SONG OF THE DAY: Numbers (kudzu'd)

8 is often my favorite number (singular digit), because it is an upright infinity, though I disagree with the human laws of civility being applied to infinity and making it upright. 7 is a good one as well, and 3, both have significant mythological reputations for good and even godliness. I was born in ’73, so I feel that’s a blessing. But often when I get to thinking about numbers too much, I get lost in the fact that so much of our numerology is all built on the Base 10 foundation, that we have 10 singular digits with which we count things. It’s not like this is any sort of higher reality that was discovered scientifically; it’s just a construct we created, and have so deeply taught everyone, that it’s nigh impossible to think outside the Base 10 box built around us. Going up, to say Base 11, is easier on first glimpse, because you just imagine a new character for the 11th singular digit, and start counting. But everything gets complicated because we don’t really think that way, and can only calculate the new Base 11 rolls and flexes and growth through a Base 10 relationship in our brain. Base 10 is so deeply entrenched in our collective psyche.
To an extent, that’s a lot of the civilizational psychic infrastructure built around us. It’s not a naturally occurring thing we are replicating. Squirrels don’t stack nuts in sets of 10. Tulips don’t have 10 petals. We just, as overthinking hominids, felt the need to apply some sort of order to everything. So we went all Base 10 on everything. And then, Base 10 allows human minds to quantify an abstraction like wealth, and in fact, hoard this abstraction and its physical representations, until the actual physical material reality of a bunch of other humans is compromised, just to maintain the abstract hoard. So as we feel stronger and stronger dissatisfaction with our psychic infrastructure, as it doesn’t allow for the natural blossom of hope and happiness as easily, I think it’s a good reminder to notice how far outside the box you can let your thinking go. Psychic infrastructure built upon social constructs that are fallacy, or contribute to manufacturing suffering, these things cannot be reformed. You can’t put a fresh coat of paint on mildewed rotten walls and expect the mildew to eat through the superficial fixes eventually. But seemingly, that’s what we are offered, to answer our growing dissatisfaction. Think outside the box, then hack the box with machetes, and even if you don’t have answers as to what should be next, you can still mock the ever living fuck out of anyone trying to put a new box around everything, as securely as possible. Telling a prisoner of circumstance they do not deserve freedom because they can’t envision how the prison could be better is a fucked up expectation to put on folks.

SONG OF THE DAY: Person to Person (kudzu'd)

If I won the lottery, first thing I’d do is commission a new luchador movie where Psycho Clown and Pagano are superheroes fighting evil ICE agents. But I wouldn’t want it to be all goofy new blockbuster style, plus I couldn’t really afford that, even if I won the lottery, because I’d also want to buy the old grocery store and turn it into an illegitimate arts emporium. Plus turn the old K-mart into an international flea market, which would be a great setting for the luchadors fighting ICE movie. Seems like it would make sense to try and get John Waters to direct the movie, but he seems like the kinda guy that would want to only make his own movies, and not work well with others. I’d want to involve La Hiedra somehow, obviously, so maybe weirdness with her would convince Waters to be on board with the project. Of course, now that World Wide Fascism owns AAA, that means Psycho Clown, Pagano, and La Hiedra are unavailable creatively, as they are contractually obligated to devilry. Thus, plan B for when I win the lottery is to do exactly what I just said, except it’s probably gonna be an off-brand John Waters, and involve Zona 23 instead, likely Juan el Ranchero and Demus el Demonio. I think a friendly rancher and a good-hearted demon doing battle against evil ICE agents in Mazatlan junkyards makes a lot of sense, hand to hand combatting to free a warehouse prison full of women and children. That’s the type of art I’d be commissioning if I were rich beyond belief. We have such boring wealthy people these days.

SONG OF THE DAY: On A Sunday Afternoon (kudzu'd)

I have spent years, going through all the regional hip hop scenes’ histories, painstakingly compiling all references to playing horseshoes, in honor of my father, who loved the game more than almost anything else. This has involved hours upon hours of digging through obscure record label discographies, forgotten groups that never made any noise outside of their small city, and digging through both digital and physical archives of DJs, music writers, and hip hop historians. Thus far, this is the only song on the playlist.

SONG OF THE DAY: Ridin' (kudzu'd)

It’s fun to sit in the secondary DPUs on a long ass train, at night when nobody can see you sitting in there, and pretend you’re driving the train. Granted, your front view is blocked by the other half of the train you’re behind; but it’s still fun as fuck. Especially pretending to hit the horn at crossings. I love that shit.

SONG OF THE DAY: Turn Off The Lights (kudzu'd)

People usually just think “Turn Off The Lights” was a sexy ass song that Teddy Pendergrass made because he was a sexy ass man, but it was actually CIA-funded, and was pushed on urban American radio in the summer of 1979 in response to the Islamic Revolution in Iran, and the rising energy costs America was experiencing as a result of that. The song was released by Philadelphia International Records, the label run by the famous Gamble and Huff songwriting tandem, who had helped usher in an era of pro-Black pop soul in the decade before. But by 1975, Gamble and Huff were caught up in a payola-related scandal, and recruited by the CIA, much like the Iowa Writer’s Workshop MFA program, to help engineer mass-consciousness. This ushered in an era of songs like “Turn Off The Lights”, The Jacksons’ “Enjoy Yourself”, and “Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now” by McFadden & Whitehead. “Turn Off The Lights” only got up to 48 on the Hot 100 Billboard charts, as Teddy’s voice was too sexy in a primordial sense, so the song’s effects on mass consciousness were thwarted by the feral sexiness of the track. The CIA handlers of Gamble and Huff had toyed with the idea of using the song with Michael Jackson’s still childlike voice, though America was perhaps not ready for that level of sexualizing a well-known child singer, albeit him now being an adult. Plus, Jackson was in the process of being moved to a solo career, moving from a soul-specific CIA operation, to a larger CIA pop music project beginning with Epic Records around the same time. But Jackson’s “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough” was created in the same secret writing sessions of the late ‘70s as “Turn Off The Lights”. In 1982, as Pendergrass was finishing up his sixth album, he began to become frustrated with his label’s handlers, and had threatened to name some names and start outing the secretive efforts to control pop music in America. This led to a “mechanical failure” in his Rolls Royce causing an accident which left the singer paralyzed. His sixth album was released, but without the same push behind the scenes, and thus was his first to not go gold or platinum. The label (and CIA project) used up the rest of his recorded material with Philadelphia International to release 1983’s Heaven Only Knows, also without any push behind the scenes, and that finished his contractual obligations with the label, with Gamble and Huff, and with the CIA handlers who helped make him a superstar.

SONG OF THE DAY: Del Barrio Pal Barrio (kudzu'd)

We don’t have an actual free market, because it only allows for market changes by those already with the wealth to do so. Thus, we have “disruption” of taxi service to be gig economy jobs to drive people around as Uber of Lyft, burning through willing drivers, because it’s nearly impossible to make money at the gamified gig that benefits the creator of the new system. And you put existing taxi services out of business, by siphoning away their easiest customer base.
We used to have all these amazing Greyhound stations in America, and one by one, they’ve been shuttered and sold off, and now, for the most part, if you catch a Greyhound (if they still serve you where you are), you stand outside somewhere until it shows up, just standing around like a fuckin’ pigeon. And the old Greyhound stations were beautiful a lot of times! The Greyhound station in Charlottesville has been shut down for a while, fenced off, nobody’s bought it, looks like some work has been done inside minimally, but mostly it’s just an abandoned hulk of building that could be a goddamned bus station.
I say all this because one of the great cultural achievements that is so easily overlooked is the Transportation to Sound System channel, where a taxi driver or bus driver spends so much of their life behind the wheel, that they obviously need to keep themselves entertained, so they develop a love for playing music they love. It’s the DJ/curator on wheels aesthetic, and in many places, when combined with individual buses, which can be decorated in colorful creative aesthetics (as is often the case in non-American parts of the world), it creates a whole vibe. And who doesn’t want a whole vibe when you’re stuck on a bus for a long ass ride?
In America, we are controlled by legal ownership principles, so even if someone has a bus or cab idea, they paint them all in trademarked patterns that are patented and claimed as unique proprietary material, instead of just letting your longest time drivers also be owners and paint that shit up however they see fit, to help them enjoy their days spent working. Anyways, shout out to all the taxi cab and bus drivers out there with their signature sounds that they blast and sing along to and often times annoy white America with, because we seemingly have been trained to only appreciate the bland of the free (trademarked).

SONG OF THE DAY: I Wanna Sex You Up (kudzu'd)

This is such a corny song normal speed, and still might be slowed down, but I enjoy it. The thump has more thump (classic bass thickening from shifted pitch). Slowed down the “tick tock you don’t stop” adds layers of suggestive metaphysical meaning. At least to me, it does.

SONG OF THE DAY: Cruisin' to the Park (kudzu'd)

It ain’t easy being half-assed fresh when you’re born greasy. This is a recipe actually. Your psychic yokefellow is gonna do a produce order last week, because why buy produce at the grocery store when you can wholesale that shit and go straight to the produce man? You ask for turnip greens (feeling like an alternative to your standard bearer mustard greens), some mushrooms (maybe lion’s mane, or shiitake, the good shit), and fresh peas (meaning the little ball bearings of deliciousness). You end up getting collards, because they don’t have turnips, and your partner has them put back the lion’s mane, because it’s like “Epstein is my financial advisor” expensive. And you get sugar peas instead of ball bearing peas, but that’s okay, because you love them fuckers. You forget about the collards for a day or two, but then remember they’re about to go bad, so you gotta cook them. But then you see some smoked turkey legs on markdown at the grocery store, so you gotta get that to flavor the green. Anyways, first thing is you chop up a couple big ass sweet onions, like either the biggest two left in the onion crisper drawer, or if you don’t have big ones, then three of the other ones (2 bigs = 3 mids; standard dirtgod measurement). Let them sizzle on high heat in olive oil from the Afghan store (big glass gallon jug). Watch ‘em, because you don’t want them to burn. Start chopping collards. If the leaves are big as fuck, slice ‘em down the middle, then slice up the greens, keeping as much of the stem as you can. Stems are good, just slice ‘em thin enough to cook down. Your cutting board ain’t big enough to chop all the greens, so add it to the pot with the onions as necessary to keep the cutting board open for more super destruction of collards with your best knife (the one that can still accidentally break flesh, and nip off part of a fingernail). But you don’t wanna fry up greens necessarily, so keep the pot on high but add just enough chicken broth to almost cover what greens is already in the mix. Let that boil up while you keep chopping greens until you run out. My measurement for all this is for one big ass head of collards. If you have more than that, double up on the onions and other shit, but if you have any common sense about the kitchen, you already know that. Actually, if you know your way around the kitchen, you’ve probably already tuned this out, which is fine. I hate long ass explanations of recipes like you read online myself. But this isn’t actually a recipe; it’s about how hard it is to stay half-assed fresh when you’re born greasy. Once you got all the greens going, don’t let it boil on high, go ahead and cut it down to medium heat, or your preferred simmering heat. My “burner is on” light on the left side of the stove got stuck on last weekend, so it fucks up my flow on the stove. Shit freaks me out when I walk in the kitchen in the middle of the night when I wake up and need a drink because the CPAP cobra clutches all humidity from my body like an evil demon of medical advance. I go medium at this point, maybe a little less. Then you bust out the turkey legs, which to be honest, are one of the most annoying entities on earth, with all that succulent dark meat all weirdly entangled with those gristle bones that turkey legs got – too soft to be a full-on bone, but too cartilagey for my human teeth to gnaw through. And see, this is where the problem arises, because you’re in your fuzzy “I look like a teddy bear” Polo hoodie, which you wish you had 37 of, in a full array of colors, but you only got the one, so it’s gotta last you the rest of your life, since this is what you hope to be cremated in, this hoodie and your orange patch motif overalls. You kinda like the purple patch motif overalls more, but that one has base layer of blue denim overalls, while the orange patch one has base layer of that brown duck fabric, so it matches the brown “I look like a teddy bear” Polo hoodie better. Anyways, you don’t wanna be stripping turkey meat from cartilage with your bare hands, getting greasier and greasier, while wearing the Polo hoodie, so you take it off, and drape it over a chair. But you’ve got a Polo long sleeve like fake long john material underneath, and that’s pretty nice, too, and mostly white, which good lord, why would somebody like me even try to own white clothes? It’s a losing effort. So you take that off, too, and drape it over the chair as well. Now, it’s like been cold as fuck, so you’ve got the heat set at 60, because you can’t afford to be heating the whole ass house all the time (again, Epstein is not your financial advisor; empty pickle gallon jar in the bedroom, half full of change is). But you find yourself wrestling the meat off some smoked turkey legs, to chop up and put in the greens, bare-skinned from the waist up, as all good men in the kitchen should be ideally. I actually think the toxic masculine-induced shame most men feel about not wearing a shirt, which has led to a whole slew of dudes going swimming with shirts one (which is weird as hell), also contributes to how we are not comfortable being shirtless in the kitchen. Fuck that shit, let your gut out, and get to fixin’ some more things to stuff into it. Eventually you get most all the good meat off the turkey legs, and into the pot, which is now in that like 1/3 of the way between medium and low but on the medium side of my stove (fancy people may have fancier dials where the “in use” light actually goes off and them flat stovetops that look like spaceships have, so adjust my dial instructions as your current economic standing in the dying American empire dictates). The dog that’s been on the runner out back can smell all this shit going on inside, so is barking to come in. Go ahead and throw the smoked turkey bones into another small pot to boil up briefly, to drive the dog crazy. But then cool that pot down, so you can put the dog back on the runner and throw the turkey bone out to them. Bougie folks (dog moms and dads) don’t like to feed their dogs poultry bones, because they’re afraid it’ll do damage and they’ll have to take the dog to the vet, but true country people never take their animals to the vet, and also know life is a gamble, but you gotta live the way you wanna live, and that dog wants them turkey legbones. So you throw them in the yard, with the dog back on the runner, and the collards are slow cooking on the stove, filling the whole house with smells, so that when you walk to the back door to make sure the dog didn’t choke on a turkey bone and is dead out there, you think, “Haha, no Xes on the dog’s eyes,” like they are a cartoon. But then the smell is so good that when you turn around, you float up into the air and your nose pulls your body back into the kitchen, nose first, like six feet in the air, and you almost hit your head on the top of the doorways because your eyes are closed, and your nose is leading the way, but somehow you don’t, and it smells so fuckin’ good. But you can’t eat it for another 4 or 5 hours. In fact, the true cook time of collard greens is sort of like a mini-Ramadan, in that you deny yourself the indulgences of the greens for as long as possible, so that it can cook down to its purest essence, and be entirely flavored with the turkey as well as additional spices you add (black pepper, definitely some cayenne), so that once you finally break your temporary fast and enjoy a flat bowl (not a deep bowl, but not a plate, somewhere in the middle aka a flat bowl) of collards, it has cooked for so long and you are so hungry that it’s the greatest goddamn thing you’ve ever eaten in your life. This is best served with nothing, you don’t need 3 or 4 goddamn things in every meal. The empire is dying, lol, start controlling your desire for a smorgasbord at every moment. But if you absolutely have to have something with it, I’d suggest making a little round cast iron frying pan of cornbread. I think there’s still old buttermilk in the fridge, and technically buttermilk that you’d use for cornbread never goes bad, like for years you can still use it. But I don’t personally feel like making cornbread, and you’re not here to make it (I feel your judgment), so I’m just having a couple flat bowls of collard greens, while I listen to Motley Crue’s Too Fast For Love, with the pitch shifter on the turntable slowed all the way down. (I will leave the concept of “Too Slow For Love” unmentioned – inside these parenthesis don’t count – so that you can have that idea. I hope you do something with it, I really do.) Oh yeah, don’t put your hoodie back on ‘til you’re done eating greens, but you can put the long johns Polo thing back on. It’s cold in here, and white clothes should know better than to be around you.

SONG OF THE DAY: Just Me and You (kudzu'd)

I love bumpin’ the slowed souldies, and wish I could build a spot where this type of vibe could be enjoyed publicly. Seems like all you can do is either the familiar or the expected. Like there’s a certain style of “funk vibes” that’s allowed. I don’t know man, everything feels so predictable, even the allegedly clever stuff, I guess because our whole society has been tag teamed in the brain by long covid and digital dementia, and all you can really do is get a bunch of drunks to have cheerful pavlovian responses triggered by dopamine spikes from their nostalgia biases being triggered. Death to ‘Merica, baby!

SONG OF THE DAY: Oh Honey (kudzu'd)

Worker bees don’t organize No Queen Bees protests. They just work, rising and grinding, inspired to maintain that drone life. Neurologically, they become addicted to the drone worker bee lifestyle to the point their actual neurology changes to where that’s all they think about. They acquire an artificial intelligence that becomes their nature. Anyways, let’s go get this honey!

SONG OF THE DAY: So Low (kudzu'd)

There's piles of railroad detritus here and there along the tracks. Nice little hills of clasps and spikes and plates, and sometimes you find a great big siding of ragged old ties stacked high, and replaced rail. One time last year, I strapped 38 miles of rail to the top of my Corolla, because I'm building a 1:1 scale replica of an old small town railroad depot in the woods behind my house. I got a big DILLWYN sign too, from when they replaced that the other year, and a friend hipped me to the old one being stashed behind a building before they threw it away. You'd be surprised how much old shit they just throw away. I hope to one day build a whole town, with like 5000 residents, and a small public liberal arts college, in the woods behind my house, all with recycled things found in the trash.

SONG OF THE DAY: I Get Lifted (kudzu'd)

I wanted to write about how much I love Latimore in general, and this song specifically, but then I let the video I made a month back play, from some old ass cartoon, and boy, this one is a banger. I hope somewhere on this expansive Earth, somebody just gets baked as shit and lets the dirtgod’s 45s on 33 channel shuffle on their screen, big and loud as possible. Because I try to be a big and loud as possible, but also small and unassuming. Within my sweetness is a touch of masculinity, and within my masculinity is a touch of sweetness. Like a yin yang, but with untended beard instead.

SONG OF THE DAY: Easy Evil (kudzu'd)

The reason I love slowing down music is because it can take something entirely familiar, and reshape it in your experience. We are three-dimensional creatures (don’t let the “time travel is possible” types try to fool you otherwise), and thus when our notion of those three dimensions is even slightly shifted, it refreshes our attention. Anyways, this is a pretty chill AM soft rock classic, which then becomes even more chill, although maybe ominous, when slowed down. I make all these videos, grabbing clips from the wayback archives of one sort or another, then slapping them together with my favorite slowed down colors, and putting the music over top. Because it technically violates the copyright of the music owner, I don’t get no yakubian youtube play credits – all rights reserved by whoever ripped off the musicians back in the day. But art is not about profit, unless you are a born asshole. Anyways, we live in a great time of easy evil, so I hope you are still fighting the good fight, on all fronts, and in all metaphysical planes. If you have powers beyond the three dimensions, I humbly request you ask the Universe to smile upon me. I know I will encounter a thousand robot skims, at the minimum, before even one set of real eyeballs reads this whole paragraph. And likely millions of web trawlers, scraping the net for data, before an actual bona fide beyond-the-earthly realm power type sees this. But I like to put it out there. I feel fairly blessed in life already, but Universal sunshine is not like abstract human wealth – you can’t hoard it and it doesn’t pile up and become a burden. It’ll be like an extra half ounce of sunshine on an already sunny day. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

SONG OF THE DAY: Los Borrachoes Son Uds. (kudzu'd)

I have a passport now, and really the only thing stopping me from going to Peru and scooping up the dopest cumbia 45s possible to come back and stunt on the haters with is the fact I can’t afford any of that at all. Not only is money the root of all evil, but it’s also the root of all “you ain’t doing that shit” as well. Oh well. I got plenty, so let’s cut it up, and turn the heat up to 63 because we’re feeling froggy, and dance with the cats until they are all freaked out and shit.

By the way, this video is of Diego Maradona, the true all-time greatest footballer ever. I'm very excited for the World Cup to not happen in the United States, even though we'll be denied the comedy of every host match being an away one, because unless the USA is playing like Thailand, it always has more folks supporting the visitors than the USMNT. The US will never be good at soccer, until we embrace socialism, and make reparations to the black and indigenous. Until then it will always be some "white dudes drinking IPAs" cosplay ass shit.

SONG OF THE DAY: I Don't Want to be a Freak (But I Can't Help Myself) (kudzu'd)

In all my slowing down 45s to 33 speed years, never have I come across a song I love as much as this one, that I had no knowledge of at all beforehand. This is a 45 that I’m up to 4 or 5 copies, of varying qualities, and honestly, I can never have too many. I stockpile Dynasty 45s like dry beans for the apocalypse. Anyways, I don’t have anything clever to say today, in fact, my brain has become quite foggy. It’s too cold, or I’m too old, or it’s a time of year that runs me down, or I don’t know. But I know the mantra of this song is still true, and one day this will be our national anthem, played at the wrong speed (which is the correct one), as we realize we don’t need a flag because we don’t have borders that aren’t already present in nature.

SONG OF THE DAY: More Bounce to The Ounce Part 1 (kudzu'd)

A friend was sharing videos from a Myanmar field sound system, and I'm always looking at the homemade futuristic hyper DJ set-ups from Africa. It's weird how we have access to all this shit as Americans, but nobody builds a fuckin' sound system like that. I guess it's because you spend all this money, and you're afraid of your abstract wealth getting stolen, so you lock it all up in your house, rather than have a mobile giant ass sound system. I think about this a lot with regards to Roger Troutman vocals, too, because everybody will think autotune or vocoder, but nah man, he had a talkbox rigged to a keyboard. I feel complicit in this because I google how to build shit sometimes, but like my dad's friend Tank used to say about auto repair manuals, "If you need a manual, then you don't know how to do it." You can't google how to build a mobile sound system out of scraps; you just have to know how to do it, by the life you've lived. We've lost so much with our cluttered blessings of Americanness.

SONG OF THE DAY: Super Freak (Part 1) (kudzu'd)

We seemed to have lost our cultural pride in freakiness. This bums me out, mostly because I’m freaky as hell. And also there’s a sort of collective performative quirkiness that’s don’t feel like authentic freakiness. Like, really weird appearing people who are basic and, to be honest, somewhat bland. The truly freaky have often looked normal enough, which is helpful, because you can’t be freaky in the weirdest places possible if somebody identifies you as “freaky looking” before you get there. Gotta have a little freak camouflage, to not call attention to yourself. Anyways, please feel free to be freakier, and take militant pride in your freakiness. Don’t let nobody tell you what you shouldn’t be doing. They don’t know you.

SONG OF THE DAY: Mundian To Bach Ke (kudzu'd)

I have compiled 99 Problems With Jay-Z (because I am a bitch), and one of them is the remix of this song which Jay-Z polluted with weak ass ad-libs and his lethargic “clever guy who had a stroke” lyricism. He was always a biter of styles, and then later a co-opter of flavors, which of course makes sense he would become a billionaire capitalist for exploiting the creative labor of others into his own impossibly vast abstract wealth. Please note, he did not become a billionaire for his own record sales, so don’t act like pointing out a wack ass throwback jam or two from your younger days is meritocratic proof of his billionairessness. If that was the case, Big Daddy Kane would be rich as Musk right now.
Anyways, with this song specifically, it’s good to have the 45 to play slow, because even crawling, this beat is bonkers. And Panjabi MC rides it appropriately, like on a barely holding together motorbike, pushing the limits of the throttle, but slowing down for dirt road curves, sliding into the next stretch… there is a psychology to this shit that Jay-Z missed entirely. He was just excited to stumble down the same beat and pretend he had something to do with it, like all fat pocketed empty soul successful capitalists. You know this motherfucker has a Basquiat painting nobody ever saw, and he bragged about it? Why would you brag about that shit? I hope the ghost of Rammellzee torments him every night in this sleep, and has him seeing the Shadow People hovering over his triple king bed.

SONG OF THE DAY: If You Wanna Get To Heaven (kudzu'd)

My wishes are to be cremated, and have my ashes stored in a Timberlands box which is accidentally donated to the thrift store, as has been the way of my people since the beginning of time.

TH3 P4TH W3 C0LL3CT1V3LY...

the path we collectively 
walk never ends with one; we 
build a future together 

0VR PR1M0RD14L D3S1R3...

our primordial desire 
to walk our way to better 
tomorrows cannot be damned 

TH3 D14SP0R4 0F H0P3...

the diaspora of hope 
sows itself in untended 
margins, for future harvest 

SONG OF THE DAY: Oye Como Va (kudzu'd)

We shall dance on the ashes of ICE to cumbia rebajadas. 

B0X1NG 0VRS3LV3S 1NT0 TH3...

boxing ourselves into the 
reality built around 
us does not lead to escape