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What's your most honest, down-home, good ol' blue-collar rock moment?

ONLY NICE THINGS

18:36 / 07.05.02

Having decided that irony is for the birds, I think we should all embrace our denim-clad, gravel-voiced, my-daddy-worked-in-the-shipyards/mine/Army during the dark days of World War 2/galley of the Edmund Fitzgerald selves.

So, share.

What's your most honest, down-home, good ol' blue-collar rock moment? And would the friends who saw it with you be glad to see you now, when the shipyards have all closed up and the rust is on the bow?

20:38 / 07.05.02

I actually have one of these, but it's a little mixed with intellectual elitism --which is, sadly or not sadly, part of me.

23:07 / 07.05.02

The time I got rhythm, and named my dog "Shithead."

No wait, that's Navin Johnson...

I'm picking out a thermos for you... Not an ordinary thermos for you...."

(edited thanks to art sudnam's eagle eye)

Murray Hamhandler

23:44 / 07.05.02

Close. Navin Johnson's the name and...he's shooting at those cans!
Arthur Sudnam, II

01:25 / 08.05.02

I used to drive a rusted old blue chevy pick up.
I ran a trailer park.
I wore denim and flannel at the same time.
And there was one time when I hooked onto this trailer with my tractor, pulled the sucker off the site it was on, dragged it over to the new site it was going on and backed that thing in in one smooth motion. And backing up a 27 foot trailer with a tractor whose steering fluid is slowing leaking out is no mean feat.

And that, my friends, is a true story.

Zoom.

(Of course, the campers took to calling me "One-Shot Tom" after that, and it was the year that Tara got pregnant, and things just got messy after that....)

(And on second thought, I probably shouldn't have told you that.)

06:19 / 08.05.02

I cried (manly) tears when they closed down the last pit in Lancashire.

ONLY NICE THINGS

07:48 / 08.05.02

Yes, Sax, but did you do it with a picture of your childhood sweetheart, whose daddy died down those mines, burning a hole in your back pocket?

07:54 / 08.05.02

No, but I swear that as I stood there a cool breeze sprung up, and as it whistled through the long grasses it kinda sounded like children, children singing, and I swear they were singing: "Don't go down the mine, dad."

ONLY NICE THINGS

11:11 / 08.05.02

Saw my Daddy break down and cry when momma joined the angel choir, then drive home and make me and my sister dinner. I've never been prouder of that man in my whole life.

11:18 / 08.05.02

And sometimes in the middle of the night, when it felt like you had a twister in your gut and a rattler in your soul, it was only the sweet, sweet sound of rock'n'roll that got you through those endless hours before morning, right?

Elijah, Freelance Rabbi

15:46 / 08.05.02

there was the time i was working the ranch to save up for my cool car/guitar/whatever and a storm came up, full bore, lightning and all, and i had to make the decision to keep on working surrounded by metal bailing wire in a lightning storm or give in and let the storm win.

that story is about 98% true, i wasnt actually saving up, i was blowing the cash on booze and floozies

Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero

19:23 / 08.05.02

That time I was helping my drummer Clint, a quiet guy, a guy who could carry a 300 peice of machinery effortlessly, and by all rights a complete asshole, change the transmission on his giant blue pick-up. Listening to some blues. On a spring day. In The Middle of Nowhere, TN.

The moment was ruined when I asked him what he would do if his girlfriend was indeed pregnant. He looked thoughtful for a minute, and answered "punch her in the stomach". Come to think of it, that pretty much ruined the entire day, whether or not he was serious (I'm still not sure).

13:40 / 09.05.02

Met my husband at a pie-bakin' contest, which he bought my pie even though I done put salt 'stead a sugar in it. When he asked me to marry him I was just 13, and we spent all night goin' back and forth between my mama and my papa just to get their permission.

When I found out he was spending all his time at honkey tonks with hussies, I wrote my first song, "You Ain't Woman Enough (to Take My Man)", and I got on the grand ol' opry...

No wait, that's Loretta Lynn...

13:48 / 09.05.02

So, I was sitting with my guitar, and, um, and my dog, and I was looking at a storm or something. Out on the prarie. Yeah. And I had a gun. And my guitar. Wait, I already said that.
Dammit! I screwed it up! I misspelt Prarie! I ruined the thread for everyone! I'm so stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!

pointless and uncalled for

13:50 / 09.05.02

They day I came home from winnin' the deer-huntin', pie-eatin', beer-swillin', pig-rollin' allya'llstate John Deere champoinships to find that rootin, hogtown, varmit Elvis was in bed with my Lurleen May Bessie an hadn even done gone pulled in the hay like he did promise that he would did do.

Showed him a few new things about pitchforks he didn be knowlegeable befurr

A ding dang doo

13:51 / 09.05.02

One time I was watching the game with the guys, sucking on a few Buds and shooting the odd half-hearted game of pool during the commercials. Roy was as honest as he's ever been in his life with us; told us that the reason he'd never had another woman in his bed since Melanie died wasn't just down to the deep respect he had for his long-since passed over wife. Apparently he's been having some kind of relationship with Joey, the rather e-ffeminate guy who pumps gas at Frank's Food and Fuel on the crossroads. Well, what could we do but give the guy a big hug and assure him that the men who had been his friends since Junior High would always be there for him, no matter what he thought he was.

Then we went down and beat the living shit out of that little fag at the gas station. Hey, what are friends for?

13:52 / 09.05.02

When I knew I had to get out of town, but there wasn't no place I could drive to.
So I huffed a can of starter fluid and set the carburetor on fire.

True story.

ONLY NICE THINGS

14:02 / 09.05.02

You know, I think some of you guys are confusing the cliches of the Deep South with the idea of the good, honest, blue-collar rock lifestyle.

You don't have to be Southern to have a GHBCRL. Why, Bruce himself grew up tough on the streets of New Jersey. You just have to see the fundamental decency of the simple life, and the importance of family, of respect, and of the intrinsic dangers of baling wire.

You know. Bit like Jonathon Kent.

14:07 / 09.05.02

Sorry. My daddy's daddy was born south of the Mason-Dixon line and sometimes when the family gets to talking about the War Between The States the Confederate genes kind of resurface.

Always thought that side of the family were just a bunch of redneck racialists with funny ideas and no real idea about the concept of a hard day's work for a hard-won dollar.

We're The Great Old Ones Now

14:15 / 09.05.02

Driving out to the ranch house, chopping logs in the rain, lighting the stove with rotgut (and losing my eyebrows in the process), laying layer after layer of blankets on the bed whilst the woman in my life sang the blues. From under a duvet on the sofa - it was damn cold and she refused to emerge until I made food and got the mud off her Nikes. And when I say 'sang', I sort of mean crooned. Or maybe whimpered.

And I swore to myself then: no more helpless Eurotrash cocktail hounds with Gucci cases and Mephisto walking shoes for the hard city streets. From now on, girls who can hand-tie a yak, take down a springing tiger, and who are at least familiar with the notion that food animals are not born in the kitchen of the Gavroche.

Long-haired country boy that I am.

ONLY NICE THINGS

14:21 / 09.05.02

I remember looking out over the ocean, my baby boy in my arms, and thinking, "there are steelworks in Russia burning away right now, and they're filled with men like me and my Daddy. And they love their sons, just like my Daddy loved me, and just like I'm gonna love this tyke until the end of the world and past." And when my boy smiled up at me, I knew we were going to be all right.

We're The Great Old Ones Now

14:24 / 09.05.02

Haus, I thought this was supposed to be true stories.

14:28 / 09.05.02

That Christmas I wanted more than anything a guitar so's I could play the songs that my Daddy listened to all the time since the canning factory closed down, stuff like that Mr Muddy Waters. But money was tight and Momma was pregnant with my little brother, so I knew I'd never get it. But I so wanted to make my Daddy happy again. I took an old shoe box, stuck a broken brush handle through the end, and strung some of Daddy's fishing line along it real tight, until it made a nice twangin' sound. Then Christmas morning when Daddy and Momma were rowing because there was no milk in the Frigidaire, I played Silent Night as best as I could, and my Daddy and Momma turned to me with tears in their eyes, and the very next day Momma went out and pawned her engagement ring so she could buy me an honest-to-goodness real guitar.

First thing I did when I got the money for playing Radio City Hall with my band was to buy my Momma a platinum ring withthe biggest diamond outside of the Queen of England's Crown Jewels on it. Second thing, I took that first guitar my folks bought me, and laid it on Daddy's grave.

14:31 / 09.05.02

((perhaps this should go in the Creation...))

14:35 / 09.05.02

Haus, it's taken nearly two years, but you've finally succeeded in scaring me. Congrats.

And huggles!

ONLY NICE THINGS

14:38 / 09.05.02

Nick, they gotta be honest. Honest.

19:00 / 09.05.02

It's my birthday and me an' my buddies from high school are playin' pool at the bar. It's the last time we'd be there before the switched to one a them fancy internet jukeboxes. I'm wearin' the new green fannel shit my baby gave me, and my Carhart jeans, made in America and sturdy enough to hand down to yr grandkids. I'm goin' on about how the beer's piss but it's $4.25 a pitcher and yes we'd like another, and how Mellencamp's a hack and anyway we're lissenin' to Born to Run. And I look up and there's a plaque on the wall from the United Auto Workers congratulating the bar for "Proudly refusing to serve Coors Beer." I nearly wept. Instead, I sank the eight ball and dug in my pocket for more quarters.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

19:07 / 09.05.02

When my Ma hocked toolchest to buy a new dress for the singing contest and I...

Oh, hang on, that wasn't me. That was Emmett Otter.

19:11 / 09.05.02

Puts me in mind o' the time I got me that bigshot movie star with the big ol' moustache, up by the creek. Busted his gahdamn ass good - critter squealed like a stuck hawg. Me, I jus' jittered along to Bubba's banjo.

19:35 / 09.05.02

Ganesh, yo' gotta purdy mouth, Boooy...

19:50 / 09.05.02

Squeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!