As a “musician” (I mostly bang on pots and pans while hoping Jake Najor doesn’t hear I’m off time and throw a stick at the back of my deserving head), I try to figure out the magic algorithm to navigate the potency of facebook. I’m chuckling to myself because in my head I hear “Al Gore Rhythm”, and I picture him dancing to “I Like to Move It” and that’s funny to me. I think I’ve finally cracked the code. Write a post at 10am on an overcast Wednesday about the time a pigeon shit on your face, 100+ likes, 7 shares, 32 comments. Write a post about the gig you have or the video you worked hard on at any time a day, 11 likes (5 are in the band, 2 worked on the video, one dates you but his having second thoughts due to your short supply of likes, one is your mother who you want to unfriend so you can post about that nitrous balloon experience at Jazz Fest, but you need to harvest her like and the other two you have miraculously “reached”). Yesterday I got my oil changed at the Midas and I talked music to the cat changing my oil, he was a “musician” too. I watched his youtube video hoping for a chuckle, but instead I got to watch this dude shred on piano, a time turned hobby in the face of mouth feed reality. We’re all fucked was my takeaway from that exchange! I understand that as a “musician” I moan the mantra of the delusional, which is “we’re all fucked, except for me”, a mantra whispered by millions, each of whom believes the correctness of that statement. Would I even recognize at this point if I sucked, has the mantra numbed me, would anyone tell me, do I belong trapped in the purgatory of Tuesday night gigs at Mother’s Saloon for an eternity of Freebird requests? I may have strayed from my initial point, but here I am, asking a simple question. How do we engage with you without inundating you? How do we reach you? We’re so many hushed hums vying for the sliver of time you don’t have with sounds unfamiliar. I’m guilty, I listen to Zeppelin in my free time because the familiar gives me comfort, but I’ll always be an explorer as well. I’ll never tag a hundred people in a post, because when I get tagged in a post with that many people I’m either livid, or it’s an unbelievable deal on Ray-Bans, that I simply can’t purchase fast enough. Facebook has made musician pages limper than the dick of your average republican presidential candidate, unless you pay and making the money we make, it’s hard if not impossible to put cash behind every post. So if you’d be willing to “follow” those band pages of ours, I’ll link to them in the comments, cause it seems when I place them in a post, said post becomes inert. And this is to spark a dialogue, so if you play music, or listen to music, please chime in. I want to learn something today.
Big Sur Parking
Big Sur has been overrun. Trampled by summer. The secret is out, betrayed by hashtags and majestic photos. The ocean mist that is Kerouac’s ghost shouting “DAMN YOU EARLYBIRD, VALENCIA & X-PRO II, DAMN YOU TO HELL!!!” Everyone took the bait and descended at once. Trying to park near a waterfall on a recent visit was like vying for position at Wallmart on Black Friday. Boxing out LA expatriates, attempting to catch vistas like you were throwing elbows for Elmos circa Christmas 96. Picture a woman in a hot pink jumpsuit with the word “Sexy” bedazzled onto her ass, holding a big mac and devouring space like the aforementioned burger, selfie sticks reaching for the heights of the redwoods themselves and a Steve Miller song blaring from a campground as a football sails through the air like a stealth missile aimed at your peace. At one point during our set, some dude threw $2 at chanteuse Shelbi Bennett and told her to “play some Guns N Roses.” And as much as I wanted to hear a spectral version of It’s So Easy, this was very different from previous outings beneath the quiet. But who am I to criticize, I don’t live there, I’m just another contributor to the din, gazing slack jawed at the slightest verdant sliver of marvel that I can fit into my distracted existence. We’re all just trying to trade concrete canyons for something more. To partake in the vastness. Tourist in our home trying to rekindle the fraying thread that once kept us attached to nature. I pray the bait of whim never eludes me, that once my fluffy roof is Morgan Freeman gray, I can still muster the energy for escape. I had the time so we kept the car aimed north, to the rocky shores and breathtaking vistas of the Oregon coast, empty roads, respite and cozy quiet. #Imnottellingyouwhere.
Chicken Sickness
I've been very sick. For a while. I wouldn't even wish long term sickness on the worst of the Kardashians. Over the last 12 weeks I've lost 12 pounds and my stomach reacts to food the way some white cops react to black males reaching for their wallet. Fortunately I'm slim and trim for the beach season, but I've been to the beach twice in 12 years, so I'm not sure how this helps me. I got this ominous letter from the doctors office last wednesday which simply said "it was nice to see you the other day, your labs were abnormal, looking forward to seeing you soon." WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS!!! I literally screamed to myself like I was rehearsing the Charlton Heston end scene from planet of the apes. At least stress doesn't adversely affect a churning stomach. I tried to call, but they won't tell you results over the phone. This gave me three days to meditate on anxiety and allow outlandish thoughts to to crash like sneakers in the centrifuge of my mind like "they'd probably text if it was HIV, maybe I'm pregnant and why do I shake hands with some of our customers." The following day I worked an 11 hour shift. According to my phone, I walked 5 miles during my shift which takes place is a small room. Thank god there's no security footage to track my hyper lunacy, stress manning the steering wheel of my machinery. Finally on Friday I would get the verdict that would be as anticlimactic as this post. Not certain this will remedy the situation, but I'm basically allergic to everything, peanuts, shrimp, sesame seeds, the sky, CHICKEN, barely and rye. I protested the chicken. "Sorry doctor, I don't know if you noticed, but I'm a black male, I literally have seven drumsticks in my pocket." Which elicited no laughter and that negative reinforcement may have single handedly upended my future career as a stand up comedian. Maybe this chicken allergy explains why I preferred Yo La Tango to Lil Kim, perhaps I'm on some inverse Rachel Doezal shit where I'd rather watch Friends than A Different World and I show up to the bbq with a kale salad, reverse Rachism. Perhaps I'll wind up on a reality show solving mysteries with my best friend Juan who's allergic to beans. Perhaps I've been gradually committing slow chicken suicide (which sounds like a shitty stone temple pilots song). Perhaps this has nothing to do with my current affliction at all. Well, after much protesting, I've cut chicken out of my diet, I cried gravy tears, I've had buffalo wing dreams deferred where I awoke in a fevered midnight sweat, heart pounding, chicken the distance I can't reach. I'll keep you posted.
We'll be shooting a video for Erik Canzona and the Narrows Thursday night at Kearny Mesa Bowl, I'll be playing the guy from the WB version of the Machinist.
This post is retardedly offensive
You can't say "retards" can you? I was late to the game about "mulattos" being offensive, in fact I learned it from an episode of curb your enthusiasm. I've gone on to use the term hybrids, blends, mochachinos and halfies, but I'm doubtful those terms are any better. Natassia keeps telling "midgets" is a bad word, but I'm stubborn and refuse to believe it, plus I don't know the alternative aside from not referring to them at all (halfling can't suffice right?). But I was raised with "retard" being the polite nomenclature, though it sounds biting off the tongue. Maybe it's like Jew where sometimes it's ok, depending on tonality, intention and the poisonous adjective you place in front of it "my friend Charlie is a Jew" vrs "that dirty Jew owes me money". I hope you all know me well enough to know I'm not a bigot, My best friend is a mixed Jewish handicapable halfling, his name is Leroy Rosenberg and I love him. But I digress, my mom has come to visit and decided to stay a little longer than usual, so it's basically been bring your mother to work week. If you've ever seen the Frank Grimes episode of the Simpsons, you'll know what I've been experiencing. In said episode they introduce a normal character into the cosmic madness of Springfield. Well, my mom juxtaposed against the backdrop of the record store of my employ has made me realize that my life is that of a cartoon character. When a "special person" (those quotes make you hear the word retard don't they, I've poisoned you, I'm sorry), anyway, when a special person jumps into the store and tries to scare you by saying "BOO" (a rather old school approach) and then offers your mom a plastic cup full of Hershey's kisses, one's day to day routine becomes visible as the reality of psychedelic folly that it is. On 4th of July, my mom put in a full shift at the Cow, my 68 year old Christian mom from the south counseled drunks with a slur so bad they made mushmouth sound like Thoreau, crazy people "tripping balls" for the fireworks, hipsters searching for the esoteric reaches of band names, yes, I was fortunate enough to have a guy ask my mom if we had any "diarrhea planet". I shit you not, I pun you yes. Well, I guess bringing her to the Casbah prepared her a little for the life her son had chosen. I've been wearing summer sweaters all week, hiding my tattoos and sweating like Aaron Neville at a humid gig when he hits the acrobatic peak of Don't Know Much. But I forgot about the metaphorical unicorn draped in a confederate flag in flames neck tattoo of a life I have attained, unmaskable, with all its fevered rock and roll low wage high reward glory. Wouldn't trade a thing.
The Flag
One last serious post and then it's back to fart jokes and music references. I don’t hate the confederate flag. I mean, I hate the sight of it and the feeling of fear and anxiety it causes me. But I don’t hate it. It’s subtler than wearing a t-shirt with a hanging black man that says in bold font “Niggers must Die!”, but it serves the same purpose. When I see it on a pick up truck, I know to accelerate and go about my business. When I see it on a t-shirt, I know to cross the street and create the safety that comes with distance. I’d welcome a world where rapists all wore a Tapout shirt or something, so you knew who to avoid at last call, where thieves literally dressed like the Hamburglar and expectations were firmly defined. Though me wearing my black skin has elicited the response of an old lady clutching her purse on more than one occasion, as if I had interest in such things (aside from the sweet bounty of Werther’s originals and peppermint candies within). Yes, I get it, I’m guilty of stereotyping as much as the other side. I’m sure there’s a southerner who brandishes the confederate flag with pride, listens to NPR and “has a black friend”, I’ve just yet to meet them (and it sounds like a unicorn wearing a crown of California Condor plumes). Last week a racist gunned down 9 innocent people and it has brought banning the confederate flag to the table (in 2015), into conversations (in 2015) and nearing a reality (in 2015). I was thinking of history’s many martyrs whose tragic exits have ushered in great change, and if this is all that comes from these 9 deaths, it’s not nearly enough. The fact that it is even up for debate in this day and age is somewhat depressing. But here we are. Our future’s history books will read like tragic comedy, confederate flags flying to this day, gay marriage not universally accepted and guns everywhere yet a wonder why there’s so many mass shootings. Earlier this week I fell into the darkest rabbit hole I’ve yet to know. I started reading ultra conservative / racist websites, reading the comments on the articles, trying to place my thumb on the pulse of a beating heart unfamiliar. It started when a confederate flag showed up in my facebook feed amongst the gifs of cats being assholes, relationship announcements and short videos of my friend’s offspring not doing anything particularly exciting. To my surprise it was someone I knew posting and praising the confederate flag. I followed it to a website that looked like it was designed in the late 90s with no spell check and then I followed link after link until I feared for my life, mourned the death of humanity and began to sleep with two eyes open. I went back to the original post a few times, debating whether or not to comment on it. I finally decided to, after all, no strides are made in silence. On occasions when I think maybe I can make a difference in someone’s perspective, I generally tip toe, so instead of “WHY ARE YOU POLLUTING MY FACEBOOK FEED WITH YOUR RACIST ASS FLAG NONSENSE YOU FUCKING FUCK”, I tried to explain what that flag means to me in the soft toned voice I use to pry rock candy from the grasp of elderly women. I explained that regardless of what one’s intention is with that flag, this is what every black American feels when they see it, fear, hatred, oppression, every time they’re read the word “nigger” etched into the wall of a bathroom stall, every time they’ve heard its bitter bite shouted and the kind of paranoia that fits well within the frames of reason. Some guy with a confederate flag as his profile picture
(and I thought twice about my profile picture of a raccoon humping a beagle) got back to my comment right away. He wrote “Alfred Howard…..It really offends me to see young “men” walking around in public for my daughters to see…….with their pants down below their asses……should we stop that as well.” First of all, I love that “Men” is in quotes, already establishing that we are less than. I was so dumbfounded by this response that it basically cleared up all the confusion. “Oh, I’m literally trying to have a rational conversation with a fucking idiot who’s response to his fear of young black males is to in turn intimidate them with fear.” As if “two wrongs don’t make a right” wasn’t one of the first tenets all parents bestow upon their children. How do you build a bridge to a mind so distant? I sent him an email, an invitation to talk. Because I can post all the equality rants in the world and harvest likes from people who already agree with what I’m saying, but if I can change the mind or vantage point of someone who likely hates my existence before knowing it, then it’s a small victory. At the end of the day a flag is color on fabric, we infuse our symbols with meaning through action. The Swastika finds its roots in Hinduism, but meaning evolves and evokes. The confederate flag is a racist symbol with an ocean of blood shed in its name. You can claim it means something else to you, but it carries a weight beyond virtue regardless. I once hoped that the archaic values it represents to me would die through the course of generations, but hatred is passed on, not through blood, but through whispers. We just need to shout the opposite.
He had a nice canyon for a.....
A few years ago I was in Moab, outside of Arches National Park. Arches is one of the most striking places in America, in fact it’s where I ate two hits of acid one morning, threw on Axis Bold as Love and put pen to paper with the intent of music for the first time. But by that point I had the Arches experience, and as gorgeous as it is, it feels trafficked in the center of summer, like a mall with red rock majesty. I figured I’d find a health food store in town and ask some hippie where one could go and get off the beaten path and avoid drowning in the tourist sea. I found a gal with a hemp necklace that looked like she dropped a hundred dollars on it in a 97 Phish Parking Lot, thick enough to support strange fruit, but with crystals. I asked her where the secret scenic spot was where I wouldn’t get run over by an obese Nebraskan in a golf cart. The first half of her response was somewhere between Mushmouth and the teacher from Peanuts, but by the tail end of her sentence she segued seamlessly into English. “(*&^**^%* Bill’s Canyon” she said repeatedly. After three looks that said “what the fuck are you saying” she finally said Negro Bill’s Canyon. She was red as the Kool Aid man, perplexed as to why the one black man in Utah at that moment was asking her to say “Negro”. I think she expected backlash, but all I wanted was directions. The real name of the canyon is Nigger Bill’s Canyon, though they changed it in the late 60s along with a number of other Parks that probably had names like Lazy Mexican State Beach and Asians Are Good at Math National Wildlife Refuge. It was a different time. I brought Nigger Bill’s Canyon up to my dad and he had an interesting take on it. He wished that they never changed the name of it. His point was that it was history. Changing the name we doesn’t negate that there was a place called Nigger Bill’s Canyon, nor a lengthy time where such a place could exist. We need those reminders of a not too distant past, better to face them head on and acknowledge them rather than pretend they didn’t exist. I didn’t think of it that way, not sure that I do now. If my guardian granola angel told me to go to Nigger Bill’s Canyon, I would have simply left Utah in a flurry of middle fingers at 95 mph back to civilized California. I think of this regarding the confederate flag hanging in Carolina, the streets named after confederate generals. I doubt that changing them really makes any difference. Though I do know the distinct panic induced the second I see that flag as a bumper sticker or in the air. But regardless what flag fights against the wind in any locale, the tension is time tested and in the veins and bones. If anything the flag is symptom, removing the symptom only creates a false and fleeting comfort while disease spreads in silence. Bill certainly had a beautiful canyon.
White is the New Black 6/12
Spokane!!!! How did you not notice that chick was white??? She looks like a white chick dressed as black chick for halloween who didn't really try all that hard. Like someone threw a chocolate pie at her in a Gallagher-esque comedy sketch and before she could clean up completely, she was offered a gig at the NAACP. Maybe Spokane is truly color blind and I can go up there and be an Asian Man named Fung Lee who maintains a Koi Fish Pond like I have always dreamed. It's the last place where Sir Paul McCartney can walk leisurely down the street and when accosted by a rabid Beatles fan, he simply says "I'm Lamont Jenkins, a Janitor and the local high school, go sports team!" I guarantee you one thing, when her black ass gets pulled over, she pulls out her hidden copy of Spin Doctors Pocket Full of Kryptonite and pronounces "ask" correctly and drives away, ticket free. This whole story fascinates me, to spend 12 years pretending to be a black person is a commitment that some black people don't even have. If I can get three words into a sentence with a fake british accent before I get too exhausted to keep up the ruse, I consider it an achievement. I'm looking forward to the inevitable documentary 12 Years A Fake and the casting controversy when they get a black woman to play a white woman pretending to be a black woman.
This Mother Fucker
This mother fucker!
I don’t know what the statute of limitations is on the misuse of an afro, but I wanna sue this dude for my dollar. I dig for records, that’s pretty much my favorite way to pass the time. Getting my fingers blacker in the thrifts and summoning dust mites into the atmosphere in the quest for black gold is a solid Monday as far as I’m concerned. I’ve learned a few rules through the years. One of them is finding a record with a fat ass afro on the cover and 1967-1972 on the back. You buy that shit. Regardless. The band could be called the Dooby Dooby Dipshits, but if there’s a Black Man who would cast a shadow that looks like he has a Hot Air Balloon for a head, you’ve got an album full of tough drum breaks and some pocket bass playing. The same afro in 1977 doesn’t promise the same thing, it’s probably some coke infused synth laden disco, but pre 72 is your safety zone.
I came across this Jimmy Mamou record at a thrift store in Oceanside. I couldn’t find a year on it, but I trusted the afro. The roundness of it was what your wanting. Plus those lamb chops! And to top it off, just look closely at those eyes. Dude looks high. He looks like he smoked a spliff the size of a baby leg 32 seconds before this photo shoot (in hindsight I guessing his red eyes are from dust mite allergies).
I did know the record was a risk. I was reading the song titles and it went Every Knee Shall Bow, Hold Me Jesus, I Read the Bible, Let Us Pray, Do You Believe In Jesus, Let Me Stand Up For Jesus and Creation. That’s a hefty amount of Jesus in a small amount of words. I’d go as far as to call the guy repetitive. I have nothing against Christianity, but man it zaps the flavor out of some music. Like saying “Christian Rock” is another way of saying “bland rock”, but still, the afro. I dropped a dollar on it. Took Jimmy home and dropped a needle on it. TERRIBLE. I skipped through this smooth Christian themed soft reggae, the kinda reggae Jimmy Buffet fans listen to while snapping their fingers along off rhythm. There was one song that had a groove to it, it was like the afro jumped off the head and said in a voice deep enough to front an all black Crash Test Dummies Cover Band “Yo son, I’m producing this track cause you been fuckin shit up with yo nonsense”
I guess I paid a dollar for a story about misspent afros. And now I've created a pressure on myself to never put out shitty music, or the easier challenge of never placing my face on an album cover. I'll go with the latter.