The Obamacare Wars Part II

July 22, 2213. 11 AM Northern Time. BGBC Holovision Studio. New Freedom, Ellesmere Island.

Sven and Karl are sitting at the News Desk and chatting amiably as they put the finishing touches on their report. Sven looked up at the camera as the technician counted down “3, 2, 1.”

Sven smiled and looked at Karl, saying, “That was amazing. Unfortunately, there’s not a lot of context. Hopefully, as they continue to sort through the materials they will really get to the bottom of this. It appears that there was a government shutdown followed by some kind of financial crisis, precipitated by some faction of Congress known as Republicans and that their leader was someone named Ted Cruz.”

Karl responded, “Yes, Sven. It appears also that, at least of the time of this document that King Obama was not yet a King. They refer to him as the President. Do you think that they may have had some kind of government like our own?”

“It’s hard to say Karl, but the records that have been passed down to us say rather clearly that the Obamanian Dynasty was a Monarchy. It wasn’t until the reign of Queen Sasha the Fourth in 2113 that a Democratic Constitution was instituted after the great plague and the move of the Barackistan Capitol from Albany here to New Freedom after the conquest of the Canadian Resistance.”

“I guess that we’ll just have to listen to more of these reports, as soon as we re-establish to link to our correspondent on Catoctin Island. Karina, how’s the weather this morning?”

Karina smiled and straightened her dress. The pale blue of her eye shadow beckoned the camera and it zoomed in on her and then abruptly angled to the screen on her left.

“It’s hot, hot, hot. Going to be 32 degrees today. Look at those sailboats out on Baffin Bay. Looks cool and refreshing out there. Wish I could join them. And you can see the cliffs of Greenland clearly in the background. A beautiful day. Not much to complain about, but the solar farms and the windmills will be working overtime to keep all those houses comfortable this afternoon. Back to you Sven!”

“Yes, it’s time to resume our little trip into the past. This next piece is from Fox News the day after the President suspended the Constitution. Then there is something called This Week with George Stephanopoulos from a couple of days after the first tape.

Fox News, Saturday Morning, October 19, 9:42 AM.


“Brit, this is Ed Henry across from the White House. There are literally thousands of people in the street. Battle lines are being drawn. The forces of good and evil are facing off against each other. If you were an unbiased observer you might say that nobody is right and everybody is wrong. But these people are spoiling for a fight. They are singing songs and carrying signs. You can see them here in this picture. “Obama is a Kenyan Socialist Muslim. Go Home to Kenya You Voodoo Witch Doctor. Ted Cruz, get your Canadian Ass out of here. Go Back to Calgary Cruz! Keep your grubby Govermint Hands off my Medicare! That’s just a sampling. And then there are the giant effigies, one of Obama and one of Senator Cruz. This is crazy.”

“Ed, what’s the mood out there. It seems dangerous.”

“Well, Paranoia strikes deep. It’s insidious. Remember those sand bugs in the Wrath of Khan that burrow into the brain through the ear. It’s like that. This whole thing could blow sky high.”

“Stop! What’s that sound?” Everybody's looking around. “The effigy of Cruz is going up in flames! Now the Obama effigy is burning! The police are moving in. They are in riot gear. I can smell the tear gas. Dozens of protestors are being wrestled to the ground. Sirens are blaring. I hear shots! I hear shots!”

“Ed, run for cover. This is a war zone. Get out of there as fast as you can.” The tape ends abruptly. Brit Hume composes himself for the camera.
“It appears we’ve lost Ed. Chaos and paranoia at the White House. The country is going down in flames. It’s sickening, just sickening what the President is doing. The will of the people is being trampled on.

Sunday Morning, October 20. 10 AM Eastern Time. ABC News.

George is absentmindedly staring into the camera. Then he focuses his eyes and smiles.

“We’re here this morning 48 hours after the President shocked the nation by actually acting to keep the government open. Things have been relatively quiet across the nation. There was a small scuffle across from the White House yesterday with two arrests for violating the District fire codes and there were small protests around the Capitol Building in Austin Texas yesterday, but most people were watching College Football and the Baseball playoffs. This has been a remarkable couple of days. What’s your take, George?”

George Will gathered himself and glowered across the table. “This is an unprecedented usurpation of power by the President. It’s a goddamn coup in the best Banana Republic tradition. Hugo Chavez couldn’t have done it better. He should be impeached and someday he will be impeached. But…” George paused for a moment and sighed. “He had to do something to make sure the Baseball playoffs were not disrupted. That would have been a tragedy of epic proportions.”

“Charles, what do you think is going to happen?”

Krauthammer, looked startled, as if awakened from a disturbing dream, and blurted out, “Happen? It’s already happened. The American experiment is over. Done. Kaput. We’re just a laughingstock Eastern European Socialist gulag now.”

Sunday Morning, October 20. 10 AM Eastern Time. Fox News Sunday.

“Britt Hume here. The President, as we all know, committed the highest of all high crimes on Friday morning. Some would say that he just made official what he’s been doing all along, which is sucking up all of the power in this country, shoving his commie agenda down the throats of helpless Americans. He’s declared himself Hitler or Mussolini. Joe Stalin is cheering from the grave. FDR too and all those Pinko New Dealers. And his nemesis, the dashing Senator from Texas, Ted Cruz. Poor Ted has been locked up awaiting trial for Treason. Treason, my God! What an appalling turn of events. The White Knight in jail and the Black Knave in the Oval Office gloating. Obviously, this is a perversion of Justice, a perversion of the American way, a perversion of Mom and Apple pie. This is the disgusting spawn of gay marriage and European Socialist tyranny. What do you think of all this, Juan?”

Juan Williams took a deep breath and said, “Something had to be done. But clearly this was the wrong thing. I really think the President should have abdicated and turned the government over to an unbiased caretaker. Someone like Mitt Romney perhaps.”
“Yes, that would have been the sensible thing to do. We’ve got the Republican Governor from Texas on a live link from Austin. How you doin’ Governor?”
“Well, the Aggies really stomped all over Auburn yesterday and we’re looking forward to next week when the Longhorns hope to do the same. So we’re feeling pretty stoked this morning. Yee Ha! Go Texas.” A small crowd gathered around him flashed the Hook ‘em Horns sign and stomped and cheered loudly.

“Of course, we’re all saying our prayers for Teddy boy. It’s a darned shame. Here he sticks his neck out for the good of the country and look what happens. Oops. Never would have figured that Obama had cojones that big. Never in a million years. We’re fixin’ to send a Pardon request up to the President, along with our thanks for not letting the economy of the other 49 States go in the crapper and drag Texas down with it. Texas Strong, Brit. Go Aggies. Gotta go.”

“Resistance continues to mount across the country. There are numerous reports of arrests and pitched gun battles across the nation. Thousands of people in the streets. It was also reported that George Zimmerman was again taken into custody after threatening his neighbors and shooting out the lights at a local convenience store after arguing with the manager over a box of skittles. These are dangerous times. The rabble is roused. We suggest you stay inside and keep the doors locked unless you really have to go out. Keep a gun with you at all times, if possible.”

Sunday Afternoon, October 20. 1 PM Eastern Time. Fox Sports. “Hi Folks. We’re here at Redskins Stadium in Landover Maryland. It’s almost kickoff time and the crowd is buzzing. And they are hoping for a big victory from the Redskins against the mighty Chicago Bears after a very disappointing 1-4 start. Robert Griffin III has looked better and better each week, but the defense has been horrible. Chuck, how do you see this game?”

“Well, I think maybe if they borrowed a couple of balls from the President, they might be able to get something going, but otherwise this is likely to be another loss.”

"Okay. It’s time for the National Anthem. The crowd is roaring and waving those American flags that the Marines were passing out by the Stadium entrances. This is a great afternoon for Football and for America.”

The Obamacare Wars Part 1

The year is 2213 and we are reporting from a remote island which used to be a Mountaintop in the former fiefdom of Maryland. Researchers and archeologists have uncovered a cache of tapes and paper records from the administration of the First King Obama, who started the Obamanian Dynasty which has long been credited with saving the Republic of Barackistan from the horde of invaders from the backward Southern and Western provinces. However, this particular period is shrouded in mystery given the Oil and Gas Wars of the 2020s and the Climate Wars of the 2020s and 30s, and then the great flood of the 2050s which obliterated most of the low lying lands of the eastern seaboard. The reigns of Queen Hillary and Queen Elizabeth of Warren are much better documented, but leave plenty of questions unanswered. We’re going to play you some disks that we found which may shed some light on how this all got started. It’s taken them quite some time to figure out the technology, but we’ve finally figured out how to broadcast these fascinating historical documents.

October 18, 2013. 10 AM EST. “Hello, this is Brian Williams with NBC News. We interrupt this broadcast for an unscheduled Presidential Address. David Gregory is standing by in the Rose Garden of the White House on this beautiful October Morning. What’s going on David?"

“Well, the President is standing on the walkway just outside the Oval Office joking with Joe Biden and a couple of his aides. Now, he just gave a playful jab to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Martin Dempsey. The Presidential Podium is set up facing the cameras and the White House press corps. Otherwise there is a hush in the crowd. He looks remarkably calm and rested, despite the turmoil of the last few weeks. Wouldn’t you say Brian?”

“Yes. Quite remarkable really. The stress of all this must be enormous.”

“And now the President is stepping up to the microphone. The glimmer of his smile begins to fade into a look of relaxed determination.”

“My Fellow Americans. These last three weeks have been a strain on all of us. The brief government shutdown in early October was resolved with great difficulty and painful compromise, though our signature accomplishments have remained untouched. We managed to stabilize the markets, though a lingering malaise has continued as the forces of extremism pushed on, determined to get their way despite the terrible toll that they were exacting on all of us. There is no doubt that these forces of extremism, regardless of how well intentioned some of them are, have brought us to this unprecedented turning point of History. As a result of their intransigence, this Mighty Nation has been brought to the brink of economic catastrophe. The debt ceiling has been breached as of yesterday morning. We have enough cash on hand to pay the Interest on the National Debt. We have enough cash on hand to keep the Military in operation for the time being. The stock market dropped 30% yesterday and was closed early to prevent further losses. They did not reopen this morning, hopeful that by the end of the weekend some solution to this mess will be in place and confidence will be restored.

“Some of you have argued that I could use the 14th Amendment, which guarantees the full faith and credit of the United States to declare the debt limit law unconstitutional and continue borrowing to keep things running in the face of this Republican insurrection. Some have also floated the idea of casting a Trillion dollar coin and depositing it with the Federal Reserve.“ The President smiled for a moment and added, “Imagine trying to put that in your pocket and going out for groceries.” The Press Corp laughed nervously.

“While we might kid about such ideas, in my view, a Constitutional Crisis is not the way to solve an Economic Crisis. It would be a short-term fix, allowing the forces of extremism to lick their wounds and rally for another and then another and then another assault upon this great Nation and its traditions. And the people would suffer greatly. As Lincoln once said, “A house divided against itself cannot stand…I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other.” Lincoln was a wise man and a great President. Perhaps the greatest of all our Presidents. Holding the Union together was not a popular course of action. Yet he held firm and the Union prevailed."

“For the last 24 hours, we have met with the leaders of the Opposition. They continue to refuse to compromise or alter their list of demands. Indeed they have added additional demands. They have sorely tried my patience and I am a VERY patient man. The words that Speaker Boehner used were “our way or the highway.” I take him as a man of his word. I have thought long and hard about our course of action over the last weeks, consulting with all the living Presidents, and some of the dead ones too.” He chuckled softly and smiled radiantly into the camera. “I have come to my decision with a heavy heart, but with a clear conscience. I do not take this action lightly. But Speaker Boehner and his troops have been shown the highway, as they demanded.”

“I am hereby declaring a state of emergency. I have temporarily suspended the Constitution and by executive order, the debt ceiling has been eliminated. I have talked with Wall Street and the leaders of the large banks and credit will flow normally when the Stock Market opens on Monday. If necessary, the National Guard and the Army will be on call to keep the peace in any district where it is deemed necessary. All Republicans in the Congress who refused to sign a loyalty oath have been arrested and have been loaded on buses heading to an undisclosed port, where they will board Coast Guard cutters bound for the new Federal Resort at Guantanamo Bay. In addition, Justices Alito, Scalia, Roberts, and Kennedy have also been arrested and are on the same buses. Clarence Thomas will remain as the token voice of the opposition on the court. I hope that after a moderate vacation in the sun and surf, with free margaritas and plenty of rum that they will see the error of their ways and return to us rested and ready to play a more constructive role in this great Enterprise. One leader of the insurrection however, cannot be dealt with so charitably. Mr. Ted Cruz, also known as “Calgary” Cruz and “Carnival” Cruz, no doubt for his cheery disposition and party planning skills, is being held in custody and will be tried for Treason. Elections have consequences. Ditto Insurrections."

“My Fellow Americans. Thank you for your patience through these great trials. Your Health Care has been saved, along with Medicare and Social Security. God Bless America and good day.” The president smiled and waved; then he stepped down from the podium and walked away quickly, disappearing into the Oval Office with Biden, his aides, and the Joint Chiefs.

“Brian. That was really a stunning performance.”

“Yes Indeed. The President was really on his game today. I expect a huge bounce in the poll numbers after this.”

Chris Matthews chimed in, eyes gleaming, “Masterful. Simply Masterful. Not one concession to the opposition.”

“What about the Cruz situation? Did he handle that correctly?”

“Well Cruz’s poll numbers, outside of Texas and the deep South, have totally cratered. He just has no support where it really matters.” Matthews was on fire.

“Yes, even his Republican allies seem to despise him. He’s got a rough road ahead making his case to the American people.”

“I think the end of this is a foregone conclusion.”

“No doubt about that,” said Harold Fineman with a sly smile.

“Thanks. This is Brian Williams for NBC News. We are now returning you to your regular scheduled broadcasting, but you can turn to MS-NBC for an ongoing discussion of these historic events.”

Imagine No Obamacare

Imagine true compassion I wonder if you can
no need to give or share
beyond your tight-knit clan...
Imagine all the people
Living for today

Imagine no Obamacare it's easy if you try
kick grandma down the staircase
let all the deadbeats die
Imagine all the 47 percenters
Living life in dread

You may say I'm a dreamer (Ryan, Boehner, Cantor, Rubio, Paul, and Cruz...)
but I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
Free and on our own..


Imagine bright tomorrows
It isn’t hard to do
warm gun under your pillow
And no taxes too
Imagine all the Makers
Finally set Free


You may say I'm a dreamer (Ryan, Boehner, Cantor, Rubio, Paul, and Cruz...)
but I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
Free and on our own..

(c)2013. Jim Heald. All Rights Reserved for the additions and changes to John Lennon's Imagine.

New Book Out Now on Amazon

Right now, I'm not scheduled to play again until October 4 at Barrel Oak Winery, but I am doing some recording and also just published a book of selected songs and poems. It's available at Amazon... Check it Out...

Part of My February 19 Interview with Thom Bishop

In February, I had the chance to sit down with novelist, poet, songwriter, screenwriter Thom Bishop (also known by his pen name Junior Burke).  His novel Something Gorgeous (2005) has been re-released on Kindle this spring.  The book is Bishop’s take on The Great Gatsby, filling in the background of Fitzgerald’s novel with the “true” story of the romance of Gatsby and Daisy.  Bishop’s style in this work is more Hemingway or Dashiell Hammett than Fitzgerald, but he has a knack for dialog and plot and keeps his story moving.  One of the more intriguing things about the book is how faithful it is to the original while turning it inside out.  Even the most outlandish scenes in the book have some basis in Fitzgerald’s story. In the interview, we talked mostly about his musical efforts (he also just released a CD “A Little of Physics and a Lot of Luck”) for a piece that I am writing on his music.

JH: Let’s switch gears here.  What drew you to the Great Gatsby as the inspiration for your novel Something Gorgeous?

TB:  I just always loved it and it was coming to the end of the century and they were always making these lists of the top 100 American Novels of the 20^th Century and the Great Gatsby was always either number one or number two.  But I felt something about that book that nobody else had ever pointed out to my knowledge, which is that the book is a flawed work in that it’s told in the first person, from the first person of Nick Carraway who lives next door to Gatsby, so he’s somewhat of a passive narrator and then he meets this person named Jordan Baker who is the conduit of all the information about Gatsby.  She mentions it that first night at dinner. She’s the one that Gatsby pulls in to the library and talks to. 

But the trouble with that is that the Jordan Baker character is presented by Nick as being somebody who’s untrustworthy. She cheats at golf.  She doesn’t put the top up on a convertible that she borrows and it rains and the thing gets damaged and she doesn’t cop to that.  She’s a dishonest person.  So the trouble with it is that when she’s pulled in to the library with Gatsby  and then she comes out and says I just heard the most amazing thing.  I met this guy five years ago and he’s in love with Daisy and he built this house to get her attention.  She’s carrying all that information but we never heard that conversation because it’s told, the story is presented in the first person and that happens off-stage and she’s somebody that we’re told is not reliable. 

So I started thinking about well what if when he pulls her into the library he says, well is he falling for it, what’s going on.  And so from that I just started… that was the beginning of investigating that book.  Which again, I think is a beautiful book and a work of genius, but also flawed.  There’s a lot of unanswered stuff in that book.  There’s a lot of very strange stuff in that book.  There’s a scene at the end of chapter two where it seems Nick Carraway had a same sex experience with this photographer at this party.  I mean there’s a lot of weird stuff that goes on in that book that’s never explained.

JH: How long did it take to write?

TB: I started on Feb 20^th 1998 and I finished it in ’05, or I guess at the end of ’04. So it took about six years.  Five years, six years.  Too long.  I’ve got to start turning these over faster.

JH:  There was an interview, I think on your Junior Burke Website where you mentioned you were already about 1000 pages into another book.  Is that ever going to see the light of day?

TB:  I finished the draft of it on Saturday and I hope so. Yeah it will.   Something Gorgeous just went up on Kindle and Nook and all that stuff, so if I can’t find somebody to publish this new work, it’ll go up in that way.

JH: Is it more contemporary?

TB: No, it’s another alternate history.  I saw a photograph in the 90’s actually that stayed with me a long time.  A photograph of the young actor James Dean, acting on the stage at the General Electric theater on CBS television, holding a gun on Ronald Reagan who was the host of that program. So it was from 1954.  And in my book, James Dean is a young troubled actor and he becomes convinced that Reagan is somehow this threat, dangerous threat and he ends up shooting him on live television.  And it’s the beginning of a twelve year saga involving an ensemble of people through various parts of America and overseas.  And at one point it was 1000 pages, because I was writing from 1954 up until 1980.  But at some point I just realized how out of control that was and I stopped it in 1966 and now it’s 90,000 words which I think is about right.  And I just finished it on Saturday.

JH: So it sounds like you’re going back to your 50’s and 60’s roots.

TB: I guess that’s my time period.  I don’t know how you see it for yourself.  I’m basically a 20^th century person.  I’m living now, but most of the things that I, the sensibilities that I appreciate and gravitate toward are still there.

New Review of My CD - Old Jalopy

Jim Heald "Old Jalopy" Own label; 2012 [actually 2007, but who's counting] 

This singer-songwriter lives just a few miles south of me in Alexandria, Virginia and learned guitar years ago in Chicago, where I have also lived. I have not seen his live show, but hope to soon as he does a fine job with these original folk songs. read more

© David Hintz

New Music from the Elusive Mr. Bishop

“A Little Physics and a Lot of Luck” from Di-Tone Records is the new six song CD from veteran songwriter Thom Bishop (also known as Junior Burke).  Thom burst onto the Chicago music scene in the mid-70’s in a blaze of creative energy and has been performing and writing (plays, screenplays, musical theater, novels, and songs) ever since.   Despite a fairly considerable artistic output over the years, Bishop has managed to keep a low profile over the last 20 years.  You can read more about him after the review. 

This new album, his fifth release, is, in large part, an homage to Bishop’s musical influences, particularly the rock ‘n roll and literature of the late 50’s, with a nod to the psychedelic 60’s with Lennon’s I’m Only Sleeping and the title cut which is pure 70’s.  It was mostly recorded in the late 70’s and early 80’s, around the time that his first record came out.  Indeed, two of the six cuts are from his first album.

The title track kicks off the album with piano and harmonica.  It sounds almost straight out of an early Bruce Springsteen anthem, chugging along like Thunder Road.  The drums kick in and the electric guitar fills in over the top.    Bishop tries to match the intensity with his vocals, generally to good effect, although his vocal strength is more of a smooth purr than a growl.

I’m not entirely convinced that the lyrics fit that well with the heartland rock treatment.  The words feel like they’re from a slightly different era, more theatrical than salt of the earth.  There’s a lot of clever literary wordplay, particularly inversions of common phrases.  The title is a twist on the old cliché that what goes up must come down.  Here, it’s “what goes down, must come back up again.”  It’s not really a rock anthem, as the music might suggest, and the wordplay could get lost in the arrangement.

The verses, which don’t rely as much of the clever wordplay may also get a little lost compared to the bravado and cleverness of the chorus.   This is particularly true of his line in the second verse, “in the neon rain I felt the glass that had shattered deep inside.”  The line aches with fragility.  It’s painful to think of walking on broken glass, but to have something like glass shattering deep inside is almost unbearable to think of.  In a recent conversation, Bishop explained that this was the only line that he rewrote and rerecorded from the original version.  When he wrote the song, it went something like “in the neon rain I cried as hard as I did when Elvis died.”  He later updated the reference from Presley to John Lennon, but even that reference is now dated, so it had to go.  Clearly, this update is much sharper and is more directly applicable to the personal loss documented in the song.

The story boils down to flying into town to see an ex-lover.  He’s having a drink; “the last one before the airplane touches down.”   He’s probably had many drinks, since he says in the chorus that “you drain your cup then fill it up.” He views the meeting as a theatrical performance where he’ll “step on stage when the circus comes to town.”  He knows she’ll be there, “unless she’s too sick to attend.”  You can feel him hedging his bets, trying to not be crushed if she doesn’t show.  It’s obviously a big deal to him, but he’s not sure what his audience of one really thinks about it.

He tried to forget her, but it was a painful breakup.  He tells us that, “some scars are too deep to heal, too dark to ever mend.”  But by the end of the song, he feels certain that she will be there and perhaps everything may even work out.  It’s just “a little physics and a lot of luck.”  Of course, the title phrase is pure wishful thinking, with not an ounce of physics.

He drops a reference to Eugene O’Neill’s play The Iceman Cometh in that last verse: “when our souls collide for the final time when the Iceman comes to town.”  If you don’t know the play, it takes place in a bar where a bunch of alcoholic dreamers talk endlessly about their dreams, but never do anything.  A salesman comes and tries to strip them of their illusions and they find that without them they have nothing.  So at the end they go back to drinking and dreaming. It’s generally considered one of the bleakest plays of the 20^th Century.  Bishop could simply be suggesting in this reference that when they meet, that their illusions will be stripped away and they’ll see each other exactly as they are.  But the play suggests that rising above your illusions and wishful thinking is extremely difficult and that life itself is almost too painful and difficult to bear without them.

Let me make one final comment on the arrangement for the song and you can take it for what it’s worth.  It is a full throttle, piano-driven rocker and the musicianship, as on all the songs, is superb.  I do think though that this song would have benefited from having more of a break in it, either a full instrumental break or a change in tempo or greater change in dynamics between the verses and choruses.

The next track, Endless Sleep was a hit for rockabilly singer Jody Reynolds in 1958 and a country hit for Hank Williams Jr. in 1964.  It’s a favorite song of Thom’s, which he considers a “fabulous piece …of gothic rock.” The original recording is pretty laid back and almost sounds like a ballad with Reynolds’ smooth vocals very much on top of the mix.  Bishop’s approach is more aggressive, layering on some Texas roadhouse guitar sass for straight ahead vintage rock.   His vocal is as smooth and velvety as Reynolds’ original.  Bishop also contributes some very accomplished blues harmonica on the track.  The guitar part is played by Elliot Randall, who played the solo on Steely Dan’s Reeling in the Years.  Jazz Pianist and Composer Kenny Ascher, who worked with John Lennon, contributed percussion.

The story is fairly straightforward.  After a fight, the narrator’s lover wanders down to the seashore and throws herself in the waves.  He comes looking for her.  The “angry sea” taunts him that he’s taken his lover away.  She calls to him to join her in the endless sleep of death.  And finally, he jumps in, finds her and wrests her away from the sea and saves her from death.

The song exemplifies some of the casual chauvinism of the 1950’s.  His girl is little more than a cipher.  Her only words are “Come join me, baby, in my endless sleep.”  Her only action is to throw herself in the waves after a fight. The narrator has something of a dialog with the “angry sea” and she’s little more than a pawn in the argument.  At the end, he declares victory over the sea as, “my heart cried out ‘she's mine to keep’/I saved my baby from an endless sleep.”  It’s almost more about him than it is about her.

The Wireless Wonder is Bishop’s paean to 50’s radio, the Beats, and the allure of the open road.  This was the title cut from his first album and is really a suite.  The intro is pastoral folk rock, with acoustic guitar over a gentle beat.  Bishop told me he spent a lot of time on his grandparent’s farm when he was young in downstate Illinois, but I still have a hard time imagining him as the “fair haired farm boy, who’s never been kissed,” milking cows and slopping hogs.  In any event, he “curls up next to the radio” at the end of a long day.  After listening impatiently to the news (“the cold war, the hot war, and all that other jazz”), the anticipation and the tempo picks up and the song switches gears to straight ahead 50’s rock ‘n roll.

This is the true beating heart of the song and what connects it to the rest of the collection.  You can imagine all the hours that Bishop and his innocent farm-boy alter-ego spent listening to Buddy Holly, Carl Perkins, Fats Domino, “the mods and rockers,” and Eddie Cochran while reading Jack Kerouac and itching to get his “blue suede shoes” on the road.  This is a full throated embrace of the romanticism of the road through the wonder of the radio.  He was “hip to the voice of the highway/schooled in the rules of the road.” 

Though the lyrics in this section are mostly a pastiche, stringing together pop references, the phrasing and images are crisp and evoke the “magic” of the radio and the place in time perfectly.  The only other song I can think of that tries to string together pop culture references in a remotely similar fashion is the mostly forgettable Billy Joel song, We Didn’t Start the Fire.  Here it works perfectly.

When we get to section three, the piano and guitar drop out and we’re left with a thumping drumbeat and bass.  This is a particularly tricky maneuver.  The somewhat older and perhaps wiser narrator has replaced the wide-eyed innocent and addresses the listener directly in a spoken monologue.  It begins with “headlights, searchlights, probing mother night.”  He places himself in Chicago, where he’s taking a “drive along the Lakefront on this steamy Friday evening.”  He notes that Chicago is where Route 66 starts.  And Route 66 leads to California, “the golden land gulf where it all empties out.”

He recounts a drive along Route 66 through the night.  Instead of dissolving in disillusionment, he “keep[s] pushing.” In the morning, with the sunrise, he feels that he’s moving toward “a hazy gold redemption in sunny California.”

The music picks back up and he recounts travels real or imagined across the country, through the heartland and the South, and thrill of being able to “bounce off Broadway…then fly to Frisco three hours late.”  At the end, there is a saxophone solo, a Kansas City Blues flourish to top off the arrangement.  The solo is played by Ron Dewar who toured with Elvis Presley. There’s also some great piano work by multi-instrumentalist Ed Tossing, who has worked with Bishop on a number of projects through the years.  Bishop claims that there’s possibly no better keyboard player in rock or jazz than Ed Tossing out there, and based on what I’ve heard on Bishop’s albums, I’m inclined to agree.  The only one that I can think of, and they are similar in some ways, is Lyle Mays, long-time collaborator with guitarist Pat Metheny.  Bruce Hornsby is also worthy of consideration, but the styles are a little different.

This is a great and ambitious song and I’m glad to see it rescued here, so that we can all enjoy it again.  In a recent interview, I asked Thom why he didn’t just re-release the whole album, which I thought was pretty good when it came out, and still do.  He said that for him only about half of the album really worked.  He said he made the classic mistake of putting too many that he had just written on the album, instead of picking his best work.  While I might agree that not all of the songs are of the same high caliber as The Wireless Wonder, I’m sure he also thought that he’d be releasing albums year after year, instead of waiting the better part of a decade for the second.

This is followed by a cover of Lennon’s I’m Only Sleeping from the Beatles’ album Revolver.  Bishop has covered Lennon before on his 1996 CD Feed Me a Dream.  After three up-tempo numbers, this song provides a little bit of relief. This song is about that early morning state between sleep and waking, where your head is filled with the fragments of dreams.  The singer doesn’t want to be disturbed from this state of reverie.  He’s still able, in this state, to keep “an eye on the world going by.”  But the song is much more than simply an evocation and celebration of the dreaming state.  It’s also about simply being, taking life at its natural pace and rhythm; allowing it to happen.  We don’t always have to be wide awake or strung out on coffee or cigarettes, living our rat race lives.   As it says in the song:

Everybody seems to think I'm lazy
I don't mind, I think they're crazy
Running everywhere at such a speed
Till they find there's no need (There's no need)

I was reminded of another Lennon song while I was listening to this one, the late-great Watching the Wheels.  It expresses the same sentiment, but from a place of waking and a place of power.  People are still calling him crazy and accusing him of being “lazy, dreaming [his] life away.”  But he knows that the rat race or the merry-go-round is not where he wants or needs to be.

The song starts off slowly and quietly, providing a little breather between the first few songs and the last.  But as the song progresses, the music gets louder and more electric and insistent, as though someone is trying to almost drag him out of bed and he’s resisting with his whole being.  It reminded me a little bit of how the Black Keys start some of their songs low key and acoustic for a verse or two and then switch gears and turn on the whole band for a crashing finish. Here, the ratcheting up the tension as the dreamer resists being awakened.

While the original has some electronic effects, such as backward guitar loops, for the Beatles it’s a pretty conventional arrangement, inching towards the great psychedelic sound of Sgt Peppers rather than diving in and embracing it.  The rhythm is a very heavy, almost plodding 4/4. 

Bishop’s remake views the song through the lens of the psychedelic period, taking some cues for the arrangement from songs like Lucy in the Sky, Because, and The Sun King.  He starts out slowly with just two guitars. The drums and the full band don’t kick in until the second verse and drop in and out of the mix until the ending section.  This gives it a dreamier feel than the original, which is appropriate to the lyrics.  Flute on the instrumental break adds a little to the late 60’s hippie vibe. In the end, the track manages to be both harder edged and more laid back than the original.  Bishop’s vocals handle both aspects fluidly without harmony support.  All in all, this is an excellent version of the song.

Crazy Black-eyed Lady in a Yellow Satin Dress is pure Honky-tonk, roadhouse blues, complete with piano, guitar and horns.  The lady in question is beautiful and dangerous, a real heartbreaker.  She’s every man’s fantasy, but no one can possess her.  Bishop called it his “version of a Chuck Berry song” in a recent interview.  The song starts out as a bit of a “guy walks into a bar” story.  After listening to this guy bitch and moan for a while, the bartender finally asks him what he’s doing there, and he talks about the woman that he just can’t forget. 

The second verse talks about parents dealing with an inter-faith relationship and using the Crazy Black eyed lady to break up their son’s romance.  It may be the guy in verse one, or it may be someone else.  The final verse generalizes, suggesting that most men would give up something dear to spend an hour with such a woman. 

There’s more great piano work from Ed Tossing and the whole band really rocks out. The key here is that the story, as it plays out in the verses, is much less important than the bigger than life female myth that is conjured by the chorus and the joyous rock and blues music used to deliver the tale. 

The Dream was Never Me puts the Tenor Sax right up front in the arrangement and it acts as a musical hook for the song, filling in at the beginning and end of the song and between each verse.  The song is something of an interior monologue about dreams and illusions and the sometimes painful process of growing up.  The second verse suggests, with perhaps a trace too much hyperbole (“vultures in the east” and “serpents in the sun” and odds of “a million plus to one”), the difficulty of standing up for yourself and asserting yourself, since we all can “lose eventually.” 

The final verse is about Bishop’s disillusionment with the music business and the manufacturing of image.  He states that:

Though you’ll never see my face

I’ll be playing in your head

As I try to state my case

Simply saying what I’ve said.

All the things they get behind

I just never want to be…

The irony here is that the singer is trying to separate himself from the hype and magic that he celebrated in The Wireless Wonder, that “everything is magic on the radio.”  Or perhaps he’s suggesting that the real power of the radio is in the songwriter and performer trying to state his case and “simply saying” what he means.

You can also consider the song as a response to the opening track, suggesting that he’s put any self delusions and pipe dreams behind him.  At the end of the end of the first verse and the end of the song with a slight variation, he states that “the lie was never mine and the dream was never real.”  You have to live your own life and pursue your own dreams, not somebody else’s. 

The last verse also suggests that he wants us take his songs at face value.  The meaning should be clear whether you know him or you never see his face.  Of course, you might argue that the meaning of this particular song is not exactly quite so transparent.

Despite the age of the recordings and the somewhat distant roots of the material, this is not an exercise in nostalgia.  The music sounds fresh and timeless, the performances are impeccable and the songwriting is strong.  Given the iPod and streaming, it sometimes seems as if all music is now contemporary music.  I’m not sure these songs break any new ground in either blues or rock, but they sit comfortably with the classics and should find a home in the ever-changing musical landscape.  And the version of I’m Only Sleeping redefines and elevates an underrated Beatles tune.  You can’t ask for much more than that.

More on Thom Bishop

When he first moved to Chicago, fresh from studying drama at the University of Illinois, Thom was a successful singer-songwriter, performing mostly as a solo artist.  He toured the country from New York to California.  He also dove deeply into the Chicago Theater scene, doing a little bit of acting (Junior Burke was his Actor’s Equity name), but eventually got involved in writing musical theater.  By the end of the 70’s, he had three shows going at the same time, including Bagtime, co-written with Louis Rosen and based on a book by local Chicago writer Bob Greene.

Around 1979, he teamed up with the Chicago rock band Freewheelin’ and they did a number of shows together over a two or three year period. In 1981, he recorded his debut album The Wireless Wonder, with a small label that promptly went out of business.  Disillusioned and looking for new challenges, he decided to pack up and move to Los Angeles, putting his musical career on hiatus.  He did some songwriting for the movies, placing songs in About Last Night (based on the David Mamet play Sexual Perversity in Chicago) and other films. He also wrote a three act play called American Express that had a couple of performances in LA. 

The tug of the music business still remained strong and he started seriously writing songs again after a couple of years.  He also started to make regular trips back to Chicago in the mid 80’s, playing with friends at Orphans on Lincoln Avenue.  In 1989, he finally recorded his second album, Restless State of Grace.  The album, produced by songwriter James Lee Stanley, has a lush sound that captures Bishop’s tunes very well.

About the same time, one of his friends, multi-instrumentalist and songwriter David Bromberg, was producing an album for Bob Dylan at the time in Chicago and he recorded a couple of Thom’s songs.  Unfortunately, the album was never released, though Thom did hear the songs and some of the other things from the session.  He said that from what he’d heard, the sessions “turned out beautifully” and he hopes they see the light of day at some point.

He also rekindled his songwriting partnership with Louis Rosen and the two of them put together an ambitious original piece of musical theater, The Book of the Night, which had a successful run at the Goodman Theater in 1992, and had a revival off-Broadway in 1997.  He recorded a third album, Feed Me a Dream, in 1996, produced by guitarist and long-time collaborator Billy Panda.  This effort had, for the most part, more of a stripped down, acoustic sound. 

He did the soundtrack and music for a film called American Reel, which starred David Carradine as a down and out musician, trying to make it one more time.  He also got a writing credit for the film, but claims in a recent interview that he really didn’t contribute that much to the screenplay.  On the other hand, he was very proud of the soundtrack, which contained some of Vassar Clements last recorded work and was mostly built around Carradine's own songs.  Thom had nothing but praise for Carradine as an actor and singer/performer.

He published a very good novel, Something Gorgeous, in 2005 under the pen name Junior Burke.  It has been re-released on Kindle this spring.  The book is Bishop’s take on The Great Gatsby, filling in the background of Fitzgerald’s novel with the “true” story of the romance of Gatsby and Daisy.  Bishop’s style in this work is more Hemingway or Dashiell Hammett than Fitzgerald, but he has a knack for dialog and plot and keeps his story moving.  One of the more intriguing things about the book is how faithful it is to the original while turning it inside out.  Even the most outlandish scenes in the book have some basis in Fitzgerald’s story.

Bishop released While You Were Gone in 2007, also under the name Junior Burke.  This was possibly his most accomplished and best produced album. 

Bishop has also very recently completed a draft of his second novel, an alternative history of the 50’s and 60’s which starts out with a young James Dean shooting Ronald Reagan on live TV in 1954.  He also has two musical theater pieces which will be produced this summer and fall in upstate New York, one based on the Greek Myths and the other based on the works of Edgar Allen Poe.  Perhaps his most important unreleased work is a musical based on the life of Sonny Liston that he co-wrote with musician/producer Jim Tullio, which is under consideration for production in London.

Thom/Junior has taught creative writing at the Kerouac School for Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado for a number of years.