36 Susan Matsumoto was the other one of the founders.

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apter 6

Hemingway’s Cats“I can’t stand it... It’s driving me sane” Spike Jones

The last gasps of classic good-ole-boy racism, the collectivenational hangover from Vietnam mixed with a rather stubbornnostalgia for another ‘good war’ had by now faded. It was spring of1983, I was still off and on dating this dark-haired, heavyset Italianwoman named Anne Pitrone whom I had known since we wereboth been nominally enrolled as freshmen at Cornell some fifteenyears earlier. Annie (as I called her) would become one of twowomen to start the at once intuitive and unlikely organizationcalled WIT (Women in Toys), which as a professional36

organization is for, as you may have guessed, women in toys (notwomen’s toys) so, I guess as co-founder along with SusanMatsumoto you could call her ‘half-WIT’ (except for the fact thatshe was really brilliant,--at least when not playing with her water gun).

She emerged from her lobby at 579 Broadway, just below Houstonand into the balmy summer night, (into BEHO (hold,-the selfrevealing splendor) or (y)ESO(h!disciple, be)HO(ld) the MOJO), asI had buzzed her down, being illegally parked in front. (This waswell before Broadway was infested with GAPs and DolceGabbana’s, but nevertheless as far as parking, still eminently illegal)I turn toward the street. I notice my car, a black Ford Falcon, nowhas a flat tire. I leapt to the task. Within two minutes I had the carin the air and the spare ready to go. Another two minutes and thenew tire was on and the jack stowed stealthily and neatly back inthe trunk.

“Wow! Where did you learn to do that!?” She asked, with neo-sarcastic breathiness, but obviously genuinely impressed. “Merchant Marine”, I replied, straightening slightly and wiping mynow schmutzy fingers on my jeans belt and face. Even the blackgrease could not hide my schmutzpride. Being herself a genius, she

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had probably figured out rather quickly that ships do not havetires. She was very smart. Annie was smart enough to go toCornell in 1968. Smart enough not to say anything more to meabout that fact in 1983 as I stood there on Lower Broadwayproudly triumphant over my handiwork that had resulted in thenewly restored equilibrium of the Ford Falcon that I was an idiot.

Back in the late sixties Annie lived in this kind of funky first floorgarden apartment on College Avenue which had become thedesignated hangout for local musicians like myself and Al Hartland.I often found myself occupying her couch in a variety of positionssuggesting deep thought and sleep simultaneously. The couchitself was kind of natty so she had covered it with a kind ofintricately distracting, beige and green cotton pseudo-Paisley throw.It was my six-foot sanctuary from the grind of the intellectualworld.

It was also around this time I also met Jillian. Or, met her inperson. Jillian was an art professor at Cornell and startlingly (forme) young. She had hair the color of English Toffee and two lastnames. She was kind of the anti-Annie or Bizarro-Annie. Anne wasalways covered with paint, either paint or food, from painting herapartment while cooking lasagna for us musicians (not that she wasa groupie, more like a prototypical Italian earth mother). Jillianprobably painted every day, but I never saw a drop of unwantedtint, or even a pencil smudge on her; not even a vagrant piece ofscone. Annie’s uncoagulating curly black hair framed a Da Vincinose and the misbehaving curls appeared all over the place as ifthey had a mind of their own, popping out here and there to greetyou like a fugitive Labrador puppy. Jillian’s hair was invariablyswept up into a neat dowager bun, never a strand out of place, alinear family without the hint of argument,–while Annie seemedperennially on the edge of laughter or screaming, or both, extendedpinky likely to be found possibly anywhere, including her nose orass. Jillian was always calm and collected; you had a feeling shewas about to drink tea, the pinky deftly extended in the air at aprecise angle never contacting an unsavory body part.

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Not to be disingenuous, I had heard a lot about Jillian long beforeI met her from hanging out with the art students like Cathy. I hadassumed her to be this old-maid professor type, at least from thehushed tones of respect they employed in speaking of her so, whenfinally I did meet her, I was somewhat taken aback and shocked athow accessible and ‘ageless’ she in fact was. She was also a gooddresser. Often she wore this lime-green alpaca-ribbed button downsweater draped over a somewhat low cut, (not provocative) top,off-white chinos and sandals, dark framed 'fashionista' glasses withthe slight wingtips (before they were fashionista, -when they werejust retro-cool). By contrast Annie usually was stuffed in a bulkysweater, far more masculine at least to my eye,-a tan or dark brownfine knit v-neck which, while it showed some cleavage, remindedyou of one you might see on a slightly horny professor at a facultymixer.

One day, not too long after we met, as we were sipping Earl Greytea in my own post-hip rather ratty pseudo Paisley apartment onState Street she confided something that seemed at onceincongruous and embarrassingly personal. We were seated cross-legged, on the floor of the living room. She looked at up mesquinting through the aqua-rimmed fashionista glasses saying,“You know when I fall in love with someone, C, I don’t just fall inlove with the person,- I fall in love with their car, their shoes, theirhouse, the color of their car. I knew at that moment exactly whatshe was talking about. And somehow she must have intuited that Iknew exactly what she meant, that I tended toward the sameobsessiveness in infatuation as her infatuations, something ranalong the same genetically skewed lines in both of us,–and we bothknew that we were somehow different from everyone else. It was abond of sorts, I suppose. Not that anything came of it in eithercase. ‘Twang the magic twanger, froggy.’

Speaking of paintbrushes, fairy godmothers, humiliation and magicwands I now get several emails a day now from drug companiesoffering, saying they have a pill to give me. My first thought wasthey must have somehow digitally archaeologically excavated mymental affinity with Jillian, as some kind of out-of-work fairygodmother (though, it seems I never get offered sprinkles.)

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I never talked to Jillian for more than ten minutes at a time (exceptonce in her office when she wanted to hire me for nude modeling).That conversation on State Street was at that point the secondlongest I had ever had with her or really anybody for months. Itsomehow affected me. I couldn’t have ever imagined a professor,let alone a proper Jillian-type professor being ‘in love’, not in thesense that I knew it. (Now I wonder if fairy godmothers on thewhole, as a profession maybe are just kind of pissed-off in general,because they never get the prince, or the castle, or the life. Theyjust get more sprinkles, sometimes maybe a bigger wand,–unionbenefits, forty on twenty off,--did you get the email? Is there aunion? The FGMU?–the fugmoo?). That probably was why Iagreed to do something so out of character for me as nudemodeling for her life drawing class at Cornell (that and the fact thatI needed money).

Stevie Odum was another one of those musicians who made thepilgrimage on occasion to Annie’s house in search of the perfectlasagna. By 1971, Hugh Anthony Cregg had already taken off backto the red umber hills of Marin California to run his post-Keseyanyogurt truck business ( searching for and eventually finding fame asthe ‘Iwannanewdrug’ Huey Lewis). Me, I was still banging andhanging around a slowly fragmenting Ithaca having traded in BillyHerndon’s Currier and Ives meets Scarface intensity for thesoothing simplicity of a straight soul R&B group fronted by a guynamed Steve Odum who somehow managed to convey thisinoffensive charm of Little Anthony and the innate funkiness ofCarol King and unlike Billy, was not the least into smack or anydrugs for that matter.--a professional, and actually talented; apleasure to be around after surviving two years of Billy’s FuManchu mandarin inspired funky funkeey-y-y town madness,shooting up and then going on a picnic with his kids., I was up fora real change, you know,–temporarily wanting to feel like a normalguy myself again for a while at least, figuratively, musically andliterally. Apparently not all good deeds (or good people) are punished.Stevie would go on to have a successful career in R & B and also(somewhat bizarrely) reach a parallel height in his alter-ego as

3

7 “What’s new at Wells.” Wednesday, April-May, 1997

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country singer named (through some tubal ligation ofnomenclature), Odum Conroy. In 1997, after playing a gig on theWells College campus in Massachusetts, the college newspaperdescribed him thusly, “Ithaca native Steve Odum is a veteranrhythm and blues singer and guitarist. He has performed withDionne Warwick, Little Anthony and the Imperials, Little Richardand Dr. John. Odum also performs country music under the nameOdum Conroy”. I don’t know how you get to be a veteranguitarist; or, if there ever was a guitar war,-- or maybe even a guitarVFW where they have dinner and dances (apparently there areguitar heroes now)—where nobody dances,--tricky tray anyone?And second of all Stevie was actually from Elmira.

“Odum Conroy (aka Steve Odum) was inducted into the NewYork State Country Music Hall of Fame for his outstandingaccomplishments in the field of Country Music.“ , (one of which37

was probably being the tallest, skinniest, blackest Country andWestern singer to appear at the ‘grand ole opry’) well anyway, thatis something else and I sense I am rambling, mut I actuallysometimes imagine him performing a trio with Little Anthony,(Little Anthony and Big Stevie) and Carol King (light Carol. darkStevie), getting confused and breaking into “The Devil WentDown to Georgia” right smack in the middle of “Tears on MyPillow. Stevie Odum aka Conroy,--not one apparently to waste agood country name! Yeee, hahh,-- beeyotch!

Ricky was the bass player for our little band of brothers (havinglikewise more or less successfully survived Billy’s drug fueledmanias)and by the way, an ex-con. He was shacking up with Carol,‘shewhomustbeobeyed-RichardFarinavamp’, like Stevie, fromElmira (of course). She had black hair and a vampiress whitecomplexion and just in case you didn’t get the point, she wasalways dressed in black. She and Ricky both drank onlySevenandSevens. He came to play with Stevie in 1971 (about thesame time I got sick and tired of Billy Herndon). He had this ex-con way of laughing semi-exuberantly ‘Hah Hah’, as if someone

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had written it out for him on the script and then becomingimmediately humorless. He also had peculiar a way of holding acigarette, barely and gingerly so that it made you think it wassomething at once very rare and valuable and incidentally thatmight just have recently have been recently shoved up someoneelse’s asscrack. He got killed two years after the band broke up aand it happened in front of the Black Elks club where we hadoften played. A guy on leave from the army beaned him with a treelimb (probably over a woman, probably other than Carol). A stormhad broken it off (the limb). The blow was hard enough to collapsehis skull. He died there on the spot, probably with a seven andseven in one hand and a cigarette in the other going ‘Hah,–Hah’ inthat deep, raspy humorless laugh.

Hanging out in Collegetown with Annie was in some sense justbarely enough to preserve my self image as both an intellectual anda musician (though as far as the intellectual part by now Cornelland I had parted ways). It was mid-Spring of 1970 and Annie wasthere in back behind the beaded curtains, singing, dancing, nose-picking, cooking up lasagna. I was laying on her couch and thefloor off an on reading Yukio Mishima’s, “The Sailor Who Fellfrom Grace with the Sea.”, listening to Spike Jones violate the airon her recordplayer (yes, recordplayer). There also just happenedby coincidence to be an article in Life magazine that day laying onthe floor next to the couch open to an article on Yukio Mishima’ssuicide. They had called him without irony ‘the JapaneseHemingway’. In my book, he was the quite the antithesis, (morelike the Japanese Wallace Stevens), gay erratic, nationalistic.Anyway, as I read ‘Sailor’, it became apparent that Hemingway’ssense of raw unfiltered violence was certainly there but the style ofconveying it was really quite feminine and calculating. Rather thanbrusque masculine understatement he would coax you first gentlyinto his peculiar world of obsession and metaphor, seducing youwith brilliant metaphor, artfully placating, lulling one’s post-adolescent anxiety about the ambiguities of sexuality (in this casehis), the whole infused with rumbling undertones of cannibalismand homoeroticism, all while creating this gnawing sense ofcontrapuntal disorder until you found yourself confronted havingbeen stripped of all defenses, like the victim, with this single act of

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horrific violence, one that you could finally now witness assomething both totally foreign, yet completely intimate,– oneresulting both in utter revulsion and complete tranquility, anineluctable detachment coupled with a totally involuntaryfascination.

As I lay on the couch tracing the Kanji character for ‘walking onthe edge of a sword’ in the air, I did not (nor could I) know thatMishima had committed suicide while yelling from a podium at acollection of vaguely bemused and giggling Japanese DefenseForces dressed in their powder-blue uniforms. He had beenlecturing them from the Ichigaya heights overlooking Tokyo FirstDistrict Headquarters of the Eastern Army, telling them toembrace their warrior past. He would fail to rouse them to anyfurther action and following his unsuccessful self-disembowelmenthis lieutenant/lover would finish him off with one swipe of asamurai sword. Though I experienced some guilt when I readabout it I sincerely doubt it was because of anything I did, -wellanyway, certainly not because of Annie’s lasagna. ‘Pop Goes theWeasel’. Shmerz glob kapop!

The question that came to mind then and increasingly obsess me asI read on toward the shocking denouement of his novel about thesea, (still laying on that nicely covered ratty couch), was where insuch an obviously spare and carefully ordered mind could one haveconcealed such inchoate anger, such a sudden and seeminglybrutally senseless act of violence. Even wrapped within thatencompassing metaphor of brilliant melancholy,-there it was,naked, suddenly exposed, like a shout that restored you to ashocked silence, expectant and lewd, like a flasher in the park.Anyway I attributed Life’s comparison to Hemingway to a kind ofreverse racism of a kind that was very prevalent during the postVietnam era. I knew it to be based on a kind of violentminimalism. The offshoot of a completely different aesthetic ofmeaning from my own.

And it wasn’t entirely just that the titles, (his and Hemingway’s) oftheir ‘sea novels’ were virtual phonemes that had invited thecomparison in the magazine. Both he and Hemingway could

38 “The Sailor who Fell From Grace with the Sea”, Yukio

Mishima, Random House, New York, 1994, p. 5.

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somehow manage at times to live entirely in an idealized world ofmetaphor, this crystalline, translucently defined sea and sky. “Onlya dazzling sky and a few fragments of clouds hard and glossy asenamel in the light bouncing off the water, could be seen from thewindow.” Each sentence I read was a gem, an exquisitely38

sculpted Haiku. Reading in this fashion had also, somewhatunderstandably, put me off my game, made me extremely self-conscious of my own post-adolescent homophobia andcannibalphobia (is there such a thing?), and the not unrelated,almost uncontrollable fear of homosexual cannibals. I attributedthis (as I did all my moral failures) to my having attended MidwoodHigh School, a mostly white, middle-upper class High School inBrooklyn to which I had gained slightly illicit access through asubterfuge instead of to the integrated Erasmus (and to which Ialso attribute possibly also my eventual self-implosion at Cornell aswell as my preference for Carole King records, and mycontritionary bass playing) and this too, perhaps, despite playingthereafter in mostly black bands, still, a persistent perhaps relatedunwilling, unconscious image/desire for self-destruction and anagging fear of all blacks. Anyway, I found even when I washanging at Annie’s house and with the soporific of lasagna my stateof heightened dichotomized self-consciousness was becoming lessand less tolerable. Along with the lasagna, I thought I could get atemporary dose of self-deprecating perspective from the incipientJonz-Mishima superposition, (though the two never seemed toexist fully in the same universe), yet now, there it was, here therethey were, –both of them. One on the floor and one in my handand one on the record player. I turned up the record player andput down the book.

As I lay there, book listlessly appended to my outstretched arm,listening now more intently to Spike Jones with his mindlesscomedic sound effects; raucous laugh tracks, kazoo glissandi,random gunshots chased by sirens to a chorus of immaculatelytuned cowbells and slide whistles, interspersed jazz riff, spoofs ofLiberace, knock-knock jokes,-- the contrast with Mishima’s spare

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monotonic mindscape was almost too much to bear. In some waysthis mirrored the insane duality of my own life, and how I wasseeking to avoid the complexities of my life by self-medicating withlasagna and marijuana but I could not yet figure all or indeed anyof that out exactly. Jillian I knew had been somehow part of it butwhich I did not know and now she was nowhere around. No oneto rationally and calmly discuss it with except Annie and she haddisappeared back into the bowels of the per-simmeringkitchen/garden somewhere and Jillian into an inalterably geometricUniversity officialdom. Annie I knew would have just laughed itoff anyway.

Spike Jones, if you have ever been exposed to his happy brand ofmindless nonsense for more than a few seconds, you willunderstand, was about as unselfconscious and uninhibited a personor rather performer as one could imagine (barring Robin Williams).He however, was a product of those euphoric, postwar years whenit was still not offensive to anyone except Nissei Japanese to callthem a ‘Jap’. Again, the bizarre superimpositions. At that time Ifelt there was nothing morally wrong with the kind of humorousstereotyping. I was just casually absorbing via the air, the recycled1940s air, though of course I would never have dreamt of callingmy Japanese language teacher at Cornell, Terisaki-san, a ‘Jap’-noteven in the private recesses of my own Hemingwayesque thoughts,but somehow it still seemed all so harmless. Billy Herndon intoday’s politically correct terminology would have been a substanceabusing, socially disadvantaged narcissist version of Father KnowsBest who enjoyed family ‘outings’ instead of a fuckin’ junkie. PCdoes have its limitations, conciseness being chief among them.

Back to Spike Jonz...It seemed, much as the cover notes suggestedwas the case, that he was not prejudiced but rather in some sensethe paradigm of fairness having found some way to in somemanner offend virtually everyone, as the liner notes put it, “Whattoday we would unquestioningly call acts of racism, seemed, forSpike and the Slickers and indeed postwar America, as pure andunpremeditated as the breathing of a Zen monk . . . Seldom in

39 Spiked! The Music of Spike Jones (liner notes to Catalyst CD,

1994).

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music has one mind exerted itself so much to seem so mindless.”39

Zen Racism! Is that the definition of irony? More conflict. Moreanxiety. More confusion. Yes somehow, the whole combination,lasagna, Hemingway, camels, Spike Jonz, Yukio Mishima, thecross-dressing dowager artist--it all seemed somehow so deliciouslyelevating so artfully crisp and delineated that spring afternoon onCollege Ave., that racism, angst and self-doubt all seemedsomehow miles besides the point in the ecstasy of creation. Of course, in hindsight, the whole idyllic tableau was infected withthe same narcissistic self-congratulation that would permeate eventhe most purportedly innocent intellectual exercises in those days,but at the risk of self-indictment, at least in this case. I had learned,thankfully, it was not just untutored prejudice in fact, but infact–well it was but,–well an indulgence for a country that had justwon a war. So why should it be difficult or perhaps impossible toimagine or understand how in today’s society, except perhaps inparts of the deep South, that the endemic racism found inmainstream American culture was once regarded fondly as‘harmless’. It should have been evident to anyone who watchedeven one episode of “Amos and Andy” or even “Our Gang” thateven when couched in humor, it is never ‘harmless’. That did notmake it not funny. And though there were no laugh tracks back inthose days just the singsongy syrup taffy-stretched soundtracksclinging to mindless hilarity and double takes, at least Spike Joneshad some intellectually justifiable musical content to justify theswipes. And on the plus side, white people could enjoy beingnarcissistic idiots without the accompanying self-consciousnesswhich defines the white race and makes them poor dancers,speaking of which,- at that moment, bursting thru the bed sheet ofmy contemplative horror there was Freddie Morgan, veteranguitarist, singer and banjo player singspieling somewhat frantically,--

40 ‘Skokiaan’ is also the name of a current group of four guys from

Liverpool. Heyy! I heard of four guys from Liverpool!

41 This song, which was named after a South African Zulu tribal

drink was introduced in South Africa by ‘The Bulawayo Sweet

Rhythms Band’ on Gallotone Records. It was released in the

U.S. on London Records # 45-1491 and entered the Pop Charts

on AUGUST 28, 1954; spending 8 weeks on the charts and

achieving its Peak Position at No. 17.

42 COLUMBIA # 4-40306.

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Sakimoto, SakimotoOh hooooohhe’s a crazy eskimohe can make the bebop flowhe’s not a square but really cooloh hoowwin other words he not a sch(u)mo(ooh)( –this was featured on the tune, ‘Japanese Skokiaan’ )

Skokiaan is in fact not Japanese at all but a traditional Zulu tribaldrink made mostly from fermented sugar, yeast and berries fromthe Marula tree. (This does not really help anybody because no40

one really knows what a Marula tree is). Much like both soda popand Skokiaan, the tune itself had a long shelf life remaining onboth the American and Mexican pop charts in one form or anotherfor years, as well as a short run on South African TV as the themefor a soft drink jingle, the longevity based not so much on itsinherent musicality as on the fact that, like a somewhat aggressivedrunk at a cocktail party, no one seemed to be able to get rid of itonce it had insultingly insinuated its way in.

The original Skokiaan tune was written by August Msarurgwa, aSouth African, as the local radio jingle for soda pop. It hit the41

American mainstream two years later with a ‘shmerz-glob, kapop-whoosh’, (the song, not the drink) when a version was cooked up forAmerican audience with lyrics by Tommy Glazer and sung by “TheFour Lads”, a Canadian group backed by Neal Hefty and hisorchestra. It soon became a pop vocal hit as well, entering the PopCharts on September 1954 and reaching number seven after onlytwelve weeks. 42

43 Mercury Records # 70432-X45

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For a while, in the mid-fifties, (just as it seemed as we were gettingover our panicky, omnipresent fear of polio) the catchy moronicmelody seemed to be also omnipresent and epidemic. Even LouisArmstrong recorded a Dixieland version with Sy Oliver’s orchestrain August of that year. (Actually, the first version had been aninstrumental version, an arrangement done by Ralph Marteriewhich had reached number three on the charts and incidentallythere had been a second instrumental big band arrangement byJohnny Warrington also in 1954-listed in the sheet music version asa ‘foxtrot’(?!) .) Glazer, who contributed the post-jingle English43

lyrics, til then, had been mostly noted for his deeply moving 1963culinary ballad, “On Top of Spaghetti”, which as everyone knows,begins “On Top of Spaghetti, all covered with cheese.” I vividlyremember hearing this on the radio when I was a kid.—(Well itwas moving for a twelve-year old). Speaking of narcissistic racism,Glazer’s version of the Skokiaan lyrics go like this;

Oh, Far away in AfricaHappy happy AfricaThey sing a-bing-a-bang-a-bingoThey have a ball and really goSkokiaan, Skokiaan, Skokiaan, Skokiaan

Oh, Take a trip to AfricaTake any ship to AfricaCome on along and learn the lingoInside a jungle bungalowSkokiaan, Skokiaan, Skokiaan, Skokiaan

The words to Skokiaan. in ‘the lingo’ of that time would have beenreferred to as ‘singable’ and ‘amusing’. This is, I suppose, at leastpartially true, at least when compared to “On Top of Spaghetti”.However, even the persistently saccharine, doggerel charm ofSkokiaan by the late ‘50s had begun to fade and the subtextualracism had grown more grating to a changing society. When BillHaley finally recorded a rock version with the Comets (his lastouting on Decca records in 1959), it reached number seventy. Just

44 Herb Alpert/Hugh Masekela A&M/Horizon Records CD-0819

Producer, Stewart Levine, Herb Alpert and Caiphus Semenya;

associate producer Hugh Masekela. Released in 1978.

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to complete the discography, the tune was briefly revived, in 1978with a disco version released by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana brassfeaturing guest South African trumpeter Hugh Masakela then44

surfaced and splashed again briefly as a Mexican mariachi numberand after that, it sank gracefully into the depths of soda-pop-elevator-music-jingle oblivion,—.

So anyway, back to this Spike Jones version I am listening to thistranslucent day on Annie’s couch, before the unexpectedly opaqueand sanguine literary explosion that was to intrude into myconsciousness like an atomic bomb and which appeared for allpurposes to have come culturally speaking midway in the wake offirst four American releases of the tune Skokiaan. The single hadbeen released by Spike Jonz as the flip side of “I want Eddie Fisherfor Christmas” and was played on a California radio station fifty-six times in a row as a publicity stunt by an overly zealous DJ (andsomewhat gratuitous given the musical crazy-glue nature of itsmelody). It is amazing that the African tourist bureaus did notobject more strenuously as this was probably enough to makeanyone want to kill themselves rather than go on a trip to ‘happy,happy Africa’.

This particular arc followed by this particular piece of music, wasnot particularly anomalous for that era nor in fact for the onefollowing when it came to pop music. There had by then in factdeveloped a peregrinatio (if you will) a course prescribed by theindustry as a standard mechanism to move any piece of music fromits African roots to the Afro-American subculture if need be, intojazz and thence into the mainstream. Skokiaan had somehowstepped onto the mindless racist escalator of early pop music. Forall its purported ‘hipness’ this same business paradigm wouldstructure the entire business model of the phenomenon known as‘rock and roll’.

Let me explain it better for those unacquainted with the musicbusiness. It was in fact, by design, a kind of Rube Goldberg system

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of racially indexed Nielsen ratings. A song would first becomeknown as a kind of “sub rosa” hit written and performed by blackartists specifically for black audiences and venues. It then might betaken up by black musicians with “crossover” credentials, likeLouis Armstrong and Sy Oliver, reaching thereby the “hipper”white audiences before becoming diluted and dissolving insaccharine imitation. If it refused to dissolve and also passed the‘hip audience approval test’, from there it might be covered byvarious white groups whose versions might become a mainstreamhit simply because their backers were the ones pushing liberalamounts of ‘payola’ and ‘cocaine’ in front of the noses of thenation’s disk jockeys. Inevitably someone like Tijuana Brass woulddo an instrumental version and that would be the death knell,unless perhaps a Vic Damone or Tony Bennett picked it up fromthere, or perhaps even Counting Crows thirty years later. (Not thatI don’t like Herb Alpert) you understand it’s just that he was firstand (like Hugh) foremost a businessman with a trumpet).

As a further business note, ironically it was Sun Records, thegroundbreaking original blues label that first pioneered thisexploitative practice of musical chain of custody. They as a matterof business practice recorded and signed (for a pittance) blackartists like Howling Wolf, B.B. King and Rufus Thomas just to getthe ‘raw’ copyrights and then produced various white ‘covers’ onthese underlying tunes which if they seemed promising enough,which were then promoted heavily thru the well-established payolasystem. This arrangement eventually benefitted the black artists tosome degree, especially the more savvy ones who had retainedsome of the rights to their works, (like Muddy Waters) theyreceived further (if usually meager) royalty checks when the songsbecame hits. Eventually, just as with Skokiaan lyrics, the duplicityof the system grated just too obviously. Most left Sun for othercompanies that would promote them as artist/products in theirown right.

So this non-vibrant zombie form of racism persisted and it maytherefore be not all that unusual that this particular song alsoattained such a remarkable afterlife (or second life) as kind ofironic ethno-musical flypaper when it became the official theme

45 In March 2003, The Camino Gardens Association placed a

plaque to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Africa USA.

The plaque reads as follows; "At this site in 1953, John D.

Pedersen and his family established "Africa USA," a major

Boca Raton tourist attraction for nearly a decade. The 350 acre

site drew some 2,000 visitors daily to view the park's camels,

giraffes, elephants and other exotic animals and plants. In the

park a "Watusi Geyser" erupted hourly from the rock still visible

in the lake, throwing 1,000 gallons of water per minute, 160 feet

into the air. Near the left edge of the lake are remnants of

"Zambezi Falls," the park's 30 foot waterfall. Dedicated by the

Camino Gardens Association in March 2003 on the 50th

anniversary of Africa, USA."

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park music of ‘Africa U.S.A’. The park was started by a Danishimmigrant named John Pederson in Boca Raton Florida in 1953. As a further sidenote, “Africa U.S.A.” boasted the largest herd ofcamels in the United States since Jefferson Davis, as Secretary ofWar in 1855, arranged to bring thirty-three of the ill-temperedbeasts back from the middle-east to aid in the settlement of theSouthwestern U.S.A. When the 20 camel was added to the herdth

at the park, Pedersen was heard to quip “Now I have a full pack ofcamels.” The “Africa U.S.A. site is now a subdivision dubbed withhorticulturally automotive eloquence, “Camino Gardens”.45

“Japanese Skokiaan”, the Spike Jones version I was listening to atthe moment had never been too much of a hit. The flip side. “Iwant Eddie Fisher for Christmas’ proved far more popular. Isuppose that is because Glazer’s lyrics when you came down to itare not really either what would correctly be called singable oramusing (nor in this case really even audible for that matter whenyou listen to the recording). Though, as with the later versions,most people, on hearing the song complained bitterly that it wasimpossible to get the stupid thing out of their head, it having thatkind of musical inevitability that one associates with “Pop Goes theWeasel”. Either way and not to lose the original thread I foundthis inevitability to be equally true of Yukio Mishima’s suicide,-- ittoo was just possessed by some kind of socially sanctionedirritatingly unintelligible inevitability.

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Speaking of inevitability, I suppose that one day my vineyard willend up as a subdivision as well; ‘Dodge Dart Floral Hills’subdivision I suppose. It is as inevitable as a pack of Camels inFlorida or the great Odum Conroy singing ‘The Devil Went downon me in Georgia”,-- or, oh what the hell were we thinking anyway!‘Bing-a-bang-a-bingo’? Come on! Who the hell knows!!

So Yukio Mishima would never exactly learn the ‘lingo’. Prior tohis ritual suicide he had become a master of kendo a form ofbushido, martial arts. He had formed a group of commandossupported by the monies derived from his literary royalties. Thegroup was incubated inside the JDF and was called ‘The Shield’. Itwas headed by his ‘second in command’, a university studentnamed Morita Masakatsu who was incidentally also his lover. In1969 (just two years before thee entire tableau described here), hestaged the aforementioned bizarre attempt to incite his‘commandos’ to rise up within the bosom of the baby blue cladJDF Forces and stage a coup in the name of the Emperor againstwhat he found to be an unseemly passivity, spending several hoursharanguing the five thousand largely bewildered troops in hissomewhat girlish voice from a jury-rigged platform (without eventhe help of a microphone) this just before his disciple finished hisbotched suicide by beheading him. Yukio Mishima never went to‘Happy, Happy Africa’. He went to crazytown.

Masakatsu was not exactly a he-man either. (Evidently there wasalso no Jack LaLanne in Japan at the time.) He had to make threeattempts before, mercifully, it was finished off by another memberof the cadre on hand with more upper body strength. Banz (andNoble) Zai!. Not to be too callous about it but “On top ofSpaghetti’ never made it onto the Japanese charts. So here I am thirty five years later, still engaged in this aimless,morally insupportable mental rambling, still waiting for the slidewhistle, Ayyuuugaaah! car horn and Mickey Mouse ejaculationannouncing Armageddon, ‘Hey Kids!’,--that or the Mister Softeejingle. I suppose I’ll still be sitting here waiting for the world toend,-- when the world actually ends. I don’t know. At least maybeI’ll have had some tasty lasagna, a full pack of Camels and Spike

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Jonz on the box. That would be, as my father used to say), afeather in my cap. But even so, -whatever it was that did or didn’thappen to Jillian and her Lime Green Alpaca sweater and EarlGrey teat, (and all those feathers in her cap,– and of course, all therest of this crap?) I don’t know and honestly I really don’t give acrap anymore.