We are the vacuous, harmless, mindless masses. We have little to offer and expect little in return. I work incredibly hard to maintain the safe, comfortable, false reality which I wrap myself in like a pox infected blanket. Please do not challenge me. I wish for nothing new. Mainline my entertainment. Nothing of substance please. Thinking is a slippery slope. Should I turn on the TV one day and find myself watching programming which insists that I use my brain I may wake up one morning using that brain to think about war, death of innocents, the raping of the environment or any number of things I would much rather not think about. I would much prefer to shut my brain off entirely and watch C grade celebrities’ dance to bad music. Please don’t make me look for ways to spend my money. I certainly do not want to waste time searching for ways to occupy my mind. Drop my complacency off at my front door. In return I promise to never ask questions. I vow to spend massive amounts of my minimal income on products I don’t need and what I don’t spend you can take away from me. Use it fuel the machines of war. Use it to line your pockets. Use it to discover new and exciting ways to kill strange and frightening peoples. I will never question why. Stoke the flames of my fear so that you may use it to your own ends. Tell me delicious lies. Tell me you will keep me safe. Tell me you NEED to keep me safe. Show me the horrors that lie just outside my door and I promise I will never open it.

  I will wake up and go to work. I will come home and watch the “news” and reality TV and I will go to bed. I will do it over and over again. I will not vote to elect my political representatives but I will vote for the next American Idol. I have my priorities in order you see. When I sit down in my living room to watch reality television I expect no true reality. Reality makes me uncomfortable and that is not something I can live with. You have taught me well to live in fear and I have grown to feel quite comfortable in its grip. I wish for nothing more than to be a good American and I know quite well what that entails:  A sound lack of knowledge and no desire to inform myself, a strong fear of my neighbors and the rest of the world, and an unquenchable desire for new products with names I recognize. I have listened well, careful not to think outside of the box.

I now have a healthy and irrational fear of brown people and box cutters.

We were fifteen years old and creating our experience on a daily basis. Most involving the consumption of fist fulls of various drugs of varying effect. Gnashing at the bit desperate to feel the blood of life drip down our chest… But mostly we were just fucking high… Really fucking high. One of our closest friends of the time fancied himself a bit of a modern age Timothy Leary but mostly he was just high… Really fucking high. It was not entirely uncommon for him to call me at any given moment of the day requesting that I come over to his house so that I could closely watch as he swallowed/smoked/snorted some new experimental drug so that he could be sure he didn’t freak out or choke on his own tongue. Granted, a fairly heavy trip for a fifteen-year-old. At one point he had acquired a decent shipment of a new hallucinogen from some Swedish pharmaceutical lab. He described the drug as children’s chewable acid. We were children and we could chew and boy did we ever love acid. Around this time Nickelodeon was having puff-a-palooza marathons which consisted of full weekends of Sid and Marty Croft shows. I’m sure there were legions of kids all over the US dropping acid and taking the ride. We were not about to miss out on this. We locked ourselves in a friend’s bedroom strapped with bag loads of our new drug.  You may be assuming that this story is winding its way towards a good freak out. No, that comes later. Just hang in there.
As a child Mac was a kinetic beast. He rarely sat down and never stopped moving unless he was passed out or had dosed over. So sitting still to watch TV for 8 to 12 hours was quite a request. Needless to say it didn’t happen he was bouncing off the walls, literally. At one point Mac was perched atop the bed marveling at the feel of rice chex in his mouth when he threw himself full force back into the bed. Unfortunately, his head did not make it to the desired destination. The back of his skull made contact with the wall with a sickening crack. Everything froze and he stared at me in disbelief. Now maybe it was the hallucinogen but I’m fairly sure I could see the knot rising on the back of his head like a fucking cartoon. At full size it had grown to the size of a grapefruit. He shook as he daintily felt the new head growing out of the back of his own.
“Oh jesus… Oh fuck… This is bad… Really bad.”
He frantically looked around the room for help or assurance or more drugs. I had Mac turn around so that I could inspect the knot. It was freakish, insane, the largest knot I had EVER seen in my life. We should or could have taken him to the doctor but none of us were in any state to go on that sort of trip. So I did the only thing I could… I lied.
“Oh, shit that’s nothing. I’ve seen way bigger.”
Bullshit.
I slapped a band-aid in his hair and turned toward the TV.
“Shut up. I’m missing Land of the Lost here.”

So after that last post I figured I put up something a little more uplifting. It’s not for you, it’s for me.
Sacramento is lucky to have almost always had an incredibly lively punk rock scene. There are tons of bands playing tons of shows at tons of venues… Well, tons of bars. Look at it this way; you could live in Santa Cruz, which at any given moment has only a handful of viable punk bands. Granted there are problems with the scene in Sac. A painful lack of venues where anyone under 21 can go see a show and the city’s seemingly complete unwillingness to support the creation of said venues. I guess they would rather have their kids doing drugs and fucking rather than going to see live music… and doing drugs and fucking. The other thing which I believe holds us back as a scene is the disparate sects within our scene. We’re all friends we all see each other at shows, buy each other drinks and talk about what’s going on and what’s coming up. However, there is an unspoken and nearly unacknowledged gap between all of us. Nobody hates each other… I don’t think… but it’s still there. I think part of that comes from a lack of a central venue for everyone to rally around… The other part… I don’t know what it is. Maybe it’s that as musicians/artists a lot of us are socially inept creatures who (albeit unwittingly) make themselves somewhat unapproachable. I know that it’s something that I do and its something that I’m always working on.
Now, regarding The Wu-Tang Clan. Here is rap group which set the standard for hip-hop for years to come. They worked as a unit. However, they were still very much individuals. They had a game plan and it worked incredibly well for them. They “formed like Voltron” and once the group had established their popularity they were free (and encouraged) to work individually. Then there was The Killer Bees. Again , once Wu Tang was at the peak of there popularity they were able to help their friends up the ladder.

Now I’m not saying that we don’t help each other out I know that it happens. What I’m saying is we’re lacking focus in regard success of the scene itself…. Maybe I’m just saying I’M lacking focus… Just thinking aloud here.

Or

Who Invited God To The Party?

Warning! Parentheses heavy post.

I get older and I hate things more. That seems to be the general rule. I’ve always been a bit a bit on the “You and your friends can go fuck yourself” side of the fence. However, much to my surprise as I get older I seem to get more crotchety, more impatient and climb up way higher on my soapbox. Yet ironically I also seem to be far less willing to do anything to affect change in regard to the things that bother me so deeply. Ahhh, the sweet fucking stinging embrace of our lady of ironic justice.

Things that have climbed deep inside of my craw and laid festering eggs:

1) When the fuck did rock shows get so safe and therefore FUCKING BOOOORING!? Allow me to clarify. I am not talking about the various hardcore shows that go on at the uncountable bars in the area. I’m talking about all ages shows. The shows where kids are in attendance and get the opportunity to witness how visceral and dangerous rock and roll can really be. There was once a time when a punk rock show was NOT the kind of place where parents were comfortable dropping off their kids. It was this kind of environment which helped to ensure that the bulk of the attendees were tenacious little fucks who were going to see live music no matter what kind of bodily risk was involved.
2) Who invited god to the party? Cause it sure as shit wasn’t me. God does not rock. Christianity is not edgy. In fact, organized religion is as close as it comes to an antithesis to rock and roll. IF rock and roll had tenants (which it certainly doesn’t because it’s NOT an organized religion) one of the top on the list would be; “thou shall not worship ANY idols within the church of rock and roll (unless its Lemmy)”. Anytime religion becomes involved in rock and roll in ANY way it should be immediately recognized for what it is (a slick recruitment campaign) and dismissed.
3) Drummers who break down their drums on stage… Fuck me… Look douche bag, I know you’re desperate for attention and you need to milk that stage time so that every lonely insecure woman in the venue will have plenty of time to recognize that you the drummer (and a shitty one at that). But get your fucking shit off the stage. There are other bands here and all we want to do is set up, play, break down and go home so we can watch TV/read comic books/get high/play video games et. all.
4) Ok, here’s the deal; rock and roll has been milked fucking dry. There is nothing new for you to do so stop acting like the horrible little bands you listen to are part of something new. Stop trying to emulate all those shitty musical outfits you love who spend more time applying eyeliner than they do actually listening to (or even playing) music. Just because you have hair in your face does not make you entertaining or worth watching.

Oh, I could go on forever but its time to close up the shop, go home and watch TV/read comic books/get high/play video games et. all.

Discuss.

(addendumB)

I just reread this and… Wow! Thats a spicy meatball. I swear I’m not really that/this angry. I am not going to take this down or edit it in anyway (that would really make Kerouac mad). I wrote it so I must have meant it in some shape or form. However, I would like to make it clear that this was NOT intended to be an indictment  of ANY band in the area. The only bands that I actually see and hang out with I know and like. Otherwise I wouldnt be around them… That does not mean that their arent bands or venues in the area that fit the bill.