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July 30, 2009
Fun Clicks
Hello stranger, put your lovin hand in mine, n hop on to Renegade Minstrels' fanpage:
Renegade Minstrels' Facebook Page is brought to you by Poetry.
Poetry: The only form of writing online that improves your ability to focus.
Renegade Minstrels' Facebook Page is brought to you by Poetry.
Poetry: The only form of writing online that improves your ability to focus.
July 23, 2009
Food for them that's got an appetite to feel incredulous.
It comes down to bein' real, and it's so simple.
If what you've got to give is true to you--
even if it ain't ever barely clear to you,
follow it relentlessly and pour and force it forth.
What do I crave to be?
A multi-instrumentalist performer composer
who's a constant student,
who is diabolically prudent
and consistently shrewd.
A rabid writer who fills multiple forms full
with congruent dynamism.
A jazz scat freestyle rapper who can cut deep,
a playwright unveiling legions of new archetypes,
each of whom remains both real and true
both awake and asleep.
A rabid conversationalist
fluent with technology.
Who refines his crafts n skills every day
whose songs, when heard, lift from you
your need to pray.
A teacher who spurs students to forge their own way,
and hone their pursuits by the day.
A melody creator with the wry elegance of Duke,
the funk of Superstition,
vulnerability pure as Lennon's,
swagger sheer as Satchmo's,
truth raw as Joni Mitchell blue,
mystic eyed as Dylan
expansive as Whitman
concise as Emily
innovative in observation as the Bard.
Is that so much to ask?
It has never been the case
that the crown is obsequiously requested.
You take it.
I do not shudder in the slightest under the absurd
reach of my ambition. I patiently believe--
this person is already in me,
some of the one I am now is not me.
Let these spirits all pour through to infuse me utterly,
Let me become annihilated in sublimation to the forces
swirling true as the unseen world still whirls.
Embrace abandon, face the music
Carve new acres of oceans, plains and groves.
Groove.
If what you've got to give is true to you--
even if it ain't ever barely clear to you,
follow it relentlessly and pour and force it forth.
What do I crave to be?
A multi-instrumentalist performer composer
who's a constant student,
who is diabolically prudent
and consistently shrewd.
A rabid writer who fills multiple forms full
with congruent dynamism.
A jazz scat freestyle rapper who can cut deep,
a playwright unveiling legions of new archetypes,
each of whom remains both real and true
both awake and asleep.
A rabid conversationalist
fluent with technology.
Who refines his crafts n skills every day
whose songs, when heard, lift from you
your need to pray.
A teacher who spurs students to forge their own way,
and hone their pursuits by the day.
A melody creator with the wry elegance of Duke,
the funk of Superstition,
vulnerability pure as Lennon's,
swagger sheer as Satchmo's,
truth raw as Joni Mitchell blue,
mystic eyed as Dylan
expansive as Whitman
concise as Emily
innovative in observation as the Bard.
Is that so much to ask?
It has never been the case
that the crown is obsequiously requested.
You take it.
I do not shudder in the slightest under the absurd
reach of my ambition. I patiently believe--
this person is already in me,
some of the one I am now is not me.
Let these spirits all pour through to infuse me utterly,
Let me become annihilated in sublimation to the forces
swirling true as the unseen world still whirls.
Embrace abandon, face the music
Carve new acres of oceans, plains and groves.
Groove.
JPS 7.16.09
written in Mt. St. Helens' shadow.
written in Mt. St. Helens' shadow.
A Simple Thing
If you'd care to take about 90 seconds and give our band a boost, I'd deeply appreciate it.
This link will open your iTunes to a mix I created called "Rollicking Songs." If you like, give 'em a listen, I think that some of em are truly great.
All I'm requesting you do is give us a good rating for the iMix I created. If you have an additional 30 seconds to spare, share the iMix with some friends.
This link will open your iTunes to a mix I created called "Rollicking Songs." If you like, give 'em a listen, I think that some of em are truly great.
All I'm requesting you do is give us a good rating for the iMix I created. If you have an additional 30 seconds to spare, share the iMix with some friends.
July 15, 2009
What's Woody Got to Do With You
Even if you aren't a folk music fan or a modern day folkster, but yer an American, Woody Guthrie matters to you. I think a lotta folks might not quite believe this, they might think "He's one of those people you're Supposed to know, he's just a scratchy old voice on some records, and yeah yeah he influenced a whole lot of mighty musicians--that's wonderful but he was for his day and he came along a long time before these new issues came to be."
Well here's what's funny. You go to the Woody Guthrie Archives in New York town and turn over page after page of what Woody wrote, typed, scribbled and scrawled all over all kindsa paper and you'll be shocked at just how much of what he wrote is gleamingly relevant to this very day.
Ol woodrow wilson Guthrie is just important to you, man alive it's true.
Here's some reasons why.
His songs are exemplary examples of what being an American is all about. His songs say among other things: trust yourself, don't let no one else tell you how it is, question everything, and glory in the mightyness of nature.
His recordings document a very great performer. One who delivers humor and stories and tragedies and majesty and the Joad family with clarity and spunk, with wise syllables and laughing wonder. I believe that so much attention gets paid to Woody the Icon or Woody the guy who wrote more that 1000 songs or Woody the guy who wrote "This Land is Your Land" or some other Woodys--and we never talk about how fine a performer he was. There's very few flubs and glitches on his many many recordings, and I doubt he had the patience to do multiple takes of many of his songs.
There's many more reasons, but the one I'm getting at is this: Woody Guthrie's relationship to the U.S. Government is fascinating, and particularly so today, because he was the beneficiary of Government money by way of FDR's New Deal. Woody wrote songs to warn folks about VD when he was in the Merchant Marine, and he wrote songs to promote the Bonneville Power Administration's dam-building projects as well.
In case you don't follow too much news, there's a whole mess o' government moo-lah just about to come down the pipe, and (who knows) perhaps trickle down to little old you and me. So examining how Woody fared back in his heyday when the last such glut of government funds came down is particularly relevant.
I'd love it if you told me what you dig about Woody, or how you're surprised by some way in which his body of work makes him relevant today.
Well here's what's funny. You go to the Woody Guthrie Archives in New York town and turn over page after page of what Woody wrote, typed, scribbled and scrawled all over all kindsa paper and you'll be shocked at just how much of what he wrote is gleamingly relevant to this very day.
Ol woodrow wilson Guthrie is just important to you, man alive it's true.
Here's some reasons why.
His songs are exemplary examples of what being an American is all about. His songs say among other things: trust yourself, don't let no one else tell you how it is, question everything, and glory in the mightyness of nature.
His recordings document a very great performer. One who delivers humor and stories and tragedies and majesty and the Joad family with clarity and spunk, with wise syllables and laughing wonder. I believe that so much attention gets paid to Woody the Icon or Woody the guy who wrote more that 1000 songs or Woody the guy who wrote "This Land is Your Land" or some other Woodys--and we never talk about how fine a performer he was. There's very few flubs and glitches on his many many recordings, and I doubt he had the patience to do multiple takes of many of his songs.
There's many more reasons, but the one I'm getting at is this: Woody Guthrie's relationship to the U.S. Government is fascinating, and particularly so today, because he was the beneficiary of Government money by way of FDR's New Deal. Woody wrote songs to warn folks about VD when he was in the Merchant Marine, and he wrote songs to promote the Bonneville Power Administration's dam-building projects as well.
In case you don't follow too much news, there's a whole mess o' government moo-lah just about to come down the pipe, and (who knows) perhaps trickle down to little old you and me. So examining how Woody fared back in his heyday when the last such glut of government funds came down is particularly relevant.
I'd love it if you told me what you dig about Woody, or how you're surprised by some way in which his body of work makes him relevant today.
Context
The thing I like about blogging is that they lend themselves to being concise while you can also ramble on as long as you like. For instance, Andrew Sullivan's blog mostly consists of posts that are less than 300 words, but when he wants to, he can write as long a post as he likes. One reason he's so successful in the medium is that he only writes as much as is necessary to make his point. That's invaluable. I don't know how many articles and columns and papers I've read that take many more words to make a point than is necessary, simply because the form being used demands a certain amount of words.
You need a lot of space & time to make your point if you're making a complex arguement or your topic requires abundant proof, and so time and space is dedicated to your sources. Otherwise, please, we're all in more and more of a hurry. Get to the point.
You need a lot of space & time to make your point if you're making a complex arguement or your topic requires abundant proof, and so time and space is dedicated to your sources. Otherwise, please, we're all in more and more of a hurry. Get to the point.
July 13, 2009
The Ultimate Evil
Hollow: the bluster of friends n pundits n politicians. Cost: the effectiveness and accuracy of our discourse.
Hollow: our cursory attempts to atone for the tragedies inflicted upon slaves n natives. Cost: our country's burgeoning spiritual crisis.
Hollow: Current attempts to cure these ills Cost: Real and true freedom, or: maximum liberation.
But when I speak of "maximum freedom," remember what the song says, "I see true freedoms need checks just to be..."
We face failures where ramifications can't be measured because the real costs are just barely beginning to be felt. For instance, whole ecosystems are collapsing while we keep up our wasteful ways. The examples are legion, I bet you'll agree.
Hollow: our cursory attempts to atone for the tragedies inflicted upon slaves n natives. Cost: our country's burgeoning spiritual crisis.
Hollow: Current attempts to cure these ills Cost: Real and true freedom, or: maximum liberation.
But when I speak of "maximum freedom," remember what the song says, "I see true freedoms need checks just to be..."
We face failures where ramifications can't be measured because the real costs are just barely beginning to be felt. For instance, whole ecosystems are collapsing while we keep up our wasteful ways. The examples are legion, I bet you'll agree.
One Song I'm Workin On
Songwriters and writers of any sort, please steal freely from these, the raw content of lyrics that I'm chiseling down and reworking relentlessly into a song. If you want to give me co-writing credit though, that's cool.
I should also mention that I don't use the phrase "hollow cost" lightly here, I'm using the extreme resonance of the sound of that phrase to point out that we are not truly facing the many drastic ills afflicting us. My next post will explicitly state why I believe the phrase isn't overkill, but the only appropriate phrase to be used for my purposes.
Verse 1
Look out mothers cause I'm gettin explicit
Flow relentless as cold thunder driven rains
And the gnawing flood of peoples that drained this land's natives away.
Swindle upon swindle punctuated by massacres
between promises and exiles the reservations blur
While underneath it all there lies the land
The land they were forced from before
we forsaked them and it--
the land we must embrace
if ever our ways become legit.
It sounds like my rhymes are internal but look out
what I spit rhymes with what's around you eternally.
Hear yer preacher braying "What he speaks is infernal!"
But only our better angels are conversant with me.
It takes gumption great as Lincoln's to face these onslaughts today,
Blues greater than his will grip [you] if you can't embrace the array.
I live where the culture's all imported
Cause we done drowned out the native life
Through technologies all senses get distorted
Like time distilled our artifacts of strife.
What's tacky's all that's soulful in these nowhere towns out west
Meanwhile diverse eyes keep lookin' doleful in this land I know the best.
Don't we all crave and pave over this land of false named "Indians."
the resilient indians
whose name was falsely given
who knew the value of the land
Verse 2
Slavery, our unoriginal sin
isn't over here when
I pour out some of my fifth for those descendants
of the liberated slaves
of whom more than a fifth now strive
in a prison or a ghetto
thronging thicker than sin
striking deeper than stillettos
Like fine rock scoured off mountains down through plains and valleys,
the spirits pour through churches and alleys
Whores, hip tappers, hustlers, trappers, pimps
loose sailors, cheap players and rich nymphs--
let's put together a grand get together
that drives these sterile blues clean away
and breed a whole new brand 'o blues.
This is not my land we live in now.
It's a flat graveyard that once knew the plow.
The fiery gumption must now blaze anew.
Let's do this in New Orleanian fashion
and get the lewd and their lush piano ticklers
roaring forth from out the bawdy doors.
Verse 3
The driveby media done riddled another demographic with a constricting perspective.
We zoom in through so little so quick there's no space for contemplation.
Folks crave a scene with constant happenings,
some feel that goin on online.
But most of you can shift yer pixels all you please
What you fawn over often feels thinner than 2D.
and for all the acres I can click through
it still feels hard to get through to
somewhere something's meaningful to me.
In congress, on screen, out back and all over disunion
you watch the faces change while all else remains the same
Language continues its warp
but it's viewed as no more than a tool,
all too rarely made to resonate
or renovate the ways we think.
Language must outpace technology.
This is why my hope is smaller than microbes growing
in a wide eyed infant's drop of useless drool.
The currents ripple wickedly
cross breeding aims resonate
our oligarchy smiles indulgently
bemused at the flailing outrage.
They fold their hands
and go on as they please.
It's hard being elegant and simple
stifling simplemindedness won't do.
A roar is pounding through the temples
Like the northern line barreling through.
the way it is now money means more freedom
and this means money's hard to come by,
thus freedom's far from cheap.
The currents ripple wicked dragging
these flagging hopes off course
let the winds take you
or else take what calls to you, by force
It's hard to gauge the depth and breadth of the disorders--
Fiscal and attention deficits yawnin wide.
Sure as greed begets swindlers repetition kindles affinity
Mass and volume drown out value and values.
Overseas blues got families displaced n driven away
Like a silent dust storm blown in from back in the day
The crises mount like dark clouds piling over yonder
Aimless swells of anger can't be drained away without cold thought
Sure as there's only so much New Orleans' levies were built to bear.
Now that clamping catastrophes have got loose can non attention spans caught
We may just damp disaster's fuse before too many more flash out n' flare.
Like so much else, this all remains under-understood.
By we who cannot face how many profits stifle good.
How do you strive for progress when the tides decree we aspire to the mean?
I search lady suicide bomber to choose a side 'midst the dreams
Heaped among still seething piles of bones
Oh oh the pickins are lean.
All that's certain is that we ain't gainin on too much that's been lost--
We ache n' scrape to fill in deficits of this culture's hollow costs.
All that's certain is: we ain't gainin much of all that's been long lost--
We ache n' scrape to fill the deficits of this culture's hollow costs.
Breathe in fuming airwaves shiv'ring thick as traffic exhaust
Strain to fuse and ache to pay this culture's hollow costs.
I should also mention that I don't use the phrase "hollow cost" lightly here, I'm using the extreme resonance of the sound of that phrase to point out that we are not truly facing the many drastic ills afflicting us. My next post will explicitly state why I believe the phrase isn't overkill, but the only appropriate phrase to be used for my purposes.
Verse 1
Look out mothers cause I'm gettin explicit
Flow relentless as cold thunder driven rains
And the gnawing flood of peoples that drained this land's natives away.
Swindle upon swindle punctuated by massacres
between promises and exiles the reservations blur
While underneath it all there lies the land
The land they were forced from before
we forsaked them and it--
the land we must embrace
if ever our ways become legit.
It sounds like my rhymes are internal but look out
what I spit rhymes with what's around you eternally.
Hear yer preacher braying "What he speaks is infernal!"
But only our better angels are conversant with me.
It takes gumption great as Lincoln's to face these onslaughts today,
Blues greater than his will grip [you] if you can't embrace the array.
I live where the culture's all imported
Cause we done drowned out the native life
Through technologies all senses get distorted
Like time distilled our artifacts of strife.
What's tacky's all that's soulful in these nowhere towns out west
Meanwhile diverse eyes keep lookin' doleful in this land I know the best.
Don't we all crave and pave over this land of false named "Indians."
the resilient indians
whose name was falsely given
who knew the value of the land
Verse 2
Slavery, our unoriginal sin
isn't over here when
I pour out some of my fifth for those descendants
of the liberated slaves
of whom more than a fifth now strive
in a prison or a ghetto
thronging thicker than sin
striking deeper than stillettos
Like fine rock scoured off mountains down through plains and valleys,
the spirits pour through churches and alleys
Whores, hip tappers, hustlers, trappers, pimps
loose sailors, cheap players and rich nymphs--
let's put together a grand get together
that drives these sterile blues clean away
and breed a whole new brand 'o blues.
This is not my land we live in now.
It's a flat graveyard that once knew the plow.
The fiery gumption must now blaze anew.
Let's do this in New Orleanian fashion
and get the lewd and their lush piano ticklers
roaring forth from out the bawdy doors.
Verse 3
The driveby media done riddled another demographic with a constricting perspective.
We zoom in through so little so quick there's no space for contemplation.
Folks crave a scene with constant happenings,
some feel that goin on online.
But most of you can shift yer pixels all you please
What you fawn over often feels thinner than 2D.
and for all the acres I can click through
it still feels hard to get through to
somewhere something's meaningful to me.
In congress, on screen, out back and all over disunion
you watch the faces change while all else remains the same
Language continues its warp
but it's viewed as no more than a tool,
all too rarely made to resonate
or renovate the ways we think.
Language must outpace technology.
This is why my hope is smaller than microbes growing
in a wide eyed infant's drop of useless drool.
The currents ripple wickedly
cross breeding aims resonate
our oligarchy smiles indulgently
bemused at the flailing outrage.
They fold their hands
and go on as they please.
It's hard being elegant and simple
stifling simplemindedness won't do.
A roar is pounding through the temples
Like the northern line barreling through.
the way it is now money means more freedom
and this means money's hard to come by,
thus freedom's far from cheap.
The currents ripple wicked dragging
these flagging hopes off course
let the winds take you
or else take what calls to you, by force
It's hard to gauge the depth and breadth of the disorders--
Fiscal and attention deficits yawnin wide.
Sure as greed begets swindlers repetition kindles affinity
Mass and volume drown out value and values.
Overseas blues got families displaced n driven away
Like a silent dust storm blown in from back in the day
The crises mount like dark clouds piling over yonder
Aimless swells of anger can't be drained away without cold thought
Sure as there's only so much New Orleans' levies were built to bear.
Now that clamping catastrophes have got loose can non attention spans caught
We may just damp disaster's fuse before too many more flash out n' flare.
Like so much else, this all remains under-understood.
By we who cannot face how many profits stifle good.
How do you strive for progress when the tides decree we aspire to the mean?
I search lady suicide bomber to choose a side 'midst the dreams
Heaped among still seething piles of bones
Oh oh the pickins are lean.
All that's certain is that we ain't gainin on too much that's been lost--
We ache n' scrape to fill in deficits of this culture's hollow costs.
All that's certain is: we ain't gainin much of all that's been long lost--
We ache n' scrape to fill the deficits of this culture's hollow costs.
Breathe in fuming airwaves shiv'ring thick as traffic exhaust
Strain to fuse and ache to pay this culture's hollow costs.
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