duke wisdom

I jumped ship.

Please, my handful of readers, come on over.

That would be 'phourteen.'

I always say, when life hands you lemons, make tire yard cellphone art. I'm telling you, I always say that.

This would be a logical follow up to overpass or evicted! - an instance of me wasting time roaming about with camera in hand before band practice. We've moved to yet another location (don't we make for good neighbors, people?), this time in Midtown KC.


This is the back of the building in which we rehearse (we're really fucking serious, that's why it's called "rehearsal"). It's not quite as decrepit as it appears and actually suits us quite well. Of course we're somewhat decrepit.


I didn't come across any drill presses this time, but I did find a tire fort behind which appeared to be a homeless person's shopping cart. I didn't go too close. Out of respect.




Right about the time I rounded the next corner it occurred to me that in this very neighborhood a good friend of my got jumped and robbed a few months back. I decided I might pick up the pace a bit and head back toward practice while it was still light. Stopping for more shots along the way, of course.






18th & Oak.

Do NOT park in the engravers' lot, ok?


Yeah, I like beat up old doors.

... you have to do some of this:

(distinguished humans blurred to eliminate possible association w/ yours truly)

... and hook up some of these:


... to do some of this:


Every so often, I tell you.

Pictorial residue from a trip to the Glore Psychiatric Museum.


I'm sure plenty has also been learned from the experience of those who have suffered psychiatric "treatment."

I found something very unsettling about this, the first display of the tour. Outside the window is a beautiful world; inside things are not quite right.






Centrifuge and detail.


E.E.G. machinery.


The "tranquilizer chair." I know I felt relaxed just being near it. Egad.






Chairs and chairs.


"Lunatic Asylum Pipe Line."






The end of the line. The end of the tour. Most of the exhibit pieces were moved to the museum in which they're currently housed from the adjacent facility which is now a prison. The morgue, however, always existed in this building, formerly an administration annex. The slabs are still functional. Rooms with drains in the floor have always made me uneasy.
 

One more in the spirit of the previous entry. Here are some albums that will be old enough to drink in '09.

I still really love some of those albums. I'm not going to reveal which ...

Uhh ... no, not me.

I was listening to The Pixies' Doolittle and noticed that it came out in 1989. Wow. Damn.

Here are some other albums of interest that are turning 20 years old in 2009.

On the Boulevard they take it hard.


Lord have mercy.




It's not that he requires grooming.


Unknown.


Do people really need to be told when to use dummy gladhands?

It must have been a pretty sad selection at the ol' thrift store if records were 4/$1 and I could only muster about 75 cents worth. But, oh the joy.



Richard Thompson - Live! (more or less)
I'm inexplicably giddy about this one. I've only been a Thompson devotee for a few years and have no knowledge of this, apparently a repackaging of the barely imported I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight with two sides of additional live material. I could listen to the man sing and play all day.

Michael Schenker Group - MSG
I love to stumble across something like this nestled amongst the Andre Kostelanetz and Herb Alpert vinyl. I've had this on CD for ages, but basically once I found the Richard Thompson set I was just fishing for three more items to round out my dollar. Looks like not much has changed in 25 years as I found myself sitting on the floor next to a turntable listening to Schenker. I always wondered how Stephen Stills came to sing background vocals on Never Trust a Stranger. Probably money.

Keith Jarrett - The Koln Concert
Four sides of unaccompanied solos from the notoriously asinine Jarrett. So far sides one and two range from being rhythmically interesting and lyrical to borderline Windham Hill.

Johnny Oahu & His Orchestra - Hawaiian Magic
I can't tell you how many years I've been searching for this title. In records stores and pawn shops from coast to coast I've dug through probably 9,000 crates of ... oh never mind. I just liked the cover and, y'know, it was only a quarter.

But that's not all!

When my buddies and I used to go music digging in Omaha (seemingly every weekend) we had a running joke (recently hinted at in a LJ comment) about who would inadvertently come across the first copy of Debbie Harry's Kookoo. Today I came upon a total of seven copies - some still sealed.

Left to right: Kookoo, Kookoo, Kookoo, Kookoo, Kookoo. Not pictured: Kookoo, Kookoo.

So did I buy all the copies to send to my old friends? I guess they'll just have to watch their mailboxes.

You know, once upon a time people's letters to one another were published as books, the communications between supposed personages perhaps providing context and permitting a deeper understanding of the authors. I'm trying to remember the last time I wrote a letter, i.e. put writing utensil to page and placed said correspondence in an envelope. And I have no idea. I'm not even sure I know how to operate a pencil any longer. Now it's all email.

Not that anyone would ever study my remnants for sagacious insight, but one thing is certain: I sure as hell wouldn't want published as an everlasting document a compilation of emails between, say smolkinsquid</lj> and myself. What a bunch of disjointed shorthand/gibberish/running references that would be. To reduce it even further, now we have the phenomenon of Twitter with its 140 character bursts of the right now. So, in an effort to revive an old practice and review my own 2008, I now present Selections from the Collected Twitter Updates by yours truly.

• Work computer makes snail look hasty. 12.30
• Bi-lateral procrastination achieved. 12.22
• Archie Shepp, you make a Monday more like a Tuesday afternoon at about 3:20. 12.08
• Did she just say, "intranasally inoculated?"  12.04
• Yes, watched pot, I get your point. 11.26
• Just had a Krautrock discussion w/ visiting EVP. 11.13
• Flourescent bulbs smell like salt & vinegar chips? 11.12
• Raw fish: ingested. 11.05
• Haystack: reveal your needle at once! 10.13
• Dreary drive w/ Bridge of Sighs: AOK. 9.24
• Spanish Grant destruction = very upsetting. 9.16
• Just threw away part of a donut. This has never happened before. 9.15
• I count the corpses on my left ... uggh. 8.25
• F-16s: louder than 2 motherfuckers. 8.21
• Buffet at Pam-Pam: total bullshit. 8.21
• is trying his hand at cymbal stand alchemy. 8.19
• V brought me Jameson! Damn! 8.14
• Hangin' in Dallas waitin' round for the show. 8.09
• Color correcting a very odd looking, jaundiced scarecrow lady. 8.07
• Browsing eBay for Loudness patches. Don't worry, there aren't any. 7.30
• The forklift at DAV is in tune w/ Sister Golden Hair. 7.24
• Contemplating Db ... five flats. Ok, I'm done w/ that. 7.22
• has a note on his desk reading, "examples: root beer & cadavers." 7.17
• Am I the only person in Cassco listening to Killing Joke? 7.04
• Listening to Buzzcocks and waiting for the Latin Carpet Crue. 6.30
• Those are NOT reggae lix. What would Linton Kwesi Johnson say? 6.25
• My mom was just playing Wii bowling. Weird. 6.21
• just won a Cuisinart. No really - I just won a Cuisinart. 6.20
• Moving my crap into a new desk. Purging wildly. Possibly recklessly. Would that I could do it this way at home. 6.20
• My to-do lists have to-do lists. 6.12
• Ungrateful. Self-important. Pains-in-the-fuck. 6.11
• Has lots of plates in the air. 6.10
• Running brain thru band-pass filter. 5.28
• Thinking of Tippy Martinez, Jack Morris, and Len Barker. 5.23
• Contemplating the spiritual implications of episodic sell out. 5.20
• Tackhead + Mountain Dew + 3:05 = 3:06. Updated. 5.19
• Pondering toolbar weirdness. 5.16
• If I had six heads they'd all ache. 5.13
• Just referring to Thus Spake Zarathustra in an office email. 5.08
• Nick Drake soothes dry and empty skull. 5.05

Just what the hell does it all mean?!

Come on, y'all! It's time to boogie down to some Bobby Womack!


That's it.

I've started reading Willie Nelson's The Tao of Willie which I received for Xmas - a very inspirational tome so far. As is the case whenever I'm reading a book by or about a musician, I have the urge to listen to certain albums as they are mentioned. In this case I'm aching to give Stardust a spin. Being that I only own a vinyl copy this could only mean one thing: it's time to rotate living room albums with basement albums. The two crates upstairs act as a sort of "current listening annex" to the total collection; or do they? What I found was that there were a bunch of Poco records and a copy of Loverboy's Get Lucky. What in the hell is going on here?

Clearly, I had an easy time deciding what to banish.

Here is some of what I brought up:


Bob Dylan ~ Another Side of Bob Dylan


Joni Mitchell ~ Mingus. I don't remember liking this one too much. But it does have Jaco Pastorious, Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock on it.


Ray Charles ~ Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music Volume Two. You know it's a motherfucker.


Music for Flute and Tape. Hunh? On the Nonesuch label from '74. We'll see.


Mahavishnu John McLaughlin - My Goal's Beyond. Yes, apostrophe s. On the Douglas 9 label. Wha? As you can see this and the previous were mined from the aforementioned KPGY.


Marty Robbins ~ I Walk Alone


Lou Rawls ~ Soulin'. Man, I have a surprising number of Lou Rawls albums ...


Mick Ronson ~ Slaughter on 10th Avenue. Yes, I suppose Mick was androgynous, but in a very disturbing way.

Oh yeah - the Willie Nelson albums were all already upstairs in the other crate. Huh.

There used to be train tracks running through Randolph, IA, population 200 (not including feral cats). There used to be a depot, even. At some point the rails went away and so did the depot; the structure was transported to a nearby farm where it was preserved or used as a tool shed or something. By and by the owners died, taking to the grave with them the desire to see this outbuilding on the property. So the good folks of Randolph (my uncle among them) brought the thing back to town.

I have to say, it's pretty damn interesting.


The building now resides a couple blocks from where the tracks used to run.










I don't think these were originally from Randolph. Don't tell anyone.


Hell if I know.

27 great albums in my collection with one word titles.

Aerosmith - Rocks
Art Zoyd - Nosferatu
Battles - Mirrored
Bjork - Post
Boris - Pink
Candlemass - Nightfall
Alice In Chains - Dirt
Curtis Mayfield - Roots
Sepultura - Roots
Death - Human
Emmylou Harris - Cimarron
Gov't Mule - Dose
Jeff Beck Group - Truth
Loudness - Disillusion
Manu Dibango - Africadelic
The Mars Volta - Amputechture
Mastodon - Remission
Neil Young & Crazy Horse - Zuma
Opeth - Damnation
Miles Davis - Agharta
Redd Kross - Phaseshifter
Roy Hargrove - Habana
U2 - October
Uriah Heep - Wonderworld
Wishbone Ash - Argus
King Crimson - Red
Zappa - Lather

It is very.

In order to avoid a potential 4-hour round trip commute caused by skittish drivers in mere inches of snow, I took the day off. And in order to avoid sitting and drinking coffee for the entire morning, I stepped out to take some pictures. Walking un-scooped sidewalks in the 10 degree wonderland, it occurred to me that I may not have spent this much time out in this low of a temperature since walking to class as a senior at Iowa State in the winter of 1991. And this was even voluntary. Man, I'm stupid.

Anyway, turns out there wasn't much of note to shoot in the neighborhood.









I took the next two while laying on my stomach in the street. Y'know - just to get a good angle.





(Ok, I'm not quite that stupid.)

We have some.

Waterfire is a "moving art installation" featuring 55 floating bonfires accompanied by various live and recorded music and other performances. Seem a bit lofty? Maybe. But standing there next to the water watching an interpretive display of flame twirling to the strains of a tenor aria was pretty overwhelming. Thankfully the human waste content of Brush Creek was on the low end of the scale.

Hey, it's my blog, I can name it after a Candlemass song if I want to ...

Saturday was another great day for walking around among the trees.










These colors have been amped up a bit after the fact, but only to make the images match what we actually saw. These trees were the epitome of fall colors. Brilliant.

With the exception of "the arts," I am extremely reluctant to discuss or debate what I consider to be matters of taste. By their nature, such topics are highly subjective and prone to turn debaters into arguers with neither party taking away anything useful. The subjects of religion and politics are ones about which people are extremely passionate and opinionated; they are topics that are complex, highly nuanced and steeped in opinion, rooted in cumulative personal experience.  And because it's damn near impossible to prove anything about either, ultimately they both boil down to individual taste. People who I consider good friends have very different views about such matters; and we'll never agree. I can leave it at that.

So with a very historic presidential election just weeks away,  this will be my singular sort-of-political post. I'm not getting on any virtual soap box, but I'm sure it'll be clear which way I lean. Mostly I just want to commemorate the incredible atmosphere of the moment and post the following pictures.

I'll be in or en route from San Diego the better part of November 4, so I have to submit an absentee ballot. Weird.


An unnamed 20-something making signs to protest at a McCain rally tomorrow in Belton, MO. Umm - working at my dining room table.


And speaking of protests, there was an Obama rally in KCMO Saturday 10.18.08 which, of course, featured the presence of the infamous Westboro Baptist Church. Can you believe these cocksuckers? I mean, really. They are a disgrace to discourse.

John McCain famously compared Barack Obama's celebrity to that of certain vacuous starlets. As ridiculous as that ad was, there's no doubt he's a rockstar capable of  generating a spontaneous three ring circus at any stop on the campaign trail. The Kansas City appearance brought out an estimated 75,000 spectators to this Barackstock. Being wise, for once, we drove to m_toast's house and took a bus the rest of the way.






Not really sure ...




For a minute we thought this was a Secret Service sniper. Turned out to be just a hippie.


The hordes at Kansas City's Liberty Memorial.




Somewhere in that glow is the passing motorcade - or so they would have us think. Barack may have driven himself off in a borrowed Kia for all I really know.



 

Static-humming panel-beaters

(The Minstrel in the Gallery, that is ...)

Have you ever seen her in the same place as any of the below? I think not.

Pete Willis from Def Leppard


Gary Moore


Ritchie Blackmore


Paul Stanley.

Just sayin'.

 

Six of the most peculiar things found on my hard drive. I think I'll tag is as objet trouvé; that's how it seems to me. Obviously I saved these images at some point, though now it's difficult to say when, from where, or why.

Have you ever heard the theory that taking different, varying routes on your work or other commutes stirs brain activity? I don't know if it works, but I certainly put it to practice. However, since about mid-summer (aka Orange Barrel Season) the application has been pushed to ridiculous extremes. It seems that the Missouri and Kansas Departments of Transportation conspired to place construction along every possible way for me to get from point A to point B, consistently adding anywhere from 25 to about 3,000 minutes to each leg of the daily trip. I must have attempted at least a dozen variations on the theme, most resulting in glacier like progress towards the office, or even worse towards home.

Of course, most infrastructure repairs have relatively short lifespans. By and by one lane has come back to four here and a once closed ramp has reopened there. Unfortunately, I've recently learned that an obscure bridge in rural Jackson county, near the Missouri/Kansas line - a veritable keystone to my swift passage - will be out of commission for at least another nine months. Nine months! I could fully gestate a child and still not necessarily get back on that fucking bridge!

But what's the big deal? Observe:

The green route is my old, unavailable, secret route. The red route is one viable alternative. The skull and crossbones represent the bridge.

See how many squiggles I seemingly have to navigate? Do you know that there are three additional cemeteries to pass on this route? Ok, I guess that's part isn't so bad.

According to a spokesman for the Kansas City Public Works Department, "the Kenneth Road bridge has a history of closures due to people who take vehicles that are too large and drive them too fast." Err, I don't know what he's talking about. The trouble is that the bridge was already scheduled for replacement in 2009, and, "it’s not worth sinking any more money into something that’s going to be torn out.”

But how bad could it really be? Couldn't I still drive the thing if no one was looking? Already in the area for a wander in the woods, I was able to get a close look at my precious.

Hmm ... pass-through-able.





Uhh, yeah. Maybe not. See why I used a skull to mark the structure? Looks like I'll be whistling past the graveyards until sometime next July.
 

There is trouble with the trees.

Hey - it's my blog, I can start with Rush lyrics if I want to.

A wonderful wander outside this afternoon ...

And now, without further ado, Bootsy Collins placed into stills from Stanley Kubrick films.

Galveston, TX has become one of our favorite vacation spots of late so we spent a good part of the weekend monitoring various media for clues as to the island's condition in the wake of Ike. One of the first things we learned was that a most interesting landmark, and location we celebrated our anniversary this year, the Balinese Room, was destroyed. Obviously the loss or property is less important than the loss of life, the extent of which is still perhaps to be determined in the coming weeks. The loss of the Balinese is sad nonetheless.



ZZ Top - Balinese

Deep in the South of Texas
not so long ago,
there on a crowded island
in the Gulf of Mexico

it didn't take too much money,
man, but it sure was nice.
You could dance all night if you felt all right,
drinking whiskey and throwing dice.

And everybody knows
it was hard to leave.
And everybody knows
it was down at the Balinese.

Yeah, I remember Ruby,
she always dressed in red
wearing skintight pants, Lord, and how she could dance
with a rag wrapped around her head.

And everybody knows
it was hard to leave.
And everybody knows
it was down at the Balinese.

It was only this Friday past that leon_thecleaner</lj>  sent me a link to a Jerry Reed clip, sending me off into a JR bender. Goddamn.