PERFORMANCE ENHANCEMENT

I see that once again they are going after professional athletes for taking performing enhancing substances. Persecuting them for taking substances that make them do their jobs better. What a bunch of bullmalarkey. WGAS-WGAF! (who gives a sh*t-who fives a f*ck!) I'll tell you who needs to find substances to take that would make them do their jobs better........POLITICIANS!!!!!! 

Boy I'll tell you, if there were substances out there that could make me feel the music better, substances that could enhance my state of consciousness and put me in the zone to play and perform better, substances that could block all the day to day clutter in my mind and open up that direct connection needed to write better songs, well I'd take those substances in a heartbeat. Um......wait a minute.....strike that.......there is and I have *LOL*

RAY LEWIS, FOOTBALL, MURDER AND GOD

After The Baltimore Ravens won the Super bowl on February 3, 2013 Ray Lewis was quoted as saying,

“It’s simple, when god is for you who can be against you?” 

In a pre-super bowl interview Ray Lewis was asked if he had anything to say to the families of the two murder victims from Atlanta in 2000 that he was accused of being involved in.  His response was as follows,

“It’s simple, God has never made a mistake. That’s just who he is, you see. And if our system – it’s the sad thing about our system – if our system took the time to really investigate what happened 13 years ago, maybe they would have got to the bottom line truth. But the saddest thing ever was that a man looked me in my face and told me, ‘We know you didn’t do this, but you’re going down for it anyway.’ To the family, if you knew, if you really knew the way God works, he don’t use people who commits anything like that for His glory. No way. It’s the total opposite."

Overall the American culture has evolved over the last 25 years to a point of not only giving thugs and gangsters respect but even sometimes rewarding them.  Much of the dress code and dialect of our youth comes directly out of prison culture and somewhere along the way it has become part of the American culture to give respect to unintelligence and criminality.  It seems to me that a whole generation or two has completely lost their way and lost sight of proper goals and what should be important in life.  I won’t even begin to go into all that as it’s a much bigger subject and a much larger sociological problem, but I will say that Ray Lewis was as much a part of all that as anyone.  He might not have pulled the trigger that killed those two men, (no one knows really,) but he was enjoying the gangsta lifestyle.  He was a success story from, “da hood,” and at the very least he was hanging around with thugs who carry guns to nightclubs and pull them out and start shooting other people at  the first perceived notion that they are somehow being disrespected.  And I’m sure that with all the money he was throwing around he was getting plenty of attention and respect from those hoodlums and he was loving it.  But he was young and I really can’t even fault him for that.  We all mature and become better men and women over time.  He is obviously a different man than he was back then.

But what I can fault him on is how nonchalantly he throws his deity into everyone’s face.  Take notice of how he begins both of the aforementioned quotes with the words, “it’s simple,” as if any of this really is.  I think the only thing that is simple here is Ray Lewis’s mind.  Ray Lewis is obviously simple-minded.  I can understand that what he was trying to say in regard to the murders is that he was found innocent because his god doesn’t make mistakes.  That in and of itself is a totally ridiculous statement that I’m sure a lot of incarcerated people would disagree with but doesn’t Mr. Lewis realize what a slap in the face that statement was to the families of the two murder victims?  Doesn’t he realize that by saying what he said he’s also saying that his god decided it was right for those two guys to die?  It just seems to me that Mr. Lewis is so intent on putting his god views into everything he says that he has completely removed the significance of his god.  His god cares more about football games than he does about little girls being raped and murdered in the Middle East for the simple crime of wanting to become educated?  His god cares more about overpaid athletes that live a luxurious, lavish lifestyle than he cares about people going hungry in the drought areas of Africa?  His god cares more about a football game than he cares about the earthquake victims in Haiti?  And not all football games mind you, not all football teams and not all football players but only the particular football team that Ray Lewis happens to play on.  In Ray Lewis's simple-minded view his god cares more about Ray Lewis and The Baltimore Ravens than he cares about any other football player, football team and of course anything else that might be happening in the world.  All I can say is GIVE ME A BREAK!!  I don’t begrudge anyone the right to believe in a higher power or to seek spiritual guidance but when you reduce the power that the deity of your beliefs wields to such a ridiculously low level you remove all credibility for the possible existence of your deity in my eyes.  When you tell the world that your deity cares more about you and whatever is going on in your life than it does about anyone or anything else, you are simply proving to me that you are delusional.  Your god exists in your mind and your mind only!

As a Ravens fan I am happy that my team won the Super Bowl but I’m intelligent and rational enough to know that it had nothing to do with the power of a god.  I, for one, am glad that the career of Ray Lewis is over because I don’t think I could sit through much more of his holier-than-thou, pious ranting.  I wish him no ill will and I actually hope that his beliefs bring him peace and contentment in his retirement.  But I am very happy that I will never again have to endure his delusionary ramblings.

Way to go ravens!!  Great team effort!!  All human!!  No god involved!!   

OH JEALOUSY

When a person with limited cognitive ability is jealous over the success, accomplishments and achievements of someone else, that jealousy can easily manifest itself in the form of anger and aggression. 

SO MANY OF THESE OUT THERE

There is nothing more sad than people who choose to remain ignorant and uninformed even after being presented with the facts!!

NO MORE DRIXORAL

I just discovered that we can no longer buy Drixoral. In fact they took it off the market in 2008. I didn't notice because I had bought a large stockpile of it and didn't need any. What a total bunch of bullshit!!! It's all because it has pseudoephedrine in it but that's also why it worked!! Who cares if a few people were making bathtub meth with it!! Why should I no longer be allowed to purchase a legal, over the counter cold remedy because a few people have figured out a way to get high from it. The rules this government has in regard to drugs absolutely suck!!!! WTF is wrong with the mind-set of this country? Who cares if some people are getting high as long as the majority of the people are using a drug to fight symptoms and illness. For that matter who cares if people are getting high?? Period!!! People have always gotten high and they always will. Little kids spin around until they are so dizzy they cannot stand up. That's getting high!!! It starts there!!! Should we outlaw spinning???!!! All of the crime related to drug use stems from the fact that they are illegal not from the use itself. The crime comes from the selling and obtaining of them. And now because of this paranoid, Ronald Reagan era, simpleton MADD type frame of mind we are no longer allowed to purchase a drug that actually works?? We are not allowed to take advantage of the benefits of our own science and technology?? Oh but I can go out and buy an assault rifle at a gun show with no background check and I can buy high capacity magazines and ammo online with no problems. OK right! god bless america. Land of the violent and the not so free.

ON THIS DAY

On this day in 1980  I was young and in my prime. I didn’t care much about the things that worry me now. I didn’t care much about planning for retirement. I didn’t care much about 6 month dental check ups. I didn’t care much about arthritis, knee replacement, eye glasses, health insurance, tumors being benign, tumors being malignant, mortgage payments, getting wrinkles, job security, money in the bank, hair loss. I didn’t worry about things like losing a loved one and I certainly didn’t worry about my own demise. Basically I didn’t worry about much of anything. I didn’t care about anything more than which town was next down the road, what I would find there, who I would meet, what kind of songs I would be influenced to write and what kind of bars there would be for me to play them in. I was on the road. I was on the road like Kerouac. I was on the road like Cassidy. I was on the road like Kesey.  Hell I even had a bus. A 48 passenger school bus that I had purchased from the, "First Baptist Church Of Polson Montana," and oh yea she was sweet. A big yellow road hog with lights that automatically flashed when you came to a stop. It still said, "School Bus," all over her and I was actually pulled over by cops in three different states for, "Impersonating a school bus." I guess they were afraid that I was going to pull over at 3:00PM, (let’s face it, it wouldn’t have happened at 8:00AM,) load up the vehicle with 40 kids and take them out into the middle of the desert to start a cult or something.

Anyway, I had taken the seats out of my bus when I got her and converted her into a pretty nice camper. She was a virtual house on wheels and I christened her, "The Troll."  There was a double bed in the rear with storage underneath. A decent sized cedar closet next to it on the port side. A couch next to the closet in our, “living room.” The starboard side housed the galley, (we called it the kitchen of course,) and it contained a 3 burner, 17 inch propane oven, a sink and a small refrigerator.  We were self contained and we were rolling down the highway sucking down about a gallon of fuel for every 7 miles we traveled. What an insult to the planet!  But we were young, we were underway, and we were happy.  I crossed the Continental Divide in that bus during an ice storm with virtually no brakes. That is no lie and my wife will readily verify that horror story. The vacuum system had failed and I was too far into the soup to stop. Thank god for low gear. But that is another story for another time...........

And on this day in 1980 we rolled into Tucson Arizona. We had headed in that direction because it was warm there in December, which made sense to us. As we drove down one of the main streets into town we saw a large, hand lettered sign hanging off of the side of someone’s house that read, "Goodbye John Lennon." I jokingly said to my wife, "what’s that all about?? Did John go back to England??" We were heading for a park that we knew about in the heart of the town. It’s a really nice park that has a zoo and also pavilions with electricity, (Our main concern at the time,) and as we got nearer to the park it became more and more obvious that something was not right. There were more and more people like us out and about. Now don’t get me wrong, in 1980 in that part of the country at that time of the year there WERE more people like us. But it was obvious that these lost souls, these drop outs from society, these free wheelers, these independent individuals were gathering for a reason.

We slipped into one of the parks’ parking areas and I pulled the lever which opened the double door on the starboard side of, "The Troll." I used to love the way those doors opened. No sooner were they opened when one of the lost souls looked in and said, "are you here for the vigil??"

"What vigil??" I asked.

"For John," he said.

"John who??," I asked. It still hadn’t clicked yet.

"John Lennon. He was murdered last night," he said, in a voice that was almost devoid of emotion and feeling. Almost like he was still in a state of shock and disbelief.

That was when it all came together for us too. The sign. The people. The disenfranchised. The lost souls gathering.  Our hearts sank..........

I grabbed one of my guitars and we locked up the bus. With our happy go-lucky Newfoundland dog by our side, (she was just happy to be out of the bus,) we began climbing a small hill. As we reached the crest of the hill and looked beyond, we saw that there on the other side were literally hundreds of people below us. Perhaps even well over a thousand people gathered to morn the death of John Lennon. The thing that I will always carry with me is the silence. There below me from my vantage point on this small hill were hundreds of people and it was quiet. It was so quiet. As we walked down the hill toward the crowd the sound of weeping could be heard. Weeping, crying, and actual sobbing. Everyone, male and female, was just kind of standing around staring at one another with red, teary eyes. Some were so openly consumed with grief that they were visibly shaking.  People were hugging each other. People were consoling each other. People were hugging us. We began tearing up. We began crying. The collective consciousness of that group of souls was absolutely amazing!!  I will never forget the vibe that I felt at that initial moment of contact.

Then someone asked me if I was there to play some of John’s music and I realized that I was standing there with my guitar in hand.  I felt kind of weird. I felt awkward. Hell, I carried my guitar everywhere with me back then and I didn’t have it with me just because of that particular moment in time.  "I am," I said, strangely positive that that was in fact why I was there. Or at least aware of the fact that I had better do something.

I knew some Beatles songs and I also knew some of John’s solo tunes. "Working Class Hero," had always been in my repertoire and of course I knew, "Imagine." I sat down and started playing. Soon there were about 100 people all around me, maybe more. Another guitarist showed up and asked if he could join me. A little while later another guitarist joined us. The three of us played Beatles and John Lennon songs for hours while hundreds of people sat and stood around us holding hands, hugging, swaying together, crying, wondering why..........

 Soon it started to get late and the crowds began to disperse. Some folks asked us if we would like to have dinner at their house and we accepted. We had taco salads and Mexican beer and after dinner we played music into the wee hours of the night/morning. Mostly Lennon and Beatles songs but as the Mexican beer and the stress of the day took its toll we did venture into other musical territory. Some good and some not so good. As the sun was coming up though we did one last version of, "Imagine." We all cried.  We all hugged.  We all said that we would stay in touch but we knew that we wouldn’t. Hell I couldn’t even tell you the names of any of the people that I was with that evening. But they mean more to me than you could ever imagine. They mean more to me than almost anyone that I have met through the day to day existence that has become my life. They mean more because they were pure. We all were.  Pure and innocent. And Mark David Chapman took away that innocence.  He put an end to the idealism that we all held on to. It would have ended on its own. Things were going in that direction anyway. Hell, Ronald Reagan had just been elected president!!! The world was about to go to hell in a hand basket. But Mark David Chapman stole our innocence and our idealism prematurely and for that I will never forgive him.

I will never forget that time of my life. My freedom. My passion. My innocence. My youth. And I will never forget that the beginning of the end to it all happened on this day in 1980.  Goodbye John, I still miss you...........and I will forever............

Bruce Myers

12/00

LUKES BAR IN MISSOULA MONTANA

I lived in Missoula Montana for about two years back in the late 70's and while I was there I played music at this bar almost every Wednesday night. It was named Lukes after Hank Williams alter ego, (Luke The Drifter.) The bar was a wild mix of bikers, cowboys, lumberjacks, native americans and transients with a few students from the university thrown in for good measure and for the most part everyone got along. I've really never experienced anything like it anywhere else. On any given night you could hear anything from Pink Floyd to George Jones and everything in between. It was a time in my life when I was young and adventurous and it was a great place for me to unleash my original songs as well as my favorite covers and establish some kind of stage presence. For better or worse I became a fixture there and mostly drank for free. Which was very important because I was also mostly broke *LOL* It was a time of my life I will never forget. And by the way, the bikes you see outside the bar in this pic were always there. Those guys rode year round and let me tell you it got cold up there. I've seen the thermometer hit 40 below! Those guys were bad-ass!! As I got to know them I learned that most of them were on the run from the law down South in California and liked Missoula because it was close enough to the Canadian border to allow them to scoot up there if they had to. You did not want to fuck with those guys and I'm glad I was on their good side. Sadly I hear the place is long gone and the whole area was yuppified years ago. I have a friend who still lives there and he says I wouldn't recognize the place. But ahhhhh the memories I have........

THE STALEMATE CONTINUES

There is an orange man talking on my TV and basically what he's saying is that absolutely nothing has changed down there in Washington, DC since the election.

ON THE NORTH KOREAN ROCKET LAUNCH

It sounds like the secret satellite laser defense test that our government performed yesterday was a great success.  I'd like to personally thank North Korea for donating their new rocket to the experiment. :o)

RAP HAS NO MELODY

Recently an acquaintance of mine told me that Rap and Hip Hop does have melody it’s just not melody in the traditional form.  He went on to explain that melody in Rap and Hip Hop is actually in the inflection of the vocal.  The melody is all in the way the rapper says what he is saying.  So this morning as I was having breakfast I pondered this.  I am, if anything, open to the idea that perhaps I have formed the wrong opinion of the genre, which is that it should not be considered a musical genre at all and is actually a spoken word genre.  As I tried to look at it from his point of view I literally laughed out loud and almost spit out my coffee.  When I pull up at the Taco Bell drive through window and order my usual three crunchy Taco Bell Grandes with extra hot sauce I am not using melody to convey my message.  I am talking.  Equally, when I yell at the guy who has just cut me off in traffic because he was so consumed with his cell phone that he didn’t see me I am not using melody to convey my message.  I am yelling.  Talking and yelling does not constitute melody and it is certainly not singing.  And therein lies the rub because that is what rappers do.  They talk and yell.  The fact that they do it over a rhythm and a beat does not make it a melody.  It is still just talking and yelling that happens to be happening over top of a rhythm track. They rhyme much of their ranting but it’s all greeting card bad so I really can’t even give them credit for writing or being lyricists.  It’s just absolutely horrible, third grade writing.  So needless to say I completely disagree with the concept that there is melody in Rap and Hip Hop and feel that my acquaintances attempt to justify it as a legitimate form of music is completely wrong.  My aquaintence also went on to say that the reason I have such disdain for the genre is because I am prejudiced, something that sounded quite strange coming from a 60 year old white guy and an accusation I didn’t even dignify with a response.  Hell, I don’t like Kung Fu movies either but it doesn’t mean I dislike Chinese people.  I simply do not like or respect the genre of Rap and Hip Hop or the people who are involved in the business of it.  I don’t feel that it is in the same league as the music I perform and/or listen to which involves people actually playing musical instruments and really singing.  I understand and accept the fact that it is a form of entertainment but I do not consider it to be music.  I think it’s a shame that our culture has not only accepted this form of entertainment as music but also rewarded the no-talent people who perform it and made many of them multi millionaires.  Children now grow up idolizing these guys and aspiring to emulate them.  Something that isn’t hard to do because they don’t actually have to learn to play a musical instrument or nurture a natural singing gift so the cycle continues.  And as this cycle feeds upon itself the whole entertainment industry gets dumbed down and in the process our whole culture gets dumbed down.  And so it goes . . .

MY FIRST BLOG POST

I’ve thought about having a blog for some time now.  I don’t really know why I should want one, it just seems like something I should have as part of the cyber side of myself.  Although I’m very computer literate and internet savvy I admit that I haven’t really been keeping up with the fast moving pace of technology.  I have had multiple internet domains to promote my music for years.  I have a personal Facebook page and a musician/artist Facebook page.  I have a twitter account but I do not use it.  I've only sent four tweets in a year.  I have a cell phone but I still only use it for verbal communication and I haven’t moved into the world of smart phones.  Mine is an old flip style phone and I don't text with it, don’t take pictures with it, don't surf the internet on it and I have downloaded no apps to it.  I have also not yet bought a tablet or electronic book reader.  I still read my books and magazines the old fashioned way and I still surf the internet on a traditional computer.  I do have an Ipod and have embraced the convenience and portability of the technology but I still prefer to buy CD’s over downloading music so that I can read the liner notes and overall I still prefer the audio quality of analog.  And now I have a blog and I’m wondering just what I’m going to do with it.  Somehow it all just seems to be too much!!  What am I supposed to do with all this cyber space that’s available to me??  What do I fill it with and where do I find the time to fill it??  It seems I would have to be connected and entering content continually just to be able to keep everything tied together.  Twitter, Facebook, blogging, website uploads, texting, skype, email.  It's mind boggling!!  And in taking the time to deal with all of this available cyber communication how much of the real world will I be missing??  The connection I have with nature and the planet. Tasting the salty smell of the Bay as my sailboat catches the wind, digs in and begins to slice through the waves.  Sitting at the waters edge on a hot, humid Maryland night under the twinkling stars and full moon watching the aerial light show dance of fireflies  against the contrast of the dark woods on the other side of my small cove.  Walking on a brisk, late November evening as a damp, foggy warm-front gives way to a windy cold -front that is opening the door for the coming Winter.  The real world sights, sounds, smells, interactions and experiences that I enjoy and that have made me the person I am.  I realize that I am fast growing old and that I am not of a generation that has grown up with and/or is growing up with all of this technology that surrounds them.  They know nothing other than this and they are faster, quicker and smarter than I'll ever be at figuring out and utilizing it all.  Still, I have to wonder if something isn’t being given up in exchange for this instant and interconnected world we now live in.  There is a yin and a yang in life.  A tidal ebb and flow.  Something found means something lost and I think something is in the process of being lost.  Maybe it's not necessarily a bad thing, I don't know.  Only time will tell I guess but what I do know is that it's all moving too fast for me.  I'm slowing down while the world is picking up speed.  Are we speeding toward a sociological or civilizational crash and burn or are we evolving toward a new and different level of enlightenment??  I have no idea.  The question I'm currently pondering is whether it's worth it to try to keep up with it all.  Oh, and just what the hell I’m going to do with this blog.  Hmmmmm