CRAZY ARMS

Yes, I know, I said I wisnae poppin' ma Stoned Holy Heid above the parapet until Chrimbo had shot it's materialistic bolt or fizzled oot in a dyspeptic and alcoholic fug but the snell blasts of December have blown in some Blue Notes & Black News for aw us hiding oot n cloistered here at Stoned Holy HQ! Sad Tidings not Glad Tidings!
Not 'A King is Born' but 'A King is Dead! Ray Price, King of the Honky Tonks is Deid!!

I was loathe tae emerge frae under the Stoned Holy Bedspread this morning, detecting a distinct chill in the air, not by reading the plummeting thermometer but by the tried n tested methodology of stickin' a foot out of the aforementioned bedpsread's cosy embrace..but Ray Price is Deid!..so Ah felt obliged tae haul ma sorry carcass up outta bed just so as I could pen a few lines : not to mourn his passing - we aw peg oot eventually after all! - but to salute the man and his music, which has a hallowed berth in the cockles of the Stoned Holy Heart and on the Stoned Holy Juke-Box!!

Ahm no here, people, tae tell yi how he boarded n boozed wi Hank Williams and, after life had leaked out of Hank in the back of the cadillac on Highway 31, he inherited his band The Drifting Cowboys and blah blah blah.....or detail how Ray Price took country music by the scruff of it's red n sunburnt neck and rocked it like never before with a beat they called The Ray Price Shuffle....or tell of how he then went on to redefine Country Music for a second time with the orchestral arrangements of 'Countrypolitan'.....no, ahm just here tae doff ma hat in acknowledgement of a Stoned Holy Roller gone before us; a man who's place at the very top o the heap in the midden that is Country Music has been unjustly filled by the likes of  the pompous showbiz excess of Garth 'too fat to fly' Brooks or the ridiculous mythologising, nay canonisation, surrounding Johnny 'flat as a pancake' Cash !! Not good enough tae shine Ray's cowboy boots, neither of them!!

Anyway, being an avowed atheist, this small tribute shall be free of claptrap about how he's gone to a better place or he's looking down on us from Hillbilly Heaven - I'll leave those cliches tae others. It matters not a jot that Ray Price is singing with the angels. But, please join us, here at  Stoned Holy HQ, in raising a glass tae a man who's contribution to Country Music, the true Red Dirt Soul of America, is immeasurable. Let's remember Ray at his very best, with the Cherokee Cowboys behind him and that big, booming baritone singing songs of heartbreak and longing like few others before or after!! "Now Blue Ain't the Word for the Way that I Feel...."


 

Ray Price 1926 - 2013

Dwarf Sized Sin City - London's Own Miniature World of Vice!!

In his classic cautionary tale from 1961, the Immortal Jimmy Reed warned us clealy, in his own inimitably lazy n laconic manner, that the 'BRIGHT LIGHTS' & the 'BIG CITY'  Would Go To Your Baby's Head!....but here I am, loping like a chimpanzee up on two legs round Soho, London's own MiniatureWorld of Vice!!!

Adrift in Soho by day, Costermongers shout the price of apples from behind their barrows in Berwick Street and office drones scurry to order over-sized cups of coffee during lunch breaks. The huge fireglow of the Sun swamps the Puny Neon Doodles and renders their message ineffective.....but sooner or later the Sun disappears from view and it's Diminutive Celestial Sibling, The Moon, takes over the task of throwing light upon one half of the World. And it's when night falls the Dwarf-Sized-Sin-City comes fully to life and starts to Glow!

To All Night Drug Prowlin' Wolves, like yir very own SToNEdholYBLoggeR, creepin along the Kerbsides n Alleyways lookin for some Midnight To Six, Man kinda Stimulation, the Moon has been made redundant by a Vast, Obedient Army of yellow street lights but for most of the Human Being Species it's still all they've got between them and impenetrable darkness, so it's just as well the Moon still insists on clockin' on for its night shift!   There was a time, long ago, that when darkness came, our ancestors would huddle close to one another and wait for the light to return. Strange Days Indeed! Half formed & naked, not knowing truly if the Sun would be back, staring into the unknowable immensity of Space and (if their Proto-Lingual skills had developed sufficiently to allow them to do so!!) wondering, open mouthed, at a million Studs of Fire twinkling above their frail little Simian skulls with their foreheads criminally low & their prognathic jawlines jutting out most ungracefully...& there, all the while, the mystery of mysteries, crawling across the Dark Mansion of the Sky; a Big, Silent, Silver Orb!....And then it came to pass that fire was bridled!... and in an evolutionary blink of an eye it wasn't long at all before there were light bulbs & the multidazzle of Soho was shining out and selling sexual gratification!! So to the shuffling human shapes of Soho the Moon goes unnoticed; its pallid, ethereal light lost in the importuning glare of Neon. Even if you were to throw your gaze heavenwards, your eyes would, as Evolution has taught them to do,  ignore the Moon's flimsy, ashen light and settle instead upon the Gaudy & Urgent Buzz of Coloured Neon!

Unlike Fireworks which bomb their Shimmering Splendour in an instant, Neon will glow for as long as you pass an electrical charge through it. Unlike Fireworks and their Ephemeral Moment of Brilliance, Neon shines on....So Neon has been Captured; Neon has been Tamed; Neon has been set to work! It can be bottled and moulded into phosphorescent symbols which burn through human retinas to send you a promise of satisfaction! In the crowded Scintilla of Soho we are in a place where the neon lights assure us SEX can be viewed; SEX can be spied upon; SEX can be consumed, SEX can be perused, SEX can be bought.....

It is also, in the words of the All-Time-Master-of-Honky-Tonk, Ray Price, a place where lights can say "forget her name in a glass of sherry wine" or where lights can "offer other girls to empty hearts like mine." Verily it remains thus, Brother Ray! "The Cabarets & Honky Tonks, their flashing signs invite a broken heart to lose itself in the glow of city lights!! They paint a purty picture of a world that's gay & bright....but it's just a mask for loneliness behind those city lights!!!"

Time, methinks, to leave these illuminated postcodes behind me!!
Ahm Outta Here-Vroom Vroom!!!....

here's the link to Ray in all his honky tonk Glory! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xr79fOfP0dY

and another one for Jimmy Reed sounding half-cut as usual!  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giGGK3Fk9co