Day and night, night and day, day and night, and on and on and on, interminable, what an awful, awful evening, what a awful day, what a terrible couple of months. Not even a scant scent of triumph in all this terrible time, in this dirty underhand little setup, and then,-
A Blue Diamond Shines in the Pigsty!
Jone Johnson sang to me on the radio while I drove and she looked down on me from concert posters as I parked the car under the second lamppost from the corner. The London Concerts. The Apollo, the twenty third and fourth.
The Virgin tour 2010. A month and a half in the UK. Small intimate venues. A Crystal White Rose, the CD. "La Dama Desnuda"(The Naked Lady), the song I am haunted by. Wrote it herself according to the radio.
Writes all her own stuff. She’s Spanish. I read it somewhere.*
It’s in her voice dancing the radio waves, the beautiful crystal clear sin of it all! Pure pleasure! That’s what gets to a person! That’s what gets to my person!
Those that shape taste have no desire to cultivate persons! Persons are a true nightmare of a complication. What they manipulate, what they demand and command, are people. They just adore “the people”. They just love dipping their grubby little fingers into that pie! The people pie! They feed the people on people pie!
Jone's no virgin. Jone no es virgen. There’s no virginity in her sweet smile. She's not even Jone. A stage name. She is not people pie! She is not of the people. There’s no virginity in her crystal clear eyes, just pure pleasure in the beautiful sin of the sound of her song and what that sound does to your person. That’s what gets to a person! That’s what gets to Jone’s persons, the crystal clear sin of it all!
What do I care if my interpretation is on the spot or not? It’s mine! If my premise is lived as real by enough persons, it is real in its beautiful crystal clear consequences,- the beautiful crystal clear sin of it all! The crystal sound and the crystal vision! Pure pleasure! Pure beauty! Pure sin! Pure Virgin, pure, real Jone Johnson.
Oh, by the way, thanks for the second hand inspiration, Mr Thomas!#
Pure pleasure! Pure beauty! Pure sin! Pure Jone Johnson.
That’s what gets to a person! That’s what gets to my person!
Teach me about virginity, show me Jone!
I pushed the lock button on the key card of my Renault and its lights blinked twice as it shut down and I felt a kind of warmth inside myself somewhere at half nine on a chilly October night, Friday the twenty second, downtown.
No, Jone no es virgen.... Can't be. It just isn't right. Please let her be....
I might just have to buy myself a ticket for the show!
I'm getting nervous, I need a drink.
Jone Johnson sings Lou Reed.
After having written this piece and going to two of her shows, I discovered that the key to getting the UK dates was the online success of a cracking cover version of a Lou Reed song, “A Sheltered Life”, from the CD “Rock and Roll Heart", 1976, recorded by Jone in late December 2009, a song on the playlist at the London shows.
Jone was backed on “A Sheltered Life”, and live, by the "Blue Roadsters",- Alba Johnson, upright electric bass, B. Sherpa, all wind instruments, Piru5j, percussion, The Visitation, lead and rhythm guitars and Victoria G, power bass guitar.
The London concerts were heart warming, very moving. Heartrending, in fact. Never to be forgotten.
# W. I. Thomas, an American sociologist.
