I don’t wanna have to shout it out
I don’t want my hair to fall out
I don’t wanna be filled with doubt
I don’t wanna be a good boy scout
I don’t wanna have to learn to count
I don’t wanna have the biggest amount
I don’t wanna grow up

—-The Ramones, ‘I don’t wanna grow up’

What is it with the fucking Ramones?

First Joey, dead of cancer in 2001 at 50.

Then Dee Dee, dead of a drug OD, at 49.

And now — does goes Johnny Ramone. Dead of cancer, at 55.

Read more “Wanna Be Sedated”

That girl is pretty wild now
The girl’s a super freak
The kind of girl you read about
In new-wave magazine
That girl is pretty kinky
The girl’s a super freak
I really love to taste her
Every time we meet

I just downloaded Super Freak to my phone.

It’s kind of lame, not the original but a synthy re-do like a lot of ring tones. But it doesn’t matter, man.

It’s Rick fucking James. It’s SuperFreak.

He died while I was in Fiji. I didn’t know til I got home.

Don’t let it be one of the three things. I can see the headstones. James Brown and George Clinton are shivering right now.

I have a confession to make. When I was a teenager…

I can’t say it.

Read more “Super Freak”

I’ve had Lloyd Cole songs going through my head all day.

jodie wears a hat although it hasn’t rained for six days
she says a girl needs a gun these days
hey on account of all the rattlesnakes
–Rattlesnakes

Read more “spin spin whisky and gin i suffer for my art”

A commenter (Commentor? Commentator? One of these things), BykerSink, said this:

There are only two types of music. Good music and bad music.
The genre is not important.

It’s very glib to say genre doesn’t matter, of course. It’s one of those “I love everyone” sort of statements that makes the speaker sound very open-minded and above it all. Hell, I say stuff like that all the time. But the truth is, as truth usually is, much more complicated.

Labels are tools. And like any tool, misused, they harm or hurt. The hammer drives the nail, but also hurts the finger.

So sticking with musical genre for a moment; I rarely, very rarely, say to myself “I want music”. I say “I want this genre music. I’m in the mood, just now, for some jazz. And not just jazz, but cool jazz, or maybe bossa nova, or maybe I want some swing right now. And I’ll go look for that. or I’ll want heavy metal or funk. Because the genre implies a feel and mood. And I’m seeking music to fit a mood, sometimes.

This is why a record store will group by style. Because I don’t want to look through country/western today, I want Classical.

Obviously, it’s useful. I don’t put my shorts away with my flannel shirts. I don’t put my pans with my silverware. I don’t put my rat poison with my toothpaste.

But there’s the other side. The dark side of the force, if you will.

Since people tend to listen by genre, listeners, buyers, will say “I don’t like that kind of music.” They reject based on type. And we all do it. People who claim they don’t are lying to themselves. “Yeah, I love all music, but not those boy bands”. “I like all kinds of music other than reggae”. Because there’s always a bias. Always. It’s just a question of how the bias is laid out. BykerSink says there are two kinds, good and bad. So it’s simply binary, BykerSink don’t like a genre called bad music.

People cut themselves off from a lot of music with genres, sure. And bands suffer; when I was a local music scene person, I was surrounded by bands that didn’t fit a genre. My favorite, Dot3, were kind of funk but kind of afro-tribal and kind of prog-rock and kind of punk/pop. And yes, they were good, incredibly good. But promoters didn’t know what the hell to do with them. Another band that came out of the ashes after Dot3 broke up, Tongue Tied, used to get lumped in with hard rock bands because they were dark and heavy, but they were not at all a hard rock band. They had trouble getting to the right audiences because they’d been mis-labeled.

Labels are useful. All the more so with a modern collection of music on Mp3; I can’t find the right stuff from my collection without a genre label, there’s too much to wade through unless I’m seeking a particular song or album or artist. But they screw me up because some artists are so badly mis-labled (rock bands in ‘alternative‘? Punk bands in ‘hard rock‘? Let’s just call them all ‘rock‘ ok?). Worse for me is that ‘Disco‘ and ‘Soul‘ and ‘R&B‘ and ‘Funk‘ and ‘hip-hop‘ all tend to get crammed together in a blob; so when I’m trying to find funk collections, more often than not what I get are collections that are mostly disco or hip-hop, and not true 70’s funk at all. Not that I have an issue with those genres, but KC and the Sunshine Band != Funkadelic.

So BykerSink, I say – yeah, there are genres called good music and bad music, but for us to have a conversation about music, we need something a little more agreed upon. So the labels, the genres, are important, even if they are also a frustrating impediment to enjoyment in some cases.

Read more “Only two types of music”

Everything I ever said bad about rap and hip-hop?

I take it all back. Just, you know, for the record.

Ok. It was a long time ago the first time this white boy said ‘you know, this rap stuff might not suck’. I bought a Heavy D album and a De La Soul album (oh, hell, I don’t know how long ago, but first albums for both, when they were first released). And I liked ’em ok, but didn’t really play them.

A while later, I heard NWA and Ice-T and thought, y’know, I kinda like these gansta guys, even thought they’re sorta fuckheads. But I didn’t go buy ’em. Didn’t feel compelled.

And yeah, that was a while ago. I’ve heard things I liked since, sure. Tupac, Jurassic 5, Eminem, Kid Rock. You can’t avoid the rap and hip-hop these days even if you want to. But I never really felt, again, the need to own.

Then — well, I blame Jeff. It’s all his damned fault. Not that this is the first time Jeff ever talked me into anything, but I’m just sayin’.

Jeff’s a whole topic of his own – but let’s set that aside. Let’s just do this – Jeff’s my boss. Jeff’s just finished his full body suit tattoo (I mean just – like two days ago). Jeff’s been my friend as long as Austin Ray, but only my boss for about four years.

So Jeff – Radio Jeff – Jeff who owns more music than almost anyone I’ve ever known (Willy Keats may have him beat still, but I bet it’s close); Jeff has been telling me for a couple years now, ‘rock is dead‘. He’s been trying to get me to listen to hip-hop for a long time. Keeps handing me CD’s, bringing me his iPod, saying “Listen to this”.

But there’s one thing he said that finally clicked. ‘It’s all about the DJ’s.’

It’s about the DJ’s. It’s not about the rappers. The MC’s.

You have to think about that a little, if you’re not familiar with hip-hop. because when when people say hip-hop, you think rap; you think Snoop Dog or Tupac or Ice-T. You think about the MC. But rap != hip-hop. Rap is part of hip hop. So you have to step back a little and see that whatever that guy up front is doing, stalking the stage, posturing and rockin’ the microphone, the origin of it all, the beat, the backbone, it’s all the DJ. Or that’s where it started anyway, even if a lot of rap is now done on a computer, not by a live guy with two turn tables and a microphone.

So Jeff said to me — It’s all about the DJ’s. “It’s like Jazz,” he said. “Because they are improvising, and they’re just doing it for themselves.”

He said it a while back. But it didn’t sink in. he’s been playing me cuts for a while, talking about artists, DJ’s. He loaned me a DVD of Scratch, which I mentioned before. But I’d been sitting on it, hadn’t watched it. But then one day, in his office, he was playing a cut from something and I said ‘man, you should make a compilation disk of the hip-hop you really, really dig’.

So he did. he called it ‘Bounce, Dammit’,

I listened to this once. And didn’t like it much. And then I listened again – this time turned up loud, in my car. And loved it. And played it over and over. And loved it more each time. And it was like a light went on in my head. ‘Christ.’ I thought. ‘It’s about the fucking DJ’s‘.

I suddenly got it. I came home and watched Scratch. And it was like I discovered an instrument I’d never heard before. These guys are musicians. They’re artists. They’re insane. Cut Chemist, DJ QBert, a ton of others. Amazing people. And then I went back and started listening again. And the more I listened, the more I was amazed.

And then I started buying stuff. Eminem first, though he’s not a pure hip-hop guy, but I wanted to hear the albums again. Then Prozack Turner who’s a local boy, and is truly amazing (run, don’t walk, and buy Death, Taxes and Prozack, trust me on that one, this white kid from Campbell can rap.

But still, it’s the DJ’s. And I don’t even have a list of albums and artists for this, but the Return of the DJ series is a goddamned good start. I just listened to them, and they’re top of my ‘to buy’ stack right now. Then there’s Cut Chemist meets Shortkut. This is hard to find I think, but from my limited exposure, Cut is my favorite of the DJs. He’s amazing; he’s also the turntablist behind a lot of Juassic 5.

They are – as Jeff said – like jazz. And once you’ve actually seen these cats working, and then listen with that mental image, it’s frankly incredibly. It’s not just whicka-whicka-whicka scratching, though that, you start to see, has it’s own music. But it’s also whole new songs built from the old. I’ve only begun to explore this, but like my discovery of jazz a few years ago, I can feel a gateway opening to a universe of music I knew little about. These are the moments I live for; new experience come unexpected and bringing with it amazing rewards. You know, some of you, what I’m talking about. Out of nowhere.

…And I still wanna go buy those 1200’s and a mixer, call myself Dj Freaky E, and start scratching.

---

Now Playing: Jurass Finish First from the album Bounce, Dammit!

Read more “It’s like jazz, he said”

This was started as an email to a friendlast night, but that went off into the weeds somewhere and was terminated.

But I liked the first part so here it is.

—-

One of those funny moments when lots of thoughts collide.

Wait – must warn you – I’ve had several really tall long island ice teas – dinner at the restaurant where my ex-nanny works and the bartender took so long making my first drink, it was free, so I had a few more, and they were getting stronger as they went.

So anyway, I’m listening to this CD I have not listened to in years and fucking years.

‘You could be the one’ she whispered ‘listen – love is all you’ve ever
wanted, all you’ll ever need.’

Thomas Dolby – who I loved when his first album (Golden Age of Wireless) came out, but then he released ‘Blinded me with Science’ and it fucked the deal up, he got to be a huge star with this novelty song and then released a remixed version of the first album on CD which was half as good as the original, and hardly anyone who’s not my age remembers that there WAS an original, which was so damned good and has never been out on CD.

So then I looked at the vinyl original. (Yes I still own a lot of vinyl, AND a turntable, but I hardly ever listen to it because it’s a production to get it all set up). I worked in a record store when this album came out. The original with This cover , not the later one you all remember.

Nineteen Eighty Fucking Two. Twenty two fucking years ago this came out.

I was already past the worst of my illicit substance phase. That was when I listened to this so much I know every word and every drum-beat. I put it on and suddenly was back in the toyota truck I had back then, I could feel the wheel and hear the motor and smell the funky smell that truck always had, and see the lights from the graphic EQ I had mounted in the glove box.

Damn.

—-

Some things make a man feel old. Music I listened to and still think is new is now older than people who will vote in the next election.

On the other hand, it’s an interesting thing I’ve found recently about being over forty. I’m not sure when this happened exactly.

Suddenly I went from being just some guy to being hot older guy to women in the twenty-something/thirty-something range. Suddenly I seem to have teenage girls look at me different.

Maybe it’s just me. Maybe I’m feelin’ good and I’m readin’ it in. But damn, my trip to d-land last week, suddenly instead of feeling like the late-teen-early-twenty goth chicks who wouldn’t have noticed me before were smiling at me. And of course I was smiling at them, because have this philosophy that if I’m looking at a pretty girl she should know it.

Same thing with on-line friends. Suddenly, I’m getting attention from places I never got it before and girls I would have expected to ignore me (girls in some cases younger than the aforementioned vinyl) are interested in flirting with the scary old guy.

So I ask you – what’s up with that?

Not that I’m complaining. But maybe some of the hot younger chicks out there can hip me to this hot older guy thing I seem to have tapped into. Because I don’t get it.

Now back to the writing.

So I’ve been trying to work on the story I posted an excerpt from. But I got to a certain point and I’m not sure it’s working. I can’t get back to it because while I like what I’ve written, I’m not sure it moves the character along the way I want to move him, and I’m not sure the plot I have outlined is strong enough to drive the character development I’m aiming for. Because this story needs to be a character development piece, about how this man goes from one place to another in his life, and it needs to set up the later, longer story I’m still planning to write about him.

Add to that the fact that I’ve been reading Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (Why have I never read this before? I don’t know), and that’s making me want to write like Hunter S. Thompson. I wrote a little piece inspired by him, I’ll have to post it here later. But suddenly it’s making me want to skew what I’m writing to be a bit more hallucinogenic. I have to wait for that thought to pass or mature before I can go back because I don’t want to have my work lessened by my sudden desire to be old Raoul Duke.

I actually have another story outlined based on that thought, though that writer in the original thought was Bukowski. Basically a story about a young man with pretensions to be some self-destructive writer, but he can’t quite manage to be as romantically self-destructive as he wants to be and he’s not got the talent his idol had. These two thoughts might work well together, I’ll have to ponder that.

Sometimes you have to write the demons out, when they won’t leave of their own accord. On in their own accord. Here’s where we need a Ralph Steadman drawing of demons driving away in an old blue Honda.

And that seems to be where I should stop, leaving us all with that image.

Read more “Golden Age”

“She tune in till the tune suits her right
she tune in till the dial come alright
she tune the dial till the needles.’s in the white
tune in tonight
tune in tonight
tune in tonight…
…try to think of nothing…”

---

I’ve picked up Circe’s habit of starting entries with obscure (or not so obscure) song lyrics. But I like it as a device, and since I think of almost everything in terms of song lyrics (or in terms of sex, or in terms of monty python – god, imagine what I was like as a teenager, with this trio of influences running through my pot-fueled brain. Yeah, that’s it exactly, annoying as hell), it sort of makes sense to me.

I had one of those nights last night; awoke a 4am with my brain running at absolutely maximum speed, like I could actually hear clockwork running and synapses firing. Oh, and did I mention it’s damned cold in my house? Rats in my heater. Don’t ask. So anyway I’m lying there thinking about why I can’t stop thinking. Thinking about the work that needs to get done this week, the deadline for two projects, the headcount drain in my group that lead to a team of six becoming a team of two. And I’m thinking about all the stories I want to write, another of which I started last night (why the fuck can’t I stop that, I need to finish one before I start anymore. Someone out there, crack the whip). Oh, and about friends who’re having trouble with child care and new jobs, with husbands they don’t want but can’t leave, with mates who may or may not be the one, with friends are upset about having to say no. And how I’m gonna pay for the fucking rats in my heater.

This stuff, of course, all seems quite manageable in daylight. With a hand-painted demitasse full of steaming home-made espresso (Peet’s Italian Roast, made in my freshly cleaned Gaggia espresso machine, no automated crap for me!), I feel quite honestly there’s no problem I cannot solve. Kirk in that story line (ok, help me here trek geeks, which film was that?) where he hacks the simulation because he does not believe in an unsolvable problem? That’s me. Really. Give me time I’ll come up with something for all of these issues. Even the one about the saying no.

4am though. What is it, the worrying hour? Or maybe it’s just that cold makes my brain over-heat. Maybe it’s too much blood in my caffeine system. Hell if I know.

Aside: I should talk about the call I got over the weekend, from my mother, who had just read a piece of my writing for the first time. But I think that’s another whole entry.

So more comments on blogging. I have observed interesting things lately in some other friend’s blogs; first Circe, one of the best bloggers I’ve ever read (ok that’s not a huge sample but still) worrying that she’s not writing as well as she should because some nitwit bagged on her (As if). And then she said something like “Blog as if no one is reading”. Now this thought sort of set the mongeese (yes, that IS the plural of mongoose, fuck you if you disagree mister dictionary, I invoke the Humpty Dumpty Principle) to battling the cobras in my mind. I realize true journalers write for themselves, but – well – ah – what’s the fucking point in that when you’re in a blog, right? Because a blog by it’s nature is a public forum – because a blog isn’t the same as some ratty little book you keep tucked away from prying eyes. People can claim it is, but it isn’t. People can write like it is, but it isn’t. Maybe it should be though. That’s one for further consideration.

I guess there’s a funny line we walk, some of us who like the freedom to talk about ourselves but still need some shell, some curtain to draw to leave a little privacy and mystery. I read something similar in Doxy’s blog not so long ago, about “A lot of me. But not ALL of me” which I rather liked because, while my name is really attached to this thing, I still by nature am not going to be able to do what some bloggers can, and simply spill the id out upon the type-written page. It’s not (at least not yet) in me to do so. I suspect it never will be. I’d rather lurk in the shadows and leap out at you like a nosferatu, clutching my skinny white fingers and flashing my fangs, than dance in the spotlight with my tits hanging out like Miss Jackson.

Then there’s Sam. Who started with one blog she wasn’t updating. And then added another that she updates less. She’s now up to three she doesn’t update. What I’m wondering is, how many does she have to start before she finishes one? Sam, let’s make a deal. You start updating more and I’ll start finishing stories. Really. Promise.

Sigh. Is it friday yet? No? Ok, then is it the drinking hour? Damn, that’s gotta be close.