July 21, 2023

HS34 - 7M3 Bark No Bite

Orlando airport always smells the same to me on the tram to the concourse: night blooming jasmine wafts in with the heat.   

I’m back here to get tapes. All of them. I’m here to move things and remove things and to say good-bye to my childhood home, the trees in the yard, the neighborhood haunts long grown over and replaced. Goodbye, bus stop. Good-bye, walking circle. Good-bye, bears rummaging through the garbage.

I’m clearing the last vestiges of my childhood from this house alone, and I’m trapped here with the most complete history of the band, tape after tape after tape of 7M3, which my parents kept for me in an upstairs room for more than a decade.

My listening choices for packing the truck are limited. There’s still a CD player left in the house, and the only CDs that haven’t escaped already are unopened copies of every 7M3 release and a slew of discs from my grandmother's jazz collection. 

I decide to go for the latter, lest the neighbors hear me listening to my much younger self, while packing up my much younger life.     

I carry dozens of 2-inch tapes down the stairs after hitting play on Ralph Sutton’s 1961 Wonderous Piano: Private Family Recordings. He and my grandparents were friends. I was never a big band jazz guy (not past the 8th grade at least, when I played baritone sax in the middle school jazz band—we could really tear up some “Hang on Sloopy”) but I can hear what delighted my grandmother so much about Mr Sutton’s piano playing. It’s free and considered. This jazz is the soundtrack to good times, even when it’s sad, which is a rare feat. It's a singular sound.

There’s not much left to do after packing except remember. 

I sit in my dad’s old chair. It still smells like him. My brother and sister’s rooms have long been turned into “guest rooms,” but I find a few nostalgic remnants: an old Atari controller, pictures, ephemera. This chapter is now closed.

Did you know that nostalgia is derived from the Greek “nostos,” meaning “home,” and “algos,” meaning “pain”?

Home pain. 

But I’m not pining for yesterday. I love to drive. So I roll down the window and let the local classic rock station play me on my way. Of course it’s “The Joker” by Steve Miller Band. How could it not be, Orlando?

It always takes longer to drive out of Florida than I remember, and I’ve done it 1000 times. I don’t know why time expands the way it does when you’re heading north on 95.

I guess you just have to really earn your leaving.

Your Space Cowboy,

JR

P.S. I just got back  the LP master of Dislocation. Sounds pretty fucking great to hear the band in rock mode. Looking forward to sharing it on vinyl. Here’s the remastered version of “Bark No Bite”—a song that began with a riff that Sir Casey Daniel dropped on us one afternoon in his basement. Little white crosses on dangerous curves. Home safe, people.