SONG OF THE DAY: The Joker (kudzu'd)

What better way to close out a calendar year (which is nothing but printed boxes on the wall to make little notes within) than a slowed down 45 at 33 speed of a Steve Miller Band classic that all self-respecting internet-era music lovers would look down upon. This is trash music for the trash masses, and yet somehow there’s magic to it (still, even after all these classic rock years beating it to death), and slowing it down even further makes me wanna enter a used Lincoln Continental into a demolition derby with #69 and call myself The Joker in real life.

L1K3 T0 C0NS1D3R MYS3LF...

like to consider myself 
less than domesticated, 
but let’s be real… I’m settled 

C4N'T 3V3R FR0NT 4S 1F 1...

can’t ever front as if I 
was perfect - my chip-toothed smile 
gives away reality 

MY 1D3NT1TY 1S 4...

my identity is a 
fractured mosaic of the 
pieces which I salvaged 

T00 34S1LY 3NT4NGL3D...

too easily entangled 
in the madness of others, 
thus absorbing their ripples 

C3L3BR4T1NG SVRV1V4L...

celebrating survival 
of the undeclared struggles 
which permeate existence 

SONG OF THE DAY: Planet Rock (kudzu'd)

Planet Rock is real to me. I respect and am drawn to those who build a personal mythology that weaves deeper meaning into the universe around them. This practice feels ancient and more traditional in the good way. Thus, something like Planet Rock is way more than a song - it's the culmination of a theory made by a life scientist. That's the type of science I respect most.

B4PT1Z1NG MYS3LF 1N TH3...

baptizing myself in the 
wild; grounding myself in the 
woods; keeping myself rooted 

SONG OF THE DAY: The Letter Y

Arctic blast blowing in, and already took down the power line between my house and the neighbors. I still had power but they didn't, and on extending the other direction for miles. Tree and line work dudes showed up, and lineman asked if he could take his big cherry picker truck back along the yard, because it might leave some marks since the ground is soft. I was like, "yeah man, that's fine," because they had work to do. Imagine being so pre-occupied with self you get mad about your yard while a bunch of people are sitting in the dark on a freezing cold day. What a sad world we live in. Progress and comfort for the individual at the expense of the collective isn't progress, and I hope we start slapping the fuck out of anybody who thinks so. Not like alpha male peacock posturing slaps, trying to trigger physical conflict. More like an old grandma slapping a kid being stupid softly but firmly on the hardest part of the head, going, "What the fuck is wrong with you, boy?"

N4TVR4L 0MN1P0T3NC3...

natural omnipotence 
can’t ever be overruled; 
that is truly eternal 

SONG OF THE DAY: Hey Ruby (Shut Your Mouth)

This is such a great fuckin’ song and I wish I had known it when I still lived in the shitty basement apartment underneath the woman who mined bitcoins and her adult son who lied to the DMV about his address being downstairs so the police would show up with warrants for his dumbass and I’d be like, “no idea who that is, he don’t live here,” and they’d make me show my ID but then leave, and after they drove off, I’d go upstairs and bang on the door and tell the woman, “The cops were looking for Gabe again.” Dumb fucker stole a keffiyeh package one time, I just know it, had to get a PO Box for a year while living in town just to keep that fucker from taking my shit with his stupid ass. Anyways, this would’ve been a great song to play back then, except I would’ve been the one asking them to shut the fuck up, which is not the ideal role in role playing this song, although I would’ve played that role by pointing my subwoofer directly upwards from the laundry room (because some flooring was missing there up above me) and blasting this up into their level loud as fuck, to get them to be quiet. In my Greater Appalachian unorthodox mystic brain, this makes perfect logical sense.

M4NM4D3 0MN1P0T3NC3 1S...

manmade omnipotence is 
ultimately impotent; 
man created man as god 

SONG OF THE DAY: Superjock

Decided my DJ name now is Professor Lounge. Address me as that when I'm playing 45s at the correct 33 speed to properly unlock the deeper funk held within but not allowed to be expressed by our hyper-time sensitive culture built on the industrial fallacy of we must always be productive. I look forward to spinning this record (which I recently got, so recent it hasn't arrived in the mailbox yet) at the right (wrong) speed soon enough.

4ND 3V3N 4FT3R TH3 F4LL...

and even after the fall, 
simple minded, good hearted 
folks find the power of lounge 

SONG OF THE DAY: Tamo Daleko

Branko Mataja is yet another story of an obscure artist who created amazing but specialized music, combining the Yugoslav folk music he’d grown up with along with psychedelic guitar playing that he’d recorded himself in California in the ‘70s and ‘80s. The story is a single album existed and then Mataja recorded a second self-released cassette and a Southern California crate digger had found the album and got in touch with Numero Group, who wanted to license reissuing the stuff. Mataja had actually found work as a guitar tech, having taught himself the electrical components to that, and was a classic mad scientist tinkerer, so fucking around with reimagined versions of the folk music played in his childhood home makes sense in that way. Numero Group should have a zine that goes along with every release. Anyways, this Branko Mataja music is pretty great, and the fact some guy just made amazing weird ass hybrid music in his garage that nobody paid attention, but resurfaced four decades later because some random record hunter found a used copy is pretty neat too.

C4L3ND4RS H3LD T0G3TH3R...

calendars held together 
by obligations and 
honor codes… things fall apart 

SONG OF THE DAY: Drift Away (kudzu'd)

Dobie is not that common of a name. Makes sense he’d be a strong philosopher type to write an anthem to saying “fuck it, I ain’t doing shit” like this.

1 F1ND MY GR34T3ST P34C3 1N...

I find my greatest peace in 
forgotten spaces no one 
thinks they’d possibly find me 

TH3 3BBS 4ND FL0WS 0F 3MP1R3S...

the ebbs and flows of empires 
make history books; meanwhile, 
regular folk keep walking 

SONG OF THE DAY: Straight Out The Swamp

Another Boogie Brown banger from his Blue Globe Beats bandcamp, but about three releases back, because my "song of the day" process is a slow burner that even the most high quality vibes of songs don't get on the list until after a month or two, and then it takes me a month to get around to writing about it. I don't respect immediate reactionary newness philosophy... that contributes to our own downfall. Take your time and enjoy shit. But also recognize the fact there's people out here doing amazing shit on a pretty regular basis that you might be overlooking entirely because you're too caught up in the new shit purposely paraded past your gaze.

W3 K33P P0W3R1NG 4L0NG...

we keep powering along, 
assuming the horizon 
is eternal, when it’s not 

SONG OF THE DAY: El Bongo de Rule (rebajada)

This selection comes from one of Sonido Dueñez’s mixtapes he made back in the day of slowed down cumbia music sold in a Monterrey flea market. Dueñez was a pioneer of slowed down music, and after the internet rediscovered him, cumbias rebajadas became a bona fide genre with him as the legendary figure who helped create it. Dueñez suffered a stroke last week, and has been in the hospital recovering, and his family has set up a Go Fund Me to help support him. Now having had a slowed music radio show for half a year, I really put Dueñez alongside DJ Screw as the two true and original patron saints of slowed music. If you have the ability, throw a couple dollars the way of the Dueñez family.

TH3 L13S C1V1L1Z4T10N...

the lies civilization 
has told itself done wove an 
entangling ass world wide web 

D34D B4TT3R13S C4N'T B3 JVMP3D...

dead batteries can’t be jumped… 
there’s lessons to be found all 
around the rural compound 

SONG OF THE DAY: Remember 02

The physical difference between typing a word into a computer or smart phone to find the meaning after clicking SEND for fairly immediate results, and that of walking into another room to pull a fat dictionary off a shelf to turn pages using guide words ‘til you narrow down the right page to read the printed words. The brain receives both pieces of information but the cells of the body experience the two receptions very differently. The former is immediate but requires little work and thus perhaps feels less necessary to retain; the latter takes physical effort of the body to send the information to the brain.

The physical difference of having printed books accumulated full of the information you feel necessary or enjoy having around piled around you to consult when you feel necessary to search for the chunks that feel relevant to your current needs, and that of oral histories shared over time from various elder sources that your mind slowly absorbs to retention if you are listening well enough or the story is relayed strongly enough so that later when you feel the need or the information is relevant you lean back on your memory of those oral sources. The brain receives both pieces of information but the cells of the mind have absorbed where that information is very differently. The former can always be accessed but is external and thus feels less necessary to retain; the latter takes mental effort of the body to keep the information in the mind.

Progress is a myth, but myth does not necessarily mean false. Mythology operates separate from a true/false binary to be honest. But progress can be more false than true, without being entirely one or the other, and the notion that we’ll prove it’s false to know it’s false is not something that occurs historically. More often than not, people know something to be false long before it’s proven to be false. Proof itself depends on a lot of progress as the process of proof, and all of that isn’t necessarily true itself. Throwing good science after bad.

The scientific western civilization human brain regards the human brain as unique and extraordinary, and thus scientifically justified in its dominion of the Earth (and eventually Space). Why nobody ever thinks it biased the human brain considers itself an extraordinary brain when it’s studying brains through the filter of the human brain has always boggled me. There are many spiritual traditions throughout human history (and still present) which regard the human brain and humans themselves as just a part of a larger whole, not any more or less special than everything else we share the Earth (and thus Space) with. I try to think about that a lot, not really in any specific way where I force my brain to come to conclusions, but more like listening to oral histories, repeating that story to myself, so that my brain knows it inside my mind, not just on the book shelves stacked around me. It’s easy to book shelf know things, but much harder to mind know things. And with all this progress we’re bombarded with, it’s even easier to click SEND know things than it was to book shelf know things. That’s why everything feels so wrong, because we “know” so much but it feels at our cellular experience like that knowing isn’t being retained or all that real.

F33L1NG MY M0RT4L1TY...

feeling my mortality 
creep in around the edges 
which I used to just ignore 

W0RK H4RD, PL4Y H4RD, 1GN0R3 S1GNS...

work hard, play hard, ignore signs 
hard, pretend there ain’t no cops 
hard, arm leg leg arm head hard 

3DVC4T3D B3Y0ND MY...

educated beyond my 

intelligence - true gods of 

dirt got grime for DNA 

SONG OF THE DAY: The Place Where We Dwell

Another Gang Starr banger. I don’t make those year end albums of the year lists because time is a bullshit social construct anyways, and mostly those lists are tied to the immediate consumption of newness rather than enjoying the full spectrum of mass-produced culture. But I will say that Gang Starr’s Daily Operation made my albums of the year list again this year.

N3VR0L0GY CH4NN3L3D BY...

neurology channeled by 

suggestion into “needing” 

more things I’ve never needed 

MY M1ND'S C0MP0S1T10N 1S

my mind’s composition is 

mountains and valleys, heavy  

with fog, and reduced vision 

SONG OF THE DAY: I'll Never Grow Old

Another Wu sample, and though this is the original song, I did recently get a bootleg 45 with this on one side and “C.R.E.A.M.” on the other side. It’s easy to be a digital bootlegger but it takes dedication to the underlying philosophical foundations to transition into physical media world with bootleg 45s. I appreciate people who do that, to be honest. A lot of shit is unnecessarily expensive or impossible to find, and bootleggers fill an important purpose. And the idea that bootleg shit is lesser quality frankly overestimates the morality of the legal manufacturers, who often times are not moral at all, and cut any and all corners possible to increase their own profits. Anyways, this is a great song, and this has been a Saturday blurb on a minor old style “blog” website that very few people ever see because the means for communicating digital information has left this lane by. But I gladly occupy the front porch of my little back road blog still. They called it the “information superhighway” at one point, then built social media interstates around those old superhighways, so I’m a back road of a forgotten road now. That’s okay. Fuck false progress.

TH0S3 B0RN W1TH RVSTY LVG NVT...

those born with rusty lug nut 
realities rarely have 
time or space to know-it-all 

S3LF-1MP0RT4NT 3V1L CL0WNS...

self-important evil clowns 
manufactured with a great 
abundance, digital age 

BR0K3N W1ND0WS TH30R13S M0ST...

broken window theories most 
often perpetuated 
by them with exclusive views 

SONG OF THE DAY: After Laughter

Been trying to find bootleg 45s of shit that's too expensive to actually buy on the original label release, which also is funny according to legality, because random bootlegger is seen as stealing intellectual property, whereas some old record industry dude that exploited naïve young musicians out of royalties actually owns the intellectual property, not the people who conjured up the music more often than not. So I fully support and love bootleggers, of all types – t-shirts, records, liquor, whatever man. Is there a bootleg twitter yet? Let me know in the comments. Nonetheless, in that quest for old bangers, I downloaded some “Shaolin Soul” collections which have all the shit that RZA famously sampled, and let me just say, judging solely by the records he sampled and how she was portrayed in that Wu Tang tv show (which I couldn’t get past the first season to be honest), RZA’s mom seems tight as fuck. How old is she now? Her record collection leads me to believe no matter how old she is, we could enjoy each other’s company. Anyways, this song is a fuckin’ banger. The 45 is a zillion billion dollars though, so I’ve gotta wait for a bootlegger to make an “edit” for “promo purposes only”. Also, more so than most songs, this one feels like a shoulder tattoo. I don't really know how to explain that, but it just does.

SONG OF THE DAY: El Expreso (rebajada)

They still don’t make amethyst turntables, which is fucked up if you ask me.

SONG OF THE DAY: Summer Breeze (kudzu'd)

Kudzu’ing music doesn’t mean anything other than playing it slow, like kudzu grabbed a hold of it and caused it to drag. Some folks call that “screwed” but I read about how Screw himself didn’t want nobody calling it that unless he did it, so I’ve adopted “kudzu’d” as my version of this. I enjoy having old dumb pop songs like this slowed down, because it unlocks a different level to it. Doesn’t work for everything, but when it does, it can be quite impressive. Somebody asked me the other week about songs I love played slow, more than the original, and this is definitely one that came to mind. It becomes more humidity baked and naked feeling. Anyways, this is the blurb I made myself write so that I didn’t just post the video without a blurb. Thank you for reading to the end (if you did). I slap these videos together to upload to youtube when I rip the 45s at 33, and this one is just some cruising scenes from an old ass lowrider movie. Be sure to subscribe to my youtube channel. I get nothing from these videos and it means absolutely nothing anyways, hahaha.

VN4TT3ND3D SP4C3S G3T...

unattended spaces get 
filled right quick with sketchy shit; 
this is true of heart as well 

SONG OF THE DAY: Sitting in the Park (kudzu'd)

The original is classic (obviously) but this Sunny & The Sunliners cover of the Billie Stewart song, when slowed to a nice even boil like you hear right here, is too sublime not to be considered “the best” although when I’m using a superlative like that, it’s never exclusionary. Everything could be the best if it actually gave a fuck to try.

M1L1T4NT TYP3S W4V1NG FL4GS...

militant types waving flags 
so hard they lost all meaning; 
just waiting for the fire now 

ST33P3D 1N TH4T H34D F1RST 1NT0...

steeped in that head first into 
any and every wall 
mentality (bit too deep) 

R4GG3DY 4R0VND 3DG3S...

raggedy around edges, 
but my essence is golden 
so I clean up pretty good 

41N'T 3V3R PR3T3ND3D T0...

ain’t ever pretended to 
be the freshest dipped, but I 
carry myself well enough 

SONG OF THE DAY: Love Sick

Gang Starr was a popular group, and it still is.

S0M3 F0LKS D3S1R3 4SC3NS10N...

some folks desire ascension 
of abstract pyramids to 
reach the clouds; I just gaze up 

TH3 0PT10N T0 S1T 4ND L3T...

the option to sit and let 
the threats pass, but move again 
before becoming stagnant 

M0ST F0LKS TH1NK F0RKS 1N R04D M34N...

most folks think forks in road mean 
you gotta choose direction… 
ain’t always that dramatic 

SONG OF THE DAY: Real Connection

I regret to inform you I have become a “souldies” guy. Maybe it’s because I have a radio show where all I do is play 45s at 33 speed, and the vast bulk of new 45s released are from the rapidly expanding souldies scene. Bobby Oroza is a dude from Finland who dropped Get On The Otherside this year on Big Crown Records, and that shit slams. Sadly, Big Crown Records has not released “Real Connection” on 45 for me to play at 33 speed. The fun thing about souldies is it’s the strangest multicultural scene ever, that has scenes pop up in expected places (like Brooklyn and Northern California) but then Finland. Anyways, I want to start a record label now, with no money and no experience. That’s what happens when you start to listen to too many 45s.

SONG OF THE DAY: Smother Me With Your Love

A face sitter aficionado’s secret anthem, thus a degenerate classic. I think I’ve convinced my girlfriend that should I ever get old and be on my deathbed to smother me out of my misery in this manner. It’s a shame we don’t live in an actual progressive society which could respect my wishes. Instead, I’ll likely be separated from everybody I love, and kept alive against my will hooked up to a bunch of goddamned machines that will drain whatever meager coins I have saved in my pitiful life right out of the possibility of sliding into my children’s hands once I’m gone. What a disgusting world we’ve built, and I say that as somebody who began this paragraph talking about women sitting on my face, lovingly.

SONG OF THE DAY: Drip Drop

Another Cadillac spaceship banger perfect for time traveling because the audio is skewed ever so wonderfully as the 4th dimension recalibrations happen upon re-entry to earthly atmosphere. If you've never experienced it, it's like the sound of having done 17 whip-its all at once, but it doesn't hurt your head and feels like you just dove off a cliff into deep mountain spring. Pretty great, except for the realization that, "Oh fuck, here I am back to my normal base life, back to work, no more playing dominoes with 1971 Pam Grier lookalike in Dayton, Ohio, motel." Hate that shit.

M0ST MY P30PL3'S M3N P4SS3D...

most my people’s men passed 
early - tragedies waiting 
to happen from beginning 

SONG OF THE DAY: Right Place Wrong Time (kudzu'd)

The permutations of place and time are infinite, in fact an infinite number of infinities of them. Infinity can seem way smaller than it actually is because it’s such a simple word full of slender letters. But the infinite permutations of place and time go on and on, and the best you can hope for is to slice a little sliver of your minor infinity into a beautiful snapshot of feel goodness. It’s hard though, because institutions stuff every crack in our infinities with bullshit, trying to misdirect and channel us the wrong way, into some tiny boring ass corner, instead of exploring our infinite place and times of our tiny slice of conscious existence (assuming we’re conscious).

R3MN4NTS 0F TH3 R04D TR4V3LL3D...

remnants of the roads travelled 
stains cellular memories; 
new practice takes time to take 

F3LT TH3 FR4CTVR3D P3RSP3CT1V3...

felt the fractured perspective 
of illicit substance for 
sweet temporary escape 

CL1MB1NG L4DD3RS, CH4S1NG CL0VDS...

climbing ladders, chasing clouds, 
without realizing a man 
can’t ever get that far high 

4S 4 HVM4N B31NG, 1'M...

as a human being, I’m 
more akin to fresh weeds than 
abandoned mechanisms 

SONG OF THE DAY: Don Dada (Hip Hop Remix)

I went to sleep playing this 100% Dynamite! NYC dancehall meets rap compilation the other night, and when I woke up, I had transformed into wearing a light blue and white tracksuit with Polo sneakers on. It was crazy. I guess I got a fairy godfather I didn’t know about.

M4K1NG D0 B3C0M3S 34SY...

making do becomes easy 
if you ain’t got no other 
choice… well-practiced survival 

F33L M0ST BL3SS3D 1N TH3 D4RKN3SS...

feel most blessed in the darkness, 
crawling through marginal zones 
which don’t know that much newness 

0VR VNT3ND3D D1M3NS10NS...

our untended dimensions 
fall apart easy enough… 
fix what you need, fuck the rest 

SONG OF THE DAY: Computer Love Part II (kudzu'd)

A solid proof of America's deep and inherent racism is a bunch of people love Bruce Springsteen still, for some reason, but ain't nobody talking about Roger Troutman. Neoliberal bullshit. Also this song should be the internet's theme song, but we blew it. Now libertarian tech dorks own the internet and we're like ten years away from the national anthem getting changed to a pun that 13 year olds think is stupid.

M4NVF4CTVR3D PVRP0S3 C4STS...

manufactured purpose casts 
long shadows in our culture, 
but I ain’t got to do shit 

L0ST BVT F0VND PR0PH3C13S 4R3...

 

lost but still found prophecies are 
never profitable… find 
joy in my own foolishness 

SP34K1NG P03MS T0 G14NT...

speaking poems to giant 
hulks of metal, hovering 
all ‘round my one-man cipher 

SONG OF THE DAY: La Risada (rebajada)

Slowed music is a lifestyle choice. Slow living prevents slow death, and around the clock digital clockfaces got too many of y'all thinking some RIGHT NOW shit is more urgent than it really is.

B1NG3 W4TCH1NG CL0VDS, STR3TCH3D 0VT 1N...

binge watching clouds, stretched out in 
the dirt of America’s 
rapidly-declined margins 

M41NT41N1NG 1MM4CVL4T3...

maintaining immaculate 
castles made of sand becomes 
difficult work… we’re lazy 

TH3 BRVT4L 4RCH1T3CTVR3...

the brutal architecture 
of displacing natural 
thought with chasing a clock’s face 

SONG OF THE DAY: Soul Heart Transplant (kudzu'd)

[Been out of practice of writing blurbs for songs, so just whipped out a freestyle sonnet for today...] 

The ebbs and flows of brain and heart... Information 

consumed often containing poisons, polluting 

thinking with fear or hate, raw manipulation 

of reactionary types quick to be shooting 

off "just asking questions" digressions of discourse. 

Meanwhile, natural rights and wrongs known (or divined) 

at heart level from birth, which manmade laws enforce 

according to our mythology; but you'll find 

aberrations from heartfelt path, men using math 

chasing pyramids of numbers rather than shared 

goodness of existence, before bloodletting bath 

between divisions. Mind is where the two are paired - 

brain and heart - coming together, and back apart. 

I always hope that spirited thought's seen as smart. 

4SS1GN1NG 0VRS3LV3S PVRP0S3...

assigning ourselves purpose 
where none needed to exist… 
fuck it, I’ll be in the woods 

VN1V3RS4L D3TR1TVS...

universal detritus… 
us human beings born from 
wild stardust (allegedly) 

4B4ND0N1NG D3ST1NY...

abandoning destiny 
to indulge in nothingness… 
if Sisyphus had just quit 

4T TH1S P01NT TH3 CR4CKS D3F1N3...

at this point, the cracks define 
the system as much as all 
the alleged safety nets 

H4LF-F3R4L M4RG1NS PR0V1D3...

half-feral margins provide 
the comfort of shadows for 
those hiding from too much light