Looking back now, I can see that a big reason I was so devoted to this blog project was twofold--to provide a place where I could spout off about any given topic, just as I used to do in the bars, and to chime in on the story of the day, usually involving politics...well, for once, my side won. Being hopeful doesn't make for an urgent need to spout off. And I guess I'm not missing the alcoholic soapbox nearly as much. So what to do with this space? Keep paying the rent on a useless old soapbox? or maybe cut a hole in it and put on some strings...

So if less verbal content in the future, perhaps I can commit to contributing more of what I have been working on lately--music. Today's contribution is a composition I put together these past few weeks, a chord cycle that occurred to me out of the blue and which turns out to be fun to improvise on. the two guitars are my recently-acquired breedlove hybrid classical, run through a wah pedal (am I the first to do so? cuz it sounds pretty great...) and my new strat build, the pink swamp ash guitar with the two harmonic design z-90 pickups. gets a great two-pickup tone, I think. see if you agree. "For Reals" after an expression my daughter brought home one day. Some funky guitar playing for your Sunday afternoon... available for download under the new heading "PLINK SESSIONS"...

Peace on Earth.

...

an early gem by America's greatest living songwriter: Tom Waits

Small Change got rained on with his own thirty-eight,
And nobody flinched down by the arcade
And the marquees weren't weeping, they went stark-raving mad,
And the cabbies were the only ones that really had it made
And his cold trousers were twisted, and the sirens high and shrill,
And crumpled in his fist was a five-dollar bill
And the naked mannequins with their Cheshire grins,
And the raconteurs and roustabouts said "Buddy, come on in, 'cause
'Cause the dreams ain't broken down here now, they're walking with a limp
Now that Small Change got rained on with his own thirty-eight"

And nobody flinched down by the arcade
And the burglar alarm's been disconnected,
And the newsmen start to rattle
And the cops are telling jokes about some whorehouse in Seattle
And the fire hydrants plead the Fifth Amendment
And the furniture is bargains galore
But the blood is by the jukebox on an old linoleum floor
And what a hot rain on Forty-Second Street,
And now the umbrellas ain't got a chance
And the newsboy's a lunatic with stains on his pants, 'cause
'Cause Small Change got rained on with his own thirty-eight

And no one's gone over to close his eyes
And there's a racing form in his pocket,
Circled "Blue Boots" in the third
And the cashier at the clothing store didn't say a word
As the siren tears the night in half, and someone lost his wallet
Well, a surveillance of assailance, it that's what you want to call it
And the whores hike up their skirts and fish for drug-store prophylactics
With their mouths cut just like razor blades and their eyes are like stilettos
And her radiator's steaming and her teeth are in a wreck, and nah,
She won't let you kiss her, but what the hell do you expect?
And the Gypsies are tragic and if you want to buy perfume,
Well, they'll bark you down like carneys, sell you Christmas cards in June, but
But Small Change got rained on with his own thirty-eight

And his headstone's a gumball machine,
No more chewing gum or baseball cards or overcoats or dreams
Someone's hosing down the sidewalk, and he's only in his teens, 'cause
'Cause Small Change got rained on with his own thirty-eight

And a fistful of dollars can't change that,
And someone copped his watch fob, and someone got his ring
And the newsboy got his porkpie Stetson hat
And the tuberculosis old men at the Nelson wheeze and cough
And someone will head south until this whole thing cools off, 'cause
'Cause Small Change got rained on with his own thirty-eight, yeah,
Small Change got rained on with his own thirty-eight.

...

"They say there are no atheists in foxholes. But as we sat in those holes, praying that God would save us, I thought about the fact that the other side was doing the same thing. And then I wondered if God is just playing some kind of game with us. Pretty much I decided at that point there was no God. For the rest of my life, I've tried to do the right thing. I raised a beautiful bunch of kids -- and they truly are my greatest accomplishment. So I'm not worried about what's next. If there is a God, I think he'll know that I just did the best I could. That's all a man can do."

--Milton "Chris" Christian, quoted after receiving his long-belated Bronze Star.

...

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

...

from the beginning of the "tiger" telecaster project it was planned to have some sort of A/V record of both the build and the performance thereof. first thing was to get it set up and get a sense of the range of the pickup tones. there is a bridge pickup-only track which is mostly meandering from riff to riff demonstrating various of the multiple textures one can generate with a good telecaster bridge assembly...fx and eq were employed--fulltone OCD, tech21 blonde preamp, tech21 reverb, EH memory boy, MXR analog delay (for slap), fulltone supa-trem, ftone compressor, fuzzface...the two pickup tune obviously is the one with both neck and bridge pickups together. this guitar sounds very old school R&B to me, ala Steve Cropper or Cornell Dupree, and less able to get a thick tone for jazz, at least not on this setup. the amp is a dr. z carmen ghia 18W head running into a boogie 1x12 cab. the two-pickup tune is a tune I wrote a while back. on both this one and the neck pickup demo, I used the sampler/looper to lay down a chord pattern or bassline to play over. on the latter the loop is a simple turnaround but it's fun to hear what came out, in the pursuit of trying to demonstrate as many interesting chord extensions and textures as possible...in the process something of a tune came out...btw the basslines aren't a real bass--that's an Electro-Harmonix octave multiplexer, giving me the octave below guitar range. you can hear this in particular on the neck tone tune...

I think this little trio of meandering guitar bits at least shows off the instrument's tonal range, some of the particulars of its emerging personality, and me thinks I done good.

---> *** see the mp3 section under TIGER TELECASTER DEMOS for file/download links **** <---<

....

another rescue, this time two children. buried for seven days? I know I'll be hugging my kids tight tonight...

...

this has to be one of the most amazing pieces of news footage I've ever seen.

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Praise Song for the Day
by Elizabeth Alexander

A Poem for Barack Obama's Presidential Inauguration

Each day we go about our business,
walking past each other, catching each other's
eyes or not, about to speak or speaking.

All about us is noise. All about us is
noise and bramble, thorn and din, each
one of our ancestors on our tongues.

Someone is stitching up a hem, darning
a hole in a uniform, patching a tire,
repairing the things in need of repair.

Someone is trying to make music somewhere,
with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum,
with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.

A woman and her son wait for the bus.
A farmer considers the changing sky.
A teacher says, Take out your pencils. Begin.

We encounter each other in words, words
spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed,
words to consider, reconsider.

We cross dirt roads and highways that mark
the will of some one and then others, who said
I need to see what's on the other side.

I know there's something better down the road.
We need to find a place where we are safe.
We walk into that which we cannot yet see.

Say it plain: that many have died for this day.
Sing the names of the dead who brought us here,
who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges,

picked the cotton and the lettuce, built
brick by brick the glittering edifices
they would then keep clean and work inside of.

Praise song for struggle, praise song for the day.
Praise song for every hand-lettered sign,
the figuring-it-out at kitchen tables.

Some live by love thy neighbor as thyself,
others by first do no harm or take no more
than you need. What if the mightiest word is love?

Love beyond marital, filial, national,
love that casts a widening pool of light,
love with no need to pre-empt grievance.

In today's sharp sparkle, this winter air,
any thing can be made, any sentence begun.
On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp,

praise song for walking forward in that light.

...

this one is for all you folks out there who think it's ok to defund music programs in our schools...

...

given some of my interactions with folks out in the boonies, I'm thinking we might start getting more concerned about those couples who actually can make babies!

(btw kudos to states like Iowa and New Hampshire who are pro-civic freedom/anti-incest)

...

about time we had some new blood in the mp3's section.... three new takes on an old holiday classic. one solo, one two guitars and one has two separate improv tracks and xmas-y cymbal accoutrement... I recently picked up the "christmas real book" and have been having fun poking around some of the old chestnuts... this one surprised me, nice changes...

all the best for a safe and happy holiday...

...

Last Minutes with ODEN from phos pictures on Vimeo.

Merry Christmas.

...

The Elephant is Slow to Mate
by D. H. Lawrence

The elephant, the huge old beast,
is slow to mate;
he finds a female, they show no haste
they wait

for the sympathy in their vast shy hearts
slowly, slowly to rouse
as they loiter along the river-beds
and drink and browse

and dash in panic through the brake
of forest with the herd,
and sleep in massive silence, and wake
together, without a word.

So slowly the great hot elephant hearts
grow full of desire,
and the great beasts mate in secret at last,
hiding their fire.

Oldest they are and the wisest of beasts
so they know at last
how to wait for the loneliest of feasts
for the full repast.

They do not snatch, they do not tear;
their massive blood
moves as the moon-tides, near, more near
till they touch in flood.

...

off the grid for the next few days...

happy turkey eating etc....

...

here is a perfectly reasonable question, put forward correctly--as a secular, civil rights question, not a religious one, with the appropriate mention of the constitutional guarantee of equal protections (in a country where the separation of church and state is a fundamental premise) and the response from the elected official is neither specific nor reasoned. translation: I'm the white heterosexual male, so what I say goes. tough.

the tide is turning, whether Senator Bumpkin knows it or not.

...