All posts by Joe

Joe Perry is co-founder of the band Big Green and brother to Matt Perry, other co-founder of Big Green. Shall I go on?
Political Rants

R.I.P., uber rich lady atop killer empire

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When the queen of England died last week, I felt bad for the 96-year-old human being that she was, a lady about the age of my late mother. I take no joy in the death of anyone, even people I’m not crazy about, so all due condolences to her family who, I hear, are planning a quiet little funeral. Did I say little? I meant large … in fact, six billion pounds worth of funeral. Such is the institution of the British monarchy – still crazy after all these years.

No, I’m not a fan of “The Royals”. I watched The Crown on Netflix or whatever, and it was mildly entertaining in a slightly nuanced gossipy kind of way. (They went way too easy on Thatcher and made Robert Kennedy look like a cheap wing man for his wife-beating brother the President.) But generally I avoid T.V. dramas about royalty mostly because it bores the living piss out of me. Then there’s that small matter of imperialism, but let’s try to keep our thoughts positive, eh, what?

They’re changing the guard at Thirty-Rock palace

I have to say, though, that I’ve been take a little aback by the degree of monarch worship on display on the purported left-leaning news channel MSNBC. I’m not sure if they’re drowning in their own tears or just drooling themselves to death, particularly on the set of Morning Joe, which is really just the Reagan/Bush administrations resurrected in the form of a talk show. It’s kind of ironic to hear them railing against the tyranny of Trump one day, then waxing poetic about the late Empress of the Realm.

If this is the reaction from the left-leaning news outlet, I can’t even imagine what the right-wingers are saying, other than Hunter Biden killed her or something to that effect. Still, it does make me wonder what the source of this royals adulation might be. I see it in friends and acquaintances, their attachment to this deeply problematic institution only deepened by the pomp and circumstance beamed at them from every television set, smart phone, tablet, etc.

No tears in Nairobi

Because Elizabeth II symbolically embodied the empire itself, she necessarily carries a great deal of imperial baggage. One of the more searing examples of British colonial thuggery was in Kenya, where as Caroline Elkins describes, the empire imprisoned more than 1 million Kikuyu in fortified villages, reminiscent of the strategic hamlet program in Vietnam and modeled after the Brit’s own murderous strategy in Malaya. These “native reserves” were the site of sickening abuse:

They used electric shock and hooked suspects up to car batteries. They tied suspects to vehicle bumpers with just enough rope to drag them to death. They employed burning cigarettes, fire, and hot coals. They thrust bottles (often broken), gun barrels, knives, snakes, vermin, sticks, and hot eggs up men’s rectums and into women’s vaginas. They crushed bones and teeth; sliced off fingers or their tips; and castrated men with specially designed instruments or by beating a suspect’s testicles “till the scrotum burst,” according to Anglican church officials. (Elkins, via The Nation)

This was under Elizabeth II’s watch, in a country that was of particular interest to her. Plenty of blame to go around, but …. really?

Sun never sets on something new

Kenya was nothing new in the British colonial enterprise. I feel I owe it to the victims of that centuries-long project to not join in the near-fanatical worship of this departed demi-god. Seems like the least we can do, really.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Usual Rubbish

All the king’s robots and all the King’s pens

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We got another one of those notes, man. One of those neighbor notes about the uncut lawn. Let’s say they’re a little disappointed in us. I have to admit, I’m disappointed in us, too. We really SHOULD have mowed that lawn, but we were too damn LAZY and SHIFTLESS. (Please share this post with our neighbors so that they will feel validated.)

Anyway, here we are in the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, no validation in sight … not even for our parking. You know, I think we might be the subject of yet another community effort to rid the neighborhood of ne’er do wells. Frankly, I object to being termed in such a way. I may not always do well, but I certainly sometimes do well. I can’t speak for any of the other members of our entourage, but I for one try to remain on the straight and narrow. (It’s been a bit too narrow lately, though.)

Call in the lawn robots

Now SOME people I know, and I won’t say who, hire robots to mow their lawn. I’m not super comfortable with that idea. The part I’m not comfortable with, I should add, is the “hire” part. Why buy the milk when you own the cow, right? We have our own damn robot, thank you very much. His name is Marvin (my personal robot assistant), and if you Google his full name, you’ll come up with about twenty years of posts on this very blog. Or some nonsensical artificial intelligence story. Same damn thing.

Thing is, the lawn robots descend onto your property in a swarm and cut the grass in about ten minutes – just a big flurry of activity, then they’re gone. Marvin could NEVER do that. If he tried to get a job with the lawn robots, he would never get past the first interview. They would laugh him out of Utica, for chrissake. Think of that: Laughed out of Utica. Good name for a band, I think. But I digress. I can’t ask Marvin to do our lawn. It’s a matter of principle. Marvin was created for greater purposes, like vacuuming the hall. I can’t allow him to lower himself in that way.

Sign ’em if you got ’em

What Marvin really needs is a contract. We used to have one of those, with that crazy corporate label Hegemonic Records and Worm Farm, Inc., of Indonesia. It was signed in red ink, actually, though it may have been blood, now that I think of it. Those guys were kind of rough. They weren’t getting us to do shit by using Jedi mind tricks. It was more the truncheon and tire iron method. But hey, you don’t want to hear about our contract signing ceremony under duress. This is supposed to be a HAPPY occasion.

Mow the damn lawn. Stuff it!

It’s actually a good thing we’re no longer under contract to Hegemonic. We can release our new songs into the wild like birds and let them fly on their own volition. Labels always make you do dumb shit you don’t want to do, then cut up your albums to make two or three. You call that value? Jesus Christmas. What an industry! Even our mad science advisor, exploiter of the intergalactic time warp, Mitch Macaphee thinks that’s unjust, and he’s crazy as a loon. Maybe crazier.

From green to red

Yeah, so there are drawbacks. And the first is no money to pay the damn bills. A smarter band would just let them do what they want with their music, but nobody ever accused us of being smart. At least not to our faces.

Political Rants

Riding Grievance all the way to armageddon

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Biden recently announced another $1.1 billion in arms sales to Taiwan, this on the heels of Nancy Pelosi’s bizarre-ass junket to the island / breakaway province. This, I think, is called tripling down, based mostly on a calculation common to most U.S. politicians that provoking China is a political winner, regardless of context. That may be true, but only if you’re cravenly pursuing popularity with no thought of human consequence. While that may sound particularly like Donald Trump, it also sounds like pretty much every other modern president.

We live in a time, once again, when criticism of American foreign policy is characterized as either foolishly alarmist or callously dismissive towards the victims of our official adversaries. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been called out for not being sufficiently critical of either China or Russia. It’s not enough to say that the leadership of both states is arbitrary and rapacious. You need to cheer on the weapons as they roll off the assembly line and into the waiting hands of our Ukrainian or Taiwanese allies.

The actual grievance narrative

What gets glossed over in this toxic discourse is a fuller understanding of history and motive. What is the power behind Putin? He presents himself as the protector of his people – the strong dude who’s going to rescue them from the ravages imposed by the west. This narrative resonates with many Russians because they lived through a catastrophe in the 1990s – an economic implosion born of the “shock therapy” doctrine pushed by the United States and Europe. Many, many Russians lost their livelihoods, their security, even their lives. They also lost any lingering sense that Russia was a great nation. Into that breach walked Putin.

There’s a similar dynamic with China. Xi Jinping and his cohort seek to present a strong, non compliant nation. While China is far from being a democracy, it’s likely that the Chinese people want to think of their country as consequential. That is probably founded in China’s history over the last 100+ years, which started with decades of humiliation at the hands of Europeans (the British especially), followed by civil war and a long, bitter occupation by imperial Japan. No question but that Xi is a tremendous dick, like Putin, but their grievance narrative is based on something real, unlike that of the Republicans.

Revisionist history 2.0

It’s kind of amazing how little understood this dynamic is. The public radio show On The Media did a story about competing historical narratives regarding Hong Kong and China (thanks to Best of the Left for clipping this). What fascinated me about this was that these narratives, which were presented as mythical, all had varying elements of truth embedded in them. There was this “King of Kowloon” graffiti artist who became notorious for claiming that his family owned the Kowloon Peninsula before the British claimed it. Well, maybe. It was something like a feudal society. Then, of course, there is the tabla rasa myth of British Imperialism – the place was empty when we got here.

But then this NPR reporter talked about how China was rewriting history books again to, in effect, erase British imperialism:

Now they’re claiming that Hong Kong never was a British colony. They’re saying that when the British took over Hong Kong, there were these series of treaties, which the Chinese call unequal treaties. They say they were forced upon them by gunboat diplomacy, by violence, and they never actually agreed to any of these treaties. So sovereignty was never ceded. It’s a crazy argument when you think of all those governors and the British administration of Hong Kong to claim that it was never a colony, but it also shows you the sort of mutability of history.

Is it crazy to say that China’s sovereignty over Hong Kong was taken from them by force? Really? It was a forfeit as a result of one of Britain’s opium wars. What do you call that?

No more gunboats.

We seem to be leaning into our imperial posture. And while it’s natural to empathize with the victims of Russia and China, let’s not forget that there are people directly in the cross-hairs of our policy as well. We need to spare them some concern and intervention as well. We also need to bear in mind that major power conflict in the modern age carries with it an insupportable risk of nuclear war.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Usual Rubbish

If you’re built upside-down, walk on the ceiling

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Hmmm. That’s kind of catchy. How about this one? Right …. nothing on the applause meter. Okay, your turn. That’s just goddamned awesome. Now let me try one. Sucks. WHY WAS I BORN?

Oh, hi. Yes, we’re working. As one of those performing rock/pop groups that composes its own material, we, of course, need an editorial process. You just walked in on one of our markup meetings. Here’s how it works: we write out a lyric on a big sheet of white paper, then hang it up on the wall. Everyone gets a chance to cross words out and add words in. We decide with a roll of the dice who goes first. If the winner of the dice roll is Marvin (my personal robot assistant), I have to put a bucket on my head. Then Matt is invited to draw a face on the bucket with magic marker. Got all that?

Sausage making 101

I’ve written about our creative process many times on this blog. Think of my posts as helpful tips for songwriting, especially for those who aspire to be as commercially unsuccessful as we’ve been. Now, let me just say right here and now that not everyone is cut out to reach that lofty goal. It takes a certain special something to be this big of a flop. You either got it or you don’t, as the saying goes. And baby, we got it.

How do you write a massively non-commercial song that almost no one will be able to relate to, except perhaps your neighbor’s dog? Well, it’s not as hard as it sounds. You start with subject matter – something real niche-y, like the history of cardboard. We, for example, chose Rick Perry for one of our albums. Now that may seem like a crass attempt at capitalizing on someone else’s fame, drafting behind them as they sail along. Nothing could be farther from the truth. In fact, it’s so far from the truth, it circled the globe and bumped into the truth from the other side.

The ballad of Cousin Rick

Look – if you’re going to be as unpopular as Big Green, you need to pick something to write about that’s even more unpopular. Rick Perry was low hanging fruit in that regard (see Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick). So Matt wrote a boatload of songs about him, and I wrote a handful. That’s our usual ratio. You could say I’m more careful when I write, but that would be a lie. I rely on found words, forced rhymes, and a bottle of tempera paint so that I can squeeze it all over my lyric sheet when I decide it’s garbage. It’s cathartic, trust me – just give it a try.

Does this look convincing enough?

Thing is, as a band we’re kind of built upside-down. I mean, Big Green started out with the weird songs. You know what I’m talking about – Sweet Treason, The Milkman Lives, Going To Andromeda, all that stuff, then those umpteen million Christmas songs. After that, it was International House weirdness, then Cowboy Scat, and finally, Ned Trek. Now we’ve got a boatload of songs about … wait for it …. interpersonal relationships. You know – the stuff that most bands start with before they go all weird and shit. We’re like freaking Benjamin Button, except that I hate that stupid movie.

Where next?

I don’t know, man …. we’ve got some recording to do. Lots of songs, damn it. There’s certainly at least one album’s worth of unreleased material, and maybe even a box set. That’s right – we could record all the songs, put them in a cardboard box, set the box out into the middle of the road, and hope our fans chance upon it. That’s called “marketing”, kids. Ask your mother.

Political Rants

“The Improvement association” needs improvement

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I probably spend way too much time thinking about elections. I suspect you think so too, particularly since I’ve devoted so many blog posts to the subject. I even talked about it a lot on my short-lived political podcast, Strange Sound, though not so anyone would hear. The fact is, I kind of hate elections. They’re nerve-wracking as hell, they often turn out badly, and I’m not a big fan of suspense, especially when it runs all night long. But that’s just experience talking – long, bitter experience.

There are many things we can do that are more important than voting. Mutual aid, organizing, public service … all of these things make an immediate difference for people. But more than one thing can be important at the same time, and my contention has always been that voting is important enough to do, even if it isn’t as important as all that other stuff. For people like me – CIS-gender white males – the time commitment involved is negligible.

So, though I’m not a huge NPR fan, I was excited when I heard that a recent Serial Podcast had centered on elections in North Carolina and purported voter fraud. But after listening to it, I can only say that they kind of hid the ball. Or dropped it. Not sure which.

Organizing is the enemy

Without getting too deep in the weeds of the podcast, The Improvement Association – a co-production of NPR’s This American Life / Serial and the New York Times – talks about a political action committee in Bladen County, North Carolina that does get-out-the-vote efforts for black residents. They basically hand out a sample ballot with their recommendations and encourage people to support their list. In short, this is organizing 101, completely legal and above board, and a really effective way to drive turnout and support for Democratic candidates.

Naturally, the Association is under constant attack by white politicians, who accuse the organizers of voter fraud. They basically gaslight the organization, so that when an actual Republican voter fraud scheme is busted, somehow this black organization’s name is dragged into the conversation both on a local and a statewide level. The white people in this story – mostly Republicans – understand the power of this black voting block, and they’re using the tools available to them (i.e. baseless accusations of cheating) to undermine it. What is more of a threat to white power than organized black people?

Strange focus

What kind of astonishes me about this podcast is the degree to which the reporter, Zoe Chase, gets sidetracked by this internal power struggle within the PAC. Now, it should come as a surprise to no one that organizers and political agitators tend to have egos. It seems likely that the two lead organizers, Horace and Cogdell, push to get their own way in the context of the organization. But if the ultimate goal is more power and resources for black people in the sea of white people known as North Carolina, is this all that bad?

Chase follows Cogdell’s efforts to elect three black councilmembers in a little town named Elizabethtown – a majority black community run by rich, white people, where there is virtually no public investment in the black neighborhoods. Chase spends a lot of time on the critics’ accusation that Cogdell is doing this so that he will be able to control these three black women on the town council. In the end, Cogdell’s candidates lose, and his colleague Horace suggests that this was essentially because black people were voting against their own interests for one reason or another. This is Chase’s take on Horace:

“It’s always zero sum with Horace when it comes to politics. I’ve learned that. If you’re not with him, you’re against him. And if you’re against him, you’re wrong.“

The thing that must not be named

On the other hand, what I hear from Cogdell is a pretty reasonable economic, almost Marxist analysis of how power works in that little town. A minority of white people with money get all the benefits, while underrepresented black people get the shaft. NPR / NYT say little if anything about this dynamic. It’s really more about personal squabbles. That’s what makes a podcast go viral, right?

Am I surprised to learn that NPR / NYT reporters are constitutionally incapable of giving credence to this kind of analysis? Not at all. There was a similar issue with the podcast Nice White Parents which I talked about on my podcast, Strange Sound. They will twist themselves into knots trying to avoid it.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Usual Rubbish

Welcome to the song recycling center, Campers

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You want to use that one? Really? Which version? Hmmm … okay. That one’s not in the best condition. I think Mitch was using it to prop his closet door open. And then there’s the rising damp. Lots of factors go into this, dude. It’s not so simple.

Like most bands, Big Green has a back catalog. The question is, what to do with all that material, sitting idle, not carrying its own weight. I’ve told our old songs to go out and get a job, but some of them are reaching retirement age, and that’s not an optimal time to start the search. The thing is, we’ve got a boatload of new material coming this way, thanks to the transitive property of Matt Perry, in particular. Yes, I (Joe) have written a handful, but Matt’s output far outstrips mine, and good thing too. ‘Cause I’m a lazy-ass mother. Putting it all on the table here.

Reviving the nineties

So, some who have known Big Green since its inception recall that we had a flurry of activity in the early nineties. We were playing clubs, schools, etc., with a bewildering variety of guitar players. The decade before, we couldn’t hold on to a drummer for love or money. John White took up with us in the late eighties, so problem solved …. except then we didn’t have a guitarist. Then we got one, then lost one, got another, lost another, etc. Let me know when you’ve heard enough. (I know I have.)

Most of the recording we did in the nineties was with Jeremy Shaw, friend of the band, who played a bunch of gigs with us, did some video, and a few audio demos. One of the demos we did was a group of songs we recorded live and later released under the moniker LIVE FROM NEPTUNE. These were performances straight to DAT tape, no overdubs – we did a bunch of takes on maybe five or six songs. You can hear Jeremy really shredding that thing on Special Kind of Blood, Merry Christmas, Jane, and one or two others.

Look over there: something shiny

Okay, so our new material is nowhere near ready for release in any form. Frankly, we’re still in the composing and rehearsing stage. Then comes the de-composing. After that, Marvin (my personal assistant) fashions an album cover out of used ball bearings, and that’s how the sausage is made. But as of now, we’ve got a long way to go. I mean, we’ve got personnel issues to straighten out, we’ve got hinky tech problems, we’ve got rising damp. Our objective – a new album – is either very, very small, or very, very far away. Don’t ask me to solve THAT rubic’s cube.

Did you post those oldies yet?

What do you do when you don’t have anything new to share? Recycle the old stuff, that’s what. We’re chucking some older numbers onto our YouTube channel, so that fans of that platform can listen to our classic selections free of charge, any time that suits their fancy … even if they don’t have a fancy suit to their name. We uploaded 2000 Years To Christmas some time ago, of course. Now we’re working on our EP from the mid 2000s, the afore-mentioned LIVE FROM NEPTUNE. The first two songs are posted on YouTube, with more to come. What do you know about that? Something shiny.

Seasonal effectiveness disorder

Summer’s almost over, and I know I’m not alone in thinking that it’s about damn time. Still, we haven’t accomplished much this season. Not that this summer should be any different from previous ones. Hey, we’ll keep chucking old songs in the air until we get our arms around the new ones. (They ain’t chuckable quite yet.)

Political Rants

Getting the most out of your five minutes

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As anyone reading this blog knows, I come from a history of relative privilege. My parents weren’t rich; they were white working class during a time when being that meant a measure of disposable income that’s practically unheard of for working class people today. Dad worked, and his income was the only money we had coming in, whereas Mom ran the household and basically did all the menial work of cleaning, cooking, washing clothes, etc., etc.

One thing they always made time for was voting. And again, being white, working class in those days meant voting was relatively easy. I inherited that state of ease from them, apparently, because I seldom if ever have to spend more than five minutes on voting. I walk in, sign a paper, get my ballot, fill it out, and drop it in the machine. Easy as fuck, particularly since my employer is fine with me taking the time to do it. For lots of other folks, though, not so easy.

Calling all white people

Okay, so, if you’re like me, you’ve got even more of an obligation to vote in a way that counteracts rampant suppression of voters of color. Our congressional district has shifted significantly, as I’ve mentioned before, so my old classmate Claudia Tenney is moving on to a newly reddened 23rd district to avoid what would almost certainly be a crushing defeat in the 22nd, which she currently represents. She has been going through some wild political gesticulations, ensuring that she stays on Trump’s good side by underwriting his “stolen election” theory and various other bridges-too-far. Not pretty.

That’s not to say that the Republican contenders for the 22nd district aren’t as crazy as Claudia. There’s this dude Steven Wells, for instance, who’s been running about a million ads. Kevin McCarthy’s PAC dropped $300,000 in TV spending into his campaign at the last minute, according to Syracuse.com. He’s doing the full Trump Monty, crowing about Biden’s border crisis, the price of gas, inflation, crime, did I mention gas? He’s also trying to pull the businessman piece of it – only he can fix it. The dude is a tremendous waste of space.

Primary choices

I’ve wondered this year if people in the new 22nd district understand the character of this race. They settled on the lines very late in the game, and it’s more than possible that a lot of people don’t know what district they’re in let alone who’s vying for the House seat. Some Democrats may not know that there’s even an opportunity to win the 22nd. That opportunity existed before, of course – the two elections Claudia won even within the old district lines were real squeakers. That was when the district leaned Republican; now it leans more Democrat.

While there are more progressives in this district than before, like many other districts they were unable to settle on a single candidate. Sarah Klee Hood was a good candidate, but she was massively outspent by a more centrist Dem named Francis Conole, who took the race by about three or four points (less than a thousand votes). Trouble is, there were two other candidates who were more or less to the left of Conole, who between them took another 25 points. A similar thing happened downstate, in the 10th, where rich boy Dan Goldman very narrowly beat out Yuh-Line Niou, a sold progressive. It was another crowded field of leftists, including Mondaire Jones, Carlina Rivera, and freaking Liz Holtzman, all of whom took a substantial piece.

Organize, people

The only way to beat people like Goldman and Conole is for progressives to settle on a single candidate, if possible. That takes organizing, and that means spending more than five minutes on politics. Some have the bandwidth to do it, but at the very least, white people, take five to vote when it comes up. With margins this slim, it can really make a difference.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Usual Rubbish

I said keep the bastards away from me!

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I told you, I didn’t want to be disturbed. And just because I have a gaping hole in my wall doesn’t mean you can just jump right through it. Get out, and take those nasty things with you. Jesus! This mill is a prison!

Okay, I admit that I was overreacting a tad just then. My deepest apologies, and the same for Marvin (my personal assistant), who was once again in the process of invading my personal space for no good reason. Still, that doesn’t justify bad feelings or harsh words. We try not to fly off the handle around here – that’s part of our credo as a band, and it’s something we’re particularly, uh … shit ….. WILL YOU TURN THAT DAMN THING DOWN!!

Quadropedal unmanned vehicles

What did Marvin want from me? Well, he made a new friend today and he wanted to show the bugger off. It’s one of those automated robot dogs – you know, the kind that chase people to death in your nightmares (or just in Black Mirror). He thinks he found the robot dog out in the street, but I happen to know that little iron fido is one of Mitch Macaphee’s latest experiment. It’s kind of his Eighth Man, if you know what I mean, though he’s clearly no Professor Genius.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I don’t trust autonomous vehicles of any sort. They have a mind of their own, you know. And they’re just as liable to take your leg off as any real dog, maybe more. I mean, I could possibly get behind Mitch’s experiment if it were about supporting our next interstellar tour. But damn it, man, it’s got nothing to do with that. That’s right – Mitch is going rogue, once again!

A real Florida story

Now, I’m not a big fan of all these other states. But apparently there’s one state called Florida, and apparently there’s a place down there called Cape Canaveral. And at this Cape Canaveral is a special installation of the Space Force. And that force needs protection … the kind you get from autonomous robot dogs.

Yeah, I'm not crazy about that idea.

Okay, friends. Like I said earlier, I don’t much cotton to autonomous robot animals. And I’ve made my opinion quite well known within the domain of the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill. Which is why it puzzles me so that Mitch Macaphee – whose hearing is excellent, I understand – would put in a bid for building those robot dogs for Cape Canaveral. Seriously, do you know what this means? It means all of his beta testing will be happening right here, in the hammer mill. That’s no fair, man. Tell Florida to get their own beta-tested robot dogs. (Not even sure you need to tell them something like that.)

My little redoubt

Like with most of Mitch’s contracts, it’s really best to just ride them out and keep your head down. I might consider investing in some knee guards – something that will protect my vulnerable shins from those vicious robots. No, they haven’t done anything mean yet. But they might decide to at any moment. What part of autonomous do you not understand?

Political Rants

When Losing starts to mean winning, we lose

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Democracy is always an approximation. The countries we describe as being democratic have systems that exclude some voters, make it hard to participate in one way or the other, and are otherwise imperfect. That’s to be expected. We don’t aspire to imperfection, of course. In many countries, people try to do the best they can with what they’ve got. In France, it’s the fifth republic. In Britain, constitutional monarchy. And right here, we have the U.S. constitution – penned by rich white men, for rich white men.

During the Bush administration, people around the president were fond of saying that the the constitution isn’t a straitjacket. (Of course, they were mouthing those words in defense of torture.) Still, we are kind of locked into certain interpretations of it, and as such remain firmly under minority rule – just as the founding fathers envisioned it. I know others have said this, but apart from 2004, the insurrectionist party (formerly called the Republicans) lost the popular vote in every presidential race since George Herbert Walker Bush was elected in 1988. And yet they “won” 3 out of those seven races. Minority rule.

Narrowing the halls of justice

It goes beyond just the raw numbers of presidential terms served. Republican presidents have had far greater consequence than their Democratic counterparts over this period. Nowhere is this truer than with respect to the Supreme Court. Between Bush Jr.’s two terms and Trump’s term, they have appointed five of the sitting justices – Democrats only three. And we are seeing the results in the form of more and more draconian decisions being handed down by a court majority that is openly contemptuous of the public will.

We are being forced, as a nation, to accept an extremist view of abortion, gun rights, regulatory agencies, and others things. The Supreme Court is like our version of the Supreme Islamic Council in Iran or the old Soviet Politburo. But really, more like the former – they tell us what laws will stand, which will not. They tell us who is a person with full rights and who isn’t. They are aggressively unelected and unconcerned with prevailing sentiments. And there really isn’t much of anything we can do except wait for their next decision. Sure, we can push for court expansion and other reforms, but we have to do so within the constraints their decisions establish, and there are many.

More election drama

With the fall elections approaching, one wonders if the results will be broadly recognized. You can bet that, wherever Republicans do badly, there will be challenges, particularly in states with GOP dominated legislatures and GOP governors. I would like to think that people on the leftward side will take this election seriously and show up in unprecedented numbers, but we shall see. The pro abortion rights vote in Kansas certainly came as a surprise, especially since the ballot measure was designed to be confusing as hell. But even with a massively lopsided majority, Republicans are forcing a recount.

This is what we can expect. We have to be willing to fight back, non-violently (though I understand the need for self defense in oppressed communities). Honestly, we have to get this right. Allowing them to continue to claim victory whether or not they win races is just a recipe for authoritarianism. We know where they want to go – they keep telling us. Viktor Orban is the model they prefer. We need to believe them when they tell us who they are.

Keeping your options open

I would admonish you to vote, but I’ve done that before and look where it’s gotten us. Suffice to say that I am voting, and I encourage you to do the same (and to encourage others to do the same). If only to keep the option to vote open for the years ahead.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.

Usual Rubbish

Even the colonel gets more mail than us

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Get Music Here

Did the mail come in yet? Oh, right. Looks like bills and solicitations. Again. Not a single handwritten missive in the entire pile. What was the name of that short story by Gabriel Garcia Marquez? “No One Writes to the Colonel”, or something like that? Well, somebody best tell the colonel that we’ve got him beat. When it comes to postal neglect, we’re number one, amigo.

Hey, you know what they say, right? Every complaint is really about something else. So if we’re complaining about our lack of fan (or hate) mail, what we’re REALLY complaining about is the heat or somebody’s sore toe or the price of sorghum in Madagascar. The sorry fact is, we wouldn’t know what to do with fan mail if it was dropped on us via helicopter. It’s been so long since we opened the mail bag, I doubt that any of our current readers even remember that that was a thing. Hey, newbies – that was a thing!

First tune, then play … the tune.

Part of what makes people cranky around the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill is the lack of creature comforts. The furniture in this joint is literally either made of bricks or fashioned crudely from surplus hammer handles. Looking to get comfy? Just stuff an old burlap sack full of grass and you’ve got yourself a pillow, dude. And when it gets hot here in upstate New York, well, you just open up a window. Or wave a fan or two. (You see? You knew I would steer it back around to fans again, didn’t you?)

That said, we have our tasks at hand. One of them is keeping Marvin (my personal robot assistant) from setting the mill on fire with his greasy cooking. The other is rehearsing for our next album, which we are doing remotely through one of those Zoom-for-music apps. That’s right – Matt’s on one end of the hammer mill, I’m on the other, and we jam over the internets. (You gotta problem with that, huh? HUH?) It’s mostly a process of Matt showing me a half dozen more tunes that he wrote since the last time we talked. Me? I’m chipping away at one, maybe two.

Subject matter experts

The thing with Big Green, you see, is that we get onto these jags. This is particularly true of my illustrious brother, Matthew. I’ve written before about his tendency to deeply explore a topic through the medium of pop song. Hell, he wrote about eighty songs on the subject of Christmas, probably a hundred about Ned Trek, at least 25 about Rick Perry. Now he’s on to human interrelationships, so it’s relatively unbroken ground. I mean, who can you think of who has written songs about human emotions? Hell, no one I know.

I don't think that's the colonel Garcia Marquez was talking about.

Anyway, I’ve got a notebook full of handwritten chord charts that say we’ve got an album on the way. Though, as with the Ned Trek material, it may actually be more than one collection. You musicians know what we’re grappling with. Do you make three mediocre albums, or one really, really, really bad album? Such a hard creative choice to make. We probably need a focus group to help us untie this knot. Where the hell is Frank Luntz when you need him? Having a sandwich? Okay …. don’t bother him, then.

Right, but when the hell …

Okay, so if we actually DID get fan mail, one of the first questions would probably be something like, WHAT THE HELL IS TAKING YOU SO LONG WITH THIS STUPID ALBUM? Well, dear fake reader, I know it’s been nine years since our last release. And I know that release was really lame. But bear in mind – our technology is from the stone age, carving music from living rock. We’ll keep chipping away at it until we’ve knocked off everything that doesn’t look like a new album.