|
NOTES FROM SRI LANKA. (March '00) Click here to return to Table of Contents.
3/4/2000 March is in. March on, march on... Hope everyone is ready for what promises to be a very eventful and electrifying year for those fortunates who count themselves amongst the Big Green faithful. I'm talking about new releases, ectoplasmic manifestations (the virtual equivalent of personal appearances), and a whole lot of things popping up as the year progresses. You may even see big improvements here at BigGreenHits.com...not that there's all that much room for improvement. But if there is room, we will find it. And we will improve it. Just you wait and see. Yeah. Just wait...and... (...the sound of someone whistling at the far end of a long, tiled corridor....) Still there? Good. It is hard to keep an audience engaged once you've abandoned mortal guise (i.e. live performances). People have remarked on this more than once. I've been asked why we didn't even try to find our way onto a stage at Woodstock 99® when it was only a stone's throw away from our luxurious estate in the Hamptons (previously owned by Billy Joel; a complex we purchased under the unlikely pseudonym "Jerry Seinfeld"). The truth is, we were at Woodstock 99® -- for the part that didn't involve the burning and the screaming and the dropping of shorts. I know this will be hard for some of you to believe (God knows, I hardly believe it myself), but we actually were performing on stage under the unlikely pseudonym "Jewell". (The name was Matt's idea. I was all for calling us "Seven Vertical Inches of Purgatory," but that would've taken up too much signage space on our roadside lemonade stand). That's right -- the act you saw at Woodstock 99® billed as "Jewell" was really us in a skin. Very uncomfortable, especially in July. But you see -- this is just the sort of exciting development I was talking about earlier. You'll see more and more of this as the weeks wear on. (Watch for us on TVLand...I'll be the back half of Mr Edd.) Political humor department: Let's test your knowledge of the current crop of presidential hopefuls, shall we? See if you can match the following verbatim excerpts from the March 2nd Republican debate with the appropriate candidate... #1. "You guys [in the media] play the game, put the mask over the eyes of the people, and then ask why they don't see me. And I refuse to dignify that little tactic with any more of a response than that." #2. "...what I call rogue state rollback. And that means that you do whatever you can, whether it be the use of propaganda, whether it be used to organize groups outside the country, whether it be arming and training and equipping." #3. "I regret I did not speak out against the school's anti-Catholic bias. I missed an opportunity. I make no excuses. I make no excuses." The choices are, of course: A. George W Bush B. Alan Keyes C. John McCain Give up? Can't! You must match the ludicrous quote with the ludicrous national candidate man. Email your guesses to jperry@biggreenhits.com The all-to-obvious answers will appear in next week's column. And all you residents of Rudy Giuliani's Bronx, listen up! You should only expect summary execution at the hands of the police if you have a criminal record of some kind. (Unless -- of course -- you refuse to surrender. Or make the mistake of reaching for your wallet.) The late Mr. Malcom Ferguson is testament to this policy. The mayor's PR team seems actually a tiny bit proud of this killing, two blocks away from where Diallo was riddled with NYPD lead. Be careful out there! jp Click here to return to Table of Contents.
3/12/2000 Good moooorning.... Time passes. Long winters (even mild ones) tend to make people restless here in Sri Lanka, where a cold, steady drizzle has been falling for the past two days and I've found little reason to venture forth from my adobe lean-to. So what to do on a blustery March afternoon, or a cold, soggy Friday night? Break out the old tapes! We got together for an informal rehearsal a couple of nights ago and thought we'd kill the balance of the evening by watching an old performance video we threw together in '93 (recently excavated from the ruins of my former bedroom at my parents' house). It was shot by a freak named Angel who had a digital 8mm camcorder that broke down before we started playing; he wired it into a VHS deck and started rolling. We were playing with guitarist Jeremy Shaw, founder of the Neptune Ensemble, at the time. I was toast that night, and looked it...my head as veiny as a snapping turtle. John had Hugh Grant hair. Matt looked like John Carradine in Jessie James. Old Angel was pulling out all the stops, rolling around on the floor, pressing every effect button he could get his finger on. Freeze frame on Matt...then infra-red shot of Jeremy's fingers...then a jerky sequence of my turtle head on the mic. I think the only button Angel couldn't find was the "pause" button, with half the tape taken up by between-song bullshitting. Just as well, as it wasn't our finest performance, exacerbated by the fact that whoever was doing the audio mix was Angel's evil/opposite twin -- unable to find any of the controls, it would appear. Good for a laugh, though. My memory of that night (like many nights) is hazy. I do recall that the rehearsal space was a block away from the Police station. It was a loft rented by some metalhead friends of Jeremy who were generous enough to let us make strange noises in their home for a couple of hours. The intention was to make a video demo, but it was, of course, useless for that purpose. Angel disagreed, was quite proud of the work he had done. I had to use a crowbar to get the master tape away from him, which he regarded as an original piece of art. Want a copy? Forget it. Matt would put me out with the recyclables. Anyway...Friday was the first plenary rehearsal, the first Big Green quorum on the road to what will be our second CD, release date TBD. We mostly went over stuff only hardcore Big Green-atics would recognize..."Don't Give Up The Ship," "Kelleher," and other chestnuts. John's drums were in pieces, so he banged on inverted stewpots and plastic tubs. Matt availed himself of my Martin D-1, but insisted on restringing it left-handed and playing it behind his back the whole session. I just sat on my keys and said, "Quit it!" (See what I'm up against?) In other news: California's anti-youth Proposition 21 passed by a wide margin last Tuesday. This ludicrous "anti-crime" measure criminalizes a wide range of juvenile activity to the point where a 14 year-old can be tried and incarcerated as an adult (with adults) for graffiti -- an offense that will become a permanent item on his/her record. This at a time when crime statistics for young people are low and dropping (yes, in California) nearly as fast as allocations for social services. For more on this, check out www.YouthEC.org or Alex Cockburn's latest editorial in The Nation. Then complain. Loudly. all yours, jp Click here to return to Table of Contents.
3/19/2000 Hola, Hope everyone who's been reading this column for the last few weeks is still alive. I'd hate to think that this is killing anyone. Speaking of "killing anyone," I see that Giuliani's boys are at it again, this time right around Penn Station. Another unarmed man bites that NYC dust, courtesy of the Gang Investigation Unit, this time. And so Patrick Dorismond of Brooklyn joins an ever-growing list of the summarily executed that includes Malcolm Ferguson, Amadou Diallo, and various other unfortunates brandishing life-threatening candy bars, water pistols, etc. I suppose the next time I'm waiting at that taxi stand outside MSG I should consider myself a legitimate target. Good thing I'm white. Like the mayor. The NYPD PR machine wasted no time in putting out details of Dorismond's past brushes with the law. (The guy had a record, so he deserved to die...?) With their usual skill at covering their ample political ass, Rudy and Howard Safir were quick to dispel any notion among their favored white constituency that this man didn't fit the black predator profile. In their rush to put the best spin on the killing, neither one of them found the time to contact the man's family directly with their regrets. Charming. For more on Dorismond, read this Daily News story by Roberto Santiago. Ooooooohhhhh! All right, I'm back. I've had occasion to be in the city a few times over the past several months. The last time I found myself, through an accounting error, in the Al Hirschfeld Suite of the Algonquin Hotel. The bell captain (in a ludicrously ornate get-up) let me in by mistake, and the folks at the front desk let it slide. Surrounded by caricatures of Liza Manelli, Katherine Hepburn, and other show-biz icons, I dropped back onto the sofa and listened to someone shouting nine stories below. He was having a bad day, and was probably unaccustomed to the comforts that were so erroneously conferred upon me that afternoon. Or perhaps the room had been reserved for him. Then again, maybe it was the ghost of Al himself, saying "Get out of my roooooom!" Dunno. What's this got to do with music? Not much. We're working on the new album...slowly. The fact is, I'm still trying to get people to listen to the last one. I saw a brief review of it on-line yesterday; one that associated our music with that of Glenn Frey. Not an analogy that had ever occurred to me personally, but hey...there's something in 2KY2C for everyone. Hey...I caught myself watching a show about the Beach Boys. Nothing surprises me anymore. Well, gotta go...cause the heat is on. Keep those emails coming. luv u, jp Click here to return to Table of Contents. 3/26/2000 Hihowareyaevrybuddy, Spring is just beginning to assert itself here in the spice islands. Or insert itself, as the case may be. A land of fire and ice. Mostly ice, though, at this time of year. Matt and I got together on Wednesday to go over some stuff, and I'm a three-toed freak if he didn't pull out a whole raft of new numbers no one has ever heard before. That well-oiled Matt Perry songwriting machine has been chugging along once again. I can just see him now, driving between bird feeding stations, doing those things that conservationists do...what ever they do...then yanking out that little tape recorder and humming a few bars into it every so often. And here I thought he was taping bird songs, all this time. Yeah, we're full of surprises around here. We've got a suitcase of songs waiting to be recorded, pressed, hacked, and melted down into pudding. All we have to do now is get about the business of doing it. Life is just so fucking simple, it almost makes you cry. It's just like what those old EST freaks used to say. Want to stop hunger? Easy! Just think it gone. Don't let hunger be a part of your world. Forget redistribution of wealth. Never mind sustainable agriculture. IMF structural adjustment...what IMF structural adjustment? Just look at every world crisis in terms of your own massive ego, and you'll feel a whole lot better. And if people stubbornly refuse to stop starving, well...then they're just in the wrong motivational yuppie-club, right? I sure miss that EST clan. Werner and the geeks. Off spending money somewhere, no doubt. Quote of the week department. New York Republican Party political operative Jay Severin was playing tailgunner for Giuliani's Senate campaign this week, taking some moderate flak over his Dishonor's handling of the latest NYPD summary execution of an unarmed black man (see last week's column, below). Severin felt "Team Giuliani" would do okay despite the mayor's somewhat unseemly rush to get every detail of the late Patrick Dorismond's police record (including sealed juvenile records, opened especially for the occasion) into the news immediately following the shooting. Severin: "They [the campaign] walk away from this with Rudy having re-certified his credentials as someone who will crack down on crime, support the police and make the streets safe....The risk to Rudy is that he is seen as to tough on crime with [suburban and Upstate voters], which for these voters is probably like being too thin or too rich." Crack down, yeah. Only no crime necessary. And make the streets safe? For whom? Patrick Dorismond? Amadou Diallo? Or just people like Rudy's kid, who reportedly storms around his apartment building, giving the other tenants a pain in the ass because his dad's the Mayor? Hey, Jay...I'm one of those upstate voters, and from where I'm standing, Rudy is too thin and too rich. Too thin on humanity. Too rich in the blood of black people. Of course, Rudy's Senate race opponent is depressingly similar; a patently conservative force in a conservative Presidential administration that has done more to advance extreme police tactics and undermine the rights of the accused than even its immediate caveman predecessors. So if elections do little, then...what? Ask the 27 arrested outside Dorismond's funeral yesterday. Lettuce pray. jp |