Return of Reverend Silas Theology Sasquatch

After further review of the debut of new and improved Reverend Silas Theology Sasquatch, we of the Ministry of the Internet have decided he is truthful ... and boring as paint.

Therefore ... God has told us to bring back the T in Silas T Sasquatch by bringing back Texas.

Why does the Ten-Dollar Flat-Rate Soul Saving Paradigm exist?

Well, I'll tell you why it exists.  I show you God and save your soul.  That's not a hard thing so there's a flat rate of ten dollars for the save.  The reason the paradigm ...

Hold it, hold it ... just a minute.  For y'all in Texas, a paradigm is something what ain't a gun or a horse and you can't screw it or eat it.  That's a paradigm.  (I'd be crying if Miss Mona said that)

So the reason the paradigm exists is once you get your soul saved, it doesn't work like a fuckin' student loan from college and you have to pay for your new soul for the rest of your miserable life.

God said specifically it pisses him off that he gives souls away for free and then these guys in hats make money on the after-market.  He's ok with the flat-rate soul saving as otherwise you'll be wretched sinners who will wander around in the dark where you will probably fall into a pit and be eaten by a grue.  So, he's ok with that.  Souls on a payment plan.  Not good.


The good Reverend already he knows he has God right here on the Vocalist LiveFX but there was a sudden epiphany just now when he realized that means he has Satan on there as well.  We have smoke.  We have lasers.  We have fookin' hellfire.  A bit of programming will keep the lights to shades of red.  Fire red lasers into smoke and it will be as satanic as Koch Brothers prayer meeting.

Maybe Satan needs to tell Sasquatch what he's going to do to him if he ever catches him.  Anything more on what could be done with that needs to wait until it happens.



There will be no threat to anyone's belief in God.  Maybe it's silly to keep posting the disclaimer.

How About Some Lionel Hampton

"Swing Heil" is some kind of swing boogie and that's already too much nomenclature for me as what matters to play is the eight-count.  That count always means one thing:  dance.

It seems anything from a four-count should just drop into an eight-count but it doesn't work that way and I was surprised how much it changes.  My emphasis has been so heavily toward rock, house, disco beats that an eight-count swing, boogie, la de da was sweeping right past.

The song has all kinds of mistakes in it but there's enough which is not mistake to scream practice, practice, practice at me.  This is something I never did very much but it has an outrageously good feel to it and everybody has to move for a beat like that.

"Swing Heil" is for high irony in that more than anything I ever did, this I would love to play for my ol' parents.  It was the language of the Swing Kids but they knew it too and my ol' Dad did really love to swing dance.


So then I was thinking, how can there be swing without Lionel Hampton.  Bringing a vibraphone into this is so deranged that it's more cool to think about it than most likely it would be to do it.

Lionel Hampton was so cool he wouldn't even have to play.  He could just hang around being cool and the whole place would light up.

Hampton wasn't mentioned in "Swing Kids" as he wasn't the bold up-front guy but rather he was back there with the vibe being cool.  I think he did lead bands later but that was after the swing era, I believe.

"Let Me Go" - Avril Lavigne feat. Chad Kroeger (video)

There is a measure of irony to the song.

Twitter is aflutter or Twutter is aflitter with the news Lavigne and Kroeger are ending their marriage.  As to who let whom go, the interested student is invited to flutter and flitter as he or she will.  Frankly, we don't care.


Why we listen is it's high-production, non-hip hop, pop and they did a peach of a job of it, not so much on the marriage apparently.  Their break-up doesn't amuse me but the irony of it is a two-headed dragon to get enough teeth to bite and make enough flame.  Unbelievable.


People love to hammer Kroeger but he's got a gift for song-writing.  Regardless of whether you like the style, he's incredibly good at it.  My assumption is Lavigne wrote this one as it specifically says Kroeger is featured rather than principal.  That being true, my respect is the same as the crafting of the song is excellent.  It has all the precision Hollywood can give it so I'm not surprised ninety million people have seen it before I did.


No matter where you are, irony is inescapable.

Donald Trump Announces His Plan to Buy England in a Hostile Take-Over

Donald Trump said today the English need to face facts.   The country is a useless welfare state with a few crumby nuclear submarines to make it feel like some even smaller country will take them seriously.  But no-one does and the best move for the crumbling Empire is to accept evolution ... and Donald Trump's more than generous offer for the real estate.

The Donald said he may be able to use some of the people for contract work but the best ones already split to Spain so the others will have to find somewhere to go.  Maybe they could go to Poland, he suggested.  They don't have a wall yet.


This is simply doing good business, said Trump.  England has been a loss leader for decades and the best disposition now is to sell it for parts and then market the real estate.  Fuhgdaboudit, he said, have you seen some of those castles.  There could be some really fantastic golf courses around them and have you seen Stonehenge.  The lie of that land is perfect for golf.  Why should the Druids care, they're fuckin' dead.  Not for nothin' they put up all those rocks.  That would be a great place for the golf clubhouse.

When asked if he has ever watched "Poltergeist," Trump replied his mind is too powerful for movies and he doesn't waste his time on them.  They melt simply because his powerful mind focuses on them.


Trump was asked if there is anything about England he really wants to keep and he said instantly that would be The Stig.  He was reminded The Stig is not English and Trump replied, well, that explains it then, doesn't it.

Guns Are Great Equalizers ... Except They Don't - How to Fix That

The say guns, most particularly the Colt .45 models, are the Great Equalizers but the trouble is they haven't equalized anything.  The people who have guns live as terrorist kings and the others hide inside their houses.  Even though the gunners have taken over the country, they still screech relentlessly about the supremacy of white people and the manifest destiny of Caucasians.

Femmes feel militant when they get screechy but this gets no respect.  Guns get respect.  The Equal Rights Amendment is one thing, the Equal Rights Amendment borne by militant femmes with guns is a whole different thing.

The process of equalization is a simple one because it will not waste any time with the not-men on Capitol Hill.  This time the femmes will do it themselves with simple survey stations scattered around the country.

They will interview people individually at the mandatory survey stations and they will ask one simple question:  do you believe without reservation in the equality and rights of all human beings without regard to any other consideration whatsoever?

For every YES answer, the subject is wished a good day and a pleasant life.  For all others, shoot them and kick the carcass into the river.

The equalization of America will be complete in days.  In fact, the Colt .45 really IS the Great Equalizer.

Kerry Speaks Well as Veto Now Impossible for Iran Deal

John Kerry is not exactly the most dynamic wallflower you can find at the florist but he was forthright on the considerations regarding the nuclear deal with Iran.  His strong emphasis was on the agreement being more than a bilateral arrangement between Iran and U.S. as it also includes the other nuclear states.  Kerry is clear there would be profound implications were the U.S. to fail to engage with the most important league of nuclear nations in the world.  (CNN:  Barbara Mikulski vote)

Note:  the Barbara Mikulski vote makes the bill veto-proof as the GOP won't be able to get enough votes to override a veto.

The marginal comedy is in passing these negotiations off as girl fights with lots of scratching but usually no particular damage done except to pride.  The fact of it is these negotiations are almost always men so it seems they would be better served by girls since there's no chance they could possibly get any worse at it.  The START talks have, ostensibly, been actively pursuing nuclear disarmament for who knows how many years now.  It's laughable to say they accomplish anything ... or it would be if it were all that funny to have so many live nukes in the world.


There are multiple demerits against the Obama administration but this Iranian nuclear deal is not one of them.  Anything which makes a strong statement for peace with reason needs everyone's support.

Besides, if you start a fuss with Iran then you'll blow up some Peugeot manufacturing plants and that's going to get the French fussin' too so then it starts getting better by the minute.

Note:  it's true that France has sent auto work to Iran just as has happened with America with Clinton's NAFTA, etc.


While the demerits are heavy, bringing Cuba and now apparently even Iran into the actual League of Nations make an important legacy.  The good part is peace, soon you will be able to go to Tehran and take selfies to upload to Instagram.

Critique of Ride the Dragon From Last Night

Ride the Dragon

Straight-up helping of Bad Silas and this is whoop ass for the pure purpose of blowin' shit up.  There is one clam sequence which makes me groan but it's short and overall the continuity to the lead guitar feels pretty good to me.


Hey Baby

This one is one has a bit of schizosynclasticity as it's two songs stuck together, both of which happen to be the same song.  It might have been better to do it better one way or the other but I wanted both sides of it.  The song will almost certainly reappear in another show, whether in one form or the other or both ... we'll see.

This is Bad Silas followed by Surprisingly Good Silas.


Improv on a Squishy Thing

This was a looper exercise which has interested me less and less.  The other three left this one behind for me.  This is Good Silas.  I don't think we really like Good Silas that much although he does pretty stuff sometimes.


Swing Heil

First, the cop:  this was the third or fourth time I played it as I have no idea if I can do stuff like this because I never did before.  There's never been anything even resembling this one.

It surprised me how much it sounded jangly with a mouse and a chicken.  The Man's name won't be mentioned in the same context as there is a tremendous number of mistakes in it.  However, they don't deter me as it's a blazing way to play because you're hard onto an eight-count whereas practically everything in rock is hammering a four-beat.  Despite mistakes, playing in this way brought stuff out of the strings I didn't know was in them.

Of all the things of the night, this one is most exciting to me as it feels just a tiny bit it joins with those brave little bastards who really were the Swing Kids.  It comes back to them in the only language they respected.  Swing Heil!

This is a Silas we never heard before.


Link to the entire set:  Ride the Dragon stage test

Will Not Play for Republicans or Fake Democrats (i.e. Clinton Republicans)

The question came up last night and I won't do it.  I have my standards and Republicans don't meet them.

(Ed:  you turned down a pay gig?)

Yes.  It's the same thing as Django Man in "Swing Kids" when he wouldn't play 'good German' music.  He died for it and he was way braver and more talented than I will ever be.  In support for him, I will not do it.

(Ed:  you need the money)

I need pride more.


In Germany the Green Party is relatively strong but it has the same problem as America's Green Party which is relatively disorganized.  In large part that's because they're overwhelmed by corrupt electoral dollars and that aspect is obvious in U.S. but not so obvious in Germany.  The alternative for Germans is the Social Democratic Party and this one has many similarities to the platform presented by Bernie Sanders.

There is also the Christian Democratic Union which is often partnered with the Christian Social Union.  They realized a long time ago Republicans serve no purpose and the last eight years in Congress proved it.  The only purpose in presenting Republican candidates for the 2016 election is to demonstrate they do have the capability to make things even worse.

That 'Christian' is in the titles for the conservative parties is yet another flagrant violation of Goldwater's warning to conservative parties in the sixties (i.e. keep the religions out of politics).  Goldwater was adamantly Republican but he was one of the rare ones as his perceptivity was keen.  But the party ignored Eisenhower and it continued by ignoring Goldwater.  Their next effort was Nixon the Quaker who made, through Vietnam, one of the biggest fiascos of the 20th Century and that fiasco has continued to date, only moving sometimes.

It amuses me if Republicans want to hear my music, they can hear it the same way they have made me smoke reefer all these years, by sneaking around in the background.  Enjoy the shadows, kids, you meet a better class of people there anyway.

Return of the Bank Dick, By the Thousands

After Reagan destroyed Miranda Rights and protection against illegal search and seizure, cops who had at one time served the purpose of maintaining public order became breakdown artists whose only purpose is to find a way to break you down and get inside your car.  Once they are inside, they are sure to find something they can use to arrest you and / or take from you.

That outrage continues multiple times daily and yesterday a black man was stopped and ticketed specifically because the man 'held eye contact' with the cop.  The cop said this was a specific reason he pulled the man to the side.  Law no longer has anything to do with it.  Stop him.  Break him down.  If he moves, shoot him.

America has, in large part, abandoned cash transactions and even the most trivial types of transactions for even small amounts of cash are performed using a debit or a credit card.  In parallel with this has developed a concept known as 'civil forfeiture' in which the mere possession of cash is evidence of law breaking or the intention to break the law, either of which is, in present time, legal justification for the police to take the money and keep it.

The banks get they want as their rent-a-bank dick cops make people afraid to carry legally-acquired money and they're only safe with bank cards which are controlled by even worse cops (i.e. Congress).


Number of Americans killed by cops this year so far:  779 (including a significant number of cold-blooded murders)

Who started all this:  Reagan

Silas Scarborough Stage Test (audio) - Updated w/Solo Song

Full recording of the live stream test from the Circus.  No change was made to audio for EQ, etc. However, I did compress gas out of delays to improve the flow.  Other than that, it's exactly how it went to SL.

Update:  since this writing, I did doctor a small segment but it had nothing to do with music.  Good luck spotting it.

Song list for "Silas Scarborough Stage Test" on the Ride the Dragon podcast (free).  Also available on SoundCloud (free).  "Swing Heil," "Hey Baby" and "Ride the Dragon" (from the same set) are available individually as well on the podcast.

Ride the Dragon
Hey Baby
Improv on a Squishy Thing
Swing Heil (changed from Swing Kids)

Run-time:  about 30 minutes

The Carnegie Hall up-front is because Cat had never heard it so I figured I would give her the full reading.  If you have never heard it, this isn't such a bad telling of it.

"Ride the Dragon" - Expecting a sweet John Denver song would not be wise, young grasshopper.  Sometimes you've got to ride that fuckin' dragon.

"Hey Baby" - Hendrix uncover I've been threatening for some while.  This is two versions in one flow and the hearing will reveal how that works.  The lyrics are not the originals.  The chords are similar and the lead isn't even close ... so it's an uncover.  It's in keeping with my thinking it's not important to play like Hendrix but to think like him.  Hopefully this did.

"Improv on a Squishy Thing" - This is the only one you have heard previously and you haven't heard this one.  It's a looper and it's about watchmakers.  It wasn't but it is now.  You see, the watchmaker didn't only love time and he wanted to impress his true love by making the perfect clock.  It wouldn't just tell time, it would make music so she would know the time and always have music with it for as long as she lives and always it would sing of how much he loves her.  He was in love and did not think of how long it would take before she took a machine gun to the clock ... but that's another song, isn't it.

"Swing Heil" - The Swing Kids resisted the NAZIs through at least 1941 and they were teenagers who did it with nothing more than swing music and dance.  People often get mixed-up on what heroic means.  Hopefully there is no confusion on this and hopefully the song shows my respect for them.

I screwed up as I hear it play back and so much wish I had said, "Swing Heil!"

Critiquing anyone else's work is an easy thing for perspective if not always so easy for finding words to adequately express it.  For my own stuff a perspective is impossible so it's a pointless exercise.

Some things for sure:

- None of the songs resemble any of the others or not much

- There will be mistakes as none of this is memorized.  I do think I'm getting better, tho.

- The overall sound reinforcement is satisfactory as there was no clipping / distortion and neither was there any need to 'sweeten' the sound with anything electronical after the fact.

That Dow Jones is So Sexy When She Gets Feisty Like This

Ever since the bleak days of the Bush administration and a Dow Jones down around 8000, the Dow has been showing how she responds to the attentions of a real man who treats her right.  In a few short years, she was double what she had been during the dark days of Bush when satisfaction was always just out of reach.

Note:  never have sex with drunks as they are the original inventors of the I-Got-Mine-You-Get-Your-gasm.  As we saw, until 2008, it was nogasms for everyone in the country except two who ran it.  If it's any consolation, their women also were getting nogasms.


Now she roars, I am Woman, treat me right or feel the claws.

Right now the Dow is riding kind of wild but maybe you should have been more careful when you were whispering in her ear.  Calling her by her sister's name, you had to know, was not going to be received well.


So she's kind of annoyed over that and I can't say I blame her but you better treat her right.  Anyone who gets nervous when she gets like this never should have been dancing in this ballroom anyway.

My Father Was a NAZI Commandant (video)

Today Breitbart reports on at least one of Miley Cyrus' nipples flying about the crowd at VMA.  We had already assumed Miley Cyrus has nipples but thanks to the Breitbart for the confirmation as the world needs serious journalism like that.

Children are of interest but our focus is on those with something to say and this story is of a child, Monika, growing up from WWII and discovering her father was a death camp commander.  To this point she had no idea as she thought he commanded work labor teams and he was good with them.  He was my father, you know.  This is what my mother told me.  How should she know.

Be warned right from the top this is absolutely heartbreaking.  I believe it is my duty to endure this as what I feel in watching is such a nit next to what these immensely courageous women carry.

These are NOT NAZIs but rather they are their children and also the children of those who died there and how does one live with that.

Now she says, "If you can't change the past, maybe you can do something for the future."


The path from the discovery of what her father did to that actualization of the present must have been unimaginably difficult and she tells that story in the video.

This is NOT a story of the horrors of Nazism as we know them already.  What she tells us, more intimately than anyone else could, what it is to live with that as a personal heritage and legacy.

The reason there is a particular connection to this woman is her father is the camp commandant for the death camp featured in "Schindler's List" and going to that movie set is part of where she learned of what her father actually did.

She was born in 1945 so she had no possible way of knowing what happened in the war.  Her mother wasn't too maternal and would not tell her what happened.

"I wanted to know what happened to the Jews.  Nobody told me.  I did not know."

Note:  she got no help from her mother who didn't seem so different from her father in her regard for her daughter.



"I have to grow up.  I am no more a child.  I am not with my mother.  I am here.  And I have to obey." - Helena, a young girl working for Goeth in his villa with another girl, essentially as slaves.  Check out the courage of Helena's father when the SS took him away.


Monika and Helena meet each other and this is where the biggest heartbreak came for me as Monika carries shame she never even knew and Helena is overwhelmed by the Plaszow camp.  The impact doesn't come through historical pictures but rather from the blazing emotion of two women so catastrophically damaged by this but in opposite ways which nevertheless have exactly the same effect.  Both are left with a tremendous void in their lives which they did nothing to create.


More and more a focus on children comes to me as this is not just a hippie trippie hipvolution from saving whales but rather I see so many things and it becomes a mandate.  This one isn't so different from War Child and it would be swell if you could take a look at War Child as well.  All of these people are, by anyone's definition, victims and what makes it even more poignant is they are the most defenseless victims.  This isn't bleeding heart concern but rather self-defense on behalf of the human race.