TALKING YOUTH TO POWER
  a gonzo report from Al Gore's Ruinous Road to 
Radical Religious Right Redshirt Republican Ruses
Recurringly Redneck and Remade.
  Ryder, Rollins and Penske are here. Has no one
been left out??? 
  There's more press, more secret service and more
lackeys, flunkies and politicos here at the amusement
park than I've ever seen in this place at any one time.
And Gore/Bradley and their ilk won't even get here until
tomorrow!
  There's even a rumor floating around that rather
than the Beach Boys, they're going to have BackStreet
Boys and Britney Spears impersonators to start the
show.
  Wait, that's not all. There's an MC on the flatbed
truck right this moment rehersing "So similar! So
similar to the real thing! You won't be able to tell
the difference!"

SPEAKING YOUTH TO POWER: Next Day, Same Shit.
  Along with the secret service, press, fbi, cia, local
and state enforcement and assorted other spooks, geeks
and dorks, Al Gore brought all of Yale here to Green
Bay for a day. Never mind that his last stop was 
Canterbury can I complain about something? 
  Politicians are just plain lousy for my economic well
being. 
  I announced this as I played street guitar in front of
a young determined journalist who had his heart set on
shouting to the VP on his way out, "as someone who wants
to look cool with the press, how come you're entertaining
no open Q&A?"
  
  There were many different kinds of protestors there. Most
of them (us) got obscured in the press behind the Republican
protestors who stole the show. (can you say amerikan para-
military???) There was a handful of men in their 20's some
skinheads, some wearing the fake hollywood coneshaped bald
heads, orange robes and sandels, bouncing basketballs. they
were out to slam Bradley and Gore in one display of 
assininity. Good work.
  My friend Geoff from the local Latin American community
printed up flyers about Occidental and the U'Wa people 
being adversely effected by Al Gore's economic choices,
another friend Adam wore his white plastic SOA death mask
and a T-shirt about the F-Word. There were about five 
different kinds of flyers being passed out by various
different groups. Some anti-Gore, and some just, well,
anti-Gore.
  
  I played guitar where I always play, but the firetruck
and saw horses being used to obstruct justice in honor of
the event made the space near me somewhat of a ghost town.
  Politicians give out some kind of spooky energy that causes
people to tip me pennies, nickels and dimes mostly. Rather 
than the quarters, ones and fives I'm used to. The hour 
leading up to Al Gore's Ministry of Truth PepRally I made
a little more than two dollars. I played after he was done
for another hour and raked in the rest of my 11.37 for the
day. My average for the summer is 16 bucks per hour. Today
I made my average, and I also did the day before Gore. Go
figure.
  One woman about my mom's age wearing a George Bush T-shirt
gave me my only early dollar bill. "I don't know if you're
republican or not, and I don't care," she said to me, "this
is because you're working so hard out here in the sweltering
heat."
  An old grey haired man in a straw hat with an Al Gore 
button, an Al Gore T-Shirt and bad bermuda shorts (the kind
with only one pocket and single stitching that Kathy Lee
Gifford sells for way too much) walked up and asked me if I
was on welfare. He and his narrow mind both seemed quite
surprised and disbelieving when I told him no.
  Do you think making up a yes to that question might have
gotten me a tip from him? Would I have even wanted one from
him? I'll pass.
  I took to telling people between songs that the main reason
I'm an anarchist is that republicans tip me a whole lot better
than democrats, and I refuse to embrace 3/4 of what rebublicanism
has to offer.
  Many people (I'd say 5 or 6 at different times) thanked me for
providing live music at the event because they were sick of the
"canned crap" coming out of the loudspeakers.
  Let's see, Dave Matthews I heard at one point out of those
things, and BTO's "you ain't seen nothing yet..." (that one
may even be public domain by now, unless Michael Jackson already
owns it.
  Or is that even the canned crap he meant??
  I wonder if the Gore campaign pays out any royalties for use?
Nevertheless, it WAS canned. I'd almost settle for the Beach
Boys or the impersonators, eh?
  The Radio Station must've been just drumming up a rumor about
those impish personifiers, or they no-showed on old Al and Bill.
No, God no. Not another Bill on Capitol Hill. Please Lord. Spare
us.
  When I'd first gotten there, I made the mistake (or was it really
a mistake? With me almost everything serves a perfect metaphor and/
or guerilla theatre.) of walking up to a ss man and asking, "where's
a little guy allowed to sing a protest song around here?" He started
out saying anywhere I'd like, so I continued on past him.
  "Wait!" he said. "Did you say 'protest song?'"
  "Yes," I told him.
  "Hold it right there," he said, "I'll have to clear you. It'll 
probably be fine." Fist over his face, talking into his wrist he
dialogues with "Mr. Main Man," (who I'll encounter later) who 
instructs him that there's a general area I can go to where they
will search my guitar case and need to know exactly what songs I
plan to sing.
  
  That's when I decided to go to my usual busking spot and sing
for the children and parents of the amusement park instead.
  I did later succomb to the search but not the set list when
Bradley's rhetoric began because I felt like walking around the
crowd without singing.
  At one point blue and white signs were hoisted high up in the
air by just about every single person except me, and I was 
surrounded by people young and old all growling, looking and 
sounding exactly like the Hitler Youth, all of them.
  That's when I had this sudden brownish black feeling come
over me.
  I'm surrounded by democrats.
  Lost and alone, feeling more alien by the minute I went away
from there and ultimately back to where I played for my much
more lucrative hour.
  It may sound like I'm saying democrats are cheap sons-of-bitches
and it would appear that I feel Al Gore is very bad for my 
personal economic abilities on this planet.
  You heard right.

SINGING YOUTH TO POWER
Next up comes my free hour. I found myself a spot which the 
ss men hadn't planned for.
  I sat under a tree for about an hour and played until the motorcade
passed me by. During "One Tin Soldier," how cool is that? Pure
poetics.
  So there I was under a tree, right by the road. When the motorcade
bangs its first right - there I am right across the street lit up by
the sun, playing my '64 epiphone dreadnaught box guitar. Gore won't
hear me, I'm sure, but no way he's not going to see me unless
someone next to him covers his eyes, kicks him in the gonads or
points and says "look! Up in the sky, it's..." 
  Two police are within earshot of me. A local cop who seems bothered
by me but fairly tolerant and a state trooper whose task is to
direct the motorcade to that right turn that will pass me.
  I hate sounding obsessed over self-importance here, but I was on
a mission. Jimmy Carter had Amy, constantly abugging his conscience.
Reagan had that son on SNL dancing around in a tu-tu.
  Gore's got no one, people. Think about it. His children are yuppies.
They're like the Brady Bunch without the remarriage. His wife is, 
well, his wife is HR2911, er uh, I mean Tipper. His wife is Tipper.
  So he needs people like me just around every single corner.
  Turn right Al, I'll be there. Turn left? There I'll be!
So he needs to see me, DK hat, an earring in each ear, my non-racist
skinhead haircut, my cut-off jeans, and my RC cola baseball jersey -
that's right. Neither republicrat nor demican, no pepsi, no coke -
and my Mickey Mouse slippers playing my guitar under a tree on the
perfectly-cubed factory-made wood chips that make my butt fall
asleep.
  
  So this "Mr. Main Man," the head honcho of all the ss men, I mean
even the snipers up in the bell tower (we later learn they're local
SWAT team with m-16's) had to take orders from this dood. He leaves
his post at the front door, where I swear he'd been mounted since 
Wednesday, yes, the front door to the famous Pavillion where FDR
made his first speech, and Lawrence Welk kissed his first girl,
and Proctor and Gamble fouled to their first lake and river to
condemnation, so many decades ago.
  He left his main duty station to come address the concern of 
some guy playing his guitar under a tree in the way of where 
VP Al will be driving.
  
  He walks up to the trooper, they each look my way about five
different times then whisper to each other like two teenage girls
planning out which one's going to ask me to ask someone out.
  I saw the statey do one of those hand gestures that sort of 
says, "don' worriabowdit."
  I can't tell if it was my acoustic version of Black Magic Woman
or my weirdass reggae rendition of Aerosmith's Dream On that got
to him, but by some point in there he was all but full-on grateful-
dead-style dancing along to my music. A weird way of pacing he'd 
developed so as not to look too weird jitterbuggin' there in his 
uniform.
  I'd love to get him on MTV teaching all the other little blue
uniform peeps all over the world those steps, but I digress. He 
was doing that right up to the point when "Mr Main Man" walked
up on him. He then leaves him and comes over to ask how I'm doing.
  "Great," I tell him. 
  "I need to make you pack everything up and move down there
somewhere," he tells me. "You can't be this close to the motorcade.
It would make me very uncomfortable."
  "How come? So there's no possible way Al gets to see some young
man playing a guitar under a tree for the rest of his life?" I saw
by the look in his eye that my entire life suddenly made total
sense to him. Maybe he did the same Lightning Bolt as me back when
I was in the army. Or was it the light blue daisies? Or maybe the
paisley swirls? I'll never know. 
  "I just can't have you within spitting distance of the cars," he
saw me size up a certain part of the curb which was about as far as
I could ever get a loogie.
  "It's a metaphor!" he told me smiling. I swear I'm not making a 
single word up here. I told him I understand but that I'd already
had my guitar case searched and my whole person, and that I carry
no ill will toward anyone in the motorcade, and that this was very
important to me.
  "OK," he said, "I can give you two choices," before having seen
that look in his eye I'd have thought for sure one of the choices
was jail-time.
  "You can either pack up and move down there somewhere, or I stand
right here next to you the entire time."
  "If you could do that," I told him, "I would really apreciate
it." He agreed, then explained that he had to do this because it
would be the only way he would be "comfortable."
  I think one of the security guards at Disney World told me 
something the exact same way with the exact same words once when I
was in 2nd or 5th grade. [was that you???]
  That's the last thing he said to me. He stared forward during 
three full songs. It was that stare a salamander gives you when
you can tell he's studying the heck out of you from the very edge
of his periferal vision.
  Suddenly I thought of what his biggest fear probably was. He
likely watched a few too many reels of A-16 footage last year.
I was going to perhaps jump out in front of Gore's car and lay
down on the pavement to risk getting mooshed and stop the motorcade.
He'd have to tackle me before or after it perhaps risking his own
life as well. This was a very serious moment.
  I was on autopilot the first two songs I sang him, so I can't 
remember what they were. Was one of them Jon Anderson's "Seminole
Wind?" I honestly don't recall. But having no idea when the cars
would actually start, the next song that came to my mind was "One
Tin Soldier," from "Billy Jack."
  He heard about two thirds of it.
  
  When the last black-window-tinted car whizzed by he left me for
his original post to go relieve his relief. Never said a word. A
man on a mission. I finished the song and went home.
  I'm certain Gore didn't hear me over the air-conditioning and
the steelbelted radials on the hot summer pavement, but I wonder
if he felt all this?
  One could only hope.
  Oh, one quick addendum. An earlier SS man who liked my DK hat 
while I was busking asked me if I knew "Stink Foot" by Frank Zappa.
He confided in me that Zappa was his favorite artist ever. 
I promise never to tell Tipper.

muzIK!