music

I’m putting up my 1965 Guild Duane Eddy DE-400 for sale. I hate to sell the damn thing, really… but a man has to eat! ha. Here’s the link to the Craigslist posting and a pict of the box in question. Click the pict for a bigger view.

A short history… of the site, not necessarily me.

Johnford.net started quite a few years ago as the now defunct radiosurfer.com. Radiosurfer was a radio news portal patterned after the macsurfer.com site. But, instead of the news being geared towards the Apple fan-boy’s, it was radio intensive. Essentially a links and commentary site highlighting the latest news in the world of corporate and not so corporate radio broadcasting. Radiosurfer lasted a few years, but in the end, it was all just too much damn work for very little return. Other sites have popped up to take it’s place, including the excellent radio news and industry site allaccess.com. Unfortunately, the niche wasn’t completely filled, and there really isn’t a ‘one stop’ radio news portal supplying links to the other radio news sites. Radiosurfer was pretty handy, but sorry, it’s gone.

About this time I got the bright idea of using my personal domain as a blog. Over the years, johnford.net swung from a site primarily about radio and media, to a singer-songwriter/americana music links and commentary site, and eventually becoming just my personal blog, with commentary, inane and often insane ramblings on whatever strikes my mind. The archives could go back quite a bit further than are currently listed, and there are thousands more postings on my old movable type blog. However, importing them all is just more damn trouble than it’s worth.

So what do you get here? Basically me. My thoughts, songs, poetry, photography, etc… It’s a continuing work in progress to get things up and running again after almost a couple of years of letting the site flounder in the wings. Where will the site go next? God only knows. But thanks for stopping by and visiting. I do promise to be more vigilant in the future about keeping the site more up to date. Feel free to contact me by shooting me an email using the form below if you have any questions or just want to say hi!

Here’s some other places you can find me on the Net:

• Suite 101
• Associated Content
• Bright Hub
• FaceBook
• MySpace

You can contact me using the form below:

cforms contact form by delicious:days

Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net

I only be gotten one wrongs

Last night I went and saw local blues guitar slinger Albert Castiglia downtown in Himmershee Village. A couple of my buds have been trying to get me to see him play for quite a few years now. He played his little heart out. Certainly a fine player in this vast wasteland of no respect for talent South Florida. Albert plays that kind of electric blues that attracts the middle-aged white-collar crowd. You know, the same kind that hold down respectable jobs during the week and play biker outlaw on their custom Harley’s on the weekend. Albert has a lot of soul. A very fine player. On a bizarre side note, in his third set, Dennis Rodman walked into the bar and wanted to sing a song. Albert consented. To make a long story short, Rodman wouldn’t get off the stage and screamed and puked into the mic for about a half and hour and made a total ass of himself. It was embarrassing…. Mostly for him, although I’m sure he didn’t realize it or would even care if he did. The downtown barflies gawked. Something you wouldn’t see in New York. There no one would give a shit. The whole scene reinforced to me just how much I don’t fit in here anymore. Not that I really fit in anywhere. ha. Listening this morning to Blind Willie Johnson-”Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground.” It’s got to be the most soulful piece of music recorded in the 20th century.

someone wanted the lyrics for this song. here they be….

I stared down broadway
stood out on madison and vine
seen this land scared
by man and the hands of time
i know this old world will pass on
sure as my body hungers
for a new home in the ground
still they buried my heart
in a shallow grave
the day they tore old beale street down

everybody wants to cheat the reaper
anywhere you may go
to tear it down and build it up
sure makes you feel like you have control
so it has been
since this whole world started spinnin round
but my heart fell in a shallow grave
the day they tore old beale street down

i walked up church street
one of these days
they’re gonna carry me back down
up the stairs into daylight
past mr hamilton
and poor old mary brown
how the high and mighty do fall
and gather as dust onto the ground
still they buried my heart in their shallow grave
the day they tore old beale street down

I shall always detest the fourth of july, as that’s the day I was given hope. There is nothing more vile in this world than the threat of hope among the hopeless, and as an acquaintance of mine once said, that’s the biggest heartbreak of all. I’m struggling with a new song today. Just fragments. Little pieces and a simple melody. Trying to wrestle its simplicity into something. I ‘wrote’ it the other night as I went for a walk up the beach. Trying to contain the melody while I bounced along the beach front/bar fronts with their cacophony of Latino/reggae tourist music for the masses. It’s damn difficult to keep a melody in your mind while four or five amplified bands dogfight with each other on a quarter mile strip of rabid trendiness. Yet, somehow I’ve managed to remember ‘most’ of it. But perhaps a bigger question is how long can one toil with a song-thread? A week, a moth, a lifetime?

Got a cup of early morning joe and sat at the table listening to the trucks blot out the soft roll of the ocean this morning. One of the local stations was playing on the outside speakers and I heard some new cover version of James Taylor-Fire and Rain. Good God how did he write that. Talk about writing out your pain. I must have heard that damn song a million times in my life. But man, he laid it all out there bare. Last night one friend of mine was giving me some shit about my songs and angst. It was kind of hurtful, but I pretended to let it roll off my back. It’s tough to be ragged and honest. To try to wrench emotion and somehow get at the core of your truth, whatever that is. I’ll always have a lot of respect for anyone who tries. And for me, the lone songwriter always has a dear place in my heart. I don’t care, I’ll respect anyone who can sit naked with just an instrument and attempt to wrench their guts out in front of friends and strangers.

T-Bone Burnett

Originally uploaded by spoot.