Savage Distortion

BALLAD OF A THIN WHITE DUKE




In late sixties swinging London there was a singer/mime/sax playing guitarist named David Jones who couldn't get arrested. Legend has it that the fame accorded to the other David Jones of Monkees fame prompted this individual to change his name. This reinvention began a seemingly never ending readressing of character and style that would be the career of David Bowie.

Bowie was not the first to do this. One must remember that back then everybody was trying on Bob Dylan's clothes. Reinvention begins with Dylan, and Bowie gladly took the torch and ran. What was genius was that Bowie didn't reinvent himself as Bob per se, he made himself into Bob in a dress, sang a song that tied in well with a popular movie, and seemed destined for one hit wonder/novelty status.

That is until he met Andy and Lou. The Velvets had a huge impact on Bowie, but he didn't make himself into a Lou clone either. He blended the dylanesque with the lower east side velvety vibe which we hear on Hunky Dory.

Then Angie took over the look, Tony Defries took over the books, and history was made in the image of an androgenous spaceman.





"That weren't no d.j. that was crazy cosmic jive"

Bowie was not the only genius responsible for his glory. His forementioned wife and manager; Mick Ronson, Tony Visconti, Ken Scott, the list goes on. Ziggy took off, took over, and then Bowie killed him just like he promised in song. He also fired everybody, including his wife, moved to LA, ordered up a crop of Peru's finest, and began chapter three.

This time it was R&B, gloss, session men, coke, more coke, and some more coke.




He almost died. Bowie almost did a Belushi before there was a Belushi.

BUT, he's David. He's a genius. He made three great records during that period.

Then he took Visconti, Iggy and Eno to Berlin for Phase Four.

Coke was out, smack was in. Pop was out, soundscapes were in. Horns were out, synths were in. He dug deep, got high, made 'Low', became a 'Lodger', and we became 'Heroes' (not in that order).




Then he came back to London, arriving by train with a brand of pomp that could not be mistaken for anything but fascist.

What is he doing?

He's still trying on Dylan's clothes. Clothes Bob didn't even know he had.

He capped that phase with the fab 'Scary Monsters'. Put art to bed, called Nile Rodgers, and said 'Let's Dance'.

Then he disapionted everyone, got involved with films, made a ton of dough, moved to Switzerland and married a supermodel.





This would have been a logical end, but David wasn't done with Bob's clothes.

Bowie joined a band. Made some fun records with them that didn't sell, and then he went electronica and toured with Trent Reznor.

Not done yet.

The dawn of the new millenium saw David combining all of the above, including working with Visconti and Eno again.




And let's not forget Zoolander.

I am now going to put on my red shoes and dance the blues.

AFTER A LONG LAST OF TIME













Thanks to Rob Machold for designing the CD art which is based upon concepts that he and Chrispy worked together developing.

I am very happy and extremely proud of this record.

'Santiago Love Songs' is entering the duplication process. As soon as we get them, we'll start selling them.

HTML MCDLT

I successfully added a link to my blogroll - 'Dangerous Spork'. This was a watershed moment. HTML is like sanskrit to me, but I was able to find the other links that Hue put up for me, and I simply copied one of those links and changed the names to protect the guilty. It worked. Yay.

Blogroll is remeniscent of lobster roll, or egg roll, spring roll, roll roll, roll in zee hay.......

THE BEST OFFENSE IS......A REALLY GOOD OFFENSE

Having a great defense certainly keeps things interesting, but it really doesn't win games for you. The Jets never really got blown away last season, staying in the game, but ultimately losing much more often than not. Why? No Offense. The Jets need to address that this year.

Issue #1: QB











Can Chad stay healthy? Chad could be great, like Montana great, if he can only find a way to keep that shoulder in tact.

Issue #2: Curtis




Can Curtis compete. Age is a bitch, even the best bow to old man time, and make no mistake, Curtis is the best, quietly breaking rushing records for the past ten seasons, as loyal and classy as Peyton, Curtis is the certainly the greatest man ever to don the green - but can he keep it up in his eleventh year?

Is this man the answer?


(RB Cedric Houston)


Issue #3: Recievers




(Justin McCareins) (Laverneus Coles)

Over the past three years the Jets have lost great recievers to free agency. I would cry, but nobody listens. Santana, come home! Anyway, McCareins and Coles are our proven warriors, here's to hoping Chad can get them the ball.

Otherwise, it's up to this guy again this year to put points up on the board.



(LB Jonathan Vilma)

BIG PHARMA TO LOSE A LITTLE WEIGHT?

We'll see. I'm sure they'll find a way to offer their 'opinions'. Either way, your prescriptions won't be getting any cheaper, and I will still have work.

IT'S GOOD TO BE KING

George is meeting with some resistance in his drive toward bringing the Monarchy back to America.

It's clear now that the war was simply a tool in his process of ending democracy.

Weather or not we are bringing deomcracy and freedom to Iraq, it is happening at the cost of our own.

WE LOVE TO FLY - AND STARVE YOU

I just had my first experience with American Airlines. Where's the fucking food? I had to buy a shitty Otis fucking Spunkmeyer muffin for two bucks - that's the only option - a fucking muffin, and I had to pay for it.

What is this crap?

I usually fly Continental, or Delta if Atlanta is involved. Those guys feed you.....well, weather it's actually food or not is debatable, but at least it's free, and you can count on getting a snack.

I want somebody to start an airline that caters to my flying needs. I want childless flights. I want preferred seating for those passengers who's carry-on baggage is actually carried on, not dragged behind causing other passengers to trip over their stupid drag bag, which takes up all the fucking room in the overhead compartment - assholes! I'm, talking to you, you know who you are, you inconsiderate jerk-offs. Check that fucker!

And I want food!

LASAGNA

For some reason not revealed to me, lasagna popped into my head while walking through Union Square. I don't know of any relation between Union Square and Lasagna, but in this day and age I'm sure one can be found. I'll get Cheney on it.

Anyway, I decided to make lasagna for dinner. I have cooked some things that I called 'lasagna', but I have never bothered to use a recipe - until today.

Of course I only used the on-line recipe for guidlines, and to see if there was anything I wasn't getting right. Eggs and milk mixed in with the ricotta - I knew there was something missing.

I'll just tell you what I did that wasn't in the recipe.

I added diced peppers (cubanel, poblano) with the onion and garlic for the sauce - I do this a lot.

I used ground pork, which I seasoned with Jane's Crazy Mixed Up Salt, cumin, and jamaican curry powder.

I added layers of sliced eggplant which I sauteed in the pork grease - yeah buddy.

I left out the provolone, mostly because I didn't have any, and stuck with the mozz solomente like.

For the sauce I used a combination of Goya salsa picante, and stewed tomatoes.

It's been in the oven for twenty minutes. I can't wait.

LEWIS BLACK - REQUIRED VIEWING

I watched Lewis Black's most recent HBO special. He is very funny. He is also right. This country has quite simply gone hog wild.

Three things he said struck me as utter genius. (I paraphrase)

What would be best in the coming election year would be the Republicans and Democrats taking some time off.

The Democrats inability to find someone who could beat Bush is like not being able to find a 'normal' person who could win in the Special Olympics.

We should elect a dead president, preferably Reagan. That would scare the shit out of every other nation, and NOBODY would fuck with us.

WORD VERIFICATION IS BACK

A few months ago I turned the word verification on my blog off. I felt that I was losing potential comments from extremely lazy people who would otherwise be happy to comment.

It turned out that I still generally only get comments from my band of faithful bloggers, but an interesting thing happened. For a while at least, I was not getting comment spam. It seemed that when I originally enabled the word verification, I got taken off a list or something, because when I first turned it off after about a year, no spam - for a while. Lately I've been getting infested with spam, all of it on old posts. One post 'American Heath Care - A Bad Joke' got hit with multiple comment spam daily. I deleted that post - we all know American Health Care is a joke. Today I enabled the word verification again, and after a while I'll probably turn it off again.

Sorry for any inconvenience.

ARTS AND CRAFTS

Chris and I made a scale model of our plans for the new Smoke and Mirrors, which will be located very near our current digs.

We drew the room dimensions and filled it with cardboard mock-ups of gear and isolation booths.

It's cool.

I wish we had a camera.

In our new studio James Brown is 6 foot 4, and Jesus is just over 5 feet.

CRYING FOUL/IT'S MY OWN DAMN FAULT - I KNEW THIS WOULD HAPPEN


I accidentally bought the 'remastered' CD of the first Ozzy record "Blizzard of Ozz". Now I knew that a few years back Sharon got Ozzy to have the drums and bass tracks on that record redone with his current bassist and drummer.

That's such a shitty thing to do. To Bob Daisley and Lee Kerslake, and to me, and to anyone who loved that record.

I simply did an impulse buy, 8.99 on sale at Virgin. I had a memory lapse and forgot about the bogus 'remastering'. That CD lasted about a half of 'I Don't Know' before I pulled it out of the player in disgust.

I am glad I heard it. It's not the same record.

Ozzy should be more ashamed of that than snorting ants with Motley Crue.

It was an obvious move to resolve some financial disputes between Bob Daisley and Sharon.

Sadly, Bob's not a very good business man.

ARTISTIC INSPIRATION

Sometimes when an artists gets blocked, or is otherwise unhappy with his/her results, the artist may reach out for some inspiration. Immersion in a different culture, read new books, listen to some new or different music. Jackson has come to such a state with his cooking. Yeah, I've been watching a lot of Molto Mario, but I don't cook and view concurrently. I've decided to go out and buy a cookbook or two. This is something I've done only once before, in 2000 I bought (actually Chuck and Dave bought it for Bruxelles at my request) 'A Celebration of Soup' which kicked my cooking up a notch - well beyond the realms of soup.

I think I might get 'The Babbo Cookbook', which is Mario's book named after his famous restaurant here in NYC.

There's also 'The French Laundry' cookbook by Tomas Keller, again named after his famous restaurant in the Nappa Valley.

I could get my hero's book; 'Anthony Bourdaines Les Halles Cookbook', yet again named after his NYC restaurant were he famously no longer cooks.

Most likely I'll just browse the racks at Barnes and Noble and buy whatever cathces my eye.

ROCK HONORS (HORRORS?)

So I am finally getting a full viewing of the VH1 Rock Honors show that aired last month, so far it's a 50/50 mix of greatness and embarrassment.

The first bit I caught was Queen (with Paul Rodgers and the Foo Fighters) doing 'The Show Must Go On', which is an overblown number from the latter part of Queen's catalog. In the hands of Freddie it was a tear jerking, inspiring number in which a man deals with his impending death. Paul Rodgers offers us a break from the emotion, and just rocks out the tune very ably. So far so good, right?

Why, on God's good green earth would anyone - anyone try to improve on Freddie. As if you could? On 'We Will Rock You/We Are The Champions' Paul Rodgers destroys every ounce of respect he has so deservingly built up over many many years of excellent singing. He treated us to Queen as done by Mariah Carey as done by Paul Rodgers. It was awful, all that overbearing over the top over-singing - eeeeccchhh! Paul, sing the song - don't embellish.

Next up Priest. Nice.

Godsmack does a medley of 'The Hellion/Electric Eye/Victim of Changes/Hell Bent for Leather'. Respectful, earnest, Nice!

Out comes Priest. I can always do without 'Breakin' the Law', but they deliver an inspired version followed up by (snore) 'You got Another Thing Comin'. Again, Halford is in fine form so I forgive the 'let's play the hits' attitude. Godsmack played better Priest songs, but hey, what are ya gonna do? I'm also not pleased that KK and Glenn are still playing those crappy Hammer custom models. C'mon guys, I know you have endorsement deals and all that, but don't tell me you prefer these guitars over Strats, V's, and SG's.

Def Leppard? They just shouldn't even try.

Who are The All American Rejects? The singer blows, but so does Joe Elliott, and the song they are doing, 'Photograph', is so well crafted and ubiquitous that any band could do as good a job, which is to say not very good, but I didn't turn it off. They aren't really cheating either, because Rick Allen had two arms when Def Leppard recorded the song..

Leppard comes on with 'Rock of Ages'. Joe can't sing anymore, at least not anything in an upper register. I don't know, for all my Leppard hating, for all my claiming that 'High N' Dry' was their only good record, for all of my saying that the best thing about Def Leppard was dead (Steve Clarke), Def Leppard is the greatest nine armed rock band of all time. '20th Century Boy' is a great song, certainly Madison Avenue thinks so. I hear that song on TV all the time selling something I probably don't buy, anyway. Def Leppard plays the T.Rex cover with Brian May (Queen). It's on their new covers LP. I think they should have played a Queen song - oh yeah, Joe can't sing.

Up next, Kiss. Whatever. "We are the people your parents warned us about" What? You would think that after almost forty years in the biz, Gene would know all the stupid cliches by heart now.

Rob Zombie, Scott Ian, Tommy Lee, Slash, Gilby Clarke, and Ace Frehley do 'God of Thunder', probably the best thing to happen that night. The fact that Ace appears with the band giving tribute to him speaks volumes. Hey, then who's that in the Ace make-up playing with Kiss? Nobody, there is no Kiss. There's the Paul Stanley/Gene Simmons band with both a fake Ace and a fake Peter - ridiculous. They don't even let us know who these guys are. It doesn't matter, the fake Ace blows, and the fake Peter is, tonight at least, Eric Singer who replaced Eric Carr, who replaced Peter. Kiss has always traded up in the drum department, and Eric Singer is a great drummer, but you know this is just a check for him, as is his other gig as Alice Cooper's drummer.

Kiss plays what would have been a decent 'Detroit Rock City' except Paul Stanley must have been chatting with Paul Rodgers because the Star Child sang this classic like some crappy auto tune abusing R&B chick. 'Love Gun' was better, but it's such a silly song really. Watch out for my love gun, baby, it's gonna get ya.

The fake Ace tries. He plays the parts. I guess he's okay, but he's not Ace, Ace is sitting over there chatting with Rick Allen about driving expensive cars under the influence.


Whatever.

ET TU JACKSON

Yes, so sorry, but I haven't been posting much. There is a definate corelation to employment and blogging. My summer vacation began on the 23rd of June.

I have been:

Watching TV - World Cup, Molto Mario, Supergroup
Making Music - Ted Record, Wolf Downers, Just One
Eating - lots of boiled meats, pasta, roasted veggies

"A person can work up a mean, mean thirst, after a hard day of nothing much at all"

- P. Westerberg