..Catch Wave..

Prelude to green..

..Prelude to Red..

Catch Wave..

..I'm here for a higher knowledge of myself.. and of the universe.. for power.. and to conquer my fear of death..

Ingo Diamond Smith..

Untitled

..this untitled drawing by West Troiano will appear in my yet to be released poetry book.. the photograph was taken by Nic Coury in the sci-fi section of Book Buyers..

Senfl - Ich stuend an einem Morgen..

Motoharu Yoshizawa

The magic lantern..

Skydecker Presents

Monterey County Weekly Best Of:

Best New Live Music Movement

Skydecker’s Acoustic/Electric Concert Series

East Village Coffee Lounge

498 Washington St., Monterey, 373-5601

Carbone’s

214 Lighthouse Ave., Monterey, 643-9169

Several months ago, local musician Keigan Skydecker developed what has become one of the most enjoyable and fresh ways to experience live music on the Peninsula. The concept is simple: One Saturday per month, a band is invited to play an acoustic set at East Village followed by an electric set. So far, Skydecker has delivered Battlehooch, Sun Hop Fat, Matt Baldwin, Mike Beck, The Blank Tapes and Sean Smith to largely sold-out audiences who have found the shows to be a revelation – who knew Mike Beck or Battlehooch had such a soft and reflective flavor unplugged, or that melancholic-genius songwriter Sean Smith could electrify like that? In April, the concert series continues at Carbone’s with shows that include Forrest Day, Silent Comedy and Le Vice.

..here are some pics i took for Skydecker Presents.. the band was called 7 orange abc .. i'll put a youtube of the boys at the bottom.. so you have some sounds to go with the images..

Bert Jansch

John Martyn

Connecting Science and Art.. McCarthy~Herzog~Krauss

Harpo..

Winnie The Claude

Desperadi

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[Andrew Shaw-Kitch speaks.. from his blog..

check it out ..

structureseinplay.blogspot.com .. i

assure you he's smarter then how ye doin it..

Desperadi..how ye doin it.? i'm survivin..

where the bad bitches at?. where ya hidin?.]

The first context in which I came to know the Eagles' song "Desperado" was not at all fair to the classic seventies anti-ballad, a song that gave title to their 1973 album of the same name. In "The Checks" Elaine dates a man who needs a personal moment in any situation where the song comes on. They are sitting in a car at the end of a date on the verge of a tender moment when "Desperado" emerges from the radio; Elaine tries to say something and he interrupts her and stares off transfixed. When she tries to share his love of the song he refuses to. She instead decides to make hers what is possibly the stupidest hit the Eagles ever had: "Witchy Woman." The joke here, while very clever, is quite simple: a man, by the intent listening of a song manages to miss its meaning entirely; by falling under the spell of a song that declares "you better let somebody love you," he fails to let somebody love him; and Elaine, by taking an Eagles song as hers to get even with her "Desperado" becomes a "Witchy Woman" with "raven hair and ruby lips." The songs become defined by their listeners; by taking mediocre, sentimental poetry seriously they require more of the very advice initially received. Consequently for the first twenty years of my life I had no respect for the song beyond its potential as a punchline, until I encountered a cover version of the song on a CD my friend lent to me.

The Langley School Music Project was recordings from a Canadian Education experiment that introduced elementary students to the playing and singing of pop songs. In the version of "Desperado" a girl who sounds nine years old belts the song out alone over the teacher's piano. 1970s bizarre utopian ideas are refracted through some indescribable Eagles crystal, and the song suddenly meant something more to me than just irony.

To get at this meaning, how the character of the singer is re-done by the re-doing of the song, it would be productive to look at what the song means in its original recording by the Eagles. At this point in rock and roll and alternative country an established artist coming out of the sixties was either making a change and embracing the smoother, less confrontational sound of the seventies epitomized by the Eagles—Paul McCartney, Neil Diamond, Fleetwood Mac—or he was cartoonishly sticking to the rebellious, youthful image he had embodied for a decade—the Rolling Stones, the Who, Led Zeppelin—or he had grown up and remained an artist—John Lennon, the Kinks. Or he was dead. It could very easily be read as a patronizing message, or even an intervention, to Townes Van Zandt or Gram Parsons to say

Now it seems to me some fine things

Have been laid upon your table

But you only want the ones you can't get.

"Desperado," advises Don Henley, "you ain't gettin' younger," so you better grow up. However, if sung by a third grader, an entirely different meaning comes out of it: a precocious little girl who has seen too many movies is singing across the playground to the nine-year-old object of her affection—a little boy who is still convinced that girls have cooties and would rather throw mud balls at them and climb fences and wrestle and skateboard. "These things that are pleasin' you / Can hurt you somehow." She watches day after day, singing, "Why don't you come to your senses? / You've been out riding fences for so long now." At any age—10, 20, 50, 60—someone can tell you to go to the next stage, to claim "your pain and your hunger are driving you home."

At the age of 23 I began to write a book about Seinfeld and to love Linda Ronstadt and the "Desperado" became me, being called by 27-year-old Ronstadt to "come down from my fences," the heights of my outlandish youth, and "open the gate," return home, and prepare my own adult life. This version came out right after the Eagles', and the complexity was not much deeper.

The last re-do, though, I encountered last, and was recorded thirty years later, showing the song was not a fad or a cliché, but a classic. If anything at this point it would be unhip to cover the song, but Johnny Cash gives it new weight, new dignity, and expands the meaning again. This is the man who was the Desperado his whole life—he has been there, he was asked "Ain't it funny how the feeling goes away?" and the man in black laughed. The song becomes a discussion of the ironies of freedom.

Don't you draw the queen of diamonds

She'll beat you if she's able

The queen of hearts is always your best bet

First we see someone advised to choose the card he draws, as though this were literally possible. The card game is a metaphor for life, but then a metaphor for life—"your best bet"—is used back on the card game metaphor. Choice and acceptance become confused once you choose to accept the lack of choice. The symbols of his liberty become the very things that bind and destroy him.

Freedom, Oh freedom

That's just some people talking

Your prison is walking through this world alone.

When you look back on your life and you realize you never had anyone else there can be no re-do. "You better let somebody love you before it's too late."

Persona..

Persona..

THE SQUEEZERS..

IT WAS FINALLY AT HIS GRASP.. a (new)

format or source.. source not.. but more

like a receptacle.. a limitless container.. one

to contend with the might of the new

genius.. the last call of humanity.. our

enduring cry of preservation will not go

quietly tonight.. but wail and trail and

plunder alike.. with no certain focus or -

plan.. just intense burst of light and red..

and blood.. and foot prints back to the sap of

grungy alleys.. to places that left us

questioning ourselves.. places with frosty

buildings rising high.. to the glory of what

our squeezing power can do.. no noble

afternoon with perfect temperature can

secure this false day of celebration.. dare

not come to my land, and sing of a

falsehood that all know the tune to.. we are

simpletons no longer.. and you have pushed

us too far.. loosen your grip now or dare to

drag my grandfathers sacrifice into the

ditch.. with your warmongering.. your

delight in the darkest sides of power.. your

betrayal of love.. your blindness of the weak

and poor.. and those born without a mind to

dominate.. dream you now a cloud that

contains you in your moment of gasping..

your dieing body.. where now are the down

trodden .. where now is the blood you

drank.. where is the fat you consumed by

the barrel.. it’s coming down upon you..

and the peasants cry through the streets..

with torches high.. with drool.. slobber..

and blood.. and cum.. they blot out the sky

yet again.. with their burning display.. and

the dance goes on.. and the peasants ask

not to be squeezed to death.. and the

squeezers. Squeeze..