Voodoo Voodooifies Cat's Art MusikCircus

This 'voodooify' business is just a little weird to me as I like inventing words but I don't think this one is likely to endure.  Something that has surprising endurance, other than Voodoo Shilton's music, is the set of concert graphics he has made to promote them.

The graphics have been remarkable.  I must ask him if he has had any professional training as he consistently turns out very cool promo graphics for his shows.

What struck me from the show on Friday wasn't so much a particular song although Voodoo took "The Littlest Elephant" a good long way and it was a very delicate way.  This is another reason to buy his show recordings as his sets never stay the same.  Sure that's a plug but the reason is real.  The song captures me in part because this picture has been floating about online:

The picture looks authentic as you would have to be very good with Photoshop to get the gradations of shade in the baby elephant's shadow.  The angle seems consistent with the adult elephants and the fade appropriate given it's not such a sunny day.  So ... the Littlest Elephant can fly.


Overall, the precision and delicacy of Voodoo's play caught me over and over.  His ability to 'enunciate' a note is extraordinary even, maybe especially, when he plays at very high speed.  Without any specific comparison, I've heard people with exceptional skill who play at blistering speed but they make the song feel like a road race.  To bring speed as it's needed and then back away from it is understanding a very important dynamic and there are two pieces to it as playing at high speed without high accuracy is a very bad idea.  It is much better to slow down and speak clearly, just as in anything else.  What's extraordinary about Voodoo's play is that he speaks clearly even at high speed and it never feels like he is racing anyone.

Often you will find the strongest men speak quietly and so it is with Voodoo.  He has immense musical power and he's humble about it but his power is real nevertheless.  He can make a mistake when he flies at the speed of a jet plane and think through to play a recovery without losing the vibe in any way.  Let's see your Artificial Intelligence Processor do that trick, Annoying Computer Guy.

Maybe you think I seek to flatter Voodoo but here's a tip on that:  I have never even met him!  He would be cool to meet as I imagine conversation would get into highly-diverse things and this would be most interesting to discover.  No chance Cat would want to miss that conversation either so let's close with that image of a very cool campfire situation.  It wouldn't stay just three.  If Voodoo plays anything and anyone hears it, they will come.

Unmanned Drones Being Used to Smuggle Drugs into Prisons

Officials at the Kansas State Penitentiary were surprised recently by the number and variety of drugs being seized during standard prison sweeps for contraband.  Heroin and marijuana are traditionally in high demand in a prison but the sweeps were revealing psychedelics and other designer drugs which are usually wanted only by a more sophisticated clientele.

Warden Smithers interviewed one of the prisoners to try to find out how the drugs were getting into the prison but all he was told was it's 'a DOC thing.'  The expression covers anything ex-prisoners will do for their brothers still inside, it's a Department Of Corrections thing.  It also means the prisoner does not know or will not tell the identity of the ex-prisoner.

After an offer of time off and other compensation, the prisoner revealed that unmanned drone aircraft fly the drugs into the prison at night.  With their night-vision video, the operator can fly the drone right to the prisoner's cell and the drone is so quiet that almost no-one will hear it.  When asked how the deals are arranged, the prisoner said they use cellphones.  There are three things you can find anywhere in prison:  sex, drugs and cellphones.

Smithers went to the Kansas Statehouse to ask for a solution and gave a particularly moving appeal that concluded when he said, "my jail is not for taking acid trips!"

A $4.8 million dollar grant was authorized for prison system purchase of anti-drone drones which will fly about the prison to detect other drones and shoot them down.  The system will be operational in the third quarter of 2014 and Warden Smithers expects to see a substantial drop in the amount of contraband in the prison after that date.

The warden was asked about what his response might be to anti-drone killer drones that would fly about shooting down the anti-drone drones.  His response was that he will be happy to go back to the Kansas Statehouse for additional funding for SAM missiles and other appropriate weaponry.  He ended with what has now became his battle cry, "my jail is not for taking acid trips."

Chicagosax Jams at Cat's Art MusikCircus

Chicagosax is one walking, talking Taste of Chicago all by himself.  He brings that Chicago blues vibe and he's not talking about something he saw in a magazine as he has been playing jazz and blues in Chicago since the late fifties.  He knows Chicago blues.

Chicagosax is so smooth.  He will talk to you a little, do a song, and then talk some more.  It never feels there should be more of this or less of that as it's all part of the story.  He's very good at it and he would be as he has spent a lot of his life on the stage.

His saxophone is a Yamaha EWI (Electronic Wind Instrument) and Chicago mentioned how the synthesizer section supported an extra-cost chip for those downtown sounds.  He sure got them and he can give you anything from guitar to flute.  With the guitar I was noticing in the sound that it had the attack of the guitar but gave way to a breathiness on the decay which I thought was highly delicious.  You can do things like that with synthesizers and some have no use for digitally-generated music but, to my taste, it has an incredible richness and has no reason to apologize for anything.

The liveness of the instrument comes because it detects how hard Chicago blows into the sax.  That gets turned into electronic information but it's still 'real' in the sense that nothing synthesized it.  In other words, this music doesn't come from cleverly pushing buttons.  It really is the true reflection of his live play.  Chicago has been playing sax since the Fifties so someone is going to tell him how a saxophone should sound ... I don't think so.

It's the Chicago lead that takes so long to learn.  Most times when you're playing a lead line you'll want to follow the melody, maybe you do some kind of unison or maybe you do some kind of whizzy flash bang but still it will be generally predictable.  Chicago knows how to make it unpredictable but you realize the predictability as he plays.  In this way it's a continual revelation.  At first maybe you think, dude, what are you doing but then it comes, yah, I see it, I see it.  Welcome to Chicago jazz.

Silas Stumbles at Cat's Art MusikCircus

This was a day of medical delirium after three+ days of trying to get connected with the hospital to take care of scheduling, etc and nothing was happening despite frequent tries.  The day was bearing onward and I was thinking, geez, how do I play behind this.  I'd just be thinking thinking wtf is happening.  I can handle it when things suck ... I don't handle it so well when I need a Lunar Excursion Module just to figure out where I am.

This is a diary and not a whine.  If I'm of a mood to whine, I will try to be clear about it.

The north Dallas VA contacted me a few hours before the show.  I did not get a date but it's confirmation things are in-motion.  That kind of de-orbited me but still there were many things flying through my head.  Part of the thinking is treating croakage with respect.  If I'm croaked then damn sure bring all you have got as there is no second act.  This is not exactly musical thinking.

The set started out with "Ice Cream Blues" as it does state the situation well.  Life certainly is like an ice cream and it certainly will just melt in your hand if you only look at it.  The song was out of reach.  I was chasing and chasing it but right away it was clear this was a greased pig contest so pull it together, mister.  There are people here.

"The Death March Digression" is a big deal but not out of any personal morbidity as it's specific to two hundred million guns in the country.  It's deeply important to me and delivering it on the piano is the way it has to come. It is not well-suited to looping, tho.  The digression goes six chords starting with F minor and down to F minor an octave lower ... and it's way the hell too long at well over twenty-bars at eighty beats per minute.  This one was driving people out of there and maybe some of that is from the sentiment but mostly it's because the loop is too damn long and I was making mistakes.  The same thing happened last week when I tried it a different way but I know it can be very beautiful so I will look for yet another way to do it.

Something that should work with "The Death March Digression" is to record the loops ahead of time.  For this what I need is a loop of the whole thing but with only piano and maybe bass.  Another loop has the same chords, same timing, but with heavy guitar and this is for when they all shoot each other.  Optionally there's a third loop for screwing around in some demented way but the exit is to return to the original piano loop and do angel voices to sing for the spirits.  This brings it back down and goes to a gentle exit.  Next week.

I guess if you have those twenty-something reflexes then you can do fighter pilot stuff like catching a fly while it is flying.  This gig was like trying to do that ... but missing every time (laughs).

It's funny now as I process it and always learn, learn, learn.  My feelings can't be hurt by it as what should I do.  There is only one answer:  play it better next time.

The lesson from it is a lot the same that comes from anywhere:  focus.

It was suggested that maybe I can 'vent' anything on the twistedness of the current trip by playing those blues and specifically some medical blues:

"The Blues for NO, You Are NOT Going to Stick that in my Ass, Doctor"

I probably won't do it ... but ... it's the MusikCircus ... anything can happen ... except proctology, definitely no proctology.


I will play this weekend for Mania in SUF on Saturday.  This does not mean I will increase the gig schedule although I will do one relatively soon at Sister Julie the Poet's place.  Loyalty is more important now than ever and playing for Cat, Sister Julie and some other old cranky guy means very much to me.

Sonya Jevette Brings Love to Cat's Art MusikCircus

Sonya Jevette singing Thursday night at Cat's Art MusikCircus.  Look closely to Cat to see the bubblegum because in that "Big Girls" song they have their high heels on and they love to be poppin' that gum.

Sonya Jevette gives us "Big Girls" but you have heard about that from me multiple times.  It hasn't in any way lost its coolness and you can see Cat and I dancing on the stage with Sonya while she did it. The problem is that focusing on this one too much can leave you thinking it's the only good original she does and that just ain't so.

Sonya opened last night with a new song and I don't know its title but she sings about how the world is starving for love.  It starves for love for the little African babies all the way through to so many people who tell you they are happy but you can see clearly they are not.  John Lennon said it his way and Sonya says it in her own.  What's more, she sang it in a sultry kind of way and this is a different Sonya.  Her originals, very generally, take the form of ballads rather than blues but this one was kind of a slow Sonya jam that was gorgeous.

There was another one that particularly struck me and this was also, I believe, brand-new and this was "Black Woman."  As the song unfolded I became more and more taken with it as I was hearing the kind of 'stand your ground' that means something.  I am here with my love and my spirit.  I am a black woman and I will stand my ground (paraphrased).  Sonya teaches music to kids right after her show on Thursdays.  What I hear in this song is that she can teach many things and she is just the one to do it.

Sonya's voice has so much power that she could scare you with it if she chose to use it that way.  When she goes after those high notes, she hits them and it's with a purity that lifts you away from wherever pitiful place you are into that Magic Circus place.  Sonya does it in a way no-one else can.

Digital Deceives Cat's Art MusikCircus

Deceptions Digital is deceiving in some way ... but I have no idea what way.  She plays regularly at Cat's Art MusikCircus and she always comes on time so this isn't deceptive.  She helps other people and this is not deceptive.  She plays music she has recorded previously but this isn't deceptive either as she tells you.  So I don't know what exactly DD deceives but it doesn't matter as we are here for her music.

DD makes an enormous amount of music.  She's absolutely driven and it's marvelous to see her passion.  It's even more marvelous to hear it as she is constantly experimental and will use anything at all as a sound source.  That she can do it isn't all that interesting, that she can make it musical is incredible.

This will get a bit technical but hang with it.  A sampling keyboard can record a sound and then you can use various kinds of magic to play it at different pitches.  For example, you could record a dog barking and then, after some magic, play it back as C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C.  I was talking to Cat about this and we got away with it a little bit as you can sample the dog so why not sample a whole lot of animals.  Why not make a symphony of animal sounds with all of them being pitch-correct.  As we talked we thought, hmm, who would try such a thing.  Yep, DD.  If anyone would, it's her.

I don't mean the above as doing something like Alvin and the Chipmunks for some kind of musical joke.  If applied artfully, it's conceivable that something really fascinating would come from it.

There's no chance DD would have considered such a thing in the past and the newsworthy aspect to the story this week is what she is changing now.  Her songs are getting significantly longer and trippier so there's much more a sense of an excursion with them.  She's going traveling and you're welcome to come along.

I do have one criticism as the four-beat kick drum can be kind of hard on an old fool like me but I know that hard-core dance beat is huge for dance clubs so I don't know if I'm just being a crank.  But I don't mind seeding twisted thinking.  What does DD sound like in 9/8?

Now What asked the Great God Mescalito

Mostly people don't know what to do with it as they want to be encouraging and it's realistic but also they wonder, fark, is he a deader or what.  I don't know but I'm not worried either way.  If you really feel the Zen, this moment is the only one that matters so you can use it or throw it away.  Death is only one moment and I will not sacrifice any others in its favor.

So I asked the Great God Mescalito what does one do when one is really, seriously fucked and he said one talks about something else.

Rather than talking about Joe's Pancreas, there are various things important just now and part of the interest for any observer, I suspect, is whether the relative importance of things changed.  In many ways that already happened as poverty will create an enormous awareness that others only get hearsay or see on the news.  I'm curious also as to whether any perspectives will change now.  I suspect they will not.

There was a request to keep a diary and I do that anyway with the blog but I've backed off quite a bit on the day to day of life in favor of covering the music.  It's been very important to my own music to cover the music of others even if only that it gets me to listen to something other than always what I play myself.

There is some thought to doing a video series but that's an awful lot of precious, in my view.  Hey, y'all, wanna watch me get really sick.  When I did the Death March Digression, it was supposed to be ironic and definitely not literal.  So I don't have a good answer on how much coverage this really needs yet.

There's only one bit of my music online in any place halfway reputable and that's "Symphony for Cat No. 2" on SoundCloud.  That invites some thinking of uploading more but that feels like building a graveyard.  My thinking on music Zen remains the same in that music is supposed to disappear.  It's the nature of music.

Voodoo Shilton does something similar in that you can get a recording of his show ... but only if you are attending the show.  In part it's kind of a goodie for people in the audience but it's more than that as you have to know the 'liveness' of what that music means or you can't have it.

The fear, if that's really the sensation, isn't that someone I don't know would hear the music in some time long past this one but rather that someone would not, that these song files and videos would spin forever ... doing absolutely nothing.  In this age of data retention and disk capability, it will take an Ice Age before anything is ever erased from disk.  Beyond that, it's highly likely that all existing data will continue to be migrated forward as the cost and speed of storage declines off into the indefinite future.  There's a very good chance those songs and videos will spin for decades or, without even a huge stretch, centuries.  So why do that.  Why, indeed.

The Worst Second Life Outfit of All History

Some have tried for the title but, in the face of this, there can be no point in continuing any competition.  We don't know where Sister Julie found the Monsanto outfit and, frankly, we don't want to know.  Words are scarcely sufficient for such concentrated hideosity (holy cow, that's really a word!) so herewith a picture:

Sister Julie modeling Monsanto's famous Punk Tartan Cow with GMO Corn outfit.

If the sight of it doesn't kill you then the Monsanto corn will.  Don't eat it.  Don't even look at it.  Perhaps this is what happens when Madonna meets Braveheart on Old MacDonald's Farm.

At one point Sister Julie said she had apples attached to her backside.  We did not know old MacDonald was that kinky but we like it.

We did not ask if she sings.  We hope not.

So, how about some popcorn.

Ride While the Sun Still Shines

That's so obvious but lots of people don't do it ... and then they sit back on that porch as an old man and think, "You know.  I wish I had bought that Harley Davidson."

This isn't about buying a Harley or even having a bucket list as people don't do their buckets either.  Don't save something on a bucket list, do it now.


My ol' Dad took my ol' Mother over to Europe.  All the kids were grown and the house was largely a hippie crash pad by then what with some siblings, significant others, and who knows who else.  So they said we'll be back when they're ready to come back.

They roamed around all over the place.  I didn't even know my ol' Dad spoke French but apparently he does well enough with it that both of them ate very well there and I don't mean downtown but out where real people are.  They would have meals for two and three hours in which the hosts would not let them leave.

It was glorious and they went all over the place.  They didn't bother with postcards much, they just went out there and lived it.

They had not been back so long when my ol' Dad had a heart attack that was immediately followed by a significant stroke.  He was one of the most articulate, well-educated, intelligent people you would ever met and suddenly he couldn't even talk.  That's not just gush about my ol' Dad as ask anyone.  That's who he was.

So you can imagine the tragedy of the situation that followed.

But, that's not the point.


I breezed off to Greece and was having a fine old time eating olives and feta cheese and loving it.  You all met Charlie the Cat and then there was roaming about Europe on the scooter to wind up in Scotland.  People were calling it a vacation but for me it was a pilgrimage, to do the scariest, most absolutely insane thing ... and get away with it.  Seeing Europe is an incredible privilege as there were sometimes fields of sunflowers, thousands of them, and also I saw entire fields of lavender where it was being grown for perfume.  Most of all I saw the people and I very rarely saw angry ones.  The only ones I saw who were even tense were cops ... but that's usually my experience with cops.  And even that was cool.

When I got back here I got sicker pretty quickly and that was six months ago.  The stuff coming up is really going to suck and ...

That's not the point either.

I'm sure you already know the point but I'll say it anyway.  Don't fuck around as time will not wait for you.  Time does melt like an ice cream, the song is real.  It's a really good ice cream and letting it melt to drip into the sand is just wrong.

So Then Maggie Said

"You've got lung cancer, dear."

She's such a sweet lady that it was almost funny how she said it.

There was no particular emotion to it as I've known it for a long time but couldn't find a doctor anywhere who would take things seriously.  It was such a hassle getting hooked-up with VA originally in Texas that I decided, fuck it, if I'm going to die then I'm going to do it in Greece.  (It wasn't for Sunny as that relationship was tanked long before I got on the aircraft)

After some time in Greece, it became clear that I should at least try.  There was no hope for doctoring in Greece as the nearest VA-supported doctors were in Athens, five hours away.  Then I thought, hmmm, I'm UK so let's get a taste of some nationalised medicine.  So began the scooter jaunt to Scotland.  As I discovered there it was like taking an Alka Seltzer for a heart attack.

I was back in an Emergency Room not long after I got back to Texas and this is what got things started with VA as they decided I was high risk enough that any treatment plan had to start now.  Since December they have been checking things.

There was no melodrama with Maggie as my first thought was, ok, what are next steps.  Are there next steps.

The general plan is that there will be surgery to take it out and this will be followed by radiation / chemo.  I will learn specifics today.

I often hear people complaining about the Affordable Care Act but my own experience is that American medical care sucked ferociously before the ACA so it couldn't possibly make things worse.  As I see it in practice, it didn't.  It also didn't change anything.  I still do not have any medical insurance and, if not for VA, I would be dead already.

Death is easy, poverty is hard (paraphrased from Oscar Wilde)

My perspective on both is real and I don't know extreme poverty as I don't think anyone here has gone more than a couple of days or so without eating but what I've seen is close enough.  Death is easy, you only have to show up ... and you will show up (laughs).

The Passion of Paris at Cat's Art MusikCircus

Paris Obscur is the embodiment of passion as you hear it in his voice, his words, his hard-core guitar. He wasn't sure if I meant 'hard-core' as a good thing but I hear unrestrained, raw, powerful.  Paris doesn't dance around the periphery, collecting flowers, and painting landscapes.  He goes for the heart of it and a great many people have been discovering this.

The deep sexuality of Paris Obscur songs is more honest than most can manage about sex but he tells of how things are, how they can be, and even how they should not be.  He does not give any lessons but he tells stories and you can learn from them what you will.  The passion is not only in how he sings the song but in the depth of the content to them.  When he gets inside the mind of rapist, maybe it triggers revulsion but this is only a different kind of passion.

There is a growl in Paris' voice that is unmistakable and he is brilliant at keeping it musical.  He pushes it so hard that he strains his voice by the end of a show as he is so fully-engaged, physically, emotionally, spiritually.  These are not just words as Paris feels his body at the height of its powers when he sings on-stage.  He very much feels the 'liveness' of a show as much as the audience and that audience has been steadily growing.

A 'hard-core' guitar has been turning up more frequently in Paris' songs and this is giving a whole new rawness.  It's not an incoherent grunge but rather it's a good, powerful statement and he does it very well.  After listening to the musicians at Cat's Art MusikCircus for some while, I hear the evolution in their music.  At first there was no electric guitar in his songs but it has been visiting more frequently and it's a very well-selected complement to his sound.

Paris has doubled his performance schedule and will now perform every two weeks at the MusikCircus.  You can find a lot more about him on the Paris Obscur Web site.

What Was the Republican Contribution to America

Republicans will tell you freely and at great length that they are such great patriots but what is the foundation for this claim.  What did they contribute to America that made it a better place.  FDR had Social Security, Johnson had the New Deal, etc, etc.

Republicans defend gun rights but that has nothing to do with patriotism, they get off on owning and shooting them.  They talk about abortion a lot but that doesn't make them patriots, it just makes them boring.  They say they keep taxes down but they get all the expensive military toys they want while the lower taxes mean the roads don't get fixed and kids can't afford school.  There's no patriotism in that either.

While I've been alive, the military has been building nuclear submarines at about a billion and a half a copy the entire time.  To my knowledge, they've never done anything except launched a few rockets every so often and taken Navy SEALs on summer trips.  At a billion and a half a copy for submarines, the Navy SEALs can fly commercial.

So, other than waving flags and telling you they are patriots, what do Republicans truly do that makes America a better place.  They gave us Abraham Lincoln ... but that was a hundred and fifty years ago. Don't you think they have been coasting for long enough.   They also gave us Calvin Coolidge and his tax cuts on the rich prior to the Great Depression so that deserves acknowledgement as well.  Eisenhower built the Interstate system and that's a military investment too but at least we get to use it for something.

Please do review the history and I believe you'll discover Republicans haven't contributed much of anything to make America a better place although they sure do talk a good show and they sure do wave a lot of flags ... but they don't do much.

Some say Reagan contributed a lot and that's true if you consider it a contribution that he attacked Miranda Rights and protections against illegal search and seizure.  This propagated out to today's abuses in which cops show up in armored vehicles with no-knock arrest warrants.  They flash-bombed a house and seriously burned a baby a few days ago doing that.  It's not clear whether the kid will live.  The family had nothing to do with the crime.  Thanks to the Gipper on that one.