Pimp My Rhodes

Pressing different combinations of buttons unlocks th' secrets of Love.








Yeah, I wanted to do a blog on th' Great Rhodes Refurbishing of '06 but I of course wanted to Lightfootize it in some manner or another so I wouldn't just be another polesmoking consumer buttfuck all worked up about some piece of fucking metal and wood like every other pissant Crap obsessed dickweed I'm forced to share th' Road Of Life With. with.

I'm thinking I'll take a bigass cucumber and shove it down some tight jeans and have my crotch in every shot, Spinal Tap style. See, that'd be funny but, well, it would be coals to Newcastle if you get m'druft. Girlish titter.

So phuck it- I'm just going to have to suck it up and realize that I'm just another cheesy middle-aged putz in his little shed licking his finger and rubbing on some piece of consumer bullshit to wipe away an unsightly moist spot that I created in a fit of Consumer Moneyshotting. Just a fruitnut, y'know? Just like any other douchebag with a "honk again I'm reloading" bumpersticker in th' geerage under th' hood of my 73 Corvette. Tre middle class, daddy.

Difference is I've done lots, lots lots more drugs.

You have to admit it looks pretty hot, though. When I climb onto them boards and get behind this little betty ain't nobody gonna think I'm stopping off on the way to a bowling game, man. It was quite a job and a bit more expensive than I would have liked, and it'll just get torn to shit in like three days but that's life. Then I can redo it in orange or lime-green or some shit. Or snake skin.

Th' wood case was pretty well pocked from twenty-seven years on this planet so there was plenty of sanding and applications of wood filler and all that. Lori sprang for the not-inexpensive new black hardware for my early birthday and I got a new front logo which sparkles like, well, like a new piece of '73 Corvette trim.

Wouldn't you know I also made a matching padded dolly that th' thing rests and rolls in. So maybe it won't get all fucked up for like a week. My little deuce coupe.




Jesus added to show scale.














First thing I wonder when I see a Rhodes set up with th' lid on: how many pounds of weed have been cleaned on this surface since 1974?











Stop jacking off and play a song on me.












The lid must also be covered in- and out. The top part is a latched compartment for the legs and all that.













Cherry Twizzler Red, I call it.













Sal Th' Feist sez just wait 'til I add a fragrant coiler.

Took Me A Little Walk This Evening.

Tha's right, man.

Off across th' moor I strode not unHeathcliffelike. I dug my well-lined hands into the pockets of my dungaroos and leaned into the raging noreastro.

And I thought, man. I thought hard. All about where we're going and the state of things.

And about how hard it's getting for an honest man to get a fair shake. And about how one man's problems don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. And I thought about the millions that perished on 9/11 in th' slaughter camps of Flussbertstein and Candice Belsen.

It hurt me to do it, but I nosed in and really sort of flopped around in it, man. Really lathered myself up with it. On th' moor.

And I turned over in my mind the state in which we find ourselves as a country.

Read that again.

It was hard to do, you know? Usually I just like thinking about Houses Of The Holy and Kristy Finkelstoon's butt in th' 11th grade. Like a sumptuous and fresh-cleffed pomegranite 'twas. Now? Now I suspect it resembleth th' Final Faceoff in the World Wide Jack Russell Terrier Wrestling Federation with th' battling pups confined to dirty pillowcases until the bell rings.

Ha ha ha. Butt I digress.

It was an unseasonably warm evening in th' autumn of the year and as I reached the tarn that surrounds the house of Usher on horseback I pondered what would happen to the children, you know? We have to teach them well. You have to teach the motherfucking children, right? Even if you do as I and simply provide an example of how not to be. I think that's valid, man. Actually, I really hope so. I'd like to think they cast an eye on their jittery and existentially embattled dear old stepdad and think yeah, music's out as a job, you know? Maybe some nice law school or macroeconomics. It's fun to play basketball or finish furniture or play Playstation with him but when he gets that look you want to be turning th' volume up.

It dawned on me as I came upon the small dirt road that leads around our compound how important it is to try and stay o-positive. Even as Biafra and th' Vietnam conflict rages around us. Even as bridges burn and rivers flow. Rivers of fire and brinestone. From whence the good salt comes. Cold as Vichy Soisse. Cold, cold, cold.

And the sun danced off to th' west and old mister moonlint bathed the heaths in silver as I strode ever onward. And the stars cane up in the sky and I offered a silent prayer; that we'd be all right, that the little ones would grow strong and honest. And that the Old Ones would all shuffle quietly away to ships and shuffleboard where they fucking belong before they fuck it up even worse. All those fucking towelhead tinpot fuckbag trillionaires in th' Mideast. All those fat, worthless, offal-devouring, stale-twizzler-dick twat Republican politicians with their sick, unctuating fish lips and their evil. All those dick-tickling fuckface lying shit head hypocrite radio "personalities". All the filthy, repulsive, cat-shit covered corporateer sootikin-devouring little Satans that run all the companies. All the infant-diddling, zit-sucking, scrotum-chinned religionists in their cumstained vestments. All our pasty, pouting, pussy Protooled pop stars nancying about with their cocks and cunts and tits and calves all stuffed with padding and sewn shut badly with fishing line and seeping pus and shame and self-hatred and vacuity. And all the suckass googling pissant e-peasants who drop their fucking blood money to keep all the feckless fucking movie stars in incontinence underwear so they they can better cope with the heartbreak of a rectum rendered loose and helpless by centuries of endless, loveless, hopeless buggery.

And I thought about how, really, the best-case scenario is really th' perpetuation of all of it. For a billion trillion years amen.

When I got home I shoved my dick in the motherfucking wood chipper.

Seems To Me We've Been Torturin' Foreigners For Years Just Fine.

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There Are Seven Levels.

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Sunday Night Thoughts.

1. Why do I have this voice now? It's sinister and it's freaking me out. Look, I am a plainspoken motherfucker and I know what I've got and what I don't have. You're not going to hear me talking about what a world-class instrumentalist I am any time soon. I'm an ideas guy. That shit tends to end at my wrists.

I've always had just enough kinesthetic instrumental ability to get a song down on tape from th' drums on up. I grew up on punk rock and I didn't want to know about fuckin' guitar solos.

I'm a good bass player but that's sort of like being a good driver. You don't notice it until some fuck wraps their shitty Audi around you on th' 405. You don't notice good bass. You're not s'posed to. Some reviewer talks about your smokin' bass playing you're doing something wrong. Good bass composition is another matter. That's why we all love McCartney. Good ideas. Good ideas.

Anyway, I don't know why this voice has been dropped into my throat at this stage of the game. I certainly didn't earn it with my decades of smokin' and screamin'. Aren't I supposed to be doing a Dennis Wilson by now? Aren't I supposed to be ramping down? Isn't my range supposed to be diminishing?

I can suddenly do shit that I couldn't have dreamed of when I was 25. Chest voice A about middle C? In my sleep. Falsetto head voice on up to, say, an E above that? In my god damn sleep. Tone for days? That musical rasp that you don't have to force? It just comes out? Check. On down to G's and F's an octave and a half below middle C? Loud? Over the band? Yeah. No problem.

Maybe it's the music. The Soulfinger shit is singer's music. It's all Marvin and Al and Otis. Maybe that's what it is. I've always sung my own shit and maybe I never really thought like a singer before, but rather like a writer. I've never really confronted the many choices that are involved in being a stylist.

With a well-chosen song I can stand there, tilt that stand 15 degrees to th' left and shut the room up and turn heads. Even if they've been antagonized by Ace McClintock The Drunken for 15 minutes straight. Maybe that's what it is. I'm always trying to get them back. Look, I hate humanity as much as the next dude. I think they suck. But I still like an audience. Actually, maybe like is the wrong word. I just want them to get value-for-dollar in one shitty area of their lives because then you don't feel like such a fucking mark all the god damn time. If they pay 10 bucks I want them to get 50 bucks of good. We're all sick of feeling like fuckin' marks, right? That's where we land in a shitty crap culture like this. Fieldmice and hawks, man.

Maybe that's what it is. It scares me a little. It's a knock-on-wood thing.

2. I'm confronted with a choice. It's not a particularly new choice but it's sittin' square in my field-o'-vision these here days. It's this: do I keep hustling and scraping to try and continue making my way as a musician by any means necessary or do I get behind a desk, punch a fuckin' clock and then make my music my way when I'm done sucking hind teat? Because the hustling and scraping means little or no Lightfoot music. It means a lot of work-for-hire and a lot of singin' the Hit Parade for punters. And the other way means more Lightfoot music at the Whim Of The Man. And th' older I get the less fucking patience I have for the concept of doing some useless shit for some worthless company that is turning the blood of infants into shareholder swimming pools somewhere along the fucking line. I mean, honestly- come on.

Three more months here I'm going to be 42. A lean, tanned, priapic 42 to be sure, but 42 nonetheless. Why can I now finally sing like Sam Cooke meets young Rod Stewart now, when no one has any fucking use for me? Am I meant to take another plunge? No, I don't mean trying to be a big star. That's been over for 15 years. I mean find an audience, tour a circuit, get on a good indie. Just on th' down-low where people respond to Good. The World Cafe market is what I used to call it. The shit they play on World Cafe on NPR.

But see, them fuckers don't like me either, right? Because I don't have "authenticity" because I'm not ugly and I sing like a motherfucking riot. And I'm "showy". I don't see why I should look like I'm making a pit stop on th' way to the bowling alley when I hit the stage. And my songs have the odd minor 7 flat 5. I can't sing them stupid fucking folk songs because I'm so over playing the same five open chords.

I really can't figure out what to do or where I belong. I wouldn't care that much but see, this fuckin' voice got dropped into my throat last winter and I can't help but feel it's for a reason.

Fuck it. It's probably so I can hum a really bitchin' version of "Shop Around" while I fit that twelve gauge in my fucking mouth. It probably is.

World's like that.

I Can't Get Th' Title Right For This One.

yeah, I remembered this a little while ago and thought I'd get it off my chest.

Th' only catholic priest I remember as a child was old Father Finley who lived up the street and used to give us Oreos and Coke and tell us stories about UFOs.

He never moved in on any neighborhood boy that I can recall.

As to whether he filmed us unawares and spanked off to it later is anyone's guess. And I can only say this in defense of good old Father Finley who I'm sure did th' Mortal Coil Shuffle long ago: if he had ever taken it upon himself to bend any of us li'l sprats over the kitchen table I'm sure it would have been with a good-natured laugh and a tender and loving reacharound.

that's not a picture of him. I just googled "buggering clergy" or something.