how i spent saturday afternoon iii

Kent State University, Stark Campus
Canton, Ohio

when i am king iv

There will be an advisory board to approve or deny cover versions, thus preventing sonic atrocities such as Bruce Dickinson's slaughter of All the Young Dudes.

(A tip of the crown to Kevin M. for the genesis of this royal decree)

names for bands v

The irreverently spiritual edition:

* Healthier Than Thou
* Myth of the Given
* Conscious Pilot
* The Loneliest Monk
* Freudian Sin
* Pope Falco and I
* Shaman Lowgrade
* Jacob's Stepladder
* Free Martyrnizing
* Crucifaction
* Ankh's Cheer

there are no signposts in the sea

it's coming

Only Revolutions

but what does it mean?

A couple of nights ago, I dreamed that I was attending an outdoor music festival. Jimi Hendrix and Miles Davis were in the same band performing onstage. They did "The Wind Cries Mary" with Mel Brooks and Deborah Harry on backing vocals.
I suspect that my brain is doing drugs behind my back.

caution: crude, obscure humor below

A couple of years ago I was temping somewhere, and a co-worker asked me if I had ever seen the Disney movie Bedknobs and Broomsticks.

"No," I replied. "I was always too scared because I thought it was a documentary about women's prisons."

She didn't get it :(

shameless product placement

lowercase lifestyle uses these fine products at work and would be happy to endorse them for a small fee.

embrace the spamdom

Just received this spam at work--no attachment, no sales pitch, only a grammatically fractured scenario:

"only sound was the calm, sleepy hum of the motor. It was very sunny and it watched, without a single blink. One by one, each of the eight birds
"Reverse?" he whispered. I shook my head desperately and waved my fist right water."

This could be the start of a mutant version of Exquisite Corpse. Post any nutty missives that come your way, and we'll stitch them up into a surrealist Frankenspam's monster.

return of the giant hogweed

when i am king iii

All late-night infomercials will be banned and replaced with this as a test pattern.

The Washington Monument will be torn down and replaced with this:

Photo courtesy of cellar.org


Meet your new Poet Laureate.

don drumm studios, akron ohio

dondrummstudios.com

names for bands iv

And now, back to our regularly scheduled stupidity, already in progress...

* Piss Porridge Hot
* Fruit of the Loon
* What We Lack
* Thrift-Store Linus
* Briefcase of Souls
* Sheephead Souffle
* Thesaurus Rex
* Michael Palindrome
* The Dead Year
* Broken Wand Ceremony
* I, Irritant
* Three Dots and a Smile

the pursuit of happiness

Disclaimer: Rest assured--this is as political as lowercase lifestyle will ever be.

America is not the current government. America is not the village idiot from Texas.

What is America, then? America is jazz, the blues, death metal from Florida. It's Frank Lloyd Wright, Frank Sinatra, and Frank Zappa.

America is a brilliant concept still in its infancy. It's a nation of well-meaning people with big hearts looking for direction. America is a blueprint with too many fingerprint smudges on it.

America is Les Paul, Leo Fender, and Mel Bay. It is urban chaos, suburban sprawl, rural expanse. America is one hell of a road trip.

America is hopeful, afraid, curious, confused, proud, difficult, nervous. It is a continuum of voices, a spectrum of much more than just red and blue.

It's better to light a Roman candle than curse the darkness.

chalk art that survived the rain

Oberlin, Ohio

three-way plug, claes oldenburg

Oberlin College, Ohio

how i spent saturday afternoon ii

Tilt by Steven Siegel -- Kent State University

embrace the random viii

Surrealist Compliment Generator

"In your presence even my shadow acquires the sensation of touch."

I will use this line someday.

when i am king ii

All subway announcements will be delivered through a Vocoder.

eminence frontman

Devastator and I had our eardrums pounded severely by Ministry and the Revolting Cocks last night at Cleveland's House of Blues (there was another band too, but they were boring and so shall remain nameless). RevCo had a few new touring members, including vocalist Josh Bradford. Nattily dressed in a black tuxedo, Bradford twitched and grimaced comically as the perfect foil to ultra-badass Al Jourgensen and supreme-loon Luc Van Acker.

Too many frontmen these days have nothing to offer, nothing to set them apart from one another. They look the same, scream the same, stomp around the same, all attitude and bluster with no vocal ability or character. Lord, save me from cookie-cutter Tattoos-R-Us spudboys with castrated Cookie-Monster vocals.

Bradford, on the other hand, had character to spare. Much like Jarvis Cocker and the young Elvis Costello, he's a bit nerdy yet extremely confident and compelling with a wry sense of humor. His vocals are elastic, by turns aggressive and self-deprecating. Inventive and slyly subversive, he was fun to watch--what more could you ask of a frontman?

I may write more about the show tomorrow when my ears finally stop ringing. If not, suffice to say that Ministry kicked much ass. Don't believe me? Here's some video from the show.

how i spent saturday afternoon

Behind the Brain -- Kent State University

neon heat disease

Photo courtesy of www.billielawless.com

touching the divine

I don't believe in an interventionist God who answers prayers and performs miracles. However, I do believe in a higher power that exists both without and within us, a force that occasionally overlaps with our perceptions. Perhaps this energy can be accessed through meditation or prayer--sometimes we stumble into its presence unwittingly. Most often for me, I find myself in its presence through music.

For the past six months I have been immersing myself in drone music as a way of handling stress. Much of my anger and anxiety comes from being at odds with a deadline-driven, breakneck-speed, need-it-now culture. Drone music represents the opposite of that culture: it unfolds slowly, with no set agendas, no target-dates, no demands of urgency, no selfish goals.

Listening to drone music, I can feel my pulse slow down, my breathing deepen. My neck and shoulders shrug their yoke of tension, and my muscles feel both heavy and light. And then, sometimes, it's there: a warmth in my chest radiating outward, an energy, calm, limitless, timeless. No anger, no anxiety, only peace.

Are musicians able to access the divine more readily than other people? Or is it that music is the most direct means of translating and communicating the divine?

Here is the website that set me off on this morning's tangent. Listen to Stay. Great music, Irene. Thank you.

when i am king

Whenever three or more people are waiting in a line or at the bus stop,
they must practice tai chi.

Every organ at every sports arena will be replaced with a Mellotron.

This will be the new national anthem.

embrace the random vii

Random Paragraph Generator


The sticky dog stumbles behind the party initiative. The typesetting adviser gasps over the shot dream. Across a future shines the excellent imbalance. America expands around the screw.

puttin' on the brows

Frank Zappa used a wonderful phrase to distinguish between playing a musical part accurately, and playing the same part accurately but with personality. He called it "putting the eyebrows on it." When you put the eyebrows on something, you perform it with style, leaving your fingerprint on it in some way. Putting the eyebrows on is different from showboating or overplaying, however; being asked to sing an extended note and instead delivering a Mariah-Carey-faux-soulful-wounded-beast-yodel is not a musical eyebrow--it's an audio eyesore.

So how exactly does one put the eyebrows on an action/song/task/whatever? Frank knew it when he heard it. It seems to me that determining the eyebrow is intuitive. It could be the result of much woodshedding or the product of a happy accident. But when you arrive at that "Eureka!" moment, you know it. You recognize a phrasing, a flourish, a style that marks that expression as your own.

Have you put the eyebrows on anything lately?

embrace the randumb iii

Ohio landmark or outtake from The Division Bell?

Hip couch or part of Bill Bruford's drum kit circa 1984?

Photos courtesy of roadsideamerica.com and the defunct worldofkane.blogspot.com

five maxims to live by iii

Life is too short for conspiracy theories.

Someone always has a crappier job than you.

Performance art is a scam.

A watched boil never pops.

Heaven is a large pillow.

embrace the random vi

Oblique Strategies

names for bands iii

Here's the latest batch, fresh out of the oven.

* Apeshit Surprise
* Nobodaddy
* Juxtaposeur
* Charred and Charming
* Lethal Erection
* The Rapid Firemen
* Colonel Bastard
* The Redundant Sea
* Tonto Goes to Town
* Any Lummox
* Blessed Errors
* Heinous Anus

transistor zen

I purchased a Buddha Machine about a month ago at Bent Crayon. The Buddha Machine (or BM for short--no, wait, that's just gross) has been aptly referred to as the anti-iPod. You can't download millions of MP3s onto it--instead, you're stuck with nine preset snippets that loop over and over again, issuing forth from a single, cheesy speaker.

And I love it.

The Buddha Machine is beautifully and unashamedly low-tech. Its haunting sounds are drenched in crackle and hiss, bloops and bleeps clotted in damp graveyard soil. Its mournful drones seem to emanate from an afterworld of test patterns, emergency-broadcast signals, and Morse codes sent by long-lost submariners. The loop I'm listening to right now sounds like a whale-song, deep, unfathomable, a final lullaby for Ahab perhaps.

My Buddha Machine howls quietly by my bed all night. Powered by a 6V adapter, it sings me to sleep, its single red eye glowing on my nightstand. The Buddha Machine can also run on two AA batteries that tend to grow weak rather quickly, causing the tones to deepen and distort further as they slow down into oblivion, much like the dying song of another mechanical creature with a single red eye.

Good night, Buddha Machine, and pleasant dreams.

strumming down memory lane

A recent post by Warehouse Man lists his favorite guitar solos, setting off quite a few two-handed hammer-ons and twang-bar dive-bombs in my brain. I began to list my own favorites off the top of my head. Most of the solos I wrote down had first stunned me back in high school--they still provide chills today. In no particular order:

La Villa Strangiato--Alex Lifeson/Rush
Ritual--Steve Howe/Yes
Kree Nakoorie--Yngwie Malmsteen/Alcatraz
The Fountain of Salmacis--Steve Hackett/Genesis
Three of a Perfect Pair--Adrian Belew/King Crimson
Ship Ahoy--Frank Zappa
Ease--Steve Vai/Public Image Ltd.
The Four Horsemen--Kirk Hammett/Metallica
The Web--Steve Rothery/Marillion
Moisture--Fred Frith/The Residents
Hammond Song--Robert Fripp/The Roches

For those about to shred, lowercase lifestyle salutes you.

embrace the random v

Here's a silly one: Google your name and the word needs, then record the first ten sentences that appear.

1. Matt needs to have his bottom bared,
and a paddling needs to be administered. (yes, Mistress)

2. Matt needs money. (who doesn't?)

3. Matt needs to not play every little blog meme that comes along. (oh, sweet irony)

4. Matt needs prayers and help and maybe just a balloon, a rainbow, or a little fairy dust now and then. (it's true)

5. Matt needs an Xbox 360. (Nope, but I wish I still had my
Magnavox Odyssey2--PickAxe Pete rocked!)

6. Matt needs tasks. (I have enough already, thank you)

7. Matt needs a family where he will receive support and consistency. (already have one, thanks)

8. Matt needs new liver, please help. (nope, but I haven't had liver and onions in a few years)

9. Matt needs to do my laundry for me. (do it yourself, you lazy slob)

10. Matt needs a fine instrument. (very true--I would love to own a Chapman Stick)

names for bands ii

Take 'em--they're free. One to a customer.

* Shit Dip
* Whoremoan
* The Smarmy Channel
* Heavy Seething
* Spastic Aztec
* Biblical Portions
* Washboard Forehead
* Ron Wood's I.V. Bag
* cruel-de-sac
* Feral Oaf
* The Cracking Disease
* Rectal Handshake

embrace the random iv

Old School Edition:

Virtual Burma-Shave

absurd words i have heard

From a dream last night:

"If God were a nose, I'd be a bean."

send in the drones ii

9 Beet Stretch

Through digital alchemy, Leif Inge has mutated Beethoven's 74-minute Ninth Symphony into a day-long opus-to-end-all-opuses. Each note has been extended by twenty-four times its original length while maintaining its original pitch.

I've been listening to the streaming webcast (linked above) for the past hour, and I feel like I'm floating in an extraterrestrial ocean of sound. Notes rise and fall at a glacial pace, swelling ominously like tsunamis of molten lava.

John Luther Adams writes that "sound is audible time." If that's true, then 9 Beet Stretch is the sound of Time dreaming.

five maxims to live by ii

If there is preparation, there is no regret.

Horseplay leads to horseshit.

There is no I in team, but there is an m and an e.

WWFD -- What Would Frank Do?

It takes two to wango tango.

i'm not dead...

i just smell funny.

embrace the randumb ii

If you don't like Iron Maiden's version, you can always sing
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner to the tune of Yankee Doodle.

five maxims to live by

Everyone is entitled to an opinion--all opinions are not created equal.

You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drown.

It's better to be pissed off than to be pissed on.

I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.

Never trust someone who prefers Van Hagar.

refrigerator rembrandts

Artwork from a co-worker's young daughter--much better than anything I could do at that age, or even my age now.

send in the drones

Drone Forest

Free full-length MP3s of ambient, droning soundscapes.
Hours of sublime noise.
Enjoy.

theater of the mind revisited

Andrew Listfield on WFMU

I stumbled across this archived radio show while searching for info on composer William Basinski (more on him next time). Listfield's weekly show is a cornucopia of ambient, exotic, trance-inducing music. However, the real treasure is his inclusion of old-time radio dramas from the 40s and 50s.

The particular show I've linked above features an episode of Pat Novak, For Hire, a noirish detective series narrated by Jack Webb of Dragnet fame. Dry humor, sharp dialogue, oddball metaphors galore: this one's got it all.

On many a drunken night, the usual decaying city would serve us up a slab of such vintage radio from his vast vinyl collection. Inevitably, I would fall asleep five minutes in, having had far too many beers to keep my eyes and ears open any longer. Mea culpa, my friend--you were right all along. This is great stuff.

not out of the woods yet

kraut on the tiles

celebrating the season of lint

A dry towel is not necessarily a clean towel.

embrace the random iii

My favorite strip of paper I've ever plucked from a fortune cookie:

Because of your melodic nature,
the moonlight never misses an appointment.

they came, they played, they pummelled

Devastator and I were aurally assaulted last night by the infamous British noise group Whitehouse. How to describe Whitehouse? Imagine a freight train steaming through a factory. Imagine the hiss of one thousand radiators and the howl of two thousand air raid sirens. Imagine the anger and disgust of a nation screamed through a megaphone three miles wide. Now multiply all that by five. You're getting closer.

Droning, screeching blasts of white noise pounded us until I was convinced my ears no longer worked and all sound was now being absorbed through my sternum. Various internal organs vibrated and churned to hammering pulses of subsonic bass. And throughout this audio barrage, I smiled ear-to-ear at the surreal sight of such mayhem being created by two men who looked like visiting professors from Oxford. Wolves in sheeps' clothing, indeed.

Extreme times require extreme music. Thank you, Whitehouse, and thank you, Devastator, for one sledgehammer of a birthday gift.

embrace the randumb

The gray film of dust on my Jesus bobblehead makes him look like Michael McDonald. Hmmmmmm.....Jesus is just alright with me.

between no longer and not yet...

on the threshold of some brighter thing
--David Sylvian

there's always room for mellow

Sleepbot Environmental Broadcast

Streaming ambient radio. Droning, whirring, bleeping, bubbling. Liquid sound.

a year of audio strangeness

The 365 Days Project

One mp3 a day for a whole year--obscure and oddball music clips to amuse and disturb.

Special thanks to the usual decaying city for bringing this brilliant mp3 site to my attention. And thanks for a great evening of conversation--you provided much brain-and-soul-food-for-thought.

frozen flora

winterday, dream away

fork in the road

snap snap, grin grin

I received a new digital camera for Christmas, hurray! Expect more stupid photos (and maybe some good photos too) in the near future.

This picture is entitled my gods are many and smell of pez.

Happy New Year from the staff of lowercase lifestyle.