TAIME DOWNE STILL STRUTTIN’ HIS STUFF TO THE HIGHCLASS PART OF TOWN
Ya know I really like that guy actually. I saw him talking on a podcast to like, some much younger, earnest fan boy kid and he was totally cool and righteous and sincere and not the least bit haughty or condescending, like he’s the kinda real rocknroll motherfucker I’ve always liked, and gotten along with. My wife always teases that I just like the bands that look like me and ya know yeah me and Taime are both older now, not as svelte as we once were, with the leather vests and biker boots, glasses and black hair and cowboy hats, right? Not that many of us left around. He was saying he never sees Izzy anymore but that was who he was tightest with in Guns N Roses and how they are still one of his favorite bands and how he loves the memories of those bands toring together way back in 1987, which the podcaster said was a lifetime ago, but to me, was just like a few weeks back. I remember the day I bought the Faster Pussycat debut and “Appetite For Destruction” and I liked Pussycat better at first. I don’t like the rap song, but I always say to me they were like a fun and entertaining cross between AC/DC and the Joneses, Jeff Drake’s band. We used to cover the Joneses “She’s So Filthy” at that age and when our original skinhead drummer quit the band, we got this older, know it all, friends with the Ashton Brothers guy in the group and he insisted we cover a Faster Pussycat song called, “Where There’s A Whip”, so we did for awhile. Me and my band bros met the Pussycats twice I think, we were like seventeen, the photos of my kid guitar player who’s a doctor now with Greg are funny cause my guy looks like he’s about ten. Our first band broke up cause like half of us wanted to move to the big city and get a record deal, and the other half wanted to stay in their hometown and be popular amongst the people they went to high school with-I think that bunch got some negative feedback from their peers about our punk band being “too glam” cause me, the guitarists and the original chick magnet Inxs new wave bass player were all still pretty united in our full blown, big haired, kohl eyed, red lipstick goth and biker sleaze incarnations with the feathers and the leather and the scarves and the cowboy boots, and those other guys wanted to be more suburban conventional like Social Distortion or like the Descendants and they took one of the guitarists with ’em and I think they did sortof a New Bomb Turks punk band after that. More conventionally masculine, with the barber shop haircuts and imported boots and muscle cars and chain wallets and shorts. Me and the rest of my pirate crew moved to Boston and commenced searching for drummers and kept on wearing the velvet suit jackets and the cop hats and mirrored shades and much leather, funny what divides a rock band, ya know? A purple scarf, some fucking smudged eye mascara. I loved Faster Pussycat, they were my kinda seleaze punk, and was always rooting for the old guitar players to rejoin that band and always got excited about it every time they did guest appearances, I really like Brent and Greg very much, but like I’ve said elsewhere lately, Taime’s latest lineup have a shit ton of energy and they are really trying to put out for the fans. If I could fucking find the right guys to play with, I think Golden Robot Records is definitely one of the labels I’d shop my songs to. I really dig Taime’s “Like A Ghost” song, another cool tune about growing up way back in seventies Seattle. Taime’s cool, check out his latest sides and you know Danny Nordahl ex NYC glam hero always brings that old school Evil Boys/Angels In vain/Sweet Pain/Heartbreakers/Deadboys/Skin N Bones sensibility to the Pussycats. I am really rooting for those guys to keep making new music and playing shows. They are still very good based on all the clips I see on Youtube on these cold and lonely mornings in the dead end desert ghostville. I used to curl up in my old girlfriend’s bed on the Sunset Strip and listen to that “Whipped” album while she was outta town and my other girlfriend was eyeybrows deep in the ghetto wine, and that “Hey Mister Lovebone” song really spoke to me, had a lotta soul, I always loved Andy Wood, too.That whole lp was great-they had it painted on the side of Tower Records back then while the Teaszer wa s painted purple for our friend Joe Normal’s old Zeroes band. Taime’s written some real good songs, honestly. Even the early stuff is still fun to singalong to-“Smash Alley” and “Bathroom Wall”! Glad him n Danny got together-it just really takes two real dudes to get the ball rolling.
Ya know as a teenager I was always devotedly in love with this one particular new wave chick, there was a significantly long procession of other girlfriends those hicktown males are still spitting bullets jealous about, but it was known that my heart was with The One. I just always carried a torch for her since the first day we met when we were probably thirteen nd fourteen. I might be like half a year older than her. The one who got away as people always say. The one who keeps me putting quarters in the jukebox in the wise words of Willie Nelson. One of those songs I’d always play for her was “If You Leave” by “OMD”, another was Morrissey’s “Old House”, another one was Burt Bacharach’s perfect song, “Always Something There To Remind Me”. THAT is the kinda song I’m always trying to write, with less and less success each year. I grew up loving the Naked Eyes version, but Morrissey got me hipped to the Sandy Shaw version which I came to hold even closer to my old heart. (RIP)
While many of my old school pirate lords were heavy metal enthusiasts, Motorhead, New Wave Of British Heavy Metal enthusiasts, or hardcore British oi punk oriented, like summa my old crusty punk corner gang drinking buddies who are almost all dead now were into like GBH and the Exploited, I never stopped listening to Billy Idol or Duran Duran. I still listen to ’em like all the time, whenever I can. Just something about Duran Duran has always spoke to me. I saw them live many times, brushed with them a few times. I still love ’em and actually pray for Andy Taylor! I had a dream the other night that Patti B., one of my middle school girlfriends who shared my love of Duran Duran was in. One of my closest friends who I was setranged from for a long time and I have reconnected in recent years and she also shares my love of Duran Duran. Also that chick I told you I stayed in love with all those years. My lyrics were never so opaque but I think Simon’s awesome, I don’t always know what he’s talkinga bout with vigilantes out on dawn patrol and the Union Of The Snake is on the rise, but I always FEEL IT, ya know? I love everybody in that band, I mean from the main lineup and also Steven Duffy. Not so much the Missing Persons guy, but the originals. I even like Arcadia and Power station. Lots. Even Neurotic Outsiders, even “I Do What I Do”. I might be a bad influence on them but I’d still very much like to write songs with Nick and John.
“That Seymour Hersh published his big piece on Substack and not a major news outlet is such an insane indictment of the US media class and yet another testament to the off-the-charts levels of censorship that silently reigns over it.” (-Heshmat Alavi’s Trenchcoat)
“They’ve been censoring him from larger outlets for a years now.” (-Grumpy Grandad)
“Yup they straight up refused him permission to publish his book on Dick Cheney.” (-Heshmat Alavi’s Trenchcoat)
“Well, the Wikipedia trolls are hard at work today. Definitely want to make sure “conspiracy theorist” is the first thing people see if they look up “Seymour Hersh” (-Michael Tracey)
“Please lift the sanctions and allow aid into Syria. This level of cruelty isn’t the way.” (-M.I.A.)
“Seymour Hersh has confirmed what many of us suspected: the U.S. via the CIA blew up the Nord Stream pipeline.
Russia never benefitted from such an action and all claims otherwise were always shameless war propaganda. The US committed a war crime by destroying Nord Stream. The US is committing war crimes by sanctioning Syria during a natural disaster. The US is a mafia state that is exceptional in its war criminality.” (-Danny Haiphong)
EASY TO FALL ON HARD TIMES IN THIS RICH TAKE ALL ECONOMY
Man those of us who pay any attention know that even musicians we love who can still sell merchandise and command substantial guarantees on their Headbanger’s Ball fame can fall on hard times. People I know are all suffering from depression. I know veterans who turned to hardcore drug abuse. I know dudes who think the others are being propagandized or Cointelpro patsied, but it could never, never happened to their team, cause they’re the smart ones and of course the others are over their telling themselves the exact same stuff. I know educators who gave up knowing what’s happening cause it might threaten their tenure so they just say the current thing and just try to stay cloistered and laser focused on NPR/PBS and try to tell themselves everything is okeydokey so long as we keep repeating that Dr. Jill Biden is large and in charge and praising Kamala Harris and Chelle Obama, who are all supposedly saving us from those Republican voters and Melania Trump, just don’t listen to Tara Reade or Dr. Naomi Wolf. I got diehard old rocknroll motherfuckers writing me letters about how I am a past my prime faded dreamer who will probably never record anymore songs, like that’s something that I aint had to contemplate. Other ex punks saying anybody in leather pants is silly now and there is no fortune to be made playing loud, rude, aggressive music, even though I can show you hundreds of examples that prove otherwise. Got people who think the main problems in the world are immigrants, or wily Antifa protestors, they froth over these exaggerated menaces like they used to “The Muslims”. I know people who are still real ginned up about Bernie Sanders still wearing a cloth mask and Bono showing up to support the demented old teleprompter reader selling fake confidence to people who already own their homes and have insuarnce and pensions and secondary properties. Them Bernie folks are still talking about the un cloth masked and undervaxxed and blaming them for all the sudden deaths. New wave icons, waving Nato flags for war. 12 steppers tell me how they are accepting imperfect times. I aint mad at any of ’em really, cause I know they’ve all been bombarded with unprecedented propaganda psy ops, fake news designed to divide us and keep us all in a state of fear, believing we need more alphabet gangs and military to “keep order” and protect us from the scary boogeyman “others”. Most of us used to oppose censorship but now the haves only believe that people they agree with should have free speech ever since the think tanks infiltrated the colleges and taught those safespace kids that it’s not really censorship if there’s a private billionaire owner standing upfront. They kept telling us any inconvenient fact that contradicted their official narrative was antiscience or fake news, or Russian trolls or Russia influenced misinformation like that BUFF BERNIE meme that supposedly ruined everything when it was “Hillary’s Turn”, or conspiracy theories. Just Trust Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and all your benevolent billionaire, scientific seed hoarding, astronaut super saviors! The Rachel Maddow people kept howling for more censorship cause they did not like Alex Jones so now the entire antiwar left has been censored and kicked off the platforms. None of us know what’s really goin’ on, we all just get to pick between two known liars, two demonstrable recipients of billionaire dark money bribes. Which fake news source do YOU prefer to be lied to by? Vote now, operators are waiting. Are you Team Jennifer or Team Angelina? Backstreet Boys or NSynch? FOX anti China or MSNBC anti Russia? Are you dutifully peppering all your speech with mainstream programmed Kenta Cloth and prayer flag safespace transkid’s rights virtue signaling obedience lingo, or are you still in a panic over scary black people protesting the brute kkkops and immigrants coming over the border to steal your good jobs nd benefits? Either way, the real rulers are not going to look out for your health and safety, which is why we need to tune their bullshit division creating broadcasts out, create our own media, and resume looking out for one another.
The Tea Party and Pink Hats were both fake movements, manufactured for rich people who don’t wanna pay taxes and to elevate Hillary Clinton, they were both billionaire funded, astro turf, big screen hundreds of wooden chairs fake protests, that’s why you saw no teargas deployment or water hoses, or cop grenades blowing people’s arms off or blinding elders, or heavy intimidator military cop presence, but almost every demonstration since then, from Black Lives Matter to the MAGA Capital Hill protestors disputing the electoral count voting software, they’ve all been deeply managed and infiltrated by deep state operatives and agent provocateurs with trucks full of bricks and random violence and masks on. That police precinct that caught on fire, turned out to be Proud Boy working for the FBI. That’s how it always is, now. I saw it at Occupy, rich college professors coming in and telling people what they were allowed to say or do, and leading the whole occupation actually out of the banking zone in a trail of tears surrender, as not to offend their lawyers, and Saturday Market rich friends, it was madness, then kkkops dumped off a dead drunk and belligerent wino at their camp who attacked somebody, got in a fight, ended up dead so the screws could come in with their klieg lights and kick everybody out of the dirty needle park beneath the underpass that was making no statement anyway other than college age kids getting to have their first sex and drugs slumber party sleepover in the tents. Then you saw so called activists feuding over access to the GOLDEN TICKET free pass to some annual rich people, Deadhead drugs galore, boomer hippie getdown way out in Veneta, Oregon. They tried staging a protest on behalf of the local 3000 homeless people in FREE SPEECH PLAZA that drove the local politicians to not only shut the place down declaring a medical emergency and sending in pressure washers with Hamzat suits on, but wanting to change the name of the public space, and also, wanting to remove the statue of Ken Kesey downtown that they believed sends the wrong message to the town’s yuppie two grand a month rent payers. Some City director lady later bragged to her lawyer pakls that she “changed the culture” of the town by promoting a “poop fiction”, telling the media that someone had pooped downtown to justify removal of protestors, and that she felt entitled to be somehow financially compensated for that by the rich hotel owners and sports tourist community. You can’t make this shit up. But City Hall did just that: THEY MADE SOME SHIT UP! Literally! Fucking crazy times and most of your friends only pay attention to tv news and a bigass fake awards show Occult Ritual with all the pyramids and one eyes, glorifying demons and selling your soul for material gain…brought to you by Pfizer. I think they got a textbook to undermine protests, like, if you were some fat cats sitting on city hall and every yuppie middleclass homeowner was saying “defund the police”, what’s the easiest go-to strategy to warp the discussion and change the narrative, you send in some compromised informant types to create destruction and violence so all those exact same yuppie middleclas homeowners forget about the dead black people, and want to superfund the racist cops to “restore order”. It’s easy peasy, they do it in their sleep. Plant a gun and say the cops felt threatened for their lives.
“While American officials keep touting the “rules-based international order,” the truth is the US is absolutely a rogue nation. We are out of line with the global community in just about every way that matters.” (-Lee Camp)
“I was born and raised in West Jerusalem. My grandfather was one of the founders of Israel. My father was a general. My sister was good friends with Benjamin Netanyahu. As one of the privileged people in Israel’s apartheid state – I know it’s apartheid” (-Miko Peled)
“The real SOTU? Both parties are racing to the nuclear abyss, dithering on climate, derailing the right to strike, denying HC as a right & throwing >$100B to an explosive war we could have prevented by simply supporting Minsk. We need emergency action not clueless optimism.” (-Dr. Jill Stein) “
Blockading aid to Syria after a devastating earthquake that’s killed thousands is truly evil.
That is what the United States is doing right now. For those who are so surprised, the US maintains the most crippling sanctions arguably on earth on Syria and is stealing its oil in occupied territory to the East. This is hampering aid efforts.” (-Danny Haiphong)
“I can’t wear fancy trousers anymore they look ridiculous on my 57 year old broken body and these days I’m not trying to prove anything to anybody. What a colossal waste of energy and time two things I don’t have much of left.
Realistically, I have maybe 15 yrs left. That puts me at 72. I have less time on this marble than the last time I saw you in person in ’05. I certainly don’t have time to waste on delusional recording opportunities that will never happen. It’s one of the things I regret. Never having the stars align for us to record an album. When you put the cart in front of the horse you won’t get very far fast, you just get stuck pulling a cart, then I’m like fuck carrying this cart full of faded dreams.
I highly doubt we’ll see each other in person before one of us dies let alone write new songs or record
I’ve got too much nerve damage to play consistently.” (-The Artist Formerly Known As Nasty Bastard of The Original Suffering Bastards)
WATER IS LIFE! REMEMBER WHAT THE DEM ADMIN DID TO WATER PROTECTORS? HOW YA’ALL’S CLASSY & DASHING, FALSE HOPIUM PEDDLER, FOREVER PREZ SAID HE WAS “GONNA LET IT PLAY OUT”?
This is not ancient history but I’m layin’ out some links so all us crackers who always sem to instantly forget shit like human rights violations and police bruttality overnight when they are committed under a DNC Services Corporation figurehead’s administration and their donor class big oil cronies, maybe ’cause of a heavy fluoride consumption, maybe they got some kinda suppressed tech that erases middle class people’s memories, I dunno, but precious few of us Divided Slaves Of Amnesia like to remember how the First Black Pres and his Goldman Sachs Cabinet refused to intervene on behalf of The Original People when bankers, leaky pipeline profiteers, Hillary’s fracker friends and private mercenary proxy armies wanna abuse folks who are just trying to defend their land and water. Burntout Recluse Remembers. In “my country” the corporations program us with tv copaganda and hire actors like Ice T to help make the po-po and mercenaries and alphabet gangs sympathetic to the honkies on the hill, even got a show called “Cops” that’s supposed to serve as “entertainment” carefully edited to make poor people look like inept, shirtless, druggedout crazies, and the nightsticks into some kinda long suffering, patient, caring social workers, even added in a reggae soundtrack, you know, for that “diversity” the empire loves so much, “whatcha gonna do when they come for you” it says. Well, it might be worth thinkin’ about. You think you are immune to their gestapo tactics cause you got a degree in fashion merchandising or navel studies from the Sports University? I saw ’em roughing up white women and gleefully using chemical sprays on NYU students like it was all good fun at the Occupy Wall Street protests. Saw elders get bruised by rubber bullets and water cannons at Standing Rock and the millionaires on tv tried to spin it as some kinda Smooth Victory for Classy and Dashing Obama, rather than a betrayal of all his fancy talkin’ promises and conscious rap playlist drops and campaign speechifyin’. Rememeber when that dude did one of his famous controlled public relations events in Flint, prtenending to drink the contaminated water so all the tv watching Karens would go back to sleep and believe their dashing hero had fixed it? Not only did all the crooked politicians who were involved in the poisoning of the water get off the hook in court, but the water in Flint is still fucked. They got all these Section 8 houses available for poor people to rent there but they only list them by zipcode cause they don’t wanna emphasize exactly where it’s located cause the water’s still poisoned. Shitlibs just put their hands over their eyes and ears and go back to blaming Putin, Trump, Husein, Chavez, Gaddafi, always some external boogieman. Or that guy who messed up Pelosi’s desk. I say prayers to my higher power the way that shitlib Kalltha Kops Karens only live to Thank Obama. And Beyonce.
. Now they try to trot out AOC and even Gropey Joe with dementia to speak in his played out hallelujuh black church gospel cadences, but it’s embarrassing and ridiculous cause the only gospel they know is Wall Street, money, weapons of war, of always blankcheck funding funding spooks and rubber stamping more private armies to keep The People on the Res. The lesson is always the same, the shitlibs hate having their consumerism or commute delayed, the furious Thank A KKKop MAGA wingnuts get so enraged by images of protests that FOX shows all day of black people looting convenience stores, they get the guns out of the safe and go outside to belligerently confront random people in the front yard, the talk radio assholes always demonize the families of the dead victims, they are doing it with that kid they killed for squatting in a treehouse at the Stop KKKop City forest defending frontlines right now. They’ll plant evidence, or they’ll hide a gun, they’ll frame a story everywhich way but loose and all the cameras will mysteriously stop working and those Bill O’Reilly people will bleat on and on about Law & Order. Murkkka trains it’s young to hate protestors and worship enforcer class jack boots who use weaponry to “restore order”. The fat honkies in the South even wrote laws and put ’em on the books, making it legal for rightwing white people to crash into crowds of marchers with their cars if they dislike the message of the people’s movement. Shitlibs have never stopped crying over Nancy Pelosi’s desk being messed up by a white male during the Capital Hill MAGA protest because pig media said the word “insurrection” 1 million times a day for four years. If you doubt the out come of an election, you can not demonstrate, or talk about it in public spaces, or “sacred temples of democarcy” where the corporations go to bribe the politicians, or the One Percent will declare you a Thought Criminal; and they can come round you up ever since the First Prez With A DISPOSITION MATRIX, Obama’s NDAA indefinite detention papers were signed, and he was given a library, a big book deal, Net-Flix job, and a sprawling plantation. Better stay in line and keep your lip buttoned or Kopmala might have to unleash her dogs on you. Google this: Homeland Security Mission Creep. They gonna let it play out some more. Might play out on you.
I was not a big fan of that bluesy L.A. sleaze metal band Little Caesar, can’t really say why, I guess I was kinda fickle at that age, just didn’t vibe them much as I did, say Junkyard and Sea Hags, other than their album artwork was kindof atrocious and maybe the band name reminded me subconsciously of my really terrible pizzamaker job at Little Caesars, and Rob Young, the vocalist’s, singing style was just maybe a bit too blues night blustery for me, ya know I was not into Led Zeppelin, the Allman Brothers, Tesla, or Soundgarden, either, but when he spearheaded that online campaign to aid Dave Roach from Junkyard and raised a shit ton of money for him, I started kinda thinking about him and wanting to revisit his band. Turns out he’s written a rockstar bio I have not read but I’ll link to below. He was signed by Geffen and worked with John Kalodner one of those industry hack song doctors who helped ruin Aerosmith in the Bon Jovi years and was produced by Bob Rock, the slick Metallica/Dr. Feelgood/Sonic Temple guy. So the straight world expected them to make it big, I suppose. He also had a brief Cameo in some Terminator movie. A cover of an Aretha Franklin song, “Chain Of Fools” was probably not the right choice to help them reach an L.A. Guns-Four Horsemen-Circus Of Power-Guns N Roses-Raging Slab biker chic junkie sleaze metal audience, which is who I woulda targeted. Maybe I just don’t like “Chain Of Fools”. I do love “Save Me” by Aretha. I probably even would have preferred they did “Freeway Of Love”. Earl Slick joined the band and I always call him Earl “Too” Slick, in spite of his work with Hunter, Bowie, lennon and the NY Dolls. Listening to songs like “Hard Times” and “Wrong Side Of The Tracks”, they ARE actually better than I remember. My old goth girlfriend move to L.A. before I did and used to send me tornout pages from the free Sunset Strip entertainment weeklies, encouraging me to come out there to find my band and I remember them being seemingly big in the club scene at that time. To me, if you were in Kerrang! and Rip magazine, you’ve MADE IT! Maybe cause I live in a dead end desert where there aint no punk rock, no record store, no real nightclub, nothing to do but sit in a chair, or take a walk by the river, but I’m listening to “Supersonic” right now by L:ittle Ceasar and it’s perfect for a winter morning filled with yearning, coffee, ongoing sadness, it’s good stuff. Sounds like rocknroll to me. Everytime I say I wanna find a new guitar player and write some new songs or still dream about creating another after hours performance venue where outta town bands can visit and play, my family always says the same thing to me, that I’m “just trying to relive (my) twenties”. I dunno about that, man. I see a lotta guys even older than me still out there playin’ music!
She thinks she’s being edgy and provocative but most times she’s being repetitive and predictably, trying too hard to be offensive. Fackoff, Debbil-Madge. I liked her better when she was Susan and singing stuff like “Lucky Star”, “Borderline” and Into The Groove”. I’m not into her witch priestess bullshit at all.
“Terrible predatory forces are eating away at the country. The corporatists, militarists and political mandarins that serve them are the enemy. It is not our job to make them more appealing, but to destroy them. There are amongst us genuine freedom fighters of all ethnicities and backgrounds whose integrity does not permit them to serve the system of inverted totalitarianism that has destroyed our democracy, impoverished the nation and perpetuated endless wars. Diversity when it serves the oppressed is an asset, but a con when it serves the oppressors.” (-Chris Hedges)
“Blaming our problems on socialism when we live in the most capitalist country on earth is lunacy. Every one of our presidents has been a capitalist. Both parties who rule over us are capitalist. A socialist has never even been elected to Congress (Bernie & AOC aren’t socialists).” (-Ryan Knight)
“Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). Russia hacked the 2016 election to elect Trump. China spied on the US using a hot air balloon the size of four buses. The US war machine is built on lies, lies, and more lies.” (-Danny Haiphong)
“Our problem, folks, is corporate socialism, not socialism.” (-Dr. Jill Stein)
Zelensky couldn’t make it, so “Dr” Jill Biden got the call to promote another regime change operation against a country sanctioned and continually attacked by the US. Neocon theatrics like these are now mandatory at US awards ceremonies.” (-Max Blumenthal)
Swedish guitar virtuoso Steveie Klasson was one of those rare individuals who was just Born To Rock. He picked up the guitar as a kid and by the time he his his teens he was already performing in punk bands Neon Leon, Friday’s Angels and Linus & The Loosers and by the time he was seventeen or eighteen he had been discovered and befriended by the late great Johnny Thunders who kept Stevie in his band THE ODDBALLS until his tragic demise in 91 after which time Klasson relocated to the UK to collaborate with the badass legend, Patti Palladin. Since then, he has variously collaborated with Syl Sylvain, Glen Matlock, Darrel Bath, members of the Hellacopters, Flamin’ Groovies, Cardigans, Diamond Dogs, and Hanoi Rocks. I used to see him play around NYC with the Oddballs in my late teens and early twenties and he always reminded me of JT’s little brother, had that same impeccable stylishness and coolness, still does, all these years later. One cool cat who never gets enough credit is the glammy blues cowboy STEVIE KLASSON! He’s seen it all, done it all, experienced woe and grief and loss and heartbreak, and still carries himself like a suave and dashing dandified Bo Diddley Meets Doc Holiday, a gentleman gangster of the old West! ALL HAIL STEVIE KLASSON!!!!
“Number of democratically-elected governments the US has tried to overthrow since 1945: 50+.
Number of democratically-elected governments China has attempted to overthrow since 1945: 0. Western media: China is the world’s biggest “threat”! (-Danny Haiphong)
Cold mornings in Neverland, I move my chair to the sunniest parcel of the yard and listen to the birds, still thinkin’ about all my faroff family and friends who’ve been knocked like billiard balls to different parts of the world. I talked to some of my old homies on the phone-we’re all kinda crazy and in perpetual chaos or crisis, everybody who’s at the bottom of the capitalist culture knows we’re being gaslit and abused by the powers that be, with non stop psy ops and propaganda, and pro war bullshit, and excuses for billionaire greed, and fake as fuck politicians who never tell the truth about what’s really happening but instead just blame “the others”. People who are cold and broke and worried tend to fuck up or quarrel, suffer from intense helpless depressions, or just get psychologically burdened by all the lies and lying and top down media division programs, it makes us all a little meaner than we maybe need to be, especially with each other. it’s sad to behold. None of us can really even help each other anymore cause we all gotta hunker down and stay our post, and protect our loved ones and what little stability and shelter we can still grasp onto. Aint no surplus to share much, like in the olden times when we had a big bandhouse and twenty people chippin’ in to buy P.A.’s or band vans, or pizza and libations. Media makes people in the dwindling middle class stay focused on the lifestyles of the rich and famous, and pretend like they can join them and become millionaires too, if they keep the trains running on time, avoid the riffraff cooties, and repeat “the current thing” obediently enough, on social media. I’m gratified I aint the only one talkin’ about people like Springsteen and the Squad selling out the workers and the underclasses. I don’t know what we can do about any of it, anymore, it’s a helpless feeling when the Big 5 Vanguard/Blackrock/Gates weaponsmakers and pig-pharma owned media push their bogus advertising lies so hard our fellows can only parrot the dumb commercials about Chinese balloons or Chinese Bats or how the proxy war was unprovoked, and how “we” gotta send more billions to nazis in the Ukraine, rather than provide for any of the people suffering at the bottom of this ghetto nation or “dying suddenly” from mysterious causes no one can explain. Yesterday, we worked in the yard and fixed stuff and listened to some old George Michael and ended up having a bonfire under a full moon and all that felt good. Other days, the pressures of poverty, bills, superinflation, the war economy and family medical problems, make it hard to have harmony cause everybody’s under pressure, just like in that old Queen and David Bowie song, “it’s the terror of knowing what this world is about”. I found one of my old Catolic school friends but neither one of us can really bring ourselves to talk on the phone cause we’d rather leave things as is, as they were, we don’t wanna foul up the holy memeories, or touch the butterfly’s wings, we both instinctively prefer to cherish the scrapbooks of the log gone past and don’t wanna mess up the good old flame. Several of our friends from the good old days have dropped dead, now we’re all just coping with the disintegrating infratstructure around us, the nonstop threat of eviction, crime in all our cities, and disntegrating society, goin’ to work, doing our best to care for loved ones, with what limited resources we can still access, but shitlibs don’t understand how the bureacracy is not really there to benefit us, it’s all a slippery slope and more tricks of the rich. Somebody used to say the rich get richer and the poor get drunk, nowadays, the poor people can’t even afford much beer. I’m glad to see some old rocknroll bands like Circus Of Power and Faster Pussycat still playing at the last few metal bars scattered across the land and bringing those old songs to the people, even if the big towns are less than welcoming to us poor people, at least some middle class folks can still get together in the cities and remember the golden years when everything still seemed possible, and hear thaose good old songs about freedom and fun . I love that summa those guys still know how to bring a room of people together for a celebration of life, like the nice lady at the local grocery cash register told us yesterday, we might as well have fun while we can, seize every last moment of joy and communion, cause it’s all too brief and harboring too much unforgiveness and anger just kills us off early. Joe Strummer really had some stuff figured out towards the end of his life. I still wish more people could have heard songs like “Boogie With Your Children” and “Nitcomb” and “Johnny Appleseed”. Old ideas that need to be kept alive around the fire and passed down to whoever survives this bullshit Klaus Scwab depopulation, purge, culling of the herd. Lou Reed said it “Takes A Bus Loard Of Faith To Get By”, a bus load of forgiveness, too.
“When your government condemns socialism while engaging in fascism and refuses to denounce Nazis, you’re being ruled by fascist Nazis. Me connecting with poor white people for the better is called a “Red-Brown alliance” rich men black & white connecting to steal from us is called “bipartisanship”. (-UnholyRom3)
“The Chinese spy balloon debacle is nothing but a psyop meant to prepare Americans for war with China
BOOJ COMPOND AMAZON SHOPPERS ARE FUCKING WHACKADOO
Max Blumenthal has been talking about Branch Covidians for a long time-the cloistered haves who are so one message psychically scarred and adversely affected by nonstop media blitz that they still want babies to wear masks and society to remain in permenent lockdown because they only need shop Amazon or Grub-Hub. We know people who still have their Wal Mart shopping done by employees and delivered to their car so they don’t have to risk the death plague by setting foot in the store. They live in big gated compounds and only see employees and consume corporate media all night long so they trust Dr. Jill Biden and Dr. Fauchi and think every other scientist or doctor who is not actively pushing more boosters for children, shutdowns of mom n pops, and billions for endless war nazi regimes must be working for Russia, China, or Trump. I got neighbors in the desert who live in trailers surrounded by cameras and electronic gates. Only place I’ve ever seen a trailer with cameras and electric gates. The country is getting weirder. I know people who consume rightwing media who keep complaining to me about the immigrants and Chinese “threat” just like the shitlib pink hats, who keep bleating on and on and on about the Capital Hill election protests. Not my problem, not my cause, I BELIEVE IN FREEDOM OF SPEECH & THE RIGHT TO ASSEMBLE. I DO NOT believe that these fucking puppet politicians are goddesses from Mt. Olympus or should be worshipped as such. They all suck so bad. What phonies, such traitors.
BACKSTREET CINDERELLA
When I was avoiding the truancy officers while waiting to turn eighteen in a school to prison pipeline, fuckedup and corrupt, fascistic patriotic, tankplant town, I lived in a cold garage in an attic crawlspace over my friend Bryan B’s mom nd brother’s sports cars, we had a Coalman’s stove we’d run sometimes, but I get dizzy just remembering the fumes and how idiotic it was to try to wram ourselves with that thing in a confined space, you do a lotta dumbass risky shit when you’re a kid and if you survive all that, I guess you’re lucky. We had some heavy metal girlfriends who’d get rides to come visit us up there. My stoner metal skateboard crew and detention hall roommate Beefy (RIP) might bring over some dirtweed which was just ridiculously outlawed back then-total reefer madness drug scare bullshittery. Girls would bring us 12 packs of Budweiser and it felt like the greatest thing in the world. Back then we were all still into Def Leppard and Ratt and Cinderella, but were about to graduate into Dogs D’Amour and Circus Of Power and Junkyard and Mother Love Bone, right? . Keifer had a real specific kinda singing voice, you might say an acquired taste, but I’ve known festivals fulla people who actually love that high pitched screechy shit. I can not sit through a whole album’s worth of screeching very often, but I can do four or five songs worth in a sentimental mood. Back when I was sixteen or seventeen, I thought he dressed Goth Like Me, and was sortof a dumbed down smalltown Steven Tyler, so I was all aboard and never stopped really loving “Gypsy Road”. His band brokeup a long time ago and Jeff LeBar died. Kindof a sad story. Anyways, I’m glad that guy’s still around doing his thing! (RIP) Jeff LeBar
When I was in my twenties, I had an open all night, non stop party, communal crash pad, bandhouse and performance venue where most of the time there was like fifteen cars and three or four motorcycles parked out front-we had cookouts, bar b q’s, a motorcade to all our dodgy shows, weekend visitors who’d bring us groceries/booze/new music, it was so much fun but I foolishly believed all that fleetingly fabulous bedazzling magic was gonna last forever. All those dudes who used to drive me ten hours to see all the big city rockshows? Bobby, Mitch, Joey, Keith B.,…Most of them are dead now and my little black heart just can’t stop cryin’ over ’em. Hug your babies, call your grandmother, forgive ’em all for they know not wht they do, do it while you can. All those sleazy metal bands soundtracked all our best times in our young lives and I feel particularly attached to Circus Of Power, who’d kinda taken a couple of under their wings and always brought us backstage and encouraged our greasy kid hairspray punk bands. Special Thanks to Alex, Gary, and Ricky. We all liked LA Guns too, but I think we kinda lost interest and enthusaism when Mick Cripps split and those other guys did all the bitchy lawsuits and stupid feuds for decades and attacked the fans who were confused about when Phil and Tracii were getting along and when they were hating on the rest of the old band, all that shit over the years, it was hard to really stay connected to them-Tracii Guns did that Brides Of Destruction band and then all that shit with the TV show people, Phil Got bitchier and went though 500 different bandmates who all left in bitter acrimony, then they got Paul Mars Black back in the band with Tracii for a minute, right? Then the other guys-Riley and Nickles had their version. I tried to checkout their new song “You Betray” this morning but it ws just too heavy for me I guess. Faster Pussycat still entertain me. I like Taime and Danny and those other guys are putting a lot of energy into the show, even if I don’t care if I ever know their names cause I miss Greg and Brent, right? I bet you do, too. (RIP) Ryan Maher and Zowie Ackerman and Mark Michaels. I still have not been able to get a copy of that “Nothin’ But A Good Time” book about Eighties Heavy Metal in L.A., but you know I want it!
“However, to date, the dumbest smear on my book thus far goes to Kirby Sommers, who claims I am sus because I had a great grandfather live in Ohio in the late 1800s lmao. If you are a professional historian and are smearing my book for not including Russia + China, but can’t be bothered to read past Chapter 2 to find the parts where I do talk extensively about Russia + China, I am have a very hard time believing that you are acting in good faith.” (-Whitney Webb)
“Cynical does not capture the immoral game U.S. policymakers are playing with the lives of Ukrainians. Everyone knows the final outcome of the war, yet the U.S. continues to escalates creating the necessity for the Russians to conquer the entire country.” (-Ajamu Baraka)
THE TOP 25 MOST CENSORED STORIES OF 2021-2022 (projectcensored.org) Blackrock, Vanguard, Gates, WEF supervillains capturing regulatory agencies, covertly geoengineering, buying media and most of the USA farmland, tech cenosrhip, mass surveillance, kidnapping journalists, proxy wars.
“On this day in 2003, Colin Powell lied the US into war with claims that Iraq harbored WMDs.
On this day in 2023, the US is once again lying its way into war with China over an absurd ballon-gate scandal that no one with an ounce of critical thought would take seriously.” (-Danny Haiphong)
That is what they call themselves, but they are not Liberals.” (-Clifton Duncan)
“Monday Night Football – It is now impossible to watch sports in America without constantly idolizing the military and war. The US has transformed completely into a totalitarian war machine. The cultural infrastructure is used to promote militarism.” (-Garland Nixon)
“Americans really believe that this war started in February, came out of nowhere and for no reason, other than Putin is a movie evil villain that decided to try to take over world.
Our Gov’t can make us believe just about anything, and steal billions from us while doing it.” (-Black In The Empire)
“Twitter has suspended the account of Palestine Online, one of the most influential Palestinian news outlets on Twitter, to prevent them from conveying the truth of Israeli apartheid to over 80,000 followers.” (-Geoffrey M. Young US House candidate, KY-06)
If you think it’s nuts that Ukraine will get tens of billions more from NATO after bombing a NATO member state, then you’ve obviously never heard of the USS Liberty.” (-Primo Radical)
“Zelensky is a war criminal and NATO is his enabler.” (-Danny Haiphong)
What has always been interesting was that we all were supposed to pretend that this actor wasn’t acting and actually had independent thoughts & positions. This irrational insistence represents the real Zelensky – someone out of their depth from day one.” (-Ajamu Baraka)
“This is the colonial mindset of Black petit-bourgeoisie. She decided to capitulate to the sensitivities of whiteness while her husband smashed universal healthcare, expanded AFRICOM, attacked & destroyed Libya, started wars in Syria & Yemen – in other words – serve white power!” (-Ajamu Baraka)
“It really would not matter if she retires because democrat party has no credible moral & political leadership waiting in the wings to step forward. The party is intellectually & morally bankrupt & unable to rise to the historical task to eliminate the capitalist dictatorship.” (-Ajamu Baraka)
“Text Of Pelosi Speech : Warmongers such as me are bent on nuclear human extinction. I can count on the squad to support Nazis & promote the lies necessary for such a horrific ending for humanity. Who cares about the future, there is none.” (-Garland Nixon)
My 15 year old woke me up singing the 1963 closet classic “Surfin’ Bird” outside my bedroom door about 4:30 this morning and has only paused singing it to do some early morning Badfinger while I wash dishes. I’m trying not to be in a bad mood so I gotta make some coffee.
Man ya know way back in my heavy Cramps and Gun Club phase when I had my Tower records co worker Erika bleaching my hair and shit, I thought Nik Fiend was like the koolest rockstar on the planet. He probably still is. I used to live with a girl who ran his U.S. fanclub and we always dug all their art and crazy sounds. When I used to holler for some long forgotten basement goth gangs, this is who I ripped my whole look offa. They were too much fun. I wish Nik and the Mrs. Fiend all the best things always. Coolness, personfied!
ASHETON
I never met the Asheton brothers but my second drummer knew ’em real well and talked about ’em all day at the old hippie used record store I worked at in some Mayberry farmtown in the eighties. Once my fabulous furry freak brother Dave Andra got me into the Doors and the Stooges, ya know, that was it for me. We used to read “Black To Comm” magazine. Old “Creems”. “Well, alrite!” Ashton brothers wre just like us, from the same exact kinda place, we got into all the same kinda jams, growing up, ya know at the resevoir and in detention, smoking under the bleachers and meeting girls at church and sneaking into the drive in and shoplifting heavy metal magazines and probably some underage drinking and getting put in the juvie hall. I was not wild about “The Weirdness” but was happy those guys, a little like Killer Kane, got to have their happy ending before they left the planet, they wanted to return to the stage as the Stooges and Iggy finally made that happen. God bless ole Iggy. He does the right things more frequently than most rich or famous people.
If you’re anything like me, you need that daily dose of real rocknroll just to keep trudging onward in this wicked swamp of bullshit lies, propaganda, fabrications, backstab scoundrels, all the violence and horrors and creepy cannibal capitalist scum warcrimes. Cleanse your psychic pallette with some hell ya allright motherfuckery from the best of the best. The baddest of the bad. Jim Jones is the crawling king snake, man. You know how I always think I’m a better rocknroll hellion than all these other frontmen? I don’t think I’m anywheres close to Jim Jones. Or Eddie Nichols. I love those guys.
Yeah I worked at Target for about a year when my youngest son was small, fuckedup my knees from all the bending, merchandising endcaps four hours a day. Eating suburbanite shite at the register for the other four. All the moms there buying sour patch candy cheap to take to overpriced movie theater next door want to teach their kids how to pay so here come the baggies filled with pinnies and nickels. Target sucks so bad. They’d keep you on call, send you home early, make you come in during the blizzard, I don’t drive, so that job was a real pain in the ass hardship for my wife with a newborn baby, driving me to work, having to come back and fetch me two hours later-they really fuck you around at that place and I never got a raise. Okay, they did give me a dime raise. A fucking dime. I hated Target-it was worse than Wal Mart for workers and you can never be promoted to management without a four year degree, in spite of all the feelgoodist marketing aimed at Karens and mandatory asskissing policies. Did you see this article about Target targeting goths? I mean are those comic con cosplay Lady Gaga splatter people even GOTH? I got chased outta school by zero tolerance admin hardons for looking like this in the eighties, now all the mainstream people say they like punk and goth but I think they mean Lana Delray and Pink 182 and trendy vacuum cleaners they saw coupons in the Sunday paper for but it was bait n switch-Target may have advertised all that patio furniture for $100 but there was only one in stock and now you have to go stand in the customer service line to get your raincheck. They only have one $39 Dyson Spaceage Dust Sucker 5000, yeah I know you got a coupon, want me to call the manager on my walkie talkie, he’s not here on Sundays.
I only saw the Throbs live one time-they were pretty sensational, though. Sweetheart was from Canada and grew up immersed in Canada’s dynamite punk scene, briefly played guitar in a band that featured future Skid Row rockstar, Sebastian Bach, I think it was called Vo5? Early Throbs “Proud To Be Loud” stuff sounded like the Ramones. “It’s a nucleur attack, baybee, and I aint never comin’ back, baybbbee…” He moved to NY, formed an over the top glam gang with Roger Erikson from Smashed Gladys, Danny Nordahl from Angels In Vain, and Ronnie Magri from Sweet Pain. “The Language Of Thieves & Vagabonds” was hyped as the East Coast answer to Guns N Roses, it was produced by Bob Ezrin, had that epic old Alice Cooper concept album feel, guest starred Little Richard. They were in all the magzines, had a couple vids on Headbanger’s Ball. I dunno why they never became mainstream stars, they seemed to have all the right pieces in place, but showbiz is all a big mystery to me. I still really have no idea how any of that works. I mean I know there’s payola, shit like that, but still…! Somebody said they released a second lp called “SECOND” but I never heard it. I thought their big first record sounded an awful lot like Zodiac Mindwarp & The Love Reaction, quite honestly. They’ve grown on me over the years. I really like that song “Underground”, I can really relate to that one somehow. I think I always appreciated Sweetheart cause he did not sing in that obligatory Iron Maiden high metal screech like Waxl and Jason McMasters-ya know I can’t tell you how many guitar players I tried working with in the metal years who were all bummed out I could not belt out the high note like Bruce Dickinson or Queensrhyche or whoever. I’m just not a metal guy, never have been. I mean, I like Van Halen, but I come from more of an underground punk tradition. I like vocalists like Stiv Bators and Steve Leckie. Jim Carroll. Jim Jones. The kids in one of my online glam groups are all still crazy about the Throbs. I think they still have reunion shows every few years, Ronnie Magri lives in New Orleans. I remember when they kickedout poor ole Ginger-that wasn’t very nice! Ya know sometimes band chemistry is a very elusive, mystical thing-you can like all the same records and both wear a polka dotted scarf but not have that sorta natural unspoken connection. I had dinner and drinks with a former Throb named Pete Pagan once when he was forming a band that was supposed to be bankrolled by Bas; and my friend, the World Famous Ratboy dragged me along! We used to see Danny Nordahl boppin’ along on Second Ave. all the time. I met him when he was in the NY Loose, really fun guy.
FASTER PUSSYCAT TO RELEASE A NEW 45 ON GOLDEN ROBOT! “LIKE A GHOST” b/w “PIRATE LOVE”
I always say upfront I never, never liked their dumb Beastie Boys rap song or all those years of Taime with a revolving door of blackhaired dudes doing all the loony techno tributes to Marilyn Manson, whatever that shit was, but ever since ex Throb/NY Loose bassman, Danny Nordahl joined the Pussycats, they seem like they’ve gotten their old sleazy punkroll asskick back. Danny’s a real rocker and I always liked summa the scroungier, sleazier, AC/DC meets Joneses type Pussycat stuff. So all their old school fans oughta be pretty excited about their newish single in late November, on transluscent blue vinyl, no less.
The James Calvin Wilsey bio by Michael Goldberg is by far one of the best rocknroll books I’ve ever read. I can’t stop reading it. You’ll want to again and again. The writer is impeccable and knew Jimmy personally and really effectively tells the story. It’s like a movie. Author Michael Goldberg pours so much heart into this careful study, I feel for Waylon n Winter. (RIP) Jimmy He really was one of the most exceptional, innovative, creative guitarists on the face of the earth. Up there with like all the greatest guitarplayers ever. I’m a singer/songwriter so ya know I’m ALWAYS seraching for a cat who can play with that kinda graceful nuance and subtlety, spooky, edgy soulfulness and danger! My friend Paul K would’ve loved this book, but of course, he is also dead, everybdy’s dropping dead now, all the good ones, all the soulmen. Jimmy had some flaws for sure-he lied to everybody all the time, probably even started believing his own lies himself, and like a lotta junkies, he lied about shit he never had to lie about-he was a bad junkie with lifelong depression and hardcore habits, but boy could he play guitar.By the time I saw Chris and his band live, Wilsey had been gone for awhile. I think he left the band around “San Francisco days, which was the last of his records I really loved. I saw Chris on a daytime bill with Human League and Duran Duran but the whole day wa kinda ruined by the usual drunken herds of buffoonishly loud, idiotic sports fan fratboys who go see anybody famous in those stadiums and just scream shirtlessly like it’s the Big Game all day. Summa those fuckers kept like stepping on us and shit, some loud mouthed soroity girl yelled at me for asking her not to drunkenly step on my oldest kid. That whole state is a hellhole. I’m sure Wilsey’s former manager/producer and Silvertone bandmates know deep down they kinda fucked him over on the songwriting and publishing credits, same shit happened to half of Generation X, I feel bad for Bob Andrews. I see why he’s bitter. Some people in showbiz are in it for the money. Other people make music cause it bleeds outta them all the time, like almost involuntarily. Wilsey “The King Of Slow” was a real special player. His solo album goes for like $200 now. I aint got no bread to buy shit, but I sure do love the Wilsey sound, I love Isaak’s early work to tears, he’s one of the best singers in the world, his songs about heartbreak and despair and how nobody loves no one influenced by own songwriting-what an entertainer, what a band, his drummer is amazing, too. I will treasure this book about JC Wilsey, you should get yourself a copy if you’re an Avengers or Chris Isaak fan.
“The faster you drive, the less you can feel
The lights on the road, are strange and unreal When there’s nothing to lose, there’s nothing to win In a night without day, on a road without end, darling Kings of the highway, we will be…”
BEEN LISTENING TO A LOT OF OLD JEFF DRAKE PUNKNROLL MUSIC FROM THE JONESES TO AMANDA JONES!
His autobiography is real good. Mandy should get back ro makin new music with Jeff! I wanna see that unreleased video the Joneses made at that hotel and hear some unreleased Amanda Jones songs like the one they co wrote with Iris Berry!
“There is no left wing in the US government. The US is led by sociopaths. They intentionally kill children & other innocent people on a daily basis. Stop acting like these are serious & rational adults.” (-Lee Camp)
“Congress can’t find the $ to lift millions of kids out poverty, get health care to ~70,000 who die each year for lack of it, or house 1/2 million without shelter.
But to sustain war in Ukraine, they can’t give it away fast enough.” (-Dr. Jill Stein)
“When you are rogue state you can just make up any excuse to invade a nation to prop up your puppet govt. Nothing to see here but Western values at work!!” (-Ajamu Baraka)
“The thousands of tech workers being fired from these Billionaires without notice should remind each and everyone that your Job is NOT safe without a Union no matter what the industry is don’t wait from join up!” (-Christian Smalls)
“RECYCLED NATO FRAUD: The entire Western media and Slavoj Zizek promoted a UN envoy’s claim that Russian soldiers were on a Viagra fueled rampage in Ukraine. That UN envoy now admits she had no proof, and was influenced by an ex-Ukrainian official who’s confessed to lying.” (-Max Blumenthal)
“So, a police officer has been found to have sent an image of Grenfell on fire to others, titled “The Great Muslim Bake off.” As someone who was there and saw armed police on the streets that night, I am not suprised.” (-Lowkey)
“Ukraine suppressed opposition parties. Ukraine abolished collective bargaining and unionization. Ukraine has prevented Western media from covering Kherson while it publicly tortures “collaborators.” This looks a lot more like fascism than “democracy.” (-Danny Haiphong)
“The lesson from yesterday should be that one small mistake has the potential to end most life on earth.
Every sane human being should be calling on leaders on both sides to hold peace talks now, and not continue down an escalatory rabbit hole that can only lead to nuclear winter.” (-Primo Radical)
“So now, the same people who flooded the country with fentanyl hope to make additional billions on vaccines that will supposedly solve the problem they caused. This is a tried and true business model for Pharma. You can’t make this stuff up.” (-Robert F. Kennedy Jr.)
but I saw the Phantom Chords-they were good. Vanian and company were a main influence on almost every real rocknroller I ever knew, still going strong all these years later, God love ’em, God bless ’em. This song says it all for me right now. I just feel trapped and controlled and angry/anguished this morning. Not a good vibe. The Divided Staes Of Gotmo Amnesia is a real motherfuckin’ buzzkill and almost everybody I know has memorized The Script. Makes me laugh when punks say they hate hippies-everything the fuckin Damned ever did was fucking heavily influenced by hippies. Ya ever hear of Arthur Lee? Naz Nomad sure has! The real punks and real hippies know what’s up, all fight the same systems of bullshit and oppression. The real resistance culture is not celebrity worship or rulebook mongering. “I just can’t be happy today!” It’s a miracle the original Damned lineup is scheduled to reunite in the UK this year, you know those guys all have really big, cantankerous, clashing personalities but there is something real wonderful, special about seeing the originators doing it together again. Goth, punk, fifties croonsome Elvis from hell, retro garagey pyschedelia? These are the badass granddaddies of it all!
So I been reading a book here by a famous underground cult figure I grew up loving and much to my surprise, he mentions an interview I’d forgotten about doing with him for a national magzaine I used to write for when I was stll living with my two middle children and their mom what seems like 100 years ago. He did not use my name in his book but he remembered the title of the article which was also a lyric from one of my unfinished, unreleased, but still seemingly widely circulated, old songs. A friend of mine made a youtube video to that old song but I asked her to take it down cause I never got to record a real lead vocal, and what she hears is the guide track I did for the rhythm section, a scratch take. Anyways, yeah, I used to write for a famous magazine in the late ninties, early double 0 zeroes. That magazine had a whole mission statement in the beginning about being a no holds barred, free speech platform, but when I started writing about the race riots in the bad town I lived in and the murderous police and their known ties to hate groups, the editor started censoring my shit. That became a pattern, I’d write for some punk mag, and they’d incrementally keep censoring, or altering, or otherwise kinda diminishing my work, cause they were all run by in crowd fame hags who just wanted to keep it on script, as to never offend the famous red carpet celebrity, book signing at the museum people they wanted the approval of. How punk is that? Not really punk, at all. Sucking up to rich people is not my mission in life. I can’t stand the fucking suckups, man. Just horrible. Fuckoff. Media professionals might as well just call themselves liars and whores for war, cause that’s all you’re allowed to do on corporate airwaves or imperialist print media-there is no real underground here, anymore-they all just wanna build brands, sign deals, get money, marry up, Have More stuff, and be famous on Tiktok as scab members of gentrified namebrand headliner Gotham City cover bands. Anybody with a decent job in media nowadays is Controlled. I used to like Jeremy Scahill’s work, he wrote the book about Blackwater, Dick Cheney’s oligarch friend, Eric Prince, the secretive, plausible deniability proxy army, corporate mercenaries and white billionaire, faux Christian jihadists, who can freely mass murder Iraquis and operate outside any international laws, or basic human rights dignity, and be billion dollar black ops paid by the Pentagon for overthrowing governments, or helping the secret police murder foreign heads of state, or crush any native resistence to endless Nato invasions and brazen plundering of their country’s natural resources, like in Iraq and Syria and Yemen and Afghanistan and Libya, Obama and Hillary’s war, but now he’s like, writing these Bush/Cheney official narrative cover-stories for the billionaire who owns the Intercept and it saddens me, same with Amy Goodman at Rockefeller financed Democracy Now, she has sadly become just another imperial stenographer, serving up lockstep official narrative propaganda in “an old hippie voice” in the memorable words of Max Blumenthal.
Wokeup pissed, we got too many cats, they wake me up at all hours, last night, motherfucker knocked down on all my wife’s fancy dishes she was trying to sell on Ebay, broke some shit, they circle me like sharks meowing before I’ve had my first cuppa coffee and the teenager starts yelling “meow, meow”. One of these needy, neurotic cats has psychological issues. Middle class people care way way way more about their fucking cats, your cats, his cats, her cats, any cats, way, way more than they ever, ever, ever will care about a human being. I can’t help but notice how few of these cat crazy people are capable of sharing space with other people, ya know they don’t have peer relationships-middelclass people aint really able to acknowledge others as equals. They suck up to the powerful and reserve the right, think they got some kinda license, to just mistreat, smear, slander, exploit, plaigirize, or otherwise rob the poor. They are fucked up fucking shitlib capitalists. ‘Racist woman I know hates people of any hue, aside from honky Wonder Bread whiteness, she always supects Mexican people are stealing at her store, can barely contain her seething hatred of others, esp. if she aint got enough fucking middle class prescription pain pills, but man she never shuts up about her cats and cat problems and gives them all these people like, detailed, cinematic biographies, like this one’s a movie star and that one’s a cowboy, and of course that one there is always the reincarnated Cleopatra, every shitlib has one. Cat with different colored eyes named Bowie. The pitbull people are even fucking worse. “I always say he rescued me!” is a tiktok meme joke my kid quotes but it aint no lie, the crazy pitbull people where I live say that everyday, exactly. I used to go on walks by the riverside and all the batty new age ladies who talk to themselves and get off intimidating people with their leashless pitbull duo say the same script out loud to no one in particular, everyday.
“Working class unity will not be achieved as long as the collaborative settler-left continues to evade dealing with its’ internalized pro-West, normalized white supremacist worldviews that are buttressed by the imperialist rent that corrupts workers movements in the West. The U.S. & its colonial allies prepare plans to invade & occupy Haiti violating its territorial integrity & sovereignty but gets a pass while the G-20 issues its hypocritical condemnation of Russia. Hey U.S., Iraq asked you to leave its territory but you refuse & so did Syria. The arrogant colonial mind is so pathological that it doesn’t comprehend that the real world – not the 10% that make up the U.S. & Europe – see the incredible hypocrisy of the U.S. with its world-wide military force & intelligence units subverting, attacking & destroying nations? “
“The Dems are gonna do everything they can to get people to not pay attention to what comes out about Hunter and his Daddy, as if enough hasn’t come out already. Don’t worry Democrats, there are enough corrupt Republicans that are dirty enough in Ukraine with your Biden buddies and yourselves to make sure no investigation goes too far.” (-Black In The Empire)
“Is it objective reporting when your side represents objective positions and the other side’s positions are propaganda? Shouldn’t that be an assessment made by the consumers of your reporting? Shouldn’t they determine what is “baseless” from evidence produced by the reporting?” (-Ajamu Baraka)
BORN AGAIN TO LOSE
To most people, rocknroll was never their real calling, true passion, or way of life, it was more like their side hustle when they were younger-a way to meet chicks or hobknob with celebrities. Only people I know still even bothering to really make new music are like, trust fund artsies, people with Very Nice Hats and parents in publishing. A few boomer hobbyists in silly skinny jeans and Hot Topic costumes stealing younger people’s copyrights, or old punks who made it big with their band in the seventies of eighties, whose old band name still has some kinda marquee value, even though they are the only remaining member. Some guys who wrote fistfight books and became 12 step stars with vintage automobiles. I mean, ya see any unfamous people who aint rich, having any access to recording studios or rehearsal spaces anymore? Not where I live. It all costs too much, nobody can afford $100/hour. Are you kidding me? I can’t even afford cigarettes. I had to quit smoking and now, I’m just angrier all the time.
So ya know I did not end up where I thought I’d end up and I have very little security where I am now, it all hangs precariously by a thread here really. Not much space to be myself, requires a lot of shutting up and taking shit, doing mundane and tedious busywork almost all day everyday, with no space or time for getting down, and letting nutty bullying rich people always have the lengthy anecdotal last word, always, always about their own genius, superiority, and philanthropy. I’m aware of having been caricatured, one dimensionalized, written off, or otherwise dehumanized by the old gang, the old crowd. I’m just like a scarecrow in a Ramones t shirt in the eyes of the joiners and belongers, never real, not flesh and blood, just like a symbol of a long lost cause and long obsolete subculture. I aint got no vintage echo machine or tube amp or smoke machine or record collection or purple motorcycle, ya know? I got some good songs, though. Love my family, wish the music had gone different so I could give them more stability and mobility, choices and security. Sometimes in life you can make plans, do your homework, engage in lengthy prolonged negotiations with former associates, employers, and friends, and the obligatory network of friends of friends, though many of us recognize that in capitalist culture, by say age 27, everybody’s already kinda redefined the definition of friends to mean people you went to school with who you compete with on Instagram. Look at my boat, my booze on the beach, my smiling blonde kids on vacation. Namaste. You think you’re gonna move somewhere free and tolerant, hip and groovy, and do your thing, but that kinda enclave is shithoarded by the filthy rich people and you end up in an entirely unforseen set of circumstances of which you had almost no control. I’d been planning on relocating to a certain bohemian artist colony where some like minded musician friends had settled and it seemed for quite some time like the promised land, but then things changed almost overnight like they do if you are an immobilized slave at the bottom of the capitalist hierarchy and none of our seemingly well researched and thought out out, master plans could be implemented anymore, due to a variety of reasons including the pandemic hysteria, jacked up gas/groceries/utilities and rent, the intense distrust and antipoor paranoia of the haves-with the subconscious notion they all seem to harbor, that poverty is contaigious-they’re always telling my old lady she should buy real expensive stuff to prove she does not have “a poverty mindset”, see, this whole time she just needed to “think abundantly” so some male who has a big fortune will “manifest”. Me, I don’t drive, got no wheels, have an eighth grade education and a checkered work history as a dishwasher/entertainment weekly columnist/plantation go-fer indentured servant/record store guy over twenty five years back, there’s an old eviction on my background check, a loud kid with special needs, and what with the ever shifting agendas of some former associates who may have gotten cold feet, second thoughts, or even plausibly sabotoged our endeavors from behind the scenes, I’m kinda stuck between the big machine and the whims of wealthy landhoarders. Narcissitic powertrip bosses who think of themselves as saintly indie martyrs but push all their employees around insensitively and talk down to us like we’re fools. Same as it ever was, same as it ever was.
SURPRISE!
Can’t tell you how close I’ve been to reaching that “next level” of bargain basement independent punknroll records generating, I dunno how many times. I been this close at least four times, with a cool band, in the studio, good tunes, glowing reviews, offers to open for big bands and the whole thing comes crashing down again cause ya gotta have shit tons of money to grease the wheels like almost every step of the way, everybody wants a fast buck handout and a free lunch and a plane ticket and a hotel room with a hot tub and their selfie with Steve Conte or that chick from the West Coast “Barbed Wire Dolls”. I don’t know anymore what really happens when shit goes off the track, for no logical reason, least none that makes any rational sense to my little pea brain, and people say I can be paranoid. Usually feels like greed, envy, mutiny, competition, money. If you dunno why shit went wrong, it’s almost always money. One wouldbe collaborator’s entrouge seemingly determined I was just not as famous as he was, therefore, I’d be somehow second hand getting some kinda social cachet popularity currency I do not deserve if we were to work together, his wife felt like I might soil his merchandising/fame brand with my working class attitudes and belligerently rebellious power to the people class consciousness, something like that, lotta those rich people require I not exist in their zipcode so THEY can be the lone blackhaired working class rebel with a big house and a motorcycle and a buncha spare rooms full of flea market finds all neatly bagged and alphabetized for Buddhaism, Science and Genderfluidity or something, and I chuckle at the whole notion, cause I see so many people actually doing those kinda jiveass, disingenuous, social climbing suckup song and dances, maybe I’d be distrustful of people if I was in his position making big money playing at famous fame festivals and shit, Joan Jett says once you’re famous everybody’s nice to you all the time, I dunno, but you’d think if he’d really read anything I wrote or sang about, over the course of the past thirty years, he’d have some idea of what I’m about and what I stand for. It aint for backstage laminates or selfies with the rich. I see an ex friend who got rich has all these parasitical suckup money grubber assholes from our hometown always posting all their family’s Gofundme shit to his social media like it’s his job to pass out all the alms for the poor cause we went to school with these people thirty five years ago, even though I don’t remember very many of them being very kind to us at all back then. I would not want to be in his shoes with all the dysfunctional relatives and disabled nieces and nephews and horny stepfathers and other emotional blackmailer extortionists–all those people clamoring for a piece of his fortune like he owes them, but after he deals with all the impressed by money suckup gimee gimees kissing his ass all day, ya know he aint real interested in hearing from me, which is too bad cause we used to be real cool, complimented each other, enhanced one another, did comedy together, were friends. Everybody else wants something from him, of course, he sadly thinks I’m only here to shake him down, too. I think he thinks I’ma wait in line to ask him for a favor at his daughter’s wedding or some shit like in “The Godfather”. Nahh, I gone this long without those guys, I might as well ride it out alone. Rich people are crazy and they guard their territory with like a fanatical surveillance tech skittishness. We know a dude who keeps cameras on all his female employees all day, records their conversations at the cash register, brags about how his properties are all wired so he can see every room at any time on his I-phone, knows what his dog is doing. He’s one of those dudes that gets inappropriately giddy around any female. He kept trying to rent one of his places to my wife and family. He can’t keep employees cause he shits all over males, abusing his authority, insulting them in front of customers to assert dominance or whatever-thinks that insulting and demeaning other dudes is alpha wolf, winning quarterback behavior, that it impresses the chicks, and all the chicks you see at the crosswalk downtown who used to work for him all quit and are filled with rage over him disrespecting or sexually harrassing them, and the dude is married. Keeps offering jobs to me or my wife, thinks he can buy his way into a divide and conquer scenario with his secret spy cameras, minimum wage, and mighty might big truck ownership. Come ON, now-how dumb do we look? Rich people think you’re stupid if you’re poor. People are crazy, crazy times. Old men are creeps. I avoid sports fans and big truck owners.
Another outta town target destination wouldbe employer was clearly not super comfortable with the fact that I was distant friends with his famous ex girlfriend who admired my old music and writing stuff, so anyways, it is hard to move with a family in this kind of bullshit rich get richer economy, when every fucking landlord wants to charge maximum rent shamelessly, and also requires you always grovel and assure them they are the saintly martyr greatest, for doing you an unrepayable favor, so you are obliged to be forever in their debt. I am not anywhere close to where I expected to be after all the years of grinding on any level but fucking hell, summa my old pals just unexpectedly up and “died suddenly” these past two years, so I guess I gotta be grateful I’m above ground and have shelter from the cold, even if it’s not where I expected I’d be and have somewhat limitd access to music making, free speech, or any kind of real genuine, artful revelry. We did catch a break from some unexpected quarters, and that aint always how it’s gone for me so I’m trying to not complain. I have heat and I am thankful. I keep having to reiterate to multiple old homies how I aint in the position to offer them any kinda financial assisatnce or provide any living space or livelihood to them, it’s insane. I got nothin’, and what little my wife has belongs to her and our disabled kid, not my fellow adult slaves, aint no underground railroad here, I wish there was. Where can one flee to get free from the evil empire clampdowns and dystopian pyramid schemes? Let me know if you find out. I feel bad for the Cubans, still being fucked with by the bully capitalist scumbags. One friend of mine’s talkin’ bout visiting that place, the Flats they made a movie about, looks to be a real lawless Road Warrior/Planet Of The Apes/Welcome To the Jungle like vibe to me there, he could probably do well. Not me. I’m a smaller person, not a wrestler or bar brawlin’ man. This whole world is looking more and more like one of those eighties apocalypse movies ya know? “Escape From NY” or “The Warriors” or some shit. People I know are all just waitin’ for the society to just hurry up and finish disintegrating so they can run wild like in those riots from a few years ago. My kinda anarchy involves like volunteering to contribute and help out, not just pillage the gas station. You’re supposed to bring something to the bonfire besides your entitlement and appetite. Capitalists are just all wrapped up in their own private ego trips, they don’t share what’s theirs, they want what’s yours and then it’s on to the next sucker/victim/host. The shameless takers will suck you fuckin’ dry, hell, they pretend to be you. Like the Ultras sang, they all just wanna “eat your face and be you”. This is not a civilized country-it’s all corruption, bribery, hate groups, bullshit, media control, surveillence tech overlords ushering in a cashless microchip society, fake liberals, fake elections, fake medicine, fake everything. lies for war, torture, inhuminity and shameless excessive greedy shithoarding and some people like are cool with all that shit-the TSA and dudes in camo busting down somebody’s door for reefer or fireworks or some shit, that’s all just been normalized here. The brutes are applauded, revered and celebrated-alphabet gangs, mercenaries, paid thugs and trained killers, bouncers and bullies are looked up to. I don’t support the USA USA plundering other people’s oil. I oppose that shit, don’t care how much pinkwashing or woke bullshit they try to cover up their crimes with-a female torturer or a female drone operator or a gay deep state spook aint no cooler than a honkified “cys born” dude one. Civilization is supposed to be civilized, but the media hypnotized everybody with empty security theater and bogus identity politrickis-a black suave droner in chief toppling Libya for his Wall Street donor class Goldman sachs bosses, that kinda shit. You ever see that movie, “IRAQ FOR SALE”? Well ya should, cause the warmakers are using the exact same playbook in every country now targeted by the WEF and bankers and weapon makers and oil barons. I’m not one to romantisize big dummy violence, here or abroad-how many times a day do you read about cops killing the wrong guy? People I grew up with wanna be the cops. I can’t believe friends of mine actually joined the police or military-that is some batshit kooky brainwashing. I view things from more of a Cuban like perspective-invest in helpers. I can’t rely on my barbarian big stick to take somebody’s lunch. That’s jail behavior I aint no good at. I aint no caveman, aint no Terminator Road warrior motherfucker though I’ve often been stereotyped, or manipulative guilt tripped as if I am, I just like the Standells and the Deadboys. Mostly, the Coma Tones and Beasts Of Bourbon. Rocknroll was not my side hustle. It’s my whole thing.
COAT TAIL RIDING REPLACEMENT MEMBERS OF NAME BRAND BANDS
love to spew official narrative empire propaganda, like it’s some kindof rebellious act, and can sadly even influence their been famous too long celebrity bosses into echoing the staus quo. UGH! Fuck those people. One self appointed suckup, vicariously second hand popular by association deputy of truth and “science” even told his bosses band’s fans to social media unfriend themselves if they refused to spout the preferred slogans of the one percent. No problemo, backstage boy. Ciao. VIP room celebrities and their overreaching bigmouthed employees still suck. Everybody was a foo foo fighting….
THE INFLAMMATORY JACKET THAT CAUSED ALL THAT HICKTOWN HAVOC & CONTROVERSY
When I was about 17, my old partner in crime, former eighties punk/rocknroll guitar hero, Dave W painted the back of my leather jacket with the phrase “SEX GOD” in a biker club sorta tattoo tapestry on the bottom panel of the jacket and the black and white sillhouette of the chick with the gun from the cover of the Jonese “Criminals” album, some skulls on the sleeves he copied from an old Lords postcard on the front porch where our hellion rhythm guitarist lived and we hot glued some leopard fabric into the frontpanel by the zipper and all along the belt. This fucking jacket caused such a ruckous in the hyper conservative 700 Club, tank plant weapons of war building town we went to school in, it was like a swastika to the hicks and preps-the audacity of a gawky Ramone kinda guy, pale and scrawny, having the nerve to strut around in a jacket that said, SEX GOD! It even infuriated our own so called friends. It’d been autographed by several members of Dogs D’Amour, the Mike Monroe band and Circus Of Power. I loved it alot-we’d been covering some Cramps and Gun Club songs and whenever I wore that jacket with no shirt underneath and some rosaries, maybe some Nik Fiend clown white kabuki makeup, I felt just like Bryan Gregory or Jeffrey Lee Pierce, like I got my mojo workin’ and wanted to dance around the bonfire like a screamin’ tribesman, burnin’ like a voodoo man with Lords skulls on his sleeve. That jacket got stolen outta the back of Dave’s woody station wagon while we reluctantly applied for convenience store jobs in Harvard Square. I was crushed, it had become part of our deadend band, hicktown mythology-when aging outsiders at the hometown record store tell the stories of what few public performances we played around that part of the state back then, it’s always a little exaggerated, there was never a real “riot” like people claim, but the jacket was considered unforgivably provocative by the Nascar rednecks and golfers, while me and my precious few faithful punk rock supporters, most of ’em from Wapak, we just thought it was wholesome rocknroll fun. It’s a fuck you Sunday in the ghost town I live in, got cats running around like crazy, my wife and kid are gone to his sometimes employer’s house. She’s giving the boss’ wife some English lessons. He’s playing with their new puppy. I got no landline, no one to call. My friends are dead, and the couple of folks I still talk to either live in Canada or the UK, France or Australia, or they don’t talk on phones, they just text, and I don’t know nothin’ bout texting, just not my thing. Plus the wife and kid are night owls, whereas, I still wakeup on my grandparent’s old Kentucky farmer schedule, so I only see other humans for a few hours a day, roughly 2-7-ish. Kinda makes me weird, I used to go on walks, now, we moved to like the middle of meth country and I have no desire to fuck with the drug crazies, gun nut rightwingers, or their perpetually unleashed junkyard dogs, so ya know, I read a bit, walk around the yard, think about my dead friends, wish I had a band, or at least someone to talk to who was not tv bamboozled, type some crazy shit about the long gone past that’s never coming back, repeat. I take pictures of the sunup and sundowns except when my second hand camera stops working, like now. My make believe band is called the Loneliness. THE LONELINESS MAXIMUM TORCH & TWANG. Sortof like Chris Isaak if he sang more like Lux Interior. Aint no punk rockers around here.
“Volodymyr Zelensky will make the case for continuing and expanding the $80 billion+ proxy war alongside George W. Bush at the George W. Bush Center in an event sponsored by CIA regime change spinoffs Freedom House and the National Endowment for Democracy.” (-Max Blumenthal)
“The Ukrainian government’s order accuses CNN and Sky News of having “carried out information activities in the city of Kherson even before the completion of stabilization measures.”
In other words, they risked broadcasting more scenes like this to a Western audience. Just hours after CNN broadcasts footage of a Ukrainian soldier sieg heiling from Kherson, CNN is banned by Ukrainian authorities from filming in the city.” (-Max Blumenthal)
“Ukrainian authorities pulled press credentials of a number of Western press outlets from reporting from Kherson. The reason given was that they had not been given permission. The reason was that authorities wanted ensure images like these were controlled.” (-Ajamu Baraka)
“It wasn’t enough for the system to stop Corbyn – he has to be totally crushed. It’s sending us a message – there’s no prospect of serious progressive change in the UK from within the current party/parliamentary/media system.” (-Mark Curtis)
So yeah ya know I never connected with much in the way of grunge/alternative after Mother Love Bone and Thee Hypnotics, the nineties were a nightmarish blur of like ugly piercings, dumb goatees, junkie drugdealing richkid superstar celebrities, and rich people I could not stand making bad muzak that was sadly always derivative of Sonic Youth, Seattle, or the Beastie Boys. I had foolishly revisited the loathsome midwest to say involved with my kid, but it was not my kinda place, not my kinda scene, I did not fit in there with the trust fund people or frat bros, at all. A few of ’em were doing some tenth generation, spazzy, Hot Wheels garage punk ala New Bomb Turks but cargo shorts and baseball caps are not for me. I found some metal kids-a Kentucky born L.A. Guns fan who had heard of Pussy Galore and liked to drink all day-he was a bit Elvis-ish in his own way, had a Southern gentleman charm in spite of flagragntly running around sloppily swigging from a fifth of Jack all day wasted, early Slash style. He was a charming rogue and a drunk driver whose hatchback was always running out of gas or getting stuck in the snow. He was always getting too wasted, permanently fucked up. I taught him summa my old band’s “hits” and started co-composing some new ones, we stumbled upon a slacker grunge suburbanite who had a bad attitude and played bass and loved Mother Love Bone, and Cheap Trick, and had been a founding member of the local retro punk band that had a single out on a national hipster label. He knew a guy with a rich kid drum kit and a pink bandanna who liked to twirl his sticks like Riki Rocket and Tommy Lee, so we tried workin’ with that guy for awhile. An even richer lawyer’s son who lived in a mansion but saw ghosts and said he had a government listening device implanted in his neck showed up somehow, he was a medicated schitzophrenic but allowed to drive a vintage 67 convertible and played guitar like a metal gawd, deedling all over our very fast two and a half minute angry punk songs, it was all I could come up with in that backasswards sports town. I had met the famous rich kid with the smoke machine and big record collection and he promptly nicked our initial drummer who was more like a Ramones dude. So it was pink bandannas and medicated rich kids who saw ghosts, for a while. We played at dork suburban bars for people in baseball caps and they only vaguely connected to what we were doing cause they recognized the furiously fast deedle-deeedling of the spook seer and the stadium metal theatrics of the Tommy Lee guy as reminiscent of eighties hair metal. The L.A. Guns guy quit the band and started kinda sucking up to the fat grunge playboys who owned shit and was on his way, but he died on the West Coast with his indie rock band, like almost overnight. My original sideman hellraiser motorcycle cowboy and allnight rocker Nasty B. got out of jail for his old warrants and joined me in the hellish sports town and we resumed making loud music. Got rid of the pink bandanna guy, found a nutty bartending motorcycling drummer named Boogie Jack The Bad Joker, “Your Personal Mixologist”, back North in Flag City who loved to laugh and shared our enthusiasm for partying and things started looking up a little. We’d opened up for some nationally famous punk bands and were hosting after hours parties at an old poolhall the sleazy sideman had rented up North. A famous bassplayer who’d worked with Neil Young and Marrianne Faithful was even coming to our jams.
The internet was buzzing with all these new sleaze rock bands from like, Sweden and shit, who looked like us, but had access to like the epic production value of major label heavy metal-ya know? Bands like Backyard Babies, Hardcore Superstar, Turbonegro, Vains Of Jenna, Black Halos and Crash Diet were all the rage in faraway places so we started thinking maybe we stood a chance of being discovered again after two or three years of being studiously ignored or blacklisted by the indie hipster mafia. We made a demo in a crazy crackhead’s old seventies country music studio. It was good-we did not have much money so we had to work fast, the drummer broke the snare almost immediately and had no replacement so we had to come back a second time, but we got about five songs on tape. Crazy country music dude added some real cool honky tonk piano to our sound it gave it more of a glammy, Dollsy, Joneses feel. I wish I still had those demos now, but no tapes survived all the hard years of moving and divorces and shit. Everybody in the band had like one copy of our songs on cd, but everybody went through spells of homelessness and living in cars and being arrested for vagrancy and shit, so I aint heard any of those tunes in years and years although some city slickers we were associated with in the early nineties had learned those songs and decided on performing covers of them and even using one of our old band names, which we thought was almost comedic at the time. Like, really??! I knew a lot of our songs had promise-they were mostly all uptempo rockers a bit like say, the Romantics. Meets the Humpers. We were pretty confident we’d be discovered by one of those labels that were putting out 45’s by bands like the Candy Snatchers and Teengenerate and the Mummies and D-Generation. The first demos were almost like basement tapes, really raw sounding, but catchy songs were there, that could easily be elevated with a better production. They weren’t polished-they sounded like basic demo tapes,but I sent ’em out to some fanzines anyways. One compared us to Dramarama and the Hangmen, okay, that was flattering. The big magazine with the glossy cover compared us to the Humpers who we were friends with, and the Turbo A.C.’s who we’d never heard, but knew were a popular band in the big cities. One of those songs, “Ultraviolet Girl” was very popular in our little glamour punk circles, so even if one of the dudes in bands that covered our songs is probably trying to steal the copyright, everybody knows I wrote it about a hard partying, purple haired stripper I used to drink with at the old junkie dive bar named L.A., it was reviewed in multiple magazines years ago, and it is well known and established that those old tunes are mine-I lived ’em, wrote ’em with my friends, about my friends, so ya know, it’s unfortunate that all those dudes in bands who covered our songs somehow convinced their wives or selves that they actually had some hand in writing them rather than, at best, adding a break to their cover version and calling that an arrangement revision, wanting to cut me out of some publishing/copyrighting scam. People always liked our songs even if they personally disliked me or the guitar player or bratty bassist or wildass drummer. So I was looking forward to doing some more recordings, but the guitarist and drummer were rival bartenders on Main Street in a small town so they started having competitive friction, were sniping back n forth all the time. Mutual accusations being leveled back n forth about how the other one was doing drugs or sleeping with someone they maybe should not have been, non stop, back n forth, jealous rivalries, petty gossip hissing celebrity bartender shit. Big fish in the small pond issues. An amplifier I had borrowed from some famous friends of mine came up missing. Some other internal band conflict and “creative differences” (me being hurled onto the cement by the musclebound sideman) were appearing, as various band personel were kinda having their own personel fleeting hot minute of local limelite bar stardom, and got a bit dazzle drunk on their own press for a year or two, I think the guitarist’s girlfriend was telling him he should be the singer. He found some locals and started bossing them around, recorded a cd that opened with one of our tunes, him singing. I decided I needed a break from that dude after the amp disappeared and I was thrown on the cement. By this time, five bands were covering material I wrote. Not all of ’em emphasizing who the real author was. One rendition of my old songs was cut at the fat grunge guy’s super suave high end recording studio and even if the singer changed my lyric to something dumb, sang some sub-Crue shit in the middle of it I would never sing myself, the sound of it was epic, it really sounded like some “Appetite For Destruction” quality tune, and my ex partner, the famous rawk critic, put that band on a glossy import magazine compilation where I thought one of my bands belonged, but that’s showbiz. A couple years back, I had a publisher wanting to publish my memoirs but I decided that discretion is the better part of valor and all that, felt it was still “Too Soon”, ya know? I never hear from her anymore cause I ain’t been makin’ no new music, so I think she lost interest, there’s always another semi-reformed old reprobate storyteller with bad tattoos willing to spool out their sordid misdaventures. I think I probably missed my chance. I’ve been good at that in this lifetime. About twenty years ago, though, there were three different record labels saying they were gonna release my record but ya know, the bands all mutinied when the records were only halfway finished. We fucked around so long that a famous power pop kid band kinda stole the title of our record, and another glam band wanted to steal my old band name, and wrote a song about my fanzine. Me? I could only get dishwashing jobs, but it seemed like every motherfucker, every housepainter, office tech nerd, everybody got to have a band in the “altenative” era…except me. I knew I could write songs and other people kept doing only so so versions of ’em. East Coast dude even paid hotshot famous people to play on his recorded versions of my old tunes. You can’t make this shit up. I had my own tribute band before Wire did. Not me, but a simulation. Had a couple of those, really. A gunge kid in the suburbs was even doing my songs with my ex bassplayer. Whacky, right? Bassist got an inheritance, blew it overnight, became homeless, but not before bankrolling some other kid going into the expensive grunge studio to record, yep, you guessed it, a cover rendition of my fucking song. My old pal Paul K went through a lotta shit like that, too. People would cover his songs without really saying he was the actual author. One story had it a band got signed to a hipster label by doing his back catalog and some Motown peppered in and the label honchos just weren’t hip to none of those tunes so it seemed like really prolific songwriting-Paul K and Smokey Robinson, Holland-Dozier-Holland–ya know?
The jovial drummer of my constantly disntegrating blues punk guttersnipe band was still gung ho though and insisting we should soldier forward minus the surly guitar player for awhile, so a record label mogul we were pen pals with suggested I try out a dude from a semi famous band I’d known way back in the eighties, and we got together and it was real positive for awhile, we were able to pretty much instantly start writing pretty good songs at an effortlessly efficient pace. He was into most of the same old bands and records that I was, so he totally understood where I was coming from, and what I was trying to do-make music in the spirit and tradition of Hanoi Rocks, Generation X, the Clash, and Lords Of The New Church. That fella was Detroit based so we sent tapes back n forth, did a lot of talking on the phone, and I’d ride the bus up there on weekends, for a couple of years. We drank all night, sang, wrote, told each other stories, he introduced me to a lotta good people, some of whom I’m still friends with, some of whom have sadly died, or become too famous to consort with lowlife hoodlums such as myself now. He found a local rhythm section and they’d get together and work on tightening up the songs, even when I was not around. I had a couple of kids at the time, and a soul draining nine hour a day job at a corporate bookstore, so it could not yet be a fulltime band thing, but I had ambitions and a friend of ours said they might be able to get me hired on in the office of the Detroit entertainment weekly, so I started trying to negotiate with my baby mama to relocate with me to the Motor City. Everybody liked our songs and we kept writing new ones. A famous filmmaker who made like the definitive movie about the legendary Boston garage rock/ seventies punk scene showcased and awarded all around the world,at film festivals and shit compared my singing to John Felice from the Real Kids, while our own rocknroll heroes compared my singing to Stiv, so I never fretted much about summa the scratch vocals on some studio bed tracks not sounding like I wanted them to, they are scratch vocals for a reason, guide tracks. Motherfuckers who spent hundreds of hours polishing all the real emotion outta some vocal of their own, ya know can say I sounded hoarse or off key on this demo, or that bed track, but that don’t mean I suck, these same Simon Cowell pitch critical motherfuckers get drunk and misty eyed listening to the fucking Replacements, ya know? I don’t get people at all anymore, except I think they’re all rat race competing, even with their friends they are supposed to be supporting. It’s a mad, mad world, this last stage capitaislism, whoever dies with the most stuff wins mentalities, so I always kinda mope back to my lair real disappointed in humanity, everytime I get involved with the schemers and the scenesters, and the hustlers and the fame hounds, the knows some dead rockstar’s girlfriend and the coat tail riders. I’m an outlaw singer not a fuckin apple polisher. Like Tex Perkins sang, “I know I stand alone.”
In my experiences, bands are hard even if you grow up together, so many different reasons people get into music in the first place, for the girls, for the beer, for the therapeutic release, for the time on stage, to travel, some people just like the recording studio, others are extroverts who crave attention, some people are like processing all their childhood trauma in song, you know, and everybody at a certain age has other stuff to contend with like kids, girlfriends, health insurance, house payments, ripoff rents, etc., etc. Back then, in the late nineties, there was not enough real straightup, genuine, or sincere communication between me and summa my bandmates though, cause by their mid twenties, people stop sincerely communicating, or maybe I just could not hear them, but when I really tried to make the big push to move to the big city fulltime with my family, as to be better poised and supported by our faithful supporters and ardent fans up there (and we really did have some faithful supporters and ardent fans) that would have required my booj ex wife selling her house and shit, my main dude would keep joining more other bands that were able to tour overseas, leaving less and less time for our little project and he was steadily becoming less able to host visits from outta town rock singers with kids, and upwardly mobile wife problems. Some dude in one of his other bands disliked our bassplayer, insisted he could not play properly, so the whole dynamic was sortof dissolving. Plus, I think the guitar player was ready to become the singer in his mind. He had been the sideman in several groups and I think he was ready for top billing. Meanwhile, at home, I quit the bookstore job cause I was being paid as a columnist in the paper, but the beautiful wife at the time was waitressing at an upscale, high end, rich people restaurant in the rich part of town and being hit on by all these rich males who owned shit. All her friends and former business partners were wealthy, buying big mansions, buying nightclubs, flying around. So yeah, we got back in the recording studio, with the help of a boutique label honcho who I kinda thought was gonna be our manager back then, and laid down what, maybe 11 bed tracks, but then, my newest guitar dude vanished with his more established bands, the chick ditched me and took my kids, moved a preppie dude into the home, my grandfather died, and I was out on the streets again. All that in less than a year. A famous DJ friend offered to put me on the air at his Louisville radio station, he was gonna give me my own radio show where I could play my kinda music free format and talk about politics and have call ins and shit-sounded perfect for me, so I spent some time on his couch in Kentucky, drinking with our famous songwriter friend, crying over my broken home. Wrote some good songs about it all. Still having troubles getting many of them recorded correctly. I’m waiting for the cable guy right now, we live in the boondocks and the prior tenants never had cable out here, so they gotta get permission from the neighbors to trespass on their property to rig up the telephone poles or whatever, and no one has ever seen the neighbors, they might live outta state. If we do get cable again soon, I plan on downloading some recording software so I can hopefully get more tunes archived before I die. An old collaborator wants me to do an “American Prayer” type of cinematic poetry album. Feels like I’m runnin’ outta time. So many of my old pals keep “dying suddenly”, just dropping dead in their fifties, who knows how much time any of us have left? It’s complicated having any houseguests around, even if they are just there to hookup the cable, cause it kinda triggers my rambunctious kid.I have developed social anxiety over the past couple decades, don’t really like having to fuck with people much at all anymore. I’m becoming more antisocial everyday. So yeah all my bands crashed and burned and it was a bummer. The last couple had so much promise, at least in my head. How could those guys not recognize our songs were awesome? An old amigo unerathed a scrappy demo of a tune I co wrote with a guy I don’t talk to anymore that sounds like a Joe Strummer & The Mescaleroes outtake. It still stands up like, twenty years later. I can’t believe we never recorded it or took it on the road together. I think the rocknroll people would have really connected to that song. I still believe in summa that old stuff. Not all of it but the real good stuff’s still good.
Only saw that Motown guitarist one more time after that, after he kinda split with his many other bands to go on tours, when I showed up at his door unexpectedly with a bottle of booze and a case of beer, accompanied by my next girlfriend and we watched some Andy McCoy movie and an Elvis concert, he did not seem hospitable or bon vivant any longer, there was no more loud laughs, making plans, enthusiastic all night merry making, and I recognized he’d sortof moved on, like the wealthy chick I’d had two kids with. Sheesh. He did summa the songs we wrote together on a series of solo 45’s and cd’s. His record label guy finally sent me one or two. He’s in a famous band now. So yeah that was a bad couple of years for me. The chick moved my kids across the country, without my permission, but I was busy taking care of my grandmother, so I was not really able to put up much of a fight. My grandmother died, my new old lady had an emergency appendectomy while pregnant with our child, and it took me a couple more years to relocate my new family out West where my kids wer taken. By then, the kids had been bonded to my Colorado ranch owning replacement, were confused, seemed like they’d forgotten me. Hard times. I guess overall, you could say I missed out on the nineties “sleaze rock revival”. American Heartbreak sounded a LOT like us, so did Black Halos, really, people compared me to D-Generation all the time, though I was never a fan of that band aside from the lyrics to “Helpless”. I just never got to finish my vocals on that motor city record, so that was that. I started another band with another former guitar player, and his Midwestern college town record collector friends, we put out a 45 that received shit tons of positive praise in magazines, then there was a scandal during my divorce when I was unavailable to perform at an AC/DC cover night, and then we brokeup, too. My youngest kid was diagnosed with Autism and I became his primary caretaker. When my middle kids turned eighteen, we left that town of shitlib gentrifiers and fraud squad worshipping Hillarybot landlords, cause we never really saw or heard from the children anymore, in spite of spending ten years in that overpriced hipsterville and going into deep debt, to be in their proximity. Now I’m a hermit in the desert and almost never talk to people. Aint heard a word from one of my own kids in about seven years now. One of the ex guitarists was thoughtful enough to at least ask me first about recording some of our old tunes with his rich and famous people band in the big city. Says he’ll make sure I am properly songwriter credited. I appreciated that. The mightabeens can kill ya, if ya let ’em. If only this woulda gone like that, if only that woulda gone like this. I been awake so long the coffee got cold, I’m bored, restless, resentful, kinda caffeine crashing into depression, really struggling to just sit perpetually in a dumb swivel chair by myself in these dead sober rooms silently all my days, starts to feel like captivity. I can’t fuckin’ relate to nobody-they’re all on a different frequency now. I’m still more like an eighties person-I never did grunge, adult cartoons, sit coms, unreality tv, I-phones, techno, festivals, brunch, rental property hot tub, any of that bullshit. I’m not gentrified-fluid.
MIDDLE CLASS COLLEGE PEOPLE DEMANDING WE CARE ABOUT THEIR FEELINGS, OR PREFERENCES, OR WHATEVER OFFENDS THEM, BUT THEY DON’T CARE IF US POOR PEOPLE LIVE OR DIE. WELL, COME TO THINK OF IT, THEY PROBABLY GOT A PRECIOUS PREFERENCE FOR THAT, TOO! SHAKE OFF THAT WHOLE SCRIPT THAT MIDDLE CLASS, AND RICH, AND SUPER RICH “SCIENTIFIC” DAVOS PEOPLE ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN POOR PEOPLE. THERE IS NOTHING “SACRED” ABOUT CAPITAL HILL, NANCY PELOSI OR HER DESK, OR VACATION PLANS, OR PRIVATE JETS, OR INSIDE TRADING, DEEP POCKETED LOBBYISTS, OR ENDLESS WARS PROVOCATIONS. “CRITICAL THINKERS” ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE AFRAID OF IDEAS. OR FREE SPEECH, OR FREE ASSEMBLY, OR A FREE PRESS.
Please watch and share this entire video. It is really great and with very powerful messages from and to the Australian Government. Thankyou Lorese and Co. for organising the event “Converge on Canberra” to Free Julian Assange aand the team at Consortium News for the great Youtube video.
“At a rally before the Parliament building in Canberra on Thursday, Australian politicians decried the British and U.S. governments’ persecution of Australian journalist Julian Assange, the imprisoned publisher of WikiLeaks, and demanded that he be released.
“Watching them so brazenly re-define how they have always used “recession,” and then Paul Krugman adding it doesn’t matter if we’re in one or not (it doesn’t matter for him), all to protect the Biden WH, is a new level of audacity no matter how low your opinion of them already is.” (-Glenn Greenwald)
“If someone criticizing the most dangerous agendas of the most powerful and destructive government on earth looks like Russian propaganda or Chinese propaganda to you, it’s because you yourself have been brainwashed by propaganda.” (-Caitlin Johnstone)
“Democrats won’t fight for M4A, Green New Deal, free public higher ed, ending student debt, $15/hr or diplomacy over militarism. They just fight the candidates who do. Tell ’em where to go.” (-Jill Stein)
“Who supports Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan? GOP House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy Former GOP House Leader Newt Gingrich. Former Trump CIA Director/Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, also a neocon, There is only one party in the United States: The War Party.” (-Danny Haiphong)
“But, this fight has shown us how much the system is rigged against us. Even though Dems have control of Congress & the White House, fossil fuel companies still hold the pen on writing climate policy.” (-SUNRISE MOVEMENT ON TWITTER)
“Folks, U.S. officials don’t live in the same world with the rest of us. That is why their policies are failing & are doomed to fail going forward as they are now agitating the Chinese. This makes them an existential threat to all of us. In a logic that is consistent & predictable, U.S. authorities are now moving to openly criminalize political speech & association. With the FBI raid of Uhuru movement yesterday Black radicals are now in the cross-hairs of this effort. Never let any representative of any Western govt twist up their mouth to declare solidarity with Dr. King. The West has exposed itself in ways that can never be reversed. As predicted, Black radicals are targeted again for not falling in line with U.S. imperial agenda on Ukraine. The FBI raided headquarters of African Peoples’ Socialist Party in two cities. The allegations? It seems spreading Russian “misinformation.” (-Ajamu Baraka)
“BREAKING: Nancy Pelosi has said Medicare for All is a dead policy and she won’t support it. When pressed, Pelosi clarified that the American people won’t need healthcare once she is done sparking a two-front nuclear war with Russia and China.” (-Danny Haiphong)
“Imperialist bipartisanship. For democrats if you don’t support war on Russia, you are Russia agent. We are not surprised because both parties are committed to doctrine of “Full Spectrum Dominance” as U.S. national security strategy.” (-Ajamu Baraka)
“MARION, Illinois — Daniel Hale, dressed in a khaki uniform, his hair cut short and sporting a long, neatly groomed brown beard, is seated behind a plexiglass screen, speaking into a telephone receiver at the federal prison in Marion, Illinois. I hold a receiver on the other side of the plexiglass and listen as he describes his journey from working for the National Security Agency and the Joint Special Operations Task Force at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan to becoming federal prisoner 26069-07.
Hale, a 34-year-old former Air Force signals intelligence analyst, is serving a 45 month prison sentence, following his conviction under the Espionage Act for disclosing classified documents about the U.S. military’s drone assassination program and its high civilian death toll. The documents are believed to be the source material for “The Drone Papers” published by The Intercept,on October 15, 2015.
These documents revealed that between January 2012 and February 2013, U.S. special operations drone airstrikes killed more than 200 people — of which only 35 were the intended targets. According to the documents, over one five-month period of the operation, nearly 90 percent of the people killed in airstrikes were not the intended targets. The civilian dead, usually innocent bystanders, were routinely classified as “enemies killed in action.”
When those who expose the crimes of the state are criminalized and sent to prison, tyranny is inevitable.” (–Chris Hedges)
“The white left can sit this out believing there might be credibility to these allegations. But as always, we (the Africans) are first & will suffer the most, but unless you completely surrender they will be coming for you. Now is not the time for cowards.” (-Ajamu Baraka)
“It’s a continuation of the infringement of free speech and free association as seen most recently with the tech industry crackdown on political speech that is in opposition to the USA government war propaganda. Plus there are plenty articles on FBI targeting of domestic activists.” (-False Prophet-o1 on Twitter)
“To recognize the system is rigged, while confining yourself to the 2 parties of the system, makes continuing betrayal inevitable. Frederick Douglas’ wisdom is as true today as ever. “Power concedes nothing without a demand…” (-Dr. Jill Stein)
VANITY FAIR IS GATES RESET PROPAGANDA
Man, I used to love Vanity Fair magazine because I thought Christopher Hitchens was an absolutely crucial writer even though I disagreed with him about war, torture, and atheism. Now my favorite Vanity Fair writer was Dominick Dunne, who someone I really respect by the name of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. despises, they fell out over a Kennedy cousin who was accused of stalking and killing a neighbor and I kinda recognize why both of them saw the story through the lens they did. Dunne was a celebutante red carpet groupie partyboy, until some evil motherfucker killed his daughter, and then, he became a crime journalist. I grew up reading Dunne and consider him an influence, actually. I knew VF was over, was just ruined, when they started white washing the crimes of the Bush admin and trying to glamourize creepy abuser billionaires. I believe Robert F. Kennedy knows more about the government and media and capitalism and deep state corruption than you and I do, and I sincerely think the corporate programmed shitlib idea, that books and whistle blowers should be kidnapped, buried, burned, banned or censored, or that dissident jornalists or whistle blowers should be feared, is completely rightwing Hitlerian. You should not talk about any book unless you have read it. Having said that, I really loved DD. His documentary “After The Party” is extremely entertaining.
THERE IS NO FREE SPEECH OR BILL OF RIGHTS ANYMORE. THAT’S JUST SOME BULLSHIT THEY TELL THE GOT-MINES THAT KEEP TRAINS RUNNIN’ ON TIME AND SPY ON YOUR PHONECALLS. MURKKKA IS RULED BY SECRET SOCIETIES AND THE SECRET POLICE
GUTTER GOSPEL: GENERAL LABOR INTERVIEWS JOHN DISSED
Songwriter, singer/guitarist, JFK researcher, revolutionary rabble rouser, human rights activist, insurrectionist podcaster, incendiary truth teller, deep state researcher, radical whistle blower and notable right-on freedom fighter, the courageous composer, essayist, and all around rebel rocker, JOHN DISSED is a powerful provocateur and genuine rocknroll motherfucker whose albums don’t receive enough attention and airplay, because moral courage is in such tragically short supply in this country and many of his ideas are off script, forbidden in the mainstream. He’s a real smart guy so I asked him to answer some interview questions. I encourage you to check out his music and podcasts. If you just wanna hear the reassuring view of Whoppi Goldberg, or Amy Goodman reading her Rockefeller funded Pentagon, neo-con talking points in a kindly ex hippie tone, you know where to find ’em. NAMASTE!
GENERAL LABOR: I guess I just don’t know very much about your background. Where are you from originally, what was it like when you were growing up, how were you first exposed to cool music?
JOHN DISSED: I grew up in Riverside County, CA in a remote valley that we then called Menifee, but the area didn’t really have a name, I guess. Our address was Sun City, which is a little retirement town five miles away. The elementary school was called Menifee Union Elementary School, where I went to kindergarten. Then my parents moved just outside the district (to a shithole called Quail Valley) and I was bussed to Perris for 1st – 4th grade, which was more diverse, where I was exposed to poor kids of many backgrounds. I remember my friend Ghan from Vietnam taught me how to count to ten in Vietnamese, which I can still do. We moved back to Menifee where I started 5th grade and that’s where I met my friend Rick who turned me onto KISS, Aerosmith, Badco, Zeppelin, etc. From then on, I was obsessed with music. He was in fourth grade and had an older brother who played drums in a band called The Kind and would hang out with those guys on weekends and report back to me and my brother, and bring back tons of riffs like Ziggy Stardust, Breakdown, and Best Friend’s Girl. I wanted to be like Ace and play lead guitar, but my dad made me learn classical, which I am now grateful for. Even then I thought it was cool to play classical because Rick played piano. I used to sit next to him on the piano bench while he practiced Beethoven before we went out to his garage to listen to records and ride our bikes in circles and talk for hours. We did a lot of that. It was the country, we’d set up jumps and crank up a boombox and just take turns jumping with our bikes. We used to love to run and jump off the sides of freshly bulldozed roads on hills. You could just fly off the side of the road like you were jumping off a cliff and land in the soft dirt. We’d do that for hours too. We had an old trampoline set up in the middle of some high brush and we would jump on that thing until it got dark. There were tons of rocks to climb and horse trails to ride our bikes on. Through it all, there was always music playing. My parents didn’t have a TV so I would go to the library and check out books every week during the summer. So, when I wasn’t playing guitar or riding bikes I was reading.
GENERAL LABOR: I was really charmed by that article you wrote about Randy Rhoades. When I was at rightwing baptist school in deep Appalachia-they really, really, really feared Ozzy, but my first 3 rebellious teen guitarists from my earliest basement bands, Harlot and Teenage Devil Dolls, were all super Randy Rhoades influenced. I don’t know if they’d admit that now.
JOHN DISSED: Thank you. I didn’t admit it much either, but after many years of thinking my friend Rick was dead from a motorcycle accident, he contacted me, and we started texting about Randy and sending each other links to videos and interviews that would have blown our teenage minds. Randy was the closest thing I had to a hero as a kid. It went far beyond just the music: He had Shaun Cassidy/Mick Ronson looks, and fame, but all he wanted to do was play guitar. He was one of us. He was obsessed with learning and practicing and improving. You can hear clinics and lesson tapes students made, he was a guitar nerd through and through. He loved to teach. He was a man of the people. He was on tour with Ozzy, but he’d do clinics where he’d teach kids all his licks. They would just shout out songs and he’d say, “oh I just do it like this, it’s really simple” and play it for them. He wanted to quit rock ‘n’ roll and get a master’s degree in classical guitar. He was my inspiration to get my master’s in classical guitar, although I never admitted it to anyone until I wrote that Substack article. His death was a dark time for us because we were absolutely obsessed with him at that time. It still angers me when I think about it. He was like a rock ‘n’ roll angel. There aren’t many of those in the world. He inspired me to always strive to be a good person and treat people well. Rick and I started a guitar podcast called Strummertime and we are hoping to record an episode on the Blizzard of Ozz album soon.
GENERAL LABOR: How did you meet Anthony and have you ever met Jimmy Dore? Don’t you guys go to see him sometimes?
JOHN DISSED: I was doing a podcast, playing independent rock ‘n’ roll. My favorite band was Cyanide Pills, and I read a cool review of their first album. I liked the politics in the review, so I looked for more by the writer, and I stumbled upon an interview with Anthony of Slow Motorcade. It was at a time when I was discovering JFK truth and was getting close to my idea of a concept album on the topic, so his blending of deep politics with rock/glam/punk was extremely attractive. I contacted Anthony and started to play his stuff on my show. We’re both in L.A. so one day he suggested we hang out. We went to see Hedwig and the Angry Inch with Donovan Leitch at the Roxy and have been friends ever since.
Anthony turned me on to Jimmy. He had mentioned him a lot, but I didn’t check him out much. I had given up on all my progressive heroes. They all sold out or lost their minds. I missed all the 2016 Bernie fun. I liked that some of my friends were getting activated, but I just didn’t believe he was the real deal, or that the real deal would be allowed to do anything real. But that didn’t stop me from sending him money. When Hillary lost, I was relieved, but depressed over Trump. I talked to Anthony about it that night and he said “you’ve gotta listen to Jimmy Dore, the revolution starts NOW.” So, I did, and was instantly hooked. I remember tweeting at Abby Martin that I loved when she laughed at the MSM, and that we needed to mock them harder and more often. Jimmy was the answer to that prayer. I did meet him the first time I saw him live, in Burbank. It was March of 2017. I didn’t miss very many live shows after that. We all went to about one per month until the Covid lockdowns. Jimmy Dore has sort of replaced Henry Rollins for me. Henry’s interview at the end of One from None was hugely influential in my life. Talking about the machine and unplugging from it. But he’s now an unapologetic Russiagating Democrat. I don’t trust him at all. I have lots of theories about him that I don’t like to talk about because they scare me. I do think he means well, and his influence runs deep within me, but I can’t listen to him talk anymore. I used to travel to see Henry’s spoken word shows. I went to San Diego, Santa Barbara, Bakersfield. I wouldn’t do that for anyone else. Maybe Jimmy. I met Henry once and he was super cool. I mean no disrespect.
I met Jimmy another time in Burbank, and once in Hollywood. He’s always cool. I have a photo of him laughing as we’re talking, and I think that says a lot about him. He’s a comedian who isn’t so insecure that he can’t laugh at a civilian’s non-professional attempts at humor. He can relax and hang out. The last time I met him with my girlfriend, he was making fun of my phone and showing us his new iPhone with three cameras he got to use for the show. I love the guy, he’s brave. He’s got what JFK had. He’s not afraid of death. He’s had near death experiences, he lives in pain, he actually lost height when his spine collapsed due to a bone disease. JFK had back pain too, severe. He wore a brace. His favorite poem was called “I Have a Rendezvous with Death”. I worry about Jimmy, I hope that he lives a long, long life. He could stop now and retire. He’s done his part and we should all be grateful for his amazing art. I think he will go down in history as one of our great prophets. Julian Assange as well.
GENERAL LABOR: what do you do for work and what do you do for recreation?
JOHN DISSED: I worked as a vault monkey at a shitty postproduction facility out of college. It was my first full time job, and I was treated like shit. They fired me for a mistake they couldn’t prove and tried to take my unemployment. I won the case and after the unemployment ran out, I got this job working for the company who made the software we used in the vault. It was like a different world working there. Not perfect, but it was like night and day compared to that hell hole. That company that fired me is the only company who was so awful to our support team that we cut them off. It made me happy to know they were stuck using an old buggy version forever, or forced to re-invest in something else. I still work for the same company.
For recreation I read, listen to podcasts, music, watch political and Bitcoin videos, movies, and documentaries. Go to live shows when I can. Movies. Jimmy does his live shows now at a theater eight minutes away from where I live. It’s mostly standup these days so I don’t go too much. He did a game show recently which we caught live, that was amazing. The greatest night out ever was a Progressive Comedy Tour show with Graham, Ron, Steph and Jimmy all doing standup. One of the few perks about L.A. That team is broken up now, it’s sad. Fuckin’ Covid.
GENERAL LABOR: When did you become interested in modern history and establishment propaganda? When did you first realize the US government was controlling the monopoly-media and lying to us?
JOHN DISSED: I don’t know what made me not trust the media first. It might be the few times I was mentioned. I played in a classical guitar master class that got press, and I was the only person in the class who didn’t get ripped to shreds, and the L.A. Times made it seem like I got some praise, but then told a lie that I was asked to play the piece again, implying that I was then admonished like the rest of the students, which I wasn’t. That really pissed me off, because it wasn’t true. I nailed my piece and the guy told me I was brilliant. Then the school paper mis-quoted me about that same class which was embarrassing. I played a concert at a Jr. College and their school paper called me a genius. The journalism student who wrote it was very sweet, it wasn’t a big deal. But then the guitar professor from that school panned my classical record in the leading classical guitar periodical and spelled my name wrong. I didn’t even send it to him, or the magazine. He just found it and did that. I feel like the dude was just pissed about the “genius” comment, but of course I can’t prove it. So that taught me a lot. It never surprised me when they lied about anything because they blatantly lied about me for no reason. They have the power to destroy, and they can’t resist it. They went after Sinead, which broke my heart. So even before I was political, I hated mainstream thought, I hated the mob mentality. It was always cruel, stupid and dishonest. Mediocre. I could tell my college political science professor was completely full of shit, and I knew nothing about anything at that time.
Speaking of college, I need to credit the CSUN conductor David Aks who taught classes in History of Symphony Orchestra and History of Chamber Music. He turned us on to Shostakovich, and he told us about the composer’s memoir, Testimony, that was published after his death in the ‘70s. That book taught me about authoritarianism and its relationship to art. It’s basically the story of the composer’s lifelong mission responding to the cruel Soviet leadership (mostly Stalin) in his music without getting himself killed. He wrote music that the people understood, snubbing the leader while giving the people an excuse to cry. They were afraid to show emotion. They had to whisper under blankets, due the power of Stalin’s surveillance. One poet friend he writes about wrote a poem, gave it to his wife to read, then tore up the paper it was written on and buried it in the forest. Many of his friends were shot. He himself almost didn’t make it. His music was publicly condemned more than once. I always told myself if I ever felt that such corruption was happening in the U.S. that I’d dedicate myself to writing music to fight it. It took me years before I started to see it. Shostakovich is a true hero to the people, and a prime example of how art can save us. The documentary Shostakovich and Stalin tells a lot of the story.
I think the Anita Hill trial disturbed me, but the 2000 election was my first real lesson in corruption. Before that, I really didn’t pay attention to anything political. Then Afghanistan. My brother turned me on to Chomsky, who said that the Taliban offered to give up OBL if we provided proof of his involvement in 9/11. We responded that we didn’t need to do that and bombed them anyway. Then Iraq. I remember Rollins did an hour of war propaganda on KFI to get us pumped up for the Iraq War. I listened to it parked along the 101 in my car. That’s how big of a Rollins fan I was. I heard he was going to be on the radio, I didn’t have a radio, so I found a nice spot near the beach to park and listen. And he talked about why we needed to take out Saddam. On KFI, which was the same station that had Rush Limbaugh on. It didn’t really hit me then, but wow. Anyway, Iraq was a deeper level of awareness. I remember Saddam was making offers to do what they wanted before we invaded. We were like, nope, it’s too late, you are going to die.
I watched Bush steal the 2004 election in OH. I had no doubt. They practically announced Kerry the winner, then it flipped. I saw a website flip. (I think it was Slate.) It was a Kerry announcement, not official, but I remember he was getting off a plane, smiling and waving, then I refreshed, and it was “Bush Wins!”. That same week there was a Ukraine election thing that the media was talking about. I wrote to Right, Left and Center asking why they talked about the Ukraine election, but not the U.S. election anomalies. The producer wrote me back and said they don’t report the news, they just comment on headlines, and the Bush/Kerry debacle wasn’t in the headlines. I replied that headlines should also include the independent blogosphere, which was talking about it a lot, and she wrote back that it’s too bad I don’t consider indie media to be the media. She just switched to my argument, nonsensically. I think THAT was when I realized everything was a lie.
I heard former CIA officer, Ray McGovern talking to Brad Friedman one night on my commute home from work, and this was after Obama had just won. I had supported Edwards. He doesn’t get enough credit for being the first to not take corporate money that I know of. In comparison, Obama was like an MLK impersonator to me. But I did support him, although I voted for Dennis Kucinich. McGovern said that he thought Obama and his CIA head Leon Panetta were “afraid of the CIA”. That blew my mind. I also heard Brad interview Sibel Edmonds. I became obsessed with her Boiling Frogs podcast. I heard Russ Baker on there and read his book. At that point I was awakened to a whole new level of corruption and on my way to writing songs about it.
GENERAL LABOR: How were you affected by Oliver Stone’s endeavor to shake out the truth about the Kennedy assassination?
JOHN DISSED: I saw JFK when it came out and it was over my head. It felt like a bunch of theories all bunched together. It is confusing, the whole Garrison trial. But years later I read Russ’s book, and then a ton of others, and watched the movie again and I absolutely love it. I can watch it over and over. Kevin Costner’s performance brings me to tears every time. And Stone’s new doc is amazing. I think I’ve watched it three times. The four-hour version is on iTunes. I bought it and downloaded it. I wish I could get my friends to watch it. That’s why I made my album, to try to turn people on to this story. It’s so deep. It’s so relevant. All the answers we need are there. Not even Jimmy Dore will read about it. He said on his show “I am not going to read a book about JFK”. He’s supporting a third party that isn’t serious. I know because I’ve talked to them. They don’t get it. If we go that route, it’ll be just another decade wasted, ending in heartbreak. The guy I talked to was completely triggered by the fact that I mentioned that Sibel noticed some vague funding language on their website. She leans to the right, so he tried to dismiss her (and my) concerns. The guy ended up talking to one of his superiors about it though and got back to me that the language is there if, for example, one of their supporters wins the lottery and wants to make a large donation. They also leave themselves open to foundation money, which is how the intelligence agencies launder money and support many organizations “under the table”. They are naive. They think that the controlling of the politicians is being done at the party level. That every progressive Democrat is merely a “career climber”. I don’t know where they find evidence of that being the case. Elites in Davos have admitted that they control foreign governments with metadata. How does that mean that our own politicians are exempt? How can you not see that AOC is completely controlled? We can see examples of Obama being controlled. They leaked his itinerary. They let those uninvited visitors crash the state dinner. These are huge on-purpose breaches of security. Obama had to replace the head of his Secret Service. Russ Baker traced the state dinner breach to Robert Gates’ office. Those were clearly warnings. As Russ says, we ignore deep politics at our own peril. Jimmy refusing to read the JFK story is disappointing. I wish I could have a beer with the dude and talk to him. But then again, he goes far enough. Too much truth in his hands could be dangerous. Let someone else bring that message. I have a new song called Wasted Martyrs. It’s not fair to expect someone to give everything of themselves for this. We should all learn and do our part. Be the media. Look at Assange who sacrificed himself for us. And only a tiny percentage of us even care. JFK/RFK/MLK/X and so many other martyred themselves, and we don’t even know the truth about their sacrifices. We don’t teach it to our kids. We just think some insane “lone nuts” targeted them for their egos. I think Jimmy gets it, it’s just too dark and he needs some hope. But that People’s Party needs to toughen up. My bass player, Junior (who I do the Discontented Podcast with) says we need a #ForceTheVote party. The candidates need to be like soldiers. They don’t even need to win, they just need to tell the truth, the deepest and darkest truths about the grip that’s on our country and what we are really up against. We need an army of soldier-candidates flooding local politics and on up. The JFK community doesn’t get it either. They are all Trump deranged. A lost cause. They can’t even apply the information they’ve gathered to modern politics. We need to take their work and do good with it. They don’t know how.
GENERAL LABOR: What was your involvement with Occupy Wall Street? Weren’t you telling me that big tech was already spying and censoring back then? why do so few seem concerned that the NSA monitors and records their every communication-is that not the exact definition of orwellian dystopia? Then, they removed all the payphones, ya know? TSA gropes your Granny, how come the woke pinkhat shitlibs are okeydokey with being fondled for freedom fries?
JOHN DISSED: I followed OWS closely. What you’re referring to is the fact that my brother and I noticed that if we used certain terms in an email, that Yahoo would block the email. Right at the beginning of the movement. It was either OWS or Occupy Wall Street, or something. We tested it, it was eery. But I didn’t have direct involvement. I tried to get someone from the ground in NYC to talk to for my podcast at the time, but they put me in touch with some dude who was going on Fox News. He didn’t want to talk to me. I should look him up, I’m sure he’s now working for the Democratic Party. He blew me off of course. But I was down with Occupy. It showed me the power of a leaderless movement. There was a plan to assassinate their leadership with snipers. We know because the FBI document was released. The FBI knew and didn’t warn them. What saved them was that there were no leaders to assassinate. Anarchy in the USA.
GENERAL LABOR: Don’t you agree this whole Capital Hill shitshow is just a big staged psy op to incriminate activist groups and outlaw protest and get shitlibs to support superfunding the police state and do you think they are preparing Lyn Cheney to run for future office as a Democrat?
JOHN DISSED: I wrote a thing about Jan 6 a few days after it happened, and I still believe now what I wrote then. It was like what we did to the Soviets in Afghanistan, or the Russians in Ukraine. The protestors were lured into the Capitol. We stole an election, seems to me. I have no proof, but Biden was not a popular candidate, just like Hillary wasn’t. Then we made it a crime to talk about it, even though we talked about Trump/Putin stealing 2016 for four years straight with no evidence. Then on the day the election was to be certified, we let protestors into the Capitol and branded them as terrorists. Provocateurs even pushed them forward from what I’ve read from witnesses. The proceedings were stopped, taking away the Republicans’ opportunity to contest the election. I watched Barbara Boxer contest 2004, which was a historic event completely blacked out by the media, including Right, Left and Center. Yes, Jan 6 opened up a new era of “domestic terrorism” that can be easily tied to former constitutional attorney Obama’s 2012 infinite detention that allows U.S. citizens to be disappeared indefinitely. Chris Hedges sued Obama over this, and SCOTUS refused to even hear the case. Same thing they pulled with Sibel Edmonds’ case, which would have revealed 9/11 truths.
I will not be surprised if Tim Kaine and Lyn Cheney run together because the Dems now love Bush/Cheney. Why not? They had the same policies as Obama. But watch for a pivot to the GOP. They can’t have too many years straight of Dem control before it becomes obvious that they are never going to do anything for the people with their power. It’s just a “shitshow” as you say. That’s how we don’t stop believin’. It’s time to make the Democrats the villains again. The Republicans have a great opportunity with Joe’s obvious dementia, these vaccine mandates, lockdowns, and inflation. I also think it’s an opportunity for a real third party fighting medical tyranny. If those people can get together with the #Med4All people, we could really get something done. As more U.S. Americans realize they’ve been poisoned and lied to, that movement will grow. Scary times.
GENERAL LABOR: What do you think is going to happen now with so many of our fellow citizens being so willingly blind with the whole partisan pingpong shuck n jive? How can we ever get these corrupt corporate tyrants off the thrones and their rotating villain puppets and pinups out of office when the secret police can hack the votes and the media keeps everyone in such a heavily censored and propagandized hypnospell?
JOHN DISSED: It’s dismal. We just need to keep talking to each other. I can talk to conservatives easily. We bond over hating the Democrats and then I try to warn them of the lies they are being told about open borders and things like that. I don’t know about the border, but I do know that Obama wasn’t called the Deporter in Chief for nothing. And I watched Biden tell a Mexican-American to vote for Trump when he expressed concerns. I wish Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson would tell the whole truth. I wish someone with some facts would debate them and pin them down on the party propaganda. The conversations always get a bit wacky.
Did you see Megan Kelly interview RFK Jr.? That was fucking beautiful. His book is a must-read. I think it’s the Achilles Heel. The vulnerability spot in the Death Star. I think the Alec Baldwin thing was a warning to RFK not to put out his book. He had just recently done an interview with Alec, and they are known to be friends.
GENERAL LABOR: So we are kindof already in world war 3 with Nato expanding on Russia’s frontporch and our government and media manufacturing consent for wars with China and Iran, why is there no significant peace movement anymore? I mean i know it has something to do with Obama and the Squad and middle class people just staying in some kinda regressed celebrity Teenbeat fan culture. Why don’t people care that our government mass murders so many people in these shameful wars based on lies, resulting in so many veteran suicides?
JOHN DISSED: I sure don’t have the answer to that, but I do know that we love war. We love authoritarianism. I read a book about Skull and Bones and one of the main agendas of that organization is to get us to worship the State. It’s deeply embedded in our culture. That’s why even the left only considers options like Communism. What attracts me to Bitcoin is the idea of making the state irrelevant. I think there is a chance that it will fix everything, just by being perfect money. It would happen slowly over time, probably not in our lifetime. But it gives me some hope.
When Iraq happened my friend had a friend who had to go, and he talked to me about it. He went on a long rant about how his friend had to go and die in this war based on lies. It was a beautiful rant and I have to say that it moved me deeply. I really relate to David Swanson. But I send his stuff to friends, and he offends them. They must feel triggered because war fever is so embedded in their psyches.
We took war off the TV. We made it illegal to show the coffins coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan. I volunteered a couple times at Arlington West where every weekend they put out a cross for every dead soldier killed in those wars on the beach in Santa Monica. (They’ve since moved it.) I remember a lady walking up to me and asking what the crosses were for. I told her and she asked, “What war”? If we showed Obama’s double-taps on weddings and funerals, and what we put our own kids through when we put “boots on the ground”, we’d have an anti-war movement like we did in the ’60s when we had Vietnam on TV. I mean, we don’t have a draft which is also part of the problem, so it may not be just like the 60s. Instead, we just get Joy and Whoopie talking about how brave the troops are fighting for democracy, what should we expect?
Jimmy Dore talked about how The View is called “the” view because it’s “the view”. All the ladies have the same stupid opinion, and it’s handed to them by the powers that be. They are giving us “the view’ every morning. It was just a joke in passing but it hit home for me. That’s what our media and education system do. They give us “the view” with tiny deviations here and there.
The propaganda is so thick. People on the pseudo left think they are doing their part by hating Dave Chappelle and Joe Rogan. #ForceTheVote revealed a lot to us about what many thought was the actual left, and so does this vaccine mandate thing. I knew long ago that most progressives are full of shit. The JFK community is full of shit. People are just in it for their egos. They won’t talk to me. They hate anyone trying to do anything. They want to shine. They hate Jimmy for his success and the adoration he gets from his viewers. He’s the Howard Stern of progressive independent media. His success comes from having the intelligence to see the truth and the balls to tell it. He’s interesting, too. That’s just a gift he has, a lot like Howard. He’s not afraid to be hated. He’s stared deep into the abyss and he’s not afraid. These motherfuckers are lightweights. I’ve dealt with a few of them. The last thing on their minds are kids dying from our bombs or the Trump/Biden vaccine. They are careerists, and some of course are paid to lie. The truth is in smaller media. Substack. Read those comments, those people are the brightest bulbs in the world. Just everyday people who are reading, paying attention, connecting dots. It makes me proud. Those of us learning this stuff need to talk to our friends, spread the truths we learn and teach each other. Learn from each other.
Howard Stern used to talk about a doctor named John Sarno. He learned how to heal pain with the mind. I read his book and I healed some excruciating back pain in a single night. The pain is caused by the brain creating mild oxygen deprivation in muscles to create a diversion from repressed anger, stress or emotional pain. The cure is to tell your brain that you know what it’s doing, and that it’s just creating more problems. So, the pain goes away. Understanding the problem fixes the problem. Howard healed his OCD in one night using Sarno’s technique. We need to understand our world, who the real enemies are. Teach each other. Learn from each other. And the problems will melt away. So, talk to your family, friends, neighbors and co-workers, and be patient. Guide them toward the truth. It’s all you can really do, and I do believe we are well on our way to reaching the level of understanding necessary to create change.
Whitney Webb, my favorite journalist, is now featured on a Hulu documentary about Victoria’s Secret and Jeffery Epstein. This was deep stuff a couple years ago. Now it’s in the mainstream. Everyone knows about the Great Reset. That was conspiracy theory just recently. I think this is remarkably hopeful.
GENERAL LABOR: How about Vanguard and Gates and Blackrock buying up all the farmland and rental properties-how are poor people going to stay housed and fed?
JOHN DISSED: Terrifying. I think the homeless problem is a direct reflection of our lack of morality in this country. Even more than the wars. It’s right in our neighborhoods. Think about all the virtue signaling about Trump and trans rights while at the same time the woke culture says never a word about the fact that there are people sleeping under every bridge in every U.S. city. This stuff falls into the same category as the mandates. Progressives aren’t particularly concerned. And I must say that the mandate people aren’t concerned with the homeless problem either. Not from a perspective of compassion anyway. I just read this morning a Robert Malone article where he printed a quote from someone saying that one reason CA is bad is that people were “free” to be homeless. Like it’s just a bunch of hippies partying in the streets for fun. I love that guy but he’s so misled in some ways it scares me. And he’s going to support Republicans, and they could achieve power and betray him and the medical freedom movement just like Obama betrayed the progressives. Another wasted opportunity for change.
Did you hear what Obama said about why he betrayed the progressives? This comes from Ray McGovern too: Obama was having dinner with some of his progressive activist friends, and they asked why he betrayed their agenda, and he said something to the effect of “don’t you know what happened to Dr. King?” But I digress…
GENERAL LABOR: Please tell me something about each of your records.
JOHN DISSED: My first record worth mentioning is only available from me at live shows, but I am posting a lyric video from one song soon, so it’s sort of being revived a bit in my tiny world. It’s called The Shooter EP, and it has two political songs on it. At the time, I had an opportunity to work with a producer and I had three songs lying around, so I used them. The fact that they don’t go together was problematic. I realized I wished I had done three political songs. From that point on, I’ve stuck to politics. It just feels right. Caterpillar is inspired by two cases where Israeli military murdered U.S. activists. They were Rachel Corrie and a teenager named Furkan Doğan, who was aboard the second Freedom Flotilla and shot five times, once in the face, and once at point blank range. The other is a tribute to Sibel Edmonds, who changed my life with her book and podcasts.
Next came Red Flag in 2012. That was basically my response to the Bush years and the beginning of Obama. Songs about empire, war, rendition, and austerity. I have a song on there about the 9/11 jumpers inspired by Chris Hedges. No one ever talks about them, so I wrote a song. Red Flag is a full album, with a band, produced by me. Steve Postell taught me how when we made the Shooter EP. And my friend Tom had befriended one of our heroes, Mixerman, and actually was living with him working on a script. Mixerman had done an online journal about being hired to produce a mainstream rock record in 2002 or so, and it was amazing. My friend and I were hooked on the story. He was a controversial figure on the audio message boards, but I could tell from much of what he said in his diary that he had original ideas and was a master at his craft. I asked Tom to ask Mixerman if he’d mix my record, and he said yes. That was a lucky break for me, meeting Mixerman. It’s super fun to work with him. The album is a bit more Stonesy than what I’m doing now.
Lastly is American University, which is my JFK concept album. It took me five years. No researcher would ever endorse it, because I read a ton of books and all the researchers hate each other. You have to just take it all in and make your own conclusions. I do have original ideas, but it’s all based on research, and I know that a lot can never be proven. I have no idea how the album comes off, but I feel like it’s a primer, and if you go to my website, you can see the list of books that informed the songs. Lyrically inspired by Slow Motorcade,Stiv Bators and The Wanderers, Queensryche‘s Operation Mindcrime, and probably Pink Floyd a bit. Musically, KISS, UFO, Ramones, AC/DC, Nirvana. I think the story is a modern romantic Shakespearean tragedy, and everyone should learn about it. Also mixed by Mixerman.
I think independent music is important, which is why I started a podcast playing independent rock ‘n’ roll 13 years ago. It didn’t catch on. People get that journalism needs to be independent. But for some reason they think rock ‘n’ roll needs to be corporate funded. Jimmy Dore was just ranting about this the other day, about how rock ‘n’ roll isn’t rock ‘n’ roll because of everyone selling out to the woke agenda. Yeah, but so does CNN, dude. Corporate rock was dead when it became corporate. We don’t need them to make great sounding records anymore. So why even bring it up?
My next album is all about the control of our culture. I’ve learned a lot in the past few years. Nothing you see is what you think it is. This is all a show. Manufactured reality. What was so great about the rockers Jimmy thinks are rebels? They sang about their dicks and all the underage groupies they fucked. About how they fell in love with groupies who broke their hearts. About life on the road. Partying. Maybe early Dylan and Lennon. We can see what happened to Lennon. And it’s pretty obvious Dylan backed off after the JFK assassination. It was cool seeing he paid attention though. Murder Most Foul was kind of gratifying to me, it gave me a sense of validation after the total rejection of American University.
I have a new band with an incredible Cuban-American rhythm section and I’m super excited about this next album.
GENERAL LABOR: where can people hear your podcasts and buy your merch?
JOHN DISSED: I don’t have merch but I do have podcasts and music and a few videos. You can get to everything from johndissed.com. I’m on twitter but I’m trying to get kicked off so I can start building something new on a platform that doesn’t censor. The only good thing about twitter is that you can fuck with the woke people. If we move to other platforms, we’ll just be preaching to the choir and that’s not necessarily what we need to be doing.
Thanks for asking, and for featuring me. Your work is always great and meeting you and Anthony has inspired me to no end. I don’t know if there’s anyone else out there like us, but I’m mostly grateful to having learned about Stiv from you guys. I loved The Lords in college but had no idea about Stiv’s politics and lyrics. He was a soldier for the truth, and so are you and so is Anthony. Thank you for everything you do and for your support and friendship.
“US is speculating that Russia killed Ukrainian POWs & then staged a scene to frame Ukraine. When similar allegations are lodged against insurgents in Syria — except with overwhelming evidence (see OPCW leaks) — that gets dismissed as “atrocity denial” &”conspiracy theories.” Also worth nothing that the allegation that Russia, not Ukraine, bombed a Russian prison of high-value Ukrainian Azov Nazi POWs is great timing for the current bipartisan push to label Russia a state sponsor of terrorism.” (-Aaron Mate’)
“Fascist Fox News host shows the Neo-McCarthyite tactics of the authoritarian US regime: If you don’t support war with China, you’re going to be labeled a secret Chinese agent” (-Benjamin Norton)
“I’ve had a hard time writing of late and didn’t know why. Then I was reminded of the one year anniversary of Glen Ford’s death and put and two together. Glen Ford was an irreplaceable revolutionary journalist. And I miss him greatly.” (Danny Haiphong)
“Wow. Jersey City Councilwoman Amy DeGise allegedly ran over an UberEats deliverer with her car and then took off. She was not made to take a breathalyzer or drug test. She is refusing to resign.” (-Zellie)
“So how did these corporations get so powerful & how do we fight back? 1) They consolidated their power to the point where most industries are now controlled by a handful of monopolies. 2) They bought off our politicians & both capitalist parties to rig the laws in their favor.” (-Ryan Knight)
“Democracy Now is where you can watch a hippy read MSNBC transcripts.” (-Max Blumenthal)
“12 years to the day since the publication of Afghan War Diaries, here is Julian Assange speaking in 2011: “The goal is an endless war, not a successful war” #FreeAssangeNOW” (-Wikileaks)
“No Australian citizen should face over a century in jail for the crime of telling the truth” Senator
#FreeAssangeBig protest for Assange being censored by Youtube today but tell me how we live in a free democracy and have representation again. You booj pig sons a bitches.
Since it’s probably just you and me here, I’m gonna be honest and tell ya, man, I think it’s pretty fuckin’ depressing, the way this world is goin’. A handful of sociopaths, billionaires, secret societiy douchelords at the top-people like that king of Saudi Arabia and Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos-those kinda dudes are fuckin’ robbin’ all us poor people of any kinda quality of life, keep starting wars for resources and control of everything and everyone, and that batshit Klaus Schwab and Henry Kissinger devil’s chessboard bullshit. Meanwhile, what few people still have any surplus or influence in this society just keep goose stepping in lockstep formation behind these tech monopoly fascists, endlessly repeating their advertising buzzword mantras, don’t even ask no questions no more. I’m thankful for comedian Lee Camp, and comedian Jimmy Dore, and antiwar activist David Swanson, and heroic and courageous Doctor JILL STEIN, cause most of my former peers who are all so proud and confident of how “educated” they are have never even fucking hard of motherfucking Black Rock, ya know? All they know is what Whoopie Goldberg and Rachel Maddow tell ’em. Ya know that dude John McAfee had a whole tattoo on his arm that said, “whacked”? He was one of the many who have made public comments when they said they were not suicidal and if they were found suicided, it was a hit. How often does that shit happen? Michael Hastings told people he was working on a big story and was concerned somebody was following him and messing with his car. When his car lost contol and burst into flames incinerating the Rolling Stone journalist who had embarrassed Hillary and several high ranking generals, many knew it was a hit. The Young Turks even did shows about it, but that was before they took big millions from an HRC megadonor and started reading the official script from the teleprompter. WIKILEAKS Vault 7 proved the deep state have tech to kill people who drive newer cars by remote control-they just threw the book at the guy who leaked that story. Same with Daniel Hale. College people always dismiss Sibel Edminds, Colleen Rowley, Ray McGovern, Naomi Wolf and Col. Ann Wright as “conspiracy theorists”, but seem themselves and like, Stephen Colbert, and Bill Maher as “critical thinkers”. Anybody who strays from preferred rich people and deep state narratives is automatically branded some heretic or crackpot by the Microsoft robots. I’m just nobody, but for the record, If anything happens to me you know it’s some bullshit. I’m still trying to do shit. Make records, reconvene with lost loved ones, stir some people to conscious action for peace and human rights. You dig? Don’t believe the HONKY DEATH MACHINE!
“The David Lee Roth track is fire, I’m so glad Dramarama is still churning. Dave’s new tune or new to me at least is a strangely reminiscent of some of your more recent Musings. The Dramarama is, well, Dramarama, took me back to better times in the basement on Pleasant Street.” (-Nasty Bastard)
METHQUEENS, PITBULL ATTACKS, DEAD TOWN WITH NO PAWN SHOP…
I do my best to avoid all the drug crazies-you can usually see ’em coming-or hear ’em, cause they all seem to have car stereos that are more valuable than the cars. I can usually spot ’em walking from a couple blocks away. They all seem to have that desperate forward leaning druggy gait if they’re on the speed, or the slow zombie lumbering “Thriller” dance like walk, if they’re on the other shit that’s out there nowadays, I dunno that much about it, but you can feel the whiteboy jailbird predator vibes rolling off all these cars with two bald males in the front seat, driving in slow circles. It is a tough hustle trying to get money in a dead end desert ghost town in the middle of an intense heat wave and hardcore recession with all the capitalist price gouging, post Covid. People are getting more desperate down there by the dollar store which is like the main drug hub where people panhandle. Low income housing neighborhood with all the shifty people in the ghettofied park. I was out there looking for something to generate revenue myself this morning. Looking for something to resell online, doing the hard hustle, trying to turn a nickel into a dollar today, but things aint nothing like they used to be. I never seen so many “Sorry We’re Closed” signs anywhere, and all the people I used to know just act like this shit is acceptable, the new normal, cause tv says, ‘blah blah blah…Moneypox…blah blah blah Bitcoin…blah blah blah billions for Ukraine…blah blah blah blame Russia and let’s also have war with Iran and China…Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, trump, Trump, Trump, blah blah blah, own nothing and be happy…blah blah blah, diversity and science.” I felt almost bad for the missing teeth meth lady who came outta one of the alleys and complimented my kid’s drenched in dad sweat $7 from Wal-Mart KISS t shirt. I thought that was suspicious, naturally, she asked me if I had a couple dollars to give away so she could get a pack of smokes, well, the hard fact is a pack of smokes is at least ten bucks now, and if I had ten bucks, I’d be trying to find a way to turn it into fifty, so I could buy a birthday present for a loved one. Right now, I gotta worry about this upcoming electric fucking bill that’s gonna be a mean motherfucker. Can you imagine being one of those fake bumper sticker shitlibs, self described academics, ex punks, celebrity class entertainers, “woke journalists”, teachers, boomers ee no evil tv believers, or media broadcasters who refused to stand up for Julian Assange? People are too cowardly to even say they are anti-war nowadays, because the tv programming is so powerful, they are afraid their peers in the cubicles will get mad at ’em for not reposting the Ukraine flag today and demanding more billions to warp speed some Monkeypox boosters to all those poor war babies on the frontlines in the Ukraine. Oh man, it is HOT here in the desert, had a hard time sleeping here last night, kept waking up hot. Most mornings, my body moves itself almost instinctively outta this dumb chair and away from the corporate propagandizing hypnoscreens and puts me outdoors on the mountain trail to listen to a symphony of birds and get some sunshine and fresh air, but when it’s this hot with the swamp cooler running indoors, it’s too hot for a walk. I’m sick of sunburn-my kid comes up and hugs me and ooh ya don’t want nobody squeezing your sunburnt flesh. I’m trying desperately, nervously, prayerfully, to sell some rare mint condition collector object online cause a family member’s birthday is coming right up and the electricity bill with the cold air running all the time, is gonna be a hardship for my family. Biden’s inflation, which is really just the Wall Street Walton family gouging us poors some more, because they can, makes it real hard to pay for anything but the most basic essentials. We used to get about three or four times more groceries for what we’ve been paying since Nato launched the provocation with Russia, requiring them to gift this celebrity magazine coverboy showboat Zelensky with another 80 billion for weapons every few days that will all end up on the black market, they just want permanent wars over there, to Balkanize the Russian territory and bleed alla Russia’s, and next stop, China’s resources, for their big imperialist new world order Gates Reset plans. Anybody who opposes full spectrum dominance and endless wars and nonstop billionaire surveillance techlord and secret police censorship is being branded a commie or Russian sympathizer by this bigass overfunded bureaucratic juggernaut bipartisan war machine. No politicians have stood up and said maybe we can negotiate a peace settlement because none of their significant donors, the private contractor proxy armies and weapon manufacturers, big pharma, and big oil, want peace. That’s how you know they are not real liberals or progressives, they are just corporate shills and popularity puppets. Stop worrying about your teen magazine favorite politician’s feelings and start worrying about the future of the planet.
I’m seeing cockroaches and scary hairy spiders around my place, it is summertime in the desert, but I am not a big fan of bugs. I’m outta drinking water again. We used to buy these three dollar generic 12 packs of carbonated water that went up to $6 under Covid but they quit selling them and the dickhead grocer acted personally offended when I inquired about them ever returning to the shelf. “It’s the price of aluminum because of Putin! And supply chain issues! I don’t know! I can’t get them, anymore!” Dumb people buy in to any media script so the social engineers and spooks on social media really don’t even have to try that hard anymore. Murkkkan tv obeyers are happy to thrust the blame for Murkkka’s oligarch’s criminal enterprises, money laundering and merciless greedhead behaviors on any random foreigner. Putin, Gaddafi, Bin ladin, it’s all Hussein to them. Just don’t say THE SQUAD SHOULD BE FIGHTING FOR POOR PEOPLE, that’ll piss off some motherfuckin’ Amazon ordering Netflix watchers. All the booj mimosa sippers stay behind their big walls and only come out behind the wheels of their gigantic gas guzzling, tank like big vehicles, ya know? These MSNBC watchers they all insist the town’s just getting so HIP and TRENDY. They think it’s “gentrifying” and they are all gonna “GET RICH OVERNIGHT!” with their maxed out already investment property, but truthfully, the place died when they did the shutdowns and it aint gonna make no big comebacks just cause there’s four rich people saying it over and over, how it’s gonna be a “tourist destination”. Those ten airbandb owners are fuckin’ dreaming, just kidding themselves. Five fake business owners on the strip are only even open maybe, what, twelve hours a week? Even if some real creepy mansion builder can successfully sic city hall and their entire code enforcement apparatus and police force on a couple of hoarder old man cowboys for having too much junk in their yard, that don’t mean anymore rich people from outta state, that oft dreamt about, “Big California Tech Money” will ever ever wanna congregate in the crazy 106 degree heat and get followed around by Breaking Bad Slim Shadies with broken out back windshields. Nope, the place is dead as hell, it’s ghettofying more everyday, as all the loony drug people keep coming over the hill from the crime ridden nearby town to look for customers, suckers, weaker people to shakedown or extort from, old folks to potentially rob, any kinda easy prey. I’ve lived in bad places all my life and just in the past couple of weeks, I’m seeing and feeling the escalating tension out there. When the locals start kinda getting real animal like. Everybody’s hunting. Not just hurting, but HUNTING, with an “n”. I feel it especially at dusk. Freaks come out at night, hut hut hut. It’s hot outside and my wife got me a sonic gizmo that promises to deter leashless dogs, thusfar I’m seeing mixed results from it. Nothing deters mentally ill old geezers in the middle of these manic meltdowns. Mental illness is sad to behold, especially when all middle class folks have been tv trained to believe there are some kind of still existing social safety nets. All NPR listeners seem to yap on about the imaginary “services” they imagine all us unsightly poors are enjoying. Fox watchers and obnoxious Ann Coulter types still moan about those $600 checks some people got and refer to creepy Crimebill Gropey Joe the bankster servant as a (cough, cough, snort guffaw) “radical leftist” cause their fake ass culture wars fictions. AS IF he aint been voting with the Republikkkans for fifty years, mass incarcerating seven times the immigrants Trumop was at the border and superfunding cops, starting wars, and appointing rightwing judges. Come ON, man. Sometimes, I wanna shake ’em but they will never wake up until the hard times evictions, layoffs, sudden deaths or extreme health problems affect them personally. Or MAYBE if it happens to someone they love, but even then, they tend to just parrot catch phrases from television commercials. Ask your doctor if sudden death is right for you. Some side effects may include…
BEWARE OF DARKNESS
In my book, the self titled Concrete Blonde record is one of the most perfect albums I ever heard. I love every song on it. They were so good. Everything I want from a band, poetry, punk, and soul. They don’t make ’em like that anymore. I’m 52 and still trying to put together my own band like that. Johnette is so talented, compassionate, heartfelt, I always vibed with her songs. I don’t know what she’s like anymore, fame kinda seems to have it’s way with people but I will always be grateful for her musical contributions that enhanced my travels and experience here. I think she may have dropped out of the ratrace and moved to the desert to be a happy hermit like me.
ELECTRIC GYPSY
One of the last concerts I saw was L.A. Guns about 13 years ago. Tracii Guns was not in the band-just Riley and Lewis and various blackhaired sidemen. They were good. Phil was sortof borrowing heavily from the Zodiac Mindwarp bag of tricks. I liked Faster Pussycat as a kid, not as much as I liked the Joneses but I liked em when it was the original lineup or semi original couple of lineups. I never understood how guys as famous as Mark Michaels and Zowie Ackerman can just disappear off the face of the earth like Richie James Edwards, no body, no death certificate, just nothing? So yeah I’m seein’ all the same footage from the current metal tours online as everybody else. makes me feel better about my own old man singing/dancing/stamina and energy level. In a certain mood, I can listen to Cinderella‘s “Gypsy Road” over and over, but after about oh, maybe five songs, all these screechy metal guy voices start wearing on my nerves, honestly. I used to be like on nodding terms with him back in NYC and my friend Ratboy knew him and we’d pass him sometimes in his velvet newboy cap, but really I only properly met and conversed with Danny Nordahl once and we got along like a house on fire. He was even helping to hide me out from nazi skinheads at the NY Loose and Rev. Horton Heat show my ole pal Katie’s brother took me to. He’s a fantastic person, in my book. I’ve fallen into the drums a time or two myself. God bless him! I love that dude!
If you know me, you know that growing up in the 80’s a lot of my only friends were early rap enthusiasts. Yep, we just called it rap, back then, but my homies had the two turntables and the shelves of 12 inch records-some were “mixologists”, some were MC’s, my buddy Wuzzy had a breakdance troupe-the Jammasterz! They used to let me carry the boombox and big piece of cardboard around, but I turned out a punk.
GLEN GREENWALD ON BIG TECH MONOPOLY/DEEP STATE CENSORSHIP
A federal district court in California on Friday denied Google’s motion to dismiss a lawsuit alleging that the Silicon Valley giant is violating federal antitrust laws by preventing fair competition against its YouTube video platform. The lawsuit against the search engine giant, which has owned YouTube since its 2006 purchase for $1.65 billion, was brought in early 2021 by Rumble, the free speech competitor to YouTube. Its central claim is that Google’s abuse of its monopolistic stranglehold on search engines to destroy all competitors to its various other platforms is illegal under the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890, which makes it unlawful to “monopolize, or attempt to monopolize…any part of the trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations.”
It is rare for antitrust suits against the four Big Tech corporate giants (Google, Facebook, Apple and Amazon) to avoid early motions to dismiss. Friday’s decision against Google ensures that the suit now proceeds to the discovery stage, where Rumble will have the right to obtain from Google a broad and sweeping range of information about its practices, including internal documents on Google’s algorithmic manipulation of its search engine and the onerous requirements it imposes on companies dependent upon its infrastructure to all but force customers to use YouTube.
Founded in 2013, Rumble began experiencing explosive growth in the run-up to the 2020 election. Americans were encountering escalating and aggressive Big Tech censorship of political content as the election approached. Conservative politicians, followed by a wide range of heterodox voices on the right and left, began migrating by the millions away from Google’s YouTube to Rumble, which has promised and thus provided far more permissive free speech rights. That was at the time when Google and other Big Tech platforms — at the urging of the Democratic-controlled Congress, began aggressively increasing its censorship of political video content on YouTube on the grounds of “disinformation” and “hate speech.”
The explosive user growth which Rumble enjoyed in 2020 has continued to rapidly increase, as Big Tech generally, and Google specifically, clamped down further on dissident views in the name of the COVID pandemic, and now even more so with respect to the US/NATO role in the war in Ukraine. More and more prominent politicians, journalists and commentators, along with smaller content creators, have either been banned by YouTube or left on their own accord to join Rumble as Google’s crackdown on free speech intensifies. The ability to speak more freely on Rumble regarding the most contentious political debates has become one of the key drivers of the exodus of users — both those with large public platforms and ordinary citizens alike — from YouTube to Rumble.
During the COVID pandemic, Rumble allowed far greater questioning of the claims and policies of U.S. health policy official Dr. Anthony Fauci and the World Health Organization — regarding the virus’s origins, the efficacy of masks, and the justifiability of vaccine mandates — than Big Tech platforms permitted. For the first year of the pandemic, Big Tech users who questioned or rejected the official story that COVID-19 was zoonotic rather than due to a lab leak in Wuhan were silenced or banned: a censorship policy that was reversed only when the Biden administration itself admitted that it did not know the answer to that question and would officially investigate it.
Similarly, Americans who were stifled or outright barred by Big Tech from citing pre-election revelations about Joe Biden from the archive of his son obtained by The New York Post found a place, on Rumble, where they could openly reference and discuss them. And Rumble has aggressively resisted pressure campaigns from the U.S. government and corporate media outlets and outright legal bans enacted by the EU requiring all platforms to cease allowing “pro-Russian” news outlets such as RT and Sputnik to be heard.
Rumble’s user growth, driven overwhelmingly by growing anger toward Big Tech censorship and de-platforming, has continued to swell this year. As Investor Place’s Ian Cooper wrote in April, “its user base hit a new record of 41 million monthly active users in the first quarter of 2022. That is 22% growth quarter-over-quarter.” Moreover, “Rumble is setting user engagement records. In the first quarter of 2022, Rumble users watched about 10.5 billion minutes per month.”
As discussed on this page and as was reported byThe Washington Post, I was one of a group of nine journalists and commentators, along with former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI), to make Rumble my primary home for video journalism in mid-2021 based on support for its free speech principles and the need for alternatives to centralized Big Tech repression. Though the purpose of that Post article was to predictably malign Rumble as a cesspool of hate speech and disinformation — relying on and extensively quoting a “disinformation” expert who happens to partner with U.S. and British intelligence agencies and Big Tech platforms such as Google and Facebook — The Post was forced to acknowledge how significant Rumble’s growth has been (and since that August, 2021 Post article, the growth has increased further):
Rumble has grown from 1 million active users last summer to roughly 30 million, said the site’s chief executive Chris Pavlovski, a Canadian tech entrepreneur who worked a brief internship at Microsoft and founded a viral-joke website before launching Rumble in 2013. And its traffic has exploded: According to data shared with The Washington Post by the analytics firm Similarweb, visits in the United Statesto the site grew from about 200,000 in the last week of July 2020 to nearly 19 million last week — a 9,000 percent increase.
Though Rumble’s audience size is still significantly smaller than YouTube’s, the threat posed by Rumble to YouTube is real. Rumble’s imminent merger with the special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) CF Acquisition Corp. VI will effectively make Rumble a public company and is likely to arm it with far greater capital to compete even more robustly with YouTube.
But the major obstacle to competing with Big Tech giants generally, and Google specifically, is that these companies have acquired such extreme market dominance in so many key areas of the internet that they abuse that power to prevent competition and crush any competitors who pose a challenge. That these four Big Tech giants are classic monopolies in violation of the antitrust law was the emphatic conclusion of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law’s comprehensive 2020 report, a conclusion that now has ample support from leading members of both parties.
The lawsuit brought by Rumble against Google is designed to ensure free and fair competition, so that the public is not effectively forced to use YouTube but can instead fairly choose among Google’s competitors as well. The primary allegation is that Google abuses its power as the dominant search engine and destroys free competition for online video platforms by manipulating its algorithms to prevent YouTube’s competitors, including Rumble, from being found by the public.
Attempts to find Rumble videos through Google searches are purposely thwarted by burying Rumble’s videos and instead redirecting the user to YouTube, the lawsuit alleges. Google’s “chokehold on search is impenetrable, and that chokehold allows it to continue unfairly and unlawfully to self-preference YouTube over its rivals, including Rumble, and to monopolize the online video platform market.” I often am unable to find my own videos using Google’s search engines even when I recall the title of the video more or less perfectly, and have frequently heard the same complaint from viewers.
Further illegal monopolistic acts alleged by the complaint include Google’s manufacturing of its Android phones with a pre-installed YouTube app as the default video setting, and imposing agreements on other Android-based mobile smart device manufacturers to pre-install YouTube, place it in the most prominent position, and prevent users from deleting it. The court summarized the alleged anti-competitive results of Google’s behavior this way (citations omitted):
[Google] “requires Android device manufacturers that want to preinstall certain of Google’s proprietary apps to sign an anti-forking agreement.” [Rumble] alleges that once an Android device manufacturer signs an anti-forking agreement, Google will only provide access to its vital proprietary apps and application program interfaces if the manufacturer agrees: “(1) to take (that is, pre-install) a bundle of other Google apps (such as its YouTube app); (2) to make certain apps undeletable (including its YouTube app); and (3) to give Google the most valuable and important location on the device’s default home screen (including for its YouTube app).”
As another example, [Rumble] asserts that “Google provides share of its search advertising revenue to Android device manufacturers, mobile phone carriers, competing browsers, and Apple; in exchange, Google becomes the preset default general search engine for the most important search access points on a computer or mobile device.” And, by becoming the default general search engine, Google is able to continue its manipulation of video search results using its search engine to self-preference its YouTube platform, making sure that links to videos on the YouTube platform are listed above the fold on the search results page.” [Moreover], Google’s revenue sharing agreements allow it to maintain a monopoly in the general search market and online video platform market).
As a result of the denial of Google’s motion to dismiss the complaint, the lawsuit will now proceed to the discovery stage. After denying Google’s request to dismiss the lawsuit prior to discovery, the judge scheduled a conference at which a discovery plan would be established. This phase of the lawsuit is when one party can obtain a broad range of documents from the other relevant to the claims of the lawsuit.
The antitrust specialist Matt Stoller, Research Director of the American Economic Liberties Project, said about the ruling: “Getting past the motion to dismiss stage is quite meaningful, and depending on what turns up in discovery Google could be in serious trouble.” This ruling should enable Rumble to acquire and utilize extremely revealing documents about how Google exploits its algorithms to manipulate search results on its dominant search engine, as well the burdensome requirements it imposes on other companies dependent on Google’s infrastructure to ensure prominent promotion of YouTube.
Google did not respond to requests for comment on the judicial ruling. Rumble’s statement was naturally celebratory: “We welcome the court’s decision, which is a significant step toward ending Google’s unlawful preferences for YouTube and helping to put creators first. We look forward to starting discovery.”
When Rumble first filed the suit, its founder and CEO, Chris Pavlovski, told Fox News’ Tucker Carlson that the company’s data specialists had determined that, with its search engine algorithmic manipulations, “Google has redirected up to 9.3 billion visitors to YouTube instead of to Rumble.” These anti-competitive practices by Google, he argued, destroy the possibility for innovation and competition: “Imagine being a tech entrepreneur trying to build an online video platform. You absolutely do not have a shot. You do not have a chance. You have pre-installed YouTube apps on phones. You have a rigged search engine. You have no ability to compete in this market.”
Lawsuits like these have the ability to unite people across the political spectrum. Stoller, one of the nation’s leading scholars on the question of Big Tech monopolistic dominance, noted that “the case leverages antitrust action by the government pursued under both Trump and Biden. It’s also notable that this ruling came from an Obama-appointed judge. Clearly concentrations of power worry both sides.”
Regardless of whether one is an avid admirer of the modern iteration of capitalism, there is nothing to cheer when a tiny group of corporate giants can corner a market and prevent competition. That is particularly true when — as is obviously the case for Big Tech — the “market” in question is now the primary means by which Americans gather information, politically organize, receive and disseminate news, and question and debate the most consequential political controversies. The political and propagandistic aspects of these anti-competitive practices substantially elevate the public interest in fostering free and fair market competition. To allow a tiny number of tech giants to maintain a stranglehold on the digital public square is self-evidently dangerous, especially as they escalate their censorship regime, due to some combination of their own political interests, the demands of the majority political party in Washington, and the incessant grievances of their own work force.
These dangers are not abstract. Perhaps they were most vividly seen in January, 2021, when Parler — designed as a free speech alternative to Facebook and Twitter — became the most-downloaded app in the country, fueled by anger over the pre-election censorship of the New York Post‘s reporting on Joe Biden’s activities in Ukraine and China as well as the banishment of President Trump by a consortium of Big Tech giants. As soon as Parler rose to the top spot, Democratic politicians such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and censorship activists groups such as Sleeping Giants demanded that Google and Apple immediately remove Parler from their app stores, preventing any further downloading. Other Democratic lawmakers then demanded that Amazon Web Services, the dominant hosting company that had enabled Parler’s website, terminate its agreement with Parler.
Within forty-eight hours, all three Silicon Valley monopolies complied with these demands. Parler instantly went from the most popular app in the country — thanks to the free speech principles it upheld — to utterly crippled if not destroyed. It attempted to come back but never really recovered. That was as brute and stark a display of Big Tech’s ability and willingness to destroy any successful competitors as one might imagine. And in the process, they not only abused their anti-competitive dominance to destroy one of their few successful competitors but also, heeding the demands of Democratic Party politicians, abolished one of the few significant venues on the internet where Americans could gather to freely question and dissent from the orthodoxies and pronouncements of their leaders.
There are other antitrust actions currently pending against the Big Tech giants from both private companies and, increasingly, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). But this suit from Rumble has enormous potential to open competition in the vital video uploading market and, perhaps even more importantly, shed substantial light on the extremely opaque and guarded algorithmic manipulations Google uses to force down the public’s throat the content it wants them to see while hiding that which it does not want them to see.
Former FASTER PUSSYCAT member Eric Stacy got interviewed by our friend at Glambone for their X-Mas Podcast Episode, check it out!: http://glambone.com/
If you own more than one 80s glam metal album then you’re probably familiar with the name Vicky Hamilton, since you could see it on almost every thank list on these vinyl inserts. I briefly met Vicky at Bar Sinister in L.A. in 2005, and when Robbie Quine (The BARBARELLATONES) told me “You should talk to my friend Vicky”, I thought it would be interesting to send her a few questions…
Can you tell us about your background? When did you move to Los Angeles?
I dropped our of art school in Indiana in 1980, I moved to Hollywood in 1981 where I decided to be the best female rock and roll manager in the world…
I had 2 bands from the midwest that I was pumping when I first moved to LA and that is where it started. I was also a record buyer for Licorice Pizza Record Store on the Sunset Strip.
How did you start managing bands?
By accident! My boyfriend in Indiana was in a band and then the band broke up. I decided to manage his career and help him find a new band. I got the management bug…I worked with 3 bands in Indiana and then decided I needed to move to Hollywood, as to take it to the next level, I needed to be where the action was.
I read that you helped MÖTLEY CRÜE in their early days… In those days, did you ever imagine they could have become so big?
I loved Motley Crue from the beginning. What they were doing then (1981) was really fresh as the glam/metal thing was just starting. LA until the Crue was pretty punk rock. Yes, I did think they could be huge, and I saw it as a new trend in rock…which it was.
You also managed POISON. I’ve always read that despite the party image, the band was a hard working one, were they?
No one worked harder than Poison, they didn’t have day jobs, they made promoting the band their day job. They didn’t take “no” for an answer and they were the kings of self promo.
Do you remember the first time you’ve heard about GUNS N’ ROSES? Then the first time you met them? They lived at your place for a while, right?
I met Axl and Izzy when they were in Hollywood Rose. I was a booking agent at the time and they came by my office and played me some tracks. I was blown away, and booked them sight unseen. I met Slash around the same time, he was playing guitar in another band I booked called Black Sheep. I booked both bands on a show with Stryper at the Music Machine and that was when GNR started coming together. Yes, they all lived with me, except Duff who lived with his girlfriend while we were shopping a record deal. You’ll have to buy my book to get that story though…hopefully will be out in the next few months.
When did the band actually start to make enough money to live off their music? Just after the release of “Appetite For Destruction”?
They got an advance from Geffen, but burnt thorough that pretty quickly. I think it took at least a year after the record came out before they had real money to live on.
Talking about managing STRYPER. That must have been very different from dealing with Axl & friends…
I worked as a management consultant to Stryper and Motley Crue, I wasn’t their manager. Surprisingly, a band is a band whether they are Christian or not, the business is pretty much the same. I didn’t live with Stryper and they didn’t date strippers or have drug habits, but it was all about business, just like GNR.
Didn’t you feel that the magic faded away when Steven Adler got fired and Izzy left?
Yes. Those five guys had the magic. When you start taking pieces of the magic away, the sound is different. I don’t think it will ever be as good as it was when those 5 were together.
Are you still in touch with them? Do you think they will ever reunite with the original line-up?
I talk to Slash on a fairly regular basis and I am friends with all the other guys. I have not spoken to Axl since the mid 90’s unfortunately. I wish him well, and hope one day were will get to chat. I don’t think the original lineup will ever get back together, I would love it, but I think the chances are slim to none.
You also got FASTER PUSSYCAT to sign with Elektra, right?
Yes, I took Faster Pussycat to my friend Peter Philbin who was an A&R man at Elektra at the time. Peter signed them.
Any other bands you managed that should have deserved to make it big, but didn’t?
Many! Salty Dog had a good run, but could have been bigger. Lostboys, featuring Randy O from Odin. Darling Cruel signed to Polygram but the record didn’t get as much attention as it should have. Rick Parker, I,Napoleon, Half Way Home, Shadowland, Graveyard Train…all bands I brought or worked with at Geffen, could have had bigger careers…as recently as The Art…sometimes there is no rhyme or reason to this business, but you have to make the best of it.
I read in an interview that it wasn’t always easy for you on a financial level during those years, have you ever thought about stopping band management at some point?
Financially the music business has never taken care of me other than the years I spent at Geffen and Capitol. I have never worked with young bands for the money, it’s always been for the love of the music. Somebody has to try and break new talent, and I have had more success at it than most. Also I had a Grammy win on my own label Small Hairy Dog with June Carter Cash in 2000, I just loved what she did and no one wanted to sign her, so I started my own label to get her music out there.
Were you still managing bands during the 90s?
Yes, I have never quit managing bands! I managed Sex With Lurch, The Art from Sydney Australia. I worked with a great irish band named The Future Kings Of Spain, among many others…
Then you were a booking agent at Bar Sinister in the 00s. Have you done this for any other clubs?
Yes I worked at Bar Sinister for 9 years! It’s a great club even now! I booked The Malibu Inn for awhile…I promote a few shows still here and there.
Do you still manage bands today in this Internet era?
I currently manage Diana Meyerhttp://www.dianameyermusic.com who is amazing singer songwriter who rocks and Co-manage Talk Like June featuring Suzanne Harper http://www.talklikejune.comTalk Like June is California Country and about to play Nashville Jan 17-23, I’m going with them, I’m excited!
Can you tell us about “Glitter Beach”, the musical play you wrote with Robbie of The BARBARELLATONES?
Glitter Beach is mine and Robbie’s love child. It’s a bout a Glam rock surfer dude named Reef Bedrock who invents Glam rock music in 1969. Imagine Rocky Horror meets Hedwig with a little Bowie and Dick Dale thrown in. We are planning on doing a couple more workshops in 2015 hopefully in LA, Vegas and Miami!! It’s such a great musical, Robbie out did himself writing the music for this and it is all about misfits coming together…it’s a beautiful play and I know one day it will be huge! I am hoping to write another play with Robbie soon, I love working with him.
You run the Aesthetic V blog. Can you tell us about this too?
Yes, I am doing a video blog called Aesthetic V Blog http://www.aestheticvblog.com My partner is Micheal Kraemer who was my street scout at Geffen. Micheal shoots the videos and takes care of the website and I put together the interviews. It’s all about the creative process. Its about finding the muse, weather it’s music, art, writing, film…all things creative. Its a way to expose new talent to the world, and get advice from people who are working in the arts. Again a labor of love, but hopefully it will start making enough money through ad sells on the website so we can keep it going. It’s all about the internet these days, and I have had a lot of help from some of my friends like Andy Stack at YouTube and Gregory Markel at Infuse Creative to learn this new medium.
Are you still working on your autobiography? Please tell us a bit about it…
I have finished my book! It’s called Appetite For Dysfunction. It’s my life story about all the bands I have worked with, my creative journey through the arts, writing etc. It also goes into my personal life and the process of getting sober etc. It will have a lot of great pictures and stories from the humble beginning of the rock artist you know and love. It’s also about being a woman in the business. I have been working on it for 7 years. The book is finished, just needs a professional edit and I have a manager who is shopping it currently for a book deal, the book has some strong interest. I’m very excited! Getting this book out there is a dream come true for me…hopefully by summer!
They played in famous bands during the 80s/90s and have not decided to give up rock’n’roll or to remain passive such as fallen rockstars who have nothing fresh to offer. It’s time to BUBBLE !
It would be nice if you could introduce the band.
BUBBLE is Bam of Dogs D’Amour/Wildhearts fame on drums and backing vox; Share of Vixen/Contraband (bass) on guitar and lead vocals; Brent Muscat of Faster Pussycat on guitar and backing vocals; Eric Stacy, also, of Faster Pussycat on bass and backing vocals.
You’re recording a new album on your own label. Do you think that it’s a way to be more independent and get more freedom ?
We’ve worked with lots of different producers in the past and thought this time, it would be cool if we didn’t have to answer to anybody apart from ourselves. Funny thing is, we’re quite hard on ourselves…which is good. It will give us an album where every song stands by itself with no filler tracks. We definitely have more creative freedom and that’s great.
By the way, can you tell us more about Basement Boy Records ? Do you already produce bands/artists ?
Yes, we already produce other people. But none have had a proper release on our label. The first will be BUBBLE. Then, an LA heart throb named Ashleigh! (boys…look out). After that there are a few more acts we want to sign.
You chose “taxi driver” for the HANOI ROCKS tribute album. I guess that it must not be easy to choose only one song among all HANOI ROCKS songs. How did you decide to choose this one ?
Taxi Driver is our hands down favorite Hanoi song!
I saw on your website that The DOGS D’AMOUR are back with Share on bass. Do you think that it will affect BUBBLE ?
Not unless the Dogs and Bubble have to play a show on the same night on two different sides of the world!!!!
What kind of music do you like to listen when you’re at home ?
Ash, Radiohead, Neil Young, Led Zeppelin, Stones, Kinks, Bowie, Beethoven, Miles Davis, Beatles….everything really. We’re very open to new music.
What would you answer to people who say that rock is dead ?
WAKE UP!!! YOU’RE DEAF!
There are several BUBBLE webpages, do you appreciate that ?
Yeah, that’s really cool. The more the better.
Do you plan to come to Europe ?
Nothing would make us happier. But right now there are no definite plans.
Veglam 
