Usual Rubbish

Unique opportunity.

No, this isn’t spam. This is real life. Real as it gets, man. Gravity, oxygen, water, the whole nine yards.

This is what we need. I was just thinking back to the bad old days in the 1970s when television was king and the internets were just a twinkle in DARPA’s eyes. On about five million occasions – maybe slightly more than that – I can remember watching an ad for 120 Classical Masterpieces introduced by the well-known character actor John Williams (not the classical guitarist … nor the composer of the Lost In Space theme song). Now that we are on the verge of releasing our third and perhaps silliest album ever, Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick, I only wish we had a marketing powerhouse behind us like John Williams. Or even Guy Williams. (Except that he‘s dead too!)

Looks like, once again, Big Green will do the legwork on our own. We have some volunteer help, as you know. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) will tell all of his robot friends to download the album. (They don’t even need a freaking smart phone!) The man-sized tuber will be in charge of rural distribution; we’ve provided him with the requisite maps of Nebraska and Idaho. The rest of the country will be handled by the two Lincolns, who – as candidates for the presidency – have tread that ground before with great success. We have great hopes for anti-Lincoln, who has made some friends in Nashville. (Actually, that’s Nashville, Franklin, Idaho. Look it up.)

Yes, distribution is always a headache when most of your fans live on other planets. There’s a cost-benefit issue in trying to ship discs via UPS to Neptune; it’s hard to make that $9.95 per unit generate a profit against the transportation costs, even with our interplanetary handling surcharge of $45,682.53 per disc. Add in the exchange rate headaches, particularly in the Quatloo zone planets, and it’s hard to make your nut that way. Still, we try. Mitch Macaphee has some ideas involving matter transportation technology. All very hush hush at this point. We’ll let you know.

Hey, we live on crumbs. It’s the art that matters, right? That’s why we’re assembling an all-star panel of reviewers for our June podcast – experts who will examine Cowboy Scat from multiple insane perspectives. So stay tuned. This may be the best batch yet.

Political Rants

In the street.

While they’re all talking about the Sopranos … let’s talk about something that’s actually happening in the actual world. Like the uprisings in Turkey and in Brazil.

First, the way the U.S. press covers the government response to these protests is interesting, to say the least. I suppose they are so overcome by the loss of James Gandolfini that they have forgotten how harshly our own various municipal police forces cracked down on the Occupy Wall Street movement just eighteen months ago or so. The developing world doesn’t have a corner on repression, not by a long shot.

The only way things changeStill, it’s interesting that in both cases, the original impetus for the protest was a decision by the government affecting public services. Both Turkey and Brazil have been touted as relatively successful governments, and yet beneath many success stories there is often another story to tell, that of the poor, the working people, those left behind. You can see them in Brazil, in China, in India, in Turkey, just as you can see them here in the United States. True, the standard of living in Brazil has improved vastly over the last decade. But the people protesting increased transit fares are making us aware of the work that is yet to be done.

This did not come out of nowhere. The core of the movement in Brazil are organizers who have been working for years towards greater social and economic justice. These activists and the landless peasant movement was substantially responsible for the somewhat more progressive shift of national governments, starting with Lula’s election. (See this article in the New York Times.) I’m sure the same can be said of the people standing in the park in Turkey.

America is no different. Occupy Wall Street didn’t come out of thin air either. It was the next chapter of resistance to a society that rewards criminality on the part of the privileged and protects the powerful from accountability. From Ankara to Sao Paulo to New York, mass movements remain the best way to get our leaders to stop, listen, and act.

Feet on the street – that’s what does it, every time.

luv u,

jp

Usual Rubbish

Fragments of brain.

If I could think faster than a slow crawl, I would. That’s the issue, always. And don’t look at me like that, Marvin. Not ALL of us have electronic brains.

What would I do with all that brain power? Well, for one thing, I would get our next album out a bit quicker. Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick seems to be in perpetual becoming mode. I know you’re sick of it, I’m sick of it, Matt’s had it up to here, the president has started complaining, the ambassador from Madagascar has issued a protest against Big Green – suffice to say, no one is happy. Hey, well … we’re working as fast as we can. It takes a while to bake all those discs, especially without a convection oven like the big, famous groups have. And then hand painting all those covers. Jesus!

At least, in these modern times, we no longer have to perform the music separately for every disc we sell. That was a real pain in the assets. Eventually, someone – I think it may have been Mitch Macaphee, our mad science advisor, but I’m not certain – told us all about the concept of mastering, then spinning copies off of the master, etc. Up until then, we were recording each copy individually. Talk about quality control issues! Sheesh.

We’ve got an assembly line set up in the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, just like the good old days when proles were hammering out … well, hammers within these very walls. (Very clammy walls, I should say.) Big Green is applying the lessons first applied by Henry Ford, in that we line up a bunch of underpaid individuals (including robots and man-sized tubers) and have each one handle a piece of the manufacturing process. Then we drastically underpay them, but not so much that they can’t afford to buy one of the discs on their way out the door.

Well, there’s the factory whistle again. Time to get back down to it. LINE THREE! LUNCH IS OVER!

Weird ass music since 1986