wjbiii

Excuse me: there is no "we". You might "have to deal with them", but you have no authority in the world to enlist me in the project. It doesn't matter what your problem is, Michael: you have no right to force me to help you solve it. My answer to you is exactly the same one that I have for liberals who moan about what to do with poor people without the welfare state. I don't care, and I don't have to. There is nothing that you can do about that.

A reading: excerpts from the Foreword to Lucius Beebe's "The Big Spenders" -- [...] [...] [...] (excerpts: "Foreword" -- "The Big Spenders", Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1966) (ibid, p. 303)

{nod} I can imagine. Hate it, but there it is. Of course. I always thought, though, that he had a real eye for the right lines. The guy was a real kook, in some ways. I don't know if you ever saw his "Angel of Death" series of posts, in which he had a bunch of black-operative renegades out of the U.S. intelligence corps running around delivering packets of incriminating information on various politicians and apparatchiks with the aim of driving them out of government. The thing is, it was all hooked to stolen banking software with a 'back door' in it to allow this sort of snooping, and there was a real-live mystery case about that with a lot of facts in it. One had to be careful with him. I often wondered whether he got played on the inside by someone really heavy. At the same time, he was amazing: the day that The Lying Bastard testified before the grand jury in the Lewinsky affair, Grabbe posted to the Whitewater group in Usenet that he had committed perjury. He did that before that grand jury session was out. Understand: he got that report out of the grand jury room itself. That was wild. When the FBI files story broke, and the media were reporting "nine hundred files", Grabbe was on the Usenet scene within minutes telling us that the number was in fact over two thousand. He had real live wires out there. I never saw anything like him. Me, too. He was a net.original.

Well, think about it and check me on this. Am I right? That was a spontaneous observation that occurred to me the first time I heard it, many years afterward. (I was fairly late to Zappa's party. I didn't really start digging him until the late-70's.) Yeah, I suppose that would qualify as a hint. I haven't listened to "Brown Shoes" in quite a while (it's not my favorite period), but I can see it.

Not any more. We lost Orlin in March of last year. His article, "The End Of Ordinary Money" was the first thing I ever read that convinced me of the value of an internet account. And he was the first person who ever paid me for something that I wrote. I'll never forget that guy.

Hey: it's ghaslty, what governments can live on, including themselves. Try me,one of these days, and we'll see. That man and I have been in touch for at least a decade. He and I were contributors at J. Orlin Grabbe's place, back in the day.

Well, thank you for saying so, Bill, but you'll probably get over that soon enough once we ever get into politics. I maintain that there is a fatal disjunct between Ayn Rand's ethics and her politics, and I am a rational anarchist. This government must be destroyed. That's my story and I'm sticking to it, just like I have for over thirty years.

FZ as social critic: "Magdalena" (from the 1972 album "Just Another Band From L.A.") -- this is Frank and the second iteration of The Mothers of Invention, featuring Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan of The Turtles as "Flo (The Phlorescent Leech) and Eddie" on vocals. In 1972, almost no one had the nerve to even approach the subject of child sexual abuse, and Frank blasted it in 6:24 recorded live at Pauley Pavillion. This is an amazing recording demonstrating the ability and discipline of his band. "Son Of Orange County -- from "Roxy & Elsewhere" (1974): "And in your dreams You can see yourself As a prophet Saving the world The words from your lips 'I am not a crook' I just can't believe you are Such a fool..." He puts Richard Nixon in his place with one sharp back-hand. "Pygmy Twylyte" ("Roxy") -- spotlights the horrors of the drug culture. Nearly all of "Broadway The Hard Way" (1988) -- burns down everyone from Jesse Jackson to Jim and Tammy Bakker, Ronald Reagan, and Michael Jackson. Those are just off the top of my head. If all you're looking for is a pretty tune, then you might better look elsewhere. Frank's disclaimers of "just entertainment" notwithstanding, he was the H.L. Mencken of rock music: he had serious things to say, to anyone who knew how to listen, and for a lot of the pretense that rock music in his era made toward "social conscience", etc., nobody -- ever -- was in Frank's class.

Reprise: Well, it just is what it is, you know? "The world began when I was born." Thank you for saying so, though. I'm off to Tokyo early in the morning, and I'm on my way out to a local blues jam right now. I still have details to dispatch and I don't know if I'll get to some things that I'd like to say here before I jet tomorrow. I'll have time here & there once I have my feet under me across the sun. I'll be back when I can. Y'all stay cool.

Michael? Please pay attention. I may be a lights guy, but I have spent enough time around real sound guys from studios around the country, to roadside-stomps up & down two-lane roads, to Madison Square Garden and every arena in the country and most of its stadiums, to know what I'm talking about when I'm talking about a gig and a recording that you weren't even present for but that I put together. Please pay attention, sir. This is not a "thin skin". I'm telling you about the facts: when you say something like "They tried to compensate for this with sheer volume,...", you don't know what you're talking about. We don't do that. For one thing, we play loud just in our nature. We don't have to do it to "compensate" for anything. But you don't know anything about our gear on that deck, what it sounded like in the room or through the front-end, you don't know anything about the camera that gathered that audio or its terrible little microphone, and you don't know anything about countless details about that recording. I'm telling you the facts. You were wrong about that. Now, then... Thank you, but I will quite make up my own mind about that, starting right after I hit the "Add Reply" button on this post. Well, thank you, sir. I should bloody hope so. In that video frame, there is about 150 years of rock music experience in those four souls. The drummer and the bass player have been a rhythm-section together off & on since they were thirteen years old, and they're my age, now: fifty-two. I'm the weakest player on that deck. It's privilege for me to get to play with them. Finally, then: That's pretty amorphous, but I will tell you this: there will be no meeting halfway or anywhere else on the two points that I addressed in my first comment. None. I'm the one who's right. Beyond all that, it's nice to meet you.

I've only ever posted this stuff at my blog. These links go to what I called the Aural Sketchpad series of recordings from about four to five years ago. What you will hear here are some results of desktop recording experiments: I piled up a bunch of gear for running sounds to hard disk multi-track recording. This was about wringing it out to see what I could do. This was new to me. All my previous recording experience had been with four-track tape and mics in the room: no direct-inputs or anything. That meant loud amplifiers and all the rest of it it. This stuff happened at high-gain but low volume, and there was lots of fooling around with digitally processed guitar sounds. It's a very different thing from running a fifty-watt Marshall wide-open. Along with the technical aspects, it was literally a sketchpad: a series of recordings spiked on disk for prospective future workup. I gave each bit a jot-title more or less just to be able to find it again in history. The whole pile is mostly just two guitars, with an occasional bass part, as well. "Reasonable Intimations (3:48 -- two guitars, bass) "Shooter Girl" (1:50 -- two guitars, bass) "SatCruise" (2:11 -- two guitars) "Stairway To Nowhere" -- Led Zeppelin fans will probably not recognize this. Two guitars. There are all kinds of defects all over this stuff, both in production and performance. They go to the ways they were done, which was usually in a blind panic to get them stuck down for later work. Believe me: anyone here can carp if they want to, but nobody will do a better job than me. I don't usually link this stuff around. I'm showing you something very personal, that has the added debilities of not being produced or laid down very well. It might, however, give an insight. The guitars: A cheap-ass Mexican Fender Stratocaster of indeterminate vintage and no photograph. 1995 Gibson SG Special, modified with Seymour Duncan Phat Cat single-coil pickups. 1977 Gibson Les Paul Custom, stock. 1962 Gibson ES-355, stock, with no Varitone, no stereo output (the preferred features-set) and PAF Humbucker pickups.

If that's his point, it's still bullshit. Look: this band is a hobby. I'm a stage-lighting director: I work on rock tours (thirty-two years, this year). At any moment, I might have to take off around the world, and when I'm lucky, it goes for weeks and months. That alone makes it hard. (We were going to try to get together for a rehearsal today: my last chance before I leave for Tokyo on Tuesday. We couldn't work it out.) The other guitarist is a local cat with enormous talent and skill who never had the nerve to run down his passion as a matter of exclusively making his living. {shrug} That is what it is. The drummer works at what used to be called a home for juvenile delinquents. These days, people in that line are usually referred to as some variant of social workers, but Alan isn't. He works at a private facility with the worst violent sexual deviants, and -- in addition to being the hardest working man I ever knew (he's my best friend) -- he is very good at it. The bass player is one of the most blindingly talented people I ever knew, who got his ass burned off by attorneys, agents, and managers in a record deal in the mid-80's. He quit playing his bass, and without a degree or anything at all but his own brain, walked right in off the street and into a serious technical gig at the National Nanolithography Laboratory at Cornell. All these guys have families. (I don't.) Try to understand: we're just four guys who like to play who've found a joint in our neighborhood where we can play this stuff and people don't throw rocks at us. To us, that's a good day. There is no "worship" or any of the rest of it involved, and we are not dedicated pros, nor do we make that pretense. I'm pretty sure that I'm the only one who writes and records. It's generally very blues-rooted. Try to understand: I don't have time to do it justice. You fuckin'-aye bet. What I protested was important to me because it's not true. Now, it's an easy thing to manage: don't fight me over it. I'm right. That's a separate point.

Let me point something out about Rich's observation here: This is a function of virtuosity. In popular conscience, Frank is one of the most sadly neglected guitarists of all time.

Why the dichotomy? Try describing and then playing on the marimba a part of "St. Alphonso's Pancake Breakfast" (this is the "Rollo Interior"), from "Apostrophe", 1974. You can hear the entire original piece, including Ruth''s work in context, . It ends abruptly when it runs into "Father Oblivion" with signature terror-tempo FZ guitar lick. (Pick it up on the very next beat, .)How 'bout the first (and only, I think) calliope solo in rock history? "Fifty-Fifty". I really don't see how anyone can tell you what you're going to like, Ted, but I'll dig around for you if you want.

On a lark, I came over here from SOLO to see if any of that mess is reverberating here. And the very first thing I laid eyes on is this: That's when I had to register and login. There is not one word of that emphasized line that is true. None of it. If facts matter to you any more than they matter to Perigo, you will face, admit, and endorse the truth. And then, here is something that might help you hold your keel: Do not ever judge me by anyone else you know or ever knew. You have made a very clumsy blunder over style, Kelly. You have mistaken the natural amplitude with which I do everything in my whole life -- "on 10": turned all the way up -- for what you're calling "worship", a word which too many Objectivists and Objectivist-inclined have used so blithely for so long that it is nearly always a dead-giveaway for sheer pot-brained lingo with no serious conceptual content. It should be stopped altogether, and you should definitely stop taking my name in vain over it. I would appreciate it if you made clear that you understand. Thank you, sir. Ps. -- "They tried to compensate for this with sheer volume,..." You're wrong. You don't know what you're talking about.