The Horror of Twin Peaks: Re-Visited

This photograph is capable of destroying me. It's of Laura Palmer, a character, played by actress Sheryl Lee, on the television show Twin Peaks. 

Perhaps you need to know the story of that show to be moved by that image or be interested in anything I'm going to say here. I'm not writing this for those of you unfamiliar with the show. This one is for everyone who already knows, or tried and couldn't make it through the first episode because you didn't know what to look for, or maybe this one's just for me. Let's call it posterity.

Laura Palmer is a tragic character. You can see it in the eyes, red-rimmed and a bump too glassy. Her life isn't her own, due to her age, the problems of her parents, drugs, sex and forces beyond her own, or anyone's, control. (There's a little bit of Laura Palmer in all of us, I always say.) Things definitely did not end well for Laura, 25 years ago today, but there probably wasn't ever much of a chance that they would, once she was born the daughter of a man named Leland... Or, Le Land...  Or, The World. And, when Leland was just a boy, he had this neighbor...

The Five Reasons Your Band Isn't Going to "Make It"

I live in Nashville, Tennessee. What actors are to Los Angeles, musicians are to Nashville. It's a total infestation. This, combined with many years as a touring musician, has afforded me the opportunity of seeing countless people make gigantic mistakes in their efforts to "Make It."

In this post, I'll tell you five things you're doing to sabotage your chances at The Big Time. And, no, Number One isn't that you suck. Statistically, it's safe to say your band sounds terrible. But that didn't stop all of the shitty bands currently on top of the radio charts, so there must be more to it than that, yeah? Assuming your band can all play the same song at once, let me give you some tips on how to drop the attitude, quit annoying the people you need, understand SEO, build your legacy and rise above the rest of the local scene.

[UPDATE: Since writing this article, I've been added to several lists of "music blogger emails" sold by scam artists. I'm not a music blogger and I almost never write about new music. I'm never going to listen to your band's music and I'm certainly not going to write about it. Honestly, this is probably doing you a favor because if I did it would almost definitely be a bad review. If that sounds harsh, allow me to offer you my sincere lack of apology. The same segment of this website where my email address can be found has a specific request to not send me promo materials for musical acts. To ignore this request is actually illegal but, perhaps even worse than that, makes you and your band (or your clients, if you're a "publicist") look like total assholes. Stop doing this and keep reading this post.]

Four Horrific Authors: Jeremy Robert Johnson, Stephen Graham Jones, John Farris & Dennis McKenna

Much as discussed in last week's article on caffeine/coffee, tolerance to a drug builds quickly. One needs a bigger hit and more concentrated a dose. When the addiction is to myth - this need to experience fiction as allegory for what lies beneath the veil of Maya - all roads lead to Horror. Whatever your preferred Cosmogony of Consciousness, existence as self-aware entity is not possible without a symbolic system to explain away those moments. You know the ones. The time your walk became a run towards your back against the other side of the front door, slammed shut before the realization struck - you hadn't even looked behind you to see if anything was there. The time you never really could remember that dream but the feeling - and whatever Thing(s) causing it - clung to your day, just under the surface.

Hey, it's okay. We don't have to talk about it if you don't want.

I Hate Music, or, How I Learned to Reset My Head

With a singer-songwriter as a father, one would assume that I grew up in a home with music always in the air. This was not the case. When I was young, my father actively avoided listening to music and his temperament was such that when he did something, everyone in the home did it. We didn't listen to albums. In the car, the radio was always off.

When you're a kid, you just go with the flow because everything's normal, right?

"Sometimes when we go outside, people go apeshit and take pictures of us. We get on stage and all of those people are now somewhere behind the blinding lights while the music happens. Then we go home, there are no screaming people, and there is no music."

It made sense to me, I guess.

Curtis Mayfield, Prophet of Soul

Curtis Mayfield

This one is personal. I've been magnetically drawn to the music of Curtis Mayfield since the first time I heard Super Fly. [I remember hearing "Pusherman" as a child and, having no concept of the words being used other than "mother" and "daddy," being intensely attracted to that circular, School House Rock-ish melody being hot potatoed between the instruments and vocals. I was a fan.] When I registered this blog, Curtis was one of the first topics I knew I would cover because even among music historians, discourse on Curtis' contribution to the general well-being of the Soul of the World typically revolves solely around Super Fly. This is misfortunate, as Curtis Mayfield made some of the most brutally realistic, cathartic, spiritually uplifting music this world has known or ever will - and you can dance to most of it...