The clone gospel choir

On Saturday I indulged a studio wish list item by purchasing the Abbey Road refills for Propellerhead reason.
I mentioned these in an earlier post, if you recall. (scroll down if you don't)

I've been very fixated on the demo for Duct Tape and Superglue which is sort of morphing from demo to studio track bit by bit.

I played and recorded some mellotron samples. I then recorded backing vocals in 3 part harmony. The effect of the two together is this rather amazing gospel choir sound that gives me chills in a good way. It's like I cloned myself and took 9 versions off to choir practice....such fun.

When I started recording Sunrise, I approached originally from this place rooted in African Spiritual music but centered on the idea that perhaps technology can impose a sort of slavery and disconnection that on one level seems to advance society, but on another is setting us back in so many regards.

I took a break and stepped away from the album, coming back to realize that what I thought was done is missing a few songs.

right now the songs that I am focusing on are
-Duct Tape and Superglue
-God in the Telephone Book
-Chickens and Eggs (a re-recording of this track)

I know I promised an album for the summer, but I must be flexible and realize that I would rather have something with which I feel "right" and complete. I promise you that it will be worth the wait.

Attack of the Phantom Chicken

I smell fried chicken. It took me a while to realize that there is no friend chicken cooking anywhere in the vicinity.
Maybe I have begun to run low on some essential vitamin or phytonutrient that can only be obtained by scarfing down a heaping helping of KFC or Popeyes. I don't know. It's weird. I'm like an amputee who feels an itch on his no longer present toe.

Is phantom fried chicken a sign of brain tumor?

Be Prepared!

I have been saying for almost two years that the United States is heading into a
2nd great depression. We live in what I call a false economy or a credit economy.
It's simple. We spend more than we make. We are a country of consumers, not producers.
We have been financing a war that we didn't have money to fund in the first place.
We've been borrowing that money mostly from China.
People have heard me say this and looked at me like I am off my nutter. If you remove the facade, I believe that we have been in recession for the last 5 years, an invisible downward slope.

I stockpile canned goods and large bags of rice, the kind of behavior that crazy people on compounds in Idaho do.
K used to laugh at me for this and then this year what I have been seeing is finally starting to rip through the facade of the false economy. Costco started limiting the number of bags of rice that people could buy at one time. People began losing their homes at alarming rates. The layoffs have begun. If that isn't scary. I don't know what is.

It's not comforting to know that what I have been seeing is probably true, however it is comforting to know that I am not the only one who sees it.

Capitalism is folding in on itself

Sometimes I wonder if every generation has felt like the world was ending.
Apocalypse seems to go in cycles, but when will it stick? When will this planet
get fed up enough with human beings that it will unleash enough incurable diseases,
earthquakes, mudslides, wildfires, cyclones, floods and reality tv shows to drill into the skulls of humanity
that we have royally fucked this place up and Mamma earth aint happy about it.

Regardless of whether you imbue the planet with a personified emotional state, ready to shake off humans like flees or see this place as a godless rock in a meaningless void, you must surely have noticed that the small corner we've cut for ourselves isn't doing so hot. Blame Bush. Why not? He seems like a good scapegoat. I'm all game for digging in the toolshed to find granddad's old torch, stop by the hardware store for some tar and eagerly pluck the feathers out of my luxurious bed bath and beyond comforter. Really though, as much as king George II has done to flush the economy, world relations and human rights down the drain, I think one would be hasty to paste a stamp of blame on his empty cavernous head.

I blame capitalism. The very thing which has made this nation such a world power is the very thing that is causing it to implode. Ok, so capitalism is great in theory, but it's structure has no checks and balances to help control greed. Everyone wants a piece of the pie, but once they've had one slice, they want another. Before you know it they have the whole pie. Why find satisfaction in one pie when you can have the whole pie shop? Why not two pie shops, the pie factory, all the cherry trees, flour mills and every pie tin. Now that they've got all that and the millions, make that billions it brings, they're still not satisfied. They have to buy out all the competition and desimate the towns where they had built factories. God, this money is like a drug. How can they make more money. Fire all the local workers and ship the factories to china or india. Yes, they don't have to pay them very much and they can have more money, piles of it.

I think of this as trickle up economics. So the people who worked at the pie shop and the pie factory aren't doing so well. They start putting expenses on credit cards because they can't afford to live in a nation with so little pie. The banks that loaned that money aren't doing so well, so they have to borrow from the government. The government isn't doing so well, so it has to borrow from china. Well, china's got all the factory money coming in from all the pie manufacturing, so they don't mind making the most powerful nation in the world their bitch. It, afterall is part of their plan for world domination. Stupid Americans, so arrogant.

While this is going on most people are so fascinated with buying crap they don't need because it takes their minds off the fact that the carpet is being pulled out from under them in their foreclosed homes. Btw, that crap they don't need was made in china by people who took away their jobs.

I found it fascinating to watch elaborate arrangements of dominoes stacked and stretched for miles. All that work and then one little flick and you watch this chain of events that is quite breathtaking.

Cocks gone wild! True Stories of barnyard manlove.

Photo by Carrie Thomas

Ok, so I made the title a little more sensationalistic than it had to be.
Last night I had a short chat with my mother who is fighting off a rather nasty sounding chest cold.

As previously posted, I visited the family farm in Kansas back in the fall and helped my father build a larger chicken coop. Recently my parents got a 2nd rooster.
Well, the juicy gossip folks (Yes, you heard it here first) is that rooster #1, aka Little Jerry is gay. Sorry Jerry for outing you. I know how hard it can be to live as a homosexual rooster in Kansas. Little Jerry has been seen "humping" the new rooster.

This news delighted me, as it gave me the chance to educate my mother on prevalance of homosexuality in animals. She was completely unaware.

btw, who knew that 1/4 or all black swans are moes?(as in ho-moes)

ah, black swan, I wonder where you are?
ah George, You save my soul.

The Egg Report

Last night I was given the egg report. Those girls are gettin' busy having laid 17 eggs yesterday. Congratulations ladies.

In related news I started recording Chickens & Eggs last night.
Ooh La La

I must have been hungry when I recorded that album

photo by the very busy Carrie Thomas

I am a foodie by nature, the food version of a Junkie.
I love cooking, eating and fantasizing about food. I guess it should come as no surprise that this obsession has creeped into the new album. I realized last night that I talk a lot about food on this album. As many of you know, I have a bacon fixation. Last Saturday was K's birthday. He asked for something fatty and decadent. I of course made him fried pork chops cooked in a blend of bacon fat, butter and Crisco. I swear I am not trying to kill him.

Thus far, the following food items have made it into the lyrics and let me just say that it sounds like I'm cooking up the heartattack special at the Greasy Spoon Diner.

chocolate, bacon, biscuits, gravy, pickles,flapjacks, mashed potatoes, milk, meatloaf, chicken, and eggs.

The Egg Report

In a previous post, I mentioned liberating the cooped up chickens with visions of their egg production doubling. I am please to announce that last week, the chickens laid their daily best of 17 eggs in one day. This tops the previous record of 9 eggs in one day and is more than double the 7 eggs a day that was their previous average production.

I receive periodic egg reports on which I will keep you updated.