M1N14TVR3 B3NCH3S TVCK3D...

miniature benches tucked

away among the mosses

just in case Littles are real

V1V14N PR1NC3SS3S L34D...

Vivian princesses lead

child slave rebellion against

bastard General Manley

45s on 33 – #19: “Let the Drums Speak”

I like to waste time scouring the digital camps of bands and clouds of sounds, looking for African producers of today music. Cultural anthropologist know-it-all justice bridgers love to point out how the drum is part and parcel of the African experience, which I’m not convinced “drum” is basic to all of humanity though certainly more prevalent in some cultures than others, but fuck man, all people historically have had elements of their culture who like to bang on shit rhythmically. Nonetheless, post-digital influence on music making, where live bands are replaced by dudes with laptops, it is interesting to go seeking out post-digital music (beat) makers from the African continent, where live drumming is still a larger part of actual real life. (To clarify, I’m not dissing modern beatmakers or being like “LIVE DRUMS BETTER THAN STUPID COMPUTER PEOPLE!”)

Drums make backbone rhythm of most music now, regardless of whether that came from Africa or not, that’s fact. (You could add bass to that as well, but let’s stick with drums for the sake of this word meander, okay?) You could consider drums laying the path that a piece of music follows, where the drums guide the music as well as the listener as to the direction to follow. Thus, the move to digital production of music, where samples are used or machine-generated drumbeats are done at an incremental piece of time then looped so as to repeat the pattern takes the path and eliminates some of the meander that live drums have. Basically, it is the difference between a traditional footpath which became a trade route, which might pass around this mountain but then curve back organically to this river confluence, and a railroad town built all at once, strict squares in place, streets all straight as they can be, ground leveled to allow for this. That’s the difference between live drumming and digital drumbeats. Again, not dissing the new, because even in a gridlocked little town built by the company’s devious master engineers, you can vandalize the fuck out of everything to make it beautiful. You can still meander off the straight path.

But the beauty of the meandering path is that you can meander off that too, and then you are meandering off a meander. (That feels like some shit Pooh bear would say, not cartoon Pooh bear but old ass book Pooh bear. Again, not dissing the new Pooh bear – each epoch needs its versions of shit, especially in a capital system where you’ve got to squeeze more fucking profits out the poor Pooh bear’s throat.) Thus I find myself wandering the gridlocked squares of the internet, trying to find “producers” from Africa, who combine the new-fangled looped path, but with the meandering philosophy deeply ingrained in who they are as well, as it is still part of their life (I am assuming… let’s not even start opening up that Pandora’s planet rocks). Thus you have the straight path complemented by meandering path, still letting the drums speak, not just forcing them to repetitively say the same shit until it’s beaten into your head, as if your head was a drum instead of the drum beaming into your head.

Actually, that thought kinda fucks me up, that we are now the drum, being beaten into a rhythm to hold, by unseen hands. So with that existential crisis, I guess I’ll leave you for the moment.

x m a s q

you never hear about how

hansel and gretel had stole
that weird old lady's x-box

Dundee Honey Brown

AFFORDABILITY: The Dundee Honey Brown 12-pack was on markdown at the Kroger grocery store place, and it came out to a quite affordable 12-pack of the pop top bottles (although it was probably actually twist top... used to be that was the true test of whether a beer was high brow or not, but now a bunch of pseudo-high brow beers come in twist top bottles; my theory is that they have moved to this when owned by larger breweries to keep people from homebrewing because pop tops are the only ones you can successfully use in homebrewing, and I also have a paranoia that everything is out to stop any D.I.Y. mentality whatsoever from existing in us till we're all a bunch of veal calves in cubicles, waiting for our R&D government to feed, fund, and direct us, for their profit and probably fake prophets too). 4 out of 5.
DESTROYABILITY: Dundee Honey Brown apparently used to be my wife's beer of choice when she lived in Athens, Georgia, but something is different about it now according to her. I remember us drinking it sometimes in our early dating days when we wanted something mellow instead of a 30-pack of Budweiser (which seemed to be rarely), and I didn't like it back then, but I didn't like much of anything back then. This here Dundee Honey Brown that we've been buying lately, I can enjoy it, and it's in that cheap good 12-pack range like Yuengling and Killian's Red, if either of those are considered good (which they aren't to beer dorks, because nothing is ever good enough), and I can see this becoming a steady staple in my diet, which I might've mentioned, but I drink a lot so it's hard to remember every goddamn stupid talking point I make in these stupid endless nothing posts. 5 out of 5.
LABEL AESTHETIC: The remodulated Dundee Honey Brown bottle labels are pretty nifty, in a nice honey color, with some marching band looking bumblebee getting his caricature on. It's nothing that would make a good poster or anything, but if ever there was a beer bottle label that would look great on an old t-shirt found in a thrift store that benefits retarded Christian veterans of domestic wars, this would be the one. And that is high praise. 5 out of 5.
CORPORATE MASTER: They portend being owned by theyselves but you can tell something is up. I don't trust nobody no more, fuckin' Obama accepting peace prizes talking about going to war. Nothing even cares to be full of shit anymore. At least they used to pretend, in wrestling and political debates and commercials and everything. Now they're just like, "Our shit gives you cancer, we're going to war Nobel Peace Prize, and let's talk about blah blah blah ratings merchandise bottom line advertising search optimization." Here's an embedded search optimization hook-up for your ass - stupid bitches die world blow up let's go end times fuck you all . 2 out of 5.
OVERALL AMBIANCE: I enjoy this here Dundee Honey Brown beer thing. It reminds me of what the dad from the Berenstein Bears would drink. Hopefully he drinks too much over at the big dog, little dog house, and the little dog also drinks too much, but big dog doesn't drink at all, and little dog wants to drive Pa Berenstein home to his tree but little dog doesn't want any of them to drive because those two have been drinking Dundee Honey Browns since 1 pm and big dog is too tired from his night shift at the Wal-Mart Distribution Center to drive, but little dog does it anyways, in that big long ass car, and they don't wreck, because drinking and driving doesn't always end in tragedy. Don't let late night TV PSAs fool you. I know with a big long car driven by a drunk little dog ready made for extended crumple zone jokes, or the Berensteins living in an oak tree and that whole "whiskey bottle, brand new car, oak tree you're in my way" thing, you thought I was gonna make them wreck. But I didn't. You shouldn't be so tragic. 5 out of 5.
TOTAL RATING: 4 & 1/5 STARS!