MS PAC MAN & ME:

I don’t know when I got “really good”, but I know when I got ‘ridiculous’, at fast speed ms pac man.. that was after the old maroon Volvo drove off that cliff about 7am one mornin’ on the Fairhaven side of Bellingham when I was drivin’ to pick up my friend's dog “Kia” for to go on a run around Lake Whatcom.. to this day and to my grave I’ll swear I dodged a spotted leopard (but there was black ice involved as well).. regardless (and maybe more on all that some other time).. but things started spiralin’ outta control over those next couple weeks what with the insurance havin’ lapsed and the job at the movin’ company havin’ not all that much appreciated the 2 weeks I took off to follow john prine around western Canada.. and then the whole “christmas tree” escape in sf when it all started comin’ full circle, and I went back to my little studio on G or H Street up the hill and looked in the mirror – and I saw a guy 3 days shy of 28 with no job, too much debt on 2 different credit cards, no car, no insurance to do shit all about the wrecked car.. and really no friends to speak of seein’ as I was just in a disagreeable stage anyways, I suppose now..

but.. there was this bar down the hill a bit towards town, under a mile, and it was sort’ve on the edgier side of downtown, and it opened at 2… & it had a fast speed miss pac man machine stand-up just left of when you walked in the door.. I wasn’t usually much on ‘afternoon beers’ so I’d just settle in with a ginger ale or dr. pepper & my mind was everywhere but reality after spotted leopard gate, just the same I’d been avoidin’ callin’ my folks & shamefully askin’ if they’d front me enough to get back to Mississippi..

so I just played that game..

For some reason, I recall specifically after all these years that, prior to all this, I had a “recreationally good” high score of “206,000” points that I’d attained at this bar in Wharfside Village in Cruz Bay on St. John a few years earlier which had occurred in front of greg lee and Hannah koeppen one afternoon when we snuck over the hills from Maho Bay into town.. I’d never gotten higher.. then, there was Bellingham.. and that first or second time I walked in that bar (and that’d mean the 1st or 2nd day after I flew that Volvo off the cliff and the airbag fought back), I just “went.. some… place.... ..ELSE..!!”… I was goin’ through the motions and on my last ‘gal’ by around 160K, when suddenly everything just zeroed in… I crossed 206 on that last gal & in that very same game I crossed 250, 350, 500.. all the way up to just over 585,000 points… 2 days later, I reached the “kill screen” and, as the banana kharma had been kind once the fruits started comin’ out at random, had over 1.1 million points at that time… Crowds started millin’ over from the bar and a couple’ve drunks even ventured out front hecklin’ passerbys to come in and see the freak on the fast speed miss pac man machine..

....after about 3 weeks of this nonsense, and a good half dozen “kill screen” milestones later (meaning: the game just stops as it wasn’t programmed to go beyond, making ms pac man high scores pretty much dependent on 3 things: staying alive, eating 16 ghosts on every or damned near every round that they’re still edible, and how lucky you get with which fruits come out, which is the “banana kharma” I refer to, as you want bananas and pears, not cherries and pretzels, etc).. still, after a few weeks of this nonsense, I finally hopped into a rental my Dad put a card down for and slunk back to Memphis for a year to work it off..

I found a ms pac man machine in Memphis on the corner of beale and front street at george pauls last call bar, also a standup fast speed.. but my mind was comin’ slowly back to reality and, while I did regularly get scores upwards of half a million to, say, 800K, I didn’t reach the “kill screen” at any time during that next year in Memphis..

but I stayed in “pac shape”, practiced my game time breathin’, and learned the finer lessons of approaching the game - such as the awareness that, at these advanced levels of ms pac man fast speed, even 2 beers will significantly alter your “motor skills” and ability to react decisively.. put 3 heinekens in me, which I myself would’ve hardly registered, and my high scores would hardly cross 300,000.. drop a half dozen, and I might not even get the day's “high score”..

The years after I left Memphis that time all kind of flow together, get jumbled in my mind.. I left the country awhile and then returned briefly to san Francisco (bell-hop dreamin’) and had a machine on Haight (a “sit down” turbo) that I regularly entertained the people waitin’ in line with, as it was nestled up close to where they’d order.. there was one at the ‘Cliff House’ restaurant as well, though this may have been another time, before it burned down with the whole damned place.. There was the one back in Cruz Bay even though I was in Coral Bay when I hit the islands again, but I’d take the bus and listen to St. Croix Tom jabber on in that accent that still had a hint of west texas and in due time be back at Wharfside Village by the water, or this other little breakfast joint closer to Mongoose Junction with a standup machine up a steep flight of rickity blue steps, beats me how they got it up there.. if I wasn’t giggin’, or if I wasn’t paintin’ a house or workin’ for Cimarron Builders or swimming at Waterlemon, hikin’ down to the petroglyphs or talkin’ life with Kenny at the Quiet Mon Pub, I was probl’y playin’ fast speed ms pac man..

….still, though, while my scores were, at least per all the high scores between there & St. Thomas to the west, likely the highest the islands had ever seen, I wasn’t at the “Bellingham madness” level, where I’d hit the kill screen 2 or 3 hours after poppin’ a quarter in every other time I took a game seriously.. yet, my games lasted 60, 90 minutes, my pac demise often coming when I got bored and looked away, or had that 2nd or 3rd Cruzan Dark w’ pineapple.. it slowly became less and less about the high score, and more about the pure calmness I felt overtake me every time I played ms pac man.. stand up, sit down, didn’t matter.. I just needed to play.. and my mind would wander and I’d lose a gal or three that way but I figured out some of my most tangled aspects of my life in those days, and still do, while chasin’ fruits and dodgin’ ghosts and prayin’ for bananas..

Some years passed.. more ms pac man machines came and went.. there was the one in cooper-young the year I returned to Memphis to make that record with cadillac cowgirl nancy apple.. it was back up by the restrooms and smelled all piss ‘n shit but I played it anyways before I’d hunker at the bar, drink a couple beers, and trade lies with that dj from rock 103 that was always there with his wife.. there was one at the hueys in midtown for a short spell, and one I found at a motorcycle bar in Nesbit, Mississippi just south of the state line, where the bikers took it about as serious as I did, with some pushin’ upwards of 6 figure scores themselves.. I must’ve gone a spell without playin’ when I took off to nepal and india for about a year, but I emerged, after a spell in Charlottesville, va, in bushwick, Brooklyn one fall, but before I even moved in, that summer of ‘09, I’d found barcaid by the lorimer stop on the L.

That day I found it I was waitin’ on this big black guy to get off, and I was sittin’ up at the bar sippin’ a ginger ale slow and readin’ the newsflash that michael jackson was dead.. I kept lookin’ back at this big guy playin’ and he was gettin’ pretty animated.. I was goin’ back ‘n forth thinkin’ about dangerous and thriller and the moonwalk and finally decided to go check it out.. he had 700-K plus and was on his first gal..! His name was William, and his name was on the Big Board for the high score – a “kill screen” score of around 1,035,000 or so.. his name, almost 20 years later, is STILL up there and it’s on every barcaid in the City (all 3) and the one in fishtown, philly as well.. it took me some years to find a respectable arcade that William hadn’t invaded but I finally did down in Asbury Park at the silverball arcade around 2017… and I took the high score there (around 600K) and I go back every several months to try to top it off (it currently hovers just below 700K), and maybe too I really go back just to confirm William hasn’t found it..

I got to KNOW William back in the day.. and over the years find him lurkin’ around the same ms pac man machines I’m lurkin’ around in the boroughs, and we’ve had some (very, very long) 2 player games and I even BEAT him once when I got about 900K and he was tired.. but, in all reality, William is on a level of his own.. even though anyone on a high skill level, for example, can get 14,600 on the 1st board in about 35, 40 seconds (the highest one can get with all ghosts and both fruits consumed), william isn’t satisfied with simply “eating all 16 ghosts” but, rather, he has to “group ‘em” – this no doubt driven’ by a fierce ocd alongside his general skill and competitive will.. this makes the 1st, 2nd, and each of the boring first 7 rounds before the fruits start comin’ out at random – as well as the next 10 or so rounds before the ghosts stop turnin’ edible at all – very slow and frustrating to watch.. we’re both gonna have just over 120K after the banana round: the difference bein’ I’m gonna be there about 6 minutes after the game starts, and William about half an hour after! In the later rounds, though, long after the ghosts let you eat ‘em, this makes William unstoppable!. You wanna see THE best this Earth has to offer in Fast Speed MS Pac Man, find William from Queens – and I’ve already told you where you’re gonna find him!

....but, for me, I’ll settle (for now at least) for callin’ myself “one of” the best ms pac man players in the world – there almost certainly bein’ 20 or 30 or maybe 200 drifters out there lurkin’ at some machine between Madison and Eugene, East Nashville or Kagbeni or Amsterdam.. and yeah, likely some of ‘em are like William ‘n get that “kill screen” just about every game.. me? I still chase whatever it is I’m chasin’ every time I find a machine worth playin’… every now and then I’ll catch myself driftin’ back to that bar in Bellingham and wonder what exactly happened in my head those few weeks after I flew that Volvo off the cliff… then I put a quarter in and see if I can find out..

THE END

THE ASS CRACK TOUR:

One night in a bar in Culver City (LA) that billed itself as Culver City's oldest continuous bar, on a tiny stage just right when you walk inside the front entrance off the west side of Sepulveda Boulevard, on a raised stage behind a mic & w' trusty Gertrude, my Gibson J-100 strapped to me as I sang my heart out about Miss Smoky Mtn or bein' lost far from home or maybe just one about Tiger Beer or even dogs I've known, I had an Epiphany:

I'm The King Of The Ass Crack Tour!

I looked out at the audience, all eight of 'em bellied up to the bar to my 11 o'clock and realized I was lookin’ at the top of six different Ass Cracks, and not a single set of eyes..

The only reason I wasn't lookin' at eight ass cracks was ‘cause the damned bar curved at the far end near the door and their backsides were out of my sight range..

It wasn't that they despised my songs, or thought I sucked.. or maybe even that I just wasn't this or that. I mean, these were mostly blue color folk getting’ off work, lookin’ to have a whiskey or beer and see an old buddy and, if there’s music on that stage, that’s cool but that ain’t why they’re here.. It hit me that half the gigs I played and had for years were just like that. There were, of course, plenty of amazing gigs where everything flowed, and the ones that start out a drag then you catch that one soul and it just telepaths across the room, somebody laughs about a funny song or some old timer wipes a tear about a sad one where a dog dies (and they always do), and then too there’s the rare one where a large crowds there maybe for a bigger event or I’m part of a larger show or whatever but.. I just couldn't keep from comin' back to the simple reality that no one.. NO one.. travels as hard as I do, writes as many songs and sings 'em into as many mics as I do.. for pretty much the chance to maybe get a hundred bucks on a good night with a pack’ve ass cracks on the side.

I don't know why, or should I say instead I don't remember exactly "when," I decided to "become a songwriter".. I wasn't a day younger than 32 when I wrote my first song, and that leaves some good years prior that I'd been playin' live, and I mean a lot of playin' live. In Coral Bay down in the islands one year and the next too, I must've been behind a mic in front of a crowd of ragin' sailors & island sorts up to 8 or 10 hours a week late into the evenin's for the type's of characters that one've these days deserve their own songs.. but back then all I wanted to do then was play John Prine, Hank Williams, Townes & Dylan and anything off any record Ramblin' Jack Elliott ever did.. and Mississippi John Hurt outta’ Avalon, just down the road from where I started..

I wasn't tryin' to "be" the story or the songwriter, I just wanted to tell a story and feel myself & others react.. & react they did.. and we'd many a night talk hours after on some boat or off some dock about music or travel or life or rum or whatever needed bein' danced through..

Then I went to Kerrville that one offseason, maybe 2005, & everybody there was insistin' I write.. I didn't want to, nor did I really feel "called" to.. but I pitched a tent on my friend Ike Eichenberg's land after Kerrville that blazing Texas summer and for a solid month or two before returnin' to the islands trailed Ike around askin’ questions about songwritin', going to hear anybody I could from Ike to the crowd at Cheatham Street, to Adam Carroll and more, just tryin’ absorb. But it just wasn’t my time.

Maybe a year later I was livin' or stayin' at my sisters' in Germany & that year I DID feel "led" to write, so I started one about an old timer I'd known in New Zealand in early '01.. used to busk the streets of Ponsonby. I called him "Ponsonby Jim" in the song and I loved and still love old folks so I tried to do his life justice insofar as the little peaks he'd let me see in that brief spell our paths crossed.

Then I wrote another couple that summer there near Würzburg & I'd even hit this Irish pub in Schweinfurt and sing my new ones interspersed w/ the train songs and covers that I was more confident playin'..

A year after that, damned if I wasn't at Nancy Apple's place in Memphis makin' a full-on record of 14 songs, 9 of which I wrote. Golden Nancy believed in me and even though those songs were all I had, and I can hear my insecurity if I listen today, after almost twenty years I can say I'm proud of that record.. They was mostly all travel songs, the ones I'd written, as everybody from Kerrville to Germany to Memphis & more would always go: "Write What You KNOW, Gann.. Write What You Know" and seein’ as I'd been abroad about 8 of those 10 prior year, that’s what I did: I wrote about that ol’ Dutch Man in Southern Laos in September of '01.. about buskin' on Shotover Street in Queenstown.. some girl that died her hair purple and left me all broke up at the Purple Penguin Hostel in Dunedin on the South Island.. about my favorite beers the world over and, of course, about Ali Baba.. and I don't think outside my immediate circle that album radiated much, but it did get one radio play in Little Rock aand another in Oregon a couple months after it came out (by which time I was in Nepal), but I was proud of that one radio play and rumor had it some lady at WEVL in Memphis played another track (not Nancy Apple, who'd produced it & hosted a show there called “Car Tunes”, but another radio host that I'm sure Nancy’d handed it off to).

I never felt comfortable for years playin' those songs, so at gigs I'd still mostly play the ones I felt inside: Woody & Jerry Jeff, Lucinda, Dylan.. I spent a year between Nepal & India & by the time they started callin' me "Mississippi Gann" down in South Goa, I had half a dozen songs that would take a few more years to mold into a record..

I came back to the USA & discovered both New York City and Alaska at about the same time, and I discovered the obsession of gettin' in my car and just "going".. just going.. just go.. go, go.. next town I'd play some little market and then in Redding the bar where they say the weed was Merle's.. and I'd go down and up, down and up that West Coast and if you've seen a little bar there with a tiny stage that little small-time musicians play, I've probably played my songs there.. around Alaska but mostly Skagway and Juneau, across America more times than I could possibly count.. couches, yurts, spare bedrooms, dogs to watch and driveways to shovel.. I did anything I could to keep goin'.. just to keep goin'.. I didn't think it'd "pay off," I just did it to "be".. and maybe because I didn’t know what else to do and was terrified of getting’ stuck in just one place.

Those songs became a record called "Peddlers & Ghosts" that I made in Memphis with an old friend named Jeremiah Tucker in 2013.. damned if one've the songs didn't get played all the time on "Coffeehouse" on Sirius and I didn't wind up gettin' over $10 thousand dollars in royalty checks right before going to India to turn 40 with less than $3,000 and a paid-off credit card. Suddenly, I felt rich!

I played a few gigs in India those several months but when I came back stateside I kept goin'.. it was the next year, fall of 2016, after returnin' from my half-year stretch in Alaska, that I was doin' the West Coast at the little bar in Sepulveda where my epiphany occurred.. I'd play there every several months, sometimes closer together, and that's where "Big Al" was (more on Big Al sometime I hope).. but I just went flat.

I wasn't ashamed, I’z proud of my songs although I figured they weren't too relatable. In my mind, ‘the market had spoken’ and it was what it was, insofar as thinking that bein’ a travelin’ musician or recording musician or songwriter was really ever gonna, or at least any time soon, make me anything close to what resembles “makin’ a living….” But I "wrote what I knew" just like Jack Motley in Texas & Ike Eichenberg between there and the Virgin Islands & Nancy Apple or John Kilzer in Memphis and all those others used to tell me.. didn’t, and still don’t, know any other way. But I’ll take it to my grave I’ve done my best to be authentic, to “be me”.. and I’ll take that medal as well for bein' the undisputed "King of the Ass Crack Tour”.