The Official Hog Blog
Tuesday, November 23, 2004
I wondered what it would be like to live in an Orwellian society, and with a list of items ticked off to remind me exactly how we have allowed ourselves to be governed by thought police since our original birthdays I found that we not only live in an Orwellian society, but most of us welcome it.
Some people people call it a radical idea, and throw it away as part of a paranoid delusion. Conspiracy Theorists are nuts. Why should we listen? On the other hand, aren't there enough people in your city who live a life in fear? or impoverished to the level that they are working from day to day and only making enough money to get to the next paycheck? imagine that life only existed two weeks at a time, and if you didnt work enough during those two weeks, life as you knew it ended. Even worse, that you had to consider living on the street, or in your car. Some people who are reading this know folks who have to live this way. I certainly do. And who do we look to for salvation?
The good people in Orlando, Florida have a Clear Channel billboard to remind them that we have George W. Bush to thank for some of the worst decisions made by an administration, resulting in an ever widening gap between our nation's poor and our nation's rich. The result of his re-eletion will be the appointments of conservative judges to the Supreme court, there will be an increase in the loss of our privacy by way of the Patriot Act 2, there will be more war on terrorism (not to be confused with the war in Iraq which is its own separate war that is part of the war on terrorism which may include North Korea and Iran someday making it a world war on terrorism or maybe just a holy war, christians versus muslims), and there will be even more of our nation left in the dust as the powerful folks we call our leaders sit in plush offices laughing, golfing on their many days off, checking out their numbers to make sure everything is falling in line, etc, etc, etc, etc...
A constant reminder that we the people have a new president in town, or rather, we have the same old president. It reads "Our Leader," when in fact it should read "Get Used to It."
Thursday, November 11, 2004
Parchman Farm are playing at Café Du Nord this evening, but I can’t make it cuz I’m deejaying tonight. I’ll go and see them another day, tho. They’ll be playing in December when I am available. Who are Parchman farm, you may ask?
Long story made short: Allyson Baker moved to San Francisco from Canada with the intention of creating a heavy rock band. This band, as she tells it, would eventually become Parchman Farm. (Parchman Farm being the old blues tune by Bukka White, not the real-life prison made into legend by the Coen Brothers movie O Brother Where art Thou) In Toronto, Carson Binks' band was falling apart, so he took a vacation to visit the Bay area. By that time, Allyson had been playing with a solid drummer by the name of Chris La Breche. Allyson knew Chris from his days in the Deadly Snakes, found out he was in town and asked him to ditch the sax he used to play for the bass guitar, and to play it like he was buttering ass. As soon as they hit their first notes, they knew it was on, but they needed a singer. Eric Shea stepped up, looking for a new project to sink his teeth into as their lead singer.
Baker, Binks, and La Breche are like new additions to the Frisco nightlife, but San Francisco won’t find Shea to be a mystery, he has put himself into the heat of the musical maelstrom for years. He was a member of Mover, the country-rock band that could have taken the No-Depression world by storm had it not been for artistic differences that caused its demise. He hosted a weekly acoustic open-mic night called the Monday Night Hoot until the venue (and the city’s rock scene) got bigger and the hoot got the boot, and he has been championing the legacy of Gram Parsons by putting together the annual charity event called Sleepless Nights, where West Coast bands pay tribute to Parsons onstage, playing for free, and donating the proceeds to the Haight Ashbury Free Health Clinic.
The new project, Parchman Farm, has swelled beyond their expectations, with shows booked in the best San Francisco halls, playing with some of the city’s best players. Rumors began spreading of them opening for a re-united Mountain at the Warfield circulated the crowded shows at the Ivy Room or at the El Rio, but still the band took it in stride. They are a young band, having been together for under a year, and they are on the verge of discovering themselves in the process. Their live performances are a free form pastiche of ideas that gel and slip away from each other as the songs unite only to give way to the next big sexy psychedelic groove. “I think that we’re totally in transition,” says Allyson, whose smoldering presence onstage, and warm distorted guitar sounds throw fuel to Binks' blistering bass lines, each riff escalating the progression until all four band members are hovering around the drum set, heads bobbing and hair everywhere.
They dismiss it when I mention that they sound like a stoner rock band, with all of their loud and fuzzy, psychedelic references to Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, and Hawkwind. Instead, they reference Screamin’ Jay Hawkins and the early Motown recordings as influencing their sounds just as much as Blue Cheer. “We don’t want to pin ourselves into a corner by labeling ourselves, or adhering to genres,” says Shea, “We’re more into funk rhythms and a lot of harmonies.”
LaBreche goes on to explain how important the live experience is; even referring to it as an organic event that includes participation from the audience. “Rock’n roll, or going to see live rock’n roll is a physical thing, though,” says Binks, with dirty blonde hair and a pretty boy face belying the immensity of his playing skills, wherein his fingers move so fast across the fret boards they might fly from his hands at any moment, “People think we’re a loud band, but we’re not a punishing band. It’s more of a sensual thing, like you feel the reverberations in your sternum. It’s heavy, but funky and uplifting. It’s pop music that’s played really heavy, which is much more exciting and sexy.”
“When it happens it feels sort of like a Jacuzzi,” Shea says, “and being able to kick back with the bubbles on all around you.”
After their very first San Francisco show, Nick Tangborn was impressed enough to quickly snag them to release their first record on Jackpine Social Club, the little record label he slugs away for.
“Eric Shea's been a friend of mine for a few years. I dug his old band and seeing him solo, but this time he's doing what he really wants to do,” Tangborn explains in his matter-of-fact way, “He’s such a filthy hippie anyway, now he can hide under his hair and scream like a banshee.”
Taking that into account, look at Parchman Farm’s gig schedule. They have done shows with folk acts, post-punk bands with disco lean, prog-rock bands, and country-rock bands. All of whom seem to have little in common with them, but always playing with high caliber acts. It’s as if the heyday of San Francisco’s summer of love is re-lived, with no boundaries. Are we experiencing a resurgence of the acceptance of different sounding bands on the same bills and who cares if they are so absolutely different?
“I think we're finally seeing some cross-pollination,” says Nick Tangborn, “San Francisco has always had good bands, but each scene is so insular. It seems like the proliferation of new venues in the city, combined with a bunch of people determined to either play good music or helps promote it, is leading to a real upswing in good bands --both quantity wise and quality wise.”
Shea is quick to remind us of the Parchman Farm goal and that is to “make the best Rock and Roll that money can buy,” but it aint about money with this group. They are four closet heshers who have come out of the shadows to seductively scratch that public itch. That is, we all want to rock. When the work week is over, and us common folks need to let it all hang out and just fuckin’ rock, Parchman Farm is gonna be there. The debut release from Parchman Farm is due out in November on Jackpine Social Club Records.
-30-
Wednesday, November 10, 2004
This person said everything I was thinking right chyar, sir.
Monday, November 08, 2004
Here is your divided America. Each of the counties of each of the states are depicted by the color of their voting. THat is, Bush = red and Kerry = blue. There are purplish spots all over the map, too.
whoah. I'm totally stoned.
and another one.
politics are trippy man. like, whoah.
Friday, November 05, 2004
O! and here is another case of voting machines malfunctioning in GWBush's favor.
not surprisingly, the nation is apathetic.
I wouldn't usually prescribe to anything that USA Today reports, but look at what I found! USA Today reports that there were (GASP!) missing votes in North Carolina.
I guess the missing votes couldn't have changed anything, but were there more missing votes in other states? That's what I want to know.
Thursday, November 04, 2004
There are a few facts that have been misleading us all over the last few days. Not to mention some old news stories that were un-remembered. I present them to you.
First: While the world awaited Ohio to decide whether or not to vote in the devil they knew or the devil anew, I remembered a story from August 28, 2003. It read as follows:
Published on Thursday, August 28, 2003 by the Cleveland Plain Dealer
Voting Machine Controversy
by Julie Carr Smyth
COLUMBUS - The head of a company vying to sell voting machines in Ohio told Republicans in a recent fund-raising letter that he is "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."
The Aug. 14 letter from Walden O'Dell, chief executive of Diebold Inc. - who has become active in the re-election effort of President Bush - prompted Democrats this week to question the propriety of allowing O'Dell's company to calculate votes in the 2004 presidential election.
O'Dell attended a strategy pow-wow with wealthy Bush benefactors - known as Rangers and Pioneers - at the president's Crawford, Texas, ranch earlier this month. The next week, he penned invitations to a $1,000-a-plate fund-raiser to benefit the Ohio Republican Party's federal campaign fund - partially benefiting Bush - at his mansion in the Columbus suburb of Upper Arlington.
The letter went out the day before Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, also a Republican, was set to qualify Diebold as one of three firms eligible to sell upgraded electronic voting machines to Ohio counties in time for the 2004 election.
Blackwell's announcement is still in limbo because of a court challenge over the fairness of the selection process by a disqualified bidder, Sequoia Voting Systems.
In his invitation letter, O'Dell asked guests to consider donating or raising up to $10,000 each for the federal account that the state GOP will use to help Bush and other federal candidates - money that legislative Democratic leaders charged could come back to benefit Blackwell.
read the whole story here.
Second: There are plenty of reports stating that President Bush won this election by performing an amazing feat. That is, he got more of the popular vote than any other president elect, ever. BUT, if you look closely at the numbers, you'll find that Kerry (had he won) also would have had more votes than any other president elect, simply because this election had the most voters the nation has ever seen.
finally, if you want to read more from a blog, read Ken Layne'sblog. He is a well rounded guy who also happens to be a great songwriter as well.
