Category Archives: podcasts

Neil/Joni vs. Spotify/Rogan & How the Left Continues to Devour Itself

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Note: This started as an informal Facebook post on 1/21/2022 addressing the controversy of Neil Young pulling his music off Spotify in protest of some of Joe Rogan’s recent guests. Watching everyone pile onto the “Cancel Rogan/Spotify” bandwagon was starting to bug me. Not only has his show on Spotify been grossly miscategorized by the mainstream press and it’s dangers highly exaggerated but the movement to shake Spotify’s support of him, I believe, is built on dangerous and false pretenses. I tried to get all my thoughts out and be brief as well. I definitely failed at the latter.  (Some of the grammar has been tightened up since originally posting)

 

 

I am 100% with Rogan on this and here’s why… first off don’t respond if you don’t feel like reading the whole thing. Unfriend me or whatever. I have no use for people who form their opinions based on twitter posts and out-of-context media clips. This complex world is too nuanced for that.

 

I heard what P. McCoullough and R. Malone said on Joe’s show, some of my thoughts were rattled for a bit but in the end it changed nothing for me. Glad I could hear their claims for myself. Glad I could hear that both of them might have drifted a little off course. Glad I know not to listen to much of what they say in the future. There’s simply better data than what they were touting; you might have to dig a little but it’s out there.

 

I’ve watched a slew of the “discredited” guests he’s hosted and I still safely believe that the vaccinated are 1000x more protected from CV19 than the unvaccinated and that a certain subset of masks (n95’s etc) really do their job well most of the time. This is where the latest data from around the world has been clear.

 

Where I commend Rogan and his guests is over their concern with the informational inaccuracies, mistakes and in some cases full on misinformation presented by the White House, CDC, NIH & WHO over the last 2 years. I’m not a ‘conspiracy theorist’. But not all that is considered a conspiracy always turns out to be so…

 

Also throughout the pandemic the lack of messaging for self-treatments like exercise, Vit-D/zinc, healthy eating, losing weight, and sleeping well, has greatly bothered me. Since healthy folks fair MUCH better than their counterparts when infected it seems like not hammering home this message was a hugely wasted opportunity.

 

To me this is a big failure of the powers that be. And it’s a little crazy that this post is maybe in danger of getting taken down as “disinformation” for even saying something as simple and obvious as that… Because if the CDC hasn’t said it then it’s considered false.

 

Much of what was once considered conspiracy thinking over the past two years has landed MANY a professional and media personality discredited, defunded and deplatformed. Problem is lots of this “crazy talk” turned out to be true in the end. Pick your example, there’s a ton.

 

It’s a good time to mention that I am triple boosted and if I had to go back and do it again i would DO THE EXACT SAME THING…

 

Anyways. This over-arching narrative, that has been our guiding light, has been breaking down through revelations of upper level email leaks and unignoreable facts of of happenstance; everyone is beginning to see the relativity and effect of so many falsehoods. The cognitive dissonance this has all been sowing isn’t helping with the cohesiveness of our already fractured society. Whether this shift is based on “bad intel” or is intentional I find I’m trusting CNN/NPR/MSNBC/etc as much as I trust the entertainment at FoxNews.

 

I don’t agree with, or take seriously much of what Rogan’s two guests (mentioned above) said. But I DEFINITELY don’t think silencing these voices prone to dissenting from the excepted narrative is the answer. Their concerns, as best I can tell are worthy; they think there’s something they know that we’re not being told or that the Powers At Be are ignoring altogether… You don’t want to live in a society where professionals are afraid for their careers to speak out when they think shit is going sideways. But we are getting closer to that everyday. And in the end, correct of not, the point is that dissent is the engine of self correction.

 

Far too often over the last 24-months we’ve seen esteemed professionals and scientists being totally blacklisted from the media for things they said that later turned out to be true… And then on the cover of Newsweek “yeah… Evidence kinda’ looks good for the lab-leak theory…Whoops.” Have those blackballed folks been allowed to monetize on youtube yet? Nope. Have they any options for appeal for raising a very valid concern? Also a big fat “nope”.

 

We need all the conversation we can get, even if it means crackpots like Alex Jones get a spot. (yes, I shudder to even type that) When the conversation ends there’s no other option but violence. These hive-minded shifts to gleefully cancel anything/anyone they don’t like is, to me, the death of all that is holding our democratic society together.

 

As much as I HATED the living fuck out Donald Trump but I’m still queasy about him getting deplatformed from everything (esp considering North Korea still has a Twitter account… do we want to know who’s in charge of drawing the lines?)

 

THIS SWORD CUTS BOTH WAYS. Lemme say that again but a little quieter and plainer “Censorship is a sword that cuts through the left, the right and the middle”

 

That leaves us where we are today. The Democrats have performed horrendously over the last two years and I anticipate an electoral bloodbath in both ’22 and ’24. I hate to say that but I don’t see how middle-lower class & rural America (the largest voting demographic) can possible relate to a bunch of liberal ‘city-folk’ who label everyone with white skin and any success at still staying alive as a ‘racist’.

 

But far-be-it for the left to notice such a digression. They’re too busy cancelling the fuck out of each other on twitter, the toxic social cesspool that Dave Chappelle correctly pointed out “Isn’t a real place”. Then again that just might be his “white- privilege” speaking. (you can thank NPR for applying that trope to the wildly famous BLACK comedian.)

Are things going off the rails or is it just me?

 

Oh it gets better. In response to this craziness the conservatives are again going full-blown-moron in response to the ‘call out culture’ of the left… Maus, the amazing graphic novel based on a surveyors account from Nazi Concentration Camps; is being removed from school library’s in some red controlled states because a bunch of whacked-out asshole, Christian alt-Right-wingers feel threatened by it. Whats Next Elie Wiesel’s “Night”? or how about Viktor Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning”?

 

This is madness. I really can’t imagine a world where everyone doesn’t have access to these great works of human survival and perseverance. And I can’t image a world where huge corporations get to to decide what content you and I have access to and what we don’t.

 

But if you’re gonna go on blattering about what a dangerous tool Rogan is PLEASE, if nothing else, at least watch his 8min response to this new controversy. Don’t watch what CNN and NPR show you. As expected they cut out and ignore the important pieces.

 

Full disclosure, I’ve been listening to Joe’s show for years. I don’t know of many other podcast hosts willing to sit back and let the guests do the talking in such an open ended, natural way. It’s my opinion he has a wonderfully creative and curious mind and allowing some insanely great convos to flourish. And though at first sight he comes across as a bro-y meat-head he possess a refreshing amount of humility, constantly joking and playing down his own considerable intellect.

 

JRE has on an incredibly wide-range of guests, a majority of which I have little to no interest in. I personally dig the brainy ones. I took a chance and watched the recent interview with Jewel and it was one of the most inspiring and amazing interviews I’ve ever seen. Some of his guests, like Matthew Walker, Rhonda Patrick, Jordan Peterson, The Black Keys, David Sinclair, Wim Hof, Jamie Foxx, Peter Attia, James Nestor amongst many others, have truly changed my life and mind for the better.

 

The reason I say all this is because It has seemed to me, anyways, that the people who consider him alt-right, a misogynist, trans-phobic, racist, anti-gay, whatever… prob have never actually watched his show or have any idea what he is actually like. Seems they most likely read twitter posts and watch out-of-context take-down attempts on the mainstream media outlets a ways to inform their opinions. None of the wild accusations I’ve heard has ever squared with what I’ve personally witnessed in the 100’s of hours I’ve listened.

 

I love Neil Young and Joni Mitchell, always have, always will. But they are on the wrong side of this in a big way. Censoring voices you don’t agree with isn’t the way forward. Messaging to America that “you’re too stupid to think for yourself so we’ll control the info spigot” is a dead-end that will only strengthen the resolve of the craziness on the far right. Remember when they were the biggest proponents of censorship? Is this the direction we on the left really need to follow? That said, Joni and Neil will quietly put their music back on Spotify once this all dies down. That you can bet on.

 

So this brings me back to the original point of this whole way-too long thing. Actually LISTEN to what Joe has to say in today’s 8min response. See for yourself and then make up your mind and cancel Spotify or and talk shit or whatever.

 

In all aspects of life information is getting twisted before it reaches our ears. Always find the source and then only form your opinion. And think hard about what it means to pressure corporations into becoming a blunt tool for censorship. With effective censorship comes the ability to control with ease. You don’t have to take my word for it. Look it up.

 

Here’s Joe’s Response

https://www.instagram.com/tv/CZYQ_nDJi6G/…

Part II: Making Art & Music While Lost in the Woods

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This morning,

while I was hanging yet another shelf in my tiny but increasingly intricate work-space, I heard the word “bloviate” for the first time. The word was uttered by Sam Harris in his latest podcast with Andrew Yang. According to google search results it means to “talk at length, especially in an inflated or empty way”. Well here I am with an update to my last post sincerely hoping to not bloviate all over you guys in the process.

The last time we spoke I had just finished actualizing the “album” cover for my upcoming music-single Magnetic Fields. Well wouldn’t you know that as soon as the pixels were dry up springs this white-hot idea slap on a “B-Side”. In truth I was feeling a bit high from having completed something that would soon be public. It’s a rare feeling for me to experience considering most of what I’ve worked on over the last five years hasn’t traveled beyond my studio computer.

I am a completionist at heart…

Cover revised to include Lost in the Woods

For instance, when I find an author that I love I have to own and read everything they have ever written. Through 2018-19 I read every Jon Ronson book with the exception of The Elephant in the Room; which i didn’t know existed until right now because I just googled his bibliography to make sure I wasn’t lying to you. Another example of this tendency, that I haven’t acted on, is wanting every size viewing lens for my huge backyard telescope. Even though the moon hardly offers the opportunity for a peak I still want all the sizes so when I do have a window to ogle at the moon I am not distracted by wanting an even closer look. The more pragmatic portion of my mind knows this isn’t even close to a good place to throw the little money I have so it stays buried a few pages deep in the “wish-list”. And anyways the included lenses work great and blow the moon up to truly breathtaking proportions. But even though I know it’s impossible to see the disbanded lunar-rover from Earth I still wanna try.

So it goes with shop-tools and music-gear, all of which I can usually justify as essential and then write-off for taxes. If something allows me to expand my creative options and happens to be part of a “set” promising more of the same then there will hang an lingering incompleteness until I hunt down the missing parts.

What started kicking up dust after I “finalized” everything with the Magnetic Fields art (and then told you all about it) was this same nagging completionist impulse. Magnetic Fields all the sudden needed a second side; some sonic subtly to counterbalance it’s fully-produced weightiness. For some reason the thought never occurred to me to include a B-Side for The General Store, my latest release. It’s not like I didn’t have enough music dying to be born it’s just that the idea never occurred to me as far as I can remember.

In retrospect it all seems obvious…

Rain • The Beatles

Traditionally all singles have a flip side. This started in the 50’s when record labels began to using 45’s as teasers for larger upcoming LP’s. The B-sides were often the best part. The number #1 song Paperback Writer by the Beatles, for example, is a cool song but the lesser know Rain is the shit. (BTW I just posted my own folky version of this to my YouTube [click here]).

Lately though I have been much more inclined to trade perfectionism for accomplishment…

And it’s been a longtime coming. More and more I have been feeling the deep-seated urge to just get stuff done and out there. As I’ve rambled about at length before I am positively pregnant with music trapped in state of hard-drive purgatory and most of it is mostly ready. I sense a great purge in the making…

In the case of padding the Magnetic Fields release I decided to use my song Lost in the Woods which I’ve been playing live over the last few years. I have an almost completed, full-band version of this but it’s one of the many that are stalled a few yards short of the end-zone. I’ve since kicked to the back-burner but I do plan on digging back in and wrestling it into some sort of respectability after my next LP drops. In the meantime I developed an acousticy arrangement to suit my solo performance needs and lightened it up with some finger-picking and a slower tempo. In the end it’s a different song and doesn’t leave me feeling like I’m treading the same ground.

I realize that you haven’t heard this full-band version I speak of but it’s “heavy” in much the same way Magnetic Fields is “heavy”. [which you can hear if you read the last post]. I became so invested in my full-band recording that I pushed away the desire to record the solo version as well. Putting in this effort felt a lot like buying those expensive lenses for a telescope I never use.

But a few days ago, with excuses in hand, I was determined to start the song from scratch and be DONE with it in a few days time. This is something I’ve never attempted on any serious level. Somehow I’ve convinced myself that recording and mixing has to be akin to torture and take forever. Enough of that.

Start to finish it ran about four days of work at maybe 3-5hrs per day…

Mike Meadows, tracking Lost in the Woods

I can only work on this stuff for so long before I get ear fatigue and everything begins sounding blurry. Mike Meadows, one of my favorite drummers in Austin, has a baller studio setup and recording chops like the pros. He cut me a great deal and after supplying him with the basic bones he worked his magic. A few days later I was seamlessly able to fly his tracks into my flies and continued working. Recording technology is really quite slick these days.

So to summarize: fast-tracking was the name of my game here. I’m already way too excited to share Magnetic Fields with the world and a little irritated it’s not out yet. But I think taking the time to finish Lost in the Woods was the right move. Or anyways at least my inner completionist isn’t barking at me. My inner perfectionist, however, is grumbling but I ain’t got the time to listen to that.

So in a rare moment of artistic vulnerability...

…(helped in part by not having a huge readership) I’m deciding to share what I have so far…  This version was spit out last night and after listening this morning I don’t hate it. That’s an unbelievably good sign in my world. Chances are that I rounded an elusive but important corner in the finalization process and I’m 95% sure that what is eventually saddled to the underside of Magnetic Fields will look and sound very much like what is posted below.

Lost in the Woods (Unfinished Version/Unmastered)

04/24/20 ||| Everyday Chances, Trump vs. Lysol vs. CV19, No Overlap, New Sam Harris

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••• A Noonish Good Morning •••

So it’s just after noon here on Friday morning and I’m feeling rather dumb. For one thing I spent almost five hours face-timing last night with a wonderful girl who lives about 2000 miles away. She might as well live next door; it’s not like we could see each other anyways. I’m thinking I’d throw an unhealthy amount of caution to the wind for this sweetheart if she was really that close. Welcoming these unexpected sparks into my life and actively panning for more isn’t why I’m feeling dumb though. Not in the least. Though at a glance the long game here looks bleak but I just don’t believe in dropping something that feels this good out of some pragmatic or existential reasoning. People who play too safe and live by some chanceless, idealistic bent tend to cut themselves down before the finish line. They may be happy to trudge home with the “participant” ribbon but you know the whole while they’re wondering what it feels like to hold the gold.

I’ve learned that if you want something then you have to stay the course and deal with the obstacles as they present themselves. Not give up before there’s any resistance. In my experience this is the only way the impossible can become possible. Right now I don’t care that her and I doesn’t make sense on paper and that we are separated by three solid days worth of driving and that both of us are heavily embedded in our own locales. I can’t think about that now. If this is meant to work out then it will find a way. I mean, saying that is sort of a non-sequitur because we can never actually know what would have happened that time when we zigged instead of zagged. What’s that quote? and who’s it by? “You lose every chance you don’t take?”

I’m not so stupid to believe in something as empty and vacuous as “The Secret” or that simply praying to the universe will bring what you want. If that shit worked EVERY TIME then I’d be a believer.  The fact is things sometimes work out and sometimes they fall apart; it’s always been that way.

Over the ages the charlatans have figured out that it’s easy to manipulate our feeble intuitions into believing there’s something behind random chance. People can’t help but to find patterns in the static, significance in the insignificant, spooks in the shadows. A face on the moon. We’re built for making sense out of this mystery we’ve been thrust into. Us human would never had made it this far without these great powers of deduction. But this machinery is still running on overdrive in a modern world that’s best understood through math and science. Those simplistic sentiments are as ridiculous as they are popular. I mean there’s very smart people who believe in numerology after all. I’m still waiting for them all to win the lottery. But winning the lotto is also chance.

My point? Look. Like each of you there’s tons of instances where I wanted something so badly and was even convinced my chances of living a good life depended on getting it…  and in the end things still didn’t pan out and I didn’t die. All the praying, all the good thoughts to the universe, all the miles walking on the righteous path and most importantly, all the grit and grinding and still no reward… How do you square these moments with the results after telling yourself to just wish harder? For me the best way is to notice your surroundings and the very spot where you are sitting. All these dashed hopes and near misses contributed as much to where you are as all the success’s and wins did. As long as something feels good then I think you need to go for it.  It doesn’t mean you’ll always get what you want but it might be that you get what you need. I have to give credit to the Stones for that tidbit of philosophy; I think they were dead on. Dawes, speaking of bands and songs, deftly grazed this fundamental truth of life as well. Dig the these lines from When My Time Comes.

“So I took what I wanted
And put it out of my reach.
I wanted to pay for my successes
With all my defeats.
And if Heaven was all
That was promised to me
Why don’t I pray for death?”

Right?!?! …and then there’s this line I rather like a lot…

“You can judge the whole world on the sparkle that you think it lacks.
Yes, you can stare into the abyss, but it’s starin’ right back.”

Check out this Dawes song and their accompanying video here below. It’s stellar.

So I’m gonna keep leaning into what feels right because I don’t know how to do it any other way. The odds probably favor frustration and heartache if strong feelings develop but in the end (to use another well-worn cliche) you can’t win of you don’t play.
Okay, things just got pretty unspooled there; its been a long while since I’ve had a woman on the brain to such a degree and I’m no longer used to it… ah well. Moving on and I’m now realizing I still haven’t told you why I’m feeling so dumb today… It’s because throughout the duration or our five-hour chat I was sipping straight Tito’s vodka. This on the surface sounds nut, I know, but hear me out. This manner of imbibing has been a successful ‘life hack’ of mine I put into practice starting late last fall. I really like Tito’s vodka but not enough to gulp it straight. No way. The stanky burn of 80 proof spirits has a built in self-correction mechanism that works remarkably well for me. Part of my problem with alcohol has always been that I simply drink it too fast (i do the same thing with coffee and seltzer water). After a few drinks my governors often fall off and I lose the instinct to keep track; it’s just what happens when you’re having fun. By drinking it ‘on the rocks’ a single scotch glass worth tends to last me way longer than say a beer or a mixed drink would. Way longer. For instance, while playing in Key West with Ben Balmer in January one drink usually survived the full duration of our 4 hours sets. It has really worked for me but can’t I remember the last time that I drank for 5 fucking hours. So there-in lies my mistake. Live and learn right?

 

 

••• Trump in the time of COVID •••

Though the mental fog has dampened my day some there is still plenty of room for love, light and laughter. I mean the headlines this morning were just fucking priceless. Trump seems to think you can inject people with disinfectant to stop COVID… I wish the word “retard” was still permissible to use because it would have fit perfect here….

Oh and here’s a crazy yet related thought: Is it any wonder why the most ill-educated people in this country think Trump is the Second Coming of the Messiah?

Everyday I can’t believe things could get crazier but the alternative facts just keep flowing from the disgraced oval office.

In closing… maybe the president will save us all some pain and take his own advice:

••• “To my friends and relatives that still believe in Trump” ||| The DailyKos •••

A distant relative who I recently connected with sent me an article today. He said it made him think of me. Our values and sensibilities when it comes to scouring the planet for good information seem to be very much aligned. Not gonna get into the how’s or why’s but take my word on it. Had I found this bit of writing first I believe I would have sent it his way.

The opening venn-diagram really caught my eye. “Thoughtful People that read and think critically” in one circle and “Trump Supporters” in the other with VERY little overlap. Though this might seem like a easy jab it’s really not; it’s a clear fact for anyone willing to look with open eyes. For me this has been, and is, a constant and uncomfortable observation being that I’m related to a inordinate amount of Trumpers. Can’t say I have a single non-related “friend” who supports him though. I don’t really bother with anything less than great company and being able to think clearly is a prerequisite; every one of my close acquaintances are whip-smart.

Anyways it’s as impossible to not notice the lack of thoughtfulness in that tribe as it is to find pro-Trump arguments that are halfway coherent and don’t quickly devolve into something about Obama using those deflective “yeah-but-what-about” fallacies. The sad truth is that his supporters, for the most part, could give a fuck about a solid argument or they wouldn’t be supporting that one-dimensional sociopath in the first place. Seems they could give fuck about thinking all half the time. Instead they’d rather let the twisted fear mongering right-wing propaganda channels think their thought’s for them.

Let me share my youngest brothers opinion on tagged article; he’s always great for a smart take on something. Our sensibilities are also almost always in alignment. I count myself very lucky that I can send a good write-up like this to both of my brothers and it won’t be construed as an insult. But unfortunately I have my doubts that it will track much outside of the larger of the two circles.

“This article was great. It’s nice to read fact based things like this that try not to be partisan and still show how unqualified he is for the job. I know Trump supporters would still call it liberal propaganda but that’s the world we live in.”

Indeed brother….
Click the brilliant venn-diagram for the article.

••• Making Sense w/ Sam Harris: A Conversation w/ Caitlin Flanagan •••

Sam Harris is my jam. This dropped yesterday and I haven’t started it yet. But I will asap.
Hit his website at https://samharris.org/ and subscribe to his podcast
Also check out his awesome meditation app: Waking Up