Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Around Town Marbles
Posted by Betsy Phillips on Wed, May 20, 2009 at 9:05 PM
And that, my friends, is how it is whenever any old man in this town tells you about the day 'Marbles' took on Johnny Jones and lost. First of all, because they all tell you about watching Marbles dragging his amp up from the Club Del Monacco to the Club Baron, like they were all there. Like every sixty-something year old man in Nashville had nothing better to do with his time back then than stand around waiting for Marbles to do something crazy, like play the guitar with his teeth or march up to the Baron to challenge Johnny Jones to some kind of guitar duel.
But what do I know? Maybe so many men did stand around loitering on Jefferson, just waiting for Marbles to do anything, that they regularly had to shut the street down, call for the police to move those men along. I don't know. Though I doubt it.
I think the truth is probably that Marbles was good, but that few people had any idea that he was going to be great. It's just that, this many years on, who's going to tell you that they guessed wrong? No, they all have to say they knew, they knew he was something special.
But then, in typical Nashville fashion (and I say this out of the deepest love), they have to tell you about how he got his ass handed to him by some guy you've never heard of--in this case, Johnny Jones, the guitarist at the Club Baron. So, you see, they all knew Marbles was great, but while he was here?
Eh, even guys you've never heard of were better than him.
If that's not Nashville, I don't know what is.
Anyway, the best part about Nashville, I think, is that things and people get lost and found again. I didn't know, because I never know as much as I want to, that Johnny Jones was a real person, is a real person, and is still around and playing. And back in the day, his band often served as the house band on the tv show "Night Train."
If random old men aren't available to pull your leg, you can learn all about Jefferson Street either by kidnapping Michael Gray from down to the Hall of Fame (which I must strongly recommend against doing) or by reading this handy article from some paper I've never heard of. Isn't the internet grand? That stuff's just lying around out there for anyone to find. Even this footage of Marbles on "Night Train."
(Check out the guitarist.)
Comments (51)
Showing 1-50 of 51
Honestly ... What the fuck does this mean? I kept waiting for some miraculous revelation. Like, maybe, "Marbles" was some alias for Ray Charles. Or something. Anything. But it never happened. Then, I went back and re-read it. Even held it two feet from my face and blurred my eyes, hoping to at least see a psychodelic dragon or something. Still, nothing. Is this the future of journalism in Nashville?
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And some time after Hendrix left, downstairs was taken over by Ironing Board Sam, a one-man-show from Memphis who played a proto-electric keyboard attached to an ironing board.
Wow. I wish I could have seen that.
So the link and the video and the tag -- all of which were about Jimi Hendrix -- didn't clear it up for you, Harrison? Damn, Tennessee schools really are worse than I thought.
BTW, Ray Charles wasn't a guitar player, so why you were waiting for Marbles to be Ray Charles is anyone's guess.
Oh, I didn't know journalism had devolved to the point that we have to read tags to decipher an article. Next thing you know, she'll be telegraphing to us in secret code that Bob Dylan miraculously once played in Nashville, too. Oh wait ... scratch that.
And before Ray Charles played the piano, he played the guitar. All great instrumentalists have played the guitar. Maybe they didn't teach that at Sarah Lawrence, or the Ladies' Diesel College, or wherever you went to school.
You didn't watch the youtube video, Harrison? You didn't click through and even skim the story? Or read the tags? Seriously? Your complaint is that I didn't sit around writing this thinking "My god, just how stupid and lazy would a person be willing to admit to being in public?"
Are you for real? Come on.
Or, if it makes it easier for you to get through your day, just pretend that Chip Forrester brainwashed me into posting something cool that I thought people would enjoy. It's all a Chipinista plot to hurt your feelings!
The point here isn't that I don't want to solve a Rubik's cube in order to get to the hidden point of your post. The point is that the Scene is now in a full-on downward quality spiral by letting amateurs like you clutter up valuable online real estate by drawing stupid musical treasure maps. Instead of Aunt B, they should call you Aunt Riddler.
And yes: It is Chip's fault. It's always Chip's fault.
Okay, come on. Is this for real? You can be honest. I won't hold it against you. Are you really upset because I wrote this post in which you had to get clear to the end to discover that Marbles was Jimi Hendrix? I mean, do you truly believe that "I had to read the whole thing!" is a criticism a writer (even one as terrible as me) cares to do anything about?
Or are you upset about what you're always upset about but for some reason are taking it out on a non-political post?
You know what I'm saying? Are you really complaining or do you just have some number of fights you're contractually obligated to pick with liberal bloggers and this one seemed less boring than what you're typically up to?
Harrison, I underestimated your laziness, but don't brag about your ignorance or blame your lack of critical skills on someone else. Nobody else is having these problems. It's a well-worn journalistic convention to write the "and now you know the rest of the story." Paul Harvey made a career of it. You may have heard of him. (Then again, given that you're Johnny Clueless, maybe not.)
Pith readers also can be relied upon to bring some of our own knowledge to bear, such as knowing that nobody lugs an amp to a club to play the damn piano, as Ray Charles did in the mid-1960s, at the time of the *guitar* duel in question.
Oh, and one also could read the fucking link, as they say.
Or note the tag. Or watch the video.
Yes, Aunt Riddler: It's a pity that I dare to expect clear, concise writing in one of Nashville's two newspapers of record (not to mention marginally interesting, which "Marbles" is not.) Also, I must have been imagining that most media outlets actually don't bury the lead in the last line (or better yet, the online tags). Finally, how dare I expect to read NEWS in a newspaper, as opposed to some cryptic YouTube-based drivel about how Hendrix once played the guitar (gasp!). So I reiterate: What is the point of this stupid-ass post? Instead of tormenting us with your terrible riddle-laden writing, why don't you just force us to work Sudoku at gunpoint?
What pulled me through to the end was trying to figure out how "old" men had to be to be an old man?
Oh, Harrison. Ha ha ha ha. You really don't find it remotely cool that Jimi Hendrix used to play here and the earliest still existing video of him is him playing here and you can see it, right there? Then, I have to say, I feel a little sorry for you.
Have you never seen a newspaper with a general interest story? Oh, wait, I bet you don't bother to read newspapers all the way through either, so you probably don't know what goes on inside them.
Woods, you don't know who Bill Robinson is?
Just for shits and giggles, I looked at today's front-page of the New York Times. And oddly, I was able to discern -- in a matter of two or three lines -- the point of all six articles. You see, Aunt Riddler, the practice of journalism actually involves straightforward, plain English. Not the series of winks, tongue-clicks, grunts and whirs that you subject us to. Here's an idea: Instead of berating us, the readers, for not comprehending your Mandarin Chinese-esque approach to writing, perhaps you should try to write clearer. Or would that be, more clearly?
Harrison, unless you're now confessing to being the moniker under which everyone in the Governor's office who wants to complain about Forrester in public but doesn't want it blowing back on the governor, you are but one man. There is no "us, the readers" here my friend. You're the only person who's having any difficulty.
Everyone else seems to get it.
Anyway, again, I invite you to open up the paper and read the whole thing. You'll find many things in the New York Times that are just general interest stories. If you need help with the advanced technology that is unfolding and opening a paper, please, do feel free to come back for an explanation.
Looks like the only one doing the berating is the one who didn't get the essay. But, hey, this is the YooEssAyy, and every schmuck has a right to stand up on a soapbox and defend his own pig-ignorance.
I'm not even from Nashville, and I thought the story was interesting. Imagine Jimi Hendrix, being outplayed by someone I'd never heard of! And I like the nickname thingie, too. And from my years of reading stuff on the internet, I've learned that authors usually include hyperlinks in the text for a reason. It takes a little bit of effort, and a smidge of deductive reasoning sometimes, but it is worth it for the intellectually curious. Perhaps not for those whose parents raised simps.
Here we go again. First, I was Bill Fletcher. Then I was Beecher Frazier. Now I'm with the Governor's office. The fact is, I'm none of the above. But what does any of that have to do with the fact that you are an awful writer? Send me a NYT article where the subject of the article is never mentioned. And don't give me this "It's in the tags!" shit. Here's a tip: Being a shitty blogger doesn't qualify you to be a shitty journalist. If you want to pursue creative writing, then send it to the college poetry journal. But don't waste people's time with one-word headlines and silly irony.
Thanks to Sam for making my point.
Aunt Riddler: If your audience is Sam, who apparently celebrates "socialists and anarachists" on his Church of the Bad News blog, then by all means keep on keepin' on. But if you're going to hold yourself out as a real journalist, well, try to be less irrelevant.
B, remember, "Harrison"''s always been a little slow, and it takes him a while to get things. He'll figure it out in a week or two.
Have you ever seen the chics at Ladies' Diesel College? HAWT!
Harrison - you are a very angry person. Let go of your hate and you'll live longer.
And for the record, I couldn't care less about Hendrix. But those Buddy and Stacey dudes are pretty fly dancers.
Well, technically, since this is a blog, I'm still just the same old shitty blogger I've always been. You can promote me to journalist in order to then demand my demotion back to blogger, but... Oh, what the hell? Go ahead. It's hilarious.
But okay, I get it. You don't like things that are fun. You don't like things that aren't just like the things you already know. You don't like things that aren't spelled out for you. And you have some fetish about a cute blogger who irritates you holding a gun to your head while you work puzzles. And you seem to believe that you were, at some point, elected the boss of me.
Anything else I'm missing?
Glad to see Left Wing Quacker back in action from the comfort of his beanbag chair. But Quacker: Shouldn't you be off scarfing Cheetoes at a Chip seminar on rebuilding the Democratic Party?
And to Aunt Riddler's question -- I think you've just about captured the gist of it.
Not to change the subject much, but:
Why the continuing suggestion that bloggers shouldn't be held to high standards? The Scene's own bloggers, whose work is supposed to involve journalism in their other lives, make this same excuse, too? "It's just a blog." Why should this be presented as an excuse for substandard writing or fuzziness on facts.
To be clear, I'm not making that claim about the Hendrix story above. I will admit, the story got off on the wrong foot with me -- an "old man" by the standards of you young urban hipsters -- with the gratuitous generalization about old men.
I've lived in Nashville over 30 years. Never heard that story about Hendrix. Never knew he lived here. Never had some old man tell me that story, much less claimed to have been there for the big showdown. It was a very interesting bit of Nashville history that was not well served by the rather contrived set-up to the story.
"It was a very interesting bit of Nashville history that was not well served by the rather contrived set-up to the story.
Oh sweet Jesus... GET OVER IT!!
Boyd is the voice of reason. Look, Riddler: If you had started out by saying, "Two years before Jimi Hendrix brought 'Purple Haze' en vogue, he was toiling as an R&B session player in the basement of Nashville's own L&C Tower," then I might have read that with some interest. Instead, I have to find a secret decoder ring and decipher this "Marbles" crap. Is it an interesting factoid? Yes. Would it have appeared in this form in any self-respecting newspaper a decade ago? No. Standards apparently are gone in journalism. Boyd's right -- blogging is no excuse for bad writing.
And yet you read. And read. And comment, comment, comment. The purpose of on-line content is to draw clicks. Clicks mean page views, page views increase ad rates, and ad sales make the content provider money.
Betsy is a fucking gold mine and you, Harrison, are the cranky old prospector. Come back to complain a hundred and fifty more times. Bring two hundred of your unobservant cranky friends. You can all spend the day complaining to each other about an article that you first read at 2:35 in the morning. As long as you keep clicking and yakking, it's all good. Thank you for contributing to her success.
And I get to click in some more, too! Woo-hoo! It's like playing video games against the computer at the easiest setting: even though I keep winning, it gets old real fast. But when I'm really bored, it's addictive all the same.
Let's see: Shitty writing = Reader grumbling = Ad revenue. Only in the mind of a fool does that equation make sense. But how about this: I and my 200 "unobservant cranky friends" will continue bitching about shitty writing, only next time we'll couple it with a pledge to boycott advertisers who sponsor said shitty writing. I think I'll start right now, looking at the banner ads on this very page. If Sprint is going to support Aunt Riddler's "success" in awful journalism, then consider me an AT&T patron. Or if StubHub is going to help underwrite the Riddler's bashing of her readers, then consider me ticketless.
And to your point, Aunt Riddler: What appeared in the Scene a decade ago was a well-researched, well-written, thoughtful, entertaining tale that dropped the words "Jimi Hendrix" within the first two paragraphs. It didn't require a fucking Easter egg hunt.
Harrison, if you can even name two hundred people you even vaguely know, I will buy you a beer.
Even I thought Bridgett was optimistic when she threw out the 200 challenge. But let me run over to AT&T store and see what I can do.
Talk about sex toys all you want. Still doesn't change the fact that your "writing" sucks ass.
Weren't you going to AT&T? For a man who keeps threatening to leave and to take all his friends with him, you're still pretty firmly here.
It's my charm. It's wearing you down, isn't it? It's okay. You can admit it. I think you're cute when you're mad, too.
Oh, I'll be here. Whenever you display your shitty penmanship, I'll be here to point it out.
Damn it, Hargrove, I'm totally buying you a beer the next time I see you. Because I'm going to be laughing the rest of the day thinking of Harrison as kind of the anti-Tom Joad.
Far be it from me to get back to the original topic or anything. But I want to note that when the Night Train to Nashville exhibit was up at the CMHoFaM there were oodles of related talks, demonstrations, panels, sessions, and whatnot associated with it. And one of the joys of my life has been having the chance to hear Billy Cox imitate young Hendrix back in the day using $10 words and complex but completely accurate grammar to explain, in his Seattle accent, why he had his guitar hooked up to his amp so funny. They all knew the guy wasn't long for this town.
Yeah, yeah. Topic, schmopic. In homage to our protagonist, allow me to perform this dramatic reading of "The Grapes of Wrath," Aunt Riddler-style:
"Whenever they's a fight so Marbles can eat, I'll be there. Whenever they's a cop beatin' up Marbles, I'll be there. If Marbles knowed, why, I'll be in the way Marbles yells when he's mad ... See? God, I'm talkin' like Marbles. Comes of thinkin' about Aunt Riddler so much. And readin' Her suck-ass prose."
Thank you. Thank you very much.
Looking past the name calling, etc., an interesting question has been asked here:
What are the journalistic standards for a blog like "Pith"?
It's run by a news organization. It covers "real" news.
Should it hold to a higher standard or just throw any old thing up like just a pajamas blog?
Well, all right, then, Sarducci, if you want to talk seriously, let's talk seriously. Is this whole electronic enterprise a "newspaper"? I would argue that it is, or at least the earliest iteration of what newspapers look like in the electronic era. And if that is the case then there are two truths--one, that the way newspapers have been in the recent past cannot continue to be the way newspapers run in the near future. That's just a fact of life. But two, there's tremendous opportunity for trying out new things.
I don't have any sympathy for "but it's not like it was last year or two years ago" as an argument. It can't be like it was last year or two years ago, or even a decade ago. That model is no longer workable.
Will this model work? Probably not, but at least it has the potential to morph into something that will work because here is where the readers are--online.
So the Scene is trying out some stuff. It's different than what they did before.
But you know, to contradict myself slightly, papers did not used to be sickly anemic small things. They used to be vibrant necessary parts of the community. And you used to find all kinds of things in them.
I'm honestly surprised to find folks alarmed to see this kind of stuff here, like it's something new. How old-fashioned can you get to have a person sit around and tell you stories about the characters in your city?
When I was growing up, that's what the left hand column on the third page of the Tribune was for--giving Mike Royko space to tell stories about the people of Chicago to the people of Chicago.
Don't get me wrong. I am by far not even fit to carry Mike Royko's shoes. So, I'm willing to accept that I'm a talentless hack. That might be true.
But to suggest that this kind of stuff doesn't belong in a space you associate with a newspaper seems to me to only get at how small your ideas about newspapers are.
My beef isn't with the subject material. It's with your presentation. This new model seems to be a recipe for declining quality. Question: Do you post directly to the site? Or do you have an editor work with you to advise, consult, and inject some common sense before it goes online for all the world to see?
Harrison, let's be fair. Your beef is with me and has been for the last five months. You're just hoeing this row today because it provides a little variety from your typical pissing and moaning about the imaginary conspiracies you blame Forrester for running inadequately.
And while it's amusing to see you now pretending like you want to be taken seriously, I CAN STILL READ WHAT YOU SAID EARLIER. And earlier you did to have a beef both with the subject matter and how it was presented. Don't you remember your little skirmish with Bridgett about Ray Charles?
Or have you changed your mind?
Aunt Riddler: By all means, let's make this about Chip Forrester and his supreme incompetence. (News flash: Making this about your spiritual leader Chip doesn't exactly accrue to your benefit.) Meanwhile, I stand by my earlier statements: A. I couldn't give three shits about Hendrix; but B. I might be persuaded to care if someone presented the information to me in a quasi compelling manner (which you didn't). Additionally, you have basically confirmed that you are posting to this site with no editor/filter whatsoever, which is troubling on many levels. Finally: Why are you so obsessed with who I am, what my motivation is, etc? Word of advice: Let it go. You seem wounded to the point of being pathetic.
Hey, Betsy, I linked to yr story here:
http://eliashiebert.tumblr.com/post/110955845/so-cool-it-hurts
