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Mars Will Send No More

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Mars Will Send No More

Tag Archives: music

short story draft: Solo Tour

24 Friday Mar 2023

Posted by Mars Will Send No More in MeteorMags

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fiction, meteor mags, music, Patches, science fiction, short story, writing

Meteor Mags: Solo Tour
© 2023 Matthew Howard. All Rights Reserved.

Episode 39 in The Adventures of Meteor Mags and Patches.

Mags takes Patches and two of her closest friends on a tour of the Asteroid Belt to promote her second solo piano album, unaware that her enemies have planned to kill her.

3,900 words

Anger is a gift.

—Rage Against the Machine; Freedom, 1992.

🏴‍☠️

The cyborg gripped Timothy’s throat with cold titanium fingers that promised to crush the life out of him before it had time to flash before his eyes. The teenager thrashed as hard as he could. The back of his skull found the club’s concrete floor and was far from happy about it. He couldn’t scream, but plenty of people around him were taking care of that. If his brain had not been preoccupied with its imminent demise, he might have second-guessed just how far he was willing to go as a fan.

🏴‍☠️

Five hours earlier, Meteor Mags landed her ship on the asteroid Nemesis 128, a carbon-rich chunk of rock not wider than 178 kilometers in any direction. The corporation which first claimed Nemesis had filed for bankruptcy the previous year and abandoned all the equipment and sub-par hovels constructed for the mining families, along with the GravGens that pumped out an artificial gravity field approximating that of Earth’s. Like so many workers in the Belt in 2033, the residents of Nemesis owed their survival to a rugged determination and support from Mags.

She stepped out of her ship and planted her combat boots in the middle of a dingy, dreary spaceport. “Fucking hell,” she said. “I love what they’ve done with the place.” What light bulbs worked at all flickered incompetently and sprayed her shadow intermittently across the hull behind her in oblique angles.

Her sound engineer, Dr. Plutonian, poked his head out the door of the Bêlit. “Jesus, Mags. Do they even have enough electricity to power our equipment?”

“Leave that to me.”

Mags’ calico cat Patches bounded from the ship, pressed her ears backwards and flat against her bushy head, and howled.

Mags said, “We’ll get ’em sorted.”

The final member of her entourage appeared in the ship’s doorway. “I’m assuming this isn’t the scenic view you promised?”

“It’s one of them, Sarah. Would you help Plutes unload for a minute? Patches and I need to fill out some paperwork.”

Sarah was hardly old enough to drive a car on Earth, but ever since Mags had rescued her from being eaten by aliens in 2029 and taken the young woman under her wing, she’d formed her own band as the singer for the punk-rock sensation Dumpster Kittens, and she was no stranger to loading and unloading. “Get on it, then. We only have five hours ‘til showtime!”[1]

Mags departed with a flick of her tail and lit up a smoke. Patches followed suit, stopping every so often to sniff random objects and scratch them with her impervious claws to let everyone know she had been there.

Plutonian said, “I guess this is why we get paid the big bucks.”

Sarah laughed. The sound was brighter than any light ever seen in that decrepit port. “I always knew you were only in this for the money.”

His eyes following Mags told a different story, a story Sarah knew all too well. She was, after all, a telepath.

🏴‍☠️

Mags returned longer than a minute later and found all the equipment unloaded. “Listen,” she said. “They’ve had some problems with power, and I’m going to fix them. I need a couple hours to install our energy system at this rock’s poles. Patches is coming with the two of you as security. I can’t have my band wandering this godforsaken rock without a bodyguard. If anything goes horribly wrong, call me.”

Plutonian said, “We’ll make it to the club. Just make sure we have time for a proper soundcheck.”

Mags kissed his cheek. “I doubt anything about this tour will be proper.”

Patches leapt onto the black box containing Mags’ piano. She stretched out, licking one paw and rubbing it over one ear.

Sarah said, “Your chariot awaits.”

🏴‍☠️

The first time Timothy heard Meteor Mags in 2030, he was thirteen years old, and he pleaded with his best friend Brian to turn off the music. In the storage closet that passed for Brian’s bedroom in the dilapidated shack Brian’s parents called home, a tattered boombox blared.

Now I ain’t your little girl
Now I ain’t your toy
Your life don’t mean shit to me
Something to destroy

“You don’t like it?” Brian’s parents were both working in the mines on the same shift, and he was enjoying a rare free hour to listen to music as loud as he wanted—or at least as loud as his limited equipment could handle.

“God no,” said Timothy. “It’s bloody awful!”

“It’s Meteor Mags,” said Brian, “with these guys called the Psycho 78s.”

“It’s a lot of screaming and bashing. Can we listen to something else?”

Timothy was not yet a fan.

🏴‍☠️

The week his parents lost their jobs in 2032—along with every other miner on Nemesis when the corporation went belly-up—Timothy hardly slept at all. Unlike Brian, he didn’t have a closet to sleep in, only the couch in the scant few meters that served as both living room and kitchen. He didn’t even have room to stretch out his legs.

His parents, still on erratic sleep schedules from their mining shifts, woke him up at random hours by plopping on the couch next to him to fight over which video to watch and careening recklessly toward the end of their final paycheck by converting it to booze and cigarettes.

It was like he was a ghost, so he left the shack without saying a word. He walked alone for hours, and all he had to listen to was the music on a small drive Brian gave him. In his earpods, the Psycho 78s blasted their single Whipping Boy, with Meteor Mags on vocals. She sang about being so angry about being beaten down that you’d want to take up arms against your oppressors and keep on killing until the killing was done—or at least, that’s what Timothy could decipher amidst all the screaming and bashing.

The music wasn’t all that different from what he’d heard two years before, but it made a new kind of sense to him. He’d seen his parents turn from hopefulness to hopelessness on the cruel frontier. He’d lost hope himself and felt it replaced by a constantly churning frequency that felt like rage boiling under the surface of every minute of every day.

Somewhere in that mess of noise in his ears, he heard his rage reflected, focused, and redirected. And the fact that these people, these Psycho 78s he had never known or even met, had captured his feeling and brought it to life made him feel like maybe, just maybe, anything was possible.

Head-down in his hoodie and singing along as if no one could hear him, Timothy was well on his way to becoming a fan.

🏴‍☠️

Ninety minutes before the show, Meteor Mags checked her phone. “Bloody hell. What’s a bitch gotta to do to get a few bars out here?” She shoved the tiny black box back inside her bra and positioned the second rod on the rocky ground before her. Holding it steady with one hand, she lifted a hammer above her head. Then she brought it down, again and again, until the rod was firmly embedded in the asteroid.

Nemesis was not the first asteroid where she’d installed her free-energy system, an engineering triumph made possible by her late friend Slim’s mathematical genius and Shondra’s manufacturing expertise on Mars. But it was certainly the first hunk of space rock she’d lit up just so she could play a concert there.

Nemesis was on the first leg of her tour in support of her second solo album, 88 Light Years. And if the pathetic asteroid needed a boost, then she was damn well sure she was the one to make it happen.

As the clock ticked ever closer to showtime, Mags pounded the SlimRod one, two, three more times then slipped her hammer into a belt loop. A stolen cigarette found its way into her hand, and she knelt to flip the switch that would send a wave of energy from the north pole of Nemesis to its south pole, then back again in an endless wave that anyone with open-source equipment could tap into. And she’d made damn sure her concert equipment could tap into it.

She took a drag and let it leisurely escape her lungs below the star-splattered sky that hardly twinkled in the human-made atmosphere.

She said, “Power to the people.” A shockwave made the asteroid tremble as if from the notes of a bass guitar. The blast ruffled her skirt and caused a single lock of hair to fall over her face.

She smiled a wicked smile and finished her smoke before starting up the vehicle she had borrowed without asking from the spaceport. She was pretty sure she remembered where the club was.

🏴‍☠️

The day Timothy became a true fan, three ships from Mars landed on Nemesis. He had nothing to eat in the last five days except protein powder. He was one of the lucky ones. Many others died in the food riots following the mining corporation’s hasty exit. More had overdosed on heroin and fentanyl in their untidy hovels rather than face the future. Some died with lit cigarettes in their hands. Fires broke out and consumed what passed for Nemesian neighborhoods.

If his parents were still alive, Timothy had little hope of seeing them again. The last time he saw them was at the end of a hallway on fire, brighter than he could ever remember seeing anything before, so bright the paint peeled from the walls and bubbled like blisters. Heat choked his lungs and turned his skin red, and he fled.

It wasn’t a picture he wanted to see again, and hunger wasn’t doing anything to deaden the screams he couldn’t forget.

When the ships landed, he ran for them—just like everyone else. He didn’t stand a chance of getting close, of touching them. All around the ships was a crush of bodies, a tuneless song of shouting and weeping. A breaking of human waves.

The noise was nearly deafening. Drowning.

Timothy tried to retreat, but his feet and the ground had lost contact. A crowd surge drove him forward on a mass of elbows and grease and stink. He balled his hands into fists and used them to cover his face.

Volume challenged the crowd. It came from the middle ship of the Martian trio, a boxy ex-cargo ship called the Hyades. It looked like a semitruck trailer got fucked up on methamphetamines and crashed into a trailer park before being covered in graffiti—but a thousand times bigger.

“Listen,” said Mags.

The ship’s loudspeakers blared. The riot continued.

Mags covered the mic. “Dude, this is never gonna work.”[2]

Alonso leaned back in the pilot’s chair and threw his feet onto the console. “It’s bulletproof, tía. Just give them a minute. They’re probably so hungry they’d eat the assholes out of a chicken coop. Just talk to them.”

“Listen,” said Mags. “I brought some friends to—”

“My mistake. I think they’re killing each other.”

“Guys! I said—”

“Puta madre.” Alonso sat up and switched off the microphone. “Tía!”

“What?!”

“I got a better idea. Sing.”

She flicked her tail. “Sing?”

“Sing, you know?! Sing a song to last the whole day long? You motherfuckers’ll sing someday? Do you know what I’m—”[3]

“Count it off.”

He switched on the mic. What the Hyades lacked in aesthetics, it more than made up for in sonics.

Still, it was not Mags’ proudest moment. Fifty-three people died in the riot before the mob calmed the hell down and the people aboard the ships were able to begin distributing food, first-aid supplies, and emergency medical care.

Despite the bumps and bruises, Timothy survived. In fact, he ate better than he had eaten in weeks, even when his parents had been in charge of feeding him. At one point, he made it through a queue to a long table where volunteers handed out plastic bags containing soap, a washcloth, toothpaste and toothbrush, aspirin, and snack packs.

Timothy accepted a bag from a teenage girl on the opposite side of the table. Her long black hair had been woven into cornrows and bundled at the back into a ponytail. If Timothy’s ragged, filth-covered appearance distressed her in any way, she showed no sign—only a radiant smile followed by the words “If you need a doctor, we’re setting up a temporary facility just over there.”

Maybe, he thought, I should see someone about my burns. And all that smoke I breathed. He said, “I’m sorry, where?”

She stood to better point out the location. “Just past the—”

Mags interrupted by slamming a cooler onto the metal table. “I got an Esky full of fresh sangers, bitches! Hooooo!” She unlatched the lid, pulled out a sandwich sealed in plastic, and handed it to Timothy. “You need anything else, Sarah?”

“I was just going to show this guy where to find the doctors.”

“You okay, kid?”

Timothy recognized Mags from photos and wanted posters. She’d been singing in his earpods for days about all the things that made her sad or angry, with the insistent conclusion that she was strong enough to overcome anything life could throw at her. He stumbled over his words and failed to say anything.

Mags put her hand on his shoulder. “It’s alright, mate. Sarah will show you. Sarah? You want to take a break? I can cover this station for a bit.”

“Sure thing,” said Sarah. She climbed onto the table and slid off it next to Timothy. “What’s your name?” She already knew.

Mags and Sarah had just made a fan for life.

🏴‍☠️

Thirty-two seconds before concert time, Mags showed up with a sorely depleted bottle of rum in one hand and a hammer hanging from a belt loop on her skirt. “Sorry guys. I ran into some fans. Did we do a sound check?”

“We as in me and Sarah,” said Plutonian. “Are you ready to go?”

“I was ready three days before I was born. Let’s kill it.”

Plutonian made his way to the soundboard, Sarah got comfortable behind her keyboard and microphone, and Mags took center stage at her piano. The smuggler unleashed a flurry of black and white notes as if she were brandishing a weapon before a fight. She said, “What is up, Nemesis? How the hell are ya?”

During the cheers and applause, Mags put one hand to her forehead like a visor and scanned the crowd. “Has anybody seen my cat? No, that’s not the first song. Patches!”

The fluffy calico had made herself at home atop the bar at the back of the venue where she graciously accepted petting and ardently dissuaded anyone who tried to shoo her off her throne.

Mags said, “Oh, there you are. Tonight we’ll be playing songs from my new album, 88 Light Years. Eighty-eight because that’s the number of keys on a piano.” Again, a flourish. “But this wasn’t a solo thing at all. Put your hands together for Sarah, from my favorite band, Dumpster Kittens!”

The audience exploded in a raucous response.

“That’s right,” said Mags. “Sarah did the harmonies and gorgeous keyboard work on my album, and we got your favorite pirate-radio DJ Doctor P rockin’ our sound tonight, so give it up!”

Without further preamble, Mags launched into Gun Yourself Down, a hard-edged ballad that despite its morbid title encouraged the listener to ignore the haters and keep pushing forward.

She didn’t recognize the teenager who stood front and center at the edge of the stage, bobbing his head and swinging his long brown hair in time with the music. The last time she’d seen him, he was covered in dirt and smoke, half-burned and starved nearly to death.

In the year since Mags’ humanitarian visit, Timothy had—like so many survivors on Nemesis—pulled himself together and got on with life. He’d never found any evidence that his parents survived, nor any that they had died, and he’d struggled to cope with that ambiguous loss, never knowing if he should let himself grieve or hold onto one last shred of hope. Gun Yourself Down had become his personal anthem. He raised a fist in the air and sang along.

Then everything came to a screeching halt.

🏴‍☠️

Twenty-three minutes before showtime, a cyborg landed on Nemesis. He arrived in a small ship that did not use the spaceport Mags had encountered, and he strode through the regolith with a singularity of purpose: to destroy Meteor Mags.

Much of his body had been replaced with titanium and machinery to render him super strong and impervious to most kinds of harm. And because Mags had been known in recent years to tour with a bevy of telepathic space octopuses, he wore one of Earth’s most devious inventions: a helmet to block telepaths.

The cyborg followed pre-programmed map coordinates to the club. Asteroid dust surrounded him in a cloud that grew with each metallic footfall until he approached the door.

Two guards drew their pistols and shouted orders, but the cyborg only granted them as much attention as was required to grip their skulls and fling them away like ants in his path. They did not survive the encounter.

He ripped the door from its hinges, tossed it in the direction of the two fresh corpses, and charged inside.

🏴‍☠️

Mags had her eyes closed as she sang. The noise caught the attention of her sensitive ears. But if anyone was faster than Mags, it was her cat.

Patches leapt off the bar and bounded from tabletop to tabletop, spilling drinks and ashtrays every which way until she was in range of the cyborg. She launched herself at the monster, but he was faster and stronger than any human foe.

His backhand slap knocked Patches out of the air. She hit the concrete floor and slid backwards until she smashed into a table. Its drinks and ashtrays went flying, and the people sitting at it screamed and rocketed to their feet—as did everyone else who had been seated.

In the chaos, the cyborg stormed the stage.

Plutonian rose from his stool behind the soundboard and brought his Benelli shotgun to bear on the menace. But he hesitated to fire, because some crazy kid in the general admission area right near the stage had decided to pick a fight with the intruder.

Plutonian still had every intention of blowing out the cyborg’s brains or whatever combination of neurons and circuitry served the same function. He scrambled through the screaming and overturned tables and people smashing against him as they ran for the exits.

For the sin of interfering with its holy mission, the cyborg gripped Timothy’s throat with cold titanium fingers that promised to crush the life out of him. As the teenager thrashed as hard as he could, the back of his skull found the club’s concrete floor and was far from happy about it. He couldn’t scream, but plenty of people around him were taking care of that.

When asked about it later, Timothy couldn’t explain why he’d stepped into the cyborg’s path and confronted it. He’d think about listening to Mags’ music with his best friend Brian, and how after 2032 he’d never seen the boy again. He’d recall lonely days where he could hardly put a thought together because he was so hungry. He’d remember Mags putting her hand on his shoulder and giving him something to eat. But all those moments were merely snapshots, photographs of a life he would not fully understand until decades later when he wrote his memoirs.

In the moment, he only knew that something awful was trying to take something beautiful away from him, and he reacted without even thinking.

His valor won Mags several seconds, and that was all she needed. As the cyborg choked the young man, Mags brought a mic stand down on its head. Three times she struck in quick succession.

That got its attention, and it dropped the boy. In the half second as the monster raised and turned its head toward her, Mags grabbed her hammer and introduced it to the cyborg’s face.

Blood spurted from the wounds. The cyborg bellowed its rage and pain. Intent on Mags, it forgot about Patches—a fatal mistake.

Mags shouted, “Get through his helmet!” She and her cat had seen a similar device before, when Earth had sent an assassin to kill them at the final Small Flowers concert.[4]

Patches landed on the cyborg’s head and set her invincible claws to work. In a flurry, strips of metal flew away from the combatants. The cyborg grabbed at Patches to dislodge her and finally succeeded. He flung her away. But the damage was done.

“Sarah,” Mags shouted. “Fry his brain!”

Sarah wanted to be a nurse when she grew up. She dreamed of a life where she could help people overcome pain and lead them to healing. She was, unlike Mags, a kind and gentle soul. But she had seen what their enemies could do, and—like Mags—had reached a point in her life where she would do anything to protect her friends.

The young telepath focused on the cyborg’s exposed and all-too-human mind, and she blasted it with all the force of the rage that fueled her music in Dumpster Kittens.

The cyborg gripped both sides of its head and made a noise no one who heard it ever hoped to hear again. It crashed against the edge of the stage and bashed its face into the structure. Then it reared up to its full height, went rigid as a stone, and fell to the floor.

“Good job, Sarah! You okay?” Mags didn’t wait for a response before she was cradling Timothy in her arms. Patches and Plutonian gathered around her.

Mags said, “Hey, kid.” She set the palm of one hand against his face. “You alright, mate? Talk to me.”

There she was, his favorite singer, right in his face. Timothy coughed and rubbed his throat. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m okay. Mags?”

“I’m right here.”

He placed his hand over hers and held it. “Is that the best they can fucking do?”

Mags helped him to his feet.


[1] Sarah’s talents and courage were crucial to the crew’s overcoming a cybernetic mutant monster in Daughter of Lightning and a swarm of vicious space wasps in The Hive.

[2] This humanitarian mission happened after Mags had released her remaining octopuses on Earth, as shown in Farewell Tour and Pieces of Eight. Otherwise, they would have been happy to use their telepathic powers to pacify the crowd from the safety of the massive tank they lived in aboard the Hyades while on tour with Alonso and the space monkeys as Small Flowers.

[3] Alonso paraphrases both Sing by the Carpenters (1973) and Sing by the Dresden Dolls (2006).

[4] As told in Farewell Tour.

pbn 123: equinox

12 Sunday Feb 2023

Posted by Mars Will Send No More in music

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clutch, equinox, freeform, james carter, Jazz, john coltrane, music, pbn, rock, solstice

PBN 123: Equinox

Listen or Download the MP3. 61 minutes. 128 Kbps.
View or Download the playlist.

Playlist:

Clutch – Wicker
A Winged Victory for the Sullen – Every Solstice & Equinox
Black Light White Light – Solstice
Valley of the Sun – Solstice
If These Trees Could Talk – Solstice
James Carter – Equinox (John Coltrane)
Hoodoo Gurus – Bittersweet
Pinkshinyultrablast – Glow Vastly
Vast – Thrown Away
Psychlona – Gasoline
The Freeks – Before
The Freeks – Big Black Chunk
Stonerror – Red Tank
The Atomic Bitchwax – Ice Pick Freek
Miss Lava – Murder of Crows

Notes:

Equinox is one of my favorite John Coltrane compositions. Its simple minor-key melody and basic twelve-bar blues structure make it easy for almost anyone to pick up and play. Trane composed quite a few numbers like this that were practically beginner-level blues tunes with charts so easy that even I can follow them. Other examples that quickly come to mind are Mr. P.C. and Cousin Mary from the “Giant Steps” album, and the Mongo Santamaria composition Afro Blue. In concert, Trane and his bandmates tended to treat simple songs like a spaceship treats a launchpad: as a starting point for greater explorations.

Some of my favorite interpretations of Equinox are the rock version from Clutch, the piano-heavy version from Red Garland (who recorded many times with Trane, beginning with their tenure in the Miles Davis Quintet), and the delicate original version from the John Coltrane Quartet.

This playlist features a true gem from James Carter’s 1994 album Jurassic Classics. In addition to the beautiful arrangement, Carter summons an incredible array of sounds and tonalities from his horn—the kind of array that I used to spend anywhere from hours to years trying to achieve with various electronic “effects” during the two decades when I was obsessed with playing guitar. But Carter doesn’t need any effects pedals, effects boards, or studio wizardry to create a monumental tribute to one of the most innovative and influential horn players of the twentieth century, and to take a very simple tune and create something absolutely new with it.

Supported by a solid rhythm section and beautiful, harmonically complex piano work from Craig Taborn, Carter breathes new life into the tune like it is being played for the very first time—not an easy thing to do when the guy who used to play it was John Coltrane.

Making a jazz tune the centerpiece of a playlist full of heavy rock might seem like an odd choice, but if you listen closely to Carter’s interpretation of this classic, then you might agree with me that it blazes with the same kind of intensity that some bands need a stack of fuzz-drenched amplifiers to create; and the wonder of it all is that his band achieves such energy with only acoustic instruments.

For more expeditions into what I consider awesome music, see the PBN Page.

music review: Ssih Mountain by Kenneth James Gibson

16 Sunday Oct 2022

Posted by Mars Will Send No More in music

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ambient, drone, indie, Kenneth James Gibson, Meadows Heavy Recorders, minimalism, music, music review, Ssih Mountain, The Evening Falls

Sandra Leans Toward Eternity from Ssih Mountain is also on Spotify and Soundcloud.

The challenge of reviewing an ambient album like Kenneth James Gibson’s soon-to-be-released Ssih Mountain is that it isn’t music you review. It’s music you write poetry to, or paint ethereal landscapes to. It’s music you close your eyes to and let wash over you while you daydream or meditate or play out imaginary film scenes in your mind. It’s a collection of songless songs that use droning tonalities and slowly changing washes of chords to play with your emotions; sometimes uplifting, sometimes menacing, sometimes peaceful, sometimes pensive. Ssih Mountain is the countryside of dreams and the wind that blows across the distant hills of insomnia.

Probably the best-known similar works are Brian Eno’s most ambient albums. Neroli, New Space Music, and Thursday Afternoon come to mind. I don’t doubt that Kenneth is influenced by Steve Reich’s minimalist works, and Ssih Mountain also reminds me of the Incandescent Cinema album my friends in Trio Nine recorded. Ssih Mountain is one of those albums I like to play on repeat for a few hours to cleanse the musical palette and chill the heck out. It’s like sonic incense to calm the senses.

After listening to the complete album that was sent privately to me for review, I bought Kenneth’s 2016 album, The Evening Falls. It uses more recognizable melodies than Ssih Mountain, usually minimalist piano or slide-guitar melodies played over drones and washes like those found on Mountain. Imagine someone took the first couple of minutes of Pink Floyd’s Shine on You Crazy Diamond and made an entire album with that vibe. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

From The Evening Falls.

Ssih Mountain will be released on November 4, 2022, and you’ll be able to pick it up on Bandcamp at kennethjamesgibson.bandcamp.com/music. In the meantime, you can find more news about and excerpts from Kenneth’s other works at worldofkennethjamesgibson.com and on the Meadows Heavy Recorders YouTube channel.

music review: Ape Law by Maybe Human

14 Friday Oct 2022

Posted by Mars Will Send No More in music

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Tags

ape law, indie, maybe human, metal, music, music review, planet of the apes, post rock, prog rock

January 2023 Update: This album is now available to everyone!

Maybe Human’s album Ape Law is a hard-rockin’ tribute to the original Planet of the Apes movies. Each song contains samples of iconic lines of film dialogue which are sure to please longtime fans, and they even work artistically if you lack that context.

But don’t expect the eerie atonality of the first film’s original soundtrack. Instead, you’ll be treated to a combination of post-rock melodies and prog-metal riffs that bring to mind bands I like such as Tool, If These Trees Could Talk, Tuber, and Cambrian Explosion. Maybe Human even throws in a few electronica vibes and some industrial riffage in the vein of vintage Ministry albums. Ape Law is an ambitious combination of sounds and genres, but somehow it all works and feels cohesive thanks to the unifying theme and outstanding bass and guitar performances.

In case you haven’t seen the original films, Ape Law is based on the idea that the apes had two fundamental laws concerning social relationships. One: Ape shall never kill ape. Two: Humans shall never say no to an ape. Clearly, these are a comment on racism, fascism, slavery, and the subjugation of an “out group” by an “in group”, but this instrumental album is not in any way a political manifesto. It’s an affectionate tribute to a beloved series, and the only axe Maybe Human has to grind is an axe with six strings.

The full album was released on November 25, 2022, and Maybe Human made the first track available for your listening pleasure. (See the video at the top of this post.) You can purchase the complete album on Bandcamp at https://maybehuman.bandcamp.com/. There are both digital download and vinyl versions available.

Now take your stinking paws off my blog, you damn dirty apes!

from the musical archives: Country Hate Machine

05 Monday Sep 2022

Posted by Mars Will Send No More in music

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acoustic guitar, album, country hate machine, guitar, music, punk rock

Country Hate Machine began as a solo acoustic side-project to record hillbilly versions of songs by Nine Inch Nails, whose first album was called Pretty Hate Machine. Eventually, CHM evolved into a punk-influenced hybrid mixing rage with humor. I recorded a bunch of demos in informal settings, but life got in the way of doing formal studio sessions. So, I’ve collected twenty of my favorite acoustic demo and concert recordings from twenty years of musical madness for your listening pleasure. They contain strong language and adult subject matter, and they might be inappropriate for children or any other form of mammalian life. Consider yourself warned.

Country Hate Machine: The Lost Years is now available as a free mp3 album including twenty songs, the album art, and a mini-booklet in PDF with credits for all those who contributed lyrical and musical ideas or were kind enough to share their recordings.

I have also added several other out-of-print projects as free downloads on my Music Albums Page.

DOWNLOAD THE COMPLETE MP3 ALBUM AS A ZIP FILE.

gondolier

10 Wednesday Aug 2022

Posted by Mars Will Send No More in music, poetry

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Ann Arbor, gondolier, meteor mags, music, poems, poetry

Gondolier

Underground in the basement,
three young men plug in.

No roadies carried their amps.
They are lean and strong.

No one else wrote their music.
It came from inside,

from a place you never see
below the surface.

Friends arrive, descending stairs.
Conversations. Drinks.

Reunions and shared laughter.
The band greets them all.

Then in unison: a chord.
Not just any chord.

It’s a harmony of light,
shining in the dark.

This poem is a variation on Japanese poetic forms that often use groupings of five and seven syllables. It is named after my favorite local band in Ann Arbor in the mid-1990s. Bassist Geoff Streadwick was previously a member of the locally legendary Morsel, created 40 oz. Sound studio to record local talent, and sadly passed away many years ago while still a young, creatively brilliant man.

The vinyl single.

You can still find Gondolier’s music online thanks to their drummer, Jayson, on his Soundcloud page. Although those recordings remain amongst my favorite things, they pale in comparison to the jaw-dropping majesty of experiencing Gondolier in concert in a friend’s basement or Ann Arbor’s Blind Pig or the bar formerly known as Ypsilanti’s Cross Street Station.

The flip side of the single.

For many years, I had a Gondolier t-shirt silkscreen-printed with the first single’s cover art by the company founded by Morsel’s bassist Brian Hussey. I wore it through seven kinds of hell until the damn thing nearly fell off my body. I still miss it.

The only surviving picture of me in my Gondolier shirt from 1997, and you can’t even see it.

Gondolier was three young men from Michigan who made music that inspired me and continues to inspire me to this day. I had the pleasure of interviewing them once, for a music review in a local publication. But nothing has ever compared to being right against the stage when they belted out the greatest sounds I’d ever heard.

This poem now appears in the book Meteor Mags: Permanent Crescent and Other Tales.

Rebel Girl: Notes on Writing Mags and Her Music

25 Thursday Nov 2021

Posted by Mars Will Send No More in MeteorMags

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Tags

guitar, memoir, meteor mags, music, writing

A few years ago, I read a draft of a scene from the Meteor Mags stories to my workshop group. In the scene, our space-faring criminals turn on the ship’s radio in time to hear the DJ back-announce a few songs and say what comes next.

During the feedback session, one of my workshoppers asked, “How do you come up with all these crazy song titles and band names?”

I’m rarely stunned into silence on matters of writing, but that question hit me like the asteroid collision that killed the dinosaurs. It took me a moment to realize that when it comes to music, I might as well be from another planet than some of my writing comrades.

My answer? “I didn’t make them up. Those are all real songs and real bands! And they kick ass!”

You can find a list of all the real songs the characters in the series have broadcast, performed, or just plain argued about on the unofficial soundtrack page of Mags’ website.

I like to think those songs might be played if Mags and Patches ever get made into a film or a cartoon. Nothing could make me happier than seeing and hearing Mags perform Porcupine Tree’s Trains as a solo piano piece in the dead of night by candlelight from Red Metal at Dawn, or her brilliant, butt-naked rendition of the Hoodoo Gurus’ Down on Me with a tribe of space monkeys and telepathic space octopuses in Small Flowers.

I have always felt that when the end credits roll on Mags’ first film, the song that must destroy the theater’s speakers is Bikini Kill’s Rebel Girl.

It’s a fuckin’ barnburner.

I don’t know if Kathleen Hanna and the gang in Bikini Kill had in mind an even older song to which Rebel Girl traces its roots: a pro-labor, feminist acoustic jam by Hazel Dickens called The Rebel Girl.

Decades before Loretta Lynn’s Coal Miner’s Daughter became a country-music hit in the States, multi-instrumentalist Hazel Dickens was singing pro-union, pro-people, and pro-women bluegrass songs in a folk-music vein, advocating through music and direct activism for America’s miners. She also eulogized her brother in song after he died of black lung disease.

Born into a coal-mining family, Hazel died in 2011, and you don’t hear about her very often these days. But she loved rebel girls, and I love her for that. The social problems she fearlessly addressed nearly a century ago have not yet been solved in our country, and maybe they will never be. But music gives me hope.

Most songs on the unofficial soundtrack page have a similar bit of history behind them and a thematic or emotional relevance to the stories. They appear in the text for a reason—even if the only reason is because Patches is obsessed with gangsta rap.

But my workshoppers were right to suspect that I have been making up a hell of a lot of other songs for my imaginary bands: the Psycho 78s (named after a line in the Misfits song Horror Business), the teenage Dumpster Kittens (who are some of the nicest kids you’ll ever meet despite singing about suicide, murder, interplanetary death armies, and nuclear infernos), and the Sterile Skins (a ska-punk crossover band that filled its choruses with the British “Oi!” despite being mostly Chicanos from SoCal).

But what I’ve never told my workshoppers (or anyone else, until now) is that for every imaginary song whose lyrics appear in the series, I put together real music.

And for that, I blame Greg.

Greg was the awesomest drummer I ever had the good fortune to share a house with, and it was a unique pleasure to hear him bashing away for hours in the basement. He was in a number of ass-kicking bands whose shows I enjoyed, and we’ve kept in touch over the years despite being thousands of miles apart now.

I miss that guy.

Back in 2015 or so, I sent him a message about how I wanted my characters to have their own unique songs, not just other people’s material they referred to. He told me, “Then you need to write those songs.”

He always had a way of cutting through my apparently complex problems with straight-forward advice.

That evening, I picked up an acoustic guitar and bashed out chords for the song that appears in the episode Whipping Boy. Ever since, I have done the same for every absolutely bonkers “imaginary” song that gets its lyrics printed in the series. It’s now a fundamental part of the creative process.

Whipping boy! What’s your name?
Whipping boy! A life of pain!
Maybe you should take the cash and run.
Maybe you should get yourself a gun,
before they kill your soul. Alright!

Most of the earlier songs can be played on a standard-issue acoustic guitar using basic power chords. After all, despite teaching several aspiring musicians about music theory and performing in small jazz combos, I still enjoy a straight-forward, punk-rock approach to songs you could perform drunk around a campfire.

But a few years ago, I got a baritone electric guitar from ESP. With its longer neck length and scale, and a weight that’s somewhere between a guitar and a bass, the baritone is designed to be tuned a fourth below standard guitar tuning, with a low A instead of a low E.

I tried that tuning, but after Wo Fat convinced me that C minor is the heaviest key in all eternity—and considering my love for Jimmy Page’s open-C tuning from Poor Tom on Led Zeppelin’s Coda—I tried a low C instead, keeping the standard string intervals from a normal tuning.

As far as C minor goes, one of my favorite heavy pieces in that key is Rachmaninoff’s second piano concerto. Ukrainian pianist Anna Federova brings even more life to it than my concert recording of the composer performing it.

When I ran my C-tuned baritone guitar through a Logan Square Destroyer distortion pedal, ultimate heaviness resulted: crisp treble and gut-punching bass. I bought this pedal because I am a raving maniac for the first four or five Queens of the Stone Age albums (and their predecessor, Kyuss), so I thought it might help me get closer to that sound.

It did not disappoint.

To push heaviness a little further, I sometimes keep the C-based tuning but drop the low string to B flat—just like how you would tune to Drop D on a standard guitar. That gives me a power chord on the low three strings, and if I throw on a capo, I get some stupidly heavy sounds from the ESP in a variety of keys.

I am all about truly stupid levels of heaviness. If your riffs don’t give me permanent brain damage, then you’re wasting my time!

Maybe someday I’ll produce an album of these imaginary songs. But as much as I love to sing them, we need Mags or her teenage friend Sarah on the mic—not me.

I’m no brilliant singer, though I’ve never let that stop me from performing or recording. But I often fantasize about hammering the hell out of my baritone axe while someone more talented than me takes over on vocals. I like to think we’d give Alice in Chains a run for their money.

Happy Thanksgiving, Martians! This year I am thankful for ripping riffs and brutally heavy jams, for that annoying pain I get while building up my guitar callouses again, and for music in general. It remains one of the great joys of my life.

We own the sky! And don’t you ever forget it.

jams

07 Wednesday Feb 2018

Posted by Mars Will Send No More in music

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music

Last year I sent copy of the Meteor Mags: Omnibus Edition to a band whose albums I listened to approximately one million times while writing the story Voyage of the Calico Tigress. Mags and her crew, including space monkeys and telepathic octopuses, do an impromptu performance of one of Snail’s songs. In return, I received a note saying, “This is the coolest thing ever,” which made me smile. I’m glad the guys got a kick out of it. Here are some other albums in heavy rotation in the writing lab.

Unida: El Coyote.

If the Internet is to be believed, Unida’s final album was never released by their record label, but was eventually made available directly to fans at concerts. It is often found on the web with different titles, but I like El Coyote. Singer John Garcia, formerly of the legendary Kyuss, is Mags’ favorite vocalist, and references to his various projects pepper her stories like buckshot.

Hell Camino: Hell Camino.

I usually listen to this album back-to-back with its follow-up, Orange Lily.

Wo Fat: Noche del Chupacabra. 

Wo Fat convinced me that C minor is the heaviest key of all time. They are the reason I got a baritone electric guitar to tune to Drop C. My favorite songs on this album are Common Ground and Descent into the Maelstrom, the latter of which shares a title with a totally different yet amazingly ass-kicking song by Australia’s Radio Birdman. You really can’t go wrong with any Wo Fat album. Psychedelonaut slays with tunes like Analog Man, and The Black Code is a masterpiece with Hurt at Gone and Sleep of the Black Lotus, a title I believe to be inspired by my favorite Conan story Queen of the Black Coast, about a female pirate.

Orange Goblin: Time Travelling Blues.

I never heard an album I didn’t like from Orange Goblin, but this is the one that stays in heavy rotation. From the rumbling drum riff that opens to album to the closing song that shares the album’s title, it’s such a hefty slab of rock and roll that I usually listen to it twice in a row. The title song’s declaration “We own the sky” has become a recurring motif in Mags’ stories, and her band covers it in their concert in Blind Alley Blues.

Black Angels: Passover.

I attended a Black Angels concert last October in downtown Phoenix, and the music was so simultaneously heavy and beautiful. These cats annihilate me. The band hails from Austin, Texas, but I first heard them courtesy of the Europeans who run my other favorite Internet radio station, GRRR Radio. GRRR Radio’s streaming URL is: http://pstnet5.shoutcastnet.com:50390 This album doesn’t have what is perhaps my favorite Black Angels song, Currency, but it’s damned amazing all the way through. Black Grease and Bloodhounds on My Trail are my faves on this one.

My Father and the Guitar: A Brief Memoir

14 Tuesday Nov 2017

Posted by Mars Will Send No More in music

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dad, eulogy, guitar, memoir, music

dad and his alvarez acoustic guitar 001

My father died two years ago today, after a long bout with cancer that spread from his spleen to eventually his brain and his whole body. Dad and I did not agree on most things, and my teens were times of conflict, to put it mildly. But in my twenties, we were able to put most of that behind us and just hang out.

Dad never understood my love for playing guitar until I was in my thirties. Then one day, he started sending me emails asking about mandolins—and I’m an easy target for anyone and everyone who has questions about music theory and stringed instruments. I don’t know exactly what turned him on to the mandolin, but soon he got into guitar. Our relationship reached a turning point after he got his first guitar and told me, “Now I get why you were into this.”

All I could say was, “It’s pretty awesome, isn’t it?”

By then, we were separated by great geographical distance. But when I would visit, Dad stocked the refrigerator with beer and tuned up his growing collection of guitars, and we would play together for hours. I would show him a few techniques and answer his theory questions, and we played from charts he had for country and worship music he liked.

By the time I got into my forties, Dad’s arthritis made it increasingly difficult for him to play. But he still loved buying guitars, and trading them in later for other models, and getting on Internet forums to discuss gear, and trying new types of strings. He often performed at his church, accompanying his impressively deep bass voice with his ever-growing arsenal of acoustic guitars.

It was a massive about-face from his discouraging attitude toward my love of something which, for twenty years, had basically defined my entire life: playing the guitar. He eventually told me why he was so antagonistic toward my interest, and the reason is probably too personal to blog about. The important point is this: he eventually changed his tune.

Perhaps my fondest memories of Dad are the ones we created over a 12-pack of beer and 12 vibrating strings, jamming in unison. He never got to the level he wanted to with the instrument, but he kept trying and learning and improving. At the age of 44, I can tell you that journey never ends. One day, you pick up the axe, and something changes inside you. You’re never the same afterwards.

It was a pleasure jamming you with, Dad.

hoven droven: groove cd

09 Tuesday Feb 2016

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CD, groove, hoven droven, liner notes, music, nordic roots sampler, scandinavia

hoven droven groove cd (2)

Long live the glorious island republic of Scandinavia. They make some awesome music there. What’s that you say? You can’t find it on a map? Then try this one.

I started to get a clue about what a Scandinavia is right about the time I first heard Hoven Droven’s tune SlentBjenn. Taking the energy of a rock band, adding fiddle and saxophone, and drawing on folk material, Hoven Droven lays down some seriously heavy grooves with beautiful melodies.

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This post includes scans of their album Groove, which you can score on Amazon, and the first Nordic Roots sampler that features one of their tunes. If you want to get totally Scandinavian, Nordic Roots put out a second and third sampler of awesome bands from the region.

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art blakey afro-drum ensemble: the african beat cd

09 Tuesday Feb 2016

Posted by Mars Will Send No More in music

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african beat, african music, afro-drum ensemble, art blakey, CD, drums, Jazz, liner notes, music, nat hentoff, percussion, yusef lateef

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In 1962, Art Blakey recorded The African Beat not with his quintessentially swinging Jazz Messengers but a percussion ensemble. Yusef Lateef, who also recorded modern jazz albums using Asian and African ideas, joins the ensemble. The result is a sumptuously rhythmic album that often gets overlooked, perhaps due to its defiance of easy categorization.

Nat Hentoff’s liner notes give a brief but enlightening explanation of the music’s sources and the musicians’ cultural backgrounds. I recommend The African Beat for fans of jazz, percussion, “world” music, and African music. Fans of jazz/rock fusions and prog rock might also like this album, if they want to expand their listening into some other types of musical fusion.

Get a copy from Amazon.

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proof CD

09 Saturday Jan 2016

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CD, music, self publishing, while my guitar gently annihilates

while my guitar gently annihilates proof cd 1

2022 Update: This compact disc went out of print in June 2021 due to changes at Amazon. However, you can find it available to download as an MP3 album, at no cost, on this blog’s Music Albums page.

while my guitar gently annihilates proof cd 2

sketchbook sunday

03 Sunday Jan 2016

Posted by Mars Will Send No More in art studio

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art, drawing, music, sketchbook sundays, venus flytrap

Making art quickly makes chaos out of your walls. Things get hung at random and, over the course of a year, lose all sense of order. Closing out 2015 required a bit of wall patching, cleaning, painting, and re-hanging.

art wall
seven crescents cd proof

Yesterday saw the arrival of the proof copy of a music album I’ll be publishing this month. The artwork, which I designed using scans of an acrylic painting and an ink drawing, came out really nice. 2022 Update: This compact disc went out of print in June 2021 due to changes at Amazon, but you can download it for free as an MP3 album from this blog’s Music Albums page.

I don’t do the tree thing in December, but the art studio desperately needed some suitable greenery. Here in the desert, we get ordinary house flies all year long, even in the winter. Otherwise the weather is so nice you can open windows and doors and let the cat come and go as she pleases and enjoy the sunlight and play guitar on the porch and… then the flies. It doesn’t take but a couple in the house to drive me mad. But, when life gives you flies, grow Venus flytraps.

venus flytrap

Nothing says seasonal festivity like a carnivorous plant. I ordered this one on eBay from “Joe’s Carnivorous Plants”. She just ate her first fly yesterday. I was so proud. The leaves are thin enough that when the sun shines on them you can see the pesky little fly trapped in there.

venus flytrap closeup

That should keep the freshly cleaned and organized sketch room from devolving into pestilence and infestation for another year! Go, little flytrap!

electric moon

18 Sunday Oct 2015

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electric moon, germany, music, psychedelic, rock, swans, the gate

While patiently waiting for our 1-in-2500 limited edition album The Gate to arrive this week from the sonic headquarters of Swans, we went looking for other extended psychedelic monster jams.

And that’s how we ended up with a massive musical marathon courtesy of Germany’s Electric Moon. This guitar-bass-drums trio, formed in 2009, has been playing festivals all over Europe and releasing many mind-blowing albums in the process. Here are three of our favorites so far.

Inferno
This is the first one we listened to, and we were hooked.

D Tune
This one incorporates synth sounds, and has a more driving, upbeat vibe.

Flaming Lake
This video has some cool space imagery to go with the jams.

P.S. Yes, The Gate did finally arrive on Saturday. With three of its songs clocking in around 30 minutes each, it is a supremely awesome sonic experience of pure Swans power.

motor dolls cd: burning memories

25 Thursday Jun 2015

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All Fired Up, burning memories, CD, Detroit, Motor Dolls, music

motor dolls burning memories cd_0001

After listening approximately a gazillion times to the Motor Dolls album we posted twelve days ago, we had to pick up this one, too. Burning Memories is the second and final solid slab of Detroit rock and roll from this trio, the stand-out cuts being “You Want It” and “Nailed to the Cross”. Several people have told us to include “Power” in that list, too, though the whole album is a veritable non-stop blaze of straight-up rock fury. You can find it on Amazon as Motor Dolls: Burning Memories, and it is usually selling for about half the price of Motor Dolls: All Fired Up.

One of the songs on this 1996 album, “Hangover”, appeared two years later on a compilation called Motor City’s Burnin’ 1: 1968-1998. That disc places the Motor Dolls right alongside legendary acts like the MC5 and The Stooges, and other hard-rocking southeast Michigan bands of the mid-90s like Big Chief. We think after hearing this album you will agree that placement was well-deserved.

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scotty karate postcard

24 Wednesday Jun 2015

Posted by Mars Will Send No More in postcards

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henriettahaus coffee roasters acoustic, music, postcards, scotty karate, smalls

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 We love getting weird stuff in the mail. Who doesn’t? No, not creepy weird. More like “strange and mysterious and fun” weird. This mysterious postcard arrived in the martian mailbox signed only by “The DJ Who Shall Not Be Named”. That just brings a smile to our little late-night-blogging-obsessed faces. It features Scotty Karate, and you can witness him performing in this same outfit and colorful stage set-up in the video below.

Video notes: Scotty Karate plays Dig A Hole at Smalls. February 13, 2011. Part of the Henriettahaus Coffee Roasters Acoustic series.

motor dolls: all fired up CD

13 Saturday Jun 2015

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album, All Fired Up, Ann Arbor, Detroit, Motor Dolls, music, Paula Messner

motor dolls all fired up cd_0001

Once upon a time, I lived in Michigan and held a copy of this awesome album in my hands as a volunteer DJ at the college radio station WCBN. But that was 20 years ago, and the album has been out of print for some time. So, this month I got a copy from Germany. Yeah, Germany! eBay is an amazing thing.

At WCBN, we had a section of the massive CD and vinyl library dedicated to local music. You could find on that shelf so many great bands from Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti, Detroit, and all over Michigan. But, it was not that special shelf that introduced me to Motor Dolls, though I would often pull this disc from the shelf to play on the air.

motor dolls all fired up cd_0002

No, I had a friend who was into this band, and we went to Detroit together many times to catch their shows. Motor Dolls could seriously throw down in concert, and we always had fun. So you know what? Instead of recouping my cost by putting it back into the eBay market, I’ll just send him this disc in today’s outgoing mail. He’ll get a kick out of it.

The Motor Dolls t-shirt I bought at one of their shows was one of my favorite pieces of clothing ever, and I wore it until the damn thing practically disintegrated and fell off my body. I haven’t loved a shirt like that in a long time. And you know what? This album sounds even better to me than it did 20 years ago. It would go well in a set with L7, Mensen, and Bikini Kill, for starters, along with Ann Arbor/Detroit legends Big Chief, Easy Action, Speedball, and Wig.

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If you want to hear this great little slab of mid-90s Detroit rock, you can buy it on Amazon. Currently, the lowest price is around $20. Feel free to hate me for picking up the only available copy on eBay for less than $10, even including shipping from Germany.

And, don’t forget to pick up the Motor Dolls: Burning Memories album, too! (That one, you can currently obtain for less than $10 including shipping to the USA.) These two albums have never, to my knowledge, been made available as “official” downloads.

motor dolls all fired up cd_0004

Here’s a Motor Dolls video from singer/guitarist Paula Messner’s YouTube channel. The jam is “You Want It” and appears on the Burning Memories album. Paula was a bad-ass frontwoman, and her rhythm section (Monic on drums and Dana on bass) was a powerhouse. Where are they now? I honestly don’t know. But their rock lives on.

jimi hendrix voodoo soup: cd booklet

23 Monday Mar 2015

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CD, jimi hendrix, liner notes, music, voodoo soup

jimi hendrix voodoo soup cd liner (15)

This album is available on Amazon as Jimi Hendrix: Voodoo Soup. Though you can currently find CD or even cassette versions, Amazon does not yet have it available as an MP3 download. Numerous Amazon customers have rated it four and five stars and written reams of praise. So let us simply say, we concur. It is truly awesome.

jimi hendrix voodoo soup cd liner (1)

When Voodoo Soup came out in the mid 1990s, Hendrix fans had fewer posthumous releases of quality than we do now. This and Rykodisc’s stellar album of Radio One BBC recordings, later released in expanded form as the BBC Sessions two-CD set, were among the finest. Few if any of the recordings released since then can match these two recordings for sound quality, energetic performance, song selection, and production choices. Even songs released on The Cry of Love receive superior post-production on Voodoo Soup, and in our opinion sound more like what Hendrix would have aimed for in final mixes than most other “posthumously completed” compilations.

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We scanned the CD booklet, including the complete 19-page essay on the context and production of the songs, for our archives, and share it with you now. As our CD copy had a cut out on the front cover, we did not scan the artwork by Moebius, but you can easily find that in any product listing for this album.

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sonic’s rendezvous sweet nothing: cd booklet

11 Wednesday Mar 2015

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Ann Arbor, concert recording, Fred Sonic Smith, Gary Rasmussen, guitar, live show, music, Scott Asheton, Scott Morgan, Sonic's Rendezvous

sonics rendezvous sweet nothing cd liner (2)

Sonic’s Rendezvous issued this live recording from 1978 twenty years later in 1998. It features the late Fred “Sonic” Smith of the MC5, Scott Asheton of The Stooges, Gary Rasmussen of The Up, and Scott Morgan of The Rationals. It’s a bit of a who’s who of Ann Arbor rock and roll legends.

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Though we can’t recall exactly when and where we purchased this disc in Ann Arbor in 1998, it might have been at one of Scott Morgan’s live shows. We caught him once at a basement party in the house of a friend from the radio station (WCBN), and perhaps once or twice at Club Heidelberg. If there is any doubt as to whether or not Scott Morgan’s blues-driven rock guitar impressed us, the not-so-subtle handwriting on the last page of the booklet should clear that up. It looks like we added our own graphics to Fred’s guitar on the cover, too.

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Despite our enthusiastic vandalism, this album remains a favorite memento of Ann Arbor’s rocking musical history. Check it out. You can find it on Amazon in CD, MP3 (only $8.99), or vinyl as Sonic’s Rendezvous Sweet Nothing.

Note: Since the release of this album, more material from Sonic’s Rendezvous has come out of the archives. They are not all filed in the same place as this album on Amazon, but under “Sonic’s Rendezvous Band.”

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cassette tape nostalgia

26 Thursday Feb 2015

Posted by Mars Will Send No More in music

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1980s music, buzz factory, cassette tapes, do it, memoir, music, rock and roll, rollins band, Screaming Trees, tapes

rollins band do it cassette 1

Although you can now download these two albums in mp3 versions which sound better than my old cassettes, I’ve held on to them sentimentally. They are among my favorite hard rock albums of the 1980s, along with 13 Songs by Fugazi, Bleach by Nirvana, and Louder than Love by Soundgarden.

Here are the Amazon download links.
Rollins Band: Do It
Screaming Trees: Buzz Factory

screaming trees buzz factory cassette 1

I don’t have any certification or evidence that Henry Rollins really did sign this copy of Do It. I can’t prove its authenticity. But I can tell you that in the mid-to-late 1990s in the rock-and-roll blur that was my twenties, I was in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I heard Rollins come and speak at the amazing Michigan Theatre several times. On one of his tours, he did a book signing right across the street at the Borders bookstore. I went to that signing and asked him to sign my copy of Do It, which was and still is my favorite Rollins Band album.

screaming trees buzz factory cassette 2

The inlay to the Screaming Trees tape has obvious wear. You can see the dirt and what appears to be moisture damage to the paper. That’s exactly what it is, and the same goes for the Do It inlay. I never spilled anything on these but they did endure some humid and inclement weather in my old truck when I was travelling back and forth across the country for fifteen years as if there was actually something out there worth driving to. Now I am a cynical old bastard who doesn’t even have a cassette player.

screaming trees buzz factory cassette 3

The last time I played these tapes was 2009. I played them on a dual cassette deck with a USB output and digitized them into glorious mp3 files. Yeah, it was kind of a waste of time since I could download them now from Amazon or something, but it verified they play. Since then, for six years, they have been stored indoors, free from inclement weather, on my bookshelves with the rest of my pirate treasure. ARRGH! You can see there is a little wear to the text on the cassettes, but you can easily read all the song titles and stuff, and the tapes themselves are in amazingly clean and solid shape for being more than twenty or thrity years old now.

“It’s a one way ride to the end of the universe.” — Mark Lanegan

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screaming trees change has come cd

26 Wednesday Feb 2014

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album, CD, Change has Come, EP, music, Screaming Trees, Sup Pop

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Sub Pop put out a limited edition EP from the Screaming Trees — at gas stations, as one reviewer recalls, and perhaps through their subscription-based mail-order service of the late 1980s. The songs on Change has Come are five of the Trees’ best. But somehow they missed making it onto either of the Screaming Trees collections: Anthology the SST Years 1985-1989 and Ocean of Confusion 89-96. At the time of this writing, no one has seen fit to issue official mp3 downloads for them! The compact disk retains its status as a rarity.

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For many years, no one wanted to sell their copy. But, the global Internet marketplace has expanded greatly since this album came out. In the last ten years, it has become regularly available in the $20 to $40 range: Screaming Trees Change Has Come EP.

screaming trees change has come rare CD- (4)

Amazon claims a date of 1994 on this, but we remember listening to it many years before that. Perhaps a German release came out in 1989 on vinyl, with a CD pressing for the USA in 1991. Our best friend’s brother had a copy we never saw, but we heard our friend’s cassette copy dubbed from that unidentified source.

Do you think you have the definitive proof of the correct release date? We’d love to hear from you then! Comment, please! And now, archival photos & scans, including the original shrink wrap!

screaming trees change has come rare CD- (5)

Ali Farka Toure: Liner Notes from The River

31 Friday Jan 2014

Posted by Mars Will Send No More in music

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african music, ali farka toure, liner notes, music, the river

ali farka toure the river liner notes-001

Listening to vocal music in languages you don’t speak means you lose the narrative, but it can draw your focus to the purely musical aspects of a piece. We enjoy the hypnotic minor-key drones and plaintive singing of The River, but if you download the album you miss out on some deeper meanings. Fortunately, Ali Farka Toure kindly provided us with stories, culture, and context in his liner notes.

We snagged these scans of The River before selling it on Amazon.

ali farka toure the river liner notes-002
ali farka toure the river liner notes-003
ali farka toure the river liner notes-004

Jukebox Comics: Jazz Biographies

26 Thursday Dec 2013

Posted by Mars Will Send No More in educational, golden age, music

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Cab Calloway, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Famous Funnies, golden age, Jazz, Jazz Comics, Jukebox, Jukebox Comics, Lena Horne, Lionel Hampton, Louis Armstrong, music, Nat King Cole

jukebox comics jazz biographies- (14)

We ran these biographical jazz comics from 1948’s Jukebox by Famous Funnies as a series in our first year here on Mars, but you might have missed them. Now you can read them all in one post! Retailers don’t often carry these in stock, although you can find a few issues on eBay every now and then. We are so grateful to the Digital Comic Museum for these scans!













Cecil Taylor: Indent

25 Wednesday Dec 2013

Posted by Mars Will Send No More in music, poetry

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Antioch College, Cecil Taylor, Indent, Jazz, music, piano, poems, poetry, solo, Yellow Springs

cecil taylor indent liner notes (4)

The liner notes to Cecil Taylor’s solo piano album Indent include the poem pictured above. Cecil Taylor’s early bebop work includes recordings with John Coltrane released eventually in album form. But even the ground-breaking context of bebop would prove too restrictive for Taylor. Works like the Great Paris Concert take the instrumentation of a bebop quartet to perform what sounds like almost completely free and unstructured music.

cecil taylor indent liner notes (2)

But, one suspects that Taylor has his own ideas of structure, and that jazz merely served as a starting point. The lack of any recognizable song forms and the energetic chaos erupting in waves from Cecil’s piano will most likely appeal only to the most adventurous listeners. We recommend listening without preconceptions or expectations, letting the sound wash over you like a symphony.

cecil taylor indent liner notes (3)

Cecil Taylor recorded this performance in March, 1973, at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio according to the liner notes. If we recall correctly, he had a teaching or fellowship position there, though we can’t find much information on that now.

When we discovered this album in the early 1990s as jazz DJs at a college radio station, this amused us. Our grandmother had taken us to Yellow Springs during summers in the mid 1980s when we would visit her. It had many new age bookstores and art, a kind of hippie haven in an otherwise conservative midwestern state. You could buy crystals and meditation music in mom-and-pop shops. But what was it like when Taylor was there in 1973, recording this concert, less than two months after we were born? We can only imagine.

Collector’s Guide: From Indent by Cecil Taylor; Freedom, 1977.

cecil taylor indent liner notes (5)

Understanding Rhythm Changes

11 Wednesday Dec 2013

Posted by Mars Will Send No More in educational, music

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chords, george gershwin, i got rhythm, Jazz, jazz theory, music, music theory, ornette coleman, rhythm changes, two five one, wynton marsalis

You can find the most current version of this article as a free  PDF download. 

Understanding Rhythm Changes:
A Primer for Writers and Reviewers of Jazz Music

In an interview with Musician, Wynton Marsalis draws attention to a common shortcoming in jazz music reviews: writers on the subject do not understand the basic technical elements of the music they critique. Wynton claims, “Ornette Coleman sounds like Bird. He was playing rhythm changes on The Shape of Jazz to Come. Have I ever read that by anybody reviewing those albums? No. Why? Because they don’t know what rhythm changes sound like” (Zabor, 1985). As Wynton might agree, a music writer needs enough technical and historical background to understand both the artist’s intent and the tradition of the music.

Understanding the chord patterns of rhythm changes and their development in modern jazz empowers the music writer to better understand jazz, to enjoy it more, and to communicate about it more knowledgably. Because our audience consists of writers, not musicians, we will avoid most traditional musical symbols. Instead, we will explain the ideas simply without teaching a new alphabet of symbols.

The Strongest Resolution

Without a technical background, even the term “rhythm changes” may cause confusion. It sounds like it refers to changing the rhythm of the song, perhaps by altering the tempo or the meter. But in reality, it describes a set of chord changes based on George Gershwin’s song, I Got Rhythm. With that in mind, let us develop an understanding of this set of chord changes, moving from simple elements to the more complex.

To begin, rhythm changes demonstrate one of the fundamental building blocks of jazz: the strong resolution of the Dominant chord to the Tonic chord. In a basic blues form, the Tonic chord represents the key signature of the song. The Dominant chord is built on the fifth scale tone of that key, and is typically played as a dominant seventh chord. In the key of C Major, for example, C is the tonic note. Expressed as a dominant seventh chord, our Tonic chord is C7. The Dominant chord, then, is G7, built on G, the fifth scale tone of C major. One can easily hear on a guitar or piano the resolution when a C7 chord follows a G7.

Jazz takes this idea from the blues and logically extends it. If the strongest resolution happens when the Dominant chord moves to the Tonic, asks jazz, then why not create structures of continually resolving movements? Consider our key of C Major again. We have our Dominant chord as G7. Jazz takes G7 as a new starting point, a new Tonic, and then finds its Dominant chord; in this case, D7. D7 resolves to G7 in the same way that G7 resolves to C7. If we resolve D7 to G7 and then G7 to C7, we have completed the basic chord sequence of jazz.

Jazz musicians often call this a “two five one,” because the note D is the “two” or second note of the original key – C Major in this example. This is the most common harmonic movement in jazz. Its most common variation replaces the D7 with a Dm7.

Jazz often extends the idea yet again to get a set of four chords. Continuing our example, we can treat D7 as a new Tonic and find its Dominant chord: A7. The complete sequence, played as a series of chords, is now A7 to D7 to G7 to C7. Musicians may call this a “six two five,” because, in our original C Major tonality, A is the sixth note of the C Major scale. If you play this sequence on a guitar or piano, you may notice that you have heard similar movements in a slew of popular tunes from blues and jazz to country and rock. It also forms the harmonic backbone of rhythm changes.

I Got Rhythm

George Gershwin incorporated elements of early New Orleans jazz in his musicals. Although his brother Ira deserves credit for the lyric of I Got Rhythm, George composed the melody. Underneath his melody, the chord sequences a piano, guitar, or full band will use are nothing more than an exercise in “six two five” resolutions. Its horn-friendly key of B♭ and its logical sequences of “six two five” resolutions made it a favorite of jazz musicians. No sooner did it appear on stage than jazz artists began improvising their own melodies and solos over the basic chords of the song. We call this set of chords “rhythm changes.”

The most important chords of the first four measures are the Tonic, B♭, and its Dominant chord, F7. To make it more interesting, the chords Gm7 and Cm7 come between them. This creates a Dominant-to-Tonic resolution from G to C, then from C to F, and finally from F back to the song’s original Tonic, B♭ (See Appendix 1).

Measures five and six create the same pattern of resolutions: from B♭ to E♭ to A♭. While it may seem like a change in keys, all three chords are standard chords in a B♭ blues.

Measures seven and eight create a “six two five” resolution ending on the Tonic, B♭. D resolves to G, G to C, C to F, and F to B♭. The second section of the tune, beginning on A, restates this same movement over eight measures. The A resolves down to D then follows the same cycle of resolutions. It does not end on B♭, however, as the form will predictably begin there on the next verse. This logical sequence, while perhaps unfamiliar to those who have not studied harmony, makes perfect sense to a jazz musician – so much sense, in fact, that it spread across the country like wildfire.

The Change Exchange

In 1932, two years after I Got Rhythm first appeared on stage, Sidney Bechet used the chord changes in his recording: Shag (Harrison, p. 432). Bechet’s band does not play Gershwin’s melody. In fact, they barely have a “head” or opening melody at all, diving instead into a group improvisation based on the chords (SoundJunction). Listening to Shag, one should listen for the same overall motion or resolution sequences as I Got Rhythm. Understand that according to U.S. copyright law, composers may copyright melodies and lyric but not chord progressions. Therefore, musicians may appropriate the chords for their own melodies or improvisations. At the time, jazz musicians commonly borrowed chord sequences, including those of Tiger Rag and Moten Swing (Williams, 1989).

In this atmosphere of “open source” chord progressions, Charlie Parker appropriated I Got Rhythm for his seminal bebop tune, Anthropology, with a few customizations. He sometimes uses a minor seventh chord (Gm7) rather than a dominant seventh (G7), and he omits the A chord at the beginning of the second section (measure nine). He also adds a different ending for the second repetition of the “verse,” or first eight measures (See Appendix 2). But, underneath the melodies, the chords essentially follow the same pattern of resolution.

According to Wynton Marsalis, Ornette Coleman used a similar approach on his album, The Shape of Jazz to Come. His group improvisations, Wynton claims, follow rhythm changes. Reviews of Coleman’s 1959 album consistently state the importance of The Shape of Jazz to Come lies in its abandonment of strictly outlined chord progressions and completely “free” improvisation. Wynton, however, urges us to listen closely and more knowledgeably to hear the musicians playing within a tradition of rhythm changes.

To Be Ornette to Be?

Armed with this understanding of rhythm changes, a writer may develop a deeper understanding of jazz. But what of Wynton’s claim about The Shape of Jazz to Come? While Wynton’s expertise and theoretical knowledge give us no reason to doubt his claim, listeners may have some problems verifying it due to Ornette’s idiosyncratic style.

Even a cursory review of the first track, Lonely Woman, reveals that Wynton certainly did not refer to it. Its passages of relatively simple D minor tonality have nothing to do with rhythm changes. However, Congeniality, despite its tempo changes, sounds very much like standard bebop. Its solo sections, like those of the final tune Chronology, swing along very much like bebop.

After several listens to the album, one finds it difficult to believe statements about its abandonment of chord changes. It seems much more likely that the musicians simply did not write down the chord changes, emulating the bebop style “by ear.” Each of Coleman’s collaborators on the album, accomplished musicians in their own right, certainly did not need a chart to play basic jazz chords and melodies. To such musicians, improvising a line based on rhythm changes would come naturally.

Rhythm changes do crop up in other works by Ornette Coleman. However, he often shortened the form by omitting one or more measures. He also seemed to improvise in the style of rhythm changes, but in a different key from the rest of the band. For a more thorough analysis of Ornette’s music, see Jari Perkiömäki’s 2002 doctoral thesis for Sibelius Academy, Lennie and Ornette, at http://ethesis.siba.fi/ethesis/files/nbnfife20031086.pdf.

Closing Suggestions

If we approach jazz culturally, we seek to understand any given recording in terms of the traditions that gave rise to it. Shag exemplifies the Dixieland era’s approach to rhythm changes, while Anthropology demonstrates a bebop approach. Ornette and other modern jazz pioneers may have played “free” or “outside” music, but they came from this same tradition. Sometimes what seems “outside” to the untrained ear relies on tradition for its underlying structure.

Writers, when possible, should seek out a composition’s chord chart and identify the Dominant-to-Tonic resolutions inside it. While it can be difficult to identify chords by ear in a fast-paced performance or recording, seeing the charts makes it quite easy. Hearing the chord progression played on a guitar or piano, without all the soloing and embellishment, also helps one hear the overall movements of the song. If a writer does not play guitar or piano, perhaps a friend or colleague can play the basic chords.

This level of structural analysis remains absent from most jazz critique. Writers, often non-musicians, can only write their impressions of what music sounds like. This compares to writing about architecture based strictly on what the outside of buildings look like, without understanding the inner structure. The professional writer, therefore, will strive to understand and hear more like a musician. Seek to understand the internal logic of the music as much as its subjective effect. The basic structure of rhythm changes and patterns of Dominant-to-Tonic resolutions underlie a great number of songs in both traditional and experimental recordings. If one cannot pick them out by listening, then one must train the ear and the mind. In the end, taking the time to learn about the music one critiques will bring a deeper appreciation, and a more thorough understanding.

Appendix 1: I Got Rhythm chart

i got rhythm chart cropped

Appendix 2: Anthropology chart

anthropology chart cropped

References

Bechet, Sidney. (1932). Shag. 1932. Audio sample retrieved 25 October, 2013 from http://www.soundjunction.org/sidneybechetwildjazzwanderer.aspa

Gershwin, G. (1996). I got rhythm. The complete Gershwin keyboard works. WB Music Corp., ISBN 029156298383. (original copyright 1930?). Chart obtained from Jazz Ltd fake book.

Harrison. Essential Jazz Records (e), Volume 1. “Boppers were not the first people to erect fresh tunes above familiar harmonies: Sidney Bechet, after all, recorded Shag… less than two years after I got rhythm was first sung in the Gershwin’s show, Girl Crazy.”” p. 432

Parker, C. and Gillespie, D. (1945). Anthropology. Chart obtained from The Real Book 1.

SoundJunction. Sidney Bechet: wild jazz wanderer. Retreived from http://www.soundjunction.org/sidneybechetwildjazzwanderer.aspa, October 25, 2013. Includes audio sample.

Williams, M. (1989). Jazz in its time. New York: Oxford Press. Qtd. in Crawford, R. and Magee, J., Jazz Standards on Record, 1900-1942: A Core Repertory. “He goes on to call Shag by Sidney Bechet ‘the first of hundreds (thousands?) of new I Got Rhythm themes to come.’” Also notes that this was common practice including standards like Tiger Rag and Moten Swing.

Zabor, R., and Garbarini, V. (1985, March). Wynton vs. Herbie: The purist and the crossbreeder duke it out. Musician, 77, 52-64. Excerpted from The Eighties (Palermo), Ch. 54: Soul, craft, and cultural hierarchy. PDF retrieved from http://www.scribd.com/doc/32894306/Wynton-Vs-Herbie-2

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