Lyrics for Hey Superman vs The Batman
Read MoreOddstock Festival, the secret festival with the most talented musicians. Thank you.
Thank you Kait Jaouen, Jeff Goresen, Steve Miller, Suzzi Immarigeon, Daniel, Rich, Jason, Lance, Kristen and so many others for an amazing time at this years 4th Annual Oddstock Festival 2016.
Steve Miller and Jeff Goresen finally taking a rest. (Director of Venue Logistics and Talent Coordinator, respectively).
So, today is Tuesday, a few days after the end of the 4th year that Oddstock Festival has been running this three day getaway for musicians, artists, campers, and music lovers. Plus they raise money and awareness for MS/Alzheimers!!
I have had the pleasure of experiencing, in one weekend, what most people don't experience in a years worth of music. My live music experience goes back to the early nineties, this is pre-cell phones with cameras and high speed digital satellite feeds. This was a time when Independent music was strong and being a musician in a New York, allowed me to be part of a scene that had presence, had fans, and had places to perform live.
Kait Jaouen, She is the reason this festival runs so smoothly. Director of Events extraordinaire.
Today, while live music venues are becoming extinct in NYC, and possibly elsewhere. There is still that glimmer of hope, up north, just a little over and hours train ride, in a place, known by musicians, (I actually spoke to one, who I saw back in NYC, who knew exactly what I was talking about, random conversation), This place, Danbury, Connecticut, is by some, a musicians town. If you don't know what that means, then you are not a musician. But, most of you are fans of music, and a musicians town, simply means a place where musicians can create freely and have places to perform, jam with others, and build bonds with music, at the same time, a community alongside their fans. Which just happen to also be filled with musicians.
Imagine, you get to visit a small city and everyone is literally, part of a modern day family. But, that family consists of artists, musicians, foodies, craft makers, multimedia designers, punk rock philosophers, poets, songwriters, etc. On top of this, they support each other, and have venues and shows, and places to share there creations with each other, and they are super welcoming to visiting musicians and artists from other parts unknown. My band Strangebird, has been very lucky to have attended and played amongst these talented individuals and bands that always remind me what is really important, music. Plus I get to live out the musician/superhero/fan list in those days.
Suzzi Immarigeon, the best Stage Manager.
I'll be writing more in the days to come about some of these bands, I just have to collect some more info, but this year it seems, there were definitely more bands, and you can even here all of us on the radio at WXCI 91.7. it's a college radio station, that really pushes new music, indie music and those classics we love. I happen to hear them on Tunein Radio App. Download if you get a chance, or get over to Spotify, or Soundcloud, or any of those streaming stations to listen to some of these bands!!!. Here's a few to get you started. For more info about this years Oddstock, click here.
Spectral Fangs
Quiet Giant
Mantyhose
The Red Hots
The Atom Family
Mother Tongue
Three Legged Dog
2:23 am Carnival
Sapo Negro Issue #47 Cover I had the oportunity to create for art show of magazine cover series from the Brainchild of Russian artist Deems. (back a few years ago)....
There was only one way out of this place. The ham, serrano, was good and processed. half melted on the counter, with no intention of interesting any vagrant. The dubliner, firm, two pieces of yellow un toasted toast to toast the occasion. every conflagration that requires one to bring out a flask and suck it's tip. The conversation, a broken record with mad lib lines to fill in the interesting "parts" as someone would say. Didn't help that fact that the whiskey found it's home on Fulano's tongue. The place smelled of ashes, rust, and Wednesday's tuna. The flask, a concealed weapon, kept it's secrets hidden. Together. The beats would not be missed tonight. The canteen of the brothel bedouin. The trumpet blaring in the back of the head, miles away the waves hitting the shore. That shore. Lonely shore, that waited for no one. called to him, but waited for no man. Waited for no congregations of the counseled, couch cackling, coke cake eating, cock in a speedo wearing corsicans. It did call to him. A subconscious entrail, a jealous jellyfish, a cold train to paris after a hot night in Tunisia.
Heroes weren't dead. God wasn't dead. Hitler hid out in a castle made of sand where the crosstown traffic made him remember those machine guns and he sat their crying. Stalin became a painter, and Mussolini, well we all know too well got stuck playing bass for that asshole Glen, misfit that he was.
But mother. Mother. The children are still coming up this way. Coming up the road to see the accident. Coming up the road to see the truck spilling habaneros near the havana. Spilling chilies like blood, covering the concrete with sugar, the lunatics have sex while sky diving into that magic truffle mushroom's magenta. Pigs that they are. Who cares if that trumpet hits that note? That high note over the sun?
The fingers kept tapping on the table. Knees, hell bent on instructing the feet on where to go. As usual. When did this galaxy turn into Gattaca? You have out to hide out in places like these to get to know no one, and make sure no one gets to know you. Where flesh forgets sin, and fish forgive the bathers for not frying them in the hot sun. Penultimate fan watching the entire room. Back and forth. The pentagon was empty. The pentagram pointed south. That edge where the tip touches the earth on that green paper, scraping the skin.
Writers need room. Trumpets need space. A naked woman needs a canvas. The rest of them need dollars to spend on that umbrella strip pole that kills the vaginal rain from pouring water in to that river. Walden. Whitman, and now just fucking Waldo. Fuck Waldo. Fuck waiting. Fuck water. Whiskey. If I could fuck whiskey, then make mine well. so the taste stays with me the next week. The sweat out out of my pan pipe can be smelt in the next train car. A man once never said to me, "suicide if there's no whiskey." Well then, just enough to get through this night. To whisk me away to that place, where the dead chase you through empty rooms in empty mansions and never speak.
Writing, is like fucking. No. Fucking is a dog in an alley, covered in mud, performing Wagner's ride of the valkyries. Penetrating that dripping playstation that has no end credits. Breaking that brick wall with the backside and buttocks of the betrothed. Writing is smoking a cigarette, laying on his back on the floor. Momentary memory still dripping on an upside down Tunisian rug, passed down from the family, covered in the the cum of saints and the confessions of sinners. El ingles no sirve para lo que escriben. No tiene animo, ni animal en sus palabras. Solamente qiuere placer el prosista.
Who says you can't write in two languages? Quien dijo? Bernay's to Bernie if you get the clues so far. But most of you are so far away you don't see the eye land. Glass and ice don't do whiskey justice. It must be the nickel or metal of the flask that give it that kick. In your throat. In your thoughts, to keep everything moving along. easier to pass to a partner. The words are running now, flowing out of your head. The great writers listened to jazz. The playwrights, silence( people screaming upstairs from their apartments). The musicians, (sitting on their fire escapes) the street. The cars, the traffic, the urgency to get somewhere. The roads that people needed to be on. Every occasion a silent drift of space would come in between, a lull, allowing memory to stand on the corner of the three story storage space that buzzed tween midnight and dawn.
Melody didn't care that i stripped. The whiskey was a fireman in four five one. I was a book near a candle. The bonfire began. The walls caught on . The ceiling had a feeling. It wasn't the first time I had penetrated the posterior passageway of a dolly parton with my dewey decimal digits. Index, first. I was a gentleman. After a five finger distant country did i decide that a coup de etat was necessary to evolve the meditation to another situation. I simply took a train from the wheat station to the sugar cane plantation. Not since the poolsides of an ulterior motive in the Arizona desert, by a kitchen stove, had I decided to enter such palaces broadsword in hand. She asked. We thought deeply about it for a few hours.
The escalator was at the other end of the platform. Trains slid in and slid out of the station from both sides. Doors opened and people got out. Other people got in, and doors closed. The platform was full. Again. It was always full of people coming and going somewhere. Musicians sitting somewhere playing the soundtrack to their lives. Rumble, swish. Pause. Pum, Pum. Horse stampede. pause. Horse stampede. Pause. Swish, screech, rumble.
Melody knew that it was dangerous to play with water in the space station. Scott told everyone he played with fire up there from time to time. His Twitter account had photos of it. She thought she could do one better. At the next video conference for Nasa, she played around with a water bubble. That showed him. That showed all of them. The firmament was intact and the water outside wasn't going to penetrate on her watch. It was a tough job. Sitting up in the air for weeks and months, just watching the seas above the skies. But, she was patient, and it would soon pay off. That first step so many years ago in that empty desert where they saw an eagle land, would still stand for something. Even if she knew that she could never tell anyone that something that she knew.
So, the escalator. Is still at the other end of the slowly elongating platform. But, I have to get through all the people that are coming in my direction. Today, we recorded again. Trying to finish an album takes time. takes finesse. Takes a lot of gear. Now, I was with most of this gear. Alone at this 59th St. station. searching for an elevator. A modern minstrel on a mission. I have my guitar strapped to my back, with no outer case. An old mexican made fender stratocaster that had seen it's day. But, as chance would have it, bought back from the dead. Black, covered with stickers, an eye of providence, and a , "Squirrel, it's whats for dinner," sticker in big fat rat bastard yellow colors.
The finger guard is covered with a tiny comic book story about a man in the middle of the night. A man journeying through the night, in search of a kidnapped moon. The sequestered son of the sun. You see, no one knew who took the moon. It was believed that a man threw a rope up and lassoed it for love. For a girl. But, that was another fairy tale. This was not that story. In this story, the moon is gone. Missing. You ever see the night sky when the moon is in it's death phase? It's as if it's not even there. Strange thing is, if it is there, wouldn't you just see a black circle surrounded by stars? Hmm. I hadn't thought of that until now. So where is the moon then? Or maybe I just never noticed on those nights. How many nights has it been since I've been a kid? Well in the story, the main character Samuel, goes searching for a moon that hasn't been seen in more than a month. The people in the story started to get scared that the moon just up and fell off of it's plane, down into, or is it up into? space. Or someone or thing either stole the moon, or vaporized it. And just like that, nights became darker. Lovers and poets lost their way. Who was to guide them now? What was to bring the tides in? The oceans, laid there motionless. But it has only been a month. There was artificial lighting everywhere. People could see. They had their cellphones and candles. But what would become of this new night?
You see the nights of no moon were, to the pagans, a night of ritual. A night of bringing in new ideas. A night of sacrifices and Bacchus orgies of wine and flesh. But all this was in the hopes that the new moon would come. Breathing new life into whatever was asked for on the eve of. If the moon never returned, what will become of this new way. With the nightlight gone, that flashlight over the seaman's desert, there would be nothing there to guide them. caress them.
Apparently, I spend a lot of time thinking about the moon, the earth, the sun, the stars, the firmament, Copernicus, Scully, and Moulder, but without all the alien agendas and ancient stuff. Just the thought that we are floating or hurling through space. Space. SPACE. When you have space in a room. Hang on. space and room can be the same thing. Space is either a location where you put your things, this can also be your room. If you have space, which you can have in a room, then there are less things in the room leaving a lot of space there. You can also have a lot of room in your space as well, and room in you room to put things in the space left by the emptiness of the room. Hence space. This is what happens when you too much time on your hands and are sitting in your space, or room, contemplating these things. Which leads me to that other space. The one outside of the Earth, or surrounding the Earth, that goes on forever in every direction and has tons of stars in them(which we came from), or nothing in it and it is just a fake creation of the people in room 237. Either way it's a bit to think about. And yet, we don't. We don't talk about it.
Space is the elephant in the room left by the lull in the conversation about non-space. Just for the record, if there was nothing (lots of empty space) before the big bang, and space (lots of room in an otherwise empty space filled with some stuff) after, then where does that leave us? It's a big mind fuck that no one is paying attention to, like this story, which no one is reading, except for you.
Speaking of which, how come on their three day journey to the moon, no one took pictures? I take an hour car ride, and I take at least a few pictures of the sun and the landscape and other people. But, space? First time seeing it and you don't wanna record it? They had windows. There were three astronauts. Three guys, three days, not one picture? Is space boring? Was there really nothing out there? They obviously knew how to use them Hasselblads on the moon.
I watched the conference the astronauts had when they returned from the Apollo 11 mission. I got the impression that they were bored. Not excited to return after a journey that No One had taken before. No excitement. enthusiasm nil. What happened in space? What happened on the moon? Did they see something they couldn't talk about? Large strobe light looking aliens? There was more written about Columbus, Marco Polo, and tons of other people that were the "first" to step on dirt. Some dirt far away from the dirt they lived on. Still, the dirt from this Earth. But, these guys stepped on the moon! The first guy to do that came back to tell everyone about it, and what does he do at the conference? Just sits there, waiting for it to be over. Looking like a guy who wished he never took that step for all mankind. This, is probably why some people think the Eagle never landed. But, most don't look at it that way. They look at the photos. They look at the images of the ship, and the lighting, and they look for all the possible reasons why they couldn't have gone. All they had to look for was sitting right in their faces. Those three guys. Out there, somewhere, for at least a week, and came back from a vacation from Everyone with no stories. I get it. There are no bars up there. There are no landmarks to take pictures of. No natives to learn things from. I get it. It was just a cold, dark, death, star, of a small planet/satellite with no life. No stories. Nothing to see. Nothing to say. Keep it moving people. But wait! we are going to Mars now!!! (See how easily get distracted?)
There is a man somewhere on the internet that believes that the moon is just a hologram. His name isn't Truman. The bible and the people in it, believe that there is a dome covering the Earth. A firmament. Outside of that dome, is space, or more water, depending on how you take in your oxygen.
In my right hand, 2 amps on a luggage cart, A brothel red 20 watt fender amp, and a smaller black Peavey for some kick. On top of them, some microphones in a solid carry case that would otherwise be used to carry large amounts of cash, drugs, or illegally imported whoopie cushions. But I haven't seen that day yet. Finishing the leaning tower of Bill Gate's Babel, an M-Audio interface board. Long, sleek, and covered in the front with beautiful shiny knobs. The back flushed with ports, and portholes for balanced beams and XLR cables, that connect unbalanced tight rope walking tune makers to the ballast of an newly created Itunes page.
An unrolled, crushed cigarette messes about in my left pocket. Tobacco everywhere in there. I can feel the little crunches every time my arm swishes past that spot. I put my hand in there and feel the dry shards of plant life, that once covered some green field in Virginia, Mars. Hung up to dry, like so many of us. Waiting for someone to pull us out, roll us up, smoke us, and exhale our souls into the beautiful bleak blue.
Prince, Simon, And El Gar of Funk
Prince can make every situation better. really gonna miss him.
12:18am
They couldn't control the sun. Everyone would know about the things that floated in the ocean of space soon enough. The plan to conceal the outer worlds was failing, They sat, wondering what was being served for lunch. Thirteen men and thirteen women, humans, from different backgrounds and lineages. Old and young, different shades and hues . blue eyes, brown eyes. It didn't matter anymore. Some kind if Salmon salad. This wasn't about race. This was about humanity. The workforce that they had had a hold on for centuries. Is it Atlantic or farm raised? A millennium or ten. Who knows at this point. Probably with croutons, and a light dressing. They only knew what their positions were, and what was to be done to keep the masses in check.
Do they have that gruyere? It was easier in the 1900's and before. Every now and then, they would start a fictitious conflict. They knew that it was all perspective. The media always helped greatly with this. It didn't matter what country you were presently sitting in, they always had an enemy for you to worry about. It didn't matter what side you were on. These were merely mirror reflections for them. How about a soft Merlot? Manipulations, mind games, and mnemonics, merely a mystery to most. Not to the people sitting in the room. Propaganda, was the greatest gift they ever received. They knew this to be mankind's greatest problem. The other person in a room, far, far, away. They began with the salad.
Animals don't have this issue. They don't hate other animals cause you tell them that the other animals did something wrong. They go on living. People don't. People worry, People talk, People gather, and People magazine sells them the same story, month after month, year after year.
I once took two years worth of a few different magazines. Layed them out and studied them from cover to cover. Looking for patterns in pictures, collage in chaos, calligraphy in concepts. You know what I found? The same story. Over and over. All the magazines didn't even bother to come up with anything new. They just ran the same story, with different wording, placing. Pictures. Photos of people doing things that you wish you were doing. Places that most have never seen, and never will, cause it is easier to look at a picture. Than read a thousand words while riding on a plane or a boat to that unknown destination.
This went even further, as I continued my study. I began first by lining up just the same months, but a few years at a time. Almost without a hitch, the covers and insides were the same. Well of course they were. That's what the magazine was selling. But what is it telling us?
I am not naming one magazine in general. But, I knew what it was without saying it out loud. It was the same reason I stopped watching television all those years ago. It is the same reason everyone hates watching the television.Yet , they still watch it. To see their program. To watch their programming. To be Programmed. To be Pro. Orwell's nightmare. Or was it Goebbels' dream? Who can tell at this point.
In the beginning, like everything else that is pure, there were no commercials. No breaks in programming. No need to sell the listener or the viewer an unnecessary product. The program sold an idea. Today, these interruptions are everywhere. Every program is now half of what it was a decade prior. Meaning, every hour of programming is half an hour of program, half an hour of commercials. Yin/Yan, half and half of Gandalf, half full and half empty glasses sitting side by side, confusing half minded people about the dangers of eating whole foods. If the day was like this, you would spend the sun hours watching programming, and the night time watching commercials. They are there whether we like it or not. Redundant platters for hungry masses looking for that next hit of the solyent tofu. The next feasting of the fleshy, formaldehyde fonts dripping down off the direct tv onto the formica.
Patterson went to pick up his medications. The tic tacs were low so he needed to replenish. He knew it was all just sugar, but he enjoyed the flavor of those tiny, concrete pills. The labs had perfected the taste, making it easier for one to take their medicine. No need for pharmacies, no doctors. This new method was designed to keep everyone medicated from infancy. first soda pop shops, now candy stores. No more simple white boxes, and small lettering. Its was all flashy colors and bold names like, whatchamakallit, and kit kat, and menthos, zagnut and skor. Sexual names and chocolate, a perfect match.
Chemistry in the early 1900's had taken leaps never seen before. Compounds were constantly being mixed and tested to see their results. What they found early on was that children loved crunchy foods, and also felt a connection and comfort in soup. So cereal was designed with that in mind. What better way to get the youth hooked on sugar meds than with a "healthy dose" every morning.. it didn't stop there. They wanted everyone on it. Toothpaste was the answer. What better way to get sugar and now flouride into people's bodies, with there consent? Make it the first thing you have to do in the morning. at least three times a day, if you have the time. An apple a day too. Let's not forget Eden while we are here. Keeps the doctors, the sinners, and the snakes away.
Sugar and salt were secretly the worlds biggest commodity. The way through everyone's heart. The password through any firewall. Fuck grains of sand. If you understood the power of the dark side of these grains, you would understand how to control 10 billion people. People don't eat sand on purpose. Children, adults and even dogs eat sugar and salt. Except you never hear anyone talk about it. Common as cold air, if blinking was the bread, then breathing would be the butter. They even had chemical versions of both, but nothing beats the real thing, baby. At one point sugar was made from then corn, but it simply wasn't strong enough so they had to process it even further. Who knew what the world was like before these discoveries. The cocaine of coffeehouses. Then came the synths. First aspartame, which actual is found in asparagus, naturally, the tame part, well that's still unknown. Then came the cousins, the pink dose, the blue dose, in cute packets. What happens when you combine Domino with Dominoes?
The walls outside are covered with them. The trains, the cars. Even people walk around with Brands on their clothes. You know what was branded first? Animals. So that other people would know who owned them. Like Ford with the assembly line, things caught on. Or did they? What would you write if you owned a newspaper? What would you show if you owned a TV station? What would you play on the radio, given the chance? What if you knew that millions of people were out there, listening, watching? Changing channels. Streams of other people's ideas, flowing out to your brain.
The first image to be put through a television was a skull. Death. Imagine that. A large death symbol, projected over space and radio waves into your brain. that was a hundred years ago. Today the screen you watch is broken up into 1000 miniature screens, all projecting a collection of images, that you see on your side as one. What if one of those miniature screens within the larger screen was altered? I don't suppose that any person will catch that at 100 frames per second.
The people in the room knew. They always did. They knew that the young inventor of the Iphone didn't allow his own children near those devices. They knew about Goebbel's plan to control the masses and divert them from their ordinary lives. They knew about MKultra, the Majestic 12, LSD, the hippie movement, guggenheim, and the Tavistock Institute. They always had to know the plans, in order to implement them to the proper services, groups and organizations. The people in the room, were known as The Arcane. Most people didn't know about them, some only heard stories, few had actually seen them alone, and no one has seen them all together. This was the way it always had been done, and was the plan to always do it. A small group of people, running the lives of a large group of nations, countries, and continents. When something was tilting too much one way, they would step in with a "solution," to the problem. Most of the time, the tilting was done by them. Followed by the "answer".
But, people were catching on. People were waking up. The air, which was mixed with different chemicals, was losing it's power over them. You can spray things only so much, before they become immune to it. The following generations growing stronger with every breath. This was ecology. This was evolution. This was the beginning of the revolution of the new minds. But, like the process of the single cells to the sapiens, time was a factor. This was the strength of the Arcane. It wasn't what they did for their own lifetimes. But what they did that continued the seamless control over the masses throughout many lifetimes. Decades. Centuries. Eons.
The Arcane, started in a small room much like any room, anywhere in the world. It started as an idea, as a myth, as a way to better their own lives. Much like any family would. Much like the Mafia, the postal service, and the CIA. The point was to have an agenda that benefited the group, and find a way to keep that going. Much like any empire, there are always a group in the middle of that, which spread the truths and doctrines which support the empire. The regular people never knowing. As soon as they do, the doctrines or truths change.
The group grew faster than it thought it would. It moved locations when people became suspicious. They used their sources in all fields of science, religion, military, and media to keep the momentum going, and keep their movements secret. It's members where first family, then close friends, then as they grew, people in power, until they were putting people in power themselves. But the center always remained intact. The 26, could be chosen by the previous 26. These positions were for life, but successors where chosen early on, for those certain cases where accidents may happen, or secrets were divulged to the wrong parties......