Last
Friday night, I performed five of my original songs at the Burk’s Falls Legion
during the monthly 3rd Friday Coffee House. In that performance, to
about 60 or 70 people, I played one of my dark Christmas songs, “Merry
Christmas To Me”, and that was the first time I have ever played that song in
public. Somewhat autobiographical, the song refers to an experience I had as a
teen, wherein my cousin, my best friend, and I hitched to downtown Buffalo to
go to a party hosted by a notorious local pot dealer. It was Christmas Eve, and
we were picked up by two guys, dressed up as Santa and an elf, driving a very beat
up red Ford Van. We were probably somewhat intoxicated, but Santa and the elf
decidedly had us beat. Santa was drinking Jack Daniels out of the bottle, and
both he and the elf were smoking a joint. Keep in mind, this was the Seventies,
and around the holiday season I’ll wager that half of Buffalo was driving
around intoxicated. There’s actually an internet meme about the unique ability
of Western New Yorkers to drive drunk in snowstorms. At sixteen or seventeen,
my ability to make wise decisions had not yet even begun to develop and, happy
to be out of the cold, we hopped into the van without a second thought. I don’t
remember much about the ride downtown, although we were riding in a dilapidated, rear wheel drive van, with no shocks,
in a snowstorm, with a very drunk and stoned driver dressed up like St. Nick. We made it to the party unscathed, and there I
remember drinking a lot of really crappy pink wine. Back in the 70’s, Pink
Catawba wine from some Upstate New York State winery was a popular cheap wine
in Western New York. Along the lines of Mad
Dog 20/20, or Ripple, or Boone’s Farm, Pink Catawba was sweet, rotgut swill
that tasted a bit like ginger ale. In keeping with my severely under-developed
ability to make wise decisions, I guzzled about five or six big glasses of Pink
Catawba rotgut, and probably drove the porcelain bus at some point in the
evening. Another thing I remember about that night - and keep in mind I had
only recently been exposed to marijuana - was that someone was walking around
with a salad bowl full of joints, passing them out to guests like hors
d’ouevres. As a sixteen year-old kid, I had never seen so much weed in one
place. In the song, which I probably wrote in my mid-30s, I took poetic license
and embellished the story for effect. The subject of the song was a loser adult
(not like me!), Santa and the elf were drunk, stoned, and high on hallucinogenic drugs, and the story ends with the loser
staggering around in the snow at 3AM “wondering where the hell to call home.” While
many of my songs include kernel of personal experience; the trick is to make
the message universal. I also played another original song during that Burk’s
Falls performance, which I have only just completed. It’s about an old friend
of mine who had at one point in his life had ended up in prison due to drug addiction.
I recently heard from him, now clean and sober for sixteen years, and he seems
to have put his life back on track. “Old friends are the hardest to
deny/Because Old friends know the secrets that we hide.”
If you
plan to imbibe this holiday season, and many of you will, let a designated
driver or a cab be your ride home. May your holidays be blessed with peace, good health
and, of course, good music!
Written by Jamie
Oppenheimer c 2016 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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