Fell asleep with a headache, just woke up and I'm feeling better now I fell asleep watching The Seventies on Netflix Jim Jones, John Gacy, Son of Sam, the Manson Trial There's more but I fell asleep, but I was a kid then So I remember a lot of it anyhow, just like you did I was in kindergarten in 1972 when Duran fought Kenny Buchanan at MSG in New York The results flash across the TV, and in 1974 I was 7 And Richard Nixon resigned, and I was 8, and Vietnam ended in 1975 I thought about you growing up in the Bronx, did you fear Son of Sam? What was your first concert? Mine was a Doobie Brothers My mom took me and some others and that part was nice And I walked around for a while by myself and I saw a shocking amount of sex Going on back in the trees, girls down on their knees Guys with their backs against the trees Whoa oh, oh, listen to the music Whoa oh, oh, listen to the music Whoa oh, oh, listen to the music Whoa oh, oh, listen to the music Lots of music centered my first live concert experience My first attempt at a sexual experience was when two older girls Took me and a friend across Millers Road in Massillon, Ohio It was a field back then, and there was a small hill And beyond the hill, we were smoking and the girls asked us Do you guys have hard-ons? We never heard the term, didn't know what it meant We asked them: What are hard-ons? And they smirked and after a while, one girl shrugged her shoulders to the other And very slowly, the four of stood up and left The girls were walking ahead of us, as if we didn't exist Down the street, they crossed They looked so tall as we trailed behind them What's a hard-on? What's a hard-on? They were asking each other At seven years old, we smoked cigarettes But we didn't know what the term hard-on meant So yeah, I remember these things when I was 4, 5, 6, and 7 What do you recall of those years, Kevin? I remember Frazier, Frazier, Frazier from the kid across the street Whose smoke and joke beat Ali In 1972 on TV, Frazier was saying that Ali was taunting him in the rain Frazier said: Ali was saying to me Don't you know that I'm God? Don't you know that I'm God? Frazier had a witty reply, but I don't remember what it was, do you? As a kid, did you ever go to the zoo? I have no memories of ever going to a zoo with you But we went to an enormous barn where my dad bought us parakeets so many times So many times because they always died They'd never last a week, those parakeets, from what we called Parakeet Prison I hated the guy who owned it, but looking back on it now He was just a parakeet supplier in Ohio, trying to make a living But yeah at the time, I hated that guy He and my dad would talk for what seemed like hours and hours In that big smelly barn that smelled like a pigsty An eternity of metal cages coated with bird shit Thousands of iridescent birds fluttering and fluttering Feathers floating through the air, like a bomb went off The crud got into our lungs and we choked on parakeet feathers While my dad and him kept talking and talking, big smiles on their faces The guy always had these gross green clothes covered in bird shit He looked like a walking Picasso, I mean Jackson Pollock But Picasso rhymes better with clothes And Picasso rhymes better with coming home Taking turns vomiting privately, never letting dad know Dad was obsessed with us having parakeets that would live He kept trying and trying, but they kept dying Don't know if it was the temperature at home or the Ohio climate But eventually we were so tormented by those trips to buy those dying birds We'd be awake all night, dreading going back to Parakeet Prison One morning, our dad woke us up, so pumped up to go get more parakeets We were scared to tell him we didn't want to go back there anymore I was a brother, so I did all the talking If my dad was triggered, I wanted to be the one to take the beating I said: Dad, the parakeets keep dying, we don't want to go back there anymore Dad went easy on us, I could see his heart in his eyes The parakeets dying was breaking our hearts But he wanted us to have something colorful and vibrant To think of him fondly while he was out of town That amounted to us flushing dead parakeets down the toilet In addition to our dad being gone My first movie was went my mom's friend somehow snuck us into to Jaws I just remembered that it had to be kept secret She said she was taking us to some mall in some far away suburb to shop Her husband was strict, and her fear of her getting caught and her nervousness Eclipses my memory of the movie So Kevin, what do you remember of your life between the ages of 4 and 7? I don't know how Frazier replied to Ali during that fight at MSG But I lived on a steep hill called Loring Place One day, water came rushing down the gutter on my side of the street Flowing beneath the Pintos and the Cutlass Supremes And charging down Loring Place to the main avenue, Fordham Road Someone had opened a hydrant up the hill But to me, the North Pole had melted The Watergate had broke, the one I'd been hearing about The water from Watergate coming from the top down How could such a thing happen? Was safety an illusion? How long before the flood waters rose And before it reached the 6th floor of the building where I lived? I'm pretty sure the first movie I saw was in a movie theater, on Valentine It was The Towering Inferno I remember the fire blazing out of control from the middle of the building Working its way up, people trapped on the top floor above the fire They were sitting ducks, their only chance of survival Was to blow up the tanks on the roof that held the building's water supply And hope it was enough to stop the fire and not drown themselves in the process Tying themselves down to keep from getting washed away Oh, and far as zoos I remember this guy made the front page of the Post and the Daily News For climbing in the tiger exhibit at the Bronx Zoo His photo was taken with a long lens but there he was, across the fence Just like you or me, seated in a Buddhist-like position with a tiger right next to him Its head tilted in fear or confusion, its right paw in mid-swipe The guy was wearing a satin baseball jacket or windbreaker Holding out his hand like he wanted to pet the tiger He got roughed up, the zookeepers were able to distract the animal Got the guy outta there and sent him to Jacobi Hospital Staff gave his ripped up jacket to his mother I knew the zoo, I knew where the incident occurred The paper said the guy had a history of mental illness How long did he have this idea, I wondered How long had he thought about doing this? Or was it a spur of the moment thing? I'd like to get close up to those tigers, close enough to touch them What did crossing that line finally involve? What was the difference between doing it and just walking away? Was it insanity? Was it bravery? I asked this friend I was hanging out with that summer, Arthur Macguffin Who said: No question, the guy was nuts but even if he was It still takes guts to get in a cage with a tiger Oh, the Son of Sam, that's a vivid memory I remember a lot of people seemed crazy back then It seemed like a thing that was going around, like a spirit David Berkowitz used to work at the post office up the block from my uncle Sam It was strange, to have a cousin Sam that was the son of my uncle Sam I remember the blackout of '77 I remember the Yankees winning the World Series that year and the following year I remember seeing the Sex Pistols on a late night show, Night Bird or Midnight Special And feeling like they weren't that different from the Son of Sam I remember a Canadian TV show that aired on Saturday morning Hilarious House of Frankenstein, hosted by Vincent Price You lived on a hill, too? So did I And a Cutlass Supreme, my dad had one of those, a company car I believe that you had a fear of a flood coming and being washed away My friend's fear that disaster was on its way was when we flew to LA To see my grandmother and my grandfather, I'd never been on a plane Who knows what was going on? Maybe the hostage situation, maybe I don't know, but it was my first flight and I thought Maybe it might go down in flames It was a summer between the second and first grade and my ears were popping And it was such a piercing, excruciating pain, I'll never forget that pain I was probably crying and the pain was so bad I don't even remember crying All I remember is that my dad didn't go Early sign of my mom and dad's divorce but I was too young to see it coming You know, I've never seen Asians until we got to Los Angeles Next door to where my grandparents lived Their neighbors, their names were the Hongs A song about that trip to see a hummingbird, seeing Benji in the theater Hearing Bowie's Young Americans for the first time But a memory that stands out that I've never sang or written about Was how the houses all looked the same in that neighborhood And there was a park across the street where we would play My sister was over there and she ran across the street to my grandparent's house But accidentally ran into the Hongs' house It was her first time at that place, we never met them yet She found herself in the living room of a Chinese family And she started screaming, like you hear in horror films When someone's being stabbed to death and they're bleeding to death And in fear, the Hongs walked her back to her grandmother's We were on our way over there to see what was the matter She was sobbing all day, my sister is so delicate I mean, how would anybody expect her to act? We grew up on Wonder bread and Velveeta cheese and everybody we knew Except my dad's friend Moses and my friend Lamont, were white We went to the Queen Mary on that trip to LA, the world opened up to me And I knew that on the west coast, I would live one day And here I am at 51 in San Francisco, laying next to my Vietnamese girlfriend My doctor is Chinese, my landlord is Chinese My dentist is Korean, my guitarist is Filipino California's my first taste of diversity, I must have loved the taste Because it's where I ended up 3000 miles away from where I grew up Because I was too much of an outcast to stay I'm from the biggest high school football town in the USA That's no bullshit, Massillon, Ohio, Go Tigers! There's a documentary, rent it today Chris Spielman's from my hometown His widow Stephanie Belcher, she was the most popular girl in high school He married her and she was diagnosed with cancer, she ended up dying He ended his football career to help her I never thought I'd feel anything for anybody who played football But I felt for Chris Spielman I just realized from the years from 4 to 7 were the years where the seeds were planted The seeds that sprouted and blossomed into who I am I watched two kids boxing at the boxing gym today And of all things, they were siblings, 4 and 7, I asked my boxing teacher What do you think makes these kids end up boxing at this age? He said: Circumstance, there's always something, you never know At the ages between 4 and 7, my destiny was set in motion Between those ages, I fell in love with Music, culture, crime, California, the fight game, and girls And no, to this day, I've never owned any pet birds And I still hate flying, and I still hate football But I still have a cigarette every now and then after a show And I found what a hard-on was, oh man did I ever And here I am, about to fall asleep, in my apartment On top of Nob Hill, in San Francisco