There's grit, then there's true grit, then there's Jon Wayne....

"The year was 1984. Ronald Reagan was running for reelection on a platform of peace, prosperity and "a new morning in America." That old lady on the Wendy's ad (who's gotta be pushing up daisies somewhere by now) was asking all summer, "Where's the beef?" Yuppies were to be found everywhere, wearing jogging suits at the mall and getting coked up at fraternity parties hosted by Rodney Dangerfield Even blacks had been turned into cute little yuppies like everybody else—remember the the Cosby kids and Urkel? And Michael Jackson had gotten his first nose-job.

It was altogether a much simpler time.

There was no Waco, no Oklahoma City, no 9-11. Sure the Iranians were chanting "Death to the Great Satan" but nobody took the towelheads seriously back then. The biggest threat to the world order was the debacle of "New Coke."

The music was simpler too.

Tipper Gore got her panties in a wad over Twisted Sister so Big Al's woman got to match wits with Dee Snider and Frank Zappa on national TV. Springsteen was into lifting weights. Rap music was Run-DMC.

There was no Death Row Records, no Shug Knight, no Puff Daddy (or even P-Diddy). There was no internet, no mp3s, no vocal tuners, no cross-eyed banjo-picking girl groups like dixie chicks spouting anti-american drivel for a fawning european audience.

There was, as Ronnie reminded us, a bright sun like a giant smiley-face rising across the fat blandness of the American landscape. Only if you looked twice there was blot. A tiny blot, but still a blot. And if you zoomed up close enough--ignoring the sun's blinding radiance--you could make out a form, a human form, part-troglodyte, maybe even a man. One thing was sure: he was a Texan. You could tell because he was wearing cowboy boots and a cowboy hat and a homemade-looking t-shirt that said "Take this Job and Shove it" even though it was obvious to all who looked that he had no job to shove. And he had on a pair of jeans that looked like they'd been washed in chickenshit, and he was mumbling to himself, something like "No go diggie dye."

The figure, of course, was Jon Wayne. And he too had a dream. He wanted to make a record, a vinyl record, the thing you play on a turntable. A vinyl record for the ages--one that people would be listening to for hundreds of years. And into the grooves of this vinyl record he would distill the chaos of his world, this Texas, a vast phantasmagoria of mules, horses, trucks, funerals, cyclones, jailcells, cheap wine and cheaper whiskey. And he found bandmates Jimbo, Ernest Bovine, and Timmy Turlock (to replace the institutionalized Billy Bob) willing to share in his journey.

And he stuck to his dream and he did make his record. And strangely enough, he found a record label willing to press it and distribute it. Of course there were compromises--the kind that come between the artist and his art. The suits at the label were full of suggestions:

"Turn the goddamned drums down."

"Is he speaking English?"

"Do you guys know what a key is?"

"There’s a hooker in the control room—says one of you bast*&ds stole her teet."

"I'm not recording anything else until that crazy motherfecker puts the gun down!"

Suffice it to say, the sessions which produced Texas Funeral (Cargo Records, 1984) were legendary. And though much of the magic of those sessions made it onto vinyl, much did not. It was too much reality for one disk. It was too much reality for 1984.

Fast forward to 2000. Like Brian Wilson who dreamed of making Pet Sounds the perfect album, Jon Wayne still hearkens to revisit his masterpiece. He spends three years in a variety of tiny studios strung along California's Central Valley, honing, refining, turning the drums up. But in the meantime legal situations arise--creating obstacles to the realization of his "beautiful dream." A simple drunk and disorderly charge in Modesto turns into an 11 month 29 day stretch in Chino when coupled with outstanding warrants for indecent exposure, animal cruelty and Barstewardy. And then there's that fourteen year old Guatemalan girl who claimed she was sixteen when she was actually twelve. Luckily the INS took care of that one.

But better not to dwell on the artist's life, the turmoil out of which he creates his art. It is the art itself which survives. By the Spring of 2003, "Mr. Egyptian," the centerpiece of the breakthrough Texas Funeral, has been remixed. Jon has finally been able to realize his vision fully--to get the disturbing sounds from his head, full of feedback, maniacal two-beat and paranoid schizophrenic monkeychatter, onto record. It is his magnum opus. It is ready for public release. But is the public finally ready for it?

As Jon puts it, "I don't give a good goddamn , all I know's everybody's made their fecking two cents off this **** but me!"

He wanders off mumbling something about his gums hurting and needing to score some crank. He is an American Master--like Louis Armstrong, Frank Lloyd Wright, T.S. Eliot. And like the greatest artists, he has left his mark on the civilization, he has added to the language itself, giving us an insight into ourselves as a people and a nation."

And he's back!!!!