The Carlos Guitarlos Former Sidemen's Support Group Monthly Zoom Call Will Come To Order

Where was I? Where am I? If it’s Thursday, it must be Berwyn. Or was that Tuesday. But enough of the present. I’m still stuck in the Wayback Machine, back when I was trying to avoid growing up.

So many choices! I knew a few things I didn’t want to do. I didn’t want to wash dishes. I didn’t want to carry drywall up flights of stairs. Or collect signatures anymore at 50 cents a pop. But that still left plenty of depressing possibilities.

Then there was music. I’d been playing in bands through high school. But other than the drink tickets and getting into shows for free, nothing much was going anywhere. Probably for the better. If anything was going to happen, maybe the later, the better. But does anyone realize that at the time? Youth is always in a hurry. Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein at the tender age of 18 in 1818. (Wikipedia, mon amour.) And that novel inspired Bob Dylan’s “My Own Version of You” some two hundred years later when Dylan was pushing 80. Excellent work all around, I’d say.

Sometimes quickly. Sometimes slowly.

All I really knew was that if I could get paid to play guitar, that would be a fucking miracle. And I was young enough to believe in miracles. Or maybe I could learn to fly. (A plane, Einstein.) You know, like a crop duster or something. Or be a helicopter pilot. I was into that for a while after reading Dispatches. A book about flying Hueys in Vietnam. (The 80’s were all about Vietnam books and movies. I still think about Dispatches. Some images have stayed embedded in me all these years, like scrap metal from a land mine.) 

Or maybe I was destined to be a songwriter. (Me and Destiny were tight back then.) I listened to KNEW, the AM Country station, in my car and was thinking it might be cool to write country songs.

Really. After a couple years of listening, I felt like I was getting a lesson in anatomy. All those songs seemed to be baked out of the same ingredients but they were all different. They still played George Jones and Merle and Johnny Cash in those days. Their latest and greatest records. Like this one that went to number one in 1983. I mean, C’mon!

But these pilot/writer/musician careers were all fantasies at best. And I mostly kept such grandiose dreams to myself. 

Looking around, I was convinced that everybody was breezing through life. As Van Morrison says in “She Moved Through the Fair”: “The sunlight around her did sparkle and play.” 

But I didn’t feel like I was moving through anything. And the sunlight certainly didn’t sparkle and play around me. Not that I could see. 

Nowadays everybody is either part of a tribe or looking for their tribe. I’m not sure if there’s a word for what I was seeking. Still, on some level I must have sought out the company of weirdos. Characters. Damaged personalities. People with drug and alcohol problems. Narcissists. Outlaws. Fuck-ups, Colossal Fuck-ups. Fuck-ups without Borders.

Hey, I found them. Or they found me. Either way, a normal healthy person would run from that crowd, get as far away as they can. I mean, why would any sane person sign up to play in Carlos Guitarlos’s band, right?

 Go ahead and laugh. But I’ve been approached on more than one occasion by musicians who’ve done time in Carlos’s band who suggested forming a support group. Which has come very close to happening. 

I have a song called “High as Johnny Thunders” that I like to dedicate to the women in the audience. And I tease them with “You know you love a good fuck-up, ladies!” Some look at me blankly and others shake their heads as if to say, “Well, they do have their appeal, it’s true.”

I was somehow convinced the misfits knew things. They were my teachers. 

You probably want names. I’ll see what I can come up with, but right now, I have to get the driver’s side power window on the van fixed. It’s in the 30s outside, and without being able to get the window back up, the outside is pretty much the inside, too.

Yes, we are very much out here. Going from town to town. (see dates below). I should give an overdue shout out to Daniel Strickland and Peter Wark for working minor miracles for us on the daily. Pulling these shows together and making sense of them, not to mention arranging for the band and me to sleep indoors. 

TUES MAR 07 – EASTSIDE BOWL – NASHVILLE, TN

THU MAR 09 – COFFEEHOUSE LIVE AT ST. ANDREWS – HOUSTON TX

FRI MAR 10 – THE CONTINENTAL CLUB – AUSTIN TX

SAT MAR 11 – THE CONTINENTAL CLUB – AUSTIN TX

[All dates Chuck Prophet & The Mission Express.]

Onwards,

- CP

PS: Again, it occurs to me that if you made it this far, you could be taking some kind of mild interest in the goings and comings of this great newsletter experiment. In which case: Why not become a paid subscriber today, if you’re not already?