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All collective thought seems to have been so codified and so agreed upon that fresh ideas seem jarring almost dissonant. The crush of the noosphere and the 'conventional wisdom' is a bit much.

We need to "transcend Elvis." Our influences need to go beyond music and beyond 1955. Our ideas have become mirrors of mirrors of shadows of echoes. Year Zero needs to be pushed back into a different place.

Something radical needs to be done to fix how life is lived. It can't be done in a casual manner, in a medium pace. If you're of the mind that life is fine then skip this. If you feel that something is missing, that something is wrong then stick with this. Something we're doing is radically wrong and therefore something equally radical needs to be done to fix it.

The Hypertonics are of the mind that things CAN be fixed. The eternal optimism rests on the supposition that life can be worked on AND improved. 'Individually or collectively?' that is the question.

The things that we think are wrong in our world are not the true things that are wrong. It's not a matter of war vs peace or life vs death. Most people living are not really alive or awake and THAT is the real crisis we face. You can escape the bombs and the guns and the explosions, but if you aren't awake then you're are as drained of life as someone who did not escape. Our problems are bigger than you think.

Music is a channel to, and a conversation with, God. Anything less is like using a Porshe to cart apples to market. Music isn't LIKE a religious experience, it IS a religious experience. Anything less is like using yoga to stay skinny, or eating the Eucharist as a mid-day snack attack.

That Neil Young is using music to protest the War shows that he still doesn't get it. He's not alone. Our problems are not political, they're spiritual. John Coltrane said that. George Bush can't do anything to you that you aren't already doing to yourself. And if you're whole then nothing he does can touch you. I said that.

Science is the most myopic art you could have invented. It relies solely on the human brain as it's point of reference. Science is more geocentric than any religion out there. What we call the universe is made up of only what the human mind can conceive of. In a battle between what the mind can conceive of and what is the full universe, science takes the side of the human mind and all it's limitations. Science is too proud, and doesn't seem to acknowledge the human brain's faults and limits. Reality and perception are two separate Ven Diagrams, and I prefer reality.

Ralph Nader always once seemed to have cast the widest net, but even his scope is too narrow. He's still doing better than most.

The swamp of stale ideas really has to go away soon. Between the repetition of incorrect ideas, the repetition of purposefully wrong ideas, and the oversaturation of recreation/entertainment/amusement in our lives we are oxygen deprived. We really are an echo of a mirror of a shadow.

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"Why Are You Giving Away All Your MP3s?"

Here's the idea: Every mp3 from every studio recording and decent live track is available on the website here.

Here's the idea behind the idea: The old way of doing things is over. The 20th century is gone and the ways people interact have changed. People aren't consumers, they're people. Cities aren't markets, they're cities. You don't "target certain age groups". (If somebody was targeting me, I would feel the need to defend myself. I wouldn't buy their product, I'd shoot them in self-defense.)

Sustanance shouldn't be held for ransom. No more $7 bottles of water at concerts. No more $18.98 for a CD. The artificial scarcity and hostage crisis that capitalism creates is over. The monopolies that it seeks are impossible now.

So this site is a vehicle for breaking that antagonism up. The artist and the listener aren't on opposite sides of the baricade. They aren't opponents or enemies. The battle between "Getting As Much Money For A CD" and "Paying As Little As Possible" is bad for art, and it's nonsense created so some third party can make money. How's about the artists and the listeners collude and collaborate and shove off the middlemen all together?

This site is a channel to you. These songs are written and recorded, and now they're here to be heard. They weren't created to be hidden behind the castle walls of commerce. What's the point of recording 30 songs and then holding them hidden away for ransom?

Too many bands out there have been scooped up by a major label, given impossible obstacles to surmount then left to die rotting on the vine. Dead because the listeners don't trust anything that comes out of the same pipeline that brought us Hootie & The Blowfish and Britney Spears. Nobody takes a chance on a new band selling their CD for $18.98, the label takes it out on the band and the music is put in limbo on a dusty shelf. No thanks.

They don't charge money for Bibles and you don't charge your friends to hang out with you. When something is that meaningful, you don't want to be alone with it you want to share it. The circle of close friends here always get CD-Rs with the new demos, the live takes, the covers, the full catalog. Why not extend that circle of friends from 20 people to 20,000 people? Hey friend, here's the new stuff, dig it. Take it, we made for you in the first place. We didn't make it just to claim possession of it, it's everybody's.

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Rock'n'roll may ultimately be forgotten, it may have severed itself from Forever. And on purpose too.

Rock'n'roll lacks a mytical foundation and so it may not be telling the Truth. Or it may be telling only a partial Truth. The origins of rock'n'roll is when people like Ray Charles and other took the sounds of gospel music and put it to "secular" themes. Instead of praying to God or communicating with God, the artist and singer was now speaking of romantic love and themes of the material world. People seemed to like it and all seemed ok. Rock'n'roll seems pretty awesome.

Rock'n'roll seemed like Year Zero. It made everything that came before it just disappear. Everybody's favorite music was the music that just came out. There was no Past, the Elders were stupid and the Kids were awesome. As if the Elders weren't just the Kids with 30 years more wisdom to offer...

But when you pull back from R'n'R both in Time and Space you realize a problem. In other parts of the world and in other times music was the antennae by which people and the Spirit world communed. And it seems that if music CAN commune with the Spirit world, then it should. This is the mystical experience. This is the musician as mystic.

Modern American music is cut off from this. Hell, the modern world is cut off from this. The mystical experience has been severed and profit and fame and other pseudo-mystisicm has taken it's place, like a hydrogen atom bonding with a carbon atom instead of bonding with an oxygen atom. It feels really good but, it's foundation is cut off from it's full possibilities. It's exactly the same as the food we eat today which fills us up but is depleted of any nutrients it once had.

This is just the early iteration of a theory, of a feeling but I think the point stands: As long as music is cut off from itself as a mystical experience, it is not destined to live on.

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Diagnosis: A Love Undiagnosed

Sometimes I take baths. Not showers but full-on baths. It's cute. But one problem with them, beyond urinary tract infections, is that my feet are very hypersensitive to the hot water. I can't tell if the water is too hot or just right because my feet tell me the water is super hot. Maybe I have bad circulation, but dipping my toes in to check the temperature doesn't do the trick. Maybe I should get in the water ass first or something.

So my imagination starts wandering. I have diabetes in the family so I get worried that maybe I have it. One symptom of it is that you lose bloodflow to your extremities and eventually they fall off. I have a friend with it and she goes to the doctor once in a while to have her footies checked out. So as I'm easing into my bathtub, I'm thinking about my friend and her feet. And I'm think about my feet and what's wrong with them. We all think about our lady friends and their feet when we're in the bathtub, but this is different...

So this is the origin of "A Love Undiagnosed". A big problem with medical issues is that people try to ignore them, so as to make them go away. Something's wrong and we're gonna hide from it. But with most medical problems, ignoring them has a way of accelerating them not banishing them. If people ignore their diabetes, the capillaries in their footies don't do so well. It got me thinking how people do similiarly with their inner world, with their emotions, with their wants and needs. Something's wrong on the inside, and I'm not sure what to do.

I am of the opinion, and I'm living proof, that if you ignore your inner world, it will shrivel and atrophy just as your body does if you ignore it. There must be some latin phrase that says "as it is with the body, so too the soul." I'm not sure why, I can only speak for myself, but it seems like when you're not good at something you tend to run away from it. Rather than explore and seek out a fullfillment for your inner world, some of us ignore it and hide it and hide from it. My soul has a fever, why haven't I gotten it some cowbell?

Maybe it's a guy thing, but when we have problems, medical or otherwise, we tend to deal with them by "toughing them out." But that's a shortsighted cure that doesn't really fix things, does it? Rather than say "I deserve to love and to be loved," we employ a sort of "turtle-in-his-shell" kind of hiding. It is so much safer to not try than it is to try and fail. There are a lot of people in this world who are hiding from each other and from themselves, and their feet are falling off. So "A Love Undiagnosed" is a diagnosis of the double illness we put ourselves through: you're in pain AND you're hiding from it.

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Beaten Is My Heart (Part II-The Words)

"I am defeaten, my heart is beaten." - Began as a play on the phrase "beating heart/beaten heart." It's oddly accurate. The highs and lows of life do physically play themselves out on that valve. It's not allegory, it feels pretty literal sometimes.

"I used to live in New York City like a child without a home." - Written in Brazil on a 25 hour bus trip from Rio to Bahia. Being in such a beautiful, distant place helps to reveal just how crushing the urban environment can be to the spirit. It's New York that can do that to a person, accomplice-free.

"Now I live on hope and pity and a need to be alone." - After a day filled with people - in the street, in the buildings, in your hair, and on your clothes there's nothing you want more than isolation. Even the people you love most are noise. The "hope and pity" refers to the precarious and simultaneous need for love, in whatever form other people are willing to bestow it on you. If you can't have love, than perhaps pity will be a good substitute.

"I was raised to say 'I love you' but we lost the battle and the war." - That feels like a child who's self-defense mechanisms have been neutralized by external authority and bullying. More important than taking care of yourself is being obedient. As an adult that legacy can do some damage. Be pleasant, even if you're in an unpleasant situation.

"I was born in 1990, I was dead by '94." - Exactly what it sounds like.

"And I have fallen on my own weapon and it is broken on my skin. I have fallen on my own weapon, I did not float, I did not swim." - The samurai in Japanese had a tendency to kill themselves with their swords when they did something dishonorable. There's something strange about using the same sword used to kill yourself that was once used to defend yourself from others. The same goes for the rest of the population. Sometimes the actions you take to make the world better actually make it worse. It's kind of sad. A death by your own hands.

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Beaten Is My Heart (Part I - The Music)

A little Song writing dissection here (for those who would like to see musicians talk about MUSIC within the confines of a MUSIC magazine).

"My Heart Is Beaten" is in the key of A Major with a 4/4 beat along with a couple of deviations from the original key. It's inherently a fast song to keep the lyrics buoyant. Dirgelike music would sink the words into a morass.

The chorus existed as a pretty piece all by itself for a while ("someday this D to D minor thing will see the light of day") independent of the verse. The verse was something played around with at rehearsal to get the amp sound good enough and loud enough. It seemed pretty too (A, C sharp minor, B minor, D minor). Somehow the chords of the verse got halved to create a pretty little musical interlude. The chorus got thrust upon the verse, somehow the two felt good together. It fit the song best to have the chorus go first and so the chorus went first. Pow! the horse comes bolting out of it's proverbial gates.

After a verse or two the song had to go somewhere, somewhere away from itself. Doodling with the verse chords, where should we go to get away from them? How about a half step lower (B flat minor)? A new key, with a legitimate gateway into it. Just slide down a half step. Now what? Inspired by "You Don't Kiss Me Anymore," it's time to dance around some new chord progressions (B flat minor, F, B flat minor, D minor, etc). This is the "dark forest" part of the song. Dark, departed, a song within the song. Once the bridge has said what it needs to we have to somehow bring the song back to the song. Repetition always works for something like that. It's kind of a see saw to swing you into some momentum, ala "1 for the mommas, 2 for the show, 3 to get ready...") Once freed the song goes into a second repetition (B minor, D minor) that relates to the dark forest AND brings you back into the clearing of THE song. We're back in the song and now we repeat and fade 'til the story get told fully. That's important, always tell the story. Don't stop until then...

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