The Parable of the Philosopher and the Pig Farm

On a fine spring day, a philosopher went for a walk in the country.  As he contemplated the quaint farms and basked in the warm sunshine, his mind relaxed and he forgot the cares and strains of university life.  He considered that a rural setting would be an excellent location in which to think his philosophical thoughts and, should he happen upon a farm that was for sale, he would buy it.

As always happens in these stories, the philosopher immediately thereafter encountered a farm with a For Sale sign staked in the yard. Gazing beyond the farmhouse, the philosopher saw a beautiful apple orchard on one side of the property, and an ugly pig sty on the other side. Struck by the philosophical implications of the dichotomy, the philosopher walked onto the porch and rang the doorbell. The door opened and he was confronted by an ancient farmer who explained his operation. “It’s basically a pig farm,” he said. “But we feed the apples to the pigs to hold down feed costs.” Eager to cast apples before swine, the philosopher made an offer on the farm. He learned quickly that the farmer was of the Hegelian bent and the price was therefore non-negotiable.  But the philosopher was flush with cash, having recently been granted tenure, and happily paid the asking price.

Time passed. The farmer settled comfortably into retirement and began attending classes at the university.  One day he decided to drive out to his old farm and check on the philosopher’s agrarian progress. As he turned into the yard, he could see the philosopher in the apple orchard, engaged in an activity and surrounded by several pigs.  The farmer walked down to the orchard and, as he drew nearer, he saw that the philosopher had propped a tall ladder against one of the apple trees.  The philosopher was standing on the ladder, holding a pig up to a branch of the tree, and allowing the pig to eat an apple.  After the pig had eaten the apple, the philosopher climbed down the ladder, placed the pig on the ground, and picked up another pig. He then ascended the ladder, held the pig up to a branch, and allowed it to eat an apple. As the farmer watched, the process was repeated several times until all of the pigs had been fed.

The farmer stepped forward and cleared his throat to get the philosopher’s attention. “Excuse me,” the farmer said, “but isn’t that a very time-consuming way to feed your pigs?”

The philosopher turned to the farmer with a warm and peaceful smile. “Perhaps,” he said. “But what is time to a pig?”

Local Grade-Schooler Announces Plan to Draw a Horse

Kaitlyn, a second-grader at Montgomery Elementary School, has announced that she will draw a horse during this morning's Art and Creativity period.  The announcement was made near the bulletin board, to a small gathering of students and supporters.

"I usually draw a flower or a cat," Kaitlyn explained. "But I thought it was time to step up my game and really try to draw that horse."

Kaitlyn joins an already-crowded field of horse drawers that includes Madison, Megan, Emily, and that weird kid who sits in front of Madison.  Madison and Megan announced their plan to draw horses at a joint press conference held on the playground during yesterday's recess. That weird kid who sits in front of Madison did not formally announce his intention to draw a horse, but a source noted that "He just draws whatever Madison draws." Emily has drawn a horse during every Art and Creativity period since kindergarten.

Immediately following Kaitlyn's announcement, she was accused of being a copy-cat by both Madison and Megan, while Emily leveled the same charge at Madison and Megan.

"Emily always draws a horse," Madison countered. "I'm not a copy-cat if she's drawing it every day."

"She can't just, like, say 'I've got Horse' and nobody else can draw it," Megan added. "And if she calls me a copy-cat again I'm gonna tell on her."

At press time Kaitlyn, Madison, Megan  and Emily were all drawing horses. That weird kid who sits in front of Madison had seen his efforts end in disaster when he produced a stick-figure monstrosity with impossibly long fingers at the end of each leg and a head that resembles a tadpole.

New Madrid - Hey, Look What I Found!

In case you were wondering, there is still great music being made in Athens, Georgia. When I stumbled on New Madrid's Yardboat album today I thought, "Jeez how much more stuff like this is out there that I don't know about??" If your iPod is full it might be time to delete Tres Hombres and make room for something new, fresh, and really really good.

Like many of today's new bands, New Madrid does not fit neatly into any single pigeonhole. Check out some of their Bandcamp tags: alternative, cosmic Americana,  southern noise rock, post folk regional, cosmic boat swirl, ambient, and dirt shine rock. I'm not sure what some of those things are. If I had to put New Madrid into a single genre, it would be "Southern Dream Pop." Whatever the heck that is!

Fountains of Gold is my new favorite song. Start with a solid blues-rock riff, soften it up, throw in clean-n-fuzzy guitars, and layer on one of the best vocals I've heard lately. Doesn't tell you much, does it?  So listen below!

Summer Dream Sigh is a six-minute pop song without obvious hooks. Featuring wonderfully layered guitars, harmony vocals, and a blending of rock, country, and jazz, this may be the best song on the album. Like Fountains of Gold, this is one of those songs that sounds instantly recognizable and at the same time sounds completely fresh. I'm tempted to say something lame like "think Allman Brothers Band meets Pink Floyd with vocalists who can actually sing" but that doesn't do the song justice. Let's just say, "This is Good Music and you will Feel Good when you listen to it."




Yardboat is available for download at yardboat.com.  Name your price, anything over $10. You can download Fountains of Gold and Summer Dream Sigh for free.  But c'mon, buy the whole album. Too many bands are having to give away their best stuff just to get enough buzz to be booked for a $300 show in a bar with a drunk sound guy. If you don't have $10, go out and collect Coke bottles and cash 'em in at Krogers. What? They don't do that anymore? Jeez no wonder this country is going broke!  OK, well, buy what you can. It's Good Music.

Like any Southern band worth an RC Cola and a Moon Pie, New Madrid isn't afraid to stretch things out. Four of the album's eleven songs are over five minutes, and the entire album is just short of an hour. So you will get your money's worth  (see previous paragraph).

If you look for videos on YouTube, be sure to search on "New Madrid band."  If you search on "New Madrid" you will find about [infinity] videos by some very spooky folks who heard someone say that Obama is trying to split the country in half and took it literally.  They say Obama is trying to re-activate the New Madrid Fault Zone in order to divide the US in half and create a deep-water port in Kansas City.  And they have a map by the US Navy to prove it. But if you know where to look you can find this video for Houseboat. And there's more where that came from.

For more videos, downloads, band news, and show dates, visit the New Madrid home page.

Note on pronunciation: I haven't heard anyone say the band's name.  But if it is named for the Missouri town (and the fault zone), then it ain't pronounced like the city in Spain (muh-DRID). It should be pronounced "New MAD-rid" though most folks get the "D" in the second syllable ("MA-drid"). Here is a Wilco video with Jeff Tweedy getting it almost right.



Postscript:  I'm trying to avoid playing Name the Influences. But I can't help but think that the boys have given Mac Gayden's Skyboat album a few spins. No? They haven't? OK my bad.

Alex Bleeker - Watch out for Falling Anvils

Alex Bleeker gives us a pair of bipolar breakup songs. Both feature melodies and arrangements that are borderline feel-good folkie.  But the words reveal a person who needs to increase his Seroquel dosage.

In These Days (2010) we see a man who has dumped his girlfriend and is walking away with a springy step.  But like Wile E. Coyote, he has already walked beyond the edge of the cliff. And he will keep walking forward until he looks down and sees only hot air supporting his emotional weight. At which point he will plunge into free fall and create an insignificant poof of dust when he hits bottom.

Words like "I've got better things to do than spend my time running after you" sound great in daylight. Wait until you are awake at 3AM, searching the shadows for an excuse to send that text message. You know the one I'm talking about.

Don't Look Down (2013) finds our friend in the role of dumpee, begging the dumper not to forget him, not to forget that once she loved him. “Don’t look back on the way we met ... Don’t retract all the things you said.” 

Hey I know I was a complete jerk who was always trying to kill you. But remember that time the anvil fell on my head? Remember how I collapsed down like an accordion? God those were fun times! And when you have fulfilled your dream of becoming The World’s Most Self-Actualized Woman and I am still crumpled up in my Desert of Self-Pity, please don’t look down on me.  Though I know it will be difficult not to look down on me when you are standing at the top of the cliff and I am lying broken below you as the shadow of that boulder that I launched from the catapult blots out the sun and I await its final, inevitable, crushing blow.

Backslash7 rating for These Days and Don’t Look Down: Three sides of the triangle!!!  But watch out for falling anvils.

Don’t Look Down will be available in May on Alex Bleeker and the Freaks’ new album, How Far Away, from Woodist Records.

These Days is available on iTunes.


ALEX BLEEKER & THE FREAKS TOUR DATES

Wed-Mar-13 – Austin, TX – Red 7 – Force Field / Stones Throw (SXSW)

Wed-Mar-13 – Austin, TX – Empire Control Room – Megablaag (SXSW)

Thu-Mar-14 – Austin, TX – Spider House Ballroom – KVRXPlosion (SXSW)

Sat-Mar-16 – Austin, TX – Beerland – Ground Control Touring Party (SXSW)

Sun-Mar-17 – Dallas, TX – Spillover Fest

Tue-Mar-19 – Oxford, MS – Lamar Lounge

Wed-Mar-20 – Nashville, TN – Mercy Lounge

Thu-Mar-21 – Boone, NC – Boone Saloon

Fri-Mar-22 – Athens, GA – Farm 255

Sat-Mar-23 – Greenville, NC – Spazz Fest

Wed-Apr-3 – New Haven, CT – BAR Nightclub (Free show with Ex Cops)

Fri-Apr-5 – Harrisonburg, VA – MACRoCk Festival

April 11-13 – Calgary, AB – MTT Fest

Alvin Lee and Mylon LeFevre - On the Road to Freedom

Rock music's most unusual combination was Gregg Allman and Cher.  Second place belongs to the pairing of British blues rocker Alvin Lee, guitarist and lead singer for Ten Years After, with Mississippi gospel singer Mylon LeFevre.  I think it's safe to say that both men were working through some issues.  But the resulting album, On the Road to Freedom, released in 1973, contained some excellent music by some great musicians.

The album's best track is "So Sad (No Love of His Own)."  Written by George Harrison, the track features George (credited as Hari Georgeson) on guitar, a beautiful slide guitar, bass, and harmony vocal, with Mylon on lead and harmony vocals, Alvin on guitar and vocals, Ron Wood on 12-string guitar, and Mick Fleetwood on drums.  Not a bad band.  This version is much better than Harrison's own take, released on Dark Horse the following year.

My next-favorite song from the album is "We Will Shine," written by Mylon, who contributed lead vocal, 12-string guitar, and background vocals.  Alvin added guitars and vocals, with Steve Winwood on piano and Ron Wood on bass.  Again, not your average garage band.

These are timeless songs that we can carry around in our heads for decades.  Every now and then we need to pause and thank the artists who enrich our lives.  Alvin Lee died March 6, 2013 at the age of 68.  Thank you Alvin, Mylon, and George for giving us these great songs.

Ex Cops - I Feel I've Almost Heard This Before

I first heard James in Singapore, at 1 AM, about four months before it was released on Ex Cops’ True Hallucinations album.  How did this amazing event come to pass?  Let’s just say that being an outer-edge-of-the-solar-system-hanger-on for an indie band with an unreleased album has its perks.  If you have a very loose definition of “perks.”

At the time, I didn't know the song was “James.”  It was just “that song at 04:33” on a very large MP3 file called TH ALBUM.  But whatever it was, it had me doing the Cat Dance in my hotel room.  James is great Pop Music and there’s nothing wrong with that.  Somewhere down in the mix, Phil Spector is pounding a grand piano.

Separator is a true Pop Masterpiece.  I didn't recognize that at first.  Hey, I'm slow!  But I want the record to show that on January 25 I emailed Ex Cops' manager and informed him that Separator is the best song on the album.  The following week, having been reassured of the song's quality, Ex Cops released the Separator video to the public.

Initially, I was drawn to the album’s uptempo songs like James, Ken, and Broken Chinese Chairz.  You know, the Cat Dance songs.  But I started listening to Separator over and over.  The subtle complexity of the arrangement revealed something new with each listen.  Then I found myself hitting the replay button because I was trying to figure out where I had heard it before.

True Hallucinations has been described, unfairly, as a tour through Brian Harding’s iPod.  Reviewers have focused as much on Influences as on the songs themselves.  A certain amount of Influence Peddling cannot be helped.  The creation of music will always involve recycling, and improving upon, established themes and ideas.  Just ask George Harrison’s ghost.  With My Sweet Lord, George subconsciously ripped off He’s So Fine when he thought he was consciously ripping off Oh Happy Day.  But then, George’s mental hard drive was always in need of a good defragging.

The songs on True Hallucinations sound completely fresh to me, and yet seem to resonate on some past memory. A listener who experiences such Deja Vu FEELS that the song has been heard before. The first time I heard Bruce Springsteen's Thunder Road, I felt that I had been hearing it all my life. And it is that "I feel I've almost heard this before" quality that makes True Hallucinations GREAT music.

After many listens, I decided Separator was pinging on Transformer Man, from Neil Young’s long-out-of-print Trans album.  I had not heard Transformer Man in over twenty years.  But after finding it on YouTube, I realized that I need to join George Harrison's ghost in the Brain Defragmentation ward.   What the heck was I thinking?  Does Separator’s guitar riff borrow a few notes from the little “doot doot doo-doots” in Transformer Man?  Is it that one weird chord change?  I dunno!!!  It’s best to not think about these things too much. 

The "dancer" in the Transformer Man video is Nils Lofgren of Grin and later the E Street Band.  He does not remind me of the dancer in the Separator video.

Backslash-7 rating for James, Separator, and the rest of True Hallucinations: Three sides of the triangle!!!

For Ex Cops tour dates and videos, or to purchase True Hallucinations, visit excopsband.com .

HYMNS - Don't Think Just Listen

HYMNS had the ability to sound like every band you’ve ever heard and yet sound fresh and unique.  Well, usually they sounded fresh and unique.  Sometimes the game of “Name That Influence” became a distraction.  Are they channeling Tom Petty, The Byrds, or Bob Dylan?  No, they’re channeling Tom Petty channeling The Byrds channeling Bob Dylan.  This stuff can drive you crazy.  You end up like the guy in “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” who became so obsessed with defining “quality” that he ended up in an insane asylum.  It’s best to just enjoy the music.

My favorite HYMNS song is the medley of NYC Nervous Breakdown / Off My Mind from the Travel in Herds album.  No, it wasn't a medley on the album.  But when I created a HYMNS playlist and sorted it alphabetically, that was obviously the way God meant for the songs to be sequenced.  You can stream the result of God's Will below.  You're welcome.

Backslash-7 rating: Two sides of the triangle!!!  They lose a side because A) It doesn't make me do the Cat Dance and B) I can’t figure out where that 12-string guitar solo came from.  Based on their video for Train Song, I’m guessing it came from Hard Day’s Night.

Brian Harding (lead vocals and guitar) is now the front man for Ex Cops.  Jason Roberts (lead guitar and vocals) is touring with Nora Jones.

Amalie Bruun - Soulful Insomniac

Amalie Bruun, ex-Minks and current Ex Cops, has a nice pair ... of romantic songs.

Crush  gives us the shimmery happiness of new love.  If the layered guitars and breathy vocals don’t make you feel good, then you are already dead.  I made this my ringtone, so I get to do the Cat Dance whenever someone calls.

In Crush,  Amalie sings “When I see you I wanna stay up all night.”  Nite shows us the B-Side of romance with Amalie again up at all hours, but this time suffering the ache of being alone at 4 AM with her lover gone.

Don’t be fooled by the “black metal” tag on Amalie’s Bandcamp page.  This is great pop music.  Backslash-7 rating for Crush and Nite: Three sides of the triangle!!!

Amalie is currently on tour with Ex Cops.  For tour dates, videos, or to buy Ex Cops’ True Hallucinations album, visit excopsband.com