I've been experimenting with psychedelic drugs since I was a teenager but the peak of my experience came when I was in my early twenties working at Masquerade Fantasy on Decatur Street where we made and sold hand painted leather masks in the Italian style. The owner was a big, eccentric drunk guy who always wore Hawaiian shirts and would ride around the Quarter on his electric scooter hitting all the bars. This fellow wasn't a strict boss and was frequently out of town, so I would often live in his mask shop for weeks at a time presiding over the place by day and having raucous parties by night.
As it happened it was right at this time that an old friend of mine started up an herbal entheogen business and began importing exotic hallucinogens from all over the world. From Salvia Divinorum to Peruvian Torch Cactus to powdered toad venom, I did it all sitting behind the counter of the mask shop listening to my White Album and Live at Leads tapes for the ten thousandth time.
The Ayahuasca came already brewed in a two liter 7-UP bottle. I couldn't help but think of poor Bill Burroughs slogging through the jungles of South America and eventually contracting worms in search of the same thrill. In the modern world the most exotic drugs you've never heard of are just a mouse click away.
Now back then when I had access to all these weird drugs I have to admit that I was irresponsible. I would give the stuff away at parties and festivals in a haphazard fashion. For example I went to Jazz Fest one year with an ounce of Salvia 10x and handed it out like candy to whoever wanted it. In retrospect I realize that kind of freewheeling behavior was unwise and it did occasionally cause problems.
One time I gave a gutter punk a hit of 10x (which is 10 times stronger than raw Salvia) and he sprinted off down the street into the night. The next day I saw him and a friend sitting on a stoop. When he saw me he told his friend, "Watch out for this guy. Last night he drove me completely insane."
I was a madman on the loose and needed to be stopped but I had yet to learn this lesson when I got my bottle of Ayahuasca. I immediately offered some to a couple of gutter punk friends.
"What the fuck is it?"
"It's a shaman's brew from South America. A mixture of two plants. One plant contains the DMT and the other enables your brain to process it."
"It smells like shit. Have you tried it?"
"No, I have to go to work today. Supposedly this stuff is pretty potent. Like, "talk to aliens" potent. I'm going to drink some after I close up tonight."
"Alright, hook me up.", said the Alpha punk. The Beta punk concurred.
We went down to the mask shop and I locked the door behind us and drew the curtains. I know it's hard to believe someone would give me the keys to their business but I swear it's true.
"How much are we supposed to drink?"
"Not much. Just a couple swallows."
I poured the vile liquid into plastic go-cups and the punks choked it down. Then we sat around and smoked a joint while they waited for the DMT to take effect.
It wasn't long before the punks started looking green around the gills and within twenty minutes they were clearly feeling it. They were slurring their words and flailing around and one of them kept laughing maniacally. They started to get nervous. The mask shop can be a menacing place with all those frogs and witches and ducks glaring at you in the florescent light.
Trained spiritual guru that I am I recognized their agitation as a symptom of sensory overload and suggested that they go lay down in the bathroom. The mask shop used to be an apartment and had a pleasant, spacious bathroom with a functioning tub. I got the punks situated, closed the door and put on "Dear Prudence" from the White Album which always has a soothing effect during a heavy trip. Then I opened the curtains, flipped around the sign, unlocked the door and started making a pig mask out of leather.
It was about an hour later that my coworkers Mindy and Sylvia arrived for work. Mindy was a former model who had moved to New Orleans from Florida with her boyfriend Dave. Sylvia was a cheerful and gregarious native deeply involved in the local bar culture. By then they were both accustomed to, and I'd like to think highly amused by, my stupid antics. Neither of them were particularly surprised when I told them about the comatose punks in the bathroom.
After the usual pleasantries I said to them in an offhand way, "Oh, I almost forgot, there are a couple of gutter punks writhing around on the bathroom floor. I gave them some witches brew from South America and apparently it's pretty intense."
"You saved some for us right?"
"Of course, but I thought we could do it at your apartment after work."
"Hell yeah! Dave won't mind."
The gutter punks finally came to after a couple hours. They seemed no worse for the wear.
"Good call putting us in the bathroom man. I puked twice. That's some crazy dope you got there. Insane visuals. At first I didn't know what was happening. I could hardly move. It was fucking great!"
Another successful experiment.
After work we locked up and walked over to Mindy's house off of Eylsian Fields. Dave wasn't home so we lit the Nag Champa and I poured us three small doses from the sacred 7-UP bottle of foul tasting enlightenment. That stuff was pretty bitter but we got it down.
I'm going to forgo rating the categories by number. It seems so arbitrary. I'll just list some important points about the experience and comment on them.
Authenticity--- In all truth, my Ayahuasca was not brewed up by witch doctors in South America but by sketchy looking guys with long hair and dark glasses in the French Quarter. I know what ingredients they used and what they were supposed to do but I don't know if they followed the recipe carefully or just winged it together. I doubt they prayed over it. The dose I took was about four ounces and lasted for three peak hours with two hours of come down. I've heard tell of Ayahuasca trips lasting for eight or nine hours, but like I said, these guys weren't exactly chemists.
The "Oh shit! I took too much!" Factor--- The first effect I noticed from the drink was a sudden and certain panic that I had taken too much. The room started spinning and my heart was beating out of my chest. The fear was overwhelming. The incense and trippy music Mindy put on the stereo wasn't helping either. Mindy must have been feeling the same way because she got up, went into her bedroom, and closed the door. Sylvia was, as usual, in a state of pure bliss. Not wanting to disturb her with my frantic vibrations I went out on the balcony which was overflowing with plants. It really felt like the jungle. I curled up into the fetal position on the ground and began to recite the Litany Against Fear.
The Power of ONE!!!--- After writhing around for what seemed like hours, but was probably more like forty five minutes, I started to relax a bit and became more aware of my surroundings. I was still laying on Mindy's balcony surrounded by plants in full bloom. Mindy's cat, Sid Vicious, was staring at me with mild curiosity. I was now profoundly struck by the beauty that had been created on that balcony as an act of pure will. This jungle I was in was not to be taken for granted but had been painstakingly eked into existence in this unlikely place, through careful nurturing and diligence. Did Mindy realize the profundity of what she had made?
The cat was a product of the ages. Bred down from countless generations to be as pleasant and agreeable to my sensibilities as possible. In the forth dimension he looked like a vastly long cat-snake that got cuter and cuter the closer you got to the head. He seemed to know I was in a strange mood.
Even the mosquitoes swirling around me were my friends. I let them land on me then shooed them away without killing them knowing that they too were part of the tapestry of the universe that comprises all things.
I sat there in a blissed out revelry for maybe an hour or two before the intensity began to subside and I again felt I could handle human company.
The Come Down--- Ayahuasca is one of those drugs that makes you thank god you're still alive. I went into the living room and Sylvia was still sitting in the same spot on the couch. She gave me a knowing look.
"Holy shit dude!", she said shaking her head in amazement.
"I know what you mean. I just took a tour of the cat's genetic history."
Mindy came out of her room and we all shared a kind of "high five" moment. We had survived again.
"I'm going to say that this was more intense than the toad venom but not as crazy as the cactus.", said Mindy.
"Yeah" agreed Sylvia, "This was more intense at the peak but the cactus lasted much longer."
"So do you think you would ever want to do it again?", I asked them.
"Hell fucking no! Just like most of the stuff you come up with it's fun to do once but not something you want to do every day. There's a reason the classic drugs never go out of style."
We all cracked a cold beer and drank to that.
Monday, August 12, 2013
Monday, August 5, 2013
The Stories Behind My Songs
Every song has a story behind it and when you write songs as fucked up as mine, they sometimes have pretty good stories behind them. One of my main goals as a song writer has always been to push social boundaries and to show that many of the things that people take very seriously,like the devil for example are,in fact,completely ridiculous. Here are the stories behind all of the songs that appear on my albums The Hippie Bum and Sex at the Zoo with introductions explaining when and how they were recorded.
THE HIPPIE BUM--- I wrote all of the songs that would appear on The Hippie Bum when I was in my late teens and early twenties hitchhiking around the country, living in squats and playing music on the street every day. Most of the songs were written on Pearl St. in Boulder Colorado, 6th St. in Austin Texas, and Decatur St. in New Orleans. Playing street music is what made the whole thing come together. You only have ten seconds to get the attention of someone walking by on the street so every word out of your mouth has to be some kind of hook. I discovered that outrageous humor was a great way to kill two birds with one stone in that you could horribly offend the conservative couple walking by while at the same time delighting the teenagers walking behind them. It was this dichotomy that provided the inspiration for my entire song writing approach. I would test out new songs on the street kids in town and if they laughed I knew I had a winner.
I recorded The Hippie Bum at Minimum Wage Studios in New Orleans in 2002 and started selling it in 2003. Over time I've sold about 7000 copies right out of my guitar case. The album, which was engineered by Lance Koehler, was recorded over 2 days and mixed on the third. I played all of the instruments on the tracks with the exception of “Going to the Cave” on which Lance Koehler played percussion and Ray Bong played percussion and drum synth. I produced the album with lots of input from Lance and Ray. I think I preform some of the songs better now but 10 years latter I'm still happy with how the album stands up.
The Poop Eating Gnomes--- To give you an impression of how warped my perceptions are, I actually wrote this song to impress a girl. Needless to say I was way off. She was driving her van from Connecticut to the West Coast on a winding route and meandering path, smelling the flowers along the way. We hooked up in New Orleans (I had known her for years) and we decided that I would join her for the trip. We went through Austin, where I made 300$ playing on 6th street at the South By South West music festival. We went through New Mexico and Arizona and the Grand Canyon and all that shit. Round about the time we got to Utah things were looking pretty grim for our relationship. My money was running out and she made it perfectly clear that she wasn't pulling any dead weight. She went “ice queen” on me pretty quick and within a day or two was no longer laughing at my jokes. The death knell. One day in Moab while she was off hiking in the red rocks I wrote The Poop Eating Gnomes as a way to try and win back her affections. To make a long story short, it didn't work and it was a moot point because the next day we got pulled over by the pigs, I was arrested for marijuana possession and paraphernalia, did fifty days in Buncombe County Jail, and we never saw or heard from each other again. One interesting point is that there was a lot of argument in the studio about whether or not this should be the first song on the album. Lance and Ray both thought that the (slightly) more commercial “I Love Being A Homeless Bum” should lead but I stood firm. I wanted the first track to be in your face, “Poop Eating Gnomes. Deal with it.”. Maybe I'd have sold 8000 if I'd have listened to them.
I Love Being a Homeless Bum--- One of my most requested songs, I wrote the chorus in Renaissance Square in Austin and then wrote the rest a year later in Jackson Square in New Orleans. Something about Squares gets me going I guess. The truth is that, at the time I wrote it, I didn't really love being a homeless bum much at all. I was more or less constantly depressed and I wrote this song as a way to try and cheer myself up. Now all these years later I'm still homeless and I actually do kind of love it. Or maybe I'm just fooling myself but what difference does it make? Over the years I have, at times, lived in apartments and houses and sometimes people (mostly gutter punks) have questioned whether I'm homeless enough for the song to be sincere. Apparently I have to live in a ditch the rest of my life to remain authentic. By way of reassuring the skeptical all I can say is that if you can't by listening to my songs tell that I know what I'm talking about, maybe you're the one who's not homeless enough.
New Orleans City Jail--- The truth is, the original name of this song was “Buncombe County Jail”. Remember how I told you I got jacked by the pigs for possession and did fifty days jail? They take “the weed” seriously in Utah. It was the longest time I have ever been locked up, but it was in some ways the most fun because of the unbelievably creative and intelligent class of criminals they had in there. In our cell block there was a guy who invented board games for us to play on construction paper, a Buddhist who had "painted" a giant ohm symbol on the ceiling of his cell in toothpaste, a secretly gay guy who made collages out of fashion magazines which were much cooler than you might think, a guy who made hooch out of juice drinks, and me. The Buddhist was actually in for going into an open court session with a fake bomb. He was looking at 5 years. We wound up spending Easter in there and the secretly gay guy hid plastic eggs that the guards had given us all over the cell block. We went and hunted for the eggs then he dressed as Arial from the Little Mermaid using a big laundry bag for a tail and spent a good hour singing songs from the movie as we all drank jail house swill. It was quite a spectacle. It was in that environment that I wrote down the words to what would become “New Orleans City Jail”. I made up the music on my guitar the day I was released. When I go from town to town I learn the name of their jail and just put it in the song. The concept is universal. While I was in I also wrote a reggae song call “It's All Bad”. I might get around to recording it one day.
Crazy Rachel--- One of my personal favorites, this song has traditionally been quite popular with girls named Rachel. If you've hung out for any length of time in the dank underbelly of New Orleans, you've probably met, or possibly been attacked by, Crazy Rachel at one point or another. Rachel is totally unpredictable. The first time I met her she was friendly and engaging and we talked for several hours down by the river. The next time I met her she threw a full can of beer at my head. The night I wrote the song, I was walking through Jackson Square and saw a bunch of punks gathered around watching a fight. When I got up close I saw that Rachel had a big punk guy pinned to the ground, gripping him in a merciless choke hold. His face was turning red and you could tell he was about to pass out. Rachel was laughing like a mad scientist and kept screaming in the guy's ear, “Kinda hurts to breath doesn't it? KINDA HURTS TO BREATH DOESN'T IT?”. The punks thought this was the funniest thing they had ever seen and I had to admit it was pretty choice. I went home and wrote the song figuring that if anyone deserved a song it was her. The album got around and eventually Rachel got a copy and heard the song. Now whenever she sees me she makes me play it for her but pretends she doesn't like it. She comes up and says in her most menacing voice, “Play that song you wrote about me, fuckin' asshole.”
I play it for her and she says, “I sang the lyrics to my daughter and it made her cry.”
“Well, I guess there's no higher praise than that.”, I replied.
She stalks off after calling me an asshole again but I know that deep down she secretly loves the song because she hasn't attacked me in years. I kinda miss it.
I Love the Devil--- My big hit. “I Love the Devil” came from several different inspirations. First of all I was making fun of Pantera. I've always thought that big, tattooed white guys playing heavy metal was hilarious and Pantera always seemed to me like the most unintentionally funny band of all time. All the devil noises in the middle are my take on Phil Anselmo's vocal delivery. As for the lyrics, it's basically me saying all the most evil stuff I can think of. When I first started playing the song it was completely free form. The part about sacrificing babies was always in there but other than that it changed every time. It wasn't until I got into the studio and was just about to record my vocal that I took a sheet of paper and wrote down the words that would be in the song from then on out. In a way, it used to have more energy when it was improvised but what can you do? The other main idea behind the song was to write a catchy song about the devil that people could sing along to as opposed to most songs about the devil which are so fast and loud that you can't even tell what they're saying. When I'm in the right mood this is still my favorite song to play.
The Burning Bush--- Originally, this song was written on keyboard and was meant to have a more up tempo rock vibe but for some reason I decided to slow it down for the album and play it on guitar. This is one of the rare instances of my having vague, hard to interpret song lyrics. There is no way anyone would ever guess from listening to it that this song is about a girl who shot fire out of her vagina as a circus routine. She was part of a troop that was pretty big in the New Orleans underground in the early two thousands and all of their acts had something to do with their genitals. One would hang a six pack of beer from hooks in her labia, one would shove a power drill up his wang, one gargled his own piss and, most inspiring to me, one shot fire out of her vagina. What a perfect symbol! I wasn't really in love with the girl, I just thought she was super hot and had a great act. Hilariously, her boyfriend was kind of pissed when he heard the song and gave me some shit about it, kind of jokingly but kind of not. I told him, “Look dude, if your girlfriend shoots fire out of her vagina and you let someone else beat you to writing a song about it, that's on you.”
Kinky Sex With You--- I wrote this one when I was 17 making it the earliest composition on the album. Frankly, I think it shows, though it has had it's share of fans over the years. The impetus for this song was this friend of mine who had a super hot girlfriend and a super hot sister, both of whom I would have liked to have had kinky sex with. I had the first few lines of the song but couldn't think of anywhere to go with it. One day while riding on the bus to my job doing political polls on the telephone it hit me that the song didn't have to be about the guy's girlfriend and sister but could be about the concept of kinky sex in general. I made up the rest of the words in my head right there on the bus and played it on guitar when I got home that night. That was an important early lesson in letting a song go where it wants to instead of forcing it to be something it's not. Kind of a crude song but not bad for a beginner. The gutter punk girls liked it.
Glue Head Girlfriend--- This was one of the first songs I wrote on keyboard after learning to play. I bought a super cheep wind organ, which is kind of like an electric accordion laid out in keyboard form, for thirty bucks at an antique shop on Decatur St.. I was working at a mask shop there making and selling Italian style leather masks for this big, fat, drug addict guy who would dress in Hawaiian shirts and ride around the French Quarter on an electric scooter. He was pretty lax with his managerial duties and for several months I lived in his mask shop having crazy parties every night. I brought the wind organ to the shop and wrote songs late, after people had gone home. “Glue Head Girlfriend” started as an homage to this gutter punk girl that would huff paint and glue down by the river. She always silver paint on her face because metallic paints supposedly give you a better buzz. For some reason this girl fell in love with me and would try to get close to me at parties and stuff. I wasn't attracted to her and resisted her advances but when I got the song idea I knew I had to follow it through to it's logical conclusion. I've never been able to write a good song about love when I was actually in love because they all come out too cheesy and sentimental. To really nail a love song you have to be emotionally detached. This, along with “The Burning Bush” is the only song that survived the mask shop period as most of them were just too fucked up and over the line. One title that got axed was “I Want to Have Sex With Your Wife” after I noticed the chilling effect it would have on whatever group I played it for. Some of the songs I won't even talk about. I was still testing the waters of how far I could or should go.
Going to the Cave--- This is my favorite recording on the album and one of my favorites to play. It was a more collaborative effort than most of the others in that it was co-written with Ray Bong, with Lance Koehler providing much in the way of production and musical expertise. Ray and I had discussed the concepts behind the song for weeks, like moving to a cave, taking your dog and a shotgun in order to escape from society and become self sufficient in preparation for the apocalypse as a metaphor for social alienation, and talked about writing a song based on the ideas. We batted it around at jam sessions but nothing much came of it until one night when we went to go see the jam band moe. at the Howlin' Wolf. After the show Ray raved on and on about how great the performance was but I hadn't enjoyed it. I felt that they jammed directionlessly in ways that were totally irrelevant to the “song” they were supposedly playing, not incorporating it tastefully as a good jam band would. We were both pretty drunk and the argument got heated. When he finally dropped me off at the flop house I went upstairs determined to prove that I knew what I was talking about and that he was full of shit. I plugged in my four-track recorder and started laying down keyboard tracks and writing down lyrics. By the time the sun came up I had the song finished. Most of the time I have to be feeling happy to write a decent song but this is a rare occasion when a pretty good one was motivated by revenge.
Draft Dodger Rag--- I included this song by Phil Ochs on my album partly because I love the song but also because I wanted to show that my music was based on the folk musical tradition and not some bullshit like “Weird Al” Yankovic” or Tenacious D. Back when all the other kids were grinding away on Slayer riffs I was learning Bob Dylan and (old) Leonard Cohen songs on my acoustic guitar. I always loved Phil Ochs because of his beautiful, classic voice, his dexterous guitar picking and his bitingly clever hatred of the man. Unfortunately, Phil killed himself in 1976 at the age of 36, but I and lots of other people still sing his songs and struggle to play them half as good as he did.
Beautiful Hippie Princess--- This one's another collaboration, written with Brian Aurther back when I was 19 living on the streets of New Orleans. I've always been fascinated by hippie girls and blown away by how beautiful they are. Brian felt the same way, and the day we wrote “Beautiful Hippie Princess” we had met a particularly beautiful one at a homebum feed down at the gravel lot. Her street name was something ridiculous like “Piranha”. We went down to the river and drank malt liquor while trading verses back and forth and pretty soon we had the song. I can't remember who wrote each individual line but I can say for sure I came up the music because I've always been into the whole country-folk vibe. I've since played the song for many hippie girls and the response has been largely positive.
Money For Drugs--- This song was the bread and butter of my street act for years. If you've walked down Decatur at any point between 2001 and 2008 you've probably heard me play it in person. One day it just popped into existence while I was busking and I immediately started making mad bank. I would play this song over and over as people were walking by and if someone tipped me a dollar I would offer to play them one of my “real” songs and then they would usually buy an album or at least tip me another buck or two. I thought I had found my life's work until Katrina fucked up my hustle in 2005. After the hurricane I kept at it for a few more years but, for me at least, it would never be the same in terms of money. During festivals pre-Katrina, I would have impromptu parties form around me on the sidewalk and everyone would be sing along and contribute to the energy of the scene which made it fun and easy to make living. For some reason that stopped happening after the hurricane and people started being much tighter with their cash. I still look back on it as the highlight of my career because it was so organic and seemed to speak to the true purpose of street culture. After a while it got to be a drag trying to compete with the new t-shirt shops popping up every day and the horrible canned “Zydeco” music they pump out at maximum volume. It didn't help to realize that most of the yuppie tourists didn't know the difference between real culture and fake culture and didn't really care besides. From what I understand the scene has since come back in full force so maybe I'll go back one day and play on Decatur for old times sake.
Hip Hop Medley--- Obviously, I didn't write the words to this one, I just took some rap songs and “white-boyed” them up for comedic effect. I assumed a lot of black people walking by on the street would think it was hilarious and it turned out I was right. The fact that so many rap songs are inherently funny made it pretty easy to crank this one out once I got the basic idea. I would bet that other comedy musicians have “written” similar songs because there are few things funnier than a white dude trying to be “gangsta”.
They're Red Hot--- The reason this song is on the album is that Ray Bong was there while I was recording it, yelling out the names of songs between takes. I kept telling him to be quite, that I already knew what songs I wanted to do, but he wouldn't listen. So here is my rudimentary take on a song popularized by Robert Johnson in which I mess up the words and skip most of the song because I didn't really know it. What the hell, it makes a fine coda. Having said that, it was good to have Ray there to bounce ideas off of even if I almost never followed his advice.
SEX AT THE ZOO--- The songs that would comprise Sex at the Zoo were written between 2001 and 2006, right in the heart of George Bush's reign as President. I can remember reading the paper in those days and seething with rage at whatever stupid bullshit he was doing or saying that day. I actually canceled my subscription because it was making me so angry all the time. The album was recorded at Sound Mike's studio in Houston Tx, and unlike the first one, it was a bit of a slog. Sound Mike and I had some different ideas about how the album should sound and working it out was a bit of a struggle. It's unquestionable, though, that he made certain tracks much better than they would have been otherwise. This album differs from my first in that I got other musicians to play a lot of the tracks. Eric “Lief” Moore played drums, bass and lead guitar on most of the tracks and Olivia Dvorack sang on several and played kazoo on Sex at the Zoo. I played all the rhythm guitar, keyboards, and banjo and played bass on I Just Want Your Booty. The main argument I had with Mike was about the layering of the vocals. I thought it should be minimal but he kind of went nuts with. It really worked on some songs though so credit where credit is due.
I don't think my song writing approach changed much between my first album and this one. I guess maybe the songs are a bit more structured. An interesting bit of trivia is that, although obscene by many standards, there are no curse words on the entire album. How that happened I have no idea.
Let's Get the Baby High--- I wrote this song to honor the birth of my favorite drug dealer's first child. I was wracking my brain trying to think of something tasteful and appropriate when it occurred to me to combine his work and his family life. This was one of those songs where I knew it would go over the line for some people and asked myself several times while writing it, “Is it OK to sing about this? Is it OK to sing about getting babies high?”. As I expected the answer was “No” for some people. I usually like offending people with my music but only for the right reasons, when I intend to. It irritates me when people get offended by this song because it is so transparently farcical. I mean, of course you shouldn't really get a baby high. It's a joke. Anyone that needs me to tell them that was going to fuck up their kids anyway. At any rate, plenty of parents, including the ones I wrote it for, have told me they like the song. I really like Olivia's backing vocals on this one and the keyboard sound we got using a fairly cheep little Korg which is why I had it lead the album. Also because you can't tell how fucked up the song is until you get to the chorus.
Laura's Bush--- This is one of my only overtly political songs. Like I said, I was very unhappy about George W. and I knew I would eventually have to write some kind of song about him. Before he got elected I had never been that interested in politics. I followed the elections and all but it was W. who really got me paying attention which is probably true for a lot of people my age. I don't remember exactly when I got the idea for this song but I remember that for a long time before I wrote it I was telling people how bad I wanted to sleep with Bush's wife (and daughters) just to fuck with him. The guitar riff is something I had been playing for years and improvising over so I finally put it in a proper song. My favorite part is the breakdown in the middle where I name all the different parts of the White House Laura and I are gonna do “it” in. My dream was that one day, somehow, W. would hear the song himself and be super offended by it. Offended, but somehow unable to track me down. I really like this one but the problem with it, and most political material, is that it gets dated quickly. It's simply not as poignant now that Bush is no longer in office. Singing about banging Michelle Obama just wouldn't be the same.
Sex at the Zoo--- This one came out of a visit to the Audubon Zoo. I wish I could tell you that I got kicked out for breaking into the primate house and slapping the old man meat on an orangutan but, in reality, I only fantasized about it. A simple little call and response number, once I came up with the premise all I had to do was think of which zoo animals it would be funniest to have sex with and the song wrote itself. It just seamed so obvious. Sex is funny, animals are funny, sex with animals is fucking hilarious, so sex with exotic zoo animals must surely be the funniest thing ever. This was one of those songs where I couldn't believe I was the only person to ever think of it. How could it be? It was always floating out there in the aether, just waiting for someone as warped as me to channel it into reality. This was one example of Mike's vocal layering technique being used to good effect and, as a result, this is my favorite recording on the album.
The Stink--- I usually start out with the lyrics to a song but with this one I had the music for a while before I put words to it. Also, this is a rare instance of me writing a song in a minor key.(A) In my head I imagine it being sung by the evil sounding guy who sings in the Grinch cartoon. Some people have told me they don't like the song because it about stinking and stinking is, like, gross. Well, ya know, life is gross. Lots of modern music is about pretty people who don't stink singing about how great they are and I want to be the antithesis of that. Anyway, it's artistic license, I don't really stink all that bad.
Anal Butt Love--- I don't want to cop out here but I honestly can't remember writing this song. Frankly it's surprising that this is the only one. A funny thing about it is that when I do my show in bars sometimes people come up and ask me afterward if I'm gay because of the last verse. I mean, after all the crazy shit I sing about (sex with animals, purposely contracting STDs, poop eating gnomes, etc.) the question in their minds is, “Are you gay?” Believe it or not, listening to it now I'm pretty sure it was inspired by Willie Nelson's version of the gospel song, “I Couldn't Believe It Was True”. There are several songs on Sex at the Zoo, and this is one, where I feel the addition of the female vocal adds a whole new level humor and/or weirdness.
I Just Want Your Booty--- This is one of the two songs on the album that I played all the instruments on and one of the only songs I've ever written on an electric guitar. For this one the music and the lyrics came all at once and just meshed together immediately. I was playing around with a wah pedal and came up with the riff, and the words just seemed to suggest themselves. The song is meant to be ironic, you can't just have someones booty after all, but people have a tendency to take it at face value which irritates me. One film maker guy made a video for the song full of stereotypical, sexist cliches which I was so embarrassed by that I completely disowned the project. Lot's of shots of girls dancing in hot outfits and shit like that. If I was to do a video of the song, it would consist only of shot after shot of girl's booties, one after another until they become hypnotic and stopped meaning anything sexual, as a comment on the ridiculousness of objectification. I don't know, maybe I'm misjudging the material, but I know I'm not misjudging the video which is why it's not included in this package. I do like the song, though, and like to think it has a bit of a Prince vibe.
Smokin' Crack--- I wish I could say that I am the white boy that loves smoking crack but I actually wrote this one about a friend of mine and changed it to first person for convenience sake. The guy's name was Phoenix. He would hustle all day making palm frond roses in the French Quarter and then go blow his wad on crack every night. I went with him to his crack house one time and smoked with him as kind of a “National Geographic” experience. The thing about Phoenix was that he was such a happy go lucky, positive dude. He was always in a good mood. He loved hustling roses on the street and he loved smoking crack as much as anyone has ever loved anything. It was infectious, which is why I had to write the song. At the risk of sounding immodest, I have to say I think this is the best song I've ever written. It's hard for me to imagine someone doing a better job with the subject matter. When I was writing it my neighbor told me that he heard me playing in his room and that I kept having to stop because I was laughing so hard. That's usually a good sign.
Horse Cop--- Anyone who knows me knows I hate authority and that I fucking despise the police. It's hard to imagine anyone who's spent much time on the streets of New Orleans thinks too highly of them. You got your car patrol cops, your foot patrol cops, your undercover cops, your bike cops and, last but not least, you got your horse cops. I've always felt it was especially evil for them to co-opt unsuspecting animals into their sick war against humanity. I came up with “Horse Cop” during Jazz Fest one year when it seemed like they were just everywhere. Once I realized that “swine” rhymed with “equine” I knew I was on to something. Some people have asked me why I didn't sing the song myself on the album, but in fact, I'm singing the whole time. My vocal is a very subtle whisper in the background behind Olivia's lead. It's easy to hear if you know to listen for it. I just thought this song would be a good opportunity to showcase Olivia's amazing vocal range. I want to say that although the words “fag” and “dike” appear in this song, I'm not homophobic or anti-gay in any way. I included those words only because I felt police would be offended by them. I'll admit it's kind of questionable and that if I was writing the song now I might think of some alternative but believe I will let the song stand as it is. I would argue that those words are funny in this particular context.
Crabs and Pubic Lice--- “Crabs and Pubic Lice” was, like “The Stink”, my attempt to write the exact opposite kind of song that guys usually write to try and impress girls. Go to any open mic. and you'll see tons of dudes passionately performing tunes designed, in they're minds at least, to portray themselves as sensitive guys with lots of attractive qualities. My idea was to write a song that any girl would be repulsed by, and by virtue of reverse psychology, attracted to. My theory turned out to be correct because from the first time I started playing the song in Jackson Square I could tell lots of girls were amused by it. This is another song that benefits greatly from the added dynamic of a female vocal and I think Olivia sounds particularly good on it.
VaticaN.A.M.B.L.A--- Yeah, ya know, I just can't get over the whole “Catholic priests molesting children” thing. It strikes me as a significant detail. Lots of people have laughingly told me how this song is “just wrong” over the years but I don't see it that way at all. Convincing people you're some kind of liaison between them and the creator of the universe and using that position to indulge your bizarre and perverted sex fantasies is “just wrong”. Scathing ridicule of such people in the form of a catchy song is right on the money. These guys don't even have to pay taxes and I'm supposed to spare their feelings regarding their widely known, barely repressed pedophilia? Give me a break. They should be kicked out of their parishes and tarred and feathered on national television. For a while I was thinking of writing a musical about the subject and might still if I can come up with a good story. My favorite part the song is the thing about eating meat on Friday.
You Don't Suck Blood, You Just Suck--- Ah, the Vampire scene of late 90's early 2000's New Orleans. The whole French Quarter was overrun with prosthetic fang wearing kids with spooky contact lenses and black clothes they had bought at Gargoyle's. Kids who lived on the street would save up the money they panhandled and buy 400$ shoes that went up to their chins. To me this seemed like total insanity. In my view, the main thing that separated Vampire kids from Goths (whom the Vampire kids felt greatly superior to) is that Goths had a sense of humor about how ridiculous they were whereas Vampires took themselves quite seriously. They would walk by me with their noses turned up to the sky. It was only a matter of time before I wrote this song to irritate them and irritate them it did. I was “threatened” by butt-hurt Vampires on more than one occasion. I put “threatened” in quotation marks because these Vampire kids were possible the biggest dorks I've ever seen in my life. Their idea of a threat was to say, “This is your first warning. You only get 3.”. Three warnings?!?! You got to be shitting me! The guys that hang outside Port Authority they were not. I wrote the song on the acoustic guitar and that version is kind of folk-country, but for the album I used a cheesy pre-sequenced keyboard line as a way to make fun of the horrible dance music they listened to. And you gotta love the title.
Well that's it. I've got lots of other songs but those are the only ones I've managed to record. If you've read this far you must be a true fan so thank you for your interest in my work. I honestly believe that I have the coolest fans in world.
THE HIPPIE BUM--- I wrote all of the songs that would appear on The Hippie Bum when I was in my late teens and early twenties hitchhiking around the country, living in squats and playing music on the street every day. Most of the songs were written on Pearl St. in Boulder Colorado, 6th St. in Austin Texas, and Decatur St. in New Orleans. Playing street music is what made the whole thing come together. You only have ten seconds to get the attention of someone walking by on the street so every word out of your mouth has to be some kind of hook. I discovered that outrageous humor was a great way to kill two birds with one stone in that you could horribly offend the conservative couple walking by while at the same time delighting the teenagers walking behind them. It was this dichotomy that provided the inspiration for my entire song writing approach. I would test out new songs on the street kids in town and if they laughed I knew I had a winner.
I recorded The Hippie Bum at Minimum Wage Studios in New Orleans in 2002 and started selling it in 2003. Over time I've sold about 7000 copies right out of my guitar case. The album, which was engineered by Lance Koehler, was recorded over 2 days and mixed on the third. I played all of the instruments on the tracks with the exception of “Going to the Cave” on which Lance Koehler played percussion and Ray Bong played percussion and drum synth. I produced the album with lots of input from Lance and Ray. I think I preform some of the songs better now but 10 years latter I'm still happy with how the album stands up.
The Poop Eating Gnomes--- To give you an impression of how warped my perceptions are, I actually wrote this song to impress a girl. Needless to say I was way off. She was driving her van from Connecticut to the West Coast on a winding route and meandering path, smelling the flowers along the way. We hooked up in New Orleans (I had known her for years) and we decided that I would join her for the trip. We went through Austin, where I made 300$ playing on 6th street at the South By South West music festival. We went through New Mexico and Arizona and the Grand Canyon and all that shit. Round about the time we got to Utah things were looking pretty grim for our relationship. My money was running out and she made it perfectly clear that she wasn't pulling any dead weight. She went “ice queen” on me pretty quick and within a day or two was no longer laughing at my jokes. The death knell. One day in Moab while she was off hiking in the red rocks I wrote The Poop Eating Gnomes as a way to try and win back her affections. To make a long story short, it didn't work and it was a moot point because the next day we got pulled over by the pigs, I was arrested for marijuana possession and paraphernalia, did fifty days in Buncombe County Jail, and we never saw or heard from each other again. One interesting point is that there was a lot of argument in the studio about whether or not this should be the first song on the album. Lance and Ray both thought that the (slightly) more commercial “I Love Being A Homeless Bum” should lead but I stood firm. I wanted the first track to be in your face, “Poop Eating Gnomes. Deal with it.”. Maybe I'd have sold 8000 if I'd have listened to them.
I Love Being a Homeless Bum--- One of my most requested songs, I wrote the chorus in Renaissance Square in Austin and then wrote the rest a year later in Jackson Square in New Orleans. Something about Squares gets me going I guess. The truth is that, at the time I wrote it, I didn't really love being a homeless bum much at all. I was more or less constantly depressed and I wrote this song as a way to try and cheer myself up. Now all these years later I'm still homeless and I actually do kind of love it. Or maybe I'm just fooling myself but what difference does it make? Over the years I have, at times, lived in apartments and houses and sometimes people (mostly gutter punks) have questioned whether I'm homeless enough for the song to be sincere. Apparently I have to live in a ditch the rest of my life to remain authentic. By way of reassuring the skeptical all I can say is that if you can't by listening to my songs tell that I know what I'm talking about, maybe you're the one who's not homeless enough.
New Orleans City Jail--- The truth is, the original name of this song was “Buncombe County Jail”. Remember how I told you I got jacked by the pigs for possession and did fifty days jail? They take “the weed” seriously in Utah. It was the longest time I have ever been locked up, but it was in some ways the most fun because of the unbelievably creative and intelligent class of criminals they had in there. In our cell block there was a guy who invented board games for us to play on construction paper, a Buddhist who had "painted" a giant ohm symbol on the ceiling of his cell in toothpaste, a secretly gay guy who made collages out of fashion magazines which were much cooler than you might think, a guy who made hooch out of juice drinks, and me. The Buddhist was actually in for going into an open court session with a fake bomb. He was looking at 5 years. We wound up spending Easter in there and the secretly gay guy hid plastic eggs that the guards had given us all over the cell block. We went and hunted for the eggs then he dressed as Arial from the Little Mermaid using a big laundry bag for a tail and spent a good hour singing songs from the movie as we all drank jail house swill. It was quite a spectacle. It was in that environment that I wrote down the words to what would become “New Orleans City Jail”. I made up the music on my guitar the day I was released. When I go from town to town I learn the name of their jail and just put it in the song. The concept is universal. While I was in I also wrote a reggae song call “It's All Bad”. I might get around to recording it one day.
Crazy Rachel--- One of my personal favorites, this song has traditionally been quite popular with girls named Rachel. If you've hung out for any length of time in the dank underbelly of New Orleans, you've probably met, or possibly been attacked by, Crazy Rachel at one point or another. Rachel is totally unpredictable. The first time I met her she was friendly and engaging and we talked for several hours down by the river. The next time I met her she threw a full can of beer at my head. The night I wrote the song, I was walking through Jackson Square and saw a bunch of punks gathered around watching a fight. When I got up close I saw that Rachel had a big punk guy pinned to the ground, gripping him in a merciless choke hold. His face was turning red and you could tell he was about to pass out. Rachel was laughing like a mad scientist and kept screaming in the guy's ear, “Kinda hurts to breath doesn't it? KINDA HURTS TO BREATH DOESN'T IT?”. The punks thought this was the funniest thing they had ever seen and I had to admit it was pretty choice. I went home and wrote the song figuring that if anyone deserved a song it was her. The album got around and eventually Rachel got a copy and heard the song. Now whenever she sees me she makes me play it for her but pretends she doesn't like it. She comes up and says in her most menacing voice, “Play that song you wrote about me, fuckin' asshole.”
I play it for her and she says, “I sang the lyrics to my daughter and it made her cry.”
“Well, I guess there's no higher praise than that.”, I replied.
She stalks off after calling me an asshole again but I know that deep down she secretly loves the song because she hasn't attacked me in years. I kinda miss it.
I Love the Devil--- My big hit. “I Love the Devil” came from several different inspirations. First of all I was making fun of Pantera. I've always thought that big, tattooed white guys playing heavy metal was hilarious and Pantera always seemed to me like the most unintentionally funny band of all time. All the devil noises in the middle are my take on Phil Anselmo's vocal delivery. As for the lyrics, it's basically me saying all the most evil stuff I can think of. When I first started playing the song it was completely free form. The part about sacrificing babies was always in there but other than that it changed every time. It wasn't until I got into the studio and was just about to record my vocal that I took a sheet of paper and wrote down the words that would be in the song from then on out. In a way, it used to have more energy when it was improvised but what can you do? The other main idea behind the song was to write a catchy song about the devil that people could sing along to as opposed to most songs about the devil which are so fast and loud that you can't even tell what they're saying. When I'm in the right mood this is still my favorite song to play.
The Burning Bush--- Originally, this song was written on keyboard and was meant to have a more up tempo rock vibe but for some reason I decided to slow it down for the album and play it on guitar. This is one of the rare instances of my having vague, hard to interpret song lyrics. There is no way anyone would ever guess from listening to it that this song is about a girl who shot fire out of her vagina as a circus routine. She was part of a troop that was pretty big in the New Orleans underground in the early two thousands and all of their acts had something to do with their genitals. One would hang a six pack of beer from hooks in her labia, one would shove a power drill up his wang, one gargled his own piss and, most inspiring to me, one shot fire out of her vagina. What a perfect symbol! I wasn't really in love with the girl, I just thought she was super hot and had a great act. Hilariously, her boyfriend was kind of pissed when he heard the song and gave me some shit about it, kind of jokingly but kind of not. I told him, “Look dude, if your girlfriend shoots fire out of her vagina and you let someone else beat you to writing a song about it, that's on you.”
Kinky Sex With You--- I wrote this one when I was 17 making it the earliest composition on the album. Frankly, I think it shows, though it has had it's share of fans over the years. The impetus for this song was this friend of mine who had a super hot girlfriend and a super hot sister, both of whom I would have liked to have had kinky sex with. I had the first few lines of the song but couldn't think of anywhere to go with it. One day while riding on the bus to my job doing political polls on the telephone it hit me that the song didn't have to be about the guy's girlfriend and sister but could be about the concept of kinky sex in general. I made up the rest of the words in my head right there on the bus and played it on guitar when I got home that night. That was an important early lesson in letting a song go where it wants to instead of forcing it to be something it's not. Kind of a crude song but not bad for a beginner. The gutter punk girls liked it.
Glue Head Girlfriend--- This was one of the first songs I wrote on keyboard after learning to play. I bought a super cheep wind organ, which is kind of like an electric accordion laid out in keyboard form, for thirty bucks at an antique shop on Decatur St.. I was working at a mask shop there making and selling Italian style leather masks for this big, fat, drug addict guy who would dress in Hawaiian shirts and ride around the French Quarter on an electric scooter. He was pretty lax with his managerial duties and for several months I lived in his mask shop having crazy parties every night. I brought the wind organ to the shop and wrote songs late, after people had gone home. “Glue Head Girlfriend” started as an homage to this gutter punk girl that would huff paint and glue down by the river. She always silver paint on her face because metallic paints supposedly give you a better buzz. For some reason this girl fell in love with me and would try to get close to me at parties and stuff. I wasn't attracted to her and resisted her advances but when I got the song idea I knew I had to follow it through to it's logical conclusion. I've never been able to write a good song about love when I was actually in love because they all come out too cheesy and sentimental. To really nail a love song you have to be emotionally detached. This, along with “The Burning Bush” is the only song that survived the mask shop period as most of them were just too fucked up and over the line. One title that got axed was “I Want to Have Sex With Your Wife” after I noticed the chilling effect it would have on whatever group I played it for. Some of the songs I won't even talk about. I was still testing the waters of how far I could or should go.
Going to the Cave--- This is my favorite recording on the album and one of my favorites to play. It was a more collaborative effort than most of the others in that it was co-written with Ray Bong, with Lance Koehler providing much in the way of production and musical expertise. Ray and I had discussed the concepts behind the song for weeks, like moving to a cave, taking your dog and a shotgun in order to escape from society and become self sufficient in preparation for the apocalypse as a metaphor for social alienation, and talked about writing a song based on the ideas. We batted it around at jam sessions but nothing much came of it until one night when we went to go see the jam band moe. at the Howlin' Wolf. After the show Ray raved on and on about how great the performance was but I hadn't enjoyed it. I felt that they jammed directionlessly in ways that were totally irrelevant to the “song” they were supposedly playing, not incorporating it tastefully as a good jam band would. We were both pretty drunk and the argument got heated. When he finally dropped me off at the flop house I went upstairs determined to prove that I knew what I was talking about and that he was full of shit. I plugged in my four-track recorder and started laying down keyboard tracks and writing down lyrics. By the time the sun came up I had the song finished. Most of the time I have to be feeling happy to write a decent song but this is a rare occasion when a pretty good one was motivated by revenge.
Draft Dodger Rag--- I included this song by Phil Ochs on my album partly because I love the song but also because I wanted to show that my music was based on the folk musical tradition and not some bullshit like “Weird Al” Yankovic” or Tenacious D. Back when all the other kids were grinding away on Slayer riffs I was learning Bob Dylan and (old) Leonard Cohen songs on my acoustic guitar. I always loved Phil Ochs because of his beautiful, classic voice, his dexterous guitar picking and his bitingly clever hatred of the man. Unfortunately, Phil killed himself in 1976 at the age of 36, but I and lots of other people still sing his songs and struggle to play them half as good as he did.
Beautiful Hippie Princess--- This one's another collaboration, written with Brian Aurther back when I was 19 living on the streets of New Orleans. I've always been fascinated by hippie girls and blown away by how beautiful they are. Brian felt the same way, and the day we wrote “Beautiful Hippie Princess” we had met a particularly beautiful one at a homebum feed down at the gravel lot. Her street name was something ridiculous like “Piranha”. We went down to the river and drank malt liquor while trading verses back and forth and pretty soon we had the song. I can't remember who wrote each individual line but I can say for sure I came up the music because I've always been into the whole country-folk vibe. I've since played the song for many hippie girls and the response has been largely positive.
Money For Drugs--- This song was the bread and butter of my street act for years. If you've walked down Decatur at any point between 2001 and 2008 you've probably heard me play it in person. One day it just popped into existence while I was busking and I immediately started making mad bank. I would play this song over and over as people were walking by and if someone tipped me a dollar I would offer to play them one of my “real” songs and then they would usually buy an album or at least tip me another buck or two. I thought I had found my life's work until Katrina fucked up my hustle in 2005. After the hurricane I kept at it for a few more years but, for me at least, it would never be the same in terms of money. During festivals pre-Katrina, I would have impromptu parties form around me on the sidewalk and everyone would be sing along and contribute to the energy of the scene which made it fun and easy to make living. For some reason that stopped happening after the hurricane and people started being much tighter with their cash. I still look back on it as the highlight of my career because it was so organic and seemed to speak to the true purpose of street culture. After a while it got to be a drag trying to compete with the new t-shirt shops popping up every day and the horrible canned “Zydeco” music they pump out at maximum volume. It didn't help to realize that most of the yuppie tourists didn't know the difference between real culture and fake culture and didn't really care besides. From what I understand the scene has since come back in full force so maybe I'll go back one day and play on Decatur for old times sake.
Hip Hop Medley--- Obviously, I didn't write the words to this one, I just took some rap songs and “white-boyed” them up for comedic effect. I assumed a lot of black people walking by on the street would think it was hilarious and it turned out I was right. The fact that so many rap songs are inherently funny made it pretty easy to crank this one out once I got the basic idea. I would bet that other comedy musicians have “written” similar songs because there are few things funnier than a white dude trying to be “gangsta”.
They're Red Hot--- The reason this song is on the album is that Ray Bong was there while I was recording it, yelling out the names of songs between takes. I kept telling him to be quite, that I already knew what songs I wanted to do, but he wouldn't listen. So here is my rudimentary take on a song popularized by Robert Johnson in which I mess up the words and skip most of the song because I didn't really know it. What the hell, it makes a fine coda. Having said that, it was good to have Ray there to bounce ideas off of even if I almost never followed his advice.
SEX AT THE ZOO--- The songs that would comprise Sex at the Zoo were written between 2001 and 2006, right in the heart of George Bush's reign as President. I can remember reading the paper in those days and seething with rage at whatever stupid bullshit he was doing or saying that day. I actually canceled my subscription because it was making me so angry all the time. The album was recorded at Sound Mike's studio in Houston Tx, and unlike the first one, it was a bit of a slog. Sound Mike and I had some different ideas about how the album should sound and working it out was a bit of a struggle. It's unquestionable, though, that he made certain tracks much better than they would have been otherwise. This album differs from my first in that I got other musicians to play a lot of the tracks. Eric “Lief” Moore played drums, bass and lead guitar on most of the tracks and Olivia Dvorack sang on several and played kazoo on Sex at the Zoo. I played all the rhythm guitar, keyboards, and banjo and played bass on I Just Want Your Booty. The main argument I had with Mike was about the layering of the vocals. I thought it should be minimal but he kind of went nuts with. It really worked on some songs though so credit where credit is due.
I don't think my song writing approach changed much between my first album and this one. I guess maybe the songs are a bit more structured. An interesting bit of trivia is that, although obscene by many standards, there are no curse words on the entire album. How that happened I have no idea.
Let's Get the Baby High--- I wrote this song to honor the birth of my favorite drug dealer's first child. I was wracking my brain trying to think of something tasteful and appropriate when it occurred to me to combine his work and his family life. This was one of those songs where I knew it would go over the line for some people and asked myself several times while writing it, “Is it OK to sing about this? Is it OK to sing about getting babies high?”. As I expected the answer was “No” for some people. I usually like offending people with my music but only for the right reasons, when I intend to. It irritates me when people get offended by this song because it is so transparently farcical. I mean, of course you shouldn't really get a baby high. It's a joke. Anyone that needs me to tell them that was going to fuck up their kids anyway. At any rate, plenty of parents, including the ones I wrote it for, have told me they like the song. I really like Olivia's backing vocals on this one and the keyboard sound we got using a fairly cheep little Korg which is why I had it lead the album. Also because you can't tell how fucked up the song is until you get to the chorus.
Laura's Bush--- This is one of my only overtly political songs. Like I said, I was very unhappy about George W. and I knew I would eventually have to write some kind of song about him. Before he got elected I had never been that interested in politics. I followed the elections and all but it was W. who really got me paying attention which is probably true for a lot of people my age. I don't remember exactly when I got the idea for this song but I remember that for a long time before I wrote it I was telling people how bad I wanted to sleep with Bush's wife (and daughters) just to fuck with him. The guitar riff is something I had been playing for years and improvising over so I finally put it in a proper song. My favorite part is the breakdown in the middle where I name all the different parts of the White House Laura and I are gonna do “it” in. My dream was that one day, somehow, W. would hear the song himself and be super offended by it. Offended, but somehow unable to track me down. I really like this one but the problem with it, and most political material, is that it gets dated quickly. It's simply not as poignant now that Bush is no longer in office. Singing about banging Michelle Obama just wouldn't be the same.
Sex at the Zoo--- This one came out of a visit to the Audubon Zoo. I wish I could tell you that I got kicked out for breaking into the primate house and slapping the old man meat on an orangutan but, in reality, I only fantasized about it. A simple little call and response number, once I came up with the premise all I had to do was think of which zoo animals it would be funniest to have sex with and the song wrote itself. It just seamed so obvious. Sex is funny, animals are funny, sex with animals is fucking hilarious, so sex with exotic zoo animals must surely be the funniest thing ever. This was one of those songs where I couldn't believe I was the only person to ever think of it. How could it be? It was always floating out there in the aether, just waiting for someone as warped as me to channel it into reality. This was one example of Mike's vocal layering technique being used to good effect and, as a result, this is my favorite recording on the album.
The Stink--- I usually start out with the lyrics to a song but with this one I had the music for a while before I put words to it. Also, this is a rare instance of me writing a song in a minor key.(A) In my head I imagine it being sung by the evil sounding guy who sings in the Grinch cartoon. Some people have told me they don't like the song because it about stinking and stinking is, like, gross. Well, ya know, life is gross. Lots of modern music is about pretty people who don't stink singing about how great they are and I want to be the antithesis of that. Anyway, it's artistic license, I don't really stink all that bad.
Anal Butt Love--- I don't want to cop out here but I honestly can't remember writing this song. Frankly it's surprising that this is the only one. A funny thing about it is that when I do my show in bars sometimes people come up and ask me afterward if I'm gay because of the last verse. I mean, after all the crazy shit I sing about (sex with animals, purposely contracting STDs, poop eating gnomes, etc.) the question in their minds is, “Are you gay?” Believe it or not, listening to it now I'm pretty sure it was inspired by Willie Nelson's version of the gospel song, “I Couldn't Believe It Was True”. There are several songs on Sex at the Zoo, and this is one, where I feel the addition of the female vocal adds a whole new level humor and/or weirdness.
I Just Want Your Booty--- This is one of the two songs on the album that I played all the instruments on and one of the only songs I've ever written on an electric guitar. For this one the music and the lyrics came all at once and just meshed together immediately. I was playing around with a wah pedal and came up with the riff, and the words just seemed to suggest themselves. The song is meant to be ironic, you can't just have someones booty after all, but people have a tendency to take it at face value which irritates me. One film maker guy made a video for the song full of stereotypical, sexist cliches which I was so embarrassed by that I completely disowned the project. Lot's of shots of girls dancing in hot outfits and shit like that. If I was to do a video of the song, it would consist only of shot after shot of girl's booties, one after another until they become hypnotic and stopped meaning anything sexual, as a comment on the ridiculousness of objectification. I don't know, maybe I'm misjudging the material, but I know I'm not misjudging the video which is why it's not included in this package. I do like the song, though, and like to think it has a bit of a Prince vibe.
Smokin' Crack--- I wish I could say that I am the white boy that loves smoking crack but I actually wrote this one about a friend of mine and changed it to first person for convenience sake. The guy's name was Phoenix. He would hustle all day making palm frond roses in the French Quarter and then go blow his wad on crack every night. I went with him to his crack house one time and smoked with him as kind of a “National Geographic” experience. The thing about Phoenix was that he was such a happy go lucky, positive dude. He was always in a good mood. He loved hustling roses on the street and he loved smoking crack as much as anyone has ever loved anything. It was infectious, which is why I had to write the song. At the risk of sounding immodest, I have to say I think this is the best song I've ever written. It's hard for me to imagine someone doing a better job with the subject matter. When I was writing it my neighbor told me that he heard me playing in his room and that I kept having to stop because I was laughing so hard. That's usually a good sign.
Horse Cop--- Anyone who knows me knows I hate authority and that I fucking despise the police. It's hard to imagine anyone who's spent much time on the streets of New Orleans thinks too highly of them. You got your car patrol cops, your foot patrol cops, your undercover cops, your bike cops and, last but not least, you got your horse cops. I've always felt it was especially evil for them to co-opt unsuspecting animals into their sick war against humanity. I came up with “Horse Cop” during Jazz Fest one year when it seemed like they were just everywhere. Once I realized that “swine” rhymed with “equine” I knew I was on to something. Some people have asked me why I didn't sing the song myself on the album, but in fact, I'm singing the whole time. My vocal is a very subtle whisper in the background behind Olivia's lead. It's easy to hear if you know to listen for it. I just thought this song would be a good opportunity to showcase Olivia's amazing vocal range. I want to say that although the words “fag” and “dike” appear in this song, I'm not homophobic or anti-gay in any way. I included those words only because I felt police would be offended by them. I'll admit it's kind of questionable and that if I was writing the song now I might think of some alternative but believe I will let the song stand as it is. I would argue that those words are funny in this particular context.
Crabs and Pubic Lice--- “Crabs and Pubic Lice” was, like “The Stink”, my attempt to write the exact opposite kind of song that guys usually write to try and impress girls. Go to any open mic. and you'll see tons of dudes passionately performing tunes designed, in they're minds at least, to portray themselves as sensitive guys with lots of attractive qualities. My idea was to write a song that any girl would be repulsed by, and by virtue of reverse psychology, attracted to. My theory turned out to be correct because from the first time I started playing the song in Jackson Square I could tell lots of girls were amused by it. This is another song that benefits greatly from the added dynamic of a female vocal and I think Olivia sounds particularly good on it.
VaticaN.A.M.B.L.A--- Yeah, ya know, I just can't get over the whole “Catholic priests molesting children” thing. It strikes me as a significant detail. Lots of people have laughingly told me how this song is “just wrong” over the years but I don't see it that way at all. Convincing people you're some kind of liaison between them and the creator of the universe and using that position to indulge your bizarre and perverted sex fantasies is “just wrong”. Scathing ridicule of such people in the form of a catchy song is right on the money. These guys don't even have to pay taxes and I'm supposed to spare their feelings regarding their widely known, barely repressed pedophilia? Give me a break. They should be kicked out of their parishes and tarred and feathered on national television. For a while I was thinking of writing a musical about the subject and might still if I can come up with a good story. My favorite part the song is the thing about eating meat on Friday.
You Don't Suck Blood, You Just Suck--- Ah, the Vampire scene of late 90's early 2000's New Orleans. The whole French Quarter was overrun with prosthetic fang wearing kids with spooky contact lenses and black clothes they had bought at Gargoyle's. Kids who lived on the street would save up the money they panhandled and buy 400$ shoes that went up to their chins. To me this seemed like total insanity. In my view, the main thing that separated Vampire kids from Goths (whom the Vampire kids felt greatly superior to) is that Goths had a sense of humor about how ridiculous they were whereas Vampires took themselves quite seriously. They would walk by me with their noses turned up to the sky. It was only a matter of time before I wrote this song to irritate them and irritate them it did. I was “threatened” by butt-hurt Vampires on more than one occasion. I put “threatened” in quotation marks because these Vampire kids were possible the biggest dorks I've ever seen in my life. Their idea of a threat was to say, “This is your first warning. You only get 3.”. Three warnings?!?! You got to be shitting me! The guys that hang outside Port Authority they were not. I wrote the song on the acoustic guitar and that version is kind of folk-country, but for the album I used a cheesy pre-sequenced keyboard line as a way to make fun of the horrible dance music they listened to. And you gotta love the title.
Well that's it. I've got lots of other songs but those are the only ones I've managed to record. If you've read this far you must be a true fan so thank you for your interest in my work. I honestly believe that I have the coolest fans in world.
Wednesday, July 17, 2013
Jacked Up By The Pigs
One of my main personal rules for street living is to be as mobile as possible and to never get overly attached to one camp no matter how nice it is. It's natural to want the security of a home base, but the reality of the lifestyle is that it is not practical for that base to be permanent. At any moment the police could raid you or your camp could be invaded by other bums. Not to mention the fact that anyone could sneak up and kill you in your sleep.
I believe it is better to pare down to the necessities and take your home with you, mentally, wherever you go. But you'll frequently see green proto-homebums, fresh to the streets, building fortresses out of cardboard in some hole behind a building, trying to preserve some semblance of their lost domestic tranquility.
It's been raining here so for the last few nights. I've been holed up under my favorite bridge on West and 6th Streets. Not all bridges are created equal and this one is a true gem possessing both practical utility and mythic resonance. It's constructed of giant stones, real old school like, and is surrounded by lush greenery. It runs over Shoal Creek and when it rains the creek floods up to where I'm sleeping and threatens to wash me out, but the place is so big and elevated that it's never gotten me. At night you can hear the people partying up on 6th Street and at 8:30 PM, like clockwork, the bats come in and swoop around for a few minutes before moving on to the next bridge.
It is the most magical place I have found in Austin.
By vagaries of the geography and architecture, which I'm at pains to describe, the space under the bridge is strangely isolated and somewhat hard to get down to which is why I was so surprised to be awoken this morning with a flashlight in my face and a huge cop standing over me yelling, "AUSTIN POLICE DEPARTMENT, YOU CAN'T SLEEP HERE."
I was startled awake and sat up quickly making sure to keep my hands visible. As he walked toward me I had no great fear in my heart but simple resignation to the inevitable. The possibility of citation or arrest are a constant Sword of Damocles hanging over the head of any homeless person and eventually you just learn to live with it. Besides, I was prepared. My drugs were safely hidden under a rock 100 yards away so I knew the only thing he could hit me for was camping which would be a two or three day maximum if he wanted to be a dick about it. As luck would have it I drew a humanitarian.
"Look, don't worry." he said, "I'm not going to arrest you or anything. I'm just going to write you a citation for camping."
I said to him, "I want to point something out. I've only been down here for a couple of days because of the rain and yesterday I picked up a whole garbage bag full of trash and packed it out. There were beer cans and food wrappers and dirty clothes all over the place and now it looks great. I honestly feel I had a positive effect on the place, if any."
This is true. I always pick up all the trash wherever I sleep whether it's mine or not. I do this in the interest of aesthetics and general cleanliness but also so I can play this card in just such a situation. Though the cop could tell I was telling the truth, and claimed to sympathize, my efforts had been in vain.
"Don't take it personal. I'm sure you're a great guy. This citation isn't a big deal. Just take it down to city court and the judge will give you community service. You won't even have to pay a fine."
"Alright" I said, "But look, can I still come down here and read during the day? It is a part of Shoal Creek Park and it's such a beautiful place."
He said I could still hang out there and that he could see why I would want to.
Before leaving he said, "You've been doing pretty good if you've been here for over a year and this is the first time I've had to talk to you."
"I don't commit crimes." I told him. He didn't get the irony.
So on the plus side I now have official authorization to continue reading in the park but with the stipulation that I must perform community service for sleeping in a place no one ever goes. America is a fascist police state, but I already knew that, end of story.
Later while I was walking down to skid row to see about scoring some drugs I noticed an old guy over by the homeless shelter trying to pack a new box of cigarettes. He was in a wheelchair and appeared to be suffering from some form of Palsy. He was shaking pretty badly and kept dropping the box of smokes on the ground until finally some kind soul picked them up and offered to do it for him. (for a cigarette, of course)
"Damn" I thought, "Imagine what it must be like for that poor dude trying to survive in this environment. It's a sign of a sick society that someone in that condition isn't better cared for."
I walked around the block for a few minutes looking for discarded drugs on the ground. I came around to the local convenience store (MadDog 20/20 & Fried Shit) and out front I saw a couple of bicycle cops jacking up that poor old handicapped guy! They were writing him a ticket for flying a sign in front of the store asking for change. The cops were big and gruff and were menacingly explaining to the guy that if they caught him panhandling again he would be arrested and brought to jail.
It just goes to show that for every "friendly" cop there are at least two pig scumbags waiting to bully and harass an old Palsy victim just trying to make a little scratch. And even the "friendly" pigs still give you the ticket.
So I''l go to City Court and do my service but what is that old man going to do? Can he pick up trash off the side of the road? How can he pay a 180$ fine when he's just struggling to survive? The simple fact is that he wont be able to pay it and the next time some bully cop has nothing better to do but run his name he'll be shipped on down to the Dell Valley Jail with every thief, rapist and killer in Travis County. I'm sure he'll receive compassionate medical care from their highly professional staff.
People go insane here all the time. Just today a relatively normal guy I've known for months shit himself and started pounding himself on the chest screaming "NOOOOooooooo" over and over again. For two hours. Some say it's the drugs, and that is a piece of the puzzle. But an even bigger piece, in my opinion, is the lack of empathy and understanding with which this society treats it's least fortunate members. Why, in the face of such cold and irrational neglect any man would eventually go mad. Except for me, of course.
I believe it is better to pare down to the necessities and take your home with you, mentally, wherever you go. But you'll frequently see green proto-homebums, fresh to the streets, building fortresses out of cardboard in some hole behind a building, trying to preserve some semblance of their lost domestic tranquility.
It's been raining here so for the last few nights. I've been holed up under my favorite bridge on West and 6th Streets. Not all bridges are created equal and this one is a true gem possessing both practical utility and mythic resonance. It's constructed of giant stones, real old school like, and is surrounded by lush greenery. It runs over Shoal Creek and when it rains the creek floods up to where I'm sleeping and threatens to wash me out, but the place is so big and elevated that it's never gotten me. At night you can hear the people partying up on 6th Street and at 8:30 PM, like clockwork, the bats come in and swoop around for a few minutes before moving on to the next bridge.
It is the most magical place I have found in Austin.
By vagaries of the geography and architecture, which I'm at pains to describe, the space under the bridge is strangely isolated and somewhat hard to get down to which is why I was so surprised to be awoken this morning with a flashlight in my face and a huge cop standing over me yelling, "AUSTIN POLICE DEPARTMENT, YOU CAN'T SLEEP HERE."
I was startled awake and sat up quickly making sure to keep my hands visible. As he walked toward me I had no great fear in my heart but simple resignation to the inevitable. The possibility of citation or arrest are a constant Sword of Damocles hanging over the head of any homeless person and eventually you just learn to live with it. Besides, I was prepared. My drugs were safely hidden under a rock 100 yards away so I knew the only thing he could hit me for was camping which would be a two or three day maximum if he wanted to be a dick about it. As luck would have it I drew a humanitarian.
"Look, don't worry." he said, "I'm not going to arrest you or anything. I'm just going to write you a citation for camping."
I said to him, "I want to point something out. I've only been down here for a couple of days because of the rain and yesterday I picked up a whole garbage bag full of trash and packed it out. There were beer cans and food wrappers and dirty clothes all over the place and now it looks great. I honestly feel I had a positive effect on the place, if any."
This is true. I always pick up all the trash wherever I sleep whether it's mine or not. I do this in the interest of aesthetics and general cleanliness but also so I can play this card in just such a situation. Though the cop could tell I was telling the truth, and claimed to sympathize, my efforts had been in vain.
"Don't take it personal. I'm sure you're a great guy. This citation isn't a big deal. Just take it down to city court and the judge will give you community service. You won't even have to pay a fine."
"Alright" I said, "But look, can I still come down here and read during the day? It is a part of Shoal Creek Park and it's such a beautiful place."
He said I could still hang out there and that he could see why I would want to.
Before leaving he said, "You've been doing pretty good if you've been here for over a year and this is the first time I've had to talk to you."
"I don't commit crimes." I told him. He didn't get the irony.
So on the plus side I now have official authorization to continue reading in the park but with the stipulation that I must perform community service for sleeping in a place no one ever goes. America is a fascist police state, but I already knew that, end of story.
Later while I was walking down to skid row to see about scoring some drugs I noticed an old guy over by the homeless shelter trying to pack a new box of cigarettes. He was in a wheelchair and appeared to be suffering from some form of Palsy. He was shaking pretty badly and kept dropping the box of smokes on the ground until finally some kind soul picked them up and offered to do it for him. (for a cigarette, of course)
"Damn" I thought, "Imagine what it must be like for that poor dude trying to survive in this environment. It's a sign of a sick society that someone in that condition isn't better cared for."
I walked around the block for a few minutes looking for discarded drugs on the ground. I came around to the local convenience store (MadDog 20/20 & Fried Shit) and out front I saw a couple of bicycle cops jacking up that poor old handicapped guy! They were writing him a ticket for flying a sign in front of the store asking for change. The cops were big and gruff and were menacingly explaining to the guy that if they caught him panhandling again he would be arrested and brought to jail.
It just goes to show that for every "friendly" cop there are at least two pig scumbags waiting to bully and harass an old Palsy victim just trying to make a little scratch. And even the "friendly" pigs still give you the ticket.
So I''l go to City Court and do my service but what is that old man going to do? Can he pick up trash off the side of the road? How can he pay a 180$ fine when he's just struggling to survive? The simple fact is that he wont be able to pay it and the next time some bully cop has nothing better to do but run his name he'll be shipped on down to the Dell Valley Jail with every thief, rapist and killer in Travis County. I'm sure he'll receive compassionate medical care from their highly professional staff.
People go insane here all the time. Just today a relatively normal guy I've known for months shit himself and started pounding himself on the chest screaming "NOOOOooooooo" over and over again. For two hours. Some say it's the drugs, and that is a piece of the puzzle. But an even bigger piece, in my opinion, is the lack of empathy and understanding with which this society treats it's least fortunate members. Why, in the face of such cold and irrational neglect any man would eventually go mad. Except for me, of course.
Wednesday, June 26, 2013
Waiting In Line
I get in line.
Older, obviously drunk and high, gay
man yelling at someone in the line, “DONT TRY TO SHOVE YOUR FUCKING
GOD IN MY FACE! WHO ARE YOU TO JUDGE ME?!? DO I TELL YOU WHAT TO DO?
FUCK NO! IF YOU HAVE A PROBLEM WITH ME GET OUT OF THE FUCKING LINE!”
Older black lady, “It says in the
Bible, 'It's a sin for a man to lay with another man.'”
Young, angry black guy in back of the
line, “WE JUST BELIEVE IN THE BIBLE BECAUSE THE SLAVE MASTER SHOVED
IT DOWN OUR THROATS! WE JUST BELIEVE IN THE BIBLE BECAUSE THE SLAVE
MASTER SHOVED IT DOWN OUR THROATS!”
The older, drunk, almost certainly high
on K2, gay guy now really working himself into a huff, “NOW SEE,
IT'S OK FOR YOU TO THINK THAT. THAT'S THE GREAT THING ABOUT AMERICA.
YOU'RE FREE TO BELIEVE THAT, AND WHATEVER OTHER STUPID BULLSHIT YOU
WANT. JUST DON'T TRY TO TELL ME WHAT TO DO.”
The old lady, “You better believe
you're going to have to answer for it.”
The angry guy in the back of the line,
“WE JUST BELIEVE IN THE BIBLE BECAUSE THE SLAVE MASTER SHOVED IT
DOWN OUR THROATS! YOU THINK THAT SHIT COMES FROM THE MIDDLE EAST?
THAT BULLSHIT COMES FROM EUROPE! YAHWEH MY ASS.”
A kid gets in line in back of me. He's
bedraggled and limping and gives the general impression of being
injured. He says, “Hey guess what? I got hit by a car this morning
going 40 miles an hour on the highway. I woke up and was walking down
the road and, “BAM”, I hit the pavement and he sped off. It
fucked up my leg pretty bad.”
“Did you go to the hospital?”
He responded as if that was the
craziest idea he had ever heard, “Fuck no! I got up and walked
away. Man, fuck this line, I'm gonna go look for some leftovers.”
Just then a kid with a big, red afro
comes running down Piss Alley with another guy right on his tail,
“Get the fuck away from me you fucking asshole! What the fuck is
wrong with you?”
The red haired guy ran past me and the
crazy guy stopped in the middle of the street in front of the line.
He looked me right in the eyes and started to scream in a
cartoonishly high pitched voice, “HEY LOOK, I'M NOT FROM AROUND
HERE AND I'M NOT SURE WHERE I'M AT. YOU GUYS AREN'T GOINING TO TRY TO
BEAT ME UP ARE YOU? PLEASE DON'T BEAT ME UP.”
No one said anything. I almost wanted
to go up and start punching him just because I knew he would begin
screaming in an even more comical fashion, but no.
He ran into the middle of the
intersection and began contorting and writhing on the ground. The red
haired guy explained to the security guard that he had smoked a stick
of K2 with the guy and he suddenly went batshit insane. They went to
the intersection to try and drag the guy out of there. As they
grabbed for his feat and hands he struggled to get away and continued
to scream, “PLEASE DON'T BEAT ME UP. PLEASE. NOOOOOOOO!!!”
They finally got him and carried him to
the corner like a sack of potatoes. They dumped him on the sidewalk
and the red haired guy walked away. The security guard asked if he
should call the ambulance but the old Christian lady said, “No,
he's just fucked up on that K2 stick. He'll be fine in five or ten
minutes.”
The maniac had meanwhile quieted down
and was sitting on the corner in a contemplative state.
An old man gets in line in back of me
and tries to hand me a plastic bag with ramen soups and canned
sausages in it, “Alright, are you going to go and try to trade
these soups and these sausages for a stick?”
“I think you got the wrong guy.”
“Oh, I thought you were going to try
to trade this food to the Jamaican for a stick.”
“I don't know the Jamaican all that
well.”
“OK then, I'll ask someone else.”
The angry guy at the end of the line,
“HE'S RIGHT TO STAND UP FOR HIMSELF. I SAY HE'S RIGHT. THAT BIBLE
SHIT CONTROLES YOUR MIND. JESUS IS A EUROPEAN WHITE MAN!”
The security guard opens the door, “Ten
more people.” The old lady and the irate gay guy and his boyfriend
all go in to eat. The K2 maniac gets up off sidewalk and gets in line
where the angry guy explains to him how the Bible has been used to
control black people for centuries. I listen while smoking cigarettes
in a dream like state. Ten more minutes to go.
Monday, May 27, 2013
My Review of Drinking Mouthwash
When
you spend a lot of time on the streets, you begin to classify bums by
the different drugs they use as an easy way to predict their
behavior. You of course have your languid weed bums and their new sub-group,
the K2 bum, who spends all day in a semi-psychotic state talking to
himself and starring at the ground. You have your heroin bums who nod off mid-sentence and you have your crack bums who rage all night
and into the early morning hours until they finally hit some kind of
critical mass around sunrise and begin to believe the birds are out
to get them.
Then you have the old mainstay: the
drunken bum, who has, by virtue of commercial variety, multiple
sub-distinctions. At the top of the tree is the beer bum who is
usually somewhat more functional and articulate than his brethren.
The whiskey bum is reduced to a semi-human state in which even simple
panhandling becomes an insurmountable challenge. Not to be outdone is
the MadDog bum, shunned even by his own kind for his uncivilized
behavior and brutish countenance. In all cases the drunken bum is a
primal being who lives or dies by his integration with his
environment. If a bum is skilled you can barely see him as he blends
in, chameleon-like, with his surroundings.
If you think there could be no further
rung down the ladder than the MadDog bum you are mistaken, because no
matter how depraved he may become he has the comfort of knowing that
his drug of choice was, in fact, manufactured for human consumption.
Not so the mouthwash bum, who would be shamed by the horrible social
stigma his poison incurs if only he was coherent enough to perceive
it. Alienated from society, mocked by other bums, the mouthwash bum
stands alone as a symbol of how far some people have to go before
they finally hit “rock bottom.”
This is the strata that I occupy.
Oh yes, I've drank mouthwash, my friends. If you
weren't careful I might have drank all of yours when you
weren't looking. Before you hone in on the negatives, I want to call
your attention to some of the benefits of drinking mouthwash:
1: It's legal to carry anywhere. You
can bring it in the library if you want to. This is no small
consideration to the bums who live under constant threat of citation
or arrest for drinking alcohol in public.
2: It's dirt cheep and at 27% alcohol
it's a much better value than MadDog., especially if you get the
generic brand.
3: You can buy it on Sunday. Have you
ever woken up with a bad hangover on Sunday and counted down the
minutes of excruciating agony before you could finally buy a drink?
Not the mouthwash bum. He just heads to the oral hygiene section.
4: Minty fresh breath.
Now I know what you're saying, “You
can't drink mouthwash! It's made with isopropyl alcohol. You'll go
blind !” This is a common misconception. Mouthwash is made
with Ethanol, it's all the other stuff they put in it to freshen your
breath that makes you sick. And make you sick it does, my friends,
and deranged beyond all reason.
I went on a mouthwash binge myself not
long ago. I like to think of it as an Arthur Rimbaud kind of thing,
warping the senses to experience the full the limits of the human
experience and true mental freedom. A courageous adventure into the
depths of the human soul. Unfortunately my girlfriend didn't see it
that way.
Fun
Factor---2 : Does waking up in the morning, shaking so bad you can
hardly stand up and stumbling to the pharmacy where the cashier eyes
you with open disgust and grudgingly rings you up in awkward silence
sound like fun? All alcoholism is ugly but add mouthwash to the
equation and you have a phenomenon most people aren’t even prepared
to process. As for the high I can only compare it to absinthe as it is
like the standard alcohol buzz with a little something extra added
in. In this case the “little something extra” is Eucalyptol and
Methyl Salicylate, both of which are toxic in high
doses. I can't say if it was just my imagination, but it seemed like
the effect was more disorienting than most alcohol. One thing I can
say for sure was that after a few days it started to wreak havoc on
my throat and stomach. If you think throwing up tequila is bad, try
Listerine. I give it two instead of one just because it's always a
little bit fun to do something so anti-social, even if one of the
side-effects is vomiting blood.
Social Stigma---10: People
are very sensitive about the whole “drinking their mouthwash”
thing. The girl I was seeing at the time just couldn't get over it.
Even if I went to the store and bought it with my own money she would harangue me for hours. Hey, I can understand your position, but try to
understand mine. If they sold beer on Sunday I would never have even
thought to drink mouthwash in the first place. We live in a deeply
broken society and I am simply a product of it. The government, with
it's acquiescence to the “moral authority” of the Church made it
inevitable that I would end up drinking mouthwash. It was a foregone
conclusion. Anyway, that's what I told her but she wouldn't let it
go.
Fear Factor---3/10: Much of alcoholism is tied up with the cycle of anxiety and relaxation that
is inherent to the alcohol binge. A large part of your consciousness
is tied up with how relaxed you are feeling at the moment and
whether or not you should be feeling better than you do. When the
booze is at full tilt, you become calm and even-keeled enough to function, albeit in a confused and foolhardy manner. When you are in the
middle of a dry spell, like at night or on Sunday morning for example, the soul
crushing anxiety begins to take hold and it's all you can do
to keep yourself from shaking. The obvious way to avoid this
negative feedback loop is not drinking in the first place but
once it's started the cycle can be very difficult, and even dangerous,
to stop.
Value of Psychedelic Insights
Obtained---0: This one is a toss-up because in some ways the
insights you obtain while drinking mouthwash are completely accurate.
The problem is that they only pertain to the stupidity of drinking
mouthwash and the fragility of human life. You wouldn't need those
insights if you didn't drink mouthwash in the first place so they are of limited value. One side effect that's of some
interest to the psychedelic warrior is that during the detox phase you
experience vivid hallucinations and frighteningly realistic dreams. I
can't say I obtained any valuable insights from them but they definitely constituted an “altered state of consciousness.” You
will see the pink elephants, and they will not be amusing.
Detox---10: Detoxing from alcohol is something everyone from New Orleans experiences at least
once in their lives. It's a right of passage akin to catching a Zulu Coconut or sleeping with a teenage runaway from Monroe. As brutal
experiences go, few compare to checking yourself into the the ER and
telling them you have a four pint a day mouthwash habit. If you're
lucky they'll give you some Ativan but some states don't go for that
kind of thing and if you don't play your cards right you can end up
in the padded room. Detox takes a good week or so and includes
several shades of paranoia that you weren't previously aware of. Definitely not worth the menacing hallucinations, no matter how realistic they are.
But you didn't need me to
tell you that, did you? Most people would never consider drinking
mouthwash even if you told them it was the best thing since Hindu Kush.
And that's a good thing. That chaotic vortex of depravity is not for the curious observer but only
for the experienced aficionado who cannot tolerate the tyranny of government over his drinking habits and has a hearty tolerance for the disdain of his fellows. Whether or not this disdain is deserved is debatable but you can rest assured that you will not have people lined up to invite you over for dinner. Even if you do it's only a matter of time before they start hiding their Listerine.
Saturday, May 25, 2013
My Review of Inhaling Scotchgard
When I was growing up, the kids I hung
out with didn't care about racial or class boundaries. Rich or poor,
white, black or Indian, it didn't matter to us one way or another. We
weren’t interested in such trivialities because we were all driven
by the same purpose and there was only one question that absorbed
each of our minds, “What household chemicals can we get fucked up
on?” Some huffed gasoline while others got more exotic and delved
into the pool supplies. I knew one kid named Tommy Swallow who got so
into huffing paint thinner that his parents sent him away to a
brainwashing boot camp. We didn't see him for a long time and when he
came back he had a drone mentality and the thousand yard stare. I
don't know if it was the boot camp or the paint thinner but something
had fucked him up pretty bad.
It was the guitar player of my high
school band who turned me on to Scotchgard, which is a stain and
water repellent for upholstery. He said it “made you hallucinate
better than acid” and told me how to concentrate it into a
washcloth and huff in the fumes, “Or if you're hard core you can
“mainline” it by putting the rag over your mouth and inhaling the
Scotchgard directly.”, using the rag as a kind of filter. I was
open to trying any drug in those days. You might say, “How are you
any different now?” and the answer is, “Now I look up the pills I
find on the internet before I take them.” Back then I would have
skipped the research faze and moved right into human testing. I vowed
then and there that I would try huffing Scotchgard myself the next
time I got the opportunity.
Which happened not long after because
Scotchgard is easy to come by and I had fairly lax parents who
frequently let me spend whole weekends at my, often much older,
friend's houses. Because I could play the drums and owned a drum set
I was immediately accepted into a couple of bands with juniors and
seniors and even one with actual adults. It was hanging out with
these older, much more worldly people that I would learn how to play
music, take drugs, have sex and basically do all the things in life
that matter. One weekend when I was over at my friend Brian's house,
the “adult” who's band I was in, Brian got a call to come into
work and I ended up having his place to myself all night. Well, not
quite “to myself”. Brian was a pot dealer who had gone to my
school and we always had crazy parties at his house with other kids
from the school and people from around the neighborhood. Because it
got a reputation as a “party house” there was always lots of
people coming and going and the neighbors from across the street felt
perfectly comfortable coming in without knocking or ringing the bell.
It was that night that I would take my first, and last, foray into
the alternate reality that is upholstery sealant.
I have now decided to begin reviewing
drugs I have taken in the past in addition to those I find on the
ground. The fact is I really want to write this review but I don't
ever see myself huffing Scotchgard again. Or maybe I will when I'm an
old man. I'll save it up as a last blast before I finally succumb to
the radiation poisoning.
Degree of Disassociation from
Reality--- 10: If you think Salvia sends you to another place you
obviously haven't huffed much Scotchgard in your day 'cause, let me
tell you, Scotchgard takes “disassociative” to a whole new level.
It's like an extended stay compared to a late night fly over. If
you've always had something you wanted to say to the
inter-dimensional beings and couldn't get it out in the time it took
for your toad venom to wear off, Scotchgard will finally give you the
chance. I was sitting in a chair “mainlining” the stuff like my
guitar player had told me and after a few deep breathes I would no
longer be sitting in a chair at my friends house, but traveling
through the depths of my subconscious mind. The euphoria was intense.
I can't remember now what I saw specifically but only that it was all
enveloping, multicolored, and gave the sensation of weightlessness.
As always with inhalants there was the vague feeling that something
profound was taking place. Then, as I would start to come to, I would
become aware of the nauseating chemical taste in my mouth and the
greasy rag draped across my face as I lay back in the computer chair
as far as it would go, drooling and gibbering like a chimp. I'd say
the hypnotic effect was so strong that you could have amputated all
of my toes and I wouldn't have noticed until the can went dry.
Ability to Function---3: As you've
probably guessed Scotchgard isn't the kind of drug you can do while
performing open heart surgery or giving a piano recital. When you're
under the influence you are fully incapacitated and completely
incapable of logical thought. That night when I was in the middle of
a blast, the neighbor from across the street came over to use the
phone and, as usual, he walked in without knocking. He might as well
have been a visitor from another planet. It was several minutes
before I could even tell he was a person, as opposed to a color or a
piece of fabric. Later he told me that I was trying to get out of the
chair and kept falling over, “You looked happy as a pig in shit
though. You was laughing your ass off. What the hell were you on
anyway?”
“Water sealant.” I said
“Man, crazy motherfuckin' white
people. Water sealant?!?!?! You need some guidance.”
The reason I give it three is that if
the burglars come in right when you're between hits you might be able
to mount some kind of half-assed defense in your 30 second “window
of clarity ” before you brace yourself for another rip.
Value of Psychedelic Insights
Obtained--- 5: Like most inhalants Scotchgard knows how to do the
song and dance but doesn't deliver the goods in the end. You're
euphoria level is so high that it can easily obscure the fact that
you've been staring at a door knob for ten minutes contemplating it's
intricacies and mythic symbolism. Inhalants are great for people who
want to be entertained but not very useful if you want to expand the
bounds of your consciousness, because they will make you think every
idea you have is profound thus obscuring your ability to make
objective value judgments. The reason I give it a five is that the
immersion of the experience is so great while at the same time being
benign so it could conceivably give a neophyte psychedelic warrior
some insight into what kinds of mental states are attainable while
not overwhelming them with brutal objective realities. Kind of a like
the kid's roller coasters at the park only with a more pronounced
chemical aftertaste.
Fun Factor--- 8: Inhalants are pretty
fun in general and Scotchgard gets some extra points for the simple
depravity of it. It's the kind of thing that makes for colorful
stories to tell the grandchildren before they too succumb to the
radiation. I feel lucky that I had such a full and rewarding high
school experience! The only reason I don't give Scotchgard a perfect
ten in this category is that there is one brutal downside I have yet
to mention.
The Come-Down--- 1: Utterly and
absolutely brutal. If there had been any confusion in your mind about
whether huffing Scotchgard was bad for you, the way you feel the next
morning will clear it right up. The horrible chemical taste I
mentioned earlier seems to permeate your entire being and flavors the
agony in you head all the way down to your gastro-intestinal tract.
You can brush your teeth and rinse with mouthwash but the essence is
deep down in your lungs, which are now conveniently resistant to
water and most stains. If you want to commune with alternate
realities you have to pay the price in ours, and Lady Scotchgard is a
harsh mistress indeed. I wouldn't advise doing it on a night before
you have to give your doctoral dissertation or operate a crane.
Indeed, I cannot in good conscience
recommend that anyone ever does Scotchgard. The dangers are too great
and the benefits too fleeting for further experimentation, in this
researcher's opinion. I huffed it for you so you could experience the
thrill vicariously. Ultimately, it doesn't matter what I think
because the suits down at the Scotchgard factory got wise and changed
the formula so as to make it unsuitable for use as a recreational
drug. I'm not sure what they did to it but I can report that the new
Scotchgard coming out just isn't the same as the stuff I huffed in
the Spring of my youth. Oh wait...I said earlier that I never did
Scotchgard again, didn’t I? I meant to say I never did “good”
Scotchgard again. The stuff the kids are huffing these days is
strictly shwag.
My Review of Crack Cocain
I have been to the crack houses of
New Orleans and I have smoked crack with the crackheads there. I have
sat with the Native Americans in the mysterious deserts of Sedona,
Arizona and I smoked crack with them too. In Colorado I met a Yaqui
Indian named Wahako. He shared with me his great tribal wisdom while
downing pint after pint of Takka Vodka and, after telling me for the
fiftieth time that his name was Wahako and that he was a Yaqui
Indian, he pulled out his peace pipe and we smoked to our new
friendship. Did I say “peace pipe”? I meant “crack pipe”.
I've smoked a lot of crack my friends, and if there's one thing I've
learned, it's that crack is expensive. Except when you find it on the
ground.
Like this one time when I was living in
a flop-house in the Garden District of New Orleans. As I was climbing
up the stairs to my rat-hole room I looked down and happened to
notice a small leather pouch sitting at the base of the stairs. I
snagged it up, put it in my pocket and rushed on up. When I opened
the pouch and emptied it on the the table a torrent of crack rocks
came cascading out into an off-white pile. Individually wrapped,
twenty dollar rocks and forty dollar rocks, all told five hundred
dollars worth. There was also everything you need to smoke crack.
Crack pipes, fresh Chore Boy, and a piece of wire hanger to push the
Chore Boy from one side of the pipe to the other thus collecting all
the crack oil residue in the pipe. This is called the “push” and
is often the best hit of all.
My friend Ray was there and we were
both completely astonished. I, and I'm sure he, had never seen so
much crack before. Now that I think about it I had, on one other
occasion, but this time it was mine. I said to him, “OK look, we're
going to smoke a couple of rocks and then tomorrow I'm going to sell
the rest to this crackhead I know.”
“Whatever you say.”
Twelve hours, and several hundred hits
later, Ray finally drove home after having sworn universal brotherly
love to me at least twenty or thirty times. I then went on a journey
of deep, soul crushing despair that lasted the rest of the day. As I
sat there grinding my teeth and cursing my stupidity, I reflected on
how unhappy the person who had lost that leather pouch must have
been. Losing five hundred dollars worth of crack is the kind of thing
that can get you shot.
Several months ago I found a crack pipe
hidden in a bush on 6th Street and got a good rip off it, so I feel
it has been recent enough to warrant a review.
Fun Factor---10: There is a reason
people smoke crack, my friends, despite it's being perhaps the most
stigmatized drug in America. Have you ever been on The Pirates of the
Caribbean ride at Disney Land? Have you ever sledded down freshly
fallen snow? Have you ever played with a puppy? Have you ever had sex
with someone you were completely smitten with? Crack is more fun than
all of that combined. It's like your brain takes a trip to Disney
Land and rides Pirates of the Caribbean all by itself. The problem is
the ride only lasts ten minutes.
Fear Factor--- 0 or 10: This one is
hard to judge because, although I personally have never gotten
paranoid on crack, I have seen people go from completely relaxed to
completely certain the police were on to us after one hit. The
paranoia it causes appears to be more pronounced in those that smoke
it regularly and does not seem to deter them in any way. Maybe it's
part of the appeal. It is a bit of a bummer to hang out with someone
in that state however because they want you to join in their fantasy
and be just as paranoid as they are.
Come-Down---1: This is by far the worst
part about doing crack. Like I said, the high only lasts ten minutes
and after that you have two choices: suffer mental anguish or smoke
more crack. This is the factor that drives many crackheads to violent
crime as, when you are in the middle of it, it feels like you would
be justified in doing anything to prolong the experience. It's
ability to quickly turn an otherwise rational person into a raving
animal is what makes crack one of the scariest drugs on the market.
It is wise to have some tranquilizers on hand to take the edge off
the landing.
Value of Psychedelic Insights
Obtained---2: It's hard to imagine a drug being more conducive to
total bullshit than crack. It will make you think you are having
valuable insights but, in reality, you are having delusional
fantasies, often of grandeur. If a pattern is not really there, crack
is certain to make you see it clearly. It will also make you prone to
misguided sentimentality, such as telling someone you barely know
that you love them. The only reason I give it a score of two is that
one time when I was smoking crack I had a revelation that my
girlfriend and I were incompatible, which was true, but it must be
noted that I was on heroin also which may well have compromised the
experiment.
Makes You Do Weird Shit Factor---10:
Crack makes you do weird shit. The night I found that pouch I ended
up climbing to my neighbor's balcony and taking hits up there for
several hours. I had no ill intentions toward my neighbor at all, I
just wanted to sit on a balcony and didn't see why I shouldn't. Try
explaining that to the police. I knew one guy who would dress up in
girl costumes and dance around to House music every time he smoked. I
say “girl costumes” as opposed to “woman’s clothing”
because I have never seen a real woman dressed in such a way. He had
a sense of humor about it though which, how could you not? Still, it
could be kind of awkward when I had company over. So common is
bizarre behavior on crack that the term “crackhead” has become
synonymous with it and, from what I've seen, the reputation is
deserved.
Now, I wouldn't want to give you the
impression that I'm a frequent crack smoker. I'll usually only do it
with crackheads as a “When in Rome...” kind of thing. Like, when
I'm in Asheville I eat vegan food and go on nature hikes and when I'm
in New Orleans I drink King Cobra and smoke crack. Also, I have a
hard and fast rule which is to never smoke crack when you are in a
good mood. Just one hit can completely ruin your day if you were
feeling good already so only do it if you are down in the dumps and
presumably have nothing to lose.
It's worth pointing out that most of
what I've said about crack also applies to powder cocaine, but to a
slightly less degree. I'll never forget the time I was partying with
this defense contractor in Houston. He usually snorted cocaine but for
some reason he couldn't score and ended up buying a bunch of crack
from a friend of mine. “I think I really like this stuff.”, he
kept saying over and over again. By the end of the night all he could
say was, “I'm never smoking crack again!” And he did.
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