I remember watching a dvd about the making of Dark Side of the Moon that contained footage of studio sessions in which Floyd was recording songs not on DSOTM.  One in particular, “Echoes” - David Gilmour and Richard Wright were peforming a vocal duet in the initial verses of the song when Gilmour stopped, looked scathingly across the studio at Wright and said “hangs motionless UPON the AIR.  You’re going to bloody butcher us…”  Richard looked at that moment like he wanted to be anywhere else in the world but in that studio.  That’s probably the first time I really identified with Richard Wright.  When people think about Floyd, the tendency is to think about Gilmour and Waters, but the post-Barrett Floyd would never have been what it became without all four of these passionate perfectionists - Gilmour, Waters, Mason and Wright.

Each one of these men conveyed a compelling message that they articulated collectively through their music.  So compelling in fact, that nothing short of brilliant music would serve to convey it. 

“Us and Them” is, I think, Richard Wright’s greatest achievement.  Orginally written as a background score for the film, Zabriskie Point, directed by Italian filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni, it was rejected by the director as too “mournful… sad” and lay quietly forgotten before being resurrected to be included on Dark Side of the Moon.  This piece of music entrenched Richard Wright as an instrumental influence on the sound and the success that launched Pink Floyd to the next level with Dark Side of the Moon.

It’s a black month, Richard.  Thank you for leaving with us those pieces of you that you could describe on your keys.  I hope you are now at that Great Gig in the Sky.  I hope you are happy and at peace.

You are missed.

Friday night.  We’re going to be rocking Snyder.  We play mainly classic rock.  Songs from Credence (Side Note: Pretty sad that Credence doesn’t have their own website, but I don’t google much past the first page. Dudes, see me about page rank), The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, some B.B. King, and even some sweet rocked up Dylan tunes like “Knocking on Heaven’s Door”, except with some kick.  I know I’m missing a lot here, but hell, I don’t even know what the play list is for this gig.  That’s what final rehearsal is for tomorrow night, right?

It will be the first time the band has practiced together since before our last gig about two months ago.  If you’ve read any of my previous blogs about the band, you know this is no cause for alarm. We don’t believe in over-preparing.  As a matter of fact, we don’t even have a name.  One of the guys in the band keeps calling it the Joel DuffieldBand but Joel, as cool as he is, is very self-deprecating and gets flustered when we call the band by that name. We had thought about “Frostbite” because the building we practice in has no heat or air-conditioning and our fingers turn blue in the winter. Personally, I think we should call the band “The Johnsons” but I don’t want to start a gender war with the female members and end up being outvoted and playing for a band called “The Clappers.”

Are we too tight for Snyder?  Probably not.  We’re a guitar band for sure.  It’s an interesting mix though.   The guitarists range in ages from their early 30s to the middle 50s.  You’d never guess, but the youngest guitarist, Joel, is like Buddy Holly re-incarnated - plays this huge hollow-body Guild and when he kicks that overdrive pedal the thing screams.  Very nice indeed.  Mike and I, well we’re Stratocaster guys. Mike, lucky bastard that he is, proudly struts his VG around the stage with it’s blinking blue LED light while I drag my customized standard around with its EMG Active State pickups that’ll wrap some sounds around your head. We all bring a different sound and when we put it together we do a “Green River” that has to get John Fogerty hard, without Viagra.

Who would’ve guessed that the web address for Viagra was VIAGRA.com?  Did those letters grow?  What are they trying to tell us?

 So am I excited about this gig?  Hell yeah!  Just ask Viagra.

It occurred to me as well, that if we can make drugs that will allow a man to grow breasts, why can’t we make intelligent alcohol? Target the ‘bad’ brain cells, so to speak? Depression? No problem. Drink three of these, stay away from the neighbor’s dog, and check back next week. Recuperating from disabilitating disorders can be exhausting and frustrating and the inherent stress can lead to further ailments. Shouldn’t sick people be happy too? Anxiety? How about Mike’s Hardly Worried Lemonade? Change the old mantra of “Oh poor me… I had my leg amputated!” to “Look at me! I’m a pogo-stick!!!”

Grasping the elusive nuances of Calculus and Analytic Geometry requires a healthy dose of misdirection and abstract thinking. If peered at too closely, integral and differential equations, hyperbolic and transcendental functions, trigonometric substitutions and polar coordinates, will confound any attempt to be captured by mental accuity. Thus, distraction and a self-distancing approach to allow for a higher-level appreciation of the fundamental truths and axioms of the medium and their interrelationships are required. Dr. Threadwell understood this well and was a master in conveying knowledge in a highly distracting manner. Many are the times and raucous was the laughter when he stretched to the top of the whiteboard to scribe a parametric equation describing projectile motion, only to turn around to the class and discover he had popped a nut out of the side of that skanky outfit in the process. Projectile motion took on a new meaning.

I took two semesters of Calculus with Dr. Threadwell. The last time I saw him, he was walking through the Business Building, in a haze. Eyes wandering twenty feet above everybody else’s heads, bumping into students every step of the way, no doubt contemplating l’Hopital’s Rule. My best friend in college, who was with me at the time, and with whom I’d just returned from a liquid lunch at Hills and Dales in preparation for our final in Sociological Research Methods, asked me in a very collegiate fashion, “Who the @#!* is that freak??” I just laughed and replied, “That’s my calculus professor, dude.”

Shortly thereafter, right before I was to begin my third semester of Calculus, Dr. Threadwell dropped from sight of the university - no explanations.  I had a hunch that maybe he had gone, permanently, onto that higher plane, and was happier in a place where he could deal with numbers and not people.  For those of us who had made it through those first two semesters and were looking forward to that third and final semester, we were much disappointed to find he had been replaced with an Engineering professor who had no talent or knack for calculus and who was also a very boring dresser.  (More on that later)

We all blamed his disappearance on the Dean of Instruction.

We lost a damn good professor that day…

Dr.  “Spitterman” Benny Cornett, shown here in his favorite Student Disciplinary Appeals Hearing outfit, thank you from all of us for depriving us of a quality third semester of Calculus and Analytical Geometry.

P.S.  Shaving doesn’t help…

I’m glad I have my work.  There, at least, I can focus.  Here, however, I find myself turning from one thing to another, leaving most unfinished.  I guess I’m going to the office tomorrow in jeans and a pullover…

“Sometimes, there’s just not enough rocks.”  That, I’ve always thought, was one of the more profound lines from Forrest Gump. Speaking of rocks, the Olympics start tomorrow. If you can find a connection between the Olympics and rocks, let me know. I can’t, but it seems like they should go together, like a leg-humping chihuahua and a crispy beef taco. Go figure.

I’ve always been a big fan of Pink Floyd. David Gilmour is a fabulous guitarist. The music is mournful, soulful and brilliant. The lyrics - dark, controversial at times, but always inquisitive of the other side of things. So I listen to a lot of Floyd. Sometimes though, especially at times like these, Floyd can be like a gateway drug, like ‘They’ say marijuana is, or like gerbils. Gerbils are dangerous - before you know it you could be hooked on guinea pigs and they’re a lot bigger with all of the attendant increases in tooth and claw size. Explain that one to your doctor, if you can make it to the doctor before it chews and claws its way through your stomach. I’m really not sure what the purpose of gerbils are in the big picture, but I’m sure THAT’S NOT IT. So yeah, Floyd can be a bit depressing at times. But ‘fun’ music just makes me want to puke. Since when was music supposed to be about fun?

So nothing funny here today. Thoughts of people. New friends. Lack of certainty. Lack of sleep. Lack of desire for sleep. A strong desire for a new guitar. Patches on gaping holes that don’t work. A lot of gray and too little color. It’s not finished, so here I am - unfinished.

There’s nothing poetic about code, excepting the instances where the clueless somehow manage to become managers of more of the clueless.  That, in a sense, would be poetic justice, but considering that they’re clueless to begin with, it’s pretty much business as usual.  If you’re trying to write poetry with code, you’ve probably been visiting too many porn sites and you’ve lost your connection with the Real and need to either go to work polishing balls at a bowling alley or hang out at city parks until they catch on to you and make you register with your local Barney Fife.  If you’re SEEING poetry in your code, there’s no help for you.  What are you writing?  “Red Rover, Red Rover, let de-referenced pointer come over…?”

You’re sick.  You need help.  Got Therapy?

The lazy way - No Tripod.  No Timer.  I’m doing this like my daughter taught me.  Hold the camera up and away from you at arm’s length, purse you lips together to look as sexy as you possibly can, drape all your hair down one side of your face so only one eye is visible, preferrably the one with the makeup, and press the shutter release.  Nothing is so simple with a digital SLR that employs advanced state-of-the-art TTL metering and Nikon’s patented 3D Color Matrix Metering II system! I’m not complaining though, because the results are stunning! Nose hairs gone awry stand out with pride! First off, there’s no ‘one handing’ this baby. Number one, the TTL means you have to either cover the viewfinder with your finger or use a hood to get the camera to take a picture. One hand down. The other hand then is accorded the responsiblity of depressing that cool little silver shutter release. Number two, you don’t want to drop the D60 because you’re being foolish. On the positive side, being in front of the camera for a change allows me to see that sweet little Auto Focus in action! It rotates smoothly and silently to ensure the perfect capture of my imperfections, and the Vibration Reduction compensates for the delerium tremens that must surely be occuring from a steady diet of M&Ms and Glen Livet! This camera is awesome. So, having employed the required operational saftey methods, the results are here. I think my daughter would be proud.

I was actually looking to download some Tool from iTunes. Silly me. Apparently, you cannot get Tool from iTunes. I’m sure this is not hurting Tool in anyway - just idiots like me who depend on iTunes for the bulk of their music. Even more exacerbating is the the fact that at my local Best Buy (no links for the Dark Side), I can’t find Tool cds. When I do manage to divert one of the pimple-faced customer-profiling zombatrons from their zone sweeps to ask about Tool, they usually tell me Sears is at the other end of the mall. Such is the travesty of living in a small town. Don’t get me wrong. I love the shit in Best Buy, but the people working there… I’ve seen more friendly bouncers at biker bars I wouldn’t throw my grandmother into without and 8-ball, a big knife, and a huge stash of cash to either buy her way out with or purchase sex from some guy named ‘Skids’.

Anyway - A Perfect Circle. Fucking genius. Here I am, whining to my friend that I can’t find Tool on iTunes and she says “You should check out A Perfect Circle.” Well, I already had a couple of songs by them on my iPod. (By the way, I’m really getting sick of iThis and iThat. Next time I go to the iDoctor, I’ll make sure to tell him I have a family history and he needs to check out my iProstate for iCancer).  But, I digress.

I am lost in a fugue of brilliant emotive eloquence and I am ecstatic about it.  This is exactly what music is intended for.  If the music you’re listening to doesn’t allow you to take wing and soar, it’s not worth listening to.  I’m a musician - always have been.  Music is a powerful coalescing force inside me, screaming to get out, searching frantically for a voice, an outlet, an avenue for anger, loss, love, joy.  It’s absolute feeling.  Mine comes out on six strings but the stream is carried in the lyrics.

 Wake up and face me.  Don’t play dead…  This song, “Passive” just screams what I can’t write for myself.  I don’t know what moves me more, “I’m dead as dead can be” or “You fucking disappoint me”… “Go ahead and play dead… you fucking disappont me.”  It’s easy to get lost in this.  Every now and then you find a perfect song at the perfect time and you become a fan for life.  It’s the in-between spaces that music carries me through.  If you’re reading this and you think I’m referring to you, no matter how obliquely, you’re probably right.

“Someday, maybe, I will walk away and say  you fucking disappoint me.”

Yeah.  Passive-Aggressive Bullshit.  Maybe you’re better off this way.

Society today is filled with tragedy and heroism.  The tragedy of the acts perpetuated by those consumed by hate, intolerance and irrationally perceived personal affronts are counter-balanced by the unselfish and unthinking acts of instinct for preservation, whether for self or others, of those such as Greg McKendry.  I don’t know the man, never met him in my life, never even heard of him before today, but I know many like him.  They are all around us.  If we’re lucky, we can even count ourselves among them.

I generally like to make fun of everything - poke holes in the fabric of the thought and the rationalizaton that serves as such a pitiful attempt to mask the absurdity around us.  There’s nothing laughable about this story - other than the laudable attempt of the writers to clarify to those of us living in the trees on insects and fruit what exactly a shotgun is… 

Is there such a thing as ‘holy ground’ anymore?  There used to be a time that you could safely sit next to your mortal enemy in a church, even though prudence dictated that you may want to leave by separate exits after the services.  I’m sure that the anti-gun movement will add this tragedy to their stockpile of ammunition in their war on guns.  Of course, the other side will point to the efficacy of concealed carry laws in deterring crimes such as this.  If we keep heading down this road with church shootings, I see one of two things happening, neither more laughable than the other: 1) An appearance of metal detectors at church entrances or 2) half the congregation packing heat.  You tell me, which is more absurd?

If a guy wants to walk into a church and start blasting, he should have the balls to leave the guitar case in the truck.  If he believes so strongly in his twisted sickness, he should have the courage to declare himself and be ready to fight for those beliefs instead of waiting to declare until he’s safely inside the sanctuary of his defenseless victims. Jim D. Adkisson, you are a worthless coward and a loser.  Guitar cases are for guitars and shotguns are for enthusiasts.  You are neither.  I hope you like anal sex…

Now, I’m not a movie critic, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night. So, if you haven’t seen this movie (which came out in 1998), grab it next time you walk by the Bargain Bin in your local video store or Walmart. If on the other hand, you’re easily offended by a liberal smattering of profanity, you may not make a connection. However, as employed by the Coens, the profanity is not so much gratuitous as it is a defnining characterstic of the central characters - the Dude and Walter. Poor Donnie… Just shut the fuck up Donnie.  ”I am the Walrus?  I am the Walrus.”