I OWE BO

So many epitaphs as the shadows lengthen. I grew up on Bo. The beat fascinated me in the way that it took no prisoners. It was always there, a launch platform to anything you wanted it to be. It was the foundation of PTOOFF! It was the reason for Mona, and while we were recording Mona, Paul the cello player hipped me to how the same rhythm was totally replicated for a few measures in one of the Bartok string quartets, (I forget which one off hand, you gotta go look for it) written at the dawn of the 20th century. The beat talked of Detroit steel cars and heavy industry, and endless highway, and thus it became background for demented poetry in Tijuana Bible’s “Memphis Psychosis.” Bo is gone, my sisters and brothers, but -- it’s mercifully trite but the truth all the same -- the beat goes on. (Whip it out Cher.)