That's When I Really, Really, Really Knew It Was Over.

O.K.

Let me set this up for you.

It's sort of going to hurt so make sure you've got some happy music to put on.

I'm going to have to tell you about the worst moment. The sorriest moment. The moment when I really, really, knew it was over.

Now, you have to understand (and I'm sure by now you do- we all livin' this miracle called life) that for a thing to be truly, truly, really over it has to be because, well, simply because you can't muster a fuck anymore.

It's like a relationship, where one person can burn enough for the both a while. A little while.

When that burn is good 'n' gone isn't nothing on god's green earth gonna zippo it back to life. Ain't enough lawn mower gas in trenton nj to get that shit up and cooking again.

And so it often is with our live's sincerest endevours.

They reveal themselves as...as...threadbare.

The curtain rises on the earnest young man and the Radio Promoter. It is Los Angeles. The year is 1999. The season is late winter. The weather is sunny. The temperature is 74 degrees.

A rubicon has been crossed. A single has charted well on the Gavin US radio charts. It has reached number 27. The Radio Promoter has worked assiduously, greasing palms and buying trips and garden implements for program directors across the country. Clear Channel is not quite yet the force it will be shortly, and the possibility for an independent to reach the national radio charts is remote but possible.

The earnest young man has traveled the country earnestly in advance of a theoretical tour to coincide with the release of the second single in the spring. He shakes hands and plays guitar in radio stations day after day after day. He and the band's unstable guitarist crisscross the country, often driving 500 miles a day, trying to make themselves indelible. They do interviews and play live on the air. It's all very Loretta Lynn.

The song is pretty good. It's very organic and archetypal, 60's in slant and homespun. People like it a lot. There are big harmonies and a knockout hook. It modulates up a whole step on the last chorus. It's pretty much all there.

It sounds huge. It was recorded on an analog cassette 8-track. It's a little miracle of a song. It's one of those minor miracles.

The second single comes out and after a couple of months stalls at #32. They were hoping to get in to the top twenty. It's not going to happen with this song; it is quite esoteric. It comes off very organic and Police-like but the chorus shifts into this R&B field holler and there is a brilliant, spiky guitar solo and slightly stretched instrumental section.

It's more of a college radio track, the Radio Promoter says. It's not going over a #30 on the AC charts.

I test marketed it and it got a 4, the Radio Promoter says.

Ever done a test market thing? They call you and play you bits of songs and you rate them 1-4, 4 being the best, 1 the worst. maybe they only do it in California. Takes about 5 minutes. So, 1 is a really crappy song, and 4 is a standout Honest To Goodness Smash. 2 and 3 are varying degrees of indifference.

I test marketed it and it got a 4.

So, good, right? That's good if you test market something and it gets a 4, huh? Honest To Goodness Bigass Darned Song, right?

I test marketed the first one and it got a 4 too. It was over the moon. Wish we could get you into some of the major markets and really let this thing blow up.

Well, sweet, right? That's gotta be doable, huh? I mean, the earnest young man thinks, a 4 has a better chance of that than a 2 or 3, I would imagine. Yeah, I like the sound of the blowing up thing, the earnest young man thinks. Stuff blowing up is cool.

But hang on a minute, Slim Jim. Don't get your knickers in a uproar.

A warm breeze wafts in from San Pedro. They are sitting in the earnest young man's manager's stuccoed villa high atop Rolling Hills. Soon they will lunch in Palos Verdes. The earnest young man is still quite taken with restaurants in Palos Verdes and meeting at the A&M lot on La Brea. He has been to parties in Bel Air and studios in Century City and Malibu and has found it quite much to his liking.

His reverie is broken by a staccato burst of automatic weapons fire. Oh, wait. That's some other story.

His reverie is broken by the Radio Promoter's intrigues. We're gonna have to go past this record, he muses. We're going to have to tailor something different that I can really push up their asses. The radio promoter is Kenny Loggin's cousin. I can't tell you or your manager what to do, man. It's your career.

The earnest young man quite likes the idea of tailoring a hit. He's a songwriter. This is what he's been working for his whole life.

Here's what we need to do, Kenny Loggin's cousin begins. You've been giving me these 4's which is great. But it's stalling in the big markets. What I need is a 2 or a 3 that won't scare these guys away.

Huh?

Yeah, if you guys can come up with a 2 or 3 I'll be able to get it added in more markets. These guys don't like the 4's and they don't like the 1's. Write a 2 or a 3 that'll sit between the ads without distracting the listeners too much and these guys will add you right and left. If it tests too high they'll shy away from it because it'll detract from the ads.

The windchimes dance gently in the LA breeze.

That's when the earnest young man really, really, really knows it's over.

Clay Aiken: 37- Year Old Female Lesbian From Northampton, Massachusetts.

That's my theory anyway.

Come on- doesn't that sort of explain things?

Look at that picture. This is the picture of a lesbian. You know it. Don't give me that PC shit. It's chemical, man.

What we have here is a 37-year old lesbian from the town of Northampton. She used to work at this holistic place on Crafts Ave. and she lived with an chick who was a mechanic at Harold's Garage. An chick. What the fuck is that? An chick.

Anyway- so, yeah. She worked at MotherFyre and used to do the lesbian open mics and stuff. I think she opened for Phranc, the jewish lesbian folk singer once at Fire And Water. Crazy, crazy shit. Singing all these '90's MOR ballads at the lesbian open mic. Ha. She did it like karaoke with tracks playing and stuff. It was execreble and everyone but the mechanic girlfriend hated it.

So she goes to American Idol to try out and they think she's a young guy. They think this 37-year old lesbian is a guy. I mean, look at her. He thinks she's a young teenage dude who's a little femmy.

So, the guy asks her what her name is and she's all up in it and thinking he's coming on to her and she says "I hate bacon" and he thinks she said "Clay Aiken" and the foundations for the whole crummy tower are laid. You would shit if you knew how these things come around.

Clay Aiken: 37- Year Old Female Lesbian From Northampton, Massachusetts.

So By Now You All Know I Got Man-Spammed.

Eesh. That don't sound right.

Anyway, so this lymphstain that sent this cruddy crud to my blog- been trying to figure out what I'm going to do about it.

I think at the very least I'll start by reprinting some of it here and changing some words here and there. yeah, that's where I'll start.



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With traceability and security now deemed a serious waste of fucking time, companies are increasingly focused on employing blowjobs and scrote-ticklings designed to ensure the authenticity, integrity and confidentiality of their incredibly worthless product that wouldn't even exist unless they hadn't bamboozled a bunch of money-grubbing celibates into thinking they need it.

The President of Fuckpunt, John Negroponte, had this to say when he was finished devouring a pile of used paper diapers: "I am evil incarnate, and I like nothing better than to be naked with a nice hairy Montenegran."

Ha! Am I showing them or am I showing them???? Fuck with ME. Uh-uh. Uh-fuckin'-uh.

I'LL JUST COME BACK ALL ERUDITE ON YOUR ASS.

i guess the stuff they were talking about in that crap was like some lame shit about money.

Are people just into this because they want to retire happily which i obviously have no problem with although my personal retirement plan involves rocking myself assless and then keeping a date with a bottle a jim beeem and a .38 many, many miles from now?

I really like old people when it isn't rush hour.

In fiction we wanted to find a drummer who was like a 86-year old party animal old lady. She'd be all rocking the shit out of the kit and leaning over and doing monster rails off a mirror. and she'd be gettting arest-ed for guns and crap and shooting up hotel rooms.

That's When I Knew It Was Over.

Seriously, though. Wouldn't you pay to see that? Two trim and correct edgy alt-rockers and this ancient lady Bonham fucking breathing fire and smashing bottles on her head? Getting in fights with the security? Stripping and crowdsurfing?

"yeah, i guess the music was o.k."

The Man Made Flesh #1 Of A Series: Matt McCoy.

Yeah, I know this is a picture of that skidmark Ohio prick who needs to be bled and made into Baco-Bits. He just looks like such a craven, greedy asshole that I'm sure Matt McCoy looks like him.

Who is Matt McCoy, you ask? Well, he's the first contender for my new Lightfoot Series, "The Man Made Flesh".

'kay- backstory. Back when I was days from international stardom in 00-01 I maxed out my Chevron card and my Visa for the sake of my band. It's like the generic indie movie story, where th' guys mortgage their houses to complete their vision and chuckle about it at Cannes and Sundance. That's like what I did but without the Cannes and Sundance.

So I wound up with a grand on my Chevron and a couple G's on th' Visa which are of course doubled now. It was default-o-licious.

You know me- just how much of a FUCK do you think I GIVE about my CREDIT RATING???? huh? y'THINK I'm all WORKED UP about that CRAP? Y'think perchance I'm in the market for a McMansion or a LATE MODEL FUCKING VEHICLE? huh?

No, people. No. I'm Bobby FUCKING LIGHTFOOT. And I live like a KING off your CASTOFFS. Cars with less than One Large on th' odometer make me REALLY NERVOUS. And don't think I'm judging you because you got a nice car. Drive what you god damn want. Just don't fuckin' judge ME because I REFUSE to play that fucking American Dream Con Game. I'M NOT FUCKING HAVING IT. Yeah, it's lonely. So is BEING A FUCKING READER. So is liking fucking SCHUBERT AND THE SEX PISTOLS. I'll be O.K. I have less than zero respect for this culture, and the farther I can be from it ideologically the better. I think it's a sick, shortsighted, unsustainable FUCKING JOKE. It's like a HUGE FAT FUCK IN SPEEDOS who th-th-thinks he LOOKS HOT.

So maybe I'm not much of a "CATCH", y'know? Not a real big "CATCH". I can hang with that if you can. My "portfolio" is a little "thin".

So anyway. Matt McCoy. yeah. So, I've been paying off (or trying to) my god damn cards and it's a fucking hassle. The first few times I tried to give them money they wanted my BANK ACCOUNT NUMBER. Fuck you. I'm keeping BOTH my god damn dollars. DAD-FUCKIN'-GUM IT. Them blame fools.

So I gave up by the time Matt McCoy, Collections Anus came along. Matt's like an A&R guy. Matt's like the modern version of an A&R guy. He's totally "professional" but he's "on the same page", you know? He's not a p-putrid (I swear I'll stop that now) rotten gonad quite so much as a "financial advisor" and his "advice" is "give me more dad-gum money for my large Macarse." He's like, "you should get this paid off, mannn. Your credit's not that bad, mannnn.....Get this shit paid off and then you can HAVE A FUCKING ESPLANADE. YOU CAN GET YER FUCKING LEXUS SUV and then you'll BE HAPPY, Mr. Lightfoot", happy like US". AND THEN WHEN YOU GET THIS THEN YOU GET THAT. THEN YOU GET THAT. THAT COMES WITH THIS. THIS ONLY WORKS IF YOU HAVE THAT. THIS IS THE CURE TO THE DISEASE THAT THAT CAUSES.

"THIS IS THE CURE TO THE DISEASE THAT THAT CAUSES."

hOW ABOUT that, huh?

Do I or do I not deserve a small hand of applause for just here and there digging The Truth out? Just getting down in the filth and shivelling a little? For you? For all of us? Except for the pixie american idol kid? He's out. On Planet Lightfoot that little snail smear is on the 12:05 express to executionland. Or maybe we just do him here in the office at Pentagram Records. Either way the little cunt has to go. He's built from a different molecule entirely, that little fish face. My god.


I sometimes think part of my problem results from a childhood of having beggars with no hands come to the door. Maybe that's part of my "problem". My little "weirdness". Like, if you get a meal and a shower and a roof of sorts YOU ARE FUCKING GOLDEN, SUNNY JIM. JESUS CHRIST!!!!!!!!!

Yeah, can't wait for my FUCKING FLATSCREEN AND MY FUCKING SUV AND MY FUCKING CRAPPY SHITTY DISGUSTING FRENCH ROYALTY LET 'EM EAT CAKE SHIT. I KNOW I JUST WON'T BE HAPPY UNTIL I CAN FUCKING TEXT MESSAGE MY BUDDY FROM THE MIDDLE OF TH' AMAZON DESERT WITH TH' NEW xp56545433453467 FROM FUCKING NEXT TEL.

Aaanyway- Matt McCoy- The Man Made Flesh #1.

So, I actually started paying this shit off. It's like, I don't know, 3 grand? I don't fucking care, you know? Throw it on the god damn stack and line up, you know? Mea Maxima Motherfucking Culpa for trying to make a living in an area where I have some ability. I just thought that's what you do, eh? Sorry. I'm hip now. I know the cash is in mediocrity. I learneded it up for you sir. I just want to be straight with The Man, you know? I wasn't raised to be in debt. No point in that. So we worked it out so's what I'd give this fucker a hundred at the end of every month, you know? That way, I see this shit being off the books in 2008, you know? Took me a lot longer than that to pay off my student loans, you know? And those were worth every dorm room sexcapade, you know? Best Years Of Your Life, man. I learned ALL this shit. Allll this crap that no one wants to hear.

Problem with Matt McCoy- he's a fucking liar and he's a greedy fucking bitch. 100 a month just isn't good enough. He has to tell me these stupid lies about how my "creditor" is going to "audit" me and "garnish" my shit. First of all, that's a fucking lie. They're not the fucking IRS. They can smoke my freakin' pole, not to put too fine a point on it. Fucking republicans. Jesus fucking Christ.

So he wanted me to get a bank loan to pay off the 3-odd G's, which, if I act now, they'll probably settle for 1,400. Lies, lies, lies. This is the Time And The Place of Lies. People make fortunes off Lies.

Lying- the Great American Pastime.

He just wants his fucking scratch NOW so he can get the new "pleasure attachment" and "GPS" installed in HIS fucking Esplanade. With th' Sirius so he can listen to the same crap that's on th' radio anyway. Greedy, lying, stupid, ignorant, illiterate bitch.

So, the deal we had was I'd call at the top of each month and do a check over th' phone. And I was religious about it. BUT IT JUST ISN'T ENOUGH FOR THE GREEDY LITTLE LEECH. MATT FUCKING MCCOY. So now he has to bug me every month about th' bank loan that i'm NOT going to get, or this way to save 20 cents or that way to pay a dollar less on this debt. I REALLY DON'T FUCKING CARE, SHIT STAIN. It's 9 A.M. ON FUCKING SUNDAY AND I TROD THE BOARDS FOR 5 HOURS LAST NIGHT FUCK FACE.

So every time he does that I just dock him a month. I tell him, "sorry, no hundred bucks this month Matt."

Drives him up a tree. All the threats about my credit rating. All that.

What a mistake for him to assume I give the minisculest of shits. What a fucking idiot.

Matt McCoy- The Man Made Flesh.

The Man Of Wimpole Street.

Fuck it ain't pretty huh? No, sirree, it ain't a picture of calypigian-ness by any stretch of the buttoxical imagination. Where else are people acting like this? Where else?

I'm digging my god damn shelter. Oh, my god this shit is going to Fuck in a Crapbasket faster than you can say Fat Indolent Christer Weirdo on Meth. These "folks". "Folks".

I'm hoarding my XTC records and my classic literature and my native wit and I'm hightailing it down to the fucking basement and soak in the tub, fuck's sake.

I'm going down to Big Pedro in Holyoke and I'm going to cop a bottle of black market morphine and I'm gonna cut it with some god damn empathy. I'm going to cook it all up at once and I'm gonna sit on the couch with one of them I.V. bags on wheels and I'll just roll it to the bathroom when I h-h-have to drain the lizard. Shit. Guhhh.

Oh, the muscle control is going. My shit is giving out. It's for sheer desperation and alienation. Ogh. Where did the "folks" go what "read books" yo? Where's the man gonna stand up and say, "um, I'm sorry, but this is fucked". Whenever I say something to someone that's really funny and they give me that bl-blank st-stare it's like you gone down for a whole episode 'a' Full fucking House and she just look at you like you a spare cushion. Cushion.

I toiled hand t'mouth for 23 years so's what I could dance away from the nicotine-stained mitts of the man. The wrinkley, noisome did-jits that wend their way about our lives like a fast-filmed advance of army ants. Like the branches of the Tree Of Crap, Rumsfelding its putrescent limbs into your very Isle Of Langerhans. Ohhhh, don't Seek Shelter Neath The Tree Of Crapola, my dear, dear, beloved ones. That's no place for men of letters, for women of letters. No kind of place at a-a-all. You'll need those Isles when you're old. They don't know what they're for but you need 'em when you're agid.

Criminy fucking cricket but that Michael Moore is a putz. That's who we have? That fucking guy?

What a dope. that Farenheit 9/11 shit was weaker than your gran on disentery. If that's the best we got, some pushy fat 2-yearer oinking around and acting outraged, we are well and truly extinct. We are the Commonsenseosaurus, man. It pains me to s-s-say.

Lawks-a-mussy is we good 'n' boned if that's what we got. That wet High School Dance Wall Hugger. Oh, I piss myslelf with fear. Yes, fear. And that butthole Kerry? Give me a break.

that's what we've got? That fucking Kerry dude? Waxes like 300 VC at great personal peril and then lets Bush saunter back into the White House like Elvis into fucking Graceland after blowing his load for the cameras? Ay, chihuahua. that is some f-fucked up, fucked up stuff. Some funky shit. What kind of a man does that? YOUR kind of man? If you're a chick and you're going with Kerry and he just mums up while that fucking 56th trimester abortion George Bush just waltzes back into the Winter Retreat you're going to still respect him? Oh, my god. No wonder about the divorce rate, that's all you expect a man to do.

And not even try to rabbit punch the fucking guy. And not even just man the fuck up and say what he's thinking which is, "I'd like to put forth some wise and good policies but right now I'm just so scared, so scared for my family and my country because you, Mr. President, are about as right in th' head as a fucking lead addict. You are about as in control of your faculties as a Jack Russell with a tennis ball dipped in liquid acid. After a hour.

Who else we got? There has to be SOMEBODY, you know? We can't really be THAT devoid of quality as a people.

Um, Bill Clinton? Oh, yeah. Him. Sure. That fucking guy'd spent any more time with his nose buried in fucking Osama's bush he'd have fucking brain lice. Him an' that freakin' harridan who walks him around by his nose an' whenever she looks about for a suitable place to take the shade he's floppin' his cocktail frank in another teenager's ear. He's like Bill Sykes and she's fucking Fagen, all dark motivations and Chanel Number Something.

Cripes, who we got? We are well and truly fucked.

I'd take fucking Sting at this point. That's how blown we are. We could get fucking Bono to run shit. Or that drip from Coldplay. That drip with the crap on his hands. "Hey, mannnn. Let's have Free Trade and no killing duckies". "Hey, mannn. It's uncool when you fiilbuster me on the House Floor".

They've got the Ghost of J. Edgar fucking Hoover and we've got a fat dick, a pussy VC annihilatin' congressman, a pukey doctor, a harridan with loins of ice, a Pillsbury Dickboy with a hankerin' for teenie trim and a bad ticker and fucking Jerry Springer.

And Liz Winstead. That guy is weird.

On the fucked scale of 1 to 10 I think you'd be hard-pressed not to agree that we are a h-h-hundred. Oh, my friends, my brothers and sisters I feel the hour is nigh. So it's off to the basement with a twelve-gauge and a morphine I.V. and a big smelly bong and a stack of wanked-out 70's Lithuanian titty books.

And may God have mercy on your s-s-souls.

Yo Anonymous--

Hey thanks for th' hip exposition on the "Tristan Chord". I reckon that was in response to my comment in my "Woodface" post on there being no new way to spell a G minor 7.

This was interesting to me for a few reasons. The first is, while it isn't strictly a "new way to spell a G minor 7", (more on this later) it could indeed be construed as a "new way to spell" an F minor 7, i.e. by flatting the fifth, which in jazz is a perfectly acceptable substitution for a minor 7. Raise it a whole step, to G-Bb-Db-F, and you do indeed have something of "a new way to spell a G minor 7".

I'm guessing you know this.

The other thing is that if you take this voicing and put a G in the bass, you have a very sexy G dominant #5 chord indeed, which would resolve (as it does in several examples in the "Tristan" exposition) by raising the Ab, or #9, to a perfect 9nth (A). The #5 could resolve by moving a half- step in *either* direction to a 5th or a 6th.

Long story short, after some analysis, I have come to the conclusion that your "Tristan Chord", even in the original key of Ab, could be considered as "a new way to spell a G minor 7" in a jazz substitution kind of way.

You must have known that.

You're Phillip Glass, aren't you? Sorry I cracked that joke about you a couple of months ago. Can you look at my string quartet scores?

P.S. My favorite "modern" way to spell a minor seventh chord, for all you music freaks, is to play the root and a sus 4 chord a whole-step down. I- VII-iii-XI.

How sexy is that? Sounds great when, for example, a guitar plays an E sus (no dominant seventh, though- eek) and the bass plays an F#.

It positively detumesces the wang. I might venture a guess that not one single person on The Man's Warped Tour would have a fucking clue what I'm talking about. And that was cool in 1977, you know?

But I have decreed it to be LAME now.

The Man's Warped Tour, Northampton MA, August 15 2005

News bulletin for you kids- if it's named after a product it's probably not that cool.

Park In Toulouse, 1957, Early Summer, 5 A.M.

It's so quiet here in this misty park. It's 5 AM and she slept on your tuxedo jacket, her hair arrayed about her face, Venus on a muslin shell. You danced for hours on the roof of the Grand Hotel and you kissed in that night club off the Champs de Espagne. It seems like years since you've spoken English; you don't even think in it any more. You don't think at all anymore, really. You don't think about anything but the next five minutes and the five before.

And why would you? Are the next 60 years going to be like this? They won't be, you know. Colette won't feel this way in a year or a month. That doesn't happen when you're sixteen. No, she'll go to Prague on that exchange thing in a year and meet that American idiot and you'll have to sit in that topiary in Lyon with that letter and cry like a child. And it'll be five in the morning like this and early summer and it'll be misty like this and you'll have no one to sleep on your jacket.

And if you think that train ride to Milan and the night with the beautiful whore and the good wine and the cocaine is going to take the slightest edge off of this you're wrong. Nothing will, not for years. Not a thousand nights on a thousand hotel balconies in Ceuta or Tunis or Cairo will blur the memory. And the opium might help for a while but it never stops with the black tar and the headrest. You'll have to Climb The Ladder and you'll end up like Lucien if you're not careful; white and still in a bad garret with cruel little marks between your toes. It's like the old Mandarin said; you can Chase The Dragon in smoke but only in your veins can you catch him.

And you won't have the stomach or the heart to punish the next woman or the one after that by calling her the wrong name or searching her face for features that recall that sleeping girl in the park.

All that money and those nights in Nice and St. Petersburg and Baleares, those earnest German girls, the ruins of the Drachenfels at dusk, Hyde Park on Christmas Eve, none of it will matter without the sleeping girl and the scent she left on your jacket and you didn't have the heart to return it to the leasing shop and you offered a weak excuse and lost your deposit.

And there it hangs in your wardrobe all those years later and it still smells of that morning. And maybe if you had the courage to burn it or give it to the charity maybe then you could start to live again.

But you can't and you never will. And many, many years from now you'll ask that kind and dear friend that you married to bury you in it "because it belonged to your father".

And that'll be that. But that's all so far away, isn't it?

Did you just hear her stir? The birds are starting to sing.

What on earth will you tell her parents?

Best Thing About Being Old #2:

I won't have to be around in 2055.