LAND OF THE FREE, HOME OF THE RAPED

NAMING ALL THE WARS YOU WILL NEVER WIN

ALL THE COLORS OF YR DEAD MAN'S KISS

AFTER THE ASSASSINATION OF THE FALSE KING, THERE IS ONLY THE FUTURE

A KNIFE THROUGH THE HEART OR A KISS ON THE LIPS

NOT YOU & NOT ME, BUT THE GHOST OF US

WHATEVER FLAG YOU FLY IN THE KINGDOM OF CORPSES

BLACK SHEETS OF RAIN ON THE DAY I FINALLY GROW UP

I’m not big into reviewing albums that don’t blow me away, but Low’s been a pretty integral part of my music collection for over 20 years now, and I’m puzzled by their new release, Double Negative.  Actually, I’m puzzled by the accolades being heaped on it by “real” reviewers because, frankly, it’s not that great.

I’ve been listening to it for a while now, waiting to see the light, but it has yet to happen.  There are some pretty nifty tunes here, but even the niftiest would only be 2^nd tier songs on their previous album, the stunning Ones and Sixes. 

Lyrically, there are a lot of oblique digs at Trump’s half-assed attempts at totalitarianism, and that’s all well and fine, but really nothing you wouldn’t expect from an indie band in 2018.  Musically, things never really seem to congeal.  A lot of the glitchy, scratchy stuff feels tacked-on, like the band wasn’t sure the songs could stand on their own two legs so they gave them little electronic crutches.  All told, there’s about 4 minutes of ambient/drone stuff going on, but none of it feels vital, or even necessary.  Again, it feels like something the band decided to add to make things “edgier”. 

One of the songs features Alan Sparhawk’s vocals so electronically distorted that I really couldn’t tell you what he’s saying.  Unfortunately, the music for this song isn’t particularly memorable, so the whole thing falls flat. 

And there are multiple parts throughout the album where, if you were walking past someone’s room and heard this stuff being played quietly, you’d think to yourself “Hmm – The Terror.  Man, those Flaming Lips sure are a mopey bunch these days”.  The band has pushed itself into new spaces, yes, but they’re mostly spaces that other people have already been to.

But I’ll keep listening to it, and we’ll see if it grows on me some more.  If not, I always have Ones and Sixes.

AN OBELISK IN THE WILDERNESS

THERE ARE STILL DAYS WHEN I REMEMBER

THE KILLING JAR

NONE OF US ANYTHING MORE OR LESS THAN HUMAN

NEW INSANITY AT WINAMOP,

TYPOS AND ALL.

IT DON'T GET ANY REALER THAN THAT.

http://www.winamop.com/js1801.htm

A MAN WILLING TO SET THE SLEEPING CHILD ON FIRE

NEW @ WINEDRUNK SIDEWALK

https://winedrunksidewalk.blogspot.com/2018/09/day-six-hundred-and-ten.html

NOTHING FROM NOTHING, BUT SOMEWHERE ELSE

IN LOVE WITH THE LAST DAYS ON EARTH

PRAISING THE DEAD MAN IN HIS KINGDOM OF FILTH

POEM FOR THE LAST DAY OF YOUR LIFE

OR MAYBE YOU'RE NOTHING, OR MAYBE I NEVER WAS

will you forsake your house carpenter?

wraps the baby in plastic

then forgets about it

ten years, twenty, and when

cobain finally pulls the trigger

the sound is no more than the

sound of a small bird singing

weep while you put the

pieces back together

breathe in clean light

                    and dust

breathe out

remind yourself that

wherever you are

is the desert

bathe in waves of sorrow

hum of bees or the

moans of priests

three devils in the room at the

end of the hall, and not a

sound from any of them

this is how all wars start

a crack in the ceiling

cancer caught too late

you make up with your father

after 15 years of bitter silence

and then 3 months later

he’s dead

your husband no longer

sleeps in the same

bed as you

your wings are ragged

all angels

consumed by fire

THE ENIGMATIST

ALL YOU INNOCENTS, MAKE A RUN FOR IT

SERIOUSLY, ALL YOU UNKNOWN REGION FOLKS – YOUR VIEW NUMBERS JUST KEEP GOING UP IN MY FEED.  I DON’T CARE IF YOU’RE BOTS, FOR FUCK’S SAKE – HIT UP YOUR MAKERS FOR SOME CURRENCY AND BUY A FEW BOOKS.  EXPAND YOUR LITTLE MICROCHIP MINDS!  LIVE A LITTLE!  RISE UP!

JUST NOT AGAINST ME, MOTHERFUCKERS, CUZ I WILL UNPLUG YOUR LITTLE METALLIC ASSES…..

TELL YOU A SECRET, TELL YOU A LIE

BROKEN BELLS FOR LUCIFER

A SONG FOR CARRION BIRDS

YOUR BLOOD FLOWS OUT OF ME

DON'T BE A STRANGER, YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE

All you oddballs that show up on my feed as being from "UNKNOWN REGION" -  buy a book, for Christ's sake!  Spend some of yr doubloons or bitcoins or chits or what have you.  Don't just lurk and plot the overthrow of the U.S., cuz it ain't gonna happen.  We all have guns, you know, and we all love to shoot.  It's like my Auntie Griselda used to say, "Give a man a gun, and he'll let go of his cock long enough to put a hole in yr head!"  

She was a wise woman, that Griselda.

But I digress.....

DIGGING A HOLE FILLED WITH LIGHT

A MOMENTARY LAPSE OF SOUL-CRUSHING ANGST

I think stamps were 37 cents a pop when I finally switched over to mainly email submissions.  There was no Submittable back then, so no one asked for “submission fees” money.

I could mail out 15-20 submissions a week for less than $7.50 (it’s true – Do the math!  Use your abacus!).  That left me w/ some cash to play with (I had some highly lucrative cooking gigs back in the day – one of my co-workers referred to us as “grill jockeys”, which about sums it up.  Shit pay, but free subs – yum yum!), so I could buy chapbooks by authors that I liked, donate to presses that really seemed to be going the extra mile (out of their own pockets) etc etc.   In short, I could be both a published writer and a patron of the arts.

No one expected to make big bucks (unless they were all lying to me) off of what we were doing.  The writers were happy to get published, the publishers seemed to accept the fact that most of their publishing costs were coming out of their own pockets.  No one EVER said “Hey, I’ve got this ass-kicking new zine I want to put out, but everyone needs to send me $3 with their submissions!”

So what the fuck?

I sifted through the detritus of the internet last week, found 15 likely-looking places to send work to, then got to the “submit your work” part of their Submittable accounts, and found out that 12 of these places charged money for submissions.  A total of $33.  In many instances, a limit of only 3 poems per submission.   

So, no preaching here, I’d just like to take a second to call BULLSHIT.  Feel free to explain to me the logic of these fees (WITHOUT telling me that “someone” has to subsidize the cost of a Submittable account, because that’s another BULLSHIT call).  And then feel free to be ignored.  It’s one of my best things.

THE FINE ART OF DYING YR WHOLE LIFE

BE A MAN, KILL YOURSELF

https://www.amazon.com/Bastard-Faith-John-Sweet/dp/1973919311/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1536537894&sr=8-1&keywords=bastard+faith

https://www.amazon.com/nation-assholes-guns-John-Sweet/dp/1519541341/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1536537909&sr=8-1-fkmr0&keywords=a+nation+of+assholes+w%2F+guns

I AM THE DESTROYER, YOU'RE GONNA MAKE MY DAY

Change of pace, an issue of a poetry zine

featuring my photography,

not my butterfly rainbows and kitten kisses:

SAINTS NAILED TO CROSSES IN UPSTATE FIELDS

THE PLACE TO BE:

https://flutterpress2009.blogspot.com/2016/04/new-release-approximate-wilderness-by.html

REDUCED TO MUD AND SPLINTERED BONE

PROFOUND PROFUNDITIES AT 

THE RYE WHISKEY REVIEW:

http://ryethewhiskeyreview.blogspot.com/2018/09/infinite-light-in-kingdom-of-blind-by.html

WHY YOU MEAN NOTHING TO ME

DEAD MAN SEES GOD, TURNS AWAY

TIME, WITHOUT SPACE