When interpreting philosophers’ works and transforming their ideas into lyrical poetry, I understand all too well how their ideas can become didactic. Compounded by my tone-deaf vocal delivery, I have found that in every project, when I get to track 8, I am sure the listener needs a break. Ludwig Wittgenstein said it himself that “when one cannot speak, one should be silent.” Having an instrumental track is the best way to respond!
Because music is the management of vibrations that we can audibly perceive, this spectrum itself has a range of limitations. In creating instrumentals, I research a connected idea and use it as a sonic template. I found that even using the same chord structures of these songs, my limitations and aesthetics yield a truly different result!
Listen to the album while reading the text.
Uncivil Society Music Manifesto
- Let us be inspired by the frequencies and vibrations that make life, and not
constrained by the perceived ownership of something we all experience. - Do not be censored – be it yourself from expressing ideas aligned to your
passion. - Encourage and celebrate joyous active participation in your world.
- Be open to to grow and change.
Counter Arguments #1 and #2
Even though the lens may be the same, I am responding to these artists’ statements from the past in my moment using the tools of the now. For example, the first two counterarguments manifested when I learned about Phil Spector. I found he was influenced by Wagner and, in turn, aspired to create “little opera-ettas” for the kids.
Counter Argument #1 was influenced by Raymond Scott. That man was a big baller – when my son hears any of his songs, he says, “That is good music.” When I ask why, he says, “It makes pictures in my mind.” That, to me, is how music can transcend time and space. For Counter Argument #2, “Ride of the Valkyries” became the sonic template to build from, and although I clearly failed to capture Wagner’s glorious crescendos, I was happy to learn that I could still read sheet music.
Counter Argument #3
When working on the John Dewey project, I used the Monk’s “Black Monk Time” as inspiration. While creating the project, I started listening to Gregorian monk chants and began to experiment with incorporating them as backing vocals. For Counter Argument #3, “Carmina Burana” has always been one of my favorite classical songs, and I had no problem putting it into my creative blender! Can you even hear a trace of it? I didn’t think so; I couldn’t either.
You see, that is the beauty of the Uncivilized Society process – I don’t give two shits about copyright, knowing damn well humanity has been constructing our chemical reactions – be it sight, or sound, to the same limited range of perceivable frequencies for eons. So for some asshole to say they “own” a range of frequencies is utter and total bullshit to me. When constructing a project, I rely on AI to analyze the algorithm and provide me with a sonic substrate on which to build. If you actually listen to what I am doing, there is no way that you will ever be able to discern the song I am blatantly stealing. . . .ahem.I mean drawing inspiration from.
Because I am a loss leader – that’s right, I make a decent living that affords me the time and opportunity to synthesize my passions I can put out one or two projects a year and pay the 150 dollars a month to eventually pay off the credit card dedicated to supporting my creative “habit.” Look, many other 50-year-old men who are comfortable in their career and life have similar hobbies – be it a boat, an addiction, or a mistress. Me, I make music, video, and zines – all in one package that my friends simply ignore, and the rest of the world has no fucking clue how to respond to the prattle and clank that goes on in my mind.
Counter Argument #4
Yet, I am compelled to create and, like Johnny Anarchist, seed throwing my ideas into the air and not give a care if the seeds take root, much less grow into a tree that bears any fruit. I just sit on my couch in my makeshift studio and write, practice and record – all the while I look out my window upon the idyllic Suburban Utopia that I am fortunate enough to exist in and scowl and shake my fist at the petty bourgeois assholes who dare to make noise and play in the street. Yes, I am the angry old man shaking my fist in contempt at the gilded cage that provides me with my first-world problems to work through.
Now, for Counter Argument #4, I reflected on growing up in Southern California, and I landed squarely on my favorite band at that time, Agent Orange. To this day I still ride my autographed Vision Agent Orange pool deck when I skate with my kids!! When researching Bloodstains I had no idea why it was written in Bb, that key landed nowhere near the emotional impact of I how I experienced the song either through recording or hearing it performed live. I remember asking Mike Palm back in the 1980s about his songwriting process, and he said something about trying to play Judas Priest riffs fast – maybe Bb was the precursor to drop D tuning. Either way, I really struggled with the tonal structure – it just didn’t sound right. When I recorded it didn’t feel or sound right either.
Being a counterargument, I did what any self-respecting artist would do – I drank half a bottle of vodka and edited from the perspective of an altered state – the epiphany I had was to replicate the structure and then subtract what was wrong and fuck with what remained. I am sure many producers in the 1970s employed this same tactic. Either way, I latched onto the freedom to create and the courage to scream into the void. To do that, I wrapped my arms around the bass – actually, I included three basses in this song, listening now that is way too much – and that is from someone who embraces the bass.
Counter Argument #5
Counter Argument #5 came by surprise. I was planning on moving forward with “Spectacle Incorporated” for my fall release in 2020, yet when the coronavirus hit and our distractions were eliminated, as much as I love Debord, it just didn’t feel right to proceed with the critique about the distractions of society. Kropotkin is about survival, evolution, and how we can grow collectively. In the face of a global pandemic and economic depression, I revisited my copy of Mutual Aid. The project was inspired by bands that have evolved and changed over time. I remember seeing the Nation of Ulysses opening for Fugazi at the Scottish Rite Ballroom in Oakland.
Their hyperkinetic energy electrified my being. I was left with asking, “Who is this band?”. I promptly bought the single at Epicenter and, later that fall was inspired to hitchhike up the west coast to Olympia – because that is where the address was on the back of the record. I remember arriving at the Olympia Co-op – smelling like sulfur because my previous ride was a trucker who picked me up on the condition that I would go back into his trailer and shift his load with a shovel and a bucket.
Much to my delight, we ended up dropping off the pile of chemicals at the Ostrom’s Mushroom company. I had no idea why I kept smelling something was burning, and that people on the bus and street were keeping their distance. Standing in front of the store I saw a punk kid with a homemade NOU t-shirt. I excitedly asked where they rehearsed and when their next show would be. He laughed and informed me they were from Washington D.C., and after that, he kindly pointed me to a shelter where I could get a shower and some new clothes. When I eventually made it back to the Bay Area, 13 Point Plan to Destroy America had hit the stores. Needless to say it didn’t leave my turntable for quite some time, I still have the dog eared copy of the vinyl today. Choosing a favorite song from that record is like choosing your favorite child – you can’t. Love is a Bull Market did inspire the most spontaneous dance parties and I have always loved that bass line – so it won.
When I started recording this song, the national protests over George Floyd erupted. However, I was safely ensconced in a suburban enclave. I envisioned creating a rising protest march reflective of the swirling torrents of social unrest engulfing our land. Hey, even though Francis Scott Key was safely on a ship out in the harbor, at least he could see some legit flames instead of cowardly watching from my screen. Needless to say, this one came out quick, dirty, and easy – wow, that didn’t sound right . . .
Counter Argument #6
Counter Argument #6 was inspired by my discovery of Simply Saucer – truly a find! Fucking weird is what I have to say about their act. I discovered they reunited for their 30th anniversary and were going to play their seminal record Cyborgs Revisited in Seattle – this among almost every other aspect of the spectacle was postponed.
As the disruptions created by Covid, and social unrest ripple and attenuate through our world and the structure of the absolute power that lies behind the curtain has been clearly exposed – my question is what’s next?
Now that God and country have been destroyed, what will we create from this moment? Can art have the power to affirm its independence or disintegrate what remains in the language of civil society? Will the commodity of culture and the false consciousness it creates be able to capture our attention and distract us again? Or can the real negation of culture preserve its meaning – to no longer be cultural, but arrive at a completely different meaning?
Counter Argument #7
Counter Argument #7 was kind of a no-brainer. My first encounter with the band Rush occurred at a K-mart when I was 5 years old. Inexplicably drawn to the rad cover art of their debut record in the rack I was inexorably scarred when I saw Alex Lifeson’s cameltoe in the picture on the back cover. Rush was the first pop/rock band that opened my mind to music.
In 5th grade, my friend had a new TAMA drum set that was set up like Steward Copeland of the Police and had the additional Tom rack like Neil Pert. We would spend many afternoons in his room listening to Moving Pictures, as he would try to play the beats. I would absorb the thump of the bass drum in my heart while the bass riff would make pictures in my mind.
Besides reflecting back and realizing my “friend” was kind of selfish dick for not letting me play his drums more than once in a blue moon – is that “YYZ” is such a ripper I had to try mangling it the best way I know how!
Counter Argument #8
Counter Argument #8 was inspired by the music of Astor Piazzolla, and
deconstructed the Western structures of melody and unified rhythm that have created a unified coordination of time – that has been perfected as two-minute pop songs; this is an embodiment of “progress.” The most challenging aspect of this project was to take away the 2 and the 4 of the beat – which is suggestive of your mother’s beating heart and replace them with other less tangible expressions.
In researching I read an interview with Van Dyke Parks in Tape Op #145 – such a delightful loon! He talks about working with an artist who uses time changes that switch between 3/4 and 4/4 to create a 7/4 time signature and loops to construct ostinatos – or roughly translated from Italian it means obstinate – a really great descriptor of my own personality! To create something that people might not be going to immediately tap their toes to, but achieve a “scansion of poetry” through the geometry of songwriting and its construction to achieve music “so ironic in its unimportance (yet) so pronounced” in its effect.
This idea drove the musical foundations of the guided improvisation, experimentation, and ultimate expressions in this project, while lyrically, I attempt to synthesize “social events through the intimacy of poetry.” So I pushed myself to pick out and articulate separate phrases and fuse them to create simultaneous melodies and learned to listen for the harmony and dissonance that I created. As the author states “this kind of noticing is just what is needed to appreciate the multiple temporal rhythms and trajectories of the assemblage”. While choosing effects – especially with the reverb settings I opted for large cavernous spaces – be it a concert hall, like where so many of the greatest Piazzolla recordings come from, or a large space like a forest in my attempt to capture the feeling of marching through a forest with a group of gnomes in ecstatic pursuit of elusive mushrooms.
Counter Argument #9
Counter Argument #9 is Discharge’s “The End” I have to admit three plus years into the new normal caused by the Pandemic and living through the attenuations this event has caused has pushed us to both a collective and personal end point. The invisible nature of World War 3 has torn the fabric of society to a point where I am unsure if it can be mended. My own personal life has not been immune to the larger trauma, and I have tried to keep my shit together while watching my eldest child have literally everything taken away from them.
Today, with all corners of Earth inhabited, corporations now seek to colonize our attention and time by claiming our cognitive and expressive space by copyrighting words, phrases, and color schemes. Although technology has enabled colonization – in the past, it was fought with steel and swords – today, the battle is being waged with satellites and cell phones. The cost of “Free” content comes at the cost of trading your most expensive commodity – your existence. I have embraced the tools of the now to empower my own expression – but to use them to give back, to share art and ideas in the hope of stimulating imagination and action.
Our system will produce what ever sells – as long as it is designed to include planned obsolesce and the false promise of fulfillment. I do understand that to create shareable work, dynamics are squashed to all peaks with little valleys for the listener’s ear to both wander, rest, and discover the mystery that resides in the full spectrum of the sonic plane. The irony of creating free music to share, a massive amount of sonic material must be excluded in the process of concentrating only on the frequencies that we can consciously perceive. Yet, I am willing to accept these sonic losses in my art to counter the cynicism, misinformation, and ultimate depression manufactured by modern mass media.
Counter Argument #10
Counter Argument #10 is a cover of the Minutemen’s “Cohesion” – From the generosity of Michael T. Fournier, he purchased a copy of Craig Ibarra’s “Wailing of a Town” for me. I was at a real low point that summer – sick kid, family trauma, struggling with loss on a few levels – and this book, which tells the story of the Minutemen, was both a beacon and an anchor for me. I reached out to Mr. Ibarra, and in kind, he put me on his mailing list – where I discovered his yearly D.Day Jamboree – where the life of D.Boon and the Minutemen are celebrated in Pedro.
I had been kicking the tires of starting to perform again – this time taking my Songs and Stories of Enlightened Anger video out into public – where A_Non gets to narrate, jam a little bass, and go-go dance (much to my wife’s abject horror). At the time, I was getting close to completing the “Counter Arguments” project – where I gave a super nod to the Minutemen. To play the show, bands need to perform two Minutemen songs. I had a video of History Lesson from earlier projects, but to be part of the show, I learned the instrumental “Cohesion”, and used that song to open the performance playing acoustically on my bass. Also a super shout out to Mr. Ibarra for reprinting copies of the Prole – a fanzine produced by Mike Watt and D.Boon – inspired, I used this visual aesthetic to create this project.
“Ideas improve, and words participate in improvement. Plagiarism is necessary, progress implies it. So embrace an author’s phrase, make use of an idea – to erase false ones and replace it with the right ones.” – Guy DeBord Society of the Spectacle, passage 207
“We don’t write songs, we write rivers.” – Mike Watt