SUNDAY, MARCH 16, 2008
Chris Lucey was an album I made out of need for money. When it was finished I had an album that had somebody else's name on it and somebody else's picture on the cover. Those of you who like the album I'm afraid have missed the point of it's creation. I was Bobby Jameson not Chris Lucey, not Brian Jones, who's picture was on the cover. Think about it! What the hell was I supposed to do with an album that led people away from me as an artist to someone named Chris Lucey who really didn't exist, except within the context of that album?
I couldn't and didn't promote my own career with it, because, if you think about it, what was I gonna say, and believe me I tried. "Hey here's my new album and look it's not my picture and it's not my name, but it's really me." Well that's exactly what I was confronted with. People just didn't get it when I showed them or told them about it. They would simply ask me why wasn't my name and picture on the record if it was mine? I finally gave up on using it at all. It was 1965 and Chris Lucey did not exist as anything except a bailout for Randy Wood's Surrey Record deal. I'm sure this context does not fit into anyone's perception of Chris Lucey, but in fact that's how it was at the time. Randy realized I was a better artist and writer than he had given me credit for, once he heard what I could do, but no one was running around heralding Chris Lucey, as an artistic achievement.
It took 30 years for people to figure out that Bobby Jameson was Chris Lucey. The telling of this story is difficult for me in that I run into lack of perspective by everyone in regards to how the true facts were viewed at the time they took place. The view, from what I have encountered in the last few years, is so far off the mark that I have found myself arguing with people who don't know shit about the facts as they truly exist, as to what really happened. The so called music historians have written so much bullshit that people have excepted as fact that I am slowed to a painful crawl as far as clearing up myth.
The arrogance of some of these people who relate stories, as if they'd been there, is a pitiful attempt at self glorification on their part along with those who print and distribute this bullshit. I'm sitting around available to clarify facts, but have found that nobody is particularly interested in my opinion even though I am the only living person who was actually there. Some of you may wonder what is bothering me, because I at times become so frustrated that I threaten to just say the hell with it. Well! I am always ready to quit and say the hell with it, because it is the only protection I have. I do not have to do this if it's going to kill me.
I already lived through it once. Dragging the bottom of my misery so I can relate my past currently is one of the most truly painful things I will ever do. I am constantly remembering things that hurt so bad at the time that I found them difficult to digest as they occurred. To relive them again for the purpose of writing them here is not a pleasant task at all, but something I choose, a day at a time, to continue to do or not to do. There isn't any guarantee whatsoever that the whole story will ever get told.
Chris Lucey was a throw away album when it was created. Like it or not, that is a fact. It has, in recent years taken on a life of it's own and for that I am grateful, but it needs to be viewed in real context to see how it has risen on it's own merit to a position it never held when it was created. This in fact from a historical point of view makes "Songs Of Protest And Anti Protest" better as a work and in no way diminishes it's intrinsic value. To attach a lot of untrue rhetoric to Chris Lucey is to belittle it as a work and as a part of minor musical history. Chris Lucey is what it is. A little album that could.
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