Starting From Scratch

Does anyone else stop to consider that the majority of our beliefs are derived from a culture of idiots? Like, The Nat King Cole television show had to compete with Hee Haw...and Hee Haw won...so what we call culture is Hee Haw. Our cultural perception is based on what a hungover writer scribbled out so Sally Fields and Tim Conway could say it through a hole in a barn. Is that ok with you? I'm not comfortable with that. I would like to clean the slate but I'm having a hard time doing it. Things like beauty and what is environmentally acceptable have no basis in science, but are more likely to be based on something I saw in a McDonalds ad or when I was reading a Batman comic. You could say our parents pass on many of our beliefs which means I'm relying on the incredibly manipulative '50s media with bomb fallout shelters or "I'm a doctor and I smoke Pall Mall."
See, above all, I think this is behind my desire to drop out completely. I am very uncomfortable with values that were designed with the benefit of oil stock holders in mind. I can recognize them but it turns out that to resist them only causes giant problems. So, I don't belong. I resist and am considered undesirable. Fine. But the real problem is actually succeeding in flushing out these poisonous values. It's damn near impossible. IMPOSSIBLE.
People like to say that we don't use most of our brain's potential. My answer to this is to try to reverse your political opinions. Just try to do that. Switch sides from liberal to conservative or conservative to liberal. That should be easy. Right? It's hardly any brain power at all. You saw Bambi as a kid and like animals. Your dad was a hunter so you like to kill animals. So, just switch. Well, if we can't do that then maybe we've got a high opinion of our brain power. Maybe we are pathetically slow and to even manage to grasp a single political opinion is about as good as it gets. To switch sides is hopelessly hopeless. We aren't capable of reinventing ourselves.
I've tried for twenty years to stop watching boston sports but I still care when the celtics suck and miss easy layups or blow their defense. You would think that after 20 years I would not care about these things. But it's almost biological. I don't care about the Celtics. In fact, their fate is only a distraction to me, like the rain outside. So why do I still care? Other people don't care. I want to be like them.
Is there electro shock therapy for this? I want answers!

Good Song, Bad Ear

I can't post any more bedroom performances until I rectify this flat vocal problem I have. I can picture Randy Jackson shaking his head and saying, "You're flat, dog. Real flat."
And I am. Let no one say I've got a good ear because people with good ears for music do not sing flat. This was a problem with the violin which once you've got tuned you still have to hit the exact spot on the neck to get the right note. And the note has to match the piano. So you adjust. Well, I never adjusted. I always played in the same spot and some days it was in tune and some days it wasn't.
"No, Oggy, the violin isn't the problem," said my teacher.
"Can't you tune it again?"
"It's in tune."
"Then what's going wrong."
"You aren't listening to the note you are playing."

So, when I sing I usually hear myself as sort of in tune. Like, it doesn't sound terrible, but listening to these videos I have to conclude that I'm not in tune. I'm flat. And the problem is breath control.
Let me introduce you to a guy who has no problem with breath control. Leonard Cohen. This song, I believe, is an attack on Bob Dylan, "The man in white". It would've been directed at his Nashville Skyline album and Self Portrait since Cohen's album arrived in March '71. This is what people go to grad school to research but can we just pretend I already did that? What do you think?

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

Handbags and Gladrags

This is a tune I picked up in Mexico. I heard it once or twice in the one room apartment, writing odes to Kerouac and drinking beer with a hooker chaser and I thought, "I can sing that tune." But it took a year to get a damn piano to do it properly. I haven't figured out the exact piano lick but it's just a variation on a D major chord into a C major chord. Then G Major. Then A major. the chorus is b minor, A major, then D major then E major. Then G major and A major back to the lick.

Never Surrender...the video