A man?

How would they say I wasn’t a man?

I’ve got a truck, two sports cars, plasma tv, and an ulcer.  I’ve got ED, two mistresses, a cooler full of Coors, and satellite service.  I’ve got sons who toss footballs, girls taking penalty kicks, nephews hitting homeruns, and gymnast nieces. I’ve got the jobs: CEO to trashman, plumber,paper distributor, East Coast representative.  I went to school. Ivy  League. commuter/community hell, school of hardknocks.

I’ve been Serpico, Scarface, I’ve been a dirty Rat. I’ve got friends in crawlspaces.  I kick it NASCAR, in sports bars, in sauna rooms, and studio apartments.  I subscribe to Sports Illustrated, GQ, Time, and People, too. I practice religion, Christian Man.  Real man as I do love Jesus.  But if I’m reincarnated, I’ll bring my 40 virgins back to name them under the sun.

I’m a man. I like country, rocknroll, R&B.  I beat up homos with my boots, defend chicks with my fists, protect my mama from sidewalk and wise cracks.  I’ve goneto war, put copier #2 back on-line, fought the good fight, cold-called every cold case and squared off with wevery hard case, how could they say I’m not a man?

I’m a stuck man. Looking at blinking cursors, blank page to infinity, empty ideas and dead ends, careless start stops and restoration.  From film to nation public radiom from television to word.  I’ve looked in the bedroom, living room, rumpus room, under the couch, in the mattress, under the pillow, six feet under.

 

 

My Man Skip

Skip was my former pot dealer. He’s dead now, casualty of an evening shootout with police forces less than 200 yards from his suburban house.

Skip liked to talk to me. Anybody who’s bought pot illegally (which is everybody I know) discovers that in addition to the illicit transaction taking place, there may be involved a period of polite subservience, bonding,  in order to obtain the sought substance. I’d bend the knee and dutifully listen to Skip’s monologues because his environment was so threatening.

At Skip’s home, I’d ring the bell and after a second, he’d holler for me to come in.  I’d open the door despite the drooling pit bull and bulldog raring and clawing at the glass storm door. “Nice doggies,” I’d soothe his nipping hellhounds as they sniffed at my balls. Skip would beckon me to his kitchen or his bedroom and I’d sit across from the heavyset man with a chinstrap beard and shorn head.

He kept ounces of pot in mason jars and he’d set the containers before me so he could name the various strains he had available that week. As a smoker, I’m seasoned but as a connoisseur I’m a dirt roach neophyte (If it’s green, smoke it and see). I’d ask him to hook me up with whatever blitzed him the most and he would assemble a mélange baggie, the suicide option that resulted in dizzying highs and substantial headaches.

If we were in his bedroom, he would have You Tube open on his PC.    He’d ask if I’d seen this video about honey badger and oh shit, you gotta see this. I’d wear the bemused smile of feigned interest and effuse when it seemed appropriate.

I tend to play along with the guy with a bunch of guns. Skip was a firearm enthusiast if there ever was one. Here was one former felon who sloughed the shackles of federal law for he so loved his weapons. Opposite his computer screen on a table was a disassembled AR-15 and various rounds of ammo, strewn like a kid who was building a Lego tower but got distracted midway.

He offered for me to touch and admire his functional guns. I’m not a gun guy because I’m also not a guy who stands too close to high altitude ledges.

While he would weigh out my order, we’d smoke a little bit and Skip would espouse conspiracy. Some, I could appreciate. Illuminati-like overlords pulling the strings is a good one because I enjoy how it totally overestimates human competence. Others, like the gov setting up straw men tax foils went over my head and I also just didn’t give a shit about financial scandal. He’d give me free legal advice regarding the handling of cops and fourth amendment procedures (basically, you tell a cop “No. I don’t consent to ‘whatever.’ Yeah right. Don’t tase me.). He’d dial up vids featuring Russian FPS controlling machine gun mounted drones with an ipad and he’d forlornly warn, “This shit is coming. And when it does you know what to do,” he’d pat the presumed holster under his armpit.

Meanwhile, I would nod. Nod at crazy and maintain eye contact and hope that crazy dosen’ t believe you are condescending to them. The problem with US drug laws is that it puts nonviolent waster voidoids like me right in the jaws of pro criminals like Skipper. He and I had virtually no association other than the drug dealer/drug abuser symbiotic relationship. Pot isn’t a gateway drug. It’s just the gateway to shady motherfuckers who have embraced outlaw status and will sell you pills that’ll make you feel drunk.

The process of obtaining my meager supply of marijuana was needlessly drawn out and colored by the personality of Skip. I utilized his services for nearly six months. He maintained his connect and despite my uneasiness around his deadly peripherals, I continued to return to his guard dog survivalist compound located in the placid incorporated township of Redacted.

The second to last time I saw Skip, he instructed me to meet him in the parking lot of a grocery store a mile from his house. I waited for him in my car, eyeing my phone and scanning for police. He pulls over in his white Saab. He nodded at me and I got in his car. We U-turned out of the parking lot in the direction of his house. He explained that with all the motherfuckers rolling through lately, this way is just better. Hey, I’m all for discretion. He clicks the button of his automatic garage door opener. It shuddered upward and he parked us in.

Inside, the routine was basically the same. I pushed his beasts down and kneaded their sweaty haunches. Skip tells me he’s in the middle of Glenn Beck’s book. Though I’m impressed he’s reading a ‘book’ It occurs to me that I would buy weed from a Nazi. I’m seeing a man unhinged.

Skip was feeding his crazy with a continuous news cycle. His theories were encouraged by the restless internet, each rabbit hole leading to another, larger hole, until he got way down in the six mile borehole of despair. He dreamt of cultivating fields of weed in the rural country, maybe leader of a righteous militia or sponsoring one. He believed they were coming for us and for an hour, I went along with it because I wanted to get home with my weed so I could listen progressive British ambient-step on weed.

As he drove me back to my car, we talked about David Koresh. Mainly, because he referenced a Waco if police happened to interfere with him. I asked him if he remembered the Branch Davidians because I remembered vividly the standoff that took place. It had been on Channel One in school and we were about the same age. He frowned grimly and said, “I fucking remember that bullshit. That same shit is happening now. The shit is coming down.”

He took me back to my car in the grocer’s parking lot and I drove away, relieved. Over the months, Skip had said unsettling things to me but most of it, to my ears, fell in the camp of bullshit. Skip was full of machismo and shit talk because he was an expert. Experts spend a lot of time explaining shit to people who don’t understand and sometimes gross hypotheticals are required to illustrate a point. Despite his cache of undoubtedly illegal weaponry, I honestly felt that Skipper was a mostly harmless drug baron protecting his supply by deterrence, real and assumed.

I had become weary of it if not wary. I wanted another connect to come along, something easier and less charged by dangerous association. Once Skip escorted me to his home because he feared that the traffic around his place might be incriminating, I felt I was treading close to a line that could have disastrous consequences for myself. I told all my friends how nuts my pot dealer was. We’d shake our heads and smoke and acknowledge how fucked up some people are.

I never had a personal epiphany regarding Skipper and how I was to disassociate myself from his services because this was the last time I saw Skip:

http://youtu.be/JJ5gb2bpAyc

Skip loved dashboard cams.

Bisection: Dean Blunt/Dirty Beaches

DEAN BLUNT: THE REDEEMER

DIRTY BEACHES DRIFTERS/LOVE IS THE DEVIL

Bisection

Back when I had unspooled audio tape draped on my ceiling and walls, I had the kind of time afforded to one who could spend the time hanging tape as decor.  What appeal did the intestine links of Kris Kross singles flapping lazily in the smoke ring breeze have, what did it signify to me?  Splayed against a white wall, the tendrils sorta resembled A snapshot of static drawn in through the antenna of my color tv. If I held a cigarette to the end of the tether, the cellophane would ignite and burn up to the ceiling as a fuse.  WARNING:DO NOT TRY WITH VHS TAPE.  Don’t try with any tape.

I could really listen to a record then.  Or cassette.  Really dig into the thing, live in it.  Memorize the lyrics.  Act out the lyrics.  Yes, this is something to do. the Fuckin Wall Side A Side B one tape.  Ignoring the robotic arms of the boxy three disc CD Changer because I only had a dub.  First world problem.  I’d sit rapt and listen to the whole damn thing after school, the sunlight draining from the room as I descended deep into the thin ice and fascist wormfood of rock star hell.  The anguish I can’t even fuck these groupies cause I’;m so high, you can lip synch that and rock back and forth like the frantic rocking of a Pink Floyd mental patient or how Scott Weiland went fetal clutchy fists during Creep Unplugged.  But the big moment, of course, was “the Trial.”  When I listened to the trial I had to stub out my cigarette because my vigorous gesturing and quasi Kabuki choreography was liable to come into contact with the aforementioned tape and burn my mom’s house down.  I’d seen the cartoon, too, so I knew how to impersonate Roger Water’s little kinks.  I could put a hand on my hip playing the spurned ex-wife because Roger was doing the heavy lifting by singing like a chick.  Then the sneering headmaster, wasted potential crazee, the final admonishment of a defecating judge, man that shit had some life to it!  TEAR DOWN THE WALL!

I’m pretty dense, too.  I couldn’t figure out if he commits suicide or just accepts the crazy.  Ambiguous.  Better listen to it again. And that loop continued for a couple of months when I fake played my Squire to Portrait of an American Family and so on into oblivion.

I feel like Dean Blunt (THE REDEEMER) might have little moments like this too, before the skills and talents fully manifested or the expressive mode was unknowable at the time.  Blunt has progressed through a recent succession of records each with a different flirtation of style in the sphere of electronic dub.  The first record I heard was BLACK IS BEAUTIFUL.  The tracks are named numerically and the cover art is the logo of EBONY magazine.  Pitchfork named “2” best new music and it’s the track that I dig the most, too.  At 2:14 it flirts with my definition of even being a song (my metric is the length of “I, Me, Mine “from Beatles Anthology Three).  It sounds cheap to describe Inga Copeland’s  singing as “druggy” or “syrupy” but that’s where it lumbers in that semi-conscious prom queen kind of way.

On THE NARCISSIST II ,which may be one of my favorite album titles ever, cause it’s only slightly more clever than a debut act releasing GREATEST HITS (cause what’s better than being a narcissist? Being 2 of em.) Dean Blunt gives into narcissism and sings.  He can’t really do it, but that’s never stopped anyone and shouldn’t.  Here he conducts scotchguard one-acts THE POD style, distorted shrieks and pouty laments behind a crusty distorted effect.  It’s the kind of chronological and free edited  sound of tapes left on to brap or for delay experiments to write themselves.

Now his new one, THE REDEEMER, is Blunt having the confidence of a real narcissist adds the grandiose treatment, sound movie Pink Floyd/Roger Waters style.  His vocals come through clearer, reminiscent of Rog but still distorted and disaffected like David Thrussel of Snog.  The beats are incredible when present, satisfying like early DJ Shadow and groove is fantastic and he fucks with harp glissando and piano solo for flourish. This does feel like Blunt’s widest palette. He plays the joke a little on the nose withthe angelic simulated by organ chorals, but when there’s a spiritual dude like D’EON already laying down that kind of thing, it plays a little light, especially for a record you’re not sure is LAUGHING AT YOU.The album art depicts hands folded in prayer, but it doesn’t feel like redemption and smacks of esigesis  Like with THE NARCISSIST II, it kind of feels like he’s mocking me and making good shit at the same time. And someone would only call it shit because it feels so unfinished and that kind of verbal barb would be just the kind of thing to provoke a reticent man to peek over the edge.  Blunt throws in the vocal samples (confused woman leaving a rambling message, ocean waves(I picture the low sine of a west coast gangster contemplating the water), New Year’s Eve and the bells.  There’s a movie for this somewhere like My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult or an art(y) film like THE WALL.  The actual REDEEMER is Joanne Robertson’s vocal on the straightforward  “Imperial Gold” but even this recalls the pastoral folk of “Nobody Home.”  THE WALL references probably aren’t fair, but the thing feels like the vibe that record pulled off: Ego run amok surrounded by devil womens and just get me a fucking Steinway so I can write this songsuite already.  I always liked how Floyd’s “Nobody Home” ends with an unfinished lyric, but it was a song by my definition.  Blunt’s are short scribbles that I think will become way more interesting in extrapolated context like punctuating two unconnected strands, a rapskit between a random playlist that spit out Norman Greenbaum and is queuing up Slowdive.

Which, incidentally, came to mind as I was listening to “I dream in neon” on Dirty Beaches double DRIFTERS/LOVE IS THE DEVIL, the flatulent groove of “Spirit in the Sky” (and since I’m an atheist I like to imagine a Space Bus kinda like the Winnebago but trailing rainbow vapor trails like Magical Mystery Tour goin up to the spirit in the sky where I wanna go when I die) mixed with the dirge guitar of SOUVLAKI.  Eno produced a song on that Slowdive record, and Dirty Beaches definitely dig some Eno  My first hint?  They have the fucking word “Beach” in their name which everyone knows is Eno’s natural habitat when the cycle completes reverts into landcrab abyss mode (read your appendices).  “Casino Lisboa” is Alan Vega on MY LIFE WITH THE BUSH OF GHOSTS which is as awesome as it sounds.  The washing machine pulse propels DRIFTERS with the kind of clenched teeth rigidity that Suicide records invoke, but fortunately Frippertronics are allowed to unfold over the mire and consistently burrow themselves into bubbling volcanic pools or insect infested cessbogs.  The Tension relents somehere around LOVE IS THE DEVIL but where the split is located is not entirely clear.  Probably right around “Greyhound at Night” where despondent saxophones honk over a Phil Collins-esque cymbol meditation.  I like“This is not my City”’s Lesliespun koifish piano splashes that reside in what Lester Bang’s called the (in reference to ENO) “Still waters that don’t necessarily run deep” which is pretty okay criticism for when these kinds of pieces veer too far to the cinematic/ passive .

Further tape manipulation is explored, but in the touch and go manner afforded the time to listen to these records, to really get inside them. It works as a synthesis of Eno’s DISCREET MUSIC, in which summation is ok.  Ambient records, beside falling asleep to, by definition aren’t supposed to have the buzz of a DRIFTER and singletracks shouldn’t have to be listened to for 135 minutes in order to grasp them.  Mostly these pieces work because Dirty Beaches don’t seem to be directing a movie in the same fashion that Dean Blunt is.  This plays more like a Jonny Greenwood soundtrack.

The thing about The WALL, is that for all its glut and righteousness and disco appropriation (YES, another brick in the wall pt.2 sounds like a fucking disco song), it was largely built of song type songs.

THE WALL worked consistently for fans because they could act out those silly dramatic scenes whilst wearing a cape in under the Xmas lights of their bedrooms (there were dozens of us).

Blunt works largely with the literal but he’s too obtuse or stubborn or smart to let us in on the joke.

Beaches, when not cutting you in the subway, are drawing silent silver planes in their faraway Mosquito Coast brewer’s lagoon.