I’m thinking about the butterflies, the money owed/ the time elapsed & the time to go/ anger in a face/ beetles and cellar mold/ big plans not quite/ big enough to launch/ a rocket or a row boat? pursued across the ice flow/ tortured with telephones/ threatened with lunch lawyers long distance calls/ why should I care? In the end it seems like nothing is enough. I should live my life more recklessly. I admire the avalanche, good work. At night the hallway by the elevator is lined with ladies in wheelchairs, talking trash. ‘Are we on a boat?’ ‘When are we returning to Alaska?’ ‘Just walk me to the elevator, cousin, I won’t implicate you…’ ‘Her old man’s in prison but he’s cool with it.’ What kind of questions do you ask on a day like this? What’s the message? I’m on a train, trying to stay awake. Green pastures, March winds, blue & cloudy skies, so far from home. Connections to make, retreat from engagement into head leaning? What town is this, anyway? ‘I have arrived, only to leave again in the morning.’ I need help & get it. Over & over I’d fall then fly then free

I crowed a temperate break-pest, lent to my own fault & never believed my stones, orbs eyes or slather, but edged reason to silence & spit in the wind of peace Gathered my senses, stretched my extremities, pursued the drip drip drip of hollowed age bent on kindness but over my bent sensate confusion—or lack thereof Calasanctious was the school of Gaynelle’s childhood horror & led to her death—the priest who never slept no doubt is sleeping eternally—as is she by her own hand Particles always another bump down for October ’til the end Time gets out it’s bookends & destructions ticket doesn’t pay ’til the seventh race the one—where your hats on backwards your pants walk by themselves & Gracias Catapult—shooting irons—the rack—turrets for the king wise treacle sucking K9—thats french for something—out of reach or rhyme for cloistered tenpin   challenges blue orange blue green blue yellow green ten to one ’til doomsday Voices rising from the bottom—deadly traffic indistinguishable hand-riley bomblight—sheila—strengthened by dorm memory & pile on politics creeley fishing for sin to label high rise blow by farce They sang with grace & stirred the ashes—tales of midsummer early morn & balanced on a chromosome—I bailed

https://petercase.com/wp-content/uploads/05-Early-Version-A-Million.m4a [above: Chris and Joey] [earliest version of A Million Miles Away, from 1981 tour]     I ‘d met Joey Alkes and Chris Fradkin at  just the right time, the same week the Plimsouls began playing in the Hollywood clubs. We’d hit it off immediately. I ‘d always wanted to be a Brill Building songwriter,  like Otis Blackwell, Doc Pomus, or Carol King,  who were adept at composing three minute rock ’n roll symphonies on demand.  I felt Joey and Chris were my ticket to that dream, to that kind of fun. And we always had a blast writing songs. I’d get up in the morning, get some coffee and head straight over to Joey’s. Chris would show up, and we’d get right into making up songs, trying anything and everything out, looking for a real idea. Joey’s from Brooklyn, was a few years older than me and Chris, had been in the army, was a published poet, too, but  his specialty was great song hooks. Chris had studied music, and played guitar and piano. He’d been music director for a wild band Joey had managed in Denver, and always had a lot to say about grooves and arrangements.

https://petercase.com/wp-content/uploads/PC-Bumble-Bee-day-1_01.m4a This is the Memphis Minnie blues, from the HWY 62 sessions at Sheldon Gombergs’s Carriage House Studio, in Los Angeles, performed on a guitar Ben Harper had just laid on me, a perfect replica of Lead Belly’s Stella 12-string. Bumble Bee was the first song I played on it. This song is Track 1 on a CD of blues, by Buffalo musicians, released to help homeless veterans in the Western New York area. Here is a link if you’d like to receive a copy, and help out a very good cause: https://store.cdbaby.com/cd/buffaloblues   June 14 Blues 4 Vets Peter Case Buffalo Blues Benefit Band ft. Dave Constantino, Grace Lougen, David Michael Miller & more   5pm on at Larkin Square, Buffalo, NY

https://petercase.com/wp-content/uploads/05-Poor-Old-Tom.mp3 POOR OLD TOM A Tennessee boy joined the US navy In nineteen-fifty he was seventeen A quiet kid who’d never seen the ocean His mama died his first trip at sea He learned to work and he learned to whistle He learned to gamble and he learned to fight He learned to suck a bottle and go out whorin’ Somehow he learned to stagger in at night   Poor old Tom he don’t know Why his teeth’s gotta rattle shiver and shake The night wind’s free to blow wherever it pleases Tom’s free to walk to the cold day break   Poor old Tom he’s tellin’ it all His thoughts are roarin’ like a waterfall He never cared about money and there’s no doubt He never had much money to care about Typhoons and calms on the great Pacific Proud to be serving the USA He worked hard on board and he got promoted He got VD but it went away   Poor old Tom he ain’t right He went out in San Francisco on a Saturday night Sunday morning his ship set sail Tom was resting in the Oakland jail   Now it’s thirty-fiveyears since his incarceration On

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https://petercase.com/wp-content/uploads/Dangerous-Book.mp3 Kool Trash (1998) When I was a kid I read for hours in the local bookstores, working my way through the Hardy Boys detective series, then moving on to Ian Fleming’s secret service novels. I didn’t understand anything about detectives or spies, so it was strictly fill-in-the-blanks, piecing together a picture of the world from bookrack to bookrack, unguided, racing through the set-ups to the death-defying sex scenes. I loved the nearest branch of the public library too, ever since the Friday night when I was six, in 1960: My pal Pete Damon and I had our first sleepover and brought five or six picture books about bugs back to the house to study by flashlight, all night in bed. That’s still one of the best times I ever had in my life, it was so much fun, reading about walking sticks, and praying mantises, sharing the pictures of anthills and beehives. Life seemed huge, friendly, ancient, inexhaustible. But the reading experience at Ulbrich’s Books at the local suburban plaza, was different. They had popular titles, the latest things, like The Sport Of Judo by Kiyoshi Kobayashi and Harold Sharp. Me and Pete poured over that and eventually brought

The complications in any discussion of The Birth of Tragedy are overwhelming at this point.  I’ve been looking at the companion piece he wrote later, An Attempt At Self- Criticism.  Have you folks seen that? He’s opposed the idea of the Christian with Dionysian. He thinks Christianity is anti-art, anti-life, the desire for a “sabbath of sabbaths.”  I agree that the Christian message has at its root a disgust with the ways of the world. But there’s more to it. It’s also about seeing all with the eyes of love. As usual, what is desirable is not black and white thinking , but a mixing of the viewpoints. Christianity versus Art!  Apollonian versus Dionysian! And a genius philosopher who went mad. But there is something to his probes into these phenomena and their effect on culture. Ok lawyers have at it!     “Nieztsche never wore an umpire’s suit” — (Highway 61 Revisited liner notes)  

https://petercase.com/wp-content/uploads/08-One-More-Heartache-Live.mp3 Live in Cleveland. 1981!   The great Motown/Marvin Gaye hit “One More Heartache” from the live LP “One Night In America.”   Later that same night the legendary “Swingo’s Incident!” Yipes! One Night in America (1981)

https://petercase.com/wp-content/uploads/Peter-Case-Hide-In-Gout-mix-150104b_02.m4a with Ben Harper, guitar, DJ Bonebreak, drums, Cindy Wasserman & Eva DeRoovere, background vocals, David J Carpenter, bass, Jebin Bruni, keyboards Recorded by Sheldon Gomberg at the Carriage House, in Los Angeles Inspired by the Richard Wright novel The Outsider.