Gargoyle!

"When I think of you, I think...  BROKEN-WINGED MONSTER!"

The Secret Code of the Universe

The Secret Code of the Universe: "Everything changes, nothing is lost." - Ovid

Way Too Late!

You just know when the glaciers are melted, and the water is lapping over the streets of Manhattan and Miami and New Orleans, and the forests are ash, and the crops are burnt to a perfect crisp, and the people are cowering in their air-conditioned nightmares, starving, and slathered with sun-block, you won't be able to find any of those global warming deniers.  They will deny that they ever denied. And we won't be able to hold them to account anyway. And we'll be asking ourselves "what happened?" And of course, it will be way, way too late!

Not Clear!

Sometimes you have to "take the bull by the horns."  Is it a "brave and direct action?"  Or is it just a dumb move?  I guess it depends.  If you wrestle that bull down, and emerge triumphant, well, I guess it was brave and direct.  On the other hand, if that bull tramples you, pounds your body into the dirt, and you end up broken and bloody, well maybe it was sort of a "dumb," stupid, and dim-witted move.  

Acting

What is that advice again...?  


Act like you are the person you want to be and you will be that thing.  


Really?!

The Tortoise!

So happy to say that people are buying our CD 10+1.  Slow and steady.  Be like the Tortoise!  


And very happy with our next show's poster.  Cal's is a hole in the wall kind of bar, a Chicago institution; lots of cold beer, no stage, just push the tables aside and let it rock!  We plan on going electric and primal for this show.  Thinking of doing the Door's "Soul Kitchen." "Speak in Secret Alphabets..."

Perspective

"He's the kind of person that looks better from a distance."

Go to Albums

r&r diary - whitewolfsonicprincess shares their "go to" albums...

Sales & Formats!

A subject near and dear to my heart.  I pay for music, always have.  I have owned 45s, 33 rpms, 8 tracks, cassettes, CDs and digital downloads...  lately I've spent most of my money on used CDs. I like owning a tangible thing, I enjoy the album art, the liner notes; I enjoy listening to a disc as one coherent piece.  I very rarely spend more than $10 for a disc, sometimes as little as $3 or $4.


You look at this chart and you marvel at the reign of the CD format.  CD sales peaked around 1999 (Backstreet Boys) looks like the bubble burst in 2000, right around the 9/11 thing.  And music sales are down just like everything else in these post-bubble years.  And when people say that there is a resurgence of vinyl, well, it's certainly a micro, micro, micro-market.

You wonder if the record companies blew it when they were selling CDs for $16, $17, and $18 dollars. But maybe the world just took a turn, and this is just another window into "The Great Reset." There is now a generation of people who have never paid for music.  CD sales have fallen dramatically.  There's a big debate about the ethics of illegal downloads vs. actually paying for music, but for lots of folks that horse left the barn long ago.

The Mystery Clarifies

It seems to me, that as life rolls out, I don't really understand what life is, instead, I slowly start to understand what life isn't.  It's not a very elegant sentence, or formula for living, or a very efficient way to conduct yourself. But there it is...

Where Does the Time Go?

Yes, an excellent, heart-breaking question... Sandy Denny's voice is radiant...

 

No Normal

The "new normal" seems to be pretty "non- normal."  And maybe it's not so new either.  It's a weird time in the land.  And "the land" is basically planet-wide.  Strange, unexplainable things are happening all the time.  And the "conventional wisdom wielders" try to tell us that everything is fine, that "up is down," "slavery is freedom" and "ignorance is intelligence."  That there are no mysteries, everything is fine, and explainable.  It's clear they are clueless and really poor liars.  And once your eyes are open to the lies that people tell, and the unreliability of our reality, you realize anything and everything is possible.  And there is no normal.  Never has there ever been a "normal."

Straddling

You do a lot of straddling. You straddle between a hard-headed/clear-eyed approach vs. a plastic-headed/dewy-eyed approach.  Between the smart-guy take and the not so smart guy take. 


You straddle the world of physicality/materiality vs. the world of spirituality/immateriality. 


You approach the world and your life as some grand unholy beast of contradictions.  Makes for interesting dinner conversations. And it's the source of all your problems and all your solutions too...

Plasticity

So yes, well, our hope lies with the "plasticity of our brains."  It's a thin reed of hope.  You see much of humanity resisting change, resisting the fluid, flexible approach; sometimes it seems the "dumb ones," the egotists, the ideologues, those with firm ideas of what constitutes life, those with the loudest voices, or the splashiest robes, or those with the biggest checking accounts get to call the tune.

The Rich

I don't know if Felix Salmon's reviews of these books is fair or on target, but the statement at the end of the review hits the bulls-eye...

Yeah, it's a simple formulation, so for that reason, maybe it's suspect, but it certainly seems simple, clear, concise and totally, totally spot-on!

"This is now a country run by the rich, for the rich."

Pretty Sure

And if you do fall into a worm-hole, what do you do?  Don't panic, don't fly off the handle. You can deal with it.  You may be annihilated, or reconstituted, or something, but I'm pretty sure you can endure it.  Pretty sure. You can come out the other end.  And live to tell the tale.  Maybe.

Worm-Hole

Cell Phone Transcript:

Caller #1: "I cooked my nines."
Caller #2: "Stop saying that."


Caller #1: "That's the best way to describe how I feel."
Caller #2: "We fell into a worm-hole.  It's the longest day ever."


Caller #1: "Hmmm..."
Caller #2: "Time has stopped."


Caller #1: "A worm-hole? I'll meet you on the other side."
Caller #2: "What if we can't find each other? 


Caller #1: "I don't..."
Caller #2: "It would be weird not talking to you on the phone."


Caller #1: "Yeah..."

It's Pretty Simple!

Yes, Kevin Drum has a nice little post summing up how we ended up in such a disastrous economic pickle. 


It's an election year.  


It's good to remember how we got here.  And it's pretty simple: The Republicans destroyed the country!  

One Grand All You Can Eat Buffet

Yeah, this is not a pretty story, but it is the story of our time.  "We have basically killed most of the wildlife that was available to us only a single generation ago."


We have done an admirable job as a species of being fruitful and multiplying, but the rest of nature is suffering, and disappearing at an astonishing rate.  And some of us are concerned, but our concern seems like a paltry, ineffective thing.


We have pretty much trashed the place, and we seem to look at the bounty of nature as just one grand all you can eat buffet.  And there are limits to this buffet.  And then what?  Nap time? 

Hot Ashes for Trees

 

Incidentally, I'm beginning to think Pink Floyd's "Wish You Here" is not only a masterpiece, and maybe their best album, and a showcase of David Gilmour's fabulously soulful guitar, and a haunting tribute to genius of the lost soul, Syd Barrett, and one of their most cohesive efforts, but it's also a less bombastic outing than "The Wall," and more open and airy than their masterly claustrophobic "Dark Side of the Moon."

And dare I say it, Roger Water's acid lyrics to the title song ring so true and prophetic to our human condition on this spinning little planet at the moment.  And is that guy on the cover with flames shooting out of him a stand-in for us?

And did they get you to trade
Your heroes for ghosts?
Hot ashes for trees?
Hot air for a cool breeze?
Cold comfort for change?
And did you exchange
A walk on part in the war
For a lead role in a cage?

Change Your Brain

The hope and optimism is fueled by the caffeine, and the ability to think, and the willingness to put one foot in front of another.  There's also the prospect of change: change your ways, change your diet, change your hair, change your brain.

The new day might seem like the old day, but it's not.  And you might seem like the same old being, but you are not.  And as long as you breathe, you can grow, and morph, and move.  That's everything in a nutshell.

Last Leaf

We were up late at a bar playing music.  We were the "head-liners" which means we played last.  A long night.  We did a good job, the band is really feeling it now, and we are making a joyful, rocking noise.  It was very gratifying.


Up early anyway, and feeling pretty burnt, and still stuck in the midst of my Keith Richard's kick.  Here's Keith in a duet with Tom Waits. "Last Leaf" is from Wait's latest "Bad As Me"... it's my song for the morning after...

The Harder...

Here's a nice little rarity... Keith Richards doing Jimmy Cliff's "The Harder They Come." Sublime...

 

Deus Ex Machina

Yeah, so maybe we are stuck in a bad sitcom and the writers have run out of ideas, and they are just concocting crazy ass situations to try to keep the thing lurching forward.  And it's gets weirder and weirder.  And as the hapless characters in this looney contraption, we pretend that everything is OK. We are barely holding on, we are holding on by a wisp of a thread, and we are in deep denial.  And we are hoping for the Deus Ex Machina to make an appearance... but we're not sure if the writers are up on their Latin.

Jump the Shark

Can a society, a political system, a country, a culture "jump the shark?"  If so, I think we are deep into the "shark jumping" phase!

The Stupid Unravels Slowly!

Ok, I get it, history, meaning in this case, human history, is just a very long, very slow, unraveling of an infinite fount of stupidity.  Human history is the story of our brains.  What we put in them, what we conceive with them and what we believe when we use them.  And most of what we put in, conceive and believe is really, really stupid.


And the stupidity is so enveloping that we even mistake stupidity for intelligence.  But there is an unraveling.  And the best of us; the scientists, the physicists, the cosmologists, are on the case.  They aren't afraid to admit their own stupidities in the face of an observed universe.


Not being afraid to admit your stupidity is the first step to some kind of recovery.  So the unraveling of idiocy moves forward.  But we are only in the early stages of this journey.  And we will not see the end, it's way too far in the distance. So we live in the large, overwhelming sea of the stupid.  We swim in it, we revel in it. Once in awhile we get a glimpse of a glimmer of an intelligent life for ourselves.


It's out there, and we can begin to adopt it as a part of our existence too.  But this wave of humans will not live long enough to see the fruits of the unfolding to intelligence.  We were born way too early in the process. It will take many more waves of humans to get there.  And we may not make it.  It's a long story of the stupid.

First-Rate!

"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function." - F. Scott Fitzgerald


So on the one hand you think: we're doomed!  On the other hand you think: things will get better!


The big picture sucks.  Everything for me is just peachy keen...


Nothing lasts... love is forever...


I might drop dead at any moment... Maybe I will be the one who lives forever... (or at least long enough to realize all my hopes and dreams)!


Maybe... Maybe not...

Sign Me Up!

What if there is no free will?  And we live in a finite universe where basically everything is pre-determined? Are then things like guilt and regret, useless and pointless and meaningless?  If so, sign me up!

You Go!

You can go with a smile on your mug.  Or you can go kicking and screaming.  You may be happy, or you may be sad.  In the bigger picture, (there's always a bigger picture) it probably just doesn't matter.  You are going to go... so go...

Car Radio, Summer of 1969

I was a little kid.  We lived in an apartment complex.  There was a pool.  It was summer of 1969.  I was outside all the time.  There was a parking lot next to the pool.  One of our neighbors had a car up on blocks.  It was always on blocks,  maybe it's still up on blocks?


Our neighbor was a "Grease Monkey."  He was always working on that car; under the hood, under the car.  He was always streaked with grease and oil.  That was part of his uniform.  The car had a very good radio.  And the radio was always on, maximum volume.  And it was tuned to a Top Forty station.  All the hits, all the time.


And the number one song, that summer, the song that kicked me upside the head, and made me listen was the Rolling Stones' "Honky Tonk Women."  It opened with a cowbell, and a really dirty guitar sound, and the drums were big and funky and upfront, and then the first line... "I met a gin-soaked, barroom queen in Memphis..."  It was all such an eye and ear opener for a little confused Catholic Boy...


My little mind reeled at some of the other lines too... "I laid a Divorcee in New York City..." and "She blew my nose, then she blew my mind..."  and "The Lady, she covered me in Roses..."  Something was going on... I just didn't quite know what... and the band kicked ass, it rocked, it was the essence of rock and roll, it was the essence of cool...