“Say it forget it…Write it, regret it!” Judge Judy
Honestly, I hate writing blogs…on my phone…while driving 80 mph. My mind only desires these fresh song lyrics popping into my head 24/7:
“I’m a Psychedelic Junkie/ Brass monkey…that funky monkey…” The Muse continues, “I’m a psychedelic junkie/ He said You are fired loser flunky/ Sipping on purple stuff rollin up skunky…Soleil Moon Frye…Punky…what else rhymes with junkie?”
I AM A SONGWRITER, NOT A BLOGWRITER! Performing these songs to you (because I Love You!) is my definite purpose in life. Setting my effects pedals (Macrodose, Life Pedal, MXR EVH Phaser, Boss Loop Station, Q-Tron, Boss Delay 3) through my Sunn Solarus (cranked up to 10) amp (which I drove across the State of Florida to obtain) is our Love Supreme battlefield artillery. The War is Not Over!
I have a new guitar being put together in Los Angeles as we speak! All that I care about right now, is performing these songs to you! And I will have that goal manifest this SUNNDAY 8-21-2022!
That being said, I have been performing (and will continue) my “Drone Metal Broadway Musical/ Stoner Rock Opera” titled, GOD IS MUSIC every Sun(n)day at the Barn. The Barn is an actual Barn in the Redlands at an outdoor venue/sculpture garden called Mt. Crowley. A sort of punk rock/noise art/Angry Deadhead community has been forming and this is wonderful. A young man was leading a conversation about Gucci Handelsman’s God Is Music after my recent performance there last Sunday. I asked him to please “nail that to a piece of paper and send it to me.” A few hours later, I received the following in my IG DM from him:
“The lyrics on God Is Music have a quality to my mind only comparable to cut-ups, a technique created by Brion Gysin and pioneered by William S. Burroughs, often using cut up pieces of paper or manipulated tape recordings to connect disparate or random words or sounds. Burroughs would say that what cut-ups revealed is not just what happens when you shove random words together, but that life itself was a series of cut-ups, seemingly chaotic streams of information coalescing into a discernible narrative. God Is Music is no different. Gucci will string together words that feel like you’re hearing a litany of experiences crashing together, it’s sometimes unclear who’s perspective he’s speaking from, he builds images that have weight, the stories themselves feel like he’s dragging a bag of intense experiences, like the Fool in the Thoth Tarot, pulling them out and syncing them together in an effort to make sense of them all. It sounds like a spiral. He tells me he wants to style what he’s doing after a Broadway musical, and I see it. It has the cadences of something like The Wall, where associative imagery is used to tell emotional truths, not stringing together a clear story, taking refuge in that wall of abstraction. The only difference here, is that these lyrics are not abstract at all. They are direct, as direct as could be. And behind all of these words is the wall of sound that Gucci Handelsman and his ensemble create. The Sunn O))) Amp and associated pedals that Gucci uses create a sound that shakes the barn at Mt Crowley. The sound is massive and imposing. It has at times filled me with intense anxiety and at others made me feel as if I’m dropping out of life. It is the kind of sound I’m dying to hear in a Cathedral or in the middle of the desert.
The Barn at Mt. Crowley is actually a stable, and the community of artists that gathers there is amongst the most adventurous I’ve seen in the last decade. There are few venues in South Florida who are willing to put up with the noise that gets created there. But everything flourishes in that space. There are very few sounds you can make there that will get some uppity sound guy or unscrupulous booking agent angry at you for daring to not sound like the Red Hot Chili Peppers or whatever. And sometimes when Gucci Handelsman performs, the audience and other acts are invited to perform in the ensemble, with whatever instruments may be around. This is the essence of music, this is how music is created: community, locality, effortlessness. Everybody there is the Grateful Dead. Real music is happening there. If you miss out it says more about you than it does about Mt. Crowley.
The Hooded Figures: The Hooded Figures is Nothingness emitting multiplicity, and Nothing is Eternal.
He then went on with an in-depth analysis of my hit song, “Grateful Dead Parking Lot.” However, he asked me to not publish that part of the DM in this blog.
SUNNDAYS AT THE BARN continues this Sunday, August 21, 2022 with: Rat Bastard, Calnepuelco, Hooded Figures, SBINF, and Gucci Handelsman. The Barn at Mt. Crowley is located at 14300 SW 192nd ST. 33177. Event is free and begins around 4:20PM. See you there!
