Author Archives

by

why does it always stop

why does it always stop with music? isn’t Riker’s Island infinitely more powerful as a symphony? Could Mahler have even come close to expressing the death, the anger, hatred, the languor, the longing, the rocks, the sea? no. men and women created this magnificent masterpiece of damnation.

rikers

why does is always end at Revelation 22:20? didn’t Martin Luther King contribute a chapter to the Bible (“the Books”)? Isn’t the Civil War (my Civil War and your Civil War) a part of the Old Testament? The Bible was written by men and women, simply by their living in conjunction with a Greater Consciousness.

why does it always end at the edge of the canvas? doesn’t blood on the floor count? didn’t you spill something out of your heart just now, there, next to the still life of your child’s grave? isn’t that a tear stain on the sky? just what do you call “paint”?

by

tracking The Gray Album

I have been tracking the Grey Album for about a month now, and I’ve got sumpin’ to say!

First, it seems right to hear what Brian Burton (aka Danger Mouse) had to say about the project:

“A lot of people just assume I took some Beatles and, you know, threw some Jay-Z on top of it or mixed it up or looped it around, but it’s really a deconstruction. It’s not an easy thing to do. I was obsessed with the whole project, that’s all I was trying to do, see if I could do this. Once I got into it, I didn’t think about anything but finishing it. I stuck to those two because I thought it would be more challenging and more fun and more of a statement to what you could do with sample alone. It is an art form. It is music. You can do different things, it doesn’t have to be just what some people call stealing. It can be a lot more than that.”

I have only a few general comments to start- first, this is very clever: black and white = grey.  And, technically speaking, this is genius.

However, I’m a musician, and in the end, I have to listen to this shit.  That’s where I always diverge.

The biggest “problem” with this is the vast disparity in talent between “Jigga” and the Beatles.  And I have anything BUT a distaste for rap! On the contrary, I listen almost exclusively to rap, and have done so for almost 20 years now.  There are great rappers.  Jay-Z ain’t one of them.

So, this project becomes an amazing Warholian work of art, in and of itself. It is “Beauty and Debris.”

One particulary distrubing track is the first one,

“Public Service Announcement” – 2:45

This is mostly because “Long, Long, Long” is so incredibly haunting.  It has always held an indescribable loneliness for me. And so when you get angry rappers yelling over a mike over the sounds of all human life fading into the abyss…

The good news is that, no matter what you’re thinking right now, you should definitely go get the White Album, and listen to it (again) and again.

The Grey Album – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

The Grey Album is a mashup album by Danger Mouse, released in 2004. It uses an a cappella version of rapper Jay-Z‘s The Black Album and couples it with instrumentals created from a multitude of unauthorized samples from The Beatles‘ LP The Beatles (more commonly known as The White Album).

by

Justice John Paul Stevens is a smart guy

“What really for me marks a conservative judge is one who doesn’t decide more than he has to in order to do his own job,” he said, relaxed in shirt sleeves and his signature bow tie in chambers floodlit by April sunshine. “Our job is to decide cases and resolve controversies. It’s not to write broad rules that may answer society’s questions at large.”

This is contradictory to his portrayal as a liberal savior by the Democrats.  Very few people understand the terms conservative, though, and liberal has lost any meaning it might have had at one point.

Conservative means parsimonious, not “right-wing”, or “old-fashioned”,or Republican (of all things!).

As the last surviving Justice who served in WWII, he also said:

“It really was a unique period of time, in the sense that the total country, with very few exceptions, was really united,” Justice Stevens said. “We were all on the same team, wanting the same result. You don’t like to think of war as having anything good about it, but it is something that was a positive experience.”

I’ve often thought that.  4 times in history that the United States was “united” were the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, WWII, and September 11. This unity isn’t simple or trivial, and it doesn’t mean we’re all just a bunch of happy friends. And I don’t think that the people were united for the technically correct reason.  But, even Noam Chomsky was sad on September 11th, and didn’t waste a word on decrying the failed state of the Union.

by

crucificarlo!

“crucificarlo!”  good phrase to know in many languages.

“crucifie-le!”

“распять!”

it used to be “I love you.”

“Ich liebe dich.”

“J’ t’aime.”

now, there are so many more opportunities to assemble as a mob, and condemn someone to death.  just makes sense.  think of how many times in a day you, or someone you know, throws out that dagger of total condemnation, without any desire to try to investigate the situation or the person.

heck, it’s pretty much question #9 on the  drivers’ ed exam!  “what do you do if a guy cuts you off, and he’s from Boston?”

“Kreuzige ihn!”

and then republicans and democrats are crucifying everything! everyone!

“Hey, man!  Crucify You!”

“You too, buddy!”

“Hey, pal! I got your cross right here!”

by

Germans continues to speak German; French Canadians are not French, they speak French

English is most creatively applied by hip hoppers, and it should be handed over to them. The language will grow. Hip hop will nurture the English language like Shakespeare did.
Shakespeare was probably not a real person. C’mon. Just listen to the name: shake spear. Its for sure a hip hop collective that fronted as some kind of imaginary playwright.
Of course I expect you to make the appropriate conscious transitions to let this notion happen in your brain. We all have a responsibility to use our brains a lot.
Pretty soon, we will lose all contact with California. Everybody in Cali will “misplace” their cell phones and their car keys because they will be fogged in. All calls to California will be forwarded to an automated answering service. As Bob Dylan once said to me, in a song, “when you hear the beep, it will be 3 o’clock.”
Spanish is the real Esperanto. Start now, and you will be able to communicate in the 21st century.

by

US-Canada border control is over the top

It’s pretty silly. You know, the people themselves are silly. We citizens of the world are silly. Childish.
We act as though someone is directing us, as though we are following a widely accepted, universal rule book. But we are not. We are just abdicating.
It goes back to childhood – when our parents wanted to be ‘serious’ they spoke in a stern or loud voice. As though the tone of voice actually has the effect of making a situation serious… This is a childish notion. Like the “weirding voice” from Dune. If the plane is hurling towards the earth and you are talking like a silly goose, will that make the plane crash really really hard?
And then there’s the real issue – for all the precautions that are taken, known terrorists book flights over the Pentagon using the same frequent flyer number, and we don’t notice. Escaped convicts board a plane in LAX without a boarding pass.
Security will only ever happen when the human race decides to grow the fuck up. When I can trust you as an adult to think about the general good. Until then, we might as well just let it all happen.

by

Nobody dies from lack of health insurance

It is inaccurate to say that millions of Americans have died from a lack of health insurance. No one has ever died or had complications from lack of health insurance. Just a lie to protect and nurture the health insurance industry.
People die from lack of health care. Period. That burden lies solely on the shoulders of health care providers. Of course, we all find excuses. But if you need blood, pumping health insurance into your veins is not likely to save you. How about a dose of the truth?

by

Where is all the discussion around Precious?

I thought that movie was ground breaking, glass breaking, earth shaking … Now I am seeing the book in more bookstores. Why wasn’t is promoted before the movie came out? Deinitely check the book out because it was either written bt Precious herself or ghost-written, depending on your point of view.
The main point it – and for once I agree with Oprah – it presents a truth that America is not prepared to accept. Unfortunately for her, I think she might have said “white America. ” Sorry, O, you didt grow up in that neighborhood neither. Maybe Bill Clinton did.