Warren's Song of the Month

Another balearic jem from Warren.

Michael Jackson 1958 - 2009

Michael Jackson was a beacon of light for humanity and all its eccentricities. He was a symbol of forward thinking evolutionary progress- for the powers of transformation that we have as a species now. He realized one doesn’t have to be the color they were born or the gender they were born. In this day and age, with science where it's at, we can move past archaic concepts like these- you can be whatever you want, and Michael was living proof. He harnessed creative energy and changed the world with it. He was one of our all time greatest dancers, singers, and arrangers- on par with James Brown.

But anyone shattering the status quo and living such a highly visible alternative lifestyle will inevitably be taken down by the forces that be: the people that are afraid of change and things that they don’t understand. These people found opportunistic families that Michael was nice enough to help to “make their dreams come true” and used them to slander him and rob him of his money and dignity. Throughout the trial that acquitted him the media portrayed him as a freak because he identified with Peter Pan and was into plastic surgery. One media meme led to the next and now in the majority public opinion- he is guilty. It is sickening. All his accusers admitted they were forced into lying about what happened to them. Their parents admitted they were extorting him for money, a fact sadly left out of the news. I know people that worked closely for and with Michael for decades and they say the charges against him are ridiculous. The “jesus juice” story was cooked up by a writer for Vanity Fair trying to make a name for herself by riding on the back of the Gloved One, just like that irresponsible sad excuse for a news reporter- Martin Basheer, a condescending morally righteous scumbag. I know a woman who followed the trial religiously and was there everyday. She was so convinced of his innocence she made a marionette puppet of him and marched across the country with it. This is how much people love MJ!

But all that is beside the point. What matters is the joy that Michael brought to the millions of people throughout the world with his music. Just hit after hit, groove after groove, shaking booties of all shapes and colors. That is his legacy. Go back and watch him do his thing in his prime- he is one of the greatest entertainers of all time, not to mention arguably the most famous person ever. I mean, how much more powerful can one man get?? Michael Jackson was walking, talking, empowering evolution and he challenged people’s perceptions of what it means to be a human being. And, boy, could he move.



My mother tells me that when I was 7 I bought Thriller and had a little "Michael Jackson Radio" and did the moonwalk around the house.

DVD Review: Traitor

Ok, Ok we get it! All Muslims want to kill as many innocent people as possible! Americans good! Muslims bad! This film is nothing more than more right-wing propaganda. It tries to play off this intention with a few ‘tolerant’ one-liners but the message is overwhelmingly prejudiced. The FBI cops are righteous and smart, all the Muslims are deadly killers. Cheadle is the American bred non- violent faithful Muslim caught in the middle.

The film plays like a bad episode of 24. Intense situations build up only to dissolve with lazy writing cop-outs like “oh, I have a stomach ache” in order to move the plot along. The dialogue, brought to us by Jeffery Nachmanoff, who wrote “The Day After Tomorrow”, is heavy-handed and unimaginably cheesy. Most lines are standard Hollywood crap lifted from other films. The weird thing is that the one and only Steve Martin wrote the initial story. Even more mind-boggling is why he would hand it off to a hack like Nachmanoff.

Every role would have benefited from better, lesser known talent instead of rich actor dudes that are in every other crappy movie. Not that it was an exceptionally good movie, but Body of Lies is a better take on similar material, even if Dicaprio is poorly cast as well. Cheadle just isn’t believable in the role. That last conversation between him and Guy Pierce is one of the most cringe-inducingly corny I’ve seen in recent memory. My roommate actually got mad at me for bringing this home.

In conclusion, if you are a conservative ideologue or republican moron looking for justifications for your judgmental world-view, this movie is for you. Everyone else, stay the fuck away.

Final Flesh

Final Flesh is a film by Vernon Chapman, one of the creators of PFFR, Xavier: Renegade Angel and Wonder Showzen. He screened the film last night in LA to a packed house at the Silent Movie Theater. The films set-up is this: There are porn companies online that do custom porn. You can send in whatever your fantasy is and they will act it out, record it, and send you the tape. Well, Vern wrote a series of absurd scripts for the porn actors to do- weird and bizarre shit, no sex. He made it so the actors thought he would be getting off on it- not turning their videos into art films. He presented the films exactly as he received them- the companies did all the titling and editing. The result is very twisted, often times gross, and always funny. The film is in four parts. The first begins with three black actors talking around a table moments before the Atom Bomb is about to drop. One of the ladies goes into the shower and pours a jar of ‘neglected children’s tears’ over herself in an erotic manner. Read into this what you will… She goes on to give birth to a piece of raw meat that she breastfeeds. And that’s just the beginning; the parts get progressively crazier from there. Check out the DVD that will be released by Drag City later this year.

I couldnt find any images online from the film so I just put the PFFR logo...

Nurse With Wound - Swansong

Here we have yet another piece of music made up entirely of the human voice. After the Maja Ratkje and Robert Ashley pieces, I thought I’d include one more, this time by Nurse With Wound. NWW is Stephen Stapleton, an English guy that lives in Ireland on a farm he built himself with recycled materials. He also makes incredible art, like that above. He has been doing crazy dark psychedelic ambient noise music as NWW for over 20 years. He has barely ever performed live and had never in the US until a few years ago in San Francisco, pictured below. It was him with 5 or 6 other people creating a sea of sound that completely enveloped the room non-stop for an hour. It was one of the heavier live sets I’ve seen. Anyway, this piece is called Swansong and, according to Stapleton, was "spewed out after watching a documentary on the American A-Bomb tests off the Bikini Islands which left me sad, helpless and fucking angry- an ocean of death." The piece perfectly captures the raw feeling of destruction and devastation, especially when the ‘bomb’ drops halfway through the track. Enjoy! As always, play this very loud.

Visions of Cannes

Potion Lords had a representative at The Cannes film Festival these past two weeks. Tim was out there, his film The Aphrikan was screening at in the 'Short Film Corner' of the festival. He handed out promotional scalpels. Below is what he sent us.



Visions of Cannes
05 24 09

-dark green mountains salted with pockets of white villas nestled along peachy sand beaches.

-swimming out to a buoy, opening my eyes along the way under the clear emerald water

-watching Neil Young film at sunset on the beach with yachts aglow in the distance

-mothers in high heels and 500 dollar daisy dukes pushing strollers along the croisette

-giving Quentin Tarantino a scalpel talking about Redondo Beach

-topless 8 year olds
-topless 68 year olds

-Tan young French girls poolside. No plastic surgery

-watching Dario Argento´s Giallo, wishing it was good, but witnessing how very bad it is :(

-eating Mussels that look like pink labia, and taste like heaven.

-Lobsterazzi burnt by the sunbeams from Hell

-Catching the premiere of Tetro. Vincent Gallo winning my heart back with the performance of a lifetime

-Being blessed by a screening of Von Trier´s Antichrist, one of the most original statements ever filmed. More shocking in its subtlety than any horror film this year, or ever.

-Agora, a history lesson on religion with a grace and beauty that smacks you in the face

-Having to make the choice between catching a reprise screening of Gaspar Noe´s Enter The Void or going to the to see Psychic TV play in Marseilles..........

-walking the red carpet to see Inglorious Basterds in the grand lumiere theater with Nico. the 2hr20min flew by as Nazis were slaughtered by Jews,

-giving Terry Gilliam a scalpel, him exclaiming "Now this is something I can use."

-reattached body parts, especially toes.

-missing body parts, especially arms.

-sagging leather

-attending the Min Ye premiere with a griot in attendance. Africans filing in as I listen to Am I black Enough by Schooly D.

-Standing in a HOT line for 2 hours to catch Das Weisse Bande by Haneke (pictured). His greatest photographic achievement yet. STUNNING black and white. He channeled Bergman and stepped up to a new aesthetic of emotional storytelling.

-Walking out of the palais for the final time, catching a glimpse of Gaspar Noe´s face on the screen, knowing they are inside, entering the void without me.

-realized you can´t see em all.

-running through the crowded streets of Cannes to meet my girl at the train. Hop on. Roll out by stunning ocean and mountain landscapes on the way to Marseilles and Genesis..............................................................;)

T
I
M

PFFR

PFFR. An art collective from New York. These people are way, way out there. They made the mind blowing television program Wonder Showzen. Now they do an animated show called Xavier: Renegade Angel that is completely strange and totally psychedelic. It's about a philosophical faun-like creature with backwards knees "seeking the mystery of his own origin." He is often fending off violent rednecks or meeting with his Shaman. PFFR describes it as "a warning to children and adults about the dangers of spirituality." Also check out their website, it's one of the raddest I've ever seen. They are a band too and this is a video they made:



And here is a link to a totally mental episode of Xavier.

They are screening their new avant garde porn film Final Flesh at the Silent Movie Theater in Hollywood June 9th.

Jamie Foxx: A Study in Biopics

Jaime Foxx must be the greatest impressionist in the world. After diluting the beautifully complex and rich life of Ray Charles into a boring Hollywood popcorn movie, Foxx is now poised to do the same to a variety of influential icons:


Frank Sinatra. Word is Foxx will play ol’ blue eyes in Martin Scorsese’s upcoming film. Scorsese wanted his muse, Leonardo DiCaprio, in the role but the studios said, for once, they wanted someone different. Johnny Depp, Justin Timberlake, and Harry Connick Jr. were mentioned. Then the other day it came out Foxx was the front runner for the role. A studio executives reasoning: “Magnificent singing voice, totally convincing acting ability, like Frank himself, born the wrong side of the tracks, rags to riches, makes it big against the odds, has his brushes with authority.” This is political correctness on crack or a probably a bullshit rumor but either way Sinatra is turning over in his grave.


Martin Luther King, Jr. In Steven Spielberg’s next self-important manipulative emo-film, Foxx is set to play the one and only MLK. To me, this kind of makes sense; I guess he looks a little like him. Though I did run this prospect past a friend and he summed his thoughts up in one word: “insulting.” No matter who plays Dr. King, if Spielberg is making it, I guarantee it will suck.


Mike Tyson. Foxx used to do an impression of him (as well as Ray Charles) on his comedy show In Living Color. Apparently back then Mike tried to track him down and beat him up. Now Tyson sees the impression as flattery and wants him to reprise it for his biopic. Foxx as Mike Tyson is a stretch indeed, but who knows? But why not find new, more qualified actors for all these roles?


Bob Marley. Absolute madness! The audacity of Hollywood! This rumor was going around for awhile until public outrage became too much and Foxx stepped down claiming he was never serious about it. Can you imagine him doing a watered down version of Bob’s accent for the masses? Let us not forget, we are talking about the Prophet, Robert Nesta Marley! These studios need to show some respect. I’ve heard the project is moving forward. The logical choice would be one of his sons, no?


Michelle Obama. And now, in an unprecedented piece of stunt casting, Jamie Foxx is… Michelle Obama. Yes, in the upcoming Spike ‘I just couldn’t wait’ Lee Joint, Foxx will play Barack’s wife, our First Lady. Expect scenes of Foxx with straitened hair wearing designer dresses frolicking in the White House garden with children. Lee on the decision: “Foxx is the finest black actor of his generation, but he just doesn’t have that Barack swagger, that ‘thing.’ But when I noticed his uncanny resemblance to Michelle, I thought outside the box. And to my surprise, when I approached Jaime, he was receptive.” The film, tentivily titled Obama is due December 21, 2012.

Book Review: Blackwater

Jeremy Scahill’s Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army is a detailed and fascinating chronicle of a private corporate army run by Christian supremacists that subscribe to the idea of imposing their morality on the world. The company was founded by Erik Prince a young silver-spooned Christian wacko, whose father, Edgar, was an influential billionaire who gave millions to right-wing religious causes. Blackwater started as a small training facility in North Carolina in 1999 but after 9/11, went on to make over a BILLION dollars on the war on terror, mostly from contracting their “security” services to guard top government officials in Iraq. They operate outside the law and can kill anyone they want for no reason, which often happens, without any repercussions. This is possible because Paul Bremner, who was running Iraq the first year, handed down “Order 17” that stated private contractors could not be prosecuted under Iraq law.

The Blackwater men are mostly drawn from retired Army, Navy, and Special Forces, as well from other countries like Chili and South Africa, where those troops took part in the torture and slaughter of thousands of innocents under brutal dictatorships. In Iraq, they are paid 3 or 4 times more than an American soldiers and are often blamed for inciting hatred among insurgents and citizens, consequently doing more harm than good in the war. For Iraqis, the typical Blackwater solider is a picture of everything wrong with America: chiseled bodies, wrap-around sunglasses, goatees, khaki pants, backwards baseball caps, lots of guns and heavy artillery. They drive armored SUVs throughout the country indiscriminately firing at anyone that gets to close to their moving convoys. The stories in this book are horrifying and enraging.

Recently Blackwater have expanded beyond contract security in Iraq. They now operate a company called Total Intelligence Solutions, a private CIA type company run by J. Cofer Black, the legendary US spy and head of the Counterterrorism unit of the CIA for years and one of the architects of the government’s secretive “extraordinary rendition” policy. So now the CIA’s talent, information, and contacts are on sale for corporations and countries to purchase at will. The book explores in depth the other services offered by Blackwater and Prince’s other companies. Without getting too detailed, I’ll tell you- they’re really fucked up. It’s a jarhead fantasy of kidnapping, espionage, and violence.

Blackwater has recently come home and began terrorizing Americans too. They went into New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and “patrolled” the city with machine guns. Instead of sending food and supplies in, the Bush administration sent these worthless heavily armed douchbags in- and paid them 73 million dollars! Needless to say, these people are extremely well connected to government. Their ties to the Christian fundamentalists and their donations to crazy hate groups is probably the most disturbing aspect of their existence. Anyway, I’m merely scratching the surface of the evil antics of this company. Scahill goes way deep into it and the book reads like a cinematic thriller. My only complaint is it gets bogged down too much with legal jargon in the middle, and it repeats itself a little. But the main point gets through. Your tax dollars are funding the biggest, scariest, lawless army in the world that wants you to worship Christ, just like they do. Hooray!

Pacific Horizons

The Potion Lords launched a new musical adventure last week. Check it out.

Pacific Horizons

Photo of a Palos Verdes Sunset in April by China Star

Maja Ratkje: Acid / Insomnia

I figured, after the Robert Ashley piece, I'd post another experimental work created entirely by voice. This is from one of my favorite contemporary composers Maja Ratkje. She is a Norwegian woman that is one half of the noise duo Fe-Mail and the improv group SPUNK. These pieces are from her album Voice. Its an extremely beautiful and varied record from 2002 made up entirely of her voice. These are the last two tracks on the record. Acid is short and very trippy, indicative of the other songs on the album. Insomnia is an epic noisy masterpiece. I've seen her a live a few times and got to hang out with her when she was in San Francisco recording at Recombinant Media Labs. Totally cool lady and is as stunningly beautiful in person as she is in these pictures. These are among my favorite new music works. Play loud.

Acid:



Insomnia:




One of my favorite record covers ever, Voice. I wish this image showed the subtle coloring.

Frownland

What happens when someone has so much social anxiety that they cease to function? How alone can one man get? When the mundane crap we have to endure in order to be part of society gets to be too much, what happens? Frownland explores these questions. Its the first film by a guy named Ronald Bronstein, a film projectionist in New York. Definitely a startlingly original debut. The tone is strange and claustrophobic as we get inside the mind of a guy named Keith that is so messed up he can hardly form a proper sentence. We follow him around as he tries to make contact with people and function day to day. Most of us have known people like this- people that say "sorry" too much and have very awkward communication skills. So we know there are people out there like this but why would someone want to make a movie about them? Well, because its interesting and Bronstein and the lead actor, Dore Mann, do an excellent job. This may seem like something difficult to watch, and at times it is, but I found it oddly fascinating. I found myself contemplating the film days afterward. This film is about as un-commercial as a film can get. A few friends filmed it over the course of a few years as they saved money. It was shot on 16mm and the scratched film look is beautifully low budget. With no distributor, this may be a tough one to find, I think it's been screening randomly for the past year or so. Hopefully it'll be on DVD at some point. I saw it at the Silent Movie Theater here in LA. There were 10 people in the audience, among them Crispin Glover, if that tells you anything about how weird this movie is. Highly recommended.

Political Reading

I haven't had much time to blog lately since the corporate overlords at my job decided to treat their employees like children and take away our Internet access. So instead of fully summarizing these articles I'll just link to them. If you have any interest in politics, war, finance, etc.... check these out.

I came across this one, entitled The Big Takeover, in Rolling Stone. It is an engaging and well written explanation of the financial crisis and the bailout. The author is pissed off as fuck and maintains a refreshingly angry tone throughout the piece. Basically, with the aid of media propaganda, the bankers are taking over the government and stealing taxpayer dollars to make themselves rich.

The Other War was an article that appeared in The Nation in July 2007 and was one of the first comprehensive pieces that explored the Iraqi citizen death toll (100,000) and the morally ambiguous behavior of some US troops in Iraq. My thoughts: The US has a bunch of kids over there that grew up playing video games about killing and are spoon-fed government lies, so the fact that they are systematically terrorizing families, not to mention indiscriminately murdering woman and children, isn't surprising. War is hell. Its a long piece but worth the read.

And here are two new ones by Naomi Klein. A piece about Obama's treasure secretary and megalomanical moron Larry Summers. And A Lexicon of Disappointment is poking fun at the Obamamanics and is a call too arms to get over this "hope" phenomenon and start making sure "change" really happens. Well, it's not- the illusion is over and it's back to the same old shit.

Bob Presents: Elvis

We have a new guest blogger- Bob. He is taking the site to a whole new level with this contribution. Bob on the video:

"Oh yeah - the air lasso is heavy duty - I have been watching a lot of it lately when I'm feeling not so perky - fire up some air lasso and you are ready to face world".
(air lasso around minute four)

She Was A Visitor

I figured I should post more music on this site. I used to more but then I lost access to my server so now I have to use free Internet host sites. Either way, it works so I’m going to post a new piece of music each week. Most of what is already posted here is disco or balearic. I have a few hundred gigs of experimental/new music/noise/ambient type stuff on a hard drive so I’ll share some the best of that collection. A lot of it is extremely out there and challenging material so I’ll try and keep it to pieces that are more listener friendly.

First up is a piece by Robert Ashley. When I studied this sort of music, my teacher, Maggi Payne, had been a student of his and turned me on to his stuff. He was one of the early electronic music pioneers that came out of the scene centered around the San Francisco Tape Music Center in the early 70’s. Now he is probably best known for directing operas but back then he was known for a piece called Automatic Writing. She Was A Visitor was included on the same CD as that classic work but for whatever reason it resonated with me more, and still does today. It is a experimental piece for voice from 1967 performed by the Brandeis University Chamber Chorus and directed by Alvin Lucier.

Ashley's notes on the piece: "She Was a Visitor is a form of description, it is intended to be understood as a form of rumor. The chorus is divided into groups, each headed by a leader. A lone speaker repeats the title sentence throughout the entire performance. The separate phonemes of this sentence are picked up freely by the group leaders and are relayed to the group members, who sustain them softly and for the duration of one natural breath. The time lag between the group leaders' phoneme choices and those phonemes being picked up by members of the group produces a staggered, chant-like effect, with the sounds moving outward from the nearest performer to the farthest".

Play it loud.

Robert Ashley - She Was A Visitor

Martyrs

I watched what is probably the most disturbing movie I've ever seen. It is a French film called Martyrs that came out last year. It is a existential journey into the heart of depravity and pain. Though it is truly horrifying, it is not a "horror movie." There is nothing supernatural in the film and there are no obvious scares and starling noises in the dark. The story is told in a cold, calculated, detached manner. It is about the bad things humans do to each other and the motivations behind their actions. I won't get into the plot here, it would ruin it. But I'll say it concerns confinement, transcendence, and ritualized beatings. The director, Pascal Laugier, wrote it in a bout of depression and has been apologetic to the films haters and thankful of its appreciators.

I watched it alone at night and I still I can't get the images out of my mind- and I'm having nightmares about it. The only other time I have been actually been truly scared by film making was in 8th grade when they revealed who Bob was on Twin Peaks. Remember the scene right before Bob/Leland kills Maddy when hes putting on the gloves in front of the mirror? That got to me. Martyrs did too.

This is a serious film not for the light of heart. If you are interested in the darker aspects of human nature and can handle un-glorified violence, I highly recommend Martyrs. This is a movie you will never forget, the power of cinema in full force.



Edit 5/2: This film is on DVD now. Don't get it from Blockbuster! Those Christian idiots censored it.

Revisiting A Classic

Bob Marley is a Prophet. So friggin amazing...

Jeff Mills: The Exhibitionist

I found the entirety of this classic Jeff Mills DVD on Youtube. If there was a musical hierarchy, Mills would be at the tippity top... truly intense music from a master. I suggest headphones or a good sound system to hear this.

One Line Film Reviews

I've been watching new releases and semi-new releases online at home. In case you are wondering what to see, don't have a lot of time, and trust my opinion, here are some one line reviews.

Revolutionary Road- The film has some good things to say about the price of conformity but its delivery is a little heavy handed and its basically two actors arguing a lot.

Slumdog Millionaire- Couldn't get through it but I'm glad the amazing Anthony Dod Mantle won an Oscar for his cinematography.

Man on Wire- Kind of inspiring.

An American Crime- Could have been awesome (Ellen Page tortured to death by kids) but just didn’t work due to bad direction.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall- Pretty funny but I’m sick of these people.

Appaloosa- Jeremy Irons, Ed Harris and Viggo Mortensen in a western, rad.

Savage Grace- I turned this story about rich gay people in the 50's off about half way, even though I heard there was incest involved.

Taken- Suspend your disbelief and this is a fun trip into the world of sex slavery.

Gran Torino- Clint Eastwood ends his acting career on a seriously racist note, he even calls white people “Ofays” in this film.

Baby Mama- I seriously regret stealing this movie, it was terrible.

The Last House on the Left- Way toned down from the classic 1972 version but still slightly disturbing fun.

Stuck- Girl hits homeless man and he gets stuck in her windshield and she leaves him to die in her garage.

Rachel Getting Married- Intense moments of sadness as well as insights into the emotional complexity of family, addiction and grief makes this one of the heaviest films I've seen in recent memory.

Burn After Reading- The Coen Brothers present a bumbling comedy of errors in which John Malcovich and Brad Pitt are particularly hysterical.

Role Models- I found this surprisingly funny, I recommend it.

The Reader- Corney classical music plays over the entirety of this contrived and emotionally manipulative Oscar-hungry Holocaust drama.

The McNugget Emergency

"This is an emergency. If I would have known they didn't have McNuggets, I wouldn't have given my money, and now she wants to give me a McDouble, but I don't want one. This is an emergency."


This has got to be the most absurd new story of the year. This debacle amounts to everything wrong with our culture today. A woman calls 911 when McDonald's runs out of Chicken McNuggets. How dumb can people get?! This is wrong on so many levels.

1) You're eating Chicken McNuggets. McNuggets are not real food. She should of been happy they ran out.
2) If you insist on consuming toxic "food"- order something else on the menu! My theory is the woman is addicted to the additives in the Nuggets and withdrawals are what triggered the phone call.
3) How do you live 27 years and not understand what 911 is for? Its bewildering. My guess is she dropped out of school in 5th grade to have a few babies.
4) No need to call 3 times. They send cops automatically on the first call. One is enough. TMZ has the phone calls. This woman has some of the worst grammar I have ever heard.

This is the culprit, Latreasa Goodman:


A voice of reason comes from another customer at the McDonalds:

"That's a little overboard, that's way too much, way extreme for chicken nuggets. They're not that great."

The Life and Times of Chris Gaines

This is weird: ever heard of Chris Gaines? In 1999 American superstar Garth Brooks created an alter ego for himself in order to have a parallel career to his pop-country one. He claimed he created the character for a film he had written and was to star in called The Lamb. The bizarre thing is, well, look at the guy! Your supposed-to-be-cool alter ego is a cheeseball emo rocker dude? What the fuck? Brooks created a fictional back-story for Gaines, complete with 6 different record covers. He played SNL as Gaines and released the one and only Gaines record as a “pre-soundtrack” to the film. A god-awful single from the record actually charted on the pop top 40 charts. But when the film never materialized the public got a little weirded out and, as Wikipedia puts it “the majority of the American public was either totally bewildered or completely unreceptive to the idea of Garth Brooks as anything but a pop-country singer.” Brooks didn’t really get famous until his forties and after becoming the highest selling solo act of ALL TIME he probably felt he could do anything- even become a shitty rock singer. I guess Chris Gaines was just a byproduct of a mans ego gone haywire.

Clipd Beaks - Visions

Clipd Beaks released a video for there new single Visions. It's one of their more intense tunes. They are a 3 piece now that Greg left the band. In his absence, Nic's vocals have come to the front of the mix. This is a good thing because his lyrics are downright beautiful. I'm surprised these guys aren't indie sensations yet. They are one of the best live bands around.

NEW MIX!!!!!!!!

The Ketamine Brothers played records at Beverly Hills City Hall over the weekend. We recorded part of our set. Check it out.

COPS

I applied to an ad on Craigslist looking for people thats lives had been changed by watching the TV show COPS. This was my application.


I have a sick addiction to COPS. In watching it, I really get to see what life is like outside of my little Los Angeles bubble. There is something about watching white trash getting beat up by stupid redneck police that I find strangely educational. The way they exude brute force on weak drug addled people is an insight into the nature of humanity with all its wars, hate, and disease. I find it emotionally compelling too. Did you see the second episode on Saturday? They busted that kid for coke (that’s him below). I felt for him, he was watching his life shatter before his eyes and he knew it. The dude was just trying to get high- his god-given right. COPS often makes me pissed off about drug laws. I mean, the kid was just minding his own business... I get angry about how self-important these cops think they are. They are just another gang out ruining people’s lives but the legacy of COPS makes them think they are doing good work. I hate the show in that way. I love COPS, I hate COPS… I watch COPS.


Filmed on location by the men and women of law enforcement.

New Music : WARRIOR LINE

Greg from the amazing Oakland band Clip'd Beaks and DJ OonceOonce, who runs Tigerbeat6, have a new project...and it's good. Real Good. Its called Warrior Line. You can check the new track The Long Loop, here. I love the synth drums rolls in this tune. They live in Los Angeles so hopefully they'll do some live gigs at some point. Check um out.