The 1% have left us far behind. It's a rigged game! The 1% like it like that, and will do all they can to keep it that way, and they have a candidate who wants to keep the game going, but it does not make for a fair, equitable and prosperous America! Something is grossly out of whack! That trickle down crap was always a bright, shining, lie! To the barricades!
Karen O. took this photo of whitewolfsonicprincess playing at the Bucktown Tree & Garden walk last weekend. It was a grand setting and a transcendent show. I love how we are playing above the stars...
Every election is a choice. Sometimes the choices are stark and sometimes not. I think in this case, stark is a good word. The guy who has the job of President at the moment is grappling with lots and lots of issues, and not everything has gone to my liking, but I think he's done a good job. Probably the best President I can remember in my lifetime. I cannot even contemplate a Romney Presidency.
It's good to feel good about being against the other guy. And I feel really, really good about being against this guy...
And I do love this Obama ad reminding us of how Romney made his cash...
whitewolfsonicprincess played the first annual Bucktown Tree and Garden Fest last night. It was a transcendent experience. We performed up on a real deal outdoor stage. Excellent sound, great equipment: full drum-kit, lights, monitors, cool amps, all you need to do a first class show.
And our band was tight and in fine form. I almost spontaneously combusted during one song; it was hot under the lights and the sweat started to pour off my body, which made me just get into even more. I broke a string and kicked the cable loose on my guitar in the middle of our cover of "Nothing," which added to the drama of the song.
The band has really, really gelled. The sound was big last night. We filled the night. The main stage experience felt just right.
One last thought on Roger Waters. (For more see last two posts.) I like that he has an "axe to grind." Both a selfish reason for saying and doing something, and also having a very strong opinion. And his work holds together as an all-encompassing, and completely cohesive world-view. All those Waters' led records have something to say. I like that he has the vision and the dedication to create "concept" records. They are big, and sometimes clunky. Grand, operatic, but well-thought out, and meticulously recorded.
I think the best of his stuff was when he collaborated with David Gilmour, one of the best, most distinctive guitar players to ever pick up the instrument. Gilmour lent his great guitar playing, and sometimes his voice to some of Waters best songs. The work stands. A great body of work with depth and meaning. I marvel at Roger Waters ambition. He made lots of money early on in the Floyd career, but nothing dampened his creative spark. Whatever drives that man, it has resulted in some very stirring, intelligent music.
And more and more that vision seems prophetic to me. Yes, we have all been betrayed at every turn, by every institution, we can't trust those who wield power, they will only abuse it. We need to keep our eyes open and rage against the machine!
And you could restrict your listening to "The Dark Side of the Moon," "Wish You Were Here," "Animals," "The Wall" and "The Final Cut," and you could restrict your reading to "The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch," "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep," "A Scanner Darkly," "The Valis Trilogy," and "The Man in the High Castle" and you would know everything you need to know about the late 20th century and the early 21st century on this little whirling ball of confusion.
And basically what would you know? You can't trust authority of any kind, you can't trust power, success, money, drugs, celebrity, government, corporation, family, church. You can't even trust your own eyes, your own mind. You can't trust logic, or reason either. You can't even trust your own definition of "human." That about covers it.
Syd Barrett is loved, revered and considered to be a very influential figure for a generation of singer-songwriters. Roger Waters the bass player in Syd's old band, not so much. But over the years, you must marvel at Waters career, there's no doubt Pink Floyd made some fantastic albums with Waters at the helm, and his post-Floyd work is also ambitious and interesting.
Waters is supposedly a complete control freak, and very difficult when it comes to the creative process. It might not be a lot of fun being in a band with him. But no doubt he is a driven artist with a strong mind and vision. There is a deep rage that fuels Water's work. Rage that he lost his father to a war, rage against the state, and the state of the world. Fear and loathing (of self, of others) is upfront and prominent in the mind of Mr. Waters. Much of his work is bitterly anti-authoritarian, sarcastic, cutting and prophetic. He has created a slew of grand concept albums perfect for our dystopian times
"The Wall" is an over the top spectacle. A very personal diatribe blown up to stadium-sized proportions. It's more opera than rock. It's sort of dazzling, amazing and repellant too. Waters is one of those radical socialists, on the one hand his heart seems to be in the right place, and on the other, you are glad he's not a politician, or someone running a country. He puts on the guise of a strutting strongman, and it's convincing. One thinks, if he was in charge, the swift blade of justice would be wielded, and for sure, heads would roll!
Yes, and countries go to war. And people go to war. And then again, people are wars too. Sometimes you are on the battlefield. And sometimes you are the battlefield.
Warring emotions, warring desires, warring thoughts... and your cells are warring too. And when we say, "sometimes" we mean, "all the time!"
Yes, we had a significant conversation last night about "hope." We need it. It is essential to our psychic armory. Can't see how you can move forward without it. Sometimes it's a thin reed. It takes all kinds of hits, pricks and kicks. It can be dashed. But there is a well, is it limitless well? I'm not sure, maybe it can run out, dry up, break into a million tiny pieces. And maybe it's not so reasonable to carry hope. And maybe it's not so smart either. But hope is like air. Better to have it than not. We do need it for life.
Yes, the first step is envisioning, thinking and saying, "It can be done." Everything flows from that source, that starting point.It's simple. And true.
And what would be the guiding principle of the new radical, militant, environmental movement be (see previous post)? The environment rules. The ecosystem is our friend, and our mother. Clean air, clean water, and major reductions in all forms of man-made pollution are essential, and have to begin now. Climate Change is happening now at an accelerating rate, and we need to do all we can to reduce our contributions to the problem.
People who tell us that the economy and jobs are in opposition to a healthy environment are wrong. Those who say it's jobs vs. the environment are posing a false choice. We can mobilize people to clean up the environment. We can encourage a truly green economy, based on energy efficiency and working in harmony with the network of ecosystems that engendered us.
We need a change of consciousness. We need to wake up. We need a paradigm shift. I believe it can happen. We have to change our ways. Life requires a re-think, a new green ethos. It seems so logical, so obvious, if we kill all the little ecosystems, if we destroy the plants and trees, and all the little critters who have evolved out of nature, then we too are destined for the scrap heap of history.
Unfortunately, the fate of nature on the planet is in our billions and billions of grubby hands. We are not powerless. So far our power lies in our careless, unthinking and greedy ways. We need to truly go green!
Some kind of radical, militant, environmental movement is probably our only hope to keep the planet habitable. You wonder if it's possible to galvanize people to the cause. We are really good at being fruitful and multiplying, but our success as a species is to the detriment to the lovely blue planet we inhabit.
The latest heat wave, seems to be just another little reminder of how we have fundamentally altered our ecosystem. Billions of us running around with no regard to the life of the plants and animals, with no regard to the the air and water we breathe, points to a bleak future of environmental shocks beyond our understanding, and beyond our abilities to come up with a quick fix.
We need to fundamentally change the way we live on this planet. Look to nature. Nature is telling us something is gravely, gravely wrong. And we can't entertain ourselves, or buy ourselves out of this mess. We need a new environmental ethos to guide us. We need to realize that it's not all "about us." We are a piece of the puzzle, but all the other pieces are important too. We need a major re-think. And we need to change our ways. On a grand scale.
It was this article by Louis Menand about James Joyce that set my mind a'reeling on chance (see previous post)...
“Chance furnishes me with what I need,” he told a Swiss friend when he was writing “Finnegans Wake.” “I’m like a man who stumbles; my foot strikes something, I look down, and there is exactly what I’m in need of." - J. J.
And you can go back to the Big Bang, and that's where our grand game of chance began. And the trillions and trillions of galaxies and everything in them are the result. Makes you want to toke a one-hitter and just go off on some mad rambling monologue.
I mean it's not a new idea, but sometimes things just hit you with a force that they never did before.
Everything we do is a game of chance. Every moment is a game of choices. You have to pick your games wisely. Although, the choices that are available to us, and what we pick to play, is also enfolded in this grand, cascading, edifice of chance.
It is so in-built in us, we hardly notice. And we make up other reasons, motivations for our choices. And we invent characters that we imagine are looking over our shoulder guiding our hand, but it is chance that abides.
Let's say that life is pretty much ruled by chance. If things are going bad, well, you've run up against a streak of bad luck. If things are going good, you've run up against a streak of good luck.
You can apply this to your existence; right from the moment that that little egg met up with that little sperm. Happy accidents and bad accidents. That's all you have.
And you can have good intentions, and big plans, and lots of hopes and dreams, and then, well, you roll the dice on all that, and hope for luck to shine down on you.
It's as plausible as any other explanation for our lives. Kind of humbling... and maybe you're lucky to know it as a guiding principle. You roll the dice and hope.
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!
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.
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..."
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.
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...
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."
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...
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.
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.
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?
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?
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.
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...
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.
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.
"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)!
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 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...
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...
So it turns out Terra firma, isn't so firm after all. We don't really know what the hell is going on below our feet. We are walking around on the crust of the planet, but the center, the core, is a hellacious, boiling mystery, a raging enigma.
Makes you wonder what's really going on. Is there a secret agenda? We have no clue about the things we take for granted, and the things we don't take for granted either.
We also seem incredibly lucky to be walking around on this ball of confusion. There is a mind-boggling universe of factors that make it all possible. And well, most of what we do while we are here seems pretty damn lame. WTF.
Still, we're here, as unlikely as that might seem, and we should try to do the best we can, while we can. Mother Earth is a sweet lady, and a raging, boiling, radioactive Hell-Cat too...
I blogged about Keef's other band a couple of posts ago. I've been immersing myself in the X-pensive Winos live album recorded at the Hollywood Palladium. It really is a great record, a revelation. If you are a Keith Richards fan it's essential.
It stands up better than the Keith solo album Talk is Cheap. That record is good (I own the original vinyl copy), and it provides the bulk of the songs in the live set, but the overall sound of the studio version seems dated. It's very 1980's.
I think the prime culprit is the sound of the drums. Was it the recording technology of the day? Or was it just the sonic fashion of those cocaine years? There's a falseness, a hollowness, an antiseptic quality to the drum sound that just does not sit well.
Anyway, the band sounds better live. They really groove, they swing, and there's no studio sheen to contend with. Keith is an amazing ensemble player. And a great rhythm player. Keith is known as a rascal, a pirate, an outlaw, but he's also a gracious, unselfish musician. Here they do a cover of a reggae song. They nail it...
The 2nd track from our CD 10+1 is now on Sound Cloud. This song catches our band in fine r&r form. I guess you could say this song is my personal motto. Very pleased with how it all came together. Love the Beatlesy backwards thing in the beginning. And my white John Suhr Classic sounds pretty good in the instrumental break.
By the way, if you are interested in buying a copy of our limited-edition, limited-release CD, check out all the avenues for purchase on our whitewolfsonicprincess website.
The Lichtenstein Universe is quite appealing; it's all surface, form, line, dot, splashy color, comic, light, edgy, funny, pop. There is no darkness, no pathos, no drama (maybe comic melodrama!). A breath of fresh air for sure.
Pop at it's frothy best. So inspiring to see a good slice of a man's work, and all the work is dedicated to a vision of lightness. And the low is elevated to the high. You smile, you laugh, you admire the light touch, the steady hand, the zen-like approach to art.
You are transformed in the process... that's the beauty of art. And even drowning and death, well, we admire the color and form, and the overly-melodramatic situation. Those tears don't cut... they are flat, another formal element. Yeah, and Fuck Brad...
I've been spinning the X-pensive Winos live album (concert 1988, CD released 1991) obsessively (my obsessions do not respect space or time!) over the last few days. Certainly a band in superb form. And no backstage hatred. Maybe Keef made lots more money in that other more famous band he's in, but the long simmering feud he's had with their big-lipped, lead singer has pretty much doomed their collaboration over the last 25 years or so.
Mutual contempt does not make for great collaboration.
The X-pensive Winos is Keith's dream band for sure. Sympathetic players all around. Keith's voice is cracked and worn, but it's just great for these songs. And the song-writing duo of Keith Richards and Steve Jordan was very, very fruitful... love, love, love this song... beautiful... and the whole disc is just brilliant! Great guitar playing and the band is powerful and soulful. Swings too!
Lost. Feeling lost. It's not a foreign feeling. Lots of my time on the planet has been an adventure of the lost and found. No use fighting it. It's a feeling that you can trust and run away with.
Some people (like Chet Baker) would counsel: Let's Get Lost! Sometimes you seek lost-ness, and sometimes it just descends upon you like a little dark cloud of madness.
OK, yes, we are embarked upon an impossible course. That's just the way it played out. Character and circumstance. And the road is filled with impossibilities. They are numerous and glimmering.
They can hypnotize you and lead you on. And you are led even as you lead. You are making the wave and riding it too.
According to this little article, it might be healthier to be optimistic. And if you can't be optimistic, you can fake it. And faking it might be just good enough...
One theme that emerged from our McCartney show last night (besides singing and playing McCartney songs is a supreme challenge): Attention to detail. All those little seemingly insignificant details matter.
One note in a chord makes a world of difference. How you coil a cable makes a huge difference. Showing kindness and attention to your fellow beings is all the difference.
Tonight is our McCartney night. A bunch of performers will gather at a little coffeehouse and play Paul McCartney songs. We will be putting our band thru the McCartney blender. We are backing up some folks and doing a mini-set of our own... our set looks like this:
She Came in Thru the Bathroom Window Why Don't We Do It in the Road I Saw Her Standing There I'm Down Let It Be I've Got a Feeling Lady Madonna The Word
A pretty quirky and amazing collection of songs. There are so many other great tunes that others will be playing. Here's the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show all those years ago. Cute little guys in matching suits. They seemed so happy and exuberant. It was only later we found out that both John and Paul had lost their mothers at a young age. And that Lennon especially, was a very flinty, bitter and sarcastic character.
But those guys channeled that angst into shiny little pop gems about love. And it was all so captivating. Their story is the pop culture origin story. Rock and Roll was birthed in Sun Studios by Elvis. But pop culture exploded into a massive global phenomenon with the Beatles. Changed the world for sure...
We are all amateurs when it comes to living. And we are making it up as we go. And sometimes we think we know what we are doing, but we really don't know what we know, and we really don't know what we don't know, and this can lead to mishaps, regrets and sometimes to tragedy.
We are amateurs in the sense that we are in this game for the love of it all. And sometimes there doesn't seem to be enough love to go around. And we think that the silver and the gold and the material things we accumulate are more important. More tangible.
And yes, sometimes, the material of life seems more substantial than the spirit and love of life. The spirit and love seems flighty and ephemeral. And they are. But of course they are also more substantial and essential than anything else. It's all about the love, and the lack of it, and the need for it. And the ability to give it and receive it.
When I am at low ebb I always reach out to certain sounds, certain voices...
Neil Young's - "Harvest," "Tonight's the Night," "Live Rust" Bob Dylan's - "Time Out of Mind," "Live 1966," "Live 1975," "Highway 61" John Lennon's - "Plastic Ono Band," "Imagine"
And then we are reminded that love and happiness come like the rain, and they evaporate like the morning mist. And we find that in the most important things, like life and death, we are powerless. We experience and endure. And a loss is just a loss. There's no lesson there. Or maybe the lesson is that the loss, and the silence that goes with it, is like a vast ocean with no bottom.
Bansky graffitti art. A young boy "slaving" over an old sewing machine. Making a Union Jack. The face of 21st century "manufacturing." Wages of Sin, wages of fear...
We had a rental car yesterday. Red. Sporty. Sleek. And we rolled the windows down and turned up the CD player. And we played Wye Oak's Civilian. And we agreed it's a really wonderful record. Shimmering, dynamic, ethereal, dreamy. And that's good!
And then the smiley-face authority figure crashed the party and killed the vibe. Why? That's what authority figures do.
They are actually threatened by the creative endeavor. The creative impulse is also a pleasure principle. And pleasure is a threat to the hierarchy.
Creativity and pleasure; they are their own realms, not bounded or ruled by authorities. They are generated by the spirit and the heart. And the spirit and the heart cannot by ruled or guided or bound.
So our little circle of creativity was a circle or anarchy, and the smiley-faced authority figure was scared shitless. Because in the middle of that little circle "authority" has no sway.
Yes, maybe the guy said what he said because he thought it was the right thing to say. As simple as that. Maybe there wasn't an ulterior motive, maybe we can take his stated position on the issue at face value.
I know that's hard to do. We live in a world where we rarely take anything at face value. We look for the secret motive. We wonder where's the money? Who get's paid off? What cabal of people, met in which dark basement, and signed off on the statement?
But maybe none of that happened. Maybe the guy just stated the obvious. I know it's too simple, and if it's simple, you think: simple-minded. But maybe sometimes people just say and do the right thing because it's the right thing to say or do. Maybe that is the explanation...
Yes, you pinball between between two (at least) modes...
There's the caring madly, deeply, greatly about the world and it's people and things...
There's the barely "give a fuck-ness" about the world and it's people and things...
I think you need to hold both these modes in your consciousness. You carefully modulate between the two. Makes you an interesting character... at least...
And then you strip it down to the essentials. One of those essentials: Faith. You are left with having "faith in faith." A belief in the act of faith; belief in believing in something you can't prove or point to.
I am not talking about dogma or religion. Just a faith in having faith. It's not much, it's a very slim reed to cling to. It's a paltry thing to stake a life on; but it's one of the essentials just the same.
Doing research for our Paul McCartney night on May 19, I came across this video of Joe Cocker and his awesomely cool Mad Dogs and Englishmen band. So good. I always think of Leon Russell as a piano player, but his guitar playing at the instrumental break is rocking, soulful and perfect.
White-Boy Soul (Joe is channeling Ray Charles) of the highest grade!
Yes, this is good. Thinking is important. But unthinking is important too. Over-thinking can kill the vibe, destroy the buzz, kill your creativity dead.
You can out-smart your own creativity...
Dylan: “As you get older, you get smarter, and that can hinder you…You’ve got to programme your brain not to think too much.”
Yeah, your knowledge is helpful, but then you need to just let it flow baby. I find the best stuff, songs, monologues, etc. come unbidden, they catch you by surprise.
You can't think yourself out of the box of conformity. You ride the vibe and the box vanishes!
A friend of our band pointed out that if you do a YouTube search of whitewolfsonicprincess (our cool new website can be found here!), you will come across this video of an earlier incarnation of the band doing "Lady in the Sand." This is from 2008. It's kind of interesting to watch it now. The rough kernal of the song is there, The Lovely Carla's voice is there, Sanjay on drums is wonderful... but there is a tentativeness that sort of hangs over us.
You can see that Carla and I (I'm the one in the funny hat) are still working through the song. As Lou Reed once put it we are: "Growing Up in Public."
Still there is a nice bohemian vibe to this early incarnation, and Charles Joseph Smith provides his interpretive Mary Magdeline dance bit. And Sara T. does some nice jumping around with her bass strapped to her body... it's all sort of "artful," a low-down bohemian vibe, not exactly "bad," but maybe pushes on the boundaries of what we'd consider "good."
This is a long way from the version to be found on our disc 10+1. We finally worked our way into the song, and the latest incarnation of the band really helped bring it to life way beyond our original vision... this is kind of sonic archeology... I'm not embarrassed by it by any means, no, it was all part of the working process...
We're working on Paul songs for our McCartney night coming up on May 19. What I really like about doing these Rock Icon shows (we've done Dylan, Lennon and Neil Young previously), is you get to delve into a catalog of songs and make discoveries.
For some reason I was really hesitant to do a McCartney night, he's so ubiquitous, it almost seemed redundant, but some of his songs are just so amazing. He's certainly the most musically sophisticated of the group. And his melodic sense is stunning.
Sometimes he's a little too sweet for my tastes. But then again the man can rock out. And his collaboration with Lennon was just one of the most thrilling and satisfying musical partnerships in the history of music.
I'm learning how to play "Blackbird," a solo acoustic song. It's just a beautiful gem of a song. I think it's one the Lovely Carla will sing. Learning the tune on guitar is a challenge and a pleasure. Not so much technically difficult, but it's stunning how he uses the whole fret-board with unique chord shapes. How did he come up such an approach? McCartney makes it all seems so effortless. So beautiful. So brilliant...
And we're thinking of doing this one with the Telepaths. I love this video. You know with all that crazy screaming, and an under-powered P.A. that they can barely hear themselves. It had to be a real challenge. And hell, they give it their all. Exhilarating!
Someone just paid big bucks for this painting. Poor Edvard (now long gone). He isn't gonna see a penny from the sale. "The Scream" is definitely an iconic work. That little bald-headed specter seems to be a stand-in for us all!
"I was walking down the road with two friends when the sun set; suddenly, the sky turned as red as blood. I stopped and leaned against the fence, feeling unspeakably tired. Tongues of fire and blood stretched over the bluish black fjord. My friends went on walking, while I lagged behind, shivering with fear. Then I heard the enormous, infinite scream of nature.... for several years I was almost mad… You know my picture, 'The Scream?' I was stretched to the limit—nature was screaming in my blood… After that I gave up hope ever of being able to love again." - E. Munch
Yes, this seems to be a story where success and power accrues to one man and his organization. And that success and power leads to hubris, arrogance and law-breaking. And all that success and power is used as a club to beat down competitors and anyone else who stands in their way.
It's kind of breath-taking how such successful, powerful and well-heeled people end up doing such repulsive things like phone hacking, bribery and intimidation. And you marvel at how long these people ran their own little kingdom and lorded it over lots and lots of people across many countries.
And for many, many years people just bowed down to the power. It's amazing how people will bow down to the power. Boot-lickers! They admire and are envious of the success, and the audaciousness of the whole enterprise. But then surprisingly someone objects, someone stands up, someone reveals that the emperor is really a hollow bully and all his little minions are well-dressed thugs and mugs.
And slowly it all starts to unravel. And slowly people start to really "see" what was so obvious for many, many years... and then well, all those little spineless people who were so admiring, and so silent, finally start chattering.
And it's not a pretty story, really, it's hard to identify with any of the players. But it is kind of entertaining to watch the Big Man finally called out as a Craven Little Man.
