electric slide

An Imaginary Profile of the Very Real Slide Guitar Man

"They used to call me Slip n'Slide" he said to me, as we sipped our mock mint juleps at the corner cafe. "But that was before that kid toy came out - then I thought it was too hokey and I put an end to it."

I asked him how.

"Oh, well if some dumb ass drunk ever hollered at me I'd just pick up my drink - you know, the kind they give you to wet your mouth and loosen your arms when you perform - I'd pick up that drink and just pitch it at him. Lost a lot of good jack and cokes that way, but it did the trick."
This was back when Jack Cousteau (given name, Rick Jones) used to hold court on a stage instead of a street corner. Between 1973 and 1987 he made his way up from new Mexico and eventually into the heart of Greenwich village (an arrhythmic heart at that.) Jack claims to have a scar for every one of the states he passed through, and with green mint leaves stuck between his two front teeth he asks me if I'd like to see them. Due to the private nature of some of his scar's locations, I politely decline.

"You're really missing out hon," Jack tells me, mint leaf shifting slightly as his thin lips move across his teeth. "The one on my left testicle looks a little bit like Marilyn Monroe and a little bit like a jack russel terrier. You ain't never gonna have another chance in your life to see something like that."

This is true, I probably won't.

"It's better playing out on the street than in the bars," Jack tells me. "On the street, everyone thinks I'm performing but the joke's on them. Fuckers don't know that I just sit here watching their antics all day long. No damn day goes by without something to make me marvel. In the bars, the lights are always too low in the audience and too high on the stage - I can't tell a cockroach from my grandmother if it's out beyond the stage lights. I'd prefer to see my grandmother, or the cockroch, if it's there."

I ask Jack what's the strangest thing he's seen on Waverly.

"Oh, you know, lots of cat fights - those are always wild. The women and the cats. So much screechin and hollerin, you get to forgettin that the world is ever quiet. I put my guitar down when they start - no use tryin to drown out that craziness. But the strangest thing - well, I'd have to say it was the day old lady Maybell down the street set up camp in front of this cafe. She had a house of her own but she took to the notion that the world was about to end and she wanted to see the colors of the sky when God shook it all up again - like it was in the beginning. So she set up camp and took to preachin and turned quite a few young yuppies away from their daily espressos, but damn it if she wasn't right, at least in part. Three days into her vigil the ground gave way under her and she fell straight into a sink hole. I don't know if the sky got shook for her, but other things sure did. Sometimes I play a song for her. It's short and simple and I call it 'creation shake.'"

I ask Jack to play it for me.
He does.
It sounds exactly like the song he plays every day, but I trust him to know the difference.