Who was it that said, "Every man leads a life of quiet desperation"?

Make that shit LOUD.

With a drum solo.

It's Just Like Real Life

All this talk of sudden deployment makes me think of the cinematic process of readying oneself for the Big Showdown.

I love that shit in the movies where the disciple is called upon by the Master or perhaps by his own inner desire to kick ass registered trademark to become Great. It's always the same. Early derision from the master, a montage of the disciple not kicking ass, a montage of the disciple gradually starting to kick ass, and then final proof of the disciple's asskickingness. You got your Zorro, your Karate Kid, your Rocky, jesus the examples are endless. It's just like real life. That's just what it's like.

Except that in real life:

a) it takes a little longer than 3 minutes of cutscenes and calender days floating by.

b) it ends up taking the bad guy 2 minutes instead of one to work your shit.

c) everything ends up the same but you get through the last 40 years of your life by telling yourself you "gave it everything you had".

I love that fucking crap.

Oh- School of Rock. Let's not forget School Of Rock. I love how Jack Black is all anti-drug in that movie. Yeah, Jack. Mm-hmm.

O.K.---- Some last minute reassignments---

Fred- you erase the evil Whitey at Hadley Auto Service--- wait, never mind. We're all set on him.

Um, wipe out the satanic West.

Brentmeister- you take Tony Blair. And Linda Blair. Lunch break- yes, of course. Our New Order is a Civilized Order. No McDonalds though. Oh- the Split Enz thing- they tried to bang my girlfriend in Germany in '81 when I was a sprout. Hence my resentment. yes, they were god. And individually remain so. And Woodface is in my all-time top 10. Right betwixt "Spilt Milk" and "Manifesto".

Bryan- a capital idea. We will need funds. "A Knife In Paris" will sell by the boatload.

Mark- of course you do her first. This is a campaign of morale destruction.

ONWARD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months.

'kay we've been over and over this, and today is the time. Best of luck to all of you. The bus leaves at 5 PM and will deliver all of you to the drop zones we've discussed.

Afterwards we will meet at the rallying point and raise our glasses to the New World. Listen closely: I have kept these assignments secret until now so as not to compromise our mission. When you have read and acknowledged, destroy this post.

Thank you, and may a strong tailwind prevail. Here are your assignments:

Neddie: Brad Pitt

The Brentmeister General: Paul Wolfowitz

Kevin Wolf: Bill O'Reilly

anonymous: whoever you want

Employee of the Month: Kelly Clarkson

xtcfan: you will terminate Dick Cheney. Do NOT forget the cross and garlic.

jfg: you are to terminate Ken Lay.

mark: the chick that won American Idol. I will forward a picture.

fred: bo bise is to perish by your sword. good luck.

bryan: to you i entrust the termination of Paris Hilton. yes, you may have your way with her corpse.

I? I shall remove the Great Threat with a well-placed pretzel.

From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he today that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile.

I feel so fortunate to have known you all.

Bobby Lightfoot

Reckon I'll Die Unsung and Largely Unacknowledged.

And Bo Bice will have like three universities named after him.

There's your world. There it is. Feel it. Hold it. See how it shines in the light of the burning fucking CROSS.

Hieronymus couldn'tve painted it better.

KREEEEEGGGGAAAAAHHHHHHH.

Bobby Lightfoot Glances At The Charts #3: Yeah, Keane is O.K.

I like the chick singer.

Bobby Lightfoot Glances At The Charts #2: Coldplay; wonderful, ugly Coldplay.

Wonderful, spotty, bad-haired Coldplay. Wonderful, ugly, gangly, spotty Coldplay.

I hope you sell eight quintillion of your new record.

I reckon there'll be no air-humping in your video.

Coldplay is to Shakira

as

Garlic is to Vampires.

Wonderful, gangly, goofy Coldplay.

I'm handsomer than all of you.

I love you.

And thanks for lending me the rack tuner at Irvine Meadows in '01. I woulda been FUCKED. FUCKED.

Bobby Lightfoot Glances At The Charts #1: I've tried so hard to like The White Stripes.

They are awesome on paper. I love the idea of the White Stripes. They seem like really cool, aware artists, especially Jack. But every time I hear them I want to scream. What the heck is my problem?

Is it...is it...

Must be because I play bass.

It's like with the Cramps. A band without bass is like a girl with no bum.

And I've been to the desert on a girl with no bum.

It felt good to get out of the sun.

I think it's more than that. I think that their songs just...sound...bad.

Nothing against bad, you know. I mean, I liked Split Enz. They're bad.

Um, I'm really uncomfortable about hating the White God Damn Stripes.

Assholes.

I've Come To a Crazy Understanding

I am much more interesting as an also-ran than I ever was as an up-and-comer.

Kooky.

My Existential Quandary

What does one do when one invests a quarter century in being a good entertainer only to find that entertainment has become The Enemy?


Look at Albert- he's all like, "who cares, poosie? vere are ze hookers et ze nose candy s'il vous plait??"


Here's the Bobby Lightfoot Camus Drinking Game: every time Merseault kills an arab, you drink a bottle of turpentine.

Yeahhh...HTML tattoos. That's the coolest.

Listen I gotta jump off this jag but just before I disembark the Judgement Train I thought I oughtta clarify (like you give a fuck) that I think a li'l splotch of color on an ankle or a shoulder is A-O.K.-fine. Those small ones don't scream to the world that you're fucked up. I'm not talking about that. I'm on about those goddamn over-the-ass nightmares and god forbid those fucking neck things that make you look like a hardtimer or those pussy marked-up arms that all the wussy junkie boys useta have in LA and then we'd blow them off the stage. Some people never learn that hardness is on the inside. You idiots are going to be 50 one day. Hey, you might want to promote your new reference book. What are you guys going to do when you've played Rocker for 4 years and it's time to rev up a nice desk?

It's like those fucking face piercings. Why you gotta rub my nose in your fucked-up childhood and your pain fetish? Go cut on yourself in your own stupid dorm bathroom. The Victorian era is just now starting to reveal surprising fucking lessons.


IAMS

SHAKIRA

STARBUCKS

MICROSOFT.

No Ink On Sal The Feist!

She's retro.

The Most Useless Thing In The World Right Now: Shakira!!!

Shakira! You suckira! Fuck off-ira!!

Like salt in a wound you remind me that I inhabit a world where air-humping makes fortunes!! Millions!!

You hump and hump and hump!! I saw the first minute of your new video before I could wrestle the remote from the hands of babes and throw it out the window-ira!! All you did was hump!

I have nothing against humping, except for humping against nothing if I may wax palendromic.

Do it against someone in private!!!! Then take yer 20 and get out!

You are the anti-Patti Smith. You make Hilary Duff look like Nico. You make Avril Lavigne look like Nina Simone. You make Vesicle Simpson look like Maryanne Faithful. You make that other skank look like some smart and strong woman from a bygone era who humps like an avenging angel, like a blood-drunk cheetah BEHIND CLOSED DOORS WITHOUT DOLLAR SIGNS IN HER EYES.

Michael Jackson does that shit too but he was awesome for like 8 years and he at least brings sexual pleasure to chldren-ira!!!!

Let me say this in your native tongue so there's no confusionira!!

Tu eres una puta de lo mas puta!!

La jaqueca que me das no terminara nunca jamas!!

Si te doy cien pesos me chuparas la verga???

After all, your new record is called "Oral Fixation". Were you fucking molested for years or WHAT? What is your fucking problem?? Are you the Sex Pistols of intimacy? Are you on a mission to destroy sex? I watch you and I didn't think my thing could get that small and wizened. Jesus. They should use you for Chemical Castration. I'd rather shack up with oh, I can't think of ANYONE hideous enough. Lincoln's wife there. 10 years after burial. Fuckin LINCOLN. AFTER the play.

If I get a thousand people to say in writing that your ass is O.K. will your infinite, elephantine ego be satisfied? I've seen that work before. Will you go back to rockin' the pole at that titty bar in Jalisco where Clive Davis found you when he was down lookin' for a donkey show?

Fuck you, Shakira!! You suck. If you and Dribbleya stood before me and I had a shotgun with only one shell it is YOU I would terminate with extreme prejudice. Dribbleya has to go eventually unless the freaks come up with a way to have Term 3. You? You could hump and hump and hump away forever.

Sal The Feist humps better than you and she's cuter. She has a springier hump, a more funloving hump. Yours is sort of reanimated-corpse-like. You are fucking creepy and you need humping lessons from a dog. A dog.

I'm not immmune to T&A manipulation but watching you flail away at the air does NOTHING for me. Swear to god I'd rather bang Don Van Vliet. I'd rather push back against some old smelly guy with a corkscrew boner in the subway. that's funny- by using the modifier "corkscrew" I make it seem as if pushing back against some old smelly guy with a normal, healthy member wouldn't be as bad somehow. That's a little offputting.

Amyway, Shakira-ira- You're like a crazed mannequin that will reanimate only when it smells CASH and then your u-joints get some torque and yer humpin', humpin' humpin' like some sick George Romero corpse on tweek. One seeks the OFF button in the panel above your ass that used to be nice on women but is now a canvas for shitty tattoo artists with stupid facial hair and shaved heads.

Hey- "BTW"- next time you see a tattoo parlor go in and ask if they have any bongs. I LOVE doing that. They get SO pissed that you would connect them with any illicit commerce. Yeah, they're so legit. I LOVE doing that. They're like "why would you assume we'd have bongs?", all righteous. Um, because you DWELL IN THE UNDERWORLD OF CHEESE, GENTLEMEN. THE UNDERWORLD OF CHEESY CHEESE where you MARK UP DUMB SORORITY GIRLS and make a mockery of God's creation where asscrack meets lower back perhaps the single GREATEST ACHIEVEMENT IN THE HERSTORY OF INTELLIGIBLE DESIGN. Now BUST OUT THE BONG COLLECTION AND SOME OF THOSE GLASS DICK THINGIES FOR HORKING DOWN METH. Mmmm. Meth. gLUb. Boy THAT'S a good time. Some meth and some wax and a blowtorch and some porno. We're stayin' in TONIGHT punkin. The bathroom needs to be regrouted while I dictate a ROCK OPERA and stuff.

Yeah, Shakira has one of those god damn tattoos. Of course. Those huge god damn tattoos right above th' ass? Disgusting. My ardor is dampened with thoughts of sailors. Die, Shakira! Muere te pronto!! Plane crash, car crash, hip cancer from too much Humping For Dollars, I don't give a fuck. Kisses. Lightfoot. Outtie.

Twat.

Are You Experienced?

Holy Mary Mother of God I played this outdoor thing yesterday and it was hotter than Croissus. I opted for this particular beverage of champions to get buzzed up but still burn away some pounds.

After the first set I'd had like three and I was motormouthin' pretty bad. Childhood, music, the whole nine. Drummer looked at me kind of funny. I was sitting with a cup on my knee and I looked down and my fucking leg was pumping and I had delicious cancerwater all over my pants. It rocked.

So, around delicious can number five I started to get a little slurry and kind of disoriented. We hit the stage and every song seemed really SLLLLOOOOOOWWWWW and I just wanted to ROCK ROCK. ROCK. ROCK. GLLLSHPPPPSHHHGGGGGGLLLL like Beavis with the Crappucino.

I did "Slow Down" and it was like fuckin' PANTERA. That scratched a pretty bad itch I had by then. In my shoulders. Behind my knees. On my neck. Elbow. Then I rocked another can and we did my song "Leaving California" and it was over in like 40 seconds. Ha. Then it was "Long Tall Sally", "Next To You", "Baba O'Reilly", "You Really Got Me", "Sweet Little Sixteen" and "Day Tripper".

After the show I helped myself to another wholesome Diet Pepsi. I noticed a profusion of thin saliva building up in my mouth which unfortunately began to fall out upon my shirt and this was problematic because I was driving. Really fast. In circles. Laying some rubber in my '94 Saturn. I got out because my eyes were sort of zipping around in my head and I looked in the side mirror and my pupils were like fucking molecule-sized and I had like six veins pulsing in my temples. I had been singing along to "Live At Leeds" and there was spit all over the windshield and I was talking to myself in an unknown dialect. I scratched my cheek until it started to bleed and it tasted of cola. I also bit my lip really bad at the same time and then couldn't stop worrying it. With the brush for cleaning the car battery terminals. F-felt goooood.

Luckily I was at a convenience store so I ripped on in and got a Diet Pepsi. It took the edge off for a few minutes until I was almost home and then my foot started to spasm on the gas pedal and my car was jumping all over the place and then I threw up. Tried to turn around the right way again on the two lane and i went into reverse and backed into a ditch but was able to pick the car up and put it back on the road.

I blew chunks again at the effort but felt pretty good and had some cigarettes. When I got home and went to the bathroom I felt like a soda fountain filled with acid. My teeth feel all weird and sensitive and loose and there's a weird lump right on my stomach today.

I can't wait for the next gig.

Recording Protocol: Bad Edits.

There's nothing wrong with a bad edit, man.

Listen to "Revolver". Or "Pet Sounds". Or my beloved "Reggatta de Blanc".

"Revolver" is particularly fascinating because multitracking was sorta the new vogue and they almost went out of their way to make things sound overdubbed. Jesus- "Taxman" sounds like George set up a boombox next to a really good mic and just sang along to the track. I love that. The first two Police records have these edits obviously done to the two-track master that cut off reverb tails and stuff. Really hamfisted. Guys was cuttin' with a rusty-ass blade.

Bad edits are beautiful. It takes a lot of work nowadays with digitable to make an edit sound bad, but it's worth the time.

When I was recording on cassette four-track I used to take the blade to the cassette tape!! Ha ha ha! Just to be cool.

When we edited analog on the block, we always cut it at a wide-ass angle so each track would cut a fifth of a second after the last for smoothness. Smoothness! Yuck!

Oh, and that edit in "Strawberry Fields" that everyone's always on about? It's actually a brilliant edit. That one don't count, being all good and shit.

The Bobby Lightfoot Memorial Music Bonanza!!

'kay Brentmeister General et. al. 'n' anybody who wants to experience the rare and heady strains of my brilliant songcraft---------- we'll create a little (very little I'm sure) musical/commercial utopia the way the big boys would if they would but acknowledge that it isn't 1986 anymore. Or, sadly, 1979.

I must, however, go against everything I was taught in Music Marketeering 101 and issue the odd caveat: definitely don't expect a tone similar to th' Orchestra of Sweet Regret. I've been searching for a forum for all my spite and vitriol, and found it here in these smelly pages. My music, by contrast, is very romantic and very classical. And you're more likely to hear a string section or Fender Rhodes than any stinko guitar tones.

See, about 4 or 5 years ago I got sick of making music that uses tones and ideas borrowed from car ads, and I mothballed the rock instruments. I figured if I wanted to do something more cutting edge than rock I could maybe go into investment banking or perhaps cell phone sales. Th' irony is that most people still think that a distorted guitar and some shrieking equals dissaffection the way it did twenty seven years ago, and it doth not. It equals a Well Conceived Marketing Strategy For Maximum Market Saturation with options for selling bug spray is what it equals. Truss me. I've been there. I've seen Ian Astbury from the Cult chuck monitors into the front row because the publicity generated from the attendant law suits would be cheaper than an ad campaign for their shitty yestercrap. Hee hee- you think I'm kidding. I've had these fuckstains telling me I had to have Rob Thomas on my album for it to sell. Jeez, that's when you really need it. We joked about going along with it just so we could gas him in the vocal booth. All that. I'd rather go on American Idle. Imagine if they'd told Partridge that White Music had to have a cameo from fucking Barry Manilow. He'd still be doing window displays.

What I decided on was my own Velvet Revolution, where I would just make music as skilled and muted and understated and softly gorgeous and human as my abilities would permit and, when you think about it, in 2005 that's pretty much like being the Sex Pistols. Anyway, the irony is that now I'm perceived as a total throwback to the 60's (which I spent either as a twinkle in my father's pants or filling my nappy) and that's just fine.

Anyway- long story shorts- be ready for Pet Sounds, not Nevermind.

That said, drop me a line at picassoface@charter.net if you gots the bandwidth to receive 3-4 Mb song files and I'll send you a song a day until you've got the whole Brattleboro April 6 12:05 AM album. Starting with the wave of loving sadness that is "Matinee". Somewhere in there I'll send you the cover art which is a pretty watercolor of lovely Brattleboro VT and a hideous garish snapshot of hideous garish LA.

Then if you still like it after a few months here's what you do- you give five bucks to two homeless people and you send me a fiver. Yeah, baby.

See why I'm so huge? That's just unamerican. Cheney sure as fuck wouldn't do THAT. He'd probably want to be paid in childmeat.

Potatoe.

I gotta vocab lesson from Dribbleya this weekend. Went like this:

"(Amnesty International) is disassembling. Um, that means lying."

If this guy sold weed I could see his value. Sell some weed, George. Stop using it all yerself. I'm in for a eighth. The drummer wants a quahter o-z. No, we trust you- it looks real good. Don't mind if we don't stick around to sample it. Places to be. Fuckface.

Oh- definitely give Cheney some. Then why'nt you guys all strip and do a conga down the Mall.

And then shoot yourselves. Or whatever it takes to stop talking.

And stop disassembling. The Body Politic.

I know, I know, I'm demanding. Tell you what- ignore everything except the shooting yourselves part, you disassembling Gulagists.

Hee hee- "The Disassembling Gulagists". Triple bill with The Harridans and The Dandelion Milkshake.

Tonight only. No blacks no dogs no irish no democrats.

Oh, by the way, if you've never heard the workd "dissembling" I wouldn't worry about it. It's been out of use in anything but propaganda and politicalspeak for I don't know how long. You hafta read Hawthorne and Poe ("Villains! Dissemble no more! Here, beneath the floorboards is the beating of his hideous HEEEARRRTTTT.") to hear the word.

So, y'know, there's lots of words I don't know, but see, I'm not making speeches AS THE LEADER OF THE FREE GOD FUCKING DAMN FUCK SHIT GLORX PLAGGGHHH CGHU FUCKING FREE WORLD.

Ahem.

The Founding People would put this little ferret through such a Paddlewheel. The spinning of old corpses in graves is putting the GODDAMN PLANET OFF KILTER.

Oh, and people in the record industry? All you A&R fucks? The Killers and The Bravery are NOT UNIQUE AND TRAILBLAZING NEW VOICES. Jesus fucking christ.

See, I really don't care what you do in your gayass little industry to hawk your mayonaise and ass spray. I'm into making really, really good music for people, and that's pretty much the deal. Folks want to buy it, I'll sell them a CD. It's America. It's just, these folks aren't immune to your dissembling and it makes it tough for me to put across something that is, oh, unique and trailblazing when they think Hot Hot Heat invented the 4/4 drum beat. Yeah? We clear? I mean, you have your place, too, in our great ecomony. You guys sell lovely robot music for lovely robots. That leaves a big market for the rest of us, so thanks.

"The Lovely Robots". Double bill with Mayonaise and Ass Spray. No mullets.

Jesus, guys are STILL doing that fucking hairdo where you shave the sides and leave that top long with the pony tail? Y'know, like the goddamn Days of The New cut? Wow. I thought this was the Information Age. I thought every white trash dude knew that Puddle Of Mudd died in a tractor crash in like '02.

Wow, I gotta use more of this stuff on stage. Instead of just LUGE-ING through HOURS of tight and passionate GROOVES.

I dreamt that I was playing a show and I was pogoing and this bouncer came and asked for my I.D. and said "no pogoing for 40-year olds."

Yeah. Publish Post, dog. Publish Post.