there’s a haitian church across the road, where they abandoned a dismantled organ just before snowfall. pastor’s name= “wilfrid estimable”. on weekends they tear the roof off with joyous noise, and i linger in the alley with my ear to the window like a perv.
last night i dreamt that i dragged their abandoned organ into the basement and put it back together again. except when i went to go play it there was honey all over the keys and a smell like rotting bees.
i know, with a terrible certainty, that one day my son will turn to me and ask, “why are they called mix-tapes? huh what’s a tape? why isn’t it called a ‘mix-file’?”, and like a melancholy robot, overcome with nostalgia for the lost tactility of certain dead technologies, and keenly aware that me too i’m a dead technology, i’ll put my dumb arms around him and weep like a motherless child.
this long-playing record, like all long-playing records, has a backstory=
Mick Mars of Motley Crue, alone in his unfinished condominium- the sun is setting, and there’s half an inch of rain lapping at his soles; i say “mickey, what’s with the state of your miserable digs?”; he says, “they ran out of money when the bottom fell out, couldn’t pay to put the glass in the fucking window-holes.” “but mick, couldn’t you live in one of your other ones?”, “i could yes i sure could but this one feels a little truer, and some mornings the birds just fly right in here and murmur to me with gentle coos and leave their downy feathers in my grim hair.”
a little later on, he plays me his legendary demos- and though the moment itself is awkward, and fraught with a clumsy sort of intimacy, the tunes passenger across the distance between us like wandering thunderclouds shot through with miniature fingers of gold, heavy as a drowned freezer, poignant as the beating of a squirrel’s heart, but ultimately (and tragically) square. coughing into my sleeve, i scan the room, looking for exits.
eventually the silence lifts, and Mick Mars tells me the story about the time he strangled an english booking agent in the elevator of a midtown boutique hotel- “he had the type of potbelly that makes one think of pale weak lieutenants sending innocent boys to slaughter, like dull gluttony wed to lazy power.”, “but they all have potbellies like that.”, “yes, but this one had blonde streaks in his hair like a cruel teenage girl, and a dry clattering mouth that released foul-smelling winds.” and then mick says, out of the blue, like a train bursting out of a tunnel somewhere quiet, with trees the only witnesses, just like that he says, “goddamn, it’s hard to earn an honest living these days..”, and me, with my own wonderments and depressions in tow, i say “for reals, Mick Mars, for reals…”
autumn into winter, full fucking bore!, and a pale trembling frost every morning. 
soon’ll be 5 foot ice-drifts, tender trucks of fallen snow, and the bones of trees with their necks bent into the wind.
the mt. zion band, post-recording, is still up on blocks. come january we’ll crawl down under there with worklights and hammer at the rusted differential! (and am longing to be back in the middle of jamspace-reek, summoning the anxious squall…)
rough tour-plans=europe mid-march to may. eastern america=mid-may to june.
we’ve got 2 new songs on the go, unfinished leftover’s from the last bout. one of them’s a bonehead-riff, circa 1974, and the other one’s just a dozen words repeated over five bass notes. other tasks at hand= have to retool the arrangements on two of the songs from the new record, and get up on a few of the older tunes that we haven’t played in years. possible covers this time around- “death of a clown” by the kinks, and a slo-mo cover of “manimal” by the germs.
best/worst interview question anybody ever asked me= swiss radio, after “horses in the sky”- the goyishe radio-dude tells me that the record reminds him of the history of the jewish people, wandering the earth searching for a home.
what i told him= everybody in the band has an apartment. 20/20 hindsight= should’ve hit him up for some hidden nazi gold.
Ezra Steamtrain Moss Menuck,
—> born August 5th at 5:15 AM,
9 lbs., 4 ounces,
healthy and strong after 26 hours of labor.
it’s called “KOLLAPS TRADIXIONALES”
and it’s got dark brown eyes and a wicked chest-cough.
and it’s only gonna be released on edison wax cylinder.
release date= some time in janvier= long time ‘tween fruition and release.
ALSO:
Q: why is this cat in the tree?
A: because this angelic monster got crazed.
patti invited us to play as her band at the meltdown-thing.
so we flew overnight to london.
rested for an hour.
rehearsed with patti a few hours.
slept, ate breakfast.
rehearsed again.
and then played the show.
the show itself was like an absurd fever dream.
“flea” played with us.
and the master musicians of jojouka were there.
and i guess that we were there too.
a newly-learned road-truth=
jet-lag is heavier when you’re a guest on someone else’s stage.
us, we just tried to summon the zion-squall, in spite of and true,
feeling a little like an orphan tapdance brigade,
crated and shipped o’er stormy sea
just to primal dance a little for the bemused royals.
in his review,
johnny dull-quill from the guardian referred to us as “canadian anarchists”.
holy cow, mandated web-content can be a bland fucking puree.
dirk hugsam is our tour-dude,
we’ve buried many miles beneath his wheels.
he’s got an utterance that he likes to unload after certain misjudged forks in the road= “never gonna do dat again…”
yes man.
and amen, and amen, and amen.
A QUOTE FROM A SPAM I GOT TODAY= “Urgent! Storms in Fairmount Urgent! Storms in Checotah Urgent! Catastrophe in KootenaiUrgent! Catastrophe in Bethel HeightsUrgent! Hurricane in Canalou Urgent! Storms in Koligane! Urgent! Hurricane in Dishman Urgent! Hurricane in Menomonie Urgent! Catastrophe in Mount Zion Urgent! Catastrophe in Swanville Urgent! Storms in College Place Urgent! Catastrophe in North City-Ridgecrest Urgent! Catastrophe in Los Ybanez Urgent! Storms in Clover
Urgent! Storms in Silver Ridge
Urgent! Storms in BertrandUrgent! Hurricane in Kansas City Urgent! Catastrophe in Ben Lomond Urgent! Storms in Wolfe CityUrgent! Storms in Colony Urgent! Hurricane in Rochester Urgent! Storms in Holualoa
Urgent! Catastrophe in Gilt Edge
Urgent! Storms in Hustonville Urgent! Storms in Tioga
Urgent! Hurricane in South Lineville
Urgent! Hurricane in Fort Jennings Urgent! Storms in Fruithurst Urgent! Hurricane in Barrow Urgent! Storms in Manor
=heavy weather.
(and first post done.)