A Fairmount Temple carpool friend of mine started griping about the existence of God one day. “I don’t see him. Where is the proof he exists?”

I had already grown bored of that talk. Kierkegaard argued that it must be based on faith.

I’ve never debated and rarely discussed religion. I moved beyond that by thirteen. I’ve raised hell with people who seemed too sure of their opinion, but I’ve mostly left people to believe what they believed without judgment or protest.

Few will change their minds on the subject no matter what you say, and there really is no earthly answer. The laws of the universe just are as they are; they are way too complex for anyone alive to grasp, and it’s mostly something between you and whatever you consider your maker to be.

It’s been something that has left me up all night, filled with fear and angst, since six.

Mrs. K’s answer really delighted me,  though. She said that her evidence of God was the beauty of nature that she saw as omnipresent.

She introduced me to Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau.

She showed me the poetry of Edwin Arlington Robinson and Edgar Lee Masters, which I found akin to the work of Ray Davies of the Kinks. Still, my biggest hero and oft compared to Robinson’s Miniver Cheevy.

The Kinks are known for their early hits, which basically invented punk and heavy metal, but Davies is a curmudgeon who sabotaged his career to pursue something more artistic.

A colossal flop at the time, The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society had a theme with the line “God save little shops, china cups, and virginity.”

Released late in 1968 after the “Summer of Love,” it predicted how corporations like Amazon and Walmart would destroy small-town values, souls, and pastoral life via technology.

If you want your masterwork to flop preach china cups and virginity when people are sleeping with each other in the mud and burning down cities in the streets. It’s still a better message than anything that came out that year long term.

In the song “Big Sky,” Davies used the sky as a metaphor for God, sang about his absence, how he doesn’t intervene, and how small we are in the infinite universe, but just like my teacher, he sang the same message.

One day we’ll be free
We won’t care
Just you wait and see

And when I feel

that the world is too much for me

I think of the Big Sky, and nothing matters much to me

‘Til that day can be, don’t let it get you down

Davies said everything that needs to be said about today over 50 years ago. Ornery but loving by nature, he later wrote a song against lifesaving organ transplants.

He’s got no right at all 
Cause we are all God’s children 
And he got no right to change us 
Oh, we gotta go back the way the good Lord made us all

There is a famous Ferris wheel scene in the movie “The Third Man” where Orson Welles, whose character is killing people with watered-down Morphine, says that he doesn’t mind losing a few dots for easy profit. The movie argues that there is no truth.

” Victims? Don’t be melodramatic. Look down there. Tell me. Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever? If I offered you twenty thousand pounds for every dot that stopped, would you really, old man, tell me to keep my money, or would you calculate how many dots you could afford to spare.”

Davies finds the hugeness and beauty inside every one of the seemingly small dots that inhabit the planet.

It is my belief in God. It’s the same basic message I find in almost every religion and philosophy.

You appreciate the good you see in the world and do your best to improve the world. John Lennon called it “Instant Karma.”

What reason is there to disagree about who brought forth the concept of being a decent person.

I tend to live by a moral code of my own. Some organized religions tell you that is the way to seed. It doesn’t matter to me. It’s my way.

The only church, temple, or organization I’ve ever felt I wanted to be a part of was dedicated to John Coltrane on Divisidero Street in San Francisco. Silicon Valley money has pushed it out of the city but it still persists on the fringe.

https://www.coltranechurch.org/

“Giant Steps” was the first jazz album I really tried to conquer. It took me fifteen listens on cassette, but it was well worth the effort.

After hurting my foot in a basketball game, I took my cat Bailey to the airport for a red eye across the country and was stunned by the sight of nuns selling T-Shirts of the late saxophone master.

I later found out that the head of the church had also been a jazz sax player who followed Coltrane’s example in kicking heroin. Coltrane had not only kicked; he had devoted his music to God. They had chosen him as their example and patron saint. The beauty of his musical odes was their proof of salvation.

The services were open to anyone of any belief. There was no dress code. They would pass out tambourines and drums for anyone to participate.

Minus the religion, it was simply a suburb Jazz show well worth donating to when they passed the plate around at the end.

Passages from the bible were included with Coltrane’s music.

The basic message was that you had nothing to worry about as long as you believed.

I’ve long envied true believers. They don’t have to vex or fret over pain and death. As long as they do good and don’t use their certainty to ruin things for others, it seems like a superior and less stressful way to live.

Then again, you either believe or you don’t. Your faith is either tested every day or not at all.

Jim Morrison sang, “I’ll tell you this. No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn.”

I don’t see life as a test run. If there is something more, I see it as a bonus.

Ultimately, there is nothing wrong with taking a deep breath, stepping back, and clinging to what you see as beautiful in the world. Grasp tight at the people, places, and things that you love, and never forget the ones you have loved and lost.

They made you. They survive in you, and you survive in those you touch and make better.

The post God is the Beauty You Find in the World appeared first on Brad Laidman: Elvis Needs Boats.

When Benny asks why, Mel Blanc (the guy behind Bugs Bunny’s best work) as one of his writers responds in a perfect cadence of disgust and apathy with the line, “Awwww, we just didn’t feel no motivation.”

I liked it as a kid because I idolized anyone who took laziness to that level of extreme pride, but since the pandemic “I just ain’t felt no motivation.”

The last thing I published was about 18 months ago, and I purposely made it about something as banal and absurd as possible.

Seeing Ray Flanagan play his music with a five-piece, hard-charging band with two other guitarists filled me with enough joy that I felt excited enough to try to write something about it. Hopefully, I don’t desecrate it.

The best thing I can say is that it was exactly how I had hoped and wanted his music and songs to sound.

I’ve heard every song he performed at the Winchester last night before but almost exclusively as solo acoustic pieces or at venues that required a more subdued level of volume.

I said that to a couple of people who have seen him play in all his different guises, and I honestly didn’t mean it to belittle him as a solo acoustic performer.

His songs are solidly written, they are lyrically clever, his phrasing is always interesting whether he’s paying off a punchline or revealing that he’s been knifed in the gut by love. At his best, he can pull both off at the same time.

Ray’s well worth seeing as a solo, but I dig bands that can do loud and aggressive properly. I like energy.

So, I’ve spent the better part of two years imagining how I’d ideally like to hear those songs presented, which stunningly was almost exactly what I got.

I’ve even asked the dude what he would sound like if he was able to make some noise. Good luck with that. He’s inscrutable when you ask him to talk about himself or his music.

The truth is music is an auditory experience and to ask a real artist, who insists on playing his own in a city filled with cover bands to describe it is an uncomfortable, disrespectful, and unrealistic demand. The only answer if you are for real is that you’d have to be there and hear it that way.

If I put all my passion into something, I wouldn’t want to have to describe it like I’m in a five-minute movie pitch meeting either.

I have no interest in writing something and having to say it’s a mix of Vonnegut, Voltaire, and me. I’d rather they just took the time to read it.

So now I get to flail away attempting to describe it when I should merely just say it was well worth my time to hear and see in person and that I’m happy it’s so close to where I am now.

I don’t have any desire to hear Johnny Cash’s version of “Hurt” done with blazing bright telecasters, but if it’s “Cocaine Blues” that’s exactly how I want to hear it.

People forget how Chuck Berry was really a country guitarist, and it’s out of fashion to recognize how much rock and roll was just as much aggressive country guitars with tons of attitude as it was rhythm and blues.

Country music has so many different guises, but I am not particularly a fan of traditional bluegrass sounds. Most modern country leaves me cold, but I know there’s good stuff out there.

I prefer it aggressive and loud. Bobby Fuller’s version of Sonny Curtis’ “I Fought the Law” is amazing. The Clash’s version is even better.

It’s the way you know certain Hank Williams songs would be awesome if he had had the watts to back up his attitude back in the day. It’s what Hank III does with them when he feels like it.

I love Rockabilly, the amped-up fifties-style rockers of Nick Lowe and Dave Edmunds’ Rockpile efforts (for contractual reasons they only released one album as Rockpile, but it was the same band pumping out their solo efforts when they weren’t on the same label), I was a big fan of the so-called country-punk movement which included the Long Ryders and Jason and the Scorchers.  

None of the tempos were any different, it’s just that finally, I got to hear these songs behind a hard-charging band, where the three guitars answered each other with vicious, bright-cutting savagery. At times they chimed, and at times they seared with prideful vibrancy.

No one was showing off. It didn’t veer off into metal or punk, it just all had that perfect tone that shows off a telecaster at its best. A hard-charging train bent for true love or hell forging its way forward as powerfully as possible without ever coming off its rails.

That bespoke the musicianship, because the band was tight as hell, and everything mixed perfectly, which amazes me given the fact that it was their first show together as the Mean Machine.

It just all fit.

The sounded like they have been touring this stuff for a solid year their first time out.

Not to mention that Ray showed me a real front man vibe I’ve never seen before. Decked out in a sheer flashy shirt that looked like he’d bought it with Elvis at Lansky Bros. back in the day. Ray’s a performer.

There were times he sounded as if he was making a sexy come on and then he would instantly turn it around into a cry of anguish shifting between alternate modes of passion on a dime.

You’ve got a cold, cold heart

You’re heart is so cold

But your body’s warm

I’m embarrassed because I don’t know the title of that one, but it started with a sense of sexy intrigue and built itself up and down repeatedly into a final worthwhile expression of frenzy until Ray ended it with a last gasp, Elvis, at his most sensual mimic, which said, “I’ve put everything I have into this all I can do is slow it down, tease you, and make you want to hear it again.”

I wish I had more of his lyrics, but they are too well crafted for me to risk misquoting them. He sets his lyrical targets up well and knocks them out at the end with knock-out punches like “Evil walks; and it’s magnetized.”

“Stupid Sound,” was a highlight and I got these from his Bandcamp page so they are probably somewhat correct to give you a vibe

I’ll always remember
You lying on the ground
Your handkerchief neck
In your sad story town
You ever get hungry
You ever get dry
Just go on down to Molly’s
Get some bread, wine, and pie

Who knows? Who cares?
It’s raining dumb out there
I turn
You down
Turn up that stupid sound
Woowoowoowoowoo

It’s right onto Ferndale
Where you had left a stain
I can hear your sweet crying
From Kamm’s Corners down Lorain
We’re rolling past midnight
With many proofs to prove
I got $32
Should get us in the groove

Who knows? Who cares?
It’s raining dumb out there
I turn
You down
Turn up that stupid sound
Woowoowoowoowooo

If you pass the Maker’s
Please tell them I said hi
I’m drowning on Neptune
Though I was just driving by
Paper says it’s Friday
But I find it hard to tell
‘Cause my memories say it’s Tuesday
And they’ll only serve me well

Who knows? Who cares?
It’s raining dumb out there
I turn
You down
Turn up that stupid sound
Turn up that stupid sound
Turn up that stupid sound
Woowoowoowoowoowoowooooo

https://rayflanagan.bandcamp.com/track/stupid-sound

It doesn’t sound like Dylan on “Positively Fourth Street” or the perfectly honed insults on Elvis Costello’s first four albums, but it’s on that level. Whether he’s expressing love, disdain, empathy, or anguish it’s the sound of an artist who won’t tell you what he sounds like or what his songs mean but knows exactly who he is and what he’s about.

When you hear something you dig with that much passion and skill there’s little reason to deny or resist it.

I had hoped the versions of these songs I’d previously heard were just blueprints for something that could be this aggressive, loud, and tasteful. How rare is it to get exactly what you wish for these days?

His music isn’t pornography, but the best I can do without embarrassing either of us is ape Supreme Court justice Potter Stewart when he defined it by saying, “I know it when I see it.”

I know how I like to see people turn out blues/country-infused stomps, Chuck Berry vamps, and lyrically adept philosophical rockers. That’s what I hoped for and that’s what I got.

It just happened to turn out exactly how I’d hoped it would.

I know it when I hear it!

All five musicians meshed perfectly. It left me motivated enough to ramble on about it past 5 AM. I haven’t felt that way for a couple of years now. I barely thought it possible even a week ago.

I feel bad that my nicotine addiction deprived me of parts of it. After the final song which started with a gospel hush of sincerity that again built to a satisfyingly frenzied climax that fancy shirt hung drenched in a well-earned sweat.

He gave everything he had, and for the first time in forever, I was exuberantly glad that I had gotten out of bed and left the house.

Well worth the wait. Hopefully, the plagued sky is clearing, and I’ll get to hear a lot more of it soon no matter how bad the weather gets around here in the next three months.  

The post Ray Flanagan: Exactly as I wanted to hear him appeared first on Brad Laidman: Elvis Needs Boats.

Rachel and Joey were a much better couple on Friends than Ross and Rachel.

I went to Northwestern all four years that David Schwimmer who played Ross was there.

My best friend from college’s ex-wife is still in his Looking Glass theater company.

He brought me into Schwimmer’s apartment in Chicago once when he had something to do with running it. It was a pretty nice spread.

I have no idea if I met him or not. I dated a girl who was also in that theater crowd at Northwestern. They really weren’t for me except for one dude I loved who left college to attend Ringling Brother’s clown camp. I saw some stuff that was going on with John Cusack and Jeremy Piven in Evanston and was way more into that type of entertainment at the time.

I wanted to watch the “Young Ones” not see Bertolt Brecht even if the Doors took that “Whiskey Song/Moon of Alabama” from “Man is Man,” which was one of the few real dates I had in college.

I remember almost tipping over my chair falling asleep, which is apparently a big faux pas at those kinds of events.

My friend used to refer to the drama majors as the “twisted unfortunates.”

When I took improv classes my Senior “quarter” I did it downtown at a place called the Players Workshop that was associated with Second City.

I found that whole crowd to be kind of pretentious and depressing. They all wore black and smoked.

Right after performing on the main stage at Second City (we had a sketch that I was in that was exactly the Adam Silver movie “Click” although I don’t see any money ever coming to me from it even if I still had the videotape of that show) I had bowel surgery and decided I was sick of going to college took my credits, graduated and spent the last two quarters playing basketball, and telling major financial institutions there was no way I was interested in working 80 hours a week for them in various absurd interviews.

Years later I used to write goofy recaps and I did some on Friends for a while. There was some dude in England who would produce like 150,000-word analyses of each episode that must have taken hours and hours of research. One is posted elsewhere on my site under “The Most Obsessed Friends Fan Ever.”

My recaps were sort of my opinions of where shows were going and then half appreciation, half mockery.

I was the king of the Felicity recappers for a short time and had a predominantly female fan base that I cherished. Most attention from women I’ve ever had in my life to be honest about it.

Now Friends is like Seinfeld for me.

I watched every episode of both shows on the first run. After they were over no one could have beaten me at trivia about those show, but since syndication and my lack of rewatching interest in the ensuing years almost anyone beats me at both now.

You really do have to keep your skills sharp.

At the beginning of the show, Joey’s character was by far the least developed. Friends was really the first sit-com where three legitimately was no star or main character. This made the cast a ton of money went they ganged up and went union together.

I rooted for the early Ross and Rachel relationship even though Ross was way too mopey and droopy for me. Nevertheless, I sympathized with the dude with an infatuation of having a chance at the beautiful girl out of his league actually finding love when she decided to stop dating attractive, dumb jerks.

Their breakup was really well written, plotted, and just sad. I still back Ross’ we were on a break argument, but you could understand how things were still unrepairable in the short term.

Eventually, though Ross was no longer the same guy. It just got too insane and he was just a dude with a lot of issues, who had done a ton of desperate silly things.

Joey meanwhile became my favorite character on the show by  a large margin.

I am usually not a fan of dumb, but Joey was sweet and loyal dumb and that goes a long way.

Joey was always fun. I cannot remember him having any serious long-term angst during the entire series. Everyone else had drama and Joey was just always Joey. He was the rock.

Monica telling him how to please a woman when he can’t please himself due to some paying sperm gig he had is still one of my funniest moments ever, as well as Joey’s pretty crass immediate decision to no longer follow up in that matter again no matter how successful it was after he no longer had to do so.

Rachel moved in with Joey after Monica and Chandler finally were outed, and there was a time where it looked like they would hook up, but it was just another excuse for more Ross angst to finally get the fable R&R back together.

I wish Joey and Rachel got together in the end.

They always had fun together. I found them a delightful pair. The drum set ruled!

Neither were rocket scientists and neither cared. They accepted what was shallow about themselves and were comfortable being who they were. This was also true of Phoebe. The rest were neurotic messes.  

Why have a kid with droopy Ross, and deal with his years of psychosis? That sounds like a miserable life. That pairing is still having arguments about their past at 60.

Joey and Rachel would have just had a great life. They probably wouldn’t have had any kids. They would have spent their entire life going to fun parties or staying at home doing something amusing. A marriage where you are friends first and you fall in love is just a way better plan that a dope who was in love with you when he was 14 and has another kid with two lesbians.

It goes without saying that even selfish Joey is a better lay than Ross on his best day.

Rachel should have picked Joey.

I think right now that needs to be said.

The post Rachel Should Have Chosen Joey on Friends appeared first on Brad Laidman: Elvis Needs Boats.

The best shows to see are when a band is in its infancy or after they’ve had a few hits, been forgotten about, and gotten even better.

I saw Queen in Columbus last week, and it was a great show. Still, it wasn’t nearly as great as seeing the Georgia Satellites lead singer Dan Baird perform with Jason and the Scorchers’ guitarist Werner Hodges two nights before at the Beachland Ballroom.

To see an act as good as Queen for $18 in a small club where I got to meet both of my idols with only about 80 people there and get right up close is just a superior experience.

I’ve don’t need lasers and pyrotechnics. I just love music.

Certain bands are worth seeing in an arena, but if you can see them in a small club and avoid the parking hassles and the usually late to the party, jaded crowd?

I feel for the artists, but it’s a fantastic deal.

All the best shows are secret.

Uptight Sugar is sort of a secret that shouldn’t be.

I listened to their debut EP, “Under Blue Light,” after an older Mason I met told me that they were the best band in Cleveland. I was skeptical, but I checked them out out of respect for him.

After about 30 seconds of the first song, “Diggin’ Holes,” I became hooked and instantly purchased it.

The music swells at you with a pop vibe that fills your soul.

Their latest EP, “I’m OK, You’re OK,” is part two of what is hopefully a fantastic trilogy. It’s a complete work that raises more questions than it answers. It deals with that famous line from “Shattered” by the Rolling Stones that provided the title of the BoDeans’ debut, “Love & Hope & Sex & Dreams.”

Singer and principal songwriter David Hamilton has one of the best voices I’ve ever heard. His generosity of spirit is evident when he performs and deals with his devoted fans after the band’s performances.

Their original music is clearly an act of love and passion. Producer Mike Murray makes every sound worth listening to on the most expensive headphones available, and I’m less than an audiophile, but this art makes it worth it.

They combine the pop sensibility of the Beatles with the psychedelic sounds and “echoes” of Pink Floyd to create something new.

I saw a man who had a local radio show marvel at them live and say, “Do you realize how hard it is to have a five-piece unit that is that tight?”

Actually? I do.

They seem to be both a team and a family. Other bands want to steal their sound engineer Edward Planisek, but he’s too loyal to the cause. They all are.

There’s nothing wrong with paying a band money that doesn’t care about money. Paul McCartney and Yoko Ono are doing great charitable things with the wealth they have accumulated from the Beatles catalog once they finally got their business affairs in order.

Hamilton and guitarist Matt Vance have a Jagger/Richards thing going on, but there is no venom, just yearning, and compassion.

The video for “Crawl,” their new single, only hints at their power live.

If you look on YouTube, you can see that everything is of high quality and infinitely engrossing while operating on a shoestring budget.

John Lennon must have used the word “listen” in his lyrics about 5000 times. Listen to him sing “C’mon baby, listen to me. Listen to me!” with Elton John on “Whatever Gets You Through the Night,” his last number-one single before he disappeared for five years to raise his son Sean.

I’ve noticed that everyone that listens to Uptight Sugar loves them. They are all about love and passion. It’s free to watch on YouTube or listen to on Spotify.

In this case, right now, it is free, and as Buddy Holly sang, “It’s so easy to fall in love.”

It really is that simple.

The post Uptight Sugar “I’m OK, You’re OK” appeared first on Brad Laidman: Elvis Needs Boats.

In less than stellar times, there’s finally a good reason to sing the blues again.

With America polarized mostly by greed and selfishness, Cleveland based quartet Bad Hooks hit the nail right on the head with their debut single “Selfless Blues.”

It’s Swamp Rock that would sound great if they did a reunion movie for the phenomenal Timothy Olyphant show “Justified.”

I’d love to see Walton Goggins doing anything wicked as this song is playing, but it’s message is the opposite.

Calling out to the Chuck Berry classic “Promised Land,” which Bruce Springsteen has used as his secret weapon in live marathon performances for years, Bad Hooks gets down into the dirt with a beautiful harmony driven piece of funk that reminds me of the Everly Brothers fronting the Black Crowes if they had been born to Johnny Cash and June Carter.

“I’ve got a shattering desire inside my bones.”

Finally, in a time where people bicker and argue about almost everything and don’t seem very productive, some urgent music with the right idea.

The band is led by singer/axemen Nick Wagner and Matt Hertweck, while Chan Thompson and Bee Roberts ably handle a monster rhythm section.

In a time where it seems to be all words and no action, I know for a fact that Wagner has a long history of sharing and helping other artists. He walks the walk.

The song is pure, heat fused, passion, and a driving, yearning desire for a better world.

Check out their beautiful video by Mikhail Tout, and fire up your airboat to get out and see them live. It seems well worth racing through the crocodile filled muck to do.

Long like the muckrakers with ironically Bad Hooks.  

The post Bad Hooks “Selfless Blues” appeared first on Brad Laidman: Elvis Needs Boats.

Want to know options? I hated the business, but I knew as much as anyone alive, and I taught classes for one of the most successful proprietary trading firms in the world. I’m your guy.

I wrote this around 2007 for the CBOE. They hired me based on it, but couldn’t get their act together to use it. I’m giving it to you for free. It is an excellent introduction to options and all derivatives.

The simplest thing that I can say about options is that they are tools just like a car, a cell phone, or an ax, They are tools. Let’s think about an ax. It can be extremely useful to you if you want to go out and cut down trees. On its face, chopping down a tree seems pretty simple, but it would be a really bad idea to just grab an ax and head out looking for a mighty oak tree to take down without first acquiring some knowledge.

Let’s say that a tree is blocking your view of your town’s beautiful sunsets. You can buy an ax cheaply, but have no idea how to cut down a tree. Cheer up, you have two immediate assets.

1. You have a goal: Cut down that ugly tree that’s blocking my view!
2. You have the tool to get it done: The ax.

Now all you need is a little learning and you’re home free.

Are options for you?

This should always be in the back of your mind as you build on your knowledge of options. What can options do for me?

Here’s why I think options are useful.

Options are sort of like custom decorating for the investing world. They can be an extremely powerful way to help you fit your exposure to financial markets to your own personal situation or specifications. For the truly motivated, options might even become an income producing career.  

Are options terrifyingly complex?

There is fear involved in learning anything new, but there shouldn’t be. Just be sure of what you do and do not know, and I assure you that you will be better for any knowledge you gain and be fine.

I’ve heard many stock brokers call options complex financial instruments. Some of the brokers might convince you that options are scarier than meeting a really angry mugger in a dark alley. These brokers usually either do not understand options or they make their money selling something different from options, usually both. Imagine what horrible things horse breeders had to say about cars back in the day!

Are they complex? They definitely can be. Intellectuals have written many prize winning dissertations on options. I’ve been working with options for over fifteen years and I continue to learn new things about them.

Should that scare you? Luckily, not at all! A computer is also a complex instrument. My grandmother to her final day was too intimidated to even turn one on, and I could have taught her how to do that in less than 20 seconds!

My grandfather, on the other hand, knew very little about computers, but he was still able to use one to his advantage. He knew how to turn his computer on; he knew how to use a piece of software to play Gin and other card games; he knew how to use it to see where his stocks closed; and he knew how to turn it off.

That’s it. That’s all he knew, and he wasn’t the least bit interested in using it for anything else. He didn’t know how it worked. He wasn’t interested in learning how to use a word processor or a spreadsheet, and he had few people in the world that he felt like talking to much less emailing. There were a ton of things his computer could have done for him, and had he spent the time to learn them he might have found them useful, but he was perfectly happy using it to play Gin and check his stocks.

Options are the same way. There are really simple ways to improve your investment portfolio with options, and if they serve your goals then options are useful to you. A friend of my father’s used to sell options against a certain stock that he owned and did well with this strategy. He had no idea what people at Morgan Stanley or Goldman Sachs were doing with these same options and he had no reason to care. He knew what selling options did for him, and what the risks were for that one basic strategy and that strategy was extremely beneficial to him.

The more you learn about options, the more useful they can be to you. Hopefully, each small thing you find out about options will help you better decide whether trading them is for you. Some of our beginning examples may not be an end point. Do your best to gather the building blocks before reaching a final judgment. Many knowledgeable investors would consider investing without options to be analogous to owning a home without fire insurance.

Treat options like any other tool. You may decide that you want to just play Gin like my grandfather or you may decide that you want to learn how to monitor galaxies with them. It’s up to you and either way is fine.

Treat options just like you treat learning about a computer. What are they and what can they do for ME?

Buying Stock

One of the most common uses of options is to enhance your ability to invest in the stock market. Before introducing calls, it might be useful to quickly review the ups and downs of stock ownership.

Consider a specific stock like IBM. You go to a financial website and you see that it is trading $100 a share.

That’s today! At any given point in the future, IBM can do one of three things:

1. It can go up
2. It can go down
3. It can still be trading $100

Clearly, if you are considering purchasing IBM, you would do so only if you think that IBM is going to go higher. If IBM fell, you would lose money.

Even IBM standing firm at $100 is no good for you.

Imagine buying $10,000 worth of IBM and having the stock just sit there like a rock. That $10,000 could either be earning interest in the bank or perhaps even better yet, you could trade that $10,000 for a top of the line big screen High Definition Plasma TV!

Money is also just a tool that you need to decide how to use.

Whenever you are making any kind of investment in the stock market, you need to assess your goals.

1. How long do I want to own this stock? A day, a month; a year; until I retire?
2. Do I want to invest in something with a small amount of risk that will probably yield me a small but consistent return, or have I been saving this money to try and make a big score?

Your investment goal is up to you. IBM is an established company that will probably yield small consistent returns. If instead, you were looking to take on more risk, you could look around for a young company that has a chance of becoming the next IBM. Most investment professionals would suggest doing a little bit of both.

Call Buying Part 1: Comparing 1 Call to 100 Shares of Stock

The Simplest Comparison: Buying stock or buying a call?

A call is one type of option. The other type of option is a put and we will discuss them later. Don’t be intimidated; people traded calls for a number of years before puts were even publicly traded.

I’d consider outright call buying to be a fairly aggressive strategy. I’m starting with it not because it is low on risk, but because it is a relatively simple building block that is very analogous to stock ownership.

Both of the following simple strategies are ways to profit, if you think IBM will go up over the course of the next year.

Choice 1: Buying 100 shares of IBM for $100 and holding on to it for exactly one year

Choice 2: Buying 1 IBM call for $7 that expires in exactly one year with a strike price of $100

Our goal here is to profit if IBM goes up like we think it will. Now we simply need to compare the pros and cons of each strategy the exact same way you would with any other decision.

Sports Car or Utility Vehicle? There is no right or wrong, only what is best for you.

Let’s look at choice 1:

Buying 100 shares of IBM for $100 and holding on to it for exactly one year

How much does this cost?

Without using margin, this will cost you $10,000.

What’s the most I can lose?

IBM can’t go any lower than zero, so the most you can lose is what you paid for it: $10,000.

How can I make money?

IBM could go up significantly in one year. You will make $1 X 100 shares = $100 for every dollar IBM goes up. If IBM goes up to $120, you will have made $2,000. Similarly, if IBM goes down to $80 dollars you will lose $2,000

Net Profit for various IBM outcomes

IBM $10 90 95 100 105 110 115 120
($9000)) ($1,000) ($500) $0 $500 $1,000 $1500 $2000

What will my return be?

1 Year Return = (Profit)/(Investment)   X   100%

If you sell IBM for $120 dollars at the end of the year, this would be ($2000)/($10,000) X 100 % =  20%

1 Year Return for various IBM outcomes

What will my return be?

1 Year Return = (Profit)/(Investment)   X   100%

If you sell IBM for $120 dollars at the end of the year, this would be ($2000)/($10,000) X 100 % =  20%

1 Year Return for various IBM outcomes

1 Year Return for various IBM outcomes

IBM $10 $80 $90 $95 $100 $105 $107 $110 $115 $120
-90% -20% -10% -5% 0% 5% 7% 10% 15% 20%

On to choice 2:

Buying 1 IBM call for $7 that expires in exactly one year with a strike price of $100

Let’s slowly figure out what that means.

Calls, if you can somehow get them for free, take them!

Calls can never be worth less than 0! It’s like having the option to go swimming when you already have a pool pass. If you really feel like swimming, great – exercise your option to go swimming and have an enjoyable afternoon. If you don’t feel like swimming, nothing ventured, nothing lost.

A call is a lot like a coupon that guarantees you a price. Think about having a gas coupon that lets you buy 20 gallons of gas for $3 a gallon anytime in the next year. If gas never goes higher than $3, you just never use it. If, however, gas surges to $4 a gallon, you’ll be glad to have that coupon!

Consider the above call as nothing more than a coupon letting you buy IBM for $100 a share any time in the next year.

The price that the call (or coupon, if you will) lets you purchase IBM at is called the Strike price. In our example, the Strike price is $100. Strike prices are usually set in increments of $5 (e.g. 90, 95, 100, 105, or 110). Stocks that trade at lower prices may have strike prices for every $2.50.

Calls also have Expiration dates. To start out simply, we’re just going to talk about a call that expires in one year, but later we’ll learn that in the market place specific calls expire on specific dates, and are referred to by the month that they expire.

You may hear the term Underlying. The underlying refers to whatever the call is based on. In this case, it is the stock IBM. Options are often called Derivatives, because they derive their value mostly from the location of their underlying product.  

Now that you have the basic idea, here’s the formal definition of a call. A standard equity call option conveys a right, not an obligation, to its holder to purchase 100 shares of the underlying stock, at a specific price per share, for a predetermined amount of time.

Over the course of the next year, you can do whatever you want with your call. Just like a coupon, you can use it any time you wish; you can sell it to someone else before it expires; or in the worst case scenario you might never find a time to do anything with it.

How much does this cost?

This can be a little confusing, so take a deep breath and read the following carefully.

1 IBM call does not correspond to 1 share of IBM stock. When people in the industry refer to 1 call, it’s sort of like how a grocer talks about a carton of eggs.

You understand that a purchasing a carton of eggs for $1.20 means you that are buying 12 eggs all at once for 10 cents each.

1 IBM call gives you the opportunity to buy not one, but 100 shares of IBM for $100.

Here’s where it gets a little dicey. Your broker will tell you that the price of your 1 call is $7. This would be akin to your grocer telling you that a carton of eggs would cost you 10 cents, when what he really meant was 10 cents for each egg in the carton.

Yes, an IBM call, like the one in our example, will cost you $7 for each share of IBM that it represents. So your total expenditure is $700 ($7 X 100 shares).

What’s the most I can lose?

You can’t lose any more than you paid: $700 

Here’s a big advantage for the option over buying stock. IBM is probably not going to go to zero in a year, but it could easily go to $80, which would represent a loss almost three times as large ($2,000) as your maximum loss with the option.

That’s the great thing about buying calls instead of stock, limited loss. We’re buying IBM because we think that it is going up. When we buy stock being wrong hurts us, and being really wrong hurts us more and more.

How can I make money?

We’re going to start out as simply as possible by assuming that you do absolutely nothing with your option for exactly one year. This is unrealistic, but a good place to start.

After one year, it’s put up or shut up time.

IBM has to be higher than 100 in one year for my option to be worth anything.

If in one year IBM is trading $95, then your option is worthless. Who wants to buy IBM for $100, if you can buy it for $95?

If in one year IBM is over $100, then you would theoretically exercise your call, which turns it magically into 100 shares of IBM stock. In this case, you would then probably sell your stock in the marketplace for a profit.

Let’s look at an example.

After one year, IBM ends up at $110.

You exercise your call and pay $10,000 for 100 shares of IBM

Then you can sell your 100 shares at $110 in the regular marketplace taking in $11,000.

Your option was worth $11,000 – $10,000 = $1,000 to you.

Don’t forget that you paid $700 for your option, though! So your final profit would be $1000 – $700 = $300

Luckily you really don’t have to go through all that hassle, because you can just sell your option on expiration day for basically the same amount of money in the marketplace. You don’t even ever have to have the $10,000!

Here’s how we figure out what an option is worth at expiration.

Call Value = Price of IBM – Strike Price

So as above, where IBM wound up at $110, let’s see what our call is worth. This is where the confusing practice of quoting a call in terms of its cost per share of stock comes in handy.

We’re going to make the exact same calculation, but in the parlance of the industry.

Call Value (at expiration) = Price of IBM (at time the call expires) – Strike Price

Call Value = $110 – $100 = $10

For the sake of this lesson, assume that you can sell your call for $10 right at the end of expiration day, saving you the hassle of exercising it and then selling your stock out.

This value is usually referred to as the call’s Intrinsic Value or Parity

Profit = Call Value – Price you paid

In this case, we paid $7.

Profit = $10 – $7 = $3 which as above represents 100 shares of stock, so your final profit is $3 X 100 = $300. The same number we got above.

Remember, if the price of IBM at expiration is lower than the Strike Price, you wouldn’t want to use your option. The above formula would give you a negative value, and options are never worth less than 0! Your call has gone out worthless.

Intrinsic Value for various IBM outcomes

IBM $10 $80 $90 $95 $100 $105 $107 $110 $115 $120
Value $0 $0 $0 $0 $0 $5 $7 $10 $15 $20

If you sell IBM for $120 dollars at the end of the year, this would be ($2000)/($10,000) X 100 % =  20%

1 Year Return for various IBM outcomes

Remember, if the price of IBM at expiration is lower than the Strike Price, you wouldn’t want to use your option. The above formula would give you a negative value, and options are never worth less than 0! Your call has gone out worthless.

Intrinsic Value for various IBM outcomes

Let’s compare the profits of our choices with some possible outcomes.

Some things to notice:

1. With the call you can not only be wrong, you can be totally wrong! The most you can lose is $700. Buying a call let’s you profit from upside moves in IBM with limited loss!
2. IBM must go higher than $107 for you to make money on your call. You don’t get anything for free in life. You paid $700 for your limited downside risk. That’s why a lot of people call options insurance.
3. We never do quite as well in sheer dollar profits with just one call as we do with 100 shares of stock, but we can go to sleep knowing that our losses can only go as high as $700. This can be an especially attractive asset with younger less established companies than IBM where giant moves in either direction are possible!
4. Here’s something subtle but interesting. Although the call always provides you with at least $700 less profit than the stock purchase, once it starts working for you it starts working just as well as stock. Stock finishing at $115 instead of $110 improves your situation by the same exact amount ($500) in both cases. One call gives you the same upside power that 100 shares of stock does, but it doesn’t cost you $10,000. It only costs you $700!

Let’s look at return

In the above example, where IBM ended up at $110, we made $300 of profit on a $700 investment.

1 Year Return = (Profit) / (Investment)   X   100%

1 Year Return = $300/ $700    X  100 % =  43%

Here are the returns associated with some possible outcomes

Remember that we’re comparing an investment of only $700 to one of $10,000.

Some more things to notice

1. Buying calls can often lead to a loss of your entire investment.
2. Because options let you take advantage of the upside of a $10,000 investment with only $700, they can offer fantastic returns on your money. Buying one or more calls lets you leverage a small amount of money into generous upside returns with limited downside risk.
3. Buying a call leaves us with $9300 more to invest any way that we want. One choice might be to purchase more than one IBM call.

The point is that both choices yield certain return characteristics to fit your needs.

Something else about limited loss

Think about this common scenario. You buy IBM at $100 and it immediately falls to $80. You’ve immediately lost $2,000 and suddenly you think to yourself that it’s not very fun owning IBM. Nothing says that IBM will stop going down and perhaps $2,000 is as much as you care to lose. You’d have to sell your IBM stock.

On the other hand with the call, the most you can lose is $700. If stock immediately falls to $80, you’re probably not very happy, but you still have a year for things to improve. It’s gotten about as bad for you as it can get, but you have no real reason to panic about the future, because at this point it can only get better. It’s still possible IBM could still trade up to $120 by the end of the year.

An example where you might consider buying calls instead of stock

Let’s say you do some research on IBM and come to the realization that the coming year is a very important one for the company. IBM is planning to come out with a new product that will be very important to its future, perhaps a home computer that talks to you like a close friend.

You decide that whether this product is successful or not will have a huge impact on the stock. If you think that this new product is a likely success, this would be an ideal circumstance to perhaps purchase some calls especially if you have some money that you are willing to put at risk.

If the product is a flop, your loss is relatively small. If it is a huge success, you can make some excellent returns on your investment with limited dollar risk!

Skill from this less to work on

Understand how to calculate the intrinsic value and net profit for any expired call given the following information

1. Purchase price of the call
2. Strike price
3. Stock price at expiration

A Sample Problem

You purchase 1 AIG October 50 Call for 3 dollars.

Come October expiration stock AIG is trading $57

What are the calls worth at expiration?

Call Value = Stock Price – Strike Price

Call Value = $57 – $50 = $7

Profit = (Call Value – Purchase Price) X 100

Profit = ($7 – $3) X 100  = $400

The post Welcome to Options appeared first on Brad Laidman: Elvis Needs Boats.

I’ll say it again

God is a concept by which we measure our pain

Black cloud crossed my mind
Blue mist round my soul
Feel so suicidal
Even hate my rock and roll

Want to die
Yeah, want to die
If I ain’t dead already
Oh, girl, you know the reason why

The reason why was that for some miraculous reason John Lennon was a special motherfucker that rarely comes around that cared more about the world he probably detested than himself.

No one loved rock and roll more than John Lennon. Were it up to him every song he released would have sounded up to par and of the style of “Long Tall Sally” or “Rock and Roll Music.” After the Beatles broke up, he said he thought most of his work was crap and the only song on the radio he liked was Dave Edmund’s “I hear you knocking,” a basic blues in a rock and roll style and were it up to him, had he not a bigger agenda that’s what it would have all sounded like.

He was in pain. Epic pain. People fire away at those who commit suicide like it is a selfish concept. It’s unfair. It doesn’t matter who they do not want to leave behind. They don’t want others to feel their pain. They just have no ability to survive it anymore. It has to end. They are on fire. You don’t survive that pain. You kill yourself in a way you absolutely don’t survive, and if you do survive it or come close and are able to stop yourself then you spend the rest of your life trying to help others, and he did.

John Lennon could have taken over the world and ruled it as the greediest, most despicable dictator ever imagined. He didn’t. More props to him.

He had every right. He had flighty parents. He was an accident. They made him choose between them; they abandoned him; he was brought up under loving discipline that every bone in his marrow fought against. He only wanted a mother. He got her back and she was run down by a drink cop in a random joke from the heavens that would have left a mere mortal crying out for revenge forever or in a heap in the corner crying.

Somehow he was better than that. Somehow he knew the purpose of life was to have fun. Somehow he didn’t define it as just having as much fun as he could at the expense of everyone else. He wanted it for everyone, and was willing to die for other people almost all of which he had nothing, but contempt for.

People criticized him for preaching sharing when he was wealthy. Yoko Ono made all of John Lennon’s money. He didn’t care a bit about wealth. He would have died without her and he thanked her constantly.

The world is not kind to geniuses. He was one. He was better than that. He had every right to compare himself to Christ and he got the same ending. After crying out for happiness in the dark for years, after carrying the torch forever for others, he’d done enough. His search was  complete and he had done enough and he had found his escape route, he reached full consciousness on Double Fantasy, he had his true love, he had his mother, he was out of here and finally going to reap the rewards of more hard work than almost anyone ever.

I don’t care how hard rock the Cheap Trick versions of those songs are. I’m glad they exist. Bonus.

Every John Lennon song can be defined by the drug or philosophy he was reaching for desperately at the time, and the sound of Double Fantasy is perfect. The drug is contentment, happiness, and love. The thing he preached from almost from his first breath, and then that lazy, jealous, selfish, motherfucker shot him down.

The time has come the Walrus said

for you and me to stay in bed again

It’ll be just like starting over

Starting over

Why don’t we fly off alone

Spend a weekend in some old hotel

A little place without a phone

A certain honeymoon would do us well

(in the voice of Elvis who he once said he no longer believed)

WELL, WELL, WELL

John Lennon was the Beatles. All of it. It was his band his vision. He had the final word. He was intent to do what he had to do even if he cloaked his message in sugar, no matter who he had to wink at and bow down to until he could later tell them to fuck off and be better.

His band. His vision. His revolution. Thank God for him. I love Paul, I love Dylan, I love Harrison, George Martin was great.

It was all John Lennon. All of it. His Band He started it. He ended it. Even though it broke his heart for the millionth and biggest time.

The Sirius Beatles channel either has no clue or no inclination to put out that narrative.

“Where are we going boys – to the top – cheer up!”

I was a kid whose brain did not turn off. It still doesn’t turn off unless I hear music. Music is an international language that anyone or anything from any galaxy can understand. It settles the uneasy mind or at least it does its best. It’s our best shot. If it has lyrics, all the better and I listened to the lyrics. I cling to them. I live my life by them. Most don’t even know their meaning as they sing them. Most have never considered the meaning of the music they love even if those lyrics do speak to them without them listening.

No one used the word “listen” more than John Lennon. He listened as he spoke, wrote, and sang. He fought like hell every day of his life, but if he found a better idea, a valuable ally he would adopt them and protect them forever.

He had some bad days. He did some bad things. No one worked harder to apologize. No one worked harder to fix things then John Lennon.

I was dreaming of the past

And my heart was beating fast

I began to lose control

I began to lose control

I didn’t mean to hurt you

I’m sorry that I made you cry

Oh my I didn’t want to hurt you

I’m just a jealous guy

I was feeling insecure

You might not love me anymore

I was shivering inside

I was shivering inside

Oh I didn’t mean to hurt you

I’m sorry that I made you cry

Oh my I didn’t want to hurt you

I’m just a jealous guy

I didn’t mean to hurt you

I’m sorry that I made you cry

Oh my I didn’t want to hurt you

I’m just a jealous guy

I was trying to catch your eyes

Thought that you was trying to hide

I was swallowing my pain

I was swallowing my pain

I didn’t mean to hurt you

I’m sorry that I made you cry

Oh no I didn’t want to hurt you

I’m just a jealous guy

Watch out baby I’m just a jealous guy

Look out baby I’m just a jealous guy

There is no apology in the history of mankind more beautiful than that song. It takes full responsibility and says, “I’m sorry.”

The problem with the world is sometimes people will not forgive. Love is forgiveness. John Lennon was all about love. John Lennon cried out in pain for love. John Lennon was love.

There are some nice covers of Jealous Guy. It’s untoppable though.

My unsettled, uneasy mind was not ready for music when I was young. I needed words and input. I would lay in the dark filled with unanswerable questions of infinity and angst and I needed words.

I’d listen to Pete Franklin’s sports talk show until 11:45. Then I would be scared to death for 15 minutes until Larry King came on at midnight. I’d maybe fall asleep before it was time for school. Sometimes, I’d read the encyclopedia from the beginning to the end until I passed out.

Now I want nothing but music. I’m besieged by words, and I admit it I’m lazy and listen to tons of the Beatles channel on Sirius. It’s just too cheap, they keep making it cheaper every time I try to cancel. I’m too lazy to plug in my iPhone or  iPod into my phone on occasion as I drive. I sing along to the music and get enraged by the talk.

Right or wrong I just hate listening to those stories. I loved listening and discovering them, but it’s endless and so many are wrong, spouted by celebrities and simpletons spouting rhetoric generally accepted as gospel.

The gospel was Paul

I love Paul McCartney. John Lennon went around trying to knock people into bloody unconsciousness hoping that someone would get back up. Paul was the first that did, and then they formed the ultimate alliance, the ultimate team, the best movement. Those that could hang like Klaus Voormann noticed it immediately, and it changed their lives. They got to help try to change the world.

It’s just fact. John got shot. John got to be the martyr. That hurt McCartney’s legacy, but in the long run the story gets to be told by Paul.

John took shots at Paul and his music. He had the right. Had anyone else criticized his chosen partner Lennon would have slayed them with as few words as necessary like no other human.

So that’s what the Sirius channel feeds me. Paul’s stories, the same ones over and over.

We went looking for B7

Jimi played Pepper

My dad said Yes, Yes, Yes

John told me to leave “The movement you need is on your shoulder,” as is.

George wasn’t constrained by two cuts an album. John insisted that Ringo and George get two cuts an album. John and Paul made George learn and earn the ability to write the songs he did.

John looked after George and Ringo forever and even Paul even if they weren’t talking.

John’s band. John’s vision. John Lennon was going to write original songs and take over the world with them when no one had the notion it was possible in a dump town on the docks of poverty where ships brought it rare vital music.

Except for Ray Davies none of them would have written songs. The Stones, Clapton, all of them were happy to be knocking out faithful blues covers forever.

John Lennon sang those blues covers mockingly. He told those blues covers to cheer up. He made the blues happy. Marshall Crenshaw played Lennon in Beatlemania. He understands. I’ve yet to hear him played even once on that channel even though his version of Arthur Alexander’s “Soldier of Love” which Lennon covered is wonderful.

When Lennon covered others he didn’t do it by rote, he put himself in. David Bowie is great. He’s a performer. Every word ever sung by John Lennon was sung baring his soul as if his last breath and vital existence depended upon it.

It’s easy to be an artist with principals and not sell your work. Bitch and moan that you are not recognized. It takes fame to reach the masses and try to change them. It takes compromise, and once you achieve it you can never take it back. So don’t balk at Kurt Cobain. He did the best he could and only achieved superstardom because his weak spot was his love of John Lennon.

Lennon had a bigger plan, a bigger agenda. Ray Davies said more about the world to me than John, but John fought to be heard. Ray was happy to let his career drown and be re-evaluated at a later date.

The word on John Lennon’s minds was both “love” and “now!”

God was I happy when Paul came out and said they jerked off together once. I cherish pets and think nothing is worse than animal abuse, but they could have drowned a cat for all I care as long as it was the truth and new.

I don’t want jingles. I don’t want clever interludes telling me how the lyrics sound in other supposedly more poetic mediums. I don’t want the history I know it, and I certainly don’t want flimsy celebrity intellects or simpleminded fans spouting the rhetoric of acceptable crap that has been perpetuated by years.

All I want is the truth now.

The truth is only the music.

The channel is fine. I just want the words and music together and nothing else. The Sirius Beatles channel is fine for others, it’s just not for me.

I’ve read every book on John Lennon except that prick Albert Goldman’s. I’ve seen every movie and documentary hundreds of times, and I can still watch them. I just love the Pete Best produced “Birth of the Beatles,” even though that jagoff anti-Christ Dick Clark was involved.

It gets John. It shows the winks. It shows the compromises he made to get the things he needed to get done. It shows the smiles at the end saying, “Don’t you know everything’s gonna be alright.”

I’m a patient man Brian, but I’m losing my patience with you,” (followed by a cheerful wink).

I somehow had the same goofy smile and roll your eyes look as he did by birth. I looked like dork doing it while he looked like a God, but I had it.

There is a scene where Brian Epstein is beaten up late at night at an illegal gay club and hides out embarrassed of his facial injuries. I don’t know if this happened, but it feels right from the person people only say was so afraid of his manhood being questioned that he beat up a guy for calling him a fag, but then apologized over and over for losing the hairpin trigger he fought his whole life to control.

“You know it’s alright Brian. Nothing to be ashamed of you know. Any loving. Anything between people that is loving is alright. There is too much pain in this world. We knew about you the first time we was here. Don’t matter to us Eppy. We need you. (smiling tenderly) Just be more careful next time. OK?”

That motherfucker had it all figured out.

All John.

George Martin helped.

Lennon respected and enjoyed being Dylanish for a time, and God was it easy for him. He could have put people down like Dylan and Eminem in every song and he rarely did.

“A Day in the Life” is wonderful. It was something John Lennon tried like someone who wants to experience acid once.

Paul had the artistic ideas. Lennon outdid him every time with more talent and passion. Once it was done, he was happy to put on a Fats Domino record and relax, but he sadly very rarely had the chance to. His brain only stopped racing for a cherished moment and he was shot down.

All John.

I’ll keep buying other’s books. Mine won’t sell. I won’t watch that crappy new movie about some Indian guy in the future. It was a Twilight Zone episode from like 30 years ago. All this shit is recycled except for stone cold genius’ like John Lennon.

Thank God he chose love.

“Imagine I’m in love with you – I’ll get you in the end!” 1963

John Lennon – Punk Rock

The post My love, well Hate relationship with the Beatles Channel appeared first on Brad Laidman: Elvis Needs Boats.

I hated every second of every day in that business. I found it full of greed and swindlers. I did my best to never cheat anyone, but I made compromises.

In 1988, my firm sent me to New York, and it was windy and freezing cold. They put me up at the Helmsley Hotel. I could have expensed anything I wanted, but they wanted like $25 for a cheeseburger, fries, and a small bottle of Diet Coke, so I went out into the cold and got a cold turkey sandwich and a soda for much less because I didn’t think it right to pay those prices.

Soon after, I was at the Swissotel, expensing whatever I wanted out of the mini-bar. I wasn’t gluttonous, but I wasn’t walking out in the snow and wind anymore to save them money.

When I reached San Francisco, I saw traders leaning on order flow to squeeze more money from customer paper. At first, I stepped up and made the options trade at fairer prices, but I endured a lot of abuse, and to get along, I participated in it.

Aside from that, I did nothing in that business that I believe to be unethical. I never free-rolled anyone who backed me. I never broke any rule that made sense to make extra money.

This cost me a ton of money. It’s easy to join in with a cabal and get rich. I’m not perfect, but I did my best.

I’m supposed to be marketing my writing right now, but I thought of the best person I met in the business, Kelly Lively.

She was quite beautiful when she was young, but she was always beautiful to me. We were in love with each other the second we met.

She was bawdy, funny, told the truth, and got things done. She sized me up in a second and liked me. She stood up for underdogs.

She died too young. Tragically, she was supporting a sick husband who was an artist. He passed shortly after, as all true lovers usually do.

People only know that she worked in clearing, but people who know trading know that clearing is everything. She made that place tick. She ran that place. She knew where all the bodies were buried, and she shared it all with me.

Man, she was fun. She was the best person I have ever met in any business.

I wrote this for her memorial. I’m not really a fan of wakes. I usually want to mourn in my own way, but I took a bus 10 hours to read it. I messed it up. I got nervous and couldn’t do her wonderful Texas twang. It was the last time I was at that firm’s office and hopefully the last time I work in that business. I miss her every day.

       *                                   *                          *

My first encounter with Kelly Lively was a memorable one. It was an encounter that we would never fail to laughingly rehash in social situations.

Ones like the great Halloween parties she and Kurt threw. That awesome party at their condominium, the one where it took me about 7 minutes to comfortably make my way upstairs, where I promptly fell asleep on Kelly’s bed with two of her dogs for the remainder of the night.

We would go on to share many words and many laughs, but the thing that made our first encounter so funny to us was that it would prove to be the only time that we were in the same room with each other where we shared not a single laugh, in fact, we didn’t even share a word.

It was my second or third day at Peak6. Peak had just hired seven other new traders and me. They had meticulously prepared a week and a half of orientation presentations. These presentations were so crucial to the firm that they had scheduled nearly every single person who worked there to speak for at least an hour or two.

When Kelly spoke, you must know that I really wanted to pay attention. She was discussing clearing.

I’ve made many mistakes in my life, but in the course of it, I have learned how essential the clearing person is.

A good clearing person and Kelly was exceptional, could save your job. Most traders know very little about clearing other than that they’d much rather walk 20 minutes to work in the pouring rain without an umbrella than deal with a clearing issue once they get there.

So if there was any speaker that I really wanted to pay attention to, it was probably Kelly. This is where I have to make the following admission.
I have no idea what Kelly said in the next 40 minutes. To this day, if enough people told me that she had sung and tap-danced her way through a medley of Beatles tunes, I’d probably have to take their word for it.

About two hours before Kelly spoke, my left side had started to hurt. Minute by minute, the pain was increasing. During a short break, I called my mother and asked her which side of my torso meant appendicitis. My mother was stumped but suggested that I take a cab to the hospital.

“I can’t go to the hospital,” I panicked. “I’ve been here two days. What will they think? I would have to feel like I was being stabbed and gutted repeatedly with a razor-sharp dagger for me to leave.”

About 30 seconds into Kelly’s presentation, that’s how bad it started to hurt. I kept shifting sides in my chair, desperately looking for a position that wouldn’t make me feel like screaming out in utter agony. Sweat was pouring from every orifice of my body. A foot and half away, Kelly had an amazing front seat to what probably looked like the heroin withdrawal scene in the movie “Ray.”

A performance that didn’t end for 39 or so agonizing minutes, at which point, I finally decided that it would be best to take that cab to the hospital. Once there, they quickly told me that I was being attacked by kidney stones. To this day, I’ve never been in more physical pain in my life than those 40 minutes.

A week or so later, I was back in business, well, sort of. The entire orientation had been videotaped, and I had set myself up on the floor of the wonderful old cloud room to sift my way through about 40 hours of videotaped powerpoint presentations.

It was there that I first truly met Kelly as we compared notes on our first meeting. “I was up there speaking, and I kept thinking to myself – this guy doesn’t look good; I think there is something seriously wrong with this guy!”

It was the first time I heard that wonderful, full-bodied laugh of hers. Kelly had a great laugh, and she wasn’t shy about sharing it with you. Talking to her was incredibly easy. She was so down to earth. There was no affectation or artifice.

She was earthy in the best sense of the word. I suspected that she loved to curse just as much as I did.

At the end of our first meeting, Kelly had me pegged completely. She still thought there was something seriously wrong with me, but she assured me that Peak6 could use a few more bright eccentrics like me.

She told me that I should get to know Scott Anderson, who was completely off his rocker but also extremely wonderful and brilliant.

Kelly would just come right out and tell you how much she liked you and enjoyed spending time with you when we all knew that getting to spend time with her was always the better side of the bargain.

She always had the greatest gossip. There were times when I would hear something juicy and run over to Kelly to share. I was never sharing. Not once. Without exception, she had already heard the story and knew ten times as much about it as I did.

Kelly knew everything about everyone, which made perfect sense because she was always such a joy to talk to. She never had any children of her own, but she was everyone’s mother.

Who could possibly meet this wonderful woman and not feel comfortable baring their soul to her? If something happened, it almost didn’t feel real to you until you talked to Kelly about it.

She was the center of every party. If there was fun to be had, it was definitely in her presence. You could talk to her for hours and never get bored. She was a great audience, and that contagious full-bodied laugh of hers was always given out generously. She had strongly felt odd, but loving spiritual convictions, and you got the impression that she had probably proudly done tons of fun things that most of us would have been far too embarrassed to let ourselves enjoy much less share.

She always called me either Hon or Sugar. “You know Sugar, you really need to stop smoking” or “Hon, can this really be a surprise to you?”

The last time I saw her was about six months ago outside of the CBOE. I had just taken a job that I was unsure about, filled with panic and stress.

“Honey, you just need to relax a little bit, and everything will be alright.”

When Kelly was there, everything being alright always seemed possible.
When I found out about Kelly’s death, I was utterly floored. This couldn’t possibly be true. She was indestructible, wasn’t she? I can’t believe that I will never hear that wonderful laugh again.

Life is a gift that some of us eke our way through with angst, trepidation, and doubt. Kelly seemed to eat up life, devouring every second of it with joy. I wish she could have had more time because she truly seemed to know what to do with it. Selfish though it may seem, it feels like her death is more of a loss to us than it could possibly have been to her.

She was someone, who instantly made you feel comfortable enough to walk upstairs so that you could fall asleep on her bed with her dogs, and everyone knows that those people will forever be in great demand.

The post Kelly Lively the Best Person I Ever Met appeared first on Brad Laidman: Elvis Needs Boats.

I’ve thought about that passage a lot. Elvis Presley didn’t die from drugs. He died from loneliness. He was just some nobody that no one expected anything from who rattled and changed the world. He really only wanted to sing for people and get his mother out from under the weight of poverty.

His success actually drove her to drinking. She worried about him too much. She died at 42. He died at the same age.

He had tons of people around him. He only felt good singing for people. He probably just wanted to sing to one person forever. He probably was always singing to some ideal he never really met or something he thought he met and didn’t live up to the aching in his heart.

Sometimes I wonder if I ever fell in love. If perhaps, I just fell too much in love with the concept of love.

Pop songs? I’m not sure if they help or hurt.

Kim Fowley said that pop music was “lonely songs for lonely people.”

That’s pretty much every Roy Orbison song.

I used to wander around lost and alone listening to John Lennon sing “I Don’t Want to Spoil the Party.”

Smokey Robinson via the Who. “I’ve Got to Dance to Keep from Crying.”

No love is perfect. Nothing hits the peak of first love or early love. Too many couple who die jaded, conflicted, married too soon – not best suited for the long term.

But I’ve seen some old couple in sync. I’ve seen funerals where you know that just like Johnny Cash, the person that survived barely wanted to go on.

I went to a Mason ceremony a while back and met this fantastic older gentleman. He was a veteran who had brought a young man with Down’s Syndrome that he had been working with and almost everything he had to say inspired me.

We talked about music. I almost always talk about music. The stuff he liked was fine, but nothing revelatory to me. Creedence, I think.

He told me that I really had to check out a local band that his son really loved Uptight Sugar.

I put it in the back of my head, but I’ve heard so much music. My thirst for new stuff isn’t the same as when I was paying big money for imported copies of NME and buying albums from the bottom of the Billboard charts that only college radio was playing.

The name sounded cool, but I didn’t expect much.

Took me about two weeks to do a lazy YouTube search and I listened to a song called “Diggin’ Holes” and this swell of music hit me so hard that I purchased their entire EP. I knew I loved it after like 30 seconds, and I keep listening to that song over and over.

The music hits you first always, but the lyrics speak to me too. This guy has been hurt. This dude can convey it.

I had some odd dealings with the music writer Dave Marsh. I don’t think he’s a great guy, but his writing made me love music a lot and shaped my tastes. He wrote that music was the sheer conveyance of passion and emotion.

It’s probably not that original (nothing really is), but I read it there first.

I went to see the band and liked them even more. They do Beatles brunches as Sunrise Jones. Their lead singer and songwriter David Hamilton seems to be the nicest guy. He runs around trying to please his fans, and then he runs right home to be with his family.

The whole thing made me a little crazy though. He’s been around forever. Why is there nothing online? Why only one EP with only four amazing songs?

Why isn’t this guy a rock star?

I don’t really want him to be a rock star so he can be rich. I don’t want to see him in a hot tub or on a reality show. I just want him to be comfortable enough to write more songs and be happy. Maybe it’s selfish. He probably is happy. Maybe I just want more songs so I am happier.

Then his wife posted this on Facebook.

My Uncle wrote a marriage song to my Aunt. He was in the music business forever. It was alright. It’s a wonderful gesture. It wasn’t that.

That’s the sound of a guy who has been broken saying thank you. That’s the sound of a guy who will die if he loses what he just attained. That’s beauty. That’s passion. That makes me jealous I’m not married to him, and I’m attracted to Tomboys who have no use for me.

Then he turned it into this which is just unbelievable.

It has drive and flow. It’s pop, but it’s trippy enough for a festival crowd blitzed on whatever drug they need to reach bliss 6,000 feet from the stage.

Why isn’t this dude huge?

Maybe that’s selfish of me.

I’ve written a lot comparing Orson Welles to Clint Eastwood.

Orson was too much of a perfectionist. He made perhaps the greatest film of all time and then struggled to get financing. He struggled for final cut. He wound up doing wine commercials. People forgot his brilliance, while others overestimated it.

Clint Eastwood just has a vision and gets things done. Far more prolific. No angst. More bang for the buck.

I don’t know which is better. I don’t know if Welles should have been less of a perfectionist.

I do know that Vincent Van Gogh didn’t have a real friend in his life. I do know that it doesn’t matter how much his paintings sell for because he’s dead. I do know that going to the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam was one of the best most visceral experiences in my life.

I was in love for real once. It didn’t work out. It wasn’t fair. I still think I got cheated. It put me down for over 20 years, which was stupid and my fault. I tell people to move on all the time now, but no one knows that hole inside you unless you felt it. Maybe I over dramatized it. I don’t even know. I just know I thought we were going to take over the world and we didn’t, and she’s fine, but it killed me.

Loneliness is worse that a bullet. It’s worse than a hot flame, actually it is a hot flame.

I keep saying it. Almost every John Lennon song before he met Yoko Ono was about finding a true love, and almost every one after was him congratulating himself on falling in love.

After my break up, I wrote a letter or an email to a friend about a ton of songs I kept hearing on the radio.

They were all old break up songs.

I was obsessed with David Ruffin’s “My Whole World Ended.”

People told me to move on. I should have. More fish in the sea. Whatever.

A woman in line for a Jon Brion concert gave me the old “It’s better to have loved and lost” line and I asked her what her worst break up was.

She said, “I married my high school sweetheart.”

I’ve never even really raised my voice to a woman, but man I just wanted to punch her. I didn’t. I’m just honest.

I didn’t really want or need kids, but I would have had them for her. I just wanted to lay in a bed somewhere, watch movies and talk or listen to music and talk, and she listened.

So I want this dude David Hamilton to be huge. I want him to be a rock star, and I’ve expounded over and over again. You don’t get your music heard by getting married and having kids. It’s too much of a time commitment.

You make your fortune like Warren Beatty or Jack Nicholson, and then you have kids and settle down. Plenty of fish in the sea.

But then again I don’t really believe that do I?

The finished product of “In a Hole (At the End of the World)” is obviously what should be released.

That demo or love note or whatever it is. That’s the truth. That’s what made me cry.

Dude still seems equally in love. I’m happy for him. He wrote that song. He wrote a few more. That’s something. That’s a ton. Good for him.

You should listen to him. I envy him with what he has now. Wish he had the time to make some more for me until I find someone to disappear with and have the same thing.

The post Uptight Sugar’s David Hamilton: Talk about the Passion appeared first on Brad Laidman: Elvis Needs Boats.

Most people are too lazy to dig Jazz these days, and maybe it was the musicians that wanted to be heard instead of danced to that share some of the blame.

I know post-swing Jazz, but it was work. I put on a cassette of John Coltrane’s “Giant Steps” in my Orange Honda Prelude on the way to coaching sixth grade basketball in San Francisco for weeks. It took me at least 15 times before I understood it, but it was well worth it. It wasn’t that hard after that.

Truth be told, I prefer things that are more compositional like Mingus to some things that seem less formed, but if you put the work in it’s well worth it. Some free Jazz I still don’t get.

I paid tons of money to see good Jazz on the West Coast. I saw Wynton Marsalis explain Duke Ellington’s music and then play it with the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra. That music needs to be played live. They just didn’t have the technology to get it down on tape, and they were limited by the restraints of time and vinyl and even World War II rationing. Marsalis and the orchestra filled with Ellington contemporaries played a long suite called “Cops and Robbers,” I believe that I still can’t find, and it was amazing.

They brought “Harlem” to life, the city and the composition.

I saw Tony Williams play in a swanky Berkeley club, and it was just effortless the way that guy just added to the melody even though he could have been doing polyrhythms or whatever eggheads will call them in his sleep.

I saw Wynton join Coltrane legends McCoy Tyner and Elvin Jones play “A Love Supreme.” That didn’t suck. It wasn’t cheap.

I used to hang out at the “House of Swing” in the afternoons about ten years ago when I first came back to Cleveland after 20 years away.

It’s almost always nearly empty and they have an unbelievable selection of vinyl. Anything they play is worth hearing. Bob Dylan would have slipped in during the middle of the night and made off with all those albums and it occurred to me that I should probably lift some, but that would be disrespectful.

I knew they had jam nights, but I figured they were ramshackle and never went. I saw a couple of blues bands there and they were decent, but not spectacular.

I started actually playing my guitars again recently and decided to weigh in. Someone told me Lonnie Reid had a jam night. I’d never heard of him, but I didn’t really know anyone from Cleveland other than the bands I saw my senior year in high school. They were mostly my guitar teacher Tony Martin’s hair metal bands, and I would have to restrain my friends assuring them that it would be worth their time once he ripped up “Kashmir” after playing Berlin and Ratt. That always happened. Tony Martin is still as good of a guitarist as I’ve ever seen.

I should have known who Lonnie Reid was. I’m almost ashamed, but I have a reasonable excuse. I left town. I saw huge names in expensive cities.

I brought my mother and my aunt to see Lonnie the first night I went. I played and did my best, but I was clearly out of my league, but the musicians were generous.

These nights start with the house band doing a set, and it was immediately clear just how good these musicians were.

Lonnie and his friends don’t just have Jazz, Gospel, and Blues down, it’s been updated with what followed.

Motown, Soul, Funk, even Hip Hop. People assume that Hip Hop artists are just guys with sampling equipment. I don’t know if that’s ever been true, but it’s definitely not anymore. I saw Mos Def sing for Chris Martin between an Aimee Mann/Beth Orton show in Los Angeles. Dude is wicked talented and belted out Bill Wither’s “Lovely Day” and Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds” as the Coldplay front man played acoustic guitar and just smiled with a sore throat.

I bemoaned the fact that the film star/rapper was so talented, but in truth it comes from hard work.

Lonnie plays a combination of Cannonball Adderley’s “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy” that is infused with everything including probably some Jaco Pastorius, and maybe even the Buckinghams.

They played “How High the Moon” in their own style. Anything was basically on the menu, and it was pretty much only limited to what the mood of the musicians was that night.

I keep trying to show my mother the passion I have for music. I’ve been close to tears discussing certain songs and actions by the people that I idolize.

She watches America’s Got Talent, American Idol, and The Voice. It drives me insane.

I keep telling her that she likes game shows not music. I have opinions on music, but there is no need for judges. It just stands up to time or it doesn’t.

Idol was an entertaining goof for a while, but now these shows make me irate, and they usually do the same to true artists.

I’m not saying that musicians deserve a free ride. Elvis was in every talent show he could enter. John Lennon would have auditioned for American Idol, but these shows have become scripted. They are corporate.

Every act has some sort of inspirational story as though you need a degree of difficulty to perform art. The difficulty is making good art.

I’ve seen great musicians felled by tendinitis. I’m impressed if you can still play guitar despite something that affects your nervous system, but when it comes to music I just want to hear the best.

Django Reinhart was the best with two fingers. I don’t listen to Django because he only had two fingers. I listen to him because of what he said with them. It’s a cool anecdote, but the music is just music.

Had he been a great musician with five fingers and a mediocre one with two, maybe I’d go see a show and mourn what was lost, but that’s just something to add to the story. If the music doesn’t hold up. I’m not going to listen to it more than once, and only then in a voyeuristic sort of fashion.

I don’t care if you have Tourette’s or a speech impediment as a comic. I want to hear what you have to say. If your timing isn’t the best because of it, I guess the power of your message can come through, but that is a verbal medium. Music is passion.

Too many of these shows concentrate on people’s backstories. You apparently can’t just have had a happy childhood, been passionate about music and worked hard at it.

They all play covers, because no television audience can handle originals. Club audiences can’t either, but this generation is lazy and selfish.

When the Beatles played Little Richard, they didn’t talk about the pain of their childhood’s. They glorified Little Richard for healing them.

Now they cover Beatles songs, play them the exact same way, and people act like they tore it apart when all they are doing is adjusting an amp at best and often times not even doing that. God knows if they even listen to the Beatles.

I don’t want to see a 13 year old imitate Janis Joplin. I want to see Janis Joplin on YouTube. There was still something original about Frankie Lyman and Michael Jackson when they were that age.

When John Lennon covered Arthur Alexander, he both glorified Alexander and added his own flavor to it.

Elvis is so misinterpreted. What he did was mix his universal, encyclopedic knowledge of music and make race irrelevant, but time has labeled him a thief. People who talk about Elvis are clueless.

Now it’s called crossover. It’s either called a sell out or a clever marketing device. I’m sick of hearing people talk about music. I just want to hear the music.

Actually, it was fabulous to talk music with Lonnie and his group because they knew the context of the songs they played. They knew local history I was tangentially aware of. Things that are so much more interesting than the standard chronology of the Cleveland Plain Dealer which still seems obsessed with 1975-1978 for some reason.

Lonnie’s brother Terry is a phenomenal bass player and only plays occasionally now. He works for NASA. Dude is a rocket scientist and a great musician. That takes work. That’s an inspirational story. That’s the pull yourself up by your own bootstraps mentality that Reagan talked about out of one side of his moth, while debasing the people who actually do it out the other.  

Look at the history of the Crack epidemic alongside the rise of rap after Reagan pulled music programs out of the inner city schools. Passion, talent, and honest intent cannot be stopped.

He wasn’t there to sell cola or beer. He was their to enjoy his muse.

Now all this cost $2, which is just absurd. You can make money as a musician on weekends, but this was a Thursday night.

There was plenty of free available parking. The drinks were cheap. You could bring in your own food, and a lot of times the people who actually support this music instead of just talking about it bring food and share.

Music is a Universal language that doesn’t need to be bound by race or gender. It’s the critics and commenters that limit it.

My mother was pretty easily convinced. It’s really that easy to see. It’s a lot like the clean versus dirty water scene in the movie Malcolm X.

We brought my father the next week, and we brought a plate of cookies too.

I actually invited almost everyone I knew. About 75 people, who are all too busy to actually see me in person. I offered to buy them a drink if they came.

The only one who did was my guitar teacher who is one of the most respected musicians in town who values his time. He came with absolutely no warning too, unlike everyone else I invited.

When he walked in I was so emotionally moved. I walked up and hugged him and introduced him to my mother. He had brought his ax.

I said to my mother, “He is going to just stand there humbly. Lonnie is going to walk over and say hello. He will go up on stage and kick ass, thank Lonnie gracefully and leave.”

That’s exactly what happened. I had brought my guitar, but I wasn’t going to try and play that night. Others with expensive equipment and pedigree actually got frustrated and left. I was happy to see a fantastic show.

Chicago style blues is pretty much my teacher’s main idiom and that’s what they played out of respect, but my guy could have played classical had he felt like it and Lonnie’s band would have kept up.

During their break the musicians came and talked to my parents. I’m about as Jewish as you can get and the musicians were about the same age or a bit younger than my parents.

Historically, what happened in Cleveland was that schools and communities that had been Jewish became African American. So my parents met a lot of people who also graduated from Cleveland Heights that were black. They also learned about the history of the downtown scene where Jewish clubs either featured Black entertainers who were managed by Jews or there was an intermingling.

I remember the Public Enemy Professor Griff debacle. I felt sad for Chuck D. I felt sad for the whole thing. I dug “Welcome to the Terrordome.” I probably can’t admit that in some Jewish company even if I can expound on it eloquently.

It’s a history where sometimes the management ripped off the artists either out of greed or incompetence. It has led to rifts between the two communities that I find idiotic.

I had the best childhood possible. Read all about Malcolm X and black athletes and musicians, and was raised in prosperous enough communities that I barely noticed that I grew up first in a nearly all Italian community. I knew racial history, but I just saw people as people.

In Chesterland, when someone black was in the area we almost stepped over ourselves to make them feel special. That may not have been what the parents who migrated there were doing, but somehow I was colorblind for the most part.

Actually, people thought I was eccentric and accused me of wanting to be black. Hell yeah, if I could dance like Muhammad Ali, or sing like Marvin Gaye or play like Jimi Hendrix?

It didn’t stop me from loving Elvis and Pete Townshend too. Real musicians see no race.

Dick Clark did. Pat Boone did.

In 1988, I was in a cab driven by an octogenarian African American. I heard Sam Cooke’s voice. I knew it wasn’t anything I had heard. I asked if it was the Soul Stirrers never having heard a note of their music.

The cab driver looked at me in amazement. I felt like a badass.

A few years later I took a wonderful girl to a swank resort in Sonoma, and played her the real Soul Stirrers that night. I’m not sure if that’s sacrilegious or totally Rock and Roll, but I still think it’s cool as hell.

I don’t care whether Sam Cooke is singing to God or a woman. It’s a cool vibe late in the evening.

Now they are selling these stories decades later on Netflix, and people watch and are amazed. I can’t be on those shows. I don’t have a PHD. I am not the proper ethnicity or gender. The people who are experts are younger than me. They learned it in school mostly. I sought it out. I paid for that music.

If anyone discovers the music, the artists aren’t getting paid. They’re dead. It just perpetuates what Bill Hicks called the “Capitalist Gangbang.”

Later that night, I met an older gentleman who had actually played with John Coltrane.

We were talking about Duke Ellington, and he said, “The guy nobody knows was the key to Duke’s work was … wait let me think…”

I immediately said “Billy Strayhorn” and felt even cooler than I did in Chicago. I reads books. I read liner notes. It’s not that hard.

I met a drummer there who invited me to see him the next night. He was younger and I expected him to be playing jazz or hip hop. He was backing a white girl with an acoustic guitar singing a Ledbelly song, amusingly to me unaware that it had been popularized by Nirvana.

I feel old these days. I feel like people dislike the fact that I know stuff.

My parents were blown away and promised to rally their friends to come the next week. It didn’t happen, but they are old. It’s not really their fight.

After they left, I saw as good a Jazz show as I had ever paid big money to see. It was absurd. I could have taken video with my phone, but it was too good to not give my full attention.

I got a private show for two dollars. Yeah, I bought some guys some drinks too, but that just made me feel like a big spender and a patron of the arts.

I spent less than parking downtown would have cost me.

I swear I got a top notch personal jazz awakening devoted only to the people talented enough to hang and pretty much only me there to watch.

I don’t know how Lonnie’s brother managed to be so educated and such a good musician at the same time. Miles Davis dropped out of Julliard. Most musicians have to devote themselves 100% to their craft. It’s that competitive.

There are guys I’ve met who are amazing musicians, but they are also personal trainers or elite kickboxers. I’ve also met some who are hurting because their one skill can’t generate money, and they haven’t been able to adapt.

For every viral video showing some incredible woman getting paid in her 80’s entertaining old age homes, there are probably 200 stories of amazing musicians hustling for food without health insurance.

Sometimes, that happens because a musician didn’t face the music when it became clear that they couldn’t support themselves, but I’ve also seen people who were doing very well have a fluke event happen to them and never recover.

It happens to accountants and other occupations too, but I don’t get passion and art from accountants.

Unless there is some edict, I have no idea how the House of Swing will survive.

Playhouses and orchestras downtown are subsidized. John F. Kennedy was a supporter of the arts and felt that it was an important part of education and being well rounded.

Most downtown events though are corporate lovefests to me.

In the movie, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, Gary Cooper plays a hack tuba player. When he is hit up for a classical music or opera donation, he tells the dude to start selling popcorn and to make some money.

Classical music is fine, but it has always seemed like dead people’s music to me. Maybe I’m ignorant, but it feels like people put on fancy clothes and go to be seen. They root for the “1812 Overture” because they like to hear cannons go off. The only things they really recognize are things that have been used in cartoons or movies.

They can’t discuss the music. I’m fine with those great musicians getting paid, but they are being subsidized by corporations who are making investments and acting like they support art. They teach high school music if they can’t cut it.

Real art happens on the street. Real art happens in clubs. It happens in bedrooms and basements. That’s the way it has been for at least the past century and maybe always.

There are beautiful views in the flats, but downtown Cleveland is a total headache to me. Parking is expensive. I can’t even figure out how to take a left turn to get to the parking and I wind up late to the shows.

The audiences seem to feel entitled.

I was at the House of Blues and there were 200 empty seats in the balcony and I sat in one. A woman haughtily came up 15 minutes later and told me I was in her seat.

I apologized and moved down two rows to better seats.

I don’t want a fancy program with ads for law firms, colas, beers, or hospitals that charge excessive fees, enslave their patients, and don’t cure anything.

Lonnie took a break for a time. I had been busy, but I stopped by recently. I said to him, “I’d rather pay your downtown prices, but I’d rather see you here.” He nodded sadly.

I said to him. “I think this is a conspiracy. That you guys just want a place to relax and play in your own solitude.” Sadly, he told me that the opposite was true.

I don’t get it. A place where I have to dress up, pay for parking, people are shallow, I’m hustled in and out by volunteers who need to get out of the house, versus a personal show that is current and vibrant and I get to meet the musicians?

I don’t get the modern world.

If you have any brains you should go to the House of Blues on a Thursday and overspend.

If you are too busy to do so then you should rethink where your charity dollars go.

I hate to call what I do charity. I support small artists. It’s not charity, it’s an absurd bargain. It’s not tax deductible. I’m not rich. I’m going to keep doing it even if I have to skip some expensive shows by national artists of renown.

When I first came back to Cleveland, I tried to write for Scene Magazine. They told me I needed some local flavor. I had none.

Now I do. They aren’t interested. They are going to write about whatever makes them money. It is usually weekend corporate warriors who have memorized five songs they play at passionless tempos. It makes me rage like a mad man.

Most nights I’d rather hear the Clash, but not like I do at certain places selling tons of burgers, fries, chicken wings, and troughs of alcohol. It makes me want to hit the woods like Alceste from the Misanthrope. Something I always threatened to do, but back in my youth it was a lark. Now it seems like the only honorable way to survive.  

The post Lonnie Reid at the House of Swing: Ascension for $2 appeared first on Brad Laidman: Elvis Needs Boats.

Being a film critic is a great job. Everyone wants to do it. I have no idea if anyone gets paid for it anymore. That dorky Harry Knowles seemed to get some perks liking crap back in the day.

In my opinion almost no movie from the past 50 years or so has been very original. They have computers do it, and if you can’t use final draft they scoff at you.

My brain just never turns off, and I could never sleep as a kid so I spent every night reading books, listening to the radio, watching movies, and listening to music.

Everyone insists that I go see some new movie these days that is supposed to be fantastic. It is always an inspirational movie that features some kind of triumph over diversity be it some kind of awful abuse, racism, sexism, or a physical disability. They are usually based on true stories that are actually full of lies.

The only movie that I’m looking forward to seeing is Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. It’s going to either be phenomenal or a complete disaster. It will probably be phenomenal, make a lot of money, and people will berate him as it happens becuase Harvey Weinstein used to be his muscle.

Tarantino and Charlie Kauffman. Those dudes do original out of the box movies. I want to see those. If that’s not happening, I’m fine watching Jailhouse Rock for the 4,000th time.

I remember when I read about the real character that Robert DeNiro played in the movie Awakenings. He didn’t come out of a coma and act all cute. The real guy was apparently jacking off all the time in front of people, but that wouldn’t make a very inspirational movie would it?

My dad prides himself on getting new movies for free, and it drives me insane. He can’t go out to a movie theater. He can get the movies for free, but they are usually either from some dude with a phone in the front row or bootlegged with bad sound from Russia.

A while back my mother had seen so many people sing “Bohemian Rhapsody” for 90 seconds that I had to have a Freddie Mercury intervention. She digs Adam Lambert. I do too. There are still links someone reposted up from when I wrote about how great he was after three weeks on American Idol, but my mother had no idea who Freddie was or that the song was longer than 90 seconds. She likes game shows not music.

Suddenly, Bohemian Rhapsody came out and my dad wanted me to watch it. I’m like, um, well I want to watch it, but I’d rather not watch it with bad sound and foreign subtitles. Why don’t we just watch a documentary about Freddie Mercury? I hear there is a great one called The Great Pretender.

Nah, he doesn’t care about Freddie Mercury. He wants to show off his pirating skills. So he assures me it will sound good. It doesn’t. It has Russian for the cities Queen played. I hated it. Everyone hates me when I tell them why I hated it. It’s like I’m berating Freddie when I think I’m exalting him.

I have no idea why anyone would rather go to a theater and pay too much money for popcorn and soda to see a guy lip sync to a Freddie Mercury imitator in front of digital people when they can just watch the real Freddie Mercury actually kick ass in front of the real ones when I saw it live back in the day at Live Aid.

I fear for my life if I tell them I think it is a crime Bob Geldof got knighted for enriching war lords instead of feeding hungry people like everyone thought. I read too much.

It’s the real Freddie. It’s better. It’s free!

My mother’s favorite movie is Pretty Woman. My grandfather used to play a lot of gin at a country club. My dad used to play gin and pinochle.

So I figure The Flamingo Kid would be awesome to watch together. I believe it takes place the same year my parents got married 1963, and it came out the year I graduated from high school 1984. It’s a fantastic movie. The best one Garry Marshall ever made.

It’s got Marshall mainstay Hector Elizondo’s greatest performance. Richard Crenna is better here all over the film than he was as Colonel Troutman in First Blood and just as ruthless.

No one takes Garry Marshall very seriously because he made a ton of money having Fonzie jump over a shark and made even more making people sit through that atrocious Beaches movie, which at least discovered the chick who became Blossom and then wound up making a fortune on The Big Bang Theory.

It’s almost impossible to see this film now. I have no idea why. You can’t even pay to stream it. For the most part, you have to find someone with an old DVD.

Somehow my dad won’t watch it, but he did miraculously find a way to steal it. My mother actually came over to my place and watched it. She loved it. I fell asleep immediately, but I still remember it all even though I had only seen it when it first came out 35 years ago, but I watched it again and hell yeah, it’s fucking awesome.

It’s Dirty Dancing mixed with Bronx Tale, but better and before both. The cinematography is fantastic.

I have tons of old DVD’s I paid a fortune for still in the wrapping with expensive price tags on them. Used stores offer me pennies for them, but if I want to buy them online they are $50 or more.

I guess I need to learn to use eBay. I have no idea why you can’t stream The Flamingo Kid. Roger Ebert’s rave is still online.

I went to an open mic night. A young guy started talking shit about how Wayne Gretzky was slow and white. I had actually just bought Gretzky’s old memoir at the public library for a dollar for some reason and they had more copies.

I grabbed it from my car and gave it to him as a gift. I told him Gretzky was actually the beginning of speed in hockey. I showed him that he married one of the hottest women ever, Janet Jones. Janet Jones’ claim to fame? She was hot as hell in – The Flamingo Kid.

Matt Dillon is in The Flamingo Kid. Matt Dillon is a great actor. So is Keanu Reeves, but they are both too good looking to be taken seriously. Do I really want to go see Boy Erased and be depressed when I’ve already seen Lost Angels, which is the same movie, and I can just watch Wild Thingswhich rules again?

Dillon is so pretty in this movie it is sick. The cinematography showing the beach is amazing. The period detail is wonderful. The music is well chosen and vintage.

My parents spent their whole lives buying things off of QVC and other hot places. Those things were sold to everyone and the market got flooded.

I spent my time buying Gretsch and Kramer guitars for low prices because I dug Eddie Cochran or they looked cool. I didn’t play them well, but I enjoyed them, kept them in great shape, had my picture taken with them when I had hair, and now they are worth five times what I paid for them. People look at those guitars now, gasp, and think I’m the richest dude they have ever met.

You can’t sell the stuff my parents bought now, and they mostly just put them up in the attic and left them in mint condition.

So if you want to see a killer movie, watch The Flamingo Kid if you can. It’s hella hard to find.

Learn the name of the wicked, cool way Crenna holds his cards. Wonder why he gets action at Gin when he literally does insane things all the time and never loses a single game.

Watch him offer Matt Dillon the world and then only deliver on a stock boy job the same way Albert Brooks did in the awesome Out of Sight to George Clooney.

Watch Elizondo tell Dillon to go to college and be an engineer the exact same way Lou Gehrig’s immigrant parents did in Pride of the Yankees.

See how incredibly hot JANET JONES was!!!

Then watch Diner.

In the meantime, I’ll be nodding letting you think you are a genius for liking the latest version of A Star is Born, thinking to myself that Tom Parker should have let Elvis be in it with Barbra Streisand, and letting you buy me dinner and drinks. Nodding and social until I nod off later that night watching The Buddy Holly Story, which actually needed to be made because there was almost no live footage of the real dude and remembering that before he scrambled his brains by not wearing a motorcycle helmet that Gary Busey could play guitar, sing, and had the electric chemistry of a Greek God.

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Missing Malcolm X Writings, Long a Mystery, Are Sold

You likely never have to ask me because I will probably tell you first. The best book I’ve ever read was “The Autobiography of Malcolm X.”

The answer to the question at the top of the page is merely that my excitement to read them or my interest in my ability to do so is quite secondary to me.

My first concern is that they never be sold as a part of “The Autobiography of Malcolm X” in any form. I suppose I can live with them added on in the back as an addendum, preferably with like 300 pages of analysis about their place in history separating them from the Ossie Davis eulogy that ended the “authentic” version I read. I would prefer that everyone first encounter it exactly as I did.

I also want everybody to read the “Autobiography of Malcolm X.” My first and best thought about education has always been that everyone should read it as early as I did when I read it at twelve or thirteen. I’ve bought it for many, many people. I’ve forced it on people when I know that is counterproductive to my goals in wanting them to read it.

I don’t have the copy that I personally read because I lent it to a friend, and it fell apart. He had plenty of money to buy me a new copy, but replaced it with a used copy filled with underlines and highlighting. I didn’t care about it then and it’s still the copy I own. I have only read “The Autobiography of Malcolm X” once, but its message and all of it are indelibly written into my brain like the software that comes pre-installed with a new computer.

I want everybody to read it in any fashion. I don’t care if they put Spike Lee’s name and a quote by him on the cover. I don’t care what relatives accounts are added to it, although I would prefer that they too are put after Ossie Davis’ eulogy.

One thing however that I will never sway from is that I will become extremely violent about them ever being attempted to be sold mixed into chronological order like Francis Ford Coppola did with “The Godfather” and the “Godfather Part II” when he created “The Godfather Saga.” When it comes to all that footage Coppola or anyone else is fine putting it out in any format, in random order, backwards, upside down, out of focus, with CGI Jedis running around in random places.  I don’t care at all.

I will never be swayed from that opinion. It will never change. If you try to change my opinion on that you will see me angrier than I’ve ever been seen, and I’ve rarely shown anger in my life. You will perhaps see me closer to contemplating violence than I ever have, and the only time I have ever done anything remotely violent was when I was forced to fight another kid at the age of eight, and even then I wasn’t very aggressive. I just wanted it to be over.

You don’t have to call me a hypocrite. I will readily admit it, because the second most dominant message I took from that book was the heroism of listening and adjusting what you most do not want to adjust or change about your belief system, if you honestly perceive yourself to have been wrong. The depiction of “Malcolm X” doing it in that book and then going out the next day believing in himself 100% again, and constantly evolving productively each day in that way, is what made me idolize that “depiction” of him. Whether that man ever really existed in real life or not does not matter to me nearly as much as that exact depiction of him that I first read there. I feel the same way about an incredibly idealized version of John Lennon that may or may not have existed.

The number one message of that book to me was indeed read another book.  Read every book.

But to me the content from what in my version began officially on Page 1 and ended on page 460 with the following paragraph from Ossie Davis’ eulogy must never be touched in any way.

“But in personal judgment, there is no appeal from instinct. I knew the man personally, and however much I disagreed with him, I never doubted that Malcolm X, even when he was wrong, was always that rarest thing in the world among us Negroes: a true man. And if to protect my relations with the many good white folk who make it possible for me to earn a fairly good living in the entertainment industry, I was too chicken, too cautious, to admit that fact when he was alive, I thought at least that now when all the white folks are safe from him at last, I could be honest with myself enough to lift my hat for one final salute to that brave, black, ironic gallantry, which was his style and hallmark, that shocking zing of fire-and-be-damned-to-you, so absolutely absent in every other Negro man I know, which brought him, too soon, to his death.” 

Keep that intact and surround it with whatever you like, but DO NOT MESS WITH those 460 pages.

I don’t want them edited for misspellings or grammar.  I do not want them edited for clear factual errors. I do not want them edited due to a discovery of a 100% real signed document from within the last hour of either Alex Haley’s or Malcolm X’s life.  I do not want anything altered from those pages that were first released on October 29th, 1965 changed in any way.

If you want to release an annotated version, we can discuss it peacefully. But every single character must remain whole in that those pages or we will indeed throw down.

I will not be moved or swayed on that and it is unlike the “Malcolm” depicted in it my final thought on the subject.

It will take me many words to describe this apparent hypocrisy. You can choose to read them or not. Just know that this and only this is the one belief I hold in my life that I will never change under any circumstance!

Everything I’ve seriously learned honestly, almost always on my own because of interest and passion, started with Muhammad Ali’s Autobiography, “The Greatest.”

That book came out in 1975, and I probably read it in 1977 or so, I know that because I remember reading it in the bedroom I did not have until that year.

Before that I had read on my own a lot, but mostly fiction (Hardy Boys Mysteries, sports novels or short stories, a lot of Archie comic books). I loved reading, but hated reading anything that was assigned in school. I did have insomnia so a lot of times I would grab a volume of the encyclopedia we owned and read it in the hall (my parents kept the hall light on for us) until I fell asleep.

All the non-fiction books assigned at school were essentially patriotic biographies or patriotic history books. I would read them as fast as I could so I could read something else, usually something about sports.

All those sports books led me nowhere other than sports. “The Greatest” led me specifically to one other book and then to everything else. “The Greatest” was hilarious and meaningful and fun as was its “author.”

It had tons of amusing stories and legends in it. It had a rambling, funny, depiction of two undefeated heavyweight champions taking a long and very amusing car ride together, both knowing that they were not legally allowed at that time to decide in the ring who was the real “Champ.” It had a truly inspirational story of a young Cassius Clay returning to his home country wearing his Olympic gold medal, that he had won for the United States, proudly (indeed beamingly proudly) everywhere he could. Upon learning that his feat that he thought he had achieved for his country did not change the fact that because of the color of his skin he could still not frequent certain establishments or even drink from certain water fountains, he became enraged and threw that medal, which had been everything for which he had worked for years off a bridge and into a river never to be found again.

Eventually, I learned that Muhammad Ali had very little to do with the actual writing of that book. I also learned that he never threw his medal off a bridge, but that he lost it. When I gradually learned that, it was a good lesson as well.

Unlike all the other sports books I had read though, “The Greatest” made me want to read about this mysterious guy named Malcolm X.

The next book I did read was in fact the “Autobiography of Malcolm X.” From the title on the book I knew that it was merely told to Alex Haley and not written by Malcolm X. In fact, the last thing in it is Alex Haley, describing himself the harrowing last days of Malcolm X, who at that time was going by the name of el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz. That last section, which also included Ossie Davis’ eulogy for the man, was a gut punch to me. Just flat out tore my world apart forever.

It did not start that way though. The book started out talking about Jazz and swing dancing, it talked about hustling, it talked about being friends with Billie Holiday and washing dishes with Redd Foxx, when his last name was Sanford. Sanford was called “Chicago Red” and Little (Malcolm) was called “Detroit Red” due to where they grew up and the color of their hair.  There is little doubt that “Chicago Red” was hilarious while he was washing dishes. There is no doubt that when Malcolm related that to Haley both of them knew who Redd Foxx had become, and what that new name represented.

The other was “Chicago Red.” We became good buddies in a speakeasy where later on I was a waiter; Chicago Red was the funniest dishwasher on this earth. Now he’s making his living being funny as a nationally known stage and nightclub comedian. I don’t see any reason why old Chicago Red would mind me telling that he is Redd Foxx.”

One of the earliest stories in the book was an act to me that seemed extremely scary and a bit insane, it was the description of how Malcolm first had his hair “conked” or straightened so he could adopt certain white hairstyles. The procedure I believe involved potatoes and chemicals, and excruciating, burning pain!

So by the third chapter I was interested in Jazz, swing dancing, comedy, as well as racism (and its impact) and I would go on to later pursue knowledge on all of those subjects.

Swing dancing was my biggest failure and perhaps only failure in acquiring knowledge.

That book came out in 1998. There was a big swing revival going on both in San Francisco where I lived and Los Angeles where I would soon move.

From 1990- 1999, I lived in San Francisco and still could not sleep, which was a hassle because my job was a as an option floor trader on the San Francisco Stock Exchange  , which rather absurdly and inconveniently for an insomniac, night person like myself took place from 5:30 A.M until 1:10 P.M.

In 1996, the movie “Swingers,” starring Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau came out.

Favreau plays a brokenhearted wannabe comedian (who somehow never said anything funny even when he was stealing great jokes by Steven Wright) who can’t get over his past love to the point of stalkerish lunacy, until he is saved one night by his ability to swing dance.

Before I saw saw that movie, at that exact same time, although I said a lot of funny things, I was that exact same guy. I was always up all night and often wound up at a club called “Hi-Ball” at 473 Broadway, which was about half way between my apartment and my office.

I already knew and loved all the music even though technically I knew it wasn’t really swing. It was more Louis Jordan rhythm and blues, which I preferred. They had great bands playing it every night and great dancers to watch, who dressed up like peacocks. I didn’t dress up, I didn’t drink, but I watched and enjoyed both the bands and the dancers. There were many beautiful girls and being able to dance seemed an incredibly effective way to meet them.

Even without that the dancing had seemed cool to me ever since the very beginning of Malcolm’s story, and I wanted to learn how to do it for both reasons.

The Hi-Ball offered free lessons; other clubs offered free lessons; I even paid for lessons both private and group.

Sadly, never really an athlete, I had no rhythm much less “swing.”  Even without that handicap, I soon learned the sad lesson of what I will call the Brad Laidman: Laws of Swing Dancing.

The Brad Laidman: Laws of Swing Dancing are these:

One: It takes a lot of practicing to become a good swing dancer. For men this usually needs to happen when you are young.

Two: Men will dance with any pretty woman whether she can dance or not, because they have ulterior reasons to do so.

Three: Women who can swing dance well will predominantly only dance with men who can also dance well. They are usually there to dance and get better at dancing.

Four: Men who can’t swing dance well are usually not going to ever dance in a club until they somehow learn to do so through some other route.

So hilariously, I mostly just watched and admired the dancers, and when the band and or dancers took a break, I’d smoke outside and talk to the bouncer/doorman about movies he liked foreign films I had never seen.

At some point, I would go to my office and worry obsessively about whether it looked like I would lose large sums of money on the open at 6:30 A.M. I would watch futures that rarely moved for the rest of the night, and if they moved it didn’t really matter. Usually, but sadly not always, I did not lose a fortune at 6:30 A.M and often was home asleep by 8:00 A.M. This went on for at least four years, at which point I left my job and sought out different music in Los Angeles for a couple of years.

Once, a very pretty woman actually asked me to dance, and sadly I had to admit that I was so bad at it that even attempting to try no matter how much I would have made it a bad option for her.

That’s a big veer off, but nevertheless “The Autobiography of Malcolm X,” took me everywhere that turned out to be good and educational in my life, regardless of its political or social ramifications, which I also read endlessly about.

That isn’t the reason that it’s the best book I’ve ever read. It is because the Malcolm you read about, somehow on every single page is a slightly different Malcolm. If you start on any random page and then skip 30 pages forward, it’s a radically different Malcolm, but it happens by the very gradual changes on each page. The book as it was released is the very definition of positive evolution. No matter what else in that book is true or not. No matter what else was planned to be there by Malcolm or Haley that happens and it is the only autobiography or non-fiction book where I have ever seen that happen.

At its core, the book reveals an extremely intelligent man, who takes on different personas and characters due to his different environments and survival instincts, constantly in search of his true self.

You don’t even need to read the book to see this. You can glean it from the chapter titles alone:

Two: MASCOT

Three: “HOMEBOY”

Five: HARLEMITE

Six: DETROIT RED

Seven: HUSTLER

Ten: SATAN

Thirteen: MINISTER MALCOLM X

Fourteen: ICARUS

Eighteen: EL-HAJJ MALIK EL-SHABAZZ

This was a man who when he believed something or even pretended to be something did so full out. What he believed that day he believed 100%, but if you disagreed with him he might listen and have slightly different beliefs that he would in turn be 100% confident in representing. This seemingly happened every day of this man’s life. There is at no point an attempt by Haley to make the book consistent from one page to the next. The source material comes from Malcolm beginning with the first article Haley wrote about him in Readers Digest in 1959, the Playboy interview Haley did with him in 1962, and the sessions Haley had with Malcolm specifically meant for the book from 1963 until some point in 1965 where Malcolm knew in his mind that he would not live to see it published.

Whatever Malcolm told to Haley that day is for the most part the Malcolm telling the story in the book when it was eventually put into chronological order. How much of it was set in stone when Haley and Malcolm last worked on it together is extremely debatable,and has been endlessly debated. The difference between the Malcolm who was born May 19th, 1925 and the Malcolm at any other day in his life is vast, but the different turbulent Malcolms Haley dealt with from the beginning of those sessions to the end of them was in hyper-drive.

At some point during the work between the two Malcolm definitely realized that this would be his one and only chance to form a defining legacy for himself.

I think that there are many things that are very consistently true about the “Malcolm” presented here.

One: He was always fiercely proud of the family he came from and his father who was on the most radically proud  spectrum of those of his skin color at the time.

Two: He was always deeply angry about how that family was torn apart largely as he saw it do to the color of his skin.

Three: He deeply regretted all of the time he spent “conned” into wanting to look and have the characteristics of whites.

Four: He spent a lot of time searching and wandering lost for his self identity.

Five: He would despite his eventual hatred of Elijah Muhammad’s actions, deeds, and possible true intentions, be forever and fiercely grateful to the man who set him on a path to finding out who he really was.

Six: Once he became aware of the true crime he perceived to have been committed against his people (no matter what the details or circumstances) he would never describe it as anything other than an epic, disgusting crime.

Seven: At some point in his life he decided that the absolute truth as he saw it on any day would be what he would say, even before and especially after he was freed from the constraints set on him by Elijah Muhammad.

I think that at all points of his work on the book he realized that 99.99% of memoirs, autobiographies, or as told to accounts, whatever you want to call them are crafted by their subjects to build a mythical telling of their lives. He wanted to create his myth as a message mostly to those he saw for most of his life to be “his people” and then past that to all people.

The messages I got from him consistently were.

One: Everyone is constantly evolving try to evolve for the better.

Two: The key to understanding yourself and evolving is to read and learn everything you can and try to put in into the right context. He knew that not only facts but words were pliable and deceptive. He wanted to know everything he could about all the things that were considered to be facts and all of the words, whose definitions he memorized in prison, and how they were and could be used. But again the message I got most from that book was self education guided by your conscience and morality. He may have been especially moved and influenced by particular books, but that did not stop him from continuing to read every book even if it were written with bad intentions and especially if it completely contradicted the books he did love the most.

Three: No matter how false the first book you start with is, as long as it leads you to another book and hopefully a better book, that first book was vital. This especially related to whatever version of the Koran that he started with and the one he eventually ended up with.

Four:  Smart people learn mostly from mistakes, really smart people don’t make the same mistakes more than once and use their mistakes to show that.

I believe that Malcolm says that he regrets that so much of his life was derailed by race. To me the book, which is almost all about race isn’t about race at all. It is about education and evolution.

You could argue that I see it that was perhaps because I am white, but I will never stop arguing that until like Malcolm I am proven to be wrong. At which point, I’ll totally admit that I was wrong, until with the best intentions I again see things from a better perspective.

To me had he lived another year the book might have ended with a different Malcolm, but I think it was always his intent that the final Malcolm be the only Malcolm he wanted mythologized.

While I think this is clear, and I choose the final Malcolm, Haley’s involvement has been an excuse for many to choose the Malcolm they like the best, since in ways we can never fully comprehend the last words of the book aside from Davis’ stirring eulogy, which was public record were Haley’s and its final completed form also was Haley’s. At all points the reader needs to not only attempt to grasp who Malcolm was as he was desperately grasping for that himself, but as well to understand who Haley was at those times, which is especially difficult because who Haley was during that period was influenced by Malcolm. To some extent Haley was evolving too.

Aside from understanding how important it is to seek the truth, everything else in that book is for better or worse up for debate.

In Haley’s epilogue he writes about the initial contract he made with Malcolm and the Nation of Islam upon the agreeing to do the book, and you need to know that at that time (and I don’t know to how many members of the organization this applied) Malcolm X owned little and earned little. It all belonged to the Nation of Islam, and perhaps in the end Elijah Muhammad. This included the house he lived in. After Malcolm broke with the nation he fought to keep that house, the Nation of Islam fought to take it away from him and won. Despite winning they did likely (with whatever influence on or help by the FBI you want to give credence to) firebomb that house, burning it to the ground.

There were people in that organization who had a lot of money, most of it was probably earned for them by the power of Malcolm’s words, but almost none of it wound up with Malcolm. At that period and in most of the book Malcolm refuses to say that anything he said under the aegis of the Nation of Islam were even his words. He constantly says at almost all times that his words are merely the words of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. The only thing he may have admitted at that time publicly would be perhaps that his oratory abilities were better than Muhammad’s at that time (which was obvious and Malcolm probably would not have admitted that either).

In fact perhaps the only public quotes from Malcolm X that he was made to take full responsibility for were those he said after the assassination of John F Kennedy.

“President Kennedy never foresaw that the chickens would come home to roost so soon. Being an old farm boy myself, chickens coming home to roost never did make me sad; they’ve always made me glad.”

This clearly drove Haley crazy, but though the voice in Haley’s book is represented as Malcolm’s so many parts of it are preceded with the words “The honorable Elijah Muhammad tells us.”

Haley writes in his epilogue that he drafted a side contract with Malcolm at that time.

Another letter was dictated, this one an agreement between him and me: “Nothing can be in this book’s manuscript that I didn’t say, and nothing can be left out that I want in it.”

Haley in turn writes that he followed with another deal with Malcolm.

In turn, I asked Malcolm X to sign for me a personal pledge that however busy he was, he would give me a priority quota of his time for the planned 100,000-word “as told to” book which would detail his entire life. And months later, in a time of strain between us, I asked for-and he gave-his permission that at the end of the book I could write comments of my own about him which would not be subject to his review.

I’ve read tons of books on both Malcolm and Haley, the last being “Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention” by Manning Marable, which won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for History.

Here is Marable’s account of what happened before and after his comments on Kennedy and how they became almost the only things said during that era that were depicted as solely from him.

“John F. Kennedy was assassinated in the early afternoon of Friday, November 22, 1963. When Elijah Muhammad was told, he was taken aback. He had frequently warned Malcolm of criticizing Kennedy, knowing of the president’s considerable popularity with black Americans, and now he took steps to ensure that the NOI would not be caught in the storm of anger and disbelief that was already roiling the nation. He released a short statement expressing shock “over the loss of our president,” and then arranged for his next column in Muhammad Speaks to be moved to the front page alongside a photo of Kennedy. He informed all NOI ministers to say nothing in public, going so far as to have one of his sons call Malcolm so he could dictate over the phone what he wanted his national minister to say if questioned about the assassination. With the stakes high and Malcolm already bridling at Chicago’s attempts to control him, Muhammad would leave nothing to chance.”

Then:

“Now he was fired up, finally unmuzzled, and the criticism began to flow freely. Kennedy had been “twiddling his thumbs” when South Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh Diem and his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu were murdered recently. The Dallas assassination, Malcolm said, was an instance of “the chickens coming home to roost.” America had fomented violence, so it was not a surprise that the president had become a victim.

Had Malcolm stopped there, he might have escaped unscathed, or at least invited less trouble than would soon unfold for him. These comments, while certainly offensive, could at least be understood in the context of previous speeches and the generally understood opinions of the Nation of Islam. But then he added, with a rhetorical flourish, “Being an old farm boy myself, chickens coming home to roost never did make me sad; they’ve always made me glad.” There was further laughter and applause by audience members, but this extra sentence condemned him as gleeful and celebratory over the president’s death. When the FBI later noted the speech in a report, it characterized the “chickens” remarks as suggesting that the assassination brought Malcolm pleasure, which, if not quite the thrust of his much quoted phrase, was certainly the sentiment driven home by the “old farm boy” quip that followed.”

And finally:

“When he arrived, as customary the two men embraced, but Malcolm immediately sensed that something was wrong. “That was a very bad statement,” Muhammad told him. “The president of the country is our president, too.” This was an odd formulation, given that NOI members had been discouraged from voting in elections. Muhammad then told Malcolm that he was suspended for the next ninety days, during which time he would be removed from his post as minister of Mosque No. 7. Though he would not be allowed to preach or even enter the mosque, he was expected to continue performing the administrative tasks of the minister—approving invoices, answering correspondence, and maintaining records. Marilyn E.X., his secretary, would continue working for him.”

I still am not sure if those “contracts” between Haley and Malcom exist. If they do and are in a University Library somewhere and are 100% verified as true, I don’t think that anyone can prove that further different contracts may have also once existed.

What is true was that whether or not Malcolm died before the book was issued, the final words were Haley’s.

What is also true is that given the acclaim of Marable’s book that everything we know to be true about both Haley and Malcolm continues to evolve, and  nearly everyone involved that cares has a stake in the game be it The Nation of Islam, Malcolm’s surviving family, the FBI, white supremacists, past and current civil rights leaders (John Lewis is both), violent separatists, peaceful integrationists, former members of the Weather Underground, Fox News, CNN, The New York Times, and even relative bystanders like myself. Everyone cares deeply.

Here are Malcolm’s final words as issued by Haley in their book.

You watch. I will be labeled as, at best, an “irresponsible” black man. I have always felt about this accusation that the black “leader” whom white men consider to be “responsible” is invariably the black “leader” who never gets any results. You only get action as a black man if you are regarded by the white man as “irresponsible.” In fact, this much I had learned when I was just a little boy. And since I have been some kind of a “leader” of black people here in the racist society of America, I have been more reassured each time the white man resisted me, or attacked me harder—because each time made me more certain that I was on the right track in the American black man’s best interests. The racist white man’s opposition automatically made me know that I did offer the black man something worthwhile.

Yes, I have cherished my “demagogue” role. I know that societies often have killed the people who have helped to change those societies. And if I can die having brought any light, having exposed any meaningful truth that will help to destroy the racist cancer that is malignant in the body of America—then, all of the credit is due to Allah. Only the mistakes have been mine.

Those final words were extremely well planned out and so were Haley’s final words.

After signing the contract for this book, Malcolm X looked at me hard. “A writer is what I want, not an interpreter.” I tried to be a dispassionate chronicler. But he was the most electric personality I have ever met, and I still can’t quite conceive him dead. It still feels to me as if he has just gone into some next chapter, to be written by historians.

New York, 1965

Pretty perfect and accurate as to what would follow.

Haley without a doubt was a great writer and his epilogue is harrowing for two reasons.

One: It showed how much Malcolm’s ordeal had left him bravely but devastatingly close to dead before any shots were fired.

Two: As this is going on Haley portrays Malcolm as constantly obsessed with how much he can truly trust Haley with his legacy, knowing that so much of it does depend and belong to Haley!

Here are some portions from that epilogue:

For perhaps a month I was afraid we weren’t going to get any book. Malcolm X was still stiffly addressing me as “Sir!” and my notebook contained almost nothing but Black Muslim philosophy, praise of Mr. Muhammad, and the “evils” of “the white devil.” He would bristle when I tried to urge him that the proposed book was _his_ life. I was thinking that I might have to advise the publisher that I simply couldn’t seem to get through to my subject when the first note of hope occurred. I had noticed that while Malcolm X was talking, he often simultaneously scribbled with his red-ink ball-point pen on any handy paper. Sometimes it was the margin of a newspaper he brought in, sometimes it was on index cards that he carried in the back of a small, red-backed appointment book. I began leaving two white paper napkins by him every time I served him more coffee, and the ruse worked when he sometimes scribbled on the napkins, which I retrieved when he left.

Here is some of what came from those notes and those EVOLVING discussions according to Haley:

“Only persons really changed history those who changed men’s thinking about themselves. Hitler as well as Jesus, Stalin as well as Buddha . . . Hon. Elijah Muhammad. . . .”

It was through a clue from one of the scribblings that finally I cast a bait that Malcolm X took.

“Woman who cries all the time is only because she knows she can get away with it,” he had scribbled. I somehow raised the subject of women. Suddenly, between sips of coffee and further scribbling and doodling, he vented his criticisms and skepticisms of women. “You never can fully trust any woman,” he said. “I’ve got the only one I ever met whom I would trust seventy-five percent. I’ve told her that,” he said. “I’ve told her like I tell you I’ve seen too many men destroyed by their wives, or their women.

“I don’t completely trust anyone,” he went on, “not even myself. I have seen too many men destroy themselves. Other people I trust from not at all to highly, like The Honorable Elijah Muhammad.” Malcolm X looked squarely at me. “You I trust about twenty-five per cent.”

“Sit down, talk with people with brains I respect, all of us want same thing, do some
brainstorming.”

And then almost as suddenly, Malcolm X caught himself and sat back down, and for the rest of that session he was decidedly grumpy. Later on in the Harlem narrative, he grew somber again.

“The only thing I considered wrong was what I got caught doing wrong. I had a jungle mind, I was living in a jungle, and everything I did was done by instinct to survive.” But he stressed that he had no regrets about his crimes, “because it was all a result of what happens to thousands upon thousands of black men in the white man’s Christian world.”

“Yet another time, Malcolm X reflected, “Once a man has been to prison, he never looks at himself or at other people the same again. The ‘squares’ out here whose boat has been in smooth waters all the time turn up their noses at an ex-con. But an ex-con can keep his head up when the ‘squares’ sink.

“Learn wisdom from the pupil of the eye that looks upon all things and yet to self is blind.”
Persian poet.”

At intervals, Malcolm X would make a great point of stressing to me, “Now, I don’t want anything in this book to make it sound that I think I’m somebody important.” I would assure him that I would try not to, and that in any event he would be checking the manuscript page by page, and ultimately the galley proofs. At other times, he would end an attack upon the white man and, watching me take the notes, exclaim. “That devil’s not going to print that, I don’t care what he says!”

I would point out that the publishers had made a binding contract and had paid a sizable sum in advance. Malcolm X would say, “You trust them, and I don’t. You studied what he wanted you to learn about him in schools, I studied him in the streets and in prison, where you see the truth.”

Any interesting book which Malcolm X had read could get him going about his love of books. “People don’t realize how a man’s whole life can be changed by one book.”

…when Malcolm X returned this time, he reported triumphantly, “I have something to tell you that will surprise you. Ever since we discussed my mother, I’ve been thinking about her. I realized that I had blocked her out of my mind-it was just unpleasant to think about her having been twenty-some years in that mental hospital.” He said, “I don’t want to take the credit. It was really my sister Yvonne who thought it might be possible to get her out. Yvonne got my brothers Wilfred, Wesley and Philbert together, and I went out there, too. It was Philbert who really handled it.

“It made me face something about myself,” Malcolm X said. “My mind had closed about our mother. I simply didn’t feel the problem could be solved, so I had shut it out. I had built up subconscious defenses. The white man does this. He shuts out of his mind, and he builds up subconscious defenses against anything he doesn’t want to face up to. I’ve just become aware how closed my mind was now that I’ve opened it up again.

“That’s one of the characteristics I don’t like about myself. If I meet a problem I feel I can’t solve, I shut it out. I make believe that it doesn’t exist. But it exists.”

“Anytime the name of the present Federal Judge Thurgood Marshall was raised, Malcolm X still practically spat fire in memory of what the judge had said years before when he was the N.A.A.C.P. chief attorney: ‘The Muslims are run by a bunch of thugs organized from prisons and jails and financed, I am sure, by some Arab group.’ The only time that I have ever heard Malcolm X use what might be construed as a curse word, it was a ‘hell’ used in response to a statement
that Dr. Martin Luther King made that Malcolm X’s talk brought ‘misery upon Negroes.’

Malcolm X exploded to me, ‘How in the hell can my talk do this? It’s always a Negro responsible, not what the white man does!’ The ‘extremist’ or ‘demagogue’ accusation invariably would burn Malcolm X. ‘Yes, I’m an extremist. The black race here in North America is in extremely bad condition. You show me a black man who isn’t an extremist and I’ll show you one who needs psychiatric attention!’

“Once when he said, ‘Aristotle shocked people. Charles Darwin outraged people. Aldous Huxley scandalized millions!’ Malcolm X immediately followed the statement with ‘Don’t print that, people would think I’m trying to link myself with them.’ Another time, when something provoked him to exclaim, ‘These Uncle Toms make me think about how the Prophet Jesus was criticized in his own country!”

Malcolm X promptly got up and silently took my notebook, tore out that page and
crumpled it and put it into his pocket, and he was considerably subdued during the remainder of that session.”

Now just that last part alone shows you how much you must “trust” Haley. Either Haley had an eidetic memory, he immediately slipped into another room and wrote that quote back down as best as he could remember it, or indeed that was the best he could remember it when he did write it down. The argument that is is 100% accurate is nearly impossible to make.

“Malcolm speaking in Harlem stared down at one of the white reporters present, the only whites admitted to the meeting, and went on, ‘Now, there’s a reporter who hasn’t taken a note in half an hour, but as soon as I start talking about the Jews, he’s busy taking notes to prove that I’m anti- Semitic.’

“Behind the reporter, a male voice spoke up, ‘Kill the bastard, kill them all.’ The young man, in his unease, smiled nervously and Malcolm jeered, ‘Look at him laugh. He’s really not laughing, he’s just laughing with his teeth.’ An ugly tension curled the edges of the atmosphere. Then Malcolm went on: ‘The white man doesn’t know how to laugh. He just shows his teeth. But we know how to laugh. We laugh deep down, from the bottom up.’ The audience laughed, deep down, from the bottom up and, as suddenly as Malcolm had stirred it, so, skillfully and swiftly, he deflected it. It had been at once a masterful and shabby performance.”

“I later heard somewhere, or read, that Malcolm X telephoned an apology to the reporter. But this was the kind of evidence which caused many close observers of the Malcolm X phenomenon to declare in absolute seriousness that he was the only Negro in America who could either start a race riot-or stop one.

“When I once quoted this to him,tacitly inviting his comment, he told me tartly, ‘I don’t know if I could start one. I don’t know if I’d want to stop one.’ It was the kind of statement he relished making.”

Haley had a nearly impossible job. In the epilogue, he shows Malcolm both heroically and despicably, and in the actual words in the book you see the exact same Malcolm!

There is evidence of hatred and admiration towards Jews, hatred and admiration towards women, nothing but hatred for nearly every white American, finally some admiration for people with white skin not “poisoned” by America, any Malcolm you want to laud to or discredit is in that book!

“There was something about this man when he was in a room with people. He commanded the room, whoever else was present. Even out of doors; once I remember in Harlem he sat on a speaker’s stand between Congressman Adam Clayton Powell and the former Manhattan Borough President Hulan Jack, and when the street rally was over the crowd focus was chiefly on Malcolm X. I remember another time that we had gone by railway from New York City to Philadelphia where he appeared in the Philadelphia Convention Hall on the radio station WCAU program of Ed Harvey. ‘You are the man who has said ‘All Negroes are angry and I am the angriest of all’; is that correct?’ asked Harvey, on the air, introducing Malcolm X, and as Malcolm X said crisply, ‘That quote is correct!’ the gathering crowd of bystanders stared at him, riveted.”

This was an incredibly intelligent man, with almost no parallel when it came to face to face charisma, at all times the willingness and courage to say anything he wanted to no matter what the consequences.

Again who he was and what he believed changed every single day gradually, but on no single day would he ever say he was wrong about anything unless it had thus occurred to him that he was wrong, and mostly that happened upon further reflection, it mostly happened only privately, and potentially it may have only happened according to Haley.

Clearly, the most important part of the book is Malcolm’s visit to Mecca and what followed, and it is preserved on film that his views on many things changed dramatically. Those filmed interviews also showed many of his beliefs stayed the same.

So the hope and dream of that book is that the “final” Malcolm, el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz, was a man who had taken an incredible journey in his live and had finally evolved in such a radical and revolutionary way in his 39 or so years on the planet, most of them tainted by “America’s original sin” had emerged a very wise person, genuinely decent person, whose journey showed hope for the survival and the possible eventual betterment of every person in the world.

And in his final year, he indeed acted not like an American, but as a citizen of the world, and though he still condemned America, he did so mostly speaking to the rest of the world hoping that with them he could change America too. He did not do that. Perhaps “The Autobiography of Malcolm X” helped do that though.

“When Malcolm X made long trips, such as to San Francisco or Los Angeles, I did not go along, but frequently, usually very late at night, he would telephone me, and ask how the book was coming along, and he might set up the time for our next interview upon his return. One call that I never will forget came at close to four A.M., waking me; he must have just gotten up in Los Angeles. His voice said, “Alex Haley?” I said, sleepily, “Yes? Oh, hey, Malcolm!” His voice said, “I trust you seventy per cent”-and then he hung up. I lay a short time thinking about him and I went back to sleep feeling warmed by that call, as I still am warmed to remember it. Neither of us ever mentioned it.”

“Malcolm X’s growing respect for individual whites seemed to be reserved for those who ignored on a personal basis the things he said about whites and who jousted with him as a man. He, moreover, was convinced that he could tell a lot about any person by listening. “There’s an art to listening well,” he told me. “I listen closely to the sound of a man’s voice when he’s speaking. I can hear sincerity.” The newspaper person whom he ultimately came to admire probably more than any other was the New York Times’ M. S. Handler. (I was very happy when I learned that Handler had agreed to write this book’s Introduction; I know that Malcolm X would have liked that.) The first time I ever heard Malcolm X speak of Handler, whom he had recently met, he began, “I was talking with this devil-” and abruptly he cut himself off in obvious embarrassment. “It’s a reporter named Handler, from the Times” he resumed. Malcolm X’s respect for the man steadily increased, and Handler, for his part, was an influence upon the inner Malcolm X. “He’s the most genuinely unprejudiced white man I ever met,” Malcolm X said to me, speaking of Handler months later. “I have asked him things and tested him. I have listened to him talk, closely.”

“I saw Malcolm X too many times exhilarated in after-lecture give-and-take with predominantly white student bodies at colleges and universities to ever believe that he nurtured at his core any blanket white-hatred. ‘The young whites, and blacks, too, are the only hope that America has, he said to me once. ‘The rest of us have always been living in a lie.’ “

“Malcolm X and I reached the point, ultimately, where we shared a mutual camaraderie that, although it was never verbally expressed, was a warm one. He was for me unquestionably one of the most engaging personalities I had ever met, and for his part, I gathered, I was someone he had learned he could express himself to, with candor, without the likelihood of hearing it repeated, and like any person who lived amid tension, he enjoyed being around someone, another man, with whom he could psychically relax. When I made trips now, he always asked me to telephone him when I would be returning to New York, and generally, if he could squeeze it into his schedule, he met me at the airport. I would see him coming along with his long, gangling strides, and wearing the wide, toothy, good-natured grin, and as he drove me into New York City he would bring me up to date on things of interest that had happened since I left. I remember one incident within the airport that showed me how Malcolm X never lost his racial perspective. Waiting for my baggage, we witnessed a touching family reunion scene as part of which several cherubic little children romped and played, exclaiming in another language. ‘By tomorrow night, they’ll know how to say their first English word ‘nigger,’ observed Malcolm X.”

“I went to New York City in December for Malcolm X’s reading of final additions to the manuscript, to include the latest developments. He was further than I had ever seen him from his old assured self, it seemed to me. He kept saying that the press was making light of his statements about the threats on his life. “They act like I’m jiving!” He brought up again the Saturday Evening Post editorial. “You can’t trust the publishing people, I don’t care what they tell you.” The agent for the book sent to my hotel a contract dealing with foreign publication rights which needed Malcolm X’s and my signature. I signed it as he observed and handed the pen to him. He looked suspiciously at the contract, and said, “I had better show this thing to my lawyer,” and put the contract in his inside coat pocket. Driving in Harlem about an hour later, he suddenly stopped the car across the street from the 135th Street Y.M.C.A. Building. Withdrawing the contract, he signed it, and thrust it to me. “I’ll trust you,” he said, and drove on.”

So that is essentially the final thing Haley has to say about Malcolm. That he trusted him with his journey, story,message and legacy.

Here is why I give Haley’s “version” of Malcolm some credence.

Malcolm was a self professed “hustler” and “criminal.”

He probably exaggerated the extent of how much of one he was for dramatic effect, but it is without doubt true.

In my experience, all observed with the reference gained from reading Haley’s book, “hustlers” and “criminals” have three needs.

One: Money. Malcolm made close to none once he went to prison and emerged as a member of the Nation of Islam.

Two: Power. He had a lot as a member of the Nation of Islam, but did not use it very much in the real world. The dictates of Elijah Muhammad were that he would only serve him and that would only engage with the outside world as more than a commentator when a member of that group was in peril. This is a depiction of his most famous and if not only, rare, engagements on the front lines.

That is a movie and we’ll discuss its veracity later.

As to Malcolm’s power, he seemed like he had a lot at that time. Aside from that he wasn’t fighting in the streets with or against Martin Luther King, his people, or white people. How much he wanted to do that is a matter of conjecture.

What isn’t is that all the power of the Nation of Islam at the time was held by Elijah Muhammad. His goal was to amass power for him and his institution, to be used for him and it outside of those not within it. Malcolm’s job was to build that power for Muhammad and the Nation. Malcolm always told you that was his job. Sometimes Malcolm’s job included secret negotiations with the Ku Klux Klan. Malcolm built that power for the Nation vigorously and fearlessly. By doing it he became the public face of the Nation of Islam, which meant he took most of their bullets, and also that in doing so he aroused jealousy from many with more power with the Nation including its leader. Malcolm did his job, was intelligent enough to know whose power was growing as a result of it, and likely knew early and then definitely finally that doing that job did nothing, but decrease his power within that organization.

Malcolm nourished Cassius Clay, was the only one in the organization that thought him of value, when Malcolm’s belief in that value came true (in what was considered the biggest upset in the history of boxing at the time), Cassius Clay first became Cassius X, then later Muhammad Ali. Suddenly, Ali’s value led to him gaining power. Malcolm’s power within the nation was dwindling.

Ali’s charisma was the only presence within that organization that rivaled Malcolm’s.

When Malcolm broke with Elijah Muhammad, whether you believe he did so out of moral conscience, a need for his own power or both, it led to a tough decision for Ali. Ali, who likely was not a big fan of choosing between friends had to nevertheless make a choice.

You can read many accounts of what happened between the two after that. I’ve read pretty much all of them. My interpretation based on what I have read is that it weighed on Ali a lot. It probably weighed on him even more after Malcolm’s death, and eventually Ali chose the “real Islam” that Malcolm did.  I’m not really qualified to say what is fact.

Here is Haley’s and probably  Malcolm’s version from their book.

Malcolm’s travels through Africa and his visit to Mecca are easily the most joyous passages in the “Autobiography.”

Here is one joyous  passage:

One of the Egyptian Muslims, particularly, kept watching me out of the corner of his eye. I smiled at him. He got up and came over to me. “Hel-lo-” he said. It sounded like the Gettysburg Address.

I beamed at him, “Hello!” I asked his name. “Name? Name?” He was trying hard, but he didn’t getit. We tried some words on each other. I’d guess his English vocabulary spanned maybe twenty words. Just enough to frustrate me. I was trying to get him to comprehend anything. “Sky.” I’d point. He’d smile. “Sky,” I’d say again, gesturing for him to repeat it after me. He would. “Airplane .. . rug . . . foot. . . sandal . . . eyes. . . .” Like that. Then an amazing thing happened. I was so glad I had some communication with a human being, I was just saying whatever came to mind. I said “Muhammad Ali Clay”

All of the Muslims listening lighted up like a Christmas tree.

“You?

You?”

My friend was pointing at me. I shook my head, “No, no. Muhammad Ali Clay my friend-friend!”

They half understood me. Some of them didn’t understand, and that’s how it began to get around that I was Cassius Clay, world heavyweight champion. I was later to learn that apparently every man, woman and child in the Muslim world had heard how Sonny Liston (who in the Muslim world had the image of a man-eating ogre) had been beaten in Goliath-David fashion by Cassius Clay, who then had told the world that his name was Muhammad Ali and his religion
was Islam and Allah had given him his victory.

“The Muslim from America” excited everywhere the most intense curiosity and interest. I was mistaken time and again for Cassius Clay. A local newspaper had printed a photograph of Cassius and me together at the United Nations. Through my chauffeur-guide-interpreter I was asked scores of questions about Cassius. Even children knew of him, and loved him there in the Muslim world. By popular demand, the cinemas throughout Africa and Asia had shown his fight.

At that moment in young Cassius’ career, he had captured the imagination and the support of the entire dark world.”

So at that point according to the “Autobiography,” Malcolm knows who Ali chose. Malcolm sees that Ali’s name has become one of the most powerful names in all of Africa, and that is perhaps the only name in all of Africa that is instantly understood by those who speak any of the multitudes of languages. Ali’s name has transcended languages. Had he wanted that name to be his? Was he jealous? He most certainly believed that without him that name would not exist and have that power. If he feels betrayed or jealous, he has no will to show it. He does feel a need to show his joy that it happened.

Malcolm’s travels in Africa, pretty much have to be considered the purest Malcolm in the book, or at least the Malcolm he wanted to portray. By this time, he knows there will be a book, and he is consciously documenting every aspect of his trip and sending reports back to America about his journey.

Why does he not differentiate between the names Cassius Clay and Muhammad Ali? I have no idea. You’ d think that he more than anyone would insist on making that demarcation. Especially if he did indeed feel that joy that the name Ali meant so much in Africa.

When Ali famously fought Ernie Terrell, Terrell refused to call him Ali, claiming he had always known him as Clay. I’m not sure whether that explanation by Terrell was honest or a psychological tactic against Ali, whose tactics pre-fight were always psychological. What I do know was that it enraged Ali, and led to one of the ugliest nights in his career as he kept pummeling Terrell, but refusing to finish him as he for maybe the only time in his public life cried out with pure venom over and over again, “What’s my name?”

I’ve read almost every book on Ali that exists. I’ve read many about Malcolm, but less because many more exist about Ali than Malcolm.

From what I have gathered, Malcolm who had almost as many names as Ali has books written about him, was probably fiercely proud of his final name el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz.

No one on television ever insisted on calling him Malcolm Little instead of Malcolm X, because the name Malcolm Little never meant anything to them. In most cases they likely had no idea until they asked what name the X replaced. They may not have even known why his last name was replaced by an X.

From what I can gather if you had met Malcolm under any name he was not offended by you calling him any name especially the name he went by when you you two had been in contact with each other.

The post Am I Excited to Read the Lost Chapters of The Autobiography of Malcolm X? The Swing Version. appeared first on Brad Laidman: Elvis Needs Boats.

That is a weird secret language I was told would be easy to learn because I was good at math and it was all math based. It was the hardest thing I ever tried to learn and I didn’t ever learn it. I  did once get a passing grade in it during college. The second I realized how hard it was I took it pass fail.

People will endlessly bicker about it. Do you need to speak it? Is it better, if you never learn to speak it?

They would have bands at one of its peaks where half spoke it and half didn’t.

I think one of the odder ways I’ve seen it in history was when Aimee Mann who went to Berklee College of Music in Masachusetts kept nagging Noel Gallagher, who pretty much never went to any school of any kind from Manchester, England about it.

“Why did you use this chord?”

“I don’t even know what chord it is, I just did it.”

“But this one key note holds the thing together. How did you come up with that?”

“I don’t know I just did it.”

It really doesn’t matter though it just has to be done.

I basically figured out that you could either do it or you can’t.

I could do none of it. I couldn’t master my instrument. Not even tablature would help me out. All I had was a guitar,  teachers who could do it maybe once a week, and the desire to do it, but I never had a chance of doing it. It’s all on YouTube now. I spent weeks trying to learn the simplest songs. Now it’s all on YouTube.

You can watch someone play it as they explain it to you. You can watch someone break it and explain it musically. Then you can watch a third person laugh at the second person’s explaination of it.

The easiest way I can describe my awe at it is Paul McCartney and John Lennon. Only McCartney is around to tell it and he never tells you. He just says that he doesn’t know that language. He doesn’t tell you how much he knows.

I saw McCartney in person and he told a story about them going from town to town trying to find someone to show them how to play a B7 chord on guitar in any fashion. There are tons of different ways to play a B7 chord on guitar. So I don’t get how you can not use that secret language and wind up better than those who never had it.

The only thing I do understand about John Lennon was he had a desperation to do it, and gambled his whole life on whether he could figure out how to do it.

Then it happens and it gets analyzed and the people who did it claim they have no idea what the people explaining it are talking about. Some people can just do it, but not that guy, he had to fight for it.

So I love things like this, because they are fun and teach me nothing about it at all.

Basically the only thing I undestand in that video is “You wanna play like you’re really pissed off all the time too. You want to play it like you’re mad at your guitar. Because it looks tough .. and that’s kind of how John Lennon did it.”

I know enough about that kid that I can understand him being pissed off; I can understand him being mad at his guitar; most I understand why he wanted it to look tough.”

When he says tough, he’s not saying difficult. John Lennon wanted to make it look like it was easy to do. He wanted you to be intimidated when you saw him do it, whether he was angry or not at the time. I get all of that.

The rest just confuses me more. and I’ve seen the same types of videos by different people.

He never did this except in this song where he did it perfectly that way. He’s playing it here because it was easier at the time given where he played the previous chord onstange at the time, but then he didn’t do it here for some other reason. If you have to do some form of this only do it this way.

Every single thing he says makes sense given who I understand him to have been and how he wanted to come off. He basically just says in different ways that you have to make it look like you are a badass. You can find out how hard he worked every single day in Hamburg, Germany to be able to do that, and most of that time was in front of an audience. Then there are all kinds of women options around. I understand why he took all the amphetimines and never slept. There was no desire to stop doing all of it.

I want to see and understand how good or bad he was at it at all stages, but you don’t really get to hear it or see it as it happens. Given what happened you can only say at one point he couldn’t do it at all. Then by the time most people got to see it he could do it all.

Paul McCarntney has better things to do than tell you and who knows how much of it he was paying attention to at the time. Even if he were to tell you, he has an agenda about how he wants to himself look.

Klaus Voorman got to see it almost nightly for a time. He instantly wanted to be able to do it and was obsessed with figuring out how to do it. He wanted to be able to do it so bad that he lost his really attractive, smart and talented girlfriend to the bass player that couldn’t do it at all and had no desire to do it.

I wanted to do it that much too, because it appears that once you can do it you can do anything and be with anyone.

Then as the guy says hope you can sing.

That is the Beatles second English album and seems like the best approxmation of what might have been happening in Hamburg onstage, because it has so many songs that they did not write.

The post Essential Albums #92: Giant Steps and With the Beatles (left not forgotten) appeared first on Brad Laidman: Elvis Needs Boats.

If you haven’t seen either of these movies and want to do not read this first. I will spoil them for you and I love both movies in slightly different ways.

If you don’t know about McCarthyism, either get a book, or watch a documentary, or watch George Clooney’s cinematic version of it. You should probably do all three in whatever order it best works for you.

Casablanca is also the same movie. It had a theme song called “As Time Goes By.”

The key lyrics of the song are:

The post Robocop and Mr.Smith Goes to Washington and McCarthyism Are the Same Movie appeared first on Brad Laidman: Elvis Needs Boats.

Everyone has their own favorite kind of music. I’m no different, but I can listen to it all, and I always try to praise the artists not myself even if I do so bragging about how I’ve seen and done it all and can now play and sing it all here.

I first heard the Kinks on this around 77

That’s not my copy, but I can find it, and I’ll take a photo of it and post it later after I get some sleep.

It rules. Van Halen used to play half of it. Lola doesn’t fit with the early hits but that’s probably why it was released and my favorite part of it is actually Dave Davies bragging about trying to stay in bed longer than Mick Avory.

I recounted that story to my girlfriend’s parent in 1993 and it made me sound lazy but I was just a bright kid who couldn’t turn his brains off. My brains were best turned off hearing Dave belt this out in Cleveland the same year as this. Live it kicked even more ass, and his voice had so much energy and passion! Add a roaring guitar and I was in love.

I remember the day I bought Glamour how excited I was. It rules. Everything he does rules, but his first is still my favorite, and I try to buy as much of it as I can.

No ego, wryly commenting on how underrated he is. There isn’t a bigger more loyal talent than him, but Ray is older and hugely talented too. It was his band first, I’m pretty sure. Need to double check that in his book Kink when I get it unpacked. I just moved, and there are books everywhere. My two signed copies of X-Ray will be up when I find them from the day I shook Ray’s hand. One had curry on it because I ate that while I read it. I always read, and I always read while I eat. Ray was cool enough to laugh and sign both. Then I saw him sing Waterloo Sunset finally. John Wesley Harding sang A Fan Speaks and pronounced their name correctly. I don’t think either Ray or Dave care whether their name is pronounced Davis or how it looks to Americans, but I’ve always stressed about it.

I said my favorite writer was Ray in a literature class at Northwestern and they looked at me crazy, but VGPS is so much like Edgar Lee Masters’ Spoon River Anthology. Ray is a lot like Edwin Arlington Robinson’s Miniver Cheevy, and so am I. I used the name Miniver on the internet for a while.

Arthur is a masterwork, and I realized that all the houses on the street I grew up on looked the same eventually after hearing Shangri-La, which kicks all kind of ass. Why say anything else about it. The lyrics are amazing. Ray’s voice is gentle, mocking, supportive, taunting, wry, sarcastic basically everything as? He puts down maybe his father or all of the older generation he came from, but shows his love for them.

A while back I listened on headphones and was amazed at everything Dave is doing while that happens on guitar in the song. They are both so ridiculously talented, but Ray gets all the credit and Dave lives with it humbly.

He emailed me after I sent an article I wrote about him, and said I was his hero. He called me Keith because I use a punk name Keith Crime at times. I think John Lennon was the first punk, but Dave was even more punk and hit younger. Dave really was just born about three months too late to take over the world all by himself. Maybe his voice would have held him back, but his voice embodies the noise of punk better than anyone’s.

Van Halen rose to power with their You Really Got Me, but it was just the same as the Kinks with some volume and new technology. Eddie’s sound was fresh, but Dave was doing it all days later whenever he felt like it. That single brought both bands back. Guess what? Van Halen kicked Michael Anthony out. No one can replicate Dave’s voice anymore, and Van Halen bores me, but I’ll die before missing Dave in Cleveland at the Music Box April 18.

The essence of the Van Halen hit isn’t the riff. It’s the Michael Anthony back up vocal, which was Dave and that’s the real reason it was huge, but yeah Dave was the guy with the slashed little green amp, Dave played the first solo my Eddie-like guitar teacher taught me. He is amazing too.

He figured it out in seconds. Dave played it under pressure. Their career was on the line. It’s simple and sloppy and I love it. My teacher said, “He makes mistakes, but it is awesome. Play it as sloppy as possible.”

I sound sloppy on guitar on purpose, but I can now play precise, but not as well as Dave. Dave can do anything he wants. Mostly, he’s just a great guy and kicks ass.

It was 1984 and 1984 had just come out by Van Halen. The music store I learned at was filled with guys doing Eruption badly. They put a sign up saying something like if you play Jump on our keyboards we will disembowel you.

I learned the YRGM solo a week after I learned my first riff. It was ‘Til The End of the Day and I learned what a barre chord is but Dave probably played just the two bass notes on all of those. I have no idea. YRGM was written on piano originally.

Chuck Berry is Louis Jordan on guitar. It doesn’t mean much without Ray and Dave’s passion. John Lennon was arrogant as hell, and Ray loves talking about how he came up and offered the Kinks some songs and they had YRGM.

John and Paul McCartney were outrageously audacious thinking they could take over the world from Liverpool, but they did. Ray and Dave may have anyway had they been born first. Fate is luck. Something happened on that first US tour to derail them, but it made their art even better and Ray and Dave both did whatever they liked whenever they liked.

I think Dave’s been happier and less angst filled. So why not choose that?

He is amazing now having survived a stroke. What a beast he was in his prime, tearing through all the clubs with the longest hair and the coolest guitar.

My latest teacher gave me an old guitar mag because he knew I’d dig it. It featured Joe Bonamassa restoring a Flying V. It’s all cool, and I love it all, but I had to tell him who the punk that made it legendary after it was forgotten and then moved on and played acoustic music and everything else whenever he felt like it.

I love Last of the Steam powered Trains.

The Kinks started out with blues, transformed blues, both mock them and loved them on that song. Ray laughs as someone plays every single major chord down the guitar maybe that’s Dave or both of them. Dave could have played like Clapton had he wanted to. Clapton bores me even though I love Bell Bottom Blues. I prefer Beck and Townshend and Dave. Dave came first. Pete’s whole career was adding aggression to Ray’s work, but only Keith Moon was in Dave’s league energy wise. Keith Moon to me is the top musician ever. Dave’s loyalty and grace were perhaps the only thing holding him back.

I know Ray and Dave love each other and they’d kill anyone who attacked either. Brothers are like that. Look at the Everly’s, the Gallagher’s, the Robinsons, any band with brothers. They always have strife. The Robinson’s I think don’t even speak. The Everly’s didn’t. There’s something about the harmony vocals of brothers and the youngest always take all the shit. Same with me and my brother, but the Davies had tons of sisters and Dave was the youngest. John and Paul somehow sounded like brothers which is amazing.

I think the Davies brothers have the most love inside them when the truth comes to light. Dave has the most.

I watched this with the girl I loved the most the day it aired.

I’m pretty sure Ray told Dave to sing it and then tricked him by making it a duet and Dave got the joke.

The day I saw Ray finally sing Waterloo Sunset was the last time I spent serious time with her. A money thing. The Kinks understand. It’s all in Bernadette and tons of other songs by them both.

It should be about love and sharing not money. Dave shares the most.

Dave had the courage to sing those songs first. I was shocked to see him singing Young and Innocent Days. He loves Ray’s work more than I do. You could tell by the way he sang those songs.

I don’t know whether I like VGPS or Arthur better they are both amazing. Why choose?

I went to a debate camp in 1982 and the head professor was a music fan and let everyone pick two songs for the final party. He was really into Gram Parsons. One of my songs was Dave’s Strangers I think the other was London Calling but I don’t remember.

The professor said he didn’t dig Strangers. He was just flat out wrong, and Muswell Hillbillies combines everything Parsons did in his career, and the Kinks did it once and moved on like they always did, while other people play Wild Horses or whatever 14,000 times.

God I love how he sings “I said goodbye to Rosie Rooke this morning.”

Ray shouldn’t have called him Dave “Death of a Clown” Davies all those years, but whatever.

I love this song hardly anyone has heard.

This is my favorite love song ever and most speaks to me and no one hardly has heard it.

They did whatever they felt like doing whenever they wanted. They weren’t managed well. I don’t think they ever cared much about money and mocked it all most of the time. They mocked each other.

I love self-deprecating vicious loving jokes. John Lennon did it the best, but eventually he was in a bar marveling over this all day.

Dave’s rocked the hardest by far and I mostly got it from the Kinks.

The Grateful Dead inflicted themselves on me in 1987. Some dude turned all the music in my fraternity but mine from Zeppelin to Dead. I was up all night having to endure Terrapin Station and other nonsense.

I’ve heard a ton of Dead. I just don’t like the music. It is too laid back, and I hate Jerry Garcia’s tone. I mostly hate bluegrass unless it’s done like this.

They may be good musicians. I don’t know. I just don’t like it, and I certainly don’t need to hear them turn 3 minute perfect pop songs into 15 minute boring dribble jams 1500 hundred times. Too much music to hear. I can’t even keep up with Dave’s new stuff, but I keep buying it and I will get to it eventually. Still haunted by the amazing simplicity and energy of this.

The Kinks could have redone that 15,000 times, behaved and been bigger than the Stones had they had the inclination.

Tons of Ray’s songs are about Dave, more than Roger Waters wrote about Syd Barrett and almost all of Water’s songs are part him and mostly Barrett’s life.

Some Ray gave to Dave to sing, but that’s Dave’s guitar solo with more energy than anyone but Keith Moon.

This is a master statement, and it was given to Dave to sing!

What took you dudes so long to figure it out.? I knew it before the Sopranos came out and before Rushmore came out. Those guys probably did too. Ray rules. Dave has all the passion and energy.

Dave can write politics with passion when he feels like it too

I saw the Dead live. A chick took off her top. That was cool. A dude who looked like Charles Manson danced weirdly. I was bored to death by the music.  A friend of a friend was drunk and stoned and helped the concession people for 2 hours and got a Pepsi and wasted my other friends’ time. I’d have much rather listened to this 15 times in a row than whatever they played that was similar that day.

I made people listen to this 8 times in a row at the debate National Championships in 1982 because I was in a bad mood with 8 quarters.

I was a hilarious punk threat just like Dave. I became more so because of Dave. We won the state title. I knew we had won, and danced like an idiot as they revealed we had won. The next year they warned people against doing such nonsense. Just like this. This whole album is about Dave. It doesn’t pay to be ahead of your time. It pays to be exactly of your time. The Kinks don’t care about money and either do I but having some is nice if you can be happy and do whatever you want. I do know. Dave always has.

I used to write Kinks lyrics down in my senior journal and my teacher would just write “What is this?” Not knowing what they were or if they were mine. I definitely wrote these down.

I can name 15 songs about being free by the Kinks. Who has been freer of responsibility and had more fun with so little credit than Dave.

I was told that I needed LSD to understand the Dead. I liked LSD. Still didn’t like the Dead and moved on. I tried it at Armadillo Day at Northwestern in 1989 and a Reggae band sounded like they played Stir It Up for 4 hours.

I like my reggae like this. This sounds like Dave.

Eddy Grant wrote it. He’s legit. The Clash are legit. The Kinks rule. Dave rules. The Dead bore me. I ended what was an interesting Match.com relationship when I told a teacher at Old Town School of Music I had no time for their Dead worshipping boredom. I love Dave way more than sex!

The free bootlegging I totally respect and it made the dead a fortune. That was genius. I still laugh about the Doobie Brother’s What’s Happening Re-Run anti-bootlegging episode.

It may be still be on YouTube somewhere, but I can’t find it and this is more fun and takes less time.

Soon the next generation of rappers were defying Reagan taking music out of the schools and messing up intellectual property laws forever.

All art is 1’s and 0’s now. My girlfriend was a great photographer, became an intellectual property attorney, married an intellectual property attorney who was rich. They are now likely really rich.

I was too young and people didn’t get me. Just like Dave. My teacher was shocked how pastoral and English the Kinks could be later when she heard them.

I saw Dave get into a hilarious Twitter thing over whether he was influenced by Link Wray, who may have used distortion first. Distortion maybe was here first.

That was a happy accident when an amp fell and broke. Dave didn’t know about that I think. He was just bored and filled with energy and passion like me.

I love the Who and the Kinks and everything else.

I love the Davies. They changed my life. It’s hard to choose. I stick up more for Dave because too few do and he is ignored and misinterpreted like me.

Dave Davies is a gift. He changed my life, and I treasure every note he has recorded and that I’ve heard and seen him play.

I’m going to move heaven and earth to get the back of my favorite guitar signed by him. If he signs the front someone will steal it and I won’t be able to play it out. It looks like Joe Strummer’s now, but hopefully it will secretly have Dave’s name on the back for inspiration.

I’ve gotten a lot done. I’m going to get a lot more done just like Dave will.

I hope I get that thing signed by him. If I do you will have to kill me to separate me from it.

No need to edit this. You will see below. I’ve written it a 1000 times. I’ll fix anything that is wrong though, which no one else cares about. I told Jim DeRogatis he misquoted Jim Morrison once and he didn’t care.

No one cares about the truth and historical accuracy. Most people only care about themselves. Maybe, I’m the same who knows. The truth is:

I love Dave Davies. He and his brother helped transformed my life and I can die today proud of it all. Send him as much money as you can so he can do whatever he can and grace the earth with his passion, love, and awesome music, which I know he will do until he dies if he can possibly be stopped. I won’t bet against him.

My computer is having trouble keeping up with me and my $400 dollar guitars!

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