Operation 365... Blog 80

Operation 365 - Jefferson Jay - Archives - 86 Robin Lee 7 - 2-19-2009
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiZjqP-FKOg

Robin Lee is awesome and I have been profoundly enjoying posting her vids here every day, the last week or so. Here she is, playing the classic, "Pennies From Heaven." I will continue through the weekend and then decide where to go from there. I know we're due for an Edem Bastos sighting though. I can tell you that for sure.

At this set, recorded February 19, 2009, Robin was joined by Jack Davidson on lead guitar and The Soul Man on guiro. I love Robin. Wherever she is, and I miss her very much. Thanks for everything, Robin Lee. Did I mention Robin helped me get the guitar I use for almost all my videos? She recognized I "needed" it, to be the best I could be and she made it happen. Robin was really cool in that way. I got her back pretty quickly, but I NEVER would have got the guitar then in the first place, without her elaborate motivation and enabling techniques. There is only one Robin Lee.

NOTE: Coming to you live from a classroom in a local high school. Schools are pretty relaxing once all the kids leave...

Operation 365 - Jefferson Jay - Covers - 86 "Sea of Vision" by Chris Scelzo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPGE_zCSBrM

Chris Scelzo is one of my best friends on the planet and may have done more for me pursuing this musical direction in life, than anybody else. It was 1990 or something and I went to see the teacher/student rock band my school had, which starred a student who looked 30, in a tie and glasses with a thick beard. That manchild was Chris Scelzo. It could have been Jimi Hendrix as far as I knew, though. There were 800 people in the sold-out auditorium eating up everything he put out there and screaming for more.

I knew I wanted to be his friend. Fortunately, it was high school so that came to be very quickly. We have been friends ever since. From driving to Delaware for coffee to a million other thigns to bizarre to detail (No more goats, his slogan for 1994, comes to mind), Chris is truly one-of-a-kind.

We were chatting on the Facebook yesterday and he told me he was going to start copying my videos exactly and re-posting them, naked. I reminded him that he is FAR too lazy to do anything like that. I said he couldn't even do Operation 1, much less Operation 365. He said he'd do Operation 0. He wrote "lol." I typed back "hahahahaha." God bless the 21st century.

He said he always loved my song "Damaged," so I am intending to bust that one out today in addition to this old Scelzo classic, "Sea of Vision." Scelzo, like I said, is lazy. The last CD he put out was a tape, and it came out in 1994. Great stuff. I love his tunes. Always have. Like I said, he has always been a huge inspiration to me. He even produced the first tunes I ever wrote and recorded, forever ago, with Scott Baslaw in The Demarests.

Scelzy is as funny a guy as you'll ever meet and I could tell stories all day. I eagerly await returning to Roy Rogers with him, at the Vince Lombardi rest area, (where he used to work), when I am home in May. We have a date. Delicious chicken. Can't wait. He was even telling me a bunch of truly optimistic and enlightened stuff yesterday. The man has been wearing a tie and dark glasses every day, since he was 15. So much for not being able to teach an old dog new tricks. Scelzo the optimist. I love it. My friend.

Operation 365 - Jefferson Jay - Originals - 86 "Damaged"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXY0lzQi-tc

This one is here today on specific request from my friend, Chris Scelzo. He says he likes the genuine nature of the tune. It's genuine, all right. I wrote it moments after I broke my ankle, in the middle of nowhere.

I decided to surprise my friends, The Horvaths, who I have mentioned in this blog before. They live off the grid, in the middle of the woods, so you can't call before you come over and it took 3 hours to get there. I love them, so I went. No one was home, so I cruised around, hiked up a mountain, took a dip in a swimming hole, and was going for a nice sunset walk with their dogs when, I stepped in a hole I didn't see, that once was the home of a peach tree. I went down hard. Real hard. Like instant cold sweat, little blue birdies doin' laps around my face, hard.

I hobbled my ass up to the house where I plopped down on a slab of concrete earmarked for an outhouse at some point in the future. I laid there for awhile, waiting for Ryan's return. Time wasn't passing and any medical help was hours away, literally, so I draged myself over to my car, grabbed my instrument and hopped back to the slab where I then penned, "Damaged." Shortly after I finished, Ryan returned.

I used to do this song a lot back in the day, even with the band and everything, but it has long since fallen out of the rotation, so much so, that I'm going to have to spend some time relearning it, before I can record it for y'all.

My ankle was surgically repaired in 2000 by Dr. Kenneth Levitsky. Thank you Dr. Levitsky. I haven't forgotten your effort and still appreciate that thanks to you, my ankle's been working well for over a decade. Seriously. Thanks.

NOTE: Happy Birthday to my friend Anna VanRansom, who along with her husband, Dick, make and sell the best ice cream in the history of the world at Mariposa Ice Cream, here in San Diego, CA. http://www.mariposaicecream.com/