…

…

Goddammit…I love my life…

That is all.

Life Support…

Until further notice, I will not be updating my blog or my flickr page with any regularity whatsoever.  I need to focus my energy on a few high-priority endeavors right now and I just can’t make time to keep up with all of these little things.  If you need to contact me, e-mail is always an option.  However, don’t expect a quick or lengthy response.  I will answer all e-mails as quickly as I can, but be patient.  I have to get some things done and, to do that, I have to pour myself completely in to those pursuits.  Sorry to anyone that reads this or gives a crap.  I am officially dead to the world.

NOTE:  If you are a Facebook.com user, I may occasionally update my status on my Facebook page.  These updates will be brief and infrequent, but they will be connections to my life if you are at all interested.

Love to you all…

DJ Japan – Episode 4: くるり and Curly Giraffe

Two more recommendations from the land of the rising sun…

7.)  くるり (Pronounced coo-rue-ree): They are a very diverse pop/rock group that my friend Youhei recommended to me a while back.  I burned the cd from him, but forgot about it until recently.  I’ve really been impressed by the solid song writing and creativity of the band.  They use interesting instrumentation in a lot of the songs including traditional Japanese instruments like the Kodo, old Western instruments like the banjo, and electronic elements like synth and drum loops.  Here’s a sample of their stuff, but it hardly does them justice.  Lyrics are entirely in Japanese, but definitely worth a translation.  They are very good with words.

“バラの花” (Translation: The Rose)

“ハイウェイ” (Translation: Highway)

“川” (Translation: River)

“スーパースター” (Translation: Superstar)

8.)  Curly Giraffe:  I haven’t been able to tell if this is a single artist or a band, but, either way, I dig the music.  A very laid back and eclectic blend of folk, funk, and pop.  He sings almost exclusively in English, which is a little unusual for a Japanese artist, but at least most of you will be able to understand the lyrics.  This is also a recent discovery.

“My Dear Friend”

“Adolescent Love”

“Water On”

“Rocketman”

Trouble in the fourth dimension…

Long time, no write.

Sorry that I haven’t written anything recently.  I’m so busy with all kinds of things lately, that I just don’t have the time to sit down and write out some thoughtful entry about my experiences.  I certainly have a lot to write about, but no time to do so.  This entry will have to be brief as well.  I’ll at least do my best to make some excuses as to why I haven’t been updating my blog.

Let’s see…
I am working diligently on what I hope will amount to a novel of some kind.  I’m neck-deep in research for the project.  I won’t give any indication about the subject matter of the novel itself, but I can tell you that I’ve been doing serious research in to the areas of Neuro-anatomy, psychology, Chinese philosophy, Hindu medicine, the history of Western art, Buddhist scientific theories, and jazz.  A random assortment of research subjects, but I hope it will amount to something interesting and readable.  This kind of research is exhausting and the writing is slow-going, but I’m making progress every day.

I have decided to keep my current work-out schedule instead of reducing it as I had previously planned upon reaching my goal weight.  Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that as of last week, I have officially reached my goal weight of 80 kg.  In slightly less than one year, I lost 45 kg (100 lbs.).  I will now do my best to maintain this healthy weight and continue my daily work-outs.  They provide, not only a healthy lifestyle, but very effective stress-release.  This alone takes a good chunk out of my day.

I am writing music again.  I am working on some things to debut at the next open mic night at one of my favorite clubs in Kobe.  Those of you that are familiar with the kind of music I wrote when I was in the band will probably not like the kind of music I’m currently writing at all.  Since going to the San In Beach Party in Tottori, I have become increasingly interested in electronic music and DJ-ing.  I still listen to all kinds of music, but I’m mostly writing electronic pieces these days.  I also have a regular gig now in Tatsuno.  There is a shop that has a live event every fourth Saturday of the month and I’m a permanent fixture on the bill…apparently.  This music is not electronic, however, as it is just me and my guitar.  I have to come up with fresh material for each event, which is also keeping me very busy on top of writing new electronic pieces.

I’m still working as a producer with a handful of musicians in Tatsuno, Hiroshima, and Akashi.  I only meet with each of them about once a month right now, but the group in Hiroshima is getting closer to being prepared for an album.  When we go in to the studio, I will be very very busy.  I’ll probably have to put everything else on hold until that project is finished.  I’m looking forward to it.

I’m officially a host for couchsurfing.com.  I hosted my first couch-surfer last week and I’ve already got two more groups booked in August and September.  My first experience was great.  The couch-surfer was from Poland and he stayed with me for three nights.  We had a blast.  My awesome friends threw him a Takoyaki party.  We also partied at Vistari (our local watering hole).  He had a great time and so did I.  It’s interesting meeting people from other cultures and sharing experiences out of our elements.  My next group of surfers is from Spain.  Should be fun.

I’m doing some translation work for my boss’s father (the founder of the school that I work for).  The translation work is interesting, but I have a serious problem with what I’m translating.  I was not told what I would be translating before I agreed to do it, so now I feel obligated to finish my commitment.  I’m actually quite angry about this issue, though I’ve so far kept the anger to myself, because my boss takes very good care of me here and I don’t want to cause any kind of tension.  However, this issue has been the deciding factor in choosing to make this my last year at the school in Tatsuno.  I had been toying with the idea of signing one more year, but this sealed it for me.  I’ve already told my boss that this will be my last year at the school and to go ahead and start searching for new candidates.  The document I’m translating is a religious in nature (specifically Christian).  Many of you might wonder what the big deal is and I don’t want to get in to it on my blog, because I could write volumes on the matter.  Basically, having to do anything that supports organized religion in any way is a huge conflict of interests for me.  It makes me feel sick inside.  I will sum it up like this:  FAITH is a very healthy and indeed necessary part of human existence, but ORGANIZED RELIGION is a very dangerous and destructive enterprise.  Needless to say, since I’m not fluent, translating a document from Japanese in to English is taking a great deal of my time.  I also have a deadline for this project, which is rapidly approaching.

Kame-chan and I are still brainstorming about and looking at properties for the cafe.  I have explained that my level of involvement can be substantial, but that my commitment to the project has to be something that I can easily break off at a moment’s notice.  She understands and we have decided to go ahead with the idea.  She will go to India for six months starting in September to set up contracts with textile companies and learn about Indian cuisine, but when she returns, I and the other people involved need to have a game plan ready to go.  I will very likely move to Kobe after the end of my current contract (July 2010).  I have had a lot of good ideas regarding the cafe and how to use my studio space above the cafe, but I don’t have time to go into the possibilities right now.

I have joined an Ultimate Frisbee league in Osaka.  We only play twice a month and it’s very casual, but it’s always on the weekends and it takes pretty much my whole Sunday (traveling time and dinner with the club included).  I was very lucky to make this connection through Kame-chan and her friends.  I have been dying to play some kind of team sport for the last year and now I get to play something I’m not only familiar with, but I’m damn good at it too.  Our first game is in Osaka Castle Park on August 23rd.  Wish me luck.  It’s been a while.

I’m still doing regular traveling on the weekends whenever I can.  Recently, Yuki and I went to Kyoto to spend a day.  We saw the Louvre exhibit at the Kyoto Municipal Art Museum, went shopping in the Kawaramachi fashion district, and watched the river festival.  Then we went to Kobe for dinner at the best restaurant in the universe.  We found a shop called Hatakeya.  They exclusively serve vegetable cuisine and all of the produce they use is organic and grown in Japan.  It is so unbelievably good.  It is definitely my favorite restaurant of all time.  Note:  vegetable cuisine is not the same as vegetarian cuisine.  I posted pictures from our meal on my flickr.com page. (http://www.flickr.com/edwardhatfield)

I found a chunk of land in Tatsuno (Shingu area) to do some farming through a friend of Yuki’s.  He’s helping me get started and teaching me about growing vegetables.  I started this after my second trip to my friends’ farms in Okayama.  I have grown cabbage and eggplant so far and I recently put in some winter squash, but my friend informs me that I may have put it in the ground a little too late.  We’ll see what happens.  Gardening is mostly about waiting.  I’m only using a small corner of his land, so he helps me out by keeping things weeded and watered for me during the week.  I go out there once or twice a week to help out and see how things are coming along.  This has been very rewarding, not to mention the veggies are really tasty.

I am also working with my boss to set up a new branch of the school (possibly even a separate company all together).  The new branch would be focused and locating and screening qualified Native English speakers for placement in Japanese private schools as teachers.  We have to make connections with the schools, design and build a website, make an advertising plan, and start finding teachers.  We’ve just started brainstorming, but things are going to get very busy very fast.

And on top of all of this, I still have a very wide social circle that I try to maintain.  I have friends all over Japan and I try my best to see them as often as I can.  I have been lucky to find such wonderful and interesting people here and I’m grateful to all of them for how patient and kind they have been to me.  So, my social life keeps me pretty busy.  There are so many events and parties and festivals in Japan.  I’m going to see one of my favorite Japanese bands, Base Ball Bear, in November in Osaka.  311 is also coming to Japan soon and I’m planning to take a bunch of my friends to that concert as well.  I have had to quit my tennis club, because I’m just way way too busy to keep up with something that requires regular practice like that.  Sad, but necessary.

I failed my first Japanese driving test last month, because those guys are ridiculously strict.  There is a white line on the pavement in front of all Japanese stop signs as a marker of where to stop.  I stopped at one of these during my test and the license branch person asked me to throw on the parking break and wait.  He got out of the car with a tape measure and told me I was two centimeters into the line!  Not OVER the line!  IN the line!  TWO FUCKING CENTIMETERS!!!  Pardon my French, but I was really pissed off.  He failed me for that and I have spent the last month (the hottest month in Japan) using buses and trains, which would normally not be a big deal (I actually prefer not using my car, but I need it for work), but the bus stop and train station near the office building in Aboshi and school in Shirahama are incredibly far (which is why my company provides me with a car).  It’s so hot right now.  Japanese summers are nearly unbearable.  Needless to say, it’s been a real pain in the ass for the last month.  My next test is this week on Wednesday and I guess I’ll have to drive like overprotective agoraphobic mother.  If you’re wondering why I was able to drive for a year without a Japanese driver’s license, it’s because I had an international license.  However, the international license is only good for one year and can only be issued in the States.  So, wish me luck on Wednesday.

I think that’s everything.  Actually, it’s probably not even close, but it’s all I can think of right now.  I will try my best to update the blog more often, but as you can see, I’m totally swamped these days.  You can always send me an e-mail and I’ll respond as quickly as I can.  Hope everyone is doing well and congratulations to my Sister and Micheal on their new baby boy, Oliver Micheal!

Much Love…
PS.  I posted a lot of new photos on my flickr.com page.  Check it out:  http://www.flickr.com/edwardhatfield

A Conversation with Tom Waits and Beck Hansen: Part 2 of 2

Tom Waits

Beck Hansen

Last week we launched the new section, Irrelevant Topics, with Pt. 1 of a conversation with Tom Waits, which can be found below. Here is Pt. 2 of that conversation.

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BH: So how long ago did you leave Los Angeles?

TW: Oh god, 20 years ago. I haven’t been there in a long time. Like I was telling you my dad taught school at Belmont. We lived on Union Ave.

BH: Oh, that’s down in McArthur Park. Pico Union?

TW: Yeah this was Union between Temple and Beverly. Like, seven churches on this street. Parades.

BH: What kind of neighborhood was it then?

TW: Well, split. Latino, Central American, Korean and…

BH: Yeah I was born near Union, couple blocks from Union. Near 8th or 9th street down on Burlington.

TW: Yeah, I remember Burlington. Yeah, well you’re still there. You must be getting something out of being there. It’s a tremendous amount of energy. It’s like a battery. It’s always plugged in. When you move away, when you go to a small town, the first thing you experience is being an unplugged appliance. You think of the town, you know. I used to go back to LA just to get a charge, but after a while…It’s an exciting place for me to go now, just because its so alive. In your windshield, everywhere you look there’s a word. At all times, in every direction. Advertising is everywhere. Everywhere you would think to look, someone would put “Buy This!”

BH: Yeah, they turned them into TV’s now. Don’t know if you’ve seen that? The billboards are TV’s.

TW: No I haven’t.

BH: Yeah. So you’re looking up and it’s a billboard and about 3 seconds later it’s a different billboard. So you’re driving down the street and all these billboards are changing.

TW: Oh, I’m out of it.

BH: Yeah they just started doing that in the last year or two. I was wondering when you come back now, is it more dramatic, the change? Or does it seem the same old place?

TW: In some ways. ‘Cause you see the stuff you remember. But it feels like a hundred cups of coffee. You look for certain landmarks and you say stuff like “Hey! That used to be a barber shop, and before that it was a coffee shop and before that it was a bank.” You remember everything the way it used to be.

BH: Yeah, someone gave me a book Ed Ruscha did in the 60’s where he drove down Hollywood Boulevard and took pictures of the entire street and connected them. And then he did it again a few years ago. The pictures were side by side.

TW: What streets?

BH: It’s all Hollywood Blvd. I think it was from Silver Lake up through Beverly Hills.

TW: You know Western Ave is one of the longest streets in the world?

BH: I’ve always heard that. I’ve wanted to take a trip from one end to the other, see what’s on the other side.

TW: Yeah, I never did that, but I’ve seen pictures of Western Ave when it was just a dirt street. Looked like a street out of an old western town. With horses, a delivery stable, a saloon. A guy standing around on a wooden sidewalk.

BH: Yeah I have a few books with pictures. There’s no trees. Very few Trees. Just all flat. Just dirt.

TW: Yeah, all dirt. You must get charged being there as far as song ideas. Driving around, do you get stimulated by the environment.?

BH: I do. I guess there’s always been a plastic quality to LA. But it’s always had something underneath it. I find myself writing songs questioning where this is all going? Songs about everything turning into the ‘faux Mediterranean stucco retail living unit.’

TW: Yeah, it’s amazing we’re all responsible for its being built. The whole town is kind of like a folk song. It’s like public domain. You do have a hand in the building of it. It didn’t get built by one guy. This is what I envisioned, we all work together. Even in your house, the things you do to your house, well, someone will be living in it, and its what you did to it. And someone after them will be living in it. I get bothered by all the people you see every day that I’ll never see again. We’re surrounded by strangers. Millions and millions of people you see every day that are just like fish. They’re just extras in the movie starring you and you’re an extra in the movie starring them. It’s just peculiar. Then you’re really aware of it in a city ’cause there’s so many people and you’re just pushing through. You’re just like a sperm flipping your flagellum around, you know, trying to make your way through the city.

BH: Who you know and whatever situations you find yourself in with whatever people—it’s all sort of arbitrary. There are an infinite amount of doors you could’ve opened.

TW: And walk right out and walk right into another door and start another life six blocks away.

BH: I wonder if you could really do that anymore? I just went to Japan and they scan your eyes when you come into the country now. They have a computer that reads your finger print.

TW: At the airport?

BH: Yeah, when you’re going through customs.

TW: They read your eye? Oh, man!

BH: Yeah they read your eyeball.

TW: Japan is the home of the $700 orange.

BH: It’s the best orange you’ve ever had. It’s gonna be a religious orange experience. (Laughs)

TW: It’s supposed to be. Yeah, you…you’d want a room. Just with you and the orange, I think. (laughs) They take all the blossoms off the tree except for one, and that’s the one that becomes the orange. All the nutrients are going to one orange. And they have a square watermelon, you know? It matures inside a wooden box, then they cut the wood off and they have this square fruit. Slice it like bread and stack it in a warehouse.

BH: Have you been to Japan many times?

TW: I haven’t been there in a long time. I remember being able to buy underwear in a vending machine. That was pretty exciting.

BH: When they name their cars, they have names like the Toyota President or the Nissan Cedric.

TW: Oh, I like that.

BH: I don’t know if when you were there – all the taxis have doilies. The doily industry dried up out here probably a good 70-80 years ago, but it’s still alive there.

TW: Where have all the doilies gone, long time passing.

BH: They’re all in Japan. And the taxi doors open by themselves.

TW: You’re joking? Yeah, in Mexico they found out the only Chevy that was doing the worst business was the Nova. In Spanish Nova means it doesn’t go. So they weren’t buying it. No one wants a car that doesn’t go.

BH: But I thought maybe there was some reverse psychology they could do, you know? Like use some different car names, like the Dodge Apocalypse or the…

TW: The Sleep Walker. The Viking, or The Zipper. I don’t know. Yeah, Dodge Neon. I couldn’t drive the Neon.

BH: The Aspire, the Aspire is another one. You’re not quite there… You’re making the effort. (laughs)

TW: The Aspire! Yeah. It’s better than No Va.

BH: When I first got my license, you could get a car second hand from an ad in the Recycler [classified ads]. Nobody wanted them; maybe because it was in the early 80’s. You could get a car from the 50’s or 60’s for $200 – $250.

TW: It’s still a new car. They don’t say ‘used,’ they say ‘previously owned.’ I can’t remember when I last saw a car pulled over on the side of the road with the hood up and a guy with his head under there. You just don’t see it any more. It was very common. Underneath, you know, with a wrench. Now it’s all computers. People don’t know what to do when their car stops.

BH: I bought a car once– I didn’t know the battery was under the driver’s seat. I had taken it in to get an oil change. When I showed up, the mechanic…his pants were burned off. The metal in the seat, it hit the battery and it went up in flames.

TW: Burnt his pants off?

BH: Yeah. He had been a master mechanic in Germany. But when he came to America he didn’t have the same credentials and was working out of a Salvadorian tire shop. He was a genius mechanic. I showed up one time and said I only had $15 and the car was on its last leg. We had become friends, so he said he would see what he could do. I came back later and he had taken a piece of string and a matchstick and re-rigged the stick shift. It would have another good month in it. But when it burned his pants that was the end, he wasn’t having it. I called the car Jaws because the front of the hood had been smashed in so the hood was slightly open. It was a station wagon so it kind of looked like a shark. I painted some teeth on it at one point.

TW: That could catch on…that’s what Einstein said, if it has a flaw and its irreparable turn it into a feature. If you’re always burning the pancakes, put it on the marquee. Burnt Pancakes, 99 Cents. People who can fix anything with string are disappearing. I think most things can be fixed with string, but we need to be reminded of that. Except if you pour a fresca into your computer, I don’t think that will work. Or if you pour a coke in the back of your television the string won’t work. It’ll turn into a coffee table immediately.

BH: There is a photographer, Chris Jordan, I did a video with. He takes pictures of landfills. One that has tires valves, one that’s just plastic bottles, one that’s just cell phones. He some how figured out how to take the picture and alter it to where it’s the same exact number of that object that’s being thrown out every day. They’re beautiful photos. Gigantic. When you stand back you don’t know what it is, it’s kind of abstract. When you get closer you see what it is. I don’t remember the numbers. 350,000 soda cans a minute. This was just in America, too. One that was amazing was like 400,000 cell phones thrown out a day.

TW: Well you know space is already getting crowded. They’re planning on blasting up all the trash up in space. There’s things in contracts about that already. Disposing of certain materials. You have to promise, in order to get rid of it, you’ll put it on a rocket and blast it into space.

BH: Won’t it be more expensive to put it in space than what it costs originally? I guess you’ll have to buy space on the rocket for the thing you buy. It’ll be in the cost of the microwave.

TW: It’ll be on the spaceship…

BH: Space cartage fee… So how long have you been doing photographs?

TW: Oh, a couple of years. Some of them are pretty wild. I don’t know if anyone is as interested in them as I am. The shapes are just bizarre. [Photos of oil stains found on the ground]. I don’t think they’re going to be the next big thing. “Look Honey, Look, there’s Jackie Gleason; he’s got a Horse coming out of his head. It looks like a bird is eating his chin. There’s a camel, see the camel? The camel is disappearing into the pond right here and now there’s a fountain coming and Richard Benjamin is launching.” I see stuff that nobody else sees. I think they’re just for the home. Just for my own peculiar amusement.

BH: Thank you for doing this. It was a good excuse to call you up and bug you, pull your ear for a while

TW: You only live once, this is good. I would like to continue this. This is very interesting to me. Maybe I’ll make some notes next time. You know, the yo-yo is a sixteenth century Philippine weapon. It weighed 4 pounds and had twenty feet of cord and only came to the US in 1929.

BH: I’m wondering what’s going to show up in 2029 from the fourteenth century? Maybe there are other possibilities in the wings.

A Conversation with Tom Waits and Beck Hansen: Part 1 of 2

Tom Waits

Beck Hansen

Irrelevant Topics in a new section featuring conversations between musicians, artists, writers, etc. on various subjects, without promotional pretext or editorial direction. For the first in this series of conversations, the legendary musician and performer, Tom Waits agreed lend an hour of his time to talk about anything and nothing in particular. Here is Pt. 1 of that conversation.

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Tom Waits: How you doin’?

BH: Good, I’m good.

TW: Are we up and runnin’?

BH: Yeah I think so. Hey, I wanted to ask you about being from Los Angeles. You grew up there…

TW: Yeah, Whittier, La Habra, Downey, that whole area. Yeah, Los Lobos, they’re from Whittier. So is Nixon. I remember Nixon’s market. He had his own family market.

BH: He was? For some reason I thought he was from the Midwest.

TW: No, California, and we used to get a visit every year from the Oscar Meyer wiener mobile, which was an enormous vehicle shaped like a hot dog. The driver was a Dwarf, and the wiener mobile would broadcast music while he sang the song “I wish I was an Oscar Meyer wiener.” He drew quite a crowd. Pretty exciting for a shopping center.

BH: That car is still driving around. I see it from time to time.

TW: You see the Oscar Meyer wiener mobile?

BH: I’ve seen it parked.

TW: They used to pass out little whistles that were about two inches long and it had three notes available. (Laughs.) Whittier lore.

BH: I was born in the McArthur park area.

TW: You remember when they drained McArthur Park, the lake?

BH: I do, yeah…

TW: They found unbelievable things: Cars, human bones, weaponry.

BH: They should have done an exhibit.

TW: I don’t know why they didn’t. I thought that’s why they drained it.

BH: I’d always heard that when they drained the Echo Park Lake they found an amateur submarine.

TW: Oh, my God.

BH: I don’t know if that was lore.

TW: You mean a homemade submarine?

BH: Yeah, I think it was older too, from the early days of “home submarine building.” I don’t know if that subculture still exists?

TW: That was the East Kids.

BH: There’s so many different versions of the city.

TW: It is pretty international. Drive over here and you’re in Russia. Here, Indonesia, the Philippines, Central America. It’s pretty wild that way.

BH: I think of the city as a sort of mirage. If you look at pictures of the city a hundred years ago it’s just a bunch of weeds and desert dust. Its not really supposed to be here. I was always fascinated by the city it was meant to be. I guess it was a place created by developers. It’s not really like a city where some people roam around and then they find a good piece of land, and then they test it out for a while and make sure there is water so they don’t die, and then they decide to make a city. I started looking at some pictures…Beverly Hills was originally supposed to be called Morocco Junction. I started thinking, if they’d gone with that name we’d be in a whole other situation. I was wondering if there were any things that you remember? It seems like it’s shed its skin so many times.

TW: Well, cars choked everything. I know originally there was a red line that ran from San Bernardino all the way to the ocean and for 35 Cents you could ride a streetcar you know from…

BH: Yeah I heard you’d get there in 20 minutes.

TW: And in one of those red car buildings, dispatch is right there where Epitaph records is right around Sunset and Silver Lake. You remember the Continental Club in Silver Lake? That big Latin Club in Silver Lake. Burned down.

BH: Yeah I remember that.

TW: It was lightning.

BH: Lighting?

TW: Yeah, a form of lightning.

BH: I played at this benefit concert where I was about to go on stage in 45 minutes. It was a clear blue sky and a bolt of lightning came out of nowhere. I don’t know if you heard about that? It was about twelve years ago.

TW: You got struck by lightning?

BH: No, I didn’t. I was inside, but someone in the audience did. I heard this crash, and looked outside and the whole venue was streaming out with people.

TW: You lost your crowd.

BH: Yeah, they had to cancel the whole thing.

TW: That’s what I hate about playing outdoors.

BH: Yeah right? I’ve had more outdoor shows canceled from natural disasters. I was playing in Mexico once and some kind of hurricane came. Turned into chaos. One time I was in Japan. I was going to play on Mt. Fuji and a typhoon hit.

TW: A typhoon hit? Wow. I haven’t really played outdoors much. I played in Japan once; I played in an abandoned temple. The roof had been torn off. They thought it would be a cool place for a concert but it was 30 below. All I remember was my sax player making a fire out of chop sticks and holding his horn over the flame to warm it up before we went on. Everyone was dressed up in moon gear. It was pretty cold out there. It’s hard to compete with the natural elements. It’s captured better in a theater. I’m probably a little old fashioned and a little backward.

BH: I’m always interested in how the whole festival thing evolved. Those pictures from the 50’s, the early rock ‘n’ roll people playing at the state fair.

TW: Opening for super markets.

BH: Yeah, exactly.

TW: Stages that were built in a few hours out of scrap wood.

BH: I’m always curious what it sounded like?

TW: My bass player Larry Taylor toured with Jerry Lee Lewis in the 50’s. They toured all over the US in a Cadillac and all their gear was in the trunk. The amps, the bass… the speakers in the hall they played at were no bigger than an encyclopedia. But there was still wild enthusiasm and energy created out of the performances and the crowds went out of their minds. But it wasn’t done with volume. It was the odd sight of a man possessed at a keyboard, with hair hanging down. The other thing: the mics for the piano – they just used a violin pick up wrapped in a hanky and stuffed it in the hole of a baby grand. Standards were lower.

BH: But it does make you play a different way. We did this thing a couple years back, we were on a tour in the South. After the show we’d find a bar and we’d play there with little practice amps. Maybe the bar might have a PA with two little speakers. Usually we were singing through a guitar amp. I remember one time we were in El Paso. We had the day off and we were just going through town, and we found a coffee house. They didn’t have any equipment. We just had a couple of those little 15-watt practice amps. I think my guitar player found a dorm or something down the street and started knocking on the doors and people lent us the equipment. You know, when we got in there and started playing, probably 100 people crammed into this café that didn’t even have a stage; you couldn’t hear anything. So the performance had to rely on whatever kind of feeling you could put out.

TW: People had to be quiet so you could be heard then. That’s just a basic human thing I guess, right?

BH: There’s something about that awkwardness of being bereft of a sound system and that volume you’re used to. You’re stripped of that and suddenly you have to make due with almost nothing. And the people were crowded in there. They were about two inches from your face. That’s another thing. You’re singing right into people’s faces, which is another interesting thing. (Laughs.)

TW: You’d like to be raised up a little bit. I played the Roxy with Jimmy Witherspoon a long time ago, and somebody hit the telephone pole in front on Saturday. Knocked out all the power – this was like 5minutes before we went on. Place was in total darkness. People were lighting candles. Jimmy Witherspoon went and did a killer show. He just put his organist on a piano, and he has this big big, huge voice any way. Got right on the lip of this thing. I was freaked out. I didn’t know what to do. He killed. I guess you have to get reduced to that to find out the origin and basic building blocks of what you do are still in tact. Look under the building, make sure the supports are still there and haven’t been eaten through. (Laughs.) But, yeah, you can do a lot with a bullet mic and a wah-wah pedal. But before that there was changing your voice and raising your volume. I guess we’ve all gotten very lazy with all the toys that are available.

BH: I wonder, in a way, if it’s good to put yourself in those positions where you don’t have the equipment, you don’t have those crutches. But I think we’re so attuned to hearing it at that volume and having to feel that impact? There’s something maybe uncomfortable now to just hearing somebody’s voice in a room singing.

TW: I guess it’s like when you make dinner at home. You shove the bowl across the table and you throw a fork and you drop the napkin.(Laughs.) You make due. I don’t know if it’s all cosmetic. I guess you can tell when something is primarily cosmetic and lacks the structural integrity. I think we all have an instinct about that. Where does this “Best” thing come from? Is that human? Is that American? Is it all over the world? Everyone wants the best eye surgeon, the best babysitter, the best vehicle, the best prosthetic arm, and the best hat. There’s also the worst of all those things available and they’re doing rather well. (Laughs.) Denny’s is doing great. It’s always crowded. You have to wait for a table.

BH: Also this obsession with ranking. All the “Best of” lists. I get asked to write “Best of” lists occasionally. An emphasis on ranking things. Having a hierarchy and having it be written in granite, written in stone.

TW: It’s economic. So you can charge more.

BH: Yeah, it must be. But maybe it’s just a need to have some order that’s been established, and that everybody has been notified. I don’t know.

TW: There’s too much of everything.

BH: Maybe it’s a millennial thing. It started around the millennium. “What are the best movies? What are the best songs?”

TW: Well, then there’s the pressure of feeling that you need to have what has been already rated the best. A lot of people are afraid to explore their own peculiar taste for fear – that it would be uncool. Just like when you’re a teenager you don’t want to be caught with the wrong sports shirt, the wrong socks.

BH: I think there’s a bit of that. Certain things haven’t made it to the “List,” so then they go into the category of guilty pleasure or something.

TW: My theory is that the innovators are the ones that open the door to things, and then behind them there’s a huge crowd and they are trampled by the crowd behind them. And then you have to peel the innovators off the ground like in the movie, The Mask. Like a Colorform.

BH: I was thinking about influences and people who jump on a train or a trend, follow something. I was reading about the Greek playwright, Euripides, and a few others. He had written 105 plays and two of the plays survived from antiquity. I was thinking, “Can you imagine writing 105 plays, and you had to write 105 for one or two of them to survive?” I was thinking maybe in a way that the people who were influenced by the lost plays are the ones who are going to help them survive in some way. It’s not really about what you’re doing originally, it’s about the transmitting of the thing to the next person. It mutates along the way and turns into other things.

TW: You leave a little map for somebody. Maybe the others were lesser works. Or maybe the two that survived were lesser works.

BH: Maybe they were the throwaways? You never know. Maybe there’s things in there that were lost that would’ve changed everything?

TW: That’s very possible.

BH: The throwaway ones that he wrote to make the deadline are the ones we have.

TW: It’s like they found one of those van Gogh’s at a garage sale. This woman bought it and she was using it to block out the sun in her kitchen. She was using it as a window shade, so it was getting all faded from the sun. And she cut it because it didn’t fit the window. When they finally discovered she had a van Gogh as a window shade, they brought in all these experts from the museum and they were all filling in her living room and they said, “How can you cut off the top off this painting?” And she said, “It was just a little piece of the sky.” Sometimes it’s the value you attach to things. It’s subjective. And we record on stuff that’s going to disintegrate. Just like films are made on celluloid that’s going to vanish, it’s going to be gone. It’s like drawing on wax paper or something.

BH: Yeah, I think I read that only twenty percent of the films made before 1930 have survived.

TW: It’s the way of all flesh. Even in the world we’re down to the last of 20 percent of all animals that were originally here on earth are left. There were millions of other species that vanished. You really have to fight. Only the strong survive. Whose song was that? “Only the Strong Survive”? Your songs have to wind up being used as soundtracks to jump rope. Tapes will go, but people will still be jumping rope. They’ll need tunes for jump rope.

BH: It’s true. I think the last song standing will probably be “Happy Birthday.”

TW: I’m sure it will be. It’s terrible, but I guess songs are just interesting things to do with the air.

BH: There’s sort of a planned obsolescence or something. That’s just part of it.

TW: Yeah and we have every generation making a whole bunch of new ones. Even though the generation before says, “What’s wrong with these tunes? We’ve got plenty of good tunes lying around here. What are you making new songs for? We’ve got cool songs about everything you’re writing about. We’ve got plenty of songs about girls.” “No, no. That’s all right, Dad. We’re doing something else, something cooler over here. You go ahead.” And the dad says, “Do you know Jimmy DURANTE? Have you ever heard of Jimmy Durante?”

BH: I think its gold panning. You know? They’re just holding out. They’re just gonna get some little piece of something. Some little piece, even if it’s just a crumb.

TW: Yeah, that’s what every body does. That’s what Alfred Hitchcock said when he saw Ginger Rogers in a gold lame dress at a movie opening on Hollywood Boulevard: “There are hills in them gold.”(Laughs).

BH: There is probably an alternate endeavor that can be engaged in and everyone can take a hiatus from “The Song.”

TW: Look. There were heavy metal bands whose music was being used to torture prisoners in Iraq. They played it real loud to get information. Well, they deprive you of sleep and they play these bands. And that’s all you get to listen to. It’s one particular song from this band. In the same way that they use it now in the parking lot of 7-11 when they play classical music. It keeps all the hoods away. They blast Beethoven. No one hangs out now, drinks beer in the parking lot. Changed everything.

BH: Yeah, so you may be an unwitting instrument.

TW: You don’t know how you’re going to be used. You could be a doorstop or paperweight or maybe a national anthem. There’s no way of telling. Once we’re gone, the whole promotion thing is over. Now we’ll see if it can fly on its own now. Like some tunes do, you know?

BH: I think they are also some kind of ephemera or reminder to give some impression of what it was like. You know, if we just had pictures of the 1920’s, 1930’s and 1940’s; it would be one thing. But some how, when you can hear the music?

TW: Yeah, people really did listen to the song and it really captured their imagination. You could hear a song about “California, Here I Come” and you would actually decide based on that song to move to California. That’s what people did to San Francisco.

BH: There weren’t really many songs about moving to Northern Finland.

TW: Yeah, or even Needles or look at Lodi. Not a good advertisement for Lodi, ’cause you say, “Stuck in Lodi Again.” Who’s gonna move to a place that this guy told the whole world he felt “stuck in”? Not every town gets their song. Actually, Sinatra tried to do a song about Los Angeles. It was really lame. Really lame. It embarrassed the shit out of me.

BH: That was in the 80’s right?

TW: “LA, You’re a Lady.” It was one of those lame, awful… Maybe it’s the rhyme or the rhythm of the name Los Angeles.

BH: Yeah I don’t think anyone has written a definitive LA song.

TW: Maybe it’s the rhyme or the rhythm of the name Los Angeles.

BH: Yeah, I don’t think you can…

TW: But Chicago or St Louis, such cool sounding names. New Orleans. So many songs about New Orleans.

BH: I’m trying to think, I don’t know if I’ve written any place-name songs? Oh no, that’s not true. I wrote one called “Modesto”.

TW: The city itself was named because the two guys who founded the town didn’t let them use their names in the name of the town. They were too modest and they didn’t let them use their names, so they called the town Modesto.

NEW LAW OF PHYSICS DISCOVERED…

Elon’s Law of Spontaneous Annoyances:

This law states that all cobwebs’ collision trajectories shall be affected by a pseudo-gravitational force emitted by the spacial entity known as Edward Elon Hatfield in such a way that the paths along their lengths shall be adjusted to intersect with the face of said entity regardless of their relative positions in the universe.

…fucking cobwebs…

Thank you Facebook…

Well…
I bowed to the demands and threats of my friends and created a Facebook profile.  Since that time, I have reconnected with a number of old classmates and friends that I thought I would never hear from again.  It really is a stupid website, but I’m glad I joined it.  I’m glad to hear from my past.  I’m glad to reconnect to people from that past.  It makes me feel more human than I’ve felt recently.  Lately, I’ve been feeling more like an abstract concept floating about aimlessly at the whim of a synaptic breeze.  These reunions with friends from times past has grounded me again.  I’m grateful to be a part of their thoughts again and have them be a part of mine.  However, someone very precious to me found my profile on Facebook last night.  That person has been in my thoughts nearly every day since I made a terrible and hurtful decision to be weak and turn my back on them four years ago.  I’m not sure if I have been forgiven by this person, but I have come to forgive myself for my weakness.  It’s as much a part of me as my strengths.  You know who you are and no one else need know.  If you’re reading this…I’m so sorry.  I’m forever sorry for what I did.  I’m grateful that you’ve come back in to my life and I hope we can pick up where we left off.  I’ve missed you.

Note: If anyone wants to find me on Facebook.  Search for the following e-mail address: calcutec81@gmail.com

Summer Vacation…

Kanazawa

Yuki and I have made our final plans for the Obon Holiday (August).  We were trying to decide between Hokkaido, Okinawa, Kyushu, and Kanazawa.  By process of elimination (due to several factors including cost) and the random flip of a coin, we decided on Kanazawa.  Kanazawa is a coastal city on the Japan Sea in Central Honshu.  Kanazawa is the second biggest city (behind kyoto) to completely escape bombing during World War II and, just like Kyoto, it has a long and rich history.  There are two areas in particular that are very historically relevant.  An old geisha district and a neighborhood full of old samurai houses.  There are also a number of old temples and shrines in the area, including a temple devoted to the art of stealth (Ninjitsu).  The town is famous for a variety of foods, especially seafood and Japanese sweets.  Kanazawa ceramics and laquerware are also famous throughout Japan.  This is the first vacation for Yuki and I to take together.  I’m looking forward to it.  It should be a blast.  We will also visit a town in Northern Gifu Prefecture called Takayama to see a World Heritage Site.  The site is an old farming community

Kenroku-en Garden (one of the top three most beautiful gardens in Japan)

that has been preserved for hundreds of years in it’s original state.  People still live and work there in the old style.  It’s amazing.  Here are some pictures of Kanazawa.  Enjoy…

Much love…

Kanazawa geisha

Old geisha district

Kanazawa 21st Century Museum

Live From Japan…

Well…shit…

It’s official.  I have been harassed, bullied, begged, and finally…swindled into performing at the next Tatsuno music event.  The event is this month on the 26th.  I am incredibly nervous as it has been literally FOUR YEARS since I’ve even strummed a guitar or sang (aside from butchering David Bowie songs at Karaoke night).  I have honestly forgotten all of the songs I wrote during the Missing Six days, so I’ll be forced to write all new ones and get them practiced in roughly two weeks.  The pressure is on.  I may regret having agreed to this, but…oh well.  Funny to think that this is my first International Performance.  hahaha.  Honestly, I really wish Eric and Phil were with me on this, but I’m the one who quit the band four years ago.  So, I have no one to blame but myself.  I also really wish I had Dad’s guitar on this.  Master has loaned me one of his guitars on which to practice and with which to perform.  I’ve decided to play at least one cover song to cut down on the pressure a little.  I will perform the song “Mexico” by Incubus.  I’ve always liked the song.  A lot of people like to rag on Incubus, but they are very talented musicians and that song in particular has a very beautifully melancholy quality to it, which really touches me.  Anywho, I’m nervous as hell and I can’t believe I let them all talk me into this.  I’ll let you know how it goes.  Wish me luck.

Much love…