Big Brother Riding the Gun

Trusting private enterprise to help the needy brings more corruption and the government seems to make the simplest items much more complicated. So what should we do ?We have just come through another era that will be looked back on as dirty with corruption. Last February instead of throwing billions of dollars to Wall Street and the banking industry , congress should have been re-regulating both Wall Street and US Banking the way that they were regulated after the crash of 1929 produced the great depression. The corruption and calamity that came from the greed of both industries is the cause of our continuing economic crisis. Needless to say , no regulations have come about. The lobby for Wall Street and Banks across this country is more powerful than the promises made by candidates running for office after they gain their position. The lobbies that represent the Lawyers, Doctors, and Insurance Companies also are beating down the would be "Health Reform" bill .It seems like the Democrats can't even bully their way through with their precarious majority.In my opinion this bill was a diversion from the fact that congress didn't really address the current problems of regulation but politically dropped the ball while stewing , arguing , and pretending to act in behalf of an American People who they do not and will not be representing as they continue to fumble till the next election which promises more of the same. Big business has stepped across party lines just as it has stepped across State lines across the globe.Big business doesn't care about "Democracy" and , in fact , has been actively working against the principals of democracy since the Council on Foreign Relations of 1921, the Bilderberg Group , started in 1954 , and the Trilateral Commission , in 1973,.The world could tumble toward the sun and big business would still be controlling congress and indifferent to any population of any country.This is the result of "Capitalism" come to fruition and unbridled in America . This is what the American Dream is , making money ,not democracy or the principals it was supposedly built upon when the population was much smaller.


I don't believe our military should be fighting wars or creating wars ,especially wars initiated by a military machine that eats more than Haitians or even Americans.I saw that it will cost a million dollars a year for every American soldier in Afghanistan . Man, what are they feeding these guys , heroin? The character of the American soldier has changed tragically away from the good soldier of WWII.


Seeing our military on the ground in Haiti reminds me that we should have had more men on the ground in New Orleans and not in Iraq.I saw that story about the Israelis being set up as well as seeing that the Americans were holding back the flow of food and water for fear of violence.This seemed counter productive to me yet in character. Do they want to wait till the people starve and die and are quieted down by disease before they help ? It seems like the newscasters didn't have a bit of trouble getting in country and broadcasting for their sponsors.At least they dressed down a little for the gig to play their roles.The close ups of hungry children would be nicer to me if just one of the talking heads would stuff a sandwich or some candy in one of the crying kids mouths.

I am and have been against this military identity that has become America.We are "Big Brother", a character that was hated since George Orwell conceived it.Since 9/11 we have accepted the "Thought Police" as well as other ideas which are supposed to be protective devices for our society. You don't have to actually commit a crime but just talk about it ,think about it ,or write it down on paper and dissenting in a democracy became complicated affair during the Bush years . If our "Intelligence" can be so sensitive why didn't they pick up on what was really going on in the mid east before the attacks on the Trade Center Buildings or before the advent of the invasion of Iraq. I thought that the USSR was that "Big Brother" character till 1965 when I got a closer exposure to what Viet Nam was doing to our men as I worked a mere month at Travis AFB where men were returning as well as embarking to that costly "Police Action"in fear of imaginary "Dominoes" falling .We can develop a more benevolent "Big Brother" that doesn't have to threaten to gain respect but considering we are willing direct our military to fire on our own students who are practicing their right to dissent ,for instance Kent State, how can we think there is any control over the character or direction of our military much less the direction of the country.I will vote to break up all the monopolies in congress ,both democratic and republican in an effort to not allow either to do much because they both just screw up things all the more with their continuous lies to get into office and to maintain their seats and power. No more congress and president of the same party. Period.


My vote will still not change the fact that The Council on Foreign Relations, the Bilderberg Group, and the Trilateral Commission are still running the show and not the Congress of the American people.

Stop Pointing ,You Are Naked Too

Everybody is getting arrested . Everyone is pointing fingers. It looks like a football game and the guys are pointing at the other team,"They did it!" Everyone is innocent . Everybody wants to see somebody else blamed for all the things that have gone wrong , for all the injustice , for all the times the bad guy gets ahead in the world , and for all the people who don't deserve to be where ever they are in the imagination of the imaginary American People .

They are busting people for laughing at people .Today the people who run professional basketball fined the Washington Wizards players ten thousand dollars a piece for laughing at a man who was pretending he had guns ,pointing his fingers as if he were shooting them . The man pointing his fingers may or may not have had guns in his locker room , may or may not have had them loaded, may or may not have pointed one at a fellow player, may or may not..... The point is he has been ostracized on innuendo and gossip . The finger is pointed at him , a millionaire professional ball player ,overpaid , athletic entertainer .

The evening news has focused on the "Gate Crashers" , recognizable people who were able to get into a Whitehouse party . This has preoccupied the attention of serious newscasters, if that concept exist anymore . The idea is that there could have been an assassination . Suddenly there are other "Gate crashers" and other would be scenarios .What were they thinking ? The finger pointers seem to know what they were thinking . They were thinking that they would kill him ! Good grief ! George Orwell rolls over and sighs.

"The Thought Police " are here and they are us . Our paranoia has finally allowed us to self destruct . Someone in the rest of the world is pointing their finger at us . We , the American People ,are the overpaid , uninformed, people who don't deserve to be where ever we are in the imagination of those people pointing their fingers at us . Every one seems to be pointing a finger . They did it ! He did it ! She did it ! What if we all did it ? So fucking what ! We all did it ! We all have done it !

If we all did it why are we all so guilty ?

Is this a continuation of "Original Sin" ? "Original sin" is a concept that has outlived it's use except for Bible thumping telemarketers.We are not guilty. We didn't do anything wrong by being born . The king ,once again ," ..is in the all together , he's all together as naked as the day that he was born ."
Stop pointing your finger at him , you are naked , too .

Capitalist Art Directing Culture

It has occurred to me that I used to have friends who listened to music . We all liked the "Waltz for Debby" live album from the Vanguard by Bill Evans when it came out . We were crazy about Coltrane and "Favorite Things" was nearly a pop tune to us but "Africa Brass " was just terrific . We didn't get high to listen to them or drink , we just liked it , we all liked it . Most of my friends in high school were older musicians but I did have some friends my own age and they also liked jazz . I do think that back then I clung to the first statement of the melody and the arrangement before I got deeper into the improvisation. As I became more involved with my own playing I appreciated the individual solos more as well as the way the individual player approached their solos . Eventually I had opened my ears to electronic music , music concrete , modern classical , and free jazz which seemed to come together around 1959 . Listening to music became like watching athletics in my mind . A fine player was indeed to be compared to an athlete except ,in my opinion , the ability to play and listen is more intellectually stimulating.

Working as sideman wasn't exactly the dream I had in mind yet I always improvised even on the straight gigs . Surprisingly enough , it was a jazz job that turned me off the stringed bass in the mid-sixties . While on the road I entertained myself town to town with a guitar I bought. I guess I was playing bossa nova songs and even performing them with the band I was traveling with occasionally in our shows. In Louis and Clarkston ,on the border of Idaho and Washington , we played a Moose Lodge for a month ,December to New Years Eve and during one afternoon I went to see "Hard Days Night" at a movie house and things started changing fast . In Dallas I had a month lay over after the gig at the hotel and I stayed with a girl I met , a waitress in the hotel who had all of Bob Dylan's recordings till 1965 or so.I wasn't really receptive to the Beatles or Dylan but after listening I began to think that I could sing and started writing lyrics ,still to entertain myself as I worked on the road . This departure from jazz was an important event and I wasn't the only person caught up in it . After leaving the group , totally drugged out in Louisville Kentucky , I stopped in Washington DC and , after a few months , headed for Austin . The jazz work I was expecting didn't materialize right away and again I was entertaining myself with my guitar between gigs .It was at this time that I met Jerry and Pete and we formed the basic vocal group that continued till 1968 . It was also at that time that I played the Austin Jazz Festival and one of the people I had to perform with was Fathead Newman. Fathead saw where music was going and was ahead of his time incorporating rock beats in his jazz vehicles much as Stanley Turrentine would be doing a few years later .This was fine for Fathead but I wasn't personally happy to play the stringed bass behind him in this style. I left Austin and dedicated myself to the folk rock scene adapting myself to the lead guitar position with the other rhythm guitar ,folk players , Jerry and Pete . Leaving jazz yet still improvising around the folk music with my guitar , the rock beat prevailing , I was happier playing the guitar than the stringed bass in the era.

While rock grew and became more and more complicated in production , the bass lines stayed a dance beat , sometimes simply the tonic rhythmically. Pop music had ups and downs with currently interesting venues that came and went . Jazz seemed to be going backward on the bottom , the bass line , which became a work horse not the creative independent line that came forth with Scott LaFaro with Bill Evans . Ron Carter had to hold down the changes for the illusive nature of Wayne Shorter's music with Miles Davis in the sixties and the walking bass was about all he could do with it . When Miles switched horses and went to a rock beat and found a greater popularity , jazz was advancing as rock but also staying the same like pop music .

Sometimes I hear music , guitar music , "head bangers" that seem to move through the changes like elephants just taking enormous steps without contrary motion . The power alone of the instruments carry the vehicle like a tank over the audience raising their arms and hands as if at a Hitler rally . Pop becomes something like a cult to join or be run over and excommunicated from society . Jazz was going a similar path in "Fusion" with the melodies so complicated as to make it impossible to improvise . The melody became the only thing to cling to and the individual solo was going by the way side .

There are still great players but they have to work inside the character that is recognizable by a culture that has taken the easy route much like water going down stream .There are many songs that seem to call to people from the venue of the simplest or lowest common denominator.The advent of "Rap" music using primarily rhythmical undertones could be seen as another step backward toward the primitive entertainment of basic drums without melody at all but featuring poetry and sensationalism .



Many of my friends are gone , dead , or maybe I just lost touch with them . I don't know where they are at with it all any more . I do know that I still crave the improvisation, the independent line , the counterpoint of jazz. Unfortunately I don't think that this is supported by our current culture or where it is headed.I question intrinsically the idea of capitalism as a driving force to art , if there is art .I thought that there was art in Coltrane yet I still saw him as an entertainer grasping upon the ideas that he saw his audience responding to like "Favorite Things". Once I had an argument with Dizzy Gillespie about his choice of an electric bass player as opposed to a stringed bass player in his band . Diz had the patience to explain to me that he was merely trying to reach the greater audience . I admired Dizzy and I wanted him to remain in the crest of the wave as he had been in the late forties with Be Bop . Diz knew better and continued till he died ,surviving in his field , while not in the fore front , at least in the game . My characterization of Gillespie is now recognizable to me as people characterize me as someone recognizable to them ,though I may not be that person.Wasn't Miles striving to entertain and make a living in our system when he went to rock? The capitalist way has brought about an influx of singers and dancers who merely want to get their share of this market.



As music has grown to such a big business and even a contest we lose sight of the idea of art in favor of mob popularity. The idea of having a contest between Rembrandt and Van Gogh would seem funny yet we have come to the conclusion that we can have contest between songs ,singers ,dancers,players, musicians, and composers. I think that capitalism has corrupted art to the point of no return . If singers are judged by how good they sing the cliches of forty years ago , where is the art ? Popular phrasing is similar to what Ray Charles was doing in 1956 . So the masquerade is the art ? It would be different if we were recognizing interpretation but still it would only be comparing one painting to another . Is beauty in the eye of the beholder or not ? Is beauty in the ear of the beholder ?



Somewhere back there I was inspired by players , musicians , and composers who seemed different ,individually different . This difference is what is missing in our current format of capitalist art directing our culture . What we are witnessing is the effect of capitalism creating the same mold over and over again . The same movies are redone ,the same tunes are re-sung , and the same phrasing is overdone in the rush to success and the big pay off .