I was fourteen years old when I heard on the radio that

‘Johnny was in the basement, mixing up the medicine’.

The recipe for whatever this revolutionary potion was,

must exist somewhere, so I made it my business to find out.

 

Various listening’s divulged snippets of information which,

over a period of several weeks, I was able

to decipher, comparing notes with fellow disciples at school.

This was no ‘Rock-a-day-Johnny’ singing,

‘Tell your ma, tell your pa, our loves a gonna grow, wild one!’

 

This was radical stuff; no one had evr made music,

or written lyrical verse like this before.

The changing of the guard from Beat Culture to

new modes of mystical, musical revelation was at hand.

The future of popular music was taking a new path.

Before long, I too would be ‘Standing on the pavement,

thinking about the government’.

 

So, what was this foreign sound to my ear?

The question only served to intrigue and invite me to wonder if,

after ‘20 years of schooling, they’d put me on the day shift’.

This was not mop-top mayhem for the masses.

This was cerebral, intellectual chaos, another language

tapping into a habit not yet formed, but still requiring

another fix whenever this transatlantic troubadour

came over the airways.

 

Genius was unleashed the day I heard

Subterranean Homesick Blues,

and my education; in fact, liberation, had begun.

There would be no direction home.