The Gambler – Kenny Rogers

            I remember sitting at the kitchen table of my childhood, eating cereal and singing “The Gambler.” It’s one of my first memories. I was three years old and that same year, my mother tells me that I positively demanded to go to the concert, clutching my vinyl Greatest Hits record. My mother and aunt did indeed bend to my will and I’m told that I stood on my seat to belt all the words to the songs. I knew every lyric to every song, but my favorite by far was always “The Gambler.” When I asked my mom and Aunt Deb (who were responsible for paying for the concert tickets) for other recollections, their information was sparse. Neither of my parents were fans of the legendary country singer, so evidently this fascination happened of its own accord. This perplexes me, being that a three-year-old fanatical about Kenny Rogers and throwing a fit to go to the concert is one of the weirdest things I’ve ever heard. I know I was a capricious child, but that’s taking it to the extreme. Perhaps I’m not alone (maybe there’s someone out there who was obsessed with Dolly Parton at that age and insisted on owning her oeuvre), but you probably agree that it sounds a little wacko.

            There are some ways that my early fixation on the song can be explained: it foreshadows my love of storytelling, it’s got a catchy chugga-chugga western bounce to it, and the chorus lends itself to quick memorization. It’s a tale you can follow visually with plenty of unforgettable lines. I can still picture that song better than I can visualize scenes in some of my favorite books from those days, which is quite the feat being that it’s only two short verses and a repetitive refrain. It wasn’t until I got older and heard the song with different ears that I really understood why it was such an important part of my formative years.

            In preparing to write this essay, I went back to the recording and decided to transcribe the lyrics instead of taking the lazy way out and printing them from the Internet. It turned out to be quite the loving and serene process; it gave me a deeper appreciation for the way the story is vividly woven from the declaration of “a warm summer’s evening, on a train bound for nowhere” until “somewhere in the darkness, the Gambler, he broke even.” Manually writing out the lyrics was a strangely peaceful procedure and I was proud of three-year-old Kristin, knowing unconsciously that this was some good shit. Listening now, as I approach my thirtieth birthday, I’m not ashamed to admit that I got a little misty the first time through when the Gambler gave up the ghost after telling his traveling partner the “secret to survivin’.” (That’s capital ‘G’ Gambler, not just any gambler, mind you, especially not those douchebags playing poker on TV with the sunglasses. They wouldn’t survive a minute in the Gambler’s presence. I’m pretty sure he’d shoot them in their yella bellied, lily-livered faces. That there’s cheatin’, pardner.)

            It also made me realize that “The Gambler” is a treasure trove of sound advice. I mean, I’ve done a lot of boneheaded things in my life, but I remain mostly unscathed because of knowing when to hold ‘em, when to fold ‘em, when to walk away and when to run. It must have sunk into my subconscious and guided me without my waking knowledge. In all of my forays into varying forms of spirituality, nothing has ever made more sense to me or served me better than “…Every hand’s a winner and every hand’s a loser/and the best you can hope for is to die in your sleep.”

            Yes, it’s technically a pop song because of its success, which makes it more difficult to take it out of its mainstream hit context. Some may write it off as schmaltzy or preachy. Those people are stupid. Just for the record, I’ve never seen the movies based on my favorite song and I don’t intend to do so. From what I hear, it would ruin my sweet childhood memories, especially now that I’m old enough to understand what a foolhardy venture the films were. It’s bad enough that the last picture I saw of Kenny Rogers revealed that the plastic surgery he’s had makes him look as if he’s constantly in front of a very high velocity wind-machine.

            All that aside, I won’t ever forget the lessons that the Gambler planted in my young mind. For instance, if someone wants advice from me, I’m gonna need whiskey and a smoke before I say a word. I will be careful what I throw away and mindful of what I keep. Most importantly, I will never count my money while I’m sitting at the table. Apparently, there’s going to be time enough to do that when the dealing’s done.

 

Kristin Blank is the creator/author of the indie comic *Hate Your Friends*, the vocalist/lyricist of The Will Kills, and the promotional director/co-editor of The Cerebral Catalyst. She doesn't have room for any more slashes. In the past she made a living as a bullfighter and an apothecary, but she has settled on writing.

Naked, If I Want To – Moby Grape

I have this dream.  It’s a naked dream, yes, but not the classroom-lunchroom-office scenario you might imagine.  In those I usually have at least a semblance of underwear, but this dream is a disrobed, birthday suit, buck-naked nudie dream, the kind of dream they should make congratulatory cakes for.

It begins, like several of my dreams, in the basement of my childhood duplex, an unfinished, cobweb-ridden concrete room where I rollerskated to MC Hammer tapes and where, as I told Jennifer the neighbor girl, I was certain the apartment’s last tenant was buried with her poodle.  At the start of the dream I’m standing on the mossy steps to that basement.  They rise up out of the dark and emerge into the parking lot under a sad little crabapple tree.

Suddenly I know where I need to be: the field.  I leave my home, my mother, and my child-body behind, walking to the place “field” always means in my dreams: the old high school soccer field.  Because I was a nerdy, chubby type, I’d sit on the embankment behind our complex reading and pretending not to care as the high school boys ran laps in their cleats and tall socks.  Oh, but I watched!  To me these were men in the purest sense of the word: people older than me, with mysteriously-shaped calves, creatures who shouted things at each other and sweated and made a scene of disrupting the quiet central-Pennsylvania afternoon with their angry whistles and gleaming torsos.  I wasn’t sure if I wanted one, or wanted to be one.  Anyway, the dream.

From my house I walk (float) to the field, which is and isn’t itself.  As I get to the center, and yes it does seem that I arrive with a triumphant trumpet flourish, my clothes fly off—they simply blow off, leaving me naked and fully adult in the middle of a field in broad daylight, naked!

The horror?  Surprisingly, no.  Nothing happens.  I’m naked, but no audience has arrived to ridicule me for my substandard exercise regime, lackadaisical hygiene or general, glaring whiteness.  I’m utterly alone in this field, and I like it.

I cannot tell you why, exactly, this dream is so important to me when listening to Moby Grape’s fifty-one-second wonder, “Naked, If I Want To.”  Like anyone, I have plenty of naked experiences, variously humiliating, sexual and perverse, to draw upon.  But this funny little song, from the band’s debut Summer of Love album Moby Grape, can only remind me of an open, harmonious nudity I’ve seldom experienced in my waking life.

“Would you let me walk down your street, naked, if I want to?” 

A friend put this song on a mix she made me in the spring of 2005.  It was the anonymous track 15, and I recognized it only because I’d heard the Cat Power cover.  But dammit, Cat Power, not everything has to sound slow and haunting.  When I heard the original I realized I’d completely missed the point: this is a goofy folk song, a playful “interlude,” as someone called it, tacked on the end of the album’s first side like a punch line.  The song is simple: close poppy harmonies, acoustic guitar and barely-there drums.  But the trick of it is that its plaintive, almost cute requests turn tongue-in-cheek, and I can’t help but be reminded of the album’s cover, on which Don Stevenson is ever-so-quietly flipping the bird.  “Can I buy an amplifier on time?”  Jerry Miller asks.  “I ain’t got no money now, but I will pay you before I die.”  What a bunch of pretty-singing smartasses you are, Moby Grape.  If my naked dream were a reality, and if you weren’t all old and saggy by now, I’d invite you guys to join me in my bright, imaginary field.  If any of us knew how, we could play naked soccer.

 

Kelly Ramsey, when she is not eating cheese and forgetting to turn off the lights, co-edits the online literary magazine Hot Metal Bridge. Kelly also co-edits Invisible Cities at The New Yinzer.