Song for Natalie

WhiteWolfSonicPrincess played the Red Line Tap last night. We did "Song for Natalie" which was inspired by Natalie Wood. We dedicated the performance to Dennis Hopper.

This is the full band captured by our little digital recorder. I love that you can hear the crowd partying, playing pool, chatting. The band was in fine form. One of our most satisfying shows...

Check out the song here:

Dennis Hopper is Dead...

No, no, he's just outside looking in.

I heard the sad news. And thought, the man will never be dead to me. He and some of his performances are indelibly etched into my consciousness. He will be with me until I'm no longer too.

I see the manic long-hair on his motorcycle in "Easy Rider," I see the mad prophet photojournalist in "Apocalypse Now," I see a twisted spoke of human degradation on the darkness on the edge of town in "Blue Velvet."

Those performances were so vivid, alive, and Hopper's intelligence, passion and charisma informed every moment.

Plus there's the legend: a friend of James Dean, the rebellious battles with the Hollywood establishment, phenomenal success with little biker movie, the drug-crazed madness, time in a nut house, the 4 hour cut of Easy Rider, the great lost masterpiece "The Last Movie," the out of control madness of Coppola's Vietnam opera.

He was a supreme method actor and in the method much madness and life. A mad visionary. I saw it too!

Frog VS. LENIN - EPISODE TWO

It's been awhile since we've had a Frog VS. Lenin Episode. For those who forgot Episode One, check it out here...


Frog: What's up with the head-gear?

Lenin: I have headache!

Frog: Dude, your head is metal.

Lenin: I still have feelings, you green little scamp!

Shaman Thursday!

So yes, the moon was full and we did the Shaman thing.

We turned the lights down low.

We lit candles.

We chanted and sang songs.

We burned stuff.

I beat a drum.

And floated above the room and called back all my ancestors.

And then when Jethro Tull's "Living in the Past" blasted in the room, everyone laughed and danced!

So...

Well, yes, so history is a circle.

And it's a full moon.

And our friend is coming over to do some kind of Shaman Dance...

Free and Easy Wonderer

You wonder if basically we all do know right from wrong, but since we live in a world where we are paid to do the wrong thing all the time, and call it a "job", that we end up doing the wrong thing willingly, consistently and with gusto...

Ancient Chinese Secret!

Our Acupuncturist (everyone should have one) has got us on the juice...

Chinese herbs to enhance our lives.

First, there's the Phlegm Transforming stuff - can we transform that phlegm into gold?!

And now there's "Free and Easy Wanderer." I wander, I wonder. It is all so free and easy!

A handful of tiny black pills, plus some Kenyan AA free trade coffee and I'm ready to wander through the hills and the dales!

The Stoned Buddha!

This is the next photo I'm putting on my refrigerator...

Check out the NYT on Exile on Main Street.

Also the Telepath's Big Bang has a great take on the re-release of the Stones' "masterpiece."

Write Me a River

"We don't write songs, we write rivers." - Mike Watt

Running in the Fog

I'm lacing up my running shoes this morning, getting ready to go for a run on the lakefront. A heavy fog has descended in the area.

That's right, running in the fog. That's my life...

Shaky Town

Shaky Town. That's where we live. Shaky Town.

dj. shak·i·er, shak·i·est 1. Trembling or quivering; tremulous: a shaky voice. 2. Lacking soundness or sturdiness, as of construction: a shaky table. 3. a. Not to be depended on; precarious: a shaky alliance. b. Wavering in firmness: a shaky belief. c. Open to question or doubt: shaky evidence. shaki·ly adv. shaki·ness n.

Days of the Weasel

Dear Smiling Weasel: Your days are numbered. The KARMA TRAIN is barreling down the track and it has your name on it!

School of Hard Knocks

"Hey kid, my advice... don't take anyone's advice."

Inner Light Video

This is a pretty cool video

my brother put together

using "found footage."

All public domain stuff.

Plus, he worked in some

of his artwork.

That's sunnyjimmy on vocals

and guitar, and that's my brother

(I call him Bacchus Blue) on harmonica.

Nice job, Brother!

Pop Culture Curmudgeon

You know you are a Pop Culture Curmudgeon when...

Basil Rathbone is Sherlock Holmes.

Sean Connery is James Bond.

Errol Flynn is Robin Hood.

Adam West is Batman.

George Reeves is Superman.

Humphrey Bogart is Philip Marlowe.

Also, when you no longer actually need to see the latest Blockbuster, must-see movie to know that it is a flaming pile of crap, all you really need to see is the over-heated trailer and the multi-million dollar PR campaign.

Huge Oil Plumes Killing Oxygen and Everything in their Paths

The old TV show told us it was "Black Gold," and I guess it was and is, but, at the same time, it has always been "Black Death" too.

Crisis Management

When the burden of a world gone wrong gets too great...

When crisis overload grabs you by the throat...

You are left with one last defense mechanism...

The Marty Feldman Method of Crisis Management: "What Hump?!"

Time for a Re-Think?

Watching the PR machine in action, I'm starting to suspect that they really have no hope of capping that oil well at the ocean floor.

If that's true, then that sucker is just gonna empty out, leaking maybe 2 billion gallons of oil into the ocean.

Heartbreaking. An ecological disaster of major proportions.

Maybe it's time for a re-think? About our way of life?

Alone Again, Naturally

You listen to the news and it all sounds like madness. Babel. Then you read John Robb at Global Guerrillas and some sort of "sense" emerges:

"Instead, the current sovereign debt crisis is about something much more interesting: it's another battle in a war for dominance between "our" integrated, impersonal global economic system and traditional nation-states. At issue is whether a nation-state serves the interests of the governed or it serves the interests of a global economic system."

It is the Great Unraveling, and we are watching the Global Market at war with Nations. And the Global Pool of Money (They say, "the love of money is the root of all evil," and this pool of money is seriously in love with itself and only itself!) seems to be winning.

"You are on your own. You are in direct competition with everyone else in the world, and your success or failure is something you alone control." - J. Robb

If Life is...

If life is a poem, a messy, meandering poem - opaque and obscure, with false starts and dead ends, and no clear moral lessons, well, hell that's just the way it is...

Free Music!

It's so cool to be able to embed this in my blog.

Take a listen to WhiteWolfSonicPrincess!

"Shadow Boxing" & "Black Black Wings" is the full band.

"Inner Light" is jimmy jammer & bacchus blue

"Everything is Everything" is carla and jimmy

Honor the Dead

Whistling past the graveyard.

And then sometimes the graveyard whistles back...

High on Life

According to this dude, we no longer live on planet Earth. We have made a new planet with our stupid and messy ways, he calls it planet EAARTH.

Is it possible so much carbon dioxide in our atmosphere is making us crazy?

Maybe we're all just high?

Circles

What if it's just one big circle? And every once in awhile you re-trace steps you've walked before?

And of course, in the retracing, nothing really is the same. It's pretty obvious, you have changed, and your steps don't really exist, except in the fog of memories in your cranium.

Still there are echoes and recurrences, and odd twists and they kind of tug at you like a hungry dog.

You think, "I was in this place doing this, and now I'm in this place doing this..."

And was it really you, and is it really you now? And what exactly happened anyway? And you look for reasons, and meanings, and maybe they are there, and maybe they aren't.

And no one is going to interpret it all for you. Anyway.

"The Telepaths are Melting My Face." - E. Bradley

I played a rock show with The Telepaths (take a listen to our song "Crude War - someone remarked that we sounded like a cross between the Dead Kennedys and The Doors - I'll take it as a high compliment), on Thursday.

We were tight and loud. I cranked my amp up and let it rip.

Pretty happy with the results. Someone came up to me after the show and told me he loved my guitar playing and he asked if that's what I did for a living.

Nope. But gee, a guy can dream can't he?

Global Depression?!

Most of the news is bad. That can't be good.

Still maybe this is how a new world is made.

Messy, messy, messy.

I'd Say Mystic

When it comes down to it, I'd say "mystic."

As in the fundamental aspect of our universe seems essentially mysterious to our noble but feeble efforts of understanding.

And as in "mystified" by the awesome power and arbitrariness of much of our existence.

Paralyzed By Catastrophe

You ask, "how many unforeseen catastrophes can dance on the head of a pin?"

And then "unforeseen catastrophe fatigue" sets in...

Mad Consumer Paradise

I don't think "oil spill" really catches it. How about an open vein? A gaping, bleeding wound?

A severed artery bleeding out into the ocean?

This may be the end of the Gulf Coast as we know it. Leaving lots of death all around.

Cheap oil, cheap gas, cheap trips down to the mall. And something irreplaceable is destroyed. Not exactly a rational trade-off.

Another sign of the madness of our consumer paradise.

And You are In It...

And then you realize you are in a speeding car with a whole bunch of crazy people - people shouting and arguing about really stupid things. And the brakes don't work, and the accelerator is stuck, and the steering wheel is actually just a prop.

And you're in the back seat, you 're strapped into your seat, you're chewing gum furiously, you look out the window and the landscape is just one long blur, one long smear - there's what look like the shapes of trees and buildings and burned out malls and lots of rust and dead stuff.

You can't see what's behind you. It's just a blur. And it's all just gone, gone, gone.

You can see something ahead, it looks like a brick wall, no maybe that's just a hallucination, it might be a cliff, there's lots of blue sky and it looks like the road ends.

And there's some ominous looking clouds - it may actually be a funnel, "oh shit" heavy weather. And the funnel is massive and it's heading your way, and there's all kind of debris, jet trash, broken TVs, cables and strings and garbage, lots of freaking garbage.

Spinning like some Horror-Show Carousel. There's some kind of creepy circus music coming from the funnel. You realize this is your world. And you are in it.

Playing an Empty Room

We had one of those long, rambling, totally intense rehearsal sessions yesterday afternoon. It was so absorbing. Like falling into another zone.

Time just dissolved.

There were moments of beauty and of dissonance too. We played for each other. For an empty room. And that was enough. No, it was more than enough.

Destroying the Irreplaceable

"Mother Nature on the run in the nineteen seventies..." - Neil Young

I guess by now, we've run her over, stomped her into the bleeding ground, and left her in a million tiny oil-saturated, globally-fired pieces...