SONG OF THE DAY: Love is the Way (kudzu'd)

I’d like to imagine one day I could get to a place in life where me and my partner was on vacation in matching tracksuits, preferably Sergio Tacchini, maybe velour but maybe crinkle nylon. They don’t ever really seem to drop purple velour in the shades I’d prefer… too earth toned and not space brained enough. But that’s a serious ass relationship goal there, matching tracksuits, riding the train through like Turkey or Texas or some shit, sitting in the café car casually just enjoying some train coffee and talking with each other, drawing folks in to our bullshit.
I made matching shirts one time, silver iron-on letters, one that said SUPER FREAK and the other said SUPER FREAKY, because it played on that phrase in suggestive ways. I let my girl pick first, to see which way she wanted to go in rocking those. She chose SUPER FREAK, true Leo power bottom style, so I got the SUPER FREAKY. We only wore them out once, to the fuckin’ Barbie movie, which is like the only new release movie I’ve seen since one of the Planet of the Apes reboots, maybe the 2011 one. In other words, I don’t be going to the movie theater all that much.
But my girl don’t even wear that shirt no more. She put it on a mannequin in a rustic studio cabin on her compound, which to be fair, is a big sign of respect. But she don’t ever wear it, and squirrels fuck around in that cabin more than humans do. I pulled my SUPER FREAKY out last night, but it just made me sad. Not because my girlfriend doesn’t wear the matching one, but because they don’t make silver velour that sparkles iridescently that could be made into a really nice tracksuit. All this artificial intelligence bullshit, and pompous cyber-Yakub dipshits with too much money to be scheming, and I still gotta buy tracksuits from 30 years ago off Ebay because the technology and color schemes have gone backwards. Having a society almost entirely run by boring ass wealthy white dudes is a mistake in the all obvious ways, but there’s a vast multitude of overlooked reasons this has failed us all.
I try not to get angry about it in a reactionary way, though. Gotta let my heart lead the way, not my disgruntled brain. It’s hard some days though. But that’s why I put glittery silver and gold iron-on letters onto t-shirts. You can’t wear SUPER FREAKY in sparkle letters and not feel a little bit lighter about the dystopia. Try it. You don’t have to put SUPER FREAKY, but just get you a big box of iron-on letters, and buy up all the half-priced quality cotton t-shirts you can at the Goodwill on the Sunday markdown, and do it up. You’ll feel better. Trust me.

SONG OF THE DAY: Girls, I Got 'Em Locked (kudzu'd)

I’m looking for someone who can airbrush overalls. If you are skilled at airbrushing and already have the equipment, get in touch with me, because I need about 8 pairs of airbrushed overalls. It’ll be a collaborative process, for the right person. No Earth signs (Zodiac) please. I don’t collaborate well with Earth signs.

SONG OF THE DAY: Straight out the Jungle (kudzu'd)

Native Tongues is a legendary hip hop collective crew, which had a supersized influence on later artists, but in actuality had limited full-length releases, despite their cultural popularity. The first actual full-length album dropped by anybody Native Tongues was Straight out the Jungle, by The Jungle Brothers, officially released by Warlock Records on November 8, 1988. It didn’t sell a ton of records, had a pretty rough sound quality compared to major label releases of the time, but still stands as a legendary release.
February 2 of the following year, De La Soul would drop 3 Feet High and Rising, a collaborative effort with producer extraordinaire, Prince Paul, which came out on Tommy Boy Records. It immediately took off, and was certified gold (500,000 units sold) by the end of May. I bought a bootleg copy of it at a truck stop on 360 near Keysville, Virginia, so it obviously moved more than RIAA knew. The “Me, Myself & I” single went gold as well, on DJ Screw day (June 27th, but in the decade before anybody would know who DJ Screw was).
November 7 of 1989, the next two Native Tongues releases would drop on the same day, with the Jungle Brothers’ second album, Done by the Forces of Nature, coming out on Warner Brothers, them having made enough noise to get signed (and getting a little bit of a push from Kool DJ Red Alert, who executive produced the album). And Tommy Boy released Queen Latifah’s All Hail the Queen the same day, the first woman MC representing Native Tongues crew, with both albums getting the aesthetic crew push of De La’s wave of popularity. Both did decent within the conscious hip hop head community, but didn’t break out to bigger mainstream success.
On April 10, 1990, A Tribe Called Quest dropped their debut, People’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm, on Jive Records. Following in the clever conscious playful rebellious nature of their Native Tongues comrades, ATCQ’s first album was an immediate critical success, though the mainstream sales did not immediately follow. On October 30 of 1990, Monie Love became the second Native Tongues female act to debut, with her dropping Down to Earth, on the same Warner Brothers label that had signed the Jungle Brothers. (This one featured some of the earliest production credits of Native Tongues’ associates and honorary members, The Beatnuts.) It, however, did not blow up with the normals (though “Monie In the Middle” remains an all-time banger, and features sample interpolations from songs by Coke Escovedo and salsa superstar Willie Colon, likely showing that early Beatnuts fingerprint on the beat behind the scenes).
A full two years after their debut blew up, on May 14, 1991, De La dropped De La Soul is Dead, again working with Prince Paul, which was owned in a corporate structure that now included both Tommy Boy and Warner Brothers Records. It stayed offbeat compared to mainstream rap, but was a bit darker and heavier than regular folks wanted. They still wanted that old happy ass De La (and still do, to this day, actually). Within two months though, it was certified gold (500,000 units sold) as well.
The fall of 1991 saw three more Native Tongues albums come out. First up, on September 3, was Queen Latifah’s sophomore release, Nature of a Sista’, still on Tommy Boy. All Hail the Queen had almost gone gold (it still sits somewhere in the upper 400 thousands of units sold, so it might get that gold certification if “Ladies First” ever goes viral or gets used prominently in a movie), but the second album only moved about half as much as the first.
September 24, A Tribe Called Quest dropped their sophomore effort, The Low End Theory, still on Jive, which got the ultra elusive 5 Mic rating from The Source. And while it didn’t blow up immediately with the mainstream masses, it was a solid hip hop hit, with a couple standout singles, “Check the Rhime” and “Scenario”. Native Tongues had few posse songs, with “Buddy” off De La’s first album being the notable exception. “Scenario” was another, featuring Leaders of the New School, who – thought not considered full members of Native Tongues – were always associates, and dropped their own first album the July before.
October 22, Black Sheep dropped A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing, considered full-fledged Native Tongues members, on Mercury Records. I was in my first fall semester at VCU, so copped the tape of this at the old Mister Music store on Grace Street (next to where would eventually become Ipanema). I hadn’t yet discovered the wonderfulness of Willie’s downtown yet, so was still learning to expand my circles around Richmond. Black Sheep had Q-Tip on one track, and the kid member of Native Tongue, Chi-Ali, on another. He was next in line anyways.
1992 started strong for Native Tongues. The Low End Theory was certified gold in February, and A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing followed suit in April. In between, on March 24, Chi-Ali dropped The Fabulous Chi-Ali, on Relativity Records, with much of production done by The Beatnuts. The widest reaching posse cut to that point came out on that album, “Let the Horns Blow”, which had Chi Ali, Dres from Black Sheep, Trugoy from De La, Phife Dawg from ATCQ, and Fashion who would eventually be with The Beatnuts. (Actually, the real takeaway from Chi-Ali probably was The Beatnuts getting signed to Relativity as well, and recording their underground classic Intoxicated Demons EP in the months after Chi-Ali’s release came out.)
The crew put nothing else out in 1992, and then Bill Clinton was elected, and the progressive racist Southerner contingent, as led by James Carville, pushed for the suppression of conscious hip hop at Bohemian Grove’s Winter Solstice Bacchanalia towards the end of 1992. And nothing was ever the same, nor as simple. Queen Latifah eventually became a movie star, and Busta Rhymes of Leaders of the New School got a prominent Illuminati push later in the ‘90s, because his delivery style allowed for subliminal layering of suggestive phrases within the song, doubled up by visual triggers in Hype Williams videos. The Low End Theory would become the first Native Tongues release to be certified platinum (a million units sold), in February of 1995. People’s Instinctive… got certified gold the following January. And 3 Feet High and Rising went official platinum in April of 2000, after the Clinton cartel was tagging back out to the Bush cartel to continue the globalization of the American empire through a more militant push, justified by knocking down the twin towers. Chi-Ali ended up in prison for manslaughtering a dude (legally speaking, he was not convicted of murder). And in September of 2021, as Native Tongues had long since rolled through progressive white consciousness, NPR rolled out some nostalgic accolades, which helped push both “Scenario” and “Check the Rhime” to gold status with the RIAA.
But before it all fell apart, before the internal drama of ATCQ, and the record label drama De La Soul felt, to where they now own their own music but it’s released in a different form than it originally artistically was (due to the intellectual property rights holders of some of the samples), before that prescient line in “Check the Rhime” where Q-Tip lays out, “Industry rule number four thousand and eighty / record company people are shady,” there was that first release, way back in 1988. Straight out the Jungle.
And the first song on that was a song of the same title, with both Afrika Baby Bam and Mike Gee dropping a verse, before a recollecting via vocal sample of those classic Melle Mel lines from “The Message” half a decade earlier in time, but decades ago in terms of hip hop aesthetics. “It’s like a jungle sometimes, it makes me wonder, how I keep from going under,” four times over, and that third verse which lays out the times we still seem to be living in. “The animals and cannibals will do you in. Cut your throat (echo), stab you in the back… the untamed animal just don’t know how to act. It’s unbelievable (echo), uncivilized (echo), and now I’m starting to realize, danger in the jungle, the jungle means danger (echo), tension intense, hearts filled with anger (echo).” This remains the foundational track for the movement, before the bigger record deals came along, before every kid in America started wearing African medallions (including white kids), before truck stops in rural America were bootlegging their releases, with a raw, poorly mastered sound… and there’s something to that phrase. Once you are looped in with the Yakubian bean counters, you become far more mastered. The Jungle Brothers came straight out the jungle, raw as fuck, and this – to me – remains the most Native Tongues track possibly ever made. I hope to play it at Bill Clinton’s grave while I’m pissing on it at some point before I myself die.

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

We don’t have enough funky assed people involved in building robots anymore. It’s all assholes nowadays. Fascist police robots, tricky salesmen robots, neurologically manipulative sex robots… it’s all bad stuff. Where are the chill robot dreamers, who’s heart still has that ancient boom bap of the ultimate goal being so that we can kick back and fuckin’ enjoy ourselves, all together… not just manipulate everybody else? Makes me pretty sad, to be honest. The dystopia is so cheap and gaudy and all stone façades and resin spray painted gold, and there’s never any barrel fires or twinkle-eyed revolutionary love interests or even ally robots who have their microchips of artificial intelligence based on empathy and love instead of the coding of the grifter con artist. Oh well, fuck it. More copper to steal and sell to the junkman one day, I guess.

SONG OF THE DAY: The One Who's Hurting Is You (kudzu'd)

Been listening to a lot of DJ Screw lately, probably a symptom of swimming through so much mental mud. But then also I thought about how "Wish You Were Here" by Pink Floyd is such an absolutely perfect song for certain feelings like when you are swimming through mental mud all the time but also living in a poorly-run dystopia during the dying era of a self-important empire. And then I remember string theory and know that somewhere, an alien version of myself is driving an old shitbox while bumping a DJ Screw tape where he's done a 14-minute extended chop of "Wish You Were Here" that blends into Master P's "Miss My Homies", with Lil Randy somehow shouting out DJ Screw and giving him an RIP on DJ Screw's own mixtape. I wish I could download that grey tape, but I lost my dial-up connection to the Space Archives, so I can't currently get shit out of the multiverse. And you can forget about finding anything like that on a bullshit ass streaming service. Streaming of conscious will always be stronger than streaming service. And the only cost of the former is being forced to focus on your own fucked-up thinking.

SONG OF THE DAY: Time (kudzu'd)

I formed a band with the bullfrogs down behind the house in the woods called Los Loungers. We’re an acapella doo-wop group that sings soul versions of old bluegrass ballads. I dream of singing bass, but let’s be real, singing with a pack of bullfrogs in the primordial wasteland of a small Blue Ridge creek running through an old industrial site… my bass ain’t got nothing on them boys! If I was in a purely human group, I’d probably be mid-range, baritone or something, but being it’s just bullfrogs and me (and a couple peepers when they ain’t fuckin’ off), I do tenor. We don’t have a lead singer, because we’re socialist doo-wop, and all of us have equal parts. I’ve been trying to find other humans to get involved, but honestly, I don’t like showing real live humans my secret magical spots. So I’ve been leaving offerings out to the spirits, and trying to go back there and sing with the bullfrogs at twilight, when the veil is thin and lightning bugs are making twinkle flickers. I’ve sensed some spirits coming closer, and the offerings tend to be gone, usually chicken leg quarters because I buy so many when they’re on markdown, I’ve got plenty to spare for the aether. But so far, no spirits have joined our little doo-wop group in the woods back by Ivy Creek. If you happen to be wandering through that area, to one of the swimming quarries, and you hear a ghostly “I’ll Fly Away”, don’t be afraid, that’s just me and the boys making some noise. Doo-wop is underrated though. I see it making a comeback one day once civilization decays a little more and we’re not so extremely online. It’s always been a top notch standing around a burn barrel musical genre.

SONG OF THE DAY: Sound System (kudzu'd)

Today, I was eating chick peas straight out the fuckin’ can, and all the cats were nervously circulating around where I was sitting because the can opening sounds made them think it was wet food time. The whole scene was kinda pitiful, them and me, and I don’t know, I’m just sharing it here so that is there is a heaven with a giant book of all our deeds to answer for in life, but they’ve made some sort of artificial intelligence integration into the book by now, I wanna make sure my data shows I readily admit my flaws. I know I ain’t perfect lol.

SONG OF THE DAY: Diamonds & Pearls (kudzu'd)

I have a ghost in my house that either just loves music or used to be a DJ or some shit, and they (I don’t know the gender of ghosts) sing in this low pitch sweet melodious voice that sounds like an angel from a dragging record. And it used to be the ghost was outside my head when they were singing, but somehow, being a ethereal spirit, they seem to be partially inside my head when they sing now, but only when I’m in the house, like they’ve got a sound system (furthering my “they used to be a DJ” theory) and they wired my skull into the system, but when I’m not here, I’m not connected. This is probably more common than people realize, as the whole “ear worm” theory is akin to this, and I made that connection because I thought I had gotten the Grateful Dead’s “Loser” as an ear worm, where I was always singing it or hearing it my head. But then I realized it was the probably a DJ ghost who got it in my head, because they’re always singing, “I can tell the Queen of Diamonds by the way she shines.” It just plays in the house and my head all the time, throughout the day, and when they hit that warble singing they do, the way it bounces around the far corners of upstairs on the opposite side of the house while simultaneously playing inside my head, I don’t know man, it’s a type of stereophonic that we ain’t made audiophile equipment to replicate yet.

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

One creepy thing (done by slow creep) that has happened over the course of the past decade, at an accelerated rate the past couple, is the loss of public spaces. At a federal level, this is done out of pure greed (exploitation of natural resources being considered more important than everyday motherfuckers enjoying collective space). And at the localized level, this is done as reactionary fear of homelessness, and rather than helping people that ain’t got houses have some houses, getting mad at them for not having houses and ending up somewhere out in the open, together, as the human has always tended to gather. Charlottesville, which I live near, is about to clear out a homeless encampment by Free Bridge because it got too out in the open with itself, rather than hiding in the margins. Local business owners complained, and like that federal level shit I mentioned before, the rights of dollar bills are always gonna trump the rights of human beings in what America has become (where it thinks somehow that a Creator of All Things in The Universe has specifically blown a kiss at us, which is some weird ass shit to believe when you consider the immensity of the Universe, and how long even the Earth has had people and governments and civilizations and how young the United States still is).
But I’m writing these thoughts on a Sunday afternoon (word to A Lighter Shade of Brown), and I ain’t trying to complain about *waves hands around at the current cultural vibes* All This. Let’s keep it positive, and practical. There’s still public spaces – parks that are local, state, federal, and even spaces that are abandoned by the industrially minded propped up by their dollar bill stacks, and all these spaces are perfect for occupying with lounge. To occupy with lounge is to take your asses there and be leisurely about it, rather than confrontational, where you’re cooking out or throwing horseshoes or walking on a walk path or practicing free throws on a basketball goal of various conditions. Get a pick-up game of soccer going, or really, cooking out is underrated as fuck. Cooking food in public, having sides spread out on picnic tables, folks gathering to eat and talk and enjoy some time out in the randomness of public… it instills good feelings in your soul. And in fact, I’d suggest maybe we need to be militantly leisurely, still keeping it non-confrontational (because the assholes who have poisoned everything with their Culture Wars love a confrontation), and just cook out all the fuckin’ time, everywhere. Old soul is great for the Bluetooth, but I ain’t gonna be mad at different choices, because a public gathering with food really puts a genre to the real test. Cumbia, reggaeton, classic country, old school… all that shit sounds GREAT in that type of environment. Pop country, viral rap, radio pop… all that type of stuff feels way out of place in an open and leisurely public space, because all those genres are manipulated and engineered and massagers of mental algorithms.
Damn, I got sidetracked complaining about the vast conspiracy of interwoven yakubian tricks again. Suffice it to say I suggest we all just go sit in the park, and try to get our Park Time data (which we’ll have to guesstimate since no data is captured) up to our Screen Time stats, and then beyond. I truly believe when we’re all sitting around at the park more than we’re sitting around on our phones, then everything will be better. Of course, you might be scrolling your phone at the park, so that Venn diagram starts to overlap, but still… build up the Park Time minutes, cut back on the Screen Time minutes, cause grills to make good smells floating through the air, and we all get to practice making large batches of our favorite sides more, too. Shit man, it’s win win win. And on top of all that, we’re all already gonna be in those spaces, so the assholes will think twice about kicking everybody out and privatizing it all into a metaphysical wood chipper that spits out dollar bills, but only for a small handful of greedy bastards. I bet them motherfuckers don’t even know how to grill up leg quarters on a firepit. Those useless fucks.

SONG OF THE DAY: Evolution (kudzu'd)

I was walking yesterday in a place I barely knew by car, and hardly by foot at all, and it was hot enough that I was sweating from the inside out before I even hit the outside with 50 steps. There was plenty of human developed concrete gridlocks, but also still plenty of greenery to various stages of wilding out mixed in, and man them southern humidity cicadas were KICKING. That is a sound and a half right there, one that sampling and programmed beats according to time metrics just can’t really recreate well because it has that innate as fuck crescendo and descent back into momentary silence before popping back up little by little. I always wonder about the psychology of the different parts of the cicada chorus. Are there little bugs bound to start that chirp up early as fuck, and the ones who bring it back out of silence first? Why does it go down? What disruptors cause the collective volume to drop like that? I was thinking about all this as I walked through, when really I wanted to sit down there, in the shadiest but still too damn hot spot I could find, and just vibe out for three to four generations, and acquire more understanding of the how and why of cicada knowledge. I don’t speak their language so I assume it would take at least one generation just to begin comprehending their sounds at a basic elementary level. Then again, what the fuck do I know? I’m just a self-ordained primate polluted by egotism of false individuality.

SONG OF THE DAY: Riding High (kudzu'd)

This track was a Top Ten R&B track in 1978, and the title song off Faze-O’s debut album, and came to my consciousness because it was one of them old school funk songs that DJ Screw loved to throw on a grey tape from time to time. As the internet digitized all those old grey tapes, it got mistakenly labeled as Rick James, not Faze-O, so for years, when I bumped this on an old eyephone turned into retro eyepod due to it being obsolete as a smart phone already, the yakubian data contained therein always acted like it was Rick James playing this song. At some point somewhere over the past decade of my life, I came across a 45 copy of the Faze-O original, I grabbed the fuck out of it. A clean copy, too. Since then, Galaxy Sound issued an “edit” which is new-fangled talk for bootleg, and I got that too, but I still play the original whenever I’m doing a slowed down set of Screw’s favorite old funk jams, like this, “Don’t Stop the Music” by Yarborough & Peoples, “I’m Comin’ Out” by Diana Ross, and others I ain’t thinking about right now, I go with the old dusty original, always. I’m pretty old and dusty myself, and ain’t nobody making no edits of me. But this song is such a sweet banger of a track slowed down.
FYI, whenever I write about one of these 45s I’ve ripped, I find some old ass footage somewhere to make a video for the background, rather than using automated bullshit. This is just some old history cartoon I found on archive.org, and I always pink/purple neon out the color aesthetic, and throw that Southern Gothicc Futurism tag at the bottom. Layers upon layers of nonsense processes, that nobody ever sees or knows about, just like Screw slowing down his 4-track recordings into a Maxell dub deck. I love a good chaos agent of creative bullshit. And even in the age of artificial intelligence, us chaos agents will always keep riding on a higher vibration than the minimalist predictable output that comes out one of those things. To create fucked up shit is to be godly; to type prompts into a computer is to be a reactionary dullard. You might love how some of the shit you’re throwing at the wall is sticking, but you’re still just throwing shit at the wall.

SONG OF THE DAY: Wild Style Theme Rap No. 1 (kudzu'd)

The power went out the other day, right at 5:30 or so, after a big thunderstorm blew through. As it got twilight, I laid on the screened in back porch bed and vibed to the quiet. No riding mowers buzzing around, no compounded hums from the electrical wires buzzing in all our homes and overhead… just a deep, chill, settled down quiet. The folks two doors down got a generator and generally they get it fired up, but for whatever reason, they hadn’t yet. And being all the shit in the fridge was gonna be okay for a little while, made me wish we had deep quiet like that every now and then. My house is never that quiet when power’s running to it.
Of course, by the next morning, them folks had their generator running, and so did someone else, and people had begun panicking to get back to normal. I liked it still (still). It was true wild. Often times, we as humans use “wild” to mean out of order, or lacking the expected order, so we assume that means chaotic and bad. But this wild was just a deeply peaceful silence. And other times, shit we call “wild” is just seeking joy or happiness or living human lives by a different set of inspirations and motivators than what is considered “normal”, which honestly ain’t even normal so much as what we’re collectively trained to think like. Wild style ain’t necessarily bad, or chaotic; it’s just different than the established order to things, and usually unwanted by those in control of the established order. But them power dudes got the vast system of glorified extension cords humming again, and I could quickly enough poison my wild stream of consciousness with trending algorithms and flat world realities again. I was wondering about how my stream of consciousness would flow in true wild, not tethered to or trained by all this bullshit my whole goddamn life.
I guess we’ll never know. Or we already do and don’t like the answer. Or aren’t allowed to accept it.

SONG OF THE DAY: Some Woman's Bedroom (kudzu'd)

An interesting (to me) aspect of U.S. American culture is how the path becomes off the beaten path which then becomes forgotten and perhaps demolished and renewed in an attempt to regain that euphoric newness. Downtown Norfolk, and Norfolk itself, gets lost in the larger bubblings of “The 757”. But a lot of sub-culturally historic shit went on down there. In terms of tattooing, Cap Coleman came to Norfolk around 1918, the downtown Main Street of Norfolk was one of the more wild and wide opened places in the country, and definitely state of Virginia. His tattooing shop set up and was a mainstay there for decades, spreading tattooing worldwide through the sailors that would (and still do) get stationed in Norfolk.
Not far from there, first up Church Street, but later right around the corner on Granby, Frank Guida operated a booming record store, specializing in all music. A Sicilian who grew up in The Bronx, he had history singing in Harlem night clubs before coming to Norfolk, so he was an avid supporter of jazz and R&B music, and in fact, got involved in the music scene, and helped grow what would become known as the Norfolk Sound. Primary creative force behind that sound was Lenis Guess, who started his own label and began promoting and managing his own work as well as others. He had his hand in a bunch of great music, either as songwriter, performer, or recording engineer. Eventually, he moved to New York City, as most folks building scenes “off the beaten path” are tempted to do, trying to find the fame they seek in life. But Guess never got the props he should’ve gotten. A couple retrospectives have come out in recent years, including a 45 box set called The Norfolk Sound, put out Soul Jazz Records in the U.K. This is not from that box set, but an independent single, seemingly released as part of Guida’s label Legrand Records, back around 2000. The copy I got (can’t remember where, but it was in physical person, and I remember being stoked as fuck to find it) had plenty of scribbles, with some Xes on the B-side, “Some Woman’s Bedroom” with a note saying to not play on the air. That made me think it was older than it likely was, but who knows? Who the fuck knows? Lenis Guess passed away in 2021.
U.S. highway 460 begins down in Norfolk, and these downtown spaces used to be the eastern terminus of this formerly major highway, long before the interstate system was built. I know much of 460 well, to this day, from The 757, up through where I grew up Southside Virginia, with a bunch of my family including my dad and grandparents buried in a cemetery right along it near Rice. And I’ve driven that road slowly but happily avoiding the interstates, down to Roanoke and Southwest Virginia, on into West Virginia, many many times over recent decades. 460 still goes all the way to Kentucky, almost to Indiana, and before a 1976 decommissioning, used to go through the crazy spaces of southern Indiana and Illinois, all the way to East St. Louis, before terminating at the Mississippi River.
Conceivably, you could still piece together that path, from the Mississippi at East St. Louis, looking across at the Arch from the casino they built that’s supposed to resurrect that particular dying space (but hasn’t yet). And you could plod your way along these forgotten and abandoned paths, all the way through the southern Midwest (a strange place, for sure… the land of death matches), on through the heart of Appalachia, into Virginia, through all the less glamorous and non-prestigious parts of my home state, all the way back to Norfolk, not quite to the Atlantic, but right there at Ocean View Avenue, where the Chesapeake Bay serves as a poor man’s Atlantic Ocean anyways. I’d actually love to do that trip, slow as molasses, to allow the deep vibrations of all that remains, despite us calling much of it abandoned. It’s never abandoned, so much as what’s left behind ain’t what the people in charge believe is important. Fuck them.
When I play this song slowed down, those vibes start to buzz in unseen ways, like cicadas of the soul, and the Born to Lose Thunderfoot tattoo on my shoulder starts to throb, spreading into my chest, I guess where the heart would be since it leans that way a little in actual physiology. Humans ain’t ever been wholly symmetrical. But when I’m playing it in the right conditions, I get to throbbing in my Born to Lose heart zone, and I remember how much has been forgotten, in the name of keeping everything bright and shiny and new. And I remember how much all that old shit is way more important than whatever is being trended into my consciousness right now. There’s far more truth in dust than shine. That’s always been true.

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

I came upon an abandoned warehouse full of thick wood scraps, a few miles off the beaten path but still along the iron path, which don't run quite so much these days. I figured this was a sign from the church of level track, so I been making signs with them scraps. I can only haul so much off during each pilgrimage, but I been bringing 'em home, priming 'em up with scrap can paint from my Manifesting Wilderness Spirit homies, then painting Mark 10:25 on each of 'em, and nailing them to trees here or there, where it feels important to remind folks, but also where ain't nobody with a legal eyeball bearing down on me. John 3:16 gets all the roadside attention, and it's definitely a great line. But what with all the prosperity gospels proliferating like kudzu through the foundation of American institutions right now, as a society, we definitely done lost sight of Mark 10:25. And I don't wanna spell out the verse's words, make it too obvious, because really it's like a hint left for the seeker, who then searches it out and finds the ancient lesson that's always allegedly been part of our cultural foundation, but ain't nobody paid attention to this bezel of wisdom since the days of Reagan. That warehouse in the middle of nowhere ain't gonna run out of wood no time soon, and I ain't gonna run out of fingers willing to applicate paint, and inshallah I hope to scatter many many more along familiar 434 roads, and more and more in 540, 804, 276, 304, 681, 252, 301, and 336 forays, as my life conditions permit. I don't dare wander too close to the 202 heart of false idolatry; I ain't strong enough. But the more Mark 10:25 marks I can leave can hopefully cause reflection by folks headed in that direction. We all do what we can, when living right, to try and help the world be as beautiful as it is supposed to be.

SONG OF THE DAY: I'm Just Your Clown (kudzu'd)

When I attempt to calculate where I’m at standing next to the pyramid of abstract numbers stored inside Yakub’s fingerprints, to contemplate if my class transition was strong enough in two-thirds of a generation to be able to “retire” like they do on the TV shows, it looks iffy at best, which to be honest, is much better than most of my folks have known. When you become the first generation seemingly with some work and paycheck stability, America reminds you it’s a carnival game, and the carney lenders and zero percent interest havers and all them types start yelling at you, because capitalism desperately wants to break us all down to zero before we die. But I’ve known sleeping outside normal walls, and I ain’t gonna live what’s left of my life afraid of what could go wrong, even if the con is set up to go exactly that way. I never did get a chance to ride trains, and though our American world ain’t really geared the same ways it was a century ago, I can stand at a busy intersection around a big town’s skirt, and cast those cardboard sign trotlines, to panhandle my way through a day. It ain’t nothing new. People like me been waiting for nothing for as long as they sewed white stars into a blue fabric sky that was far more mythology than reality. Sleeping on the ground is just getting back to the Earth and returning a dust a little ahead of the reaper showing up, making that transition a little easier. If need be, I can be that funny little futuristic hobo clown with the sad face, camping in the woods behind the big box store that survived these conditions better than me, because the railroad tracks became interstates, and the town depot is a Wal-Mart. I wonder if the carnival game will become so abstract that they have historic strip malls as tourist destinations for folks to swim through the romanticized nostalgia of how easy life used to be, when all they had to do was drive their supersized vehicles through metastasizing suburbs to their favorite chains? Could the con possibly last that long? Maybe. There’s a whole lotta marks out here still.

SONG OF THE DAY: Lonely Tramp (kudzu'd)

I have been lazy about wearing deodorant every day, and now I’ve got a natural funk too strong for deodorant it seems. Like even if I clean my dirty ass up, and put on deodorant like I’m about to go to court or a job interview, an hour or so later, the funk starts to seep through. It’s also hot as fuck, plus wildfire smoke blowing in, so I’m sure it’s all connected. Who the fuck cares though? We live in a dystopia. Am I expected to smell like cyborg lavender sprouts during a dystopia? That seems unreasonable. But even if I’m assimilated by the false civilization of society to be ashamed of it, when I walk a good couple miles along railroad tracks in the soaring climate done changed heat, and get all extra stanky, and am carrying a great metal bucket I found along the tracks from them doing work, and have it filled up with exactly 8 clasps and 13 spikes (the magic number of both), that stank I have when I get back to wherever I started, I personally find it a pleasant stank. And when you read enough about the science of pheromones, you realize that’s probably not an unnatural thing at all. And yet, ultimately I am assimilated into society, so I rub the cyborg lavender sprouts under my arms even longer and harder, and hope nobody notices my raw humanity.

SONG OF THE DAY: Whatcha See Is Whatcha Get (kudzu'd)

Cut some grass today, for the first time in over a month. I know that’s so because the last time I cut it was the first time this year, and it was the end of May, because I was mad at global warming and the world in general that I had to cut grass before June got here. But the combination of it being an extreme drought and my own general laziness allowed me to not having cut it since, until earlier today. Even then, I only cut the back and one side because I didn’t feel like moving my railroad spike spray painting station (which is the leftover hulking frame of a patio table that a tree limb fell on and busted the top and all the glass) and the spray paint milk crate, nor did I feel like wrestling with the heavy ass entertainment stand that I put in the front yard, meaning to use as a shelf on the back porch (which is actually the front porch), but then I just left it out in the weather and it’s all fucked up now and probably even heavier, just standing on its side in abandonment. The cats use it as an outdoors scratching post though, and it helped me not feel obligated to cut the front yard today, too, which again, could be called laziness, although I also posit the theory that nature and Earth itself is kinda lazy, and if humans were lazier, the Earth would be in way better condition. Being productive is not natural, and in fact, we attempt to make the Earth be productive at a rate that far exceeds its natural cycles. We don’t even do this out of some moral imperative to feed everybody either; we do it for profit, and whatever can’t be sold is tossed into the trash, because it’s not profitable to risk any liability by giving it away for free to those in need. There’s an old book I love called The Right to Be Lazy, by a French socialist Paul Lafargue, who says in his opening salvo, “A strange delusion possesses the working classes of the nations where capitalist civilization holds its sway. This delusion drags in its train the individual and social woes which for two centuries have tortured sad humanity. This delusion is the love of work, the furious passion for work, pushed even to the exhaustion of the vital force of the individual and his progeny. Instead of opposing this mental aberration, the priests, the economists and the moralists have cast a sacred halo over work.” I’ve got this book somewhere upstairs, and I hope my eyeballs magically find it, going up there to fuck around on the turntables at some point the next few days. I’d like to put this in the bathroom, where all my best reading is still done (like any truly philosophically lazy person). Anyways, there’s more grass to be cut, always, just like there’s more dishes to be washed, and clothes to be folded, and bills to be paid, and lackadaisical hopes to be put on the backburner of life until you have run out of time and find out you have squandered all your idle moments chasing the carrot on a stick called productivity, hustle and ground to death, into the black flecks of pepper that flavor the inheritances of leisure lifestyles of the wealthy. Our wasted lives of labor allow them their leisure, and all we get is promises of an eternity we can’t touch while here on Earth to enjoy it. In other words, I’m not cutting the front yard today.

SONG OF THE DAY: Slow Down (kudzu'd)

I prefer slowed down music not just for aesthetic tastes, but as resistance to the business as usual status quo operational status of civilization, that has poisoned us all to believe we must “hustle and grind” ourselves like gears, and be as efficient as machines. Humans were never meant to be no fuckin’ machines, and we all got music innate to our heart, but we’re taught that it has to be commodity to be sold, but even then it was record labels or now streaming oligarchs who make the fattest slice of the pie, never the artist. And of course, because we are all fighting the riptides of capitalism that are always ready to tear us from whatever precarious stability we’ve managed to cobble together, at the first medical emergency or legal issue or really anything, and dump us outside of the system, penniless and hopeless, regardless of the efficiency with which we lived our life, and blame it on us – that it is our own fault we could not swim against the unforgiving riptides channeled against us. It’s all a pretty disgusting and slimy way to have built a civilization, so keep up whatever appearances you have to – make the devil and his supervisory staff believe you are hustling and grinding away, but fuck off at every chance. Don’t just embezzle back the minutes, STEAL BACK YEARS, and move slow as possible so that one lifetime feels like the benefit of three. And sure, I can already hear somebody complaining that why would they want to extend the horrors of existence, why would you slow time down to suffer the indignities of having to work within a system that doesn’t value you? Don’t hate the player, hate the game. Slow down, forever, and smash a motherfuckin’ clock whenever you can, especially one folks have had to clock into. One should never have to clock into anything. What a horrible phrase to have become part of our shared lexicon. So we slow it down to usher in Southern Gothicc Futurism, which moves as slow as kudzu, and invades the devilish master plans of the lords of the land with a thick contrary nature that says, “Fuck y’all, I ain’t doing shit.”

SONG OF THE DAY: Drums of Steel (kudzu'd)

My pops was a wizard of a small engine mechanic, cobbling things together that others couldn’t comprehend. His work truck (the truck from his work) was magical because it had a lift gate, and I used to be excited on the occasional times he brought it home, riding that hydraulic lift up like the little hick I was in the back yard. That truck always had ramps too, for the loading and unloading of riding mowers, to take back to the shop for repairs. I was thinking about this the other day, riding down the road, contemplating my neighbor, who can afford anything his brain desires, as he is the son of a banker, not the son of a small engine mechanic, though he portrays himself as a Working Man now, whereas I am a remote office worker who can’t afford shit it seems. (One time, when I explained an issue I was facing with a dead tree and hovering branches, his solution was simple – “Just pay somebody to come take care of it!”) I guess that’s the path – the son of a poor man hopes to transition classes and not have to work his fingers to the bone and break his body for paychecks; and the son of a rich man wants to occupy his idle life with seemingly meaningful work, so he cosplays as a blue collar workingman, running his own business(es). Nonetheless, I was getting myself mad at how the neighbor cut his half a acre yard with his zero turn mower like twice in a week, even though we’re in a drought, and he was just torturing that grass. Sure, mine is tall and clumpy and feral, and aesthetically displeasing to HOA ass hoes, but it is not dying from torturous manicuring during extreme dryness.
But I also got to thinking about the size of his mower – ridiculously oversized for his yard, even when you factor in the second home he has down the road a few miles, which operates as an event space. Similarly, he has a big truck, like many pretend workingmen of these days. But somehow, despite these trucks being twice as big as the ones from my memories of my pops, the bed is far less. You can’t fit a fuckin’ regular-sized riding mower in them anymore. So men justify to themselves bigger and bigger mowers, which can’t fit in smaller and smaller truck beds, but they are bigger and bigger trucks, which require trailers to move a fuckin’ riding mower around. It always clown car comical to watch some big ass modern existence truck hauling along a trailer with nothing on it but a little ass lawn tractor, albeit too big for the truck bed. So we have this false and unnecessary size thing going on, all of which just feeds the feeble psychology of all these little men who are struggling to find justification for themselves. And not only is it ridiculous, with the supersized truck payments that come with those vehicles (read somewhere about average new truck payment being like $1200 a month? Wtf?), not to mention the additional payments for whatever fuckin’ power equipment you’re cutting your little ass yard with, which probably is why dudes like my neighbor cut it twice a week, because they’re trying to get their money’s worth out of a bad financial decision, which doesn’t matter because they’ve got credit to burn.
And for clarity’s sake, I did experience class transition, so I have a car payment on a new car (2024 Corolla Hybrid) which I will pay until it’s paid off, and then drive until it dies. It’s only the second bank-secured car loan on a brand new car I’ve ever had in my life (and hopefully the last). It is one of the cheaper new hybrid cars you could possibly get. I also used my burgeoning fake ass credit rating carnival game allowance a couple years back to get a good riding mower, which I paid off early when a couple four-digit side hustles here or there came through. But I “worked” the system which ultimately works me.
I don’t really have anything important to point out here, other than we seem to be doing less actual things (like physical work, or moving actual objects with a truck itself, not requiring trailer add-ons and shit) with more monstrously sized mechanisms, all of which are way more expensive, and give us a false sense of dominating our environment. It’s all very feeble-dicked, in my opinion. A real man drives a piece of shit, and can cut grass with a borrowed scythe, or just doesn’t bother cutting it because goddamn it’s hot, and gonna be a desert here in a decade anyways. I often feel unnecessarily angry at these weird men who worship big things of false power, but there is no need in confronting them. You can’t reason with a poisoned brain.

SONG OF THE DAY: Casanova (kudzu'd)

Honestly, I think bringing back airbrushed overalls, which was an urban fashion trend from the early '90s, might be the most Southern Gothicc Futuristic fashion aesthetic possible. It is what we will wear on the work communities of Jupiter's Io moon. I have seen it in visions, many times over. My bloodline cleans the bottom 20 feet or so of the glass of the bubble, to keep the view out clear of space mildew from the intense humidity outside the dome due to volcanic nature of that satellite. They use drones to clean anything higher than 20 feet, but the drones don't do the same level of work as a hand washer, though it takes my bloodline I see these visions through a lot longer, because humans like to sit on futuristic metal boxes and stare off into space, contemplating the horrors of existing in the future, just like we do now. Io is Jupiter's closest moon, which actually is caught in orbit between Jupiter and two other moons of Jupiter, so has a crazy lunar effect, which you can feel living inside the workdome, hence all the sitting around contemplating shit while at work. You can read more about this 7th Workdome biosphere on the surface of Io in the handwritten manuscripts I dream read each night when I remember to wear my CPAP mask. I try to write as much of what I dream read as possible, but it's incredibly difficult for the conscious mind - tethered to this physical reality - to keep up with the sub/unconscious mind, freely exploring the infinite spaces of the innerverse. I do the best I can with the humble human existence I am given. I am thankful to the Creator for access to the visions. I recognize it as a blessing, though it weighs heavy on my conscious mind much of the time. That might be why I "zoned out" while you were talking to me the other day. I wish it was already the future and when I zoned out, I was wearing the airbrushed overalls I see my reverse ancestors wearing, in Io. Sitting there, staring off into space in those overalls looks pretty great, aesthetically.