David Lee Roth threw a party

For your sins

He tasted the vinegar and smiled

For your sins

David Lee Roth set up that party

All you gotta do is show up

David Lee Roth knows how to have fun

All you gotta do is show up

This is the end refrain of the song Hex. 23. There is a manifold meaning to what’s going on here. David Lee Roth (DLR) serves as something like a spirit animal in the song. Sorry Dave, please forgive me. You are everything I am not and are the highest form of animal. You can make things happen, whereas I frequently find myself lacking in that department. To be tiresome about the whole thing, the end refrain of the song breaks down into three bullets, and it’s really important for me to ruin this for you ‘cuz I’m no fun. It works like this, DLR is:

• Trying to absolve you (me) of the Sins of Introversion-- a lesson about how to ‘get down’ and have fun.

• Throwing a party because nobody else knows how to do it.

• Throwing a party because he has special knowledge about the nature of life. Here it follows that this action (partying) is the best course of action for now, because things are fucked up.

Taste the vinegar is a reference to these three dudes

Can you recognize him? That’s David Lee on the far right-- in the role of Lao Tzu. It has always been this way. Look at how Confucius and Buddha fume and suffer over the pot-- but there’s another take on this same brew. Bitter as it is, the Holy Fool finds something to appreciate. This is the path that I would like to find in life-- with bandanas tied at the knees of my spandex britches, doing high kicks of approval at just being here and alive. With you.

Hex. 23 completes the album Lustre of Denim. Kind-of. The full tracklist and order is what you see in bandcamp. But, weirdo revisionist that I am, I will be making a final version of the song Son of Tampa. Son of Tampa does not work. (Though its ending passage was a motivating factor in the creation of the last couple of songs.) Nevertheless, I want to salvage it. So the old Son is still represented online until I rework it and I can’t say the album is done yet. The next album will be called Sharkskin Music and there’s a couple of song ideas in early stages for it right now. I’m also going to do a painting for the cover of this one to try to recover some visual art skills. I’m getting very rusty and want to reconnect with 2D art. I miss it and life seems to allow for this now.

As for the recording of Hex. 23, it went very smoothly. Though I took more time on it than most songs. It was built very deliberately with beats and acoustic guitar. The whole structure was designed before I laid anything down and I did not have to rebuild the bones. So it was worth the time. In my usual fashion the vocals came late and I used a new piece of gear, the TC-Helicon Duplicator. This is the first vocal processor I’ve owned and I purchased it mostly for future live performances. What it does is slap on some compression/make up gain, and does automatic double tracking. The guitar solo and heavy guitar ending portion were the last tracks to be laid down and I had to try different treatments to get takes that worked-- I listened to a lot of thrash metal at this time. But the important thing here was that everything underneath was structured and sound. This allowed me to make the tonal adjustments on those final tracks with a minimum of frustration.

Here are the lyrics to the song

This game is called Frenzy

Frenzy is the name, of the game

And if you refuse, well...

That’s a choice play, a choice play

We trend and trade in rage

Wild eyes and frenzied

We trend and trade in rage

Wild eyes and frenzied

----------------

Hex. - 23

Things fall apart

Hexagram 23

Things fall apart

Things fall apart

Time ghost in the telephone booth

Searching

Searching for a scrap of paper

Something to write on

The message is grim,

You know the words

Don’t try to claim surprise

We trend and trade in rage

Wild eyes and frenzied

We trend and trade in rage

Wild eyes and frenzied

----------------

Hex. - 23

Things fall apart

Hexagram 23

Things fall apart

Things fall apart

David Lee Roth threw a party

For your sins

He tasted the vinegar and smiled

For your sins

David Lee Roth set up that party

All you gotta do is show up

David Lee Roth knows how to have fun

All you gotta do is show up

New song on deck! That’s right, Chief, I finished Cognitive Dissonance Blues. I don’t wanna go on and on I just want to tell you how the song works for me-- with a minimum of recording process details. Sounds good, right? Right? Okay, let’s go.

Here’s my early thoughts about the song, while I was still writing it
 

This song is a mashup of two ideas, each derived from distractionary musings on my morning work commute. The first is a paraphrase of a Henry Rollins bit about well adjusted people going into a crisis center & requesting a life crisis. It had something to do with physically harming the client as a new customer service offering. Hilarious! And perhaps the Circle Jerks did it better (Song: Operation). Sorry, I can’t find a reference recording of the Rollins routine anymore. Ten minutes on YouTube, and I found nothing. Dig it up if you wanna.

The second idea is the chorus/title, Cognitive Dissonance Blues. This came first. For some time now I wanted to work in the trope of adding ‘blues’ to a title (or lyrics) in a song. This is meant in the Bob Dylan Talking World War III Blues sense. It’s corny and I should really learn to process my aggression towards the Boomers... 

Great! So there’s two kind of half-baked notions which form the whole... 

A video for the song is planned. Here’s the evidence.
 

Cognitive Dissonance Blues is the second-to-last song for completion of the Lustre of Denim album. The final song is called Hex. 23, and is about David Lee Roth and the volatile nature of the fabric of reality. The Bandcamp sequence of songs on Lustre of Denim is updated as each track is created. Once Hex. 23 is added, this will represent the intended play order for the album.

The planned title for the new album is Sharkskin Music. There are about three song ideas in development for it...

It’s mid-july, so if I’m gonna do a June report I better do it now before I forget the stuff. This will probably serve as the total summer report, as I’m not bloggin’ as much as I aspire to. First up & most important is that I made an adjustment to the Bandcamp page. All the songs should allow you unlimited plays & downloads. I did not realize that the site was going to start harassing you after 3 plays. Sorry about that. I’m not trying to make this hard.

For my health and in anticipation of doing the songs live and loud I went through the process of obtaining these:

These are sound filtering earplugs. I finally went to the audiologist and got it done. Bring on the drums and full amplification. I also bought a PA head months ago when Greenshift Music was closing up. Don cut me a real deal, as he wanted to clear the store as much as possible. Still haven’t plugged the PA in-- don’t have any speakers yet.

June was a period of listening to the band The Sea & Cake (Thrill Jockey). Kind of a nice way to ease into the brutality of summer. (I’m not just talking heat, people lose their minds in Florida over the summer. I always forget this! Be careful on the road! We’re all confused & impulsive.) Tortoise is kind of nice this time of year, too. I also took a side-track into some metal with Corrosion of Conformity. The Technocracy album is the one for me.

Reading material: I finished Chaos Monkeys. (Finally!) I began and have almost finished Major Dudes: A Steely Dan Companion. It’s an overly-thorough compilation of Dan interviews. It’s exhausting, really, revisiting the origin story: Bard College, Gary Katz, move to California, session players & on & on… Though one effect of the book is that you actually experience what it’s like for artists to have to tell their story over and over again. Repetitions in this case that span decades. Becker articulates this kind of exasperation quite well by talking about losing facts in the repetition of storytelling. Did you know that I’m a Steely Dan fan? Well, I am.

There’s a new song:

It’s called (Yeah, you got it.) Cognitive Dissonance Blues. The basic tracks are laid down, lyrics are good, and it shouldn’t be long before I post it to Bandcamp. I’ve started storyboards for a video for this one & hopefully the shooting & production will rapidly follow the completion of the song.

And then there’s this activity in my life:

I began aikido training in February at the dojo Aikido Chuseikan. This has been a profound life-change for me-- and yeah, you can have your mid-life crisis theories, but this shit is real. I get a real sense of purpose from learning and doing this. In early June, I lost my blue stripe (Celebratory photo above), meaning that I’m less hazardous to myself and can have more technique applied with more intensity. I’m officially ranked as a 7th kyu, kind of a new thing at the dojo. The real progress milestone comes with the 6th kyu test-- and with success comes the goofy skirt-pants that aikidokas wear. Right on!

Lemme tell you something. I was on a statin drug for about 12 months prior to training. Three months of training & I let the prescription lapse… I didn’t really know (or want to know) the drill with this kind of drug (You’re supposed to be on it for life.) and was doing some magical thinking (dumbass!) that I did not require a statin any longer. Annual blood work came around and my doctor was pissed! I got a real talking to, lemme tell ya. Nevertheless, he scheduled blood work and it was agreed to postpone the statin until after the results. Guess what? Yeah, that’s right, when we got the numbers I was below the range that required being on the drug. No other dietary or fitness activities were undertaken during the time period. I place the credit for the improvement on my aikido practice. And I’m cool to be off the statin... Cuz Doc said so!

I didn’t know exactly when the time was going to be right to talk about aikido here. But my first test seemed as good as any other. It was inevitable, really. I just mentioned the health benefit. The mental health benefit is profound as well. I am able to (sometimes) maintain a sense of calm during stressful situations, when before I would try to find ways to emotionally retreat/withdraw. Don’t worry though, you can probably still startle me pretty good if you try. The benefit has something to do with not fully buying into whatever the asshole in front of me is putting forth… Somehow over the years I learned to be an easy push-over. This activity is about reversing (or at least examining) years of negative conditioning. Also, I’m not going all Full Buddha Zen Shithead Flea Market Karate Redneck (as yet). I’m not wearing kamikaze headbands or making other poor sartorial choices. The effect has been a lot more subtle and I hope I seem a little more present the next time we speak.

Bringing it back to the music: I wrote and recorded an instrumental song for the dojo. It’s called the Waterwheel Theme. The dojo posts lots of videos and I thought it would be nice for us to have an original theme. I gave two versions of the song to the dojo. No strings attached.

[Preface note: I watch a lot of HBO shows (Bill Maher, John Oliver, etc.). Please excuse these obvious influences as I work on developing an original voice.]

Yeah, I’ve been feeling all kinds of brain-shitty since about… Well, let’s just say approximately late November 2016. The reason for this of course is the shit-show commonly referred to as the Donald Trump Presidency. (If you’re not feeling even a tinge of anxiety these days, well then you my friend, need to skip this essay. Go find a place to wave your yellow or confederate flag somewhere else! This writing is not for false patriots & that’s what you are. Goodbye.) Nevertheless, excluding everything outside of my personal bubble, 2018 has been an incredibly successful year: professionally, creatively, and in terms of health/well being. But it is impossible to operate exclusively inside a bubble. Duh! I’m going to keep hitting this point, though: The more I withdraw, the more mental health issues creep out of the dark corners of my psyche. I’m convinced that things need to be dealt with in order not to perform a slow motion suicide-- or, less dramatically, exist as an insufferable mope. I have also come to the conclusion since the  Bush II years that the conventional (& even 21st century) channels of activism are insufficient. In the past, a protest march (or its digital equivalent) has made me feel good (unified, active, involved) but there’s the hangover which leads to inactivity-- and usually a sticky listserv sign up that leads to… Well, you know, an unhappy inertia spiraling into navel gazing. So if activism is (temporarily I hope) off the table for me, what to do? I am pleased to report that I have an answer.

Back to Prez Trump. In terms of political opposition or resistance, well, he’s a very slippery fucker to wrangle with. [And of course it’s been established that his base is unwavering in their support. Maybe the Blue Wave happens in November. Maybe not. (& with the madness of the Trump Machine which operates outside of the conventions of reality & yeah you already know this so I’ll get on with things.)] What can be done is to find a way to map this seemingly unpredictable (but yeah-- authoritarian) method of governance. Something that can be used right now. For you, dear reader, I have created such a device! This is an analytic rubric that I came up during the developing events of the week of 6/17/18 - 6/23/18. And with this tool, you too can see the future! (Its accuracy holds up for about two or three days.) Developing this theory is the convergence of my interest in chaos magic into my overall attempts to have a sense of agency in life.  

The marriage of these elements might seem incongruous (Upon outside examination, I think one of these (at least) should be seen as complete bullshit.) Nevertheless, I believe that to overcome cognitive dissonance is to sometimes dive headlong into confusion and mayhem. Let’s start with chaos magic, as you may be unfamiliar with the idea. Chaos magic is postmodern sorcery. It puts forth that reality can be changed through magical practice. Though not grounded in any kind of theism or faith, it is very much about belief as a powerful force. A chaos magician chooses a belief system (for example, satanism) in order to experience gnosis (direct experience of God, or a profound knowledge/insight into life). Gnosis is what Belloq & the Nazis were after in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Sounds like bullshit, right? It gets better. When the magician no longer derives gnosis from a belief system (or model) the system is abandoned. Completely. No more burning candles for Satan-- or praying to Jesus. Find another model that’s working. It’s anarchy! And that’s why the idea took root in late 70s UK Punk... Just after the London first wave (Clash, Sex Pistols, Damned). Once you’re aware of the chaos magic influence, CRASS starts to make a lot more sense (& the Subhumans & Discharge). After the obvious lefty politics, it’s the mystery ingredient. In print, the authors Michael Moorcock, Grant Morrison, and Alan Moore were all influenced by chaos magic. Moorcock was a very early adopter, with 1972’s Elric of Melniboné. The visual depiction of His ‘sign of chaos’ was then directly appropriated by the UK crust punks. The circle is completed! And then it explodes!

Now, I’m not putting on robes and doing rituals. Far from it. What I get from thinking about chaos magic has more to do with developing descriptive tools: models to test understanding.

Which brings us back to Donald Trump (and what follows next is stuff I know you know, just stick with me…) This guy has successfully mesmerized a LARGE portion of the American public-- effectively bending reality to his narcissistic will. And it has been widely noted that he will contradict himself mid-sentence and that his convictions change rapidly on a whim. Yet the base remains steadfast in their support. They just believe-- in him. [Side note: if you’re wondering about his support in the evangelical segment, I submit this: Patriarchy. It’s old-school & very compatible with evangelical practice: You don’t defy or contradict Papa. You follow even if you don’t understand.] As dismaying as this all is, it must be acknowledged that his shit works. He is successful and there is no indication that the spell will be broken anytime soon. But what I can do is show you how to map any given issue that comes up and how he effectively maintains control-- through chaos. Without the fanatical base however, it would all fall apart.

It’s time to deliver the dope. This is how Trump Sorcery works in 5 Stages:

1. Trump creates a problem (breaks something)

2. Trump blames opposition/resistance

3. Trump makes an adjustment

4. Trump takes credit for solving the problem

5. Reality is changed (For the base)

Please allow me to elaborate using the aforementioned example from this week (6/17 - 6/23). The news of course was The Immigration Enforcement/Separation of Families Debacle.

Watching/listening to the news over the weekend and Monday morning, I became aware that the President’s approach to immigration was being significantly challenged. A lot of hay has been made recently over ‘news fatigue’. But the coverage and outrage surrounding this was appropriate and encouraging because, yeah, obviously wrongness was happening. Still, I was surprised because this guy gets away with everything and seems invulnerable at this point. Nevertheless, these activities represent Stage 1, the creation of the problem. Breaking something. I had not put my theory together at this point, but by Tuesday, it all came together.

What happened was that Trump began blaming his immoral actions on the Democrats. and later in the day, Congress. The misdirection to take focus off of the Executive Branch had arrived. Enter Stage 2, blame the opposition. Stage 2 never ends and once it has been articulated continues throughout the process. On Tuesday morning I took down scribbled notes which outlined Stages 1-5. Before heading into work, I excitedly told my wife (DL) that I knew the future!

Wednesday was a blur. I almost forgot about my theory and was dealing with other concerns. Not like those seeking asylum. Not like the children, isolated & separated from their parents. For them this is a real and very present concern. No, I was just dealing with work bullshit.

Thursday morning, I awoke to find that the administration had issued a family separation executive order. Did I feel like a wizard? Yes, I did. I had predicted the next step. Stage 3 had happened, Trump made the adjustment. This was the first development to happen after conception of the rubric… And conforming to the design.

So, that’s it. That’s my take. It’s now 2:12 pm on Thursday, June 21. There’s still time for the manifestation of Stages 4 & 5. If Trump hasn’t taken credit for solving the problem today, I would be very surprised. He probably already has. But right now I’m writing this thing, you know, to get away from the news because it’s depressing. Stage 5 is a given, but should be amended. Reality will change for the base, but for the rest of us the nausea of unreality continues. My method is just a way to graph it out. Are there timeline issues with this essay? There certainly are. I’m not a journalist. For these bits of inaccuracy, I’m marking it off as the subjectivity of my awareness. The overall idea, I think, is sound. The big question is, does knowing actually do anything? Or rather, can knowing provide insight into how to get out of this mess? I hope so.

Well hello there! Welcome to the Report. These posts are a personal monthly review of cultural & creative experiences that I’ve had. It’s about the junk I’ve been consuming. (So you don’t have to?) It’s like a really poorly organized personal bibliography. (Way to sell it, Rendina!) Are you thinking that this kind of stuff might be blog filler? Perhaps you’ve noticed a couple of weeks gone by without new posts? If that is your feeling, well, all I can say is that maybe you’re on the right track. Yeah, yeah, that’s when you reach for your revolver. I get it. I suspect that these entries may have more value to me as a train-of-thought tracking tool. But, I’m going to take a chance that my wrestling matches with creative junk may have some value to you. A continued dialog or some other nonsense. Okay, let’s get into it.

I finally got into the band The Soft Boys right here, right now, at this moment in 2018. I picked up a copy of A Can of Bees after hearing a track at the tail end of the WMNF Saturday ‘70s show. (Oh yeah, the album has the worst cover art ever. But that connects with my theory that bands who can’t come up with a decent band name or general presentation might be awesome. Exhibit A: Nirvana.) As for WMNF, I haven’t listened to that station in ages and am happy to report that good stuff was happening. There were about three tracks at the end of that set that I wanted to know more about. (Probably because they were getting ready for Scott to come in and do his Gen X thing.) What’s this Soft Boys music about? It’s like an appropriated Syd Barrett/neo-psychedelic/post punk kind of dealy. There’s a Richard Hell kind of swing to it. It’s pretty great. To be straight with you about the whole issue though, I really can’t stand Robyn Hitchcock and his aesthetic/sartorial choices. He’s like the first guy at the dawn of the ‘80s who’s like, “I’m gonna bring back the super-wide flat brim fedora hat.” The Prometheus of the color brown to the goths when they wanna go granola. And then there’s the paper trail of Boomer rock writers anointing him to some Great Writer status. It’s all very tiresome and I caught all of that in real time working at the record store in the early ‘90s. Blaargh. So it took me a long time to even consider what he’s all about. Nevertheless, this record sounds really good. Twangy guitars and ropey bass. Nice and loose. It’s right in my wheelhouse. Sandras [sic] Having Her Brain Out is a swell piece of neo-psychedelic surrealistic rudeness. It’s brilliant. Even if I’m not sure if it’s spirit is simply rude or #metoo verboten these days. This perceived hypothetical conflict is kind of fun to think about, so I’ll probably stick with this album for awhile. I’m working on a blog post about Rod Stewart that explores this kind of rudeness in more depth.

I’ve had some jolly morning commutes to work this month thanks to the music of (The Naked Cult of) Hickey. Just like Mastodon or Sepultura, you cannot play Hickey too loud in your car. It’s great! I got to see them in Gainesville at the Hardback once. The opening band was called Fuckface. Right on! I saw them in Tampa about a year later at the short-lived coop venue 403 Chaos. Good times. Much like Steely Dan (Let that settle for a minute.) the songs of Hickey are recorded exactly as they should sound, regardless of econo budget realities.

Chris (Jones) sent me an enthusiastic text message saying that he was listening to lots of Billy Childish. Right on. That’s a great idea. Though my main impression of Childish doesn’t come from listening to his music. It comes from an interview: the Re/Search (SRL) published Real Conversations series, V.1. But that dude Childish has got some cool ideas. He was trying to start a new visual art movement called Re-Modernist. This movement aimed to ignore Postmodernism entirely. Rad! And he has this quote, “In Japanese the word for ‘copy’ is the same as the word for ‘learn’-- I really like that.” Cool. I like that too. I like that so much that I’ve been spouting mangled, paraphrased versions of this quote for years-- versions that certainly range into malaprop territory.

Also, in terms of listening to music, I put another mystery Lego piece into place. It turns out that if it sounds like Jeff Pezzati is singing, “Persecuted the Weavers,” well, that would be correct. Naked Raygun, bless their hearts. Such romantic spirit in that band.

In the world of podcasts, I did my usual intake of WTF, Going off Track, and Last Podcast on the Left. I’m happy that Marc Maron seems to be out of his Phlegmatic Demented Geezer cycle (Nick Nolte did some weird damage to my listening skills, not to mention Sean Penn’s, uh, thing that he does.) LPotL had some gnarly shit going on (as usual) with their current run of murder stories: Mark David Chapman & Dennis Nilsen. In the case of Chapman (& of course his victim John Lennon) it’s fun listening to Millenials reckon with the Boomers. Marcus nailed it on the generational analysis. (As always, Gen X remains passive on the Boomers. Aren’t we in charge now?) Switching gears: What’s the deal with Going Off Track, is it monthly or something? I can’t get my fix often enough. Nevertheless, if you’re into Punk, P-Punk, and H/C music, their episode catalog is amazing. The Roger Miret, Craig Wedren, and Harley Flanagan episodes are illuminating and superb.    

In May, I had the opportunity to continue my ill-advised return to the reading material of my childhood: The Elric Saga. On a recent vacation to New York, we stopped at the Strand bookstore and I picked up a hardcover copy of The Elric Saga: Volume II. I already had copies of the Berkley paperback editions that I found at the Madeira Beach used book store. To be clear, these are shitty fantasy novels. And Michael Moorcock’s books are shitty. And marvelous. I only got to revisit The Vanishing Tower for one lunch break this month, as I did not have my current library book with me that day. In any event, Elric took a ride on a magic metal bird and learned about the limitations of his evil soul-sucking sword (& semi-sentient companion) Stormbringer. That’s pretty cool.

My current, daily reading from the library is the book Chaos Monkeys, by Antonio Garcia Martinez. This book is taking me some time to hack through, because I only read it on lunch breaks but it’s a super-good nonfiction read from a Wall Street quant, internet startup co founder, and former Facebook Ads PM. Dude’s got a PHD in math. Lotsa sequences of two and three letter acronyms shootin’ around in this narrative. If you follow the HBO show Silicon Valley or movies like The Big Short, this is totally your jam. Oh yeah, there’s also that current hullabaloo about Internet privacy going on. This book gets into that, too. Did I mention that the chapter headings are selections from historical texts and dialog from indie movies? No? Well, that’s the appetizer that serves up each brain-fuck of a chapter. Get on it! The world is doomed and everything is changing!

In real life I got to attend a few cultural events. I need to do more of this for several reasons. Not the least of which is to have social experiences (as a disciplined practice) in order to avoid hermitlike inclinations. I need to get out once in awhile! It’s healthy, right? I went to two excellent exhibitions at the Tempus Projects space: Sunistra and You Can’t Get There From Here. The latter being an installation by my brother, Devon Brady. On Sunday, May 20, Diana and I went to a rock concert! We haven’t done that in awhile. We saw Hot Water Music at the Orpheum. The performance was solid and the guys still have got that feeling. The new guy (The Canadian, also named Chris I think) is alright, man! He brings something new and good to the lineup. He looks like a more-handsome Jim Parsons. His presence seemed to temper the super-hetero chest thumping vibe, mostly coming from the audience. Chuck was doing his warm and awesome earthy thing and (let’s be honest) my primary motivation was to be around that heartfelt magic for a night. Everybody delivered. It’s been too long since I’ve seen them live-- and man, do they have a deep catalog now. I only recognized three songs. Some of the newer cuts skewed into stylistic directions I had not heard from the band before. There was one that had a cool heavy progish early ‘70s thing going on. HWM fans (with the exception of myself and DL) still know all the words and sing along. The fans were what I expected: mostly thick bros with flat-billed ball caps. There was shirtless passionate flexing and flailing. But that Hot Water vibe kept everybody reasonably in check.

…

Oh! I almost forgot, Ben invited me to join his band up in Chicago around October for a one-off performance. For the performance the band will be an AC/DC cover band and in the line-up, I will be in the Bon Scott role. I’m into it, let’s see what happens.

So that’s it for the Report! I’ve got three new songs that I’m working on, a daily practice schedule, and other than that-- I’m just living the life. Take care.

• Racial Equality

• Feminism

• Freedom From Poverty

• Responsibility

• Hard Work

• Kindness

Giant Lusca has a set of guiding principles. I wrote this to articulate these principles. Sometimes the song lyrics and the stories that I tell on the blog may be jagged and raw, even appearing on first take to be mean-spirited. I hope you never find anything in the work that you feel to be an expression of cruelty or hate. That is never the intention. Upon first consideration the songs may seem poorly conceived and I will certainly make mistakes in the ideation of these works. But I use a kind of idiosyncratic precision-- regardless of visible brush strokes and glue. The ethos statement is designed to establish the core beliefs of the project. This post will expand on the core ethos. I’m going to try an experiment in brevity, here we go.

Racial Equality:

People are not objects or property. Racism is an expression of fear and weakness. True strength comes from personal daily efforts to dismantle this sickness-- from within. The first step is the acknowledgement of the legacy of racism, and then acting with good intention; recognizing hate and using all of one’s power to reduce it.

Feminism:

The belief that women are equal to men. Practicing this belief is what counts. Again, people are not objects or property.

Freedom From Poverty:  

The primary driver of human suffering is poverty. In most cases, mental health issues, addiction, and violence all come from the not-so-secret sauce of poverty. Living on the street will make you crazy. It is time to stop behaving like temporarily embarrassed millionaires. There is another way of perceiving and acting in our world.

Responsibility:

Artmaking is risky business! Successful artmaking means taking responsibility for what has been created. This means that… Once something is released to the public, the perception of the work takes on its next dimension, which results in a loss of control; but also, where the value & meaning potentially increases and deepens. The artist must answer criticism with understanding and respect. Acknowledge flaws in the work. Responsibility means being honest with collaborators and operating without scheming.

Hard Work:

A method of managing efforts through organization and disciplined practice. To be flexible and calm when plans fail or attention alters. It means being present in one’s efforts. Hard work is the realization of potential. In order to work hard, one must identify and immediately deal with insincere and diversionary criticism. Gossip and trolling behaviors are never the tools of hard work. Neither is calculated self-deprecation with the intent to achieve leverage over others. The body and mind must be maintained and healthy.

Kindness:

Kindness is practicing empathy and self-control. To recognize legitimate potential in those who have been written off by others and to help people grow-- without implicit or explicit demands for credit. Kindness is understanding that a personal feeling is not an absolute truth. It is to avoid insincere polemics and reckless social bullshitting, as this can get out of control and lead to the suffering of others. A kind person never takes enjoyment in the shame of others. Kindness is to oppose a system of thinking which holds individualism as a primary value.

…

Not knowing about a band has its mystique, but human nature will eventually fill in the gaps of any narrative. Mystique and elaborate artifice is a kind of fakery in most cases. I’m not gonna do that. Instead, I have chosen the Path of the Square, as I was never one of the cool kids. As always, I’m willing to step right into it-- a mop top home-haircut kid with enormous smeared eyeglasses slipping down the nose. There I am, showing my loot to the Gasparilla pirate and still making a good time out of the parade.

Last week was kinda heavy, what with all the psychological fear and tales of youthful misfortune. I’ll own it. It was a bummer. But this week I bring joyful news: There’s a new song in the Giant Lusca universe. It’s called Lester Deluxe and its up on the Bandcamp. I had a great time making this one and my songwriting process has improved in terms of efficiency and ease of production. It’s getting so, so close to a-- tearless delivery. By the way, I dropped my first music video this weekend onto the Giant Lusca YouTube channel. Check that out. This week was like Christmas or something-- the feeling of all kinds of shit coming together in a big way. I hit the weekend and there’s a bunch of stuff just an inch away from completion. Business cards are also in production, so if you’re having trouble connecting with me, the cards will serve as a cheat sheet. They’re pretty spiffy too. (If you don’t mind me sayin’ so.)

Back to Lester D. The idea came together using the new process which contains three stages on paper and a final digital doc which goes into the songbook. I must have order! It’s a chaotic world, after all. The first stage works like this: I get new ideas in the morning, and over morning coffee or even in the parking lot at work after the commute, I write short, super loose notes. This is the part of the process that I think of as the most stimulating. Inception! (If only I didn’t get these ideas while driving. How do I maintain safety? I keep another, smaller memo book in the car for red light creative emergencies.) These notes go into the small notebook. Sometimes what I write is only a couple of lines or a short phrase. It’s nowhere close to the shape or syntax of what the thing will become and lots of these ideas are discarded as I progress through the small notebook. There’s a lot of goofy junk in the small notebook. The first lines in Lester started appearing in the small notebook in October of 2017, though he didn’t even have a name yet. Other ideas would pop up but every few pages or so I would return to the idea. Add a little bit, discard bad lines: rewrite, strikethrough, rinse, repeat. The frequency of returning is how I know that I’m going to make a crude basic idea into a song. What I find interesting is the recycling of lines and (awkward!) evidence of how I think it’s going to go musically during this stage.

But after awhile a song idea is getting kinda wordy for the little notebook and it’s time to graduate to the composition book. I love lined composition books with the speckly cover and rounded corners. I always have (It’s a tactile/look thing!) but only recently have I had the method down to complete these. I would usually just discard a book after scribbling for a quarter or maybe half of the page count. Confusion about the process is to blame. The books become Beatnik Word Salad Abandoned Disasters. In other words, I used to become ashamed of the contents, discard the book, forget about it, and buy another one. Now, I work all the way through with a minimum of truly embarrassing text evidence (to be discovered by my enemies!) The composition book is where the song expands and the verse/chorus/bridge structure emerges. I keep this book right in the area where I practice the songs and I will add chord ideas during morning practice. But it’s still pretty sloppy and unfocused at this point. But with Lester, the enthusiasm continued and it became time for the final handwritten paper stage: the lined yellow pad. It’s actually multiple pads. I’m nuts. There’s one pad for each verse, the chorus, and bridge. (No, I don’t fill each pad with drafts of the current song. Just a couple of sheets each and then onto the next song.) The songwriting gets completed on the yellow pad. By this time the chords and lyrics have been finalized and all I have to do is consider how the song is going to exist as a reference document. Not a whole lot to it, I just type it up and print it out. This works best for long-term practice use.

So there you go, that’s the full circle of the writing process. Very little composition happens in Garageband these days, but I do allow for the recording process to influence me. (Studio-as-instrument and blah blah of course.) I’ll just spend a little time on the recording mixed with my interpretation of Lester Deluxe and then we can wrap this post up. The Lester in Lester Deluxe is a kind of composite character/crazy wise man archetype dealy. Sometimes I want to say that, “Lester is me.” That seems kind of bold (and self-deprecating). But that’s not entirely true in terms of what I think the song does. I have frequently observed real individuals in crisis ranting and dancing at traffic. I wanted observational content to be in there and this Lester was a dude I really did see on my morning commute. Then there’s the Miller character from the Alex Cox movie Repo Man. Miller is a kind of Lester Deluxe and before I graduated to the composition book I became aware of that association. In fact, I think it was misremembering the character name that put me on the path in the first place. But that was unconscious until I made the connection. Nevertheless once I put it together, I included a sample of the Miller ‘plate of shrimp’ monologue. In terms of visual presentation I wanted to reference something to do with oddball evangelism in the song. I went with an ‘80s punk rock b&w layout and selected an image from the HCPLC Burgert Brothers photo archives (used with the Tampa-Hillsborough permission statement in the Bandcamp metadata). It’s a picture of a pentecostal preacher in some Florida backwater town with worshippers-- and he’s holding a rattlesnake. Musically, I experimented with some tremolo on a gained-up bass guitar. There’s also some nice ‘digital tape music’ looping and reversing of the acoustic guitars at the end, which is good because I didn’t go all freak-out heavy on the effects on this one. Other notes: I cannot properly pronounce spaghetti singing at that tempo. So I just left it like that. It wasn’t a twee intention, I simply got frustrated, said ‘fuck-it’ and let it ride. Also, the vocals kind of get over-saturated, especially in the first verse. I twiddled knobs and checked my gain and my conclusion is that the effect was what my throat was doing. Again, fuck it, let it ride. Okay, I feel like I’m just going on a bit. We’re done here. Thanks for reading. Please enjoy the song.

The Five Letter Word is happy. My working definition is the willingness to participate in the activities of life. Some formal reckoning with mental illness is essential to well-being (Duh!) and that’s why this week’s topic is mental health and coming into contact with people in life who are suffering. That’s most of us. The rest are probably psychopaths. (So they’re happier more of the time, right?) If I keep up writing like this I’m gonna have to give Jon Ronson a co writing credit. So I better start getting a little more specific. Here we go.

Smart went crazy. Okay, 90s post hardcore band names aside, this is a kind of obscure aphoristic shorthand of a description of a life arc. It’s not a very nice aphorism. Few are. (In the mental health field the word crazy is a pejorative term bordering on an epithet.) Nevertheless, I have come into contact with people who fit the bill and I have struggled quite a bit to recognize what was going on. Before I turned thirty, I realized that mental illness is not a super-power. It’s a disability. Maybe you got that earlier in life. Congratulations. Here’s a moment in my life that was instructional as well as very painful: In the early 90s I was in a band that was very important to me. That band was called Soursong and there was a bipolar person who was a friend of one of the guys. He was older (maybe 25) and lots of people (Mostly dudes. All too young to buy alcohol and without weed connections.) looked up to him. These were my bandmates and friends associated with the band who lived in the sprawling (still newish) Northdale subdivision outside of the City of Tampa. (New Tampa was still some evil glimmer in a developer’s eyes at this point. Or maybe they were already building it. I dunno.)  Anyways, Soursong was a very communal and intimate group and these characteristics, even with the strengths that come with shared passion, would break us apart. I can’t put our entire downfall on this one individual. We were very young and ambitious. It felt like we were almost doing some kind of sorcery. But this was the first time that I can recall encountering a person with bipolar disorder and recognizing it as such.

There are tons of stories about this guy. Some are humorous. Some are very serious and are about sexual abuse and dangerous psychotic episodes. Lots of drugs in these narratives. If you know me you know about the guy but that’s not where I’m going with this. The point is that this individual was a living embodiment of the smart went crazy maxim. In his past he was seen as a gifted student. When he was up (but not all the way up) he was quite the raconteur. I observed that he was way ahead of everyone I knew in terms of computer science. He used the internet. Maybe. I think. He definitely built his own computer and thought of himself as a kind of philosopher/wise man. Nevertheless, he couldn’t hack college or hold down a job. He lived at home. His illness caused him to be hospitalized regularly. All the while he was implying that the sickness was also the source of genius. Which, goes without saying, is dangerous. Other people put forth the genius narrative, too, getting us into murky proto-cult leader territory. And I would kind of go along, not because it didn’t seem dangerous. It just seemed like all aspects of my life as an artist were dangerous. Being in a band that is actively playing lots of shows and getting a really good response is an incredibly stimulating experience-- one which is very distorted and heightened, but really, really fun. Along with all this fun, other stuff happened. People got robbed, beaten, and overdosed. Cars were crashed. In other words, normal life was not very normal. But it's what we wanted.

It wasn’t until an incident in his bedroom with a group of us that I knew I needed to get some distance. He was manic, the TV was on with some ‘70s reruns. I think it was a show called Banacek. Throughout, he kept blurting out, “Bana-Chek!” Which was kind of amusing. His upstairs bedroom window was open. We lit cigarettes with a ridiculously oversized novelty Zippo lighter. He showed us the computer that he built. Several books on philosophy and history were referred to and passed around. It was quite the multimedia lecture. And then the afternoon went to shit. He went to his closet and retrieved a case containing an AK-47. His father had brought this back as a war trophy from Vietnam. He removed the weapon from the case and excitedly handled it and commented that it still had ammunition. In his assessment the rifle was in excellent condition. Remarkable really, since it was over twenty years old and had travelled the world. I do not remember who was with me that day. Certainly it was one or two of my bandmates, maybe one of the Northdale friends. There’s a funny tunnel-vision kind of thing about these kinds of memories. I remember him and I was certainly present. But I just remember that other people were with us. I don’t even know how many. Nevertheless, we quickly made our excuses to leave-- band practice or some muttered something. I still remember the tense feeling of making it to the stairway landing and out the front door. Oddly, we just got right on with the day: the always intense way of life when you’re in a band. We did not report this to anyone. Why would we? His dad was a Hillsborough County Sheriff. We were transgressive punks. Nothing to be done. How else are we supposed to get booze?

The story ends a day or two later with him being removed from the roof of his house after firing live ammunition into the air and being subsequently hospitalized. After that, I distanced myself. Probably not as quickly as I should have, but I now fell firmly into the camp that had sussed the danger. He certainly had accumulated detractors along the way.  He could easily be seen as a loser creep with a Jesus complex and dismissed immediately by those sensing a fraud. I was not as quick to judge, and held my bandmate (his close friend) in very high esteem.There was of course other stuff going on simultaneously in my life. I had at least one roommate in college who I’m sure was a psychopath. My twenties were like a master class in mental health issues and transgressive behavior.

In the Embrace lyric it says, “Death is not glamorous.” A similar sentiment should be expressed for mental illness. Being sick does not give you superpowers. Manic confusion is not an intuitive advantage.  When I’m in an empathetic mindset, I see the genius identity as a scrap of self to cling to. Something to make trips to the shrink, hospitalizations, and everyday life bearable. This flawed belief could be the only coping strategy he has. I look back at myself and worry how much  of this junk I carry around. It’s not a question of if I share the belief, it’s a question of proportionality. To me the possibility of being an ordinary human being in terms of perception, creativity, and intelligence is absolutely terrifying. Why not be the hero of your own story? That doesn’t seem so transgressive. And yet I fear being unable to recognize dangerous solipsistic tendencies when they arise in myself. There must be a mechanism to keep the bad stuff in check. Hence, my definition of happy: the willingness to participate in the activities of life. Mr. Dawson (my algebra teacher at Buchanan Jr. High School) used to say, “ Math is not a spectator sport.” The same could be said for living. I’m just trying to stay on the field and do what I can do, knowing that I have not been picked as quarterback. Goddam. Sports metaphors fall apart quick!

Little Boxes (Hereafter referred to as Pt.1) is a 1962  song written by San Francisco folkie Malvina Reynolds. It is of its time, an example of ‘60s neo-folk pop, a kind of criticism of the post-Eisenhower suburban cold war zeitgeist. Its sing-song lilt was appealing to the boomers and this kind of stylistic infantilization of serious themes was a common technique of the hippies to come. (Also, Jello Biafra, twenty years later!) Nevertheless the song has a biting power, albeit with a large dose of boomer condescension. What makes this condescension noteworthy is that it is pointed directly at the previous generation. (Put another way, it condescends upward. A technique which would make the so called Greatest Generation furious and bemused, but which was also flawed in its lack of introspection and sense of culpability.) Over time the song has lost much of its power, a cover version appearing in the soundtrack to a 2014 children’s animated movie. This leaves only crumbs of background amusement for grandparents on the upteenth home screening on babysitting duty.

I felt that a sequel was in order. An answer of sorts. Something different, but working with the bones of the idea put forth in Pt.1. This was not to be a cover song, but a reimagining. (As for cover song attempts, I had already given myself a headache during the Bush II presidency with taking a go at Know Your Rights by the Clash. From thinking about my appreciation of Know Your Rights, I was forced to examine polemics in song, and (outside of song[writing]) question the utility of polemics in life. Of course I could also not technically pull off playing the song. Then Eddie Vedder did a version... Game over!)

Here’s the main reason to reimagine the tune: So much has changed in the world since Pt.1. The little boxes were no longer just suburban homes. Now the little boxes were smartphones providing the American Dream/Nightmare on a much greater scale. People are driving themselves crazy in new ways. But the crazy itself is timeless. Insight!

Temporal considerations aside, there’s lots of satirical relevance in Pt.1 to work with. For example, the problems of housing segregation/equity still exists. Though the legality, process, and ethos of this has mutated. There is (what I believe to be) the gospel theme of the hillside. In Pt. 1 this a twist on the idea of heaven on-the-hill, now a suburban Babylon. Also, that most sing-songy part of the song, that ticky-tacky refrain-- seemed a lot more effective than saying, “It’s all bullshit.” So I took the parts I liked, did no research whatsoever on the music, and started a creative process of reimagining the song. The end result is Little Boxes Pt. 2. You could think of it as a satire-- of a satire.

Musically, I was trying to get some of that action so beautifully realized by a band that I love, Centro-Matic. (Here’s the thing: I will never approach anything close to what Will Johnson and Co. can do. I know that, okay?!) So I pushed around drum loops, trying for that drop kick beat and paper-dry snare that features so prominently in their songs. Guitar tone was dialed in low gain and twangy. A chirpy arpeggiated synth line was added to emphasize the digital aspect of the hubris and mania in the subject matter. This is kind of an obvious move, but I think it integrates into the mix pretty well. I had also (finally!) discovered reverse playback in Garageband. I started to go nuts with this as it allowed me to make digital tape music-- a technique I had really enjoyed back in my days of taking the Analog 1 class at USF back in the ‘90s. I made some more progress with doubling vocals as well. My affinity for dry vocals remains (It’s all about the makeup gain after compression!), but the progress I’m talking about is the judicial use of where to drop the layers in, phrasing, and force (volume control). It’s a nice song and one that fits into the restraint mode of Giant Lusca. I need to do more of these, as the touchpoints of late ‘80s hardcore and thrash can become too easy in terms of problem solving in songwriting. Variety, man! It keeps things going.

Giant Lusca has a history, a fraught relationship, with cover songs. As I developed whatever playing skills I possess, I would hear the advice time and again (from reading interviews with esteemed and established artists-- and again, the same story during desperate conversations [on my end] with equally esteemed local artists). The advice was this: that the way to improve writing/playing was through the activity of playing along to records. I could never do this. It could be some undiagnosed ADHD, a bad ear, or, and this is my primary suspicion, a self-identification as not being a so-called player (By player, what I’m talking about a musician who hogs the acoustic at the party and who is generally thought of by others as having achieved a level of mastery. A session guy. I am jealous of these people. Marty, you make me sick. Kidding!) I identify more as a songwriter and I think adopting this notion has handicapped me greatly. It’s an easy out, an excuse to avoid performance and growth. Ultimately this is a lazy excuse (and the fundamental punk ideological weakness), but looking at it more deeply, it could be a defense mechanism of sorts in the sense of apprehensions in relation to the realization of creative work. In other words, actually doing the work is scary and the dream version is always exact, appreciated, and otherwise perfect. The avoidance of realization is a big topic and I’ll save that for another post.

But I do listen to lots of music and very little of it comes from online sources (Exception: I gotta hear that new Radon!) Mostly my listening habits revolve around the CD format on a single-disk player (Hello new 2018 Onkyo! Let’s beat the 30 year Yamaha longevity record.) Yes, I still have my records, but keeping a turntable up and running is a drag. (Shuffle functions and streaming services have their place too, of course. For example, while writing a blog post.) Learning disabilities aside, listening to music greatly influences my writing. The songwriting method for me is incredibly simple (and flawed) and has something to do with cover songs. What I do is pick a song, say, Deacon Blues by Steely Dan. Then, without listening to it, I do a cover. But this is where not being a player comes in really handy. I cannot exactly (or even relatively closely) reproduce the song. So, in the Deacon Blues example, I came up with the song Dandelion Fur, a song about prostitution activity in public libraries. It’s not even close to the sad-sack sax player narrative written by the Dan. (I was also trying to write my own version of Staggolee at the time, which also heavily played into the Dandelion Fur outcome.) This creates a kind of originalishness. A kinda-sorta new thing. And Ultimate Guitar will provide some new-to-me 7th chords to throw in the mix. In other words, I do not begin with a blank page. Ever. It all starts with an almost casual self-imposed assignment and a petty larceny-- born of admiration and affection. I rely on my ineptitude for protection. Despite the claims of established artist millionaires, this is how the rock ‘n’ roll gets made. It’s how they (Metallica) did it and is the true basis of art making. A speck of theft is what makes the secret sauce. This is the Oscar Wilde defense to the Lars Ulrich attack.

Giant Lusca has done a cover. Early on in the project, I recorded a cover of Ace of Spades by Mötörhead. Lemmy was still alive and at the time it didn’t feel like I was taking a piss… More of a self-deprecation which was also meaningful in the development of a personal style. It made me think about the percentage of shit-eating grin that should be present (stylistically speaking) in my songs. But, honestly, it was a piss take which was more fun with a living Lemmy Kilmister, the embodiment of hard-rocking, confident masculinity. (Do I have to mention that I am not this? No? Okay, good.) The cover taught me a lot about what I want to do musically and I actually did use the web to get useable chords and tablature. (Which is a whole other can of worms as online tabs are all over the map in terms of accuracy.)

There are three cover songs that I would like to do live. I think that the Giant Lusca sound could be applied to each and would produce something fun. And I think there kind of is a Giant Lusca sound. Having said that, these three would take a lot of work (attention span suffering, focus) to realize. These are my top three:

• Vitamin C, by CAN

• You Wear it Well, by Rod Stewart

• Perfect Day, by Lou Reed

There’s a new category on the web log. It’s called Five Letter Word. Hey, “What’s the five letter word?” you ask. Well, I’ll tell you. It’s happy. Some years ago at the library, I noticed a recently published book, I think it was called On Happiness (or some other nonsense) and it seemed to be a kind of pop-psychology/pop-philosophy self-help kind of dealy. I’m not gonna research what I saw at the library and maybe heard about on Fresh Air or whatever. There will be no reference hyperlink in this post. It’s not gonna work and it’s gonna be the wrong book anyway. I didn’t read whatever it was, okay? My memory sucks. Reference points and documentation are beside the point & is kind of getting involved in the perpetual & disposable personality cult hype engine hoo-hah. I believe that shit can get dangerous to one’s sense of self knowledge. For real. Best to just kind of pitch that into the memory hole, okay? For the sake of this thing suffice it to say that I did kind of get the itch to think about what happiness is. Over time, and utilizing my usual method, I kind of let the question fester in my subconscious. Happiness is a thing I want of course, even if I’m not sure about how it works or even what it is. I mulled it over for nine years or so. But what I did start to intuit right away is this: getting fucked up all weekend long and then grinding through a work week was not a happy way to go through life. That, and getting involved in activities such as hitting a gong and wearing robes, sniffing weird incense and listening to the music of gourds was not going to do the trick, either. I needed some practical junk to push around to know if I was doing it right.

The way I approach life and the way I put things together in my brain is all in terms of definitions. Creating and testing language models… And very recently I created a definition for the word happiness. It’s this: Happiness is the willingness to participate in the activities of life. So that’s it. Over here at Five Letter Word, we’ll keep washing that rock and maybe, every once in awhile, get something going, something that works that you can use. Okay, cheers!

The Song:  Modern Rube

Modern Rube is the first and greatest song of the Trump presidency. Of course this statement is bullshit, but that’s my lead sentence nonetheless... We’re only a year and three months into the shitstorm and Pitchfork has yet to weigh in on the issue as far as I know. But this, this boil in the form of a song started raising itself in my brain prior to the 2016 election. As with all of my creative forensic efforts, the exact month is unclear. I don’t keep a diary or journal (David Sedaris would be pissed!)  But I do remember kicking the idea around in February 2016 at my brother-in-law’s wedding out on a beach park in Tarpon Springs. The primary race was already getting ugly and I was trying like hell not to drink at this gathering. (I succeeded, by the way, and this is what the AA folks call a white-knuckle, dry drunk sober-- detached, distracted, and freaked.) On that day the mixture of NPR coverage in transit, and feeling out (pretending to get to know) new relations created a vertigo which guided me in the direction of Modern Rube. Am I saying that my brother-in-law’s new family is a bunch of hicks? No, far from it. But when I meet new people under (semi) formal circumstances, I go into a kind of socio-anthropological studies mode. I realize that this may not be a very endearing character trait and it doesn't make me look smart-- just jerky. But hey, I get it, nobody likes to feel like they’re being watched or judged for sport or diversion-- or watched at all. Sorry. Defense mechanism! But that’s what I did and this is the moment that the song started brewing.

I don’t want to get all etymological on this joint, but let’s suffer through a minute to use our Circle K feet and slash through the rube/reuben word idea and who I stole it from. (Don’t wash your feet or clean your toenails before we do this.) Here’s the reveal.  It was Hunter Thompson, and there you go. The carnival metaphor and its associated vernacular has lots of precedents in social and political criticism because… It works. It goes really good when you’re writin’. I’m just the latest jerk to come and grab onto it. But the current show is, well, unique-- and much freakier than the administrations of Nixon or Reagan (or Clinton, if you have a Libertarian/Anarchist worldview). This song is focused on the enraged dunce mentality that feeds the chaos magic shit storm of our current reality. This is a jam about the mechanisms of disorder, which of course is very punk (even if I sing like a pussy). It was after all, the responsibility of a carny to let the other grifters know when shit was going south. Here's what I’m talking about: universal complicity, everybody’s got bad teeth in the scenario and seemingly cannot find happiness, with the exception of doing micro-sadisms. But the micro-sadistic junk adds up and here we are. As for the Modern in the title, that’s a dumb joke that won’t play very well here, but I’ll try. It’s something along the lines of a hypothetical magazine title. Because, you know, nobody reads print magazines anymore and nobody uses the term rube anymore. Hilarious! Time as a concept is weird and hard to understand and it’s hard to relate to each other, but we kinda try (Not really. We’re self-centered animals) We will certainly fight about anything and ain’t it a thing to put your personal fury/fear/grudge into the most simple of social interactions. Yeah!

I had already done some work on the subject of rubes. (I’m like a scholar, majoring in Reuben Studies, man. Don’t that just bleach my karate trousers, yeah?) The song That Yellow Flag, took a shot at the behavior of the Tea Party movement in the wake of the 2008 Obama election. (I remember talking to my dad about it at the St. Pete Grand Prix.This felt exactly like explicating the plot of the Empire Strikes Back, which was another real one-sided conversation with dad, decades earlier.) As Modern Rube was taking shape, I realized that another chapter was required. A sequel of sorts. These true believers seemed to be skewing even more closely to the observations of Eric Hoffer A pattern was emerging and of course I’ wasn’t the only jackass to notice. It was more than just the trappings of rage that had changed... [For that matter, does anyone remember neo-conservatism? That seemed to end with the Tea Party uprising. It was the Tea Party coming up that led to the creation of That Yellow Flag. For now, let’s park that thread for another post on that song and/or the disappearance (and inevitable return) of the neocons. No one has gone anywhere. Except Cohen, Bowie, and Lemmy. They’re not here to help anymore.]

But there I was writing Modern Rube & thinking again about the weird self-hypnosis of the human animal and noticing the change in the branding of discontent (Not that the anger ain’t real. We can all feel that.)  Fast forward to an unnecessarily hot Thanksgiving at another set of in-laws: I remember running through an early version of Modern Rube. I was wearing a yellow Old Navy flannel (Uncool! Unfair trade!) I rolled up the sleeves. It was too hot for that shirt… Anyways, sometimes I drag an instrument to family gatherings (What the hell am I expecting to happen performance-wise anyways? Really! I have no idea how that’s supposed to go down. Sometimes I don’t even pull the guitar out of the case. I just show up and-- futz about non-musically, anxiously for hours.) Okay, here we were, and it was well over 80 degrees and I had overdressed based on seasonal expectations. My niece was less than impressed with my song craft. She was my main audience because she’d been taking piano lessons, so it’s like kinda related to her musical interests (Not really!)  Mom was supportive. She always is, but performing for her does much different work-- for both of us. This experience, as awkward as it was, still felt like something. I had made an effort in real time to describe what was happening as a songwriter. Modern Rube is important to me for that reason: a somewhat newfound ability to  articulate ideas in song form. (For most of my thirties it was a neo-beatnik word salad shooter routine. I think most writers go through this.) It’s still clumsy, but I think the effort matters in terms of moving forward with my craft.

Between these two stories (the Wedding and Thanksgiving) there’s my weird tale of the NYC vacation. We all have our version, our personal experience of the 2016 election night. This is mine. Before Thanksgiving, DL and I went up to New York because we could. We stayed downtown in the financial district; and, for Florida natives it’s nice to get a little piece of winter in the city (Please no more than a week though. Thanks much, that’s enough.) It was a great vacation, although the instinct to attach terms like, overall and, for the most part do seem all kinds of wrong when considering the end of 2016. But we really did have a good time up there. Looking back at the pictures, I had a huge mustache and a desire to consume lots of processed cheese. Museum visits happened. On the night of November 8th, I left the clock radio going, not really knowing how to set the alarm or the sleep functions. Like everybody (Popular vote!) in the US, I thought things would sort themselves out.

Me and DL go to sleep early, even in NYC. I wanted to drift off into the expected outcome and boring acceptance speech noises. Wake with a normal level of new president jitters. Needless to say, shit did not go down as most people (Hello popular vote, again!) expected and there were multiple fitful episodes throughout the night. This is the true beginning of the song. The outcome was an imperative for me. Real chaos had been unleashed and nothing-- no assumptions of human decency, rule of law, or conventions of conduct -- would ever be the same again.