My big break
I've been asked by the proprieters (well, Dave anyways -- maybe this is his little practical joke on the others to make sure they miss him while he's on vacation) to help blogsit over at The Galloping Beaver for a couple of weeks. I'll be joining Allison from Creekside and West End Bound from Moving to Vancouver in keeping an eye on things over there. The Galloping Beaver draws a lot more hits than the Woodshed, so this could be my ticket out of the blogging ghetto -- I'll try to remember all you little people kindly when I become a big blogging star and get invited to the big blogging ethics panels on CNN. In the meantime, anything I post there I will also crosspost here. The Woodshed will still offer some exclusive content in the form of book and music reviews.

Ding Dong


I've been trying very hard all day to take the high road and not to gloat, cheer or pile-on. It should always be a sad occasion when someone dies, but in the case of Jerry Falwell I'll make an exception. I'll also admit to having cracked a smile when they hung Saddam and when I heard Nixon and Reagan had finally croaked. Evil crap-sacks, each and every one. The ad is from Hustler --Jerry famously sued them and lost. He is the bastard who got the burgeoning fundementalist Christian movement tied in with the Republican party with his Moral Majority (all together now: "it was neither") movement starting in 1979. He got St. Ronnie of Raygun elected, he got Bush senior elected, he had a lot to do with getting Clinton impeached by the House of Representatives (though not as much as Clinton did, let's be fair). Without him there would be no politically active fundementalist movement -- no Ralph Reed, no James Dobson, probably no abortion clinic bombers either. He blamed 9/11 on homosexuals, the ACLU, abortion-providers and People for the American Way. He was a hate-spewing homophobic, racist, sexist bigot and if there is a hell, he is smoking a turd in it right now. And I for one, am glad.
That's right blogging Tories, CNN and conservatard everywhere, my name is Rev.Paperboy and I'm an angry, intolerant, godless, anti-Christian, liberal blogger. SFW?

The Barley Sammich
Inspired by a pair of blog posts, I must weigh in on the subject of Budweiser, beer and breakfast drinking. Please note the large brightly colored comma separating Budweiser from beer, as I would hate to have anyone confuse the two.

Let me first address the attempt by Crooked Timber's Daniel Davies to defend Budweiser and even to sing its praises. I don't hate Bud because it is an American mass market beer -- though that would be reason enough. As any good Canadian beer drinking hoser knows, American mass market beers are like making love in a canoe, that is to say, it is fucking close to water. There are many fine American beers (Anchor Steam anything for example) but Bud isn't one of them. I don't hate it because it and tap water are the only two things you can get to drink almost anywhere in the civilized world ( I don't see that there is much difference between the two). I don't hate it because it's made with rice -- I'm enjoying a rice-based Kirin as I write this. It isn't any of those other reasons either -- I agree that micro brews are often overrated and beer snobbery is as pretentious as wine snobbery, but also admit it exists for a very good reason - because there are some very good obscure small beers and some really crappy mass market ones. I don't care about Budvar's claim on the name or whether it is "for poufs" -- though if we are dealing in stereotypes, I'd argue that "poufs" are supposed to have better taste than to be caught drinking Budweiser.

I hate Budweiser because it is lousy beer. I'd say it tastes like crap, but the flavor isn't strong enough to even say that. It's the weak instant coffee of beers -- a horribly bland vaguely beer-like beverage with a hint of crap. Cold Bud and warm Coors Light are what is on tap in Hell.

"Snap, crakle and burp -- the breakfast of ex-champions"
--Hawkeye Pierce, pouring beer on his corn-flakes

As to the esteemed Mr. Noon's post over at LGM on beer as a breakfast beverage and breakfast drinking in general (go read the post and the many many comments), for a cool spring morning, Guiness or a good coffee stout would be breakfast on their own - the venerable oatmeal sammich. I agree with the points made in the comments about Irish whisky and coffee, but then I think a healthy measure of Bushmills is good for just about anything, except maybe driving, surgery or operating chainsaws.

Before going further let me say that I do not condone or encourage breakfast drinking, nor do I regularly participate in it. Drinking in the morning will not make you Hunter Thompson or Charles Bukowski -- neither of whom you'd want to share a house with no matter how well they might have written. But on the occasional lazy weekend morning, when breakfast is served at the crack of noon, an eye-opener is not a criminal offense. Certainly some cocktails are designed with breakfast in mind -- like the Mimosa or the Bloody Mary.

The beer and tomato juice cocktail -- I've heard it called a Canadian Sunset -- is another morning type drink for those who like tomato juice ( I hate it) and I've actually seen it served as a Red Eye with a raw egg and hefty shot of tobasco as a hangover cure. I think the theory on this was "Whatever doesn't kill you, make you stronger."

Personally, I find Guinness a bit heavy to add to a actual full fry-up breakfast, but if you're just having a bagel or toast or a bacon sandwich, it goes down a treat. The Budweiser fan is right about one thing, lighter rice-based lagers do make better breakfast beers.

Tokyo in summer is as close to Hell as I'd like to get; humidity of 80 to 90 percent and temperatures in the high 30s to low 40s (over 90 F for you non-metric types), often you wake up in the morning drained of all bodily fluids, feeling like you've just run a marathon through the Sahara. The tap water is blood warm in July and August and you forgot to make ice last night. Your wife is drinking the last of the iced coffee you put in the fridge yesterday. You stagger to the fridge and all you can find is milk - which will curdle in your stomach and make the pasty texture in your mouth even worse - some kind of evil, sweet yogurt and fruit juice concoction the kids drink, a diet cola guaranteed to eat a hole in your guts if the medicinal aftertaste of the aspartamine doesn't kill you first, and a frosty can of Sapporo. It's a working day, but you don't have to be in until 11 and you're not driving anyways. I ask the court -- is it a crime to pop the top on a can of suds or is it better to die of dehydration?

When doing the full Hunter Thompson breakfast, I tend to favor a lighter lager or pilsner, preferably ice cold, and a few shots of amber rum, Cuban if possible. The rum goes especially well with any citrus or tropical fruit.

The ultimate Canadian breakfast is, of course, a back-bacon sandwich and a cold Sleeman's Cream Ale or, if you can find it, a Big Rock Brewery Traditional Ale or Grasshopper Wheat Beer.

Over here in Japan, beer in the morning is not so rare, especially among the salaryman set , though many prefer a morning pick-me-up of chu-hi, a concoction of soda water, shochu (distilled liquor made from rice or sweet potatoes that runs the gamut from nice, vodka-like pricey hooch to industrial solvent) and usually some kind of citrus flavor, that come in at about 6 or 7 percent alcohol by volume -- imagine a weak vodka-and-soda with lime. Not bad if you are hungover, but the sho-chu is usually closer to industrial quality and tends to be hangover-inducing in the long run.

I've seen I've seen guys quaffing on the train platform at 9 am and I've seen quart bottles of beer set out as part of the breakfast buffet at hot spring resorts. Get on a bullet train here at any time of the day and people are drinking before the train leaves the station, no matter what time it is.

Japan is also awash in some low-priced, nasty-tasting imitation beer-like substances called happoshu and "third category beer-like drinks" the latter of which are like drinking soda water and grain alcohol with some hops flavoring.

Shandies are also nice - I prefer the beer-and-ginger ale style one to the beer-and-lemonade one. Some girls I knew in college taught me a variation that adds a double shot of iced vodka to the pint of beer and lemonade called a strip-and-go-naked, but that's a whole other post.

Faking it
(the edited review of this ran in The Daily Yomiuri on Sunday, this is the longer original draft)

The illusion of keeping it real

Faking it—The Quest for Authenticity in Popular Music

By Hugh Barker and Yuval Taylor

Norton, 375 Pages, $25.95

By Kevin Wood

Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer

All performance is, by its very nature, artifice, so why are music fans so obsessed with “keeping it real?” Why is it that raw authenticity is valued above artful contrivance in music? What makes one performer real and another a fake?

These are not idle questions for Hugh Barker and Yuval Taylor, authors of Faking It – The Quest for Authenticity in Popular Music. Rather they are central to their book’s thesis, which seems to be that full representational, cultural and personal authenticity in music is an ideal rather than an achievable goal and may not even be such a laudable end in itself. The obsession with authenticity, they argue, “has limited the kinds of music that musicians aspire to make and that critic and listeners appreciate.” The authors seem to come to the conclusion that authenticity is highly overrated as a yardstick of musical talent or quality, which may be true, but it is their examination of the notion of authenticity in a variety of popular genres that is likely to spark arguments wherever music obsessives gather.

In making their case, Barker, a former musician, and Taylor, an author and editor, start with a shared chapter comparing Kurt Cobain and Leadbelly and the notion of selling out or faking it and then move chronologically with Taylor authoring early chapters on racial segregation in southern music, Jimmie Rodgers, Elvis Presley’s “Heartbreak Hotel” and Neil Young’s “Tonight’s The Night”, while Barker tackles the Monkees and the Archies, Disco and Punk. A pair of co-authored closing chapters take snobby potshots at Ry Cooder and the entire genre of World Music, accusing them of trading on notions of authenticity while being inauthentic, and sing the praises of Moby and KLF for their ability to toy with the whole idea of authenticity.

Part of the problem with Faking It seems to be that the authors never really nail down a clear definition of authenticity in music beyond some fairly obvious comparisons between Ozzy Osbourne’s “Iron Man” (inauthentic) and Loretta Lynn’s “Coal Miner’s Daughter” (authentic) in the introduction. It seems to be like pornography, they can’t describe it exactly, but they know it when they see it. c

The opening chapter is something of a microcosm of the book as a whole. It compares and contrasts Cobain and Leadbelly, noting that Cobain’ s last public performance was of a Leadbelly song “Where Did You Sleep Last Night?” and makes the argument that Cobain was obsessed with authenticity and was authentic, while Leadbelly was uninterested in the concept and was presented in an inauthentic, even racist manner. Some of the chapter is consumed by trashing the reputation of early musicologist John Lomax for promoting Leadbelly as an unsophisticated primitive and speculating, not without some merit, on the correctness of the racial politcs of Lomax and his era. Interesting points about the notion of primitivism are raised, but as happens again and again in the book, salient points made are later undercut by logical overreaches and statements that, taken at face value, are just plain laughable – such as the notion that the failure of other grunge musicians to kill themselves like Cobain did, robbed the genre of its “essential gravity” or that fans insistence on authenticity, not his own drug addiction and manic depression killed Cobain.

“It’s too simplistic to say that it is our fault, but deep down we wonder: if we had not encouraged them—if we had thought less of “authenticity” and more simply of good music—might they have survived?”

Faking It is the kind of book where you might read nodding in agreement for pages as the authors build a carefully constructed proof of a theory and then blow their accumulated credibility by describing Donna Summer as “a brilliant musical innovator” or suggesting that the contribution of the Monkees’ Mike Nesmith to the evolution of Country Rock was somehow on par with Gram Parsons’. Barker’s efforts to draw parallels between Nesmith and John Lennon also become more than a little labored—the two aren’t in the same ballpark, they aren’t even in the same sport. Lennon was a brilliant songwriter and musician, Nesmith, despite his ambitions to do likewise, merely played one on TV.

And don’t even get me started on the chapters on John Lydon, Donna Summer and Ry Cooder. I’m not a violent person by any means, but a discussion over a sufficient number of drinks between the authors and myself would likely end with us circling each other in the parking lot with mayhem in our hearts—we are the people Nick Hornby was writing about in High Fidelity. This is very much a book for music geeks, and I mean that in the best way.

For all its many faults, Faking It is worth reading and does have some valuable things to say about the notion of authenticity and its importance in pop music. Like any argument among obsessives, there is plenty of opinion masquerading as fact and hyperbole presented as considered positions, but it is an interesting argument.

Bleating about the Bleat
It's hard to fathom, but some people seem to like James Lileks, though they also claim to have named the blogosphere.

Roy, on the other hand, has never liked the work of the most pedestrian of pedestrian writers.

What will become of the Gnat? Will the St. Paul Target store have to lay off staff now?

The funniest thing you'll read all day: "And although Lileks is one of the most talented writers on the web, I’m pretty sure he won’t be able to replace his newspaper income with his blog/website."

Stop it, my sides, ow, my sides!

Artistic Synergy
In the course of researching a review of Faking It-- The Quest for Authenticity in Popular Music, a great book for starting arguments among musicians and music geeks, but one I had some problems with (the review will come out Saturday, wait for it) I checked out the authors' blog and found this gem of an MP3. I don't know who the mimic is or whether it could actually be Mr. Zimmerman, but you ain't heard nothing until you've heard Bob Dylan sing the Dr. Seuss classic, Green Eggs and Ham

Journalism is hard work
The New York Times' Eric Asimov tackles a gruelling assignment. He suffers, oh how he suffers, but Asimov valiantly soldiers on to get at one of the most troubling issues confronting society today:

"It’s come to my attention that some people believe martinis are made with vodka. I hate to get snobbish about it, but a martini should be made with gin or it’s not a martini. Call it a vodkatini if you must, but not a martini. Gin and vodka have as much in common hierarchically as a president and a vice president. Vodka can fill in for gin from time to time and might even be given certain ceremonial duties of its own, but at important moments you need the real thing. Vodka generally makes a poor substitute for gin in a martini or any other gin cocktail."

'nuff said?

Spy Coins -- the penny drops

Remember all the fuss earlier in the year when the U.S. government warned U.S. defense contractors that someone was using Canadian coins to spy on them? Apparently, it was the poppies that baffled them.

%$#&''&!!!
It has been a beautiful week in Tokyo. Warm, sunny, clear skies - great weather all week. A month ago we booked a site for a barbecue today for our family and about 30 other people as it is the last day of the Golden Week holidays, which are sort of the Japanese version of spring break. We have to pay for the site and you can't cancel, so sure enough, I woke up to thunder this morning. When I looked out the window it was, to quote Ken Kesey, "like a cow pissing on a flat rock" -- So think of me doing my Gene Kelly while you're all warm and dry today.

Personally, I blame George Bush and Dick Cheney. I'm not sure how, but I'm sure its their fault.

Hunter and Keef
One of these men joked about snorting his father's ashes, the other one probably would have done it. The start of the video is a bit messed up, but they start out talking about having their blood replaced.

Spasibo, Comrade Putin
The Soviet Union Russia continues its march forward into the past. Do svidaniya press freedom:

From the New York Times, April 22

MOSCOW, April 21 — At their first meeting with journalists since taking over Russia’s largest independent radio news network, the managers had startling news of their own: from now on, they said, at least 50 percent of the reports about Russia must be “positive.”

In addition, opposition leaders could not be mentioned on the air and the United States was to be portrayed as an enemy, journalists employed by the network, Russian News Service, say they were told by the new managers, who are allies of the Kremlin.
How would they know what constituted positive news?

“When we talk of death, violence or poverty, for example, this is not positive,” said one editor at the station who did not want to be identified for fear of retribution. “If the stock market is up, that is positive. The weather can also be positive.”

In a darkening media landscape, radio news had been a rare bright spot. Now, the implementation of the “50 percent positive” rule at the Russian News Service leaves an increasingly small number of news outlets that are not managed by the Kremlin, directly or through the state national gas company, Gazprom, a major owner of media assets.
The three national television networks are already state controlled, though small-circulation newspapers generally remain independent.

This month alone, a bank loyal to President Vladimir V. Putin tightened its control of an independent television station, Parliament passed a measure banning “extremism” in politics and prosecutors have gone after individuals who post critical comments on Web chat rooms.
Parliament is also considering extending state control to Internet sites that report news, reflecting the growing importance of Web news as the country becomes more affluent and growing numbers of middle-class Russians acquire computers.

On Tuesday, the police raided the Educated Media Foundation, a nongovernmental group sponsored by United States and European donors that helps foster an independent news media. The police carried away documents and computers that were used as servers for the Web sites of similar groups. That brought down a Web site run by the Glasnost Defense Foundation, a media rights group, which published bulletins on violations of press freedoms.

“Russia is dropping off the list of countries that respect press freedoms,” said Boris Timoshenko, a spokesman for the foundation. “We have propaganda, not information.”

first against the wall when the revolution comes
Chris Matthew, Ann Coulter, Pat Caddell, Wolf Blitzer, Brian Williams, Jon Scott, Wendell Goler, David E. Sanger, Karen DeYoung, Bob Schieffer, Joe Klein, Brit Hume, Margaret Carlson and Laura Ingraham all just made the list

And Gordon Liddy's review of the presidential package might be the creepiest homoerotica I've ever seen.

"and Laureen dresses him funny"
Now we wouldn't expect the former communication director to Paul Martin to play nice with Stephen Harper, but this one is going to leave bruises tomorrow

"A specter is haunting Toontown"

The weird things you find when you backtrack links from the counter

Mr. Sandman, send me a dream; make it the creepiest I've ever seen

Kevin Wood / Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer

The Absolute Sandman, Vol. 1

By Neil Gaiman

Vertigo, 612 pp

99 dollars

It isn't exactly bedtime reading. Putting aside for the moment the fact that falling asleep and dropping this massive tome on yourself would likely result in a broken nose, if not a fractured skull, the eerie nature of this collection of the first 20 issues of the groundbreaking comic book The Sandman is enough to make you want to keep the lights on all night.

When the main character is the eternal personification of all dreams, you expect a bit of nightmarish spookiness, but The Absolute Sandman is a compendium of creepiness, a grimoire of grim tales and a treatise of the terrible. The series of stories includes a journey to hell, a conspiracy of cats to rid the world of humans, a serial killers' convention led by a demon with toothy mouths for eyes, immortals and minor gods held prisoner by sorcery, death incarnated in the form of a punk-rock goth girl and a performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream by Will Shakespeare himself for an audience of fairies.

Whatever Neil Gaiman may lack, it certainly isn't imagination.

Gaiman has become something of an industry in his own right with successful novels (American Gods, Anansi Boys) screenplays (Mirrormask, the English language script for Princess Mononoke, and two films, Stardust and Beowulf, due to be released this year) and a plethora of comics projects, but the Sandman series (no relation to the Spider-Man 3 villain of the same name) was his breakthrough work, spanning 75 issues from 1988-96.

The series is generally considered, along with Alan Moore's The Watchmen and Frank Miller's reimagining of Batman, to have brought an air of respectability to comics aimed at adults.

Lavishly illustrated by Sam Kieth, Mike Dringenberg, Chris Bachalo, Michael Zuli, Kelley Jones, Charles Vess, Colleen Doran, Malcom Jones III and Steve Parkhouse in a wide variety of styles on heavy, glossy paper and bound in black leather, the book looks like something a movie wizard would cast spells from, an effect that is unlikely to be a coincidence. The price sounds a bit hefty for a comic book collection at first, but a few moments browsing the impressive artwork--especially the covers by Dave McLean--will have most fans of graphic novels, fantasy, horror and gothic literature reaching for their wallets.

The story begins in 1916, when a group of British occultists seeking immortality attempt to conjure up and hold captive the incarnation of Death, but instead trap her brother, Dream, also known as Morpheus, Oneiros, the Prince of Stories and, more recently, the Sandman. His mystic captivity lasts 80 years, with all sorts of odd phenomena occurring due to his absence: Dream creatures enter the waking world, changes occur that threaten the existence of the Dreamworld and the tools that give the Sandman his power are scattered throughout many worlds.

This first quarter of the Sandman series focuses heavily on the horror genre with a good deal of otherworldly sparring between the eternals, demons and demigods thrown in. The Sandman gathers his tools, puts the Dreamworld back in order and rights some previous wrongs he has committed.

In several of the stories--that of the aforementioned feline conspiracy, for example--Morpheus does not actually appear except in a sort of peripheral way. In others, he teams up with more mortal comic book heroes such as occult detective John Constantine--even the Justice League of America makes a brief appearance.

The Absolute Sandman, Volume 1 is not intended for children, or adults who are easily frightened, but at least if the nightmare creatures do crawl out from under the bed, the book is heavy enough to swat them with.

(Apr. 28, 2007)

In Yer Ear

Kevin Wood / Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer

THE KINGS OF LEON

Because of the Times

BMG Japan, 2,548 yen

There is not a great variety of sounds or musical styles on the new Kings of Leon album, but that is not necessarily a bad thing. The Followill clan work with their limited sonic palette in much the same way photographer Robert Capa worked with black and white. Because of the Times, their third album, shows them at their most versatile yet, but there is still little to differentiate one broken-hearted, buzzing power-chord anthem from another.

As always, Caleb Followill howls, moans and declaims in throaty splendor about an array of wicked women who have steered their men wrong while his cousin Matthew picks out distorted, ringing repetitive riffs reminiscent of a southern-fried version of the Edge, all backed by the thrashing drums of brother Nathan and the often sinister basslines of brother Jared.

The centerpiece of Because of the Times --named for an evangelical conference the brothers attended annually with their itinerant preacher father when they were growing up--is the lead-off track, "Knocked Up," an atmospheric seven-minute stunner about a couple of rebellious teens determined to escape the confines of their small town in a Cadillac, have their baby and live happily ever after no matter whose body they have to step over to do so--James Dean would star in the movie. Menace and youthful angst hang heavy in the air on this and most of the other tracks, reaching almost Jim Morrison-esque dramatic heights on "Trunk"--though Caleb's rough-and-ready emoting is unlikely to be mistaken for Morrison's coiled and oiled Brechtian theatrics.

If the howling, bluesy trailer-park gothic of "Black Thumbnail" and the Red Hot Chili Peppers-meets-U2 insistence of "My Party" manage to get some radio airplay, the Kings of Leon may be the next big thing.

JOHN BUTLER TRIO

Grand National

Warner, 2,580 yen

If the Kings of Leon present a series of gritty black and white snapshots of young white American male macho angst, the John Butler Trio lay the flipside on us with a Technicolor touchy-feely grab-bag of an album that mixes reggae and funk rhythms with hard-rock and blues sensibilities, folk instrumentation and hippie-trippy lyrics put to hip-hop cadences. The American-born, Australian-raised Butler made his mark with 2003's Sunrise Over Sea, an independent release that debuted at No. 1 on the album charts in Australia.

Grand National is in the same vein as Sunrise Over Sea, but the influx of major label money into the recording process has allowed Butler to branch out even further in term of arrangement, adding string sections ("Caroline") and brass bands ("Gov did Nothing") to his already potent mix of searing electric slide guitar, acoustic six and 11-string guitars, banjo and harmonica, backed by drummer Michael Barker and bassist Shannon Birchall.

Major label support has not blunted Butler's socially conscious approach to songwriting, with songs like "Used to Get High" decrying the demons of fast food, drugs, neo-conservatism and political apathy all at one go. "Good Excuse" has the counter-culture would-be guru delivering a wake-up slap to sullen, self-absorbed, video game-obsessed teens, urging them to "Go take a step outside, see what's shakin' in the real world."

While Butler's lyrics may lack subtlety, his heartfelt playing more than makes up with numerous extended slide-guitar solos and even some easy-skanking ukulele on "Groovin' Slowly."

(Apr. 28, 2007)

Domestic terror attack (yawn)
A bomb was found in Austin, Texas, today -- fortunately it was deactivated before it could hurt anyone. Normally, I'd expect that to be a big story since everyone in North America and most of the rest of the semi-civilized world seems to crap their drawers and beg the government to take away some more of their rights every time a car backfires or a balloon pops. But this bomb was at an abortion clinic, so aside from 15 seconds on CNN and a six inch AP story there is no coverage.

Imagine if this bomb had been in a Baptist church or at a Republican political rally or a police station or school or supermarket or just about any where else -- People would be running around screaming "terrorism!! terrorism!! ooga-booga!! Don't let the scary Muslims get us Dubya!" But since it was found outside an abortion clinic and they get bombed all the time (According to the Austin Statesman: "32 incidents of violence or disruption against abortion providers in the United States and Canada were reported in the first three months of 2007, along with five hoax devices or suspicious packages. In 2006, abortion clinics reported seven bomb threats and four attempted bombings or arsons ") we get: "eeeehhh, not such a big deal."

I guess its okay if its a pro-life bombing

Feministe has the details and a much better all-around smackdown

That was the week that was...
Not a great seven days for the Gnu Gummint of Kanada, at least according the punditry, and especially to Scott Feschuk.
But you would have thought that Stephen Harper's new psychic beautician would have seen all this coming and warned him. Talk about putting lipstick on a pig...

The triumphant return of Friday HST Blogging

(I don't care what the date above says, I posted this on Friday morning, blogger has been smoking ibogane or adrenechrome or something)

"The TV business is uglier than most things. It is normally perceived as some kind of cruel and shallow money trench through the heart of the journalism industry, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs, for no good reason."
-HST "Generation of Swine"


"We have become a Nazi monster in the eyes of the whole world-a nation of bullies and bastards who would rather kill than live peacefully. We are not just Whores for power and oil, but killer whores with hate and fear in our hearts. We are human scum, and that is how history will judge us... No redeeming social value. Just whores. Get out of our way, or we'll kill you.

Well, shit on that dumbness. George W. Bush does not speak for me or my son or my mother or my friends or the people I respect in this world.

We didn't vote for these cheap, greedy little killers who speak for America today- and we will not vote for them again in 2002. Or 2004. Or ever. Who does vote for these dishonest shitheads? Who among us can be happy and proud of having all this innocent blood on our hands? Who are these swine? These flag-sucking half-wits who get fleeced and fooled by stupid little rich kids like George Bush?

They are the same ones who wanted to have Muhammad Ali locked up for refusing to kill "gooks". They speak for all that is cruel and stupid and vicious in the American character. They are racists and hate mongers among us-they are the Ku Klux Klan. I piss down the throats of these Nazis. And I am too old to worry about whether they like it or not. Fuck them."
-HST "Kingdom of Fear"

Hunter S. Thompson 1939 - 2005

and a hat tip to RossK at the Gazzeteer
Mahalo

Just say moe.

Kevin Wood / Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer

What do you get when you combine rock influences as diverse as Led Zeppelin, Steely Dan and Gram Parsons, as played by five talented musicians with a passion for improvisation?
Less corporate radio pop and "moe." music.
Hot on the heels of the release of its critically acclaimed eighth studio album The Conch, moe., the band with the unusual orthography, brings its wide-ranging jams to Japan for a whirlwind four-stop tour that starts tonight in Yokohama.
"We are an improvising rock band that likes to write pop songs," writes moe. guitarist, singer and songwriter Chuck Garvey in an e-mail exchange with The Daily Yomiuri. "It is a mix of every possible influence, style and idea we like--channeled through three different songwriters and five (multi) instrumentalists exploring the unknown. It is schizophrenic, yet familiar. Psychedelic, yet defined and memorable. It's the sound of a really diverse, fun record collection played by your friends."
Garvey is one of the original members of the quintet that started off playing college parties in upstate New York in 1989 as Five Guys Named Moe (the title of an old Louis Jordan song). After brief stints as Haggis and the moe guitar army, the band finally settled on moe., complete with the period, in 1991.
The band released three albums on Sony subsidiary label 550 Music during the next few years as it worked to build an audience with a shifting lineup--the band had five different drummers in as many years and even Garvey left for a few months at one point. Finally moe. hit its stride in 1999 with the creation of its own record label and an appearance at Woodstock 1999.
The current group, together since then, comprises Garvey, founding bassist-singer-songwriter Rob Derhak, guitarist-singer-songwriter and sometime keyboard player Al Schnier, drummer Vinnie Amico and percussionist and multi-instrumentalist Jim Loughlin.
Moe. takes a collective approach, according to Garvey: "The dynamic of the five of us (and our crew and management) adds up to a great whole. To a certain extent, our decision-making process is highly flawed, yet very democratic and satisfying at times. As far as leadership, the ball (or 'Conch') gets passed around so that everyone gets time at the top, but no one has to carry the whole weight all the time either."
Writing and arranging are also influenced by the group's collective nature. Garvey, Derhak and Schnier bring their initial versions of songs forward to be molded by the group to one degree or another.
"We used to jam to come up with parts that complement each other, then arrange them into a song. Now that our writing skills have developed, it is more likely that we can 'hear' complementary parts and put them together on the fly. We also 'harvest' improvised sections of live performances--especially when they have become a very identifiable entity on their own--to use as songs or parts of a song in progress," Garvey says.
Derhak's description of The Conch (the title is taken from William Golding's novel Lord of the Flies) on the band's Web site bears out the close-knit, collective nature of the band's endeavors: "The Conch is a symbol of keeping things civil. We sort of took all these elements of us playing as if one of us has a conch and then it's taken away and it turns to chaos. That is very similar to our lives."
Moe. has evolved its own way of recording that combines painstaking studio work and the energetic live shows they have built their career on.
Like many jam bands, moe. has its own tribe of fanatical followers who see as many shows as possible--The Grateful Dead had deadheads; moe. has moe.rons.
Garvey and Schnier also have become icons in the rock guitar world and were named by The Rolling Stone's David Fricke as being among the top 20 "new guitar gods" in February, an experience Garvey described as both exciting and humbling. The duo are also featured in the June issue of Guitar World magazine.
Asked to compare and contrast their styles, Garvey writes: "Al's technique seems to be equal parts discipline, structure, noise and abandon...My technique is based around phrasing and melody up to a point, with white noise being an alternative to make a point. I think we occasionally operate as the left and right hands of a very accomplished chord/melody guitarist--'Two is better than One'!"
Moe. will play April 21, 6 p.m. at Bay Hall in Yokohama, (03) 3444-6751; April 22, 6 p.m. at Ax in Shibuya, Tokyo, (03) 3444-6751; April 24, 7 p.m. at Club Quattro in Nagoya, (052) 264-8211; April 25, 7 p.m. at Club Quattro in Shinsaibashi, Osaka, (06) 6535-5569.
The Daily Yomiuri, April 21