FTW, 10.1.2020

1) Approaching seven months into pandemic isolation, and there's plenty to worry about, between Trump's racist alpenhorn to white supremacist thugs during the first debate, and his broad hints at refusal to accept the results of the election. He needs to be dealt a crushing electoral blow like nothing ever seen before in our history. Closer to home, our school board has voted to return students to class even as community spread remains high. Weak, vacillating leadership on public health at every level results in a catastrophic death toll that is infuriating because it was so avoidable.

2) Playing music is the only thing that gets my mind off the ongoing slow-motion train wreck that our country has become. To paraphrase Octavia Butler, habit beats inspiration, and I've been playing more than at any time since I was a teenage tyro trying to figure things out. It's going to be a long time before I go out to play with people again, but my ongoing exploration of Beefheart (assisted by my looper pedal) could potentially keep me busy for years. Absent a band, there's no reason to learn crowd-pleasing stuff that might woo an audience, so I'm concentrating on Trout Mask and Decals, the records that offer the most challenge and greatest reward. It's harder to pick out the parts on TMR, although the mix on the Third Man reissue makes them a little easier to hear. I started working on "Sweet Sweet Bulbs" last week, cranking the balance first left, then right, and recording each channel on my phone for study. The transcription (in my musical illiterate's "notation") took a couple of days. Here's what I came up with.

And here's what it sounds like. When I was listening to the original and heard the little quote from "Alouette," it made me laugh out loud. 

3) We just finished watching Anthony Bourdain's Parts Unknown. Possibly the best thing I've ever seen on television: visually stunning, creative, and edgy, with the food serving only as the frame for a larger discussion of politics, culture, and change. With each season, Bourdain's compassion, and his self-loathing, become more evident. Maybe it's trite to say, but he seemed like someone I could have known: about the same age, a wiseass punk rocker from the tri-state area. I cheated and watched the finale of the Lower East Side episode (a cover, by musical director Michael Ruffino, of Johnny Thunders' greatest song, with Bourdain's daughter singing backup) before the episode, but I'm glad the series ended the way it did, with a paean to the '70s-'80s NYC where he journeyed for "heroin and music," rather than something more sentimental (earlier episodes in the season covered his legacy and his relationship with the crew on the show). I was in the middle of my own health drama when he checked out in 2018. I'm sorry his trough of despond was so deep that he came to see death as a way out. But maybe we're all a little closer to that, these days.