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.