Thursday, March 31, 2011

Chestnut Mare

Dear friends,


I'm very sorry for the lack of posts and social media action, but it is only in result of my "free" internet ran away from me a month ago. So today, I've found some wifi and some time to do some updates.


I've been plowing, slowly at times, through Keith Richards book Life. It has become a true part of me. Everytime I read a biography, I feel like I become a part of that person. It has happened with Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Pamela DeBarres, and Anthony Keidis, and now Keith Richards. And i will take that in stride. I would love to be Keith Richards. A true lover of music. A modern day pirate dandy. A truly talented and blessed soul.


I have also been connecting with my inner "crafter", coloring some velvet pictures and, inspired by The Monterey Pop Festival 67', a yarn craft. Photos are to follow. I finally completed my first dream catcher and I am now onto my second. It was harder to make than I thought. My first dream catcher looks very earthy and traditional. I am very proud.


My love of the desert, south west, cowboys and Navajo things is growing. Turquoise is becoming part of my soul and it is beginning to influence my clothing choices.


I constantly say "Party on Wayne" for no reason. Like I am in search of my "Party on Garth" soul mate.


Cassettes are making a comeback, which to me, seems more logical that vinyl. Most people might still own a cassette player. For vinyl, some hipsters had to run out and buy a brand new turn table.


My friend and I have been busting around my hometown in a early 90's mini van, blasting our cassettes as loud as we can. Our collection includes: Guns n' Roses, KISS, the Offspring, The Band, Neil Young and many others.


This weekend should be full of shenanigans. I am attending a famous family wedding which should bring many stories and photos, and hopefully more blog posts.


Peace up until then!


Monday, March 28, 2011

Little Miss Sunshine





Lovely ad campaign.
So fresh and sunny.
I have the first 2 photos on my fridge.

Skid Row


LOVE- "Skid"
Fantastic jam that was finally released after many years being locked up in the vault.

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Walk This Way








Walking this way for Planet Blue

Survivor

My love for Keith runs deep.

Girl Next Door



Dolly Parton

Dolly grew up in Tennesse, dirt poor which inspired "Coat of many colours"

What I love about her is that she is a self made woman-

came from nothing, now a star with her own theme park (Dollywood)

Her hits include "I will always love you" and "Jolene," my personal fav.

She also stared in 9 to 5 and The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.


Some quotes:


"I look just like the girls next door... if you happen to live next door to an amusement park."


"I modelled my looks on the town tramp."


"I still close my eyes and go home - I can always draw from that."


"I'm not offended by all the dumb blonde jokes because I know I'm not dumb... and I also know that I'm not blonde."


"If you don't like the road you're walking, start paving another one."


"It's a good thing I was born a girl, otherwise I'd be a drag queen."


"My weaknesses have always been food and men - in that order."


"Storms make trees take deeper roots."


"The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain."


"You'd be surprised how much it costs to look this cheap!"

Traveling Man



Another man of my dreams
Mr. Brett Detar.
A whiskey soaked gentlemen who creates
country gems that sound like Nashville 40 years ago.
My dad and I have been grooving on his album for a few months now.
Here is a write up from his website:

"Bird In The Tangle is an authentic roots record that takes its listeners on a sweeping journey across coasts and five cities into fleeting highs and empty houses, bleak street lights and closed eyes, the darkest depths of wanderlust and loneliness. Paying homage to the legacy of story-telling found within America’s own art form of country music-- in all its weepy, pedal-steel steeped, Yes-Hank-woulda-done-it-this-way glory-- Brett Detar lays bare his soul in this stunning solo debut. The album documents one of the loneliest and most doubtful times in singer/songwriter Brett Detar's life. After touring the world full-time, releasing five studio albums on both indie and major labels in a successful indie rock band with his childhood friends for ten years, he found himself with splintered musical attachments, changed life goals, and an uncertain musical future.

"Suddenly, the ride stopped and I was left sitting alone in a strange town with no new tours or album. I didn’t know where I belonged in the world,” says Detar.

After two failed musical collaborations, a loss of belief in himself and, ultimately, a decision to "quit music," Detar found himself in a deep depression and without an outlet in the (ironically) always sunny side of life, Los Angeles. Save, however, for a small pocket-sized recorder that slowly began filling up with "throw away song ideas."

“I never gave those tapes much consideration until late one night after having a few drinks in the hills by Lake Hollywood. I listened [to them] and realized I had a sizable collection of the most honest, soul-baring songs I’d ever written...I had never listened to them because I had myself convinced I wasn’t a songwriter any more. Something about that night, though, changed my mind.”

Call it salvation in the bottom of a Maker's Mark bottle (or perhaps Merle Haggard's wise words to "drink up and be somebody" echoing in his mind), somehow, Detar convinced himself to put the pieces together for what was eventually to become Bird In The Tangle.

Armed with over 50 songs, written in a powerful, yet disarmingly vulnerable singing voice on an acoustic guitar, Detar headed down to Nashville. Working with Pete Young (known for his work with Loretta Lynn), Brett recorded the entire album live in a whirlwind three days with some of Music City's finest session musicians."

Source: Brett Detar


Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Calico Desert


Kirsten Dunst, a long way from Bring in On

Fire Burns



The more I read Keith Richards book Life, the more I realize how much he actually loves music. He is a true musician, and he was never in it to make a buck. He truly loves what he does, loves to play his guitar. It just happened that he stumbled upon drugs, which according to him did not hinder his music, or help it either. In the book, it does not appear that Richards condones drugs or discourages them either. Rather, he states that he did take drugs. A lot of things happened when he was on drugs. He did not state that drugs helped write songs. He states that drugs helped "insulate" himself from all of the crazy shit that happened around him.


Some quotes:


On playing by ear:

"I don't need this paper. I'm going to play it straight from the ear, straight from here, straight from the heart to the fingers. Nobody has to turn the pages."


On Gram Parsons:

"When I fell in with Gram Parsons in the summer of 1968, I struck a seam of music that I'm still developping, which widened the range of everything I was playing and writing. It also began an instant friendship that already seemed ancient the first time we sat down and talked. It was like a reunion with a long-lost brother for me, I suppose, never having one. Gram was very, very special and I still miss him."


On writing songs:

"What is it that makes you want to write songs? In a way you want to stretch yourself into other people's hearts. You want to plant yourself there, or at least get a resonance, where other people become a bigger instrument than the one you are playing. It becomes almost an obsession to touch other people. To write a song that is remembered and taken to heart is a connection, a touching of bases. A thread that runs through all of us. A stab to the heart. Sometimes I think songwriting is about tightening the heartstrings as much as possible with out bringing on a heart attack."


"But a songs should come from the heart. I never had to think about it. I 'd just pick up the guitar or go to the piano and let the stuff come to me. Something would arrive. In coming. And if it didn't, I'd play somebody else's songs. And I've never really had to get to that point of saying, "I'm now going to write a song." I've never ever done that. When I first knew I could do it, I wondered if I could do another one. Then I found they were rolling off my fingers like pearls. I never had any difficulty in writing songs. It was a sheer pleasure. And a wonderful gift that I didn't know I had. It amazes me."


On friendship:

"It's you can hang, can you talk about this without any feeling of distance between you? Friendship is a diminishing of distance between people. "


On Partying:

"The ultimate party, if it's any good, you can't remember it.. It's very hard to explain all that excessive partying. You didn't say, OK, we're going to have a party tonight. It just happened. It was a search for oblivion..."


(a relentless beat= trance)

(fire burn= meant hitting the drum)

(Jah= Give thanks and praises)


On Rastafarianism:

"Rastafarianmism was a religion, but it was a smokers' religion. Their principle was "ignore their world," live without society. Of course they didn't or couldn't - Rastafarianism is a forlorn hope. But at the same time, it's such a forlorn hope... They refused to work within the economic system. They're not going to work for Babylon; they're not going to work for the government. For them that was being taken into slavery. They just wanted to have their space. If you get into the theology, you can can get a little lost. "We're the lost tribe of judah." Ok, anything you say. But why this bunch of black Jamaicans consider themselves to be Jewish is a question.


On Uschi Obermaier:

"She was beautiful. She was quite famous in Germany as a model who had graduated into an icon of the student protest movement...She was a poster girl of the left; her picture was everywhere. She was a mad rock and roll fan...But Uschi's other title, of which she was proud, was the Bavarian Barbarian. She had never taken the ideology seriously, openly drinking banned Pepsi-Cola and smoking menthol cigarettes and upsetting other Commune dictates... Her road is littered with guys who tried to tame her. They tried to tame something that's untamable. She's the best bad girl I know."


On Fame:

"At first you were a novelty. But then that's what they thought about rock and roll in the 60's. And then they wished you to fuck off. And then when you didn't fuck off, they wished you to death."


"I think in a way your persona, your image, as it used to be known, is like a ball and chain. People think I'm still a goddamn junkie. It's thirty years since I gave up the dope! Image is like a long shadow. Even when the sun goes down, you can see it. I think some of it is that there is so much pressure to be that person that you become it, maybe, to a certain point that you can bear. It's impossible not to end up being a parody of what you thought you were."


Another thing that runs deep through the book, in every single chapter, is how much Keith honors these things:

1) Music

2) Friendship


Pretty much, if you become his mate, his buddy. He is with you for life. Anyone talks down to you? He will "slit their throat."

Despite his war with Mick Jagger, he still has his back. Once Keith is your friend, there is no shaking him.


Behind Blue Eyes




Some lovely outakes from Krystal Simpson

No Sugar Tonight









Spanish Moss magic in the desert <3

Eye of the Tiger



Psychedelic velvet tiger