Heart performs Magic Man
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uvr3dmptvg
It was late '76 and this song was all over the radio. Edmund's uncle owned an old house out west of Bluemont in what was then abandoned farmland, (there are probably a thousand townhouses there now...). Then, it was the middle of nowhere. About half of the roof had collapsed in on the second floor, and that area was covered in about 3 inches of bird/raccooon/whatever shit; but the remaining four or five rooms were serviceable, and so we decided to have a Halloween party out there. To get to the place was tricky, you took Route 7 to some little road, travelled a while to another smaller blacktop, then a hundred yards or so down a private dirt driveway to an old Black man's shack, where you had to abandon the vehicle, jump a creek and walk another 50-60 yards through dense woods to the ruin. All through the Fall we'd travel up there, clear a path through the woods, built a primitive bridge across the creek, and swept out the house as well as we could, and made peace with the old guy in the shack. We were set for a night that will live on in legend. Halloween came, and the god's showed their disapproval of our plans by unleashing one of the worst rainstorms I've ever seen. The world was water. I left my car on the last blacktop and stumbled in total darkness down the dirt driveway, I'd rather risk my car to redneck vandals than getting stuck in the mud at the bottom of buttfuck Virginia.
As I stumbled across our now treacherously slippery "bridge" and groped my way through the newly hewn path in the woods, I wondered if anyone would be there. But there was a glow in the distance, and Edmund, Scott and a few others huddled inside. Over the the next hour or two a couple more dozen showed up. It was a night of heroes and madmen. Oh, it was a godawful place and night to be out. But duty called to the Elite. After all, there was a party, and we were professionals. Some of you reading this were there. And amongst that number, a few of you might even remember it. From fragments still kicking around inside my brain, I know I had fun. There was at least one near bottle fight, (Fortunately, the beer had been emptied from it before Bob smashed the end off te bottle. There's no reason to be uncivilized about these things). There were oil lamps and candles everywhere, and for weeks thereafter most of us were sneezing and/or coughing up black soot. Life spans were shortened that evening. It's a wonder we didn't upset a flame and burn the damn place down, (not that it would have burned, being totally drenched in rain). Those memory fragments tell me that the overall party was a cross between Animal House and a Black Mass. Vincent Price meets John Belushi.
I had to work the next day, so left around midnight, and managed to claw my way through the mud back to my unmolested car. Many spent the night, which was the sane thing to do. But hey, it was the mid 70's, sanity was out of style.
At any rate, we were talking about Heart and Magic Man. The tie-in is that there was a little magic there and then that night; some nice synchronicity with that song as it played on the radio, so long ago....
It was late '76 and this song was all over the radio. Edmund's uncle owned an old house out west of Bluemont in what was then abandoned farmland, (there are probably a thousand townhouses there now...). Then, it was the middle of nowhere. About half of the roof had collapsed in on the second floor, and that area was covered in about 3 inches of bird/raccooon/whatever shit; but the remaining four or five rooms were serviceable, and so we decided to have a Halloween party out there. To get to the place was tricky, you took Route 7 to some little road, travelled a while to another smaller blacktop, then a hundred yards or so down a private dirt driveway to an old Black man's shack, where you had to abandon the vehicle, jump a creek and walk another 50-60 yards through dense woods to the ruin. All through the Fall we'd travel up there, clear a path through the woods, built a primitive bridge across the creek, and swept out the house as well as we could, and made peace with the old guy in the shack. We were set for a night that will live on in legend. Halloween came, and the god's showed their disapproval of our plans by unleashing one of the worst rainstorms I've ever seen. The world was water. I left my car on the last blacktop and stumbled in total darkness down the dirt driveway, I'd rather risk my car to redneck vandals than getting stuck in the mud at the bottom of buttfuck Virginia.
As I stumbled across our now treacherously slippery "bridge" and groped my way through the newly hewn path in the woods, I wondered if anyone would be there. But there was a glow in the distance, and Edmund, Scott and a few others huddled inside. Over the the next hour or two a couple more dozen showed up. It was a night of heroes and madmen. Oh, it was a godawful place and night to be out. But duty called to the Elite. After all, there was a party, and we were professionals. Some of you reading this were there. And amongst that number, a few of you might even remember it. From fragments still kicking around inside my brain, I know I had fun. There was at least one near bottle fight, (Fortunately, the beer had been emptied from it before Bob smashed the end off te bottle. There's no reason to be uncivilized about these things). There were oil lamps and candles everywhere, and for weeks thereafter most of us were sneezing and/or coughing up black soot. Life spans were shortened that evening. It's a wonder we didn't upset a flame and burn the damn place down, (not that it would have burned, being totally drenched in rain). Those memory fragments tell me that the overall party was a cross between Animal House and a Black Mass. Vincent Price meets John Belushi.
I had to work the next day, so left around midnight, and managed to claw my way through the mud back to my unmolested car. Many spent the night, which was the sane thing to do. But hey, it was the mid 70's, sanity was out of style.
At any rate, we were talking about Heart and Magic Man. The tie-in is that there was a little magic there and then that night; some nice synchronicity with that song as it played on the radio, so long ago....
posted by mendip at
8:09 PM
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