This here is Cookie Puss. It was a college radio hit for the Beastie Boys and formed the foundation for them to take over the world. Imagine Rick Rubin as some kind of Svengali pulling all the strings and here, in a concise four and a half minutes, you have a template for chaos.
The same applies, almost in the exact inverse, with this track from Funkadelic in that it was Black folks venturing into a predominantly white genre. Maggot Brain is a triumph of rock music and defies the listener to apply race or creed. It is so far beyond those kinds of considerations that it defies genre even… Maggot Brain.
The Beasties were by no means the first but they certainly opened up Hip Hop to a much wider audience. Where the Funk movement of George Clinton was vaguely segregated along racial lines, Hip Hop became the domain of practically anyone. Given that the widely agreed king of Hip Hop is a White dude from Detroit, you can see my point. Of Course, this all kinda stems back to the innovators… people like Jimi crossed the race line and made themselves thrones in mostly white dominated Genres. Before them, of course, there was Jazz and before that there was Blues and before that there was all kinds of stuff like the classical music movements of Europe and the tribal rhythms of Africa and the Pacific. Music is a living language and certainly not one to take race or color into consideration. The true test, though, is in the listening. Some folks have the patience to sit and listen, some folks have other stuff to do. I guess that right there is a better dividing line than race, color or religion ever was… huh?
I leave you here with 14 minutes of the most fantastic music you will hear today (Unless you are fortunate) and bid you a happy Easter. Whatever that means…
The word ”Slacker”, in the parlance of the time, traces it’s roots back to Richard Linklaters’ 1990 film of the same name. I reckon it’s as good an adjective as any and it went on to describe an entire demographic that just kinda gave up on trying too hard.
… remains one of my favorite films of all time. Johnny Depp and Gibby Hayes documenting a slice of John Frusciantes life. Please be sure to watch to the end. The soundtrack is amazing and the imagery is stunning. I always assumed that the canvases are Johns, simply because of the uniformity of style. Someone said to me yesterday that they always thought I was someone they could talk to about anything but people never seem to wanna talk to me. They always seem to either wanna talk at me, fuck me or ignore me. I like to talk about the cluttered and desperate life of Syd Barret or the chaos and beauty of John Frusciante. The way that he used tone and color so brutally and yet it evokes such tenderness. I have no-one now. I am in the chute, as me and peter used to say. Nowhere to go from here but down. It’s ok though. I am painting and making music and I will continue to do so until I cannot. I always felt that that was all there was to life. I understand the shabby contents of John Frusciantes house because it mirrors the shabby state of my heart.
I met my friend the other day for the first time since she has started the transition towards womanhood from being a man for the past 30 odd years. It was an amazing experience and I feel really happy for her. It has been a long time coming and the one striking feature was the absence of the deep creased frown that she has been wearing for the best part of a decade or two since we met. The politics of language is a bit tricky, using “She”, “Her”, “Hers” etc but once you get past that it’s really just my friend behind all those words and everything is ok. You know? I get the sense that the whole community we are a part of is generally similarly supportive and happy for her. I worry about how the wider world might treat her but… well, shes a big girl….
The day we met I said “Nice to meet you” and they said “Is it? I am not so sure about that, we’ll see”. A few years later I asked if they had revised their opinion and it turns out that, yes, it was also nice to meet me. Inside this marvelous package of gender confusion and misplaced hormones exists a musician of phenomenal talent and I am more drawn to the artist than I am to how he or she cares to define him or herself in terms of whats inside his or her undies. Which reminds me that they once traded me a fine fine hat in exchange for free music in perpetuity. I have been a little lax keeping up my end of the bargain but I do try to throw them a copy of stuff when I can. Since CDs stopped being a thing it is hard to navigate that kind of thing. Maybe I could send them all the bandcamp music as a gift… as a “Happy Lady Day” present…
I was seriously struck by the happiness that radiated from them, as if a gigantic weight had been lifted. They are someone I truly admire and I am so grateful to be their friend. As for the lifting of my own weight, there is no real hope for me anywhere on the horizon. I am working hard making music and in the garden and trying to just wake up everyday and grapple with the idea that I am actually a good person. Some days I win that battle, somedays I don’t. I have been listening to “Alice’s Restaurant” and am trying to download a copy of the film. I watched a TV series called “The Defiant Ones” recently. It’s all about the relationship between Jimmy Iovine and Dr Dre and their respective back stories. Really encouraging and challenging and I try to spend at least an hour or two or three working on mixes or playing instruments and trying to continue the mahi of learning my craft. I have worked really hard this past 3 or 4 years to become a better musician and producer, refusing to rest everything on vocals and harmony. It’s hard because instrumental music is a difficult thing to approach. It is not the norm and therefore nobody really seems to care for the music I make but I kinda just try to keep faith and hope that, perhaps, a time will come when people might appreciate it. Until then I will just keep on. Dub Style!
So, sorry, I guess I did end up talking about myself but my heart was in the right place… I have been making cigars from the crop of tobacco I grew last year. I went and harvested the rest of it last week and it is another way I try to keep busy and distract myself. I hope you are doin ok. Seems like you are.
I remember once calling my lover from Sydney Australia and feeling like if there weren’t an ocean between us, I would have easily started walking. That’s how this song makes me feel. An urgent and truly heartfelt expression of need. I don’t think it’s lusty, I think it’s deeper than that, I think it’s a plea for to be held and to just be wanted. If she needed me I doubt I would be able to be there right now. It’s a horrible, filthy feeling of uselessness and yet perhaps if the need were so strong I could be there. Mayhaps, at least. I so wanted, growing up, to be a lover. I am a romantic, truly I am. I have offered my heart to far too many people to think I am an honest romantic but I am still one. I broke her, ladies and germs. I fucking broke her heart too many times and I lost it, maybe forever. Mayhaps… I should say. I knew she was gone and so I went and threw my heart at someone else who trashed it and kinda left us both staring at each other on a deserted beach wondering where we go next. Well, here we are, gentle reader, here we are. Lefty left for Ohio… I suppose.
Pick it, and it won’t ever heal.
I still feel, now and then, good inside. I know I aint though and so those moments fleet. I can’t even bring myself to make music or art much, it’s all wrong and I do not truly understand why it came to this. I am just glad it never went further. I miss my friends, my lover and my kids. I miss feeling like I am a man worth more than a pile of spit. I had a friend kill himself the other day and my first thought was “Why didn’t he take me with him?” , selfish mother fucker. That’s me. Gentle, kind reader.
I guess I just keep making music. Keep trying to be something more. My heart is broken. I spend a few fitful minutes when I wake crying, between the first cigarette and the first drink. If I opened the floodgates I would drown. I hope you never know this place. I hope this trip is done soon. I have done everything I wanted to and many many things I didn’t. Surely there’s some kind of karma that will allow me to fade out soon, it’s been hurt and hurt and hurt, interspersed with vainglorious hope and brief moments of joy. and I reckon I am done. Gentle Reader, Done.
So I , um, wait…
Look man. I am gonna put a Nick Drake Album on and smoke a blunt and just type and see what comes out. I am not gonna comment on the current gossip but, I hope, you will see through my bluster and get a gauge on where my heart is. Ok? Ok.
Ah man, Matt sent me a copy of the third American Recordings album. I am drinking. Its 3pm and my curfew begins at 7 so I expect to spend the night locked up. I saw my Dad today. We sat in front of my Lawyer and I let him read all the things said about me. It was a very hard day. I have hid from the people I love and isolated myself from them and it was scary to have him there, to read and hear the nasty horrid shit that is coming up. He was really cool, my pops. We went out for lunch afterwards. I tried to stay sober today but just couldn’t. I am terrified, gentle reader. Terrified.
I used to have this terrible hallucination, premonition, fever dream of being stripped naked before the world and tortured and I suppose this is the fruition of those portents. To be stripped naked and exposed before my peers, like Pink, in The Wall. In the beginning I lusted for death. I have closed my eyes four times this year, not expecting to wake. Each waking was violent and panic stricken. Once I woke with my head in a plastic bag, Nirvana throbbing through the sound system and gasping for air, a tank of helium lying in my lap. Another time I woke in the car park across the road from the family’s first Waikato homestead with the sickly sweet taste of solvents in the air and, lamentably, still alive. Another time I suffered through 2 days of stupor, recovering from an overdose that probably would have killed a horse.
I dunno whats changed. Maybe I just gave up. I dunno. I seem to be invincible.
I feel very sad. I have not felt able to reach out to the people I love. The few times I did met with anger and I kinda shut up shop. Do you know the music of Townes Van Zandt? I am ashamed and terrified of what the world has become, encircling me and sucking me down into her maelstrom. So I have been working. I have produced three albums worth of work and contributed to another 4 more and I just hope that folks will remember that I am a kind heart but even kind hearts get lost inside the fug of drugs and booze and loneliness. I dunno about all the rest of it but I know that it must be terrifying to wake up alone in a house with a madman and to be only small. So, you know? I have a lot on my mind.
Things are stressful. I woke this morning with the most unbearable anxiety and the only thing I know to do is to read. Sometimes it will take me a day to read a single page, so fraught with distraction is my concentration. I have been gardening and meditating. I do not wank much, I mean how would your sex drive be in this case? I sometimes wake from dreams all akimbo but its just dreams huh? Suffice to say I don’t feel real sexy. I miss you, gentle reader. I am sorry I have neglected you, I just haven’t known what to say.
Whitney Houston, it turns out, was Gay and she was in love with her life long friend Robyn. But because she was from such a staunch religious background…. It turned into a mess. I love her music. “I wanna dance with somebody” was such an earth shattering single, it really did usher in the 80s. Well, for me anyway. I spend my time inside music. I recently rediscovered Jeff Waynes “War Of The Worlds”. Now, bear in mind that this album caused me to have a couple of years worth of nightmares as a kid. Night after night of fearing Martians coming from above… “The Chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one…. but still they come”. As a grownup I can face it, and it is a wonderful Rock Opera but it left deep scars on me. I will go for days and weeks without it and then return to Bob Marley, again and again. There is such wisdom there. Heh, I even landed some of my music on that cooking show from Jamaica that I like. I have been downloading music as much as I can, hoarding Wu Tang Clan and obscure shit like Nick Drake and Tricky. Listening back with a ferocity of intent that scares me sometimes coz I can completely miss the music. I guess what I am saying is that I am trying to find solace and sanctuary in music. The one place I feel safe. There is new music. It probably sucks but it’s mine.
I have been watching documentaries galore. Anything that grabs my attention. From Caviar to HIV medicine, I indulge my youtube like it’s going out of fashion. Which, I guess, it is. I sometimes watch stuff about the Mongrel Mob or prison violence coz I may have to face that shit soon. Life. Fuck.
So yeah man, times are tough. I am good. I think I know that, mostly. I am. My love is real too. It’s real fucken fragile but it is real. I hope you are ok. Please check these guys out.. they are so cool. This is what I imagine it was like for my Dad growing up in rural NZ. https://www.youtube.com/user/RasKitchen. Anyway, so I suppose I just keep writing now. I am not sure about what but I will, ok? Ok. See ya tomorrow, hopefully. Batman or The Joker?
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