Linking us together. All “seven billion and counting” of us. Here is the irony, and that is usually the first thing that will slap you awake. Never before has the earth been trod upon by fourteen billion feet at once. (I know, it’s a rough estimate, but I figure for every unfortunate amputee who would reduce the number, there is some freak on the cover of the Enquirer who was born with three legs). Never have we had so many people, roads, modes of transportation, and sophisticated electronic, nearly magical devices to connect us. And yet we continue to pursue new ways of linking us up even more. What is with that?!

Joel Osteen and the legions of Jesus-for-a-modest-fee broadcast evangelists would say that we need to reconnect to Our Savior and this prevalent feeling of distance between us would vanish. Then we could all pray together in blissful spiritual lockstep, under the banner of the only God that really matters. Self-help gurus of both the secular (Tony Robbins, Dr. Phil, Dale Carnegie) and the New-Age/spiritual (Wayne Dyer, Deepak Chopra, Eckhart Tolle) stripe would assert that the feeling of separateness is an illusion which our egos perpetuate to keep us bound and which we possess the power to conquer through inner growth and strength, thus becoming truly connected. I’m sure there are elements of profound truth in both of these perspectives. Even the bumbling Homer sapiens occasionally stumbles upon a shard of truth while belly-flopping into the shimmering pool of Bud Light.

Here’s another possible explanation. There are too fucking many people. People need stuff to live. Stuff like food, water, parking spots. With the finite resources of the planet and the limits of the human-devised systems of production, stuff is becoming dearer by the day. Ask the animals, they’re going extinct with the speed of rising fuel prices. We can’t let them have their stuff and ours too. We were granted dominion after all. With so many people needing their stuff, stuff becoming harder to get, and people crammed into the urban density, every one of your neighbors is a potential stuff-stealer. You’ve got to keep the bastards at arms length. So we are now fortified, gated, dead-bolted and security-blanketed to the max. And we still want to wave to each other across the jail yard. I love it. The feeling of alienation isn’t necessarily only a perception, it’s a virtual reality which we have created. And it’s going to continue to accelerate, with more and more perceived need for creature comfort being muscled-out by dire survival-based actual need.

This posture that we now assume in an at least apparent need for self-protection is not a social problem. It’s not a spiritual dilemma. It is simply a natural reaction of organisms to change and pressure in their environment. It’s a giant science project. Too many rats in the cage, some are going to make it and some are not. And I’ll bet that them that does are the most aggressive, single-minded and self-focused. The Law of the Jungle, if you will, but not a moral quandary. Just is, that’s all. Not a problem. That’s natural. That’s God. I actually take great comfort in the thought that just as the cockroaches and alligators kept watch over the blue ball for hundreds of millions of years (a little less than a week by more conservative estimates), they are poised to take the job again, guarding our precious planet for another string of eons while Mother Nature cleans up after the last nasty house guests have shit in the parlor and bolted on the bill. She’ll need to call ServiceMaster for this one.

To those who find this viewpoint unduly cynical, I say this. Just remember when world globes where as flat as a flounder, disease was thought to be generated by demons, and people were developing the art of hacking off heretics’ heads. Yes, mankind has always had a flair for pomposity and smugness.  Science and religion have both played a role in this long-running farce, a veritable smash laugh-riot. As sure as we have been about everything, that’s exactly how wrong we have consistently been proven to be, even by our own measure. In spite of our Deep-Woods Off, I really think the mosquitoes are going to outlive us. Maybe we’re not so damned special after all.

I just learned a few hours ago that Koko Taylor, The Queen of the Blues, passed away today. A prototype of the contemporary female blues shouter, she had an illustrious career as a recording artist for both Chess and Alligator , which are at the top of the list of prolific and important blues record labels. When Koko started her career, she was a cleaning lady for rich white people, and by the time her career ended today, she had become a cultural icon, who was sought out for timely photo opportunities by, you guessed it, rich white people.

I am not going to pretend to have been a close friend of Koko, because I really wasn’t. I really resent the flurry of e-mails that profuse at moments like this, sent by perhaps well-intended fans who can’t wait to be the first one to e-mail the tragic news. It’s almost as if there’s this maudlin blues death watch. It may be intended as respectful, but it’s just plain creepy. In spite of that, Koko’s popularity and reputation are enhanced and illuminated by the intense interest in her passing. Tragic but simultaneously touching.

So at the expense of being perceived as a poseur I will say my piece. No, Koko and I weren’t close friends, but we knew each other. When I first started playing professionally back in 1974, I met Koko. I was a soaked-behind-the-ears kid, and she was an already established recording artist in her early forties. I was playing with Mighty Joe Young, who was a personal friend of Koko’s. Many a night we would play in town, usually at a North Side joint called the Wise Fools Pub (a bar which was among the first to regularly bring black blues artists to a mostly-white part of town). Koko would come in and Joe would call her up and we’d play Wang Dang Doodle and Koko would do her thing and the small but noisy crowd would erupt and there would be a standing ovation and suddenly we were in Carnegie Hall. I was impressed. Koko’s passing really hurts like many of the other deaths of blues players has not.

You see, I was “coming of age” as a player in the blues scene at that time back in 1974. Working for Joe Young and because of his friendship with Koko, I was afforded the opportunity to socialize with Koko and Pops (her husband at the time, until his passing). They were two people who treated me with kindness, attention, respect, and sincerity, all of the things a young new musician needs to flourish. I particularly recall a fabulous seafood gumbo dinner cooked by our bass player Cornelius’ wife Mildred. The food has never been equalled since, and the company included the Taylors. I will never forget that day. I even got the chance to drive to Koko’s house with Pops to pick up some whiskey for the party (it was Sunday and we were out of hooch). I was young, eager, full of the blues and delirious about my future in it. It was a time for me that was magical and can never be matched, only remembered. I view the death of Koko Taylor not only as a loss for the music which she championed. Her passing is also a personal loss in my life, again not because we were close, but because it is just another startling reminder of the accelerated passing of time. In addition, it recalls the passion and blissful ignorance of a young man  who was ecstatic about his newly found role in a music and culture which he found refreshing, exciting and comforting all at once.

I am not a religious man, as those of you who have visited this site before already know, but I know that Koko was religious. So, in respect and deference to whom she was, I will say this: God bless you Koko, and God rest your soul. Thanks for the music and the good times.

As a child, I lived in a blue-collar “ghetto.” I use quotation marks for a reason. I will not presume to compare my early middle-class environs to the real ghettos of the day, where race and its resultant economic imprisonment defined and destroyed the lives of the truly downtrodden. It’s just that such neighborhoods, which were shared with rats and roaches, gave birth to some of the most acclaimed culture the world has seen. Meanwhile, in the intellectual ghetto of the upwardly mobile ethnic rainbow (e.g. the Poles, Irish, Italians), little cultural advancement could be discerned, with the exception of the introduction of the Tall Boy six-pack. Real ghettos build character, intellectual ghettos build characters, or worse, caricatures.

I was raised among proud and decent people who had neither the education, interest nor budget to surround themselves with art. Sure, we had access to the Art Institute of Chicago and the magnificent world it contained, but that was a long bus ride from the Southwest Side of Chicago, and not too many of my contemporaries and peers frequented the silent halls of that monument to Western man’s eyes and soul. You would more likely find kids from the North Side and the North Shore roaming that institution on any given weekend, children of doctors and academics and professionals. In our world, walls were meant for pictures of the grand-kids, affordable “art” prints in hideous frames, and most importantly, crucifixes and pictures of the tortured Jesus. Even our Catholic school educators were much more concerned with saving our blemished souls from the evil sins of which seven-year-olds were capable than they were of expanding our consciousness and understanding of the world through its cherished artistic treasures. Our classes were more apt to be found gazing at the stations of the cross which defined the perimeter of our parish church interior than at a Monet or a Picasso or a Van Gogh. Besides, Van Gogh cut off his own ear (the sin of self-mutilation) and eventually took his own life (the big one, the mortal sin), so he was not worthy of a good Catholic kid’s attention or consideration. He was just a freak show and a sinner. This unfortunate state of affairs was one of the major factors in the rise in popularity of the Margaret Keane paintings, you know, the Kids With The Big Eyes. There is a certain irony involved here, paintings of kids with big eyes adorning the world of kids who were encouraged to have no eyes at all. Or to only have eyes for Jesus and his mom.

Now music, that was a different story. Any middle-class family could afford a hi-fi, and with it the multitude of available recordings. Everything from Mozart to Mantovani, from Basie to the Beatles, from 101 Strings to Ten Years After. There was the good (Duke Ellington), the bad (Trini Lopez) and the ugly (anything by Al Martino or Don Ho). The nature of LPs and 45s, the formats of the day, necessitated that the discs be flipped after 20-35 minutes of music. The advent of the automatic record changer provided a little more wiggle room, but also wreaked havoc on the fragile surfaces of your favorite albums. You could listen to the radio, but in addition to being confined to the DJ’s format, you also had to endure the endless stream of ads and public service spots. In short, the radio was for listening to while driving and washing the car, the hi-fi was for listening, period. As a result of this machine and its more primitive predecessors, listening to music became an event, a purposeful exercise of intention, a plan for the evening. In much the same way that attending a live performance focused your brain on the concert, so did the hi-fidelity and stereo recordings focus your energies on being both close to the machine and selective about your audio choices. When we became teenagers and discovered reefer as a listening aid, we not only had our aural senses enhanced to the edge of ecstasy, but we also had yet another reason to sit on our asses and do nothing but listen. This world is no more.

We now have digital mp3’s and millions of songs to choose from. What’s more, we can fit ten thousand of those songs on a device which is not large enough to be strategically placed so as to make Michelangelo’s David decent in mixed company. In our shirt pocket we can transport enough music to fill more waking hours than we actually can expect to live. I’m not going to launch into an old-fart rant about how much better things used to be. I have digital recordings, I record my weekly radio show in mp3 format and e-mail it in to the station where it is aired, and I consider the digital world to be an inevitable, if not wonderful, bit of technological progress. However, an unintended (I think) result of this plethora of sonic choices is that music has now become a soundtrack for our lives. It is no longer a focal point, just ambiance. Here’s the music I jog to, here’s the music I have sex to, here’s the music I use to drown out the crazy world. We can sequence the sounds of our choice and through a small, nearly invisible device, fill our heads, hearts and souls with the world of our own making. As Descartes wisely observed, I have ear buds, therefore I am.

The notion of music becoming a soundtrack for our lives precedes the advent of the digital age. We have watched so many movies and TV shows whose dramatic moments are telegraphed and enhanced by the soundtrack. What used to be the exclusive domain of people who professionally scored motion pictures with synchronized musical compositions, people like Elmer Bernstein, Andre Previn and, of course DeVol (who blessed us with the watery music of the TV show Sea Hunt), has now been ceded to merely a selection of already written pop tunes. So the disposable sounds of the day fill our ears as the actors on the screen either frolic in the park with their new love, or perhaps plunge a piece of rebar into some unfortunate’s eye socket. Romance or brutality, it’s all accompanied by the tunes du jour. And now, add mp3 players to the mix and, voila, we are all in a movie and we are all maestros.

My unsolicited suggestion: Pull out the ear buds when you are in the world. There are birds to hear, neighbors to talk with, laughter to join in on, and a thousand other sounds, all disconnected from the little device in your pocket. Besides, don’t you want to hear the screeching tires of the car which might hit you as you cross the boulevard? Imagine getting crushed by a speeding vehicle while the wrong song is playing. Hey, that’s my street-crossing song, not my last-one-I’ll-ever-hear song! Leave the musical score to the writers who work on the TV shows in Hollywood. They’re better at it anyway. Listen to some music when you have the time and the attention to spare. This isn’t a movie. This isn’t a show. This is life, and if you give it a chance, you might be surprised at what you’ll hear.

This point was driven home to me in a most startling way when I lived in a very tough neighborhood in Chicago some twenty years ago. I arrived home in my car to find a crowd in front of my building, news cameras, on the scene reporters, cops, firemen, ambulances, just like on TV. On the sidewalk at my apartment’s front gate lay the lifeless body of a young man, face down, his head surrounded by a pool of blood. It seems the poor guy had flashed the wrong gang sign to a couple of punks he encountered on the street. As we well know, this can be a death sentence. As I stared at the corpse, I no longer heard the sirens, the chatter, the speculation, the screams and the sobbing. It was just him, me, and silence. I remember thinking, where’s the soundtrack? There is no soundtrack.

It is indeed spring. It has sprung, or whatever it is that it does. The trout are hitting in the local lakes, the trees are budding out, the sun is warming the longer afternoons, shoots are coming out from whatever crevice they can, and women, no matter how homely they may look in January’s early-fading evening light, are gorgeous creatures of infinite wonder and promise. Birds are singing, hormones are flowing, pheromones are wafting, and dreams are blooming. If not for this ritual of rebirth, we would all be faced with the bleakest of landscapes and the darkest of nights. It is the annual reaffirmation of life on this planet, perhaps life in this universe. Even the lowliest of those judged undeserving in the world of man are graced again with this opportunity to become. Whatever the hell they please. Answering to no man, to no law, to no demand.

On this breezy and sun-basked day, I have resisted the inner voice which tells me to sit at a keyboard, piano or computer, and grind out the effort to be productive. Productivity is in the eyes of the beholder, and today is a day for simply giving thanks to whichever Lord one bows by embracing the truly holy trinity. The three B’s. Those would be Blues, Beer and Botany. You tell me what could be better (except, of course, for trout fishing) than a glorious afternoon in the garden, the dehydrating Colorado sun answered with chilled local brew and the soul and senses filled with the strains of Leadbelly singing songs long forgotten. Fingers full of dirt and half-empty bottles, ears full of real stories of life and love on this blue ball hurtling around a generous star. Goddamn! Pinch me! But please, don’t call me. Wait until tomorrow when I will undoubtedly answer the nagging call to abandon true connection and again pursue the means to keep the lights on, the beer cold and the CDs in the changer. Small price to pay for a day like today.

It’s difficult to write this, not for any reason other than my head is still spinning. I thought I had somewhat of a grip on what was going on in the news, you know, economic collapse, creeping socialism, War Without End on the road (coming soon to a location near you), etc, etc, etc. Suddenly, out of the dusty urban blight of our southern neighbor’s capitol comes: The Dreaded Swine Flu. Not just the DSF, but a pandemic! Immediately the “Look, I learned a new word today” legions of what passes for a free press in this country jump on the story, the fear, and the word. Add pandemic to the list of words which the “media” have mindlessly tossed into the lexicon: tarmac (once a lowly runway), impacted (when not used in reference to a molar), empowered (thanks, Oprah), ad nauseum. So now we have the story of the month, a new fear, and multiple sources of distracting misinformation. Excuse me, but from this less than lofty perch what I see is the goddamned flu!

Cooler heads, many of whom have medical diplomas hanging on their walls, point out that nearly 30,000 people die each year in America from the flu, or some virus which falls into this general category. Many of these victims are already weakened by chronic health problems, advanced or underdeveloped age, American diets, and a host of other immunity-defeating conditions. Along comes a virus, sets down beside us, and frightens Miss Couric away. Yes, but what of the staggering deathtoll in Mexico from this new invader? Let me venture an uneducated guess. Mix one part grinding poverty, one part urban overcrowding, two parts total lack of access to adequate medical information and health care, add mutated virus, stir, and serve. Muerte on a grande scale.

The hysteria is not restricted to our hemisphere. In this time of prolific international travel and instant electronic transmission of unsubstantiated “facts”, the advancement of hype and hyperbole knows no geographical boundaries or lingual limits. Nations of the world have united in their determination to turn what should be a non-story into the latest rage. Reports from the world’s capitols keep us aware of the count of new cases among each populace. Hosni Mubarak of Egypt has ordered the execution of every pig in the Land of the Pharaohs. The irony of the massive slaughter of animals whose meat is a religious taboo to the bulk of the citizenry is not lost.

Even our own president, who thus far has demonstrated a keen ability to discern fact from fantasy, is at a podium warning us to wash our hands and cover our mouths when we cough. Where have I heard that advice before? Thanks, O-Mama. I’ll cut some slack to the Commander-in-Chief, as he is also a politician who knows that when popular hysteria explodes, he must throw his two-cents in as an insurance policy against getting blamed for a microscopic mishap by Sean Hannity and his network of nattering nabobs of neo-con negativism (I love throwing bullshit back on the assholes who shat it in the first place).

So now, as most of us are struggling to figure out which crevice next month’s rent is going to ooze from, we have yet another boogieman to hide from under our collective bed. Maybe the government can save us, immunize us against the danger of this prickly porcine trespasser. As I recall though, the last time we undertook a massive immunization project to ward off this microbial menace (see swine flu, 1976), more people were paralyzed from the vaccine than died from the actual disease.

The saddest part of this whole episode, aside from it confirming our national gullibility, is the fact that once again, an innocent animal has been slandered by having its name attached to a perceived problem. When it’s time for a slab of hickory-smoked ribs, or a side order of bacon, we worship at the altar of the Other White Meat. But when we need a focus of blame for our fat-laden diets or stubborn refusal to take care of ourselves, we point the finger at the poor pitiable pig. As I understand it, the Giver of Breakfast Links has nothing whatsoever to do with this latest virus being transmitted to humans. Ah, perhaps it’s the endless chatter in Washington about the elimination of pork that has inspired this latest misnomer. When all is said and done, I think we can really trace the source of this latest Chicken Little scare to an affliction far more widespread and eminently more insidious than the Swine Flu. That is the Peter Pan-demic, which is manifest in the steadfast refusal of the hordes of politicos, pundits and press to just grow up.

I would first like to thank my friend, saxophonist, and webmaster, Mark Craddock, for posting the preceding video from Blues Under The Bridge. It was a pleasant surprise to find it there and it serves to perpetuate the necessary illusion that this is actually a recording artist’s website. This helps in procuring gainful musical employment and maintaining the appropriate profile necessary to avoid getting a real job. Nice going, Mark.

Now I will move on from making a living in the music business to the business of living. A revelation has been laid before me. It has been brewing since childhood, steeping in years of real life experience, and has finally and dramatically burst forth as a full-blown inspiration. I know how to solve the problems of the world. I mean all of the problems. It is so glaringly obvious and simple that I am still incredulous that it has been so elusive for so long. All we need to do is to get rid of all the suits. I am not speaking metaphorically, using the word “suit” to represent a class of people. I am talking about the actual suits themselves. Permit me to explain.

Since I was a boy, I have hated suits. There were communion suits, funeral suits, wedding suits, graduation suits, going-to-church suits, and suits for every conceivable solemn and official occasion. Suits are restrictive, the ties choke, and when you come right down to it, what can you actually do in a suit? Nothing of any use. You can walk slowly, stand uncomfortably, or sit on your ass, which causes wrinkles in your trousers. Trousers - right there you know something is wrong. Put on a dress shirt, a tie, and a jacket and pants become trousers. I hate trousers, the name as well as the notion. Turn a pair of pants into trousers, and you turn a man into an asshole. Consider the evidence.

Travel to any corner of the world, any country, any region and you will find people in regular clothes. The fabrics change from place to place, the styles vary according to culture and function, but for the most part, clothing is practical. Clothing keeps certain things in, other things out, and conforms to the particular cultural norms related to what you don’t want people to see that they already know is under there. It keeps you warm or cool, it moves with the task in which you are engaged, and it can be easily washed in an Amana front-loader or beaten on a rock by the stream. Dry out your shirt and pants, just put them on again and resume doing what it was that got your clothes dirty in the first place. Perfect. But as usual, man does not live by clothing alone, so he invented the goddamned suit, which requires dry cleaning, a caustic chemical bath performed at a remote location for top dollar. Jesus Christ (who, by the way, would never have been and was not caught dead wearing a suit)!!!

Suits are badges of rank in a class system, vestiges of the royalty out-dressing the peons. A man in shirt and pants is a regular guy with a regular job, the same man in a suit is management. When one guy in a suit greets another guy in a suit, each can rest assured that he is meeting another pompous pinhead of parallel position. Behind every atrocity committed by the human species is a man in a suit, calling the shots.  When a palm oil company in Malaysia slashes and burns a rain forest to plant their cash crop, peasants in loincloths and hand-me-downs hit the woods with machetes and matches. Who directed them to do it? A son-of-a-bitch in a suit. When assholes in uniforms (unfortunate extensions of the suit hierarchy, with bars and medals replacing the silk ties as barometers of rank) torture someone in a cobblestone courtyard, you can bet your human rights that somewhere, up in an office watching from behind smoky glass is an even bigger asshole hiding behind his Armani. There is not a decision of consequence made in this world that is not the brainchild and direct order of some self-important suit-clad man-child. What about the Middle East, where such dictates emanate from men in flowing robes? Well, what do you think they have hanging by the hundreds in their royal closets? You don’t need Calvin Klein to figure that one out.

What is the garment of choice for the men who trashed our economy?  What was the evil genius who shafted the American working man by turning his government-insured pension into a market-dependent 401K sporting at the moment he hatched his ruthless plan? What does the warden wear when he attends the execution? What were Anton Scalia and Clarence Thomas hiding under their robes when they presented us with Junior as our duly non-elected president? More to the point of illustration and proof of my three-piece hypothesis: What does every, and I mean every, politician wear? The answer to all of these and all similar queries is as plain as the gravy stain on your silk cravat: a fucking suit. And even though the suit has been a traditionally male affectation, what was the first truly viable female candidate for the highest office in the land forced to clothe herself in (minus the Windsor knot) so as to make herself electable? I rest my case.

So, if we were to shred all the suits, turn Dolce & Gabbana and Bigsby & Kruthers into wanted outlaws, banish every tailor in Hong Kong to a remote Pacific island, what would be the result? I hold that we would save the planet. There would be no more opportunity for men with inflated egos to hide behind their suits and bark unthinkable orders to the hoi-polloi. A de-suited dictator could stand there naked and scream at his minions to kill, bomb, lie, cheat and steal, but his credibility would be in tatters just like his Versace. Everyone would simply point at his little penis and laugh. It would suit me just fine.

Many thanks to “dongoede,” who posted this video on You Tube of Ken’s gig at Blues Under the Bridge, Colorado Springs, CO, in the summer of 2008. The personnel were…

Ken Saydak - piano/vocal
Fred James - guitar
Fingers Farrell - bass
Dave Zehring - drums

My first contact with the barter system, outside of having read of its historical place, was in the stories that my brother and his wife told me of their life in the woods of British Columbia. They had retreated from the urban midwest and sought peace for a time in the islands between mainland Canada and the Island of Vancouver. They had a Portuguese neighbor down the road (whom I recall was nicknamed “The Portuguese”) who had a smokehouse. So they, who raised chickens for eggs and an occasional fricassee, would bring salmon they had caught in the salt-water bays to the neighbor, who would smoke the fish in exchange for fresh eggs. I thought that was so cool, such an obvious and compelling idea, that I recall the story to this day.

I now, also in retreat from the cities of the Great Lakes Basin, live in a small town nestled against the Spanish Peaks in southern Colorado. We are not as remotely located as Quadra Island, B.C. is, but being in a rural mountain locale, the notion of exchanging services for services is alive and well here. In the light of the fact that the fall of capitalism as we have known it may well be upon us, this system of sharing advantages seems to be growing out of both necessity and principle. I fish here, mostly for trout, and I have traded a fresh catch for produce from friends’ gardens. I have traded a few hours of recording studio tracks on the organ keyboard for equally valuable time and skill with the computer keyboard. I plan to continue the practice, as it works and has distinct advantages over exclusively exchanging green pictures of deceased U.S. presidents for very un-green Chinese consumer goods.

In the barter system, the whole idea of relative value becomes personalized. You simply trade something you have for something you need. The relationship thus established then blossoms into a trust-based partnership of mutual supply and demand. You always know what you get is worth what you give because the level on which these transactions take place is so flexible and enduring. You might get the better end of the deal this week, then the following trade yields an apparent edge to the other guy. Nobody bitches, nobody returns anything for refund, everybody wins.

In addition to the cashlessness of the trade-offs, there is yet another benefit to this system. In the whole process, you are touched by other human beings. There is no anonymous middleman simply taking a piece of the action for shelf space or delivery fees. Personal relationships are formed, friendships often follow. You find out how your vegetable supplier is feeling, what he or she is planning on for the summer, what joy or grief has entered his or her life. Additionally, even this act is reciprocated, and you are blessed with another’s interest and concern about your own life. In such an arrangement, the monetary value of “things” pales in comparison to the value of human contact and acceptance of honorable mutual dependence.

The way we have been doing things, if you haven’t been paying attention lately, is proving to be both antiquated and ineffective. This de facto caste system which we have borne and raised, with the haves holding an invincible edge over the have-nots, is about to collapse under the weight of a restless and dissatisfied world populace and the ever-increasing chokehold that this system holds on the vessel which is our planet. All of us, from the hilltop manors to the corrugated tin shacks, are about to realize, whether we like it or not, that we are in the same lifeboat together and anything that can bring us closer and devalue those things which actually have no intrinsic value needs to be considered.

The late Memphis Slim wrote a song called Mother Earth, which happens to be my favorite blues song, in  which he says,
You may own half a city, even diamonds and pearls
You may have your own airplane to fly you all around the world
I don’t care how rich you are, I don’t care what you’re worth
When it all ends up, you’ve got to go back to Mother Earth

You don’t believe that sappy socialist crap? Just ask some recently-diagnosed terminal fat cat as he empties his Gucci colostomy bag. I’ll bet he’d trade that in a heartbeat, with just about anyone for just about anything.

I will here embark on a largely emotional and broad-brushed painting of a generation - my generation. I will use the Beatles, perhaps the largest cultural influence of the Baby Boomer class, as a metaphor. I know the argument can be made that the early rock’n'rollers were the first real explosion of the post-war American culture fueled by U.S. worldwide supremacy. Remember, though, that when the rock’n'roll hurricane blew on to the scene (translation, when white America co-opted black music to sell to the restless white middle-class kids) in the aftermath of World War II, many of whom have now been termed the Boomers were small children with neither the hormones nor cash to pursue the latest cultural trend. If you doubt this, look at the difference in mindset between the Elvis crowd and the Beatles disciples. With that in mind, let’s look at what the Beatles brought to the mainstream.

When the British Invasion hit the New World shores in roughly 1963, those born in the early 1950s were ripe for the resultant commercial exploitation. We were entering or in the midst of puberty, our sexual awareness blossoming as the Fab Four urged us to hold somebody’s hand. The mop-tops were cute, catchy, hip, and innocent enough on the surface to be allowed into Middle America’s living rooms via The Ed Sullivan Show, the standard bearer of our parents’ post-vaudeville entertainment format. Each of the singing group was marketed as a personality; the cute one, the dumb one, the rebel, the quiet one, with the whole being greater than the sum of the parts. Perfect. Something for everyone. There were lunchboxes, posters, decals, wigs, and hundreds of other products to accompany the 45s and LPs which were the mainstays of the sales pitch. The resultant commercial bonanza brought smiles to the faces of both the kids and also the cigar chompers who ran the show and counted the coin.

As time passed, the individual Beatles grew up and began to pursue their passions without consideration as to how it affected the overall marketing plan. Their egos bolstered by their own success, they began to thumb their collective noses at the machine that had carried them to the fore. There was no more touring, they dabbled in experimental recording techniques, and they assumed their own studio production, minus George Martin, the genius guru who had guided their recording career. John Lennon, perhaps prodded by his miserably lonely childhood, pushed into angry politics and assumed the mantle of the Beatles’ social conscience. He railed against the pompous excesses of the First and Second Worlds’ shameless exploitation of the Third World’s resources and impotence, pointing an accusing finger at the sustained and costly effort to maintain the consumer mania which made nouveau rich out of shrewd marketeers (ironic, I suppose, as it was the workings of this machine which afforded him his podium). Eventually martyred, first by J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI, and later by a lovelorn nut case with a handgun, he was lost at a time when he was most needed. George Harrison, perhaps the most spiritually enlightened of the group, grew into his introverted role as the seeker, quietly pursuing more personal answers to the madness which characterized the growth of the Western military/economic beast. Ringo, the true mystery man of the group, lived in his octopus’ garden with a genuine smile that beckoned us to just have a good time and quaff an ale with him (too bad he couldn’t have run against George W in 2000, he’s more fun, more accessible, and undoubtedly smarter). And then there was Paul. I save him for last because his persona embodies the failure of our enlightened generation to seize the opportunity to perhaps save the world.

Paul, the Cute One, was the “musical” Beatle. An indisputably glib fountain of melody and cleverness, he wrote the songs that were added to the pop music lexicon. Yesterday, I Will, My Love and countless others have graced both weddings and elevators ever since. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve enjoyed Paul’s music for years and have great respect for his talent and output. But at a time when the Beatles had begun to open the eyes of the generation which had embraced them as tour guides of the new consciousness, Paul’s life echoed the Boomers’ complacency which later allowed us to drop our indignation in favor of the pursuit of portfolios and summer homes.

When the Vietnam War and the draft ended, the outraged youth of America began to hit the streets not in righteous indignation but in search of a parking place for their newly acquired BMWs. As the Boomers left their anger and political commitment behind, Paul retreated to Scotland to live a rustic life with his love and family, his right, to be sure. As the once enlightened and determined hordes of now forty-and-fifty-somethings feathered their nests and traded up into 5000-square-foot manors, Paul married a model (got his clock cleaned as a result), surgically tightened his jowls, and dyed his hair the jet black of his Hamburg youth. In other words, When I’m Sixty-Four going on twenty-nine. If you didn’t see his performance at the recent Grammys, where he pulled out I Saw her Standing There (”She was just seventeen….”, Paul, puh-lease!), then you missed the enduring snapshot of the narcissistic fantasy to which our disappointing generation remains deeply devoted. The performance was something, yeah, yeah, yeah, he can still hit the high “wooohs”, and the chance to reminisce was tempting, but I couldn’t help but feel a twinge of embarrassment as the moment captured the self-obsession of a failed generation.

Never has a group, namely the Baby Boomers, been given such a canvas on which to paint: post-war supremacy, leisure time, disposable cash, educational opportunity, access to literature and information, the chance for spiritual awareness. What have we done with this? We have produced a painting worthy of a shopping mall art sale, replete with the kids with the big eyes. We had momentum and challenge, we had a chance to avoid the world we now face, and instead we have welcomed and tolerated the Bushes, the Bible Thumpers, anti-intellectualism, and war without end. But we do own some cool stuff. Thanks, Paul and all of the rest of us. We suck and we’re sleeping in the bed we’ve made of our own self-satisfied sloth. F#%k the Baby Boomers. Long live rock’n'roll.

Well, it’s been a while since I felt either the urge or need to post my scattered observations. Now that spring is in the air and the days are growing longer (actually they still have 24 hours apiece) I am compelled to again vent and/or spew.

I am watching the unraveling of the capitalist dream with great interest and amusement. Before the Great Depression of Ought-Nine, the rich were getting richer and the poor were getting poorer.  Now that the shit has finally hit the fan, we see another trend. The rich are still getting richer and the poor are still getting poorer. As Pogo used to say, we have met the enemy, and it is us. While I sympathize with those who now struggle to feed the family and keep the homestead, I can’t help but chuckle at the chicken-little scramble to explain what the hell is going on. I think it’s simple. We are greedy, self-interested, self-aggrandizing bastards and the truth has caught up with the fairy tale. We have a lot of stuff, and it’s filling the hole we have dug to acquire it faster than we can chuck all the crap into the abyss.

I have always been engaged in this struggle to survive, as have most of us. I was presented with great opportunity in both education and access which I tossed aside to pursue the life of a musician. Teachers, parents, family and friends characterized me as an underachiever, lazy, lacking drive, directionless, complacent and a variety of other adjectives and phrases which, when reduced to a semantic minimum, spelled L-O-S-E-R.  Now in the light of the world shitting on itself, I emerge as all of these things, with the addition of another characterization heretofore not a part of the description: visionary. I could not be more smugly proud and pleased.

All during the 80’s, when Bonzo’s buddy urged us to drive big, fast, luxurious cars, I wondered to myself, “Where is all this money coming from?” During the tech-boom of the 90’s, when the Republicrat-in-Chief, Mr. Dress Stains himself, held up his thumb and patted us on the collective back as our housing square-footage requirements expanded exponentially, I thought, “Where is all this money coming from?” Well, we now have the answer to my questions. Nowhere. It never existed. It was all paper, all unreal. Only blind faith in our pay-as-your-grandchildren-go lifestyle allowed us to reward the shrewd, the persistent, the determined with more and more creature comforts. Most of these things, of course, became landfill and now the most elaborate suburban spreads have become white elephants with untenable mortgage payments. Well, I for one know exactly how to live on a meager income. I’m about as worried about the future as I never was because I have tapped into the great truth of life on earth: we are entitled to not one damned thing.

For those who are freaking out about the skyrocketing costs of a latte, I say: Try Eight-o-Clock coffee. To those who don’t know how they will replace their SUV as it begins its premature rusting process, I say: Get a beater. To those who scurry about in panic over the burgeoning deficit, I say: You can’t lose what you’ve never had. It’s all so simple. Just be a bum. It’s easy and it’s most definitely affordable. You will remain ulcer-free, your blood pressure will plummet, and you will become a burden on the rest of the populace, much like the CEO of AIG and the bomb-addicted buffoons in the Pentagon. Billions for “defense”, hundreds for the kids.

In short, to those of you who are concerned that this fiscal fiasco may cause you to end up up like me and the millions whose only portfolio contains pictures from childhood summer vacations in the Wisconsin Dells, I offer this suggestion. Try it, it ain’t so bad.