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The Pack A.D. is a garage rock duo from Vancouver, BC. Formed in 2006, The Pack A.D. consists of singer/songwriter/guitarist Becky Black and drummer/songwriter Maya Miller. The Pack A.D. has so far released four studio albums on Mint Records.
Last night as i was flipping out (nightly occurence) my buddy Barbara sent me some music to calm my tits and the medicine was the music of THE PACK A.D.
So i thank both Barbara and THE PACK A.D.
for keeping me out of jail
hovering over the edge of a cliff
in an ambulance
running from the fire dept.
or being shot point blank by policemen…
Thank ya for the rockand roll * fine, fine medicine*
Incidentally today would have been Jack Kerouac’s 90th birthday. Thoughts on this hepcat, and how to honor the great daddy-o of storytelling?
- Rider Levy
As usual, i am a day late and a dollar short, thus
making yesterday Jack Kerouac’s birthday.
I don’t relate too much to modern america these days with our psycho political & obsolete religiosity standards it makes it somewhat difficult to call myself a proud american.
However, when i think to those i gaze upon as true Americans…my America…the one i AM proud to be a part of…I of course think of Jack Kerouac.
Jack means so many things to so many different people
and i was lucky enough to get introduced to him early on…which i think is important…it’s important because i think Jack has a youthful message….and when you get older, his writing is somewhat like talking about the old days with an old friend…so a lot of it gets kind of lost on older cats like myself. i have no desire to turn my dick and balls into ice cubes trying to catch a ghost train in the dead of night with the wind chill factor somewhere between witche’s tit and ice cream headache. I don’t wanna travel on a greyhound bus anymore mama, with it’s toxic stench of green piss and schizos trying to decapitate me, while the guy in front of me jerks off beneath a newspaper while the bus loses a wheel down an off ramp as the driver is sleeping…no thanx Jack.
I felt there was a decison when i was younger…
The Jack Kerouac Road or University Lane…i think you can tell which one i rode…
Jack was complicated…he thought way outside of the world…i myself often travel that thought path…and that kind of thinking will help you lose jobs.
I liked the fact that in the time he was young he
smoked grass, he had homosexual friends, he hung out with black folks
all these types of things were taboo and frowned upon…Jack flew over the frowns and ignorance and he burned on past…he taught people how to think different.
To See different, to hear different and to love different…and sometimes his message is lost on people and sometimes it is lived.
When i think of Jack i think of
Lotus Flowers
Jazz
James Dean, Bob Dylan,
ghost, booze, nostalgia, the loss of family and friends
i think about life, death, god, the devil, regret, holding on and letting go…and i think about laughing at the absurdity of it all and floating
down the infinite halls and space of time which is the original always…
I don’t think of sitting in cafes
I don’t think of poetry readings and slams
I don’t think of jazz scat razz a ma tazz hip talking like some of these fruitbats try to do at bookstores and galleries…that type of Jack scat can really put
me off my piss and i wind up in the bog slamming down 7 beers i brought in a backpack just for that reason…
I don’t recall Jack using much punctuation…and i myself…i make up my own punctuation or lack of***
Too busy trying to write down what the ghost in the head is relaying…i got no time for hyphens, baby.
I fancy that what i learned from Jack i still put to good use…i still see, hear and feel and burn…
I see the poor old woman…her holocaust eyes
I still see the death clouds running like black horses in the 4 am skies
I still see the ghost of the young and old in dirty little towns with their old brick buildings and faded adverts of yesteryears…etc…
Jack is reflective
nostalgic…and it’s good to sew this into your spleen…but too much nostalgia and you can get lost…which is kind of what happened to poor Jackie.
The man was tired…still trying to live up to the myth…and it’s no wonder he blew blood like an exploding old car engine…
Too much nostalgia and the work stops getting done…
I think you honor Jack by taking a chance on yourself instead of always playing by the rules…
You honor him by saying YES sometimes instead of always NO…
You remain young at heart…you let the ghost of the past find some rest…instead of trying to recapture yesterday…to capture Today.
Don’t go jumping trains late at night and getting your legs severed or your asshole torn out by some rail riding crystal meth x body builder…take a fuckun’ plane or travel with friends by car…motorcycle trips with friends while sober…no time for DUI jail time or becoming road pizza…
Love your friends while they last
Respect yourself, work hard, cast a shadow and never forget you’re never too young or old to
Shake, Rattle and Roll*
iAN
Kerouac’s Tips 1.Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy 2.Submissive to everything, open, listening 3.Try never get drunk outside yr own house 4.Be in love with yr life 5.Something that you feel will find its own form 6.Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind 7.Blow as deep as you want to blow 8.Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind 9.The unspeakable visions of the individual 10.No time for poetry but exactly what is 11.Visionary tics shivering in the chest 12.In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you 13.Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition 14.Like Proust be an old teahead of time 15.Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog 16.The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye 17.Write in recollection and amazement for yourself 18.Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea 19.Accept loss forever 20.Believe in the holy contour of life 21.Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind 22.Don’t think of words when you stop but to see picture better 23.Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning 24.No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge 25.Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it 26.Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form 27.In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness 28.Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better 29.You’re a Genius all the time 30.Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven Thanx to Kelly Paterson
PS. I’d send U some more drugs, but U R probably in a better position to get them than I!
PPS. 4 my 40th I got a paid trip to Amsterdam to C the Boys and Gal play the Paradiso again….Will there B a tour in Europe this year?
- Pete
I would really love to answer how soon is soon for ya Pete, but that is one question that even Ask iAN cannot make out in his black crystal ball…the ball shows only a fire burning in it’s murky water and black smoke innards…
I can tell you this.
The heavens have been plundered…
as well as the graves of the saints…the boneyards have been been dug up from here to the highway ghost station to Graceland and world wide, land, sea and desert…the limbs have been tightly wrapped and hauled away back to the black science garage…where our doktors (B.R.M.C.) are steadfast at work…
soldering iron, metal, flesh, and spirit together…and adding ingredients, subtracting negatives, reworking the blood types…great filthy tomes of modern madness and euphoria are systematically being processed, broken down and packaged into soft tissue and miniture head gaskets…
strange summonings have been heard…inside the doktors are mixings teardrops…memory jolts of softness are being cross pollinated…needles, heavy duty tripple xxx-tra strength suture is thredded through the sewing machine…the black one with the teeth…reconstructive bone surgery is taking place and sinew is strengthened…the monster is on the operation table…the doktors are hard at work…with little sleep they work on…and on…and on…
I can’t tell if it’s an animal..a person…a sensation like a jaw kick from the butt of a machine gun, a hoove kick to the caranium or the song the caged bird sings set free…i only know it as monster…of a size that dwarves frankenstein by Centuries…
This would be a good time to spend wisely preparing your war paint
polishing your gear
protecting your heart
and bracing yourself for what is about to come through those doors…
Hi iAN, I haven’t asked a question in a while. But this time it’s more than personal. I’ve been going through a lot, just helping out my best friend who lost her mother, helping to raise her niece, taking care of her Vietnam Veteran father who is on psych meds. And just taking care of the house since it’s hard for her most days to get out of bed. But yesterday I woke up in the middle of a panic attack (which I’ve never had before) and decided to go for a walk. And ran into this guy that I’ve only bumped into a handful of times. He told me to sit down and tell him what was going on. But low and behold, as he hugs me, he starts rubbing his hands all over, and then tries to kiss me also he’s married and his a son. Now after punching him and running, I don’t know whether I’m lost or have a certain clarity. Being only twenty years old and I feel as if I’ve been living the lives of fifteen all at once. So the question will be is “Is it alright to be lost for so long that you may not know how to come back from it, or will I eventually find my musical savior?”
- N.O.H.
Yer out there, sussing out this / sussing out that
yer learning about the world as you wander through it…you are meeting people…some favorable some foul
so i wouldn’t confuse that with being lost…I mean hell, we are all lost… yer not a little girl, and yer ain’t lost…
Just because a person is wealthy and surrounded by luxury doesn’t mean they don’t have dark nights inside of themselves…especially when the end
draws nigh
and you wonder what in the fuck that whole life thing was all about.
Take Bono for instance.
Where is he gonna go that you can’t go?
White House 5 thousand dollar a plate supper with the president?
Locked in a room that smells like lemon pledge furniture polish and listening to invisible people drivel on
about world economics as they suckle expensive wines…Christ, drag me to the tavern with Shane MacGowen and lay some pints of cider out
and lets hear some songs through broken teeth.
Bono can attend expensive spas where you can have sex with people that look like they fell out of a magazine
and then what…vaginal snore, cock snore, empty snore, beast snore…flat out fuckun dreary…sex with robots…no sale.
Bono is in the same world as you…one big ghastly planet…where we can go around to the left or to the right and then we criss cross, we travel back home, we leave again, we get new jobs that become old jobs, we sleep with people and we let go, some remain friends most turn back
into strangers, we have pets, pets die…friends die, family die, sometimes you die and when you don’t you heave that satchel over yer shoulder
and you walk on down the road…and sooner or later…you run into Bono.
You have a chat over a bottle of water and then go your seperate ways…and it’s back to the hustle and shuffle or you get a small place
throw all your shit on the floor
and sit down until the medical examiner comes and extracts you with a spatula
from your corroded divan…and Bono is on the tube singing it’s a beautiful day.
Bono just doesn’t have financial stress
he can afford medical bills and pay the rent and travel without the stress and worry that we get pummled with…but hey, that is ok too…cause once you have no struggle within…you start wearing shirts like Bono.
So where you struggle to make sense of the world around you, Bono does that too, just on a global level
he changed his thinking, had to, he is at least making an effort to become a solution, an answer instead of a problematique rockstar…he gets more people fed than the fuckers who knock him down for what he does…ever will.
My fucking point is that both of you
are fighters
and there is only this fucking ring in which to perform our business (the planet, the city, the streets, )
It doesn’t matter that life may be pointless
what matters is the fight, the way that you got in there and had some goddamned flash, had some fight within you
that you fought angels and demons inside of yourself
and outside of yourself
You don’t see butterflies commiting suicide. Talk about a short life and not all the grueling and tedious conditions it had to go through
just to become that short lived butterfly…I love butterflies because they don’t give a gram of fuck.
They do what they were born to do…like us…burn bright
no reward
no cash prize
no promises
no afterlife
now now now
fucking NOW.
It aint easy finding your place in this world and even when you find it
it doesn’t make the world make any more sense than it ever did…
I know this gentleman
he is dying as i write this…I have known him since i was a lad…
He was a hard working white collar businessman, very high up on the ladder of success…
He did right by his wife, they had children who all have gone on to be successful at their pursuits…
He has had a great and roaring life…and he is a loveable person…
He is lying in bed…riddled with cancer…his body has gone to waste…it is a living nightmare…
Do you think for a second
he is thinking about that job he worked for most of his life?
He found his niche, he was wealthy, he lived life the best he knew how…and now after all the puzzle pieces are in place
and he can enjoy his retirement…he is playing chess with death and there are only a few more pieces left on the board…and death is cornering in his
King.
I wish i would have learned more about what makes birds fly…the designs of their skeletons…
I wish instead of driving all over town i would have gazed for hours into my lover’s eyes without trying to touch her…
Why can’t anybody save me and drive me away from here in a fast car at the speed of light and get this fucker death off my chest for a second so i can
catch my breath, the fucker won’t let up!
Mom?
What will become of my bones forever?
All those dead dogs
and the trees…i will never see another Autumn…the leaves falling…
what is water?
what is money?
I wish i could just clock back into work and be my normal self
drinking a cup of coffee…laughing with friends…
i’m gonna miss the fucking sun on my face…..
I know this man…this business man…this friend of mine
I know he has no regrets…i think he may feel shorted and slighted…and rightfully so…he deserved more time…he deserved that.
Life and Death don’t give a fuck.
I know that he got up everyday and got his armor on
and took the fight out into the sunlight…he shook a leg, he gave a fuck, he exploded, he laughed, he burned,
he did right by people, he lent a hand, he didn’t take any shit and he didn’t waste his time with those that thought they were
sly enough to waste his…he didn’t let fools eat away at his time…he fought the good fight….he got involved
he tangled with life, he made decisions and the kind that benefited the whole, not just himself…and he could make me laugh until
i cried…and now i just cry for him…it’s just him and death now…soon he will ring death’s bell and be pure…I will always miss him…he will live inside of
me and only add strength to my punches and kick…and i will keep his fire lit.
Keep your distance from
men on the street
the kind of men that want to help you get through your divorce by sticking their
cock in you
and leaving you by Monday without so much as a cup of
starbucks coffee in your panic attack hand.
Panic attacks
I got them worse than anybody
i knew
I couldn’t go into stores, malls, anywhere, i lost jobs, i got sick on busses, couldn’t fly, i couldn’t drive without pulling over, dizzy and i thought dying,
i was a fucking wreck, until one day i just told my panic attack to get fucked.
I got mad and told myself to fuck off.
I told myself i was taking something stupid
seriously,
and i told myself to fuck off
I punched a wall and went for beers down at the bar and put on some sex pistols.
Splash some water on your face and punch the fucking walls, tell yourself to fuck off and stamp your feet…
If that doesn’t work
go home and cuddle up in a blanket and eat cereal and watch your favorite old time movie
i’m not kidding…when you have a panic attack the only place you wanna be is at home doing something normal and natural
kind of like dying…all you wanna do is go home…
it took me quite a spell and many panic attacks before i got so pissed off that i fought it away…
I have only had one more and that was years ago….but since then, so far so good…i don’t have time to play
mindgames with myself any longer…now i fight.
I pray you will do the same…we all wanna relax…
you can relax when yer dead…now is the time for fucking fire.
good health and good love to you…see you on the road to wisdom, friend.*
iAN
P.S.
Should you see Bono before i do, make sure he buys you a pint. Cheers*
It would do us all well to remember that we should live to our fullest capacity when we have the health to do so…
Live for yourself and for those who wanted to so terribly bad
but could
not.
Fight for yourself and for those too weak to have a voice
the betrayed, the underdog, the victim, the bullied…the heart and the soul…in the words of Arthur Lee Love…what’s right is right and what’s wrong is wrong.
iF this song doesn’t stir your emotions and cast a spell over you, check your pulse you might not have one.
I know great music, i work with makers of great music.
THIS is great music.
This song haunts me out.
One of those songs that you listen to and know by the end that it’ll never get old, it’ll never wear on you and that it is there for you, of you, inside of you for all time….storm of crows*
Storm Of Crows
You want it you got it
there’s no doubt about it
there aint no deception here
ya’ took it ya’ broke it
yeah you kinda stole it
there aint nothin’ left but fear
you did it you got it
then ya’ didn’t want it
lets get some perspective here
ya’ got it ya’ did it
then ya’ had to quit it
there’s just nothin’ left but fear
you’re a lie
got you by the neck and let the colours fly
no one to blame
shot you in the back in the pourin’ rain
ya’ got it
ya’ did it
then ya’ kinda hid it
there aint no deception here
ya’ stole it ya’ know it
then ya’ went and broke it
it’s all jumbled up in fear.
you’re a lie
got you by the neck and let the colours fly
no one to blame
shot you in the back in the pourin’ rain
You and I we tricked almighty time
My friend.
You and I we tricked almighty time
My friend
OVERCASTERS & SLEEPY SUN
Thursday, 22 March 2012
Larimer Lounge
Touching People’s Lives by Remembering Yesterday
Celebrating Today and Inspiring Tomorrow’s Memories * The Oath of the Brown Palace Spirits
I sat in the new world order Denver airport
smoking bar for nearly an hour waiting on the Overcasters…my cellphone was in a coma, i had lost my little piece of paper with their phone numerals and then it dawned on me that they couldn’t get past security to locate me, so i bid a fond adieu to the Mother in furs and her daughter who gave me a hard on until it went limp when she said she thought Lil’ Wayne her Idol…I flew like a raven whose wings had been pissed on by a drunk farmer and luckily found the Overcasters waiting for me…with warm smiles…and probably a few mild hexes under their breath…frankly i was expecting a biker beating with chains and all that good stuff…but instead…we just boogied out of there.
I had told Maggie (an all out miracle maker with the Overcasters) that a floor would be fine for me to kip on, or a drug motel…just as long as they could throw a couple of cases of Miller Lite at my skull every now and then, i would be swell. Instead, they took me to the most exquisite and Haunted Hotel in all of Denver…Kurt got me some french fries and i felt close to him…like the warmth you hear in the music of Galaxie 500.
I noticed right quick that Kurt had Thom Yorke Rango Lizard eyes. That is when a person who has this muscular beauty mark where one eye is having a conversation with your face, while the other eye is either checking out yer cock or is clocking your wallet and moving in for the pickpocket. I asked Kurt which eye i should concentrate on when we conversed…and he told me to ignore the eye that was on my wallet.
I was jealous and it is a rare thing when i am jealous…all of my heroes have never been picture perfect.
The strangest thing about Kurt Ottaway that i noticed right from the get-go is that he has…whatever that thing is…that Kurdt Cobain and Elliott Smith both had.
Not suicide.
But that true endearing visionairy valentine sweetness…it’s a spooky feeling…but it’s good spooky…the kind of spooky sweet that you never wanna leave their company…that you wanna drape a faux fur blanket over…and give them their guitar and a bowl of ice cream and let them create…it is a very, very rare…human being that gives off this energy…i can only hope that some of Kurt’s goodwill and majick has rubbed off on me….
This was the 2nd Year of the successful Gathering of the Clouds, presented by The Overcasters…a 3 day event in which i even fainted once…bad timing on my part…worn, in need of dreams and power…i blow it sometimes…i’m sorry, but i am far from perfect.
The Gathering of the Clouds was held in an old brick building downtown where the ghost of Neal Cassady was heavy on the fast moving clouds, he was in the gutters of the street…he was crying with his dead old dad in trashed alleyways…he was all over the fucking shoppe…i felt him heavy…speed ghost heavy.
On the 3rd floor of City Hall there were Motorcycles everywhere, on display…I felt sorry for Robert, Pete and Leah…they would have been shooting stars outta their boots…and even though i know a freight elevator brings them up…it still trips me up…thinking about all of those beautiful bikes up so high…it was mad fucking brilliant.
There were people everywhere…black coffee master merchants, designers…and a fuck Ton of genuine smiles…not the kind you buy on the street.
I was already starting to swirl…and of course it starts to get hazy…I keep calling Todd, Johnny and vice versa…well fuck…Johnny Looked like a Todd and Todd looked like a Johnny…and then i tried to remember Todd by thinking of Sweeny Todd, the butcher barber…it fuckun’ didn’t work…and the whole trip…Johnny was Todd and vice versa…
We hung out in the basement and smoked crack.
It was delicious.
Well…it wasn’t crack…it was Marlboro BLACK cigarettes…mixed with a local brew that somebody dropped off which i did not trust.
The bottle was like rubber and it tasted like many things that had nothing to do with my kind of beer.
This is what it tasted like…
Flintstones fruity pebbles mixed with Syd Barrett’s the madcap laughs album cover.
It tasted like Manson family tie-dyed t shirts that they sold at the flea markets for knife money.
It tasted like the grateful dead, if Ted Bundy was on lead vocals.
I pushed it away from me, like a boyfriend trying to lick your boobs through your argyle baby blue angel hair sweater on the first date…
I finally caved in and drank from the rubber dicked bottle…the serial killer saturday morning cartoon rainbow sauce that was begging for my swallow…and my tits got sucked….sucked Hard…L.S.D. beer…why not? Neal Cassady’s ghost approved in flying colours.
People in the basement real and otherwise began to talk with me…there were even a few in the bar mirror winking at me…some asked me what i was about…i told ‘em it was quite simple…i was doing a story on this great gathering of clouds…that i worked with the band
black ritolin motorcycles and 3 of clubs…Overcasters took the stage…i pulled out my penis, put it back in, pulled out my camera, finally correct…ran somewhere and began snapping shots by looking through the lens with my trigger finger and pressing the snapshot button with my tongue and sometimes my retina…
I could hear a Mutiny in Heaven…the birthday party…Nick Cave’s birthday party..not the songs…but that haunted ship at sea swinging sideways at night feel…that i’ve adored ever since my first acid trip at 17….there was the good psychic feel of the cult’s love album waving in the midnight sea mist air…and the pwr of BRMC…I struggled to find my sea legs…my head was a dark Happy…you know that feeling of being lost in a storm…on a boat…while a drunken madman is trying to baptise you with bourbon? I didn’t until i came to this Overcasters show…Oh Lord! I ran, i located the figurehead of the ship and i latched onto her wooden shoulders….
It was a real girl and she slapped me down onto the ship’s floor…
I got up and ran cause i knew i’d be walkin’ the fuckun’ plank when her boyfriend returned with their drinks…
I was baptised…I was Overcasted…and in my dark little mind…so warm and happy to be indoctrinated and sworn in by the Overcaster’s storm of
crows…it was record 3 release night…and the spirits were throwing Down.
I get my story backwards sometimes…cause i write from scratch
or maybe
“with”
ol’ scratch…
Cousin Kurt got me to the Palace of Spirits and that is when he made sure i had some Galaxie 500 fries…
I have to tell you that sometimes i can see things that are not there…the old seer in my carnival indian junk of ancestrels…
When we walked in every floor was full…every balcony…100s of them…men and women…and i don’t see them like the beer in mah hand, more like from the back of mind and out through my eyes and then reflected back into my eyes and back up into the mind….Victorian ladies in wide blooming easter like hats…and gentlemen in dapper black….they peered down…silent…calm…
they were
fucking
Everywhere…
The first door i bumped into was Room 333
on my way to 307….Kurt gave me a hug and i slept in the lair of the ghost…haven’t slept that good in years….
The next morning
I took my first two headed artesian water shower…and i rose like Christ rose to the day…that wouldn’t last long…i found my old uncle Jackie D.
I drank and wrote poetry that i heard the room weaving into me….
to sleep like death, everyone forgotten, from the pyramids to the consierge to the ghost in the cutting room, dried up and sexless, free from madness,
the smacking hotness, free from finances, and roaring bad perfumed hips, i’d weep for the cats but i’ve done spent my last
tear somewhere outside on a night time sidewalk
next to a beggar
who possibly
was
Christ*
Those whom deserve it
Never get it…
I have beaten me at my own game
while caskets sing on the wind daily…
i Ran with the sky cutting dogs until all of the crying in the world
stopped…
I went down to the Ship Tavern…where i found out that just a few feet away from my bar stool there had been a double murder…and that in the basement another double murder…and everywhere there…i saw black hawk wolf cherubs, and was told that the original owner’s wife had kicked him out for collecting clipper ships…i picked up right quick that he felt stuck and helpless, so instead of leaving her, he collected ships and dreamed of escaping over the side of the purple horizon…and i believe he is still waiting for his ship to come in…sitting in a rocking chair…slumped.
I kept ordering hard cider and pomegranate juice…those black angels…everywhere…painted black everywhere…ships on high seas in paintings…one replica ship model is called the flying cloud…gathering of clouds…ships coming and going…and then there is a collection of little Napolean Bonapartes in sculptures and paintings and dolls….and stairwells all going the same way on the same side…and people real and otherwise wearing huge hats, eating expensive cakes and drinking glasses held by velvet gloves…me all in black leather, black of eye…black of hair…a silver shiner…black motor in a sea of lies…a sea of escape from reality…a never ending sea….and the shining got louder…and darker…
We picked up Spindrift…KP was pale and later Sweet Sasha would be…poor sweet indians…
At their Hotel…there was candy from the 70s and volleyball girls by the hundreds…holding teddybears and unicorns frowning at me as i stuck my tongue out at them…i was once a good spiker…and then a coach with volleyballs for breast asked if i could score her some grass at the cloud dance…i told her yes…i figured if we had Syd Barrett Beer, we could probably find someone who was into fucking cheech and chong.
Todd and His Missus had a BBQ…they have a strange loverly dog named Roxxy (I think…don’t sue me) and Erin and Maggie and I went to get all the junk you get when you have a big blow out…Twin Guns showed up…one cool motherfucker was from Italy, which i keep dreaming about and the other fellow was like 9 foot tall and to speak with him i had to do it in smoke signals…very cool from the hip those cats are…and of course Spindrift….our ghost western native american film brothers and sisters…it was all a bit too wonderful for me…
so i put on Mark Lanegan’s Blues Funeral…sucked uncle Jackie D’s glass cock of wooden ship floor pish…and was well on my way to missing most of the show…;(
Back at City Hall that night…speaking with people real and otherwise, surrounded again by the Syd Barrett beer round II, wonderful people, motorcycles, thoughts of ships…Memories of Neal C. and all the ghost waiting back at the hotel for me…I fainted…fell into dreams….painted hands, painted ladies, electric manchester rock and roll…junkie new york thunders….crashing motorcycles….i awoke to the running of indians….there were dancing birds of colour swirling….and misunderstandings….until we twirled into the alley of the midnight spirits….bricks and all…wound up at Kurt’s motorcycle warehouse heaven home…where he feeds the good wolf and the bad wolf while keeping them seperated…motorcycle guts, books, guitar guts….i stole his book on Blake and his nostril machine (which i returned to him) and we had words of strange and hugs…i think…and i was back at the palace of spirits….where i began to get my drink on….and then like a loaded columbo…i snuck into the employee’s only elevator and rode it down to the basement….the ghost rocking chair…the dirty sex in the air killed by alcohol sprays…locked doors, mazes, tunnels to the hotel across the street…strange paintings….even though i looked like a very rough version of Peter Hayes, i still told the cooks that i was a city inspector here to check the fire alarms and other such made up bullshit…and i ran fast down the mazes….shining like a fucked out black diamond boy….left here, left here…stuck in a maze…was that an eyeball in the mirror widening in shock….???
I wound up across the street and babbling half mad i was escorted out by security…with a cup of coffee in hand…and told to stop acting like the scooby do gang…metalling kidz!
I spoke to spanish bellboys and they told me of the spirits that made them cross theirselves late at night….
Overcasters record release….curses prayers…Kurt would later say that the devil water was on him but the bar tab was erased by Angels…
I called it a night as the sun came up like a sunburned purple ghostship off of purple clouds….
The next morning i woke up sideways…
I put on my Sunday best black
headed down to the Ship Tavern
hard cider and pomegranate juice
met the flower ghost girls…and we had some good laughs….
one was from Wichita…why does it not shock me…
ships…lemon cakes, cell phones, sex spa tiles and gurneys….
the stairs still coming and going…the valets in their stupid hats and
ass kiss Napoleon coats….the black falcon wolf cherubs at every turn…shit, motherfucker…i felt right at home…
Like i had lived there forever and do forever again…as long as i got to see BRMC and the Overcasters play together in the Orchestra ballroom….
There was more confusion…Kurt and Todd found me…just after i had cried cause i had to leave…and say goodbye to my friends real
and
unreal…
On the way to the airport we saw the forth horseman death horse rearing back with his blood red electric eyes…and i yawned.
To all my friends reading this and those of you reading this that i do not know…keep your aim true…work hard…love the little you’ve been blessed with…you are unique….you’ve got spirit….and your ship is coming in…don’t miss it.
bless your hearts….and i shower you all with my humble ghostly thanks….
I Love you.
iAN
Gathering of the Clouds III
Shine On*
You want it…You Got it…
Shot You In The Back…
Got You by the Neck…
If You Love BRMC, The Gun Club, and Joy Division like i do you will NEED to get your hands on Curses and Prayers by Outcasters & Rick Parker (BRMC-BABY 81)…ASK iAN – Straight Shot.*
bless Lou Reed*
I would like to extend Holy gratitude of the highest Altar…my warmest, blackest Thank Yous to the following…. .*
My Warm & Beautiful Moto Guzzi cousin Kurt Ottaway
The Loverly Ms. Maggie Gulasey ( whom without, none of this would have been possible, you have the spirit & strength of 100 white horses)
The Silver girl Erin Tidwell
The bad motherfucker with the heart of gold, Mr. John Nichols
The elusive, good lookin’, ace of cheekbones and raw art, divine bass, Mr. Todd Spriggs & his Missus ( Thank You both kindly for the warm hospitality during my visit to your warm house…and Roxxy too…shux)
Chrissy, Allison, Betsy – The Flower Ghost Girls
The Staff at the Endless Timeless Brown Palace Hotel
Frontier Airlines for not smashing us into the side of a fuckin’ mountain as i dozed
Corey Hayes at chayesphoto@yahoo.com
Britt Chester & Denver Westword
Danny White
Denver City Hall
The Mad & Creative good folks of Denver, Co.
TRIUMPH Motorcycles
The Liquor Stores of Denver, Co.
Planned Parenthood
Glass Homes
TWIN GUNS
SPINDRIFT AND THE WARM FRIENDS AND FAMILY
The Wild American Spirits of
Neal Cassady (ON THE ROAD)
Al Swearengen
Doc Holliday
and Hunter S. Thompson
and Always & Forevermore…my family
BLACK REBEL MOTORCYCLE CLUB / C & J OTTAWAY / HENNINGS / EVERTS / H,R,M,GS/CK/Q.*
LAST but Not Least
Mr. Henry C. Brown ( I know someday your ship will come in…ride it over the horizon, kind Sir)
& Architect Mr. Frank E. Edbrooke. ( Both of the Brown Palace Hotel)
and ALL you lovely Victorian Spirits of the Palace…Thank You***
If I accidentally have forgotten anyone
please don’t take it personal
my little haunted mind and fractured pen hand can only
hold
so much
memory…bless yer hearts.
Travel by Monsieur Charles Baudelaire*
I
The child, in love with globes and maps of foreign parts,
Finds in the universe no dearth and no defect.
How big the world is, seen by lamplight on his charts!
How very small the world is, viewed in retrospect.
Some morning we start out; we have a grudge, we itch
To hurt someone, get even, — whatever the cause may be,
Here we are, leaning to the vessel’s roll and pitch,
Cradling our infinite upon the finite sea:
People who think their country shameful, who despise
Its politics, are here; and men who hate their home;
Astrologers, who read the stars in women’s eyes
Till nearly drowned, stand by the rail and watch the foam;
Men who must run from Circe, or be changed to swine,
Go tramping round the deck, drunken with light and air,
Thinking that wind and sun and spray that tastes of brine
Can clean the lips of kisses, blow perfume from the hair.
But the true travelers are those who leave a port
Just to be leaving; hearts light as balloons, they cry,
“Come on! There’s a ship sailing! Hurry! Time’s getting short!”
And pack a bag and board her, — and could not tell you why.
Those whose desires assume the shape of mist or cloud;
Who long for, as the raw recruit longs for his gun,
Voluptuousness immense and changing, by the crowd
Unguessed, and never known by name to anyone.
II
So, like a top, spinning and waltzing horribly,
Or bouncing like a ball, we go, — even in profound
Slumber tormented, rolled by Curiosity
Like hoops, as some hard Angel whips the suns around.
Bizarre phenomenon, this goal that changes place! —
And, being nowhere, can be any port of call!
Where Man, whose hope is never out of breath, will race
Madly, to find repose, just anywhere at all!
Our soul before the wind sails on, Utopia-bound;
A voice calls from the deck, “What’s that ahead there? — land?”
A voice from the dark crow’s-nest — wild, fanatic sound —
Shouts “Happiness! Glory! Love!” — it’s just a bank of sand!
Each little island sighted by the watch at night
Becomes an Eldorado, is in his belief
The Promised Land; Imagination soars; despite
The fact that every dawn reveals a barren reef.
Poor fellow, sick with love for that which never was!
Put him in irons — must we? — throw him overboard?
Mad, drunken tar, inventor of Americas…
Which, fading, make the void more bitter, more abhorred.
So the old trudging tramp, befouled by muck and mud,
Ever before his eyes keeps Paradise in sight,
And sniffs with nose in air a steaming Lotus bud,
Wherever humble people sup by candlelight.
III
Astonishing, you are, you travelers, — your eyes
Are deep as the sea’s self; what stories they withhold!
Open for us the chest of your rich memories!
Show us those treasures, wrought of meteoric gold!
We’d like, though not by steam or sail, to travel, too!
Brighten our prisons, please! Our days are all the same!
Paint on our spirits, stretched like canvases for you,
Your memories, that have horizons for their frame!
Tell us, what have you seen?
IV
“What have we seen? — oh, well,
We have seen waves, seen stars, seen quite a bit of sand;
We have been shipwrecked once or twice; but, truth to tell,
It’s just as dull as here in any foreign land.
The glory of the sun upon the violet sea,
The glory of the castles in the setting sun,
Saddened us, made us restless, made us long to be
Under some magic sky, some unfamiliar one.
Truly, the finest cities, the most famous views,
Were never so attractive or mysterious
As those we saw in clouds. But it was all no use,
We had to keep on going — that’s the way with us.
— Fulfillment only adds fresh fuel to the blaze.
(Desire! — old tree that pasture on pleasure and grow fat,
Your bark grows harder, thicker, with the passing days,
But you are set to reach the sun, for all of that!
Shall you grow on for ever, tall tree — must you outdo
The cypress?) Still, we have collected, we may say,
For your voracious album, with care, a sketch or two,
Brothers, to whom all’s fine that comes from far away.
We have bowed down to bestial idols; we have seen
Baldaquined thrones inlaid with every kind of gem;
Palaces, silver pillars with marble lace between —
Ruinous for your bankers even to dream of them — ;
Processions, coronations, — such costumes as we lack
Tongue to describe — seen cobras dance, and watched them kiss
The juggler’s mouth; seen women with nails and teeth stained black.”
V
And then? — and then?
VI
“You childrenI! Do you want more of this?
Well, then, and most impressive of all: you cannot go
Anywhere, and not witness — it’s thrust before your eyes —
On every rung of the ladder, the high as well as the low,
The tedious spectacle of sin-that-never-dies.
Woman, vile slave, adoring herself, ridiculous
And unaware of it, too stupid and too vain;
And man, the pompous tyrant, greedy, cupidinous
And hard, slave of a slave, and gutter into the drain.
The headsman happy in his work, the victim’s shriek;
Banquets where blood has peppered the pot, perfumed the fruits;
Poison of too much power making the despot weak;
The people all in love with the whip which keeps them brutes;
Divers religions, all quite similar to ours,
Each promising salvation and life; Saints everywhere,
Who might as well be wallowing on feather beds and flowers
As getting so much pleasure from those hair shirts they wear.
Humanity, still talking too much, drunken and proud
As ever of its talents, to mighty God on high
In anguish and in furious wrath shouting aloud,
‘Master, made in my image! I curse Thee! Mayst Thou die!’
Not all, of course, are quite such nit-wits; there are some
Who, sickened by the norm, and paying serious court
To Madness, seeking refuge, turn to opium.
We’ve been around the world; and this is our report.”
VII
Bitter the knowledge gained from travel… What am I?
The small monotonous world reflects me everywhere:
Yesterday, now, tomorrow, for ever — in a dry
Desert of boredom, an oasis of despair!
Shall I go on? — stay here? Stay here, exhausted man!
Yet, if you must, go on — keep under cover — flee —
Try to outwit the watchful enemy if you can —
Sepulchral Time! Alas, how many there must be
Constrained like the apostles, like the wandering Jew,
To journey without respite over dust and foam
To dodge the net of Time! — and there are others, who
Have quietly killed him, never having stirred from home.
Yet, when his foot is on our spine, one hope at least
Remains: wriggle from under! Onward! The untrod track!
Just as we once set forth for China and points east,
Wide eyes on the wide sea, and hair blown stiffly back,
We shall embark upon the Sea of Shadows, gay
As a young passenger on his first voyage out…
What are those sweet, funereal voices? “Come this way,
All ye that are in trouble! — all ye that are in doubt!
“Ye that would drink of Lethe and eat of Lotus-flowers,
Here are miraculous fruits! — here, harvested, are piled
All things the heart has missed! Drink, through the long, sweet hours
Of that clear afternoon never by dusk defiled!”
We know this ghost — those accents! — Pylades! comforter
And friend! — his arms outstretched! — ah, and this ghost we know,
That calls, “I am Electra! Come! — the voice of her
Whose lost, belovèd knees we kissed so long ago.
VIII
Oh, Death, old captain, hoist the anchor! Come, cast off!
We’ve seen this country, Death! We’re sick of it! Let’s go!
The sky is black; black is the curling crest, the trough
Of the deep wave; yet crowd the sail on, even so!
Pour us your poison wine that makes us feel like gods!
Our brains are burning up! — there’s nothing left to do
But plunge into the void! — hell? heaven? — what’s the odds?
We’re bound for the Unknown, in search of something new!
First and foremost, I hope that you’re well….as well as possible considering the conflicted times that we live in.
I guess I wanted to throw this at you because you’re an unfiltered source reality. Good, bad, beautiful or ugly, you keep things real if not brutally so.
So here’s the deal: I recently went through what is and probably will always be the most frightening and traumatic health scare of my life. One moment I was doing just fine, the next- and completely out of the blue- I was a curled up human in the most unbearable physical pain that I’d ever felt in my life. Less than 24 hours later I was in the emergency room only to end up admitted, having no option other than major surgery, and hospitalized for 9 days. Needless to say, this kind of blew my mind…honestly, it still does. The ugly details are that- without any warning- my body decided that it needed a radical/emergency hysterectomy. My body decided that my reproductive system was absolutely useless and it wanted out. Every organ was in such bad shape that there was nothing that the doctors could save: uterus, fallopian tubes, ovaries…gone. Trying to wrap my head around the fact that, for the first time, my life was in real jeopardy: had I not gone to the hospital, I could have died on my sofa. Trying to wrap my head around the fact that some fairly important parts of my body are now gone. Trying to wrap my head around the fact that, whether or not I’d ever planned to have children, it’s no longer an option through no choice of mine. Trying to wrap my head around the length of time it’s going to take to walk fully upright again without discomfort. Trying, trying, trying…
How weird is it that, in my head, I keep visualizing an xray or even a TSA body scan of me where all you see is this empty space where my reproductive system used to be. It’s stupid but honestly a visual that I simply cannot shake and it kind of horrifies me.
The body will heal; it’s what the body does. It’s just the damned head/heart that keeps feeling assaulted by the shock and awe of it. You know, especially when its quiet and I’m sitting still (I do that a lot now) and no one else is around my brain literally says, “Holy fuck, you just had a fucking hysterectomy.” I’m not dying, I don’t have cancer, I don’t live in a war torn country where I could be raped and killed just for the fun of it, and I always have olives at my disposal. But still, shock and awe. And a little sad. And afraid. Talk about life throwing us curve balls.
So that’s my story, love.
- T.
It took a lot of courage to write in what you wrote and we won’t waste it.
Women’s health issues are on the table these days…and being a major Fan of Women…i am slightly shocked that as a country we are even re-hashing
some of these things…kind of like questioning the idea of the wheel…i feel the same way about women’s rights…especially when it is dumb men fingering through the tablatures of women’s delicates, and where ever there is an abortion…there is a man…my take is that men, unless they have an iota of a helpful solution running wild somewhere inside of their idle mind, they should just shut the fuck up…and count their lucky stars that a vagina was even kind enough to burp them into life….I like free women, i like women to chose, i like women to make their own choices 100% all the way around…the goddamned man’s job is to tell her that the red flats look better with the dark blue dress instead of the black heels with the red dress that makes her look like a trick pony…and to run some goddamned bath water, make something for supper, keep the TV low, bring two aspirin and a bottle of water…and tell her that after a long day at work, she still looks like a goddess…and then foot massage.
That is death chatteringingly frightning what you have experienced…and i am glad you got yourself to the hospital…I hope that any female fans of BRMC will always keep this in the back of their precious minds just in case you need to know what to do…when things feel wrong…do not procrastinate…save beauty alert…and it is better to get a 100 dollar bill because you simply drank too much diet coke…than to die because you didn’t know the body can do it’s own changes…etc…
I would like to stress that it is perfectly natural to feel
alone
unsafe
gutted
give it a name after something of this magnitude…
and this is a hurt…
like something is missing…and it is very psychologically similar to rape
because this is Not something you ordered.
Something has been changed, something has been toyed with
and strangers such as doctors, even though they help sometimes…can make it feel professional…and flowers and sterilization do not mix well…
It’s a cold and lonely place…as the city lights flicker
as the people yell for the volume to turn up
as the drinks are scuttled off
and the pills change hands….and the laughter is deafening…
I know how alone you feel inside…and that is ok…it is natural…you are just healing the trauma…and you will heal.
As for having children and not being able to i really can’t comment cause i’m a man and that does not give me the right to fancy to know those deeper feelings of connection and loss, but i do know
that this is a world where there are many children and babies as good as gold
that shake beg for love
that need help to just begin to stand
that have eyes of gentle deer hurt
that do not understand this explosive world going on around them…
and you can
with a little strength
someday perhaps
be a solid sun answer…
bed time stories are good
a cup of hot tea is good at night and hot chocolate is even better when two are sharing…
there are so many
wonderful starlings (children)
that need help with reading and writing and just putting their boots on…many babies out there of every magnificent colour to help…to drench in love…to warm with blanket…to care for…so please do not feel “different”
fuck a blood line
or ancestral protocol…even if you were sexless…there are still children…magical little motherfuckers out there to love…
Take something dark and spin it into Light…
The way i see it…was that i am blessed that you read the signs early and got to a doctor
that you are still here to shine your magnificence on us and perhaps by this letter, help another who finds herself in the same bad dire situation…and god help, gets herself to the A & E.
Thank you for being bold enough to share this and maybe save others…
I am thankful…you will walk through this fire…close calls take time to heal mentally and inside…so go at your own pace…you don’t need to save the world more than you already have by just sharing your story…and nothing has REALLY changed…
You can still be a Great Mother
You will still rock the fuck out of the night once you get yourself situated…
You can still fall in love and make this movie of your life a true passionate film…
This is not an excuse to STOP being anything less or more than you were before the emergency….this is a wounded period…this is a time to heal…and as bukowski said…nothing like a little hint of death to get you tap dancing once again in synch…or something to that effect…
Find your inner flow again…meditation is soft…a soft bath…a quiet place…to cry it away…like i am doing now…and come back…like a deep relaxed breath…a strength replenished…and when it is time for you to raise a child…you will.
I don’t mean to speak for a woman being a man and all…but it isn’t that difficult to put myself in your boots mentally and have empathy and sympathy…and feel the loss…the gutting…the cruelty of an unwanted order…but that is done now…turning anger into strength and ideas…
is what there is that is left…
this is no time to lose faith in yourself…and the funny strange part is that it could have happened to make something beautiful happen down the road a ways, in your life…
stay on your beautiful path…let mystery and simple majick happen…most of all heal and do not let this life bite scar you deep down inside…let it give you strength to believe in yourself now more than ever before…
Strong women are what make this world still loveable…
Heal*
my prayers are on fire for You, T.
LOVE/
iAN/BRMC
P.S.
You are not empty, quite the opposite…your capacity for love has just grown…and you are still the same beautiful flower that you always were…don’t trim your thorns just yet and get some good rest at night…
hey. i want to ask iAN on ideas how to stop the self loathe for a second, but it seems such a pathetic question.
sh*t. man.
i need music.
- anonymous
I remember a girl i knew back in my school daze…and we could really make one another laugh…
I remember she got pregnant, and felt like she couldn’t talk to her parents, or the cop that got her pregnant
so she went to his apartment early one morning before school began and while he was in the shower, she took out his revolver and blew a big red fucking
crater into her chest cavity and got gone, real gone.
I remember a friend of mine finding out that his girl had left him for another man…and he went into a field and shot himself in the face.
I remember a friend of mine finding out his girlfriend didn’t love him, so he called the police on himself and shot himself in front of the cops.
I remember a friend of mine whose girlfriend left him and he got into a car, in a garage, and gassed himself to death.
I remember a friend of mine whose girlfriend left him and so he took pills, shot black tar, and drank vodka until he turned blue and trashed off to the after life…
I remember a friend who overdosed in the bathroom of a fast food restaurant and died on the bog.
I remember a friend whose girlfriend died, so he locked himself away and shot junk until he lost all of his teeth, weighed less than 100 pounds and died soiled into his fuckin’ divan.
I also remember so many glowing translucent faces that were stricken by disease that really really WANTED to LIVE and and were handed a final notice, handed a death warrant, stripped of their memories and laid to rest.
I am done with all of that.
2012 is not the year of grunge.
This is not the year we sit around carving cocaine scars into jewel cases.
This is not the year we label ourselves as Losers.
This is not the year that we die with a needle in our arm from chasing the dragon on two broke legs, a spine made of jelly, and a shit talking alter-ego. This is not the year that we worship rock stars.
This is not the year we listen to celluloid babble.
This is not the year that we take shit from stupid.
This is not the year that we second guess ourselves for another second.
This is the year that we quit primping in the mirror and became the mirror, became the reflection, the reflection of the world around us.
A Global Entity.
A Global Force.
A Global dagger in the very heart of
Fascism.
This is the year that cute won’t cut it.
This is the year that negative words fall off of you and i like dirty rain.
This is the year that if i see you hurting yourself, i will kick you in your fucking jaw.
This blood is red
We All feel poorly often…but this is the year of
no excuses
no more pitter patter
no more hanky panky
no more procrastination
and now don’t get me wrong.
This is not the year to be so strong…that you are unbreakable…
This is also the year of tenderness…the delicate hand, the feather rising over the barricades, the year of the well balanced
motherfucker.
Cut your losses
Quit doing what doesn’t work.
Stop pining for dog shit.
Stop barking up the tree that the black cat left a year ago.
This is Not the year we listen to Courtney Love
This is the year that we listen to
our own
abstract logic
abstract reason
abstract necessities
abstract hearts
abstract magick
abstract planet
I mean isn’t it about time you forgave yourself for the short comings of others?
Isn’t it the time to quit taking the blame for the fuck ups of somebody else?
Is it not time that you called upon the Godz who only want to dress you up in dignity and protect you on this dirty road to oblivion?
You bet your Ass it’s time to Dig Yourself.
I don’t mean in the old, boring and dreary narcissistic way…where yer jerking off to your own reflection in some make shift piss pond…
I ain’t talking about that.
Gather yourself.
Don’t look Death in the eye…let death get in line with all the other complainers, vixens, idiots, mongrels, crazy makers, shit stormers, and befuddled dip shits that wanna sling piss all over your parade as they congratulate you…those days are behind us now…there is only one way to go and we are shooting not just for the stars, not just for the heavens but further out…something bigger than a bible could ever hope to lasso…electric # 1 *
Smoking will eventually kill you.
So will Life.
Is that all you got!
Next.
Mind what you eat.
Roar.
Stay off of other people’s toes
pardon yourself when you fuck up
be mindful
remember what you think is funny may not be funny to those that are hurt down deep…so find their deep sea blue light…and sing a song in a register that they can relate to…be the calm inside of the storm…instead of another hole in the boat.
It ain’t easy &
practice makes perfect.
Keep your aim true…when you help others you are helping yourself at the same time…talk about your fucking multi-tasking, son!
I remember girls i have loved…
this girl said
she hated her tits…but i loved her tits.
This girl hated her nose…i loved the shape of her nose, it drove me mad, dad!
This girl hated the stench that arose from her vagina…
and i agreed…i mean good golly…that was one stanky pussy, brother!
I AM ONLY JOKING!
no but really…she was a stinky little powder puff.
No but really…
we are
are our
own worst critic and this is not the year to downgrade yourself…
this is the year to acknowledge all of those different things about you…and be thankful…
thankful that you are not cut from a cookie cutter…
then again…i am the kind of fellow that has french kissed girls in wheel chairs, girls who have no arms, girls with different colored eyes, or as i like to say…beautiful women.
So how to stop the self loathe?
When you wake up, count yourself lucky that you are even still fucking drawing breath…you don’t how many people and animals around the world just died last night. Poor bastards…so cut yourself off quick in the morning and be thankful to the lordz and the godz and the devil…that you are even still here to fucking complain about the tea being slightly cool instead of piping hot.
In almost everything you see there is a reminder of how good you have it.
grass = people and animals are buried below it all over the entire earth…and you are walking ON it, on your way to get a 6 dollar cup of coffee.
count yer blessings…and of course you can’t do this all day and night…people would kill you just to shut up your thankfulness…so be humble to a degree…
I have met Johnny Depp a few times and i have met people with 67 cents in their pocket…and i found them both of the same breed…just good goddamn people…good hearts.
if you have a talent, be thankful for that…
if you don’t? Well you just haven’t found your niche, your song, quite yet…give it time…goodness comes around…but if you kill yourself…you jipped yourself…
lost the love of your Life?
fuck it
get over that junk
love yourself first and then you can give again…and you will always meet somebody quite fine down the road as long as you participate in Life itself…
this isn’t a pizza delivery service
if you have no where to go and no one waiting for you in the wings….GOOD.
Take a shower, put on your favorite clothes and put on your favorite music and dance electric…but why?
Cause you are ALIVE.
Celebrate what i love about you.
Snowflake motherfucker.*
RISE.
get up, dust yourself off, imperfection is perfection…your scars are beautiful…and last but not least ….Love yourself Like I Love You. ;)
iAN
While in Los Angeles last week…i found myself at some strange soiree…David Lynch red rich ghost warm lights…soft slow dancing shadows…and i heard music coming from inside the house…i followed the tiny sound…like i was again walking through the hall of my Great Grandma Henning’s House towards the record playing room…a crackling Sears and Roebuck AM/FM radio…on a grey tornado warning Saturday…dog asleep on it’s blanket…Grandpa Henning long gone and dead…his black leather lazy boy recliner…cracked, worn and sorrowful…the shades in the window dusty, with a dead little fly in the corner of the window sill…the smell of glass green coca cola bottles…and motor oil…old photographs from the Korean war…black slush ice…an accident…a car gone off the bridge after a terrible collision…a stranger…a young man dead…another scarred for life…and the sad bars sweeping up at closing time far away down the street…walking me now through the ghost hall…towards the door…Johnny Cash…Elvis Presley…Dick Curless at the truck driving gear jammer’s wheeling jamboree…Porter Wagoner…Patsy Cline…The Carter Family…some strange hurt scarecrow calling my name…Jesus bleeding in the guest bedroom..this strange earthly alcohol driven sad soul swollen music with a hair raising madness…like snakes drinking from your parlor…i give you RT n’ the 44s*
take your Medicine*
Location El Sereno, CA Gender Plural (mixed) Personal information Michael “Swimmy” Webb- Washboard/Vocals RT Valine- Wood n’ Wire/Vocals Brendan Willard- BanjoBass/Vocals
it seems that no matter how much i plan a trip
or play it loose from the hip, not by the book but play it by ear…something always gets swirlish…as in this trip.
Just prior to my flight, i had gone to great lengths, to cut my hair, shave, shower and scrub my fracas into a clean well groomed gent and even that backfired. I had actually over groomed and cleaned myself so fair that when my own Mother stood next to me, she told me that i stank. Yes…that i stank.
My natural scent unlike other brutes, is one of denim, leather, tobacco, pilsner and raja roses…and now i reeked of a brand new xerox machine…and when my little dog came to me for a squeeze and a back scratchin’…she growled at me and pee peed on mah boot. So now i am back to my old way, my old ethic, my authentic self, my BRMC don’t shower on tour (just kidding) self and once again the phone is ringing off it’s imaginary hook for me to endorse their products.
SHIT KICKER BOOTS R US
GRAVEYARD SOIL INC.
BOB’S LOW PRICE LIQUOR
THEM JEANS IS FUCKUN USED JEANS, U.S.A.
and other assorted high volume dirt merchant traders…oh and
SUFI JOE’S DEAD ROSES SHOPPE, U.K.
What some people don’t realize is that each state has it’s own speed and i’m not speaking in drug tongue…but rather city people M.P.H.
and in the midwest, a sun up can last for hours…in Los Angeles, the sun goes up and the people charge out like race horses…and within a few hours, the sun has gone down and somebody has overdosed, somebody has sold a mansion, somebody has fucked the sweet leaf sour, while in the meantime back in the midwest…the sun is almost fully up and a donkey is still trying to remember if he is a donkey or an ass.
I catch a ride with my Pops to the airport…his driving isn’t what it use to be and on the way out to the airport we encounter more than just a few near death experiences and i still have two planes to catch that may be commandeered by either drunken pilots on no sleep and diet pills or perhaps a militant group waving greasy black back pocket combs in a threatening manner while making demands that they want more ovalteen or the passengers will all be forced to have their hair combed into a duck’s ass style…i digress…so yeah, my Pops is thinking he is getting me to the airport Steve Mcqueen style when in reality he is driving like a man with a cement block on his right foot glued to the petrol petal and at the same time doing shadow puppets with both hands in the day light with no walls. I have already shat myself 7 ways to Sunday, had 2 panic attacks, my nerves locked tighter than a rusted chastity belt and i’ve clenched my teeth so hard that the nicoteen stains have busted off into dust leaving not only my skin as white as a ghost but my teeth as well. Welcome to my new tweeker look.
I make my plane…fly to Texas, it’s on time and that the layover is only 3 minutes long…that’s right…3 minutes. I am at gate 53 B and my departing flight is at gate 900 F ( i think the F was short for Fucked) so i Make It. I have lost 9 pounds in the process, 3 pounds from my brain sweating, 3 pounds from my flaccid cock and 3 pounds from my bubble arse…which make no mistake has just now only enhanced my tweeker pallor* Yay for me!
During the flight to L.A. some bozo to my left is giving a blowjob to a hotdog he brought in a zip lock bag and the fellow to my right is reading a book on the history of disasters…and they won’t take my cash for booze because now american currency is considered suspicious activity…so i just sit there…calm, cool, eyes bright and white, white knuckled, with a very white smile that might give off the impression that i am in fact the cheshire cat…if he was a fuckun’ TWEEKER!
I get off the plane in L.A. like a bat out of jail and hit the bar. I meet an old couple from Jazz city, we share some niceties and a few bargain basement drinks at 13 dollars a pop…pabst…the beer of royalty and street goofs. It’s now 3:31 pm and i race for the exit…My man Robert Been is cool as ever and we take off out of there at 3:33. No Doy!
Robert isn’t fond of my pallor.
On the way to rehearsal he plays me some of the new album…I can’t hear a thing. First of all…just being in his company still makes me feel strange…makes me act odd…and say odd things…for instance he may ask me how my flight was…and i will answer in the only way that i can…i simply tell him that…I grew up with kittens and have always loved small cats.
We get to practice just behind Leah. Have you ever seen her on a motorcycle?
We won’t go there.
We go inside and Mozart…i mean Pete…is hard at work on yet another new and mad bloody good tune…i get some wolf huggin’ and L & P ask me about my flight…Rob’s eyes widen and i just say…Kittens?
Some bands say they work really hard and when you hear their new album…it sounds like they simply just pressed the last one up in a different speed…instead of 33…it’s a 78. When BRMC work hard…i find it strangely similar to
boot camp on top of more
boot camp with parachute school thrown in for good measure
and some
boot camp with
pilot G-force training…sprinkle on a little gravity grave and some motorcycle ramp jumping…and it’s almost close…
So i get this great idea that i should drink 4 monster energy drinks…for i am half sub-wizard and half-sub-human dork.
The room is dark with strange lights…I am sugared up like grandma Moses on 1970s cocaine. I swear i was trying to play it cool….yet i only end up as something that looks like one flew over the wonka nest. When rehearsal comes to a screaming halt…i pretty much feel like a wounded WW II soldier with severe P.T.S.D.
So Rob, Leah and some sexy fellow named Ben and I head to the Mark Lanegan show and Rob wants Pizza…by now…I don’t even know what pizza IS any longer.
I need a beer to counter act this major energy drink hallucination…find one and then we all go inside…Josh Homme head Queen is shaking his ass on the dance floor super bad ass style to the sounds of Lanegan’s blues funeral. All the beautiful BRMC kids are there and so is an x flame that makes my heart sorrowful…and it is one big blur of emotions…the full range….and then Lanegan and Been and i and god knows what jibberish i am frothing forth…and then the show is over and that is when things got super hazy and strange.
I got in an argument with a taxi driver and then i am in a fleabag motel on Sunset Blvd.
It’s check out time and i walk for miles…the saddest homeless people i ever saw…crying on the sidewalks, a big black mess and some tourist on the bus flash me the metal devil horns…i flash the devil sign back and cry some more as i walk past multi million dollar religious complex after complex and a huge hospital where the nurses and doctors are all texting as none of them hand out a bottle to the dying man on the ground to my right…
sick fucking race of people we are…
I make it to the Frolic room on Hollywood Blvd. and inside they are playing music that makes my asshole pucker and makes me want to gag on a spoon…i put in some Lanegan and some BRMC…and have a beer…as imaginary blue birds wing out from the walls and circle my skull, a halo of harmony…i talk to some guy about how naked i feel without a pocket knife in my back pocket, so he just gives me one.
My friend Jess comes to my rescue as does Robert and Ben…we leave the frolic (fitting name for me) and meet at the Ryan Gossling Diner. He isn’t there…damn it Janet!
Robert eats something that looks like one of my x girlfriend’s sugar walls and Ben mixes his italian with his mexican and i have a cold one..or 3…Then it’s a mad rush to practice…with G-forces, P.T.S.D. , parachute jumping, hand to hand combat, showers of stars, alligators spinning in black waters…and i wake up on the floor.
Really…I wake up on the floor…and there is a cigarette break and it’s back into the fucking fray…
Now it gets super hazy.
Robert and I go to a Quik Mart and next to us a 250 pound skin head with a tattooed face pulls in. Next to him the cops pull up.
BRMC IS a danger magnet.
The skinhead mouths the words (what…the…fuck!)
I go inside to keep my head collateral damage free and go hide behind Robert’s shadow…
the cops leave and the skinhead comes in ranting about how he has just spent the last two nights dealing with all those motherfucking cops in this city…and i think i shook his hand and said that i thought he was purty kool…but don’t hold me to that…
Robert drops me off at some club where SPINDRIFT is playing…
I ask this stranger if i can take his photo…and then it dawns on me that this is Guy Blakeslee of the beautifique ENTRANCE…i am smitten with him right away and he gives me directions to the nearest fleabag motel…
Inside a very tiny man flips me the bird
I see an old friend
SPINDRIFT do what they do best…swirl you the fuck out…
I go outside and sit in the back of a very nice Jaguar…leather seats…and i get offered crystal meth…
I stick with the beer but offer plenty of thanks…and i make a few new friends…
Sasha says there is an after hours party…
I must’ve spoken with 60 different people there…and the haze is burning bright purple…
Some black crowes looking hippy overdoses and some goth kook is requesting his body be thrown in a ditch or put in a taxi or taken to spain to be sold to the highest cover band bidder…there are transvestite oompa loompas everywhere sellin’ candy powder that makes your dick shrink like a shrunken applehead…at whatever time in the morning we all head back to Sasha’s crib and try to figure out who this C.I.A. fellow is…and the next morning…the flat looks like the end of western civilization part one. There is a bird squawking somewhere.
I am playing blues funeral non stop on a computer
I am at the post office with a very smart artist
We go to a victorian house that seems decorated by Spock, David Lynch, The Partridge Family Vampires and yeah…I think i forgot that i went with Spindrift to a birthday party…
There are bands playing that are super wonderful
I think i forgot the night we went to the karaoke bar and heard Whitney Houston had died…and i liked that no one joked about it…that we knew she was just a girl who wanted to sing like a bird that was in a shitty industry that was now in a box…and instead of trashing it…Sasha sang and my eyes were tears of happiness…that bar sang her life…a wonderful assortment of characters…all with hearts good as gold….and wild for life…oh yeah…
back at the house of david lynch design…there was an outdoor movie screen…a splendid array of artist that were talented and kind…there was a game show in real life…the only thing missing was my mind….and after it was all sang and done…we wound up at some nasty outdoor place you eat when your tastebuds dont give a fuck any longer…i bought some black cigarettes…there was more talk about how this country needs to grow thumbs and we became closer to the man from the C.I.A. - i THINK he’s just a door to door cologne salesman that got lost…
I don’t know what i am forgetting…I can’t believe i remember that much…especially without a journal…
I have withheld many names…due to the fact…that they are highly sexy people that need their privacy to do the great works that they do…you know who you are and i thank you from the bottom of my heart for your selflessness, generosity, hospitality and kindness towards me…i will always be in your debt…
i forgot that i danced with James from Spindrift…and he was literally like t-rex…banging a gong.
At the airport i slammed the rest of a very large can of beer and put it in my bag and forgot to throw it away…i lugged it onto the screening belt and when i used the restroom on the way towards my flight…i went in my bag and found it…so much for the TSA.
Another battle won in my BRMC boots ( Thank You R.L.B.)
The new album will be out when it is finished and only then…more than well worth the wait.
Big Chief Thanx to the City of Lost Angels and all you mad beautiful sorts that make it shine like it does…
signed
the raja rose
the jack legged sufi
the swirling dervish
iAN reporting here @BRMC headquarters…erm…bootcamp/ G force training facility ***333
