So…I hate to say this for the Boston crowd, but Worcester gets the good stuff this week…
because the Wakefield/McGee/Brown/Leaman/Mojgani extravaganza is coming to Worcester tomorrow night…
FREE to the public at Clark University!!!!!
WOOT.
Author Archives: Tony Brown
About Tony Brown
Nike unveils shoe for Native Americans
http://money.cnn.com/2007/09/26/news/companies/bc.apfn.nike.indianshoe.ap/index.htm?cnn=yes
I particularly like the “heritage callouts.”
Next, Nike will address the chronic high unemployment rate on reservations by actually building the shoes in authentic Native sweatshops. Wages will be paid in beads and blankets, although not very many of either.
OMFG…New Pieces on Myspace!!!! (Now with Tech notes, for the studio-inclined among you)
The mastering’s done, and here you go…
three new pieces up on Myspace from the new CD.
They are:
Americanized (the title cut)
Las Lloronas
Where Do You Live?
I’m amazed and grateful to both Faro and Chris (a_solitaryman) for this gift.
Revised to include, for my studio wonk buddies, the tech notes
hey dkeali_i
check this out:
http://vsprtn.livejournal.com/294923.html
thought it might be of interest…
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
just got word from a_solitaryman that the CD mastering is done, barring any final tweaks anywhere. I get my copy tomorrow night, and I’ll post a couple of tracks on Myspace ASAP.
YEAH.
Maneuver
It was supposed to be easy
but every thread that holds you
seems to need
a unique knife, and you just don’t have
enough.
Still, at times like these
when you awaken at 3:30 AM
and find you’re warm and not alone,
you find yourself bearing down
and sharpening your teeth while the city sleeps.
There’s a reason they say that smiling
can lift your mood, and once
you can smile again
you’re armed
and ready.
It ought not to be
that warfare is the only metaphor
you can find for this.
You decide to call it
self-defense instead.
Hungry, staring down
creditor’s barrels, leaping from
slick stone to rotted stump,
you chew almost free and manage to approach
the fortress.
In a blink it may all
go south, but if the battle
is not to the swift, it will at least go
the way you choose. You smile at the walls
and tug on your bindings until something
gives way.
In order of importance:
— condolences to those on my friends’ list who are dealing with fear and loss this week.
— completed the recording of the CD today. mastering is in progress. hope to have a couple of sample cuts on the Myspace before mid-week — will keep you posted.
this is not ego talking: it’s going to be terrific. chris has been a godsend as our producer and engineer, and faro’s taken this whole collaboration thing to a new level. we laid down fifteen tracks in 3 and 1/2 hours this afternoon, to give you an idea of what i mean.
we decided to re-record all but one of the tracks we laid down last weekend, then wrote and recorded the remaining five tracks during the session. Faro and i essentially did the last couple of pieces as free improvisations, laying down the tracks as we created them; in both cases we elected to go back and do second takes to be sure we were on track, but i would have been happy to use the first takes (although in both cases, we liked the second takes better).
we elected not to use any of the live tracks we recorded at the Cantab on Wednesday because of the issue with Faro’s bass and because of the bleedthrough of the blues jam upstairs, but i did listen to the tracks and you can tell the show really did kick butt. not just saying that; we were on, probably because of adrenalin and nerves more than anything else.
i had tears in my eyes during the session as we pulled together the final poem, “Where Do You Live?” which is an older poem I do fairly frequently but which fits into the theme of the overall show and closes it beautifully. Faro outdid himself with the guitar backup he created for this, and i’ve completely revamped my usual performance of it to match his vision which was different from my own. it works amazingly well.
point of interest: far more guitar backup than bass on this CD; just the way it worked out.
— the book and CD will be available at our October 6 show at the Perishable Theater in Providence. i’ll be ramping up details on this within the next few days.
— on top of all this i’m getting a cold, fever, something on those lines. typical after an emotional rollercoaster comes to a stop, plus i’ve been exposed to illness over the last couple of days. figures, but i’ll muddle through.
— big doings at Gotpoetry Live in a couple of weeks; we’re going to have a poetry + music night. extended open, no feature, with musicians available to back you up when you read. (hint: everyone’s favorite bass player is already signed on and more to come.) or bring your own instrument — we’ll even welcome you singer songwriter types for the evening. more details soon, so set aside the date: OCTOBER 9.
see you all soon…
Random notes
I just watched episodes of “Newport Harbor” and “The Hills” on MTV.
It is at times like this that I understand — nay, wholeheatedly embrace the root causes of — the rise of Communism. I get the same feeling when I visit the mansions in Newport, RI.
I went to a prep school for my junior year. It was there that I first gained my disdain for rich people. Shows like these reactivate it.
God, these people are scum. Why do we showcase such evil?
Intervention
First, I prepare the needle: slim,
paper-sharp,
easy on the skin
from first prick to withdrawal.
Then I raise a fire under God:
smack, coke, or meth, it could be any of
these whitest of deities but I will not tell you
the secret name of my Lord.
When I pull the precious
up from the spoon and
hold it ready,
I do not consider
how Kandahar, Cali, or rural Missouri
may figure into my love.
It’s only later, next day, next week,
nodding before the news, that I have a dim inkling:
when I see the coffins coming home as a leader
wraps his arm around a man who kills for him
while farming the deaths of others and the oil
swelling up from the sand waiting for the line to fill;
when I see the boy saluting, his parents
fraught with pride as he leans into the march,
the countryside near his East Prairie home green with old habits,
the empty barns filling with new poisons;
when I hear the streets of a city ringing with Spanish laughter
even as the doors are barred against a bullet,
even as the dark cars zoom toward destinations
hidden in plain sight;
every turn of my every slow hour
seems to show me the pieces of some stellar judgment
that’s not clear enough yet
to be avoided.
This is the substance of choice for me:
not the needle or the spoon, not the joy
that bubbles above the fire below:
it’s that yearning for connection, no matter how hellish.
At night when the longing
catches me again, I tell myself
I’m the savior who will break the
circle. I tell myself:
give me a moment with the men
who make the world their spoon. I will embrace them
the way I embrace the high. World leaders
and shadow priests will come to me
and we’ll kick together. We’ll kick together.
That’s the hymn for this service, the one we cannot seem to sing.
You would think we’d be smart enough by now to see where we’re headed.
You would think that wherever we find ourselves, we could stop nodding.
interim work
I don’t think of this as a first draft exactly; more of a poem I have to write to get it out of the way so I can do a better job with the topic. People seem to like these better sometimes…I don’t get it, really. Anyway…
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
kiss my ass
if you don’t like it —
i’m all in favor
of performance enhancing drugs.
those bodies on the field
are already sculpted just for us
and our desires. if a cream or a shot
of the clear gets them over the lip
of the bowl of the common gene pool
then i say why not?
no one expects the artist
to go without absinthe, no one imagines
the guitarist without his joint, the heroin
sponge saxophone player is practically iconic
and an MC without Cristal is like a day without night —
so, my dope fearing
blunderbuss moralists, stop kidding yourselves,
not much in this world gets done without recourse
to higher powers, outside forces, help from friends —
for example, imagine your world
without the black fig flavor of crude oil,
or your war without the taste of cordite;
could you have a foreign policy without the fix
of raw blood spilled in a Beirut market —
copper on the tongue,
seasoned with oxygen from the open air
and more than a dash of the families’ tears,
sweeter than blonde hashish?
would you have your pleasant life
without mainlining the sewage and rot
of a Ninth Ward street? you inhale
the dust from crumbling bridges —
does the rush come from the secret thrill of knowing
your taxpayer dollars misapplied
made this batch just for you,
or is it the deaths that get you off?
how is it exactly
that you can take a boy from Detroit
and kill him in Kandhuhar,
stand there glassy eyed at his funeral
praising
the way the Army saved him from the drugs and the street,
and one week later pat the shoulder
of the man who grew
the poppies you claim
you saved him from
just because he kills more selectively
when he’s at home?
you have to be high on something.
addicts, junkies,
athletes, artists,
captains of industry,
lords of creation,
all of us
need a little help.
we can’t do it alone.
so kiss my ass
if you think that steroids are cheating, that
weed’s a gateway drug,
that there will ever be a drug-free performance
on the scale you demand for your pleasure.
toke, suck, snort, boot, lick and drink up,
there’s a world out there for the crushing.
we need a little something
to give us strength.
Fireboy
rock,
i’ve spent years
trying to talk to you.
rain,
it’s been a while
since we had anything
to say to each other.
wind,
you ought to write
more often.
i don’t bother
even trying
with the trees and anything else
alive, really.
fire,
at least you tell me the truth.
in return
i let you lick me
until i’m ignorant, crazy
from the heat.
i let you eat my home
and busy yourself with your crying joy.
fire,
over and over you’ve taken the very clothes
you made me shed
each time i stopped, dropped, and rolled.
every conversation with you ends up with me
babbling naked in a corner
while you dance.
fire,
i’m a boy and you’re a man
i could grow up to be.
scorch rock, burn trees, outrun
wind and rain. i’m listening, fire.
i’m all fuel and ears.
Whew!!!
A great show at the Cantab, as well as the most nerve wracking yet.
We got on stage during the break at the end of the open mike. Faro had done his soundcheck early, set list was settled, we were set to go — he tweaked the tuning on his brand spanking new Schecter 5-string…and broke a string.
Now, breaking a bass string isn’t exactly easy, and this was a brand new bass (less than two weeks old!), so we were a little surprised. No problem, though; he had more strings in his bag…
Except, of course, he was carrying a brand new bag, and neither he nor James Brown nor his papa had put the extra strings in it.
Ok…I admit it; I nearly lost my cookies. Not that we were dead in the water, because we’ve got a lot of guitar pieces and could have just done them. But because he is Faro, he retuned the damn bass up into a standard four string, ran through the set list in about two minutes, and figured out how to play the whole bass section of the set. Keep in mind that Faro’s style involves the use of a lot of tapping and harmonics (think Jaco, think Victor Wooten), so we’re not talking about something that’s just a matter of simple transposition. String tensions were significantly greater, and tapping became a much tougher effort.
The guy astounds me.
The set went great. We included a few pieces from the new CD — “Americanized,” “American History,” “Name,” and “Classic Rock” (easily the new crowd pleaser, and already one of my own favorites) as well as several of the old favorites. Crowd was enthusiastic and bought stuff — can’t ask for more than that.
By the time we reached the end of the set, Faro’s hands were a cramped mess. I have no idea how he managed a lot of the guitar pieces that we did in the closing section, but he did.
I cannot WAIT until we finally have the CD out and do the whole set as a single show.
Have I mentioned how lucky I feel to be working with this guy?
Thanks to everyone who came out. Next Show: the big CD release and full performance of “Americanized” at the Perishable Theater in Providence on October 6.
Plug and Plugged
Tonight, at the Cantab Lounge, Mass Ave in Cambridge:
DUENDE!!!
We’ll be doing several cuts from the new album (not yet available for sale, sadly) and of course older stuff.
Come. Enjoy. Buy stuff; I’m hungry.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Jeffery McDaniel seems to be someone a lot of people listen to, and for good reason. While hunting for something else, I discovered this:
http://poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2007/06/returning_to_the_national_slam.html
I imagine a lot of you have already seen it.
I was in that old-timers’ showcase with Mr. M, and he was (as always) terrific. I don’t know him more than to say hi to.
It’s nice to feel that I’m not alone in my estimate of the current state of slam, and of NPS. I can’t think of a place in the piece that I’m not in agreement with, both positive and negative.
Go, read, contribute.
Time to get ready.
Great show, bad life.
Bill MacMillan gave a great show tonight. Thanks, Bill.
We’re going to do a music and poetry night at the place on October 9. Music backing poetry. Will be fun — extended open, no feature.
Next week we start at 7:30 sharp. Need to make better time so the cafe folks won’t be rushing at night’s end. Spread the word.
In other news, I just wanna crawl in a hole and disappear right now. So I will.
Tonight at Gotpoetry Live
we’ve got the Most Reverend Bill MacMillan, who promises ranting and such.
I’m bringing a guitar to do a song to start with instead of doing a poem. Sue me.
Be there. 7:30 PM.
Dark Matter 