A couple of quick musical confessions.

-I couldn't use MIDI if my life depended on it. It scares and confuses me.
-I play the worst improvised guitar solos on the planet. People who have never touched a guitar will play better solos than me.
-I don't understand Ohms. They scare and confuse me. Impedances- same thing.
-When I sit down at the keyboard I always picture the key of G and have to force myself away from it.
-When I make mixing and recording decisions I always have to force myself away from recording everything in glorious stereo and just "parting" the whole mix down the middle. Everything, dude. Tambourines.
-When I record harmonies I only use consonants in about a third of them so the consonants won't overpower the line. When I'm overdubbing a harmony vocal it sounds like "...ooo... aaaa.... eeee..."
-I have a pair of fucked-up blown speakers that I like to run a mix through so I can make sure it'll sound good on fucked-up blown speakers.
-When I record piano, I like to run two separate sets of stereo pairs to four tracks. I record on the first pair until I fuck up, then I just jump over to the other set. Back and forth. I clam it bad. I do an awesome impression of a musician.
-I comp vocal tracks like crazy but I have a thing about always getting a bass performance all the way through. I'll fix a spot or two.
- I could never, ever, ever record the harmonies that I do with analog tape. All the rewinding, recording and general spooling of tape would wear the tape before I was done. It would also take weeks. I have to confess that digital rocks. I always mix real-time, though. With hardware. I need faders under my digits.

I worked with this huge Scottish front of house guy called Gungy on a big shed tour. Every pro concert mixer has a couple of songs they always throw up to get their bearings with a system and a venue. This guy's was that Kate Bush song "Babushka" and some Peter Gabriel song. This other guy always put up "Josie" from "Aja" by Steely Dan. You can see why.

I decided on "Driven To Tears" for my song. You have choose the song that you know completely.

Being Of The Harried and Idiotic Persuasion, I Keep Forgetting To Do This

So, I got a great and most welcome surprise when the inestimable Mal Thursday of The Malarians, the guy who tripped at th' Bottom Line and spilled Wilford Brimley's Chilean Seabass, dropped in and said hello on said posting.

And the great thing is, being the consummate understander of theatre that he is, he didn't break character one bit. This great champion of sweaty teenage fuzztone rock is currently residing in th' withering and feverish tropics of Florida and you by all means should check this fuckin' shit out right here. Scroll down to th' "Florida Rocks Again" podcast. All of you. Now. Further down there are installments #5 and #4 which I am off to after I do this here.

Woah! Did you check that? I'm STILL tripping. Fucking awesome. The Painted Faces, eh? How about that "I Think I'm Going Mad"? It's ALL FUCKING THERE. Liquid, arriving fuzztone, references to "time" and "the mind" pronounced "taam" and "maand", a groove that can only be described as early rolling stones ska.

Me, I'll be tuning into this forever.

Thanks, Mal. It does my heart profound good whenever I hear someone from The Mysts Of Tyme is still kicking this much ass.

And yes, I do realize now that if The Malarians had stuck it out two more years we would have been a household name. We was just ahead of our TAAM. I ran into people on th' west coast who couldn't BELIEVE I was in th' legendary Malarians all the god damn time.

Oh, I'm getting mysty.

I've heard rumblings of a reunion...I am so fucking in.

I will tell some Malarians stories next week. There are some wonderful ones, like what Mal said to Debbie Gibson's manager's assistant to get him to stop bugging us. Hee hee.

Bobby Lightfoot's Greatest Hits #11: All my best posts involve lampooning my own endless and largely-self-constructed despair.

Aw, criminy, Baby Poopus.

I couldn't even face doing my Mea Culpa this Sunday. It's taken me this long to even work up the stones to do it now. Why? Well, nothing new, really. It's just that I'm such a moron that it hurts me to confront it. Ouch, ouch, ouch. The way I go about my life away from music is just painful. It does my self-esteem no good to talk about it or to confront it in any way. Ouch, ouch. I'm like the Three Stooges without the punchline. I'm like Inspector Clouseau but I never get my man and I'm not cute. Sometimes the only way I can get to sleep at night is by convincing myself that I'm a saboteur. I'm here to fuck everything up to lash out at the man. Yeah, that's what it is. That's what it is.

The property damage, expense and general mayhem that I incur is biblical. I'm surprised it doesn't make the paper.

and yet, when I pick up an instrument or sit at a mixing desk, it's like the skies open and a choir from On High sings a massive G major chord with an added ninth that slowly and majestically sweeps through a B minor like the Saint Matthew Passion to resolve on a D major. It's like the last time I did LSD (I was dosed by some bastard at a beer garden in San Diego swear to god) and I kept cold booting and cold booting my Mac over and over just to hear the pretty music. Priiiiinnngggg...priiinnnggg....

why did you do this to me, Poopus? Why did you give me the tools to create the sublime and then array the universe against me that I should be forced to dwell in the ridiculous? I'm like the guy in Confederacy Of Dunces but with self-awareness and it hurts, Baby P. It hurts a lot.

I've been fired from more jobs than most people ever hold, Creepus. I've quit jobs just because I felt sorry for my superiors who couldn't work up the gumption.

Picture Paul McCartney trying to run a Novell network. Picture Keith Richards trying to ship and receive. Picture Elton John trying to sell car parts. Why, baby creepus, why? Why you do this to me? Why you do this to me, Dimi?

I just want to please. I just want things to go smoothly. I don't lack enthusiasm. Maybe that's the problem. A surfeit of enthusiasm. But I stumble and break and crash and fail and fuck up. I'm a musician, Baby C. I can't do this stuff, Baby C. Why can't I just be what you made me to be, huh? I can live on 15 a year, Baby Fuckus. It's not the money. 22-23 would do me, y'know? I don't need much. I just need to have a little pride. I just would like for once to be known as a person of skill and competence instead of a blithering Einstein who couldn't get a physics gig and had to park cars instead.

Ow, ow, ow. It hurts like the clap and the years stretch ahead in an unbroken line of idiocy. I have stood here before inside the pouring rain, with the world turning circles running 'round my brain. I guess I'm always hoping that you'll end this reign; but it's my destiny to be the king of pain.

What am I going to do, Baby Poopus? What's a Lightfoot to do? Is this what Joan of Arc felt like when the voices stopped? but she only had to go on for a li'l while until Cochon toasted her like a marshmallow. I have years and years unabated with no voices. Best case th' Angel o' Death comes swiftly, saving me from years of regret (not sweet) and those who have shortlived faith in me thousands of dollars in property destruction.

I won't stop trying to be a good musician, Creepster. But th' thing is, when I read yer good book it's full of crap like this; here's your brain but don't think with it, here's your dink but don't fuck with it; here's your mouth but don't speak with it.

I guess I'll just soldier on, Fuckster. You mean little rotter. You rapscallion. You bad song. You reality show. You PT Cruiser. You Citronetta. I've visualized and visualized but I ain't realized. I see and I see but I don't be.

Please, Jeebus. Please help me stop breaking everything and bring instead the sublime that is within me to the table. You mean little cock ornament.

Oh- and I take back everything I said this week. Of course. This included.

Love ya and amen,

bobby lightfoot.


P.S. This was really funny. Especially the fucking Police lyric. I'm laughing through the tears and snot. glub blug glub. Hee hee. King of Pain indeed. Earl of Grey is more like it. Marquis de Bad. Duke of Cornhole.

Sheriff of Nothingham (when I do my Rutles of XTC, this will be their comeback single).

Mayor of Pimpleton. Duke of Hurl.

My New Name For Dick Cheney: "Lon".

Let me tell you one things that has been a very important lessons to me.

I used to think that it was attractive to speak in a soft, low voice. Now I realize it's just creepy. These days when you talk like fuckin' Lon everybody's eyes start flappin' around to makes sure there are no childrens afoot.

You don't want your kids around someones that talks like fucking Lon. Here- let me enumerates the ways in which it's wrong to speaks like Lon:

1. It is manipulative to speak quietly so everyones has to lean in to hears you. It connotes a certain conviction that what you have to say is extra special.

2. When you speak like Lon it sounds like you're lying even if you're not. That whole sotto voce thing is like that, you know? S?

I got tired of this weakass post and so I just went back and put in some s's so it would seem like something.

This is not The Time Of Posts. This is not The Time Of This Crap. This is The Hour Of Headphones and Electric Pianos. The Hour Of Bitchin' Drum Loops.

And coffees. Coffees. S.

Bobby Lightfoot's Greatest Hits #10:

God Damn, I'm Jealous Of Old People.

God damn. I'm jealous of the old people. That's a first. Why? Because they got to live in a better world, as far as I'm concerned. I mean, it wasn't all peaches and regalia, Christ knows. But these days a fella just doesn't know what to think.

I'll tell you one thing- I would have left an arm on the beach at Normandy to live in the time of Cole Porter and FDR and Billie Holiday and Duke Ellington and Tommy Dorsey and Tracey and Hepburn. I shit you not. I would have left it there with a god damn bow on it. Here's a nice arm for you, Fritz. Now let me live in a pre-digital, pre-solid state pre-cable, pre-cell phone pre-American Idol, pre-Paris Hilton, pre-Dick Chaney world like a MAN. LIKE A FUCKING MAN.

I think old people are laughing at us, because they know they had it good and they can fuck off sooner than us and leave this pusbag world to us suckers.

God damn, I'm jealous of old people.