So it’s been over 3 weeks since i’ve managed to scrape together enough brain power and spare seconds to finish my story. I’ve had people complain that I am a slack-ass blog remedialist (is that even a word?), a blight on the good name of all writers and that I should post an entry or stop calling myself a blogger. I tend to agree with them so here’s the rest of the story–

We pushed play on my friend’s Rover CD player and the music started. I was nervous already but once the first shot was fired and I realized that REAL bullets were flying at me at real speed and that we were 30 miles from the nearest paved road, I started to crap myself–in realtime! I jumped like a baby whose cradle had been kicked by a gorilla and almost ran off my mark screaming “CUT–THIS IS CRAZY!” but instead I locked it down and stared straight at the camera while shots 2-3 and 4 were fired. We had set up stations where I would stand with items to be exploded all stacked to the side and behind me. Verse one down–I went to walk to station #2, signaled “I’m walking now, please don’t shoot me” and started to move when a bullet came whizzing past me a little too close for comfort. I couldn’t say “What in THE HELL are you doing?” because it wasn’t in the song and the point was to eventually cut together a final video synchronized to the original album track and that would have looked stupid so instead I sucked it up, made a mental note to protest later and moved to station #2.

Everything was fine at station 2 until one of the bottles of soda fell and rolled down next to my foot. “Please don’t shoot at that thing lying next to and touching my foot” I thought just in time to feel the bottle explode, yuking red generic tasting fizzy liquid all over my face and left side. “At least the fucker knows how to aim.” Verse 2 down. I mozied on over to station #3.

This went on til we got to the end–the final round of choruses and a station filled with all the juicy stuff, items that when shot were sure to make a nasty milky, fruit punchy, ketchup and mustardy mess out of me and my suit jacket. By this time I was eerily accustomed to the sound of gunfire at close range and the 6th sense sensation of “feeling” projectiles whizzing by me at speeds meant to kill. I was used to it–old hat. I signaled to my buddy to let loose and he did. Suddenly every item behind me started blowing up spewing every form of liquid amusement I could conjure standing in front of the supermarket refrigerator the day before. Red, Yellow, Brown, Hot Pink, and Electric Green liquid soaked my hair, my shoes, my jacket. I was a rainbow flavored mass of sweating nervous energy at this point staring at the rapidly approaching light at the end of the tunnel.

“Next time genius, hire a director and a green screen” whispered a small voice just behind my right eyeball. “I’ve got a genuis PLAN!” I finished the last phrase of the song, it’s irony not lost on me, thankful to be alive and astonished by my friends ‘one shot one kill’ accuracy, I walked off camera and gave him a hug.

The adrenaline was enough to power the space shuttle or drive a senior citizen’s basketball team to beat the Lakers. I was tingling from head to toe and felt like I had won the Olympics. In reality all I had done was stand there and lip synch the words to a song albeit with live ammunition being shot at me the whole time. It was my friend who did the real work. He gave me a hug back and said “nice job.” He told me that it was rare to see that kind of focus in a civilian. I wondered if I had what it takes to be a super agent for the CIA. Maybe if I send them this video they will recruit me and I’ll get to be a rockstar as my secret agent cover.

The whole thing fell by the wayside when I got back to NYC and showed my partner and our designer who, while admitting that I had balls of cast iron, told me that the video was boring and off-brand and that no one would really care once we put it up on the internet. I had in essence entertained no one but myself. We made a few attempts at trying to make it interesting, even contemplating faking my death to garner a few more sicko viewers but in the end it got shelved and gathered dust until a month and a half ago when I decided to throw it up on the internet and see what happened. They were right–no one cared. The video has been viewed less than 20 times and no one has commented on it. It stands there, still and motionless, floating in cyberspace as a monument to one sick man’s twisted little fantasy that people would care about his music if he got himself shot.

At least now I can say I’m willing to take a bullet for my art. Literally. Big Fucking Deal.
Thanks for reading. I’m dreaming up something interesting to say soon. . . I promise.

Until then . . . here’s the clip

\”Wannabe Your\” video–Dying for a HIT.

I’ve been a very bad blogger and I know it. Unfortunately my need to support my eating habit has gotten in the way of my content generation and I am hereby apologizing to all of you for starting to go the way of so many other bloggers who start strong and finish like a bad egg fart.

I’ve been going through tons of old video and audio in search of gold–looking for items that I can share with you–pieces of my life that you might find interesting or engaging so you’ll come back to me and love me like I want you to. Like I need you to. In that search I uncovered some dusty old miniDV tapes that contain a video shoot we did for what we initially thought would be our RFA single–a song called Wannabe Your. The idea was to have a friend of mine who is highly trained and borderline legendary in his field (hunting and killing–animals, people, you name it) shoot live ammunition at me and blow things up all around me while I, like a dumbass, stood there and lip-synched the words to the track. It seemed like a good idea to me although my partner and cohort in RFA Shaun thought a lunacy commission ought to be appointed and was dead set against it. Everyone told me I was INSANE but I was determined and told them that the worst that could happen is that I would be maimed or killed for my art which would exponentially increase the likelihood that the video would go “viral” and that we would not only get viewers for the video–people might actually BUY the record (novel concept) out of posthumous respect for the poor fool who died trying to get people to pay attention to his music. They were not amused.

I flew to New Mexico where I am from and met my friend who happened to be there that particular week. We discussed the concept and he said he felt comfortable with the idea. Knowing that he gets paid to NEVER miss no matter what, under any circumstances, I felt secure. Sort of.

That night I went to the local grocery store and bought $100 worth of every cheap nasty beverage, condiment or food item that would register some hydraulic shockwave when hit by high velocity ballistics. I bought watermelon, tomatoes, ketchup, mustard, cans of soda and this nasty stuff the locals love called Tampico–a super sweet, guaranteed to rot your teeth on contact, neon colored liquid in a gallon jug. Deciding on some chocolate milk and a few 2 liter bottles of brightly colored soda, I hit the checkout line. The woman behind the register looked at me with 2 carts full of all this non-specific generalized liquid putresence and asked “Throwing a party?” “Something like that.” I replied deciding it wouldn’t be worth the effort to try and explain that I was going to be blowing it all up for my art. Probably would have registered as just another stupid gringo doing stupid gringo things anyway. I loaded up the car and began the hour long drive back up to my house in the mountains.

We set out early the next morning to find a location with all our weapons systems, food, water, cameras and one light ordinance bullet proof vest in tow. After about 2 hours of driving we hung a sharp left off the dirt road into a dry riverbed–known out there as an Arroyo. We drove another 30 minutes or so up the arroyo to a flat open area with high walls–a mini canyon of sorts. We had to find a place where the sheer amount of gunfire-what would essentially sound like a mini turf war between locals would go completely unnoticed. . . not an easy feat-even out there where the children go to school strapped with a Glock. Things are different out there. One year my dad bought my mom a Glock 21 .45 for Valentines Day. It’s how we say “I love you” in my family.

We unpacked our gear and found a spot up against the embankment. My friend set about clearing all large rocks, anything that could potentially deflect or ricochet copper jacketing from the bullets into the back of my head or shoulders, out of the ground. We set up stations and marked out lines, signals and staging areas for my friend to shoot from. No matter how we cut it, it became apparent that this really was going to be as dangerous as it sounded to everyone else–maybe a little more. Even I started to get a little nervous. The reality of what I was about to do started to sink in. I had been pretty cavalier and flippant about the whole thing from the start–it was MY idea and once I get something stuck in my head you have a better chance or growing tits on your back than you do of getting me to change my mind. This stubborn pigheaded approach to life has gotten me in more trouble than it has served me well and is currently something I am working on altering but at the time there was NO reasoning with me. I began to reason with myself–”what if something really DOES go wrong moron?” I asked myself. “Are you really willing to spend the rest of your life in a wheel chair just to get a few strangers to pay attention to your music?” I decided I was and moved on.

We set up the fruit, vegetables, cans of toxic sugar water and saved the big finale items for the end of the song. The idea was I would walk from station to station between each verse and we’d get to the end and there would be a large pile of extremely splashy bits and bobs for my friend to blow up. We did a quick dry run, checked the weapons systems–filmed them for your viewing pleasure and then rehearsed ONE TIME. That was it–one time. It was the ultimate pressure situation. . . like live TV only with the possibility of getting a bullet through your head instead of not getting a laugh. I walked around shaking the jitters out, took a deep breath and stood on my mark while my friend got prepped.

I didn’t get scared til I saw him kick into “Tac” mode–his active duty “hot mode”. He went “live” and I saw the same face all those who have had the misfortune of encountering him on the field of battle have seen, only I lived to describe it. There is a look in the eyes of a warrior that people have called the “thousand yard stare”. I personally think that is a misnomer. It’s like a mixture of x-ray and laser cutting through you. It’s not like they are looking through you to the other side of the field, it’s like they’re looking into you and beyond into an interdimensional world–the quantum world where spirit and physical meet and form our reality. I believe those men see and hear and experience things on a supernatural level that you and I can never even begin to comprehend and they could never begin to put into words even if we could. He had the stare of a wolf–cold, icy, piercing and void of emotion–pure instinct and function. Objective and execution without emotion. Complete and total detachment from any personal feeling or ideology. The perfect killing machine. Suddenly something shifted–I don’t know what but everything was different and all I can tell you is that I have never felt so SAFE in all my life. I knew then and there that as long as I did MY PART right and didn’t flinch, as long as my personal powers of focus and years of training to tune out anything and everything around me through the show no matter what is happening internally or externally and get the job done, I would be fine.

He did a final weapons check, took three deep breaths and said “You ready to do this?” “Check.” I had my best military terminology polished and appropriately on demand for the occasion. “Then let’s go . . . ”

TO BE CONTINUED–

Here’s the song we were doing the video for

Ready Fire Aim \”Wannabe Your\”

Here’s a tour of the WEAPONS SYSTEMS we fired

Tour of the weapons systems we used

and the EMERGENCY MEASURES we had just in case

Emergency Measures we had on standby

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about why it is that some people burn so hot that they burn out and pass on to the other side early. Partly because my best mate is dead and it’s only now starting to sink in that I will NEVER have another conversation with him again. Partly because I have been re-listening to Telefon Tel Aviv’s latest record Immolate Yourself over and over. I was called up by my friend and editor Markus Von Pfeiffer who interviewed me for a profile in BPM Magazine and asked to do a profile on them. I was sent their record and had the fortune of several in-depth conversations with both Josh Eustis and Charlie Cooper about their style, their process and their general disdain for all contemporary culture in general. The resulting piece is one of my personal favorites of anything I’ve ever written–mostly because I was completely captivated by the duo and their indescribably unique process. I learned more from them about music history, process, and synthesis in the week that it took me to write the piece than I had in the previous year since I had stopped working in the studio and begun the laborious process of promotion and press.

Now that I am about to start working on the next RFA record I am back to square one and completely riveted by what I hear in the record and know about how Cooper and Eustis made it. I was writing a bio for East Village electro-acid-revivalist crew Cubic Zirconia when one of them threw it out there. . . “Yeah man, shame to hear about Charlie.” “What do you mean?” I had the feeling you get when you know the answer that is coming and you know it’s going to suck but there’s nothing you can do about it. “Didn’t you hear he died?” I felt like puking on the stupe outside the Sake bar. “No. When?” “Dunno, but it was on their Myspace page the other week.”

Later that night I sat down and sure enough, it was true. Charlie Cooper was dead. There are various theories currently available on why and how, none of which means anything to me in contrast to the fact that one of the greatest creative inspirations I’ve had the luck to interact with on a one-to-one basis is dead. I haven’t called Josh yet to offer my condolences. Why would he care-I was one of probably a hundred writers who they spoke with running up to the release of Immolate but if I could talk to him I’d simply tell him that I’m sorry and that I know that losing a brother is like losing a lung. You can live through it but you’ll never walk talk or breathe the same way again.

I don’t know why some burn so hot so brightly for so short a time and then blow out with a fizzle and a pop in the night but they do and right now my heart is sad–sad for Josh, sad for me and sad for the families of the departed. If you are out there hurting from the loss of a loved one–you are not alone.

I’m copying my article here for all of you to read in the hopes that you too will grow as enthralled with the music of Josh Eustis and Charlie Cooper as I have. That you too will find some creative inspiration from their work, their process and their undying willingness to fight anything that stands as a gaudy garish archetype of inauthenticity–of instant pop-culture pap and circumstance. I don’t know you boys but I love you no less for having never met you face to face. Thank you Josh for continuing to make music minus one lung. You tell me that it’s possible–beyond even. You tell me that it’s my obligation to the brother I lost to keep pressing into the eye of Jehova or whatever fucking diety there is out there–through the dawn electric. And beyond. Here’s what I wrote for you and Charlie. I hope you find some comfort knowing you and Charlie twisted my melon hard and I’ll never sit down in the studio the same way again.

Telefon Tel Aviv:
Punk Rock Pirates make music for strange seaports.
By Sage Rader
Reprinted from Soma Magazine Jan. 2009

After nearly 5 years on hiatus Telefon Tel Aviv’s Josh Eustis and Charlie Cooper have something they’d like to say. “I swear to God, we couldn’t give a fuck what anybody thinks of this record . . . we don’t give a SHIT. Really. Finally. We did this record for ourselves” It only takes a few minutes of conversation with them for me to be convinced that they mean it.

Discussing with Cooper and Eustis their upcoming release Immolate Yourself (Bpitch records), I feel like I am adrift on an open rolling sea with two highly intelligent if not mildly enraged pirates wielding keyboards like cutlasses at every living entity we pass along the way. Telefon Tel Aviv are punk rock, cavalier and pissed off enough about the current vapidity of culture to make almost anything they do interesting. They are also so smart it’s stupid. Their latest offering is a perfect example. While it couldn’t be further from anything they’ve ever produced, its’ naissance is of the same cerebral cortices as their back catalogue, and you can tell immediately that, while the essence is Telefon Tel Aviv, they’ve been up to something very different.

When I asked them who their contemporary musical influences are they had difficulty answering and I got the sense that they were as confused by the question as I was by the lack of an answer. When I shifted gears and asked them who their lifelong muses are and how they translate on Immolate, they had no problem immediately offering a strangely divergent list of names: 20th Century composer Steve Reich, Industrial/Electronic music trailblazers Skinny Puppy, Curtis Mayfield, and The Isley Brothers. The Isley Brothers? Seriously?

I had to go away and do some homework. Steve Reich is an early pioneer of tape looping, creating classical compositions that influenced the work of Brian Eno, Pink Floyd and now Telefon Tel Aviv. The lush aural tapestry woven by the boys on Immolate mirrors elements of all of the aforementioned artists and could have been made any time in the last 20 years.

Skinny Puppy, while often dismissed as industrial noise and melodramatic precursors to Marilyn Manson’s onstage cartoon horror theatrics, are responsible for pushing the boundaries of sonic manipulation at a time when most electronic musicians were trying to come up with the next Tainted Love. “They abused their gear to make it sound in a way that it was never supposed to sound.” Josh is getting excited. “They made sounds that no one is even coming close to today.”

There is a preternatural longing in the record that has been contoured by years of listening to early Soul and R&B records. I’d traced every connection between their latest work, and its inspirational points of origin, but I still couldn’t figure out The Isley Brothers. “It’s all about repetitive vamps.” Eustis explains. Vamps? “Soul Vamps. James Brown—the Isley Brothers “Shout” is a perfect example. They just repeat a small part over and over and the crowds would go wild. It just builds and builds.”

It is this simple idea of repetition and building that dance music has been fashioned on from day one. “There is only one really original musician and that was the first guy sitting there banging rocks together.” Eustis is dead serious again. “Everything since is just a reference.” Encapsulating the minimalism and tape looping of Steve Reich, shredding by misallocation of gear parameters the way Skinny Puppy did just enough to create an original sound, and repeating it until the crowd goes wild like The Isley Brothers is exactly what I hear when I play their record for the 8th time. Five years of culturally monastic seclusion have done Josh and Charlie no harm. Immolate Yourself is part audio sculpture, part genetic engineering. Eustis and Cooper reduce influences to their DNA and splice them together in a creative orgy of recombinant potential.

While opinionated and brutally honest, they are not pricks. Josh tempers their bravado with sincere and endearing self-deprecation. “We are essentially starting over and it remains to be seen whether anybody will care about our new work. We’re not even sure we’re around any more.” “We’ve been out in the wasteland.” Charlie boasts.

People who know nothing about music running the music business, online dynasties that wield a tyrannical power to make or break indie music careers and people who lack all context for their lives, and shop online to buy their “street” cred are a few of their least favorite things. While there is a tinge of sanctimony to their cultural vantage, it is submerged in an intellectually defensible, legitimate fervency that makes it hard to hate. Cooper and Eustis carefully document and reinforce each opinion or complaint with a selective litany of evidential ordinance—cultural ballistics, gathered, studied and assimilated into their mental weapons cache. It’s not that they are skulking around looking for a fight. They just won’t back down from one that they see as justifiable.

Their process is equal parts rock and roll high school, and NASA worthy scientific method. Analog tape loops made using mic stands as guides for the tape to increase the length and creative potential of each loop are fused with the latest digital production software creating electronic music that feels completely organic. That they weren’t trying to make a comeback record is admirable. That they turned their own creative universe ass end up, hit restart, and opened themselves to an uncharted wealth of creative possibility is what distinguishes them as legitimate artists from the mediocrity that plagues their genre. It is this willingness to shift direction, the persistent revolution of revolution that drives the sounds on Immolate Yourself, not some marketing based ploy to burst back onto the scene with a newly minted relevance.

For all of their bluster, Eustis and Cooper are admittedly two regular working guys who are only asking to be musicians for a living–no small order in this climate but one they seem willing to show up and work for. Both say they knew they would be musicians when they grew up from early childhood and neither wants to be anything else.

Charlie sums it up for me “We had fun making this record. It was fast fun and painless. Bro’s hanging out in the studio getting high every once in a while, having a drink, playing with synthesizers and fucking off. It was awesome!” Pirates indeed.

Telefon Tel Aviv-Helen of Troy

here you go–it’s 5am and I’m just too dang tired to think or write so here’s some pictures of us rehearsing for the Best Buy showcase last night at Webster Hall (which went very very well by the way.) I’ll write more tomorrow for real–a decent post with some video/audio candy and details/story time from the show. . . but for now–here you go.

JTR3 pretending to know the part

what we use to keep tommy from pulling a "stevie"

If you think i'm sexy

this is tommy's sassy face.

So we’re standing in our postage stamp rehearsal space sweating our tits off this morning at 10:00am and I’m thinking “Is this worth it?” Short answer: YES. It’s not that I’m ungrateful for my life or my band or the opportunities we have. It’s not that I’m dissatisfied with my our song arrangements or that things in the band aren’t perfect–THEY ARE. It’s just that I’m so tired that I am seeing double. Triple even.

I’m not going to complain about “the plight of the emerging artist” or “how hard it is to be an artist who is trying to support his eating habit” although both of those are blog worthy topics. I am going to say however that it is seriously hard fucking work rehearsing non stop and trying to work to pay the bills and have any kind of personal life at all. I call it rockstar 2.0–all work and very little play.

The days of letting the label do all the work while the artist gets fucked up, throws TVs out the window of expensive hotel suites and does irreparable damage to the room are long gone. GOOD RIDDANCE. The middle man is no longer required. What is required is that every band leader think like a brand manager. That every artist must also come correct with an unlimited supply of elbow grease and a multi-tool in his/her back pocket is also a given, but the truth is that no amount of work on the part of the artist can compensate for one crucial factor–the only thing that REALLY TRULY MATTERS regardless of label support, management, agenting or directing from ‘on high’–THE FANS and their support.

In the last 2 weeks for some strange reason I have been contacted by more people who are saying that they have bought or want to buy my record, love the music and listen to it all the time and are telling all their friends about it than in the last 2 years combined. I have literally been inundated with calls, e-mails, Facebook posts, contacts via text and every other real world form of support an artist could ever ask for. Not only does this make me want to keep working, it makes me want to please my fans. It makes me want to work harder longer and more intensely to make them happy and keep making music-music they laugh, cry, dance, make out, have sex, meet/break up with boyfriends and girlfriends, cook dinner, drive and dance in their undies lip-synching into their hairbrush to. In other words, music to live life to–a partner/soundtrack to whatever it is that they are doing. The digital revolution makes that possible. My job is to give them the best soundtrack I can and I LOVE MY JOB!

In a perfect world there would be no free downloading and I would be paid a fair wage for my work. You can’t walk into a deli, order a ham sandwich, take it from the clerk and say “thanks” as you walk out the door without paying for it. Not so with music. Music is free and a whole generation now thinks of their media as a portable, constitutional, God ordained, inalienable right. You can either play a Lars Ulrich and fight the shit out of it, lose miserably and retreat to a hermetically sealed curmudgeonly crust hole and sit, drooling from one corner of your mouth while you mutter under your breath about “kids these days” or you can adapt, roll with the change-by-the-hour tide of technology and figure out a way to get people to WANT to pay your for their ham sandwich. I’m not sure why or how that is going to happen en masse but for my part as long as i can continue to engage my fans on a one-to-one level and initiate real contact between artist and consumer of art (fan has egomaniacal connotations to me so I’m going to try and stop using it) who is a REAL person on the other end of the phone, keyboard or social media platform then I will consider myself a successful artist.

Yes the money is nice since my landlord will not take my press kit–no matter how hard I try. Yes I would like to go on a date and pay for dinner not wondering if there will be enough left on the card to not be rejected and humiliated. Yes I would like to buy some new toys to make better art and explore pushing boundaries between organic/synthetic means of music production and performance but those are not the ends. Those are fortunate byproducts of a successful string of real human interactions with real people who like me or my art (which one friend just called and informed me is none of my business–what people think of me and my art) and are willing to part with their hard earned dollars to experience the Ready Fire Aim sound/brand/live show experience.

That means that the labels really ARE irrelevant as long as I outsource carefully and creatively certain aspects of the business to individuals who know how to do that better than me. That means that the fat bloated days of rockstar entitlement to bad behavior, mountains of drugs and waiting rooms of young women (and the fat bloated middlemen who plied them with it all so they could ROB THEM BLIND while they were drunk, high and fucking their brains out in extravagant hotels they were unwittingly paying for) are gone for good–replaced with the leaner meaner rockstar 2.0 approach of DIY ingenuity and hard work, the very things that made America great. See rock and roll IS America. Rock and Roll has become what our parents and grandparents did to put food on the table and roofs over our heads–just another job. It’s come full circle to being willing to do the work, play the game and write the songs that make the whole world sing from some ‘Alice down the rabbit hole’ wanderland that it has been for the last 4 decades.

In the end it all comes down to one person reaching out and touching another (consensually of course) and the honest exchange of some dollars for doughnuts as my dad would say, and to that end, my dear reader YOU are the most important part of the equation-not me. And so on this, the moment before I go and play the most strategically critical show of my life, the one for which I have rehearsed for 15 years I want to thank you for not only reading my drivel but for buying my music, telling your friends, for dancing mostly naked in front of mirrors and writing to tell me about it. YOU give me a reason to keep working non-stop all day and night, sweating my tits off in a shoebox rehearsal space at 10 in the morning 3 times a week after staying up til 4am editing and posting videos on my 20+ social media platforms. . . and for that I am EXTREMELY grateful! IT’S A BEAUTIFUL THING.

BEAUTIFUL THING — RFA makes you shake that ass.

I spent the weekend at a spiritual conference in Atlanta (God knows I needs me some spiritual SOMETHING) and learned the kind of things from men and women of stature, grace and dignity that one can often only find in dusty volumes of leather bound pedantry buried in the backs of arcane abandoned literary crypts heretofore known as Libraries. The good news is that by the time you get to be the age that these folks are you figure you might die at any minute so every thought is expressed in 40 words or less. . . NOTHING worse than dying mid thought is their reasoning I suppose.

I learned that “The way to get rich is to make everyone around you rich.” and “The way to get promoted is to make the so’m bitch in front of you look so damn good that they HAVE to promote him and make sure you know HIS job and HIS BOSS’ JOB so well that they have no choice but to stick your ass in ‘em.” Then there was the spiritual part.

But wait-upon further consideration I decided that IS intensely spiritual advice. It is based upon a service oriented work ethic that has long gone the way of the 8-Track. It is based on a “What can I do for you that will benefit the tribe and therefore raise my status as a byproduct?” ethic as opposed to a “What body part of yours can I lop off so as to handicap you from further action and wave around as a symbol of why no one in the tribe should fuck with me?” ethic–the rugged individualist at the core of every ravenous Wall Street CEO, used car salesman and reality TV show contestant we love to hate.

I spent the weekend in search of an internet connection so I could share the wisdom of the ages that was being blown my way on the back end of clouds of Swisher Sweet and Parliament Menthol smoke (it IS the South after all). I spent hours on the phone with Hotel tech support (outsourced to India of course) trying to get a connection to no avail. I was able to tweet and update my Facebook status via Blackberry Mobile (and their sick ass 3G network which really is as fast as they say) but could not log on to post a blog or do anything significant online.

This disconnect caused a series of technological spasms that I have not experienced since I lost my first PS2 to an ex-con houseguest (don’t ask–that’s a long story for another post) who left with that and about $10,000 worth of other household items to which he helped himself one night. I was withdrawing on a molecular level. Internet Delerium Tremens.

In this era of highly customized, instant access everything it came as a complete shock to my system to have to spend an entire weekend relegated to the cro-mag, remedial consolation prize internet access offered to me by my mobile communication device (no offense Sprint-I still love you). What does it say about me–about us as a culture that to not be able to customize the mode of communication by which I wish to disseminate all the pearls of wisdom I was gleaning from the jowls of the good ole’ boys and girls I was surrounded by sent me into the kind of real world, offline brick and mortar social vertigo that forced me to dispose of perfectly good hours and minutes on hold with a little man with a thick accent several thousand miles away who was pretending to care about my Wi-Fi crisis in exchange for pennies on our American dollar? I wasted perfectly good time that I could have been spending learning more, interacting more and growing more: spiritually, mentally and emotionally with repetitive futile attempts to post a blog. Not to save a life, donate to charity or to even buy a sweater. NO–to POST A BLOG ENTRY.

It was only after the 90th attempt at resetting my various settings and creating different networks in the hopes of establishing a connection that I realized the squandered opportunity to have real, genuine connection with my tribe–a group of real men and women with a wealth of life experience who were eagerly pouring the sum of 60+ years of spirituality, relationship advice and business savvy into my gaping vapid cavernous maw of a cranial cavity.

I folded up my laptop, said sorry to Sanjay my new BFF from Dehli and walked down the corridor towards the conference room where my mentors were waiting with a seat saved for me, a hot cup of coffee and a warm arm around my shoulder to take me under their wings–in full surrender to the fact that I would have to wait to share anything with anyone on the interweb–cursing under my breath the entire way at the realization that I had traded in my finite access to treasure trove after treasure trove of personable, living, breathing wisdom and warmth in pursuit of my habitual online free dive to the bottom of the social media cesspool that I have convinced myself is crucial to my survival as a would-be ANYTHING in this day and age in search of the shiny lump of fools gold that may (or in this case due to network failure) MAY NOT be lying on the bottom.

Thank you for reading.

The relationship between art imitating life and life imitating art is a strange and wonderful one. Occasionally it is so circumstantially eerie that it warrants a second glance. When I created the album I was in a very transitional phase–waiting tables in a super fancy seafood restaurant in Soho on one of the most elite corners in all of Manhattan. I was slinging fish bits to the most rich and famous people on the planet. I was surrounded by good co-workers and we had a tight team on the floor. We were more of a family than co-workers–not unlike many restaurants except that we generally didn’t have that nasty backstabbery that goes on between co-workers in most food and beverage establishments. I had job security and made very good money for what it was that I did. It was the perfect work environment and backdrop for the creation of the record.

I was however increasingly unhappy at home and while unable to articulate it began to grow anxious for something else–my home life and relationship were growing stale and I was growing sicker in the head than I ever imagined at the time. I was in a dangerous place and didn’t know it . . . until it was too late.

I finished the album and started looking for labels. I also subconsciously started looking for another living situation. If you had asked me at the time I would have looked you in the eye and told you that I was perfectly happy–and meant it. Such is the power of self deception.

Sparing us both a boo-fucking-hoo of a rehash, I’ll simply say that I moved out and found a place to live in the East Village on 11th Street. It was an ideal situation or so I thought.

The day I moved out was one of the hardest days of my life. I was committed to taking actions that I was not entirely certain were right but was dead set on taking anyway. Totally fucked from the start in hindsight but once I make up my mind when I am running the show there is no stopping me. I’m the train wreck everyone has to look away from while cringing–a 20 car pile up with bodies sprinkled delicately all over the highway, standing on top waving one of my limbs like an Oscar and taking bows to an imaginary crowd while giving a well rehearsed acceptance speech–delusional supreme magnate of my own little empire.

I had spent the night before my move-out on a friends couch up in Harlem. I’d gone home with her after work. We discussed how 4 of us in the restaurant were going through horror show break-ups at the same time and conjecturing that there must have been something in the air we were breathing. I now believe there is more truth to that than either of us knew at the time but that is a story for another time.

I woke up at 7 a.m. and let myself out covered in cat hair. I am allergic to cats, my eyes were swollen shut like a monster from a Disney movie–total ridiculosity in motion, all stiff and sneezy and puffy eyed with an hour or so of quality sleep in me hobbling to the subway 6 or 7 blocks away.

Then it started to pour.

When I say pour I mean like everyone in Heaven–every person who has ever lived and died and gone up to wherever in the sky was pissing down on me all at once–a “Firemen’s piss” as I call it. The kind you need to lean into like a fire hose to keep from being thrown back against the wall. The kind that shatters the porcelain urinal if not properly directed down the drain.

Within a block I looked like I’d just climbed out of a swimming pool. I got on the subway and rode the hour and 10 minutes in early morning rush hour packed cars while professionals in suits carrying umbrellas looked at me-this puffy eyed, sneezing, soaking wet lump of flesh.

I got out at my stop for the last time, I trudged in the still torrential downpour to my soon to be former front door and let myself in. As I was walking into the foyer I felt my stomach make a fist and suddenly felt like the kind of Deja Vu that makes one believe that there is really some kind of strange space/time continuum rifting or time travel that happens in our subconscious or while we are sleeping. Future premonitions or whatever–those moments you are CONVINCED you have experienced before. It was at that moment that I realized that I was actually living out a song on my record. . . down to the torrential downpour.

I was perfectly happy at home–at least on the surface. I had a good job, lots of toys, a full home recording studio, lots of friends and plenty of support. There was no indication that I would ever be moving out and certainly not under the precise circumstances that I had written almost a year before.

When I wrote “End of Over” about a boy going back to the place where he and his ex had lived so he could collect the final scraps of their life together and maybe catch a last glimpse goodbye I had no intention of LIVING IT MYSELF but nevertheless there I was-standing in my apartment doing exactly that. The song was written with the image of him riding on the train–the rain tap tapping on the panes of glass–staring out at the grey city, tarry rooftops and dull clouds and thinking of the way things used to be and how this was not the way it was supposed to be. His lament of the aborted “could be” circulating in his head with ever increasing intensity joined by barbed threads of remorse, guilt and shame until his head was a giant facist patchwork quilt, a razor wire blanket he wrapped around him to keep warm. Something to pull over his head to deaden the overwhelming supernova resonance of his flushing emotional toilet of a brain. There I was, abandoning ship and leaving only with what I could pack in a few suitcases. Still rehearsing my acceptance speech for when the final car had joined the heap. I called a car service, toted my bags out into the celestial deluge and left. I would never live in that space with her again and I knew it. “Don’t look back in anger, I heard you say” Oasis playing in my head over and over as we pulled away.

The story has a happy ending but that isn’t the point. The point is that we all create our own reality. What we put out there is what we get, what we attract. What we sow we reap and what we pray or chant or dance naked around a fire for is eventually what we get. Whether life imitates art or art imitates life is eternally up for debate and I think is one of those universal “constants” that actually changes depending on the situation. Maybe it doesn’t change so much as its manifestation is situation specific–it’s either one or the other or both depending on circumstance and context.  No two experiences are EVER precisely the same. Mine and yours are two different worlds such that even the same story containing the same emotions experienced by both of us is riddled with difference–the distance between us all as humans no matter how similar our lives are.

Maybe art begets life which begets more art–like a merry-go-round–a creative wheel of samsara. Who the fuck knows? Who the fuck cares? I’m totally talking out of my ass right now so I’ll shut up and play you some music.

Thanks for reading to my story behind the song. Here it is in 2 forms–

1. The audio from the record and \”End of Over\” Album Version
2. Me and the boys rehearsing it this past Tuesday  \”End of Over\” live rehearsal/violin version

Enjoy. It’s a great break up song and who can’t use one of those from time to time. Sit back with your box of Kleenex and pint of Ben and Jerry’s Chunky Monkey or share it with someone you used to love. . . from me to you.

Again–thanks for reading. I’m off for a few days. May not be able to post while I’m gone. Doesn’t mean I don’t care. Be back soon.

I’m trying to provide content that is at least mildly interesting. Interesting enough for you, my dear reader, to come back again and again. Why? I don’t know. Because I suffer from the same sickness that infects an entire generation–no, an entire PLANET–namely that what I have to say and who I am is so vital to your existence that you must stop and take the time to observe the mine-oo-sha of my life. (this is how i get over my lack of ability to spell by the way . . . I spell the butchered word phonetically and obviously like I meant it that way so that you won’t know that I can’t spell to save my life and my spell checker only tells me it’s wrong but never how to correct it–like my Grandfather only without the nasty personal epithets.)

I was trying to come up with something interesting to talk about. I had an early rehearsal today with my band Ready Fire Aim. We were there at 10 am which is so un-rock and roll as to be pathetic. I was going to tell you about the rehearsal and pontificate on our work ethic and how hard it is in today’s music climate to play both artist and businessman (which is truer than you non-artist/musicians can possibly imagine) at the same time, let alone try and monetize it in the least. I was going to say something pithy about art and commerce or something to that effect and then talk about the need to generate content and then show you a video that I taped this morning during rehearsal and cut amateurishly together with my remedial iMovie short-bus skills. I was going to give you something content-ey to look at so that you don’t just have to read my drivel without getting some media “snacky bit” at the end–something I would certainly like to be known for: being the Snickers of blogs. . . something that will rot your teeth and if you consume enough of will make you so out of shape that you can’t see your own dick.

So i got home late after working all day and I began to import the video. I did so with little trouble since even a 2 year old can operate iMovie or so I’ve been told. I hack together the video equivalent of a macaroni card or a pop-sick-uhl stick box and I export it only to discover that it is too large to be posted on this blog–even in it’s smallest form.

Now this is where my problem begins. I have to go online and start another process. I have to join youtube so I can upload the video there and then link to it from here so you, dear reader, can see my video macaroni card–this piece of my life that is so vital to your existence that you can’t possibly risk missing it OR my next post for fear of losing out on the secret missing ingredient to some recent quantum physics conundrum or the latest Perez Hilton inspired report of celebrity self mutilation.

I get to youtube and I fill in the form and join the ranks of people who all also feel that their lives are so important that you should spend your time watching THEM. (Yes now i have my very own youtube station. I am officially “media” thank you very much). Once I get that done, I think “Okay good, now I can write my blog, post the link and go to bed.

WRONG.

Now there’s an empty profile sitting there staring me in the face. I can’t stand empty profiles. They are the saddest things in the world. We all have ONE friend who just found MySpace and joined last Monday, has 3 friends–one of whom is Tom–and no picture. You all think the same thing as me about them . . . “Fucking Loooooooser.” Admit it. You do. Alone naked in front of the mirror and totally honest with yourself and your god, you all hate empty profile picture slots as much as I do.

So I go to upload my standard SageRader mystery man shot that I have on Facebook–the one where you can’t see my face. I personally think the only reason to take a picture is to sell something. The memories you can’t remember without a picture probably NEED to be forgotten anyway, and let’s face it–most photos are crap. People are sweaty, sunburned, double chinned, surly, swarthy and/or generally in need of a serious photoshop session or twelve. One or two hours sweeping Facebook will prove my point. Just go surf around some day just before you polish your shotgun and go sneek a peek at what people who have this same sickness that I suffer from–the need to be seen or heard by complete strangers due to the delusion that their lives are important or valuable in some way to aforementioned complete strangers or “friends” they never see and don’t talk to–actually look like. Then pull the trigger.

So I go to my mystery man shot only it’s 30kb too big. Shit. Now what? Suddenly I notice the little camera on top of my Mac!!! Sweet. So I take some dumb shot of myself with headphones on and throw some groundbreaking stock nickel and dime effect on it and upload it. Now I have a photo–that’s a start.

Then I notice that there’s a ton of information still to be filled out and my online profile OCD won’t let me start my blog til I’ve finished the job. Just as I’ve finished the job, I notice that I can link my youtube page to my Facebook and my Twitter accounts. BONUS! Killing 3 social media budgies with one lousy snickers post. My kind of efficiency to be certain. Now I can post my crap on one spot and it’ll show up all over the place. I have ARRIVED!!!

You see I have spent the last 3 weeks discussing little else save social media–how to consolidate all my online assets into one streamlined profile. How to leverage those assets to optimize the number of viewers, tweets, facebook posts and blogs so that more people I don’t know can see and hear more of my 100,000 Grand stories and watch more of my Almond Joy lifebytes. So when you google me, so many things come up that you think “God, he must be successful at whatever the fuck it is he does–look at all those links” . . . ALL SO THAT I CAN GET THE ONE THING I CARE ABOUT OUT THERE FOR SOMEONE TO HEAR AND ENJOY—my music. All of this jumping through hoops and social media meddling, profile setting, avatar creating, smoke are mirrors is just so you, dear reader will possibly, maybe, for 30 seconds listen to one of my songs and give a shit. So maybe you’ll buy a ticket and come to one of my shows and walk out with a T-shirt.  Such is the plight of the modern aspiring rock star 2.0 of any level less than Trent Reznor and even he does this shit for fucking FUN! Sick bastard.

This is the plight of modern man. I spend less time with my friends so that I can meet more people and make more friends that I never see and don’t talk to.

Well it all got done more or less to some sense of satisfaction sufficient for me to then spend an hour and a half (give or take, I lost track of time) writing this masterpiece of modern literature. For your eyes only. And after all that–I still have very little of any import to say.

So here it is. . . the masterpiece that started it all off. From me to you with all the love I have to give a complete stranger. THANK YOU for taking the time to read my drivel. THANK YOU for taking the time to watch the mine-oo-sha of my life and hopefully somewhere in here along the line of “look at me”s and updates, tweets and photo tags, somewhere–in the vast land of personal profiles and endless avatars we’ll actually share a real human moment together.

So until tomorrow . . .
Ready Fire Aim Rehearsal

My brother died last week. I got the text he passed. I wanted to call him and confirm that the rumors of his death were bullshit but he wouldn’t pick up because he was dead. I wanted to e-mail him but I knew there would be no reply because he was dead. I went to his Facebook page and it was still there. . . playing his music. His voice and comments still there from the day before. He wasn’t planning on dying.

Currently the drama surrounding his death is equal to the drama surrounding his life and I am standing on the sidelines while people he couldn’t stand are planning his memorial services. I don’t want a special place of honor. I don’t want the box seats at his memorial. I don’t want front row, backstage, green room or any other kind of pass to the inevitable “after party”. I don’t want to speak at his burial or have his favorite hat to remember him by. i just want my fucking brother back.

He was as fucked up as the rest of us–but no more, contrary to what anyone who knew him would have said while he was alive. He had a soul of gold and a fist full of dynamite. He once took me to a strip club in a western town and paid the DJ a hundred dollars to play my record in it’s entirety…there were only 3 customers in the place and we were two of them so the DJ acquiesced. My brother then proceeded to pay 3 girls to give me lap dances for the entire time my record was playing. My music never sounded so good. That was his way of saying “Nice to see you again.”

Later that night i went to the bathroom and when I came out he was gone. He’d left me there in the strip club alone and driven home himself–2 hours away. I stayed in a motel 100 yards down the highway and walked to IHOP the next morning to call him from a payphone because my cell was dead. I didn’t hear from him for 2 days. That was part of accepting him for who he was and letting him in as my brother. Was I thrilled? No, but If I look at it from his perspective maybe I’d have left me there too. Probably not, but maybe.

Either way when I heard he died something in me died too. I wrote the song on my record “Welcome Home” for him as his “Glad you’re out of prison” song. It’s going to be tough to sing next Thursday at my show. I’ll have to cauterize something inside of my before then. He used to call me up late at night crying and drunk and tell me how much it meant to him that i wrote him a song–that I had touched him in a place that he had never been touched before. I reminded him that he was drunk and had just gotten out of prison so either way the veracity of that statement was suspect. He would laugh, tell me to go fuck myself and we’d say goodnight and goodbye til the next time.

Only now there won’t be a next time. Death is the period at the end of the sentence. Death means dead. Dead means no more–never ever ever again. I’m standing ankle deep in a nasty stinking cold puddle of never again watching life go by and hoping for a new pair of socks and shoes. I don’t like how death taints my every step. I don’t like thinking now that when I hang up on a loved one that I should maybe say “No, really–I love you. I meant it.”

The last time i talked to him was month ago. It was a Tuesday. It was around 5:30 LA time. He picked up the phone and immediately said “I have to call you back, I’m in the middle of something.” “Is everything alright?” I asked. There was something desperate in his tone that I’d never heard before. “Yeah, I’m fine, I’m just dealing with some fucking shit, I gotta go I’ll call you later.” “Wait asshole!” I wanted to tell him something important. “There’s something I need to tell you. Promise me you’ll call me back.” “I promise.” CLICK.

That’s how 12 years of friendship closer than family ended. A friendship that led me behind prison doors, strip club champagne room curtains, and pissing in the stand up ash trays at the Peter Max art opening shortly before passing out in our plates of food at the Les Paul show. A friendship that taught me to love without expectation of return and without condition. A friendship that taught me that compassion for another human being is the greatest form of surrender that I can ever achieve–the humble knowledge that I can love but I can’t cure or kill the pain. I can care but I am powerless over the life choices of the ones I love.

So as I sit here writing and listening to his voice and his music over and over in my head and avoiding the calls from people he hated who are planing his memorial service–the same people who informed me my brother was dead. . . by text message–I can’t help but believe that he is watching and shaking his head, palm on his forehead like he always used to do. I can’t help but believe that he is laughing his ass off at how stupid the idea is to have a bunch of people he hardly knew get drunk and play a show of his music, filling in the parts that never got recorded with their impromptu noodles and doodles. I was washing dishes today and I could have sworn I heard him laughing behind me. It’s the kind of situation we would have fallen over on the floor and laughed at till our sides ached. I’m sure wherever he is, he is watching me write this now and still laughing his ass off–no longer in pain and no longer at odds with the world around him and howling at the moon like the rockstar lone wolf that he was.

Wherever you are asshole. I miss you. You will always be my brother. Call me back.

\”Welcome Home\”

So I’m standing in Costco selling cookware. I’m up on a crate pallet, covered with a cardboard box making grilled cheese sandwiches from a 4 day old, crusted over solid blue-green moldy block of cheap Wisconsin cheddar. I’m shilling “Titanium Alloy” space age, non-Teflon, super duper non-stick pans for hundreds of dollars to fat, over sexed, over privileged, free sample seeking masses of middle Americans–denizens of aisles the size of European streets where one can buy bundles of 300 rolls of Charmin to wipe the 30 metric tonnes of shit from one’s 20 cubic meter ass–30 metric tonnes of byproduct from eating the crates of 50 cases of frozen egg rolls and boxes of 60 jelly doughnuts and drinking the 45 gallons of Arizona Ice Tea concentrate that make America the greatest nation on earth.

I’m standing across from the TV section where a continuous loop of Chrissy Hynde singing “Back on the chain gang” has been playing now for 6 hours. After several hours of unsuccessful attempts at getting anyone to give a shit, shouting things like “GIVING AWAY GREAT DEALS ON COCKWEAR” or “GREAT CHICKS WITH DICKSWEAR” just to see if anyone will notice or stop and give me a reaction, I’ve amassed a great cloud of witnesses–30 people all ape jawed and oggling me, FINALLY–the oddest thing they’ve ever seen in bumfuck Virginia.

“Come and see the strangest thing you’ll ever see in Costco again folks” I say as loudly as I can without being asked to leave by the manager who has had it with my antics already–sitting and reading books I’ve borrowed from the book aisle and returning every day at the end of the day without ever paying for for an hour at a time when I decide I just can’t take any more demonstrating– “Come see my cookware SHOW folks! It’s fast, it’s free and it’s fall down funny, look at my hair (white spiky mop-top like a Q-tip exploded on top of my head) how could it not be?!!” The crowd grows larger by the minute.

They are all standing there. . . half of them pointing and laughing at me, the other half waiting and hoping for a free bite of my toxic waste grilled cheese sandwich which I am dying to give them. They are all waiting for the show to begin. And then the phone rings. It’s my friend Billy with a job offer from Heaven. He wants me to work with him running around the country shooting vignettes with celebrity rockstars on Sony/BMG as “Joe Columbia” a fake character running for President.

“The job starts tomorrow” he’s not kidding. “We need you back in New York by 8 a.m. can you do it?” “Hmm, I’ll have to think about it” I tell him. “See I’m right in the middle of doing a really important pan man demonstration selling cookware in Costco. Let me think about it and get back to you.” “Cut the shit man, I’m not kidding, the job pays great, free travel, great hotels, it’s a 2 or 3 week job, you’ll get a fat per diem and you’ll get to shoot with a bunch of famous people . . . and me! You in?”

I hang up the phone, turn back around to the diminished crowd–the over 280 crowd who are still hovering in hopes of snagging a grilled cheese–and announce “Show’s over folks. I mean canceled. Sorry no cockwear today.” I leave my sleeping partner in the store and drive home for NYC immediately after arranging with my boss for him to get home on the train in a few days.

I get back and shoot the next morning to have my face stuck on the big plastic football like head (a Columbia Records logo) upside down and go buy a suit. The next morning we were to fly to Atlanta to shoot backstage with John Mayer.

Three weeks, 4 strip clubs, 7 fancy hotels, 6 adult in-room movie rentals and 1 “Proud Warrior” massage later having shot with Pete Yorn, John Mayer, Jessica Simpson, John Ondrasick (Five for Fighting), X-ibit, Anna Nalick and many many more I realized that I was probably better off back at Costco. See, I’d thought that the Sony job was going to define me, or maybe give me back my shot at acting since I’d sabotaged my career as an actor after having a lead in a movie nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance 2000 and then deciding that I didn’t want to work for the same guys who beat me up in high school–guys I am happily back in bed with again now 9 years later–the frat brother types in chinos, button downs and blazers who all call each other ‘dude’ or by their last names and drive BMW 7 series to fancy breakfasts in LA strip mall eateries. I thought that there was an actual difference between the two jobs when in actuality there was and there wasn’t. They were both bottom feeder gigs but at least in Costco I was selling something real, albeit totally shady and not entirely Teflon free, to people who were real. Real fat, real greedy, real overly eager for free samples–sure–but REAL people.

For three weeks my friend had been the only real human contact I’d had. The celebrities looked at me like I was pathetic, some bottom of the barrel feeding, out of work putz who studied Shakespeare in college and ended up with a plastic football on his head. Jessica Simpson’s then assistant Casey looked at me with pity in her eyes and on the way to the car after the shoot touched my shoulder and said “I’m sorry.” and MEANT IT! She really felt bad for me. It was at that moment that I started to realize that no one was going to take me seriously. I was a joke, a clown with a big red nose and rainbow wig to these people. At least at Costco I ran my own show–a moldy cheese riddled, rotten egg omelet flipping, lousy pan shilling show–but it was MINE.

Celebs have their own show–their whole life is one big show full of assistants, yes men and women, and their own product shilling deals. There is actually no difference between what I was doing in Costco selling “chicks with dickware” and their Hollywood coffin box lifestyles–except a few million dollars a year. When we shot with X-ibit for his bit he made us wait for 3 hours while he and his buddies smoked chronic upstairs in their room at the Standard. We sat around waiting for him and when he finally decided to show up he promptly sat down, rolled a blunt and went to the bathroom and smoked the whole thing himself. I imagine my pan man demos would have taken a whole dog leg left at the 18th hole if I’d done them stoned all the way to Pluto but he walked out straight as an arrow. It was like he was perpetually stoned into a state of functionality. He probably wakes up in the middle of the night for a bong hit or two just to finish his dreams.

I was fired from that Costco job a month later when I finally had enough and stole my bosses car and drove home from Greenwich Connecticut leaving George my co-worker of the week stranded. I had been abused with his whining about his ex-girlfriend leaving him, his frozen Costco pepperoni pizza farts, and his general malaise. I felt as though I might do something that would land me in a place worse than Costco so i left. Plain and Simple.

Now that I have my own company-Half Fiction, a decent apartment, a successful (if only critically since no one is buying records these days) band-Ready Fire Aim, and a pile of daily meaningful human contact I think back to those 3 weeks flying around the country leading the life of a semi-famous wannabe stuck in the body of a coulda’ been movie star wearing a huge plastic football on his head I thank whatever God there is and my good friend Billy for the life lesson. IT’S NOT WHO YOU ARE AS A PERSON THAT MATTERS–IT’S HOW MANY PEOPLE WATCH YOUR SHOW.

For samples of the videos clips we made GO TO THE LINK BELOW and have a laugh on me.
watch videos 9,10,11,12