Something new

Didn't want anyone to feel cheated by the old catalog, so I fooled around thursday night and recorded something new. Short and sweet.

Joe Torre's Last Press Conference

I had no idea when this song came to be that blogging limitations would help cement the idea.

As far as I know, the only way to host an .MP3 is to create a movie of the file by using an application called Windows Movie Maker. See you add the song, choose a picture, and then create a movie. Blogger will host .MP4 not .MP3. So that is what Ill do.

EXPLANATION:

As I was watching the 2007 MLB Playoffs, I knew, like the rest of the sporting world, it was do or die for Joe Torre. Win the World Series, keep your job...anything less, you are fired. I could also see the response he had as not just a coach but as a man. We all know it is a what-have-you-done-for-me-lately world, but that doesn't make it any easier to deal with does it? Just cause we know something to be true doesn't make it fun. Joe was dealing with what I thought was an irrational situation while trying to maintain his dignity. Not easy.

Anyway, as the Yankees lost and were eliminated, I had this feeling that it was his last game as a coach. Not that I care about the Yankees or the well being of the team, but something was very real about the emotion Joe expressed that day. And as Joe took the podium for his last press conference, (which I thought to be his final act of his career and feel slightly cheated that he is coaching again) this song was written:

SONG:





NOTES:

Musically, you may notice the gradual speeding up in tempo. This comes from not being very good and not using a metronome.

Also, the only image from the actual press conference I was watching is the next to last with the red background.

A change of format

From now on, this is a music blog. Not about music, but a blog with songs and or song sketches. There will be mostly three sources for the music:

1. Me
2. Me and some friends playing acoustic
3. Me and some friends playing electric


So let's start this thing. One thing to keep in mind is that as a writer, I don't really complete songs or give them titles. I like to keep my art alive by not holding to concrete form, but just writing in the moment and mixing the collective influence.

So maybe that's just a bunch of crap words for saying I am lazy and, as some people like to say (who read books about this kind of thing) a classic commitment phobe.

Here is a song sketch that I wrote sometime ago, maybe 2000? I think I wrote it in Montana at my Geologic Field Camp next to a campfire late at night and fairly drunk.





Sound quality may not be good, so you might need headphones...

Any comments would be welcomed. I have quite a backlog of songs, so I will be posting frequently so if you like one or hate another, let me know.

Measurement point for frequency

Give me a minute...









..





........we're in the trough.




I think the Internet is an obsessive-compulsive activity. GLAZE. Deer. Headlights. I mean, isn't there five or six websites you call the cycle? Glance, nod, check, dismiss. It's like a book you are reading, and the chapters change, only the lesson is the same.

I'm rambling. I am disappointed with my ability to diversify my surf. I'm stuck. Got a cool site? Hook me up, yo.

I mean, I once in a while throw in a random, discover something new, get into it, then bail..............yes, not only is that the description of my love life, but my entire life. All is conserved.


Ok, since I am posting with extreme cathartic bias, here is an old poem I wrote on a lonely, lonely day. Warning: This is so high school.

A whole needs splitting
Chaotic rhythms need mending
It isn't the end or beginning
just an elastic stretching
---> Rhyming looses my meaning

Think of a pattern.

Is it static?
Does it need attention?
Are the edges crisp,
Or woven in linen

If it moves, does it vary?
Appearing straight
In line
With no derivation?

Is there a stop-start-finish?
Perhaps a faux-granite
Slung over a chipboard mattress.

Should it be omni-present?
Existing without from
But deadly in its limits.

Could it tackle?
Kill the lesser seen
Disable, silence, crumble, and wean?

Should I wrap it
Heart-felt and sewn?
Mail it on the fourth


Do I own it, give it, feel it, or learn it?
Could it feed me, do I pay it?


Will it loose its focus,
Only to regain it?
Appearing weak
With marks that dictate impatience?
Wavering lines that allude to consternation?

Looks that suggest movement
Subtle but invasive-

It sure does look pretty.
I am an addict to its function
Spun-out as a result.

MOVE. COME ON.

Sonic Colonic (1 of 2)

Part I: Meet the Band

My band will blow your moist panties clear off. You heard me. Don’t even come to the show if you don’t want to be assaulted with the sonic force that is….’Jack Toffleday and the Busted 3’. Well that is our working title anyway. We believe and invested heavily in innuendo. Or you might say, “In your end ho”, which is the title of one of our songs. Our first album, “Splatter Zone”, is pretty much done and ready to be pressed, we are just having some artistic differences with our label concerning the album cover.

How loud you ask? We play a mix of very loud or very fucking loud.

Our drummer, who I will call “Drums”, has a set-up that would make any 80’s butt-hair rocker jealous. Double bass drums, six toms, seven crashes, high hat, snare, those wind chimey things, and of course, a cow bell. He uses a mic on all his drums, just so he can be louder if he needs to. Our bass player, who I will call “Bass”, could join Rush on a moments notice. He drops bombs with 200 watts through a 4x12 bass speaker cabinet.

Also, we have another guitar player, who I will call “Nigel”. Nigel’s 100 watt head, and arsenal of pedals, sizzles through a 4x12 Marshall half-stack that only goes to 10….but trust me, this rig means business. We also have a guy who blows the sweet sounds on old sax-a-ma-phone. I will call him “Getz”. Getz can never hear his instrument when he plays. So he blows as hard as he can for as long as he can, and then tries not to pass out. How is supposed to be heard in the mix? Turning up his microphone to ear-splitting levels seems to be the only answer. Because there is no damn way Drums, Bass or Nigel is gonna turn down. Trust me. Me and Getz have tried. That dog just won’t hunt. They play with the god-given American right of a space shuttle launch. And they like it that way.

For those of you not in the business, our musical gear is enough to fill Key Arena without a lick of trouble at all. And then there is me. How many watts do I usually play my guitar through? 8 tiny little watts. 8 watts into a 1x12. That is it. That is all I have ever needed until this band. But that amp is now dead. The band ate it. It tried to keep the pace but then “rattle-rattle-chatter-clatter-boom-click-clang”….gone. Ok, you get the point. WE ARE LOUD.

For further proof, please see this hearing damage chart developed by the Scientific Community:

The music? The music is good. It rocks. It sways. It will duck, dodge, grab, and release without hesitation. Not overtly, but simply complicated tight changes that reside in weird time signatures. I have to say, it really is fun to be in a band again. I need the release. If I had to sum up our genre it would best described as the love child of an Acid-Metal-Jazz- Rush-Led Zep-Rare Earth orgy. Get it? One of these days I will link a sound file.

We play in a smelly basement practice space that we share with the brother of Jimi Hendrix. Not an important fact, but for some reason this is first thing people say when describing us. Celebrity is so powerful in the mind that just being associated with a non-celebrity who is associated with a dead celebrity is like, wow, man.

Second thing you must know is that Drums has the poorest, worstest, baddest communication skills seemingly to ever take on human form. And a complete misunderstanding of what you and I, dear reader, call reality. These are two critical points you must remember, because Drums was the only point of contact for the upcoming series of events to be detailed in Part II. However, God bless his good intentions, for he is the ultimate optimist. Oh, the first thing to know is that we play at two volumes, loud and very fucking loud. Did I mention that?

So you got the idea? What would you expect if we should up with all our gear at your party? A nice sonic kick in the teeth, right?

Stay tuned my friend for this is only the setup for Part II: Curtain Call, which will depict the events that took place on Saturday, October 20^th, 2007, at the Montlake Community Center, Seattle, WA….Our first show.

Ask and yea shall be turned away......

I guess you heard about my trip to Phoenix? Yeah, I pretty much fell off the blog-o-wagon there for a minute…..my mind went blank, my body numb, a brown haze of nothingness paralyzed and mystified me all at once…I must have driven close to one of those Game Stores right when a 10year old kid cast a spell of ‘infinitus comas’ in a Magic the Gathering game…sure the kid was frustrated because the spell missed by a mile, but did he ever wonder where the stray bullet/spell landed…well now he knows. Right here. Not so much here…but here.


Either that or I was poisoned in Phoenix…..that’s it!

While spending a weekend “in country” trying to get my fortnightly craving of In and Out, drinking as many free iced concoctions Paper Tiger* and her family would buy me, swimming in toxic levels of chlorine, and wondering why no one else was naked and throwing random items at our condo from the well-past-closed pool, I was defenseless. Mr. Bucket took his opportunity and crippled his foe…..Oh sure, he is complaining on his site for lack of competition, but what would you expect? After dosing me with anti-blog-bugs in the desert, ala Jim Morrison, Mr. Bucket waged his assault of # blogs in the last month. For shame. For shame.
The Inter-Council of Blog-Undoing-Thoughts-Theories-and-Sanctions is on notice my friend.

But what did you expect from a manic-depressive, ego-centric, Debbie-downer, paranoid-delusional writer? Prolific accounts of a prolific nature? Come on now, if it is repetitious foam from the mouth you want, I think I still have some love letters from high school, or excerpts from a diary that read like a Christmas list.

So what have I been doing for the last month? I don’t want to give it all away at once, but lets just say everything is par for the course. And by par for the course, I mean the course is Hell, and par is Dante’s lost circle. Right. Example? Sure, why not.

I decided that I needed to get some help. We have a pretty nice Employee Assistance Program, or E.A.P., at work, so I thought to myself…Self, I said, maybe you could benefit from a fresh perspective. And maybe, just maybe, your friends would like to hear about something other than the usual “the hole of my life just keeps getting bigger, I mean I dig, and dig, and dig, but for some reason it just keeps getting bigger, and I don’t understand” speech. But keep in mind, this was a pretty big step for me. Four years in the making. Not that I am so fatalistic.................

The E.A.P. has a list of ‘medal, the rapists’…I mean, mental therapists, so I choose one at random, or at least I thought it was random. I picked one that looked appealing because she practiced in the area, two blocks from my house, and for some reason, I was more comfortable seeing a woman (maybe it stems from the ‘ol turn and cough doctor reflex). Her name was listed as “Elizabeth M.” lets say. So “Elizabeth” and I exchanged info over the phone. I told her my name was “William”. We set up a time and checked insurance and all was good. I was under instructions to show up a few minutes early to fill out some paperwork and what-not, so I did. I filled out everything very carefully. I wanted her to know I was serious. Good penmanship is a sign of sincerity in my world, because everything is such an effort.

I hear the creaking of stairs overhead….she must be coming down. The door swings open. I look at her. She looks at me. FUCK. She is HOT. Not only is she hot, which I swear was the first thought that crossed my head, she is somehow familiar. She has a look of shock and panic. I return the look. The conversation goes as follows:

“Elizabeth”: ‘I know you.’
“William”: ‘Yeah, I know you too.’
“Elizabeth”: ‘We can’t do this.’
“William”: ‘Yeah, I know.’
“Elizabeth”: ‘I hope you find the help you need.’
“William”: ‘Ok then. Bye.’
“Elizabeth”: ‘Bye.’

I dropped my well-groomed papers in the chair, secretly hoping she would pick them up, call me, and ask me out (never happened by the way).

Turns out “Elizabeth” and “William” have a history and mutual friends…. We even shared a Moroccan dinner at one of said friends 30th birthday party, and “Elizabeth” and “William” spent a long night dancing at a party-barn and sharing quiet night moments together at the same friends house. For those of you keeping track at home, the mutual friend of “Elizabeth” and “William” is known for her new-aged practices, her healing touch, her status as the holy grail, and her recent move to the LA area….oh, she sings and paints too. And logs.

Why did I keep using “proper names”? Well, see I know her as Beth. She knows me as Bob. We didn’t link the two names over the phone. Ramparts.

So with my last ditch effort to concede to the world that I need help, reaching up with my last bit of dignity to someone for some balance in the great maelstrom that is my head…..and…WHAM-O…..hit with another slap in the face… from a victim of the despair no less. What is the world trying to tell me? That my life is just a vessel for classic cruel jokes, one after another? Side by each?

I am pretty sure I can share this information, because there was no client/doctor privilege established. I mean, other than that night at the party-barn………know what I'm sayin?



*Paper Tiger is the new official name for Downtown Tiger aka Fighting Tiger. If you need explanation, just head to Lexington, KY. They can tell y'all about it.











P.S. A Super-Booo-per Ex-Stab-a-ganza!

Arrive San Diego: 11:30 AM Friday, Oct. 26
Depart San Diego: Monday.

Wierd times, but by far the cheapeset option.

Superbad v. Superbard

(WARNING: A long story containing even longer drawn out drug references)

Myself, 4x4, and his woman-type friend, who I will let Mr. Bucket call Yoshimi (because of her hatred of robots) went to see Superbad this past week. Now while, yes, this is yet another movie about High School kids trying to get laid before they head off to college, they actually had an original take. Like that drawing dicks CAN be innocent. And that plutonic man to man love CAN be verbalized. And not every time is the woman the victim…Oh, how I can relate. Anyway, go see it. I give it the Bard’s Official “Shrug of The Shoulders” which demonstrates that nothing is very good, but this was at least tolerable.

The crazy adventures (which I will save for your own discovery) the crew of misfits embarks upon got the old Bard to thinking about the past. And since the present isn’t worth a pile of piss buckets in a pool room, I figured why not let my mind drift back to the good old days…..

My real high school life totally smokes those fools in Superbad. The movie can’t compete with me on the virginity front. I cashed that voucher at the ripe age of 14. Upon discovering this saunter into manhood, my mom said, “Sex! You had sex?! Why didn’t you just try drugs like a normal teenager?!”

You may be asking how my mom found out? Well, aren’t you the curious cat! She had been secretly taping all my phone conversations with my hot Latin Lady Lover. She said, “I was told by my therapist to do it because you didn’t seem to be upset about the fact that your Dad and I just got divorced”. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that at time I was more than grateful for the split, as I would no longer be the emotional and physical dishrag for their mutual angst.

I considered my Mom’s suggestion to try drugs an instruction rather than shocked reactionary statement. Thanks for the suggestion Mother, don’t mind if I do. Which brings us to the point where I wipe Superbad off the face of the map. All of it, a true story:

One morning, before school, my friends and I, we went on what you call a “country cruise”. Which if you are from the planet earth or Indiana, you know this is driving around in the country smoking pot while coming up with great ideas and theories on any and everything and then totally forgetting them ten minutes later when you arrive at school. Oh, and I remember laughing a lot. I miss the laughing the most. So far nothing too shocking, we smoked a lot of pot. A lot. Not Topanga Canyon quantities, but……

So on lunch, we decided to go to a friend’s house to “partake in the festivities” yet again. I have to mention, we had all just tried acid the weekend before. We had some left over from the previous weekend, and thought, hey, since we are already completely stoned, why not take a little ACID to get through the rest of the day! It amazes me that at one point in my life that I thought taking acid on lunch was a good idea. So drop we did. And went back to school. ----Good lord, why?------

Around 2:30pm, I thought to myself, you know this might just work out. Things were going fine. As long as I didn’t have to talk to anyone, or move very much, I was going to make it. At 2:31pm, in walked a messenger from the Office. He had a yellow pass in his hands. A yellow pass meant somebody was in trouble deep cause they had to go talk to the Principle or Counselor. Guess who that somebody was?

So I get out of my seat, drop my books, hit the desk in front of me, rub my face and hands, grab the pass with my name on it and head down to talk to my Counselor. On acid. Stoned. Ready to shit my pants. Why didn’t I just leave right then, skip school and join the circus? Who knows. Anyway, I get there and she asks me to sit down and close the door. SHIT. She said, “Your Mother called. She thinks you are taking drugs, and is concerned. Are you taking drugs?” FUCK NO! I AM FINE. CAN I GO NOW? “Why are you yelling and why are you shaking? You can’t sit still. And what are you drawing? Are you on drugs now??” she asked. NO, NOT REALLY. JUST NERVOUS. AND TIRED. Everyone buys tired. You can’t argue with tired. Guess cause everyone has been tired at some point. She continued to tell me that she had a specialist she wanted me to see, and that he knew all about drugs and the taking of them. That he could help me see the light and that Jesus would see me through. By graces of my britches, I got out of there alive. No idea how.

I went to my next class and the teacher wanted to see me. What? WHY? She had a note from my girlfriend and a set of keys. Seems she couldn’t find me between classes since The Lord’s Coffee Breath Counselor of Death was interrogating me.

Somehow I had “forgotten” that my girlfriend had her HUGE cross-town rival tennis match that day after school. The set of keys was to a stick shift Civic that I didn’t know how to drive sober. My “automatic” car was dead and she wanted me to drive and meet her. On any other day it would have been a great idea. Not on this day. I HAD NEVER DRIVEN STICK. EVER. It was like working wet spaghetti through a cheese grater. I was already wigged out from before but now I was close to hysterical. I needed help. But my only help was my stoner friends who were tripping across town, locked up in a house. I had to get there……………….Maybe they knew how to drive stick.

THEY WERE FUCK NUT CRAZY. No joke. One was in the corner, mumbling. One was hitting a pot with a spatula. The other was in the tub. I could see without too much investigation none of these boys were going to be too keen to drive for me or were interested in accompanying me to the tennis match. But I had to go. My girl was the world to me and to this day we are still great friends. I gave no consideration to this-this madhouse and left forthwith!

Got to the match. I was wide-eyed and geeked. That car trip was insanity. I kept thinking the cops had a way to tell I was driving stick for the first time and that they would surely pull me over for this violation.

Again I forgot some key things about our social world. Families come to support kids in high school. And everyone wants to know how the boyfriend of the star tennis player is handling the fact that she is getting her ass handed to her out there on the courts. “Are you ok? You look really upset! She is doing her best out there….You are so nice to support her! Why are you shaking? Are you hungry? Want a snack? I brought a cooler full of crap over here!” There is no polite way to kindly ask these folks to leave you alone. Their whole life is dedicated to making sure you are full. Kind of like a sweet grandmother. So I went into complete lock down. I said, “I can’t bear to watch her lose”. I remember no detail of ever looking up to see her play. Not even for a second.

After the match, I suavely convinced my exhausted, defeated girl to do the driving. I thought I was going to FINALLY get back to my friends, who would understand me by default. But no such luck. She had secretly made dinner reservations for us. Which was a big deal cause we never had any money and this was a fancy place. My god, I couldn’t even think about food. But I went, cause she was such a sweetheart. I just sat there, staring at soup. Miso soup to be exact. For what seemed like hours. She just didn’t understand what was wrong. And I couldn’t tell her. (Years later I did tell her, and she was SUPER PISSED. But then she laughed. She’s great.)

So I got home. My mom was waiting on me. Shit, I had forgot that she was the one that started the Counselor visit ordeal. She was standing in the driveway with my newly purchased water bong. She thought it was a crack pipe. Seriously. She is also a nurse. Who also had access to drug tests. She marched me straight to the bathroom where I was to piss in a cup immediately. “My son, a crackhead!” Yeah, no….but I had been through it all that day and this was just icing. The seal from that piss test is still planted firmly on one of my guitars.  I didn't have my wits about me , but if I did I would have said, "I was just trying drugs, like a normal teenager!".

So, while I escaped pretty much A-OK, acid never was quite the same for me. No moral to this tale. Just bad timing. I got the girl, and learned no valuable lesson. Other than to never, never, never take acid on lunch in High School.

This still was not the worst Mother-Involvement-With-School tale that I own.
No, that precious honor belongs to a single day in the 8^th grade. When I got to my first class of the day, there was my Mom, in the front row. She didn’t even tell me she was going to be there. I took the bus, she drove in. She followed me around all day went to all of my classes. Even ate lunch there. Most Embarrassing Day Ever. To this day I do not understand or respond to subtle suggestion or passive aggressive behavior. No, if you want my attention, you got get up pretty early in the morning. And beat me to school.

FOOTNOTE:

Since the release of American Pie, it is now totally unbelievable, even in Hollywood Land, that the “Cool Crew” would still be virgins by the time they are seniors. So you will notice in Superbad the continuance of the mutually agreed upon theory proposed by Mr. Bucket that the geek/fat/dork/nerd/fat/fat/fat dudes get the hot chicks in media these days. Maybe it is because 75% of the male viewing audience look more like Jimmie Dean (of sausage fame) and make these very actors look like James Dean by comparison. Or maybe a woman can deal with a visually less appealing leading man, while men will spend a metric shit ton of money just to see Jessica Alba in her panties in her new movie, which is out.. like.. soon. Yes!