Blogging Fuyu Persimmon, Song IV -- The Things I Didn't Do

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This is one of two songs from this collection of songs that feature Deadman Turner on lead guitar.

This one is exploring the self destructive side of my imagination. Once again, we return to the feeling of being trapped, and the cost of getting free. What do you think: is the feeling at the ending of this song scary or hopeful?

Blogging Fuyu Persimmon, Song III -- Bills Come Due

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Kind of a party song, with the requisite "I'm doing something I shouldn't" edginess. It's a Bakersfield-style rave-up that would have been at home on Trax on Wax 4, at least that's how I intended it. It's definitely a Friday night song!

Blogging Fuyu Persimmon. Song II -- 2007

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This song is central to the experience of the record. Minimalist 2-chord structure meant to evoke a kind of desperate monotony. Amped up, charging around in a too-small cage is how I pictured it. The solo was intended to evoke an ambulance siren. Lyrically, it seems like a series of random observations, but isn't. It's a certain brand of punk rock broadside, following the tradition of Iggy & The Stooges (1969 1970), The Clash (1977) and others. As I believe is true with those songs, the observation points both ways: both out into the world and inside me. I envision a sort of shell game. As I examine each factoid, whether cosmic or completely mundane or somewhere in between, I was asking myself, "Is this it? Is this why I am so full of angst?" Connect the dots, indeed.

Blogging Fuyu Persimmon. Song I -- Goodbye

I am blogging the tracks for my 2007 RPM Challenge album Fuyu Persimmon. I am really proud of this record, and have since realized that I was struggling with major life issues that informed the songwriting and the performances.


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I'm starting with "the single." This was the track that was played at the RPM meet-up in Portsmouth that year, and represents the project's strengths very well.

RPM is a challenge to write ten songs (or make 35 minutes of music) in a month and record them. I set myself up to succeed, and this is the only time I managed it. I defined a band sound for myself with specific instrumentation: guitar, bass, and lap dulcimer. The drums were all apple loops, which come with garage band, the program I used to record all of my music at macidol. I intentionally used my second-best instruments to force me to play simply and directly: my Yamaha beater that has band stickers all over the top, my acoustic bass guitar that has the action set 'way too high, and a dulcimer that was barely playable then -- I struggled to keep it in tune and often didn't succeed -- and is totally unplayable now.

This song sets the tone for the project thematically as well. Full of regret but still looking forward. There were some goodbyes I needed to say, to people who were no longer around, to dreams I was no longer reaching for.

Screed

I am feeling more than a bit cynical this morning. It looks to me like, instead of using this lame duck session to put through as much of a rational, forward-looking social agenda as possible before the end of the session, or at least fighting for some of the changes we need, the Democrats in congress and the administration are going to spend this valuable time compromising with a majority in one of two houses in congress that isn’t even seated yet. This galls me. I am beginning to think some very cynical things. Here are the two main points:

1.) If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal.
2.) The Democratic Party is the sucker wing of the Corporate Oligarchy.

If the Dems were a serious party looking towards the future, it is my belief that they would be fighting tooth and nail for certain specific things:

1.) Making sure that the world will not be an ecological nightmare when our grandchildren are our age
2.) Finding ways to end America’s status as the world’s leading incarcerator of its own citizens
3.) Changing the tax structure so that we are not in debt and so that we are able to maintain and improve out crumbling infrastructure.
4.) Creating a British-style National Health Service
5.) Reducing our military to rational levels. We have been on “war footing” since World War 2 and we can’t afford it any more. We cannot afford any more foreign adventures that cost in lives and resources to the extent our two current ones do.
6.) Dismantle the TSA. NO POLICE STATE!!!

We do all of things my above list opposes for the benefit of the corporatocracy. We do not support our people, we support the rich. The Democrats talk a mediocre game and deliver basically in the range of weak tea to absolutely nothing.

A committed left would not tolerate being represented by lackeys.