6/6 funny ways

An old track I did a few years ago, and forgot about posting. It’s a bit long ish (for me anyway)

.funny ways 

6/1 Black Scootie

I got a cat. I wanted boxes of shit in my house, so I got a cat. We can’t figure out what to name him, possibilities:  1) wainscoting

2) Mr. Schmitz 3) Black Scootie.

Here another hit

6 \1

5/20 gurgles and farts

I havent posted for a while…oops. I could give a million excuses. But I haven’t been feeling the creative juice lately. But that changed with me buying a sweet new toy: A Korg Polysix. I’ve been repairing it for a month, cleaning the circuitry, trying to figure out why the voltage is screwed up, etc. I ended up getting lucky and buying a “parts” Polysix from a store in Portland for 30 bucks. But now that its together, it has a few problems: two of the voice sections are screwed up, the resonator is also off, and makes an absolutely hideous screeching noise in some patches. And the lfo that regulates the arpeggiator vacillates wildly. It’s unsteady and temper-mental, and its better that way. David Bowie said that one of the reasons he liked synths so much was because they weren’t made by musicians; They’re made by engineers who are trying to solve a problem. Synths are capable of being tweaked to do things they’re not supposed to do, to make all sorts of gurgles and farts, when all you were looking for was a pretty organ tone. A person who plays guitar and decides to make a guitar, would end up making a fine guitar, but it would only make normal guitar sounds. Engineers who made old synths were trying to approximate what it is that a  piano player would want, without being piano players. The chasm between what you think people want, what you end up giving them, and what they actually wanted. The inbetween is the beauty of it, and its also the thing that causes wars. But not in the case of synths: most of the happy accidents were happy. And people who play synths are usually total pussies.

5 2

4/12 Denver

Here’s some noise, and a broken delay pedal. This isn’t necessarily my best work, but I did mix it on my laptop speakers. 

I was in Denver, Co. last week to attend a surgery (not for me). Denver is weird, has excellent weather, and too much driving.

download denver

Kevin

My nerves are raw tonight. I need to tell you about my step dad. The echos of my past are raining upon my soul. How can you quantify one person’s influence on your life? I speak in a grand and flowery manner, and he deserves that.

Before I became an adult, before I became… what I am now, I had a friend who was so kind to me. Kevin was a rock, man. He was my dad. We were all trying to figure out how to make this situation work (Single mom, me the kid, Kevin).  I remember when I was young, really young (about 5), and we were living on Sherman st. and we were having dinner. I had a favorite glass that had Dino from the Flintstones on it, and he got up from the table and knocked it over and broke it. He was really upset(upset with himself), and I got up from the table and walked over to him and said something to the effect of ” It’s ok, It’s only a glass.”      And he started crying, and he said “Well, thank you, Josh.”  I never knew what that meant, but this has stuck with me my entire life, one of those jarring things that sticks into the ribs of your soul, that you’ll always remember. And I still don’t know what it means, but it’s a point of pure empathy that he had for me, and I for him. Why was he crying? Why was I crying? Why am I crying when I write this? We took a trip once that lasted for 2 months, which If you’re 5, is about 2 years. We went to California. We took several trips to Montana. We went to Arizona. We went to the Grand Canyon. We went on bike rides.  I puked on his jeans in the four corners.

We went everywhere, man, we went everywhere. For about 7 years in my life, I had that thing of family, and he was the glue.  The last time I saw him we went on a trip, in the spring of 2008. He came out to Oregon with my little sis, we went to the coast, and we were there during low tide. We were running on the rocks during low tide (which he cajoled us into doing), and we encountered a group of sea lions. He and I ended up in between the females and the males (Which is bad luck, and fairly dangerous). I was trying to impress upon him the fact that we needed to get out of there(Actually ,I think I said ” uhh….I think we should get the fuck outta here, man), and he said , as he was laughing “ya, this isn’t too smart!” But damn if he wasn’t having fun, so we walked back to the beach, and then promptly went to a more dangerous tidal pool a few miles down the road. 

I miss that man, mostly. I mourn the time we never had in between the Dino glass and his death. But I’m happy, happy that he had people in his life to run around the dangerous tidal pools with.  I  was worried that he didn’t have that. But …awh, one of those things where you’re wrong, chief. I miss that I didn’t see the in between. The in between is all that matters. All we are is the in between.

Kevin had model trains in his basement, and I tore the track down, so my little sister could live their, and make the house something new, for her. So here’s some music I wrote with trains.

Model trains 8-19

3 27 A ≤ B

3 10 tent city

There’s this place in Portland called Dignity Village. It’s an encampment for homeless people out by the airport, and they’ve created a little society out there where they can live together , have their own political structure, and generally pool their meager resources to help one another.  It’s more of a place for the “permanent” homeless, rather than the temporary I’m guessing.  But what about the new tent cities popping up all over the country? Sacramento has a new one, Miami has a new one. Mostly people who lost their jobs and houses in the past few months. Is this the future of the suburbs for america? Tent cities and vacant houses in the middle of nowhere? Slumburbs? America can be a bitch sometimes, you know?

It’s a hard lesson to learn, especially if you’ve bought into it your entire life: This country isn’t supposed to give a fuck about you. That’s not it’s job. It’s job is to get your money. And I don’t mean the government, I mean the people who live here, the strangers around you, they don’t give a fuck about you. It’s your job to find allies, people you can trust and enjoy, and to convert some of those strangers into allies who won’t fuck you.

It’s a difficult job acquiring people, especially when people you trust screw you over. I learned to not trust a good portion of my family when I was young(which I recently forgot, like an idiot). Just because they’re related to you doesn’t mean they give a shit about you or are there for you. You have to go with your gut a lot of times, and try to find out who cares, and build your own system of people.  You gotta build your tent city of outcast friends and homeless step siblings and stray-dog people, and the remnants of families poisoned and fractured by money and lies. Cause were all just bums in tent city.

download 3-10 tent city

2-16 The Soft-ons

I’m like most people; I can sit around and think of  terrible/awesome band names all day long. The Dildon’ts, I think, would be a great punk band name. Also, how come no one has ever been called The Soft-ons? Especially if you we’re in the 40-50 year old range, this is the band name for you.

Jens and I used to play this game where we would try and combine the least famous part of a band with another. An example: Hall&Oates + Huey Lewis and the News= Oates and the News. I think the best we did was Morris Day and the Range.

I recently got a new computer, so this track was all mixed on laptop speakers. Terrible/awesome.

The Soft-ons 216

2/09 hostage situation

sorry no post for a while; I was in my hometown of Denver, Co. I had to help my sister clean out my step-dad’s house, who died from cancer a few months ago. It was the house where I grew up, so it brought back a lot of memories for me, but also some regret that I didn’t really re-connect with him as I got older. Such is the case with fractured families. I did, however, find my old soccer jersey and shin guards (Washington Park Invaders, baby!), and some great photos of me when I was young.

I did some thinking on my neighborhood. When I was living there, it was a bit rougher than it is now. We had a hostage situation across the street, when some guy killed his wife and then came to his brother’s house. Ours was the house across the street from the hostage drama, and we were woken at 3 am by cops who told us to go out the back door and down the alleyway. We then went to our friends house where I got to watch speed racer and miss half a day of school, so I was psyched. Turns out the guy didn’t take anybody hostage, he just got drunk and passed out.

So it was good to see the neighborhood got a bit nicer. That said, Denver is a town of Lobos. Lots of young men looking to get into fights abound. In the span of 4 days, I got fucked with 3 times just walking down the street. A question: If you say “Nice hat, you faggot.” Should I take that to mean you like my hat? I got it at H&M, and it is a nice hat, so thanks. I believe it was about 12 bucks.

2-9 hostage situation

125 local affiliate

In Portland, we have a paper called the Mercury. It’s one of the weekly alternative papers here; Portland is so alternative that we have 2 alternative weeklies. Anyway, in the paper, there’s a section called “I, anonymous”, where you get to anonymously post rants about whoever is bugging you. Not surprisingly, most of the rants are about either a)you work at/go to a coffee shop/ bar and you have angered me or b) I work at/ go to a coffee shop/ bar and you have angered me. Also not surprisingly, the vitriol is mostly aimed at “hipsters,” though I still haven’t figured out who they are. I recently posted an “I, anonymous” on the message board (making my confession here rather un-anonymous). Printed below:

I don’t wanna have sex with your kids

Hey new mom, I’m just having a jog through the park. I have every right to be in this public space, same as you. This isn’t just a park that overprotective parents can come to; It’s also a park for regular people who jog. Look, I know you watch a lot of Dateline and The View and shit, so you think that any adult male within 100 yards of your kids is going to try and have sex with them, but trust me: some of us are just here for a jog. You needn’t corral your kids in a hushed, panicky tone whenever I run next to the playground. Honestly, it’s probably husband #2 or your weird cousin who will have sex with them, not me. My jogging routine just involves……. jogging. I haven’t the time, nor the desire to have sex with children in the park. The next time you see an adult male jogging in the park, please try and resist the urge to pull your child off of whatever apparatus they’re playing on so you can make them “safe”. It’s our public park, too, and we don’t want to have sex with your kids.

I recently read some of the follow up comments, and some people were mad. Apparently, I was wrong about people going to parks. People mostly go to have sex with kids. I was told that I needed to watch the news sometime, and that kids are getting abducted by the thousands (I should get cable, because I guess they don’t carry the kid-sexing on the local affiliate). Also, I needed to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes before I judged them. Thanks for clearing that up.

I used some bleepy pinball samples in the track today. I hope you likey

125 local affiliate