Another beginning, another end. A decade that I'm not sorry to see fade into cobwebbed history, and perhaps many of you might feel the same way...In any event, bring on a better time and don't spare the horses.
Thanks to all of you who have stopped by my display of diminishing returns this year. May the time to come for you all hold a bit of the promise and fulfillment so rudely stolen by the usurpers and malfeasants in their petty, fatuous quest for enough gold to bribe their way into Heaven.
I'm working this evening...and playing the morning after, so I'll not be posting for a couple of days. I'm sure you'll understand. :D
Rollins Band, Liar, 1994...With a special dedication to some former co-tenants.
As a more pleasant aside, I hope that all of my friends and acquaintances have had an enjoyable holiday season...Moreso, perhaps, than your humble scribe who just wants to get it all into the end zone on 3rd down and long without a fumble or teeth-rattling sack.
Some presumptuous thoughts, yet not born of frivolity...
So what if I'm just decrepit enough to remember the old industry, before the MBA's from Hooker & Blau took over. As a consequence, I witnessed how the wheels were greased and things got done for a steep rise and a long or short run. Later, I watched from afar with an increasing degree of wariness regarding the spread of the eventual ripple effect, as an inevitable decline from an artistic model in search of due profit to a profit model exclu$ively took place.
I also know that massive amounts of talent waits out there to be developed and deployed - 'Everybody is a star' and they're not all tucked in their iPods yet...presumably.
Genre doesn't matter. But we have to realize globally as a singular yet collective force - known as the creators - that we are at the best time ever for control of our own destiny.
The old ways are not the only ways anymore, and don't mourn them, teenagers - I could tell you of personal anecdotes as a mere fast minnow in a vast ocean how one-sided and utterly dishonest the old game was, and continues to be as practiced by the hands of the unscrupulous. "Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven" - Milton, Paradise Lost.
Brown shoes don't make it...and neither does Man-Tan and Tanqueray tears, over at Mr. Mark Hoback's Fried Green al-Qaedas. Disrespect fits Boehner like a shrink-tubing rubber shirt, it seems.
J at Contingenciesspins some FZ that would be harder than your husband to handle for those unappreciative of the symphonious muse, or uncultured motherf**kers if you prefer.
Apologies for not being consistently interactive of late...RL insists that I modify my life to a daily 28-hour clock for the next couple of weeks, or else.
"Nice country you had - shame something happened to it..."
Dear President Obama,
Now, I'm not a naive fellow - I'm quite cognizant of the fact that no one gets a turn at the Big Wheel without being vetted and buffed smooth until any possible rough edges has been eased away for public consumption, leaving only a viable candidate who can say the 'right things' (to be determined later) with enough ersatz sincerity to get elected - why, even your predecessor (who struggled mightily at all times to not look like some dim-witted frat boy trying to bluff his way out of a botched prank) was processed that way just long enough to trick the majority of marks....twice.
Therefore, you are one of them, bought and paid for and 'transformative politics' be dismissed and thrice-damned. It matters not the skin color or life experience - whatever may have been witnessed in the streets has been long left behind on the road to bargained-for power. Fine and dandy, 'tis your path to tread, forward to glory and all that.
Unfortunately, you're presiding over an incipiently failed nation in the process of dismantlement by the termites within, while propping up systemic corruption and greed with tax money filched from people who can ill-afford three daily meals and shelter, people who genuinely believe in the dream and work hard to make it a reality. These are the people that you have let down with your weakness. These are the people whom your actions discourage and disappoint, while they enrich the already obscenely wealthy and their elected courtiers and lackeys. Your people.
Don't speak to me of the need for comity and compromise, after the last decade of rampant criminality and military madness. A law-abiding citizen doesn't compromise with lawbreakers and malfeasants, unless he wishes to join their shady ilk. Someone sworn to represent the people of a great and vast nation needs to do better than that. It takes more than pretty words and lofty theoretical concepts, you see...Or maybe you don't. It doesn't matter anymore.
As brother driftglass has so sententiously opined...
Much of how I feel about FZ has been elucidated before within this blog - therefore, no need to beat a baby seal with a lead-filled snowshoe, except to offer that the concept of twining humor and serious (read: not contrived pop fluff or blue men playing the whites) music appeared bewhiskeredly corny to me until being exposed to his oeuvre...And in turn, being exposed to the insurmountable constellation of influences, peers, and disciples therein and thereabouts, which not only made me a subjectively better musician - but a better listener, as well.
So thanks from those of us still trapped on this sad, dirty rock floating in space to you all in the cosmic whatsis, Frank.
