Embryonic Tonic Essay 10 October 2019
We all know about the opioid epidemic in the US. Everybody knows somebody. It's at the point now where the children of friends are dying. The Sackler family should be in prison. Rich people never pay for their crimes. Everything is set up so that the rich and powerful stay that way. The only difference between now and how it's always been is the perceivable air of transparency afforded to the free world at this particular point in time. That's why the USA is so goddamn radical. The ruled having a say in how they are ruled is a break from the tradition of subjugation.
The willingness of the masses to believe anything they're told if they are told often enough boggles my mind. Even though incremental progress is made in terms of compassion winning out over greed, the greedy know how to manipulate enough people so that they stay in power. This nation is a Petri dish for the idea of an idea as government. We all know this. The extent to which people are ingrained in their corner infuriates me. Intolerance is stronger than ever. Intolerance is a uniquely personal sin at the same time as being a form of governance. Look, man, along the way I bothered to find out how the government in America works. I also have tried to have at least a basic understanding of how the governments of other nations operate. It drives me fucking crazy that a basic knowledge of civics isn't required in order to vote. Yeah, I know, that's the hole point of the American idea.
A way around having the same say in how your life is administered as somebody who is willfully ignorant is by lying to dummies. Sociopathologically everyone knows this. We live in times now in which Lincoln's plea to rely on "the better angels of our nature" is being obliterated by bad faith actors. I have a feeling in my gut that freedom is wasted on Americans. In a way we deserve what we get. The only catch is that I'm an American and I want more. You know what I want? Consistency. That's it. All I want is consistency. Wait, that ain't true. I crave honesty. I loath belligerence.
The standing of the United States in the world mirrors that of our individual citizens. We as a nation are isolated. We as individual people are isolated. People thought I was joking when I sang "Peace and Love, Motherfuckers" but I was most certainly not. This song is about addiction. If there's an over riding addiction nowadays it's an addiction to outrage. Basically you must explain to me why you are right. A more intellectually honest approach is for me to figure out why I'm wrong about you. Accepting blame is anathema. God fucking dammit. I get in these moods, you see. The clouds gather and the walls become a ceiling. Spelunking feels like relief from the claustrophobia. And here we are. I haven't been scooting around my beloved trails for far too long. I am adrift.
I don't want to explain this song. I want you to love it. I want one other person to see THE NEVERENDING OPERA. I mean "see" in a metaphysical way. Really, though, I'm proud of this song. The flute you hear is a little gimmick toy I got in the Philippines - or maybe somewhere else. I don't rightly recall. Brian is proud of this one. He did a fantastic job mixing. I like how Ochster switches up double time and half time and what not. It lends depth to the proceedings, like cinematic smoke billowing through a miniature set to create epic awesomeness. Epic awesomeness. Is that too much to crave?
Embrionic sludge suck it down tonight
Down the delusion make you feel alright
Just don't wanna know just don't want to see
Just don't want to care just don't want to be
Listen, man, I dig everything is wrong
Such a stupid thought put it in a song
It's a pennt ante world that don't amount to shit
Ain't got the guts to die so numb yourself to it
Here's to you again
Pain will never end
Time to say "goodbye and hello nanobytes"
Let them pull the load you have earned that right
With everything you done and everything you know
Give yourself to it you deserve it tho
You won't come back again
Won't feel anything
Let that tonic breath let it fill your soul
Let it make that real let it gain control
Here's to nowhere friends
Never ever ends
Tin Foil Girl Essay 23 September 2019
This song was originally written in the mid 80s, or the origins of it at least. I vaguely remember the Replacements LET IT BE changing my life. One thing I shared with my Minneapolis heroes was alcoholism. The line from the original writing that sticks out to me 35 years later is "drink up to the times/drink up to yourself/live your life that's what you gotta do/but how can you live with nothing to give/I'll be unknown before I'm through." I'll leave that there.
I came up with the character of Tin Foil Girl in my basement at some point. A writer writes, right? I finished up the lyrics a few years back in anticipation of recording it with Brian and Andy. My entire life I always wondered what it would be like if someone ran for president of the USA who didn't give a shit about anything. I imagined a soulless creature who said and did anything because this individual didn't actually care about the nation and the inherent promise of a Republic built on ideals. Well fuck me if that didn't happen before mine very eyes. It's what "Tin Foul Girl" does in the song. Having it actually happen was as jarring an incident as 9/11. If anything this guy's hatred of compassion has made the GOP into a bunch of sychophantic pussies. I have to hand it to Trump for remaking one of the two (TWO) American political parties into his own image. It functions as Nixon's southern strategy blooming in full. Guys like Lindsey Graham and Mitt Romney are caught up in an inversion of Bob Dylan's "A Hard Rains Gonna Fall" namely the line "you better start swimming or you'll sink like a stone."
Shit. I guess this is now a political essay. I remember Robert Mueller's hearing. He had a look on his face that said "for fuck sake, Democrats, it's all here spelled out for you - high crimes and misdemeanors - do your fucking job." This Trump guy's a destructive whirlwind. The political stuff can be reversed. This is why I hate this motherfucker. He provides cover for bigotry plain and simple. This nation's bonkers. Presidentialy the pendulum swings wildly. The Obama Reaction was going to happen.
Look. I'm a sociopath. I generally don't care about the human race. Our biggest accomplishment has been to poison the earth. Yay. I do, however, believe that, even though collectively we may deserve annihilation, individually we deserve dignity. The world is a grim place. 99.9% of human existence has been overt suffering and death. It's how nature works. It's benign. I understand why people fearfully flock to religion. It's a comforting message to know that one day your suffering will end. That's also one of my main beefs with monotheism. Everything's about "suffering" with these motherfuckers. There's so much we need to figure out. Having to deal with a majority of a genus and species that believes in Santa Claus is counterproductive. This is how Trump got elected. Facts mean nothing. Truth is now a construct, apparently. Porky the drummer can't understand Trump supporters because they have an endless appetite for eating shit, getting ripped off, and dying young. It's exactly the same with monotheism. It brings individual existential comfort and is devoid of reason and an affront to reality. That's why hysterical liberals and never trumpers call it a cult, because it is.
Blind acceptance is mostly how civilization has functioned since settled societies emerged. This country was the first that attempted to be NOT built on blind acceptance. There was always a chance that a demagogue would ascend and feed into the worst impulses of the populace. Trump is the anti-Lincoln. Whereas Lincoln pled for a reliance on "the better angels of our nature" this motherfucker is burning it down and lining his pockets in the process. Actually, I'm into a lot of what he does. I like how he blatantly tells the working man that he's going to take their money, healthcare, and clean air. It's brilliant. When his supporters say "he doesn't lie" they're referring to how he's honest about how he doesn't like people of color. He's honest about the crimes he commits to line his pockets. He's honest about the things that american voters have long suspected of politicians in general. They are relieved that FINALLY a politician has told them that he only cares about their vote. He hates the same people and that's good enough.
It's breathtaking, isn't it? The most startling thing is that people act surprised that an amoral charlatan won the election. He never pretended to be anything else.
She hates her clothes and so she walks around with nothing on
She's all butt naked at the mall she gets arrested, son
Spends the night in jail
Only thing she wears
Is just the ti foil on her head
The shrink think's she's crazy so he tries to fill her head with drugs
He don't believe the foil transmissions from her kitchen rug
Wall to wall by the sink
Don't make no sense
Just another reason she's insane
She tells the shrink exactly just what he does want to hear
Her plans have gotten bigger and she sees her time is near
Hit's a temporal note
A subsonic wave
And now the doctors are her slaves
Tin Foil Girl she knows exactly how to make some money fast
Makes the doctors clone a formula that makes the highs just last
Sells it to the numb' Cause they hate their lives
Just enough to start her own damn bank
When she multiplies the algorythm it's now on its own
Keeps on making shit be new it knows the sequence of the clone
Tin Foil gets her cut
Parties like it's life
And then becomes the president
She gives a speech up on the mall in downtown Washington
Just tin foil on her head and nothing else got no clothes on
Cut's her promo well
Hits the buller points
The pundits duly play their parts
Because she's turned us into marks
And only did it for a lark
We need a second Noah's Ark
Titular (SGnB) Essay 23 September 2019
I wrote this basic song in my dorm room in Cumberland Hall at the University Of Maryland College Park in 1987 or 88. People tell me I have an unnatural gift for remembering songs. I suppose that's true. I honestly don't know. I know this, though. By the time I bring a song to a bunch of players I've played it at least 500 times. That's why I get mad when people ask to change something. It's like asking someone to change the function of their cardiovascular system. Sure it's possible. It's supremely unnecessary. That doesn't mean I'm not open to suggestion especially in a project as expansive as THE NEVER ENDING OPERA.
I understand the problem. The way that popular music has evolved since the proliferation of electricity has served as a limit to people's imaginations. The concept of the album is arbitrary. I owe it absolutely no allegiance and neither should you. Why should the limits of what can be pressed onto a slab of vinyl in the 1950s be the template for whatever the fuck I'm goddamn writing? Please tell me I want to know.
The problem is mine and mine alone. Of course one can parse the blame around but, being as complaining and whining are now the bedrock of the United States Of America to such an extent that this nation has elected the king of whining and complaining and blaming as the motherfucking president (just right quick before I move on - Imagine General Lee blaming his troops for his loss at Gettysburg - It's unfathomable - But in the words of Bob Haney "I digress" ) the problem is mine. Here's the reason. I'm the only person I've ever met who has a problem with the album system. I've been attempting to change the way that people think of popular music. I haven't succeeded in the slightest. I haven't even convinced the members of the SFP collective.
That's fine. I don't want to put too much on their plates. It's MORE than enough that they're willing to help AT ALL! I can't express the deepness of my love for these people. If any word sums up my attitude to those I share creativity with it's gratitude. Also this, yo. We're all middle aged punkass motherfuckers bitten by the need to rock (silly but true) when we were fucking children. I believe it's in all of our DNA. I merely want to establish a completely new template upon which to display out creativity.
I can hear you getting pissed. "Stop being so vague, Dave!" your shouting at your blue tooth device on your way to work. "I'm already pissed I got to go to fucking work and now you're berating my because YOU haven't explained to me what I don't understand." Well, commuter, today's your lucky day.
I write a lot. When I was a kid pouring through rock bios of the Beatles and the Who what struck me was the business like approach to songwriting that Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, and Townshend employed. Later on I discovered the Velvet Underground and how Andy Warhol nudged Lou Reed in the same direction at "The Factory." Write like it's your job. Also, in my formative years, I stumbled across the saying that all young writers stumble across: A writer writes. So that's what I did.
As a fan of music, and by music I mean certain combinations of notes, beats, and language, I became curiously amused at how Broadway was taking pop artists and constructing musicals around them, jigsaw puzzling "plots" from hits by the likes of Abba and Frankie Valley. It made more sense to me to produce the Who's Tommy because it was written as a narrative. Aye, there's the rub! It was written as a narrative because Pete said it was. I went about constructing operas out of my songs. My thinking has always been that there's never a good reason to NOT try something artistically. If you fall into that trap you're not an artist. Obviously that's totally cool. Trying to force people into being something they ain't is for the fucking birds.
I'd been writing narratives with songs since I was literally a child.
Dammit. I just realized I spent a bunch of words explaining something and the answer is not anywhere more near than it was at the beginning of this sesh. For fuck's sake. Really, I've spent a lot of time making sure that shit lines up. I just wish we didn't need to be hassled with subsistence so that we could release the NEVERENDING OPERA on a schedule that only paused for holidays.
Goddammit. Still. Why should you believe me? Ain't it too much to ask that someone attempts to understand an artistic POV with no beginning and no end? I say it isn't asking too much. That's what the originators of civilization asked of their workers eons ago. They came up with religions and gods and retributions and salvations and blabbity blues. All I ask is that you enjoy these songs.
7.
Yeah
Well if it's true
Then she'll force it out of her mind
Congratulations
Fucking up for the umpteenth time
They say it's wrong
Spaceships guns and boobies ain't got no home
But it's a song
Can't forget the future when the past ain't ever known
She has an Elvis on her dashboard and a Dawn in pendant heart
And a dog tag of a fella who was there to play a part
When she spreads her legs and kisses everything goes down in flames
Just because it's life and death don't mean that this here ain't a game
Well had she known
She never would have entered but then she did anyway
Infatuation
That's for little punk ass mealy mouth with nothing much to say
But then that's us
Just a bunch of followers just glad to be alive
It's in the rulebook
Right after the chapter that says how to shuck and jive
Gimme a one shot dagger
Destined to blow my mind
No in between
Either the top or the bottom line
Singing on down the line
Spaceships
Guns
And boobies
She Fought For What Essay 14 September 2019
Back in college I was in a band called Forgotten Sons. As college bands do if you ain't REM (old as fuck reference #1) the band broke up and I was embittered. Being a John Lennon acolyte I wrote a "fuck you" song to Joel Baily, who left the band, in the spirit of "How Do You Sleep?" and a gazillion rap beefs that were on the horizon. Of course this isn't that song. But on the album that I wrote and recorded between Forgotten Sons and Doom Cookie, which I dubbed A BRIDE A DAY in honor of my buddy Paul Deboy who wrote a song called "Sporadic Sunjam" the chorus to which was "a brighter day" which I misheard as "a bride a day," I did write a song called "We Fought For What." Look, I repurposed much of that record for this record. But back to the original song it was kind of a primer on American wars and how I sided with the losers. The first line is "In the Civil War I would have been a rebel." I took solace in my racist stance by aligning myself with Chuck D who sang in "Prophets Of Rage" off of IT TAKES A NATION OF MILLIONS TO HOLD US BACK "I'm a rebel so I rebel." The lie of the American Civil War is that the Confederacy was racist and the Union was not. That's as bullshit as it gets. You merely had apartheid in the north whereas in the south you had full blown fucking slavery. Race is still the greatest unspoken conversation of our republic. A little history lesson may be helpful and I never hear anybody making this point these days. Let's just use Iran aka them death-to-america-motherfuckers as a jumping off point. Iran is Persia. They have a loooooooong history. They had plumbing, cities, art, education, and medicine when the anglo-saxons and the nordic folk were wrapping themselves up in animal skins and beating each other with sticks. The ascendance of white folk is an anthropological blip. Here's another example - motherfucking Afghanistan. They used to be the Khwarazm Empire until they made the mistake of insulting the Great Khan - but even before that. This is the region subjugated by Persia, Rome, the Byzantines, and the Ottomans. You think US troops standing around for 20 years makes a difference to these people? This all ties into SPACESHIPS GUNS AND BOOBIES. Everything ties into everything. A bit less intellectually challenging, however, is how the original song was reworded so as to act as the bridge piece between TRAVELOGUE and THE SAGA OF REMOTE CONTROL. Charlene is Remote Control. That's the main point to take away from this song. I ain't quite figured out how it happens. I think maybe she's like the next evolutionary spurt and is exceptionally long lived or maybe even immortal like Jack Harkness/The Face Of Boe. Maybe she gets gifted immortality from the El Camino TARDIS.
Musically ol' Ochster really does well here, underplaying much to the benefit of the song. Many times while dubbing Andy has already recorded his percussion tracks and I use his accents for my extra parts. It's fun. While Brian and I were doing the vocals we didn't have the jack to plug the microphone into my guitar rig so I attempted full blown Yoko mannerisms. Obviously I've learned lo these past few decades that Yoko's vocal stylings are rooted deeply in international musical expression. That she was laughed at in the late 60s and early 70s is another example of the backwater nature of northern europe through-out most of human history. Growing up isolated and behind the rest of the world, anglos and nordics were never exposed to the grand awesomeness of the silk road. The close minded and short sighted dumbassery is now currently on display with the leadership in both Great Britain and the USA. Shit,we didn't even get a full century ruling the world and now we'r beat a hasty retreat from our global leadership role. Whatever, right? It's only international human rights and giving a shit about food and water.
But there you go, folks. Ideally Brian and I would be doing our weekly breakdown over the course of an hour but things are too hectic right now. That's fine. One needs to constantly adapt in order to survive and then prosper. By the way I love you all.
On the interstate Charlene was just a rebel
Wrong as long as you're the one carrying a badge
In the aftermath of that sky blue El Camino
When she took one hell but it didn't hurt too bad
Now a polarized consensus leaves a girl without her senses
The aftermath was thus as much as but
She fought for what
Just to make it clear Charlene's Remote Control
You could see this swerve like a heel turn telegraphed
If you didn't know the scent of burnt rubella
Has a healing cypher and a myth just do the math
chorus
in the place where the bison thunders echo
lead that fuel gas her up and get go oh no
So the time space loop in the multiverse of stoners
Making stories up so the moon becomes the sun
Here's a reprobate sexier than Cleopatra
Let her fill your lungs up and smoke that son-a-gun
chorus
Dave and Dennis speak on Dennis's movie CATONSVILLE: MUSIC CITY MARYLAND, a Sunrider 9 Production.
Nowhere Ones Essay 5 September 2019
This is convoluted, but then again so is everything. Fuck. Here is an immediate existential digression. Follow it? Why the fuck not. Maybe go stream of consciousness. That always feels like a cop out. Who fucking knows. The thing with stream of consciousness is that it's the amalgamation of everything one's little pea brain is sorting through. Just because the words come tumbling out doesn't imply a lack of preparation. That's the biggest thing that pisses me off about motherfuckers who can't grasp the complexities of improvisation. Improvisation is the exact OPPOSITE of lack of preparation. It's living one's life constantly in the state of immediate creation. It's just that when improvising the artists shines the artist's spotlight on the shit purging itself from the soul of the vessel-artist. Then again artist as vessel is another hoary cliche. Anything that smacks of "otherness" is annoying. Like there are different "things." Things? Really? Is there ONE thing. Is one infinite. Of course it is, dildo head.
As for the Nowhere Ones it's all there. It all fits. I always think of the movie YELLOW SUBMARINE where the psychedelic words spell out "nowhere" then they desperate into "now here." It's there. It's here.
Initially this song was called "Nowhere Son" and it kicked off A BRIDE A DAY, the cassette I did between Forgotten Sons and Tude and Doom Cookie. It served as a reset there and it serves as a reset here. A lot of these initial bits are from that period, riffs wise, probably because Andy is drumming and he drummed Love & Hate and Forgotten Sons. It's amazing how much I have stayed on point in terms of large lyrical concepts.
Anyhoo, the story continues. This is concurrent with 1993. There the mundanity of existence bumps up against the harsh realities of young adults finding out that fucking up has consequences. Here though? Pure fantasy, baby, and yes I say "baby" too. It's not that there are no consequences in THE SAGA OF REMOTE CONTROL as much as it's an attempt to apply improvisational techniques to long form storytelling and seeing where the story goes. There is an outline of 30 something records for THE SAGA OF REMOTE CONTROL. That's the backdrop. That's the fabric of existence. That's the land upon which we stand as we set forth into by the minute story telling recreated in a studio and brought to YOU, you brilliant motherfucker.
I have to give all due props to Matt Besser and his podcast IMPROV4HUMANS. They make it up, duh, with even less preparation than my absolute holy grail of improv podcasts Scott Aukerman's motherfucking brilliant COMEDY BAND BANG. I bring up Besser, though, because I consider him a peer simply in that we're the same age and grew up punk as fuck. Of course he fulfilled his artistic dreams and I'm still slogging through. When he has on musical guests, mostly alt-country (natch), he asks what a certain lyric meant. I imagine he's asking me about a certain lyric from, say, Meltdown Shuffle from ACT 9 ATLANTIS and replying along the lines of "I'm really not sure what it means. It was just improvised in the larger story, like when you guys make shit up. Later you can go back and figure it out. In the moment it was stream of consciousness - in so much that every thought is stream of consciousness." I've quoted it a million times because it's perfection: "turn off your minds relax and float downstream."
"Nowhere Ones" is an attempt to bring lonesomeness into a universal realm, to try to include all the people who feel out of focus and invite them all to the party. To me that was always the great promise of rock and roll. Everyone is invited and everyone is accepted. That's pretty much a good way to approach existence. At any rate, friend, 7.
Fifty damn years on down the road
I was driving late at night
Under pollution lights
But it didn't stop the sun from coming up
To interrupt
Everything I seen
And everyone I known
My young self stumbled by
Too drunk too wonder why
Ain't no stars in the sky for the nowhere ones
That never won
Beat you black and blue
Bleed a drop or two
I see it in my sights
I glimpse it in the night
I don't know what is right for the nowhere ones
That never won
We're the nowhere ones
That just begun
00 Otis Redding
05 It's the science fiction western.
10 If there's ten songs he put a shaker on nine of them.
15 ...And he played in the Sprouts?
20 Paul bought it.
25 That was for six!
30 It just doesn't feel right.
35 Nothing is to be dismissed.
40 It might not be my chair.
45 You have some riffs.
50 I smoked pot at the first Circle 9 practice.
55 They were surfing in Tahiti.
60 He...he...he...he....
Peace and love, motherfucker and you know this yeah
Peace and love with a ruckus and you know this
Yeah yeah yeah
It's got to happen because it's right
In every feature in every sight
Drawing a bead on for loving's sake
Peace ain't a funeral love ain't a wake
From where I'm singing direct to you
I want it bad you want it too
I want it from you give it to me
'Cause peace and love that shit is free
So I walk down to the bar I saw some cover band with used guitars
And a heart made out of gold that's already been sold
From town Manila to Katmandu
Cantankeronus I got that too
Give me your loving you got that right
'Cause peace and love that shit is tight
Stoner Wintertime Essay 17 June 2019
The essay for the song before this, the "Fireplace Memories Essay," barely dealt with the song. It's hard to be so emotionally bare in a format in which you haven't spent your entire life dicking around. Suffice to say I can sing about my dad but I sure as fuck can't write or talk about him. But THIS essay, why this one may be TOO song specific.
Or maybe it will have nothing to do with the song at all. Part of the joy in being creative in a format that you made the fuck up is that you, the royal "you," are free to leap into flights of fancy. How much irrelavent tripe is too much? Tell you what, I'm not sure that relevance itself is relevant. Every once in a while I don't know what to do. But that's a lyric in a song called "Sinkin" to be dropped sometime when it's cold, most likely.
"Stoner Wintertime?" The band was having trouble with the time signaure changes so we changed it. I kept the original version I used on the demo and started the record with it because one of the main points made in the larger piece is that the categorization of music is beyond arbitrary bordering on insulting. Everyone on Earth should be angered. Everyone on Earth should also crave truth and freedom. NEITHER of those things are happening.
This is a moment in time, essentially, in a quantum amount of ways. In ways that I can percieve it's the wrapping up of the SFProject I undertook because Brian didn't want to do 1993. It's a little weird, right? I love playing with Brian and Wil but it's better for each of them if they aren't in the same band, at least to mine eyes. The major plus up in this bitch is that I've worked withPaul now for for 1 3/4 years. I LOVE the way WINTER 1993 turned out. I'm ecstatic. I ain't going to go into the ins and outs that go into putting together a record. Suffice to say that, as a fella who LOVES writing, I'm blessed (in a way that pays no allegience to the fictional characters known today as "deity') to have pockets of likeminded friends, up for experimentation. At the last SoSHEDity Fringe Players practice ole Pork was talking about the TV show Classic Albums, the one about WHO'S NEXT, and how nobody understood Pete Townsend's concept at all! Laughingly he said that reminded him of me. And of course it does! I can see it but I'm rightly convinced I'm the only one. There are parrallels in pop culture, mainly insanely ambitious and financially nation-sized ones like MVU and GoT. You see? I got the three letter thing down, motherfuckers - SFP!
My brain's scattershot right now. My motherfucking sinuses are causing me a great deal of "goddammit." It drains the energy of the human body. All my extra juice is used fighting the inflamation. Healthy living remedies it to a certain extent. I irrigate the fuckers, I take OTC drugs, I run, do yoga, do body resistence. Every once in a while my sinus laughs at me. If I was a dumdum human living a hundred thousand years ago trying to make sense of this I'd ascribe all sorts of idiotic rememdies to something I couldn't understand. That's what people have done through-out the ages. Even as recently as 5,000 years ago, 2,000 years ago, or maybe even 700CE or such. Do you see where I'm going? If you do you're a brilliant cynical motherfucker who is out of sorts with todays backwards looking society based on fear and paranoia. And while fear and paranoia do, in fact, "rule" as they say, pleae burst free from the chains of monotheism, thinker, and embrace LAST century!
The cold and ragged beauty of a winter tree
Struck Dawn as quite odd as she looked to see
A table full of papers but none up to date
No chance t glimpse beauty when you're running late
A far off police siren pierces through the air
But Billy doesn't notice and he doesn't care
Sirens don't mean nothing in the county jail
Doing time's the fine when you can't make the bail
In wintertime
The sun don't climb
The ice it shines
The world's unkind
An accident just happened out on National Pike
Some lady ran a redlight sliding through the ice
Valentines day candy scattered on the street
Now my car is totaled and it's raining sleet
The windows creek and moan as the wind bears down
Whipping through a tree branch lying on the ground
The screen door whistles loudly and the yard is froze
And me I write a song and I can't feel my toes
chorus
Dave - guitars and vocals
Paul - bass and production
Pork - drums and headphones mix
Ian - mastering
Fireplace Memories Essay 10 June 2019
Fireplace Memories Essay 10 June 2019
This here is a straight up song written to my dad. You see, my method of songwriting hues closely to the template laid down by John Lennon in "Tomorrow Never Knows" namely: "turn off your mind, relax, and float downstream." Later on I realized that people of all stripes and sizes use this philosophy in everything. It's what Mike Tyson meant when he said "everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face." It's what Tom Hank's character meant in SAVING PRIVATE RYAN when he said to a scared soldier "remember your training. You'll be fine." It's a basic root of improvisation's "yes and" tenant as espoused by the UCB trailblazers. Basically it's when one gets in touch with one's subconcious self. Writers talk about it. Athletes talk about it. That makes me wonder if it's specific to "performance."
I don't believe I've ever read anything about a scientist claiming that their hands were moved by some unknowable force when they were hammering some hypothesis into a theory. Some people may say that that is what's wrong with science in the first place. How much does deduction and reasoning factor into the subconcious creativity of an aspiring artist? I would hazard to guess, as the fucking US president would day, very muchly.
The thing about accessing some sort of non-concious realm is that it's unverifyable by any means of science. But is that true? The study of brains, especially as it pertains to psychedelic drugs, has recently been fascinating. I happen upon article after article of MRI scans of brains under the influence of substances that change perspective. Every one shows areas of the brain pumping away that lay dormant in brains being un-fucked with.
In a way everything we learn is tethered to this particular existence. I get a sensation in dreams when I know I gotta wake up. In a semi lucid dream state I reassure myself that I have plenty of time to sleep. Then I ask myself how I know. I say because I'm looking at this clock. Then I say to myself but this clock only exists in this dream state and the state to which we have to wake up is a different one and this clock is meaningless in that world. At this point I usually wake up.
But that's the larger point. Lunatics who believe the earth is flat (fucking idiots - thanks Russia!) exist on the same plane as Neil DeGrasse Tyson and Graham Hancock. Ultimately everything we know and learn is just an interpretation of the limited amount of raw materials we are provided in this waking existence. The importance or rightness of any idea is subjagated to the whims of modern society.
Take the element of gold. It's a high value item. It would not be a high value item if the human race didn't exist. It is purely through the existence of homo sapiens that the basic element of gold is more valuable than salt - or nitrogen, if we keep it elemental. Likewise the retort when I claim the ultimate meaninglessness of the human race. But without us there would be no conciousness. I reply "why?" Surely something created by a lump of carbon that acts as cancer to it's environment could not be the entire reason for everything that came before it. Or could it? It doesn't matter. We're describing the same color using defferent terminology.
From what I've seen by existentialist writing they try to hammer away at this diamond wall of impenetrability. I suppose that the bottom line is that there is no question unworthy of being asked. There is no answer that is substantially blasphemous. It's irritating and exhilerating, much like the writing of these essays is turning out to be. I used to have this problem in college. My hands can't keep up with my brain. I assume that's why I gravitated to playing the guitar. It's more efficient when relaying ideas.
Let it wash over you, music. Sometimes it burrows into your soul.
The books are kept impeccably
An air of sadness from what couldn't be
And pictures grace the mantle place
All rosy cheeked and freckle faced
Separated tender rage
She got the kids you got the cage
Kids move out a big old house of fireplace memories
Alright
Now don't no kids mess up the floor
A townhouse, baby, no back door
The bank is stuffed forever more
And the bills rise like the tides
It wasn't nothing that you said
You thought you loved her in your head
In your mind together dead
Your graves are side by said
So hold on to your fireplace memories
All that you got left can't laugh at you
And that's the truth 'cause what was true
Was what was wrong and now it's gone
Satisfaction never comes but your standards are too high
And when your gone I'll be right there until your soul floats by
And then is lightening strikes you down and crushes all the past
Fireplace memories won't die of all things they will last
chorus
Dave - guitars and vocals
Paul - bass, production
Pork - drums
Ian - mastering
Empty Glass Essay 5/25/2019
One thing I bought hook, line, and sinker through the nonstop diet of rock and roll literature I ingested through my formative years was the myth that getting fucked up helped the young artist become great. I remember John Lennon saying, in LENNON REMEMBERS, that substances had no effect on his artistic output with a quip along the lines of "I would have written 'I Am the Walrus' if I was on acid or under water."
Of course that isn't the Lennon "Walrus" quote that stuck with me. He also said that he wrote "I Am the Walrus" by eating acid one weekend and writing a verse or line, then eating acid the next weekend and writing another verse or line, rinse and repeat until you make it to "goo-goo-ga-joob."
I bring this up because I truly believed that chemical dependency was a prerequisite for rock and roll. I was a little stoner kid but, really, BEER! Nothing special about it. We were the type of kids who would play "hey mister" outside of the liquor store and go into the woods and get drunk and tell stories. This happened all the way through my teenage years. I gew up in Baltimore. While Minor Threat and Bad Brains were playing the 9:30 Club me and my guys were in the woods slamming warm Schaffer, smoking pot riddled with seeds and stems in corncobs we would purchase at the Royal Farm on Edmondson Avenue right inside the beltway, daring each other to piss on tombstones, playing drinking games that always had to do with rock and roll trivia, mainly the Beatles. The first song I wrote that I had the guts to play and sing was called "I Hope It's You and Me" and it was intended as my version of "If Only You Were Lonely", the B-side to "I Will Dare" by the Replacements. The hook was the line "I might drink myself to an early grave" so when anyone wanted to hear it they would yell "DRINK MYSELF TO AN EARLY GRAVE!" which is a great prank in and of itself.
I continued to write drinking songs for THE REST OF MY FUCKING LIFE! Whenever we do a slow number in C-major even now Brian refers to it as "a drunken swagger." My friends, "Empty Glass"is a song in that grand tradition. It has that garagey mid-atlantic thing going on. Pork says it "sounds like a New Jersey bar band." The mid-atlantic is a strange place. The suburbs are much more urban than to the west, where designers and planners wisely ditched crap that sucks. It's on old and aching suburbia. It's a pre strip mall suburbia. It has main streets, sidewalks, and little stores. It has pizza shops. This ain't the city, but it also isn't the suburbs as they are presently constituated. The houses are close together, the streets are narrow, the corners have what used to be barber shops or liquor stores. One block towards the city and you got the row homes made famous on Baltimore's keynote addition to American pop culter - THE WIRE, and one block the other way and you got mansions. Not MCmansions but real old time structures that slave owners once called home. In the working class sections of these little hamlets a couple blocks off of a road that at one time was a railroad track, you got yourself garages and basements - the petri dish for 70's and 80's little pothead rock and rollers.
These houses were big enough that, when the kids grew up, there was a small space that parents ceded to their offspring. This is what Lee Gardner referred to as, in his review of Circle 9's IF IT WAS UP YOUR ASS YOU'D KNOW IT, "rec-room genius." Another writer for an underground metal mag called Circle 9 "stoner friendly rock guys who have probably played their fair share of keggers." I don't know what's wrapped me up in this sepia toned nostalgic reverie. This is the milieau in which 1993 takes place, when these punk ass little fuckfaces have turned into young adults and the cushion of fuck up is gone. This is when people start to get lost to drugs and prison. That's the backdrop. Cocaine and PCP, two of the shittier drugs.
But "Empty Glass" itself was my attemp at writing something that would fit in on, if not PLEASED TO MEET ME, then HOOTENANNY. It's got the Stonesy Chuck Berry chugga chuggas and the suspended majors that Paul Westerberg uses so expertly. I even took words directly from Paul Westerberg interviews and made them lyrics. He was and remains the master of devestating couplets, either as insults or come ons or "generational longing" type stuff. Nowadays the lyrics in "Empty Glass" to me have the cadence of a sitcom. Set up - punchline. Exposition, set up - punchline - et cetera.
Thinking hard about this song it feels like a nice addition to the canon of boozy little pop songs written by guys and girls who aren't quite urban or suburban but somewhere in between. It's like ole Porky said when the song was coming together in the shed (the more things change!)and previously mentined in this essay. New Jersey Bar Band Rock.
I didn't see you when I went out tonight
A word or two means nothing to me that don't sound right
I live the life of an empty glass
I'm glued onto my barstool before the moment's passed
If you call the weather I'll call the time
If you say you'll be mine
Tonight I'm feeling lucky so what's the word from you
If I run out of cash before the night is through
If I told you my dream you'd slap me in the face
So ditch that creep and I'll meet you later It's gotta be the case
If you call my number then I'll set the time
If you say you'll be you say you'll be mine
If I can wake up to you my life would be complete
But I compete on a footing unsure
When I call your number
You set the time
If ever you are ever you are
If ever you'll be mine mine all mine
You'll be mine
Happy New Years Baby Essay 13 May 2019
This one is about as literal as any song I've ever written. I met my wife at a place in C-ville called "the mansion." She was a student at the college and I was a college drop out living at my Mom's. A couple blocks away from my mom's the edifice stood, a big ol' victorian structure sectioned off into apartments full of young people, or older folk looking for a new start, or drifters living out an endless Jack Kerouac novel, or something much less romantic like people who refuse to or just couldn't get their shit together.
This particular party was sometime in the 90's. Hmm, let's say 1993 (chuckle)? (If anyone is so inclined the mansion is in the Circle 9 movie THE CRACKER GETS THE CHEESE where Joe Gallagher plays a drug dealer, I play a cop, and the late Tom Wind plays a drug purchaser.) On the first floor is a big hall with a stair case opposite the main entrance and big apartments on either side. Facing the stairs, this party took place in the apartment to the right. THAT was where my future wife lived. One time I put my head through the drywall in the closet in her bedroom.
The thing about these parties is that Baltimore is a pretty gritty town - almost literally. When I was growing up you had preps and grits. Later on you had punkers too. But "grit" was a term to describe people who were southern rock devotees. They wore Molly Hatchet baseball shirts, jeans, and workboots year round, even in July. Once a grit jumped off of the high dive in full uniform at a teen night at the pool and everybody cheered. The preps kind of morphed into punks at a certain point. The thing that brought everyone together was a common love of cannabis. So at a pretty young age everybody was mixing together REM and Black Sabbath and MDC and Lynryd Skynyrd. Jump forwards a decade or so and these are the folks populating the party at the Mansion; students, workers, hangers ons, musicians, folks who weren't scared off of drugs simply due to illegality. Back then, during cannabis prohibition, a line of thought went "well I might as well try PCP or crack because they fucking lie about pot!"
Personally I gave up anything illegal when I turned 21 and I set on turning my liver into pate and my lungs into a burnt husk. Eventually I grew to view those addicted to alcohol and nicotene with scorn simply bcause they are the drugs sanctioned by society and therefore the laziest paths to addiction. That's a pretty assholish stance to take. It reminds me of gas stations/convenience stores. They function as one stop addiction shops for bloated and distracted Americans addicted to gasoline, nicotene, high fructose corn syrup, and gambling.
There's always a contingent in alcoholic circles of folks who fancy themselves as great artists or writers living out the romantic lifestyle of Charles Bukowski or Vincent Van Gogh. The truth is we were all just a bunch of drunks. I understand why alcohol came to prominance oh so many years ago. Simply put you needed the alcohol in your liquids to kill lethal bacterias. I oft wonder what American society would be like if the sanctioned drugs were cannabis and psylocibin instead of alcohol, nicotene, sugar, and caffiene. It sure as fuck wouldn't be nearly as fucking violent or mean.
Like fast food. Shit, how far have we strayed from the song now? This is like one of the podcasts me and Brian make. But dig, there is no conspiracy behind all of the legal drugs (and I include fast food in this category) being the ones that make the populace stupid, lazy, and dependent. There IS, however, a willingness to use the parameters presented to acquire and maintain power. Now we're lurching into territory that can't be summmed up in an essay about a song in a never ending rock opera. Suffice to say that, what, we're all slaves to the chains society presents to us in the form of everything they make ads for during the Super Bowl? That's myoipic and too media obsessed.
In terms of THIS SONG? What matters are the relationships we make and maintain with other people. If you're clever enough you can twist anything into seeming like an addiction. The mansion is where I met the love of my life so I presume one could say that it's certainly acceptable to be addicted to love. And there you have it. It's been about Robert Palmer the whole fucking time.
notes:
- Paul told me that adding an "s" to Happy New Year is a Baltimore thing.
- The guitar solo was played as a goof with the intention of recording a better one later but Paul and Pork liked the original one.-
I'm using Paul's effect board on all of the 1993 stuff so as to have a different sound than the SFP-Brandy stuff.
- For the back up vocals we ran a mic through the guitar pedals. I love doing that because I usually know what effects I want on the vocals and it always takes a million years to find it in the fucking computer later. Just do it live. It always goes back to the Beatles. Lennon wold have the effects on his voice when he recorded the vocals. Look, man, it's MUCH more efficient for me to record the vocal with the effect already on it.
Happy New Years Baby
The nights go on forever dogs bark through the cold
UPS trucks rumble through holidays grown old
Grey skies hover blindly grey grass lies asleep
Grey roads rise through heaven grey breath slowly seeps
How many people died when live shrinks and melts in pride
Accomplishments are nigh happy new years baby
The fireplace burns forgiving so come in from the cold
Laughter ells and singing false stories here retold
A cat purrs in the corner the music gets a boost
The stroke of midnight passes and everyone cuts loose
Cocaine and whiskey buzz acid and shrooms a must
Heroin and crack for us happy new years baby
Sleep when the sun comes up afternoon and throwing up
See the folks and suck it up happy new years baby
It's just like what Lennon said
Years come and go and then you're dead
Winter sucks or so I've read
Happy new years baby
Can't wait 'til spring comes 'round
Krokus flowers in the ground
Now the stinking fields are brown
Happy new years baby
Dave - guitars, vocals, percussion
Paul - bass, engineering, mixing
Wil - drums
Ian - mastering
1993 Essay May 2, 2019
When I was in my twenties I decided to conduct an experiment meant to test randomness and if randomness led to any noticeable patterns. I took all of my t-shirts and threw them into a gigantic pile in the middle of the cedar closet at my Mom's house. She was gracious enough to let me stay there after I stopped going to college. Every day I would close my eyes and root around the pile of literally hundreds of shirts and that'd be my shirt for the day. Once at a party my random shirt happened to be an old hospital shirt. A friend said something along the lines of "look at Tude. Most people go to the hospital and wear a shirt out. When they get home they throw it away or use it as a rag. Tude wears it to a party." That still gives me a chuckle.
What did I learn? Randomness is random. It led down a deconstructionist path that was essential in putting together the pieces for the never ending opera. Everything is arbitrary if you go back far enough. When I was a kid I read rock and roll biographies. Dave Marsh was my favorite. Later Lester Bangs was a god to me. Leg's McNeil writing for Spin was a golden age of magazine journalism. But I realized eventually, tracing the music I love back further and further, that rock and roll itself was a lie shouted by narcissistic Baby Boomers who had the good fortune of never having to face down an existential threat to their comfort. The 'Nam draftees are not included in my vitriol. They faced two enemies, Ho Chi Minn and Nixon. Hah! Where was I? Rock and roll was, is, and always will be a lie. The fact of the matter is that it's the same stuff that folk musicians had been doing for millennia. It wasn't special. Nothing is special. When you are born is arbitrary. The music of your youth is not special. You are not special.
What's this got to do with the song 1993? Wouldn't YOU like to know! I'll tell you. Remember a while back when the Hubble telescope was pointed at empty space and eventually it photographed a gazillion galaxies? That's the existential angst of arbitrary randomness right there. I fixed point in time and space, unassuming, nothing special about it (just like you) and yet, focus on it for an instant and it's the most spectacular thing ever in the cosmos. Just a tiny instant of focus and that specific reality is transformed, nothing into everything. Did it lose it's tag of nothingness when the discovery of everything was made? Does the discovery define that point in space? Did it even exist before the Hubble pointed at it? Deconstruct it further. To paraphrase Sam Kinison "we've hit another vein, mine deeper."
1993 is an arbitrary year picked at random with the specific idea of deconstructing it month by month and season by season to see what stories are told. The song birthed the concept with this'n. I wrote it for Doom Cookie. As a matter of fact the only reason this entry into the Never Ending Opera isn't under the name of Doom Cookie is that I made Brian promise that he would never let me stray from the Society Fringe Player name with future projects. He said it was smarter to be like my buddy Andrew Grimm, aka June Star, and keep the name forever whilst changing up the players.
Musically this song, through Paul's mixing, really accentuates the riff. In me pea-brain I always heard a fiddle playing the riff. I even borrowed one with the intent that I'd learn it enough to play the part when we recorded it but ALAS nyet!
I really want to hammer home the arbitrary underpinnings of all existence. It's arbitrary where you are born. It's arbitrary to what nation you owe allegiance. It's arbitrary which god was foisted upon you as a child. It's arbitrary if you dig your own gender. It's arbitrary if you get cancer. It's arbitrary if you have fun playing the guitar. Nothing is according to any plan. Keep deconstructing everything, eventually you'll get to a point of vacant nothingness and in a moment of mental anti-obliteration you'll realize that the entire everything was there the whole fucking time.
Looking at a corpse at dawn in 1993
Hit and run up the tab in 1993
Here I live in Baltimore in 1993
Born and raised wait to die in 1993
Segregate black and white in 1993
Baltimore Harbor night in 1993
It's like an alcoholic's dream
Blue collar bars and disco scenes
Poor rage and shoot up the interstate
Ain't life oh so great
Steaming crabs a baseball day in 1993
No football no subway in 1993
I'm feeling like I'm left behind in 1993
It never changes it never changes in 1993
Dave - stringed instruments and vocals
Paul, bass, recording, mixing
Pork - drums
Ian - mastering
HARD 26 April 2019
Rather unfortunately whenever we played this song live in Doom Cookie it was preceded with an erection quip. "Quip" makes it sound urbane.
This is a Doom Cookie song. This whole fucking opera is about Doom Cookie. It's the central conceit of the concept. The protagonist is a "character" like the protagonist in Jack Kearuac's ON THE ROAD is a "character" or how Stone Cold Steve Austin is a "character." When I was younger and I read novels it appeared to me that a young writer's first novel was essentially a diary with narrative overtones grafted onto it with Borg-like efficiency - clumsy and obtrusive. So 1993 could be viewed as a debut novel. Maybe it's the passion project that an artists gets to make after a great success. HAH! Everything's a passion project to folk who fucking work.
Doom Cookie, though. The way that 1993 works is we take a year in the life of a young man and follow him around. It was inspired by Richard Linklater's SLACKERS in terms of mood and feel. The function of this song is back story. It was written figuratively,but it works just as well literally. I like the idea of a young man floating around the rock and roll world nationally, drifting from place to place- or figuratively drifting from style to style as encapsulated by city. Here's the point I've been making my entire life. The differences in the types of music in the USA are fucking minuscule. MINISCULE I SAY! I'm not talking between grunge and metal, I'm talking between trance and bluegrass. Can I get an amen? I've always been puzzled by how regular folk approach music. Surely it's the only art form where people routinely hate, proudly, any output that doesn't correspond with a 3 year period when that person was coming of age. The arbitrariness of this prejudice is breathing insanity. Of course all prejudice is if you step back and observe it.
Deconstructing societal mores led to this long and rambling narrative I've been endeavoring to release lo this past half decade. It takes Doctor Who as it's main influence. Doctor Who can tell any story it wants, in any pop culture genre, thanks to the TARDIS. That function here is appropriated by the "song." The "song" is what unites the disparate story lines and characaters and genres of this narrative. The "song" makes this entire enterprise magical. As far as I can tell this has never been attempted. Maybe that's why it's so hard to get people to understand it. These essays are helping. They're functioning as a mental Tetris for me - much like psychedelic experiences fom my younger days. It's as if I'm stepping out of day to day existence and arranging these blocks of information in the story that they want me to tell. The blocks are the songs DUH!
This is why the trail run is so important. It helps alter consciousness so as to heal wounds dealt by the world of subsistence. It's why the human race found drugs for fuck's sake. It's funny how the absolute worst drugs are always the legal ones and how the drugs that inspire art and questioning are always demonized. Funny, right? If you keep along the deconstructionist path eventually everything loses all meaning it once had. That's the exhilarating part of it. Which reminds me of a thought I had out on the trails yesterday. Friedrich Nietzsche may have been a profoundly different man if he listed weights and ran in the woods. It may have given him the confidence to say the shit he only wrote about. You know what that would have made him? The Stone Cold Steve Austin of his time.
So here's to yuh!
Wake up Monday morning and I look around
I felt bad this morning and my hair fell to the ground
She came by on Wednesday with a wedding ring
I ducked out on Thursday, baby, and hocked my wedding ring
It's hard
So I went out to Seattle to try to find a band
But nobody did want me they wouldn't let me lend a hand
So I cruised on down to LA and got a new tattoo
But nobody knew Chuck Berry songs or "Blue Suede Shoes"
It's hard
So I went on down to Athens but I played too hard
Flew to the Twin Cities but they wouldn't let me in the yard
So I hitch hiked back to Baltimore and I shot myself
Now I'm paralyzed but I have found myself
It's hard
Dave - guitars and vocals
Paul - bass, engineering, mixing
Wil - engineering, drums
Ian - mastering