beersock

The meaning of life explained in terms of a V7 engine—yes, seven—Socrates and Evel Knievel meet Captain Beefheart at the off ramp.

Man, Mythe, and Magick by Beer Sock

I have noted a theme on true and fictional crime shows of the perpetrator forcing their victim at gunpoint to dig their own grave. One morning when my back was aching I imagined myself in such a lose-lose situation. At that moment I would have said, “Hell no, you lazy son of a bitch! Dig it yourself!” This coincided with an interest I had just taken up in complex (sometimes called “eerie” or “spooky”) chords on the guitar. This was ignited by the memory of a recording session years ago when I had been hired by a Russian jazz artist (unpronounceable name forgotten) to program the synthesizer (before programmable presets put me out of business). His chord progressions were jarringly discordant while being amazingly pleasing. Long story tedious, I composed and arranged this music on an iPad and wrote the text on my iPhone in a matter of a few days. I decided early on to make this a recitation rather than a song. Recording went smoothly, the toughest decision being which phrases to edit together from the four takes of my recitation. That and how much reverb to put on my voice. Collecting, processing, and editing video images has become a passion with me—an island of sanity amidst a world titling off its axis. I enjoyed putting this project together very much. The crazy signed photo of myself at the conclusion was an experiment I found amidst the thousands of images stored in my iPhone. I designed that two years ago. I’m glad to have dug it up. It’s the real me. Enjoy!

When I was in college, being an avid reader beyond my coursework, I devoured a book written in 1883 by Ignatius Donnelly entitled Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel. He proposed that within human history and preserved in legend and geological strata, our planet passed through the tail of a comet producing a rain of fire, stones, and hydrocarbons upon the earth. Many were his naysayers, and I’ll not go into the merits of his theory here. Donnelly thought outside the academic consensus box, and I appreciate original ideas. The imagery of the catastrophe he described pounded and burned its way into my imagination, producing a song in complex meters. I remember showing my ideas to Lief Nicolaisen, the bass guitarist and vocalist in Brumus, our band at the time. I hadn’t completed the arrangement, and unfortunately we didn’t pursue it. I wish we had. All these years later, I found my original rudimentary notation of this piece in a notebook. I’ve worked snapshots of the pages into my video. Whenever I see my early notation scribbled on the staffs in ink, I recall Maestro Frederick Lesemann scolding me, “Use pencil. You’re not Mozart.” I eventually conceded the point, but I love seeing these ideas so confidently and indelibly hitting the paper in my brazen youth. I wrote a lot of music back then, for everything from solo piano to large ensembles, with meager hope of ever hearing them performed. I was an English major, after all, wading along the shore of a stuffy, academic, musical conservatory culture. Authentic music students had their own compositions and assigned pieces to worry about. As for faculty performers .... well, they were faculty. When I joined their ranks as a fellow teacher, however, my prospects didn’t improve. Some of my works got performed in truncated form by my various rock bands, but most remained silently sleeping in my notebooks. Until now. The Ersatztet provides top-notch performances of my works. Stunningly and compellingly so. I can’t be happier with the result. I hope you will be, too.