Whose demon is THAT?

Sometimes we just have to get down, get right on down in one's own kitchen, and face the demons... you know, pull the big foamy swords out and have it out with your ugly faced, venom spittin bad dudes that live inside your heart.

It's a nasty business, this living life to the fullest business... but we do what we have to.

Growin up ain't for sissies, and this vid ain't for the faint of heart...

I'm grouchy today. My parts hurt -- this one right here, the chest-rib section... and over there, the gullet bits... and in there, the back muscle complex -- and when my parts hurt I get grouchy. So there.

So here. I was recently surfing about and came across this and it reallt got my gumption because, well come on! we can all agree I think Jimi Hendrix was the greatest guitar player of all time, but there are so many fucked up things about this list that I don't even know where to begin.

No, wait, let's begin right here.






Django -- that dude, after a killer fire that didn't kill him, could only play with two fingers on his right hand and yet still wrote some of the most amazing licks that your or my sorry ears will ever hear -- oh yeah, but Jerry Fuckin Garcia (#13) was better than he was. Sure sure -- all that stupid strummity strummity truckin bullshit was righteous... COME ON!

And Woody Guthrie -- how about that punk rock dude? "This machine kills fascists" crazy wicked crooner of labout songs yes! But also the original man to pen "On top of old smokey", "The ABC Song" and innumerable (literally) others that made your and mine childhood's sing! Oh yeah, but The Edge (#24, 15 marks ahead opf Brian May for Chissakes!) who has admitted several times that he doesn't really know how to play, is clearly way better. WHATEVER! Je-sus!


And, how about this shit... where are all the women?






You know, Joan Jett, Auf Der Maur, Liona Boyd, etc etc etc...

Ugh. Not a wonder I'm sick.

Good times...

I have gone music buying mad. And let me tell you how good it feels... it feels, like totally good.

The beauty of being a musicphile is that it's really easy to get quality stuff relatively cheaply (by that I mean that I can buy a stack of CDs for the same amount of bones as what a wanker of a different ilk would spend on one Grammy Award winner...)

So, the booty for this weekend runs like a twisted narrative of my current existence. Read em and weep:

The Police - Ghost in the Machine
54-40 - Dear Dear
K-os - Atlantis
The Tragically Hip - Music @ work
The White Stripes - De Stijl
The RedHot Chili Peppers
Nirvana Unplugged
Hole
Smashing Pumpkins
Jon Spencer Blues Explosion

It's gonna be a groovy week from the looks of things.
A.

After so very long, I am back on, and so glad to be here.


There will be no update, it is in the present that we must live...

Here is one of the greatest and weirdest things I've seen in a long time. A sort of eclectic cross between Ze Frank and Hi Fidelity, Eric Hill has, in a bold move, decided to listen to all of his massive cd collection over the course of the next year. Although a seeming mundane thing to do -- I entreat you to listen closely, for surely there is no greater intellect amongst us when it comes to music.

I say again, listen closely -- the oracle will speak of music 300 out of the next 365 days. I for one will listen. Care to join me?

Lightning rod in one hand, fist and hook 'em horns in the other, a connosieur of loud & heavy music could, if honed and dedicated enough, conduct music of distortion, feedback, speed and weight. Take the music in your mind and channel it out through your figures and palms, bicepts and spine -- divine enactment of power and luxury and beauty.

The variety of musical experience, dedication & aesthetic never ceases to amaze & enthuse me. Scrawled on the wall of an abandoned building in cursive spraypaint a band's name makes itself known, probably unknown to the happenstance reader, and yet so meaningful to its author. In our sneakers and boots, coats and hair we embody the sountrack of our lives & days, walk inside the music that gives us our rhythms, melodies, distortions and harmonies. In the eyes, the intensities, in the expression and through the stance, we are given words for the wordless, and more meaning where there was none before.

Decorate me musically in life and after make a tune that the kids can hum.

An old friend of mine... not that HE'S old, but moreso that we've been friends for long enough that I FEEL old... contacted me the other day and opened a window onto his life for me -- a gallery of images of places he'd been, things he'd done and people he'd met. For the most part, I guess that that is what this blog is for me -- a visual representation of the architecture of my life, an x-ray shot of the skeleton of my existence.

With that in mind, then, here's a few more for the bucket...

Rock on Peter... I miss our good conversation.

as tall as I can feel as I
learn to live to
breathe fire

Why don't the kids mosh anymore?

Please explain.

Besides the music, that was always the best... are the kids just too cool to get sweaty? Are they text messaging each other across the dance floor (as E.-- suggests)?

Tell me. Please.

Why don't the kids mosh anymore?

Please explain.

Besides the music, that was always the best... are the kids just too cool to get sweaty? Are they text messaging each other across the dance floor (as E.-- suggests)?

Tell me. Please.

My dreams of late have been nothing short of terrifying -- stark, black, bigger than life, wake me up in a cold sweat nightmares.

I read that these dreams of violence, dismemberment, immolation spell something out along the lines of being overwhelmed by the dark side, a repressed anger, that feeling that 'things fall apart/ the centre cannot hold'... and it's all probably right.

I read also of a loss of trust in others, a feeling that my safety has been violated, that I have put myself out there too much and now suffer from exhaustion...

Nietzsche says we only need 'a Yes, a No, a straight line, a goal"...
Yes, I live for it all
No, I will not succumb to a world dictating that I work more than I play
a straight line towards more creative living
a goal that I will never tell

I lock myself in a world wrapped in jazz, rapt
and dream of better dreams

Memorial Hall. Friday, March 17th.
I've never really been sure exactly what St. Patrick's Day is other than a day when everyone in public school wears green and only the coolest of the cool (read: the ones who fail later in life) looks half decent, and everyone in university drinks green beer and listens to loud Great Big Sea all evening (read: the ones that looked good in green in grade 8).

But now I know for certain that I've discovered the true meaning of St. Paddy's Day...




Yes little Ms. McRedhead and little Master McFreckleface, the true meaning of St. Pat's Day is to totally rock out with 100 of your best friends, to give to the high heavens a piece of your music thirsty soul, to give it to the people, to kick out the funkin jams with your best suit on and your strongest foot forward...



And then, of course, it's about the poetry... music and poetry, what more could you ask for?

And so, thank you to everyone who came down to freakin get your Paddy's Day freak on with us at Mem... to Chris and Rachel for winning the slam in fine form... to Whitefeather and Denis and Sam for doing such a fine job judging, for John and the finest beats I've ever heard (and the finest hat I've ever owned), for Fats Robinson for being the most talented and experimental trumpt player I've ever heard (and for being such a great partner on stage for an hour's worth of improv... ah, the chemistry!), mto Phil for bringing his one man techno show to our grand home and swooning us all, to all the slammers in their slamming...

and to Marie and Lori and ArtZone for making it happen... such talent humbles me everyday

to Mike for fixing my bass (thanks dude, you rock), and to Mitchell for saving the freakin day (thanks dude, you rock too)...

and for all you sad and sorry souls who didn't make it because you were too busy swilling green beers and remebering the glory days of public school -- when are you gonna catch on that we throw the best party in town huh?!

surrounded by beauty

LOVE IS BLUE & SEA

if you turn the machine parts
inside a clock, or if you

see through your lover's eyes that love
is blue and sea
shells its way into your heart, and

if you look long enough at the horizon
of any country

you'll see music the way
a friend hears
your absence

A figured eight
and then a turn on
the minor fifth

as a finger waves, wags
and pivots off
its bass


I am in love
with all of the blisters that
music makes and



wear them like proud wounds
on my sleeve

truth is
I never played the bass, it
played me

Last Wish

After having passed off wish
one with ridding us of poverty, and two
with eradicating war, I would piss away

wish three in granting that
in a moment of subtlety

Margaret Atwood would write
about great sex. I don’t much care

what kind – lesbian, bi-
sexual, threesome, or even
simply missionary because
I don’t much care
which way her pendulum swings – I would

just want for her

to have this cultural treasure.
Then I could spend the rest of my days

hoping that it is tucked
deep inside her
practical underwear drawer.

I spent last week undercover. Sick and dazed and taking in so little nourishment that all I could do was fall back on the very few skills that I inately seem to have -- reading, thinking, listening to music.

In this sickness, the health
of art revived me.





In the darkness, a voice
just like it's supposed to
do

rapture comes and we wake
to our own self
be true, to our

impulses relax, to our
passions
divide

and now from
the top

Winter in my mind & out & about...

REJOICE PUNK ROCKERS AND ARTSY FARTSIES!

Yesterday, December 14th, at 7pm, Mark and Hope had their baby! A rockin 5 1/2lb baby girl Rosa! Rosa Rosa Surfer Rosa! Hope is doing pretty good and Mark performed admirably in there! Send out your love vibes people! Send out your love!

Roses for Rosa.

FEEDBACK: TONING FOR THE SONICALLY DISTORTED
For centuries, people from all around the globe have practiced the art of toning, or intoning. This meditation style practice involves everything from the deep and mysterious chanting of Tibetan monks, to the soft hummings of various practioners of the healing arts as they attempt to realign your out of synch body-mind connection. Beginning from the understandable belief that the sound of the voice is a powerful force (easily demonstrated by trying out various ways of saying 'fuck you' to people and observing their various raeactions), toning works with the philosophy that just as electro-magnetic vibrations impact the emotional and physical world we live in, so too does one's voice. Ipso facto -- the more harsh the sound, the more sonically disturbed our environ can be.

Straightforward enough, yes?

But what if you're one of those that simply doesn't like things quite and calm? What if you're one of those deranged and unique people who like it loud? Like it distorted? Like it a chaotic and noisey?

I have come to find that this basic principle of toning can be practiced in a way more conducive for those, like myself, who find distortion, white noise, and feedback to be the element that soothes most emphatically.

Take your average evening at home, after the kids are asleep, and you are confronted with a veritable mountain of exams to mark. The formula to conquer this mountain is simple -- two parts Jesus and Mary Chain, one part Pixies, two parts Husker Du and, finally, if the work still isn't done, three parts Iggy and the Stooges/ Sex Pistols/ John Coltrane in equal proportion. Mix with red wine and VOILA! Work done, wine gone, good night's sleep ahead.

This is a tried and true method. Back in the day, when I first stated university and the workload seemed more motherlode than cartload, I tried the relaxation method -- quiet music, quiet space, quiet time. And I fell asleep. Thinking it was exhaustion, I tried coffee, but all that made me do was go to the can more often. I tried working in the daytime, but that just lead to afternoon catnaps. That's when I realized the problem -- it's too damn quiet! My mind was raging, but my surroundings were dead. And so, in a moment of epiphany I came to my senses and jammed Barbed Wire Kisses into the ol' boom box and the paper was flying like trees out the nether end of a chipper on a June afternoon in Northern New Brunswick.

Frank Black, I'm sending you my undergrad degree. And Bob Mould, you can have my Masters.

You see, I am Sonically Distorted. I like the monks, don't get me wrong, but they have their place -- bedtime. But when it comes to working and creativity, only one thing will do for this Twisted Feedback Machine -- raunch and roll, squeeling saxaphones, and notes that defy the music stave. Oh yes my friends, there is life in the noise off the scale, and they are the notes of the mind driven by distortion.