Philosopher Blues

This came to me last night in a flash and an artist can not question instinct. It's his muse awakening. If it pleases the masses or not is another topic entirely.

The song is in the key of C, but for some reason I was motivated to start the verse on the IV (F) chord. It's not a minor blues, but the structure smells like blues to me and the lyrics appear to be the philosopher who lives inside my brain amusing himself once more. So, it's the Philosopher Blues. If Van Morrison wanted to record this song and put it on his next album I would have no problem with that. None. That's fine with me. Just spell my name right, Van. Oggy Bleacher. Written by Oggy Bleacher. That would solve a lot of problems.


Sperm Think God
Is A Man

Sperm Think God
Is A Man

Sperm Think God
Is A Man

And the Devil
and the Devil
is his right hand.


We look to our right
but that's somebody's left

We look to our right
but that's somebody's left

We look to our right
but that's somebody's left

We look so many times
so many times
that we don't see the mess


These quilted times
are our tapestry

These quilted times
are our tapestry

These quilted times
are our tapestry

And my Schiz-o-phre-ni-a
is a catastrophe


We lives our lives
in a state of denial

We lives our lives
in a state of denial

We lives our lives
in a state of denial

No we don't, no we don't, no we don't.

Old Stories

I was rewatching the original recording of this song and decided I could do better now that I'm sober so I'll see how I feel about this take. I was inspired by some Press Room artists who sang average original tunes and I decided to write a tribute to the places I remember growing up with and the nostalgia was unavoidable. I sing this song from time to time for a small audience and wonder what they must think about these places that very few people even remember because they don't exist anymore.

Sometimes I take a moment to tell some details and the detail I like to share is, possibly fake, of Brad throwing a nerf football to me in the dinnerware aisle of JJ Newberry and I missed it and it bounced into a shelf of gaudy crystal globes, knocking them to the ground where they splintered, causing Brad and me to flee out the back door near the pet store section. I'm not sure it really happened.

Another memory is of the now neglected Jerry Lewis Theater in Portsmouth. I didn't see Star Wars there, because I saw that in Boston, but I watched Empire Strikes Back at the Jerry Lewis in '81 or '82. Later, a friend got a job as a ticket taker and I told him to let me in the back door to see Top Gun and I waited there patiently and out popped the manager like a skeleton on a spring. I panicked and said, "I'm waiting for Dan!" and then ran away into the forest. Dan lost that job but did alright in the end.

I'll annotate this song further at the risk of taking some mystery away, J.J. Newberry's had a lunch counter and a pet store where my buddy Christos bought a dog he named after the light hitting Red Sox shortstop Spike Owen, and a toy section where I stole baseball cards and picked up a nerf football and passed to to Brad. He passed it back but overthrew me and it flew into a display of that cheap leaded crystal cracker vases those kinds of stores had. Before the sound of breaking glass even reached the front desk Brad had fled out the backdoor with me in hot pursuit. Laverdier Drug Store was where we stole some gum, Brad got caught because he had velcro cargo pant pockets. I got the gum out of my pocket before they caught me but the event was a red flag in our childhood. They had an arcade at the drug store too. It's a fish restaurant last I checked. Pic 'n' Pay was the name of a grocery store that sponsored a little league team that wore red uniforms. The store is now named Hannafords and it's basically the same. The Little Store was actually called "The Little Store" and it was 2 blocks from my house and sold snacks and bread and had a deli that was probably not licensed by food health department but offered good sandwiches to the winner of the weekly arcade game contest. Venture and Galaga and Pac Man and even Dragon's Lair made their way through that store in the golden era of console video games. Twinkies did cost twenty five cents. It's now a private residence with a cool front porch that was the portal to sugar and games for an entire neighborhood for about 3 years. The 'penny candy' reference is to Strawberry Banke root beer sticks and hard candy that was offered in wood baskets for a penny. Especially the soft cherry balls and multi-colored candy drops and licorice and bit-o-honey. It was across the street from our football field at Prescott Park (which still exists unchanged), so we always could get twenty cents worth of candy on the way home. The hot dog reference is to Gillies hot dog stand between the old J.J. Newberry and the parking garage, which has expanded from the old trolley car unit to almost a modern restaurant. The number of experiences I had at Gillies could fill a book. 'Houses made of logs' refers to the age of the houses, since there are no original log cabins in Portsmouth anymore. But there are graveyards 'old as time', dating back to pre-revolution colonial era. The chorus involves J.J. Newberry a general merchandise store, Peddlers was the local, now gone bicycle shop, Dollifs was the coin and baseball card collectible shop with a quirky, before-its-time blind auction on items like confederate money and old pennies. Sessions was the record store where I bought my first LP album: Billy Joel's Glass Houses. Sometimes I throw in "Daddy's Junky Music" which was an instrument store that closed up after the internet gouged prices beyond what could compete with. Gallaghers was the place I went to have my baseball glove relaced with leather and to buy a BB gun. It was general sporting goods like soccer balls and boxing gloves. The Mall in Newington put them all out of business but the internet got the last laugh.

These places have a personal history but, like the song says, nothing stays the same.  What strikes me about this song now that I've been playing it for several years is that there is a metaphor and longing that I intended for the places, but the final verse is a tribute to my buddy Brad who is also gone and I wonder sometimes if all these places aren't symbolic of him. I think my plan is to sing it as a tribute to the places and if the message is taken as a tribute to Brad then so be it.

The crackling you hear in the background is the old woodstove back in action after a long hot summer. Why did I leave the Costa Rican beach for this climate that is either an inferno or a deep freezer? some guy named Alan Jackson recorded a similar tune. Everyone's got a story.

Meditations

I played some music for a rock star in Topanga and she thought there was something good about my J.J. Newberry's tribute. All the L.A. canyons have high musical standards so if it gets good reviews there then there might be some truth to it. My original music is like my essays, torn from the grief of my everyday life and written on tear-stained paper. Uploaded using Taco Bell free wireless or the library, sitting in the rain with the computer on a newspaper dispenser, waiting for the connection to return, bats catching moths in the streetlight, ocean fog ruining my suede trousers. The usual nonsense.

But I've been working on a project song for many years, longer than any album except Smile to be completed. I decided it must be a song about denial, the hero is 'glad she's gone' and 'better off alone'. I have plenty of personal experiences to support my theme and since I got the compliment in Topanga I tried to spend my nights vacillating between misery and reflection, looking for the few words that capture the idea and the tone can't be misunderstood. The van is my studio.

The song chords, although I tried to be more sophisticated, kept going back to the I, IV, V. There is a pattern but it doesn't fit the normal blues or folk. I'm not even sure if the measures all add up. I thought singing and speaking realize the emotional tone best and pay tribute to Lefty Frizzell, my musical mentor.

I haven't quite decided on the title. I thought "Talking to Myself" was good.

Words and Music by Senor Oggy Bleacher
                  D
I've made mistakes
         G                                       D
And loving you wasn't the only one.
 G                
But it's the one that hurt the most
          D                        G
when all was said and done.
D                       A                        G                        D
I can't help believing, you were wrong to set me free
G             A                          D
I'm no good when it's only me

I'm glad you're gone
cuz loving you was too much for one man
The morning sun in your blue eyes
was more than I could stand
I got no right to ask for one more day
I got no right to stand in your way

(bridge)
G      
I'm better off alone
                 D
watching movies all night long
G
replaying over and over again
A
what went wrong...what went wrong...what the hell went wrong?

So this is goodbye
We've come to the end of the road
I'm ready to let you go
and turn back into a toad
It's been nice to know you
aw, what the hell,
It's been nice to know you...been nice to know you
been nice to know you, fare thee well.

Sangria Blues

I made it easier for all my fans in the UAE to make this your screensaver.

The Sangria Blues is yet another song inspired by living in the Walmart Parking lot. I just now notice that I can see the Walmart sign over my left shoulder. classic. As I have proposed, we are all living in the 'Walmart Parking lot', but only I live in the official Walmart Parking lot. But do not deceive yourself that you live outside the parking lot. No, it's a big lot. And the junkies and nickle prostitutes, the worn car parts and flea dogs and puppies and abused diaper pails are your neighbors. Some people park in a distant space, and some people park near the Walmart door, but everyone is in the parking lot, bathed by the blue neon sign. Sangria is in the wine section, near the Dairy fridges. There are two architectural layouts of Walmarts. One has the dairy and wine on the right hand of the store, and the other has the dairy and wine on the left hand. I like the 'gender neutral' bathrooms in the back because I can sponge bath my ass crack in private there. Enjoy the song and remember to turn the light off on your way out. If my guitar sounds odd it is because this is my old Seagull that I glued the bridge back on with a hacksaw, and when I put a set of light strings on I found the G string was missing from some long distant patch job. And I had given away the original full set to a traveling band of gutter punks destined for New Orleans...so I had to take a bus into the Alamo district to find a spare 23 gauge string to complete the set. The guitar sounds good enough for the Sangria and Walmart parking lot crowd.

Terlingua Waltz

This is the price of the Cowboy life. Writing songs about memories in dusty towns where laughter from bars reminds you of roads diverged in the wood. Terlingua Waltz is dedicated to someone who will probably never hear it. To borrow a line from the Gary White tune: 

Caught in my fears
Blinking back the tears
I can't say you hurt me when you never let me near

I wrote it with Ernest Tubb as my wingman and Lefty Frizzell as my spiritual guide, thus the lighting is as dark as a honky-tonk bathroom stall on Ladies Night. New Hampshire didn't make any Western troubadours but I'm trying my damnedest to change that record by leaving bits of my heart scattered through the desert. Call me the "Singing Econoliner" I can't find the strength to type out the lyrics to this.

Terlingua Waltz

By Oggy Bleacher

Waltz in A

      A                                    E               A

The Mines are all empty in Terlingua Town

          D

They filled in the shafts

                                      A

And they tore the store down

              D                                                             A

You can go if you want, but there ain’t nothing there

A                                      E               A

Except for the girl with Gold in her hair.

A7               D

Gold in her hair

                   A

Gold in her hair

A                                    E                A

Except for the girl with gold in her hair

They came for the silver and left covered in dust

They bought and sold dreams before they went bust

A tired provocation of an often lost dare

To Dance with the girl with Gold in her hair

Gold in her hair

Gold in her hair

To Dance with the girl with gold in her hair

The Chihuahuan desert seems lonely at night

The coyote’s call and the stars shining bright

But nothing compares to the self-assured stare

Of the beautiful girl, with gold in her hair

Gold in her hair

Gold in her hair

The beautiful Girl with Gold in her hair

If you see her, tell her hello from me

‘cause I miss her more than the flowers miss the bee

I miss her so much that I’m near to despair

I miss the girl with Gold in her hair

Gold in her hair

Gold in her hair

I miss the Girl with Gold in her hair.

The Mines are all empty in Terlingua Town

Hard On The Mind

After my recent rant about the lack of modern protest songs I could hear people thinking "What's stopping Oggy from writing a protest song of his own?" Mainly, my point is that there are quality singers and musicians and producers with abundant current event material who are opting to continually beat down the topic of sex and dancing and 'boo hoo my boyfriend cheated on me'. I accept that eight of ten songs on an album can be about those topics. yes. But what the fucking hell is wrong with y'all? not 10 out of 10! Please can you write one or two songs every two years about politics, AIDS, ebola or somehing that shows your public school education was not totally squandered on keeping you out of jail.

Well, I am not as talented a performer as Bruno Mars. That's the issue. So me writing a song about the rain forest and Bruno Mars writing the same song are not the same.

Guitar Chords With Roots on Every String

I decided the video was insufficient to demonstrate what I'm talking about. I only went through this trouble because I had not yet encountered this particular method so maybe it's novel. In the Levelland jazz class I took I learned the horizontal chord voicings, taking a GM7 on the 3rd fret and then moving to the GM7 on the 5th fret, then a GM7 on the 8th fret and then a GM7 on the 12th fret, and finally the 15th fret is the same as the 3rd. There is also one on the 10th fret but for some reason we didn't do much with that voicing, which I didn't care about because it was the one voicing of the Maj7 that I already knew. I feel this vertical method is as important as the horizontal method.

This was painful to make so donate to the SPCA if you find it useful

The main breakthrough that this method helped me reach was learning all the notes on the 3rd and 4th strings, which were a little hazy above the 7th fret because I simply did not play chord voicings that had roots on those strings/frets...and that's how I memorized all the other strings. I've heard one simple method for learning notes is to find all the BC_D notes and directly beneath then are the EF_G notes. It's at least something to start with but I've found knowing the chord shapes with root notes on all the strings really helped me memorize the notes....and furthermore, this particular skill, playing these 3 chord qualities with roots on any string...is actually a portion of the jury exam that one must pass to graduate. I tried to write a computer program that would simulate this exam but I couldn't do it. I think there are random string generators online that you can program with music note names and qualities and string number but the easiest thing would be to make three stacks of flash cards. One set has all the note names on it Ab, A, Bb, B, C, Db, D...etc. The other set has three qualities, Major 7, Minor 7, Dominant 7. And the last set has the numbers 1,2,3,4,5,6. Shuffle and Pick one card from each set and play that chord. D...... dominant 7.......root on the 3rd string. It would look like the Bb7 in my picture, except played on the 7th fret. See, everything is movable but if you don't know the actual names of the strings then you are either relying totally on your ear, which makes you more awesome than Oggy, or you only play the chords in the voicings and positions that you've always known and you never venture beyond that comfort zone. I played the 5th string root Maj7 formation exclusively for about 13 years. I got so sick of shifting 7 frets when I needed to play a maj7 chord that I broke down and drove to God-forsaken* North Texas to learn how to play better. This diagram is a way to push yourself into some different positions and it's definitely how professionals think, and you won't have to live in Levelland if you study hard enough.

This is by no means exhaustive, as there are voicings up the ass, high, low, drop 2, drop 3, 11th extensions...diminished, augmented, etc. But these three qualities and these limited voicings should give you something to work on.  One hint that I've learned is the professionals don't play these complete voicings. They simplify them to maybe two or three notes and concentrate on rhythm. They know what the whole formation looks like but speed and instrumentation make them simplify the chord shape.

One of the exercises I did was to play iimi7 / V7 / Imaj7 in any key and any position, and it's really not complicated because all the voicings you see in the picture are within a fret of each other when played in a particular key. It's a different lesson so I'll save that for later. I probably saw this lesson half a dozen times before I finally understood what it was demonstrating. It's merely a way to revoice the same chord so your comping can have some kind of momentum and variety. Western Swinger guitarist Eldon Shamblin made a career out of revoicing the same chords to make it sound like he was playing some complicated arrangement, when really it was just Shamblin who was complicated.

There's also a formation at the 10th fret but for some reason these 4 grips are the main ones for each chord quality.

*Considering Lubbock is the "city of 200 churches" this depiction is wrong. God has totally occupied North Texas. I mean it is flat and windy and everyone is white and wears cowboy hats and their "frontier days" parade is almost identical to a normal day. North Texas is like a huge boring theme park for Baptists where you don't ride on a hay wagon unless you pitched all the hay onto the wagon first. And you study animal husbandry or petroleum engineering. People in North Texas think Los Angeles is a fictional place invented to demonstrate the horrors that happen when you stray from God. It's noteworthy to point out that Los Angeles requires North Texas for survival, but North Texas would not blink if all of Los Angeles vanished. The most radical thing that happened in the history of North Texas was a Bluegrass music program was started at a community college. My arrival there is still discussed in coffee shops. In all my travels I've never met someone from North Texas outside of North Texas. North Texas is the only place in the last 20 years that I've been able to go to a street called Main Street and have a cup of coffee and slice of pie made by Ma at a cafe called "Ma's Cafe" next door to a western wear store whose owner is the cashier, across the street from the city hall/jail/courthouse where every week business owners play old country songs in a gazebo on a lawn. If you are under 30 years old then you probably have no idea what I'm talking about. 
I was driving to New Mexico way up in North Texas and honestly my road map got sucked out the van window. It took me a minute to get the van under control and turn around and go back to get the map, laying in the middle of the road. As an experiment I decided to wait to see how long before another car came and forced me out of the road. Another car never came. Finally a rancher drove slowly along his fence line and asked if I was ok. Probably thought I was stoned. I said I was fine and he nodded and went to check on his cattle. I finally got bored and started driving west again. I could see New Mexico about 40 minutes before I got there.

Pipeliner

This song is finally in the ballpark for a demo version complete with my vocal effect unit that makes me sound like Kermit the Frog. It sucks having the soul of Jackson Browne and the the voice of Pee Wee Herman but the good lord may shine his love upon me one day and inspire a pretty, popular artist to record one of my songs.

Pipeliner was intended to get me thinking outside the box, a love song from the wife of a dead pipeline welder, a tribute to the working man from the female perspective. I demonstrated my ability to write totally noncommercial novelty songs but Pipeliner is as commercial as I can make it: pro oil, pro capitalism, pro working class, pro traditional family...(I'm still working on a lyric about his dog and truck but I made up for it with a line about his Lincoln Welder)...except I'm a man singing it for my gay welder husband. Damn it, please let Taylor Swift hear this and record it and put "Written by Oggy Bleacher" on her platinum album! Please GOD LET THAT HAPPEN so I can retire to Belize with the royalties of this cheese fest. Is that asking too much?

And lest ye judge me need I remind you of the years spent in the oil field freezing with no fat on my ass, nothing to protect me from the Louisiana hippie haters and mud up to my balls trying desperately to inject the earth with poisoned frac water.

The flood lights aren't up, because I haven't put them up yet.

I work next to these pipefitters, welders, electricians, concrete form setters, engineers. Fucking 4 stories in the air with a bitter wind in my face on an extending crane swaying in the breeze with a giant light assembly dangling from my lips. Many die, many widows are made, many lunches and next to work boots that will never be worn again. In fact, the work boots I own are from a man who could no longer walk after a life in the oil field. He could not put the boots on...so he sold them. IF THERE IS A GOD THEN HE WILL LET TAYLOR SWIFT RECORD THIS SONG! AMEN.

tree shadow

Hhahaa, I just realize the whole song should end with 'Amen' because that's even more American than a widow of a pipeliner singing a song to her dead husband. The Pipeliner Tribute Song.


ps. my piano lick is inspired by, but not an exact rip-off of, Jackson Browne's Birds of Saint Marks. So he doesn't get writing credit.

The chords are the standard C/ami/F/G...the chorus is F/G/ami and the bridge is ami/G. I rewrote the lyrics from what I sing but this is what I've got so far:

Pipeliner
By Oggy Bleacher

It's 4am, I'll make the coffee.
You can sleep a little more.
I'll put your lunch
with your work boots
beside the kitchen door

chorus: Pipeliner, when are you coming home.
You've been gone so long
I'll be waiting for you when the day is through
I'll be waiting here for you.

In the field the work is hard the day is long
your Lincoln Welder is your pride
Another bead around another mile of pipe
you're never satisfied

chorus

bridge: you and I we had so many years together
you were a lover and a friend
now the days are long, the nights are deathly quiet
and in the morning I pretend

It's 4am, I'll make the coffee
you can sleep a little more.
I'll put your lunch
with your work boots beside the kitchen door

chorus.

It's simple, a video of Taylor Swift singing and a sepai-toned widow making coffee for her dead husband, a dog waiting sadly at the door next to some work boots, an American Flag. That's a Platinum record right there courtesy of Oggy Bleacher. No, let's have more booty jiggle videos. yeah. I'll go ahead and starve to death.

Sober Blues

Music improvised in the van is one of my great pleasures and I hope this is a sign of good things to come as there's a change in the weather and El Conquistador is gazing toward the horizon and wondering what is on the other side of that hill.

Oggy & Los Conquistadores

My vintage 1951 Lefty Frizzell songbook has some pictures that are making me think crazy thoughts. Why did he get to have all the fun? I want to tour with a band in a ridiculous station wagon and tear drop trailer with my name painted on the side.

How about decorating the exterior of the van as though I were a lost in time Western Swing musician on a Mexican performing tour?

I want the art to say "Oggy & Los Conquistadores - Western Swinger Tour - 1969" Or maybe the "If Not Now, Then When?" Tour. Like in a nostalgic font with a cowboy hat and dancers in dance hall bop dress. I might have to enlist an artist for this. Any volunteers? We could make fliers and post them to telephone poles, wall art, business cards, the concert tour T-shirts would be hilarious with a list of ridiculous concert locations on the back..."Battle Harbour, Labrador Sept 9; Soddy Daisy, Tenn Oct 20; La Paz, Mexico June 4. Now I'll have to make that t-shirt for myself.

I think it's a great performance art project although it could lead to a "Music Man" kind of climax.

The van needs a paint job and this would make it less creepy. People would introduce themselves instead of calling the police. A traveling musician gets a little more credit than a gypsy.

Of course, there are no Los Conquistadores to act as my band but maybe they would materialize. This act would really help explain my suede pants, cowboy hat and spurs.

Lefty & The Tune Toppers

Any 1950 car fans know what kind of vehicle this is?

Here's my attempt at designing a T-shirt. These cost $40 each. If anyone wants one I'll order them after I get enough requests.

Front

Back

Trailer Man

I'm close to having enough songs for an album. I tried to get the harmonica out for this one but the heat had warped the reeds.

Lanny Barby Tribute Song

Maybe pop culture has finally caught up to my bottomless irreverence and disdain. I'm trying to be honest from now on...and also catch the zeitgeist of my generation...in a timeless way. I think the only thing an artist can do is be true to himself and his age...hopefully completely true to himself and his age...and then he might make something timeless. If you aim for timelessness then you won't get it. The best thing I can say about anything is that it comes from the heart and has no commercial aspirations.

If I had about $10,000 I could make a pretty funny video for this. Of course $9,000 of that budget would be to hire Lanny to star in the video...and the way I visualize it would be walking in circles around a fountain playing my guitar and Lanny is sitting down in all the park benches (either quick costume changes or a green screen) and I walk past her as she flirts with me and I'm too distracted singing the song. Yes, I would hire a porn actress and not fuck her...because I've got problems. Maybe I'll make a Kickstarter campaign...
Other than the mockery of Jack Johnson and the lack of a Bruno Mars melody to parody, the inspiration is the fatal irony of the current hip crowd like The Bloodhouse Gang singing "The Ballad of Chasey Lain"
add this to the list of songs inspired by erotic actresses.
I'm not immune to any of it...

The Lyrics of the song are here if you can't understand what I'm saying. The chords are based on a capo at the 3rd fret so I'm playing in Bb, a key that actually suits my voice. But it's a revolving G, C, G, D progression with an A7 thrown in there once in a while. I don't think it will show up in a campfire songbook any time soon. And I'll be leaving the lyrics home when I go perform at the old age facility...they prefer Sinatra.

Lanny Barby Tribute Song

You came into my life
a download video tramp
taking two guys at one time
Lanny, your ass blew my mind

Upbeat Blues

I'm like a codependent junkie who thrives on abuse so I give and give and it briefly entertains a handful of people and I crawl on bleeding knees trying to get affirmation. I actually fleshed this song out a bit in a blues fashion with a kind of bridge. It's a song and as soon as I get my piano then I'm going to be all set to record a few tracks. *The metal fabricator guy who is also a mechanic to the bone claims to be a musician. I'm going to get a piano and find out. There is no way I'm going to change oil in crappy '92 chevy pick up trucks without a piano waiting for me nearby. And I may make it a shop rule that I will not work on any truck that has a sticker of Calvin pissing on a Ford logo.

11 Bucks
words and music by Oggy Bleacher

simulated sex on a Saturday night
there's a rumor going round that Chico's shit is out of sight
there's a rumor going round that Chico's shit will blow your mind
and if you've got 11 bucks then I've got the time.
and if you've got 11 bucks then I've got the time.


writing love letters to girls who are dead
my pencil is broken it don't got no lead
my pencil is broken but the eraser works fine
and if you've got 11 bucks then I've got the time.
and if you've got 11 bucks then I've got the time.

there's a ringing in my head been going on for years
got a cold cup of coffee and a warm glass of beer.
got a cold cup of coffee and it tastes fine
and if you've got 11 bucks then I've got the time.
and if you've got 11 bucks then I've got the time.

My vocal chords are bleeding I got razors in my shoes
my inner child is bleeding because he's got the blues
my inner child is bleeding, a victim of a crime
and if you've got 11 bucks then I've got the time.
and if you've got 11 bucks then I've got the time.

Bread And Circus

Lyrics:
Chord: C/F/C/G
Bread and Circus

Living in The Walmart Parking Lot

My element is the van, on the move, I feel God speaks through me at that point and here I channel some kind of modern song Woody Guthrie might've written. You see, the world is always ending and always being reborn and my goal is to understand what I can about it. I don't want to be an expert at crimping d-sub pins but I do want to be an expert at what encompases my life. Thoreau talked about making an account of one's life. In 1846 that wasn't so hard. What industries does my life rely on? Etc. Well, in 2010 that's a damn hard thing to account for. I'm telling you that something feels wrong with how ignorant we all must be about the small details of our lives.
Ok, so I make the wires that belong in semiconductor wafer slicers. I can check that off. It's intolerable work. Only a man who is chained to child support or a disabled wife would do this job. Only a woman who is diabetic and can not walk fifty yards without hacking or quick smoking a butt would do this job. Maybe that is life with 7 billion people. Maybe we have to hustle and complaining does nothing. I feel that I can't expect someone to do this work, even if it means they have money to buy pot and get stoned and build wafer slicers. I believe this work is dehumanizing and it propagates an inhuman populace. It has to! There comes a point when living requires such complicated, foreign procedures that it's a house of cards. See? We're all relying on a thin slice of a card when there is the whole face of the card we are ignorant about. We put a key in an ignition. It starts. Is that enough?
Our day to day existence of taking the dog to the park or eating or reading suddenly relies on semiconductors and what do semi conductors rely on? Ion injectors? Argon? A gas that is heavier than oxygen so if you breath it your lungs reject oxygen. I'm troubled by these things I can't learn about in a lifetime. I can't account for my life anymore. There was a time not so long ago where a relatively educated person could account for his life. In fact, a poor person could definitely account for his life. In 1845 that person was Thoreau. Walden is his account for his life, what his life relied on at that time. Today, I can not write that book because it will take a lifetime to learn about everything my life relies on. And I don't mean reading about it in a semi conductor manual. I mean working at a semi conductor manufacturing facility. These days I'm further down the value chain so I hardly know anything about semi conductors. But I know that ion injectors and Argon come into play and those things would require more research. It feels impossible, like I'm chasing a rainbow that keeps receeding.
At first I was just singing about a lifestyle that sounds amusing to me. People living in the Walmart Parking Lot. Jesus! Is that possible? Yes, it is. I wanted to pay tribute to those gypsies and make fun of it. But as I listen to the song I realize that when I sing, "We're all living in the Walmart parking lot." I'm not just talking about the people in the vans in the parking lot of Walmart. I'm talking about society as a whole. Like, you all live in houses, but it's reaching the point where those houses are just suburbs of the Walmart parking lot. People living in their vans in the Walmart Parking lot are just closer to the source. You have to drive there; they can just walk out there doors and across the asphalt. So, is that where we are at? Don't answer that question. It's like the convict said to me at the aluminum factory: "Oggy, you only have to look with your eyes."
He was talking about quality control of industrial sized heat sinks but I like to use his words to apply to our culture because after a while your eyes adjust to insanity. You only have to look with your eyes to see what's happening. If you allow the media to distort your vision then you will see Walmart as progress. Our eyes have been poked out. This is a culture of corporate recklessness. I see children who don't stand a chance to develop their own ideas. Their minds are bought and sold from day 1. Propaganda is how to control people and right now I'm seeing a reckless race to the bottom. Media this poisonous can't be by accident. Please find some unconventional independent media to browse. Report your findings to your friends.

JJ Newberry

Here's a tune that deserves a better debut than an OJ and Absolute Tuesday night. But the world ain't perfect and with the acid rain winter on the march I think we'd all better smoke them if'n we got them. The chords are C, F, G, with a strategic A minor and E minor thrown in for that melancholy sound.
Lyrics:
My buddy bought a dog there
but it died of Guinea Worm
you could order a grilled cheese sandwich
chicken soup to keep you warm
we used to play Nurf football
in the dinnerware aisle
Bradley threw a pass to me
but I missed it by a mile
Chorus:
JJ Newberry
where have you gone
there's a tear in my eye
Peddlers and Dollofs, Sessions and Gallagers
where do little stores go to die?

We got caught shoplifting
at the drug store
Laverdiers I think it was called
it ain't there anymore
Pic N Pay sponsored a baseball team
gave us a chance to play
they used to pass out those bright red uniforms
every May
Chorus

Twinkies cost a quarter
at the corner store
they had an arcade game called Venture
I played 'til my fingers were sore
I saw Star Wars at a theater
that got tore down the other day
I was only gone a year
now it's all gone away

Chorus

Portsmouth is full of history
Penny Candy and Hot Dogs
We've got graveyards old as time
and houses made of logs
Don't ever watch the news
to find out who is right and who is wrong

One Day it's there
The next day it's gone.
nothing stays the same
that's why we write love songs.

Chorus
Repeat first lyric with...
I missed it by a mile
I missed it by a mile
I miss you by a mile

Dude Beer jam

This is how we do it in the desert!





take your pick...







If anyone has any advice about what to do with these two dogs then please tell me. They would fight like this for hours and end up biting and crying. I couldn´t help!

How did I end up here?

Of all the places
Of all the faces
fixed in frozen memory

here I stand
lost in time
how did I end up here?

Here...this dirty fare
the filthy air choking down on me

here, this circus sad
the clowns are gone
the carousel is still

How did I end up here
here among the beaten
souls that have not eaten
souls that have no home

how did I end up here
the song has all but died
life has left me here
how did I end up here?

Lyrics from 'The Sons of Job - The Musical"
by Oggy Bleacher
If anyone knows Vince Clarke of Erasure then tell him se's supposed to write the music to the musical.

Oops I live in a van

With apologies to Mrs. Spears and the writer of this melody...by popular demand, the man in the van has tweaked the tune a little to match the times.




The lyrics to : Oops I Live in a Van

(verse 1)
I think I pissed in a jug
it's all I have
don't call me a scrub

I shower every day
at the same place I shit
it's two miles away

(pre chorus)
But to sleep on the sidewalk
is just so typically me

(chorus)
Oops I live in a van
I don't have a job
I don't have a plan

You might think I'm a bum
that I live on the run
but I'm not gonna change my ways

I own a '69 Ford
it's got no brakes
cause I can't afford...them

Stop! Don't step on the gas.
We'll surely crash
then what would I do.

(pre chorus)
(chorus)