Heaven and hell

You may be a few miles from me or a few thousand.  Living your life, such as it is today, you may think you're in heaven, or in hell, just as I,  a few or a few thousand miles from you, may think of being in heaven or hell.

Wherever you may be, I find myself  in hell's deepest pit.

“Maybe this world is another planet's Hell”, famously said Aldous Huxley.

I walked the streets of the city yesterday afternoon, a warm and sunny summer day, looking into people's faces and trying to judge their happiness level from 0 to 10, zero being my own level and ten being the level of, I don't know, the recently married British royal couple perhaps.  I saw many happy people, most of them young and a few unhappy ones, all of them old. I saw many eights, nines and tens, and maybe not any zeroes, but a lot of ones and twos.

All along the watchtower

"I was nothing but a pawn in a game between two queens, who had played each other for forty seven years," said the joker to the thief.  "The black queen won, but it was a Pyrrhic victory, as she, the white queen and I lost everything  that was on the table between us.  There is no game any more. "

"The white queen could not go with the brother of the black queen, who betrayed her and  demonstrated contempt for her.  After 47 years!"

The thief couldn't steal the white queen's heart, and the joker failed to amuse and distract the black queen.

"There must be some kind of way out of here," 
Said the joker to the thief, 
"There's too much confusion, 
I can't get no relief." 

(All  along  the  watchtower - Bob Dylan)

No. 8, $3 & 4.85

At the john in the dog park two men talking at the pissoir while I was exiting the cabin:

"It is now four point eighty five!"
"Four point eighty five?"
"Yeah, four point eighty five?"

That is all I heard. What is four point eighty five?

I stepped towards the car, the dog behind me and I spotted a cellphone lying on the pavement of the unoccupied  spot next to my car.  I picked it up and carried it to the dog stuff and bath shop, my dog following me all the time.  I returned to the car and decided to arrange the dollar bills stuffed in my pocket, transfer some to the wallet, some out of the wallet into the pocket, three singles on the passenger seat of the car.  It took a minute, and by the time I was done, a man came with his German shepherds. He loaded them into his SUV (my guy was already in the back seat) parked next to the empty spot.  When he turned around I asked if he by any chance had lost a phone. Yes, he checked, he did, I sent him back to the dog shop, and I drove off.

No good deed goes unpunished, I have long found.  I was thinking of what disaster awaits me.  We drove to Ba Le Vietnamese Sandwich (and soup) shop and ordered No. 8 on the menu Bánh_mì_thịt_nướng, BBQ Pork Sandwich, my usual order, for $3.00.  Where else can you buy a sandwich for three dollars?  (It used to cost $2.25 a couple of years ago.)  

Then we drove home by the main thoroughfare.  We'll eat the sandwich there.  I was still thinking of the punishment for the good dead, and it came.   Whereas most of the time we cover the couple of miles getting stopped at one traffic light (out of almost a dozen), this time five lights stopped us, while the one light that usually stops us let us through.

Today's music sucks? Bear with me, dawg!

Every couple of years I would scour the Al Gore's most famous invention after climate for interesting music, sites like artistsdirect.com, garageband.com and others that don't exist anymore and where unsigned bands, or signed and little known artists uploaded their music, oftentimes quite good, occasionally brilliant. I'd listen to hundreds, thousands of cuts to find a few diamonds in the rough.  I had a method, which probably missed a few rarities, but which served me well. I'd listen to a few seconds to decide, 5, 15, 30.  Certain guitar chords alerted me to the worth of the rest of a recording.  And I had my taste - hard rock was usually out, plaintive folk music as well,  electronic sounds - foggetteaboutit.  Americana,  country, soul, blues yes.   I was looking for authenticity. (Doesn't everyone?) I'd gather the diamonds and burn them onto CDs, which I'd take on trips to Europe where I'd hand them to my friends there, DJs and artists, all of them in awe of American pop music, and who I thought were too influenced by the limited range of the most popular artists played on commercial radio, as bad there as it is here.   I liked to share my discoveries, and I had a reputation to maintain, oh, yes.  

Then my life had changed, and I stopped listening, stopped searching.  Until this year.  Last month, actually.   The Internet sites have changed, but the buried, largely unheard music is still to be found.   I have found some amazing artists, whom I would like to present to you.  Rock and roll, or whatever it is called these days, is not dead.   There are people out there with the skills and the ideas, who may not sell many CDs or tracks on iTunes, but who all deserve our support,  and speaking for myself, my enthusiasm.  (Some or all of them may be familiar to some of you, especially if you live in their hometowns, but as a group, I suspect they are largely unknown.)

Here they are:

Deadman,

Malcolm Holcombe 

Pokey LaFarge

The Deep Dark Woods

New Country Rehab

David Jacobs-Strain

Ukelele Orchestra of Great Britain

Lastly, the two incredibles. The future of music:

Phat Bollard

Fitz and the Tantrums

The links are just samples of the artists' music, not always their best recordings, but ones that are easily linkable. You can find more music of these artists through MySpace, YouTube, Google, the artists own sites, and so on.   Enjoy!

P. S. Goodness, how could I have forgotten. Here is the band that started me out on this trip this year:

The David Wax Museum