one of my favorite guitar players performing with that kid who became youtube-famous with his ukelele version of "while my guitar gently weeps"... here he is playing the song again! hey ukelele kid! time to learn a new song!

...

...

I don't believe in Jesus or Santa Claus. You might believe in these things, or something else. It doesn't really matter. These beliefs do absolutely nothing to bring us together or make us better people. Nothing. We are defined by what we do, not what we say, or think.

So, this holiday season, I'm featuring something that I think (hope?) we can all agree on: coming home.

Happy Holiday Season to us all...

...

...

...my main squeeze spring/summer 2008. acquired early spring off craigslist, very good price, proceeded to replace all internal wiring and pots, tuners (grover imperials--same as used on d'angelico new yorker), and pickups were changed to a jason lollar imperial humbucker (neck) and a tv jones classic filtertron in the bridge. after playing with the wooden bridge I switched back to brass. very good playing action, intonates superbly and I'll put the lollar humbucker up against anyone. it's damn perfect. this guitar is the all-time king of the polished turds: a budget axe that I'd put up against many significantly more expensive brand-name instruments at four-digit price points. great for trad jazz playing, chet-style, rockabilly, blues and old timey rock n roll. however my studio is not heated so for this time of year I needed something I could leave down there which wouldn't be quite so prone to the temp changes....

the first tele I ever built from the bare wood, now rebuilt with a new neck and new hardware and a new neck humbucker. another craigslist find: a seymour duncan antiquity humbucker (with the signature of seymour on the back)...the japanese guy swore it sounded just like the tone of "rah-ree kaw-ton"...well who's to say but it does sound good. fat, clean, nice chirp. bridge pickup one of my favorites ever, the harmonic design super 90. callaham hardware, bridge and control plate. 4-way switching for parallel/series option. replacement neck is a FAT boatneck contour from warmoth with brazilian rosewood slab and gibson-scale ("conversion") for slinkier feel. heavy strings feel almost like slinkys. all parts finished in nitro-cellulose lacquer. lightweight, very resonant. as of this week the final touches and setup are just complete and I'm in a total honeymoon with this guitar. will probably be my main practicing axe for the cold months at least...

since I was on vacation this week, I tried to get to a few things that had been banging around the studio. one of the things I wanted very much to try was to repurpose the replaced neck pickup from the archtop (an ibanez "super 58") and put it in the neck position of my leftovers frankenstein strat. boy it sounds great. and I dig that it's an orphan gold pickup on a mix & match parts axe where nothing really goes together in but everything works. kinda like a gold tooth on an otherwise ordinary face. I've told the story of this guitar previously so I won't go back into the same long spiel, but suffice to say that it ain't quite over. everything works so well that I'm actually thinking of investing in something (breaking my rule of not spending any money directly on this guitar)--a good quality bridge that would finally remove the crappy old floyd rose-licensed bridge/tremolo. maybe even convert to a hardtail. I know this would improve the tone tremendously.

another summer craigslist acquisition. the first guitar I ever messed around with was a student nylon string and I've always liked them. but the main reason I wanted one at this stage was for two reasons--chet atkins style fingerstyle (see: red thumbpick) and for brazilian music, which is slowly transforming from something I love listening to to something I can now play (a little bit). having the nylon strings makes a huge difference. a lovely feel, a very mellow tone (cedar!) and so fun to have the cutaway, especially with the 12th fret neck join. and one big challenge: not a single fret-marker! this is the one that lives in the upstairs living room.

all in all, a nice quiet week off, a few bumps along the way (sick babies, sprained shoulders, rain) but also nice and mellow. and the two solidbodies above were made whole. if nothing else, I am at least adequately equipped to ward off the evil xmas music that lurks sinister around the next corner...

ho ho ho.

...

Chicago

IN the recently concluded presidential race, I was unwillingly thrust upon the stage and asked to play a role in a profoundly dishonest drama. I refused, and here’s why.

Unable to challenge the content of Barack Obama’s campaign, his opponents invented a narrative about a young politician who emerged from nowhere, a man of charm, intelligence and skill, but with an exotic background and a strange name. The refrain was a question: “What do we really know about this man?”

Secondary characters in the narrative included an African-American preacher with a fiery style, a Palestinian scholar and an “unrepentant domestic terrorist.” Linking the candidate with these supposedly shadowy characters, and ferreting out every imagined secret tie and dark affiliation, became big news.

I was cast in the “unrepentant terrorist” role; I felt at times like the enemy projected onto a large screen in the “Two Minutes Hate” scene from George Orwell’s “1984,” when the faithful gathered in a frenzy of fear and loathing.

With the mainstream news media and the blogosphere caught in the pre-election excitement, I saw no viable path to a rational discussion. Rather than step clumsily into the sound-bite culture, I turned away whenever the microphones were thrust into my face. I sat it out.

Now that the election is over, I want to say as plainly as I can that the character invented to serve this drama wasn’t me, not even close. Here are the facts:

I never killed or injured anyone. I did join the civil rights movement in the mid-1960s, and later resisted the draft and was arrested in nonviolent demonstrations. I became a full-time antiwar organizer for Students for a Democratic Society. In 1970, I co-founded the Weather Underground, an organization that was created after an accidental explosion that claimed the lives of three of our comrades in Greenwich Village. The Weather Underground went on to take responsibility for placing several small bombs in empty offices — the ones at the Pentagon and the United States Capitol were the most notorious — as an illegal and unpopular war consumed the nation.

The Weather Underground crossed lines of legality, of propriety and perhaps even of common sense. Our effectiveness can be — and still is being — debated. We did carry out symbolic acts of extreme vandalism directed at monuments to war and racism, and the attacks on property, never on people, were meant to respect human life and convey outrage and determination to end the Vietnam war.

Peaceful protests had failed to stop the war. So we issued a screaming response. But it was not terrorism; we were not engaged in a campaign to kill and injure people indiscriminately, spreading fear and suffering for political ends.

I cannot imagine engaging in actions of that kind today. And for the past 40 years, I’ve been teaching and writing about the unique value and potential of every human life, and the need to realize that potential through education.

I have regrets, of course — including mistakes of excess and failures of imagination, posturing and posing, inflated and heated rhetoric, blind sectarianism and a lot else. No one can reach my age with their eyes even partly open and not have hundreds of regrets. The responsibility for the risks we posed to others in some of our most extreme actions in those underground years never leaves my thoughts for long.

The antiwar movement in all its commitment, all its sacrifice and determination, could not stop the violence unleashed against Vietnam. And therein lies cause for real regret.

We — the broad “we” — wrote letters, marched, talked to young men at induction centers, surrounded the Pentagon and lay down in front of troop trains. Yet we were inadequate to end the killing of three million Vietnamese and almost 60,000 Americans during a 10-year war.

The dishonesty of the narrative about Mr. Obama during the campaign went a step further with its assumption that if you can place two people in the same room at the same time, or if you can show that they held a conversation, shared a cup of coffee, took the bus downtown together or had any of a thousand other associations, then you have demonstrated that they share ideas, policies, outlook, influences and, especially, responsibility for each other’s behavior. There is a long and sad history of guilt by association in our political culture, and at crucial times we’ve been unable to rise above it.

President-elect Obama and I sat on a board together; we lived in the same diverse and yet close-knit community; we sometimes passed in the bookstore. We didn’t pal around, and I had nothing to do with his positions. I knew him as well as thousands of others did, and like millions of others, I wish I knew him better.

Demonization, guilt by association, and the politics of fear did not triumph, not this time. Let’s hope they never will again. And let’s hope we might now assert that in our wildly diverse society, talking and listening to the widest range of people is not a sin, but a virtue.

William Ayers, a professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, is the author of “Fugitive Days” and a co-author of the forthcoming “Race Course.”

...

...

I guess I have to begin by admitting
I'm thankful today I don't reside in a country
My country has chosen to liberate,
That Bridgeport's my home, not Baghdad.
Thankful my chances are good, when I leave
For the Super Duper, that I'll be returning.
And I'm thankful my TV set is still broken.
No point in wasting energy feeling shame
For the havoc inflicted on others in my name
When I need all the strength I can muster
To teach my eighth-grade class in the low-rent district.
There, at least, I don't feel powerless.
There my choices can make some difference.

This month I'd like to believe I've widened
My students' choice of vocation, though the odds
My history lessons on working the land
Will inspire any of them to farm
Are almost as small as the odds
One will become a monk or nun
Trained in the Buddhist practice
We studied last month in the unit on India.
The point is to get them suspecting the world
They know first hand isn't the only world.

As for the calling of soldier, if it comes up in class,
It's not because I feel obliged to include it,
As you, as a writer, may feel obliged.
A student may happen to introduce it,
As a girl did yesterday when she read her essay
About her older brother, Ramon,
Listed as "missing in action" three years ago,
And about her dad, who won't agree with her mom
And the social worker on how small the odds are
That Ramon's alive, a prisoner in the mountains.

I didn't allow the discussion that followed
More time than I allowed for the other essays.
And I wouldn't take sides: not with the group
That thought the father, having grieved enough,
Ought to move on to the life still left him;
Not with the group that was glad he hadn't made do
With the next-to-nothing the world's provided,
That instead he's invested his trust in a story
That saves the world from shameful failure.

Let me know of any recent attempts on your part
To save our fellow-citizens from themselves.
In the meantime, if you want to borrow Ramon
For a narrative of your own, remember that any scene
Where he appears under guard in a mountain village
Should be confined to the realm of longing. There
His captors may leave him when they move on.
There his wounds may be healed,
His health restored. A total recovery
Except for a lingering fog of forgetfulness
A father dreams he can burn away.

.........................................................

The Routine Things Around the House
by Stephen Dunn

When Mother died
I thought: now I’ll have a death poem.
That was unforgivable

yet I’ve since forgiven myself
as sons are able to do
who’ve been loved by their mothers.

I stared into the coffin
knowing how long she’d live,
how many lifetimes there are

in the sweet revisions of memory.
It’s hard to know exactly
how we ease ourselves back from sadness,

but I remembered when I was twelve,
1951, before the world
unbuttoned its blouse.

I had asked my mother (I was trembling)
if I could see her breasts
and she took me into her room

without embarrassment or coyness
and I stared at them,
afraid to ask for more.

Now, years later, someone tells me
Cancers who’ve never had mother love
are doomed and I, a Cancer,

feel blessed again. What luck
to have had a mother
who showed me her breasts

when girls my age were developing
their separated countries,
what luck

she didn’t doom me
with too much or too little.
Had I asked to touch,

perhaps to suck them,
what would she have done?
Mother, dead woman

who I think permits me
to love women easily,
this poem

is dedicated to where
we stopped, to the incompleteness
that was sufficient

and to how you buttoned up,
began doing the routine things
around the house.

.....................................................

Thanks
by W. S. Merwin

Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water thanking it
smiling by the windows looking out
in our directions

back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you

over telephones we are saying thank you
in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators
remembering wars and the police at the door
and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you
in the banks we are saying thank you
in the faces of the officials and the rich
and of all who will never change
we go on saying thank you thank you

with the animals dying around us
our lost feelings we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
we are saying thank you and waving
dark though it is

..........................................................

Starfish
by Eleanor Lerman

This is what life does. It lets you walk up to
the store to buy breakfast and the paper, on a
stiff knee. It lets you choose the way you have
your eggs, your coffee. Then it sits a fisherman
down beside you at the counter who say, Last night,
the channel was full of starfish. And you wonder,
is this a message, finally, or just another day?

Life lets you take the dog for a walk down to the
pond, where whole generations of biological
processes are boiling beneath the mud. Reeds
speak to you of the natural world: they whisper,
they sing. And herons pass by. Are you old
enough to appreciate the moment? Too old?
There is movement beneath the water, but it
may be nothing. There may be nothing going on.

And then life suggests that you remember the
years you ran around, the years you developed
a shocking lifestyle, advocated careless abandon,
owned a chilly heart. Upon reflection, you are
genuinely surprised to find how quiet you have
become. And then life lets you go home to think
about all this. Which you do, for quite a long time.

Later, you wake up beside your old love, the one
who never had any conditions, the one who waited
you out. This is life’s way of letting you know that
you are lucky. (It won’t give you smart or brave,
so you’ll have to settle for lucky.) Because you
were born at a good time. Because you were able
to listen when people spoke to you. Because you
stopped when you should have and started again.

So life lets you have a sandwich, and pie for your
late night dessert. (Pie for the dog, as well.) And
then life sends you back to bed, to dreamland,
while outside, the starfish drift through the channel,
with smiles on their starry faces as they head
out to deep water, to the far and boundless sea.

.................................................................

Dusting
by Marilyn Nelson

Thank you for these tiny
particles of ocean salt,
pearl-necklace viruses,
winged protozoans:
for the infinite,
intricate shapes
of submicroscopic
living things.

For algae spores
and fungus spores,
bonded by vital
mutual genetic cooperation,
spreading their
inseparable lives
from equator to pole.

My hand, my arm,
make sweeping circles.
Dust climbs the ladder of light.
For this infernal, endless chore,
for these eternal seeds of rain:
Thank you. For dust.

......................................................

Around Us
by Marvin Bell

We need some pines to assuage the darkness
when it blankets the mind,
we need a silvery stream that banks as smoothly
as a plane's wing, and a worn bed of
needles to pad the rumble that fills the mind,
and a blur or two of a wild thing
that sees and is not seen. We need these things
between appointments, after work,
and, if we keep them, then someone someday,
lying down after a walk
and supper, with the fire hole wet down,
the whole night sky set at a particular
time, without numbers or hours, will cause
a little sound of thanks--a zipper or a snap--
to close round the moment and the thought
of whatever good we did.

...

Dear Vatican, In this season of family and thanksgiving, allow me to respond to your recent announcement that you are "forgiving" John Lennon for his 1966 comments about the Beatles being "bigger than Jesus." My holiday thought for you: Go fuck yourself. Up the ass.

The Lennon remark was clearly meant to be ironic. Sarcastic. Satirical. A wise crack. Common practice amongst the people you strive to rule. Let me hasten to add: The Beatles are no longer bigger than Jesus (in 1966, they undoubtedly were). More's the pity.

What possible need would the corpse of John Lennon have for forgiveness from your costumed political body after he's been dead lo these 28 years? He was clearly an agnostic in life--what possible care would he have that you did or did not grant him forgiveness? And why would you make such an announcement except for the fact that he is STILL such a famous name? (one notes that the statements of the lesser-known smaller-than-Jesus heretics of '66 remain obscure to this very day) Hence, his comments about celebrity have now been verified by the PR arm of Holy Mother Church, with this latest round of blatant starfucking. So please, keep your forgiveness, but thanks so much for verifying the truth of what he said.

Happy Thanksgiving, O greatest of whores.

Love, Stratcat

...

just a quick note to say that I seem to be transitioning this web space away from the old discontent digest (aforementioned evildoers having been vanquished in the recent election) and hopefully toward more of a supermusic purpose...building guitars, producing records, appreciating, depreciating, and maybe just maybe doing some business thereof.

I'm a bit tired of ranting and raving. Which reminds me--Cheney and Gonzalez indicted today. Get ready for more of that sort of noise moving forward. But like many, I'm looking forward to getting back to what I was doing before this whole cabal got going. Full-time.

right now I'm rebuiding two telecasters. I'll post more as progress happens. also in the midst of a recording project--album length set of songs. bass and guitars. I just did all the bass parts. all these years of hanging around rock bands and recording situations...turns out I'm an ok bass player.

The mp3s are going, going, gone... I need the storage space. And the archives too. Soon as I figure out how to do that. I didn't build this thing. So bear with me as I try to learn over the cold indoor months, how to repurpose this html creation toward something a bit more festive.

right now I'm big on jason lollar pickups, callaham bridges & control assemblies and crazy custom guitar finishes that look like nyc graffiti. you? ok bye.

...

In silence the heart raves. It utters words
Meaningless, that never had
A meaning. I was ten, skinny, red-headed,

Freckled. In a big black Buick,
Driven by a big grown boy, with a necktie, she sat
In front of the drugstore, sipping something

Through a straw. There is nothing like
Beauty. It stops your heart. It
Thickens your blood. It stops your breath. It

Makes you feel dirty. You need a hot bath.
I leaned against a telephone pole, and watched.
I thought I would die if she saw me.

How could I exist in the same world with that brightness?
Two years later she smiled at me. She
Named my name. I thought I would wake up dead.

Her grown brothers walked with the bent-knee
Swagger of horsemen. They were slick-faced.
Told jokes in the barbershop. Did no work.

Their father was what is called a drunkard.
Whatever he was he stayed on the third floor
Of the big white farmhouse under the maples for twenty-five years.

He never came down. They brought everything up to him.
I did not know what a mortgage was.
His wife was a good, Christian woman, and prayed.

When the daughter got married, the old man came down wearing
An old tail coat, the pleated shirt yellowing.
The sons propped him. I saw the wedding. There were

Engraved invitations, it was so fashionable. I thought
I would cry. I lay in bed that night
And wondered if she would cry when something was done to her.

The mortgage was foreclosed. That last word was whispered.
She never came back. The family
Sort of drifted off. Nobody wears shiny boots like that now.

But I know she is beautiful forever, and lives
In a beautiful house, far away.
She called my name once. I didn't even know she knew it.

...

Mitch Mitchell, one of the most criminally underrated drummers of the 1960s/70s rock era. He made the Jimi Hendrix Experience sound be about more than just a great guitar player. I have great respect for his musical achievement.

1947 - 2008.

rock n roll heaven just reunited the jimi hendrix experience.

...

write my name in too, Keith.

"So I be written in the Book of Love; I do not care about that Book above. Erase my name, or write it as you will, So I be written in the Book of Love." --Omar-Khayyam

...

Bells are chiming for victory
There's a page back in history
45
They came back to the world that they fought for
Didn't turn out just like they thought
45

Here is a song to sing to do the measuring
What you lose, what you gain, what you win?

Nine years later a child is born
There's a record, so you put it on
45
Nine years more, if we're lucky now
Nine-year-old puts his money down
45
Every scratch, every click, every heartbeat
Every breath that I held for you
45
There's a stack of shellac and vinyl
Which is yours now and which is mine?
45

Here is a song to sing to do the measuring
What you lose, what you gain, what you win?

Bass and treble heal every hurt
There's a rebel in a nylon shirt
But the words are a mystery, I've heard
'Til you turn it down to 33 and 1/3
'Cos it helps with the elocution
Corporations turn revolutions
45

So don't you weep and shed
Just change your name instead
What you lose when it all goes to your head?

I heard something peculiar said:
"Perhaps he's got a shot and now he's dead"
45

Bells are chiming and tears are falling
It creeps up on you without a warning
45
Every scratch, every click, every heartbeat
Every breath that I bless
I'd be lost, I confess
45

-Elvis Costello

...

It's coming through a hole in the air,
from those nights in Tiananmen Square.
It's coming from the feel
that this ain't exactly real,
or it's real, but it ain't exactly there.
From the wars against disorder,
from the sirens night and day,
from the fires of the homeless,
from the ashes of the gay:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
It's coming through a crack in the wall;
on a visionary flood of alcohol;
from the staggering account
of the Sermon on the Mount
which I don't pretend to understand at all.
It's coming from the silence
on the dock of the bay,
from the brave, the bold, the battered
heart of Chevrolet:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

It's coming from the sorrow in the street,
the holy places where the races meet;
from the homicidal bitchin'
that goes down in every kitchen
to determine who will serve and who will eat.
From the wells of disappointment
where the women kneel to pray
for the grace of God in the desert here
and the desert far away:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

Sail on, sail on
O mighty Ship of State!
To the Shores of Need
Past the Reefs of Greed
Through the Squalls of Hate
Sail on, sail on, sail on, sail on.

It's coming to America first,
the cradle of the best and of the worst.
It's here they got the range
and the machinery for change
and it's here they got the spiritual thirst.
It's here the family's broken
and it's here the lonely say
that the heart has got to open
in a fundamental way:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

It's coming from the women and the men.
O baby, we'll be making love again.
We'll be going down so deep
the river's going to weep,
and the mountain's going to shout Amen!
It's coming like the tidal flood
beneath the lunar sway,
imperial, mysterious,
in amorous array:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

Sail on, sail on ...

I'm sentimental, if you know what I mean
I love the country but I can't stand the scene.
And I'm neither left or right
I'm just staying home tonight,
getting lost in that hopeless little screen.
But I'm stubborn as those garbage bags
that Time cannot decay,
I'm junk but I'm still holding up
this little wild bouquet:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

words: "Democracy" by Leonard Cohen

...