Wangbuckler Brothers song lyrics

August 31, 2007 multiconstruct Leave a comment

Here are the lyrics to songs i did with John Fenn in our roots band.

Leon Czolgozs

McKinley went to the Rainbow City

Where the lights shown bright as the sun

And Buffalo never shined so bright

As it did in nineteen-o-one

But he never took The Trip to the Moon

Where midgets served green cheese

Or saw the happy slaves at The Cotton Plantation

Busy as honeybees

Because at The Temple of Music lurked Leon Czolgosz

And Anarchy was his creed

He had a 38 revolver under his hanky

And assassination was his deed

Leon Czolgosz shot McKinley

“Why should so many people serve just one?”

Leon Czolgosz shot McKinley

For the poor-tired-huddled masses served by none

McKinley walked among the people

Didn’t think he had an enemy

Comfortable in his privileged position

He would never see

That a tenement dwelling sweat-shop worker

Would come out for more than fun

Or that someone besides the US army

Knew power comes from the barrel of a gun

Leon Czolgosz was born and raised

In a Detroit tenement

But he had a foreign name and a funny beard

And this is how the politics went

Congress banned immigration

Anarchy became a crime

Revolution increases state repression

Damn near every time

I Shot Jesse James

Jesse James was just a boy

When he followed his brother Frank

Into Quantrill’s irregulars

Where they robbed many a bank

They murdered and they pillaged

In the name of the Confederacy

And left a path of terror

Across the state of Missouri

When the war was over

Jesse’s killing was not done

He passed up peace with the Union

And set out on the run

Robbing banks and robbing trains

And killing just for fun

Seventeen men went to Boothill

Beneath his blazing gun

And reputation is everything

When you play the gunfighter game

And killing a famous killer

Is the quickest way to get a name

He was trailed by every two-bit wanna-be

Whose goals were all the same

To be the man who shot Jesse James

I shot Jesse James

“If you see me coming better step aside

A lot of men didn’t a lot of men died”

I’m as much of a killer as cyanide

Cuz I shot Jesse James

Charles Ford was meek and mild

But his sister was pretty wild

She fell for the famous gunfighter

Cuz she liked the way he smiled

She liked the cold glint in his eye

The way he didn’t give a damn

She took him back to Charles’s house

When they set out on the lam

They lived together for several months

Like a happy family

Till Charles thought about the reward

And the chance to make history

He asked Jesse to hang a picture

Cuz he didn’t have the knack

And he grabbed up his six-shooter

And shot him in the back

The Ballad of Cherokee Bill

“I came here to die not to make a speech”

I’ve killed many men in my life

I’ve shot them down in gunfights boy

And I’ve cut them down with my knife

My skin is dark my momma’s of the tribes

We were never given a choice

My Cherokee people drive from our homelands

Denied an honest living and a voice

And the blood of slaves runs through my veins

But I’d rather die than to serve

To slave my life with no hope of gain

I’d rather live by my gun and my nerve

So I’ve robbed your banks and killed your lawmen

I’ve never lost in a fight

I’ve filled my pockets with banker’s gold

And your towns live in fear of my might

I shot so many that my legend grew

And there were none brave enough to call me out

So you plied me with your cards and whiskey

And a blow from behind laid me out

So now I will hang for what you call my crimes

Live by the gun face the noose

But so do my brother’s who till their land

While their white murderers wander loose

So bring on the rope you hypocrites

Now that I’ve fallen into your reach

And I’ll keep these words to myself

“I came here to die not make a speech”

Kewpie Doll Love

Down in Moline at The County Fair

There was a Kewpie Doll and a Teddy Bear

They had sat on the shelf for nigh on three years

They made kewpie doll love and shed teddy bear tears

Kewpie doll love and teddy bear tears

They’ll ease your sorrows and calm your fears

Life has its up and downs o’er the many years

But I’ll keep my kewpie doll love and teddy bear tears

Well one day there was the unthinkable

A boy knocked down the milk-bottles with just one throw

The little boy picked the Bear as his prize

He never saw the tears in the Kewpie Doll’s eyes

Bear never again saw his Kewpie Doll bride

His heart was broken and soon he died

Kewpie Doll met with a similar fate

Believe it or not it was the very same date

Doll went to Heaven cuz she said her prayers

And who did she see but the Teddy Bear

God picked them up and put them on a shelf

No one can see them except Herself

And sometimes God will watch the two

When Her days are hard or She is blue

I think of them when bedtime’s near

And dream of kewpie doll love and teddy bear tears

Cowboys ain’t much like they used to be

Cowboys used to work hard every day

At night around the campfire they’d listen to the fiddle play

A song about the range where they belong

And all the cowboys would sing along

But cowboys ain’t much like they used to be

Got gun-racks on their pick-up trucks and SUVs

They listen to the radio quite passively

While someone else sings about the range

In days of old men would dare to behold

Sights that had never before been seen

They’d grab their horse and grab a saddle

Or grab a canoe and start to paddle

And travel to where the air is clean

But cowboys ain’t much like they used to be

Got exhaust fumes from their pick-up trucks and SUVs

They pollute the earth most aggressively

While someone else sings about the range

Magic

Ain’t no magic in a Caddy

Ain’t no magic in a yacht

Ain’t no magic left in money

Cuz you know its gonna rot

Ain’t no magic in a harsh word

Ain’t no magic left in hate

Ain’t no magic in despair

To sit and curse your fate

But there’s magic in forgiveness

There’s magic left in love

There’s magic in the Mother Earth

And in the Sky Above

And there’s magic in introspection

Best magic that I know

And there’s magic in the wild places

But few that ever go

And there’s magic in a child’s smile

And there’s magic around the bend

So lets walk another mile child

Where there’s magic without end

And there’s magic in a clothes dryer

When in years its not been run

It means the magic of the winter wind

Clothes dry in the summer sun

Ye Are Gods

Ye are gods the bible says and I it

Every word in the bible is true

And I believe King David when he says it

And I believe when Jesus says it too

I believe that Elisha the prophet

Was teased by some kids for being bald

And God sent down a killer bear

And forty-two kids were mauled

I believe that the poor should drink wine

Vodka or forty ounce beers

So they can forget their troubles

And not have to shed more tears

I believe it is wrong to masturbate

Even if no one else is around

Cuz God struck dead poor Onan

For spilling his seed upon the ground

I believe that ye shall judge not

It is much better to forgive

Unless it is a woman using magic

Than suffer not a witch to live

Categories: poetry

going crazy part 2

August 31, 2007 multiconstruct 3 comments

I really became obsessed with the idea of vibes when I was working for High Times. They are the sponsors of the Cannabis Cup and on my first shift working “security” I was instructed to clear all the vendors out so we could close up the hall. I was told to go up to the top floor and clear everyone out without being pushy but to just “vibe them out”. That is apparently the hip New York stoner way of doing things and so I walked up to the top and kind of just started looking at people like they should leave. I don’t think I had any badge of authority and was just in my typical jeans and t-shirt but it worked people would just start to leave when I would look at them and wish they would.

I think I more or less held it together for a week or 10 days but looking back I could see where I was becoming a little unhinged before that. There was definitely a precipitous break with reality but I’m still trying to lay down the background of what was leading up to that and of course I haven’t even mentioned the paranoid conspiracy novel.

I have always been a big reader and when younger had hoped to be a writer some day. In high school I thought there might be two ways to become a great writer. Become a master of the craft, a real wordsmith and just pump out the great literature seemed one way but I wasn’t sure I had the skills and natural aptitude to do so. I thought an alternative route may be to have truly astounding and interesting experiences and learn to write competently enough to convey them. After attempting to travel a ways down the latter path I realized that rather than writing a novel it might just be better to live a novel. Why drudge away at a keyboard when you can be a protagonist in your own story, out living those life changing events rather than just imagining them and writing them down. I began to think I would just live those experiences and maybe write about them when I was old and couldn’t really do them anymore. And then I discovered the paranoid conspiracy novel.

Probably the definitive paranoid conspiracy novel is the Illuminatus Trilogy, by Wilson and Sheah (sp), which though dated is still highly readable. In this genre the protagonist is faced with increasing evidence that a mysterious and all powerful conspiracy is fucking with his life for some barely understood purpose. I loved it when I discovered it and went on to read all of Robert Anton Wilson’s fiction stuff and some of his non-fiction where he sort of alleges some of this stuff is true. Probably the best paranoid conspiracy novel is Umberto Eco’s Foucalt’s Pendulum about a coterie of conspiracy book publishers who make up a conspiracy and then start getting killed off by it. The one that bears most on this narrative is the Pulitzer Prize winning Gravity’s Rainbow by Pynchon.

I had never read Pynchon before I started working for the pot group. Debbie and I used to talk conspiracy lit. a little and she would share some of her own insider information on real conspiracies of the sort like the CIA farmed out exotic hallucinogens to the Yippies for informal focus group testing. I took all this conspiracy talk as just that talk. People also talk about ghosts, UFOs and Big Foot. She did loan me Gravity’s Rainbow sometime before the trip and I ended up drawing on elements of it as fuel for my own delusions. Or there was a huge international conspiracy of unknown motivation organized to blow my mind, frankly I’ve never been sure. The most telling elements of the story was the plot line about “Rocketman” stumbling into becoming an international smuggler of hashish and the idea of questions answered, answers questioned. The latter I thought was my own invention thinking that someday I would travel the world setting up a table (like the tables we sat up with CAN selling hemp products and cannabis propaganda) with a banner reading questions answered answers questioned. It was only upon re-reading GR that I realized I had lifted that from Pynchon as well as the paranoia.

going crazy part 3

Categories: books, insanity, travel

going crazy part 1

August 28, 2007 multiconstruct 3 comments

I have not blogged in a while and I think even more than being busy is that I am apprehensive about telling the story I am going to try and tell. A couple of weeks ago I went to pick up my friend Terry from KCI. On the drive back he asked how I was and I told him that work had me feeling crazy. He asked me what that was like knowing I wasn’t just making a figure of speech. I told him since we had a drive ahead of us I would tell him about when everything went insane. The first thing you have to realize about being crazy is that you don’t just go crazy. The world goes crazy and you are just able to realize it. But first some background people always want to know how these things happen and I am in the somewhat unique state of kind of being able to answer that.

Leading up to the Fall of ’96 there was a lot of wild stuff going on in my life. I was into my 3^rd year as a full time radical grassroots activist in a wildly intense experiment in identity politics and voluntary poverty. I had stumbled into a job with the Cannabis Action Network working for room & board and free drugs working on coordinating the grassroots campaign for medical marijuana. It was high stress often busting it from the time I got up till the time I went to bed, of course smoking huge quantities of cannabis and cannabis bi-products. On top of that I had taken to doing ecstasy on the weekends and continued to do some bad LSD from time to time and occasionally some mushrooms. I also worked weekends at an adolescent psychiatric unit for the culture shock and pocket money. I was also experimenting with sleep deprivation. After work on a Sunday morning I would often go the neighborhood bar for a couple of beers. I would smoke a few hits of something premium and then lay in bed. I would do progressive relaxation until my conscious mind turned off and I would fall into the most intense hallucinations I had ever experienced even more than when on mega doses of hallucinogens.

All of that was well and good as far as I knew, looking back that lifestyle didn’t leave a lot of time for self reflection as I was also an active reader and there are only 24 hours in a day no matter how intense your life, until we went to Amsterdam. We went to celebrate our victory in the polls, we had changed the world. We went to get away from the grind of politics. We went to work security at the Cannabis Cup, the international pot growing championships of the world. We went early to pre-party and stayed late. What happened there is of course fragmented and poorly understood but aspects of my subjective experiences still shine out of my memory like no other time in my life. I will do my best to convey my experiences but in the end they are my experiences and I make no guarantees to their external veracity.

We stayed at a mind spa for the 3 weeks we were apparently there. It was pretty cool. There was a sensory deprivation tank and syncopation machines by synchrotech. Syncopation flashes lights and plays rhythems in particular beats to generate certain consciousness states. Sensory deprivation was very big in the 70s and involves floating in salt water in a soundproofed chamber in total darkness. There was also television but no channels came in and there were only Terrance McKenna videos to watch and there was a well-stocked library of esoterica and mind expansion literature whose titles I do not recall. I do remember I read 5 or so books including Gurdijeff’s Beelzebub’s Tales to his Grandson.

The mind spa was not open for business and made an excellent crash pad and we got to sample the wares. The syncopation didn’t do much for me I remember seeing some red and some green. My compatriots reported vivid hallucinations with narrative but didn’t really have the ring of truth to them when they told their tales. The sensory deprivation tank is difficult to judge because I was far gone into madness before I ever tried it. I remember floating in the salt water and being able to hear and feel my heart beating and feeling my pulse pulsing from my finger tips into the water making ripples. It dawned on me that that was what “vibes” were picking up on people’s emotional state through feeling waves from their blood pressure. I remember feeling utterly alone, like being in the womb without a mother’s heartbeat. It seemed cruel, an infernal device and I fled from its confines, but as I said by then I was quite mad.

I remember being pretty sane when we arrived. We all ate pot cookies to make the long flight endurable. We hit the first coffee house after leaving the train station from Shipbol and were smoking massive quantities of cannabis. Aaron would roll up these huge cone joints and we were on a constant quest to see how many different varieties we could smoke at once. I believe the record was 14 kinds of cannabis and 6 kinds of hash. We had been smoking a lot of pot just living and had definitely taken it up a notch. We didn’t do much touristy stuff besides hit the coffeehouses. We had also just one a big legal victory for pot and carried ourselves like gangsters.

Debbie had a gig selling poetry books and CDs for Fishbone as her man was a guitar tech and roadie for them and they always played Amsterdam during the Cup. I went to the Van Gogh museum with one of their roadies, as we were the only 2 in the scene into doing anything besides smoking pot. The museum was set up chronologically and Van Gogh’s early stuff was very Dutch Master’s stuff, all browns and blacks and heavy on the shadows. The most emblematic was a basket of potatoes. And then boom, his pallete exploded and their was the Van Gogh we all know in his one-eared mad-eyed glory. I pondered what in the hell happened to him that he could suddenly see full spectrum and at some level even then I knew it was coming to me.

To be continued. I promise not to make you wait 2 weeks for the next entry. I still despise George Lucas for ending Empire Strikes Back to be continued and then waiting 5 years to make Return of the Jedi. More by weeks end I promise.

going crazy part 2

Categories: books, friends, insanity, travel

poems and commentary

August 3, 2007 multiconstruct Leave a comment

I have had a fairly grueling day at work and can’t talk about it because of confidentiality. I do have one piece of advice in that you should never say you want to kill people in front of a psychiatrist. They react strongly to that. So instead for your reading pleasure a work in progress.

I believe I am a pattern, a pattern of information

Built of millions and millions of simplicities

Organized through Emergence, I arise up from the bottom

I am many, but still I am me!

And I believe I am a pattern, a consciousness construction

Will, sense, imagination, memory

And though I surely rise up from my body, I am much more a story

Told in the hearts of everyone who knows me.

What I want to communicate next in that ditty is Plato’s idea that behind everything that is there is an idea of that thing. Take a knife for example. Everyone has an idea in their head of what a knife is. Something thin and sharp that fits in your hand that you use to cut with. They may differ but largely all six billion of us humans think of roughly the same when we think of knife or whatever it is called in other languages. Did the idea of knife get created out of what, smaller pieces of information, individually six billion times, over and over throughout history. Or is there just one idea of knife that we all get to use. Occams razor says I am right that there is only one idea of knife. What if everything is like that. That everything that we think of as real is a reflection of the idea of those things and exists in this information universe outside of time and space.

I write a lot about consciousness. It intrigues me to no end “who I am” and the mystery of learning the intricacies of unadulterated identity, the root core. Once you realize you’re not your body, and not your thoughts or your feelings, or even your will although of all those it is the truest of that one where do you go? Of course to I am a story. Narrative therapy I have heard it called when you think of your life as a story and you seek to learn how to manipulate your character by the character at the end of the book that you want to be than from all that you have learned from the book you have already read. When I heard about this intervention it really resonated with ideas I had had a long time about choosing to live a novel instead of trying to write one.

Let me end with another poem about consciousness.

Magical Mystical Thing