These things I do became a dream, ages ago.
And that I am living, these tendrils of hopes breathe till tomorrow
when I will pass into seeming nothingness.

Having whispered my desire to whom,
at this time, seems my confidant, patient listener and willing ally,
my dear lover, Life,
I can see, this amicable, congenial partner will soon enough turn her ear.

She has done this to our vacuous speciae, and brainless intelligent bacteria, and will complete this cycle infinitely.

All I can do is enter these dreams, as sound, thought, light, dark, whatever it may take...
To last one more day...
In any conceivable way.

Fucking Psychedelic Rock from the 60's

Fuck this music.

I cannot tell you how much it pisses me off. I mean there's Syd Barrett and One has to listen to his stuff...ala Piper at the end of the Gates, or whatever something like six times in order to get it.

Hey!
I'm not averse to working it out. And you know, I really get something out of it. But Screw your fricking wannabee psych bands. If you want to be Syd Barrett, remember, the dude is dead.

I'm not saying this is how any one of these folks will end up, I'm just saying that the music comes from a different place than your normal garage, hey, let's do this this way.

Look up the Bonzo Dog Band in rhapsody, if you can find it...for something NOT TO LISTEN TO.

I'd rather Cold Play than them. !@#$ Oh and the Singer of Wooden Shjips can suck my ass.

BkTW (back to Work)

Killer Months.

As if it hasn't been hectic enough as it is.

This next month is going to be balls out.

But this is the life. This is pavement and road and grass and streams of ropy whiz. This is a fractal cloud breaking over the night horizon.

I take heart from the Obama Campaign. He says he's going to take a break in August sometime...so a couple of days off in February, a few days off in June and a week in august, every day hitting the wall. Drawing from the well. No energy left for the tears, just dragging on during the dog days in the heart of the midwest unrelenting oppressive pig infused haze heat and the south's pounding dog breath and the west's searing sole, soul melting glaze...

In for coachings on some new rep in the morning, then power lunch, then more outstanding research and newer research, freshly hatched, then cleaning up and combining years of technical writing and putting it all together in a nice artful, tasty and more importantly, Fucking Readable package.

So would I rather be just a singer? Hah.

My life has brought me here, to this stage through all of the tiny molecular decisions I have made during the past decade.

Where is the magic pen?

I am pouring over the complete idiot's guide to grant writing.

See after three years of runing The Super Group, LLC, with all of its small successes and failures along the way...I guess I lost sight of the fact that I am, no matter what project comes up, creating art.

I am creating art to sell, yes. But I am creating art.

Some people have said I am too smart for my own good. I tend to vehemently disagree. I don't think I'm smart enough.

As a singer, I'm not sure I understand what is meant by being too smart. I know it's an euphemism, but I don't know how to calibrate that thought and turn it into a positive. I think more than anything, I am too lazy for my own good...which is why I completely overcompensate on the opposite end.

I went to a singing event the other night. Sarah Smith gets up and sings, like, you know, how people who like to sing, but don't have the complete connection to the voice that's needed to really convey emotion. Then I get up and just rock the house. It's embarrassing, really, because I know many of them have thought at some point, what are you doing here?

Aren't you supposed to be singing opera at the Met?

It's like being a seven foot tall Andre the Giant, you know? I mean... i'm a regular joe until I open my big palooka mouth and start to sing. THEN people are like, OMFG! Who are U?!

That's more an aside than anything, but maybe it's informative in some way.

The point is, The things I do, may be for popular consumption, or create, but they come about in a different manner than just here it is.

The process doesn't work normally. My process anyway. I am like Billy, the kid in Family Circus.
Wending his way from here to there just to go five feet. Billy and I basically try everything and get allowably distracted by things that may seem comepletely disparate, but in the end...and nobody ever acknowledges this, Billy and I have a lot more perspective on all the stuff between here and the spot toward which we were headed.

It's a great book...and I will finish it soon.

Rock
N

Wind Farm

On a side note...

I've been thinking utterly seriously about getting into Wind turbine manufacturing. I don't know anything about it, but as it's going to be a multi billion dollar industry, why not get into the workforce now?

Do IT ALL!!! Yeah. Monday tomorrow?

Wow. G'night.

Red Handed Gypsy

I guess this is the name of my new band.

This girl that rents a property from Marco is this gypsy chick who has no concept of property. While I DO intrinsically understand that concept, for instance, Aborigines and their concept of how can anyone OWN the earth, and the Canadians calling their native peoples, 'First People' and, of course us with, uh, Native Americans... Yeah, I get that and really, especially the Aborigine philo.

But, Sheeeiiit, come on little Euro girl, whose forefathers either bought millions of acres of land for beads, or just commited genocide to get the land, Nemmen mir ein BREAK.

SO, this gal, went into our Drummer, Sam (by the way, Marco is guitar man)'s new house as he was moving out of his house to get away from his ex girlfriend. Sam is a guy who will do anything for you. He works hard, he is talented and lives life, within reason, to the limit.

But a person gets tired, and that's what he was. His only groceries, his only food after a grueling day and days of carrying loading driving etc. Gone.

He bought them in the morning and at the end of the day, comes home and he thinks he is freaking out because there's no food in the house.

Everything else is still there, but the food is gone. After a few minutes of figuring out that indeed, the food is gone, he goes outside to go to a store to get more food. A young lady accross the street comes over and asks if he lives in the houes and when he says yes, she tells him that the gal that lives above her, broke into his house and took his food.

Sam isn't a guy who gets upset, really. he does have some quirks...like being too nice... and this was no exception, he was just struck dumb.

He started to feel badly for the gal because it seemed she needed food, but when he told Marco about the strange occurrence, Marco informed him that the gal steals stuff and is in arrears with him and all of the utilities...etc. Even, as she was kind of moving out, stole their bike and excused herself the audacity by saying it was just sitting there...

So Marco wanted to call her Red Handed Gypsy B#%$^ and then we were like, hey How about Red Handed Gypsy for the name of our BAND?

I think we are still in the testing stages of the name, but it seems as good as any (even though Brian, Bass Gutar, has a newer band with Red in it too).

At least we are not a 'dinosaur' band. Which is a reference to a time in the early 1990's where a number of really prominent bands had Dinosaur in their names.

So We, Red Handed Gypsy have our first gig on August 8 in a benefit for an unfortunate musician who has no insurance. Davey's Uptown Ramblers Club in KC.

I was kvetching last week because we were almost at show time and we didn't have our songs close to being completed. But last Tuesday, we got it together and pounded out and synched it up, even adding a digital guy, Justin, who, at this point sounds like he's coming back.

So we are a five piece. Can you believe it?

Right now we have

• Neon Sunset - a piece with lyrics by poet Richard Keith


• Diversion -


• Sweet Home Chicago - A complete destruction of the Chicago blues piece turned into a seedy road rage journey to the south side


• Mangia Me - An Italian Love song that sounds like a cross between Beck and Andrea Bocelli getting shot with a shotgun


• We Call You Lief - an British Heavy Metal inspired Gallop


• I Survived the Spill - from a series of poems and songs called If's Bound to Happen...also from which Lief comes to us.

There are a few other songs that we are still honing in on... 'Dear Robert, for Melanie' Eviline Sitting, Schrutte but for this benefit, I think the aforementioned will be enough.

I cannot tell you how insanely happy to be finally, at last, in a BAND I am. My friends Scott Stackhouse and I started a band a long time ago, but it just wasn't meant to be. Midnight Furry was the working title for me...though House would probably think differently...

We rehearsed that band in the guitarist's house and then moved to a little barn on some guys property. Our bass player would never show up and as we tried to get a lead guitarist, we just atrophied.

I was also starting to really get interested in Opera and as we were all in junior college, I was aiming at increasing my abysmal GP

A and getting to Oberlin College, or Indiana, or Iowa, or even UMKC Conservatory.

So life goes out of its way to shove your dreams aside...

unless. you.. decide

...

to do it all!

Lasers...



So. FFW a couple of years later and here we are. I Yada Yada'd a whole lot there, but hey.

I was just emelling (telling a friend in an email) a friend that one of the things I like most about these boys is that they are truly glass half full persons. I think it's one of the things America has going for it. It's the optimism.

I think it's a pathological thing really...

Think about it.

Look at all of the advertisements. It's all about improving people's lives. Name me one product one has sold that actually makes things worse for people. Oppenheimer did not set out to make the doomsday device. Even the devil himself, when he met up with Robert Johnson wanted to give him the ability to play better. OK, so there's Faustus and he's CERTAINLY NOT American, but it's still a trait we strive to achieve here.

Drilling in the ANWAR... What kind of daffy headed people do we have to be to believe that there is an enviromentally SAFE way to screw up the environment? But the people who want to protect it are all like, Hey! Why do you have to be such a worry wart about it, let's "drill, Drill, DRILLL! " Actual quote from Fox News.

You tell me... I mean, it's all speculation. It's all gambling, this drilling business. So let me point it out to you in a way a gambler could understand.

If you have a whole floor of slot machines and you are a million bucks ahead in winnings for the night...the machines all have say a 10000:1 ratio for you to win another million bucks,. But the problem is, you have another four floors of slots above you, also with that ratio. However, those four floors are smoke free and you, in order to play the slots, MUST smoke. You rigged up a new fangled device that filters all of your smoke and keeps it in a two foot radius around you, so you could feasibly go upstairs and get more chances to win, win bigger and win longer.... Yet, there are people and living creatures up there that cannot breathe the smoke. They will either get sick and pass along their sickness to their offspring, or they will die outright. either way, even with survivors, there would be devastation.

Well, many people are saying, GO UPSTARS!!! you got the tech!

But what if the machine breaks? What if it doesn't break, but just wears out? What if a filter goes bad?

Oh, and another thing, say there was a new money, that helped everybody out. and you didn't really even need to play the slot machines. You could take that million dollars and make something that helps those people on the top floors, would make you unbelievably rich and would make slot machines all but obsolete...

You could play those slots on the lower level, walk away with gobs more cash and then turn that into something that will last beyond the forseeable future, keeping you in power for eons.

A roundabout way of saying, lets go for the altenative and use what we have. Use what we have and go for the gusto, really deploying our brains and energy to create renewable sources of energy instead of sucking the lifeblood of our land dry.

I'm not a pessimist. I am optimistic that we can work together to use what we have, and also create something new, vibrant and reflective of a way we ought to live. Guarding and protecting our earth and its denizens...including us.

My band are just those optimists. We will forever fight to succeed. We will forever strive to strike it rich...but in a way that brings something better to our world.

....

Today

Ok.

I wrote the couple I was talking about...yesterday? Was it yesterday? Great couple, but I was like, look this is how much I am.


I have instituted another policy about new music. If they commission music for the wedding, it's significantly cheaper. Imagine doing something cool is cheaper!!!



I also created a website today. My penchant for blatant self promotion is flying haywire right now because I can't tell you. If you get on Facebook and look up my profile, you'll be able to find it, but it is only a first in a larger order construct. The Super Group, LLC at work again.


Let's just say, everybody in KC is complaining about it. Some people are complaining in a way that is constructive to the community and others are sadly, well you know. We are all crazy so what's the diff.


I'm proud to say that the majority of my people are doing a great job in utilizing their competence and their restraint in our situation.


I also started dabbling in adwords. I think it's more fun than slot machines, though it bobcattingly is a heckofalot slooower.


I'm alo listening to Tin Machine right now... the first album I bought at full price. No columbia record club or whatever on that one.


Wow. I had no idea. "Shopping for Girls"... this truly Was a Super Group.


Later.
NG

OK, here goes.
For all of you professional performers out there who get asked to play in your hometown...
Yikes. It's such a problem and a dilemma.

I have people come up to me all the time, asking if I'll perform in their wedding. It's hard to gauge whether your professional fee will be gouging for you or for them.

Many times - 9 out of 10, the couples are very nice and you really want to help them...

by the way, this is strictly for anyone who may be up to a good acquaintance,
but not friend. for example, you know them, and there's real potential, but you
don't even know what color their bathroom is.

but their hierarchical idea of the music at their weddings is below say, decorations at the table. Understandable, really, due to the scads of people who are relatives asked to perform. Relatives whom everyone in the family insists play some type of instrument, or who majored in music. Before going on to major in (bah-boom!) NOT music.

Yet there they are, at the however many hundreds of thousands of weddings cutting away at the Bach or Pachabell, Vibratoing through Ave Maria and The Lord's Prayer, just making it worse for us who can perform to a certain aesthetic.

I am all for people singing and playing. Really I am. And these self same people do not have this idea held as one of malice they just aren't informed. Truthfully though, when it comes to demeaning my living, I really have a shrinking tolerance for the low ball attitude, intended or not.
I have no problem giving my full price to those people and others whom I get by referral or through being a fan.

Let me just add, I've started putting in a caveat when I quote my price. If your ceremony by any chance goes wrong, it wont be by me. People talk about the weddings I sing for decades. I really do enjoy giving that WOW factor. I don't say that smugly, its through the experience of having countless people coming up to me about how I sang in so and so's wedding and how great it was, as well as some bride or groom coming up and still after (too many...sheesh has it been THAT Long??) years, they still have people coming up to THEM, saying theirs was the best wedding they'd ever seen.

And that was when I was cheap.

So now that I am not cheap, although if you compare some other high profile performers, I'd be on the less expensive side, I now have these problems of the one couple in ten ( you can lump wedding couples and party throwers together ) who just do not have the cash, sometimes to my surprise. AND I like them, and there's no way they would have the dough and no way I would charge them my full fee.
And to make matters worse, there are those who can't even make my lowest fee.

Sigh.

There's always trade, but I think it was Vonnegut who hated the idea of trade because you trade something you don't want to do for something you really don't want.

I like weddings, for the hope it brings to a couple and a community. I like attending weddings my friends are in, as a participant or as a guest. But really, I am just a typical guy who would rather not go. And yes, sometimes I'd rather sit on my duffer than sing in a wedding.

Personally, I don't want to be held responsible for witnessing and having to be responsible in some way for keeping the couple together years down the line. You know that thing where the reverend asks all the people at the wedding if you and me will help these two fulfil their vows in the many years to come?
Yeah, I take that seriously.

I mean, I'm not going to go home with them and make sure they conceive and I'm not going to do anything out of the norm, or anything, but I take that vow because I care. I want things to work and if I can help I will.

It's stupid I know, but for a while, I didn't really realize what the preacher was asking. I was just biding my time until I sang again.

So that's part of it. and then again, sometimes I'd rather sit on my duffer...especially for how much dough I'd be making. Remember the 9 in 10 people. Sometimes they actually pay the fee.
And I'm right there for them...both professionally and personally

.
But again, there's the couple just starting out, or out of sorts, or whatever.
...pause 10 seconds...

One loophole I have found is Military Weddings!! That's free!
*unless it's out of town and they need other instruments etc. *
Yep, it's just one of those things. I DO give a banana this country and those who are putting their lives in harm's way. If you read this and are a cop or a fire fighter, I'd consider that too.
It's a new policy and limited to my schedule, but I think it's important.

But here we are again at the couple. ugh. Such nice people. Maybe I could do a trade.

Laters

Eyes blazing

Burning the proverbial candle from four sides now.

I am now helping Jeffery Ruckman raise money for his Spoonbender Orchestra Series.

The group consists of a full Gamelan as well as a few other choice instuments. Personnel, top notch of course.

I guess I could list it all for you , you know.

Would that help?

I found a motherlode of books at Half-Price Books which I can fully endorse because one of the owneres of the company is a fan and buys my records...so I buy his books and talk about what a cool selection of super cheap new and repurposed books they have... for nothing more than making these things available... they also sell LP's.

The Complete Idiots Guide to Grant Writing, or some such falderall. Yes!

I am the owner of a small business, an arts corporation, not an organization, whose three year purpose has been to develop arts brands that had the capability to translate to both the arts community, as well as targeted demographics, in order for these brands to be matched to and sponsored by corporations and or investors.

A total profit oriented company completely removed from the charity scene.

Nice idea.

So what's an Opera singer doing in this world anyway? Yeah. good question.

I have two ultimate heros in my professional life.

Kim Witman of Wolf Trap Opera. She took a chance on me so many years ago, to let this green kid come sing in her company. Amazing. I know, I have mentioned her before...and I will do so again. She puts it out there every day. From seeing WTOC and what it is now compared to what it was ten years ago and that's just from my perspective I am beside myself with a need to at least work that hard to put something together that has such an impact in the world. The art form and the community are far, far richer for what she has been steely and supple enough to accomplish.

Obviously she has a cadre of people that create a lot of the magic there. Without self starting individuals, brilliant in their own capacity, Wolf Trap would be less than the sum of its parts.

Placido Domingo:

I don't know how many times I will envoke this name, but I have to say that I strive to work half as much as Domingo. And if that happened I would only be Artistic Director of one company, sing only what...>75 roles professionally and conduct twice a year.

These are the people whose work holds my feet to the fire every day.

I strive to be the best singer I can be.

I strive to be a leader who leads by example and follows as well as he leads.

I try to have an amazing attitude always...at least outwardly.

I strive to face my fears.

I strive to keep a loving relationship at home.

I strive to have as much fun as I can.

I strive to retain my objectively.

I work toward keeping abrast of my finances.

I fight to propel artistry as an equal to, at minimum, business.

I pain to remian vibrantly authentic.

I try to live like a human being.

and I try to keep my word at all times and not equivocate.

There are others and I'll fill you in on those heroes in due time but.. I'm nodding off

I don't get enough sleep. rehearsal tonight for the band.

must go and prep.

Thanks you two.

Off like bug spray.

NG

Bus Kid

My folks dropped me off at the bus station at a quarter to four. It was almost Christmas.
The thing I remember was the smell.

When I was a kid, my family went all over the place, not even three years before, we went to Mexico.
Mexico, where the smell of humanity coalesced into something that I didn’t at first dig, being I was a kid from Iowa small town. Where even the smells from the packing plants were far away. The grass was indeed sweet and summers had a timeless over bright green blue, as if those pictures you see now, from the era, were true depictions of life. It’s hard to differentiate these pictures from my true memories…especially if they were good…

So Mexico, pollution, people, food, sewage, trash, shit, flowers, sweat and dirt was the palate of this din of scent. Somehow though, as I look back…and even now, witness these smells from time to time, I think back and realize that it wasn’t all bad. Even though you knew part of it was the decay of our humanity.
I forgot to mention…the smell of death was there too.

So getting to the bus station in the then foreign downtown was no closer to adventure than a dog getting a free ride to the vet.

A most of it was due to the smell. B, I was going to my grandparents, who would have again, nothing for me to do and c. I turned around, looking for my parents… and felt like an adult for the first time. I can’t remember exactly if my folks were together or not then.

You know, it’s odd. I can define my childhood and youth through other people’s eyes, but to look back and make sense of the actions I took in direct response to the actions of others…I guess, I’m a little fuzzy.

But there I was. The Kansas City Greyhound station. A dark place. Dark tile floors, less than antiseptic. Fiberglass chairs, you know, the kind that are formed to look like they’re comfortable and then when you sit down, you realize that the joke is that the floor, the cold, especially dirty floor of the bus station, was more comfortable. And yet, to sit on the floor was to admit some National defeat, as if we were too civilized to park it on the floor like people in so many other populations…including México.

Cruel humor. TV’s at the bus station. Connected to the same pastel plastic ejector seats; like the joke of my Grandpa and Grandma bringing sugar free candy for Easter, like the joke of moving to the suburbs. Into a house with a pool, moving into a house with a pool in the suburbs in August. Until you find that your chores are to mix the nuclear compounds together to make that pool clean and fresh, and to vacuum that very same pool. The slow death of a ten year old. To make sure the giant crystal diamond, the toy of all toys, the culmination of all of your childhood dreams was to make sure you moved the aluminum pole slow enough so that the sand and dirt in the bottom was able to be sucked by the not powerful enough vacuum.

My dad always thought I was doing a half-assed job. But he didn’t realize the anguish of cleaning that thing…took hours. The joke of finding you old blind dog dead floating in the pool and the stench of the foul thing entering into my coke after we cleaned up from the burial. The smell of death pervades everything it touches.

Incidentally, about the dog. I’d found her time and again in that pool swimming for dear life. And I generally did not want her to fall in and took some precautions, like putting towels out around the pool, to act as a tactile reminder to the poor thing that she was getting close. For my part, I was too confident in my invention and stayed away too long. It didn’t take long. Really only fifteen minutes and she was gone. But can you imagine, this yellow death funk, glomming onto everything in that short of time. ..Especially my coca-cola.

The TV’s, these black pods bolted to the ends of the fiberglass ejector seat rows, were all the rage at the time. Some were bashed, magic markered and basically vandalized. But I tell you, they deserved it. Let me tell you, and I know bus stations haven’t really changed over the decades. Mostly, poor people go there. Maybe some bussers have money, but I’ll wager you, they are either seriously penny pinchers, or are out for an adventure… hah. But those four people are the minority and the underdog.

These black boxes they called TV’s were black and white mini TV’s that at one time, like simple function calculators with LCD screens, cost hundreds of dollars. So I, at the time, stuck there at the bus station, and being somewhat addicted to TV, was thinking, ah, sweet freedom.

We put our quarters in the slot, and turn the knob. Slowly the screen comes to life. A dot appears. After an eon, the dot turns into this hazy snow and static swells like a slow motion wave. Before you know it a double vision image of some rerun comes on. There’s no antennae, so reception is as-is.

Here’s how the bus station is. Of course sooner than later, the timer shuts off the tv and you think that purgatory is no worse because… well you never have enough coin to turn the thing back on…even though you’d rather just draw on the thing, or break it, out of contempt for those who thought it would be a good idea to bolt the little black licorice boxes onto the pastel death chairs. The Bus Station – Good and Plenty… Witnesseth your addiction and be tormented by it.

It was just at the time, I felt vulnerable.

I swore up and down to my folks that I was ready for it. And I was, if everything had worked out perfectly.