Really nothing to get hung about...

I loved the Beatles; they had an adventurous spirit did the lads. They were so adventurous that they even sang songs about the weather- at least in a metaphoric sense - So, loving the weather as I do, I dug up a favorite from the boys that just fits the bill for a rainy day in the deep south.



I rarely make a link to Wikipedia, but this one concerning the song Rain is as good an article as any. I've probably said here before that I found the smacked up Yoko worshipping Lennon to be a little hard to take. Looking back, I think he was a bit of a phony baloney (sometimes). Sure John, let's give peace a chance and imagine there's no Heaven; but would not the end result of that prescription be slavery and hopelessness? Actually, I've come to believe that a lot of Lennon's pontifications were the guilt trip induced ramblings of guy who couldn't believe his luck. But it's not my intention to pile on John. He was a soulful singer and he was, after all, one of the Beatles. I particularly loved his work on The Beatles cover of Mr. Postman - and all of the Second Album.

Snow Queen of Texas

Oh yeah, we're getting into dangerously low pulse territory here.

I'm sure John, Michelle, Denny and Cass weren't strictly lude and weed types, but they did some pretty mellow stuff. The cover of People Like Us shows just how glassy eyed the Mamas and Papas had become...and today's selection was surely a product of those sessions. Be that as it may, Snow Queen of Texas has a special place in my musical heritage. The boys and me (Peace, Wilder, T. Durham, Reid, etc) used to get together in my Augusta Road apartment and sing like drunken fools to the M&P's; and Snow Queen became a favorite of ours...and most likely cause for my neighbors to roll their eyes and turn up the TV.

The first time I heard Snow Queen was on a local AM radio station (WFBC to be exact). The DJ for that station was a local TV/weatherman/kids show/radio guy name Monty Dupree. Thinking back, I doubt if Mr. Monty was hip to the obvious drug references in SQOT; he was, after all, a pretty square peg. I think, like me, he just dug the song. He may have figured it out if he had bothered looking at the Album cover that depicted the M&P's in various altered states of mind. You would think the lyrics would have been a dead giveaway:

Snow Queen of Texas
Left Paris in a cloud of smoke
They say she may be beaten
But I say that shes not broke
She's living in a cool green farmhouse
If you go to Houston, be quiet as mouse

In any event, when Denny Doherty died last year, I couldn't help but think back to my living room in 1984, stereo turned up considerably past neighborly consideration, and Peace styling out Denny's smooth baritone:

She's living a fairytale

Mending her heart (ooh, ooh, Deborah forever)

That's a good motto

For some junk man's cart

For the record, Peace can do a mean Johnny Cash as well. He'd have us rolling on the floor with his rendition of A Boy Named Sue.

The Mamas and Papas Snow Queen of Texas

Sha na na na na na na na na it'll be alright

In my ever increasing lurch toward the hills and hollows of the mellow lands, I give you BJ Thomas. I saw BJ in Greenville, South Carolina circa 1972. Every blue haired old lady there waited breathlessly on Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head which was made famous in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (remember the bicycle scene with Paul Newman and Katharine Ross). In those days BJ was as well known for his various substance abuses as for his awesome baritone voice; and I suspect he was pretty buzzed at the beginning of the show. Thankfully, that night he sobered up in time to perform a haunting rendition of Rock and Roll Lullaby, which is what I remember most about the evening. I stood with the the blue haired old ladies and cheered. 35+ years later T. Durham and I saw BJ again at the Newberry Opera House...and Rock and Roll Lullaby still sounds as sweet as it did back in 1972. Now I haven't attained blue haired old lady status...yet, but I did give a slightly arthritic standing ovation as the last notes of RARL drifted through the opera house balconies.

I can hear you mama,

my, my, my my mama.

Nothing moves my soul

like the sound of a good old

rock and roll lullabye

Laughter in the Rain

After two of the driest years in recent memory, I'm happy to report that the Piedmont section of South Carolina is finally getting some rain. Thankfully, the lake are filling back up and the grass is greening up nicely. And speaking of rain...

Some years ago (33 to be exact), fellow MTH author Larry Reid and myself made the short drive up to Charlotte NC to see the old piano pounder Neil Sedaka. At that time, The Captain and Tenile had a mega hit with one of Neil's tunes, Love will Keep Us Together...and Neil himself had reemerged from his early rock and roll days to once again hit the charts. Teaming up with Elton John he released the bouncy hit Bad Blood...which he performed that day in Charlotte with two gorgeous blonds instead of EJ. Definitely better on the eyes. But the song that brought the house down was Laughter in the Rain.

A movement is afoot to get Neil into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I can think of several inductees right off the top of my head that haven't had the impact on popular music that Neil Sedaka has had. Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen, Calendar Girl, and Breaking up Is Hard To Do are just a few of Neil's hits. But none as sweet and melodic as LITR. If paragons of music such as The Sex Pistols are in the HOF, then Neil Sedaka should be in there no questions asked.

Monday Musical Interlude

When visiting my Aunt Velma, cousin Ricky would let me listen to his records while my parents and various aunts and uncles played Set Back in the dining room. "You bored buddy? After I leave you can go to my room and listen to my stereo. Be careful with my records, don't scratch em' up". So, after cousin Ricky split for places unknown, I'd wander back to his room and peruse his collection. Iron Butterfly, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young (Deja Vu), The Who (Live at Leeds), Smokey Robinson, and James Taylor to name a few. I always like the long haired, freaky, married to Carly Simon, James Taylor. Sweet Baby James had just been released and the AM radio stations played the hauntingly beautiful Fire and Rain frequently. I heard the song this morning as I took my daughter to school. It took me back to 1970 and the uncertain days of becoming a teenager. Sadly, Fire and Rain also reminds me that about a year later, in the summer of 1971, cousin Ricky died in a shoot out at an apartment complex. RIP Ricky. This one is for you.

It's Rock and Roll Monday!

Chuck at CTR put up a bunch of old geezers (a couple of them dead now) scrubbing one off circa the 90's and it got me to thinking about old Roy. Here is one of my favorites. Enjoy!

Box Painted Blue

My friend Bonnee' is a singer-songwriter, and a good one at that! In the intervening years between her personal hardships, Bonnie was led to write and record a slew of songs which are inspired, to say the least. Living near Nashville, good musicians were pretty easy to find, and Bonnee' and her producer found the right combination of soul, gospel and blues players to carry out her vision of the music. The result is "The Eyes I Cannot See" (c1996 Bonnee'music). The songs are a mix of blues, 'jukin', feel-good blues, gospel and ballads, and she performs them with an energy which has to be sent from above. The CD opener "Jesus, He's a friend of mine" hits you in the gut right from the start and let's you know that this is no typical gospel album.
"Catch Me when I fall" features a wall of sound usually not heard in this genre', and the title track shows a softer side of Bonnee' which draws you in and makes you sigh.
If these songs seem highly personal in nature, it's because they are. Bonnee' has lived these songs and the experience comes through in the beautiful "Box Painted Blue", my favorite from the album.
"Box Painted Blue" is a timeless number and will be the first from the album to go to video. Bonnee' and I have decided to create a music video based on our shared vision of this beautiful number and pre-production begins in a couple of weeks. We'll be filming around the Nashville area, the spectacular Tennessee mountains, and maybe a couple of South Carolina locations.
Stay tuned as we embark on this first project...we'll keep you posted!

The Worst Songs in the History of Mankind Part 2

It seems I've been taken to task for having the audacity to include Escape-The Pina Colada Song as one of Humankind's worst efforts (notice the gender non specificity). An E-mailer informed me that she "Loved the Pina Colada Song" and went as far as to question my IQ and heredity by calling me a "stupid bastard". As I stated at the beginning of my broadside, to each his (or her) own poison. And despite the rather unfriendly tone of "Rita" the e-mailer, I remained unmoved. E-TPCS still stinks.

Which moves us forward in search of other stinkers perpetrated on the popular music listening public. Brooke over at Paleo Con Command Center submitted the perfectly terrible MacArthur Park, which I am certain is playing over the speakers of Hell as we speak (both versions-Richard Harris and Donna Summer in a loop); however, Dave Barry eviscerated this mindless Jimmy Webb tune years ago. So, I won't revive it just to slaughter it again...though it is tempting.

Instead, we search for new whipping boys from the easy pickin's of pop music . Today I sharpen the knife for one of my all time favorite awful songs: Come on Eileen by Dexy's Midnight Runners. This song is soooo bad that it is rumored to be one of the songs that the CIA blares over the speakers in which to torture their captives. If the captives are Muslim, it couldn't be much worse than the call for prayer...but I digress.

Come on Eileen assaulted it's first eardrums back in 1982 during the salad days of MTV . It can safely be asserted that the half starved images of Dexy's Midnight Runners did little to help over come the sheer dreadfulness of Come On Eileen. As for the stick people that made up DMR; according to that fount of flawless information, Wikepedia, the Dexy in Dexy's Midnight Runners refers to Dexedrine, a favorite amphetamine of the group's founding member Kevin Rowland. If you had the misfortune to actually see the video version of COE, you couldn't help but notice that the band members were a scrawny bunch. The crank'll do that to ya bloke!

And as warbled as the vocals are, the lyrics are even more esoteric. The British bards have nothing to be concerned about:

Come on Eileen, I swear (well he means)
At this moment you mean everything,
With you in that dress my thoughts I confess verge on dirty
Ah come on Eileen.

Make no mistake, COE is finger nails on the black board annoying. And while I have much affection for the Mother land, as does in house post-meister Larry Reid, Dexy and the lads are commodities that would have been better left in the Kingdom. I'm all for trans-Atlantic relationships, free trade and the like, but I'd have just as soon skipped the trauma of hearing this mush mouthed import. I've heard that if you play it backwards you hear a cockney voice rasping "this song sux".

Things I'd rather do other than hear Come on Eileen ever again: wake up next to Helen Thomas and face the harsh memories of what I may have done.

For the brave at heart here it is:

Traces

In the never ending attempt to relive my youth, I give you Traces. Since I've "found" my lounge groove, I thought this Dennis Yost and the Classics IV song would be just the ticket. It encompasses everything a broken hearted lizard pining for the past could possibly need: It has a weepy cat with lots of romantic flotsam and jetsam floating about, a sweet melody, a great sax solo, and an excellent vocal by Dennis Yost. Can't you visualize a leisure suited, side burned, bloke nursing his fifth rum and coke, sniffing away tears just as the horn intro of Traces gives way to Dennis Yost?

Faded photograph
Covered now with lines and creases
Tickets torn in half
Memories in bits and pieces

DY and the C-IV began as a Jacksonville club band. They headed to Atlanta to take advantage of the larger talent pool and ultimately released several chart worthy songs including Spooky, Stormy, and Traces. Original guitarist of the C-IV, J.R. Cobb, said this about the band in a Mix Magazine article:

“We were just a bar band that got lucky and got a record deal! We'd play rock 'n' roll in clubs, and the owners would tell us that we had to learn ‘Misty’ or ‘Fly Me to the Moon.’ Those standards worked their way into our playing and writing, and became part of the Classics IV sound.”

Moreover, Traces was recorded just as the industry was moving from 4 to 8 track recording and was released during a period that featured the soaring guitar work of rock luminaries such as Jimi Hendrix and Pete Townshend. That this somber tune would find an audience surprised the writer/producer of the song, Buddy Buie and Cobb as well:

“Me and Buddy would sit around and try to write a standard,” says Cobb, “We were overtly trying to write a ‘legitimate’ song. We had no idea it was going to be a Number 2 hit record — we were astounded! It was a cocktail kind of music; we knew that.”

Meanwhile, now that every seat within ten feet of him is empty, Mr lonely heart is boring the bartender; and the crying jag intensifies as Dennis Yost continues his inventory of misery.

Ribbons from her hair,
souvenirs of days together,
the ring she used to wear,
pages from an old love letter.

J.R. Cobb would leave the C-IV shortly after Traces only to reappear a few years later with his new band-and totally different sound- The Atlanta Rhythm Section. Dennis Yost continued to tour the clubs and lounges until being seriously injured in a 2006 car accident. According to the Classics IV website, Yost has recovered from the injuries, and throat surgery as well, and has returned to crooning in his unmistakable baritone.

I close my eyes
and say a prayer
that in her heart she'll find
a trace of love still there... somewhere.

Traces of hope in the night
that she'll come back and dry
these traces of tears from my eyes.

The little joint will be closing down any minute now and the bartender pats the weepy fellow on the shoulder, places a cup of coffee in front of him and collects the empty glass from his last rum and coke. "Hey bud, can I call you a cab"? It was the first words the lizard had heard since somebody played Traces on the Jukebox 5 hours ago.

Its that kind of song.

Source Material:





Mix Magazine

Classics IV

It's Official: I'm a lounge lizard.

No, I haven't purchased a convertible or acquired a 25 year old girl friend; and I haven't taken to haunting the Manor like I did in those young, free, nocturnal days of yore when Ridgeway and me would "crutch" our way out there and hang out till the naked eye of 4 AM. Yes, I said "crutch". We both were sporting a plaster cast. As Ridgeway used to tell curious patrons, "same loan shark".

No, my lounge interest are not of the prurient nature. Unless, you consider jazzy, swing music a lascivious pursuit. Up until now, my interest in music was a lot like most everybody among the 50 something generation; we cut our teeth on rock and roll. We were hip to Frankie and Dean and Bing; it was our parent's music, but we had something new and the standards of the big band era eventually fell from our catalogues.

My re-awakening happened recently. May 14 2008 marked the tenth anniversary of the death of Frank Sinatra. Turner Classic Movies celebrated the event by declaring it Frank Sinatra Month. Interspersed among the Sinatra movies were 4 concerts, one each Sunday evening. I happened to catch the first one...and I was hooked. Not just by Frank's singing, that was fabulous, but by the wall of sound produced by the Nelson Riddle Orchestra. I had never heard it quite that way before.

I casually mentioned my "discovery" to my Cousin Robbie Durham. We routinely chat on Robbie's evening commute from Fort Mill to Huntersville. A few days later in the mail I received 4 CD's. 2 were of Frank Sinatra: a man and his music, one was Louis Armstrong performing various solo efforts and duets with Ella Fitzgerald, Dean Martin and the like. And the forth one was a CD called Swingin Singles: Cocktail Mix Volume III. Good ol' Robbie.

CMV III is a compilation of brassy, ballsy songs that range from Della Reese's rendition of The Lady is a Tramp to Sarah Vaughn's scorching version of One Mint Julep. Instrumentals include a charged up version of the 60's hit, Tequila and a Henry Mancini arrangement called Something for Cat. Also appearing on this swinging collection is Mel Torme, Louis and Ella, Peggy Lee, Rosemary Clooney, Sammy Davis Jr and various others.

So, it is official, I've turned into a lounge lizard. And the best part is that I'm only getting started. A Little Frank, a little Ella and I'm off to discover the brave new world outside of Beatleland.

Somebody bring me a Glendfiddich on the rocks.

Henry Mancini- Something for Cat

Diana Dors- Come by Sunday

Sinatra- Let Me Try Again

Indiana Wants Me

We can only marvel at the mind of the man. We were getting ready for a little croquet action and listening to some satellite radio when the familiar siren intro of Indiana Wants Me began. Without batting an eye Reid blurts out, “R. Dean Taylor”. Perhaps a little scary that the ol’ boy would recall Taylor’s name. IWM was a top ten hit in 1970, but it was a one shot deal; a one hit wonder in an era that produced them with regularity. But you know, Reid just seems to know these things. I wouldn't be surprised if he knew Andy Kim's astrological sign. In the parlance of today, I'm just saying...


Taylor himself took an unusual path to semi-stardom. A Canadian white boy, he signed with Motown in the early 1960’s, inking up with song writing luminaries Brian Holland and Lamont Dozier. The Holland, Dozier, Holland team became responsible for many of the great Hit City USA tunes of the day. Taylor, as a writer/artist with Motown, co-wrote several songs under that label, the most famous of those being The Supremes hit, Love Child . Still, up to that point, Taylor had enjoyed very little success outside Canada and the Detroit area. But when Indiana Wants Me hit number 5 on the Billboard charts in 1970, Taylor at last received some national exposure. Enough, at least, that thirty eight years later, grown men batting about little wooden balls on a scorched South Carolina lawn still recognize the opening bars of IWM.

After the siren and an emotionally mood setting bar of ooo, ooo, ooo’s comes Taylor’s chorused plea:

Indiana wants me
Lord, I can't go back there
Indiana wants me
Lord, I can't go back there
I wish I had you to talk to

Here we have love, yes that tired, old, sway-backed horse; but life and death drama as well. The guy is obviously on the lam and the situation is coming to a head.

If a man ever needed dyin', he did
No one had the right to say what he said about you
And it's so cold and lonely here without you
Out there, the law's a-comin'
I'm scared and so tired of runnin'

So, it appears the one Indiana wants has iced a dude for having the unmitigated audacity to merely say something derogatory about his love interest. Perhaps a little extreme, but Taylor‘s excellent rendition makes vigilante justice seem totally acceptable. Taylor tells us just enough: Life on the run has deteriorated into sirens, megaphones and a hastily written love letter somewhere out on the Hoosier plain. He did it, he admits it and now the county mounties are closing in. Perhaps chivalry is not dead, but this guy soon could be.

I hope this letter finds its way to you
Forgive me, love, for the shame I put you through and all the tears
Hang on, love, to the memories of those happy years
Red lights are flashin' around me
Yeah, love, it looks like they found me

On his website, Taylor claims to have written IWM after seeing Bonnie and Clyde. Maybe so; but my version of this song imagines our over-reactive fugitive as a beer swilling, lucky strike smoking, boiler maker with three ex wives hounding him for support; and all of them pissed that he has shacked up with a stripper and fathered another damn kid. Oh well, maybe Taylor’s mob fantasy is more romantic, but something had to get him to this lowly place. Of course, most murders aren’t all that romantic and the gory details usually include the perp, moments after capture, spitting into a local news camera some version of R Dean Taylor‘s clarion call, “He needed killing”!

Indiana wants me
Lord, I can't go back there
Indiana wants me
Lord, I can't go back there

(spoken as the last lines are sung)
This is the police. You are surrounded. Give yourself up.
This is the police. Give yourself up. You are surrounded.

Hearing R. Dean Taylor’s Indiana Wants Me may have been a bit of foreshadowing for Reid’s and Wilder’s afternoon croquet fortunes. I didn't actually say “give yourself up, you are surrounded", but, as it turned out, I could have.


R. Dean Taylor's website.
You Tube version of I.W.M.

Of flea markets and Elvis impersonators

Let me tell you about our flea market days. There we were, Peace and your humble narrator, hawking costume jewelry and people watching. Man, the people; let me tell you about a few of them. I’ll start with the landlords of the place, Tina and Vic. Tina first. Tina was a little Vietnamese woman of about forty and maybe a hundred pounds soaking wet. On our first day there I asked her how long she had been in the states and she replied, “fie year”. I then asked her if she ever got home sick for the rice paddies of Vietnam (wise ass like). She flashed me a quick glance and said, “course not, I like freedom”. Great answer. Vic on the other hand had none of Tina’s grateful immigrant charm. He was a tall, flaccid guy with one of the most intense Elvis infatuations I’ve ever seen. The flea market ultimately crashed and burned just after Vic’s “Elvis” promotion.

Memories
Pressed between the pages of my mind

One day, the relative tranquility of the market was shattered by Vic tear-assing between the tables, red faced and bellowing, “who does the van parked in the fire lane belong to!!? “That vehicle needs to be moved nowww!” Yes, he hung the OWWW out there for a while. It was too much for Peace and me. We looked at each other and began howling with laughter. Vic paused from his systolic smashing tirade to fetch us a nasty look. There is nothing in the world funnier than someone losing their mind over something as trivial as an a carelessly parked van. At that moment, with veins protruding and spittle ejecting, old Vic may have looked a lot like the king himself in those final moments on his Graceland throne.

On a good day the isles would be filled with shoppers of various shapes, sizes, creeds colors, odors and afflictions. Peace liked to muse that they came to the FM in every conceivable way: crutching, crawling, gimping, limping, rolling, and trolling. They came pierced too: nipples, navels, nostrils, tongues and who knows where else. And don‘t forget the tats: on arms, legs and derrieres, mostly indescribable and usually illegible. After a few weeks of the FM, I wondered if there was anyone left in the world without a tongue bob, tattoo or both.

Our brother and sister vendors were an intriguing cross section of humanity. There was Mildred who sold toys. She loved to involve anyone who would listen in her “disappointment” concerning her son’s affection for a busty black woman. In her exclamations, she paused using the “N” word only long enough to regroup and add other adjectives to illustrate her displeasure at the sainted son’s arrangement. I would nod, all the time thinking that the black chick was the one getting the short end of the stick. In a game of guess who’s coming to dinner, I visualized her parents reaching for the arsenic at their first sight of the snaggle toothed Casper look-alike, arm in arm with their Nubian princess daughter.

Then there was the old guy that sold junk of every grimy type. He became affectionately known to us as “Fred”. One day Peace and I watched in abject horror as a man bought a mattress from “Fred” that had one of the nastiest brown stains on it that either of us had ever seen. One can only fathom the origins of that grungy ectoplasm. It could have been afterbirth or, for that matter, after death. I bet the guy is still sleeping on that bed to this day; snoozing peacefully while, just on the other side of his mattress, a serial killer’s DNA remains hidden from detection. Well, I assume he sleeps on the non-stain side of the mattress.

I suppose we fit in pretty well in that potpourri of misfits and miscreants that made up the market; most of us claiming innumerable aches, pains and afflictions. There was me: widowed,
unemployed and floating; capable of little more than stringing beads together for tattered flea market snuff queens. And Peace: divorced, depressed and disgusted; just hanging on for better
days. But despite our travails, we never stopped laughing at ourselves, and we damn sure didn’t stop laughing at our fellow flea marketeers. The place was ripe for a couple of observant vagabonds such as ourselves.

As I said, jewelry was our game and we were doing a bang up business. After we had been in business a month or so, our supplier, my cousin Ken, talked me into making personalized accessories such as bracelets, anklets and necklaces-on site while the customer waited. Ken warned me that in the on site manufacturing game you had to “take the bad with the good”.
First, the good: On my first day with the newly acquired bead kit, I hung up a sign advertising my craft and instantly a shapely woman, probably in her early twenties, stopped by and asked if I made ankle bracelets. Absolutely, I replied. Within minutes I had her sitting in my booth with her shapely gam hiked up on my chair for some strategic measurement. Every eye in the place found its jealous gaze looking my way. After I finished making her accoutrement, she plopped her foot up on my chair once again and asked with perfect charm, “do you mind putting it on for me?” Who was I to refuse.

The bad: Same scenario, only this time the ham hock was attached to a woman that was pushing a deuce and quarter. To make matters infinitely worse, that veritable stump hadn’t seen a can of Nair or a Lady Schick in many a moon. Add to that dejection, the smell that emanated from a still undetermined anatomy part was blinding. Well, needless to say, the same crowd of gawkers were on hand for this austere performance. In moments such as these, witnesses seemed to show up like bounced checks. Owing to the general tenor of our clientele, I rarely encountered exhibit A; long, smooth and shapely; but more often was visited by exhibit B; short, fat and hairy. Ken was right. I had to take the good with the bad and bad was winning big time.

We’re caught in a trap
I can’t walk out
Because I love you too much baby

So the summer of 2001 was the year of the flea. And as I hinted earlier, the promotional efforts of the building manager would prove to be the swan song of the enterprise. Our boy Vic the red faced, blow-hard, anal retentive, Presley-file came up with the brilliant idea to host an Elvis impersonator’s extravaganza in the parking lot (One of the very worst sales days we ever had). Among the luminaries there that fated day was a short, fat Elvis, a tall, thin Elvis, and a lisping Elvis who claimed to operate an Elvis museum in the absolute middle-of-nowhere Georgia, featuring a wart allegedly belonging to the king of rock and roll himself. He claimed to have the royal verruca stashed in a jar of formaldehyde for safe keeping. “You can’t be too careful”, he said with a slight curl of the lip.

Well, there is always more to the story. There were the battered flea market princesses that invariably congregated to the soothing sounds of Peace’s deep, resonate voice. He should have charged them for the countless hours he sat patiently listening to their trials, tribulations and come-on‘s, and for the sage advice he imparted in his Barry White style. He became the father confessor for many of the old gals that worked or shopped there. They sought him out. All peace lacked was a couch; he had them hypnotized with his baritone. Now, they would exchange pleasantries with me: how’s the weather and the like, but with Peace they’d bear their souls and air their grievances. Time and again I overheard comments like “I could listen to you talk all day…or night.” Who knows what kind of action the old dog could have had…or may have gotten from our plunge into the abnormal subculture of the flea market. It’s a shame we had to give it all up and get real jobs.