HAMMERDOWN TURPENTINE NEWSLETTER

"The Saloon Tribune"

JUNE 2003 Vol. 2, No. 3

Forward to a friend. This is not "monkeypox."

CALL TO ACTION: Hammerdown Turpentine will open for Brave Combo at The Bottom of the Hill on Friday, June 20, at 9 p.m.

Note: We no longer send physical mail. Please inform your friends and ask that they submit their goddamn e-mail addresses. This can be done through www.hammerdownturpentine.com or in person at our show. We will not share our e-mail list with anyone.

Gird up your loins, laggards and stragglers! The shadowy nave and transepts are void. Overflows the cup–get hip! Everyone knows HDT and drinking go hand-in-hand–like skateboarders and video cameras–so this month we’ve got an ode to alcohol. It’s not funny. Also in this newsletter, an update on the girl with a tattoo of a strawberry behind her ear that makes her ass tighten whenever a man notices it. This man apparently finds a hair in his mouth. That’s the update.

One time I had a dream: Just as I was about to eat a  cannoli(1), a grey-haired woman snatched the doily it came on and ran off with it. Bemused, I bit into my tasty dessert only to find it to be a shell for a tightly rolled scroll. Not wanting to be a part of anything so shady, I disposed of the whole thing and went to a nice park where someone offered me a free tai-chi lesson. When I agreed, the little man snuck me a scroll and told me to be careful. Needless to say, I dropped the scroll and walked off to play Frisbee with a naked girl and her pit-bull. One thing led to another and soon I was finding another scroll--decency prohibits my detailing where. I tossed it, the scroll that is, but her dog kept fetching it and bringing it back to me which was about the most annoying thing that I have ever dreamed. It was then the aforementioned old lady who had stolen my imitation-lace plate adornment brought a police officer and denounced me. Despite the obvious senility of my accuser I was dragged to a police car. The officer drove me a few blocks, letting me out of the car and handing me a scroll with a wink. At this point I woke up, utterly sick of myself.

Our show Friday (6/20) is with Brave Combo ( http://www.brave.com/bo/ ). They won a Grammy.

Love,

The Jif Johnson,

Magic Yuko Chino Caravan Rider

P.S.

We used to spend fifty bucks a month sending postcards out to people announcing our shows. Now that HDT has gone 100% e-mail, we as a band, in keeping with our pledge to the Code of Good Practices on Fiscal Transparency approved by the Executive Board of Directors of the IMF (as opposed to EMF), would like to share our plans for said savings: The first $50 we save (June 2003) will go towards Dave’s mounting coke debt. After that token of band solidarity, I suppose we’ll just save up for a computer. (No more typing these newsletters out at the Internet Café!) Or perhaps we won’t know how to handle our newly bright band budget and have to send one postcard a month with $50 worth of stamps on it. Perhaps we’ll send it to you. You’d better come!

HDT SPREADS ITS DISEASE

They're hiring sorcerers. Lighting firecrackers. Following advice reputed to be from a mystical talking baby. Across San Francisco, thousands of people are turning to the supernatural to fight HDT. Rock ‘n’ roll now has killed at least 262 people. More than 5,000 others are infected.

At the Bottom of the Hill, fans hoping to avoid severe acute rock syndrome seek help from sorcerers in incense-infused BBQs, according to local officials and newspapers. "It is quite possible that on Sunday we'll see an upsurge in cases," said Jif Johnson last month. That was the Polkacide show, and you KNOW what happened.

Meanwhile in Oakland(2), firecrackers crackled through the city after a rumor spread that a deaf man spoke after years of silence and said the band would disappear if fireworks were set off, according to a policeman. Similar firecracker displays were reported in other cities.

A WOMAN

A woman was working very hard at writing a story about two poets. When she finished, she was so exhausted, she lost her head and nailed all her silverware up on the wall to the left and right of all her pots and pans which were hanging on the wall (quite sensibly) and she was about to do the same to the napkins when she suddenly remembered she had to go to work. When this woman stepped outside she found it was a cold day and that the sky looked like rain so she shut the door again and went to her room to fetch an umbrella. When she got to her room she became so involved in writing a list of what would be much better English translations for the title "Mein Kampf" (e.g., "Octopus with a skull inside a heart" or "Woman with her hands tied to her feet") that she forgot the umbrella and was late for work. Quickly, she hurried out the door only to remember that it looked like rain so she ran back to her room and got her umbrella but when she got to the front door again she saw someone had entered through the open door while she was getting her umbrella and stolen her napkins.

This is the story about two poets that she had written:

TWO POETS

A woman and a man get out of their poetry class where they're told to write a poem about alcohol. They get drunk and he chases her around the room and tackles her. She pulls her shirt up to her breasts. He starts to kiss her belly. She says, "All right, let's go back in and do it." They both get up. He hears a slight mechanical noise coming from the apartment across the hall--he says, "What the hell is that?" She says, "Don't say anything again." He opens their neighbor's door. Indians in gold turbans escort an Indian man in a dark suit around a far corner. The poets try to smoke but the cigarettes keep crawling into their mouths, burning their lips. So they go back to their own apartment and write a poem.

This is the poem that the two poets wrote:

ODE TO ALCOHOL

Chi beer is made from millet.
The men gather it, the women chew it.
And sake comes from rice,
Koumiss from mare’s milk:
The fermentation left to the wives.

Mead is fermented honey.
The men ride out on horseback,
Spot the bees flying,
Trail them to their hives.

If the beer is sweet
The men say it is no good.
If the beer is thin,
Misfortune in marriage.

Wine holds a woman’s spirit:
Rose wine, cactus.
It should taste sharp and sweet.

Sound the line of lacquered cups,
Shake the upset mugs.
Begins with a root
And the soft mouth of a woman,
Ends in perfect amphoras,
The breath of the laborers
Pulling the wet grass stoppers.

And the children are locked up in their rooms.
Crownbird opens a stone,
By legend,
Finds a jar of beer.
One vessel after another
Wheeled into the cleared barn–

We felt as if a beautiful thing was coming.

Hahahaii
To heat the brain, they sing as they drink.
Hahahaii
Drink, they sing whatever comes into their heads.

Pretty girls offer a kiss for a glass of liqueur
Then pour out the drink,
Just touch the rim to their lips.

And women come out of the dark
To part their husbands’ hands,
To drink from the horn that called the men in.

Hahahaii Hahahaii

The cupped skulls lined with silver,
Gourd rattles split down the weave,
Red drums skinned to serve as bowls–
Things make do,
Receive the bent ladle.

Men white as milk run off to vomit,
Return thirsty,
Dry spit in their beards.

The women seem mad with singing.

Take this outside,
The heavens unstrained and groggy.
Do that outside,
And men take themselves anywhere.

Drink given to the skulls
Buried in the corners of fields near the highway;
The sides of churches and hospitals doused.

Plateau drinking, the long slow drunk.
Even the suicide rate is high;
Even the foreman who holds a brown bottle
Like a spear.
He washes in wine, his clothes the blood of grapes.

Ovidian shiftiness, slurred frenzy.
A print of the god on every brand’s label.

Drunken musicians ruin their pipes,
The foreman shakes,
His eyes red wine, vined,
A fire in his throat, he sings:
All the ways I am falling–
Women seizing my heart–
I did it with my own money!

It is the getting drunk not the being.

It’s repeated:
One drink is too many and a thousand not enough.

Women take to a loose life,
Breathing fire.
They say,
We live quickly, are always on guard.

Their husbands,
Sodden wrecks,
Deep in cups, monstered backs, bent bones,

Hell of the stomach and liver.
They say,
Milk, spit, shit, blood, and beer.

We live quickly and must constantly be on guard.
To drink is to crumble.
It’s repeated:
When you’re drunk you feel like dancing.

The moon, meanwhile, floating like a cork…
Time blown through the dogwood,
Around crowds of stars;
Time quick as in dream, branches between happenings.

Suddenly, wet eyes behind everything.
Wet eyes with the moon in them.
Red eyes are wonderful,
Red lines in the eyes.

Eyes wide, flashing, votive,
Babylonian.

And girls bare from the waist up
Paint their bodies with birds.
The young men redden
The soles of their feet
So that when they fall over,
The beautiful color will show.

Dawn birds shake behind the clock
Unable to make themselves clear.
They want to say,
A good man when drunk goes off to sleep.

Balled-up coats under women’s heads
Are glad to have nothing hard in their pockets.

The pale sun suggests
A breakfast cup of brandy.
But drinking brings the clouds down.

These little hours
Take their turn at being hungry.

Hammerdown Turpentine opens for Brave Combo at The Bottom of the Hill on Friday, June 20 at 9 p.m. or so. You’ll have all weekend to stop shaking. Also, in July, HDT will be playing a big multi-band party at The Peacock Lounge on Haight Street (around Fillmore). C’mon down and have Masonic fun: July 26 (Saturday). I’m scheduled to have my teeth cleaned the day before so wear your sunglasses.

Reply to this e-mail with the phrase: " Overpraise provides a measure of compensation for critics deprived of the experience of living in more vital times. " in the subject line.

FOOTNOTES

Beautiful are the Cannoli of Carnevale,
No tastier morsel in the world:
Blessed is the money used to buy them;
Cannoli are the scepters of all Kings.
Women even desist [from pregnancy]
For the cannolo, which is Moses's Staff:
He who won't eat them should let himself be killed;
He who doesn't like them is a cuckold, Olè!

2. Oakland is a sprawling nightmare of a town that makes you wish you were in Berkeley which in turn makes you wish you were in San Francisco.