(1/11/12: cleaned up last verse)

Religion No Rite (In Your Face Again)

Once upon a time the fall from grace
The Father said get thee from my place
Became the Son, came down, died in your face
Cleared the way back to grace through faith
The blood of the Martyrs soaked the ground
Buried in rags they stayed down
The kings stepped in put in their claims
Forced their rules upon the game

So once upon a time later today
You sign up for the fire escape
Get rewarded with a clean slate
The Blood is strong it covers your hates
But verse upon verse upon verse upon verse
Aimed at you and not the cursed
Not being deceived and God not mocked
The weight of the cross for you to take up

Religion no rite
Gun you aim for the mind of Christ
Didn’t take long to lose sight
In the halls of the councils high

No fire doesn’t mean that higher
There won’t be a reason to cry, or
That you will not be standing trial
Watching tape of every mile
And so worship and worship to taste
One thing proves if you worship to waste
Windows dressed as you see fit
But the valley before you how do you cross it?

Moral dilemmas: prepare, they’re coming
And there’s no room left for running
No slippery slope temptations
But painted corners, no win situations
Just one chance, happiness at stake
A heart you love you must break
Choices consequences how do you withstand them
And still obey His commandments?

Time to get in your face again

Religion no rite
Gun you aim for the mind of Christ
Didn’t take long to lose sight
In the halls of the councils high

By popular request (and permission from Nina and Rob), the first of my two songs for the Lead’s upcoming 4-song EP is available for download at Area 1234. I actually wrote this in 2000, and even back then I thought I could eventually record it with the Lead since the lyric is based on something that happened to the Lead.

Back in 1985, shortly after we put out our first EP,  I sent a check and an ad to the yet-to-be-legendary #1 punk political rag Maximum RockNRoll along with a review copy of said EP. I got the ad and check back from already-infamous publisher Tim Yohannan along with a note declining to run the ad. Of course I wrote a letter back to Yohannon in a futile attempt to save his soul (and a successful attempt to dis Castro and the Sandinistas), and we traded a couple more letters. Old Warrior from The Past Behind was the first response to this.

As the years seasoned my perspective a bit, I realized that I had no reason to brand Yohannon’s rejection of the ad as censorship. In fact, as the nominal owner of his business (although I’m sure he’d bite, kick, scratch and scream saying it’s not a business), he was perfectly within his rights to refuse to deal with us. So I wrote this other tune basically calling him out on being a Stalinist Pharisee while saying (as he did in his letter to me) that he had no tolerance for people with other beliefs but the same intransigence. All well and good, except Yohannan was already dead and gone as of April 1998.

Lyrics- written in 1999 and revised in 2011:

What I Should Have Told Tim Yohannon in 1985

Good evening old warrior the muzzle fits just fine
Before you go back to the rag my I have a little of your time?
Your morality’s direction as you made me understand
Abhor every intolerant and dogmatic command
And you went on and described the zealots
And, so naively, yourself
The minds in your hands never did know
Shouting I think for myself but you – you will never know

Sheep of another color are sheep nonetheless
The way it will be will be the way that it is
Your worldview these days only seems to sport false teeth
The guns and the wars are tiring of propping your beliefs
You’re printing and we are moshing
Mommy’s got our bed for after the slogans
The system you decry is keeping you afloat
You are part of the machine but you – you will never know

You say no rules while you make rules yourself
Falling into your toilet with everything else
What is good to you you have the right to say
And the right to say that it is the only correct way
But my religion that you hated for its ways
Bore the precepts you so embrace
Erase it from the earth-your dream come true
Take Him away from this world – but you’ll never think it true
What hope left for you?

2000 March 2, 11, 17, 20
2011 June 2

But I digress. Here’s a little thrasher I slapped together in the ridiculously short time of two or three weeks. I had shared the lyrics here when I wrote them a couple of months ago. Just some ruminations on the infamous hacktivist group that’s been getting into the hair of giant corporations such as the Church of Scientology and Gene Simmons and some government intel conglomerate. They’ve really become a 21st-century version of the Vikings or the Mongols.

Last verse is food for thought, imagining some cyber-Armageddon pitting Anonymous against Muslim radicals.

The download is here, if you have the guts to register. I will not forget…..

Rock rock rock rock
Block block block block
Raining from the sky
See the fire fly
Nothing left to try
Hooks and chants are dry
Wonder why

Go go go go
No no no no
It must be mine
The roses and the wine
If greed is so divine
What’s the use of time
Your dime

August 8, 2011

Oh, and this looks line another one for Frank’s Enemy, which I have been concocting some plans for as of late.

August 9: added a new verse!

Anonymous

Oh god i pray
Keep anonymous from me today
Keep them away
Watch over all i do and say

Big brother is another
Unconscientious conscience
Philosophy amalgalm
Flash lynch mob justice

Oh God i pray
Keep me anonymous today
Keep me away
What do i do or say

The battlements of power
Await the great solar flare
Signal fires and mirrors
And Morse the only code there

Anonymous drew Mohammed
And used it for a mask
Flat screens rolled like heads
Plasma ebbed from cracks

So this is my new EP called Olivier. My fourth and last project named after one of my kids with songs reflecting love and loss.

When Corinne came out back in 2005, I thought I was done with both  fathering kids and naming my records after them. Along came a change of heart and along with it Olivier (the baby) in 2008.  So basically I was contractually obligated to my family to put this out so no one gets left out.

It’s probably the least accessible (definitely the least upbeat) of my solo projects so of course this is the one I’m putting on iTunes via Tunecore. Call me whatever….

I was also dissatisfied with Area 1234 as the only place to get my music, so I’ve put this EP on a Bandcamp page where you can stream it and download it free until 2011 starts in a couple of days. I’m still thinking about how to handle things after that.

I’m from GarageBand

When I got my MacBook Pro for Christmas last year, my recording capabilities took a quantum leap. I know that’s kind of a ridiculous statement, but my goal when I started recording again in 2001 was to simply do as much as possible for little or no out-of-pocket cost. So I spent the better part of eight years recording on Pro Tools Free on a hand-me-down Windows Me clunker of a machine (not even an external drive). I did get accessories here and there (I kept breaking headphones) but the engine room remained the same.

So imagine my delight at actually working on a DAW program that lets me do more than eight tracks and has a jillion presets that enable me to sound like I’m singing through a broken mic without actually having to break a mic. Positively luxurious.

Of course, I know that you can end up sounding like the rest of the world with this stuff if you’re not careful. That’s why I made sure to include groundbreaking juxtapositions in my arrangements such as as combining banjo and autotuned vocals on True Love and the aforementioned broken mic vocal effect against slow country fingerpicking on Rage.

Hope you like it. Let me know.

Sometimes you need the pain
Just like you need the rain
Sometimes it’s the only way to see
The only way to be

And you will know true love

It’s the one thing that’s always there
You can see it all everywhere
And it’s all up to how well you die
And every day to accept it you try

In the days that feel like the last
Seeing things about to pass
You will not forget ever
What you were left trying to remember

Sometimes you forget to wish things last
Then they’re shot into the past
That sorrow you heard about tasting sweet
Sometimes that’s all you’re ever going to have to eat

And the day has come to give God praise
For the things you found in your days
The day has come to walk the line
Realize you can call no thing mine

The price of being able to login and download the aural delights and view the blackmail photos is simply your email address. No, I won’t sell the emails to anybody. I’ll send you the occasional email with an update on what I’ve got going on and the occasional exclusive deal or giveaway.

And of course I’m going to continue to populate Area 1234 with all the detritus my crazed mind can manufacture. I’m sure you’ll want to have a ticket to all that. See ya there!