I enjoy cleaning out the catbox. I consider this a great spiritual achievement. One could easily find it an icky chore, but no, with proper ventilation, attitude, and gloves, it is a gateway to enlightenment.
The weekend, that grand invention of labor unions in recent centuries, I embrace it. Work has been good, creative work has been good, today I swim, do laundry and housecleaning and “clean up nice,” as mentioned in my recent “Doin’s.”
There’s this cafe in North Beach, I don’t recall the name, I don’t know if it’s there anymore, but on a nice Spring or Summer evening in 1986ish I sat there in the open front next to the sidewalk at a table with a girlfriend and we sipped cappuccinos and watched people, and I felt entirely where I wanted to be. It’s a nice feeling, sometimes, to be right where you are in the moment and not feel you need to be somewhere else. A luxury, a blessing, a great luck. That cafe is now the Happy Accident Cafe in
Much of my earlier youthful creative output was driven by a certain anxiousness, desire and dissatisfaction, wanting to be elsewhere, frustration. I think that’s true of a lot of rock n’ roll and youthful music in general, right? I Can’t Get No Satisfaction, one of my favorite songs of all time, I mean it’s all right there in the title.
I put my angst to fairly good use, I think, in younger days. At some point, adulthood beckoned and I didn’t know what to do with it. Ya wanna have kids? Nah, not ready. Ya wanna do something other than chase your band dreams? Nah, not ready. I was a teenager until about the age of 50, I think. It was fun. I recommend postponing adulthood, for those who want to. Some of my friends were born grown up. Old souls, already mature as kids, comfortable in their shoes. Satisfied. It takes all kinds.
Now I do the adulting, in my own peculiar way. It is also fun. Why did the world decide to go stark raving mad just as I decided to grow up? One of life’s mysteries. What next, I wonder?
I do have a few remembrances to write for some recently passed friends. I’ll see if I can actually do that. Very adult-y, this dying business. In youth, that seemed more abstract.
Gotta do the exercise, take the vitamins, eat and sleep right. Oh my I must prepare my taxes also. With all the patience and Zen of catbox cleaning. Severe adulting, that.
Oh, THANKS sincerely for your purchases of The UpTones In the Studio 1987 EP, and my recent solo material, and other Berkeley Cat caterwaulings! It is, dare I say, SATISFYING! To get our material out there, and speakin’ o’ UPtones, there’s actually more, where that came from. Archaeology to be continued..
How to stylize a name, funny thing, right? We started, it was The Up-Tones! ..complete with the dash and exclamation mark, and why not? Still my favorite, honestly. There was also an arrow on the left side of the U, pointing up, naturally, and sometimes the dash was also an arrow. We loved arrows. Very Mod, the arrow thing. We did shows and in the newspaper ads the stylizing was text only, usually all-caps, just “THE UPTONES” and sometimes even the utterly mundane “UPTONES” ..I was disproportionately mad, about that. Called the club, “Our name is THE UpTones, can’t you?!” To no avail, usually. And they never did the arrows. I have an arrow pointing up on my arm – my only tattoo – and a useful reminder of which way is up. Got it when I was 18. A bit faded, but it remains! As tattoos do.
Well anyway, cheers to all here, thanks for following this mewsletter and hopefully enjoying some of our records. Stay well and do the necessary adulting, I say, but not toooo much!
Eric Din,
BCR Catbox Maintenance Officer (CMO),
signing off
Republished from the Berkeley Cat Records Mewsletter:
