Cassetter Rides The Synthwave With Style

     There is a lot of music in the world today and that is an excellent thing, but I will tell you the truth, the rarities are few and far between.  The things I actually play over and over again, and learn, do not come often in the long term scheme of things.  When I am listening to new music it is literally work, and that is the way with everything I suppose.  When I find something I like it takes the drudgery out of the work, its a bonus, it makes my efforts fun and rewarding.  Thank you to all who helped in this endeavor.
     Recently I'd been going through more synthwave and cyberpunk selections found on the net.  I swear some of them must be the promoters relatives.  I can tell by listening there is no other way they could have gotten included at this point in their musical careers, except by being related to the person making the sampler selection.  
     Perhaps they were owed a favor or something, who knows?  Maybe they are baby AIs, still learning.
     One thing is sure, they need to practice a lot more.  If they stick with it they will someday sound wonderful and not make my ears ache, but NOT YET.  My revenge for these ear aches is my understanding that if the people do stick with their music, become adept, they will one day listen back, hearing themselves as I hear them now, and they will feel embarrassment.  
     Believe me, I know all about this.  Writing is much the same.  Some of the things I wrote when I was young make me want to go crawl under a rock.  But those steps were necessary, so I just blush and try to forget the things that rang with inexperience and cliche.  
     Now back to our story.  Recently I was outside doing some work in the greenhouse, and one of the new hour long MP3s came on the player.  I kept busy but was kind of blown away with what I was hearing.  It was really just awesome music to listen to while I was doing what I was doing.  It was so distinctive that I could tell when it was over, when another selection came on the player.  I did something irregular,  I went back and played it again, and again...
     It was so listenable that I played it for a long time.  Being 62 years old makes "A long time" different from what I used to think of as "A long time".  Now a long time is a very long time.  The variety of the music was like anti-redundance, it took me longer than usual to learn it, and then I went looking for more material by the same artist.  
     And there was more.
     The name of the Magician, I mean Musician, well, maybe both, is Cassetter, and Cassetter is Matt From Warsaw Poland.  He chose the name Cassetter on the spur of the moment, because he used a lot of cassettes in his listening world.          

     Matt has only been making music for a few years.  He utilizes electronic computer equipment for all aspects of production, and he is self taught.  As I came to know the music more and more, several of the selections actually transported me away, and I really like it when that happens.
     One day recently a song by Cassetter came on the player, 500th Floor Terrace.  I was spraying water in the greenhouse again, when all of a sudden I was on Mars, it was near sunset and the sky was amazing.  My spacesuit fitted perfectly and didn't even itch!  I was walking along, there on the red planet, and the dirt was indeed a reddish hue.  Then I came across some stone steps leading up a hillside.  I walked up the steps and at the top was a wall with an alcove and in the alcove was a statue of a cat...
     Wait!  What is this?  Where am I?  Ah, back in the greenhouse south of Akela New Mexico, not Mars...but for a few seconds some truly mind bending stuff had occurred.  

     Yeah, I like it very much.

      Later, a song came on named Giant Drill and I remembered one of the Klingon weapons in a Star Trek film I once saw, that giant drill had destroyed Vulcan, birthplace of Spock.  Really it destroyed Vulcan in only some dimensions, and not the one WE inhabit.  I think.  It is a complex multiverse and Cassetter Music fits right into it like a puzzle piece. 
      Matt is a natural musical talent, and Cassetter is an expression of that.  His music is something that HAD to be born,  necessary celebrations.  Matt is a very lucky guy, but his listeners are most fortunate.    

      I wrote to Cassetter and Matt replied to my questions with an interesting and fluent manner.  
     Here are some comments from the Artist himself:

Hi Matt, how long have you been composing?
I've been making music for less than 3 years, so I ended up calling myself a beginner quite recently.  I learned everything by myself (still learning), reading articles, watching videos and what's most important just by producing - I think I have a good workflow which allowed me to make a lot of music.

What music inspires you?
I had different periods in my life when it comes to music I listen to. I've been mainly listening to electronic music, with Vitalic, The Hacker, Infected Mushroom as one of my favorites. In synthwave I enjoy Perturbator and recent work of Daniel Deluxe. I've also listened to a lot of hip hop music in my life (like Mobb Deep or Dogg Pound), also had some period with rock music quite a long time ago (Fear Factory, Tiamat).  

How do you go about composing your pieces?
As for construction of my music it happens quite automatically - I have a general idea of the song, set the tempo, layer the drums, think about the theme and go with the flow. I don't compose in the traditional way - I don't know too much about music theory, so I do most of the melodies on instinct - a lot of them just play in my head. Sometimes I feel like the process of making a track is like the process of reminding myself how the track I already make in the parallel universe sounded.  

What does the future hold for Cassetter?
My next album Robot Era (rel. in June 10th) will be quite diverse, but than I'd like to make music a bit more vibe-consistent. I have most of another album composed and it will be much darker overall.

How do you feel about the seeming surplus of music out in the world today?
There is a lot of music now and it's quite difficult to make money - but I work quickly, make a lot of music, and it seems it is starting to pay off.  On one hand, the things in music are better now, because for sure 20 years ago it would be much more difficult to make anybody hear your music, you needed to have some buddies, know someone etc. and now there are tons of new music and the process of listening is quite different - I feel like even if you'd make one good album, you mean nothing, you need to go through the slow process of building the audience and do a lot of tracks because many people listen to something just a few times and then go on and listen to other tracks, there is a lot of new.  Also you need to stay very active with social media, which is not the part I enjoy too much. Making music is my hobby but the other part (posting on socials, operational stuff) can be a bit exhausting, as I have a full-time job.  Partly because of that I joined with FIXT, and I am quite happy with how things are going with them.

Do you do live performances outside of your home area?
I haven't traveled much, I had just a few gigs and then the pandemic came, though I had some others scheduled.  I hope it'll come back, I think it's a really nice part of being a musician - meeting new people, seeing new places.

Where is home?  Where is your studio?
I was born in Warsaw so I can say it's my city. "Studio" would be a big word in my case.  I just work on a laptop with production monitors and that's it.   I use software to produce.  As for games there are some games with my music and also some streamers use it (as Dr. Disrespect for example), a lot of this stuff happens by FIXT. Producing is now consuming a lot of my free time.

      What do you do outside of Music?

     I am a boxing fan, and I've been an editor on Polish boxing portal for several years before I started producing.   I played Oblivion during the pandemic and finished it.  

How old are you?

     I am 32 now.

**************************

     Among the collaborators listed with the music of Cassetter are Voicians, King Protea, Time Travel, Casey Desmond, Bunny X, Mari Kattman, Affire, and Megan Mcduffie.   Matt says he has no favorites yet and he is completely happy with all his collaborators.

     After I learned  Cassetter -- Back To The 80s (Prime Thanatos compilation), which has nearly a million views on youtube and over 20 thousand likes, I went to FIXT and acquired The Fugitive.  I listened to Entropy online.  I have heard some selections off the new CD Robot Era, and none fail to please.  The music is fun to listen to any time, even while performing other tasks or working.  It will help order your matrix, and some will even take you away to unknown places.
     What I am hearing is music that had to get out, it is true expression, and there is nothing that can hold it back.  This is music Matt wanted to hear, needed to hear, and it wasn't on this world yet, so he brought it.
     The only thing you can take from here is what is in your head, so LOAD UP, and don't forget to hear this.  I intend to take this music where ever I go.  
     Cassetter rides the Synthesizer Wave with ultimate style, and he is hanging ten.  Way up at the front of the surfboard he lets his toes feel the foam as his back arches and his arms thrust outward in a balancing act not easy to achieve.       
     And its just the first wave of the day.


Fin

Youtube
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCU8y7EzijNWUAPdAfae0rEg

Buy albums on Bandcamp (Its much easier than anywhere else):
https://cassetter.bandcamp.com/

Soundcloud
https://soundcloud.com/cassetter

Spotify
https://open.spotify.com/artist/6rzOP8pWzUuXlniCGCtrcE

Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/CassetterOfficial

Fixtstore.com
https://fixtstore.com/products/cassetter-entropy-instrumentals-digital-album?variant=32643237937230

Back To The 80s compilation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snBcA-AqVGk

500th floor terrace

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1H7bAFnmA4

James Guttman's HIGHSOCIETY

 HIGHSOCIETY

 

Music Review
Bill Gallagher
3550 Words



      I'm going to show you a world within.  A world of rage, and intensity.  Although invisible, its forces are powerful...
                                   On My Level

   The first time I heard James Guttman's HIGHSOCIETY was on a selection compiled by a Youtube music promoter called "Cyberpunk 2077 Mix, NS Dark Techno Electro Music -- Play Hard Go Pro 45".  I was driving through Deming at night.  It was just me and a few cows and wide open moonlit country.  The selection "Louder -- I Can Take Your Pain Away" came up on the USB player, and my adventure began.  

     The sub-genre of Electronic Dance Music (EDM) called "Cyberpunk" seems most notable because of what the musicians call drops and breaks,  sharp transitions between sounds or levels of sounds, and generally much more radical than things like Skrillex or Voicians.  Radical to the point of dissonance.   

     This dissonance in Hardcore Cyberpunk makes it hard to listen to for some people, ie old people like me.  This I'm sure is something of an attraction to younger people, because being different from our elders is a rite of passage.  There is also a lot of flexing of technological muscles by the younger musicians, and who can blame them?  Anybody talking this stuff down is just jealous because they didn't have these capabilities in their time.
 
     Anyway. I'd been listening to a few things called Cyberpunk during my constant quest for New Music, but this, what I was hearing on the song "Louder -- I Can Take Your Pain Away", was not Cyberpunk in the strictest sense.  It was definitely Cyber, as anyone with half an ear could tell, but the punk part, I don't think so.  Here was a well developed musical intricacy, bordering on dissonance, but never going into it.  It was some kind of ideal marriage between hard electronix and melodix, working one into the other.

     I had found the New again!  There is fun in looking, but more fun in finding.  I searched out  the track and the artist by querying the promoters title in Google.  After some further electro-adventuring I found the single on youtube.  Questing even further I discovered a lot about the artist himself, because his output is  impressive in its quantity and quality.  I heard more music by HIGHSOCIETY, and I even saw the man himself doing instruction videos, and performing live in front of huge boards of electronic equipment, equipment I didn't understand, but I liked it anyway.

     It is a New Truth that equipment is a big factor in music today, bigger than it has ever been before.  This equipment progresses at a fantastic pace, as fast as code can be written.  The computer is as much of music now as simple electricity was among the first electrified musical instruments.  It is a whole new world.   Consider the literal electro-video barrage that young people today accept as normal, and you can see that they are on another level of perception by default.  I think the Transformer movies were much more influential in modern music than most people know, even more than the theme music from the Haunted Mansions at the Disney Worlds, and that is a lot.

     In line with the above postulation is the fact that equipment to hear music correctly is almost as complex, in its own way, as the equipment to produce the music.  Some of the boom boxes driving around out here in the NM desert have never been wet in their lives, because even if it does rain they shake any water right off with a field of sound whose vibrations can be felt from far far away.  Not kidding. Those cars must be equipped with special glass, otherwise it would just shatter from the beats.  Everything scientific and patterned a happy dire.

     So there I am on Youtube looking for the single track "Louder -- I Can Take Your Pain Away".   The first channel I came across was called NC Trap, or Trap NC, or something like that.   I initially thought I made a mistake and was at some furriers site.  Then I listened to a few things and thought Wow there is some wildness happening in North Carolina!  It was only later I somehow realized that NC was not North Carolina but No Copyright.  Blimey.  Trap Nation is where a lot of HIGHSOCIETY Music can be found.

     As for the term Trap, which describes another sub-genre of EDM/BASS Hip Hop with Blax influence, I can bring something to the table on that.  Trap was a place to score drugs, usually the projects.  I never liked them because there was a lot of treated weed.  The weed wasn't treated by the brothers, why would they throw money at something that worked fine as it was?  No, it was treated by the people running the drug war.  Cops would recycle confiscated weed by putting it back on the streets with chemicals in it, a little something for your teeth or eyesight, something detrimental over a long period of time.  Deniable tax free fundraising, and well within the spirit of the Drug War.  Drugs As Weapons. There was a lot of this and it just became more prevalent as time went on.  

     Predation.  

     It wasn't called War for nothing.  

     The earliest tests of drugs as weapons were conducted secretly on Rock stars, it was all about availability, making the drugs available, and a lot of the stars succumbed, just killed themselves overdosing.  CIA was already beginning to take control of airports during that time, and a lot of early rock stars, an abnormal number, also died in plane crashes, back when Rock Stars could be major social powers, not all diluted like today.  Some real old guard pigs were scared silly of John Lennons growing power when he was shot.

     The insiders selling high power poppy and coca drugs to the earliest rock stars also became very wealthy, of course.  Two birds with one stone and all that.  When the government becomes a juggernaut, and not an administrator of the peoples needs, it always becomes an elite mob of insiders making war on the rest, pure and simple.  Trap indeed.  I worked for three retired Police Officers in the early 1990s who retired early because they witnessed what happened at the housing projects in Fort Lauderdale during the 80s.  They said, and I quote: "That wasn't American."  

     Real traps were constructed by blocking off car traffic so that only a couple streets operated in and out of the projects.  Large concrete barricades were used.  Sometimes the police would bust 5000 people on a weekend in Dade/Broward, using drugs they themselves put on the streets, and almost all of the busted served mandatory minimums.  This is a matter of historical record, but not something you would see on mono-media TV.  The people running the prisons got rich as hell.  Trappers.   These are the movers and fixers in our society today, and their kids.  

     This economic trapping entailed flooding the projects with cocaine and weapons.  Secret insiders sold both the cocaine and the guns, making big money from genocide, along with all the lawyers.  It was called The Self Cleaning Oven (Playboy interview with Surgeon General Elders)(2).  The death rate was never well publicized but exceeded 40% in many places. The survivors got paid and all but a few forgot everything.  The equivalent of flooding the Rez with hard booze.  Very old tactix actually.

     Just a little of Americas Secret History for ya', from somebody who was there, paying attention.  This is all very hard-to-find information, kept from you by the very people who are paid to inform you!    I was working at Fed-ex at that time, 1984-87, #54169, out of the McNab Station near Pompano Beach.  People tried to sell me crack when I was in my Fedex van, isyn!  It was a Frenzy, the whole place was doing a slow burn, inside and out.  And it didn't just happen.  It was a program.  These Traps were intentionally set.  The media did as it was told by the political police, and everybody got rich except the prey, the people in the trap.  The higher you were in authority, the richer you got.  A lot like Covid. And 911.  And la la la, and on and on.

    We have all been handled.  The whole world.

    For the record I left Fedex because they were nazis about weed, which is all I use, and pretty much all I ever used, once I got off alcohol in 1991.  I could have lied my way through Fedex, but I didn't want to.  Call me weak for indulging such a thing as conscience.  All the American corporations are corpse-orations, want you to be a good hive member, lie for them, buy in.

    Ah, memories, and the evolution of language.   It is nice to see I am not the only one who remembers this stuff, even if we are just talking about vestigial awareness here.  Funny that I had never heard the word Trap used to describe a type of music before, but I am very familiar with its origin.  

     I kept exploring this new music I had discovered by actively seeking it.  Like a flower opening its petals to the sun my awareness was led inward, outward, and onward, to always newer places.  I was beginning to enjoy this adventure, these learnings, so I wrote to HIGHSOCIETY and received a very nice letter of reply.  I met James Guttman over the internet, and he was kind enough to answer my lists of questions, no matter how mundane, ill informed, or redundant they were.  I found him to be patient, and well spoken, and generous above all.  Here are some candid answers to my questions direct from the Artist himself.


                        *********************************************


    Hi James, thanks for your time.  Where do you originate, where is home?

    I'm originally from San Francisco. I lived in Amsterdam for the past 2 years and just moved down to San Diego, CA this week.

    How old are you, and are there any significant others?

    31, and Yes! I have been :) married for almost 4 years.

    Who do you admire most within music?

    I admire people who are truly being themselves and building something unique. Porter Robinson, Jeremy Olander, Rezz, Le Castle Vania, Kingdom of Giants are some names that come to mind.

    Who influences you most musically?

    Lately I have been influenced most by things outside of my genre.  Lots of rock/metal and more spacey/vibey house music. I actually don't listen to music that much when I am not producing it. When I'm not writing music I generally lean toward styles that are more "background" friendly.

    Please tell us about your collaborators.

    I don't typically do a lot of collaborations, but a few people I have worked with a lot are two vocalists, Matty McDonald and Sunnie Williams, who are both really awesome. When working with a vocalist it's typically all done online, via passing files back and forth. I have actually never met Sunnie in real life...  

    How about your preferences in collaboration, recent, past, future.

    I am working on another new song with Matty McDonald right now actually. Some acts I would love to work with are Purge & Pedestrian Tactics from the EDM world - from outside of EDM I would love to work with more metal bands. I really enjoy mixing genres and I'm a huge fan of metal music.  

    One article I read compared you to acts as big as Sonny James Moore/Skrillex, how do you feel about this?

    Well Skrillex was definitely one of the first acts that I got really into as far as "bass music" goes (I think this is true for a lot of people, in terms of his music being an entry point into the genre). I don't listen to him as much anymore but when I was first starting out I drew a lot of inspiration from him, especially the way he mixed melodic vs. heavy parts in the same track, that was pretty unique at the time. I definitely respect him a lot, he is always pushing genres forward and doing really creative things with OWSLA. So that's a nice comparison!

    Did you move to San Diego because of work?

    San Francisco is really competitive. It's a small music scene. I am actually no longer based in San Francisco, so most of my shows are going through my booking agency Cyber Groove.  It just depends who wants to book me. I needed to move back to the USA due to an opportunity with a booking agency that brought me on (http://cybergrooveam.com/) that will lead to a lot of US-based shows, so I needed to be based here.   Our visas in Amsterdam were 2 Year, and they were expiring, so it was a good opportunity to make a change. I haven't played in LA in a really long time but I have played huge shows there as well as empty shows.  It can be really hit or miss. I have only lived here for 2 weeks so...overall I think southern California is a bit more slow paced than San Francisco or Amsterdam, it's much more sprawling.  I have been really enjoying it. The weather is incredible... really goes a long way as far as keeping a positive mood.

     How about your audience?

     In terms of audience it's roughly 18-30 year olds, mostly men. A lot of your standard club kids but a lot of gamers and fitness people as well. If you look around online you can find tons of people making videos of themselves playing video games to my music.

     What happened in Amsterdam?

     We moved there for a work opportunity that my wife had. I did get involved with the music scene over there which was cool, but about 60% of the time I lived there, the music industry was inactive due to COVID. So I just produced/wrote a lot of music and focused on pushing my online listener numbers.
    
    Any hobbys or sports you like a lot?

    I'm really into health and fitness, I like to work out and do things outside.  I also love cooking and beer/wine so I'm always trying new stuff.

     Who does the graphic art on your musix?

     I do all of my own design these days.

     How do you feel about the competition in the Music Scene today?

     It's a bit of a double-edged sword for me. Overall I think this is a great time for music and art. You can teach yourself to produce music (as I did) on the internet entirely for free, self-release your music, and build an audience of millions. There is literally no barrier to entry anymore. The flip side of it is that there is a ton of really generic mediocre music that makes a lot of "noise" but doesn't really provide any value to listeners. Sometimes I feel overwhelmed by the amount of music out there.  Listener attention spans are also decreasing rapidly, a song/album release doesn't have the impact it used to. I don't really fight this though, I think massive cultural/consumption shifts like this are inevitable and resisting them is a waste of energy.

     Do you teach music as an occupation?

     I have guest lectured a few times about the music industry but otherwise no.

     Are you working on any Movie Soundtrax? Video Games?

     I have not ever done any original composing for any movies/tv/games but I have had a few tracks synced for TV on channels like HBO, MTV, etc.

      DJ'ing and performing seem to be a larger part of your work right now, true?

     Well not for the last 2 years, but it's looking like I will be doing quite a few shows throughout this year and into 2022, thanks to my new booking agency I mentioned above. I really miss playing shows!

     Is it possible to make a living with your music today?  

      It's definitely possible. My view is that you have to embrace the idea of running your own business now more than ever. Artists these days have to be amazing digital marketers, social networkers, content creators, etc. simultaneously. There is less money, being spread around more widely. So it's very important to create multiple revenue streams if you want to make any money.  Full disclosure: I do not make a great living from my music. If I lived off music alone it would be comparable to working a minimum wage job or something. I do audio/video editing as a freelancer on the side to make extra cash.

     Have you ever been part of a band?

     I have been in many bands, yes. Mostly metal/metalcore, but also some punk/pop-punk. I actually started in music playing drums at age 8. I was in a bunch of very serious bands from about 16 - 21 before I got into electronic music. Went on tour around the US a few times. Sometimes I miss playing in a band, especially playing drums. Such a fun instrument!
 
James Guttman / HIGHSOCIETY


                                    ********************************


 
     During the weeks of writing back and forth with James I spent as much time as I could listening to his music.  I heard a good bit of his earlier material, noting similarities with todays work, as you would expect, but I could tell it was the earlier material, also not unexpected.  Progression Happens, if you work at it, and James works hard.

     I also noted that the marriage of hard core sounds with melody that I alluded to earlier was not just something that occurred in the song Louder, it was something permeating all the Music of HIGHSOCIETY, even his remixes of other musicians work.  There is an underlying weave in the sounds created by James Guttman, high order, a percussive use of electronic sounds, spoken word, and singing vocals not usually employed so.  

     The listening appeal of HIGHSOCIETY is way up there, as evidenced by his listener/follower numbers, and the quality of his collaborators.  When I first took the song Louder off the Cyberpunk selection where I found it, I cut it at 3:25 because I was looking at the graphic, not listening to the song.  This is the version I listen to now, still, and to me it is an almost perfect FM version of the song, I mean it could really go off if given half a chance.  There are several others by HIGHSOCIETY in that category too, imho.

     There was nothing I didn't like, just some I liked more than others.  The cohesiveness of the music gets the part of my mind that goes grasping after order.  Sometimes these sound sculptures border the disorderly, but only just.  There is synergy, a sound that comes across as much more than the sum of its parts.  It is the freshest I have heard in a long time.  Genuinely Beautiful. Soaring. Intricate. Novel.  It truly is a new kind of music, in more than one way, somewhat due to computer tools and their manipulation of sound. The Infinite Palette.  There is high variety by HIGHSOCIETY.

     Another thing I especially like about HIGHSOCIETY are the many female vocals, my personal preference.  HIGHSOCIETY music is well suited, it seems, to the expressions of female vocalists, and these voices are utilized to the highest extent, in ways that make them musical instruments in their own right.   There is a lot of restructuring of vocals electronically to achieve all the effects one hears.  Some vocalists who collaborate with HIGHSOCIETY include Karra, Sunnie Williams, Matty McDonald, and Amy Kirkpatrick.

     My 4 favorite songs by James Guttman's HIGHSOCIETY are Fake featuring Amy Kirkpatrick, Sinking, Louder (I Can Take Your Pain Away) featuring Karra, and Heartbeat (Magic Free Release).  As far as what I personally like in music, this is as near perfect as I have come across yet.

     In my quest for new music many things occur, because its a multifaceted quest, not just about one or two things.  In many ways rage is my dynamo.  Everything is very intense and I wouldn't have it any other way.  If it all was to be put into one word it would be TRUTH, and there is enough truth to keep anyone busy for life.  Happenstance and tricks, best laid plans and accidents.  There is exaltation and depression and treasure and waste, even adventure.  Effort and reward all defined by the moment: action, reaction, random interaction...and order too.  Lots of order.  

    The world beheld by the majority is reflected in light, and also sound.

    To quest is to question.

    Music is news from poets.

fin

       .
-----------------------------------------

Bibliography

(1)Alex Constantine, The Covert War Against Rock: What You Don't Know About the Deaths of Jim Morrison, Tupac Shakur, Michael Hutchence, Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Phil Ochs, ... Tosh, John Lennon, and The Notorious B.I.G.
https://feralhouse.com/the-covert-war-against-rock/

(2) Playboy article with Jocelyn Elders, https://www.playboy.com/read/the-playboy-interview-with-joycelyn-elders

Rush, Roll The Bones

Various Online Sources

HIGHSOCIETY
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8P2v37hf-lZhnYqndWP7xA

karra
https://monstercat.fandom.com/wiki/Karra
https://iamkarra.com/

sunnie williams
https://www.sunniewilliamsmusic.com

amy kirkpatrick
https://www.cymbamusic.com/amybio

Matty McDonald

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beta_State

Trap Nation    https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCa10nxShhzNrCE1o2ZOPztg

https://highsocietymusic.bandcamp.com/

https://soundcloud.com/highsocietyofficial

N O W A V E

Music Review 

Cyberpunk


     I have been listening to music for a long time, though not all music is to my liking.  Some is forced upon me by other people, in situations where I cannot make it go away, or make myself go away. Like waiting for tires to be fixed, or at the dentists office before having some teeth drilled on.  La la ping ping tinkle tinkle, I guess the dentist is trying to show his level of culture or something.  Maybe it is music specially created to make most people relax. It sometimes makes me sick.  If the dentist knew how close I was to throwing up because of his music, he probably wouldn't say "Open wide and lets have a look."  

     During times of audio trial I feel like I am a captive audience, in every sense, and I don't like it.  Sometimes it even makes me angry, but what am I to do?  Nothing, thats what.  There is no recourse but whining and crying, and that is unbecoming.  So I sit and fume, and try to think happy thoughts.  I am not normally taciturn or grouchy, but crap music has been known to make me so.  

       I am not always hostile to other peoples music, either, and on occasion I have even heard good music from unexpected sources, which is nice.  Trouble with that is I have no control, I cannot get up and crank the devil out of the volume, so the walls shake and the windows rattle, or replay the song as often as I like.  Why, back before the internet there were sometimes years between the hearing of a song somewhere and finding out who did it.  That is because it was not usually a pressing matter, and because music as it is today was just being born.  Willy nilly serendipity reigned.  You might like a certain song that fit in a genre not played on the radio station you regularly listened to, so to hear it again somewhere when you were out was really something.  To hear it AND have the idiotic disc jockey say the artists name was usually too much to ask.  

     Did I just say idiotic disc jockey?  I did.  So sorry kids, Disc Jockeys in my day were not what they are today, no slight intended.  It was all totally barbaric, back in my early days.  You had to become a pest at the record store, or CALL THE RADIO STATION to get any info at all, like some little groupie, and that meant you had to sit and dial and dial and dial because of course you were lumped in with all the people trying to be caller number 37 for the 100 dollars free gas, or whatever.  The disc jockeys were many times aspiring musicians, now as close as they would ever get to stardom, so they acted like godlets and goddesses, which was perfectly ridiculous because the vast majority were fat and ugly from sitting on their behinds all their lives.  

     The whole mess was like riding in a covered wagon across Death Valley with your mother-in-law, a mother-in-law who spoke only in old TV commercials: its not NICE to fool mother nature...You're soaking in it now! And on and on.  Before the internet everyone was parched and starving, sick in mind body and soul because no one realized how to eat right.  We should thank Ja and our lucky stars every single day for the internet, and the will to use it.  Which brings me finally to the subject at hand, namely a music review of some sounds that grabbed me and might even be fitting revenge against the dentist and his artless tinklings.  It also says a lot for the artist because I am getting aged and jaded, and all the time hearing more and more music, and only the special stuff grabs me now.  Its not a lot.

     The last big thing in music I listened to on the radio was grunge rock.  That lasted a long time, but by then the internet was blasting off and me with it.  I never listened to another commercial again.  One of the first things I did was search for music I had purchased in the past, that was lost to me because of faulty media like vinyl, and 8-track, and cassette, and cd.  It took a long time for me to catch up, and I also looked into and listened to many bands I had been curious about, like "Box Of Frogs", old Yardbird Era British stuff, and "Hawkwind", which was so good it embarrassed America.  The penny boys took over then, and music became simply a numbers game of advertising dollars and privilege and computer generated statistics.  They were dead but they were grateful.  Those meatballs were way more interested in the technology to keep people from copying their product than producing anything redeeming.  They lost the yearning for redemption long ago.  They became shameless and tawdry and mean.

     After I caught up with things to my liking I began ranging out and it did not take me long to start catching sound waves.  Synthwave, Chillwave, New Retro Wave, and others.  There are a lot of compilations put out by the promoters of internet music and I listen to them almost exclusively now.  Every once in a while I will hear something that catches my ear and I go look up the Artist and their other stuff.  I have found so much good music this way I sometimes wonder if I am dead and have gone to heaven and don't realize it yet.

     So here I am listening along and all of a sudden, at the very beginning of one of the selections named Omen - A Darksynth Cyberpunk Mix for Aggressive Robots, there is something there.  It is different yet familiar, reminding me of some of the best Electro-Rock I have heard out of El Paso, not the new stuff.  There were musical distortions throughout the song which old guys like me have trouble adjusting to, but it does grow on you.  I think the distortions are called breaks and drops, but I am not too sure yet.  They may be somewhat the same,  distinguishable only by nuance, which is beyond me at this time.

     I've listened to a lot of Daniel Voicians and Daft Punk and Sonny James Moore (Skrillex).  I am familiar with their particular electronic distortions which seem to be very popular with the younger set, the kids who like to listen to music in cars with huge bass.  I imagine those Spaceship drivers really go for hard core distortions, in fact I know they do, because I have been there when they drive by and all the windows around me start vibrating.  Makes me jealous.  We sure didn't have that when I was young.   

     The distortions I am used to are kept in check (I think) by the marketers who realize how difficult some of the hard core window breaking transitions are for older or uninitiated listeners.  Thats because those distortions border on discordance, and in some cases wallow in it.  There is no wallowing when the promoter is trying to reach a larger audience though, and here is exactly where the boundary lines meet, this is the crux, the toughest nut to crack.  Is it going to be formulated music based on pleasing the crowd for increased revenues, or experimental music with the chance to be famous once you are dead?  Or maybe even something new, that no one has heard before?  That last one is just about impossible, but does happen.  What I was hearing from that very first song called "Destruction Man", was a radical contrast within the song itself.  Musical distortion came shining upon high order Rocktronics, and vice versa.  It was a borderline discordance in the sense of being different, not anti-melodic.  It really did grab me.  

     I went to the net, looked up the artist.

     N O  W A V E.  

     Well that's different too, I thought.  

     It was just the beginning.

     I listened to everything by N O  W A V E that I could find.  I was immediately hooked on "Obey", along with the first song I'd heard "Destruction Man".  The graphic on the singles was cool too, and later I found out the musician is the graphic artist as well.  I cranked those two songs loud and put them on cycle.  I was enjoying them immensely, and in the mean time I'd found what I consider the Artists best work: 

N O  W A V EXXXX Cyberpunk Mix

which is 45 minutes or so of killer music including Destruction Man and Obey, along with quite a few others.  I listened to that work a few times and got hooked on another song called Boundaries which is usually not the style of music I listen to.  I thought things like that were outside my line of interest, but this I like a lot.  It might be my favorite so far.  

     Sometimes a twist here, a twist there, suddenly things work.  I was intrigued.  I wondered if this was an entire band, because it sounded like it, or was it a single electronic Artist?  I doubted it was a single Artist, mostly because of the vocals and their true variety, but some could be samples and I am not well versed in what is happening in the realm of music making right now, except for the end products.  The world has moved on very fast, and I have had to take other turn offs.   I decided to contact the Artist and see if anyone would be interested in allowing me to review N O  W A V E music for my blog.  To my pleasant surprise I received a letter back complimenting me on my blog, and saying a review would be fine, send my questions, which I did.  Below is the email interview pretty much as it happened:

N O  W A V E:  Bill, thanks for your questions. Below are my answers to them.  

BG:  Where do you come from?

N O  W A V E:  I was born in Kyiv, Ukraine.

BG:  How old are you?

N O  W A V E:  I am 31, for good or ill.

BG:  Where did you learn music and how long ago?

N O  W A V E:  I became interested in music in my early teens. I tried my first musical instrument when I was 16, and that was a bass guitar.  After that I started writing songs and performed as a vocalist. I  taught myself how to play guitar with the help of books, then took private lessons of extreme vocal, trained breath, learned arpeggio, played drums, was DJing, tuned in the synths. I got a lot of knowledge from the practical experience shared by my colleagues, and from the internet as well.  It was never enough for me to play one instrument, so I became interested in musical sequencers.
 
BG:  Where do you live now?  

N O  W A V E:  I’m still living in Ukraine.

BG:  How do you employ your music in your life?

N O  W A V E:  The music is like a part of me. It’s something intrinsic and inseparable. It’s always with me. This is a form of communication: I can convey and receive information by means of my music.

BG:  Do you perform?  Raves?  Concerts?  DJ?

N O  W A V E:  Yes, I really love to give live concerts! Before the pandemic, I played my music as a DJ at the raves, cyber and underground parties, as well as at ski spots - it's exciting.  Now I am preparing for summer, I also plan to use my electric guitar and vocals in concerts.

BG:  Are you married or do you otherwise care to say anything about your personal life?

N O  W A V E:  No, I’m single. I could say that I’m in the constant search of beauty.

BG:  Any passions other than music you would like to mention.

N O  W A V E:  I’m a true fan of snowboarding. The other day I came back from the mountains, it's very groovy, especially riding the board to music! Also I enjoy martial arts.

BG:  What is your favorite music to listen to?

N O  W A V E:  Depending on the time and place, but mostly it is driving music like breakbeat, rapcore, metal, punkrock, techno, trance and what is now called cyberpunk.

BG:  What or who has had the greatest influence on your music (Not just one)?

N O  W A V E:  Without a doubt, this is The Prodigy, who have been with me from childhood, and up to this day! And also it’s Pink Floyd.

BG:  Are you 100% electronic/synth, or are there any other instruments?

N O  W A V E:  I also use an electric guitar and my voice in my music.

BG:  What are your goals?

N O  W A V E:  I want to live my life without a single boring moment, surrounded by good people and music. I want to explore the world, climb Everest. And leave something good to the world after death.

BG:  Have you gotten any radio play?  Is radio play a factor anymore or has it all gone internet?

N O  W A V E:  I don’t listen to the radio and, to tell you the truth, I don’t know what’s going on there, but I know that some online radio stations play my tracks. Mostly it’s online cyberpunk radio.

BG:  Do you have a promoter, agency, or agent, or are you self promoted?

N O  W A V E:  I release my tracks on the largest music label in Ukraine, but I do not have a promoter or agent and at the moment I do everything by myself.

BG:  Do you produce from a home studio?  What are your favorite music programs?

N O  W A V E:  Yes, I have my own music studio. I prefer to work in Ableton Live.

BG:  Who are you reading/listening to/watching now?  Who is your favorite painter?  favorite author?  Favorite actor?

N O  W A V E:  Now I am rereading Lao Tzu's DAO. I also listen to punk rock. And recently I watched the Predator films. Actually I'm a fan of the Matrix and Transformers.  I love Banksy's works, books by Jack London, Hermann Hesse, Stephen King. I really like films with Keanu Reeves, Christian Bale, Jim Carrey, Keira Knightley and Uma Thurman.

                                     **************
     
     Well I never.  To find an artist who will communicate is a rarity.  Even getting through is not possible a lot of the time.  To have an Artist communicate with interest, and in a manner so engaging, that is exceptional.  Thank you  NW !

     I tried to dissect my feelings over the music and was surprised when I realized that the songs I like especially, the ones that grabbed me, were the songs where there was anger evident, even sarcastic anger.  Thats how I feel about most things on most days.  In one of the songs (Boundaries) I think I heard the words videosphere and maya, and if that is so then I'm sure I am in agreement with the spirit of the anger as well as its manifestations.

    I am drawn to music that is angry in varying degrees.  Its either that, or the real Up stuff the Europeans call German Happy.  I do like angry the best though.  Its like 65/35.  In the song Discrete I heard a few things which reminded me of Jezebel by Noisuf-x, and in some of my favorites by NW I have heard other things reminiscent of Janes Addiction, and some Ministry songs.  "Deploy" vocals remind me of Sepultura.  Its like he is experimenting, putting things in his way, trying them on for size, and who knows where that will lead?  I am looking forward with great interest to the future doings of N O  W A V E.

     This music pushes me, it grabs me with new things, but also stays familiar, it makes me question and wonder.  And it makes me want to dance.  NW has an uncanny ability to insert vocals and alternating sounds into his compositions at just the right time, with a completeness I haven't heard before.  Everything fits, fits just fine.  As far as I can see its all dependent now on how far and in which direction the Artist wants it to go.  


To see more about N O  W A V E please visit:

NW Youtube Channel

 https://xxxx.nowave.com.ua/

 Apple Music 

Spotify

 

 

 

bg2021 

Mr. Funsy

     CONTAINS ADULT CONTENT.  Kids get out of here. Don't worry your time will come.
     This is fiction, I have no association with any of these people, and some of them do not even exist in real life.   Its all stuff I made up, but its not sci-fi, and I didn't want to start another blog just for non-sci-fi.  It does fit here because most of the background is as true as I could make it, so theres that.  Good luck.
b



Mr. Funsy
By Bill Gallagher
luxefaire@gmail.com
Deming NM
7400 Words



     Troy Collins felt like his life was beginning to resemble a Seether video.  Maybe Country Song, or even a combination of Seether videos, a kaleidoscope of absurdities.   He took his first bong hit of the day, needing it badly.  He drew the hybrid medical marijuana smoke into his lungs, holding, expelling, coughing, then again.  The second one was the kicker and he tried hard not to slobber on himself as he gagged and coughed.  
     Ahhhh, much better.
     Troy had just gotten off the phone with one of his neighbors, Rachel Applegate, and without a doubt it had Not gone well.  He replayed it in his mind, the screeching harangue, the angry queries: "What did you DO to my DOG??!"  She said it over and over again like a mantra, along with with "Missy won't come out from under the bed!" or "She closes her eyes and trembles all over!!!".  Missy was short for Mischief.  Troy let Rachel bitch onward until she ran out of steam.  She ended it all with a final: "WELL?"
     "Well what?" he asked, intentionally goading her.
     It worked, now her voice became a screaming howl, a banshee wail, and he had to turn down the speaker on the phone, there was dopplering or something going on.   He scowled at the phone as it squawked. Troy began to hope Rachel dearest gave herself a heart attack.
    "WHAT DID YOU DO TO MY DOG?"
     So he told her.

                ***************************

     Mornings in Miramar Florida can be magical things, especially once all the kids have gone off to school, and the work rush hour is over.  While the sun rises higher in the blue south Florida sky, the sounds around Ramona and Plantation and Panama Streets become those of sprinkler systems kicking on, and small planes flying out of Perry airport, and the putt-putt-putt of postal delivery vehicles.  Other sounds include birds singing, dogs barking, and the low constant hum of University Drive.
     With the dogs and the birds and all the rest there are cats too, but they do not make any noise, though they can easily be smelled by animals cursed with highly sensitive olfactory equipments.  Yet another affront to this idyllic setting can be construed easily enough: if the birds knew what the cats were up to they wouldn't be singing, thats for sure, they would be hauling ass.  But they is birdbrains, poor them.  To cats, birds are just vermin with wings, and for the record, almost all of China is in agreement with that, though the Chinese to a one will eat both birds and cats whenever they get the chance.  Another of lifes little conundrums to ponder.  Watch out they don't eat your ass, is the best you can get from that.
      All along Utopia Drive there meanders an asphalt walkway wide enough to accommodate bicycles and walkers and runners.  This morning Troy was almost alone on that walkway, heading south toward Miramar Parkway at a leisurely jog.  He was followed closely by Missy the Afghan Hound who was on her leash.
     The day was crisp and nice, South Florida October.  Troy wore gym shorts, tee shirt, and running shoes, which were plenty once the run got underway.  He had kept in good shape since high school, where he ran and swam distance.  He still did reps with his weights too.  His dark brown hair no longer blew in the wind when he ran though, because he found that keeping it short was a lot less bothersome, a lot easier to maintain.
     Mischief the Afghan had hair in sheets.  These sheets of hair extended downward on both sides of her body and head and even her tail, waving like flags from a center part along the top of her body.  Missy ran like all other dogs, one foot in front of the other, but it appeared she was doing it on tiptoes, prancing kind of, with a slight sideways list.  The list was just an illusion too, but a good one, even amusing.  Missy ne Mischief was getting her exercise with Troy because that was one of the things Troy did to make a living, he was a professional dog walker.  He also made surfboards, cleaned pools, delivered pizzas, and grew marijuana, so his schedule stayed full.  People liked Troy and he was well known in Miramar.  He was 41, had grown up in Miramar, had in fact graduated Miramar high School, then BCC.  He owned his house on Panama Street, and was an overall honest dealer in all business, which made him as popular in the community as he wanted to be.
     Monday and Friday mornings were Missys, and he had other dogs to walk or run at various times all during the week.  He kept a lengthy appointment book, and he also did a lot of record keeping slash communicating on the internet.  He had never thought of getting rich, really, but during the last ten years he'd begun to realize that if he was working, he wasn't spending, and money piled up.  It was kind of amazing.  He jogged on with his mornings work.
       A little known fact is that all wild animals, in their minds, are like a cross between Sly Stallone and Redd Foxx, they say it like it is, there are no sugar coatings, no nuance of profanity or violence denied, the more mayhem the merrier, as far as wild animals are concerned.  Nobody hears what goes on in an animals mind though, because animals can't speak english.  
     Mischief had caught a whiff o' kitty.  She became immediately vigilant. "i smells a fucking cat and that fucking cat STINX!  i wanna kills that fucking cat, TWICE, I wanna bite that catz head off and shit down that catzes neck, i wanna turn that shitty piece of trash inside OUT, oh yeahhhhhh i fucking HATES fucking catz..."
    Mischiefs nose went up and her attention, such as it was, left the immediate area.
    At Miramar Parkway Troy stopped to allow the light to change.  He remembered this road when it was tiny, now it was a major intersection with University Drive, and dangerous.  He bent slightly at the waist, hands on knees, catching his breath.  Then, all of a sudden, it felt just like someone was shoving a cold dill pickle right up his ass!  He straightened quickly, and his arms came up on both sides in a classic attitude of crucifixion. Troys eyes bulged and his mouth formed a perfect O, and all of this happened in the blink of an eye.  He made the exact sound he would imagine himself making if someone tried to shove a cold dill pickle up his ass.
     "OH WHOA!" he hollered near the top of his lungs.
     A long haired Florida surfer in an ancient Chevy Impala with all the windows rolled down was stuck in traffic and looked over at this exclamation.  Seeing Troy with his arms spread wide he hollered "Dude you look like Jesus!" then the light changed and he sped away.
    Mischief had lost all track of things, and by time she realized Troy had stopped running it was much too late to stop what happened.  Mischiefs nose was in just the right place, at just the right time, and possessed of formidable momentum.  Its tip slid along the underside of Troys right buttock, then slid further inside his gym shorts AND his boxers underneath, and finally right up and into Troys anus.  This was facilitated by doggy snot which Missys nose always produced in copious amounts, like all of her kind.  
     It was serendipity at its absolute worst.
     Neither Troy or Missy liked any of this, not in the least.  Troy actually broke wind upon insertion of Missys cold wet one into his outer anus, and the fart was unexpectedly loose, some kind of skunk response maybe.  Missy whimpered and jerked her head back but not before receiving simian squirt up her long pointed snout.
     She pulled hard at her leash then, sneezing repeatedly achphoo achphoo achphoo, honking her own horn for real, looking at him accusingly the whole time, in her doggy mind calling him a sadistic cat fucker and a soap loving mailman.

             ****************

      Rachel was finally, unbelievably, silent.  Then:
     "So what are you saying?  You shit on my dogs nose?  I'll sue you if you did."
      Troy had enough.  "Actually I shat UP the dogs nose, a fine distinction, but one I'll take.  I am sure my bruised sphincter trumps your dogs offended nose, even with all the psychosis, both hers and yers.  I had to go get my butt looked at, thank you, though I wasn't going to say anything about it.  My doctor doesn't think surgery is necessary.
     "Surgery?"  Now Rachel Applegate was thinking about being sued versus suing.
     "Thats right, surgery.  I will keep you posted, or my attorney will, because its not about what I did to your dog, its about what your dog did to me.  I guess you will just have to find another walker.  As they say in southern Japan, Sayonara you all.
     Troy broke the connection, glad to be rid of Rachel Applegate, and Missy too, though he would remember Missy for quite a while yet, every time he sat down.  He  reached for the rolling tray under the couch, and loaded the bong.
     Missy was not his first animal related injury, no, things like that happen quite regularly when you try to control something essentially uncontrollable, like mans best friend.   The first real injury he had gotten from one of his charges had been a small white short haired dog named Toodles who was so glad for Troys company she became exuberant every time he bent down to put her leash on or take it off.  One time she jumped up and licked his nose, and the slimy pink licking muscle from her mouth, her tongue, went up his nose so far it felt like it touched his brain.  He got a sinus infection and had to take a course of antibiotics.  Up close and personal, uh-huh, thats mans best friend alright.  Some people played down his dog walking duties, thought them simplistic, easy.  They were the people who lived in Lalaland, and they were many.

            *****************

     Troy walked out to his surfboard shop in the converted two car garage, to the entrance of his small grow room.  He had built a false wall 5 feet in from the back of the garage across the entire width, and it was not noticeable.  He never told a soul, and did not plan to.  Loose lips and all that.   Like many growers Troy enjoyed spending time with his plants, so this little cubby hole became his favorite room in the house, and he would sometimes come out here to make phone calls or attend his patch or just watch it grow.  Therapy.  
      Any excess electricity used was covered by his workshop, which kept an exhaust fan running 24-7, out the roof, and portable electric heaters to aid resin curing.  Nature of the surfboard business.  He also had exhaust fans at floor level into the garage out of the grow room, and any smell from the grow was covered by chemical odors of resin and catalysts and paint.
       Troy never sold marijuana, didn't want the notoriety, but never bought any either, not anymore.  Occasionally he traded a little bit, other times he made gifts, but usually he was just happy to cover his own usage, mainly because the street products had gotten so dirty with drug war chemicals, smashed seeds, and a total lack of respect.  When the greedy people made marijuana illegal they made Ja angry, Ja being the super-conscious overmind of which all life forms are vectors.   No one can guess the end of that.
     Troy knew his health was a lot better for staying away from street weed, and even though Florida lagged way behind the entire world in marijuana legalization, things had really cooled out everywhere.  A lot of heavy money in Florida came from the illegal drug trade, and still does.  The last thing those people want is an end to prohibition, because the drug war fosters industries they control: prisons, the police, the military, and all of the others who make street drug prices go through the roof and stay there.  We are talking about artificial price inflations by mind control media.  Quite elegant, from a criminal point of view, and they are the best.  Royalty.
     Troy believed Ja Rastafa, Marijuana is Good for you.  Its much easier to see higher powers in nature than in people.
     Troys present grow consisted of four females in 30 gallon buckets, one per, in his own peroxide sterilized soil mix, under banks of mostly florescent lights, the exact same type he used in his workshop.  When arranged efficiently, with plenty of directed reflection, lighting can be maximized nicely.  And don't forget the one-delta isomer.
     Troys females came from seeds sent to him by an old high school pal who'd moved to New Mexico.  The seeds were from a medicinal grow where some of the imported feminized seeds sprouted male flowers before harvest.  His NM buddy had gotten a real cheap pound of bud refused by the dispensary, and it was seeded heavily.
     All the plants tended to be female, but they also tended to pop male flowers more and more as each generation went on.  Troy didn't care, they were off a first generation grow of imported seed, and they were free.  He always caught any male flowers because he had a very small farm.  
     Also, because of the nature of those seeds, there were many different types of pot all mixed together in some kind of super hybrid selection.  During late growth he alternately smelled diesel, berry, skunk, onion, and even cat piss odors from the flowers, and the real flavors were not evident after drying until cured in jars or tins for some months.  The pot was in fact diesel and blueberry and white widow and a few other types all mixed together.  Heavy Sativa brands, some Indica.  Probably Ruderalis too for the auto flowering.  
     Overall the weed, after curing, possessed the same odor and even flavor, if there is such a thing, as Brut Aftershave, or even the Brut Deodorant.  If there were odors in Seether videos, thats what bud would smell like there.  
     Troys best friend Dillinger Gottli, The Goat, thought Troy grew outside, in the 'glades, a wild patch out with all the Seminoles stuff.  Dillinger didn't ask though, because he too was a benefactor of whatever dimension it came from, and he didn't really WANT to know.  Gottli said it reminded him more of Old Spice aftershave, not Brut, but he always tried to buy some, and most of the time Troy gave him some, unless he was low himself.  Dillinger usually brought weed, but he was still scoring smuggled bud over in Hallandale, and mostly it was not pleasant.  His taste in women was forlorn as well, tending toward big heavy girls and even fat.  One of his old girlfriends wore a pager that gave off a steady beep beep beep when a call came in, anybody around her thought she was backing up.
     Troy checked on things in the grow room, inhaled the nice aromas and heavy oxygen laden air for a few minutes, checked his calendar which was clear for the rest of the day and all of tomorrow, then decided to head down to Johnson Street on the beach, grab a sandwich, maybe check Dania pier.  He kept a board and rods and tackle in the back of his Ford F150, in case the surf was worthy, har, or if schoolies showed up on the beach.  This was certainly the time of year for that.  Bluefish were his favorites.

                   ************************

     Troy had achieved minor fame in Miramar a couple of times over his life and that wasn't over yet.  The first time he was delivering a pizza to an old guy with an Italian last name, a regular, Mr. Ricci, and when he got to the house there was no answer.  He looked in the window and saw Mr. Ricci sprawled out on the floor, moving but barely, and called 911.  Mr. Ricci, who survived his ordeal, was a well liked and important man in Miramar and abroad, and his sons were extremely grateful for Troys "Intervention".  There was a newspaper story and many kudos from unexpected places.
     The second time resulted from someone calling code enforcement on him, about the dead surfboards piled at the side of his house.  He promptly used the debris, as the citation called it, to decorate his yard in fine artsy fartsy style.  He made a cool enclave out of surfboards buried halfway or more in the ground, it looked like a giant shell, and then he put within it a plaster statue of Whoopi Goldberg he got at one of the stores on Hollywood beach.  He painted the statue all white, blanco brilliante, as the can said, and put a small solar powered flood lamp shining on it at night.  Everybody who saw it thought it was the Virgin Mary, and the Sun Tattler hailed him as a newly discovered local artist.  Troy supposed that some Art just had a wholeness about it that people found attractive.  "Perhaps," he thought to himself, "The best an artist can do is avoid ass holeness."  
     No little feat.
     Over time Troy added to his yard decoration, always in a tastefully gauche surfer kind of way.  He liked a lot of odd plants out front, and bird feeders that looked like part of the landscape, not obvious as bird feeders.  He found out you don't have to advertise the feeder, birds find it just fine whatever it looks like, because they are after the bird FOOD.  Its not "Build it and they will come", its just put the food out and they will come.  When the Tattler got really hard up for human interest stories someone usually paid him a visit and the paper always ran a picture of his yard "Improvements".
     Today the traffic to the beach was gnarly, and it didn't help that Troy was catching the end of the lunch hour.  Travel on the roads just became crazier and crazier as the holiday season progressed.  All the rich northerners flocking south mobbed south Florida starting in September and ending in April, and this was anticipated and even loved by most people, although that wasn't always so.  Once, long ago, during the nineteen eighties, some people in Fort Lauderdale got on a high horse and demanded action against all those misbehaving school kids who visited the area every spring break, engaging in wanton sex and drunken debauchery.  They put up walls and had the police hassle the kids, and within a few years they shut down a 750 million dollar a year industry which had grown as a tradition since the nineteen twenties at least.  The youngsters, really young adults in college, took their business elsewhere.  
     This had adverse effects across the entire local economy.  The star islanders were ok, but downtowns and suburbs started applying for more federal money like right away.   Royalty is always somehow able to bail itself out of financial troubles and its own mistakes, innit?  Today south Floridians are more sensitive to tourism again, which has always been a major industry within the state.
      Troy parked in the garage there on Johnson Street and walked along the beach to where he was going.  The wind was a blustery east, and he was glad he was in jeans and a light jacket over his t-shirt.  The surf was maybe two feet and werry mushy mon, though the gulfstream way out off the beach looked to be turbulent and big.  Those waves almost always passed these beaches by.    Sometimes those big swells visible outside were actually breaking upcoast, from Hobe Sound north, and Sebastion could be real fun when the time was right.  Here, now, the tide was going out, or already low.  There were massive sandbars showing within a few feet of the beach break.
     When he got to Frankies, which was very near the paddle ball courts, and was right on the beach itself, Troy looked around and saw some people he knew; nods here and there, but there were a lot of tourists this time of year, so he quickly found a place at the bar and ordered coffee.  Frankies was very hip, Elvy Musikka hung out there occasionally, it was a big smoker crowd, many of the night customers went out on the beach to smoke, then came back in for coffee, liquor and/or munchies, all of which were totally superb, best anywhere, and even cheaper than the Cosmos Coffee chain which had become the working persons staple.
     There were two construction type guys getting drunk down the bar, roofers from the looks of it, and Troy could not help hearing the biggest one, he was loud.
     "So I'm drivin' out to the beach today and theres a traffic jam and I finally come up on the problem. Its a Cadillac, hit the car in front of it, mashed it good.  The driver of the Caddy was a dwarf, of all things, and the policeman is writing him up as I idle by.  I hear the dwarf say "Officer I'm Not Happy!"  The cop sez "So which one are you then?"  
     The intended recipient of this story just shook his head, looked right at Troy, and said:
     "His mommy is a dwarf."
     The joke teller started in, "She is not a dwarf, my mother izza same species as you and me..."
     "Well, You may not recognize her next time you see her, 'cause I shaved her back!"
     Troys eyebrows rose up to about the middle of his forehead.  He wisely said nothing, grabbed his coffee and went to find a table outside on the porch, under the thatched roof, somewhere less like a you-know-who video.  As he thought this a Seether song, Fake It, came blasting out of the juke box in the bar like an omen.
     He hurried away from there.

                               ********************

     The beach was alive with music from the nearby Bandshell at Johnson Street.  It  was a local band who sounded not bad.  That Bandshell on the beach at Johnson street had been conceptual inspiration whereby Troy had created his own masterpiece, the Surfboard Whoopi Shrine (Which everyone thought was The Virgin).    
     It was becoming late in the afternoon, and there were many strollers on the beach road.  The guy on the bench across from the restaurant, under the coconut palm, was weaving palm frond hats which he sold to passerby.  He wore only swimming trunks, not even flip-flops, and of course one of his own creations.  Troy had talked to the man more than a few times.  He said his name was Nat.  
     The guy was missing teeth, and his tattoos were faded and stretched into undefinable blobs.  His skin looked like walnut shell, and his nose was epic.  It must be true that mens noses grow larger as they age, and that meant Nat was probably about two hundred years old.
     Thing about him was this: he was not just a King Of The Road, but an OLD King Of The Road, and those guys knew a lot of weird things, had seen a lot of mysterious shit, as Nat himself put it.  Though Nat was sometimes quirky, Troy always came away from conversations with him feeling enriched in ways he could not actually define.  
     Troy owned a couple of Nats pieces, and he had given the man a bud or three over time in simple good will.  Ja love.  Nat had been one of the early pot activists, had faced and beat a five year mandatory minimum for a few joints during an illegal search in the late 80s.  Nat the hat maker knew the search had been illegal, it was a shakedown targeting a whole neighborhood.  They were after crack cocaine they said, but it came out later that Fort Lauderdale Sheriff Nick Navarro had turned the 8th floor of the Sheriffs office there on Andrews and I-95 into a major CRACK PRODUCTION LAB, using seized powder.  The crack cocaine made by the Sheriffs office there in Fort Lauderdale was then used to flood the local streets in a devious plan to enrich the prison workers and all police, and to racially target whole populations.  Like Genocide.  
     They'll do it every time.
     Navarro became famous for stings targeting neighborhoods where he and his lab crew actually supplied the crack, busting many hundreds of people every weekend, most who served mandatory minimums.  Once this was discovered Navarro was on the outs but then became the richest security specialist in all of Florida, darling of the old guard.
      It was one of the weekend stings Nat had wandered into, totally by mistake, to see an old girlfriend, a classic case of looking for love in all the wrong places.  Because Nat knew the prisons were getting overcrowded to the point where the judges were beginning to rebel against the drug war, and because he also was something of a free man, with nowhere pressing to get to, he held out when he talked to the judge the first time after his arrest.  Nat calmly and respectfully told the judge he felt the police were without warrant in the search of his body and other personal space, the officers acted Quo warranto, therefore Nat was prepared to take as long as necessary within the system to prove that.  He did not want a public defender, and he would not sign any papers, and he wanted his medicine back.  It had been one of the earliest cases where use of marijuana as medicine may have influenced the outcome.  The judge deliberated not even one moment.
     "Case Dismissed.  Next."
     For awhile Nat had been the front of everyones attention within the Marijuana Re-legalization movement, but he quickly realized that he did not care to be famous, so he then disappeared for awhile.  Some people claimed they saw him in Key West during that time.  One thing was sure, Nat knew ALL of South Florida like the back of his hand, you never knew where he was going to be.
    Nat and Elvy might have had a thing going once, or maybe still did.  Troy did not care to speculate along those lines.  He watched the old mans hands work, busy about their often practiced activity.   
     Someone bought one of the cowboy type hats made from palm fronds, and Nat then set the finished hat he'd been working on in the place of the hat that just sold.  Sipping beer from a black plastic cup he got fronds arranged to start another hat.
     
                              ************************

     
     Troy took a drink of his coffee, and saw a petite tanned blond female skate past the front of the restaurant.  He recognized that sight.  It was Carol Duffy, and she had seen him too.  She did a fast u-turn on her skates, almost a pirouette, and skated up to to the railing where his table was.
    For some reason people liked to make word constructs out of Troys name.  He had been alternately called Troyly, Troyski, Troyster, Troyby, Toy, Troycephus, and on and on.  He was also on occasion known as Mr. Funsy, but only by two or three people.  The originator of that name leaned her ample bosom on the railing by his table, and he thought back to that time.  It was not a perfect time, but very very interesting.  This young woman had coined the term one night a year or so ago, calling him Mr. Funsy when what she really meant was Mr. Poopy.  She was being facetious.
      "I thought that was you and I'm glad because I was looking for you," she said.  They were eye to eye.
     "Hi Carol."
     "Hi Troy, how have you been?"
     "Fine.  You?"
     "I won two tickets from WSHE to the Seether concert tomorrow night, and I was hoping you would be up to escorting a lady to and from the show."  She smiled brightly.
     "Escort eh?"
     Troy said that because he had to say something to cover his shock.  When videos become reality it goes beyond strange and into scary.  He felt light headed and almost refused without thinking, but he liked Carol a lot.  They possessed a certain magic about themselves when they were together that neither even came close to in the world apart.  They'd been seeing each other on and off for a couple years.  They met at the library.  She was 10 years his junior, and was a smoking hot foxy lady.  
     There was a definite personality clash however, because her mommy clock was ticking loudly, and Troy didn't ever plan on having any kids, nor a wife.  Maybe that would change, but not so far.  He remembered the conversation, from whence the moniker Mr. Funsy came aborning.
      He had said something like, "Carol I'll tell you like it is, I am and may always be too selfish for a normal family life, I'm really wrapped up in my craft and my other work, and a major lifestyle change isn't something I would be happy with."
     "A regular Mr. Funsy ain't ya?" she had said.  Her face held a frown and a furrowed brow that could attract hurricanes, or tornadoes.  Troy figured she would look the same if she had been digging in the garden and unearthed a nice deposit of cat shit.  He remembered being slightly intimidated and even alarmed by this Goddess thing he was seeing.  
     He tried to console her.  He thought he should get points ie respect for truth, for being upfront, because most guys seemed notorious for lying until they got what they wanted, but he could see she found no pleasure in that discourse, so a wedge got driven between them that had not been there before.  
     Carol was serious, as were most unmarried women her age.  She had to consider her options, try to figure out what would be best.  Now, those options might not include Troy, thats just the way the imperative reigns.  Troy had been surprised by this wicked witch outlook, this "I WILL NOT BE THWARTED!" attitude, and it was one of the main things in his life he was dealing with and had been dealing with since it happened.  
     He thought that right now out here on Frankies patio on the beach he should deal with it bravely, not like a coward.
     "Escort?" he repeated like a parrot, before she could even answer the first. "Sure that sounds like fun Carol, what time do you want me to pick you up?"
     She skated through the entrance to the patio and up to his table, taking the seat across from him.  They made plans.
                       
                               ******************

From The Luxefaire Review Blog:

     Seether is an international guitars and drums band from South Africa. The original member and founder of Seether is front man vocalist Shaun Morgan Welgemoed, whose last name is pronounced exactly as it is spelled.  Ha-ha.  To simplify things Shaun Morgan Welgemoed goes by Shaun Morgan in his professional life, and it fits just fine.  
     This band from South Africa is nothing like a Combichrist (Evil, Nice) brought by Andy The Plague out of Norway, or other international bands like Australias Pendulum, or the eastern Euro band Cargo Cult, who are sometimes adopted by Americans because of new sounding vibrations, rare resonance.  
     Seether music is really American music, heavily flavored by American Grunge as grunge existed between 1992 through 2010, or even a little later. They make structured melodic high order noise in a dark and arcane color twice or thrice evolved from its Euro roots.  Seethers particular brand of exceptional sound appeals largely to the faction of American society known as Rock n Rollers, or just Rockers, though Seether has also been influenced by some modern American country music, with apparent rebounding effects into that genre.  
     I prophesy Seether will eventually change country music here in a large way, restructuring Rock in the process, maybe forever.  Not since Dave Matthews has there been such a signature sound.  
     Rock and Country have crossed over for many years in America, but the programmers of radio have ignored all but the type they control$.  Country all sounds the same now, TWANG diddley bop poor me and my poor cows and my cheatin' wife TWANG TWANG.  Country music here has become redundant like disco was, and some of the xtian type country performers even wear outfits reminiscent of Patrick Hernandez, or KC and The Sunshine Band.  Thankfully these new wave American country performers have pulled up short of dressing like The Village People.  So far anyway.
     Some of the Seether band also identifies with certain mainstream aspects of the country music demographic, ie gun ownership, and their following among hunters is fierce and loyal.   Will Seether be another Country/Rock crossover like Nickelback (Who they toured with) or Days of the New?  Possibly.
     Through his studies under such as Brendan O'Brien, and the way he has learned his way around Nashville, Shaun Morgan is a Grinning Plowman for sure.  Now Seether is setting new standards in music, reverberating across normal lines of demarcation, while keeping things alive and well, gaining speed.  
     As Seether begins to form American music more and more, America also forms Seether, and thats called Synergy.  
     This goes beyond hope, this is the real thing.

end


     Troy thought the article somewhat pretentious, the author was known for that, but it was a refreshingly different way of seeing things, even if slightly kinked.  He had been studying the band on the internet since parting with Carol after dinner at the Rice Bowl on 441 near Miramar Parkway.  The Rice Bowl had been there for over 40 years, it was older than Troy.  The proverbial hole in the wall, the food was very good with an eye on healthy.      
     He had done the wikis and some other sources, watched a few youtube videos, and overall was looking forward to attending the Seether concert.  Many questions crossed Troys mind as he read.  What a wild ride those guys were on.  Things most people only dream of had become real for them, but stardom is not a banishment of nightmares, not much.  Reality at all levels can at anytime become a nightmare, there is no cure for that.  
     Seether lyrics addressed many things at once: the seemingly built-in fucking up that takes place all day every day everywhere with everyone, the actions of people in groups of more than two (The mindless mob), the utter senselessness in most communication with other beings; all that and much much more is confronted, then pushed in our faces as an underlying theme.  Seether lyrics are biting, even scolding, and in all of them there is intimation that things could and probably should be better but we just don't know how and its a mess.
     The human condition.
     Troy read about the suicide of Shaun Morgans brother early in the bands career, and that was totally horrible.  He also read about Shaun Morgans early emulation of Chris Cornell of Sound Garden/Audioslave, even performing with him on occasion, but none of that had a happy ending either.  And then, like OKC after Waco, there was Chester.  
      God what an awful debacle.  It is known that Cornell was taking pharmaceutical drugs famous for inspiring suicides, and Troy wondered why they weren't giving that shit out like candy in Mexico and China.  How drugs related to any other thing within this melange of participants is beyond all but the immediate players though, and some of them are dead.  
     People are curious, inquisitive, nosy even.  Couple that with advances in cheap miniaturized long range surveillance equipment, and you can see the opportunity for predation giving birth to itself.  Famous people soon realize that curious people are the worst nightmare of all, the ones that want to know about the personal lives of their idols, and that means just about every fucking body.  And especially about the darker things, its the way we are made after we are born, we are the products of the ideas of the past, helpless and scared little marionettes our whole lives, and the truth of that is the fact that we lie about it, we lie at our cores.  They go way way back, these lies, these shadows of forgotten ancestors.
     Animal Blind Spots.
     A line from Henley ran through Troys mind then.  "The bubble headed bleached blond comes on at five, she can tell you about the plane crash with a gleam in her eye, its interesting when people die, give us dirty laundry..."
     At the last breath there are no happy endings.  People want to share in each others pain so they can produce an illusion for themselves that they are not alone.  But thats not true, thats the lie.  Alone is all you can be, no matter how hard you try, no matter what you do.  
     Troy shut the computer down and went to work in his grow room for awhile.

     
                        *************************


     The next day went fast. There were errands to run, a haircut, a few new clothes.  He was wearing black, Carol would have her share of black on too, no doubt.  Carol looked better in it because it contrasted and highlighted her naturally blond hair.  Yeah, she said her heritage was Irish, but there was strong Swedish in there too.  
     Troy liked black because he could sometimes blend right into things with it, get into the background, which can be difficult sometimes, if you ever try it.  Plus, if there were accidents, which there always were, black hid things well, at least a lot better than light colored stuff.  Concerts were notorious for accidents.  Troys outfit was a light black jacket over a heavy black t-shirt, black cargo pants and black Vans.  Even the rubber on the Vans was black, they came like that.
     He picked Carol up around 2 PM, driving the Toyota Tundra, versus his little beach wagon Datsun from the 80s, his hobby and fun car.  The Tundra was comfortable, reliable, and economical.  Troy thought if robots ever really hit the market he would buy a Toyota.
     Carol looked excellent in low spiked heels with little black bows on them, and calf length black pants that fit her awesome legs and posterior perfectly.  She also wore a light black jacket covering a black pullover blouse, with pretty jewelry at wrist and throat matching her nails.  
     They made quite a pair.  Troy really hoped he got laid later on, seeing as he was just thinking to himself and all.  He would never be so crass as to hint that to Carol, though he knew she knew.  He would be a gentleman up until the time came to take off the clothes, and all other inhibitions with them.  Then he would stand her on her head and eat her like an ice cream cone.  Or something like that.  He felt a chubby coming on, so he put his mind back on driving.  The evening had not even begun yet, really, and fantasy is not reality.  There are no farts in fantasies.
     They had a late lunch at Ronzos Buffet Pembroke Pines, it was the restaurant where Troy delivered pizzas around Miramar when he could, or when they really needed him, like on Super Bowl Sunday.  The last Super Bowl he worked he brought home just under three hundred bucks, and that was cash money, tips from drunks, we love you Captain Morgan.
     From the fresh buffet Troy piled on several types of salad, home made bread sticks, and Cheese Ravioli with Meat Sauce.  Carol had the Baked Spaghetti, and Chicken Cacciatore.  They talked while they ate, catching up on things, both realizing pretty quickly that neither had a love life without the other.  
     Troy wanted to try his explanation again, tell her that he could not in good conscience bring a copy of himself into the world as it was.  Too many people had children based on self gratification, or a facet of it, and that, to Troy, was the basis of all the worlds problems, right there.  He had been raised Catholic, had attended Saint Barts there in Miramar, but he was Catholic no more.  He could never see himself being Catholic again.  Things he was told did not match up with the things he saw with his own eyes, not at all, and he felt insulted they should ask him to even consider basing his life on what they said was right or wrong.  They were out of it, and their war making racket was becoming well known among the mass too.  But he did not bring any of that up.  Some other time.  He was 41, afterall.  He could finally tell when keeping his mouth shut worked best.
     They finished their meal and left, both had carbonated water with their food, the drunken party days were over for them.  Troy lit an mj ciggy after they got parked at the Hollywood Sportatorium, and they relaxed for a little while before entering the show. The weed was his Miramar Open Source Brute Brand Sticky Bud.  It sure did the trick.
     At the Sportatorium arena they had to find the SHE van and get checked in.  Once they got the attention of one of the harried workers, he checked his list and told them not only did they have free tickets, but also back stage passes, courtesy of WSHE Miami Fort Lauderdale Palm Beach.  
     There was no way Troy could feel alone inside the Hollywood Sportatorium today, it was filling fast and held upwards of 30,000 people.  Carol took his hand and led him to another table of WSHE workers.  From there they were ushered back stage to a room full of people and a bar.  Troy got them both bottled waters, and that helped with the cotton mouth they were experiencing.  
     Troy and Carol stood together and just took everything in.  It was amazing the things you can hear, if you let yourself.  Troy was getting a full story from the people around him, and he knew Carol was too.  She squeezed his hand as if picking up on his thoughts.  She was able to do that sometimes.
     There were members of the local opening bands in the room, discernible by their clothing, which looked expensive even if it was tattered, a cultured grungy look, black fingernails and all.  There were also a few members from the act right before Seether, who were becoming well known fast.  It was your basic meet and greet, a general hub bub, the low roar of human interaction.  A couple of the younger people looked totally blitzed, and it did not appear to Troy that they would make it through the concert in a conscious state.  To a one they each held a drink or a beer, taking swallows in a distracted manner, heads wobbling while they leaned on walls or whatever was handy.
     Things got quiet then, a hush fell, because, like some sort of group awareness beyond speech, it was suddenly realized that Seether themselves had come into the room and were mingling.  Shaun Morgan got out a cordless microphone and summoned the rooms attention, welcoming everyone to the concert, and thanking WSHE for the awesome support.  He introduced his band mates Bassist Dale Stewart, and Drummer John Humphrey. He then said:
     "Lets play a little musical game. Each of you will quote me some lyrics from a song you particularly like, any band.   It will give us an idea what is special to you."
     "And how smart you are." quipped Bass Guitarist Dale Stewart.
     "Not to put you under any pressure or anything," finished Drummer John Humphrey.
     Some of the lyric quotes came from Seether Songs, one guy just said "Fake it", then there were some lines from Olivers Good Morning Starshine, and also a long quote from an obscure band about the beach and surfing and the moon.  Many of the inebriated kids had to pass, they couldn't understand the question.
     Troy and Carol, blending into the background as they wanted to, were last to go.  Carol quoted off the INXS CD Kick, from the song Guns In The Sky:
     Feel the sound
     It crashes in
     All around
     It gets in
     Now take your hands
     And raise them up
     Into the air
     Its all around ya
     Well it could be good
     Make us love each other
     I have to realize
     I own the future
     Theres guns in the sky, guns in the sky, guns in the sky..."
     Appreciative hoots and clapping happened when she finished, and some of that was because Carol was such a looker, though Troy saw several very thoughtful expressions going on around the room too.  She smiled brightly as only Carol can do, then it was Troys turn.  He quoted Don Henley, his all time favorite poet philosopher:
     "You spend all your life just piling it up, you got stacks 'n stacks 'n stacks, then Gabriel comes along and taps you on the shoulder, and you don't see no hearses with luggage racks..."
     Everything got quiet.  Troy seemed to have struck some kind of emotional chord.  There was a void that needed filling, so he added:
     "And while I have the chance I want to sincerely thank Seether for all the enjoyable moments they have given me, and for all those yet to come."
     It was like a long sigh, the room relaxed, Carol beamed another smile his way.
    Shaun Morgan said "Whats your name man?"
     Troy told him.
     "Well, Troy Collins, the band thanks you too, for more than you might be able to know."
     All of a sudden there was a weird feeling of release inside Troy, the feeling of being part of a Seether video disappeared entirely.  It was back to the real world, and Troy was glad.  He looked over at Carol, and she put her head on his shoulder.  He thought of those lyrics, of hearses and luggage racks, and another change began in him, all part of dealing with things and trying, really trying, to make them work.  Nobodys time is forever.  He pulled her close.
     The pre-show party continued until the performances began.  About halfway through Seethers set Shaun Morgan introduced his next song by saying:
     "This one is for Troy Collins, and Don Henley."
     The song was Fine Again.

fin