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Introducing Johnny Angel Wendell,Guest Blogger

Writer's picture: Feef MooneyFeef Mooney

It is my pleasure this week to feature my first GUEST BLOGGER, Johnny Wendell Angel. I heard Johnny guest DJ-ing on KPFK during the impeachment hearings and couldn't believe how funny, sincere, update and cogent his commentary was. Turns out he was just riffing. Originally from Massachusetts, Johnny has lived here in LA long enough to carry our Zeitgeist. Enjoy this entry on writing songs, and have a listen, after. This guy is truly rock n roll.


I've been writing songs since high school and maybe even earlier. Always banging and tapping and chanting, a rhythmic, musical mite I was, morphing into a more loquacious teen (my father discovered lyrics I'd made up as a 17 year old and couldn't believe I was capable of same, thus was our entire relationship.) Finally, when I had a band of my own that required a repertoire, I became its tunesmith. It really is a "You have it or you don't" skill, innate for the most part. Yes, I learned music theory later on in life, but really, there has to be some sort of internal irritant to get you to marry rhythm, melody and sometimes lyric. One lesson I had to learn myself, and not via tutelage, was that individual songs are like individual human beings. They're all different. Even the most typical 12- Bar Blues tends to be somewhat unique from all the others; it's almost impossible to write a carbon copy of anything. Rule One in song-creation is to let the baby become the adult it's supposed to become, not try to make it what it can never be. Case in point for me was about 4 or 5 years back after I published my first novel, "Looking For Lady Dee". It's a combination autobiography/fiction/mystery. Like its author, it's all over the place!

The book’s initial run was remarkably successful and Mr. Bezos' corporation compensated me accordingly. With giant check in hand, I made "Lady" into an audio-book, too. Voiced almost all of it myself. But as the book's subject is a rock band, its leader and his lost love, I felt that the aural version should have its own song. The band in the book was a punk band from the 70's (Thrills), so the book's musical theme song should be a rousing, slamming anthem of rage, shot through with wistfulness.

Needless to say, that isn't what happened. The book itself is "Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll" as that was the gist of the times and the people I encountered, but my feelings for the title character were and are melancholic and yearning. So, instead of a fist in the air, slam-pit inducing 210 BPM pounder, the song came out as a very slow, spare, evocative ballad--the opposite of what was intended. As my former board-op at KTLK called it, "The Campfire Song". Songs are babies. You may wish your baby was gonna be 7''0 tall and play center for the Celtics. You may wish he or she had an IQ in the stratosphere or a work ethic only rivaled by a team of determined donkeys: fact is, people are gonna be who they are, and songs--unless written specifically to order--are gonna come out the way they want to. Escaping from your subconscious and weaving into existence, they're gonna reveal how you really feel about something. And sad disappointment doesn't sound all that convincing over a buzz-saw guitar, with maybe a handful of exceptions. So, "Lady Dee" (the song) was written from one line I had in mind in maybe 20 minutes, a good sign (if one doesn't labor over a song and it flows naturally, you tend to have a winner). I tracked all of it (singing, guitar, harmonica) myself up the street from my place in 90 minutes. Was edited and mixed in two hours. All the same, I didn't think much of it. It was written to be on an audio-book, hence, if it were a throwaway, fine. But right around the time it was completed, I had a gig up the street from my house and the other guys I played with (a rhythm section) couldn't make it. I went solo and debuted "Lady Dee". There were maybe a dozen people there plus the promoter and when I started plucking out the chords, everyone stopped talking. Which, to this day, tends to be the reaction. There's something mournful in those two simple chords and the palpable sorrow in the melody and lyric captivates its audience. The promoter, a much younger fellow than I, came up to me afterwards and said that "Lady Dee" was by far and away the most remarkable of my songs, not funny or glib or witty but just plain sad. It's been performed at every gig since. The strangest reaction was at a comedy night at a tiny storefront in El Sereno with me as musical interlude. The funny tunes all got chuckles but when "Lady Dee" was performed, you could have heard a feather fall off the back of a hawk. It hit all these comedy fans where they actually lived. Meaning that nothing in art can be forced or even coaxed. What comes, comes. What is final, after honing and trial and error, will only be judged on the feelings it evokes. Be happy and satisfied with that result: A say in the results of any task doesn't exist. ---Johnny Angel Wendell.











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