Click images for desktop size: "Livewires" I need a new rut. An every day good old fashioned rut.
Brainless, thoughtless repetition of motion. In there is the best chance of dreams.

I have decided that Jack White (White Stripes and The Raconteurs) and Matt Skiba (Alkaline Trio) are the 21st Century Guitarists.
White has made the electric guitar a solo instrument again and gotten away from the "little symphony" that was crowding to the forefront. On stuff like "Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground" I think he redefined the guitar sound as much as Hendrix did in the 60's. He doesn't have pure speed but his choice of chords and novel finger picking styles blaze some pretty awesome trails. And his riffs are fun to try and copy!
Skiba has remade power chords and fuzz tone rhythm something special again. I thought "Crimson" (his last album,) was just all right. Lately I've been blown away, especially with the guitar work on "Burn". Its impressive when he performs it with the band but on the solo - demo track it is unwordly. When you take into account that this is with a freshly broken wrist - he's a skateboarder, and skaters always have a special place - and his retake on the Dunlop Baby Wah is nothing less than magnificent. He can match Johnny Ramone for speed (and Ramone had the blazzingest right hand I've ever seen or heard. I mean those riffs he played were ALL downstrokes) but he reaches past him in delicacy and power. He plays full barres and not powerchords, avoids diochromatic chords and never touches a triad.
When he plays acoustic its more a pleasant surprise than a revelation.

Waiting to get another foster puppy. Not only do I love the dogs around but my puppy thinks the foster dogs make the best toys ever.
She helps quiet them and she never plays meanly or cruelly with them. It impresses me that my puppy will run at them but never over them, and if they have no interest in playing with her, she finds it easy to just walk away and come bother me.

Just heard that the little penny saver paper here is going to publish a little article I wrote about role models for children. Its about justice, freedom, about sports and about responsibilities to the community. The first item I don't really know but like to pretend I understand it as well as the next guy. Who understands freedom, but now I've got my whacky definition published so I can point to it as a black and white fact. Sports I know about and responsibilities to the community is nebulous enough.
I get ten bucks.
I can use it.

And people keep asking me what my fave all time number 1 song is . . . which is not easy. I think a good song is one you can identify with; that fits your mood. A great song sets your mood.
The old guys like Mahler and Berlioz worked for this. Old Scriabin gave his entire life to this - he thought a song would totally change the world.
I've spent the past few days thinking about this. The main thing I realize is that there are a hell of a lot of great songs out there. How can you not like that?
I also realized that the song that sticks its nose out of the water and reflects the sun is one that is going to tic people off when I name it.
I think a pop song is written for a purpose. Its supposed to exist in all consuming fury for a while, shoot up to number 1, impose itself on our conscious and then fade away. One week you play it 15 times a day, over and over again just in shock about the awesomeness of it and then you get it pushed out of your head for the next slice of material emotions. You hear it a few years later and it brings back that time of your life and makes it a good time in your life, happiness with a wisp of sadness.

Click images for desktop size: "Different" by Conscar I like that. I like pop.
The song I think about is a song that ended a movie. The more semiotic critics realized that the song codified and raised the movie up to a different level. Of course the critics who noted that were so un-hip that they thought Hal Ashby and Warren Beatty had commissioned this song because it fit the mood and expressed the forlorn hope and giddiness of an age that "Shampoo" was trying to crystalize.
About 15 years later a comic strip used the song to devastating effect. "Doonesbury" had a character dying of AIDS. He was clinging on to life because they were finally releasing the album on CD. He passes away while the lyrics from the song come from the speakers. He dies happily. Its the only time I can think of when a song was used in a comic, and the only time that a 4 panel comic strip managed to make me misty eyed. You maybe have figured it out in which case you won't feel insulted when I tell you that it doesn't matter where these guys ended up. It only matters for that one moment when for 3 minutes they filled the world with happiness. Its the Beach Boys' "Wouldn't It Be Nice".

This is what you have to put up with when I have no football or baseball to dwell on.

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