SONG OF THE DAY: Stage Fright

A weakness of mine is shitty ‘70s rock that definitely was solid American step between British Heavy Metal and metal blowing up officially in America as well. Shit like Legs Diamond that sounds like you’re trying to get genital warts. It’s just a wonderful genre that sadly was murdered by grunge, and at the time, all the shitty dirtbag white people were shamed out of owning guitars, so started rapping instead. Now, all we have is bourgeoisie indy rock left, and it’s all so Trader Joes-y and there’s zero chance you’re gonna do anything fun enough to risk an STD.

SONG OF THE DAY: My God Has a Telephone

A gospel souldies revival song that I was briefly playing the ever-living fuck out of. Somehow I got sucked into the souldies trend. I think I follow too many vintage cholo graffiti accounts on Instagram or some shit. This, even though a recent song pretending to be an olden days song, is still the type of jam that makes you shimmy across the linoleum sort of like a hybrid Charles Bradley/Axl Rose/bantam rooster, while washing the dishes but taking a break to scratch the neck of the black cat pushing up against your leg when the shimmy pauses. Black cats always know what’s up.

SONG OF THE DAY: Angeline

I don’t really listen to electrified guitar-based music made in the past 25 years to be honest. They kinda gentrified that whole genre, but before we all knew what “gentrification” even meant. I have fond memories, being a natural born piece of shit, of degenerate rock music blasting as the background soundtrack as I made poor choices and did reckless things which culminated in horrible scars and wonderful stories and thankfully no deaths (that I’m aware of). Sometimes I wish there was rock to love, that didn’t sound so master’s degreely and certified organic, but you can’t be mad at the way the world goes, or how art changes to match the people trying to figure out how to do art in this crushing existence we done gave ourselves.

W34P0NS W1TH0VT 4W4R3N3SS...

weapons without awareness

manufactures false sense of

expensive security

SONG OF THE DAY: Living for the City

I miss LPs. You know full-blown conceptual LPs but that were limited by the amount of space to press grooves into 12 inches of wax, but could be packaged in sleeves that sometimes opened up gatefold style, or others didn’t but might have a designed sleeve on the inside holding the album. Concepts still happen all the time, but the notion of weaving concepts into tapestry of concept for larger development of a theme is to a large extent lost. I mean, whatever, that’s how this shit works. The way you physically make the art (which in this case is digitally) changes the limitations of it. When we started having CDs, they could add bonus tracks because you could squeeze more minutes into a CD burn than an LP press.

My folks had a healthy record collection when I was young, which I guess is to be expected from young parents who smoked a lot of weed. Some albums intrigued me a lot, because of the overall weight they seemed to hold, in terms of the music as well as the packaging. Outlaw country and old school singer songwriter types were probably the bread and butter of my dad’s records he played, either drunk or hungover on weekend days. But Innervisions got constant play, especially the side with “Living for the City”. My dad famously liked to say the only time he went to New York City was riding a bus back to Virginia from having done a stint in juvie in Ohio when him and a friend stole a Cadillac to meet some girls in Michigan. He was eating in the bus stop café, and some crazy guy banged on the glass at him, trying to get him to come outside and fuck his entire life up forever. My dad detested the city, likely because it was scary. When my folks dropped me off at my dorm when I moved to Richmond to go to college, he was upset he was leaving his oldest kid and only son in the fucking city. In later years, the few times I could convince him to give me a ride to whatever shitty apartment I lived in, he never took the bypass or interstate, always straight up 360 until it turned to Hull Street, and once we got past Chesterfield almost to where Richmond city proper, he’d pull his pistol out of the glove compartment and sit it on the seat next to him, forever convinced shit was about to jump off at any point. Now to his credit, my dad was probably involved in some sketchy shit in Richmond area environs from time to time back in the day, and usually sketchy realms have the ever-present threat of attack come with that. But it tripped me out he’d just be casually riding up Hull Street to Grace, pistol at his side.

When I was a teenager, and we got one of those turntable/cassette recorder combo deals, I showed him how to plug a set of headphones into the mic slot and use it to record yourself talking, and he’d make these mixtapes all the time of him playing records and acting like he was a DJ. This was after my folks had split up and me and him lived in a trailer down the road from the house I grew up in where my mom still lived. Not much more country than that life back then, front door open whenever it was even halfway warm, for anybody passing by to stop and share a shot of Beam or bowl of homegrown. He’d make those mixtapes, and have them set up in the dual cassette recorder, playing back to back, so he wouldn’t have to change the music for ninety minutes, letting one side of each tape go, then just flip them both. And he’d always have “Living for the City” in the mix. Pretty sure I heard on more than one mixtape he made the three song combo of “Longhaired Country Boy” by Charlie Daniels Band followed by “Living for the City” and then “And When I Die” by Blood, Sweat, & Tears. You could probably sum up my dad’s philosophy on the whole fucking world in that three song combo.

I think about what he’d be like if he hadn’t died young, and was still here during this fucked up political time. It’d be so depressing to have to argue with his stubborn ass if he ended up a Trump person, which is hard to figure. He hated cops pretty badly, definitely taught me my deep distrust of the system, so he’d never be good with those blue lives matters types. But who the fuck knows man? People getting brainwashed left and right, thinking obedience to corrupt figurehead is some sort of rebellious act.

The fucked up thing is the story of “Living for the City” isn’t really any different. Michelle Alexander made a whole book about it, essentially, The New Jim Crow. It’s fucked up when you have these artistic statements about important shit, and then forty years later, ain’t shit changed. Art can point out all the problems in the world but as long as we have corrupt assholes in charge, nothing changes. Fuckers.

TH3 M1L1T4R1Z4T10N...

the militarization

of American culture

ain't new; only the guns changed

SONG OF THE DAY: Blikka Bam

Went to a demolition derby at a country ass fair last night, in the borderlands blue ridge areas that make up a certain dynamic of VA/WV/KY/TN/NC - that central Greater Appalachia area. I consider myself culturally a greater appalachian, because I read the relevant parts of that academic dork book, and that shit all made sense and applied to me. Demo derbies have always been big part of trash culture (lol as I explained to my gf's friend last night assorted nonsense about demolition derbies, I remembered to say I was a "trash culture anthropologist"), but in the feature event, the big body welded classics, there was a fuckin' car flying an Army flag and a goddamn Blue Lives Matter flag. This disgusted me, and I was actively and openly rooting against this fucker (unsettling the people I was with, as they looked around at our budding fascist footsoldier environs) because the act of wrecking up fucking cars is a desperate art built from fucked circumstances, and in no way whatsoever should somebody from that environment be flying a goddamned Blue Lives Matter flag (which is thinly veiled racism, and not even veiled fascism). Fuck that.

I'm often thankful my dad died when he did because sometimes I'm afraid if he was still alive he'd be pro-Trump and talking to me about Q Anon shit. As it stands, he was frozen in time and I can hold him as a good-hearted addiction/alcoholism-inclined man who disliked government and cops, which is how it should be. HOW THE FUCK DO YOU LIKE COPS?

Anyways, the stupid blue lives matter car was painted nicer than all the rest, and barely got smashed before breaking down along the way and just sitting there, looking nice to the undiscerning eye, but ultimately fucking useless during actual conflict, so I guess it ended up being a good metaphorical representation of cops. But the abundance of boot-licking foot soldiers for fascist ass military police states who have had their thin suppressed racism be switched into outward expression of lack of tolerance because somehow they feel like they're the ones who have been oppressed because they can't say dumb shit to everybody, the sheer abundance of these types that have been fermented in rural America really has started to freak me out. On a personal sense, I'm not into having guns, because of personal history and shit that has happened, but I've never been against them in principle, although I think the way people's brains are broken as fuck today, we probably don't need everybody having assault rifles.

And yet, these blue lives matter fascist adjacent fuckers who somehow think they are about god and freedom even though they're thinking is full of judgment and hate and fear, the preponderance of them, and how armed up some of them are, it has me worried about the immediate future. It's just dumbass message board people going wild with these shootings so far, who fell down rabbitholes and broke their brain too hard to think straight. But wait until something happens (or some bullshit leader like the one we got dog whistles people into action, around an election or something) and all these militia wannabe fuckers with blank gazes go wild. They are the fuckin' police, or at least cousins with the police, so it's not like any public officers gonna stop that shit right away.

Thus I'm re-evaluating my guns stance, on personal level. I think more folks need to have better critical thinking skills (to reduce the blank gazes) as well as weaponry skills (to reduce the sitting ducks I see on the horizon). Writing poetry and practicing shooting - draw up that venn diagram, and where it intersects you'll find your real soldiers.

SONG OF THE DAY: Tahoultine

contemplating the concept of only a half-life has passed 
with a six-pack's worth of decades (after the drive home) 
to still be a life 
writing prayerpoemraps about basically fuckthat 
in its entirety, attempting to not think 
with poison culture brain, trying to see 
if I can still hear my heart 
find a mountain to machete the kudzu 
and an AR15 to keep clean enough 
for when the devils come from the crossroads 
the four-leaf clovers of progressive avoidance 
interstates and highways intersecting 
with intersectional theory ignored completely 
except for the homeless camped in the woods 
that VDOT can't afford to contract immigrant labor 
to weed eat and gather the trash 
climate change blew the budget during Aquarius season 

contemplating the concept that these legs and ankles and hips 
which all ache from the suicide expressed as self-destruction 
expressed as ridiculous recklessness which makes for 
good tales and better scars 
that I can keep walking rightleftrightleft 
chipping away towards whatever horizon is enticing 
me to not climb into the graves dug for me everywhere 
made it through southside virginia mine fields 
where so many I've loved suffer self-inflicted wounds 
because the devils teach you from the freshest age 
it's all your own fault it's all your own fault 
it's all your own fault 
so we end up trying to kill that voice inside our head 
repeating what we was toldtaughtshown to be a type of true 
which consumes
trying to silence them voices with bullets bowls pills 
chemical fogs and digital distractions 
vodka shots at lunchtime from the bottle behind the seat 

born dead broke deadbroke and miserable for multiple generations 
so that life liberty and happiness carrot don't mean shit any more 
so bring out your sticks and stones 
chanting la ilaha illallah while my machete swings 
through kudzu and blackberry clusters gone too far right 
when the devils finally decide to come for me too 
no problem dying because been half-dead already 
contemplating how the half-life is possible 
when I been half-dead the whole time 

F34TH3R3D H41R 1N R3FL3CT10N...

feathered hair in reflection

of dusty mirror; basement

apartment has guns, roses

TH3 F3T1SH1Z4T10N 0F...

the fetishization of

guns lacking in actual

orgasmic experience

SH0VT 0VT T0 FR33D0M F1GHT3RS...

shout out to freedom fighters

liberating the global

south from northern aggression

WH1STL1NG L1K3 4XL R0S3 WH1L3...

whistling like Axl Rose while

shuffling through thickets along

well-concealed stone railroad bridge