Chapter Sixteen:     Birmingham, Alabama

DON TENNISON reporting events of Thursday, 9th of July--

Our concert in the Alabama Theater, downtown Birmingham --

This is Don --yes the sound guy again, that Don-- here to update our onwardly rolling document. This time in the historically tainted city of Birmingham, Alabama.

I found myself contributing this chapter because I have a family connection to this city and the civil rights protests that went on here back in the mid-sixties. Of course it was not me but my grandfather, Wilbur J. Tennison, who was a young redneck living right here in those days. And yes, he was involved in the race riots and street fighting-- being politically active, you might say. But by the time I was born my own father and family had moved away from the state of Alabama to California, leaving the whole shameful mess behind.

I say shameful because Grampa Wilbur was not one of the heroes of the historical Civil Rights Movement, but one of the villains, sorry to say. Good ol' Gramps was white supremacist and KKK through and through. He ended up in prison, having taken part in some racially motivated lynchings and murders, for which he was never apologetic.

I grew up without knowing about any of that. Understandably my father didn't like to talk much about his own father's good ol' days amongst the good ol' boys, those refined and cultured Gentlemen of the Deep South. But I did go to college and had classes about American History, which mentioned Birmingham as being one of the most segregated cities in the USA and I remembered that my dad had once lived there, so I asked him about it. Eventually he told me about his own father's misadventures. Which I will not go into here: it's not a family history I'd care to brag about.

So Birmingham, Alabama has a pretty ugly history, but I guess every city in every state has its embarrassing moments, just because that's where people are. The segregation laws and civil rights battles of the 60s had given Birmingham a bad rep; riots, racial murders and lynchings, the Klu Klux Klan carrying out bombings and other cruelties with the cooperation of the local cops, who also arrested 600 children in one day for being in a peaceful protest.

But Birmingham can't be considered all bad: it was also the location of the Civil Rights Campaigns running from 1945 to 1965, the Freedom Rides, organized non-violent protests, and eventually change was effected. Today the mayor and many political lawmakers are African Americans and nobody makes a fuss about it any more. Well, almost nobody, and certainly not without some legal consequences if they go so far as to break the law.

Back in 1963 then-Governor George Wallace was quoted saying "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever," but he was proved wrong already that same year, as Martin Luther King was saying "I have a dream...". But of course, that got him killed in 1968, so desegregation wasn't easy.

I hear that the locals like to lable this town "the last major Southern city in America" where the virtues of good old-fashioned Southern hospitality flourishes. "Unless you're black," Gene Smith, our cameraman and the only black guy in our convoy, has to add, but even he admits that he's had no problems here. He can't even find a "Whites Only" signs on public drinking fountains, or busses, although he's been looking. Segregation has been made officially illegal.

Lucky for us, the sixties are long gone and B-ham today is a civilized, modern American city. The Civil Rights Institute here offers some of the same horror stories as you hear in Memphis, the main difference being that most of the historic events detailed actually happened right here in this very town. But that was over three generations ago, so I don't feel personally guilty about what my grampa did.

We came here to play a concert, not to attack the system, which had already been defeated years ago.

As I often do, I'd Googled some reviews of other bands performing here at the Alabama earlier this month, and noted several complaints about the sound not being what it should be: blurred, unclear, stand-up comedians telling jokes you couldn't understand, garbled lyrics to supposedly meaningful songs. A common problem technically categorized as "shitty acoustics".

But Chrome Squatch's sound guy-- Sir Don Tennison himself -- being Me --just happens to be a genius at manipulating a balance between physical acoustics and electronic equalization. In other words, I can make the band sound good even if they play like shit.

Although they don't. Ever. Hey, I never said you did, guys. Calm down, please.

Speaking of sound, the Alabama has a built-in pipe organ: a Wurlitzer Opus 1783, originally designed to accompany silent movies, with 4 keyboards and 2336 pipes to shape the sound. Lee jumped at that, not about to share it with Melly, which she accepted, still appeased with having had access to that nice Steinway piano at the New Daisy Theater in Memphis. Delicate artists, those pianists.

The band played mostly their standard routine this concert, except for adding that 80's A-Ha number "Take On Me" to give Adam a vocal challenge to top his "SOS" extravaganzas. I think he went an octave higher and an octave lower than the original just to nail it, which was pretty astounding. His voice can be so powerful that I almost have to turn the microphones down to zero and just let his non-amplified voice rattle the windows.

We did that concert without anyone getting shot or insulted, the audience behaving itself, which was comforting.

If you remember, the first and last time I wrote one of these chapters to the notorious and glorious Document was about our day in Montreal, Canada, where we put on a concert at the Théâtre Saint-Denis. At that time I allowed myself to bare my soul, going on and on about my "secret love", although without ever really admitting who she was, like some shy high school kid.

Since then we've all experienced Adam's kha-rat, that Bigfoot Mating Ceremony (orgy), so I've been in intimate close contact with that particular lady, repeatedly, and gotten to know her (biblically) inside and out. So I don't really need to be shy about having had a crush on Melly any more. I've also enjoyed having sex with every other lady on this tour (except Bunny, who was absent).

Thanx, Adam, that was pretty decent of you to let us get away with being so indecent.

But we still have to live and work with each other now that the orgy is over. Having all shared that adventure together, the social attitude of this concert tour has adapted to a new form. Every guy has been intimate with every girl now, all fantasies have been realized, we're all on very very familiar terms with each other. I suppose that could have been disasterous, but we were lucky: we all still like each other, and maybe even love each other a little more than before.

Okay, I had a thing for Melly and now that I've "had" her I can relax. What a relief! She was incredibly nice to be with, but now I understand just how much she's truly in love with Adam... and Pokey... and Mike. So I won't persue her until the next kha-rat-- I don't need to --I'll automatically get to have her all over again. I already know how nice that will be and am looking forward to it. But I can easily wait until then.

I also had a thing for Sunny, and that I still do. In fact, we both love each other (I think). But it's weird because she went emotionally amok shagging everyone at the orgy and afterwards felt that it had been too much... because she kept on wanting non-stop sex with every guy here and couldn't quite process how to handle that. But then she had a witch-crafty session with Magga and Masnia and got all that trauma neutralized, so she's being celibate for now.

Oh. she WANTS to be with me... and Mike... and Adam... and Scott and Charlie, even Benny Joe and Old Man Ewan. But instead, she's not fucking anybody these days, including me.

But I'm not either. I think I'm in love with Sunny, I guess. Oh, I'd probably surrender if Melly and/or Lissandra offered me a friendly encounter, but they're busy being "semi-faithful" to their own three guys, which seems fair enough. Besides, me too; I'd rather just have Sunny all to myself.

So Sunny and I spend our time together just talking and being friends. Actually, that's almost enough, I like the way we interact. But I still want to have a sex life with somebody and right now it sort of needs to be her. Sunny also wants a one-on-one relationship but can't decide who with just yet, so I guess I'll have to wait.

Another weird thing is that the ones who got the most dramatic result out of the orgy are BJ and Marcie, who seem to be in actual Real Live Love with each other. I hear they're already talking about getting married and having kids.

Freddy is doing well too--he gets to "boink" incredibly cute Masnia at least once a day. Which is pretty amazing when you take into account that she has become a media darling who Hollywood is trying to sign up to be a movie star any time real soon. But she doesn't seem to feel she's too good for Freddy, even though she's devotedly in love with Adam, who is an impressively perfect physical specimen of super he-man Bigfoot, while Freddy is a fat 40 year-old comic-book nerd. But then squatches do tend to be pretty relaxed about what they consider beauty, compared to us humans with all our complexes and prejudices.