S.O.S. - Save Our Sooj

Good morning!

As many of you have heard (but many others have not), our beloved friend and bard S.J. "Sooj" Tucker has been in the hospital. At the moment, the cause of her distress remains uncertain, but appendicitis is the current diagnosis. In any case, her treatment has already been expensive, and will probably become much more so, especially if surgery becomes necessary. Like many independent artists, Sooj has no medical insurance. And like most Americans without medical insurance, this leaves her utterly screwed without significant help from friends, fans and loved ones.

And so, we're spreading the word about "A Healthy Dose of Sooj" - a fund-raising effort to secure treatment and security for our ailing friend. As the site reveals, this isn't a charity effort. Although donations are welcome, Sooj and her partner/ manager K are offering CDs, downloads, podcasts and other goodies in exchange for contributions. This way, you can help one of the country's brightest and hardest-working young artists survive a traumatic illness and you'll also get some kick-ass music for your own collection. Or - if you already have all of Sooj's albums - you can help spread the word and give the gift of Sooj to other folks. After all, Tucker is a grass-roots artist who spits in the eye of "The Big-Box Music Biz(TM." And that, my friends, is certainly worth supporting!

To that end, I'm also offering some of my own work as well. I haven't mentioned this until now, but I've been working with artist Bryan Syme on an urban fantasy webcomic entitled String Theory. Inspired, in part, by Sooj herself, String Theory follows a young bard named Meghan Susan Green as she discovers just how strange her world - and her talents - truly are. Bryan and I have been writing and drawing this project for months, and plan to go live with it as soon as we have 30 episodes ready to post. That goal is still somewhat in the future. Folks who contribute to Sooj's medical fund, however, can enjoy the following "sneak peeks" at this project-in-progress:

* Sponsors who contribute $15 to help Sooj will receive prints of five String Theory character modeling sketches, signed by Bryan. and I.

* Sponsors who contribute $25 to help Sooj will receive a signed print of an installment of String Theory, unlettered and signed by Bryan and I.

* Sponsors who contribute $50 will appear as characters within the strip, named and thanked at the bottom of the page when it appears. Those folks will also receive a print of that installment, signed by Bryan and I.

* For sponsors who contribute $100 or more, I'l create a fantasy version of you and make that character into a regular on the strip, with corresponding prints and credit (although rights to that character will remain attached to the String Theory property).

I'll be collecting donations via my PayPal account, then sending the funds to Sooj and K once I have the sponsor's address and so forth. Alternately, you could forward the funds to Sooj's own donations page, and then let me know what you contributed and where to send the prints. This adds a step, though, and may be harder to keep track of.

Either way, please help Save Our Sooj. In the absence of a working health-coverage system in our country, it falls to us to support one another - and, in sickness and in health, S.J. Tucker is one person worth supporting!

Thanks & Blessings!

Winter of Our (Dis)Content?

What a shitty Christmas… or is it?

Certainly, retailers would agree. The season of mass consumption that so many American (and European) companies use to pull themselves into the black is proving this year to be a black hole instead. Although the malls are still full (*1), people aren’t buying like they used to. Sales aren’t making projections, and the economic talking-heads are filled with gloom. Hell, even the “war on Christmas” crowd is quieter than they’ve been in years. Add that to the worsening global economy, vast swaths of investor fraud, a couple of shootouts, a crushed Wal-Mart temp and a forced miscarriage or two, and things look truly dismal this Christmas season.

Unless you take a good, hard look at our priorities and realize it’s about damned time they changed.

Now, I’m no Grinch. Pagan or not, I love the Christmas season. Regardless of the religious trappings hung around its neck, I’ve always enjoyed the festive bustle this time of year. I like the lights, the decorations, the Ranken-Bass cheesiness of it all. Hell, I even enjoy most of the music up to a certain point. To me, it’s appropriate even when it’s tacky. Looking at the real “reason for the season,” we see societies in the midst of winter who needed – and enjoyed – a reason to celebrate. Long before Catholic Churchmen decided to assign a December date to celebrate their savior’s birth (*2), people living (and dying) by Nature’s favor celebrated this season as a time of reflection, renewal, community and generosity.

This last part, however, has gotten a little out of hand.

Look, I love presents. Love getting ‘em, love giving ‘em. As anyone who’s read my oft-reprinted essay on presents (*3) knows, I enjoy both giving and receiving gifts. My family has always been a generous one, and my holiday memories involve large heaps of neat stuff under various trees. When I can, I add plenty of goodies to those piles myself; last year, with a few good paychecks in my wallet, I blew over two grand on my friends and family, and thoroughly enjoyed the process. So no – Scrooge McSatyr I’m not.

Still, I’ve worked more than my share of retail holidays, and I hope never to do it again. Each year, people and employers have grown more and more absurd in their demands. Staggering amounts of resources (natural and otherwise) go into staging an explosive and frankly unsustainable orgy of production, consumption and disposal. Trees, plastics, people, even land are used, then thrown away to feed “the Christmas Spirit.”(*4)

In a sickly ironic counterpoint to the words and deeds attributed to the Christ, people are often the first casualties of the modern “holiday season.” The appalling story of poor Jdimytai Damour and his grieving co-workers – topped off by the fatal shoot-out in a fucking toy store between a couple of gangsta assholes later that same day – underscores a litany of complaints familiar to anyone who reads the customers_suck community. The fact that Wal-Mart shoppers resisted leaving the store even after they learned that their greed had just murdered a man says all we really need to know about the nature of this insanity.(*5)

The insanity doesn’t begin or end with shopping, either. While evangelical hordes howl their pride about “the reason for the season,” corporate Scrooges & Marleys indulge in a more insidious “war on Christmas” – the one you won’t be hearing about from Bill O’Reily. For the last decade or so, the season that’s supposed to celebrate generosity and community has become the traditional time to lay off employees “for the greater good (*6).” Such annual “housecleaning” supposedly makes for a stronger bottom line at the end of the year. Fifteen years ago, this postmodern take on A Christmas Carol was an obscenity; now it’s expected that your “Christmas bonus” may be a pink slip instead. Too bad about the kids, huh? Drive yourself into debt buying those gifts, and then lose the job that was supposed to pay for them. Merry Christmas, dude.

The irony of this is sickening. Despite the Christ’s aversion to selfishness, Bebbie Jayzus Amen™ has become the patron saint of greed. A perfect example can be seen just a few weeks ago, when weeping employees at Aseptico, a local company, were laid off without warning or compensation; meanwhile, as people who thought they’d had stable jobs were escorted off the premises by armed security guards, their erstwhile CEO Doug Kazen floated off the Inner Sound on a cruise liner, schooling a well-heeled Christian group in the virtues of… wait for it… compassion and selflessness in business.

Ho, ho, ho, indeed. Where are Santa, Jesus or icebergs when you really need ‘em?

We can expect this coming January to suck even worse than usual. Low Christmas sales, combined with the insane traditions outlined above, will make for some pretty bloody bottom lines. It’s a vicious cycle, folks, and it should be telling us something.

It’s time to knock it off.

We must reassess our priorities, or they will be reassessed for us.

Two of the many elements that drew me to postmodern Paganism are the principles of cycles and consequences. The first principle asserts that Creation is filled with obvious and discernable cycles, while the second maintains that all things have consequences, usually revealed and manifested through those cycles. In contrast to the linear progression of Western science and religion (in which you start at Point A, move through Point B and finish up at Point C), these principles assert that “what goes around, comes around” – and that if you’re smart, you’ll watch those comings and goings for clues about how to live. It’s not rocket science, really – the doctrine shows up in everything from biblical psalms to Karmic sutras, folk wisdom and playground rhymes. For one insidious reason, however, the principle that “You reap what you sow” (*7) has been shunted aside for over a century.

And that reason is consumerism.

For the last 120 years or so, the human political struggle has been generalized as the battle between communisim (also called “socialism” by folks who don’t understand either one) and capitalism, the great forge of the modern world. (*8) Thing is, the greedy beast that wound up feeding on shoppers, employees and environments alike originally came crawling out of the catalogs and magazines of Victorian England (*9). For despite its age-old pedigrees, many of the “Christmas traditions” we know so well – including those piles of brightly-wrapped gifts – originated in Dickens’ London, Ground Zero for the true gospel of the 20th century: consumerism. Before then, holiday gifts were modest tokens exchanged between intimates, or displays of generosity (and bribery…) given by those who could afford them to those who could not. It was Victorian England that turned holiday gifts into cultural requirements, and linked spiritual celebration with economic necessity.

You won’t find consumerism listed as one of the soci-economic movements of the past century. Even so, consumerism is the basis for the current world economy, an economy which demands even-greater consumption of ever-greater amounts of goods by ever-greater numbers of consumers. Without a perpetual increase in consumption, however, that economy starts to tilt into the red. On paper, this concept is called “forecast profits” and “global trade.” In reality, it’s an unsustainable, unsupportable, and frankly insane form of economic suicide.

Everybody’s doing this. No nation is immune. From the theocratic sands of Saudi Arabia to the pseudo-communistic halls of Chinese government, consumerism literally makes our world go ‘round. Everyone is counting on everybody else to BuyBuyBuy in a ponzi scheme of global proportions. It’s all based on an expectation of endless consumption and endless expansion without collapse – a violation of several laws of physics and consequence. As Nature tells us, that which goes up will come down. The higher it goes, the harder it falls. And here it is, falling like winter snow.

I hope it’s not as hard a winter as it could be.

I hope we can stop being spoiled brats and learn to appreciate what’s truly important in life while we still have a chance to do so without complete disaster.

Personally, I think we’re getting a cosmic smack upside the head. As Dami and I were discussing yesterday, in a sad sort of way, the current crisis is good for us all. Because, friends and neighbors, the wheels are seriously coming off this bright little buggy of ours. When people are being shot and stamped to death in the name of Christmas cheer, we need new definitions and expectations about Christmas. When the world’s economy depends on a single holiday based around waste, it doesn’t take a Grinch to realize something’s wrong.

Whatever you call it, “the reason for the season” has got to change.

So, yeah - this is gonna be a scant holiday for me and mine. Almost everyone I know has been either pay-frozen, laid off or seriously beggared by this economic “downturn” of ours. For the first time in my 43 years, I’m not able to be with my family this year; even if I could, there’s no real money in my bank account to get them anything, thanks to a semester-long drop in enrollment at my college. Meanwhile, merchants all over Seattle are looking at their balance sheets and tearing out what little’s left of their hair because the old expectations are coming up short, thanks to the economy, the snowstorms, and a general lack of good old-fashioned cash-n-credit consumerism. The Godzillian bloat of St. Consumerism has left us all in the lurch this year, and if Little Timmy’s getting even half of his usual holiday horde, he’s the luckiest kid on the block.

And y’know what? I don’t think that’s a bad thing for us in the long run.

Like I said, I like stuff. I like giving and receiving. But if the last 10 years of writerly vagabondship have taught me anything, it’s that stuff is fleeting. It looks nice on the shelf, but when you need to pare down and consolidate, it really gets in the way. Ten years ago, I was a successful author and game designer with a great line of credit, a wonderful spouse, savings, investments, and an apartment – soon afterward a house – filled with cool stuff. Now, a decade later, almost all of that material stuff is gone, along with my former wife. What hasn’t been sold has been given away, thrown out, or stashed in storage somewhere. Aside for my book and CD collections, almost none of it exists in my day-to-day world. And y’know what? Although the divorce was painful and I still miss the person whom I had hoped was my lifetime partner, I feel no great loss over the lost stuff. Sure, financial stability was kinda nice. The stuff, though, was just stuff. I haven’t really missed it much at all. (*10)

So as yet another snowfall coats the Seattle streets, I think that yeah, we need this. It’s painful, but it’s good for us.

The current economic crash, this slide down Mazlow’s Hierarchy of Needs, the whittling of expectations from “I need everything in sight” to “I just realized what I truly need” – these are good things. We’ve all gotten spoiled in this Big Box world of ours, and it’s about damned time we recognized the need to cut back while we can still do so with relative ease.

Because, as Nature tells us, environments do correct themselves.

That’s what Winter is for.

It’s time for the earth to rest.

Maybe it’s time we gave consumerism a rest as well. Before the world we know is laid to rest by the greed we forgot to control until it was too late.

So take a deep breath, spend time with your loved ones, and let Creation’s cycles and humanity’s myths remind you what’s important in life.

Love. Balance. Sharing. And above all else, Gratitude.

For all its terrors, this Life is a gift.

Enjoy it, cherish it, and share it.



(As for Mr. Kazen: I refer you to the parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man. And may Bebbie Jay-zus shit in your stocking.)


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1. - Except here in Seattle, where the worst snowstorms in recorded history have paralyzed large portions of the marketplace.

2. - A date utterly at odds with the scriptural story in Luke 2:1-21… which, by the way, is the only gospel that treats the subject of Christ’s birth in any detail. The first mention of a December Christmas occurs in 354 AD.

3. - Which I’ll probably repost here later.

4. - A voracious entity of apparently Cthulhoid proportions.

5. - Don’t even get me started on the Third-World sweatshop labor used to create those endless acres of holiday junk.

6. - …of the stockholders, upper management, and other warriors of the Golden Parachute Brigade.

7. - See Job 4:8 and Galatians 6:7.

8 – This is a gross simplification, as it ignores imperialism, theocracy and fascism. Even those movements, however, have usually dressed themselves in the trappings and practices of either Capitalism or Communism since the 1800s.

9. – See Inside the Victorian Home, by Judith Flanders, to see just how much our ideas of “social propriety” have been governed by merchants who finance advertising and entertainment that tell us how dearly we need the things they produce.

10. – I do miss my former wife a LOT, and being able to travel freely, help friends out, and go to the doctor when I need to do so really didn't suck, either.

Happy Holidays!

R.I.P. Sir Sable LePlume

Sir Sable lePlume (see entry below) passed over at 12:51 PM, Pacific time, at the beginning of Yule. Aside from a brief struggle at the very end, he was not in pain, and he died in Damiana's arms as I held them both and Pumpkin (our other cat) watched over us all. He was purring until the very end, and that went by quickly. It was snowing hard outside, and Steve Reich's "Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices and Organ" was playing in the background. He is resting peacfully now, and will be very dearly missed.

Snow and Mortality

It's been an interesting weekend.

As anyone who's seen the news (or the ground outside) knows, Seattle has been hit with its third snowstorm in a week. This one dumped roughly a foot of snow here in Cap Hill, then sheened it over with a coat of ice. Anyone going out on the roads around here is out of their fucking minds today, so we're gonna sit at home, watch movies, read, and...

Well, we've also been nursing Sir Sable lePlume, aka, The Cat Who Will Not Die. A 20-year-old long-haired black cat, Sable won my heart upon our first meeting last year. Cantankerous, fussy and utterly endearing, Sable embodies the truism that cats and people domesticate each other. Despite arthritis and extreme old age, Sable has - until this weekend - remained strong, alert and pretty much healthy for the entire time I've known him. He's survived strokes, fits, illness, moves, dogs, fur mats, stitches, clumsy people, and more years on earth than some readers of this blog. Sadly, he took sick a few days ago, and has since dwindled to a handful of fur, bones, dry skin and attitude.

We figured that Sable was on his way to the Great Passage Friday night. Thursday evening, he ambled over to our futon and laid down on it in a way he hadn't done in months. That morning, he could barely walk. After he stopped eating and bundled himself into a pile on the floor, we thought he was ready to pack it in. Friday afternoon, Dami and made him a warm bed on the couch, then (after he climbed off the couch) settled him on the floor in front of a heater. Blowing off our usual Friday date night, we placed a heating pad underneath him and started straw-feeding him water and milk, saying our good-byes to him as he seemed to slip into that borderland between this world and the next...

...until he got up and decided to stagger to his feet, walk across the living room and go to his food bowl. He collapsed there, though, so we fed him some more, took him back to the makeshift bed, and read there, more or less in silence, each of us with our hands on Sable, letting him know we were there.

As we started to nod off, Sable remained more-or-less conscious. He didn't seem to be in pain - just deeply tired. So we took him to bed with us, set him up at the foot of our futon with a space heater aimed at him, the heating pad still beneath him, and a thin blanket over him. Again, we let Sable know that we loved him, and that it was okay if he wanted to slip away.

I had problems sleeping that night. Sable and I bonded fairly early into my stay with Damiana. I've been one of the few people he allows to pick him up and hold him, and although his litterbox habits have sometimes gotten on my nerves(*), he's been an adorably stubborn companion. As recently as Thursday morning, his senses were so sharp that he could hear Dami and I whispering in bed (on the other side of a closed door) and demand loudly to be fed and watered in his favorite drinking-place, the bathtub. I've often remarked that Sable survives on a combination of wet food and attitude (until this weekend, he'd earned the nickname Food Hoover for his voracious eating habits), and that he's had more comebacks than The Who, The Rolling Stones and The Kinks put together. In his refusal to let age get the better of him, Sable earned my affection and respect. I love this cantankerous scrap of fur, and I will miss him deeply when he's gone.

He has not yet decided to go.

So about 3:00 AM, I was awakened by a feline sneeze. I reached down and felt Sable's head hanging over the edge of the mattress. Apparently, he'd decided to go have a walk, but couldn't quite get off the bed. Gently, I pulled him back onto the heating pad, tucked him back in, and began talking to Dami. Somewhere in the middle of our conversation, he pulled himself out from beneath the blanket by his front claws, and wound up almost hanging off the bed again. Despite all indications, Sable had continued to kick the Reaper's ass. Giving him water and milk and making sure he was as comfortable as possible, we went back to sleep.

The next morning, Sable pulled himself up, got off the futon, peed (on a pile of laundry next to the bed - ah well, it'll wash), and walked shakily but determinedly out to the kitchen. I put him in the bathtub to see if he wanted to drink from it, but he didn't seem to be interested in that. Clearly, though, he could see, was responsive to sensation, and was able to purr. His legs gave out again, though, so we cuddled him for a while, bundled him up, and set him back on the bed (this time a bit off from the heating pad). He seemed comfortable enough, so I went to an audition at the LRS(***) . Walking a fair distance for an off-schedule bus, I made it downtown just in time for the audition. Dami joined me downtown afterward, and we did some holiday shopping. As the snow began to fall downtown, we caught one of the last buses back to our vicinity and hiked back amidst a stunningly beautiful landscape of snow.

Sable was till on the bed, sleepy but aware. Again, we fed him, watered him, and curled up in bed, reading. As we fell asleep, he remained there, still cognizant and purring softly. As of a few minutes ago, he's still with us.

Now, under other circumstances, I might have decided to take Sable to a vet and put him to sleep. By now, he's stopped eating (except when fed by hand), stopped meowing, and seems unable to stand, much less walk, on his own again. Problem is, our roads have been covered in snow and ice since Thursday morning; buses aren't running out to our neighborhood, and a long walk in the cold while stuck in a cat carrier would be, we feel, more distressing to Sable than simply passing away at home in the presence of people who love him. He hasn't seemed to be in real pain - uncomfortable, but not in obvious distress - and... well, as of this writing, he just doesn't seem to be willing to die just yet. And after a hideous experience my sister had a few years back with a dog who seemed ready to die but wasn't(**), I'm not willing to put an animal down unless that animal appears ready to pass over or is in obvious pain. As of now, Sable is neither.

As I mentioned, I felt incredibly sad on Friday night. Sable has a dear place in my heart, and I kinda identify with the rugged little furheap. My affection for "the old man" runs deep enough for me to put up with his less-endearing habits, and as someone who's not always the easiest person to get along with sometimes, I can identify with that element of his personality, too. The last few days have also tapped into some old memories of my death-watches over Warren, my mother's late husband(****), and Salome, my 18-year-old cat who passed on shortly before I left Atlanta. For a while, I couldn't sleep. And then, after his 3:00 AM revival, a bit of reading and some quiet words with my Higher Powers, I realized that Sable's time of passing is his choice, not my responsibility. More to the point, I understood the values of silence and stillness. As an American in the Media Age, I feel so conditioned to constant activity and stimulation that it's often hard to recognize when it's time to slow down and be quiet. Sable is obviously choosing to take a little time before he goes. He's had plenty of opportunities to slip away quietly... and he will do so soon. Despite my sadness, though, I'm not willing to rush him along.

As a Pagan, I accept death as an inevitable part of Creation's cycle, not as some abhorrent thing. Even so, there's a cold quality to passing on. Symbolically, it matches the snow and ice now packed across our streets. The implacable beauty of mortality and snow defies our illusions of control. So for now, I contemplate both and savor the life that is so obviously and precariously a gift.


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* - He left hard little "messages" on area rugs when he felt he hadn't received his share of attention... but at least he's done so in predictable places that are easy to clean up afterward.

** - Litle Red Studio, and it's okay. If the guy who was cast is the one I suspect was cast, I'd have chosen him over me, too.

*** - Buster had a huge cancerous tumor, and could no longer walk. My mom and sister took him to the vet, but it took three shots, almost five minutes and horrible distress from the dog before Buster passed over. No thanks.

**** - Another scrappy piece of work. I was with Warren when he passed on, and although that was a wrenching time on many levels, I'm very glad to have been there with him.

Unleashing on a Pet Peeve: "The Wise Ancients Believed [FILL IN THE BLANK]..."

The following is a response to a friend of mine, who had re-posted a third-party comment about what ancient Egyptians "really believed." As a postmodern mystic Pagan fantasy author who's spent decades with his face buried in occulto-spiritual/ historical texts and who has read a metric shit-ton's worth of "facts" regarding people and societies whose daily lives remain virtually inconceivable to us, I have a Kong-sized pet peeve regarding this sort of thing. Sure, we can make educated guesses about the "real facts" of bygone days. But - as the Internet reveals about the age we live in - the subtle totality of human experience and belief, even now, is a vast enigma, not a certainty.

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I'm gonna get smacked for saying this, but...

We have no earthly idea about who meant what to the ancient Egyptians. All we have to go on are a reconstructed language that was translated from a Greco-Roman transcription tablet found accidentally by French soldiers almost two centuries ago. The fragments of that language are based on suppositions, little bits of modern Egyptian interpretation, a predominantly male academic tradition, and a whole lot of guesswork. Even then, the fragments of authentic Egyptian lore are pictograms (often incomplete) gleaned from the few remaining fragments of temples and government records. Those pictograms are extremely basic, with little nuance, no distinct subtle grammar, lots of room from interpretation, and a very high percentage of erroneous interpretation.

Saying "the ancients really believed such-and-such" is an absurd proposition. Even when we have detailed transcriptions in still-living languages (say, the Bible), the "real" meanings behind an author's thought are suppositions at best. The idea of insisting that "the ancient so-and-so's believed [Bleh]" is as accurate as assuming that a Sino-Hindustanian visitor from the 25th century would know what you "really believed" because they'd read a reconstructed version of English based on fragments of a menu found at an excavated Dennys. In France.

Pet peeve on the loose! Run for your lives! :)

Late Celebrity You Miss Most? Wendy O. Williams

Question: RIP John Lennon. The list of sudden and unexpected celebrity deaths is long—Princess Di, Heath Ledger, Kurt Cobain, Marilyn Monroe, and many more. Which one affected you the most on an emotional level?

No question: Wendy Orleans Williams of The Plasmatics. (1949-1998)

One of my favorite rock bands to this day, The Plasmatics were a pack of musical terrorists who provided my first real taste of Punk Rock in 1980. I caught them on Tom Snyder's Tomorrow show, the first mass-market stage of the Punk invasion, thanks to some savvy music directors and Tom's snide willingness to play along with the insanity. Immediately, I was hooked, both on the sheer ferocity of the band and on the Kong-sized balls of its singer, Wendy O. Williams.

While many of the most visible Punk bands were (and remain) drunken goons, The Plasmatics had definite methods to their madness. One of the first bands to merge Heavy Metal with Punk Rock, The Plasmatics declared war on the materialistic excesses of American consumerism in general and the 1970s in particular. Although each member was a walking affront to society (especially tutu'd beanpole Richie Stotts and Haitian-giant-with-white-mohawk Jean Beauvoir), the band's lead shock trooper was busty Wendy, whose daredevil antics and ample charms both seduced and repelled mainstream America. Wendy sang like a trash compactor and castrated guitars with glee. The press - and fans - could not get enough of her. Neither could I.

Roughly 15 at the time I first saw them, I had finally found music that fit the smash-em-up mood of my adolescence. Thanks to a new school and a short-lived residency with my father ('78-'80 or thereabouts*), I discovered a succession of bands that blew my world inside-out: Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Led Zepplin, Van Halen, Queen, The Sex Pistols, Rush, AC-DC, The Ramones and The Plasmatics, among many others. Unusually savvy for his generation, Dad had told me about the existence of Punk. He even rather liked The Ramones, and we planned - but never made it - to go see Rock-n-Roll High School together when it first came out. Dad had heard of The Plasmatics and Sex Pistols, and although he wasn't a big fan of their excesses, he seemed to respect their spirit. Intrigued, I caught the infamous Tom Snyder show episode featuring Wendy and Co., and was totally floored. I've loved 'em ever since.

It wasn't just that Wendy was hot, although that part certainly didn't hurt. What blew me away - then and now - was the raw daring of the so-called "Demon Queen of Destruction." In an era where few rock women even picked up a guitar, Wendy hefted chainsaws, guns and dynamite. She drove buses through walls of TVs, jumped cars loaded with explosives off of piers, and eventually skydived off a biplane (after wing-walking it) naked. She fought cops fist-to-face, and spat out war-cries against the status quo. An avowed vegetarian and animal-rights activist, she walked the walk even as she blew it to pieces. To this day, Wendy's life and career make most rock stars - male and female - look like utter pussies. How could I not love that?

The band's first several album-length releases - New Hope for the Wretched and Beyond the Valley of 1984, plus the EP Metal Priestess - (**) remain some of my all-time favorites. Sadly, The Plasmatics began to decline, first by releasing a fairly lame Metal album called Coup d'Ea't and a weird concept album called Maggots. By then, the band and its schtick were wearing thin. Wendy broke away for a solo career - jump-started by Gene Simmns and several members of Kiss - and that's when I finally got to see my beloved Demon Queen of Destruction live.

It think it was 1986, on her tour for Kommander of Kaos, that Wendy came to Richmond, VA. The fact that my friends in Death Piggy(***) were opening for her made the show that much more essential. How can I describe this? It was one of the most intense concerts I have ever seen, with bodies flying and danger swirling in the air. Wendy's fan base of skinheads, metalheads, punks, bikers, anarchists and gods-knows-what-else made for a wild and uncompromising mosh pit. I literally hung onto the stage for the first few songs, taking pictures, but when a H-U-G-E dude ripped me out of his way and flung me back several feet so he could have a better view, I decided to take my chances in the pit. If I had my flatbed scanner and photo albums here in Seattle, I'd post the shots I did get that night. As it was, the show wound up with Wendy topless (as usual), sweaty and cheered by a packed-house crowd. The next day, the local music reviewer wrote, "Weep, moan and gnash your teeth if you missed the best rock concert in Richmond this year." I didn't miss it, and I'm very glad for that.

Wendy more-or-less retired soon afterward, retreating to Conneticut with her former manager and long-time companion Rod Swenson. By then, her face had grown hard and her voice was almost completely destroyed. She worked as an animal-rights activist, health-food store employee, and occasional guest star on MacGyver(****). Aging apparently did not agree with her, however. On the same depressing week in which Rozz Williams of Christian Death hanged himself, Williams committed her final act of mayhem. Appropriately enough, she blew her own head off with a shotgun, after writing:

I don't believe that people should take their own lives without deep and thoughtful reflection over a considerable period of time. I do believe strongly, however, that the right to do so is one of the most fundamental rights that anyone in a free society should have. For me much of the world makes no sense, but my feelings about what I am doing ring loud and clear to an inner ear and a place where there is no self, only calm.

Rest easy, Ms. Williams. you earned it.

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* - This period also introduced me to roleplaying games. Dad lived in Springfield, Virginia at the time. Being shy and knowing no one, I spent a lot of time walking to Springfield Mall or listening to Dad's stereo, which was set to DC101 and WAVA105. Through the first pastime, I discovered the newly-released Advanced Dungeons & Dragons books and related miniatures; through the second, I discovered Hard Rock Music after years of listening to Top 40 stations or Dad's old '60s albums and Doo-Wop tapes. Sadly, the stores and stations of my youth are long gone, but the impact they'd had on me then remains strong.

** - This is not actually the cover of the album's original U.S. release, but it's the only one I could find online without lots of digging.

*** - The band that later morphed into Gwar. Their CD collection Smile or Die features photos I took at that very show, given afterward to Russ Bahorsky, who was in my Theatre Lit class at the time. (Thanks, Bunche, for giving me a copy of that CD!)

**** - Supposedly, she dated Richard Dean Anderson during part of the show's run. I recall reading about this, but haven't looked it up.

"Information Should All be Free?" Really? Think About It...

The following is a response to someone on my "Has Rock Rolled" thread. I thought the whole "all information should be free" thing had gone out with the '90s. Obviously not, and so the issue is worth a larger discussion.

-----------------
I agree with you in theory about the MP3/Internet revolution. In most regards, it's been good for artists and fans, if lousy for an admittedly bloated record industry. Your "information should be free" statement, however, comes from from people who don't make their living creating intellectual properties - ie, music, books, etc. As one of the people who does make my living that way, my perspective is, shall we say, somewhat different. It's a nice idea in theory, but creating that "information" involves a LOT of WORK - inspiration, emotion, skilled labor and innate talent. And just as you wouldn't expect a stranger to come tile your bathroom, grow your food or fix your car for free, it's unreasonable to assume that an author or musician should just create neat free stuff for everyone with a computer.

File-sharing in small, consensual doses is viral marketing; on the scale it had attained before the Napster suit, however, it had become a one-sided "deal" in which hard-working musicians, producers and the labels that had put up thousands (if not millions) of dollars to record their work were having that work taken by people who were offering nothing in return. Sure, it's easy to say, "Dude, Metallica doesn't need a the money - they have plenty!" Thing is...

1: Metallica works REALLY GODDAMN HARD for that money. You think it looks easy? You try becoming a world-class musician, writing, composing and recording albums worth of material, than then spending most of your life on the road promoting it, playing it near-perfectly several hours a night for months on end. It's not easy, trust me. Just ask S.J. "Sooj" Tucker, who does it.

2: Metallica and their label spend thousands of hours and millions of dollars creating that material. Why do you think you should be entitled to have it for free? Just because of some shop-worn hacker slogan? Fucking please.

3. Metallica's label depends on the money generated by that "information" to pay its employees. If everyone suddenly downloads the music without paying for it, who pays those employees for their labor - and with what?

When you're talking about "information" like stories, music or artwork (as well as computer software), your "information" becomes someone else's labor - and very probably their living as well.

If those parties choose to share it for free (as I do when I blog), then that's cool. However, if you just download my books - books I had written to pay my rent and without which I could not eat - because you thought you had a "right" to them, then we, my friend, have a problem.

Ditto that - and square it - if you think you've got the "informational right" to take my work and claim it as your work (maybe even profiting from it) just because - hey, it should be free and unregulated. Now you know why copyright law exists. :)

You may still buy CDs from artist you support. Many other folks, though, don't bother. And who defines "support," anyway? "Yeah, I kinda like that dude's music, but it's not like I support him or anything." How does "that dude" pay the bills or get compensated for his labor if even a small part of his audience says something like that? And given that situation, why should he bother putting anything out at all? Is it his "right" to work for nothing so you can share it with 10,000 of your friends?

Sure, I believe in small-scale personal-use copying, especially when the source of the work is publicly attributed to the creator. There's s huge gulf, however, between that usage and a "totally free and unregulated flow of information" - a gulf that we're only now beginning to address.

And Sooj's work can be supported at itunes (under S.J. Tucker), at her website (http://www.skinnywhitechick.com/), and at http://www.cdbaby.com/.

End of an Era: Forrest Ackerman R.I.P.

Dammit.

Forrest J. Ackerman dies at 92.

Popular culture, geeky and otherwise, would not be what it is without the Ackermonster's gentle hand. If not for his groundbreaking fan clubs, his musem, his endless convention appearances, and most of all his magazine Famous Monsters of Filmland, the world might lack Star Wars, Close Encounters, White Zombie, Fahrenheit 451, "'Repent, Harlequin,' Said the Ticktock Man," and many other mainstays of geek and popular culture.

A generous, enthusiastic fan of weird and science-fiction media, Ackerman discovered (and sponsored) young Ray Bradbury, coined the term "sci-fi," made Boris Karloff, King Kong and Vincent Price into household names for thousands of readers (including George Lucas, Stephen Spielberg, Rob Zombie, Tim Burton and Yours Truly), and introduced those readers to everything from Kikaider to Harlan Ellison to A Clockwork Orange to Plan 9 From Outer Space. Much to Ellison's disgust, the term "sci-fi" has become the shorthand term for the most influential form of fiction in the last century. And throughout the near-century of his life, Ackerman not only witnessed the future he both feared and adored come to pass, he himself became an agent of its fruition.

Rest well, Ackermonster, and thank you for all you have inspired, created and shared with us.  

Has Rock Finally Rolled Away for Good?

Yesterday afternoon, I was listening to Pearl Jam's masterpiece Ten, when the thought hit me:

The early-mid '90s were the last time a Rock music movement really sounded interesting to me.

Let me clarify: I don't mean that I haven't heard a decent Rock(*) record since the '90s, nor am I indulging in that patented old-fart chestnut You kids today don't know REAL music - why, when I was your age... It's not that I like only the stuff that came out at the age when my musical tastes were supposedly set in stone. Nope. I've heard some pretty damned good Rock albums these last few years (Thea Gilmore's Songs From the Gutter, Muse's Absolution, Flogging Molly's Within a Mile of Home and The Sword's Age of Winters, among others), and really enjoy a number of recent artists (again, Thea Gilmore, Flogging Molly, Muse and The Sword as well as Placebo, Gnarls Barkley, The Decemberists, Nouvelle Vague, She Wants Revenge, and more). Still, I can't remember an explosion in Rock music that has really lit the world on fire since the early 1990s. Since then, even the best artists have been riffing on earlier achievements by earlier bands.

Really, think abut it: Thea Gilmore sounds like a distaff Neil Young; Flogging Molly is a direct descendant of The Pogues; Muse melds Queen with U2 and Pearl Jam, while The Sword records the best Black Sabbath albums that Sabbath never recorded. P!nk riffs on Madonna, She Wants Revenge riffs on Bauhaus, The Killers riff on Queen, and Gorillaz riff on everybody. Almost everyone in popular music these days sounds like earlier artists. I had hoped at one point that the Neo-Cabaret sound of bands like The Dresden Dolls, The Decemberists and The Ditty Bops would break into something larger, but... nope. The best Rock albums of the last decade or so have either come from older artists (Velvet Revolver**, the Rolling Stones) or from new artists who sound like older artists (Coldplay, Nickelback, Muse, Placebo, Flogging Molly, etc.).

The sad epitomes of this trend arrive with the hype over new albums from Metallica (Death Magnetic, their best in nearly 20 years because it sounds like what they did 20 years ago) and Guns-n-Lawyers... *ahem* I mean, the Axl Rose Ego Experience. Both dangle brand names with over two decades of shelf life, and while neither album is bad, exactly, they're just... OLD.

In contrast, think back to 1990-95: Nirvana. Pearl Jam. Nine Inch Nails. Ministry. Hole. L7. The Smashing Pumpkins. Tori Amos. The Indigo Girls. White Zombie. Soundgarden. P.J. Harvey. Alanis Morrisette. The Offspring. Live. Their names and music still have a classic sound to them. That's the last time I can recall turning on the radio and actually wanting to listen to it for more than a song or two. Yes, those artists were also riffing on the music they grew up with, but... I dunno, there just seems to have been something more exciting and innovative about the movement as a whole. Before the scene turned into Whiny White Boy Wave (Candlebox, Creed, Matchbox Fucking 20), heroined itself into oblivion (Ministry), or disappeared up its own ass (with The Smashing Billy Corrigans being the prime offender), there was a visceral power to the era's ROCK that reverberates even now. I didn't wanna pump my fist in the air to Ten yesterday because it came out during my impressionable teens - I was almost 30 when it was released. I found my heart pounding to every song on that album because it's still a great fucking album. I haven't heard its like in years.

I'm not saying there are no good Rock artists out there. I have yet, however, to see a movement where a torrent of artists combine into something memorable - a new "wave" of Rock that sweeps over the shoreline of popular culture again.

So, thoughts? Am I just getting old, or has Rock finally rolled itself out? What am I missing? Or is it Rock itself that's missing in the age of Rock Band?



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* - I'm not referring here to Hip-Hip, Soul, Electronica or Rap, although those genres seem pretty played out right now, too. The most intriguing artists in those arenas are mining their old influences to death as well - yes Kanye West, Joss Stone, Thievery Corporation and L'il Wayne I am talking about you.


** - Aka, the real Guns-n-Roses.

Albums You Probably Haven't Heard Yet: Rats (1994)

Sass Jordan - RATS (1994)

Music and drugs have a long and checkered history. No cause, perhaps, has racked up more corpses among the popular music set (Hendrix, Joplin, Morrison and Presley are only the biggest names on a very large, very black wall). Yet, paradoxically, no other human experience besides sexual passion has inspired more powerful popular music. And during the 1990s, the queen of popular music drugs was heroin.

In the early 1990s, a friend appalled my former wife Cathi and me with the desire to try heroin. “Why the fuck would you do THAT?” we replied: “They’ve known that shit would kill you since the ‘60s.” Apparently, our friend knew something we didn’t, because she wasn’t alone in curiosity. Heroin was THE glamour drug of the 1990s. Crack cocaine may have given that era the musical mystique of Gangsta Rap, but heroin gave it Grunge. Immortalized in songs like “Under the Bridge” and “Mr. Brownstone(*)” as well as rocker flicks like Trainspotting and Pulp Fiction, heroin exerted a sick fascination over popular culture. And while Kurt, Courtney and Kate reigned as the (un)holy trinity of heroin chic, an obscure Canadian Blues singer named Sass Jordan was forging her own testament to the drug.

Rats depicts the harrowing relationship between Jordan, her lover, and her lover’s addiction to smack. Vomited up with raw vocals and naked emotions, this album sweeps through your room like a storm of glass. Although it’s usually shelved with Rock, Rats is essentially a Blues record in the hybrid tradition of Susan Tedeschi, Kenny Wayne Sheperd and Faces-era Rod Stewart. Shot through – almost literally – with that genre’s gut-wrenching love stories, Rats must have been an excruciating experience to record. Already acclaimed for her powerful pipes, Jordan became one of the few singers who could accurately be mentioned in the breath with Janis Joplin(**). Her shredded singing on tracks like “Damaged,” “Honey” and especially “Pissin' Down” literally makes my throat hurt in sympathy. The rusty guitar-slinging (courtesy of Stevie Salas) cuts like a complimentary buzz saw. This is the Blues the way they should be played – with a dirty broken bottle down gritty steel strings. The rhythm section (Brian Tichy on drums and a variety of players on bass) rocks hard behind the groove while a selection of other instruments (Hammond organ, harmonica, and occasional strings and piano) adds polish to the mix. Every track on Rats is hit hard out of the park by Jordan and her band. And though each song is distinctive, the arrangement of them drives – or, more truthfully, drags – the listener through Jordan’s personal hell.

“Hell” is an overused concept in popular music. Certainly, Black Metal and Gangsta Rap make flamboyant appeals to the Pit. But for all that fire-n-brimstone, the musical style that most accurately depicts human suffering and the hope that makes it worthwhile (yet renders it all the more excruciating) is Blues. How? Because the Blues are real. The emotions wrought up through Blues music are archetypal in scope yet shattering in intimacy. The Blues won’t tell you about Satan slaying multitudes – they’ll tell you how the singer’s heart was fed into a meat grinder and the singer helped Satan put it there. Rats is the epitome of this approach. From Jordan’s opening salvo on “Damaged” to the quiet affirmations of “Breakin’” and “Give,” Jordan charts the smacked-out slide of a relationship from rage to giddiness to eventual surrender.

Despite this grim focus, Rats is exuberant, not morose. It kicks off with a ragged yowl and ends with a Gospel organ. In between, the album rocks like a Brewtown bender. The beefy production, courtesy of Nick DiDia (who performed similar miracles with Pearl Jam) and Michael Wagener (Metallica), sounds dirty but not messy. Propelled by monster Blues riffs and that raging voice, Rats sounds wounded yet compelling. Strung out on the tension between allure and rejection, the album plays out a domestic tragedy in which Sass is a willing (if unhappy) partner to her lover’s self-destruction. Rats is not a concept album per se(***), but the sequence of songs cannot be accidental. The Hell they depict is not the conventional horrorshow of beatings and thievery, but a corrosive decay of love into ruins.

The stark artwork within the CD captures the jagged reflection within its music. Despite the denunciations of “Pissin’ Down” and “Slave,” the real object of Jordan’s loathing is herself. She freely admits that “Dirty is my style/ And I like my oil crude/ You’re the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen/ And I think I love you.” After lacerating her nameless lover and his needlephilia on the album’s first four tracks, Jordan owes up to her end of the problem: she likes her bad boy being BAD. The songs “Ugly,” “Honey” and “Wish” reveal that Sass is as addicted to her partner’s dysfunction as he is to “your old lady heroin.” Like a junkie, she tries to kick him cold-turkey with “High Road Easy” and “I’m Not,” yet keeps backsliding. “Sheeeet – ugly sucka!” proclaims guest vocalist George Clinton on “Ugly.” That "sucka" is Jordan’s kind of “Ugly,” though, and even as she shows her lover the door yet again (“Breakin’”), she doesn’t seem at all sure that she can ever truly be rid of him. One of the album’s many epiphanies occurs in the split-second glide between the cacophonous “Ugly” and the smooth intro to “I’m Not”; musically, it’s like a raucous bender followed by the hung-over morning after and its futile resolution to never do THAT again. Despite an insistence that “I don’t wanna kill myself yet,” the album never really resolves the issue. Its last track asks “In this world I’m livin’ in/ Is it cruel or is it kind?” Like love, like heroin, and like Rats, it’s both.

After a harrowing period that Jordan later called “a descent into the Black Hole of Calcutta,” Jordan apparently kicked that Bad Boy’s habit for good. Her subsequent albums are happier affairs (one even got the double-edged title of Present), and she eventually became a judge on Canadian Idol(****). But although her most recent album, Get What You Give, displays some of the old grit, Sass Jordan’s dysfunctional ‘90s relationship(s?) seem(s) to have provided her greatest inspiration. None of Jordan’s albums, before or since, packs the punch of Rats. Sass Jordan still has the voice of a scalded nicotine angel, but her Blues have lightened spectrum and those milder tones of blue just don’t run as deep – or as dangerous – as Rats.

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TRACK LISTING

1. Damaged

2. Slave

3. Pissin' Down

4. High Road Easy

5. Sun's Gonna Rise

6. Head

7. Ugly

8. I'm Not

9. Honey

10. Wish

11. Breakin'

12. Give

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* - Actually released in 1987, but it’s close enough for government work.

** - Sass later went on to play Joplin on stage in a musical called Love, Janis. How they tamed Jordan’s cover-girl looks down to Janis’ homely appeal remains a mystery.

*** - An expression I’ve been cringing from using since the “Goth kids” episode of South Park, even if it is used correctly.

**** - “Good lord! *choke*”

Albums You Probably Haven't Heard Yet: Bloodletting (1990)

Inspired by geekalpha's post a day or two ago about "opus albums" (that is, albums in which every track is a killer), I scanned my music-geekish brain cells for the albums I knew and loved as examples. One of the most prominent of them is the album that earned Concrete Blonde their frequently-attributed (and fairly inaccurate) standing as a Gothic Rock band: Bloodletting.

Song for song, this album is a masterpiece. It's short by most album standards, but there is not a second of filler to be found. The band still uses most of the songs on Bloodletting during their sporadic concert appearances, and if you've heard a Blonde song on the radio, chances are it came from Bloodletting.

The expanded version of the title cut(*) remains an obligatory dance-floor favorite at Goth clubs; I've often said that "Bela Lugosi's Dead" is the Gothic "Free Bird," "Temple of Love '92 is "Stairway to Heaven" and the expanded "Bloodletting" is "Hotel California" - they're the classics everyone loves to hate but everyone gets up and dances to when the DJ sets 'em spinning. Even without the tongue-in-cheek theatrics of the expanded version, "Bloodletting" is one of the better songs from the era between New Wave and Grunge. Its bass hook remains one of the most recognizable openers in post-60s rock, and the sing-along chorus is as infectious as a vampire bite.

And that's just the beginning.

When I first bought Bloodletting (around 1991 or early '92), the cassette was in a bargain bin. I guess the album had yet to catch on, because it's since become Concrete Blonde's most commercially successful release. Immediately, it floored me. I'd liked The Blonde since first hearing them on the Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 soundtrack(**), but this was far better than their previous albums. From the title cut, the album roars into "The Sky is a Poisonous Garden," another vampire-based song that reveals the band's Punk roots and becomes Bloodletting's obligatory "thrash the floor" track(***). Without missing a beat, the groove deepens with "Caroline," another signature song detailing singer Johnette Napolitano's trademark dysfunctional relationships. Slowing down further, "the Darkening of the Light" turns meditative, with a perfect counterpoint in "I Don't Need a Hero." This reflection closed Side One of the album, which allowed you to flip it over and rock out to "Days and Days," which features one of my all-time favorite bass guitar hooks. Breaking up the introspective mood toward the end of Side One, this song leads straight into "The Beast," a full-blown FUCK OFF to love as a concept. Performing a graceul mood-flip, the next song reveals the touching dedication of love in "Lullabye" before breaking it down through the band's most popular and enduring song, "Joey." Although I prefer the anguished live acoustic version on Still in Hollywood, the studio version of "Joey" remains the archetypal plea to the fuckup you just can't let go of no matter how hard you try. It's so popular because it's so true.

Overall, the album revolves around predatory relationships, needy-bleedy love, and the ultimate disappointments of mortality. The latter theme is underscored by the album's closer, "Tomorrow Wendy"; originally recorded by Wall of Voodoo (frequent collaborators with The Blonde), this bitter requiem for a friend dying of AIDs remains one of the bleakest songs of that era. Its naked emotionalism still disturbs me, and I used to dislike the track intensely, especially back when I was with my now-former wife Wendy. Now, though, I can hear the song for what it is: a slap in the face of a God who Napolitano calls on the carpet throughout her career yet never quite abandons. An ironic counterpart to the vampiric immortality of the first two tracks, "Tomorrow Wendy" stands as a testament of the days when AIDS was the scariest kid on the block, yet never actually mentions the disease by name. Like almost every other song on the album, this one raises goosebumps on me every time I hear it.

Musically, Bloodletting is gorgeous. It rips and chimes in all the right places, with a production that lets the band breathe yet never smothers them. (A shortcoming of their later albums, especially Mexican Moon.) James Mankey's guitar work is stunning; the fact that this guy is rarely mentioned in those obligatory "best rock guitarists" round-ups shows just how underrated Concrete Blonde continues to be. Although he draws obvious influences from Jimi Hendrix(****), Mankey sounds like no one else I can think of. His guitar provides an eloquent counterpart to Napolitano's haunting vocals, seeming to weep, choke and scream like a phantasmal human voice. That element of mortality earned the band its Gothic tag, even though their roots draw more from West Coast Punk than from, say, Bauhaus. The drum-work is spare but elegant, provided partly by terminal fuck-up bandmate Harry Rushakoff (who might have been the inspiration for a few of the album's dysfunctional "heroes") and partly by Paul/ Porl Thompson from Wall of Voodoo. The real foundations of The Blonde's sound, however, are Mankey's guitar and Napolitano's naked-sounding bass and voice. Bloodletting displays all three elements to devastating effect - the best the band ever achieved.

Although they would go on to release a half-dozen other albums (including the fantastic collection Still in Hollywood, another album you MUST hear), Concrete Blonde never again nailed the musical and emotional synergy that makes Bloodletting such an underrated classic. If you haven't heard it, give it a listen. If you have, dig it out again anyway.

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TRACK LISTING

"Bloodletting (The Vampire Song)" 6:04
"The Sky Is a Poisonous Garden" (Moreland, Napolitano) 2:36
"Caroline" 5:30
"Darkening of the Light" (featuring Peter Buck) 3:24
"I Don't Need a Hero" 4:25
"Days and Days" 3:12
"The Beast" 3:52
"Lullabye" 3:56
"Joey" 4:07
"Tomorrow, Wendy" (featuring Andy Prieboy) (Prieboy)

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* - ...which is not actually on this album - it was a German single later re-released on Still in Hollywood.

** - A fantastic grab-bag from the Independent Record Syndicate (REM's original label) which featured tracks from yet-to-be-released newcomers Concrete Blonde and Timbuk Three, as well as Oingo Boingo, The Cramps, Lords of the New Church and more. The movie was kind of a mess, but the soundtrack was a killer in every sense of the word.

*** - Concrete Blonde featured one or two of these songs on each of their first several albums - fast-paced bare-bones rock-outs that sent concert-goers moshing at their gigs.

**** - Shown to great effect on their cover of "Little Wing," from Still in Hollywood.