I love playing the fireworks thing in Jaffrey NH.

Man, I dig playing the fireworks extravaganza in Jaffree New Hampshire with the guys. Thousands of people, a great gig. Great gig. This is my third one and it never gets old. See? There's things I like.

I love a great end-of-summer gig. When it's cyclical. It's bittersweeter'n hell.

It's a reminder that it's basically good to be alive. Even if it's all a fucking shit hole it's a god damn beautiful one and it's O.K. being a polyp on it. Polyp wrote all the romantic songs and Johnip wrote the groundbreaking ones.

This gig is a little early for an end-of-summer gig. Maybe the TransPerformance at Look Park in Florence is the end-of-summer gig, on August 30. That's also a fantastic gig and this'll be my third one.

What would I be doing in Los Angeles? Well, I'll tell you. I'd be trying to sell tickets to get 50 people in to my gig at the Troubador. Doesn't that sound fun? Doesn't that sound musical?

You know what I think? I think mixing music and promotion makes about as much sense as mixing love and finances. It's a sublime/ridiculous proposition. It's boring to bug people to come see your show. It makes you feel like such an amateur. Such an amateur.

You should have little elves that do that. Or promo people. Same thing.

Our press agent in LA was so bad that our guitarist joked that she must have saved our manager's husband's life in 'Nam. That's some funny shit.

This guitarist once took a hundred tiny scraps of paper in the recording studio and wrote "only bad people do compulsive things" on each of them and spread them throughout the place.

He used to make real-ish looking 7-11 coupons for free "testicle rubs". He would write to General Mills and other food companies and compliment them on their products. And he'd get free shit for it.

He made a little guitar effect box with a switch on it where you could toggle between "i wish to offend" and "i do not wish to offend". Oh, that's great. It was on the cover of our record. We decided to set it to "i do not wish to offend" after much thought.

He was pretty much way up in the crystal meth, if you hadn't realized it already.

Music and drugs. Music and promotion. Love and finances.

The TransPerformance in Look Park is great because it's a big benefit for something and they get like the 10 most happening bands and artists to pay tribute to classic bands in a sort of theme. Like, last year it was "The Birds and The Bees" or some shit and they had bands that were all animals. I played with King Radio as the Bee Gees. Crazy. "Lonely Days", "Massachusetts", "You Should Be Dancing", "To Love Somebody". They had The Monkees, T-Rex, all that. Hundreds and hundreds of people.

Jesus Christ, the Bee Gees were pretty fantastic there in the '60's. I don't know if you realize just what ultra-professional career dudes these guys were.

This year is "New York". I'm doing Steely Dan on bass with King Radio and playing keys for Dad Come Home as The Talking Heads. Sweent. Steely Dan- "Peg", "Kid Charlemagne", "Dirty Work", "Bodhisattva", "Reeling In The Years". Nice.

Tell ya, on those recordings- that bass player never stops playing. I play along with the cuts and I try to leave spaces and whenever I do...there's bass going. Like '70's Roxy Music. The bass is like ultra-busy and driving.

I like it. Because I'm the bass player.

What I don't know is how I should dress to look like Steely Dan's bass player. I don't even know who it was. There was all these "tasty" guys playing that shit. Slick Marotto and them. And Sal Mineo on Cor Anglaise. Didn't the junkie dude, Becker, play a lot of that bass? I can just look like him. All high.

I'll miss summer a lot this time. I'll spend more time wondering how many more I get.

How many more summers. Each year it dawns on me that it ends. I wish I didn't have to think about it. But so many people have died, you know? I always look at a group of strangers and wonder if any of them will die in the next couple of years. I do this thing in my mind where I "disappear" some of them like a T.V. public service ad. That is sort of fucked up that I do that. Probably other people do that and I'm one of the faders, you know? That's messed up, man.

Maybe the fact that I'm not one out of the small segment that gets to be stars means I won't be one out of the small segment that croaks young. That's a decent trade. I'd still take 40 John Lennon years over 70 not-John-Lennon years though, but it's too late for that. I might as well stick around. I beat John Lennon's time-on-planet figure last March. He beat my highest chart placing in 1963.

I'll do my utmost. I gotta drop the fags and get more than 5 hours of sleep a night. That's my best bet. So much about living longer means getting more boring.

The fireworks thing rocked though. We did "Let It Be" and "Tiny Dancer" and they fucking slew. "Hard To Handle" blazed even though I left out a verse. I always tell the band "I'm tailoring it to the concert" when I do that crap. Yeah, tailoring it. All those people are in the market for a big fat clam right there.

A clam is a musical error.

Great system they bring in there. Huge-ass line-array concert speakers blaring at thousands of people. The fireworks are synched to music and they have this state-of-the-art line array crap. Thousands upon thousands of watts. 90 percent of them for stuff under 80 Hz. That's working with headroom, boy. You'll have people's spleens erupting before distortion. Floop.

"Summer Breeze" by Seals & Crofts: consummate soft rock craftsmanship.

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