“One day you will find that all the people who rejected you in your youth are trying to imitate you, or imitate imitations of you. Don’t be distracted. that is not fame. Keep working. Keep nailing yourself to the cross of your art.” (-Phoebe Legere)
“If you wonder what’s up in the war you’re paying for, MSM is the last place to look. Here’s why the Russian withdrawal from one side of Dnieper River to the other in Kherson is not the decisive defeat the spin machine wants you to believe.” (Dr. Jill Stein)
“Prosecuting Assange means that any publication based on leaked material would become a crime”
(-Former UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Nilz Melzer)
The two issues that are not being discussed in relationship to the outcomes of the midterm election are austerity & continued support for the war in Ukraine. Why? Because there is already bipartisan consensus to support a recession & war in Ukraine. The current theatrics of the midterms as though something significantly different will occur depending on what bourgeois party controls Congress is not to be taken seriously. As Biden told his corporate backers – nothing will change.” (-Ajamu Baraka)
“Imagine STILL thinking democrats getting one more seat in the senate is “winning,” & capping for them when they’ve literally done NOTHING for you except promise to give you crumbs & then take them back?” (-Fiorella Isabel)
“Nothing enrages the official authorized commentariat like the common riff raff having access to platforms and audiences. That’s why the official authorized commentariat have been the most vocal voices calling for internet censorship …” (-Caitlin Johnstone)
Joe Biden has literally armed fascists in Ukraine and elsewhere. What does that make him?” (-Danny Haiphong)
Brothers and sisters and friends of the revolution! Holy Stars and Stardust!!! Hozac Records the amaaazing people who brought you that poignant and dynamic Michael Goldberg penned book, “WICKED GAME” about the genius godstar JAMES CALVIN WILSEY of Chris Isaak and the Avenegers fame that is so exceptionally well written, and spilling over with so much nearly unfathomable promise, pathos and pain a gripping, emotion packed, hard driving road trip of a blazing comet who enhanced millions of people’s love lives-it’s an adventure filled empathetic portrait of a rare musician who streaked across the sky and died on the cold sidewalks that you will read again and again if you are a fan of the man and his hypnotic tone and Chris Isaak’s angelic falsetto and broken hearted divebar torch n twang, those people, at Hozac, have brought us another essential, soon to be indispensable classic, “GUILTY! MyLife As A Memeber of THE JONESES, A Heroin Addict, A Bank Robber, and A Federal Inmate” by JEFF DRAKE! I mean, how thrilling is it for us JONESES fans that Jeff wrote the definitive inside story of The Joneses! Our mutual pal Anthony told be the Drake boys and their sis had been raised by old fashioned conservative parents but I smiled when in the book Jeff said his mom was out canvassing for Nixon cuae I got a Nixon Now button on my jacket-funny how far to the right Clintons and Obama pulled this country cause compared to Reagan, Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden, fucking crooked old Tricky Dick was downright woke and progressive-making friends with China, making friends with some factions of the American Indian movement, and establishing enviornmental protections agencies-that’s a far cry from the cold warrior, surveillance tech spying and mass censorship, war on whistleblowers and torture gulags we’ve had sinec 9/11 and now corporate media is evn image rehabilitaing torture architects the Cheneys and John Woo! So yeah, Jeff was raised in a pretty conservative but still somehow idyllic Beach Boys/Leave It To Beaver old school baseball cards and ponies type enviornment but I had no idea he had suffered through so, so many health problems and traumatic accidents as a kid, half his childhood was hospitals and wheelchairs, losing his hearing in one ear like Brian Wilson, and almost losing the sight in both eyes, he had a bicycle wreck where his whole face was scabbed and his whole skull was fuckedup, poor kid-you should see the photos of how Happy Days Opie cowboy innocent he looked back then. Then, he discovered “Creem” magazine and rocknroll radio and look out, ya know? He end up forming the Joneses with skateboard legend Steve Olsen and running around with ne’er do well rocknroll rogues like Steve Jones and Danny Sugarman and shit. I love that band so much, I had some older associates who lived in a nearby town next to a used record store so they steadily accumulated a vast collection of used records with their hefty allowances, including those “Hell Comes To Your House” records, and when I was still semi on the street feral and couch surfing homeless, they would buy me beer underage and let me explore all their cool vinyl, we covered “She’s So Filthy” briefly in my late teenage years and Drake told me on the phone once I had the lyrics wrong. One of my old roommates covered “Pillbox” with his snotty kid punk band in the ya know Teengenerate/Ripoffs era, right whn I was kinda leaving the rocknroll scene which I felt had been taken over by the mainstream capitalist squares and normies. L.A. witch, Screaming Siren, Ringling Sister, Punk Hostage novelist and Disgraceland habituee Pleanant Gehman wrote his liner notes. Everybody knows he’s one of my favorite singer-guitarplayer-songwriters, me and all my friends grew up covering his songs, trying to be like The Joneses, Amanda Jones, and Vice Princiopals! This book is what your sleazy rocknroll boyfriend or girlfriend wants for Christmas, believe me! If you or your loved one like the kinda wild rocknroll music we all write about around here, this is the surefire hit of the fucking year! JUST WAIT TIL YOU SEE THE PICTURES!!! I haven’t talked to Jeff in a long time, but he knows how much I love his work and I am always rootin’ for the brother! GET THIS TOME A-S-A-P! I haven’t glimpsed the Bebe Buell book yet, but everybody around here also loves Bebe Buell, the courageous trailblazer, notorious hellraiser, model/muse/underground superstar/did it her own way rocknroll legend. Maybe after the holidays, we’ll try n wrangle some interviews with these historically significant people. HOZAC RECORDS is home to the real rocknroll beat! You’ll want to go there now!
All the old timey glam people know in my snotty youth I used to put out a series of crummy fanzines about punk rock, glam, glitter and trash, very much like what we still do online here n now. one of those old bands we all loved and praised in the xeroxed glamzines was Campus Tramps. I never hear anybody mention them anymore but where I live there aint no record stores and even the make a buck hipster airbandb owning city slickers are only like ya know, “Alternative” people, still meaning Nirvana. Whatever happened to that band 16 Forever and Pilly from that band, American Ruse? In the words of Ginger Baker to Jesse from Shake The Faith, “L:ET’S JAM!” play it loud!
GRILLED CHEESE IS REVOLUTION!
Another band that was good fun was Boris The Sprinkler.
GHOSTS OF SATURDAY NIGHT
Here’s some Haloes for ya! While diggin’ through my ancient swag, I found some copies of “Machine Gun Etiquette”, a zine in the same kinda spirit as summa the mags I did, edited by the powerhouse talent Christiana, co starring primo rocknrolll ink slingers, Chaz, and Max & Frank. I wish she was still publishing that magazine now. Whatever happened to Barry Bang?
I probably heard of these cats via either Charlie Die (RIP), Deane Clapper, or Jim Budds, some cats who used to contribute pictures and columns to my zine.
69 EYES
this was really right up our alley in the early nineties, we were looking for musicians in all the wrong towns who were into this kinda thing-early 69 eyes were like Smack n Hanoi Rocks, ya know? They got a little too over the top for me later on, with the Ann rice NIN/Marilyn Manson production but their dirty early stuff is still hard to beat. This was pretty much exactly what i was trying to do back then.
Democrats just need 1 more seat. Republicans just need 2 more seats.
Working people just need 51 more seats.” (-MY PRESIDENT: Dr. Jill Stein)
“I have no special feelings one way or the other about China or Russia, I just acknowledge the indisputable fact that they are quantifiably far less destructive than the US-centralized empire. If they weren’t being aggressively targeted by that empire I wouldn’t notice them much.” (-Caitlin Johnstone)
“I have never heard anyone talking openly and honestly about the corruption and complete corporate capture of the “Democratic” party on MSNBC.” (-Ryan Knight)
“So, we are supposed to believe & care that the capitalists who owned twitter were supposed to be more responsible then the oligarch that owns it now? I couldn’t give a f..k less who owns this company as long as left voices are not suppressed.” (-Ajamu Baraka)
“BREAKING: Former US President George W. Bush and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will hold a pubic conversation in Dallas to celebrate their war crimes and remind Americans why it’s important to start World War III with Russia.” (-Danny Haiphong)
Heavily propagandized shitlibs will support Bush Wars Forever-they just tell ’em whatever they want and they eat it up with their silver spoon. ‘Cause Obama’s “classy” and now, according to Ellen and Bono, W’s “folksy”. I don’t get you fuckin’ people-stop worshipping evil motherfuckin’ war of terror surveillance tech spooks, virus patent owning billionaires, and white devils weapon manufacturing shareholder politicians.
I USED TO LIVE IN HONKYTOPIA WHERE EVERY PEDESTRIAN IS A SUSPECT BUT WAS DRIVEN AWAY BY RENT GOUGERS, KALL THA KOPS KARENS & STOP N FRISK SQUADS IN THE GENTRIFICATION ZONE. “USA!, USA!”
“Mystery keeps men sane. As long as you have mystery you have health. When you destroy mystery you create morbidity.” (- G.K. Chesterton)
“Give me back my fantasy!” (-Urge Overkill)
All the unconditional Obama-Hillary-AOC worship totally keeps the Bezos-Waltons-Kochs-Schwab-Gates One Percent bad guys in power and the poor folks under boot. Middle class slogan reciting people just wanna build more tall fences and gated communities and never have to listen to the complaints of the unsightly riffraff homeless people and low wage owners and offensive comedians and other offscript cancelled peasants. “They shoulda gone to college”, they say to themselves, all day. Luxery for themselves, dying suddenly, for you. I’m glad Zuck and his Langley bosses kicked me offa social media, it was too discouraging and heartbreaking, to see how all the hipster rock critics, and classic car polishing 12 step celebs, and gentrification bruncher ex punks, don’t even stand for one power to the people egalitarian traditional leftist value at all, ever, nothing. Just blank check sports team celebrity worship and staying in their box to protect their private prestige and special class privileges. They believe in nothing but their own comfort and convenience. Not Free Assange, not fourth amendment privacy, not second amendment ala the Black Panthers, not fight for living wages, or protect the housless community, or end the proxy wars based on lies, nothing. NOt even opposed to Lynn Cheney torturers anymore. Just their own red carpet selfie experience of just me, who’s the fairest of them all, checking the doorbell camera to see if their Amazon goodies have arrived yet, that’s it, that’s all. Maybe they might get online to thank Obama for keeping it classy, or slag pig-media’s targeted minorities du jour, but that’s it. Love AOC, war is okeydokey and Orange Man Bad, that’s all the critical thinking they’re seemingly capable of. At best making some vague excuses for Gropey Joe, ya know?
Sensitivity Studies shitlibs give lip service all day to save the whales, “my pro nouns are blah blah/blah blah”, Free Tibet, got my fifth booster, “I Voted” Blue No Matter Who, and bragging some more about successfully banning reusable plastic grocery bags so we serfs have to purchase eight dollar garbage bags, because they think it’s gonna “save the enviornment” from all those billionaire jet set emissions and fifteen different Nato wars that Greenwashin’ Greta Thurnberg never talks about, they’ve naturally outlawed loitering and panhandling near the legal reefer for rich white people boutiques, and paid tens of thousands to install big sharp rocks beneath underpasses to discourage humans from finding shelter in the cold, and supposedly you know, it’s all for the sake of Science Trusting, feminism, and for the spotted owls, but they do not give a fuck, when garbage trucks run over sleeping homeless women outside the church, s’long as she voted for Hillary first, when traumatized old vets are left in the freezing cold Pacific Northwest rains and get kicked awake by class patrol downtown guides, or have their tarps and tents and soaking wet backpacks stolen from them by cops who work for hotel owbners and Nike sweat shop oligarchs. They just want you to show more respect to Kitty Piercy, Hillary Clinton and AOC, because of course, their Gender, the New Religion Of The Klaus Schwab schooled Gates Reset cultists. Same shitlibs who agreed to promptly evacuate Saturday Market park blocks during Occupy Eugene, as not to inconvenience any bankers or lawyers in love, are likely to kall tha kops karen you for smoking a fucking cigarette in the alley behind the Wow Hall, if your pro nouns do not meet their preferred approval. See something/say something snitch squad Sensitivity Studies shitlibs are cloistered and elitist landlord class, police state neo-con imperialists who recite official tv narratives and just don’t wanna know. There used to be an online pundit called Sane Progressive who spoke with great clarity about these problems of propaganda and the warmachine recruiting fake actresses to help sell Dick Cheney/John Bolton/Mike Pompeo/John McCain policies to comfy, cozy Karens, but she was hounded offline by the think tank operated bot armies and obedient tiktok fauxwoke kancel kulture kids. Shitlib fraud squads selling Dick Cheney shit to Trader Joe shopping Tesla owners with pink triangle bumper stickers is some peak dystopian capitalist madness.They told those suckers they supported healthcare for all, then dropped it when AOC got elected and private jet Pelosi instructed her to sit down, they told those suckers they opposed child cages, then dropped it when Gropey Joe got elected with Mayo Pete affiliated software company. They told those suckers they were gonna cancel student debt, then dropped it after more shitlibs got elected, It’s exactly like Charlie Brown trying to kick the football only to have Lucy pull it away. Works everytime–like Colt 45. all they gotta do is trot Obama out on the red carpet and all the boomers and comic-con safespace kids in furry animal hat ears all swoon and obey. Mass media has even image madeover the war criminal torturers, Bush/Cheneys by blaming it all on Trump. Unreality Tv. The Bilderberg build a bitch occultic metaverse. Bizarre surrealism. Whenever the oil companies wanna invade somewhere, they just put friendly Democrats on tv to say it’s all for feminism and LGBT rights and those middle class suckers fall for it, everytime. Laura Bush went on Oprah after 9/11 to tell the boomer mom audience that Bush had to invade Afghanistan for women’s rights. People believed that shit if they went to college for navel studies and feelgood ceramics. Hillary Clinton cackled like a lunatic ON TV for savagely killing a Libyan head of state, but shitlibs think it’s okeydokey cause she’s a Female. I should not have to explain how whackadoo that shit is. Whenever someone tries, they deploy the twitterbot namecall armies. You shoulda done this, you shoulda done that, you work for Putin, etc., etc. Middleclass people are oblivious to the suffering of poor people in this country and only care about human rights when the Pentagon tells them they’re supposed to-almost everybody on tv now is “retired” military or CIA, the DNC even runs CIA as Democrats now. All the money goes for killing in regions where they wanna control the resources for Wall Street shareholder profits. All of it. The politicians do not care about us little people or do anything legit on our behalf, if they give you some medication it aint cause they are staying up late at night fretting about your children’s well being or health, somebodys’s making some dirty money every time new legislation is passed. Most usually, it’s the same five or six super oligarchs who run the world in secret nowadays. It got down into the twenties last night here in November-a lotta people in my part of the country do not have adequate heat. Utility companies are gouging us like fuck and anytime you bring it up, dumb motherfuckers have been pig-media and university politness safespace trained to blame some external boogeyman some more, never USA billionaire greed. Of their sacred and cherished puppet politician celebrity imaginary friends. That’s why I can’t stand the shitlb apologist for politicians who broke all their campaign promises and voted the opposite of their bogus feels good rhetoric. People at the bottom are suffering-death is everywhere now and the stuboornly blind shitlibs and Got Mine, Jacks still just wanna babble about the slogan of the day propaganda bullshit, or brag about their vacation or collections some more. They are mad at Chappelle, but not their beloved fraud squad who promised them student loan forgiveness, eviction moratorium, to unite the border gulag families, and free healthcare but instead just gave ’em war against Russia, heating up for war against Iran, and China. Super Inflation and “Died Suddenly”. Whoo-hoo, congratulations, mimosa sippers. Sucking up to rich, evil despots (“philanthropists” in shitlib-speak), Ted Talk third world depopulators, and worshipping war-whore politicians aint my thing.
“Here we go again. Members of the oligarchy that don’t completely subordinate themselves to still predominant program of the neoliberal/neocon totalitarian project become enemies of the state.” (-Ajamu Baraka)
“If you think CIA disinformation – that sold us wars from Viet Nam to Iraq – somehow isn’t driving war in Ukraine, i have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.” (-Dr. Jill Stein)
“The only people still defending Bernie Sanders and the squad are neocons and white leftists from the suburbs. The progressive movement is trying to gaslight us into thinking supporting all the imperial ambitions of the United States is the left position. Caring about more squad members being added is like caring about more Uvalde Police officers at the scene of a crime. I wish Americans would treat the corrupt criminal ruling class with the same disdain they treat customer service workers when they get their order wrong. Val Dmmings raised $73 million and got washed by Marco Rubio
Can we just acknowledge that the DNC is a complex money laundering operation?” (-Revolutionary Blackout Network)
“The Biden administration is trying to bully Australia out of joining the Nuclear Ban Treaty.
Hard to imagine a greater evil than promoting the gravest danger to humanity the world has ever known. ” (-Dr. Jill Stein)
“Finally, if you talk to most working class Americans off the record, they’ll admit both parties suck.
Many people just choose to lean into their hatred for one party over the other. Liberalism is not about “liberal values” or “big government” or “wokeness.” And it’s definitely not about socialism
Liberalism isn’t even a political philosophy
Liberalism is, at its core, an imperial cult around advancing the class interests of a privileged transatlantic elite. Every single day, US and NATO leaders are pushing us closer to the brink of nuclear war.
Where is the outrage? Where is the panic? Where is the survival instinct?
We should be marching in every city for direct talks between Washington and Moscow.”
(-Primo Radical)
“Even as the US and its allies are continuously escalating their war with Russia over Ukraine, they are transforming the entire Indo-Pacific into a powder keg that could erupt at any point.” (-Richard Phillips)
“Remember anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan, whose son was killed in the Iraq war? Dems supported her while it was convenient to oppose the war. Once it became obvious that Dems only opposed *Bush*, not the war, Sheehan became inconvenient, and they dropped her like a hot rock.” (-Ladies Jacket Club on Shitter)
“Biden announces the election was mercifully free of outside “interference.” Amazing how this threat always seems to dissipate the minute Democrats win.” (-Michael Tracey)
“Was just detained for asking John Bolton
about why he lied about WMD’s in Iraq, Covered up War Crimes, and celebrated Julian Assange’s arrest. Video coming soon!” (-Tayler Hansen)
“So, the progressive caucus, the Squad (the fraud) and the rest of the U.S. liberal/left and even elements of the Anti-war movement are to the right of Gen Milley and Henry Kissinger on Ukraine.” (-Ajamu Baraka)
“You know how bad you must be to be neck-and-neck in a race with Dr Oz or Herschel Walker!” (-Compton Jay)
“This is why liberals annoy the shit outta me
Trying to make an institutional problem into a partisan one The DHS is trash no matter who runs it. Biden is currently expanding the department after the abuses under Trump.” (-Revolutionary Blackout Network)
“The United States Gov’t isn’t trying to spread democracy, they’re trying to maintain their hegemony” (-Black In The Empire)
“
There is no evidence that TSA has prevented any terrorist attacks but the US has spent billions of dollars on the program over the last 20 years.” (-Mint Press)
And I’m not without you If I try hard and concentrate I can still hear you speak I picture myself in your room by the chair You’re smoking a cigarette If I close my eyes I can see your face
When we were young, nobody died And nobody got older The toughest kid in the street Could always be bought over And the first time that you loved You had all your life to live At least that’s what you said
(When we were young) The first time you got drunk You drank Pernod and dry cider Smashed a window in As the police came ’round the corner You didn’t have no time to run And your dad stood up for you As the judge said, you’re a fool
Babies, sex and flagons, shifting women, getting stoned Robbing cars, bars and pubs, rubber johnnies, poems Starsky and Hutch gave good TV And Starsky looked like me
(When we were young) The first time that you stole You stole rubber lips and tenners Bought a radio then ran away forever Never felt so good, never felt so good with you
When we were young, we had no fear Of love nor sex nor warnings Everyone was hanging out and everyone was sorted When we were young, nobody knew Who you were or what you’d do Nobody had a past that catches up on you
Babies, sex and flagons, shifting women, getting stoned Robbing cars, bars and pubs, rubber johnnies, poems Starsky and Hutch gave good TV And Starsky looked like me
When we were young, what might have been What might have been What might have been
With a start, he was awoken from the middle of a dream He’s making movies in his head that never will be seen He’s holding Oscars in his hands and kissing beauty queens
What might have been (oh, what might have been) What might have been When we were young
(Songwriters: Colm Hassett, Fergal Emmanual Gerard Mckee, Paul Anthony Page, Myles
Anthony Mcdonnell)
HERE AND GONE…GOODBYE DEAR BROTHER
Some mornings, I find myself habitually scrolling through the hometown obits cause all these childhood friends of mine keep dropping dead in their fifties, dying suddenly. WTF?
Wow Man, another one of my close amigoes from way back died about ten days ago, was buried two days ago, no cause of death, they livestreamed his funeral from the Catholic school website, he was a hometown hero to many, really. It is kinda stunning, cause I been trying to get in touch with him, just sent him a postcard like two weeks ago. Hopefully he got it before his death. I met him when we were in the eighth grade probably, he looked like Dweezil Zappa when we were young, clever kid who loved outraging the squares who loved him, kinda dressed hip suburban-you know like a Robert Downey Jr. character in “Weird Science”, and had good luck like Ferris Bueller-probably the most all around popular guy at the Catholic school I was expelled from. Being from the country club suburbs, he was walking around with a tennis racket and like white shorts, ya know, being preppie, hoping to impress the chicks. I pretend served him a tennis ball, only it was a tomato and got it all over all those Catholic school kid’s daintily pressed white clothes, rather than be offended and outraged, he saw great humor in this irreverant gesture and we stayed pals after that. We had easily a zillion laughs together. He tried his best to get me elected president of our freshman class and even people who hated me wrote my name down, cause everybody loved the joke, it was widely suspected the admin fixed the count. I got him into a lotta cool music from new wave to heavy metal. Not that many of his mainstream friends probably know what a music head he was-from garage rock to Prince, Eddie Grant, Dexy’s, Madness, even Tears For Fears. I think he liked being friends with me, someone his parents and priests and sports coaches and athletic peer group were so completely appalled by. That was his sense of humor, he could come off as caustic and cocky and even belliegerent, but he was one of those rare winner types who really did root for the underdog, he championed me from a young age, when I was most of our Catholic friend’s well guarded, dirty secret. The day when I was finally released from a painfully long stint in the child abuse gulag, Joey was the friend who showed up at the get home time, waiting there to see me. Loyal, dutiful, on time, an abiding and faithful real friend. He had to hear a lotta shit about it from the awful rich kids who wanted to be near him, probably summa his family, too.The suburban rich people really, really had me marked as the town’s kickdog blamehound, main offender, usual suspect, Frankenstein monster, from a young age. Since fourth grade, actually. Tales Of a Fourth Grade Nothing til eternity. Shmoehio don’t like born weird, leather wearers in too much blue eyeshadow and clown red lipstick that makes one’s teeth look extra yellow, causin’ a commotion and hittin’ on the pretty girls, very much at all. I hated sports and was targeted by the Catholic wrestling team and their suburban public school counterparts football team, too. Joey was way more into sports than me, Tom, or Mitch, but we all mainly enjoyed the kinda sports where you didn’t spill your beer-ya know-bowling, fishing, golf, miniature golf, pool hopping…Joey came from a very famous Italian resturant and bar owning family, with many undeniably mobbedup, well known newspaper documented ties to la Cosa Nostra, he loved that shit too, believe me, probably saw himself as a bit of a Vincent Corleone, “Prince Of The City”. Growing up, we watched the first two Godfathers repeatedly but the third one was not out yet and it was ridiculous replacing the Tom Hagen character played by Robert Duvall with disco vampire suntanned George Hamilton and Sophia Coppola actually did a pretty good job stepping in when Winona Ryder got sick, if you ask me, but Joey aint here to talk about Pacino and Deniro no more, that feels crazy to me. Not normal, not right at all. I’m still mourning Corey Lott, Dave Andra, Paul K., and Bobby Cloyd. When I experienced food insecurity as a latchkey teenager, he drove his moped to the famous nightclub with secret tunnels under the street to the hotel catty corner from it that they used to call Little Chicago back in the forties downtown and retrieved a week’s worth of food from his family’s resturant and him and Tom brought me all these different pastas, salads, garlic breads to my place on their mopeds. He had a reputaion as a charismatic but loudmouthed kinda playboy wannabe character, right? The all star, preppie, football player Catholic popularity kid, but in real life, he was sweet and thoughtful and funny and kind, impeccably well mannered, and sincerely compassionate. Always up for a spontaneous roadtrip or late night card game, sophisticated prank, or concert event in some farway big city. I worked with him for his uncles’ at a restuarant as a busboy when we were 12 and 13 ish? Also worked with him at a Little Cesaers’s that employed all our drinking buddies and bowling team friends, Skeeter and Ogre. Also, he got me insta-hired, no questions asked, at another one of his uncle’s resturants, when I was going through hard times and the famous story was, I was nervous on the first day and kinda jittery and accidentally knocked over a big rack full of gallons of salad dressing and one of the older beehive hairdo old pro waitresses came breezing in carrying a big tray of dishes over her head, slipped on the oil based mess and fell. I dirtied all their linen and mops and filled two mop buckets trying to use the dust pan to shovel up the whole awful mess and finally his uncle mercifully fired me on the spot and told me I could leave, my pal Joey laughed off the whole incident. Even as we aged, the smalltown locals remained stubbornly hostile to the whole notion of he and I being friends, I was supposed to be their boogeyman scapegoat forever, amen. He had a hard time advocating for me when the frat bros blamed me for the death of our friend who was far away at some posh college in Seattle. We all had nickname’s based offa Gilliagan’s Island-Tom was the Skipper, Mitch was the professor, Joey was the millionaire and Mitch called me, “Gypsy Gilligan”, he always insited we wayward castaways were pineering pool hopping-“the sport of the future”. Really used to drive the squares and sportos nuts when they’d see us all running around together in our tiger print spraypainted “Trash Mobile” a kooky colored ’74 Oldsmobile that got us in all kindsa trouble when the waterpump broke down in East Rutherford, New Jersey. The cops in East Rutherford are as tough, intolerant, and unreasonable as all those rightwing talk radio reciting preppie fuckers in the town we came from. We were all just having fun and being young, it was not our fault all those fatfucks in the pink Izod golf shirts did not know how to have fun unless it was at some meeker, weaker person’s expense. They were some mean spirited, permanent hiearachy oriented, cliqueish people. I was the one in the black hat. “Get him!” That state is where they manufacture the conformist fratboys, it will always be that way. Flashy car ownership and sports bar popularity are all that matter to most white suburbans, nobody’s sorry. It’s still the same back there. Nothing’s changed. Except they allow tattoos now, I guess. Used to be you could not even get a wage slave job with any visible tattoo. And they got medical reefer now.
Joey had the keys to bars all over town so me, him, Tom, and Mitch (RIP) could go into ’em after hours and shoot pool, play the jukebox-mostly Van Halen and the Beachboys, and drink beer for free, his uncles all played poker in his dad’s garage, they were all pretty nice guys once you got to know them. His little brother Johnny used to come to parties at our bandhouse and have some beers when he was the younger kid, it was his turn, a rite of passage. Some mischievous event involving a car happened Joey’s senior year that resulted in his fam pressuring him into joining the marines, he was rel proud of his service and the only kid I grew up with that never seemed traumatized of diminished by the military. He said Semper Fi all the fucking time. When we were back in the hometown at the same time, we always tried to have a beer together, we kept in touch for decades and it only kinda dwindled off when I became caregiver to sick elderly and other high needs family members these past fifteen years. So yeah I loved the cat, will always love the cat, he was my most like normal, mainstream, preppie friend, I’m way to his left politically, he still believed the Democrats were progressives, but in the circles we came up in, he was like the radical leftist compared to all his rigtwing peers, always arguing politics on social media. He had a straight office job, a longtime partner I never met, exhibited the same witty, wry sense of humor on social media everyday he had as a young blade. Joey was always cooking steak on the grill for our former classmates and even my old bassist and his wife. I’m pretty shocked, I naturally wanna drink heavily and grieve a little, play loud music, and have a good cry, but instead, I just went digging through boxes, only found about five pictures of him. One of our cats already damaged one of the photographs I intended to frame. Still have not found the storage tub with like the ten major scrapbooks, and my two main scrapbooks were kinda confiscated by an ex many years ago, but yeah, I been thinking about him these last few hours, sent emails to some of our common friends, the few I’m still in contact with, left sympathy messages to his wife and family online in the guestbooks. I’m just like at such a loss. Whenever my friends and family and old musical heroes pass, that’s when ya wanna talk to the people who were also affected by them, but it’s such a fucking strange time. When one of our closest friends died about three years ago, I contacted a dude and he said holy shit and that was it, people have all moved on into their stoic adult hood, property owning, careerist persona, and I can’t really relate to any of that. Me and that guy Joey had so many adventures together-I’ll keep it all PG here, more stories have already been written about in my four unpublished books somebody in California said they were interested in putting out, but I procrastinated as not to offend the wives and kids and elderly parents of my ole cohorts. We were the wild bunch, at least two of our teenage gang already preceded him in death-Mitch and Dan. You know the preppier Deltas in “Animal House”? The better looking ones ones that could get chicks? That’s a little bit of Joey right there. He was part Eddie Haskell and part Huckleberry Finn! Our other main common hombre Tommy got into radio promotion and ended up working at the same commercial rock station where one of my old girlfriends is an on the air personality. I love all my friends-he was a lifelong favorite. I hope wherever he is in the universe he can appreciate how loved he was, by all of them-the masses of baseball cap normies and hissing suburbanites who hated my punk rock guts, but by me, too. Especially by me. (RIP)
The Way Josh Todd copied Waxl is the way that Waxl copied McAfferty. (RIP) And Hanoi Rocks. I’d say Mike’s still a bit influenced by Stiv Bators. This one’s pretty good, very Lordsy, like I told my long lost fomer bandmate in a recent e-mail exchange, it’s exactly the kinda sound I always expected I’d be co creating by now here in my elderly goth years, but Everybody I know took a different trip.
I wish I was more excited by the promise of a new Iggy record but the last stuff I really vibed with by the guy seems like it was an impossibly long time ago. His songs I like are kinda sprinkled here and there over the last twenty some years of albums I generally only thought were like, so so. Some producer is recording a lotta people like him and Morrissey and using bigname hotshot studio dudes like Duff and the Chili Peppers and ya know I was just so NOT into that collaboration the Ig did with the stoner metal guy, it was despressing, almost as bad as Avenue B and I was not into the obligatory collaborations he did with the monopoly shitbands of punk-pop. At all. I never count him out, though. He’s been known to surprise me. I’ll be listening to the new Morrissey as well, quite obviously. He may have been cancelled by safespace kids for his alledged anti immigrant stuff but he is still one of the greatest songwriters left alive and his bands are always white hot motherfuckers-you can’t deny that. Iggy and Morrissey even got a duet on the way. I wonder if that one girl from my long gone past ever thinks about me when she hears the Smiths or the Stooges. I am still that gawky, awkward new wave kid I always was, ya know? I don’t believe people really grow up, ya know-the kid who hoarded his unopened pack of Marlboros and smoked yours instead probably still does that shit on a larger level now. The dude who never did a dirty dish in his life and only showed up to mooch beer off you is probably just like that now with gray hair. The one who sucked up to the jocks and fat Rush Limbaugh coaches back in the day is most likely doing all that same shit just with a bigger white truck. I don’t think people really go to college to learn about shit, I think they go to marry up and arm themselves with elaborate rationalizations and bullshit think tank coverstory fauxwoke justifications for why it’s okay for them to lounge leisurely in sanctimonious, self righteous Clepatra cruise ship privilege and non stop shopping while the rest of us ruin our knees and lower backs hauling all their heavy cement shit around for slave wages and gettting sick from living in toxic places consuming poisonous shit and dying young. I been working for some different ranchers and airandb owners out here in the desert Southwest and I gotta tell ya, it’s insane to me to listen to some nutty narrative about feminist oppression from an heiress who is making you lift heavy shit and fuck with black widow nests and bossing you around, while she spends all her days remodeling her queendom with big packages from overseas. Who the fuck is oppressed-the poor people doing the labor or the rich person with unearned power? Your unearned gender is not virtue. The coastal booj pigs always insist they got special rights and extra fancy happy magic status from their prior life karma, or in the midwest, it’s the the megachurch propserity gospel hustle, it’s the bounty of God’s favor-God just loves the rich people more, cause they are so white and sinless and special flag fancy. Sometimes I think the new age sensitivity wokeness gender studies shit is mostly used to divert attention and pivet away from the more universal problem of grinding class inequality.
OLD LOU REED STILL BETTER THAN ALMOST ANYTHING NOW
Or as the man himself said, “my shit is better than your diamonds, my day’s better than your year”. I think he was probably on an awful lot of drugs when he was saying all that, but I still love so many songs! He probably said al lotta his crazy shit just to wind up Lester Bangs cause he knew that’d result in more pages of Creem being taken up by Lester trying to figure Lou out. Lou was electro shocked in an institution as a kid. What more do ya need to know, really? I never wrote nuthin’ even half as good as, “and something flickered for a minute, and then it vanished and was gone…” Summa my indie alternative co workers at Tower Records were all ginned up about that nineties Velvet Underground reunion thing, I was never that interested and in have always felt sorry for Mo Tucker who gets smeared as a rightwing tea party Qanon Maga whatever, much like Exene was, just because she has questione the popular narrative of known liars and admitted eugenecists who are all over youtube saying they want to depopulate the third world and usher in a transhumanist microchip cashless scoety to be ruled by just them and their fellow elite globalist Kissinger WEF pals. Mo hadda work for her family at Wal Mart, some crappy nerd band wrote a song about it. I did, too. Have to work at Wal Mart. really fucked up my knees and lower back from all the mandatory all day bending merchandising those endcaps on cement floors. I’ve not forgotten how Kroger was just as bad and Target was much worse, and Urban Outfitters were some diabolical loss prevention obsessed motherfuckers-all they cared about was busting poor people for shoplifting-it was madness to the extreme. Like everything else having anything to do with money and fame, it becomes nigh impossible to collaborate with people who consider thesmelves geniuses because of their privilege or celebrity status, there is just to unbridgable an imbalance of power. So any superfame haver advertising a reunion is usally just Waxl and his willing victory lappers selling overpriced tickets and merch to sports dummies who have no real interest in rocknroll. They all play for hedge fund managers and lawyers now. That aint rocknroll. MAN I’ll never forget how bad they fucked over Steven Adler just outta sheer meanness, malice, pettiness, it was fuckedup. I’m glad Izzy walked. His Juju Hounds drummer passed away so ya know I dunno what he’s up to noawadays but he’s probably having some coffee and fucking around on the internet. I’d like to hear some more music from the guy before he leaves the planet. Bands are hard and waxl’s a Lil’ Trump tyrant. “You’re Fired!” “You’re Fired!” “You’re Fired!” I wouldn’t wanna be HIS apprentice. Relationships are hard, you can’t negotiate with terrorists-I hadda ghost a bunch a people from my past who can’t help but be abusive, only tool they got in their box is a sledgehammer, so of course, to them, I look just like a rusty nail. I got tired of being pounded upon. I don’t give the address or phone numer out no more, this aint no crashpad. Summa my kids have ghosted me. I have no idea what’s up with that, presume it has something to do with their mom’s and their mom’s boyfriends. I sure do miss ’em, though. Life’s too fucking short as it is, we don’t get none of this time back. Whoever told all those people that what matters is just blind taker winning and chest beating apeman or posh privileged idle millionairess territorial control of the channel changer were some despot shareholder crooked monopolist profiteers. All that’s on is “Friends” and “Coach” and “Seinfeld” and “Dancing With The Stars”, whether you are watching that idiot box on a fat screen at the homeless shelter, or a super high res sleek wall size screen in your skyscraper condo. I’m not into the tv people at all. No mail today, I think some books I was looking forward to got lost in the change of address thing or were just outright ganked by my shady ex neighbor. It’s a bummer. I was sorta kinda fantasizing about getting the security deposit back from the old rental and putting a hundred buscks or so towards the purchase of some “Vive Le Rock” and old “Creem” and “Smash Hits” magazines offa E-Bay, but that was just a dream, just like any other dream. I actually dreamt about the Beatles, Stones, Fleshtones, and Bob Dylan, since we moved into a new place with heat and hot water! I love having rocknroll dreams. All night hellion and notorious motorcycle cowboy, Nasty Bastard was in one of them. Sleazegrinder called him a gravelly voiced thug in purple velvet. Perfect capture, yeah? Aint got no landline yet and dunno how to work those I-Phones, I don’t believe in ’em. Otherwise, I mighta tried to call somebody. I always end up regretting it when I do, though. They all sound like Swiffer commercials with a Devo soundtrack. My teenager has Autism and perseverates on fireworks and monkeys, all he wants for Christmas is fireworks and monkeys. I do not want to buy him fireworks, ya know me and Wuzzy and Timmy Stapleton had an unfortunate incident as pre teens engaging in a crabapple and firework battle with the Campbell boys on Makely Drive resulting in some dried leaves in their neighbor’s yard catching fire and a buncha white fire trucks appearing almost immeditaly on the scene as we ran through the soybean fields and irrigation ditches behind Wine Sellers like guilty little pyromaniacs and I can not adopt some moneky, I got enough problems trying to domesticate this constantly meowing female feral cat he insisted we adopt from the old neighborhood. It’s a cold morning here in the deadend desert ghost town, me and my old lady have been under too much soul grinding stress from external pressurers and impossible employers and government bureaucrats and nutty neighbors and gentrification code enforcers in the pocket of shady developers and shit lately. Even the second hand stores are “inflation” gouging. That’s just ballsout greed, nothing to do with Putin or Bitcoin. Sheer greed. The kid wants me to watch many hours of firework videos and peruse these firework wholesellers with him who he wants to pay freight shipping to with money we don’t really have. Meanwhile ,I was just hoping to wrangle a couple a books and t shirts and maybe some socks outta any potential birthday money I might receive. Probably all goin’ to some firework wholesellers. Autism is no joke. Having a kid with a disability is a LOT like dating a blackout woman. You always have to leave the house in the winter and end up walking around in the dark and the cold while they reset themselves after abrupt plate hurling mania episodes.
Has been playing shows in Japan with his glammy accomplices, Hiroshi Nakagome, the Golden Arm and the GOLDEN RAT! I’m happy he’s returned to the stage, he’s not only been a good friend since we first met at a Johnny Thunders benefit show in NYC when I was maybe 21, but in my eyes, he’s one of the more sensational talents that keep the rocknroll flames burning! If you aint got a copy of his Vicious Kitten release, “We Got A Right”, yet-whatsamatter witchoo? To me, he’s as important to rocknroll as the UK Subs or Michael Monroe band or Thee Hypnotics reunion from a few years back, one of the real torchkeepers. He’s got a rocknroll heart. Where were you in 92? I was following those Pillbox guys around downtown. If ya see Chris tell him I said hello. His Mrs. made me the most fantastic Christmas card last year-I just hung it up in my new old new wave garage hideout. “All roads lead to Babylon for people like you and people like me…” (-39 Steps) He was in my dream I had last night-been having a lotta music dreams, might be the melatonin I take to help me sleep through all the loud kid hollerin’ and all night media blare. Chris was with me at a bar and so was my friend Joey who just died like two or three weeks ago. I hope Chris is happy and healthy and making some new music up there in Canada. last thing I heard by him was a guest appearance on theat Black Halo guy’s side project. Chris Barry is one of the best rocknroll singers left alive. Chris Barry, Tex Perkins, Jim Jones, Bryan Small from the Hangmen…tell me, who else has that nasty gutterpunk soulpower we all love? Oh yeah….
JOIN CODE PINK FOR PEACE! RESIST ALL WARPIGS & STATE KIDNAPPERS OF WHISTLE BLOWER JOURNALISTS!!
“The capitalist West cannot compete with socialism, especially with Chinese socialism,& so its answer is war. The working classes in the West along with colonized peoples fighting for national self-determination have no interests in supporting wars against socialist states.” (-Ajamu Baraka)
THE GOT MINE JACKS WHO THINK WE’RE STUPID BECAUSE WE’RE POOR
“Marx & Engels concluded that with emergence of capitalism from the worm of colonialism, the primary contradiction of the system was between the minority capitalists & workers. Today the primary contradiction of the global capitalist system is between capitalists & all of humanity” (-Ajamu Baraka)
It’s fucking cold as fuck this morning, the internet aint workin’ cause we aint got no landline and I guess you gotta charge the cellphone or something to make it work via a hotspot, whatever that means, I’m processing another friend’s passing, can’t call nobody even when I’m alone and finally got some early morning peace and quiet cause I dunno how to use these newfangled cellphones and we ain’t getting a landline til next Monday, I was out in the freezing garage rummaging through some boxes of old photos and punk fliers, letters from teenage goth girlfriends in the eighties, magazines with old articles I wrote about Rich Coffee and Phoebe Legere in my twenties. Lost contact with a lotta people when Zuck’s deepstate borg buddies gave me the boot from Fascist book for all my relentless anti war posting. Ya know I mighta told ya how I called an old friend about a month ago, I guess we aint really pals no more, he’s always gotta run. His mom is the one who’s always encouraging me to call him cause we were like brothers as kids and she still sees me as one of the boys, but my ole pal, I guess he thinks something bad about me now, like I’m not at his level of sophistication and maturity now, or some shit like that. I aint got no wheels. Just a shoebox fulla used cassettes. My second youngest kid aint talkin’ to me, I figured that was just like to please the mother, but apparently, the kid aint talkin to dad OR mom, now, it’s been way too long, immensely worrying. Youngest just turned fifteen-as big as me, great expectations, expects hundreds and hundreds of dollars worth of cash and prizes for holiday haul. Unrealistic demands for kangaroos and alpacas, wants whole pallets full of explosives freight shipped from overseas. Couple of my writer friends gone missing too, I dunno what’s up with that. There was a former child actor who thinks he’s I dunno, Obama’s buddy or something, a real DNC shitlib, maybe he’s influencing people. That’s what happened with the national punk mags I used to write for. Big city oldsters got shitlib offended I don’t make P.C. exceptions for war criminals based on their gender identity, hue, political party, or sexual preferences, got me kicked off the platform. Who knows? People are fickle as fuck, they just go whichever way the wind is blowin’. Ya help make somebody famous, that don’t mean they’re ever gonna remember the little people, you feel me? Whatever happened to “principles before personalities”? Got Mine, Jack shitlibs are just neo con rightwingers with guilty consciences, they tell themselves their “Black Lives Matter” sticker somehow undoes a lifetime of support for systems of intuitional racism, and ongoing oppression of the underserving poors they so disdain. You’ll hear middle class people straight up slagging “the uneducated” and “low information voters” AS IF NPR is giving anybody the straight scoop, post Karl Rove. I remember a lotta dialog from “Donnie Brascoe”. Like when Lefty says, “even a dog gets a warm piece of the sidewalk”; and “if anything happens to me, make sure Annette gets the car”. All these wasted years with nothing to show, been in stasis, immobilized, shutout by the Man and his gentrification posers. It’s a stone cold drag, babies. I dunno what happens to everybody, I dunno what drugs they’re on. But I guess we aint pals no more, I looked for you but you was gone. Poof, just like that. I got that old Stiv Bators song ringin’ in my head this morning. My old lady asks me why I don’t call him out, ya know, there aint no point, really-friendships are two way streets, if he don’t remember me, he don’t remember me, same with all of ’em, if they aint got no love left for their dirty old hoodlum brother from way back when cause I aint never made it big in show business like summa them did, or they are busy being rich and popular or whatever that’s just how it is. You can’t make nobody love you, you can’t ask no one to care about your art or what happens to you with what little time remains-they are all on their own trip, their own distant dream. choose your delusion, everybody’s dreaming. I just happen to be way more sentimental than those other motherfuckers. I’ve smoked less than a pack of cigarettes in the past couple years but there are these cold, lonesome mornings of mourning when I still crave ‘em. Kid had a tantrum last night and I had to exit stage left and I can’t even tell you how bad I wanted a cigarette. Got a bottle put away for a rainy day but never any free time to guzzle it cause the kid could wake up at any minute and I gotta be vigilant and rarin’ to go, parenting requires alla my capabilities. I dunno what the temperature is cause like I said, I’m not online, but there is a paisleyfied layer of frost on everything outside-the windows, the weeds. I got a $2 dvd at a southwest swap meet a week ago-“Duran Duran in London”, but it’s just too freakin’ cold to watch it out in the even less heated garage this morning. About every ten minutes it hits me again how my old Catholic school brother is no longer with us and how our wanna be popular mutual friends have not even forked over our other friend’s email for me to send my condolences-that’s how catty and bitchy people from our hometown can be-even when somebody dies, they’re still jockeying for social position and protecting their prestige or whatever, just concentrated on their personal in crowd status, man people suck. People who had my address for years but never wrote me, people who never responded when I asked for their phone number, others got old demos of my songs they’re holding for ransom, hoping I’ll hurry up and die and they can tell their butch, bullying asshole record collector colleagues they were the sole authors. I don’t really trust anybody, anymore-people have disappointed the shit out of me countless times for decades now, just wasted my time and pilfered my creative property and like I said, they aint sorry. That middle school shit goes on forever. Like Bob Dylan sang they just wanna be on the side that’s winning. Part of me begrudgingly understands why the privileged class materialists give up on people and get all focused on their objects. Or pets. People just follow instructions from the ruling class super villains in the ivory tower, there aint no D.I.Y. resistance no more, no intimate circle of rebels sharing a bottle at the bonfire anymore. Everybody’s just out for their own next fix. For some it’s crack, for others it’s control of their empires and nannies and assistants and shit. They think they deserve to be treated with more respect, more V-I-P upgrades, they might throw you some crumbs but they are gonna need ALOT MORE FLATTERING AND SUCKING UP, they got used to people being disingenuous and kissing their asses. I have never been good at sucking up to power, it just never sat right with me to be phony like the joiners and belongers. Fuck those people.
“Maybe now that the elections are over and the Democrats were trounced in So. Florida, Biden can move to a sane, humane policy on Cuba instead of kowtowing to the Cuban rightwing that was never going to vote Democrat anyway???” (-Medea Benjamin)
Whenever I get too down, I go back to the music that always carried me through dark times. A Kid named Stewart Strunk from Lexington, Kentucky got me into the Go Go’s in the third grade. We used to draw comic books together based on Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon and we both felt real naughty and scandalous when we started adding in the boobies on the female characters. I think he gave me a little Go-Go’s pin. I love Jane! If ya aint seen their documentary, well, it is a thing of fabulous beauty. I watched it like five or six times! I wish I had like a big gorgeous glossy coffee table ultimate Go Go’s book. Ya know? Always wanted Jane to be the minister when me and my ole lady get enough bread to get hitched someday. I guess she’s gettin’ married herself. Mozel Tov, I wish her well. Somewhere out in all those stacks of boxes, I got a Jane Wiedlin comicbook somewhere.
PREPPERS WERE RIGHT! WEF WARPIGS WORKING TOWARDS GLOBAL FASCISM.
“A short list of what the Democratic Party blames for its problems:
Black men Russia Third parties Leftists Donald Trump A short list of what’s actually to blame:
The Democratic Party and the monopoly capitalists that control it.” (-Danny Haiphong)
“No matter what party emerges as dominant in the U.S. Congress both parties pursue the politics of racist paternalism & imperialism in Haiti. And while the international left stands with anti-colonial struggles globally, we ask, who stands with Haiti?” (-Ajamu Baraka)
“After a visit to Syria, where 90% live below the poverty line, UN special rapporteur Alena Douhan
calls for the lifting of US-led sanctions, which are having “catastrophic effects” on Syrian civilians & preventing “recovery, rebuilding and reconstruction.” Sanctions are sadism. Advice to pro-dirty war sadists/dupes: to make it look as if you care about Syrian civilians, take a break from trying to whitewash the OPCW cover-up/CIA dirty war and at least pay occasional lip service to the US sanctions that are immerisating Syrians from all walks of life. Here’s Joey Rayburn,
, one of the key architects of US sanctions on Syria — approved overwhelmingly by both parties — bragging about how US sanctions really the “lowers the bar” in its ability to cripple Syria’s economy and prevent reconstruction:.” (-Aaron Mate)
“BREAKING: Big Business and the billionaire class win yet another election in the United States and retain full control of the House, Senate, and both corrupt parties who do their bidding.” (-Ryan Knight)
“Missouri legalized marijuana! South Dakota expanded Medicaid! Nebraska passed $15 min wage. And many more. These are RED STATES. Like I’ve said before…when you give voters questions without a candidate, they just vote for the question. Not a political party!” (-Sabby Sabs)
“I’m grateful to everyone who voted for our campaign.
In an election where we had to fight some of the most powerful political elites in the country just to get on the ballot, every single vote we earned is a win. Proportional #RankedChoiceVoting won last night in Portland Oregon and Portland Maine!
Could this be the beginning of a movement for real democracy from sea to shining sea?” (-Matt Hoh For Senate)
“Biden canceled a mere $10k in student debt relief—it didn’t even hit people’s accounts yet and youth turnout soared, preventing Dems from losing key seats across the country.
Imagine what full, unilateral and immediate cancellation would do.
Imagine if he canceled medical debt.” (-The Debt Collective)
“Putting missiles 5 minutes from Moscow – that’s provocation.” “Putin is in the same position as JFK was 60 years ago. He sees an existential threat. He’s not going to back off.” (- Ray McGovern)
Well brothers and sisters and friends of the revolution, I dunno what’s gonna happen next but I am sending good vibes out to alla you last surviving rocknroll motherfuckers, human rights advocates and peace and free speech activists. Boycott pig-media-we don’t need no thought control. STAY WILD, STAY FREE!
“How about we stop giving fossil fuel predators $11 million dollars per minute?” (-Dr. Jill Stein)
“US plans for a military mission to oversee the delivery of weapons and other support to Ukraine is “roughly modeled on U.S. train-and-assist efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past two decades.” Does that model inspire confidence?” (-Aaron Mate’)
“Farewell to Her Majesty. One facade comes down and another goes up. No change at HM Prison Belmarsh where an innocent man, Julian #Assange, is incarcerated for the crime of truth-telling. God save the King.” (-John Pilger)
“We have power… Our power isn’t in a political system, or a religious system, or in an economic system, or in a military system; these are authoritarian systems… they have power… but it’s not reality. The power of our intelligence, individually or collectively IS the power; this is the power that any industrial ruling class truly fears: clear coherent human beings.” (-John Trudell)
“And you wonder why there is no effective opposition in the democrat party. It is not just Bernie’s advisor, Bernie was not serious about challenging the neoliberal capitalist grip on democrat party & caved not once but twice.” (-Ajamu Baraka)
“Bernie’s foreign policy advisor makes the inevitable transition to a think tank funded by Boeing, Northrop Grumman, and all the absolute worst western plutocrats. The metamorphosis is complete.” (-Caitlin Johnstone)
“In Cuba, no one dies or becomes homeless from a natural disaster. Not a single life was taken by Hurricane Ian in Cuba. In Florida, hundreds are assumed dead from the same hurricane. Don’t let anyone tell you there isn’t a massive difference between socialism and capitalism.” (-Danny Haiphong)
“Nearly 90% of the world population is not backing the US in our current quest for WWIII. This has been admitted by such mainstream outlets as the Wall Street Journal & Newsweek.” (-Lee Camp)
“Fascists Are Red Fascists Are Blue I Absolutely Will Not Vote Blue No Matter Who!” (-Pat The Berner)
“Resolve to serve no more, and you are at once freed.” (- Étienne de La Boétie)
“While Europeans want to believe their are the world, the real world understands clearly what is going on & none of us wants to have anything to do with it but we can’t escape because these criminals have the power to destroy us all.” (-Ajamu Baraka)
LOWKEY
“Unregulated Capitalism is a Suicide Pact”: Noam Chomsky talks to LowkeyWhile widely hailed as the father of modern linguistics, Noam Chomsky has, for well over half a century, also been one of the sharpest and most committed voices critiquing the crimes of the United States government. Having written well over 100 books on a range of subjects, from politics, to media to science and history, Chomsky was at ease …www.youtube.com
“Wyatt joins hundreds of journalists and children on a kill list maintained with explicit support from the Ukrainian Ministry of Interior, which lists an address in Langley, Virginia, has an IP in Brussels, and which has marked off murdered targets as “liquidated.” (-Max Blumenthal)
“I’ve been added to the Ukrainian regime’s official kill list. My alleged crimes include a “deliberate violation of the state border of Ukraine” & being an “accomplice” of “Russian-fascist invaders.” EU nations once condemned the kill list—but not anymore.” (-Wyatt Reed)
CHEAP & NASTY
I remember how exciting it was in the early 90’s, when I self published a low budget cut n paste, stapled togther and copied at Kinkos after midnight trashy fanzine, all these big labels would send me so much shit for review, it was like a part time job just reselling the major label corporate rawk to the plethora of local record stores for $5-8 a pop. every morning, I’d look down the stairwell and a big stack of boxes would be on the floor underneath the mail slot. The amazing thing was I received good stuff too from all over the world. One cd I took a liking to was Cheap And Nasty and no I still aint made enough money moving furniture or doing lawn work for rich people to buy those awesome looking Alvin Gibbs books, yet, but an old boy can dream, can’t he? The really extra fucked up sad part about the tragic death of the marvelous guitarist and artist Timo Kaltio is that I am pretty sure that Cheap & Nasty were plotting a reunion. Nasty Suicide’s a pretty good singer, ya know I saw some of those clips from the sixtieth birthday party Hanoi Rocks reunion that reminded me of my last real life conversation with an old sideman of mine in NY, he was reassuring me that we’d still get it back together to make some more good music while we were both alive but all those old dreams just seem to be paling now, ya know? People think another old bandmate of mine stole his stage name from Jan Stenfors, but people actually started calling him that when an elderly black lady riding the last redline subway of the night from Boston to Cambridge looked at my old cohort in his leather pants and snakeskin patterned suitjacket, no shirt underneath, some silver cross necklace dangling down with his black mop of wet hair and said, “you a nasty bastard!” Because he had vomited right there on the floor of the redline. That kinda thing was once common in our circles. The rest of us barely batted an eye. I “knew” Les Riggs on Falsebook for a couple years, he lived like a hop, skip, n a jump from me back then, so I naturally asked him if he wanted to pound the cans for my antisocial glamarchist band and he naturally declined, being a nine to fiver family man now. He was a good drummer, Cheap And Nasty were All Stars. Les has a lotta great stories, as you would imagine. Timo, you might know, roadied for Hanoi, played in Cherry Bombz, Alvin Gibbs and the Disobedient Servants, Stronzo, Anzi Destruction, Rene Berg, Killer Kane, Dogs D’Amour, Peckham Cowboys, Tango Pirates, with Izzy Stradlin and Guns N Roses, Smack, Anita Chellemah, with all kinda people. Sad he’s gone. (RIP) He was one of rocknroll’s real cool ones. Where can I find a guitarist like that??? I still got the promo photos in my moving boxes out there that china records sent me in like 91, but I tore my personalized autographed Mad For The Racket promo photo while packing for the move today which was a major bummer. All my rocknroll shit’s gone from all the girlfriend breakups, band breakups, midnight moves and evictions ya know, you can’t keep nothing in this world, but on the other hand, I got a Hank Williams Singles Collection on cassette for a dollar yesterday, shit comes and goes. The Kid Congo and lvin Gibbs books are toppa my want list these daze. They got some real boss Cheap & Nasty swag available for import prices online nowadays. I still love that band and you know Alvin Gibbs is def. one of my fave bassists.
DARRELL BATH
said I should move to the UK to find musicians but I always stayed here cause I got kids I never see. He played for every good band in England and elsewhere from the Dogs D’Amour to the Crybabys. I mean all of ’em. Ian Hunter, Nikki Sudden, Los Tupper, UK Subs, Spike Gray, Honest John Plain, Sabrejet, Diamond Dogs, Guttercats, Die Toten Hosen, probably Andrew Matheson…Hunter called him ” a fine guitarist and a walking lyric.” All the good ones are goin’ away while all the evil oligarchs and royals and warpigs and evil tyrants and torturers just live forever.
STOP WORSHIPPING THE PSYCHOPATHIC BILLIONAIRES WHO BOUGHT THE MEDIA! THEY ARE NOT FRIENDLY PHILANTHROPISTS! OR SUPER SPECIAL SPACEMAN SCIENCE-SAFETY SAVIORS! EVEN SANDERS SUPPORTS ALL THE BOGUS WARS FOR EMPIRE!
“Think tanks are narrative management firms where academics are paid by the worst people in the world to come up with reasons why it would be good and smart to do something evil and stupid.” (-Caitlin Johnstone)
“No immigrant has taken your job. You were laid off by a capitalist who required cheap labor and took advantage of that immigrant to increase his profits, and nothing makes him happier than to hear you blame the immigrant and not him.” (-Mohamad Safa)
It’s crazy how no good folks can ever seem to rise in the system without being killed or threatened or corrupted. Remember the story of how Dennis Kucinich was threatened aboard a plane by a top general? It’s pretty suspicious how Sanders and Gabbard and all those people got in line and endorsed Creepy Joe Biden.
“The great lie is that it is civilization. It’s not civilized. It has been literally the most blood thirsty brutalizing system ever imposed upon this planet. That is not civilization. That’s the great lie, is that it represents civilization.” (-John Trudell)
I STILL LOVE RALPH NADER AND JILL STEIN BUT NO LONGER BELIEVE IN SANDERS OR THE FRAUD SQUAD WARPIGS IN PINK WIGS!
Hello my Brothers & Sisters & Friends Of The Revolution, roosters and coyotes are audible outside the disintegrating desert trailer, last night, me n the boy saw a skunk about as big as a small dog. Crazy kook down the road keeps disappearing our outdoor feral cats which is one of many reasons why our caravan is traveling on down the road. Had some setbacks in our relocation plans but I guess that’s how it always goes. It’s starting to get cold here in the mornings. I’m on my third or fourth cuppa coffee and it’s starting to get bitter in the cup as I peruse the sad news of the day. All the big tech tyrants and their high salaried media mouthpieces are calling for always more censorship of the internet while the government entraps people for protesting, spies on all the people’s communications, and locks our last few legitimate, courageous whistleblower watchdog journalists up in it’s worldwide network of imperial gulags, deploys fake news whores to slay their good names. They killed Michael Hastings in a ball of fire and threw the book at the guy who leaked the Vault 7 files showing how they did it by remote control. I’m kinda depressed, reached out to some people I used to have alot of fun collaborating with-one got busy trying to unscrupulously monetize my song catalog claiming ownership of tunes he only covered, did not compose. One guy blew me off because he is so lofty in the tower and posh important in his own mind. I can’t hire sidemen to record my songs with cause I got kids and zero surplus, hard laboring for outrageous electric bills and obscene grocery bills. It’s a slave minded thing to say but I feel lucky to have found some honest work in hard times such as these. One guy I know is perpetually spiraling and can not contribute to any cause beyond his own most basic, instinctive, grab what you can and drive off in a van survival. It’s a sad time to be alive. Others have local bands they feel real popular in, have dismissed me as a vital lyricist/vocalist/ frontman cause they now work with the pay to play people who can finance shit. You know how it gets in old age. Some ex peers feel like they’ve achieved some kinda second hand association to some older marquee namebrand headliner’s former fame, and others feel like they married into wealth and can now only associate with people in their class or la-di-da higher ups, others I used to jam with just up and croaked these past couple years-it’s harder finding people to make a ruckous with as we get older. So yeah, not a lotta movement in the struggle to make new music. Mostly stay busy doing odd jobs and or trying to entertain a restless, home schooled, bored teenager without any suitable peers currently. We just came inside from some morning track and field exercise. He naturally wants to buy some arcade video games, monkeys, Gucci clothing, and a karate dojo in time for Halloween. Rank N File nobodies I used to know seem to sincerely believe that quoting the pig-media propaganda of the day is gonna somehow get them some type of trickle down privileges from the powerful who hate them, it’s a crazy time here in this end times batshittery.
I NEVER GOT HOW SHITLIBS CAN WAX OUTRAGED OVER MEREST SUGGESTION BIDEN ELECTION WAS RIGGED, EVEN THOUGH NO ONE EVER LIKED CRIME ACT BIDEN, HE HAS ALWAYS BLURTED RACIST HATE SPEECH, BEEN GROSS WITH KIDS, INSULTED A FACTORY WORKER ON CAMERA AND THE REST OF HIS CAMPAIGN WAS HIM WEARING A MASK IN HIS BASEMENT, BEING HANDLED BY HIS WIFE. PIG-MEDIA IS POTENT.
“Literally the absolute worst people. Think of some rich asshole who pours their wealth into manipulating human civilization in a profoundly unhealthy direction, and they’re probably on the Carnegie Endowment donor list.” (-Caitlin Johnstone)
“When I go around in America and I see the bulk of the white people, they do not feel oppressed; they feel powerless… and we understand the psychological genocide that they have already inflicted upon their own people.” (-John Trudell)
I TOOK THE KID OUT FOR DONUTS THIS MORNING NOW I AM PACKING MY BELONGINGS AND PREPARING FOR THE NEXT BIG MOVE
My fifteen year old and his mom just left for his part time job-some creepy candy salesman is supposed to meet them at his workplace to sell him some candy cigarettes. I’m always suspicious of old men selling candy to kids-ya know? He used to run an actual candy shop but now just finds customers obn a Facebook page and meets them in public places because the rent became too expensive at his former storefront, which is somewhat believable. He showed up with his own kid in the car which gives a bit more cred to his cause. Everybody’s got a hard hustle now if they didn’t go to college or inherit money or marry up. People like Bill gates kep buying up the farmland and Vanguard and Blackrock these monolithic monopolies are buying up EVERYTHING-media, pharma, weapons, real estate. Sheesh, what a world we live in. I aint got nothing to do today so I’m watching a documentary about Jimmy Hoffa, the mob, and the Kennedys, and the countless covert attempted secret police hits on Fidel Castro. Check out “The Smoking Gun” and also, “Killing Hoffa”. my teen’s listening to some Marty Robbins, my wife has to work tonight, I’m bored as fuck and wish there was somewhere to go. Most of the mom n pop shops closed during the Covid shutdowns, including my favorites second hand shop, a bookstore, two affordable greasy spoon restaurants and the bowling alley. Some yuppie scumbags are gentrifying the two streets downtown but aside from a ripoff boutique and a ripoff beer joint and a coffee shop only open about 16 hours a week, those fake gallery businesses are only open like one Friday night a month. I can’t wait to get out of this trailer, the city hallers who sicced the code enforcers on the hermits to please the creepy fly by night developers only succeeded in driving the hermits to crazy behaviors like stealing our fucking outdoor cat. Meanwhile the fat pampered indoor cats here keep puking on the floor all morning and my kid has moved on with his demands for dogs and goats, monkeys, and alpacas.
“It doesn’t matter who exposed the secrets, it matters what the secrets are. Our government spies on us illegally.” (-Matt Taibbi)
“U.S. intelligence warned Germany of possible attack on pipelines in the summer like it called the dates for the new phase of the war in Ukraine for Feb. Brilliant intelligence or something else? This is same intelligence service that predicted a “slam-dunk” for WMDs in Iraq.” (-Ajamu Baraka)
“Money is freedom. So when you have tiny number of people (the 1%) with most of the money, the resources, & the freedom, the only way they can continue to rule over such an expansive group of people — the bottom 80 to 90% of the country — is to have us all HATE each other.” (-Lee Camp)
“I think it’s the responsibility of every human being, not just those who wear the identity of poet, activist, voter, religious person… it’s the responsibility of every person. Our responsibility is to use our intelligence as clearly and coherently as we possibly can.” John Trudell
“On its Douma “investigation”, btw,
Evan Hill’s NYT unit collaborated with Bellingcat, without disclosing that it’s funded by Western states and spook firms involved in the Syria dirty war. Even Bellingcat’s UK funders have privately admitted that it spreads disinformation.” (-Aaron Mate’)
today about funding Neo-Nazis in Ukraine. His Bio reads “Fighting for jobs and education, not bombs & incarceration” yet he votes to give the racist Azov battalion billions of dollars.” (-Jose Vega)
“Wikipedia is by design an instrument of online discourse suppression and cognitive control of Western populations. Marketed as a consensus driven encyclopedia, it empowers intel agencies and regime change fanatics to digitally assassinate their critics.” (-Max Blumenthal)
JOHN TRUDELL, LEONARD PELTIER, AMERICAN INDIAN MOVEMENT, JESSIE ED DAVIS
I’ve been studying the American Indian Movement since I was a young kid getting thrown into the classroom closet by the wrestling coach/history teacher for challenging his racist whitewash bullshit.
“Historically speaking, we went from being Indians to pagans to savages to hostiles to militants to activists to Native Americans. Its five hundred years later and they still cant see us. We are still invisible.” (-John Trudell)
“Neoliberal fascism is given a pass because because neoliberals control the state & social & corporate media. If that sounds like talking points from the right it is only because the liberal/left is aligned with neoliberal totalitarianism & stop raising principled criticisms.” (-Ajamu Baraka)
Hustling Hustling on down hustling street Rag man rag woman paper bags full Street age alerts in tenant child eyes Sidewalk playgrounds got to beware Junk man’s in the shadows Dealing his junk Beautiful sisters Deal themselves around Beautiful brothers Not so beautiful anymore So much older than the day before
“Following the sabotaging of the Nord Stream pipelines, there should surely be more interest in Britain’s arming of Ukraine with under-water drones last month. Training for use of these drones was delivered by The British Diving & Threat Exploitation Group and the US Navy Sixth Fleet.” (-Lowkey host of the Watchdog at Mint Press News)
“We must be morally & politically consistent. I condemned & still condemn Ukrainian state forcefully conscripting men to fight who are opposed to war. I also condemn all efforts to force Russians who opposed war to be compelled to take up arms. Conscientious objection is real.” (-Ajamu Baraka)
“Isn’t it strange that entirely made up rumors about China go viral but the daily, verifiable chaos, illegitimacy, and war criminality of the United States rarely gets attention? That’s your brain on propaganda.” (-Danny Haiphong)
“In addition to its longtime CIA ties, media corporation Axel Springer (which owns Politico, Business Insider, and top German newspapers) requires employees to support capitalism, the neoliberal European Union, and apartheid Israel or they’ll lose their job.” (-Ben Norton)
“The attacks on both Nord Stream pipelines is an obvious act of sabotage, no matter what the United States says. Winter is coming, and the U.S. is using its proxy war on Russia to sink Europe deeper into full privatization and subservience to U.S. imperial dictates.” (-Danny Haiphong)
“I have information about things that our government has lied to us about. I know. For example, to say that since the fall of the Soviet Union we ceased all of our intimate relationship with Bin Laden and the Taliban – those things can be proven as lies, very easily, based on the information they classified in my case, because we did carry very intimate relationship with these people, and it involves Central Asia, all the way up to September 11.” (-Sibel Edmonds)
“FDA advisor and vaccine maker Paul Offit: “A healthy young person is unlikely to benefit from a booster dose… If there’s not clear evidence of benefit, then it’s not fair to ask people to take a risk.” (-Max Blumenthal)
“This is the face of authoritarianism – even though it looks different than you were taught to expect. And it’s the mindset of tyrants everywhere: This is someone so inebriated by her sense of righteousness and superiority that she views dissent as an evil too dangerous to allow: ” (-Glenn Greenwald)
“In a mind-blowingly hypocritical speech at the UN, Biden (a strong supporter of the Iraq War) declared: “If nations can pursue imperial ambitions without consequences, we put at risk everything this institution stands for” I fact-checked his absurd lies.” (-Ben Norton)
“Despite Russia’s clear RED lines, the West has been blaming Russia & painting Putin as the villain, saying his intervention was “unprovoked.” But recently NATO admitted that it DID have plans to expand along the eastern flank YEARS ago longer before 2022.” (-Fiorella Isabel)
“The puppet on the right shares my beliefs, the puppet on the left is more to my liking. Hey…there’s one guy holding up both!”
“This is where we are at right now, as a whole. No one is left out of the loop. We are experiencing a reality based on a thin veneer of lies and illusions. A world where greed is our God and wisdom is sin, where division is key and unity is fantasy, where the ego-driven cleverness of the mind is praised, rather than the intelligence of the heart.
If you want to understand a society, take a good look at the drugs it uses. And what can this tell you about American culture? Well, look at the drugs we use. Except for pharmaceutical poison, there are essentially only two drugs that Western civilization tolerates: Caffeine from Monday to Friday to energize you enough to make you a productive member of society, and alcohol from Friday to Monday to keep you too stupid to figure out the prison that you are living in.”
I’m getting ready to move, but it’s like hurry up and wait cause so much has to be done, boots on the ground wise and via other people before I can start packing up the truck, Beverly Hillbillies style, as is my custom, and lightin’ out for greener pastures. ‘Had a hard time sleeping last night, got too much to worry about between all the gouging by the corporations at the grocery store, a family member’s medical crisis, a sometime employer’s many health problem delays, always some kinda unexpected setbacks and bureaucracy red tape, malfunctioning appliances, renegotiated terms, all kindsa shit goin’ on, that makes it hard for an impatient, right now kinda action man like me who would much rather do it, than talk about it some more. You ever notice how the richer motherfuckers are, the more they like to philosophically weigh every option in the catalog, consult their horoscope, double check the weather, visit their massage therapist, and listen to themselves talk about every option on the menu, and when the food comes, they’re always mad they didn’t order what the table next to them are having, and usually end up somehow finding a way to blame the waitress to justify their callous mistreatment of workers and still ’em on the tip? Me and the wife have been working as light landscapers, ranch hands, assistants, gardeners, housecleaners and shit movers, for a couple of different AirBandB owners and other employers. Main thing all these different people have in common is they aint really interested in getting shit done, finding solutions, or paying the least money out to contractors and shit as they are in feeling like visionaries having important William Blake like visions about where to put their stuff. I have not been around rich people in about twenty years, I’ve been avoiding them on purpose because they all seem so flakey unreliable, delusional, narcissistic and entitled. I always get hurt or burned by them so I kinda believe it is better not to be very involved with very many of these crazy fucking people. One dude I made the mistake of interacting with promptly pivoted straight to how can he monetize my creative works and exploit my shit for money. That’s how these nutty capitalists think: how can they liquidate and commodify your existence for their own personal profit or vanity brands? I’ve never been good at taking shit and pretending it feels good, and that is the only actual relationship being offered by the wealthy ranchers in the big compounds overflowing with unused stuff and long neglected weeds and shit. Even when I was a small kid, accompanying my car dealer grandfather to the Country Club. on Thursday nights, I never liked the way middle class people talk down to The Help. Same thing at the smalltown morning donut shop where all the businessman gathered for coffee each day. I knew as a kid, my solidarity was with the waitresses and dishwashers and not the big wheel stuffed shirt showoffs stiffing them. I would not want to be rich at this point. I would like to see my kids more often and I’d like to make records with a band, but I do not want to become one of those assholes I see treating humans badly and waiting for other people to die, so they can sell their property and spend their money. That’s so gross to me. I do not worship rich people or mistake property for virtue. That’s the real standoff between me and society, me and any kinda participants in the pay to pay modern music scenes. I’d say the biggest difference between me and my ex friends is I don’t suck up to rich people. I don’t believe in it. Also won’t hang my head down low and grovel in shame for being poor. I love poor people-some of the best people I’ve ever known have been poor. Just because you inherit some shit from your criminal bloodsucking capitalist millionaire parents don’t make you smarter or cooler, or sexier or groovier, or morally superior to anyone else. People I used to be friends with lost the fuckin plot and sadly gave up the ghost and dedicated their lives to eatin’ shit for the privileges of sorority membership: so long as they could keep soft jobs and high five joiner privilege. I’m not like that, and never will be. I got an old song that goes, “I’ll never live like the other half”.
A close friend of mine similarly works for a rich lady who owns all kindsa shit she got from her excessively well to do parents-she might think she’s a lot more highbrow, scientific, harder working, more virtuous, arty, intellectual, or bitchen than we are, cause she has all that stuff, and is accustomed to controlling people with her parent’s moolah, and buying their silence in her luxurious egomaniacal orbit, a whole lot like a long gone ex girlfriend of mine, funny thing is, both she and I are bohemian eighth grade dropouts, who went gypsying around and living by our wits from a young age. Only difference is, I never had no fuckin’ credit card or safety net to dip into, when things went bad. Once or twice, in the Bowery and on the Sunset Strip, I asked a relative for emergency money, we’re talkin two hundred dollars, and they still seem to hold it against me, over thirty years later-like that once needing ground support at sixteen or twenty somehow narrowly, one dimensionally defines me as a flawed and insufficient person–people just aint that cool in this me, first , I Me Mine, ratrace culture. That ex girlfriend of mine I mentioned earlier who hoarded all her surplus wealth and $1000 a night salary, just never learned to share-not without some guaranteed quid pro quo bigass profit motive. It’s the same with soldout/got old musicians, they don’t wanna help make cool music or create lasting memories, so much as they wanna make money. It’s all about the filthy lucre, aint it? I think it was Gore Vidal who said that Murkkkans cared more about seeing other people lose than mere winning. I see how the winners can’t even taste the booze of victory-they are all insatiable hungry ghosts with piles and piles of objects but no real serenity or satisfaction.
So anyways, the rich old lady my friend used to care for’s in an old folks home with dementia and incontinence, and her other relatives want nothing to do with her trustee, since she showed her hand, only wanting control of the big shitpile of inheritance money, and now, her other former longtime cowboy handyman employee is dying of the Bad C, so yeah I guess me and her are sorta begrudgingly bartering some. I don’t mind pitching in and helping her, cause she is disabled, and can’t move or lift heavy shit but really, I just ain’t so good at role playing that flattering asskiss suckup script she’s accustomed to, from her blue collar helpers; so I dunno how it’s gonna go, from here. She never stops talking, interrupts all my responses, and it’s all a crazy narrative about how academic and wise and wonderful and enlightened she is, also how stupid and incompetent all her workers are and how hard it is to get good help these days, “nobody wants to work”, they all say, some shit they were programmed with on the tv-all these different bosses with the never ending yapping, holy shit, man, that’s just like my kid with the Autism. I’m already kinda bitchy about being talked down to, or insultingly micromanaged by someone who aint probably any smarter than I am, really. Remember when McDonna started speaking with the hoity toity fake British accent? Just like that. Money people are nuts. I get why they never like me for long. I did have a love for my ex girlfriend the heiress’s more genuine and vulnerable side, she was one of those people who were born with a perfect face, but by age fifty, the meanness is starting to show, she really only loved power and control, prestige and comfort and ultimately, money. Lately I’ve been laboring for one of those people who puts you in high risk situations like with poisonous spiders and shit that’s really too heavy for one person to move. The ownership society capitalist hierarchy people just suck so bad. “Stakeholders”, they call themselves. “Investors”. This one’s my favorite: “Job Creators”.
I’m up early, as is my habit in my old age, listening to the rooster crow, having some coffee, still missing cigarettes, thinking about how to retell old stories with new rhymes and melodies, wishing I had some alcohol, “some weird sin just to relax with”, convenience store does not even open for another half hour here. There’s always gonna be ten scheming, get rich quick business owners all covered with body tattoos, talking about how they’re gonna turn some sleepy, depressing, faded graveyard into NEON LIT HOLY SHIT HIPSTER CHIC BROOKLYN OVERNIGHT! Women here seem to belong to witchy UFO new age cults and predominantly live behind big silver fences with their hot tubs and packs of dogs, there aint that many of ’em. So whenever dudes are talkin’ to me, they’re lookin’ at my old lady-even the American Indian Movement dude I really, really liked. Men here, drive like fools, do not bathe or shave, or wash their clothes, except I guess, when they get in the stinky river for their own reasons. Some of ’em embrace the sleeps with the dogs life also, but I ended up next door to the guy who hates animals. Keeps stealing my cats. It still beats honky suburbia. Or three grand a month, douchey, hipster-hip big city rents.
A long time ago, I lived in the dreadful, loathsome, depressing Midwest where they manufacture the Ken & Barbies, it was some kinda hut-two flag waver cargo shorts hell. Like war, all the time. One of many ways they tortured us, was with bad music-even in the 80’s, with all that beautiful stuff to choose from, the concentration camp speakers crackled non stop with fucking Sussudio and Lionel Richie, Rick Astley and that overplayed Animotion song. They loved to take a song and play it to death like that fucking John Waite tune, “I Aint Missin You”. They played that motherfucker so many times, your mom knows about it. I liked his other song from back then, “Change”, ‘tried to get my black clad, hairsprayed, hate drunken, surly punk band to let me cover it, but they were all too macho I think, to really hear what the song was alla bout. Even now, still to this day. Sometimes, I think they missed the whole point of punk. They think it has something to do with joining ’em if you can’t beat ’em and hazings and initiations and diplomas and sports competition-tackling your opponent, following rules for pat on the hed good doggie treats, or doing stupid human tricks to compliantly please more popular people’s conservative sports moms by bragging about property, or talking about your collections of records and plastic bagged ancient magazines stuffed into multiple art book spare rooms that no one is allowed to touch. I talk to people in the desert nowadays and it’s always about their possessions, if they are male-the jeep, the ranch, the truck, the RV, the fucking cattle they inheried with their big belt buckles. Or their Double Stuffed, Special Secret Magic, intuitive, Reincarnated Cleopatra comin’ at ya, new age psychic ESP powers and hot springs astrology AirBand rental properties, if they are female. Or voting Democrat, cause she loves the Clintons, for feminism. I don’t fit in with ’em, I’m usually there just nodding along but in my head, I’m thinking about Assata Shakur and Fred Hampton and Leonard Peltier and John Trudell, or my dead friends, long lost former bandmates, legendary children, and Echo & The Bunnymen. Ya know?
WORLD AT A GLANCE
One supremely cool, heartfelt 80’s pop band who never got enough credit or airplay in my book was a band called World At A Glance I remember from seeing on MTV’s 120 Minutes Sunday Might Tv Show. I thought their song was sensational and they had a brilliant frontman named David Ilku, a real edgy guitarist named Michael Lawrence, on drums, Dougie Brown and on bass Thaddeus Castanis. They reminded me variously of the Front, the Furs, Duran, Lions & Ghosts, Japan, Simple Minds, U2, Inxs. Why aren’t there any good original bands like that anymore? I dunno, man, but this song “Burning Out”‘s still great in my book! Maybe it’s just cause that was my era, ya know the kinda music that was popularized when I was young and head over heels in love and hoping to become a cult band like the Cult, but I sincerely love everything about that band, WORLD AT A GLANCE. Slick production by Chris Lord-Alge gave it that collegerock/electropop feel like early Inxs records-the new wave ones, before they broke into Murkkka top forty with stadium funk and sappy ballads. I’ll probably look for a hard copy of their album or cassette online if I ever get some money. This is the kindof music I imagined my old bassplayer Bobby, the James Dean lookalike wouldbe major label rockstar frontman was making in Columbus with his bands, the Healers and Shine. I keep hoping someone will post his performances or demos to youtube, but almost nothing has surfaced since his death thusfar. I lost touch with the guy for twenty years-they said he had become a bartender at Andy’s Treehouse and then, worked at a factory and played golf and drank with 9-5 people from his old high school. Damn, this life really has become like a fast forwarded VHS video tape. In my mind I can see Me, Mitch and Bobby in my mom’s kitchen, wearing spiked bracelets and leather crosses, gang-singing “Nights Are So Long” like it was yesterday, or up in the corny preppie nightclub DJ booth, Bobby spinning MTV eighties college rock for the mainstream Barbies and baseball cap smalltown paying regulars. We had set out to create our own new wave and post punk together as youngsters. He went away to sing covers with a band called Who’s Drivin’, I stupidly moved to Boston and continued to write sorta catchy original gutter punk with my scroungy, empty pocketed hoodlum friends. I really miss this kindof pop music and will probably die trying to resume making my own versions of it. Hard to find suitable collaborators in the old age-nobody remembers the old new wave. I’m still koo koo for 39 Steps and the Bolshoi and Gene Loves Jezebel and Duran Duran-ya know what I mean? I saw a heavily tattooed, muscle car driving, Carnie Danzig lookalike in the checkout line wearing sunglasses at eight in the morning but he’s a Masonic capitalist gentrification land baron, so even if he can play guitar or knows about the Sex Pistols or whatever, we really aint got much in common. Kinda on opposite sides of the culture war. Met a real butch Sunday matinee moshpit dude from Jersey named Thomas who had Clash and Motorhead tattoos and an Agnostic Front t shirt but he does not play an instrument, we are both former punk band vocalists. God bless ‘im. It’s hard cause I got all this mowing and planting and moving and weeding to do, but in my heart of hearts, all I wanna do is sing for a trashy, in your face confrontational, full contact revolution-punk band and record more original songs from the heart. It shouldn’t be so hard, but all the surviving ex punks joined some fuckedup status quo wannabe popular belonger hierarchy.
39 STEPS
I LOVE this Canadian new wave band-they were kinda like Iggy Pop and the Cult! They had that Billy Duffy gothic psychedelic guitar sound! Chris Barry’s seventies kid punk band the 222’s opened for Teenage Head at max’s Kansas City and stuff like that. Reminded me of my outcast high school friends. I mean before I introduced them to my other friends and they became sports bar honcho, frat rock celebrities.
FLAMING LIPS VS CHAINSAW KITTENS
I liked the first couple of Flaming Lips records back when they were a scuzzy psychedelic Charlie Manson and Alice Cooper influenced, van travelling little band from Norman Oklahoma, I liked their lyrics, their acidhead image-later on in the 90210 era they got too Lollapalooza rich and overproduced mainstream joke band for me and I’m not into that dead dog Miley Cyrus shit at all, but when they were a little nowhere band, they did like dry ice and strobe lights and bad heavy metal covers to piss off the ROTC generic jock pseudo punks, I thought that was kool. I remember all the camo clad suburbans in the combat boots and flight jackets LEFT THE CLUB in protest of the Flaming Lips having long hair and being too earsplittingly loud rocknroll. My friends and I were also into sorta shakin’ up the status quo so we kinda enjoyed all their loud, noisy hellraising. We made friends with them that night and they invited us to open for ’em in their hometown. We never did do that-everybody in my group was really nailed down to their deadend dayjobs and high school shit back then, and about half the band were just really not ready to leave town. So I stayed there with ’em as long as I could, trying unsuccessfully to motivate them into moving to Hollywood or NYC to pursue music in a bigger way. I think only two of us regularly did acid back then.
Everybody knows I hated grunge. Just not my scene at all. Did not like the look, the nasally singing, the macho bluster and buzzkill bad vibes, the formulaic going through the motions of imitating bands like Happy Flowers, Killdozer and the Pixies who’d been around for years only impressing know nothing jocks who never heard any genuine punk rock with their so called “originality”. I was not into the hesher-metal Ethyl Merman Alice In Chains and Stone Temple Pilots corporate headbanger “Spooky Tarzan” posturing, Eddie Vedder’s wounded beagle voice, or any of the generic fratboy college cows who infiltrated the underground scene with their awful parents fucking money. One Norman Oklahoma band that arrived late in the fake-indie alternative era that was still almost begrudgingly semi weirdo new wave enough for me was the Chainsaw Kittens. They made some pretty decent records that were like, at least, making an effort to be entertaining, ala the Dandy Warhols, Smashing Pumpkins, Brainiac, any of the poppier Alt bands that weren’t just all shirtless Christ posing in workboots and suicide note smack lyrics and swampy gloom.
But really I’m not into any “Alternative”. I still like punk rock mostly.
and some sleazy glam:
SPORTS DESK
“When Mike Bloomberg sings your praises, there might be a problem with your brand of leftism” (-Whitney Webb)
“The mainstream media carefully never mentions the “shadow bank” that owns much of the world. It’s no coincidence that this asset management firm is one of the top stake holders in every large mainstream media corporation & every large social media platform.” (-Lee Camp)
“A Princeton study revealed the bottom 90% of earners in U.S.—which is the vast majority of the people—have zero impact on policy. Remember this when either ruling class party begs for your vote or money. Don’t give it to them. They don’t represent anyone except their rich donors.” (-Ryan Knight)
“I’d like to formally request that this month’s stipend for Ukraine goes to Puerto Rico and also to the American Houseless population.” (-Just Maureen)
“In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.” (- Franklin D. Roosevelt)
“Someone tell Hillary Clinton that no matter how many photo ops she does with celebrities, she will always be hated for being a war criminal and known as the joke who lost to Donald Trump.” (Revolutionary Blackout Network)
“Russia’s mobilization is based on the fact that NATO has from the outset sought a permanent proxy war in Ukraine. Those who cheered for NATO belligerence will reap what they sow.” (-Danny Haiphong)
But if you’re a natural man You got to ball and have a good time
And that’s what I call chooglin’” (-Fogerty)
I’m retreating farther away from capitalists and the cut throats cause I just can’t stand their bullshit culture of backstabbing and mutiny and ratrace competition, fuck those people. Always stressful starting new jobs, moving to new locations, saying goodbye to devils you know. I have no illusions of being free-I am still stuck on the plantation workin’ for the boss every night and day. At least I have less pig-media programmed crazies to fuck with nowadays than I once did. I know some of the haves on the hill with the surplus property, the gallery, the airbandb, the wall sized blown up billboard photos of their own fat faces, the constant juggernaut of vanity merchandise, the fancy oversized touring vehicles, and they aint even happy. At all. Aint that a bitch? Fought their way into the tall tower only to find out, that owning the Most Stuff aint it. I remember when I was a kid, I mostly heard of Creedence Clearwater Revival, because they were selling their greatest hits album on the tv all the time. I was never into “Proud Mary”, but I do otherwise love me some old school Ike & Tina Turner. Anyways, it was the Hanoi Rocks cover of “Up Around The Bend” that really first ignited my interest in Fogerty’s songs, cause I vibed with the lyrics and thought they were at a Chuck Berry level of pure poetry. Next thing ya know, my favorite band, LORDS OF THE NEW CHURCH did “Hey Tonight”. Cherry Bombz did “Traveling Band”. “Fortunate Son” was one of the great anti war protest songs-I’d gone to school with so many meathead dumbfuck rich kids and no matter what fuckedup shit they did, they were always falling up and being rewarded. Us poorer kids were all corralled into learning disability classrooms, or herded into military service, bootcamped and probationed for wearing leather jackets or having crazy haircuts, or wearing a bit of black eye smudge, so I really deeply resonated with that one! If the Grateful Dead or any hippie jamband rocked as hard as “Down On The Corner”, I mighta liked that shit, but other than Canned Heat, I was just never into much of the reeferhead jam bands. Cats like Chris Isaak only wish they wrote “Born On The Bayou”, or that just me? Then, I started seeing “Old Man Down The Road” on MTV and wow, I dug that whole thing, too. I guess somewhere, deep inside, I always kinda knew I was gonna probably end up a hermit in the woods, if my rocknroll dream did not come true, and the problem with the rocknroll dream, is it was reliant on so many different moving parts, and then, you add in the pay to play culture, rehearsal space rental costs, ridiculous recording studio costs, the media monopoly bullshit agenda, and the Antirock Conspiracy, and here we are.
Really enjoying that documentary about CCR. They were one of this country’s greatest bands, for sure. I’m pretty sure the Seattle band Green River took their name from the CCR song and certainly the fucking flannel shirts. I remember reading about how Fogerty would not play his own hits for years, because he felt so fucked over by his just out for themselves former bandmates, and some creepy hustler publisher who stole the monetized value of his songs. I got old and summa the same exact shit happened to me. Hard to do old songs, once other people kinda poison ’em, or cheapen ’em, or try to monetize ’em, or steal the copyrights. I get it. Hell, I’ll write better ones. It does take it outta ya though, when the people you thought were your friends were just hanging around waitin’ for a chance to steal your suitcase. Just so weird seein’ other people peddling the tunes you lived and wrote like they aint never even heard of you. Funny, ’cause when I google myself, to see if any video of my old bands has washed up on youtube or whatever, my name was appropriated, ALL MY OLD BANDS names have been copied by younger bands now, all of ’em. The tv show my friends and I did on cable access, somebody stole the name of that, on youtube too, AND like dozens of old tunes get performed by people who try to pass ’em off as their own, though it should be more than obvious that some rich gentrified yuppie deskjob dude did not write those songs about being heartbroken on the street or their friends all croaking from dope. I kind got this newish job as a part time ranch hand, ya know, whatever they need me to do, so I kinda just gotta wait around on call, and can’t get too involved with any of my own projects because I might have to work later today-usually moving stuff around really. Move this stack of wood from here to there, roll these heavy cement planters into the barn, move this fifties heavyass washing machine, weed whack that acre-paint this room–that kinda shit, but the money’s okay and I got a lot of expenses now, preparing to relocate. Gotta lotta packing done this morning, but you know how it is, the work is never ending. I always swing between dark depression and intense PTSD anxiety. One of my part time Bossladies called and said I gotta go tear down a bunch of rotten cardboard boxes covered with brown recluse and black widow spiders and remove some yard debris during my usual dinnertime. Me and the employer keep opposite hours but she gets to make the schedule. At least she’s into like, gardening, she’s gonna teach us how to grow our own food. We need to start gardening more caue the grocery is such a ripoff withh the post Covid Great Reset inflation bullshit. A ninety nine scent bottle of water is now a dollar seventy post plague and my idiot former peers just CHEER for more wra in the Ukraine, with China, with Iran, they are warpigs in pink wigs My kid’s going through a crazy med change and played hooky from his part time job, so he’s here talking non stop about karate, fireworks, ordering Chinese replicas of hype beast namebrand shoes. No mail came today, I’m crabby, wanna drink.
“Wondering how many funerals that I will attend of Black people close to me dying prematurely before so-called leftists in the U.S. will realize that racism is inseparable from the class struggle. I am on number five.” (-Danny Haiphong)
“Every election Democrats tell us “democracy and basic human rights are on the ballot”—but when they have power they don’t actually fight for democracy or human rights. They fight for Big Business, the ruling class, and the military industrial complex just like the Republicans do.” (-Ryan Knight)
“BREAKING: Mass media still totally silent two weeks after UN Secretary General says world’s biggest carbon emitters (like the US military, for example) must drastically cut emissions starting now in 2022 if global climate catastrophe is to be averted.” (-CGoustin)
“I find it kind of funny I find it kind of sad. The dreams in which I’m dying are the best I’ve ever had.” (-Tears For Fears)
It’s with a bit of heavy heart that me and my peeps have realized it is time to mosey on down the road. Shady developers, psycho neighbors, city hall corruption, gentrifier delusions, all kinds of unwanted new traffic and a bridge being built on my deadend street against the wishes of every home owner on the block, are just some of the reasons we’ll be moving on, but this old trailer has been mostly good to us these past five years, other than one traumatizing incident involving a middle class predator we had the misfortune of interacting with. I just see lots of work ahead. I was listening to that sensational band, THE BOYS, this morning, and thinking about time and the aging process and the ongoing desire I have to put my tunes on tape. I did the roll call of former bandmates last week-you got the unemployable cat who relies on the kindness of strangers on permanent couch tour who I can not provide for with my dishwasher salary; the busy uptown millionaire with his personal assistants who aint really into music no more and has no time for me cause we aint into the same shit at all, he’s on his own solo trip now; about three guys who play in big fish in small pond local bands with well to do hipsters who bankroll all their shit who are already kinda spoken for; a lovable old writer who is a fine bassist but works for The Man; and a couple of hired gun salaried mercenary types who only showup for big money name bands. Couple other guys from Boston who used to play music with my group are just too rich to wanna rock with us antisocial glamarchist types, any longer-they might like the Pogues or Tom Waits, but they got yachts and recording studios and rolling plantations, so they don’t really get where we’re coming from no more, if they ever faintly did-they mostly seem to exclusively socialize with their wives and parents. Cloistered country club people-a shame they choose to no longer consort with the permanently exiled poor white trash likes of myself now they are past their college slumming phase, though, cause they could actually play their instruments very well and were very capable producer-arranger-collaborators, high harmony background singers, they gave my sleazy ghetto trash punk rock some Beach Boys appeal. WE used to have a lotta laughs til the wives made ’em get serious about you know-real estate. I’m probably gonna resort to buying some drums and a bass and getting busy doing it myself, in the new garage, Mary Chain style. Everybody gets in to music for different reasons, ya know? Some for the girls, some for the money, some to fit in with rich people in the expensive imported leather clothes at the fat actor bar, the pretentious assholes who collected more Johnny Thunders picture discs than thou, some for the wild expression of human emotion. I would be in that final category. I’m still trying to tell my side of the story before it’s too late, organize and archive the pictures we took on the trip for my absentee children and the generations to come. Sometimes, you mistakenly think people love you, if they model themselves after you, fraternize with all your former associates, cover your songs, befriend your exes on the False-Books, but they are just kinda using your shit to be seen on the scene, ya know? In this lifetime, not everybody that we loved will be capable of really loving us back, or giving a real sincere flying fuck about what happens to us. There are a lot of opportunistic, self important, narcissistic, one upping, fake motherfuckers out there in this bullshit society-they program ’em to be like that. Tiktok celebrities, brand building influencers, terminal wannabes and remorseless plagiarists. Ladder climbers. Backstabbing whores for fame. Snakes in the grass. Crazy new neighbor has the obligatory oversized growling dogs and the “Let’s Go Brandon” sign in his front yard, plays Kid Rock real loud. I dropped a postcard on an old hombre and former collaborator but he has become too garage band famous with his collegetown frat rock band to bother writing me back. I hate this capitalist ratrace popularity contest bullshit all the middle class people are so sucked into. It is exactly like middle school forever. They all just wanna sit at the table with the fat jocks and Republikkkan oafs. Bummer. It is what it is. Makes me wanna go ever deeper into desert obscurity. Disappear. It’s strange imagining all the people I used to know in their boxes staring at little boxes. Sitting alone sober in a room feels like a prison sometimes, ya know, but everytime I made the foolish mistake of calling someone from the old days, I’m always so disappointed by how brainwashed they are. They all seem like commercials. Advertising slogans. Obeyers obeying the evil empire. Not my thing, man. I’m still rocknroll. I’ll tell you what is hard for me-being sober, doing nothing, staring at a hypnoscreen, the passivity of it all. Feels like punishment. And people you love who just aint the same no more, who have been assimilated into the herd mentality. Look at me, look at my namebrand designer object. The popularity chasers. Lames. Meanwhile, all the cool people I admired and took so much consolation from continue dropping like flies. I still aint “over” the sad deaths of my record store guru, Dave A., or former bass player Bobby C., or songwriting mentor PK, or Prince or Bowie or Nick Marsh. I struggle to accept this whole death thing. Helpless Mystery.
Last conversation I remember having with Nick was about HATS. One time decades ago, I got a hold of Marsh online inquiring about Rocco Barker’s wheareabouts hoping to draft him into one of my own illfated new wave crash and burn short lived super groups, and Nick, ever the charmer said, “I’LL play!” He was up for it. “What do you need Rocco for, when ya got me?” Cheetah Chrome had once said the same thing to me when my old pal the World Famous Mister Ratboy replaced me with my dear friend, Chris Barry. True story! Of course, even if I lived in London or wherever, I could not imagine asking one of my alltime fave frontmen to play second fiddle to me, but he was like that, a team player, gabba gabba hey. He was just all about rocknroll and having a good laugh. Nick Marsh was the one who casually suggested my halfass basement glam gang open up for him and Gigantic but the lead guitar shredder in my band turned it down instinctively cause he felt he’d been somehow unfairly put out by a NY Doll he arranged some miniature tour on behalf of, that was one of the big cracks between me and that dude. Sabotaging that little band when so many people wanted to see it fly. I still live for Flesh For Lulu, ya know? One of my all time favorite bands. “Seven Hail Marys”, “Roman Candle”, “Decline & Fall”, “Time & Space”, “I May Have Said You’re Beautiful”, “Postcards From Paradise”. I still listen to them all the time. Always thought that was the perfect model for a band. Dirty goth-part pop, part new wave, cool threads and influenced by the Stooges, Damned, and Bauhaus. “..Subterraneans, Hey where’ya going now – underground – everything happens after dark..” I’ll never know why people would rather be in all those Gotham City karaoke night so-so mediocre coverbands. I just don’t get that shit at all. Long Live The New Flesh!
“I talk about narrative all the time partly because narrative control is the source and foundation of the power of the US-centralized empire. The ability to control the way people think, act and vote with mass-scale psychological manipulation allows our rulers to dominate us more pervasively than we could ever be dominated by brute totalitarian force, which is why so much energy goes into keeping the people from controlling their own narratives. That’s all the current mainstream panic about “disinformation” is, for example. If narrative control were fully decentralized, our rulers couldn’t rule.” (-Caitlin Johnstone)
“A liberal democracy, in the eyes of the West, is a country in the Global South that opens itself up to interventionism and allows its resources to be looted by Western monopolies and oligopolies whilst its citizens wallow in poverty. That’s no democracy at all.” (-Mukoma J Asani)
“The World Council of Churches passed a resolution calling for Cuba to be removed from the U.S. list of countries sponsoring terrorism. Biden should listen and do this NOW! #letCubalive” (-Medea Benajmin)
“Joe Biden has openly said that the goal of its proxy war in Ukraine is to destroy Russia. He has openly floated the possibility of war with China over Taiwan. There truly is not a war in existence that Biden and the Democrats oppose.” (-Danny Haiphong)
ONLY ONES
If you try to follow me home tonight You will find everything that you’ve heard is right You’ll never return to the home you knew Leave it all behind, it’s up to you
Only Ones were, in my estimation, one of the greatest bands of all time-as I type this, my teenage son is telling me the neighbor’s goat, Jay Jay is missing. Anyways, one time my children’s mother was dumping me and it was mostly due to ya know me not having lots of money and my band breaking up-I had gained weight staying home, not drinking, changing diapers ya know and it seemed less and less likely I was gonna make it big in show business with the sidemen ditching me to go play in glorified fucking richkid zipcode coverbands, so I was spiralling and my old pen pal Nina Antonia was empathizing, she wrote me some beautiful letters I kept pinned to my wall for the longest time: “the human heart can only take so many mauling’s”. She totally got me. I used to exchange a lotta info on social media with my songwriting idol Perrett. He was a goodfella. That band were like the fucking Pretenders-all virtuosos. If I ever do get to make music at this point, the recordings need to be at that level. I love them so much. Peter seemed to share my love and respect for the Cuban Revolution.
You find it tempting to give up the ghost You always sell to the one who bids the most You get paid for your loyalty Waiting for someone to come along and set you free Can’t you hear me?
I want to die in the same place I was born Miles from nowhere I used to reach for the stars but now I’ve reformed She’s out there somewhere If you ever start thinking what you’re doing to me Maybe you will set me free From this sorrow From this sorrow From this sorrow
All the defendants have been condemned When you were sentenced it covered all of them Give me justice you scream and scream I ain’t done nothing, it’s all a crazy dream Can’t you hear me?
I want to die in the same place I was born Miles from nowhere I used to reach for the stars but now I’ve reformed She’s out there somewhere If you ever start thinking what you’re doing to me Maybe you will set me free From this sorrow From this sorrow From this sorrow
THE PIGS OF WAR ACCUSE CUBA OF SPONSORING TERROR BUT NOT SAUDI ARABIA OR ISRAEL. THE EMPIRE ARE THE TERRORISTS.
I made friends with those garage guys at the food truck way back when I worked at Rounder/Ryko records with a buncha music people, Kudgel, Elevator Drops, Corazon Higgins who I loved from Sugarbitch, a famous kid with a goatee named King Velveeduh who made naughty underground comix. I saw the Cheater Slicks play to empty rooms. Always loved Dave’s artwork. Tom and I were close friends for years. Used to try to get ’em to be my Birthday Party, but we ended up drinking instead. I remember a couple hard partier dudes who always used to hang around their house drinking and smoking with us, Jerry Wick and Jack Taylor, are both dead now, and also their friend Alpo from the Real Kids who Tom once told me their song, “My Friends” was partly about, in addition to myself. (RIP) They’ve done some unbelievably good work over the years. We always had a good time together. Their new lp with Bill Gage will probably go down in history as another sonic landmark from their psycho garage. They even toured with Andre Williams and the Muffs, appeared on my tv show and had Pussy Galore’s Jon Spencer (“BLUES EXPLOSION!!”) produce one of their records. Both him and his guitarist Judah were really nice to me but the abrasive, Yoko Ono knowing drummer was a fratboy oaf who coulda been an Afghan Whig.
“When it comes to imperialism, Democrats and Republicans are indistinguishable bloodthirsty anti-communists and racists Nicaragua has some of the lowest migration levels in Central America Most migrants are from Honduras (after a US-backed far-right coup), El Salvador, Guatemala. DHS data on undocumented immigrants detained in 2020: 318,516 Mexicans 61,382 Guatemalans 51,011 Hondurans 23,051 Salvadorans 13,028 Ecuadorians 11,227 Cubans 7917 Brazilians 2739 Nicaraguans 2220 Dominicans 1639 Venezuelans Blaming “communism” is insane.” (-Ben Norton)
“You already know some devious shit about to go down when the likes of Pelosi suddenly show up at another country’s doorstep.” (-Richard Medhurst)
Nineteen members of the US House of Representatives have written a letter [PDF] to President Joe Biden and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin cautioning that the partial cancellation of student debts can have the unintended consequence of reducing military recruitment in the United States.The letter reads as follows:Dear President Biden,We write to you to share our concerns about the unintended consequences of your decision to cancel up to $20,000 of student loan debt per borrower. We are particularly concerned about the negative impact this will surely have on our nation’s military and their ability to recruit and retain top talent.As you know, some of the most successful recruiting incentives for the military are the GI Bill and student loan forgiveness programs. The idea that the military will pay for schooling during or after completion of a service obligation is a driving factor in many individuals’ decision to join one of the services. A recent estimate showed that as many as 178,000 servicemembers were eligible for some type of forgiveness.By forgiving such a wide swath of loans for borrowers, you are removing any leverage the Department of Defense maintained as one of the fastest and easiest ways to pay for higher education. We recognize the loan forgiveness programs have issues of their own, but this remains a top recruiting incentive.Currently, a mere 23 percent of the population is eligible to serve in the military. Even fewer of those have a propensity to serve. At the end of last month, the Army had only reached 66 percent of its recruiting goal for the year. The Navy, only 89 percent. It is no secret that each of the services continues to battle hardships in recruiting and now these problems will be exacerbated by removing the uniqueness of this benefit.As the services try to adopt unique approaches to tackle their recruiting challenges, including historic bonuses, it feels like their legs are being cut out from underneath them. With this in mind, we ask for you to provide us answers to the following questions:1. Was the effect on military service considered in the development of the recent student loan forgiveness decision?2. What is the administration’s plan to develop incentives to augment the loss of those who might join the military to help pay off student loans?3. What improvements are being made to ensure timely payments to those currently enrolled in the Public Service Loan Forgiveness programs for both active duty and reserve components?Thank you for your attention to this matter.My House colleagues and I are very concerned that the deeply flawed and unfair policy of blanket student loan forgiveness will also weaken our most powerful recruiting tool at the precise moment we are experiencing a crisis in military recruiting. https://t.co/vGEfKq0PRC— Rep. Don Bacon (@RepDonBacon) September 19, 2022So they’re just coming right out and admitting it. One of the reasons the US government doesn’t offer the same kinds of social support systems that people have in all other wealthy nations is because otherwise there’d be no economic pressure on young Americans to sign up for service in the US war machine.This is no secret, but it’s generally considered taboo for government officials to actually say so. People have been talking about the poverty draft for many years — about the established fact that a majority of US military recruits come from neighborhoods with below median income levels and that those neighborhoods are targeted for recruitment because impoverished communities often see military service as their only chance at upward mobility.But the term “poverty draft” can create a bit of confusion, because when most Americans hear “poverty” they think homeless people and those who can barely afford to eat or keep a roof over their heads. In reality the US is a nation where a majority of the population would be unable to pay for a $1,000 emergency expense from their savings, and the level at which economic pressure is felt to join the military is much higher than the very poorest of the poor.Those economic pressures are why US Army officials have explicitly said that the student loan crisis is to thank for their success in meeting recruitment goals.How did the Army exceed its recruiting goals this year? It was the student loan crisis, not the wars, service leaders say. https://t.co/cGquM88Lhipic.twitter.com/eDx73KCetz— Military Times (@MilitaryTimes) September 17, 2019So the US empire has a huge incentive to maintain a very large population of Americans who are economically uncomfortable, and this plays a significant role in the domestic policymaking decisions of that nation’s government. The US empire is held together by constant violence and the threat thereof, and its ability to apply that violence would be crippled without a steady supply of warm teenage bodies to feed into its war machine. It is therefore no exaggeration to say that the US empire would collapse without the economic pressures which coerce teens to sign up to kill and be killed over things like oil reserves and Raytheon profit margins.It’s one of those things that looks more ghoulish the more you think about it. In the wealthiest nation in the world, economic justice is actively suppressed in part to ensure that young Americans will feel financially squeezed into killing foreigners who are far more impoverished than they are. They are keeping people poor so that they will commit mass murder. It’s actually hard to think of anything more depraved than that.But such is the nature of the capitalist empire. You’re either a useful gear-turner of the machine or you are liquidated and turned into fuel for its engine. If you’re not a successful capitalist you can be used to defend the empire with pricey weaponry. If you’re not helping the empire you can be used to drive up profits for the military-industrial complex as a target for war machinery whose costly munitions will need to be replaced. If you’re not a good gear-turner you can be sent to become a prison slave or incarcerated in a private for-profit prison. There’s a use for everyone in the empire.The globe-spanning power structure that is centralized around the United States is the most evil, soulless and destructive force on this planet. The young people who are duped, manipulated and financially coerced into joining its war machine come back horrifically traumatized by the experiences they have in the situations they are placed in. Something better is needed. This cannot continue.______________(cAITLIN jOHNSTONE) Michael Parenti: How To Think About Class – Dandelion Salad (wordpress.com)
GUTTER GOSPEL WITH YOUR HOST GENERAL LABOR: When the murderous billionaires and forever-warpigs and evil empire occultist-techlords meet in secret and pig-media never mentions it; We, The People still fighting for JULIAN ASSANGE; Bon Jovi bassist; Boys From Nowhere; Amanda Jones, and More!
“The truth has a habit of reasserting itself” (-Julian Assange)
“If you didn’t care about Hillary and the DNC colluding against Bernie, Big Tech and media trying to block the Hunter laptop story, the Establishment creating Russiagate or Intelligence Agents making up the Russia Bounty story before an election then you don’t care about democracy.” (-Black In The Empire)
“The FCC has turned the 1934 Communications Act into a nullity. The act requires broadcasters to address “the public interest, convenience and necessity” of the public’s right to know. These stations use our public airwaves property for free. Disgraceful.” ( -Ralph Nader)
“Generally speaking, think tanks are institutions wherein academics are paid by the worst people in the world to come up with intelligent-sounding reasons why it would be good and smart to do something evil and stupid.” (-Caitlyn Johnstone)
“”The goal is to use Afghanistan to wash money out of the tax bases of the US and Europe through Afghanistan and back into the hands of a transnational security elite. The goal is an endless war, not a successful war.” (-Julian Assange)
“Heavily armed cops cuff, taser, pepper spray agonizing parents as children were slaughtered – instead of confronting the shooter. This is what militarized policing looks like.” (-Dr. Jill Stein)
“It was the arrogance of the democrat party that thought it could lie to the public to win office & then not deliver anything except war & higher prices that only benefited the agenda of their ruling class funders that is responsible for Biden’s abysmal poll numbers.” (-Ajamu Baraka)
“The empire’s oligarchy also lost narrative control in the 1960s. They regained it by recapturing the mainstream media & academic institutions. In the Trilateral Commission’s report “Crisis of Democracy,” they admit that average Americans were not “obeying” as they did before. The co-founder of the Free Thought Project (
@TheFreeThought2) just got a 3-day ban from Facebook for an old post of the “Free Julian Assange” poster from my website. Facebook needs to learn JOURNALISM IS NOT A CRIME!” (-Lee Camp)
“The US government thought police at Twitter locked journalist Danny Haiphong
@SpiritofHo‘s account, threatening to suspend him because he contradicted the Western propaganda narrative on Tiananmen, calling it “abuse”. There is only “free speech” for US regime propagandists here.” (-Benjamin Norton)
“The US is thinking about “allowing” Europe and Venezuela to trade together. Think about what this story tells us about global power relations and who is in charge.” (-Alan MacLeod)
“A recent article in Politico’s Lockheed Martin-sponsored National Security Daily newsletter featured a quote from an empire think tanker who argued that the tyranny of Saudi Arabia’s murderous crown prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) can be tempered by sending him to seminars.
In “Saudi Arabia shows Biden can’t have it all,” Politico describes an entirely imaginary conflict of presidential interests between a sincere desire to prioritize humanitarian concerns in Saudi Arabia and a need to maintain warm relations with Riyadh to keep oil prices low amid Washington’s economic war against Moscow. I say entirely imaginary because of course the US would happily turn a blind eye to Saudi royals using babies for skeet shooting as long as they continued to advance US fossil fuel interests.
The article features all the usual mundane empire apologia you’d expect from a mainstream publication that is funded by war profiteers (the newsletter was sponsored by Northrop Grumman before Lockheed Martin), but one part stands head and shoulders above the rest in terms of sheer foam-brained idiocy. Arguing that the US can advance both its fossil fuel interests and its super important humanitarian concerns, a denizen of the imperial hivemind named Kirsten Fontenrose is cited in the following text (emphasis mine):
Using Saudi Arabia to lower gas prices and secure geopolitical gains doesn’t have to be divorced from human rights promotion if the U.S. molds the wayward crown prince into a moral king.
“Shaping young leaders into the types of decision makers America would like as partners takes mentoring, monitoring and shaping,” said KIRSTEN FONTENROSE, a former top Middle East official on Trump’s National Security Council. “There is no reason we can’t establish something akin to a private seminar series for MBS and the inner circle as well as other young leaders in the Gulf or elsewhere around the globe.”
This quote belongs in a museum somewhere. Seen a lot of bad policy proposals but few match this combination of arrogance (America must teach foreign heads of state how to do their jobs) and futility (as if they’d even attend, let alone be “shaped” by it) https://t.co/5lw6nHJq0gpic.twitter.com/QSpG9XsJXn
So in Fontenrose’s empire-addled brain, the US can simply provide private seminars for not just MBS but other foreign leaders as well, teaching them not to do atrocities and war crimes. And this will reconcile the glaring dissonance between what the US government says it values and what it actually does.
That’s the kind of thinking that gets you made into a top national security advisor in the government with the most powerful military force ever assembled. Indeed, that’s the kind of thinking that runs the empire.
Fontenrose is a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council, a NATO-entrenched think tank that is funded by government entities, the military-industrial complex, fossil fuel companies and plutocrats. When questioned by The American Prospect last year about the fact that the Atlantic Council has received millions from Gulf state monarchies, Fontenrose responded, “Every think tank in Washington gets money from Middle East governments.”
This is true. Generally speaking, think tanks are institutions wherein academics are paid by the worst people in the world to come up with intelligent-sounding reasons why it would be good and smart to do something evil and stupid. Those narratives are then inserted at key points of influence before decision makers and the public, where they are used to help make the world a worse place to live.
AVOIDING ACCOUNTABILITY AND TRANSPARENCY: THE BLOB EDITION – brought to us by @mideastXmidwest & Kirsten Fontenrose
This is not the sort of dynamic which lends itself to lucid thinking. Fontenrose’s Atlantic Council bio reads like a recipe for turning a human brain into a cog in the imperial machine: from Harvard to the National Council on US-Arab Relations, to “building relationships with military officers and diplomats from the Middle East and South Asia for the Near East Center for Strategic Studies at the National Defense University,” to positions in the Pentagon and State Department, to Senior Director for the Gulf at the Trump administration’s National Security Council, and then on to the Atlantic Council.
And at the Atlantic Council she shall wait, spewing imperial mouth farts and earning handsome paychecks, until it’s time for the revolving door of the Beltway swamp to usher her back into a government position again.
These are the kind of people who run the world. The imperial machine is packed to the rafters with sniveling power worshippers of this variety, people who choose to spend their lives clawing their way up into positions of influence within the most depraved power structure on the face of this planet, demonstrating their worthiness by their continual willingness to advocate awful things no matter how reckless or stupid.
This is why the world is as it is. The systems which allocate power and wealth elevate the worst among us to the most consequential of positions, where they are then free to act out their own inner misery on the rest of humanity and keep us in a state of suffering and trauma. Nothing will get better until we change those systems.” (-Cait Johnstone)
“So another left journalist with Black Agenda Report & writer, Danny Haiphone is being suspended from twitter. It is getting to a point where this is becoming normal.” (-Ajamu Baraka)
“Zelensky told Newsmax this week that 60 to 100 Ukrainian soldiers are killed and 500 are wounded every day. This staggering human toll is the price of his ticket to Cannes, Davos, the Grammys, and a post-presidency golden parachute. Once he negotiates for peace, the gig’s up.” (-Max Blumenthal)
“Independent journalist Danny Haiphong has been suspended from Twitter. Censoring excellent journalists is the last resort of an empire that relies on propaganda to keep its people from rebelling against the sociopaths at the top.” (-Lee Camp)
“If I were in D.C I would be right there. Why are there like two journalists covering this? Shame. These are the fascists hiding in this country.” (-Fiorella Isabel from the Convo Couch regarding so few self proclaimed “journalists” reporting on shady Bilderberg and WEF Great reset agendas)
” There’s no such thing as satiating the bloodlust of woke sociopaths who live to destroy people to compensate for their own lack of self-esteem and purpose.” (-Glen Greenwald)
CHECKERED PAST
I grew up in the flyover states but could never wait to get the fuck out and always regretted it whenever I went back to visit, man. For the past twenty years, I even skip funerals. I avoid evil people, places, and things. Even on days when I got nothing to do, nowhere to go, no money, it’s triple digit heat barin’ down on me and most of my most cherished loved ones are estranged or long long gone, I still wake up everyday thanking the God of my understanding that at least I ain’t in the white baseball capped, drive through brainwash states where they manufacture the dumbfuck fuckin’ future rent-a-kkkip fratboys. I remember being like twelve years old and loving that Talking Heads song about the midwest “The Big Country” because the lyrics: “I wouldn’t live there if you paid me to.” People who stay there are insane, to me. No, really, like you can’t even talk to ’em. They really do actually sit around and watch tv shows like “COPS” and “Coach” and “Frazier” and “Seinfeld” and “Friends”. Their dads all love Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity and they all wanna be white truck washin’, patio grillin’ racist old curmudgeons like their FOX watching golfer dads. One of the only real kool bands that came outta that part of the country was BOYS FROM NOWHERE. How good is this shit? Play this loud! That vocalist Mick Divvens had the kindof rocknroll voice I have always loved. The kind that Amerikkkan Idol and normie types have always hated.
I’m not usually that wild about covers, this is like the best I’ve heard that wasn’t Andy McCoy:
Another great related band that never got enough credit were BARBED WIRE DOLLS, one of the only wild and dangerous punkroll bands to come from that part of the country in that era. Never mind the chick in the hotpants who stole the name. This is the real thing. One of my ex bandmates also played with the vocalist in some other group he had, and one of my old drinking buddies, a now famous radio DJ co produced one of their 45’s. I dunno about you, but I love this kinda music, you can hear the Smack influence.
When I was living in the Bowery, I was by myself all the time while my grownup roommates had jobs. I remember listening to the NYC radio station Howard Stern was on, circa ’84, and how they played Bon Jovi, all the time. I was never a fan, but begrudgingly thought “Runaway” and “She Don’t Know Me” were okay, at that age, cause, well, I was a runaway and felt like “she” did not see me. “Like I loved her.” So yeah that Alec John Such guy dying kinda did affect me today, just ’cause man, that band were like THE only band back then, at their peak, they seemed huger than all the other plastic metal bands put together. Dunno what else I can say about that, aside from remembering how Bon Jovi owned MTV and the magazines and walls of all my teenage girlfriends bedrooms, aside from a precious two or three who, like me, preferred Morrissey and Duran Duran. I do remember being about seventeen and hanging out at a hamburger joint called Happy Daze when I liked an older girl with a great smile named Gina, across the street from the biker tattoo parlor that was my sanctuary as a teen when that fuckin’ “Livin’ On A Prayer” song was on the radio, non stop. It was seemingly always snowy outside and I had a girlfriend back then named Heather who had a big gigantic warm house but her parents sortof hated me, but she sometimes would sneak me indoors through a window into her heated basement. I sure do miss those days, of listening to Depeche Mode with her, sometimes-that city tore her old house down, oh man, it’s all disappearing now. She was a real cool chick I did not treat as well as she deserved. She naturally became kinda jealous because of my infidelities and could always figure out where me and my guitar playing best friend were because of our cowboy boot tracks in the snow. ‘Round that time I was living in an unheated attic above a friend’s mom’s garage, but an older punk dude finally helped me get my first apartment. One of the loves of my young life, this other chick who was always just unattainable, helped me paint it purple and she used to come visit me there and I got to shelter my rocknroll mentor from the hippie record store, when his parents and dog died and he was evicted by the banks. We had a lot of fun, drinking cheap champagne and beer and making mixtapes there. So yeah. Formed some bands there, wrote some songs, sheltered lost souls, had a million fuckin’ laughs. My cool as fuck acidhead roommate used to trip his head off and endup running around naked in tha bank parking lot below. Man do I ever miss that dude. Everyday, L.A.M.F.!
Two ladies not actually named named Becky and Sally were really into Bon Jovi, Def Leppard and Cheap Trick. They managed the National Record Mart record store in the mall. I got along really well with Becky’s boyfriend, Floyd, a mullted local musician who played corny covers at happy hours and Italian restaurants owned by my childhood friend, Joey V.’s family, Floyd reminded me of say, Richard Marx. Nice Guy. First dude who I ever saw use like a drum machine and sing and accompany himself on guitar while people ate dinner. Those ladies hired every preppie guy in town with a Bon Jovi perm, except the deedly Judas Priest cover band guitar hero who worshipped Paul Shortino and liked beating up smaller people. He was the local popularity, bully Karate Kid suburban guitar gawd, but the thirty something, NMR ladies also loved every kid with that kind of boofy Bon Jovi hair, so they hired all of ’em, like I said, they only missed one with the boofy Bon Jovi perm. They always claimed they just could not hire me to work in the mall, because of corporate dress codes regarding long hair, but the truth was, I was just too new wave, gawky, pale, Stiv Bators or Joey Ramone-like, they did not think I was conventionally good enough looking. It ain’t like I didn’t know everything about music. I needed the job, too, cause I had a kid. So, yeah, they didn’t like me enough to give me a fucking job and that was one of the reasons I knew I’d have to leave that town, if I ever expected to fuckin even get by, in life. I was about 18 when I ended up at those old lady’s new year’s eve party, I guess I was kinda suckin’ up to ’em, hoping they’d hook me up with an income stream. If you were an unemployed male in that town, the nagging and putdowns never, never ceased. “Is he on the clock or off the clock” is all the suburbans ever wanna know. ‘Found myself talkin’ to some older guy, who’d taken most of my girlfriend’s virginity named Mike. He was the “Simon” in my close brother Bobby’s Duran Duran tribute lip synch act. His younger brother went to my school and wore many Swatch watches, and hung around with my homie, Jaysin B. I started guzzling some Maker’s Mark and ended up getting sidetracked while fooling around and socializing with all these older people when suddenly, I remembered, I was supposed to be meeting my one true fine, first love, muse, inspiration, advisor, confidante back at my downtown purple apartment, so I rushed into the living room and demanded my heavy metal girlfriend, Susie the Metallica cover band bassist, drive me home, before midnight. By the time I arrived, and rushed up the stairs, and ran down the darkened hallway where the lightbulb had blown out, oh my god, I could not believe it, there she was, alone and crumpled up in that back hallway in front of my door-the prettiest girl who ever lived, the blinding genius of my young life, man, I was gobsmacked, did not know what to say, except sorry. She did not dig the cigarette smoke or hardwood floor lack of furniture, it was a humble little one bedroom apartment in a downtown tenement full of druggies and all I had was some used furniture, a boombox, The Psychedelic Furs “Mirror Moves”, some beer and a leather jacket and shit but man, I just loved, loved, loved her, I mean, this was the one I’d been foolishly, ridiculously, passionately, sincerely, devotedly, wholeheartedly in love with, since we were about 13 and 14. She gave me some purple candles and regifted me with a Jim Morrison book, “Wilderness” for my birthday and Christmas that year. Or maybe she pre loaned it out to some other dude previously. I knew some other male had perused it cause he had left an index card in that book she wrapped in purple tissue paper that said, “don’t go to war with yourself like this guy did.”, and ya know I thought to myself, as much as I loved her all through the years, she always seemed to prefer like, lifeguard type of guys. Who, apparently, did not go to war inside themselves, like me and Jim Morrison did. You know that Leonard Cohen lyric, “she told me again she preferred handsome men, but for me, she would make an exception”? We stayed friends for years and she def. made a mark on my memory. Good soul. I just couldn’t make her mine. Even when we were shy little misfit Smiths fans together at 13 and 14, I’d be sitting on her couch listening to her talk about old King or Sting lyrics, Arcadia and Dream Academy and shit, and the doorbell would keep ringing-with all the neighborhood boys wanting her attentions. She’s happily married with a teenage kid now but I bet the doorbell has never stopped ringing. God bless her and her family!
“If you think that a party that sues to kick third parties off ballots, rigs its own primaries, and governs for Wall Street believes in “democracy” then you are an easy mark and useful idiot for the oligarchy. The Democrats are not an ally to anyone except their wealthy donors. The Democrats and their sycophants have some nerve to think that after doing nothing with their majority to help the people that they can continue to berate, bully, and scare people into voting for their corrupt corporate party.” (-Ryan Knight)
“Militarization of the police was done to protect the ruling class, not to protect the people”. (-Antifa Music Director)
Man, I used to booze it up with summa these guys at the still skuzzy and dangerous RAT in my early twenties. I’d always run into the guitarist at a nightclub called Bunratty’s and he’d be hanging out with a drummer named Jesse and they’d always say we were gonna start a band together, but it never really got passed the passing out on my couch stage. I really liked the guitarist, Mark, he had a lot of style and good humor. Fun person to be around! He was like a genuine Thunders/Richards/Pinter/Drake kind of guitarist. Always looked so cool in his dirty white leather and winklepickers. Him and the vocalist Jamie of this amazingly perfect rocknroll band who shoulda been big stars way back in the Hanoi Rocks days, even wrote a song that caught Alice Cooper‘s ear and helped regenerate his career. It’s so fuckedup getting old like this, cause this is still my kinda rocknroll, ya know, I still put out a musicians wanted ad on music store bulletin boards a couple times a year, forever looking for cool cats who understand the Stones and Dolls and Aerosmith and Joneses punk, they just get harder and harder to find. Listen to this fucking great record and try to tell me they aint the best thing you’ve heard in a long time. These dudes had so much rockstar potential. The leatherclad heart throb singer Jamie was in some other bands who were also real cool-the Jetsons from the midwest, and also the Fighting Cocks in Boston. Their lp on Throbbing Lobster is nearly impossible to find but I think Simon Ritt the fabulously cool bassplayer on this still has a box of ’em in his basement. I really miss pre gentrification, dirty old Boston, they still had the best dive bars in the world and four used record stores and an allnight diner on every fuckin’ corner.
“Thirty or forty years ago, supporting free speech was understood to be a non-negotiable core value of the liberal left. As a lifetime liberal it’s unbelievably depressing to see how completely Democrats have betrayed us on this issue. The average Dem is no better than Falwell or Helms on this issue now.” (-Matt Taibbi, Author of GRIFTOPIA, THE DIVIDE, THE BUSINESS SECRETS OF DRUG DEALING, and HATE INC. Podcast, Useful Idiots: http://UsefulIdiots.Substack.Com on mass censorship and erosion of free speech under Davos reset orders.)
“It’s yet another indictment of the American media system that a popular, bankable media figure like Ventura has essentially been squeezed out of the mainstream media landscape. At the same time, his arrival is yet another gain for Substack, and I don’t just say that because Predator was awesome. I’ve heard criticism of Jesse from various Washington-based pundit types who denounce him as a joke and an unserious person, pointing to TruTV episodes about the Bilderbergs or Reptile-People (“Lizard-like shape shifting humanoids: are they real?”). To which I always shrug and reply, “Yeah, but does your party take money from Goldman and Raytheon?” What would you rather have, an honest wrestler or a polished sellout?” (-Matt Taibbi on Jesse Ventura who thinks John Lennon was assassinated by MK Ultra patsy)
COLLEGE GRADUATES SHOULD NEVER HAVE TO FEEL IKKY
Man, I first started seeing the establishment manufacturing consent for the ballsout, no mistake about it, brazen koddled Klass kkkop persecution of the poor in a notoriously rightwing racist city in the midwest. Some preppie teenage black kid had been waiting for a bus and the kkops showed up and hassled him for no reason-he was overconfident about his rights because as an honor roll student he had dutifully learned the script about freedom and due process, but when some racist authoritarians decided to fuck him up anyway knocking him over some planter backwards and spraying him in the face pointblank with mace for a longass time while he was handcuffed and it was captured on video, the whole system went into overdrive to make believe it was somehow okeydokey. They said he had not been compliant enough. Scumbag rightwing talk radio guys talked shit about the kid like he was some demon all night and day, and a fucking judge even sent him to some fuckedup bootcamp like he was some kinda badguy, fact was the Man had got caught fucking people up for no reason, so then they had to like double down on their bullshit authoritarianism. I looked for the video of the incident on youtube but it was wiped. Koo-koo. Just a couple years later, another black teenager had some warrants for petty bullshit charges like failure to appear, seatbelts and tinted windows, and a hardon kkkop shot him the back. Killed ’em dead in ten years that city had extrajudicially assassinated TWENTYFIVE mostly unarmed black folks, some with disabilities and shit, so the community rebelled and broke windows and protested so gentrification weasel Mayor Headroom called in fuckin tanks and declared curfew and did not enforce it in republikkkan neighborhoods where white rich fat people bars stayed open, boozing it up and crowd singing Neil Diamond songs. That guy smirking Mayor Headroom still smugly pats himself on the back about helping usher in a gentrification era where rich white people have displaced poor black people. Overpriced condos galore. Shakedown kkkops in stormtrooper armor. I moved to a poor neighborhood that was bourgeoise honkifying a couple years later and was wide awake late night talking one night cause my baby mama had arbitrarily decided to come take my kids who were supposed to be spending the night and bond them to her crunchy granola new yuppie boyfriend. We heard 8 gunshots in the alley and THEN, kkkops yelled “drop your weapon”. Story on media the next day was he was coming towards kkkops with a weapon, but in real life, he was running away from them, shot in the back, no one cared. No one even wanted to know-me and my girlfriend are fuckin traumatized-kkkops killed a mf in the alleyway. Other white people just like, shrugged. I was telling everybody I encountered about it-musicians and scenesters, another ex girlfriend was dating a dude from a famous band with a dead singer, his nickname was The Spooge and he was telling me how I looked homeless while I was trying to tell her about the kkkops killing somebody in my alley outside where my kids came to visit, but no one cared. Basically, all the grungy music scene white people were all totally gung ho happy with the racial profiling and stop and frisk broken window theory policing, totally complicit in the gentrifying. They just wanted to get rid of ikky poor people so they could have mimosas and talk about the shit they own or how they are somehow fourth hand famous cause some band got signed a long, long time ago. Couple years after that, kkkops killed a white drummer kid with tattoos and a knife who was a hipster popular guy and FINALLY the white side of town rose up and complained-marches-jazz funeral, murals, memorial gardens, sculptures, speeches, tearful protests and permanently ongoing pearl clutching, hand wringing, finally concerned online tributes, a whole city of posh whiteys were social justice activated, but only over their one celebrity-here’s more weeping, more jazz funerals, more memory gardens, the whole bit. Nobody minded killer kkkops at all-at all-at ALL, until it was a hipster white kid. Who by all accounts had a weapon. To me, the whole fucking world is an upside down whackadoodle-doo KKKrazy town. All the tech platform execs, Kissinger, Gates, shady occultist WEF tyrants, Pfizer execs, and Deathstar military industrial complex CEO’s are planning some bad shit and they ain’t tellin’ you about it. But by all means tell me more about Amanda Heard and Will Smith and shit.
So then, I followed my ex to the booj Northwest to stay near my kids and could not believe the kindly, karing, karens of city hall thought it was just okeydokey to declare an “exclusion zone”, in their OWN WORDS, that’s what they called the trendy downtown neighborhood where sports tourist hotels and rich lawyers wanted to push all the poor people out of view of visiting college parents. The Occupy community protested and broke the no camping ordinance in solidarity with 3000 men, women and children of gentrified sports tourism Honkytopia who had fallen into houselessness, cause all the shameless fuckin landlords were jacking rents up to two grand a month or just flipping their ranch style homes into Airabndb’s so they changed laws and shit and banned people from demonstrating in Free Speech Plaza. I’ll say that again. They changed laws and banned people from demonstrating in FREE SPECH PLAZA. Painted a single parking space that said “free speech zone” in a nearby parking lot. Some evil bureaucrat declared it a health emergency hyping some kinda hopped up fiction about human feces being found in the plaza, a “Poop Fiction”, and that freaked out all the yuppie home owners and landlord classers who never liked having to lay eyes on unsightly homeless people or panhandlers outside of Trader Joe’s. The town spent tens of thousands putting big sharp rocks beneath underpasses, hiring ex jock hardon gestapo and Wackenhut mercenaries to hassle poor people at the bus station, started locking all the park restrooms, year round, stopping and frisking kids with backpacks on the corner, it was all so fucked up, wrong and evil, and the mean ex liberal Mayor and her nauseatingly insincere wine n cheese party yuppie friends all rationalized that this fucking brazen war against the poor was all somehow feminist and ceramic and vegan and okeydokey if they got women of color to participate in crusades against the poor. Obama and the Clintons had turned the Democrats into rightwing conservatives and corporate media convinced middle class people that as long as there were some token women and people of color presiding over the oppression of the poor, it was all kumbaya and copacetic. Just don’t say bad words, and obey their narrative mangers. They really do seem to believe in their holes where hearts are supposed to be that middle class college people’s self importance and the rights of their booj companion pets was all that mattered, you know-s’long as self aggrandizing middle class college people felt woke and unoffended, fuck the poor-ya know? So that’s where all the shitlibs seemed to come from-the pro war, gentrified, “educated”, rightwing Democrat, P.C. sensitivity-studies, safe space children of Hillary and Obama. Pig-media convinced all those safe space motherfuckers that no egalitarian principles or Bill Of Rights civil liberties mattered-only tokenist high visibility hue and gender, and ultimately, class. Truth was no longer important-just like, surface images, appearances, feelgood bumper stickers and feelings of rich people. Vibrant and diverse human rights city, they said-as long as you were a college educated home owner. I kinda doubt if you watched any of the videos from WEF but basically Scwhab’s puppets are all insisting the mass censorship USA techlords have been engaging in is not enough and that the Reset Billionaires want even more thought control and LESS free speech. So many people I grew up with have been college and media programmed to worship the billionaires and wanna put always more military grade weapons in the hands of the already insanely milittarized bastshit crazy racist kkkops, and more narrative control in the hands of just 5 corrupt monopoly media companies. It’s terrifying, how they went to school for fucking twenty five years and all they learned was white middle class property owners deserve more respect and FOX NEWS is the only channel that ever, ever lies for the powerful shareholders who sponsor them. Any shitlib who is not a free speech absolutist is no friend of mine. I do not stand with the corporate propagandists, war criminals, weapons manufacturing forever war profiteers, prison lobbyists, Lyn Cheney, mass murderers, surveillance tech billionaires, or kidnappers of whistleblower journalists, and you should not, either. FREE ASSANGE!
If you are having trouble coping with all the fuckedup fascist police state rollouts and blinding wildfire smoke and 102 degree heatwave, maybe some rocknroll music might help ya remember “freedom”. Rumor has it Hozac records is gonna publish a Jeff Drake autobiography if the rulers don’t blow up the world before then! Enjoy yaself! (-link appropriated from Twangsville and here’s an old int you might remember: Jeff Drake (sugarbuzzmagazine.com))
“I took heat as someone who said to give AOC the benefit of the doubt. But AOC, the “squad,” Sanders, the progressive caucus don’t have the character, ideological orientation & principles to respond to the capitalist crisis of the moment. None of you are working for the people.” (-Ajamu Baraka)
Every significant sized Murkkkan town’s the same now-empty downtowns, super extravagant posh hotels and condos and designer boutiques for the rich, robokkkop shakedowns and violence and exile and jail and death and ripoff Wal Mart price gouging for the poor. Middle class people all wanna be Judge Dredd kkkop “deciders”, they all just love the feckin kkkops, got 911 on speed dial as their go-to conflict resolution strategy, all the shitlib AOC lovin’ CNN watchin’ Rachel Maddow trustin’ gatekeepers, almost every college person became a shitlib kall the kkkkops karen or brand building, vanity merch pimping, pay to play faux “populars”. One thing I never could stand about the ongoing Brooklynization of every mid-sized college town is how the elites use the arts as a weapon against the poor. You mighta seen that meme about how when you see people wearing a Joy Division t shirt in your neighborhood, rents are about to go up. That is no joke. You ever seen some hipster owners put like, pictures of old drunk blues singers all over the front of their store, but obliviously wage non stop relentless outright war against street people? Ever seen a hipster record store that did not ripoff down on their luck rocknroll people? ‘Heard the hipsters talk about “needing” more hip-hop influenced murals on the side of their healthfood stores painted by rich white grad students, who think they can imitate-become Basquiat? Rich people art is always, always so unimaginatively, sadly derivative of some poor person who died in the gutter, ya know? I remember the beginning stages of the Anti-Rock Conspiracy before live music died when 900+ sports fans would still crowd into some gimmick bar to watch the local richies impersonate famous “Alternative”TM bands from Seattle. It got tedious having to listen to all these shite glorified coverbands. While visiting family, I had taken a job at a horrible grunge bar, worked the backdoor for about a year. Mediocre Alice In Chains/KORN wannabes, Pussywillows, will still be ruling the roost in Crackerville when they are in their nineties jes cause shitty grunge imitators and wretched whiteboy rappers never went outta style in Crackerville and they went to school with all the people who stayed in their rich parent’s zipcode and inherited all the businesses and liquor licenses. The Najinski 5 got signed by a hipster label on the strength of their covers nobody recognized as covers, so they had to overnight write some crap originals, but after they’d duped the hipster label, covering some disreputable, lonesome troubadour, dead cowboy’s tunes, they had to double-down on the big bluff and the guitarist quit cause he’d met a pretty girl, and he was the one with the talent who could play rare old Motown tunes and an unknown songwriters stuff those blowhard other guys traded on. They had a rich parental benefactor and a famous DJ friend and still became famous for their cheek, their front-shameless crooning bullshit slow songs featuring naughty language. Total hammy shtick. The Scuzzbuckets did a passable tribute to fuckin Hole, Babes In Toyland or Sonic Youth-unattractive people making a dissonant racket. Goosey Lucy co starred a bashful nerd with Hello Kitty barrettes in his hair and two chicks who couldn’t play, they did a cutesy Shaggs shtick everybody loved and linedup for cause the girls were pretty. You had the Hoo Haw Gang in their shorts and football jersies doing all the palsied Beastie Boys hand gesturing, obviously imitating Ugly Kid Joe or Faith No More. The Eebie-Geebies impersonating Pearl Jam and the Chili Peppers, with all the big amps and nice gear and Doc Martins and goatees galore. Fat Face, who did some kinda experimental shtick with trombones and violins and bullhorns, thought they were being arty: like Kurt Cobain. The Silver Studs were there in Loreal blue/black hair imitating Green River and Mudhoney. The Periwinkles wanted to be The Pastels or Posies or some shit but could never really write any memorable songs so they compensated by going to the thrift store every single day and loading up on all the Herb Tarlick from WKRP tacky suitjackets from the seventies and that was supposed to make them good. Poor people were always muscled out of the grunge bar by hockey player oversized bouncers who just grew their hair out cause Soundgarden. Sadists and ex sportos became blank check celebs for having cred in the money generating realm by exploiting this whole “Alternative”TM hoax. The barstool in crowd permanently applauded the local gentry movers and shakers who dealt white people drugs on the sly and got off on pepper spraying drunks and shit at the bars that made sure the working class zeroes were silenced and excluded by the richer hipsters, it was just like middle school, the worst middle school in the world, and if you online look-in on anybody from that whole “SEEN”, nothing changed 25 years later. Dudes all have less hair, but that’s it. Same five cokedout, self congratulating faces are still highfive podcasting, interviewing their old “Alternative”TM colleagues from rich school, and owning every Saturday Night Forever, cause their parents said they could. Here’s your business, here’s your record company, here’s your mama mansion for the Less Than zero swimming pool partying, here’s your second rental property, here’s your coke mirror in the corner office. Some doofus, aged-out nerd, old coverband music store guy we’ll call Billy F. was bartending at the grunge bar and like, lost his mind, did this whole meltdown, just carried on like a hysterical PMRC Washington wife cause he saw a gutter punk friend of mine freshen his drink with a pint in the bathroom. I mean this guy fucking lost his shit over that. “We could lose our liquor license! We could lose our liquor license! We could lose our liquor license! We could lose our liquor license!” Say it again, Billy F.! Say your thing, man. I mean this dude just carried on and on about it. He wanted a whole investigation and supposedly was just so flummoxed and outraged and offended, he was like running around with his head cutoff for hours. Narc’ing non stop to all the busy co workers. That’s the level of cool that was ever achieved at that place. The richies could deal drugs openly all day and night, right outta the back room as local worshipped superstar celebrities, but a gutter punk has a pint, holy shit! Call in the national guard. So yeah, it was me who let the gutter punk in, and the snitch ratfink nutbag got me fired for it. His real agenda was to push me outta the bar, cause even though summa these business owners were like twenty years older than the college age girls they hit on, everybody thought that was proper and acceptable if they owned businesses. They just could not abide with a gutter punk who couldn’t afford their jackedup drink prices having a pint of his own. Or a dude who was not part of their hometown clique having a job watching their goofy bullshit from the back wall that’s willing to let a gutter punk from the dive bar down the street who can’t pay the cover charge in the back door for free. Half the town got in for free at the front door, just not gutter punks.
“Alternative”TM turned collegetowns into generic and elitist fucking country clubs for predator class trust fund babies with elaborate collections of vintage gear and fancy shamancy recording studios. Not my jam, yo. They turned underground music into sports, or McDonalds. I never even thought Nirvana were very good. “Grandma take me home, Grandma take me home” was like any Happy Flowers or Killdozer song on some No Trend college rock compilation, we already had The Pixies. So like 10,O00 fake Nirvanas featuring the asskisser student council and bully quarterback from your hometown sports high school was just redundant and trite as all fuck. Simon Cowell changed music into sports. TV is one helluva drug. People still swear to me they like the Fucking Foo Fighters. I always think they must be kidding. Foo Fighters make Green Day look almost, like, uh, semi nearly kinda okay. UGH! I hated all that shit-they really did “break” punk, didn’t they? They didn’t want people cultivating one another’s critical thinking skills. They want us all competing like the Hunger games for crumbs of nothing. Your college friends say they live in a “DEMOCRACY” and suckup to evil oligarchs who meet in secret.
The “Crisis of Democracy” clearly states that Americans were not respecting the established hierarchy enough & were questioning authority — which the rulers believed was a serious threat.” (-Lee Camp)
When I was growing up, I loved bands like Lords Of The New Church, The Clash and The Godfathers-you know, bands that weren’t stupid. I also loved melodies and pop songwriting and these dudes from the Hollywood supergroup deserved to become a lot more famous and popular than they did. If you know who the purplehaired Zeros are, it was Joe Normal on guitar, John Napier on the John Waite/Robin Zander style vocals, Derrick from The Andersons and Bangles on bass, Tom from Big Elf on drums, and Anthony on perfect hair and cool shoes and the world’s only BETTY PAGE autographed guitar! They don’t make bands like that no more, I suspect cause it’s so hard to even pay for fucking practice spaces nowadays, the little record labels and Murkkkan rock press are all gone, and the evil elites have dumbed everyone down for 25 years. Do you remember when bands had talent, style, and anthemic songs with thoughtful lyrics? Veglam remembers!
If you’re anything like me, you want less bullshit fucking creepy garbage pop and more heartfelt, original and innovative, authentic real rocknroll. HERE IS THE WORLD FAMOUS MISTER RATBOY from Pillbox, Motorcycle Boy, Sour Jazz and the Golden Rat‘s absolutely fabulous solo album.
“Doesn’t look suspicious at all. Just a bunch of bros doing bro stuff.” (-Rania Kassim on Bilderberg secret meeting)
“I don’t understand why Max is only journalist asking questions about this gathering. But thanks Max. For those folks still under the illusion they live in a democracy this is where the real decisions are made. Another group probably not participating are Ukrainian officials.” (-Ajama Baraka on Max Blumenthal from Gray Zone being the only reporter talking about Bilderberg)
Black men
Veglam 