The Akashik Record has gone viral

Sub-title: 2005 washed over me and I time-travelled. Not with a phone booth, but a mouse and laptop

I did a weird thing last night. Let me rephrase that. Last night, I was scouting around the internet for pictures and things to add to my new Facebook page, and I ended up logging into my Myspace account because I knew I had some pictures on there that've been lost everywhere else. Like everybody nowadays, I hadn't even thought of that profile for at least 2 years which is long enough in real-world time. But in internet time this equates roughly to the process of star death. After getting what I was after, I wiped some of the dust off of things and decided to poke around a little, which landed me squarely in an archive of messages dating back 7 years. 7 years...let's think about that. For some people, possibly more solid folks than I am, 7 years doesn't mean much. Changes in wardrobe or style, possibly car. For me though, 7 years ago is an entire lifetime. I do this, have done this, multiple times. I can look back in increments of years over the course of my life and say that literally, my life has completely changed multiple times. Obviously I'm still me. My parents are still my parents, I'll always have grown up in the same place, etc etc. But other than the physically unchangeable facts of my life, I can say with absolute certainty that in the last 20 years, back to when I really started to exert my independence and stretch my legs out in the world, I've entirely changed my life at least 5 times. Maybe I have no real sense of how normal this is, and in fact it's something that happens to everyone. But for me, going through that glut of messages dating back to 2005, it got my head cocking to the side, my eyes widening a little to think about the many changes that have occurred in my life. Maybe the thing that seems so odd about it to me is not that things have changed for me, but how precisely everything seemed the change in these phases at exactly the same time. It's what makes me think of these things in terms of entire little lives lived in the course of one big life.I think specifics would be good here. For example, just 2 years ago, in 2010, I can look back on my last "life" which occurred before this one. I had a. a different band b. a girlfriend I haven't talked to since we broke up that summer c. an entirely different set of friends save for 2 stalwarts who're part of those "physical unchangeable facts" and are always there through all phases d. I was not in school yet for my psyche degree e. I had an entirely different set of goals and aspirations f. I was still using Myspace, and didn't even attempt my first Facebook page until later that year g. I drove a different car
There's more I could put, but you get the idea. Even my personality and look were a bit different. And all of these things more or less changed simultaneous with the end of the previous "life" before 2010. And that life ended at the end of 2010 and an entire new life began for me. And this has happened repeatedly throughout my life. Why? I have my suspicions. Personal insights. But whereas I used to think about this a lot, I really don't much anymore. These things happened. I learned what I needed to learn from these other "lives" and took what I needed and moved on to the next. I'm not shallow. I've cared greatly for the people, things, and experiences of these other "lives", Sometimes, you just outgrow them, or they can outgrow you. So getting an unexpected look back last night, at conversations with old band members, old girlfriends (through the entire  beginning, middle, and awful, painful end in one case), old friends, even old events I planned or attended, and bands I was obsessive about at the time, I thought about these lives I've lived, for better or worse. This "life", the one I'm living now, is the best one yet. That's not a re-writing of history. I haven't always insisted I was living the best life I could be living. Sometimes I thought things were good and I was ok with them, sometimes I was settling and knew it, and sometimes I fought to evolve. But this life...this is what I've always been fighting for. This is the life, these are the people, the music, the environment, the everything, that I've wanted all along but didn't know the specifics.And the best part is, I absolutely know it.

"Summer's going fast, nights getting colder
 children growing up, old friends getting older.
 Freeze this moment a little bit longer,
 make each impression a little bit stronger"...
                                                                    ~ Neil Peart, "Time Stand Still"

My favorites - part 1

I just finished High Fidelity again for the trillionth time, and a funny thing happened somewhere in the last quarter. A Doc Marten-ed foot attached to a  denim-ed leg came right out of the book and kicked me in the side of the head, and when I dropped it, it fell to the floor on its cover, it opened into a mouth. Then it started yelling at me which was weird. Ok weirder. But it was yelling at me in a British accent, which is cool. "So, you just started this blog, linked to your facebook page about music, and you haven't written a single word about your favorite music?! No 'favorite' or 'best of' lists?!! TOSSER! You're not fit to call yourself a musician!!" A couple things here. The book was written in 1995, but I imagine Rob and his mates would evolve with the times. I imagine Dick and Barry would have snobby blogs about the best music there is which you've likely never heard of, and how painfully stupid you are if you haven't (in Barry's case). And yes, Rob is John Cusack in the movie, and Marie LaSalle is Lisa Bonet, and Charlie is Katherine Zeta-Jones, and Laura is blonde. The casting is near-perfect. But the book takes place in England, Marie LaSalle is white with blonde hair, and Charlie has short blonde hair, and Laura has brown hair. Anyway, this weird hallucination led me here, to my multiple lists of favorite music. It's pretty long, as you might expect, and covers multiple genres. No breaking off into sub-genres or numbering, except in a few cases here or there where I may note something gets the #1 spot. Not all genres are covered, only a few. And I did the tacky thing of throwing opera and classical/neo-/post-classical into the same list. My theory and percussion professors would kill me if they knew, and if they could find me almost a decade later. Some titles have notes, some don't. These are my favorites, not yours, and they're probably not the same as yours. I take music seriously, but what's good is all opinion. Here it is.

The 5 Things In My Car Stereo This Week
 Figured I'd start with something easy. Here are the discs that make up my driving soundtrack lately.

"American Songbook Vol.1" mix cd, made by me
You'd think this was full of standards and classics of American music. It's not. It's things that feel or sound decidedly American to me and are classics in my mind, even when they're new. Not every important thing is covered here obviously, but it's for me to listen to and enjoy, so who cares?
Tracks:
1. A Map of the World" - Pat Metheny
2. Alice - Tom Waits - First/title track from his concept album about, yes, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. More about this record in another list.
3. Jolene - Dolly Parton
4. Hellhound On My Trail - Robert Johnson
5. Strange Fruit - Cassandra Wilson - I really like this version. If anyone were to cover it, she's got the perfect voice. And the arrangement reflects the lyrics really well. I think I've listened to that live version of the original so many times I wanted something a little different.
6.  Lost Highway - Hank Williams
7. Christmas Card From a Hooker in Minneapolis - Tom Waits - if this song doesn't make you feel something, I don't know about you.
8. Willow Weep for Me - Billie Holiday
9. New York, New York - Ryan Adams  - no it's not a Sinatra cover. That's not a slight on you, it's a slight on me because that's what I thought when I got this album lol
10. Release the Stars - Rufus Wainwright - a modern torch singer, he reminds me a lot of Tom Waits. Of course the voice is very different, but the feel, the style, is similar. I like them for similar reasons.
11. I Left My Heart in San Francisco (live) - Tony Bennet - in just over 2 minutes, this guy tells you everything about himself. Sometimes quiet, introspective, and wistful, sometimes rafter-shaking powerful and aggressively grabbing onto what he loves, and a million other moods and facets pass from his lips to yours in the time it takes to make a cup of coffee. And he leaves you feeling like he's singing to you and no one else.
12. Big River - Johnny Cash
13. Steady As She Goes - The Raconteurs - I love, love, love the hook in this song, and I always love listening to Jack White's voice, and his songs. Because, let's face it, this is his project, start to finish.
14. Death Letter (live) - Cassandra Wilson - another cover, this time Son House. I really couldn't get enough of this when I first heard it.Seriously, I listened to it over and over again.
14. Ruby (Don't Take Your Love to Town) - Kenny Rogers - the thing I love so much about country music is in this song. You stop, and you think, and then you go "wooooah". Simple lyrics, I suppose, but dark. And not the kind of dark that's all ghosts or serial killers or something. It's that idea of the "dark night of the soul". It's about humanity, and just how terrible it can be sometimes.
15. Your Cheatin' Heart - Hank Williams - take my last comments and superimpose them here, and after "Lost Highway". What adds that extra edge, that acknowledgment of the chasm of melancholy at our feet, is that most of Hank's songs are auto-biographical. Damn.
16. Girl From the North Country - Johnny Cash & Bob Dylan
17. Answering Bell - Ryan Adams
18. Seven Nation Army - The White Stripes
This American Life
 - "Scenes From a Recession" (episode 399, I think?) - I love this show, and when I get tired of listening to music, and I don't have a good audiobook handy, I go to the podcasts of this show. Every week there's a theme, and a really interesting take on that theme, with 3-4 stories related to it each week. You can download podcasts for free on Itunes, and I believe from their website.
Shooter Jennings & Hierophant - "Black Ribbons" - more on this under "favorite concept albums".
Kurt Vonnegut - A Man Without a Country (audiobook) 
Black Crowes - Amorica

My Top Metal Albums
You'll notice here that I'm very much old-school. Not at all to say I don't like anything else. I love some of the newer stuff, by which I mean things released in the last 10-15 years haha (not really up on the new, new stuff, though I should really fix that. Help?), it's just that my formative years were spent listening to metal and classic rock, so those are the albums that feature prominently here.

Ozzy - "Diary of a Madman"
         - "Bl'izzard of Oz"
         - "No Rest for the Wicked"
         - "Tribute"
         - "Speak of the Devil"
         - "The Ultimate Sin"
         - "No More Tears"
         - "Live & Loud"
Slayer - "Reign In Blood"
          - "Decade of Aggression"
          - "Seasons in the Abyss"
          - "South of Heaven"
"Rust in Peace" - Megadeth
"Spiritual Healing" - Death
"Pierced from Within" - Suffocation
"Ghost Reveries" - Opeth
"Aenima" - Tool
Metallica -"Ride the Lightning"
                "Master of Puppets"
                "...And Justice for All"  
"Practice What You Preach" - Testament
"Necrotism - Descanting the Insalubrious" - Carcass
"Humanure" - Cattle Decapitation
 "La Sexorcisto: Devil Music, Vol.1" - White Zombie
Cradle of Filth - "Dusk...and Her Embrace"
                         "Cruelty and the Beast"
                         "Damnation and a Day"
                         "Live Bait for the Dead"
"Alive or Just Breathing" - Killswitch Engage
Black Sabbath - s/t
                       - "Paranoid"
                       - "Master of Reality"
                       - "Vol. 4"
                       - "Sabbath Bloody Sabbath"
                       - "Sabotage"
                       - "Technical Ecstasy"
                       - "Never Say Die"
Pantera - "Cowboys from Hell"
             - "Vulgar Display of Power"
             - "Far Beyond Driven"
             - "The Great Southern Trendkill"
             - "Live: 101 Proof"
"Leviathan" - Mastodon
"Operation: Mindcrime" - Queensryche  - more about this under my top concept albums

I'm going to stop here. Because I could go on, and on, and on, and on. I reserve the right to add to it later as I'm sure I've missed some glaring examples of albums that are or were incredibly important to me. But when you're doing a list from memory, and you've been listening to music seriously for almost 3 decades, who can remember every single thing?

My Top Jazz Albums

1. "A Love Supreme" - John Coltrane Quartet - this is my number one of all-time. Arguments can be made but frankly I don't care what they are. This is the album I come back to over and over, the one that broke my ears open in one of the most profound ways I've ever experienced and my life would be different without it. Not metaphorically. My life would literally be different if a very wise and incredible old friend hadn't introduced me to this many years ago. It changed everything. My life would be sadder, more miserable, less had I never heard it. Again, literally. I'm not going to bother to describe what it means to me, or even the music itself. I can't.
"Kind of Blue" - Miles Davis
John Coltrane - and now for the rest:
                      - "Giant Steps"
                      - "My Favorite Things"
                      - "Blue Train"
                      - "Africa/Brass"
"Mingus Ah-um" - Charles Mingus
"Out to Lunch" - Eric Dolphy
"Anatomy of a Murder" - Duke Ellington
"Blues and the Abstract Truth" - Oliver Nelson
"The Art of the Trio, volume III - Songs" - Brad Mehldau
"The Art of the Trio, volume IV - Back at the Village Vanguard" - Brad Mehldau
"Underground" - Thelonious Monk
"Sun Song" - Sun Ra


Considering how very long this has taken me to get just this far, I've decided to stop the insanity for today, make this a multi-part series of posts, publish this one, and come back to it. Hope you're enjoying so far. Cheers. 
           

P.s.-

All that thinking about my favorite show pushed my little blog-related footnote right out of my head. For the rare clever reader familiar enough with Millennium, the title of this blog (hopefully) provided a little chuckle. If not, it's a little play on words of an episode title, season 2 episode 21, "Somehow Satan Got Behind Me." One of the rare funny episodes, it details the woes of four demons gathered in a coffee shop swapping stories about their mischievous exploits, realizing Frank Black makes an appearance in every one. One of my favorites.

Millennium

My favorite, and in my opinion the best, tv show of all time. While I enjoy Chris Carter's previous outing, the insanely successful X-Files, it never held me. I'm not here to debate merits with anyone, nor go favorite vs favorite. I have my opinion, and you have yours. And my opinion is that this was perhaps the most well-written, intriguing premise for a television show. While the previously-mentioned X-Files was always very enjoyable for me, Millennium had the lasting get-under-your-skin quality that the X-Files didn't. The X-Files was intriguing with interesting story lines, partly serious and partly funny with David Duchovney's Mulder the comic foil to Gilian Anderson's Skully. Millennium has none of that. Granted, there were humorous moments, but they were brief, and served mainly to break the spell of sinister dread imprinted within each episode. Achieving a cult following in the decade-plus since the show was canceled by Fox, the show is scripture to those who love it, and largely ignored in the canon of television history. For those unfamiliar, the show (in brief) follows retired FBI profiler Frank Black, played flawlessly by Lance Henriksen, as he moves his family back to Seattle after his tenure as the bureau's foremost expert on forensic profiling pushed him to complete mental breakdown, costing him his sanity and very nearly his life. Settling in, Frank is looking for work and is invited to join the Millennium Group, a cadre of retired law enforcement officers who consult with active law enforcement on the worst of the worst, serial offender crimes, usually those law enforcement is unable to crack. Long before even CSI was a staple of television, Millennium blazed a trail as the first network series about FBI profiling, and the dark world these men and women inhabit everyday. Unlike all its progeny, however, Millennium is not glossy or neat. Explanations are just as often left out as given, and most unlike all the followers that came later, Henriksen's portrayal of Black is never simply "all in a day's work". Each and every case takes its toll on Frank in very clear and unambiguous terms. He cares for the victims deeply, and sees the madness he is surrounded by as a portend of the evil chasm yawning ever-wider at our feet. Arguments can (and are) made in favor of, or against, the second and third seasons, which add a more expansive story arc threaded throughout. But that's really beside the point. As must be obvious by now, I could go on and on about my love of this show and every aspect of it. For my money, there has never been a more well-written or interesting television than this one.  

Era Nocturna - drum solo (rehearsal take)

One more shamelessly self-promoting video for today. Here's one that was taken last year, It's been posted on youtube and my facebook page, so I figured why not post it here, Since our first show, the middle of our set is usually set aside for me to do my "thing", a few minutes for me to let loose and have a little fun. Don't have any video of me doing this AT a show, but here's one taken at rehearsal. My solo has evolved quite a bit over the last year, but I still like this one.

Era Nocturna

"Happily Never After"  - 6/2/12

Era Nocturna

Era Nocturna live at "Halloween in June", Pittsfield, MA 6/2/12

Dae Noctem - Vocals

Shaun Sloat - Drums/ percussion

Brian Markelonis - Bass

The First Cut Is the Deepest

I'm not much of a blogger. Let that be my "hi, how are you?" Several ill-fated experiments and half-rotted corpses litter the ether of the scattered matrix, those which have been archived, (but isn't it safe to say everything is archived at this point, dear reader?) those that were never finished or (more accurately) started, never to become what they could or should have, those which rumbled to dust in the sunbeam of public scrutiny, as Christopher Lee in "Horror of Dracula." I've always been a writer (small w). Haven't we all - both in the sense of actually using an instrument to scratch symbols onto a medium and in the more self-satisfying sense that we put things "out there" through boxes small or large that are right here in front of us, hoping someone, many ones, read, enjoy, redistribute - always been writers? That fact notwithstanding, I find myself wanting this, a forum for paradoxically superficial anonymity and superficial intimacy. To rant and dribble, introspect, reflect and genuflect. To talk about my favorite things and decidedly unfavorite things. To post about music, movies, books, and my own artistic leanings, projects and the like. There is absolutely nothing different about this blog. The desire we all have to be set apart positively as internet writers is a farce, the Holy eGrail, if you will. Even uniqueness has become structured here, because it is a medium to bring you in to someone for whom you are still removed by 1. But that's ok. The trade-off is that perhaps by all of us sharing, we effect a different kind of uniqueness, the kind which naturally evolves out of such a large community. Unless this were a cult. But then we wouldn't know the difference anyhow. At least that's what they told us in that movie. Ok ok, without getting too blowhardy - and we all know it's far, far too late for  that, which may be something we'll all just have to get used to here - let me take it down to twitterspeak format. This is my blog. In it I share and expound, on music, movies, miscellany....miscellany...er, ok,  the m words for this cute little sentence have deserted me...and such. Who knows. Sometimes there will be more, sometimes less. I've bitched enough about people losing true communication in social media without actually putting myself out there that even I can't deny I'm being a hypocrite. Perhaps it's the derision that stems from fear. Also, there will possibly be tidbits related to nothing at all. Certainly there will be lots about my favorite band - the one I'm in - as well as talk about other projects I "do". Why? Because I have lots to say, and Hell, trying it on again, blogging is fun. So, now that I've finished that last sentence, it appears my "blog introduction post" muse has left my side (I have very specific purpose-driven muses; don't ask) indicating a sign off is next. Come back again, won't you? If you do, I will. Deal.