Ol' John....Ol' G-Daddy....the eight year old dead, and a 1000 other injured/nearly killed in Boston...
Life is increasingly fragile. At 80 I'm very much aware of "the decline and fall presently of nations all over this sick planet. Warning ignored by all... and ultimately ARMAGEDDON....
So, I'll stick around Sam...for a little bit, that is. Just hand me a beer, and play it again, just once more. It's quarter-to-three and there ain't no one here but...just you and me. Oh Well...hell..........

...reminds me of the times in my life that I was jumping on "soapboxes", in
the windy city's BUG-HOUSE Square, internationally known as the "Center of the Universe for Communist "Sympathizers' who were expressing their hatred of Discrimination and Wall Street!

right "out of the cocoon of the anti-establishment...anti-american way of life that urged them to join the capitalist system, by "getting off their individually arses... and working, fusing, integrating into the masses...who themselves had "made it" after WWII.

It was in 1952, just as I had graduated High School that I fell smack dab into Chicago's Beatnick Scene ...like growing up by Greenwich Village at the same moment, in New York City.

By 1954 I was finished with the Folk, Blues, etc., tired of playing in a college oriented Dixie Land Band,

Heard a cat, Barney Kessel on a record at the local soda shop (1951) accompanying Julie London in a jazzed-up version of "Cry Me A River". Wow...I was unaware electric guitar could do this alone! He did...a combination of a guitar sounding like itself, reborn, but with a "vibe" that was just so sweet!!

So I quickly forgot my Ukelele/FourString Guitar...and bought a Gibson ES-135 and a "Mastertone Amp.

Whether we survive a hundred years or not...Music Gives Happiness. Soapboxes STILL GIVE ME THE BLUES!