Trashcanvas

The Return of Robert Blake, Robert Sarazin Blake that is

2012-02-02T08:52:00.000-08:00

For several years now, Robert Sarazin Blake travels from the northwestern-most corner of the most northwestern state to visit us here in Missouri.

The first show was a chance encounter in a basement. The Seven Shot Screamers and Bad Folk were both asked to play. Members of both bands, but neither band in its complete form, showed up to play acoustic sets. Despite the person who booked the show not being there nor the people who lived in the house above, those that were there in the basement were treated to a nice evening of music.

The following year, Bad Folk, once again without its complete line-up, joined The Adversary Workers in another basement for a show with Robert Blake.

Out of the underground, Blake has staged shows on actual stages in the intervening years. One of my current projects, The Union Electric, played its first show at Off Broadway with Robert Blake and his drummer Jordan Rain in 2009.

Now, seven years after that first basement show, former Bad Folk Tim Rakel, former Seven Shot Screamer Chris Powers, and former Adversary Worker Glenn Burleigh will reconvene with Robert Blake during a series of shows around the area.

Here are the details:
Wednesday, February 22 - RSB at the Urban Chestnut Brewery

Wednesday, February 29 - RSB, Irene Allen, The Union Electric and The Red Headed Strangers at El Lenador. Spend your extra leap year hours drinking Stag beer, won't you...

Thursday, March 1 - The David Mafield Parade, Bob Reuter's Alley Ghost and Robert Sarazin Blake at The Heavy Anchor

Saturday, March 3 - Robert Sarazin Blake and The Griddle Kids (featuring Chris Powers) at Mangia Italiano

Blake / Union Electric tour:
Thursday, March 8 - Springfield, MO with Angry Panda
Friday, March 9 - Columbia, MO
Saturday, March 10 - Kirksville, MO

That Great Atomic Power Scared Charlie Louvin More Than God

2011-12-23T13:13:00.000-08:00

"There's a White House war machine, the one Wilson switched on, waited long enough and joined the side that won..."

Thus begins my damning chronicle of the presidential lineage of America's twentieth century. The song was supposed to be specifically about Harry Truman, Missouri's only contribution to the whole mess, but I got carried away by history. I found I couldn't write about the president out of context. It would be like trying to write the biography of Mr. Punch without referring to his beating of Judy and the conquering of his various foes, not to mention his status as puppet under the control of another's story-line.

The process started with the title. I often come up with that before the lyrics are finished, as a guiding inspiration and to keep things focused. Ten or twelve years ago I discovered The Louvin Brothers and their Christian-flavored bluegrass, such as the album "Satan Is Real". Their song "That Great Atomic Power" struck me as an anomaly in their repertoire. They were talking about Jesus again but they were relating it to this political issue at hand.

About the same time, I began reading Howard Zinn's "A People's History of The United States" and began a lengthy list of near verses noting the history of atrocity that was American politics of the twentieth century. It had to be pared down, so I focused on what led to Truman's appointment and the Fifties culture that followed his epoch, all the while keeping a watchful eye on that looming nuclear presence.

Then, my Bad Folk bandmate Joey Gavin and I were playing one day and we started in on "White House Blues", played by many old time musicians including Charlie Poole on the Anthology of American Folk Music. How could I have not thought of ripping off that chord progression for this particular song's purpose?

As we enter another election year, I join many in their disappointment with Barack Obama's term. The second George Bush dragged this song's relevance into this twenty-first century and the current man has also neglected to cut his puppet strings, tying him to this shameful history as well.

"Truman" or "#33"

There's a White House War machine, the one Wilson switched on, waited long enough and joined the side that won. Roosevelt was dying, they had to find a man who would keep things running just like they planned. Henry Wallace said what he really thought and there's no room for that, no chance for that to move up in Washington.
When Roosevelt died, they had Truman move in, left all the furniture exactly how it had been. "Show me" a man who would seem to take a stand, got the White House blues all across this land. MacArthur covers a whole nation's eyes and he waits for William Laurence to come claim his prize, Hiroshima to Washington. That great atomic power, scared Charlie Louvin, scared him more than God.

Drop the little boy and the fat man, now you got the whole world with the Marshall Plan. The doctrines were in order, they just needed a name, almost any other man, it would have been the same, it's a shame in Washington. Now you have to close your eyes to deny the rumors, the working class, we're all consumers. Truman left the White House, his job was done, left all the furniture for the next one, Eisenhauer to Washington. The Rosenbergs were still in prison, going to the chair, now there's a new man in the White House, it doesn't change a thing, in Washington. Because that great atomic power, scared Charlie Louvin, scared him more than God.

Some of the catalogue for sale, 2001-2011

2011-11-01T16:18:00.000-07:00

If you've found this and want to order a copy of any of these recordings, we'll do our best to accomodate. For The Union Electric, please visit our page at Bandcamp.com

You may send a check or well-concealed cash to the PO Box address below. You may also send your virtual funds by PayPal to mystery@kdhx.org or by Amazon payments to graveyardshift@kdhx.org - All prices include shipping, just send a note or e-mail to let me know what you're ordering.

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Full-length records/CDs:

The May Day Orchestra "Ota Benga" CD/2xLP (2010, Rankoutsider Records)
(Ten songs recorded with Kevin Buckley and featuring members of Tenement Ruth) $12 per CD / $20 per double LP (both include shipping)

The May Day Orchestra "May Day, or Songs For Lucy Parsons" 12" LP (2009)
(Eight songs written and performed by members of Bad Folk, The Rats & People and Theodore) $13

Tim Rakel & The Puppet Wranglers "33 Degrees and raining" CD (2001)
("the early years", fifteen songs recorded in Lawrence, KS) $7

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7" Records:

Bad Folk 7" EP (2007)
("That Great Atomic Power Scared Charlie Louvin More Than God", "Active Treason" and "The Band Played Waltzing Matilda", cover art by Dana Smith and printing by Firecracker Press) $7

Bad Folk "Saw A Circus" (2007)
(split single features a song by The Rats & People on opposite side) $7

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Compilation CDs (available while supplies last):

"A Very Bert Dax Christmas, Volume 8" (2010, Pancake Productions)
(features tracks by Beth Bombara, Cassie Morgan, Glass Teeth, and a cover of "Jack Frost Is Innocent" written by The Ex and performed by The Union Electric) $7

"The Space Parlour: Live In Saint Louis Series 2009"
(features live recordings by The May Day Orchestra, Pokey LaFarge, Glass Teeth, So Many Dynamos and more) $7

"A Very Bert Dax Halloween" (2008)
(features a 'Day of the Dead' song played by members of The May Day Orchestra) $7

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PayPal: mystery@kdhx.org
Amazon Payments: graveyardshift@kdhx.org
Check, cash or money order: payable to
Tim Rakel
PO Box 63098
Saint Louis 63163

November shows and beyond

2011-10-28T08:45:00.000-07:00

The Union Electric's upcoming shows:
Wednesday, November 9 at The Firebird, with Magic City and Atlanta's Gringo Star.
Saturday, November 12 at Stagger Inn (Edwardsville, Illinois), with Dibiase.

Upcoming solo gigs:
Friday, November 11 at the Urban Chestnut Brewing Company, 8-11PM, with Alvy Caby and Chad Ross of the band Rusty Nail. They'll be playing songs from their new double LP.
Friday, November 25, also at Urban Chestnut, with Melinda Cooper of The Union Electric. She'll be playing songs from her solo project called Town Car.

Rumors of war:
The May Day Orchestra will return early next year with a new "folk opera". I'm writing again after some delay in the work on this one. I spent a summer in Mombasa, "Kisiwa cha Mvita" in the local Swahili, and will be telling a historical tale from the "island of war" with the next set of May Day songs.

The films of Sergei Eisenstein

2011-09-18T12:55:00.001-07:00

Monday night, September 19, will be the third of four nights where The Rats and People Motion Picture Orchestra will perform a different live score to a silent film. This week, they present Eisenstein's "Strike!", which was made early in his career, right before his better-known "Battleship Potemkin".

Opening the show will be The May Day Orchestra, performing their folk opera "May Day, or Songs For Lucy Parsons". This music will accompany a later, unfinished film by Eisenstein called "Que Viva Mexico!". The German anarchists of Chicago and the customs of Mexico will be united under the roof of El Lenador, a feat no other venue could accomplish.

May Day Orchestra, 10PM -
Rats and People, 11PM -
free show, donations welcome

Next week, The Rats and People will perform their score to "Go West" by Buster Keaton. Mustard Rob will be returning to Saint Louis from his tour to open the final show of this month's residency.

The Handsome Family

2011-09-12T13:10:00.000-07:00

The May Day Orchestra will double as a cover band this weekend. Usually I might scoff at such an idea but what if it was a cover band performing the songs of The Handsome Family? Okay then.
Melissa Anderson suggested the idea a while ago. Her band Tenement Ruth already covers "So Much Wine" at their shows, so we decided to go ahead with it and learn a handful more.
This Saturday, therefore, September 17 at noon, in the parking lot of a beer festival, we'll try it out. Schlafly's Hop In The City festival might not yet know what they're in for. Perhaps this will be the one and only time, but perhaps we'll do it again after because their songs are something unique.

The second 7" record, August 2010

2011-08-18T13:01:00.000-07:00

Reprinting the lyrics to this 45 record, now that the band is selling more digital copies of these songs than actual records...

Thyalcine (words taken from the poem of the same name by Stefene Russell)

suitcase jaw, knife stripes, they eat the bones
no bloody feathers blowing against the salty grass
and the chimera shadow, the flip book
with jowly wolf head and hindquarters of a tiger
and a middle part that we don't know how to name

suitcase jaw, knife stripes, they eat the bones
the farmer's children slam the closet door
pull the hems of coats and dresses over their eyes
at the thought, at the thought of croupy barking
pull the hems of coats over their eyes

suitcase jaw, knife stripes, they eat the bones
but the gait, three animals put together
the book says awkward, though tireless
like the one who can't keep up, far down the path
three rhythms that trip off a little migraine of the heart

suitcase jaw, knife stripes, they eat the bones

Bugs (adapted from the true story told by Ross Lessor)

the old man worked for the chemical company
when he retired moved out to the country
that old house on the river was infested
called on the phone and siad he had to move
all those years in a blue jump suit, working for the chemical company
mixing, fixing to kill, mixing pheromones with the poison
that's how you kill them, attract them to the posion
one last phone call from that old man
the bugs are killing me

old man worked for the chemical company
mixing, fixing to kill
all those years making DDT until he himself radiates it
built a new house every step by hand
new wood, new ground, up on a hill
but these things are futile if you've been mixing to kill
that's how you kill them, attract them to the posion
one last phone call from that new house
the bugs are killing me, he said

and the heart attack was from the shock of how well it worked
and how they'd come for him in the end
at the end of that dirt road
the bugs are killing me he said
and the neighbors found him dead
shine a light on this infestation
exterminator down

Arrington de Dionyso's Malaikat dan Singa in Saint Louis

2011-05-24T11:20:00.000-07:00

On Friday, June 3, Arrington de Dionyso will play Saint Louis for the first time in his 15-year musical career. He is touring in support of his newest K Records release "Suara Naga", an album sung in Indonesian.

Saint Louis' own The Union Electric and The Volcanoes (from Saint Charles) will open the show. Doors open at 8PM at the Jefferson Warehouse, 2501 South Jefferson.

Check out Arrington de Dionyso's music. His band Old Time Relijun has released several albums over the past decade. It is wild and compelling music of a sort that you probably don't hear often enough. Unknown to the point of scaring some people, but be brave readers and listeners, it's worth the attention. De Dionyso has also collaborated with Thollem McDonas, a more frequent visitor to Saint Louis, in a group called The Naked Future. I happened to buy this record from McDonas a year ago while he was touring with his band Tsigoti. Malaikat dan Singa fits into this tradition that De Dionyso has created for himself, with rock guitar, strange horns and some throat-singing for good measure.

The Union Electric's new 45, "Tunnels" b/w "An Irish Orphan" will be available at the show before its official release later this summer. Pressed on marbled purple vinyl.

Upcoming shows in Saint Louis

2011-05-06T08:40:00.000-07:00

My friend Joe Eisenbraun reminded me that I hadn't updated this blog in months. It's not like I haven't been doing anything worth mentioning - quite the opposite actually.
Both bands have been busy, especially The Union Electric. We went on a short tour in March with Robert Sarazin Blake of Bellingham, Washington, http://sarazinblake.com/ and another in April with the Fervor of Louisville, Kentucky, http://www.thefervor.com/cms/. We opened for Dax Riggs last weekend,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dax_Riggs, and are releasing a new 45 on Rankoutsider Records this summer. The new record will be available, before its official release, at our shows in June.

Speaking of which, some upcoming gigs:

Tim Rakel, solo, trading sets with Alvan Caby and Chad Ross of the band Rusty Nail - Saturday, May 21 at Urban Chestnut Brewery, 3229 Washington (near Compton). 8PM
Rusty Nail's kickstarter project: http://kck.st/eiUgFT

The Union Electric - Friday, June 3 at the Jefferson Warehouse, 2501 S. Jefferson, opening for K Records artist Arrington de Dionyso, best known for his band Old Time Relijun. 9PM
Arrington de Dionyso's Malaikat dan Singa: http://krecs.com/html/artists/artistbio.php?interest=60

The Union Electric - Friday, June 17 at Foam, 3359 S. Jefferson. 8PM. Middle Class Fashion and a touring band from Ohio are also on the bill.

The May Day Orchestra - Saturday, June 18 at the Schlafly Tap Room, 2100 Locust. 9PM.
Nighty Night from Carbondale, IL will play after us.

new compilation and other christmas gifts

2010-11-23T17:57:00.000-08:00

Pancake Productions and the Bert Dax Calvalcade of Stars have collaborated to release a new edition of a local compilation, "A Very Bert Dax Christmas, Volume 8".
The Union Electric chose to cover a song by the Dutch punk band The Ex, one of my favorite bands. Read more about them here www.theex.nl ---
The song deals with nuclear winter a little more than it does the Christmas holiday, but our guitar player Glenn Burleigh got the riff down and brought out a guitar pedal that had been sitting around a while unused. We think it was a good and worthwhile recording.

Speaking of Christmas and gift-giving...
Physical copies of many records are available by mail. Just inquire by a charming old-fashioned letter or at the e-mail address below.

Tim Rakel
PO Box 63098
Saint Louis 63163

You may send a check or well-concealed cash to the PO Box above. You may also send your virtual funds by PayPal to mystery@kdhx.org or by Amazon payments to graveyardshift@kdhx.org - All prices include shipping, just let me know what you're ordering.

Bad Folk "Propaganda" 7" (2007)
(three songs with a cover drawn by Dana Smith and printed by Firecracker Press) $7

The May Day Orchestra "May Day, or Songs For Lucy Parsons" 12" LP (2009)
(8 songs written and performed by members of Bad Folk, The Rats & People and Theodore) $13

The Union Electric 7" (2009)
(Three songs, "Sentence", "You Have Been Served" and "Ship Out Of Luck", cover painted by Dana Smith) $7

The Union Electric 7" (2010)
(Two song 45, "Thylacine" and "Bugs", cover designed by Sleepy Kitty) $7

The May Day Orchestra "Ota Benga" CD/2xLP (2010)
(Ten songs featuring members of the original May Day Orchestra as well as members of Tenement Ruth) $12 per CD / $20 per double LP (both include shipping)

"A Very Bert Dax Christmas, Volume 8" CD (2010)
(featuring tracks by Beth Bombara, Cassie Morgan, Glass Teeth, and a cover of "Jack Frost Is Innocent" written by The Ex and performed by The Union Electric) $7 while supplies last

Asbestos Sister

2010-11-23T17:39:00.000-08:00

Dana Richard Smith, whose blog you can connect to over there to the right...,
has created record covers for my bands a few times now.
The May Day Orchestra has just released an LP and CD sporting a recent painting of his on the front. My old band, Bad Folk, released a 7" record with a series of Dana's historical character drawings in 2007. He even painted a cover for the 2008 full-length by Bad Folk which was never released. Still, a nice painting.
Dana Smith has also done cover art for bands such as The Dirty 30s and Bunnygrunt.
Perhaps my favorite work of his was painted for the first 7" record by The Union Electric, released last December. This painting hangs in Dana's hallway last I was there and his young son Louis was intrigued by the small replicas of the picture I had brought along to give to his dad.
Paintings and Records, that's what I wanted to tell you about.

Art Show / Rock Show
Friday, December 10 - 7PM sharp - Vintage Vinyl - University City, MO
Dana Smith, The Union Electric and Bunnygrunt

Music sets by two rock bands, music-related paintings displayed and up for sale.
CDs and records corresponding to the paintings will also be available since the show's at a record store.

Thanks from the May Day Orchestra

2010-11-13T08:10:00.000-08:00

The May Day Orchestra hosted a CD and LP release at the Sheldon this past week and we were impressed by the number of people that showed up to see us along with eight guest musicians and two other bands. Thanks to all who came to listen. Thanks to Theodore and The Rats and People Motion Picture Orchestra for their opening sets and for playing along with us. Thanks to Chad, Kevin and Dominique who also joined our ensemble for the evening. Thanks to my family members who worked the door and friends who tried to sell the new records and CDs.

It was certainly a special night for local music in Saint Louis.

We still have copies for sale in many places. The CD will be released nationally on Tuesday, November 16 - ask for it in your favorite record store. They are also available for order through CD Baby.
The vinyl album is available in four independent record stores in Saint Louis. Outside our hometown, this limited pressing of the double 45rpm 12" has to be ordered directly from us. Feel free to contact me at mystery@kdhx.org to have one sent to you. $20, includes shipping.

May Day Orchestra at the Sheldon - Wednesday night only!

2010-11-09T06:19:00.000-08:00

The May Day Orchestra's official LP and CD release show happens tomorrow, Wednesday, November 10 at the Sheldon Ballroom.

The May Day Orchestra headlines the show, along with the full "Ota Benga Family Band", a 13-piece ensemble to be witnessed for one night only.

Members of Tenement Ruth, The Union Electric, Grace Basement, Rusty Nail, The Skekses, Theodore and The Rats & People will all join in to perform songs from the new record "Ota Benga".

Doors open at 7PM, cost is $12 cash.
The Rats and People Motion Picture Orchestra begins the evening at 8PM with an excerpt from their film score to "Haxan", a surreal Swedish film from the 1920s. The full score will debut with next Friday at the International Film Festival - come get a preview.
Theodore follows with their multiple instruments and great songs - they have dozens to choose from and whichever they play will be good listening.

The new CD will be for sale for a low price of $10 and the double vinyl album for $15. All other related releases from The Union Electric and Tenement Ruth will also be available as well.
Support local music.

Chinese Tunnels

2010-09-08T13:19:00.000-07:00

The lyrics to the newest song by The Union Electric were inspired by a chapter in William Vollmann's 1300-page book "Imperial" which was published last year. The thing that first struck me was a passage about masses of people coming up from the ground when there was a widespread fire. "Like ants" one observer said. Worker ants. The song has yet to make it into our live set but it's coming soon. It's about Mexican immigration issues even if the characters are Chinese people from a hundred years ago. This is how I often work, take something a century old, hold up a mirror, and you don't even have to change the names. I have to believe Tijuana and Nogales have similar tunnel worlds going right now.

The 45 single will be available in Spring 2011 from Rankoutsider Records.

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In the shadow of the mountain of gold,
there are stories of tunnels of which no one speaks
In the days of the great fires raging,
when people came up, up from the ground

Under the street, like some late-night dream,
there's a tunnel under the Hotel Imperial
Building a railroad, a gold rush underground
Inventors of paper, inventors of gun powder

They came for work but they were not wanted,
condemned with the rats and the trash
They were not wanted here, so they go somewhere else
and now there are tunnels from here to there

Believe in something that you've never seen,
believe because it has to be there
That secret dragon haunts that desert,
in the heat with the whirlwinds and the quicksand

The ghost of that dragon haunts the desert
in the secret world along the borderlands
The hopeful and the hopeless all run together
and all night the people sing, please, send money home

Thylacine (on 45 and digital)

2010-07-24T09:12:00.001-07:00

The Union Electric's new 45 features a "scored poem" called "Thylacine".
The lyrics are taken from Stefene Russell's poem of the same name from her collection "The Extinction of the Species".

The track is available now through iTunes and Amazon's digital music sites.
If you are more interested in the physical artifact, it's a nice one. The records are pressed on randomly-mixed colored vinyl and feature a custom-designed cover by Sleepy Kitty Graphic Arts.

The Union Electric plays an official release show with film accompaniment by VJ Evil Che at Mangia Italiano in Saint Louis on August 14. Opening sets by Beth Bombara and Cassie Morgan.

--- This new record and all my others are available by check or through PayPal - mystery@kdhx.org - payment may be sent to this address as well as e-mail orders.

Music, Music, Music

2010-05-10T16:20:00.000-07:00

Here are some various updates on my three on-going music-related endeavors:

The Union Electric was nominated for a Riverfront Times Music Award. In the "best new band" category, one may vote for or against us by going to the website www.riverfronttimes.com - - -
The Union Electric plays a benefit for historic preservation on May 22 with Leadville & Pretty Little Empire. The event, called The Anti-Wrecking Ball Hootenanny, takes place at the Soulard Stable.
We will also play at Foam on June 4 and the Dubliner on June 5 as part of the aforementioned RFT Music Awards Showcase.

Here is a recent record review from the Eccentric Observer in Louisville.

http://leoweekly.com/music/reviews/union-electric

The May Day Orchestra played its third annual concert for May Day last week at Black Bear Bakery. There is video footage, five clips worth, on youtube. The group is at work recording its second full-length album, due out later this year. The next live show takes place at the Schlafly Tap Room on Friday, June 18 with Cassie Morgan and the Lonely Pine & Black James.

Mystery Train, my eclectic radio show on community station KDHX, 88.1 FM, airs every Monday morning from 10AM until noon. Tune in in real time or you can always listen to the last two archived shows on-line at the website www.kdhx.org - - -

Rankoutsider

2010-02-23T16:38:00.000-08:00

The May Day Orchestra has signed to Rankoutsider Records, an independent label based in Los Angeles. We will be releasing the "Ota Benga" folk opera later in 2010. If all goes well, this will be available on CD and vinyl record, as well as digitally.
Pat Todd, founder of the band The Lazy Cowgirls, has invited us to join his label which also includes Stace England & The Salt Kings among many other notable bands.

www.rankoutsiderrecords.com

www.myspace.com/maydayorchestra

May Day Orchestra - Live and Digital

2010-02-10T14:52:00.000-08:00

The May Day Orchestra's first recording "May Day, or Songs For Lucy Parsons" is still available in 12" vinyl format in Saint Louis from A-Pop Records, Euclid Records, and Vintage Vinyl. They are available in Chicago as well, at Permanent Records and Reckless Records.

The tracks are now available as digital downloads through PM Press of Oakland, CA. Just search for The May Day Orchestra in your favorite on-line music store and it should come up with "May Day or Songs For Lucy Parsons".

The May Day Orchestra, aka The Ota Benga Family Band, next performs its newest folk opera on Friday, June 18, at the Schlafly Tap Room. The Tap Room is at 21st and Locust in downtown Saint Louis.
Tim Rakel, Mary Williams, Melissa Anderson, Dave Anderson and Josh Weinstein will present the "Folk Opera Concerning the Congo Situation and the Life of Ota Benga" at 9PM.

Two of our recent shows have been with our Rankoutsider Records label-mates Stace England and The Salt Kings. Check out their newest CD "The Amazing Oscar Micheaux", as well as two previous albums of like-minded historically conscious-musical works. www.rankoutisderrecords.com - - -
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updated/reposted, May 10, 2010

Circular Anabasis, or Svejk at the Public Library

2010-01-12T16:24:00.000-08:00

"The major-general on the train says soliders aren't supposed to think..."

I've started, again, reading "The Good Soldier Svejk and His Adventures In the First World War". This book is the only thing keeping me sane... and it's hilarious.
Thanks Jaroslav Hasek.

More on this next time.

On A Monday ...

2010-01-04T16:00:00.000-08:00

Some friends of mine sent out a survey of ten questions about 2009 on New Year's Eve and KDHX asked me to name my favorite ten records of 2009. All this quantifying of activity during a seemingly arbitrary period of time...

One of the survey questions asked about a favorite book I read during the year and I replied with the following list, explaining that I work in a library. Mostly, it's that I like many different things for different reasons and I'd rather spend time listening to more records and reading more books than trying to figure out which is better by my own imagined standards. But this is by no means a list of the current best-sellers, I think the newest book I read this past year is ten years old.

some fiction:
Nick Cave "And The Ass Saw The Angel" - A book I bought several years back and never got around to... I don't know why, perhaps because a few early passages are dense and initially vague but this is one of the best-written books and creepiest narrative voices I've encountered. I've always liked his songwriting but I dare say this is even better work, as well as a logical mid-point between The Birthday Party and The Bad Seeds. It is perhaps more accessible than the Birthday Party but even more disturbing. It also has that deranged folk-influence that would develop more into work like the record "Murder Ballads".

Tayeb Salih "A Season Of Migration To The North" - A book I saw on the shelf of my May Day-bandmate Brien Seyle, by a Sudanese author not very well known outside the Arabic literary world. Salih died in early 2009 and this novel was reprinted by New York Review Books. As a one-time student of African Studies and English literature, somehow I missed this one until now. Two narrators, one within the first narrator's story, with an interesting take on a common theme of African novels, that of the modern collision between the traditional life of Africa and that of the Europeans.

Aleksandar Hemon "The Question Of Bruno" - A book of short stories by a Bosnian living in Chicago. I started reading this at the Public Library in downtown Alton, Illinois one day. I liked the stories because they stood up by themselves but also crossed over with each other, a few stray characters entering other worlds. Hemon has been compared to Nabokov on the premise of a his being a European who learned English as a second language and then used it more beautifully than its native speakers. He's also rather funny. Left Bank Books hosted Hemon ealier this past year as well for a reading from his newest collection.

some non-fiction:
Phillips Verner Bradford "Ota: The Pygmy In The Zoo" - A book which I've had for a while but finally read in its entirety this past year as I worked with the story of Ota Benga for a project of my own writing. Bradford is the grandson of Philips Verner, the man who brought Ota Benga to the United States and kept him at the World's Fair. The fair was demeaning enough but Ota Benga's life before and after that are revelatory tragedies of their own. From the loss of his family during the Belgian King Leopold's horrific colonial enterprise, Ota Benga took up with the strange white man as a door number two to avoid slavery. After the 1904 Fair in Saint Louis, he lived in the Bronx Zoo and later shot himself.

Ryszard Kapuscinski "The Emperor" and "Another Day Of Life" - Two of many books by the Polish journalist who died in 2008. "The Emperor" is made up of interviews with people in Ethiopia and documents the fall of Haile Selassie. Why people worship at the altar of that fallen leader will always escape me. "Another Day Of Life" is about the Angolan civil war of 1975. Kapuscinski went there as the state was crumbling, after Portugal's own king had fallen and its colonies were abandoned. As in his other books, the author makes himself out to be a bad-ass without ever trying, just simply describing the situatuions he's gotten himself into while keeping a keen eye on the politics of it all.

and some poetical non-fiction:
Vachel Lindsay "A Handy Guide For Beggars, Especially Those of the Poetic Fraternity" - I read some of this with an afternoon beer-buzz in a state park in Wisconsin under shelter from the rain, hoping the Springfield poet would appreciate it. This is one of Lindsay's collections of travel writing, interspersed with poems. Not exactly a memoir or a short story collection, but it works between those genres. Published originally in 1916, it makes a good case for going back to simpler things. The author made rules for himself about what time of day to beg a meal and avoided big towns and railroads, god forbid he had a cell phone out in those woods.

Speaking of technology, here is my list of CDs and records that I turned in to KDHX as my favorites of the past year.
Tinariwen "Imidiwan: Companions" - Nomad rock. Hypnotic and catchy music from a group of Mali's Tuareg people. Thanks to the French record producers that have helped the rest of the world get to hear them.
Sonic Youth "The Eternal" - It was so cool to see them play this summer on a stage in front of the Mississippi river as the sun set. The songs are consistently good on this one.
Tom Russell "Blood and Candle Smoke" - Another great live show I saw this past year, backed up by a good record. Calexico, one of my favorite bands, supports Russell's great stories with some of their trademark instrumentation.
Grace Basement "Gunmetal Gray" - My friend Kevin Buckley has been working on this one for a while. I think everyone that has heard this record has been impressed by it. Now if only more people got to hear it...
Mos Def "The Ecstatic" - I like rap when it's this intelligent. Just like with rock bands, it's so easy to sell out and make meaningless music, so it stands out when popular artists don't do that.
Scott Pinkmountain and The Golden Bolts Of Tone "The Full Sun" - Gino Robair, the drummer on this record, sent copies after his visit to Saint Louis. I think every musician in the San Francisco bay area may have had a hand in making this one.
Neko Case "Middle Cyclone" and Andrew Bird "Noble Beast" - They don't need my help with promotion but these two still make good records.
Stace England and The Salt Kings "The Amazing Oscar Micheaux" - A concept record of sorts from a history-minded rock band from southern Illinois.
Amadou and Mariam "Welcome To Mali" - More music from Mali, whose government at one point asked each of the country's seven regions to pick a band to represent their area. The results were national orchestras and some state-funded art.
There were plenty of other good records that didn't fit into my arbitrary list of ten. Maybe I'll elaborate next week.

Ship Out Of Luck

2009-12-12T15:38:00.000-08:00

"The Mermaid Song", as recorded by Bascom Lamar Lunsford, was the inspiration for this song. I couldn't get the verses or chorus out of my head so I listened to it on repeat until changed the lyrics in my head and started to sing about pirates and mutiny...

It is a lovely sea shanty in its original form. For The Union Electric, it is yet another song about economic woe. The tune and part of the shipwreck story is borrowed from Lunsford's recording. The traditional folk song was also the basis of a Carter Family song. The Union Electric version takes the sailors and storms and throws in an anti-imperialist theme. This song will eventually be part of a May Day Orchestra folk opera about colonialism, imperialism and piracy.

SHIP OUT OF LUCK

it was a dark black night when we set sail,
off on this journey of ours
the captain, he spied some golden thing
off on a foreign shore
up spoke the captain of this pirate ship,
what kind of man was he?
he said he'd seen a rich land on the distant shore and
tonight we will plunder that town
oh, the ocean waves may roll and the stormy winds may blow,
while we poor sailors are raiding the town
and haul the loot back to the ship

it was another dark night when we set sail,
then we was plundering again
we the sailors sit up on the mast
and the rest of the world rests below
up spoke the cook of this hungry ship,
said it's been days since we ate
beware the merchants and the tides
but we must find something to eat
oh, the ocean waves may roll and the stormy winds may blow,
while we poor sailors go towing the lines
while the treasure weighs the whole ship down

another black night when we set sail,
saw a port with many ships
it was the trade fleet of the king of the land,
those ships protected by the law
up spoke the mate of this gallant ship,
a well-spoken man was he
he said in these waters, once you launch,
there will be no going back
oh, the ocean waves may roll
and the stormy winds may blow
while we poor sailors are caught on board
while the ship is sinking down
throw the treasure overboard,
the ship is sinking down

You Have Been Served

2009-12-04T11:21:00.001-08:00

I found Lincoln Steffens' collection of articles, bound under the title "The Shame Of The Cities", in the Saint Louis Public Library. It's hidden away amidst the 7-story shelves, pneumatic tubes and glass floors of the stacks.
The story reminded me of the more recent scam to get the tax-payers of Saint Louis to fund a baseball stadium but this turn-of-the-last-century setting is more suited to the song. Either way, not much changes in Saint Louis politics.

It was still the era of Stagger Lee when the Suburban Railway scandal broke. Joseph Folk was elected circuit attorney of Saint Louis in 1900. During his campaign, he promised to fight corruption and those in power backed his appointment. In early 1903, he used an article by newspaper reporter Red Galvin to begin an invesitgation of the Suburban Railway Company. The embezzlement scheme involved in this business began to unravel and expose other corrupt operations. Folk prosecuted the very business leaders and law-makers that had encouraged his anti-corruption promises.

Joseph W. Folk (1869–1923) was elected Governor of Missouri for one term after his weeding of corrupt machine politics in the river city. Like John P. Altgeld, the Illinois politician, Folk also ruined his government career by doing the right thing. In Altgeld's case, he pardoned the three surviving Haymarket martyrs and had them released from jail.

You Have Been Served

no one on the farm, they've all gone to town
no one in the factory, the factory closed down
if you want a job, it's the service industry
all kinds of service with looting on the side
just another day in this shameful town,
we stand around and watch the whole rotten deal go down
they meet in south Saint Louis to pool their wealth,
enough to fix all the elections
a new standard of a honest man is one that stays bought once you pay him

corruption to the breaking point
Red Galvin take the lid off, look at this mess inside
the circuit attorney is hired to fight the criminals,
the easiest ones to find float right up to the top
a man named Folk stands alone, stand down they say,
let the status quo continue, let things go their way
selling out the people, that's bribery
the oldest tradition in our democracy

lick up and spit down, lick up and spit down,
now you have been served, you have been served
set the bribe-givers against the bribe-takers
take the whole thing down because bribery is treason

Sentence

2009-12-03T13:39:00.000-08:00

This song was originally recorded by the May Day Orchestra, with lyrics based on the testimony of Louis Lingg at his trial for his role in the Haymarket incident. His speech in court, delivered in his native German at his sentencing, included the line ending in "I despise you, hang me for it". Though four of the other convicted anarchists were hung in 1887, Lingg blew himself up in his jail cell before he could be executed. Several other lines in the song are adapted from quotes by either Lingg or one of the seven other Haymarket martyrs.

Sentence

if they didn't surpress us, we wouldn't have to speak up
if they didn't attack us, we wouldn't have to fight back
if our rights weren't violated there'd be no reason to rebel
this land is not free, only for fools
I don't recognize your law
I don't find you honorable
I despise you, hang me for it

The system is brutal and so are its thugs
they only know force, they only know violence
this land is not free, only for fools
why waste words, like carrying water to the sea
learn to use explosives and set yourself free

The First Union Electric Record

2009-12-03T13:17:00.000-08:00

The Union Electric's first recording will be available this month. The official release show is Wednesday, December 23 at Off Broadway in scenic Saint Louis, MO.
Just in time for the holiday-shopping season, this handsome 3-song, 7-inch record features a custom painted cover by local artist Dana Smith. His art is viewable at his website www.asbestossister.com or www.danarichardsmith.com

A limited number of transparent yellow copies will be available at the live shows. Standard black vinyl copies are also available at local record stores and digital downloads of the tracks are available on itunes and through bandcamp.

The record features a re-working of the song "Sentence", originally written for the May Day Orchestra as well as two others. "You Have Been Served" fills out Side A with a tale of economic woe and corruption. Side B features "Ship Out Of Luck", a folk song about pirates and economic woe. Members of Grace Basement, Ben Phillips and Kevin Buckley (who also recorded the tracks), play on this song.
A blog posting about each song will follow this one.

advance copies available
through the mail:
UNION ELECTRIC RECORDS
PO BOX 63098
SAINT LOUIS MO 63163

The Folk Opera Concerning the Congo Situation and the Life of Ota Benga

2009-10-24T13:23:00.000-07:00

The following is the text of the program distributed at the first performance of The May Day Orchestra's new piece.

1/ Never A Fair Wind Home

Ota Benga, the narrator of most of the story, was a pygmy from the territory once claimed as the Belgian Congo. He was born around 1881 and suffered the loss of his wife and children at a young age as the colonial enterprise overtook his former home in the forest. European colonialists, along with foreign and domestic mercenaries, terrorized many villages. Ota Benga returned from an elephant hunt to find his people victims of one such massacre.

2/ Dreamed Another Circus

The territory of the Congo was explored and made known to the western world by such men as Henry Morton Stanley. He became a celebrity of his day when he found the more benign David Livingstone, presumed missing in an unknown region of Africa. In this part of the story, Ota Benga, who was captured by a neighboring tribe and later sold to a white man at a slave market, believes he has died and is on a journey to the next world. That he is. Philips Verner, a curator for the anthropology exhibition of the World’s Fair, acquires Ota and several other pygmies and puts them on a ship. Here he dreams.

3-4/ Forced March I (Death Walks Along This Road)

After Stanley’s “discovery” of the Congo, his employer, King Leopold II of Belgium, and other European monarchs had a clearer map of Africa. In Berlin, in 1885, they each stuck a claim, having never seen the land itself. Leopold demanded the Congo territory as his personal colony.

Ota Benga was one of the millions of victims of slavery. Though the Atlantic trade had fallen out of favor in the western world, Leopold devised other methods of forced labor. The rubber and ivory trades enslaved much of the population, pitting whole villages against each other in a struggle to survive. The Europeans also employed and armed ex-criminals and other undesirables, sending them to the colonies to make their living with a hope of finding their fortune.

5/ The Irish Orphan

At this point in the story, Roger Casement is introduced. Casement was an Irishman who became the British Consul in the Congo. On his last trip to the area, he found the population decimated and began to inquire where all the people had gone. He met William Shepherd, a black American missionary who had been warmly welcomed by various tribes. Shepherd, as well as Edmund Morel and Joseph Conrad, informed Casement’s report to the British which condemned the state of Leopold’s colony. Shepherd and Morel found themselves at the center of one of the first international human rights causes.

6-7/ Forced March II (The Horror)

Roger Casement’s report on the Congo begins to cause trouble for Leopold’s colonial reign. Unfortunately, the damage had been done. Leopold had masqueraded as a compassionate ruler trying to help his poor subjects develop their country. This was done with the aid of one of the world’s first international, and overtly false, public relations campaigns. This method was dependent on fixing and censoring whatever news got out to the world from his colony. The death toll of this post-slave-trade era amounted to genocide and the total numbers do not include all the people who continued to live with mutilated limbs. Severed hands and other body parts were used by the mercenaries to prove how many they had killed, but just as often they took a trophy and the victims survived.

8/ The Spectacle

Ota Benga existed as a living anthropology exhibit at the Saint Louis World’s Fair for much of the year 1904. The Apache chief called Geronoimo was also at the Fair. He gave Ota an arrowhead that he had carved. The pygmy was well-liked and he entertained many visitors to the Fair. Some incidents did occur, whether attributed to anger or a sense of mischief (probably both). After 1904, Ota Benga eventually became an attraction at the Bronx Zoo. After some scandal about a man living in a cage, he was moved to an orphanage for colored children.

9/ The Execution Of Sir Roger Casement

Roger Casement joined the independence movement upon his return to Ireland and was accused of treason by the British. Even though they had previously employed him and knighted him for his service, he was condemned for his political stance. Amidst scandal and rumors of homosexuality, Casement was executed by hanging in 1916.

10/ The Suicide Of Ota Benga

Ota Benga lived out his final years in Lynchburg, Virginia where he found friends in an African American community. Many people called him “Otto Bingo”. He had little source of income and with the beginning of World War I, Ota Benga found it increasingly difficult to find a way to go back home. In 1916, he shot himself. The war over natural resources in the Congo continues to the present.

If interested in finding out more details of this story, there are several books as well as sites on the internet. For Ota Benga’s story, there is a biography called “Ota: The Pygmy in the Zoo” by Phillips Verner Bradford and Harvey Blume. There are a few biographies of Roger Casement from various perspectives and time periods. For the Congo history, Adam Hochschild’s book “King Leopold’s Ghost” is a good place to start. Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” is also recommended.

The Ota Benga Family Band:

Dave Anderson – pedal steel, keyboard, banjo, trumpet

Melissa Anderson – electric guitars, electric bass, lap steel

Kevin Buckley – fiddle

Tim Rakel – acoustic guitar, banjo, kalimba

Josh Weinstein – acoustic bass

Mary Williams - drums

The first May Day Orchestra folk opera, “May Day, Or Songs For Lucy Parsons” is available as a 12” vinyl record. The tracks may also be downloaded from several internet music sites.

For more information,

drop an old-fashioned line to:

Folk Opera Records

PO Box 63098

Saint Louis MO 63163

Twitter My Face

2009-10-17T13:49:00.000-07:00

-so the FBI doesn't have to work so hard...

Please connect your-my-space account to your-face-book and your-twitter (whatever a twitter is). This way our federal government will save time and therefore tax money when paying security agencies to monitor this stuff.

Remember, reporting everything you do keeps us all safe

Never A Fair Wind Home

2009-10-12T17:03:00.000-07:00

The May Day Orchestra will perform its second "Folk Opera" on Friday, October 30 at the Black Bear Bakery in Saint Louis. This debut performance will take place at the anarchist co-operative cafe where the first May Day project began.
The band is different this time, with Tim Rakel as the only member in common with the first ensemble. The Ota Benga Family Band, as the Orchestra is calling itself this time, consists of Kevin Buckley of the band Grace Basement, Melissa Anderson, Dave Anderson and Mary Williams of the band Tenement Ruth. More musicians may be added for performances after this month's debut.
The sound of this musical piece, titled "Never A Fair Wind Home", is also different than the first folk opera. There are fiddles, trumpets, guitars and banjo as in the previous work, this time with the addition of pedal steel and lap steel guitars, as well as drums.
The subject of this folk opera is also different but comes from a similar time period as the first. The subject is Ota Benga, a pygmy who was bought at a slave market in the Congo and brought to the United States for the 1904 World's Fair in Saint Louis. The songs tell some of the Congo's colonial history and follow Ota Benga on his journey to his strange new home. A coincidental story about Roger Casement, an Irish patriot once in the employ of King Leopold, is also told.
See the previous post from May 2009 labelled "Ota Benga" for more detail.
A biography of Ota Benga by Philips Verner Bradford informs much of the historical detail. Bradford is the grandson of the man, Philips Verner, who bought and brought Ota Benga to the Fair.
The performance on October 30 begins at 8PM. The Black Bear Bakery is located at 2639 Cherokee Street in Saint Louis, MO.

The May Day Orchestra's first recording "May Day, Or Songs For Lucy Parsons" is available in vinyl format from A-Pop Records, Black Bear Bakery and Vintage Vinyl. As of this week, the tracks are also downloadable from iTunes, lala.com and other internet stores.

The Tasmanian Tiger

2009-09-05T14:22:00.000-07:00

I just got an email earlier this week that September 6, 1936 was the day the last surviving Thylacine died in captivity in a Tasmanian zoo. The Thylacine was a marsupial predator that lived "down under" until the entire species was hunted to extinction.
There's a band from Columbia, MO called Ptarmigan who wrote a song about the animal as well. I'll have to set up a show with them sometime.
Coincidences always seem to occur in my basement at the end of each summer, so this past weekend, on the anniversary of Thylacine's extinction, The Union Electric was practicing its newest song, an adaptation of the poem "Thylacine" by Stefene Russell, set to some chords I assigned to it and some riffs that the band contributed.

---

From Stefene Russell's series of "dead species" poems

"Thylacine"

suitcase jaw, knife stripes
they eat the bones

no bloody feathers blowing
against the salty grass
and the chimera shadow
the flip book
with jowly wolf head and hindquarters
of a tiger and a middle part
that we don't know how to name

the farmer's children slam the closet door
pull the hems of coats and dresses over their eyes
at the thought of croupy barking

but the gait
three animals put together
the book says awkward, though tireless
like the one who can't keep up
far down the path
three rhythms
that trip off a little migraine of the heart

---

Everything I write now seems to be about people (and now animals) in cages. Apparently my cover songs and adaptations are falling into the same subject catagory.

May Day 8

2009-09-05T13:27:00.000-07:00

Some random facts:
Lucy Parsons wrote a biography of her late husband in the 1890s.
On July 7, 1905, she was present at the founding convention of the Industrial Workers of the World.
One of her children, Albert, Jr., was a politically reactionary youth and died in an asylum at a young age.
Lucy Parsons continued her activism among the socialists, communists and anarchists of the early 1900s, continuing to be a figure of controversy wherever she went.
She died in a house fire at an old age.

The Red Flag (another last song for Lucy Parsons)

it's the widows and the orphans who will carry on
they carry on through all of this despair
with a faith as quiet as an altar in your front room
not a street corner preacher, someone so hellbent on your doom
so light a candle for each and every saint
carry on and light one for all eight
you have nothing but the dream that you hold dear
carry on and keep the red flag flying here

all you toilers, take the tools
and all you workers, take what you produce
you have nothing but the ideal which you hold dear
carry on and keep the red flag flying here
they want you passive, they want you disorganized
they want you in factions, fearing for your lives

May Day 7

2009-09-03T09:50:00.000-07:00

Part Seven is somewhat out of place in the Haymarket chain of events. The focus is off Lucy Parsons for a moment after the death of her husband and the other three hanged martyrs. Chronologically this figures in as the period where others were attracted to anarchism by the events in Chicago. Among them were Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman and Voltairine de Cleyre.

The sub-title is borrowed from a Charles Kerr book, referring to he principle of syndicalism that encourages workers to rebuild society in the wreckage of capitalism.

I discovered the writings of both Jaroslav Hasek and Vachel Lindsay while working at Dunaway Books in 2003. Hasek was a Czech writer who lived 1883-1923, the same dates as Kafka, but in other parts of Prague. The two did meet but lived very different lives. He was arrested at least once for tearing down Austrian flags during the Great War.
Vachel Lindsay was a poet from Springfield, Illinois. He grew up and lived in a house once inhabited by part of the Lincoln family. He spent many of his early years walking through the country, avoiding railroads and begging for meals. He traded printed poems and performances for people's hospitality. Sort of an early spoken word artist and touring singer. One of his poems mentions sewing together a patchwork flag from the of emblems of all the nations torn apart.

Ragged Flag Blues (from the shell of the old)

I'm going to the grave for all of my crimes
I stole some bread and this tune because I needed them
I'm going to the grave for all of my crimes
with the state the world is in you'll not be far behind

I tore down the flag in the town square
I tore that flag to pieces
tear all the flags down, put them back together
so to sew them all together, piece them back together

May Day 6

2009-09-03T09:44:00.001-07:00

Albert Parsons fled north to Wisconsin to hide out after the Haymarket events. The Chicago Police were rounding up any and all anarchists and labor leaders for the crimes.
I imagined this as his last letter from prison, one of the few things in the May Day set of songs I didn't lift from actual speeches and writings. Some details are true though, Parsons stopped using black hair dye and lived under another identity.

Death Letter

It's Chicago's death row for me now
but they allowed this last letter
it was the hope of some justice that turned me back
i should have known better

kiss me, i don't know when or if i'll see you again
flee north to another town, let my hair grow white
take on another name and start another life
kiss me, i don't know when or if i'll see you again
this place will make you a tyrant or they'll have you a slave
i'll stand with you here in between as long as i may

Neither god nor chance can save me now
but they allowed this last letter

May Day 5

2009-09-02T18:42:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I've posted things here - even longer since I started the May Day series of postings. So, since it's "labor day" weekend...
The May Day vinyl album is out in stores and the tracks will be available soon on the internet as well.

Here's what Chris King thought about the demo version
http://confluencecity.blogspot.com/2008/12/rakel-and-rat-take-on-haymarket-in.html

Side B - I sang the first three lines of this one at a band practice with Glenn Burleigh and knew this song was written for The Union Electric too. There are two versions already released on LP and CD by the May Day Orchestra but I've recorded yet another for a Union Electric release.
The subtitle and repeated lines "this land is not free, only for fools" comes from one of the Haymarket martyrs' writings. Several of the lines are also taken from Louis Lingg, most notably his protest to the judge of his sentence in court which ended with the line "I despise you, hang me for it".

Sentence (this land is not free)

if the police didn't surpress us, we wouldn't have to speak up
if they didn't attack us, we wouldn't have to fight back
if our rights weren't violated there'd be no reason to rebel
this land is not free, only for fools
I don't recognize your law
I don't find you honorable
I despise you, hang me for it

The system is brutal and so are its thugs
they only know force, they only know violence
this land is not free, only for fools
why waste words, like carrying water to the sea
learn to use explosives ... set yourself free

Some relatively new songs

2009-06-05T06:55:00.000-07:00

The Union Electric has a web page at www.myspace.com/theunionelectric

Demo versions have been posted.

The songs up on the internet right now include "Sentence", a rock version of a song I wrote for the May Day Orchestra, based on the trial testimony of Louis Lingg.

"Ship Out Of Luck" is based on Bascom Lamar Lunsford's "Mermaid Song" but our version is about a pirate ship and mutiny.

Finally "Day Of The Dead" is a short number inspired by a sarcastic yet firmly existentialist quote by Samuel Beckett.

Ota Benga

2009-05-08T11:27:00.000-07:00

Ota Benga was a pygmy that lived in a zoo for a time. I couldn't make this up. He appeared at the World's Fair in Saint Louis in 1904 after being captured from the Congo. He was put on display in the anthropology exhibit at the Fair, his alternative being a life of dodging the mercenaries of King Leopold and various Belgian traders.
Roger Casement, an Irishman, visited the Congo and wrote a report about the atrocities he saw in Africa. This subsequently led to worldwide indictments of Leopold's colonial exploits. Ota Benga's family was among those killed in the years of genocide. He thought the white men from the US came from the land of the dead to take him back with them, so he went.
These are the major characters, both orphans, of my next Folk Opera, to be performed by The May Day Orchestra and the adjunct Ota Benga Family Band. Some of the other historical figures that enter the story are William Henry Sheppard, Henry Morton Stanley and Joseph Conrad.
Ultimately, in 1916, both protagonists died. Roger Casement, involved in the World War as well as the Irish independence movement, was executed for treason at the hands of the British. Ota Benga committed suicide after living twelve years in his strange new home.

More on this later.

The Reviews Are In ...

2009-04-29T18:34:00.000-07:00

The Union Electric is made up of well-known St. Louis musician Tim Rakel, Glenn Burleigh, and Eric Stockman. While the Union Electric has only been performing for a short time, their music has generated a strong reaction, but not from music critics. Strangely, while their pairing of pro-worker lyrics and country/folk influenced song writing has yet to gain them musical acclaim, it has ignited a firestorm on America’s political right.

Some excerpts follow:

“After years of warning my collegues, it is my hope that the emergence of yet another left-wing country band, The Union Electric, will finally convince my fellow members of congress that it is necessary to pass my bill, H.R. 9875, more commonly known as the “Screw Jay Farrar and Steve Earle Act of 2009”.”

-Republican House Whip, Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia

“The fact that The Union Electric, made up of documented anti-freedom activists Tim “May Day” Rakel, Glenn “All Power to the Soviets” Burleigh, and Eric “Von Damage” Stockman, are allowed to perform in pubic, is reason enough for Texas to secede from the Union.”

-Texas Governor Rick Perry

“ACORN!”

-RNC Chair Michael Steel

“The longer The Union Electric is allowed to perform, the more states will legalize gay marriage. It’s that simple. Both are abominations, affronts to God, and both must be stopped.”

-Pat Robertson

“It is well known that members of The Union Electric own copies of both the Communist Manifesto and the Qu’ran. The fact that these “musicians” are allowed to pollute the hearts and minds of American citizens stands as proof that the way of life that our fighting men and women have died for is in danger of extinction.”

-Fox News’ Glenn Beck

“There are two primary threats to western civilization. One is the Employee Free Choice Act, which would allow workers to freely choose to join a union, free of employer intimidation and firings. The other is The Union Electric.”

-US Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Tom Donohue

“When I hear bands like The Union Electric, I have no doubt as to why we are losing the War on Drugs.”

-Former First Lady Nancy Reagan

Record Store Day

2009-04-13T18:25:00.000-07:00

originally posted 4/13 and updated 4/23

Hey everyone -
The May Day Orchestra 12" record was made available for Record Store Day this past Saturday, April 18.
Record Store is a fictional holiday created to help save the dying independent record stores throughout the country.
My friend Robert Sarazin Blake and I played at Vintage Vinyl on the sidewalk in front of the store. Sanctioned busking in University City. They even had a PA and a sound man. Thanks to everyone who stopped and listened.
A-Pop and Euclid Records also had live bands that day. I caught part of the A-Pop sets, which were very cool.
Anyway, the May Day record is out at those three record stores as well as Black Bear Bakery. It will also be available at two gigs next week. The May Day Orchestra returns to Black Bear Bakery on May 1 and will play at City Art Supply the following evening as well.
Firecracker Press made some special posters that will be sold with the record while supplies last.

Sarazin Blake says it best, don't buy our record because we need the money, buy our record because it's a good one.

thanks for your support

A Union Electric

2009-04-06T17:10:00.000-07:00

A new band called The Union Electric debuts next Saturday, April 18, at Off Broadway in Saint Louis. My friend Eamon Toney from the band Bridgeton Air Defense came up with the name, which we used for one short set when his band backed me up.
The Union Electric features Glenn Burleigh, former bass player of The Adversary Workers, and Eric Von Damage, former drummer of The Adversary Workers and Corbeta Corbata as well as Bunnygrunt's current drummer. Our first bunch of songs include re-arranged material from Bad Folk and The May Day Orchestra as well as some new songs.
We will share the stage with our friend Robert Sarazin Blake, from Bellingham, Washington. Look his records up through his labels Same Room Records and Art Of The Underground.

May Day 4

2009-02-23T17:46:00.000-08:00

Part Four of the May Day Folk Opera.
German anarchists are on trial with the verdict already decided. Jay Gould, a rich industrialist of the time, had boasted that he could hire one half of the working
class to kill the other half.

Fighting words.

Only one of the men convicted of the crimes at Haymarket was actually present the night of the events in question.

THE TRIAL

railroaded to the scaffold, railroaded at express speed
railroaded to the scaffold, railroaded to the scaffold

they hire only half of us to kill the other half
these robber barons of this gilded age
a railroad through Chicago and the judges are appointed
appointed by the ones who own the railway lines

now people lose faith in a system such as this
no wonder one would turn to anarchy
now there are eight men put away in this prison
put on trial for philosophy

some of us are foreigners, all of us are workers
striking for wages and the eight hour day
but some of us want more, more than a written law
some of us want freedom, nothing less than freedom

now we stand convicted, just like we predicted
we are guilty of saying what was true and clear
against that mob of rich men we committed just one sin
we are guilty of saying that their end is near

the voices they strangle will still be heard
oh death is the leveller
and after this which side will you remember?

railroaded to the scaffold, railroaded at express speed
railroaded to the scaffold, railroaded to the scaffold

May Day 3

2009-02-17T12:45:00.000-08:00

The third part of the May Day folk opera is the Haymarket event itself. This has been documented so many times that I neglected to write words to describe it.
One of the better sources for the whole story surrounding this is Paul Avrich's 'The Haymarket Tragedy'.
Brien Seyle wrote the tune.
I've re-used it as the "hanging theme" in our next work when Roger Casement is put to death by the British government.

May Day 2

2009-02-15T13:48:00.000-08:00

The story begins with the principle characters, Lucy Parsons and her husband Albert. He was a civil war veteran who had become a union printer. He met Lucy Gonzalez in Waco, Texas. She was a seamstress and a thinker in common with Albert's views of social and political structures. Gonzalez was of varied ancestry, not only was she a mixed-blood African-American in the south but her other lineages were Mexican and indigenous. The bi-racial couple stood out already and on top of that they began publishing subversive literature. They moved away from Texas to Chicago in the early 1870s and found an environment no more welcoming, however they were not so isolated in their views and activism in the large city with its population of working class German immigrants. Once again, the text of this song comes, in part, from the writings and speeches of Albert Parsons and other Chicago anarchists.

CENTER OF THE STORM

up from Waco, where we're not welcome
up from Waco to Chicago
to the center of the storm
to the center of the storm
I said I still see slaves with longer chains
they said leave town or you will hang

you can vote for bread clothes and shelter
you can vote but they won't give you these things
leaders make the laws and live real comfortable
live off you workers like foreign kings

what you produce is no guarantee
toil and pray your time is gold
your time is gold and when you have no means
that's what gets sold, that's what gets sold

I said I still see slaves with longer chains
they said leave town or you will hang

May Day 1

2009-02-13T14:48:00.000-08:00

This is the official overture of the May Day Orchestra's first folk opera, musically and lyrically. The title refers to The Alarm, a newspaper published by Albert Parsons and Lucy Parsons, the main inspiration behind the whole piece.
I added the first couplet during the last edit of the whole composition, actually after the initial performance. The opening lines are shared by another song of mine but I thought it also fit into this whole set of songs quite well. The first line originally came from a Kenyan folk song lamenting that there were no young people left to take over the planting when Nairobi started to attract them away from their rural homes. The second (or third) folk opera will be set in Kenya. Anyway, I added the second line to bring it back to midwestern America, the rust belt and Chicago. The refrain, "this land has no wealth", was taken from the collected writings and speeches of Micahael Schwab. He was one of the Haymarket Eight and he eventually made it out of prison alive with a pardon from Illinois Governor Altgeld.
Some exposition in the verse where the horns come in gets repeated in the next song. I added the last set of lines because it is the godless anarchists who are the heroes of this story. Their opponents, in part, are the unthinking masses, indirectly controlled by the police and the christians, and convinced by the media that the anarchist cause was unpatriotic and harmful. We pull no punches here in the May Day Orchestra.

CAUSE FOR ALARM

no one on the farm
they've all gone to town
no one in the factory
the factory's been shut down

fields will lie fallow
machines will lie broken
this land has no wealth
without the workers
this land has no wealth

toil and pray
when you have no means
when what you produce is no guarantee
when they don't pay enough to buy bread
strikes across the country
the railway runs across the country
the policeman's club is brought down
on six days of the week
the preacher's bible is seven
brought down on the meek

Dostoevsky broke my left knee

2009-02-12T07:39:00.000-08:00

"Arielle Greenberg and Rachel Zucker are posting a series of poems relating in their own ways to Obama's first 100 days in office (one written for each day)and yesterday was my day". So writes my friend BJ Soloy from Des Moines last week.
Check out his poem (day 17) at http://100dayspoems.blogspot.com/ "Also,if you happen to be in yr local big box book retailer for some reason, look for Court Green 6, which I also snuck in".
I'm curious as to what Obama's reaction to the poem would be if he ever read it. I stole Mr. Soloy's words for this blog, I've borrowed quite a few lines from him over the years and given him a couple co-writing credits when I remembered where I stole them. It would be nice to have him around Saint Louis again for that and the fact that he's a fine guitar picker, a drummer and a clawhammer banjo player. I should have figured he'd end up in poetry journals back when we were in school together. He'd leave haikus and such under the windshield wipers of cars he knew. At least I suspect it was him. He came up with the rhyme "Dostoevsky / broke my left knee" which I've never been able to use, as long as it's been kicking around in my head. He said that one day that we skipped high school to go see Neil Gaiman give a talk at the Washington University art school. Gaiman said when you sit down at a desk, you can either write or continue to sit there doing nothing. I'm not sure where I fall in since I'm standing on the clock at the library counter while I'm typing this.

The Folk Opera as form

2009-02-11T18:34:00.001-08:00

The May Day Orchestra will soon release a vinyl LP called "May Day - Songs For Lucy Parsons". This is the first in a projected series of "folk operas". You may have heard of "poetry scores" and their combination of various art forms to make a new one. This is sort of the same idea. Ours may be unconsciously related to traditional opera (a word that literally means a "work"). Classical composers took poetry and set it to music. Tchaikovsky's took on Pushkin and
Shostakovich took works from Garcia Lorca, Yevtushenko and many others. In the next few posts, I'll be putting out the lyrics to the May Day record, derived not from poetry but pamphlets, trials and speeches from the historical record.

Also, Bad Folk's record "Part Of The Problem" is now available for download at www.lala.com

groundhog day

2009-02-02T18:01:00.000-08:00

Wear corduroy and go bowling - no, really, these are the traditions of Groundhog Day as celebrated in many mid-western American towns and cities. Both corduroy pants and shirts are acceptable. Bowling is also highly encouraged on this day, though the origins of the traditions are obscure, like most holidays celebrated in many mid-western American towns and cities.
Ideally, one will spend the evening if not the entirety of the day of the groundhog in a bowling alley, drinking some kind of beer and wearing corduroy. It is amusing to bowl while wearing corduroy pants and a 10-pin handicap is allowed.
Groundhog Day, featuring Bill Murray, is also a very funny film. My favorite trivial information about this is that it was filmed not in Pennsylvania but in Woodstock, Illinois, fairly close to Chicago. You can see the mansion where the bed and breakfast was located as well as the town square and the church that Bill Murray jumps from to kill himself on one particular day.

"the way of the dodo"

2009-01-12T17:44:00.000-08:00

Bad Folk's second full length effort "Part Of The Problem" was recorded in February 2008 and mixed over the following two months. It was eventually mastered late that summer. The record has not seen any proper release as it's makers disbanded in late October of that year.
Yer Bird Records hosted the album for a year on their digital label, The Aviary.
This site has been taken down as of the beginning of 2010.

-updated 2010 from original post

mayday mayday

2009-01-07T12:03:00.001-08:00

That's May Day, two words, as in the Worker's Holiday, celebrated nearly everywhere in the world except the United States. An international labor day intended to unite the working class and rid the planet of nationalism, capitalism and imperialism.

The May Day Orchestra, named for the holiday, is a collective band formed in April of 2008 to write and play compositions in the "folk opera" style. The first of these pieces is a set of songs which revolve around Lucy Parsons, her husband Albert Parsons, and a host of other anarchists involved in the labor movement in Chicago from the 1870s through the creation of the IWW (Industrial Workers Of The World) in 1905.

The May Day Orchestra is Tim Rakel and Joey Gavin, formerly of the band Bad Folk, Matt Pace and Brien Seyle of the band The Rats & People Motion Picture Ochestra and JJ Hamon of the band Theodore. We recorded these songs in November with Kevin Buckley engineering.

Thanks to Nick Acquisto of KDHX radio's The Space Parlour, we will be playing this set of songs on the air Thursday night, January 8, 2009. 88.1 FM in St Louis, MO. You can stream the show for two weeks after it airs live on the website http://www.kdhx.org/

Boredom 2

2008-12-31T08:40:00.000-08:00

Kids that don't have the initiative to learn, those are the scariest ones. For them, culture only exists in that small realm that has been drilled into them by the inane media. Adults too.
I work in a haven for the bored where, for no cost beyond city taxes, you can check out up to 8 movies at a time to take back to your television.
Typing a blog looks like work, reading a novel looks like I'm not working.
The middle class in this country, even the "broke" lower-middle "working" class, which a bunch of white people who read blogs probably belong to, is fairly wealthy compared to the rest of the world. This ain't no picnic but it's not a gypsy camp in Belarus either. There are places like the Ogaden where no food will grow and the rest of the desert that has no water or a hint of the infrastructure necessary for it. But still somehow we dare to claim we are in a period of economic crisis. I'm thankful for my job. Just thankful.

Anyway, the computers at the library weren't working properly this morning. People complained. They made life hell for my co-workers. What could be so important on those computers to come in every day AND be such a jerk. People sat staring at blank screens until 45 minutes later when they miraculously came back on.
I laughed at the scene, taking solace in having recently heard an indigenous resident of Alaska talking about our unsustainable culture. His consolation is that this shit can't last forever.

Happy New Year.

Boredom 1

2008-12-29T17:20:00.000-08:00

Joe Strummer was once quoted as saying that many of the songs he wrote for The Clash came from boredom. If only everyone were Joe Strummer in that way. I've found quite the opposite in people and what boredom does to their creative urges.
So I started to write songs about boredom itself. The first of these came during Labor day weekend, 2007. I saw a barn in rural northern Missouri where someone had spray-painted "life without escape" in large letters across one side of the facade. That was art as far as I'm concerned, it got me to write a song.

It's a swampland, nothing to do
but watch the river and the trains
just the sorghum and the soy
Boredom - first comes boredom
Boredom - next comes anger
It's the pilot's call whether it's safe water
or whether you should get out
Boredom - then comes stupid
Mr. Clemmon's swearing in his grave

The second piece about boredom dwells in a more urban setting. Also last summer, right after Labor day, the police found a kid's body in a dumpster. He'd been shot and some other kids got arrested on suspicion. I didn't follow up[ on the rseults of the case. One has to figure these kids could not afford the video games that might satisfy these sort of urges in more privileged children.

Necklace Of Shoes

2008-12-19T12:46:00.000-08:00

for Muntadhar al-Zaidi (and the widows and orphans)

Roll out all the red carpets
Put up a castle out in the sand
Put up a throne out in the desert
go to hell where you'll bother no one

This is a farewell kiss, you dog
Now you’ll wear a necklace of shoes
A ridiculous disgrace
Ridiculous and ready to kill us

Keep moving to stay alive
Oh, the people…
Keep moving while asleep
The people are sharks

Corrupt but loyal, it’s the customer’s money
It’s about money it's a rich land
It was a rich land and now it’s a poor one
by the sleight of a government magic hand

Wars and walls all around yourself
Roll out the carpet so full of sand
Put up a throne out in the desert
now you're king of a forsaken land

This is a farewell kiss, you dog
Now you’ll wear a necklace of shoes
A ridiculous disgrace
Ridiculous and ready to kill us

Part Of The Problem 10

2008-12-18T15:47:00.000-08:00

The famous massacre at Wounded Knee happened in the 19th century. This same place is an Indian reservation where, less than a hundred years later, the FBI caused a shoot-out with Leonard Peltier and others. Peltier was charged with the death of one of the government agents and taken from Canada to which he had escaped. He has been in prison for over 30 years, like many others, for political reasons. This is a part of the problem.
This turned out to be the longest song I've ever recorded. There aren't that many words, but I tried to encompass a whole era of history into a couple short verses. Maybe this was my idea to re-do Neil Young's "Cortez the killer" for North America. A story that needed attention.
During that same era of history wherein the first Wounded Knee massacre took place, there was a great labor struggle in the cities as well. Chicago's anarchists and socialists were organizing to strike for the 8-hour work day. Some contented themselves with this and hopes of higher wages and safer working conditions. Others advocated taking over factories, throwing out their employers by force and taking the means of production for the working class. Businessmen that owned the factories also had interests in the railroads to ship their raw materials and products. This connecting line, a train of thought so to speak, made me realize that the Indians were being pushed off their land by the same forces who were keeping the immigrants and the poor enslaved in the factories. This is another part of the problem. Marshall Fields was a motherfucker and I've never said that and meant it as a compliment. Evil white men who worship money like JP Morgan. We've heard their names, we should know what they did to the country.
Albert Parsons gets a name-check in this song. He and other anarchists were framed for the bombing in Chicago's Haymarket in 1886. He escaped to Wisconsin to avoid arrest but later turned himself in to die at the gallows with three others in 1887.
This, one of the last songs written for Bad Folk and recorded, leads to the next project I've recorded more recently. A folk-opera of sorts about Lucy Parsons, wife to Albert Parsons and leader in the struggle for worker's movements throughout her life.

WOUNDED KNEES (lyrics by Tim Rakel)

out on the plains, the ghosts of buffalo
echo like thunderstorms, storms that no one hears
Black Hills cleared to make way
for the thunder of the white man's train
and out on the plains
the ghosts of buffalo echo like thunderstorms
a nation and all it's people are left with bloody hands
a nation of people are left with two wounded knees

out on the plains, the storms still echo
from cold Chicago and through the Dakota fields
when they lose control, all they see is red
the immigrants every time
and the ones who were always here
and out on the haunted plains
and through the martial fields
the innocent flee north
stumbling with two wounded knees
a nation and all it's people are left with Parson's blood
the nation of Peltier are left with two wounded knees

Part Of The Problem 9

2008-12-18T11:04:00.001-08:00

Sometime around 2002 I saw this in neon. LAUGHTER (buzz buzz) SLAUGHTER (buzz buzz) LAUGHTER. Big red neon letters on a building in Grand Center, with the "S" flashing on and off like when you see a WAFFLE HO SE from the highway. I don't know who put it up, it was seemingly part of a gallery event in the neighborhood. That is art though, that which inspires thought and consequent art from others, so thank you unknown neon-light installation artist.
What an insight into the strangely-related and hard-to-pronounce words of the English language.
The line asking "will it take the bombs to wake us" was stolen from George Orwell's "Homage To Catalonia", I proudly admit it. His use of it was in reference to England's ambivalence to the civil war in Spain in the 1930s. The rest I would hope is self-explanatory, kind of a little anthem.

SILVER SPOONS AND PAPER PLATES (lyrics by Tim Rakel)

what gives you the right to laughter and slaughter
drank up the well, poisoned the water
and it seems like it will be a thousand years
for some people to be free
as apathy settles back in with the debris
will it take the bombs to wake us and open up our eyes
or will we finally see the truth of how the other half dies
the rest of the world doesn't eat
from silver spoons or paper plates
and death is not some side effect
in the search for the cheapest rates

what gives you the right to laughter and slaughter
drank up the well and poisoned the water
and it seems like it will be a thousand years
for some people to be free
as apathy settles back in, with the debris
cut off the heads of state, use their corpses to fill the hole
in this lousy culture that they traded for your soul
if they don't own you, you get called the enemy
you get called the enemy of ignorance and apathy
and the rest of the world
doesn't eat from silver spoons or paper plates
and death is not some side effect
in the search for the cheapest rates

Part Of The Problem 8

2008-12-15T17:02:00.000-08:00

This song came to me as a small piece of a larger world I'd created in my head while reading too many books at the same time. It's a terrible habit of mine. The title "Mechanical Lions" came from a story of the same name by Danilo Kis, who lived and died in what was then Yugoslavia.
I was reading his collection of stories, "A Tomb For Boris Davidovic", in a park on the Vltava River in Prague. Really, it was a great vacation, drinking beer in three foreign countries with my brother and reading books while riding in trains and living in hostels.
"Crime and Punishment" was also in the trip's backpack until I left it behind in Ireland somewhere. But the biographical details of Fyodor Dosteovesky are there in the first part of the song. His father was choked to death by mutinous soldiers and he was himself in prison awaiting death by a firing squad. The second verse was filled in by scenes I saw in Krakow. A statue of a dragon outside a castle was rigged to breath flame for tourists but what I noticed most was the homeless people in Poland. Everywhere I went, people looked Czech or looked Irish, but here on the streets, these people could have been Indians or from India, I didn't know. Dirt makes people the same color and hides their former identities.
The old men only appeared to me after I had crossed an ocean to get back home. In a color photograph I had taken looking one direction, there were two men walking towards me. In a black and white photograph, apparently taken a moment later with my other camera and facing the opposite direction, the men were now walking away from me. They had come towards me and passed while I fumbled with film advance levers and light meters. Anne Tkach, with whom I first shared the prints, identified the men in the pictures. I was taken aback. It made me think of all the other old ones that have passed while I fucked around not paying proper attention to their presence. So, this song has always been related to "Dead Trees" (see Part Of The Problem 7) in an indirect way. Perhaps the next thing is to figure out more pieces of the story from that alternate European world that existed in my head in those days.

MECHANICAL LIONS (lyrics by Tim Rakel)

father was murdered, they poured vodka down his throat
poured it down his throat until he gagged and choked
you get into this frenzy with that stern look on your face
line up the firing squad, send me to a better place
two old men were walking across the ancient bridge
two old men were walking along the river's edge
they said go on shout your non-sense, that's fine with us
keep on shouting non-sense but make sure it's your own

there are dragons breathing fire outside the castle walls
there are dogs wearing muzzles in the park below
the gargoyles they look down from the holy church
and if that carpenter came back he'd get murdered again
and the homeless look like they're not from around here
like angels, one moment they just appear
and the prophets get met with mechanical lions
and old men are left wandering the streets
they'll tell you everything you wish to know
you just have to notice them there

it's a damn shame hearts are hidden never to be found
while material goods continue to abound
they say thugs do the bidding, commit murder and do time
the state says that thinking is the most dangerous crime
so go on shout your non-sense, that's fine with us
keep on shouting non-sense but make sure it's your own
two old men were walking across the ancient bridge
two old men were walking along the river's edge

Part Of The Problem 7

2008-12-10T16:18:00.000-08:00

Long memory is not quite the opposite of short-term memory. Most people lack both these days. You stare at computers all day and allegedly have access to every piece of information, then you become reliant and who cares what you can or can't remember without prompting.
What if the power goes out? Then you head to the dimly lit bookstores. But those are mostly gone too. I've worked in those bookstores and libraries and seen the computers move in.
A few years ago I worked with R. P. Dunaway, a man who had started a bookshop on Delmar when you could still travel by train and visit stores in other cities. That was the way you found things that didn't knock at your door and weren't generally available in your particular city. Pat, as his friends called him, knew books and loved them. Books should be more precious but they have become commodity like all art and knowledge in a capitalist society. The more obscure, the more valuable to the seller, despite the usefulness on the contents. Pat also knew history, partly because he had lived through so much of it, but also because he thought it important to learn and remember. He liked baseball and boxing too, pasttimes that have also endured. He cursed the computers and painted a funny picture of the future devolved man, with short arms only to reach the keyboard and big buggy eyes to see the bright screens.
I showed up at work awaiting new stories or bits of history from him each day. When he died in September 2004, work became just another job. My disinterested ass got fired. There was a flashlight in his desk drawer which he used to see the titles on the bottom row of shelves. I took it, and on my next trip to Chicago, I brought it along. I left it on the still visibly upset spot in the ground where he'd been buried in Findlay, Illinois.

DEAD TREES

sit there keeping score, keeping track of everything
remember it all, always learning
watch the changes from behind the door
walk content in the way you weathered it
block the punches, dodge the blows
and counter with your stance alone
spend my days in a room, in a room full of dead trees
left a flashlight on your grave
because it's dark and you'll need it to read

hundreds of people moving in front of me
this progress it takes no care
hundreds of people
and all i can see is you who are no longer there
spend my days in a room, in a room full of dead trees
left a flashlight on your grave
because it's dark and you'll need it to read

Part Of The Problem 6

2008-12-04T10:00:00.000-08:00

Stack shot Billy. I read the book about Stagolee by Cecil Brown, a great sliver of Saint Louis history. Before that I read "A Blues Life", an oral autobiography of Henry Townsend. He passed away two years ago at age 96. I saw him play a couple times, the only man known to record songs in every decade from the 1920s to the 2000s. Back in 2001, I started writing a song about the life of Henry Townsend. It was boring. Then I listened to Nick Cave's Murder Ballads record and it all came together when I recalled an incident from the autobiographical narrative. Henry Townsend was confronted in a bar a stabbed by another blues guitarist by the name of JD Short. Townsend recovered and borrowed a gun from a friend.
Bucket Of Blood was the name of a bar in some versions of the Stagolee story so I threw that in the mix. Townsend took the weapon and went hunting through the house parties and bars to find Short. When he did, Short tried to flee but then stopped and pulled a knife. Townsend fired the gun and ended up shooting Short in the testicles. That's what happened. Sometimes revenge that does not kill might hurt even worse than death.

BUCKET OF BLOOD
Henry he hopped that north-bound train
jumped off in the yard in east st louis
henry was a shoeshine boy
fronting for that bootlegging man downtown
henry learned to play that mean guitar
henry learned to play that sweet guitar
had some folks jealous with the way that he played

JD Short got him in the back
that coward with a knife got him in the back
Henry was a bleeding he nearly died
when that coward snake got him in the back
henry wanted to take his revenge
went hunting JD Short through all the joints
cornered him at the bucket of blood
Henry stepped up and short pulled his knife
Henry drew his gun and he took a shot
Short jumped up yelled and fell down
Henry left the yard same way he'd come in
Short lay bleeding hurting on the ground

henry he's an old man now
stack-a-lee's been long dead now
with many a song to sing and many a tale to tell
the city henry knew it ain't there no more
the booker washington theatre been torn down
the city henry knew it ain't here no more

Part Of The Problem 5

2008-12-03T16:42:00.000-08:00

The Bonnot Gang invented the getaway car. That's what I tell people to hook them because it hooked me. Richard Parry wrote a book about them in the 1980s that is hard to find but well worth reading. The gang of French anarchists, named for the oldest member of the group Julius Bonnot, was active around France before the first World War, roughly 1909-1913 until they all were arrested or killed. Victor Serge was there and went to prison with members of the gang for various crimes against the state. Serge, or Victor Kibalchich by birth, is a fascinating historical figure, novelist and poet. Look him up, you'll learn something.
Anyway, the workers and criminals of France started stealing cars from wealthy estates at night so as to flee more quickly when they robbed banks the next morning. Twentieth century innovation not too long after the development of the assembly line mode of production.
Bad Folk's drummer, Anne Tkach, once remarked that I tended to write songs about cars like they were a disease. I sure ain't Bruce Springsteen.

DEBT
you've been hurrying, don't you see that light ahead
you've been hurrying, don't you see that light is red
you've been hurrying, don't you see you'll drop down dead
slaves to that gold chain, wrapped around your neck
dragged down in debt
crime doesn't pay but neither does your job
crime doesn't pay but neither did your job

you get carried away, now you'll never repay this debt
this debt that you owe
you settle down, you settle for this devil
this devil you know
fallen behind, barely started, fallen behind, barely started
fallen behind, dragged down in debt
crime doesn't pay but neither does your job
crime doesn't pay but neither did your job

it's what keeps you down, it's what keeps you up
this struggle is a very old war
Bonnot is outside waiting with the getaway car
maybe we'll make it out alive, maybe life will just pass you by
slaves to that gold chain, wrapped around your neck
dragged down in debt

Part Of The Problem 4

2008-12-02T08:56:00.000-08:00

Mark Stephens first told me the bug story. My various bands have been fortunate to share the stage with his various bands over the years and one night at Lemmon's, we stood there unwrapping microphone cables. He stood, wearing a blue jump suit with a Monsanto patch on one breast and the name "Russ" embroidered over the other. Our mutual friend, Ross Lessor, gave Mark the outfit and kept one for himself. They were heirlooms from Ross' uncle who had worked with pesticides all his life and died alone out in the country in a house infested with bugs. Mark told me the story and I said it sounded like he should write a song about it. He told me it was more a song I would write. So I did. Then Ross gave me the primary account. Turns out I had filled in details close enough to the truth. Fiction is less strange than fact in this case and that's probably why this was easy.
The images stuck in my head for weeks. Uncle Russ in his house with a septic tank out back. Then the carpentry scenes to get away from the old place which was infested with bugs. A new house also infested. Then the horror movie end with neighbors and flashlights discovering the body. Afterwards, Ross went there too and couldn't stay the night for all the bugs, which he described as looking like aliens from outer space.
Bad Folk recorded the song. Jason Rook took his tape recorder and got some scab frogs to sing the part. We rejected it. He went back and got union crickets. Turns out Belgrade, Missouri has a fine cricket choir scene. More recently, a benign cricket infestation appeared in my basement where Bad Folk had rehearsed.

Bugs

old man worked for the chemical company
when he retired moved out to the country
that old house on the river was infested
called on the phone and siad he had to move
all those years in a blue jump suit, working for the chemical company
mixing, fixing to kill, mixing pheromones with the poison
that's how you kill them, attract them to the posion
one last phone call from that old man
the bugs are killing me

old man worked for the chemical company
mixing, fixing to kill
all those years making DDT until he himself radiates it
built a new house every step by hand
new wood, new ground, up on a hill
but these things are futile if you've been mixing to kill
that's how you kill them, attract them to the posion
one last phone call from that new house
the bugs are killing me, he said

and the heart attack was from the shock of how well it worked
and how they'd come for him in the end
at the end of that dirt road
the bugs are killing me he said
and the neighbors found him dead
shine a light on this infestation
exterminator down

Part Of The Problem 3

2008-12-02T07:32:00.000-08:00

When I first met Hunter Brumfield, Chris King was there. He has recounted some stories about Hunter in his blog Confluence City. He encouraged me to write about Hunter so I will from time to time among many others who must have their turn too. Chris was there and so were a number of Ogoni people, refugees from the oil-related destructuion in Nigeria. Hunter was the white dude dancing in the black church (quite literally, one of the first times I met him). He told me about spray paint and train hopping before Upski published his book. When all my college friends were reading "Bomb The Suburbs", I pointed out that William Wimsatt's friend "Hunter" was that guy that waited on us at Mangia. They blinked. Hunter told me a lot of stories when we talked. It wasn't that I didn't believe all of them, I was just continually amazed when they were supported later with evidence from an unexpected direction.

Cut to nearly ten years later, my bandmate Joey Gavin did some basement recording with Hunter. He called the space Cricket Studios. Bugs will always be around, even in a place as irrelevant as a studio name. Hunter and Lindy Woracheck (another bandmate at the time and friend of Hunter) documented some great musical moments that day. Hunter killed himself a couple weeks later. Joey and I made copies of the poor quality CD and passed them out.
The last thing I did was take one of those songs for myself and started playing it with the band Bad Folk. For me, it was a song he wrote about himself and I could sing it about him. People that don't know him sometimes think it's mine. Small compensation.

The Laughing Song (lyrics by Hunter Brumfield III)

He's sorry that things turned out as they did, it's a god-forsaken shame
small was the box in which that he hid to temper his poisonous brain
he reached for the stars, came back with stumps (maybe stubs?)
in a downpour, yearning for rain (though i was told "urine" was the lyric, i thought "yearning" more poetic and gave Hunter credit for the ambiguity)
happiness got him once he hit bottom
gonna laugh his way through all the pain

Believe him it's easy to drink and be sleazy
as your conscience just limps along
mistaking freedom for license, he screamed in the silence
and his echo said boy you're all wrong
well, life is absurd, haven't you heard?
keep laughing boy, that's your best bet

Part Of The Problem 2

2008-12-01T16:56:00.000-08:00

"War Is The Health Of The State" said Randolph Silliman Bourne, a man of crippled physical stature but immense awareness of history and society. It was the first World War and here was a man, like those damned anarchists, who claimed that no good would come to the common person in any country involved in conflict. Whether it was outright imperialist plunder or something disguised as a more benign mission to save someone or some imagined value or way of life, the common soldier would die and the common worker would work (or become a solider and then die). Profits from war industry would be pocketed by those already wearing fat, greedy pants. Whatever small victory that could be claimed would not fix the psychological damage of the victor. Fuck the losers, we won't even speak of their fate. In the end, the original goals of the conflict would probably be forgotten as lies, as more heaps of lies obscured whatever people once thought their country was fighting for.

The poor confused soldier, perhaps a young man scorned, who enjoys firing his gun at the midnight hour of new year's eve and is prone to a revenge killing if given the chance.

I didn't know the name Osama Bin Laden in the year 2000 and I'd nearly foregotten Saddam Hussein. I imagined the Frankenstein monster as an Italian gentlemen with the given name of Luigi.

I wanted that man to die for what he did to me
I had my heart set on killing Luigi
my country started a war, they told me to take a stand
I said what did you go and do that for, I only want to kill one man
But I up and joined their ranks to see if I could see
from the planes and from the tanks that bastard Luigi
I killed ten men and maybe more and that was just the first day
more batallions topped the hill and I blew them all away

I walked amongst the corpses wandering how it could be
that I'd killed so many men and not shot Luigi
yes, I killed so many men that honors they bestowed
then they said we won the war and to me that they owed
I said wait a minute, what about Luigi
I have not won a war if still that man goes free
something still wasn't right a voice spoke in my head
so I hunted Luigi down and shot the bastard dead

they people they were outraged, they cursed my bloody name
they said that I had broken the rules of their game
I showed them my medals but they just shook their heads
they dragged me to the guillotine, they say they want me dead

Part Of The Problem 1

2008-12-01T16:19:00.000-08:00

Dual (lyrics by Tim Rakel)

Call the doctor or the wrecking ball man
go to hell or the thorn crown man
torn and tattered taped together
this hell, this hell of mirrors
challenged myself to a duel
shot out my own heart

send up the red flags and then the white
now it's just a maze, a maze of states and tribes
see the roadside signs, souvenirs of this life
translation's lost and everything is fine
and as long as they preserve that state of fear
they'll tell you these things at the same time

i came from the old world, that twisted old world
the ship sank behind me, that war rose behind me
come across the ocean to get away
but this, this new world
nothing, nothing could prepare me for this
hold my heart in your hands
it'll keep them warm for a little while

the crowds have gone got what they wanted
someone's watching me now followed and haunted
see the roadside signs and try to deny
there's nothing at the end of this road
just motels and loneliness
across a whole continent
this hell, this hell of mirrors
challenged myself to a duel
and shot out my own heart

Dual (lyrics by Tim Rakel)
(with a Nabokovian self-analysis by T. S. Rakehell)
If you think the title is spelled incorrectly, please read further for the mundane pun herein

Call the doctor or the wrecking ball man
go to hell or the thorn crown man
Catholic guilt, morbidity
torn and tattered taped together
this hell, this hell of mirrors
thinks he's funny
challenged myself to a duel
shot out my own heart
the pathetic author's first attempt at getting attention with threats of killing himself

send up the red flags and then the white
some vague reference to Russian history to mark the setting, poorly researched
now it's just a maze, a maze of states and tribes
more place marking, little development
see the roadside signs, souvenirs of this life
translation's lost and everything is fine
the author claims he woke from a dream about a gun fight to find his cat striding away from
an open volume of Nabokov's translation of Eugene Onegin on the bedroom floor
and as long as they preserve that state of fear
they'll tell you these things at the same time
the same time being another reference to duality, the "state of fear" is just more slander of
the American dream and the country in general

i came from the old world, that twisted old world
the ship sank behind me, that war rose behind me
come across the ocean to get away
this is another poorly researched and vague reference to Nabokov's personal history,
wherein his family sailed from Europe during the great war. Their former apartment building
was bombed in their absence and the ship was sunk by hostile fire in its return journey
but this, this new world
nothing, nothing could prepare me for this
just more slander of the United States. The author should move to Switzerland as did his
beloved Nabokov.
hold my heart in your hands
it'll keep them warm for a little while
morbid, just morbid, another desperate cry for attention on the part of hack of a writer

the crowds have gone got what they wanted
someone's watching me now followed and haunted
an all too obvious reference to the plot of Lolita and more of the same follows
see the roadside signs and try to deny
there's nothing at the end of this road
just motels and loneliness
across a whole continent
this hell, this hell of mirrors
challenged myself to a duel
and shot out my own heart
just couldn't bear to end it without more drama and suicidal references

--- the author bears no responsibility for his critics or any harm done to them

Appendix:

Russian translation, back to English:

Double
(lyric poetry Tim Rakel)
summon doctor or destroying man of ball
go to hell or man of the crown of thorns
stripped and tattered connected by braid together
this hell, this hell of mirrors call to the duel taken to outside my own heart desertedly send upward by the emblems of revolution
and after this to the whiteness
now of it' s exactly labyrinth,
labyrinth of positions and gears
sees the signs of curb, the souvenirs of this life
of translation' lost s and everything is excellent
and as far as they preserve the position of the fear of
they' ll tells you these things in also the time
I it arrived from the old peace, that interlaced old peace
the ship sank after me, which war raised after me
it comes through the ocean to obtain away but this,
this new peace nothing, nothing could prepare me for this
you hold my heart in your hands
of it' ll hold by their warm for few
thus far crowd dispatch what they they obtained wanted
someone' by s observing me now it followed after it
pursued it sees the signs of curb it tries to refuse
there' s nothing at the end from this road
exactly of [moteli] and solitude
through entire continent this hell,
this hell of mirrors is been cast
call to the duel and is taken at outside my own heart

French translation, back to English

Combine
(texts by Tim Rakel)
Appelez the doctor or l' man of destruction of ball
go to l' hell or with l' man of crown d' spine
torn and torn in scraps attached of the adhesive tape
together this hell, this hell of the mirrors
disputed to a duel
drawn outside my own heart
send to the top of the red flags and then white
now it's right a labyrinth, a labyrinth of the states and tribes
see the signs of roadside, memories of this life
translation lost and all is very well
and as long as it preserves this state of fear
they indicate these things at the same time
I came from the Old World, this Old World twisted that
the boat is descended behind me, that the war raised behind me
find l'ocean to leave but this, this new world nothing,
nothing could prepare me for this
hold my heart in your hands
it maintains hot
them for a little while obtained crowd went this qu'
they wanted someone
observing followed now and haunted
see the signs of roadside and try to deny there
nothing with l'end of this road
right motels and loneliness through a whole continent
this hell, this hell of the mirrors
disputed to a duel and drawn outside my own heart

Addictive Behavior

2008-11-30T13:29:00.000-08:00

I have added the blogs of some people i actually know in real life to the side of the page. see what they say too. I can see how this can occupy one's time. Also, i'm doing this at work. Does that make it more subversive or more predictable?

Renowned Luddite Tim Rakehell Enters Blogosphere

2008-11-30T12:49:00.000-08:00

With some regret, I step off the cliff of willful technological ignorance. It has sustained me so many years but now all my friends have robots.

My various musical endeavors will now have an explanatory outlet here. As physical media dies its slow death and my pockets fill up with more discarded books and records, i'll try to share what i find interesting.

- Rakehell
11/30/08