Get It While You Can

because who knows, baby...

Eastbound and down, load it up and truck it
We gone do what they said can’t be done

Jerry Reed (Eastbound and Down)

One cannot get any further south than Key West, or any further east than Palm Beach, where I sit writing this, so now all that’s left is two and a half weeks of dragging my feet due North to get to New York and I’m already growing a bit nostalgic about the fact that this joyride is now denominated in weeks rather than months. But, don’t worry Flo-rida, we’ll be back. Not the royal “we,” but me and the dog.

They say in “life is too short to live in Dallas.” But they say that in Austin because they don’t want you to know how bitchin’ it is up there in Dallas or you’d never spend a night in Austin when just one day in San Francisco would suffice. Texas is awesome, and I loved it, but life is also too short not to live in Miami. The completion of my coast to coast journey was thus “Christened” by a dip in the Atlantic.

Hollywood (Beach) here I come. It’s a little more blue collar than The Delano. There’s a Margaritaville Resort with a wave machine right there on the boardwalk where everyone can see it.

Ruth Ann and Lynn come down from Baxter Springs
And that's one hell raisin' town
Way up in Southeastern Kansas
Got a biker bar, next to the lingerie store
That's got them Rolling Stones lips
Up there in bright pink neon
And there right downtown
Where everyone can see 'em

James McMurry (Choctaw Bingo)

It’s not California, it’s Florida, otherwise it’s just like Venice Beach (without all the bums). And, replace bleach blondes with farm girls, plus one’s more likely to see men bearing beer bellies than surfboards. Anyway, this where I wanna live when I grow up.

Life’s also too short to listen to crappy music. When I first heard Choctaw Bingo on the road a couple of weeks ago I wished I had heard sooner so I could have already listened to it 10,000 times. I immediately shared it with all my friends and they all said, “Yeah, we’ve known about that one for years.” So, they are no longer friends… because a gorgeous, raunchy 9 minute anthem about feeding kids vodka, Texas road trips, Uncle Slayton, Ruth Ann and Lynn, moonshine and methamphetamine should not be withheld.

Since I need some new friends, I’m sharing some recent “learnings” about music from my travels. That’s a popular usage in the start-up buzzword bouillabaisse where I live and it bugs me when people say it as much as it does when they say “monies” like they were counting sheeps or something. This tune popped up at a coffee shop in Tennessee - it’s a cover better than my favorite Beatles song.

Forty years ago, when Austin was cool — before it went all Lululemon — they had a thriving punk scene spearheaded by three bands: Dicks, The Big Boys and MDC. Playing before entirely male, often violent, and proudly homophobic audiences, two of the three bands were fronted by openly gay men. How punk is that? Among them, Dicks, produced one of the genre’s most influential albums with an undeniable title: Dicks: Hate the Police.

The Big Boys - perfect name for a punk band from Texas - espoused thoughtful, progressive views on sexuality. Asked - gasp, horror - if his rumored sexuality was true by Flipside, a punk fanzine, lead singer Randy ‘Biscuits’ answered:

Doesn't make any difference… I want people to look at me and say I'm a human being, not to talk about 5% of my life.

The final leg on that Austin barstool - the straight one - was MDC, or Millions of Dead Cops, fronted by Dave Dictor (real name) who, although hetero, performed in drag sometimes just to piss people off. That is, when he wasn’t mocking Hare Krishnas.

He did that because a Hindu punk subgenre, called Harecore, existed of mohicans who adopted veganism and espoused a straight-edge drug free lifestyle - very fashion forward of them. Most prominent among them was the Cro-Mags, who were also the first punk band to adopt a heavy metal sonic landscape, which was, of course, also anathema. Punks playing thrash metal, Malfunction is a cracker.

MDC’s first album produced one of the definitional images of Eighties punk, and contains an amazing track about the human condition: My Family is a Little Weird.

My family's just a little weird
Daddy wears a dress and Mommy grows a beard
Little brother got thrown out of school
For drowning kiddies in the kiddie pool
My big brother lives in the city jail
Mom and Dad won't pay his bail

That Austin trifecta organized a concert tour in 1982 to protest Ronald Reagan, branded a Nazi by the Left. And history repeats itself again today. Included in the lineup was Bad Brains, from the nation’s capital, who had been thrown out of so many clubs there they released an album called: Banned in D.C.

Bad Brains’ flavor of punk: being four Black guys, Rastafarians, assaulting all white suburban audiences expecting two minute songs about stealing mom’s wallet with eight minute bombs of funk, punk and reggae featuring lyrics about highfalutin topics like poverty, faith and mercy. Not talking about throwing a skateboard at cops here:

He who oppress, reproach his maker
He who honor Him, have mercy on the poor

Bad Brains (Secret 77)

Guitarist, Dr. Know, described audience reactions: “Who are these n*ggers?” and the lead singer changed his name to Human Rights, or HR. How punk is that?

Second stop on Rock Against Reagan it occurred to HR that “Randy Biscuits” might be gay - maybe his wearing a tutu and pink boots on stage gave this away - and HR flipped out and refused to share the same mic, which triggered Dave Dictor of MDC to give him a beating and throw Bad Brains off the tour.

Basically, Human Rights hated gay rights so a straight guy dressed as a woman from the band called Millions of Dead Cops got so mad that turned into a cop. The result: Bad Brains was both banned in D.C and also banned from trying to ban Reagan from D.C. How punk is that? As I’ve always said, no self-respecting punk band should ever be so stable as to make more than one album. The best one ever: Zero Boys, Vicious Circle. In Civilization’s Dying they are talking about Lennon, Reagan, and Pope John Paul II all getting shot in 1981.

Because the Pope, the President and the big rock star who made a lot of money all got one thing in common.

HR owed Randy Biscuits some money too and he who oppressed was reproached by The Big Boys in the diss-track “Pay to Come Along,” a reference to the debt parodying Bad Brains’ anti-capitalism song “Pay to Cum.”

This presaged the next 30 years in music that lay ahead, when hiphop would supplant rock, resulting in endless diss-tracks fueled by issues of race, ego, politics, masculinity, and money culminating in the most recent halftime show in which Kendrick Lamar preformed a 15 minute diss-track pointed at Drake that nobody under 30 understood. But Kendrick’s real crime was not playing Money Trees.

I have a Bad Brains tattoo — they’re so passé - on my left arm. How dumb is that? It comes from a line in the track, Attitude, on their self-titled album and stands for Positive Mental Attitude.

Yeah, we got that attitude!
Yeah, we got that PMA!

Elvis ain’t no Johnny Cash, Memphis ain’t no Nashville and Tom Jones ain’t no Amanaz. Khala My Friend is so much better than It’s Not Unusual -

The best thing about the movie Chef isn’t how unrealistic the leading ladies were picked to play (fatter) Jon Favreau’s girlfriends, or the cooking porn, but the music. As in the movie, this one is a scorcher on the road, and yet another cover that beats the original blend.

For sunrises, there is U.N.K.L.E. Main Title Theme

If you like techno-pop, here are two lost gems of the Eighties.

Naked Eyes is a one hit wonder - Promises, Promises - but just like Human League with Mirror Man they have a great “off the beaten path” track: I Could Show You How.

Here is a rare, live, early version of Lively Up Yourself that will burn the lashes right off your eyelids.

Rock so, you rock so
Like you never did before
You dip so, you dip so
Dip through my door
You come so, you come so
You skank so, you skank so
’Cause Daddy said so

Sharon Jones will put the tears right back in your eyes with Pass Me By.

One of the most sampled songs ever, but a rare case in which the source track beats the hop-hop is William Bell: I Forgot to Be Your Lover.

When I started this journey, I passed through Fresno to see an old friend - one of California’s biggest farmers - looking for some “learnings” about the grocery business and perhaps a few introductions to supermarkets to whom I can sell our bad-ass white-labeled cashback and partner rewards technology at Kalder, the bad-ass start-up with the bad-ass founder where I work. He introduced me to his 2IC, Sean Nelson, a salesman who could outsell me, and one hell of a lovely guy.

When you love somebody, baby
You're taking a gamble on getting some sorrow
But who cares, baby, because we may not be here tomorrow

Janis Joplin (Get It While You Can)

When I got to Orlando for a produce conference that I traveled to attend, I saw my dear old friend again, as we had planned to meet up. He asked me how I am enjoying the road and I told him, it is a once in a lifetime adventure of strangers, food, cities, situations, states, places, problems and people. With more in the mirror than miles ahead, I said I plan to live my life for fulfillment now that I see it clearly, soberly. Then I asked him “Where the Hell is Sean Nelson?” He looked at his shoes and said: “Tell me about it. He died of a heart attack Dec 21, 2024.”

Sean Nelson, aged 48, left behind a wife and four daughters. This note is dedicated to him - thanks for all the help big man, I can tell you everyone at Fowler misses you dearly. Rest in peace, brother. And to the rest of you, please take this lesson: get it while you can.

Janis Joplin, forever 28, gave the best performance of her life at Calgary’s McMahons Stadium three months before she died. The innovator of G-Funk says it all: Life Is… Too Short.