Tuesday, September 25, 2018

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.


Image result for new low album
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 2nd 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 Image result for new low albummake 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.

Image result for ones and sixesBut 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.

Saturday, September 22, 2018

Sunday, September 16, 2018

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


Saturday, September 15, 2018

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…..










Wednesday, September 12, 2018

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.....















Monday, September 10, 2018

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