Social Media Challenges

On April 9, 2020, my old friend Levant Tinaz presented me with a social media “challenge”

What was I supposed to do?

Well, I’ve now made my mind up. My response, of course, is inspired by one of my Idols, Caleb Miles, who i observed responding to the same challenge, breaking all the rules… I’ll go at least that far. First, the rules I might go by…

• An album shall be defined as a visual or acoustic story. Hmmm… just a story.
• I will not deliver a story every day, for ten days. I will deliver these stories about the shapers of my musical taste when ever i feel like it, and however i want…
• Truth be told, the music (in my head) has been mostly shaped by human beings, experiences with people, groups (bands) and wreckers of the heart. These are the songs my life is made of…

This, the first episode, will consist of a few short paragraphs, each dedicated to a “random” (haha!) person, and various way’s they made impact on my understanding of the world (music)…

At some point in the early 90’s, Levant Tinaz, and I worked as Hackists at a company called ATI Technologies. We were part of a team that provided Billieboy with one of the greatest upsets in his career as world improving fake… By the end of that story we had not only hacked the windows operating system to multiply it’s video performance. We also were immersed in a culture of “Propeller Heads”. We were players in the most addictive computer game ever devised: The programming and design of integrated circuits, the movement of most valuable algorithms from software into chips. These could be touched and packaged. They had physical weight, thus a perceived value, and they made some people a significant amount of money. Most or all of us on that team are 99%’ers, a quarter of a century later. The lessons: Change comes from the bottom up, while the benefits “trickle” top down… or… Contributions have no causal relationship with rewards

Have you ever known somebody like Roxeen Roberts? There’s somebody who you can talk to about anything. Houses, guitars, musicians, animals, kids, farming or food. And, no matter what the topic of the conversation is, she’ll always come out and sing the hook line of a song that is related to the topic. It’s people like that, who make me feel alright about my inability to separate music from anything: If it’s love, it’s everywhere.

In the late 70’s and early 80’s some young adults in the town of my childhood hung out in a small cafe. Most of my dead friends hung out there. There was a table top video game with two opposing seats. I drank whole bottles of Johnny Walker with my older jailbird guitar playing friend. Groups would temporarily leave the place to go smoke black Afghan, red Lebanese or green Moroccan (Hashish) in a back alley. The two (non gendered) washrooms were often occupied by the hour with buddies shooting up heroin, and 10% of the Jukebox was stocked with freaking cool songs like “Sitting on the Dock of the Bay” or “Me and Bobby McGee”… The down and out learn different things. Faster. With less chance of survival.

That friend of mine, who says: “I’m not musical”. Then they have the coolest stereo in their car. They know the names of all the ole Rock’n’Roll bands. They know of the French cabaret singers and the lyrics of 1950’s songwriters by heart. They’ll sing, in or out of tune, in or out of time, the songs that touched their souls with more feeling and conviction than many a “professional”. On their drunken way home from the pub, they’ll belt out the most offensive and inappropriate songs at the top of their lungs. Music enters humans, and shines out of them, whether they know it or not.