11.05.14
Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, Rock 'n' Roll at 3:35 pm by George Smith
Here’s another teaser from Loud Folk Live. And it would seem elliptically appropriate to the entire Democratic Party today. Unlike the Old White Purity party, they don’t blow the right kind of folks, or when they do, they’re just not as good at it.
And if you’re given a choice between committed whores and half-assed ones, you take the former. And they did.
Puta!
And while you’re there, stick around for The National Anthem, which is up to a big 81 listens!
“We’ve got a lot of crazy people!” Perfect.
Remember, copies of Loud Folk Live can be had for name your price, although ten bucks seems to now be the going average. Or not. Just saying.
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10.20.14
Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, Rock 'n' Roll, WhiteManistan at 3:34 pm by George Smith
The first review of Loud Folk Live is in and it’s a nice read. At NYC Rock, written by an old editor of Creem magazine, paradoxically, the latter the place my first record thirty years ago was reviewed.
Some of the nice bits, excerpted:
The more George Smith, who tussles with the media world under the name Dick Destiny, lives, the more disheartened he becomes. George is like the last romantic standing, the last man who cares about the US and the more he bristles at “Whitemanistan,??? the more he thinks and studies it, and the more he bristles. It is in the nature of things, of course, but that doesn’t mean Smith shouldn’t be stating his reservations about the Reservation or even singing, dancing, and stomping his feet. Misery loves music loves company, and, as Lennon taught us decades ago, if you wanna have a revolution write a catchy hook.
Which leads us back to the extremely enjoyable and fun Loud Folk Live, if you can’t make people read, make ’em listen. You wanna rail against the robbing of the poor to give more to the rich, you wanna remind us of Waco, Texas, do it with a splendid lick to carry you and people are gonna like you a whole lot more. “Puta??? sounds like Lou Reed circa New York … It is a blast whatever other intentions Destiny might well have. Sure, he’s right, it is “Protest Rock??? but the accent is on rock whatever his intentions might be.
On song after song, Destiny and drummer Mark Smollin discover the joy in creating a racket …
Destiny’s album is a joyful leap into Whitemanistan, into the big muddy where nothing matters but the readies. The Fugs would approve. Allen Ginsberg would approve. Peter Stampfel would approve and I approve in America the place where we call home.
Go read all of it. Make the numbers at Rock NYC tick up a bit.
Yes, and it includes links to the teaser tunes here and here.
And you can have a copy, CD or MP3s, just name your price. Or not, no obligation. Just follow the link and page down.
“Impressive.” — Steve, Secrecy News
Related diversionary reading — Iggy Pop of the Stooges, asked to give a speech in England on the 10th anniversary of the death of famous radio DJ John Peel, excerpted from the NME:
The subject of his lecture – which marked ten years since Peel’s death – was “free music in a capitalist society”. Dressed in a barely buttoned black shirt revealing his bare chest and reading glasses, the punk godfather prowled the stage as he told a packed auditorium how digital advances have caused the music industry to become “almost laughably pirate” and that electronic devices “estrange people from their morals and also make it easier to steal music than pay for it.”
He claimed the normalisation of illegal downloading is “bad for everything”. “We are exchanging the corporate rip-off for the public one. Aided by power nerds. Kind of computer Putins. They just wanna get rich and powerful.”
Pretty much.
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10.15.14
Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, Rock 'n' Roll at 11:35 am by George Smith
Another teaser from Loud Folk Live, a live and crazed “Hooray for the Salvation Army Band!”
Tales of alcoholism, salvation evasion, bum checks expired and a group sing of “Bringing In the Sheaves.” Top that.
MP3s of the entire album, or a CD, can be easily had. It’s a perfect companion for the Culture of Lickspittle.
We lock up the poor for all the rich & we do it right, without no hitch…
I refuse to put it in the digital landfill of iTunes/Spotify/Rhapsody/etc. These services are of virtually no use to any music that isn’t already well-established or promoted by a record label with some resources.
Online music creates the illusion of infinite choice and opportunity that didn’t exist under the old model. History and what actually happened have shown this is just that, an illusion.
The profit in it is virtually only for the owners of the landfills.
So, all you have to do for digital copies is send an e-mail and I can supply them just as easy.
As usual, name your price, or none at all, there is no obligation.
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10.02.14
Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, Rock 'n' Roll, The Corporate Bund, WhiteManistan at 2:52 pm by George Smith
Full size. Listen to The National Anthem.
The first copies of Loud Folk Live will be going out tomorrow and Saturday. So expect them sometime around the middle of next week.
I’m proud of it. It’s a better record than my first, Arrogance, way back in 1985 and that, surprisingly, even made mention in a lot of places including Chuck Eddy’s book on the 500 best hard rock and heavy metal records. Which I didn’t take too seriously, but which was nice to have happen, anyway.
Loud Folk Live is much different. It’s an ideology, a point of view, a mix of electric Americana as well as hard-hitting guitar rock n roll, totally live and straight to two-track. What went down over our recent summer of contempt is exactly what you get.
The performances are tight and explosive. Hooray for the Salvation Army Band’s mix of Purple Haze, lyrics to alcoholism and interjections of singing Bringing in the Sheaves gospel challenges you not to laugh. Alone, it makes the entire thing worth having.
And then it tumbles right in to the sermon to our god of green, morals and how to not get into Heaven, Jesus of America.
If you don’t like rock ‘n’ roll, or my voice, you certainly won’t enjoy it.
Which doesn’t bother me that much. If you contributed after the last post, you’ll get one, anyway.
You can still have one for whatever you name. They’ll be CD-Rs with the above insert, later as a limited run burn in a clam shell case.
Don’t make the mistake of thinking this is just a diversion next to the blog. It’s not. Loud Folk Live is part of my American experience, as important to me as the last twenty years of writing on the subject with which you’ve become familiar.
No one was going to publish a book. Not possible in this country. (Work through Amazon and the empire of Bezos? C’mon, already did that and got hosed.) So I made music.
If you want a copy, go here, page down, then you know what to do.
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09.20.14
Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, Rock 'n' Roll, WhiteManistan at 12:53 pm by George Smith
Full size.
When you’ve been tossed in the garbage by the dictatorship of American capitalism you have much free time. Plenty to ruminate on how unfit the country is, time to come up with strong stories and opinions. And one expression of this is Loud Folk Live, made over the summer during live recording sessions in Pasadena with my friend, DDB drummer Mark Smollin.
Loud Folk Live was done as a you-are-there performance, straight to a two-track recorder, dressed up only to the extent of what you’d hear coming through the sound system at a show.
Welcome to the United States of Penitentiary, we all get here eventually; we lock up the poor for all the rich & we do it right, without no hitch. We have predator loans, iPhones and drones! Plus lots of crazy people! — from “The National Anthem”
The pic is the CD cover and it’s ready. Yes, there will be compact discs! CD-Rs for now, but still — something you can hold with higher fidelity than mp3s. (Which you can also have.)
One place you probably won’t see it will be the iTunes store or offered on streaming music services. I’m not particularly fond of the business model of paying a bribe service fee to get thrown into a cloud Oblivion of tags, meta information and lists compiled by “curators” who work for zip. (Quote: “Now you get to give 99 dollars to Tunecore for the privilege of being buried in the world’s digital landfill of streamed music.”)
If you still read the blog or believed at all in what was done for the last two decades you’ll want this.
It’s a statement, sometimes laugh out loud funny, always pointed, and loaded with the contempt and anger richly earned by the Culture of Lickspittle in the superpower of predatory business.
Wanna buy me some guitar strings, picks and other sundries used up in the Loud Folk Live sessions and score yourself a CD at the same time? Wanna review copy? Have an opinion or a promotional scheme?
Share or hit the donate button at the bottom of the “about” page.
Much more to come.
Have a listen to The National Anthem, one of the many great tunes on Loud Folk Live.
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08.30.14
Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, Rock 'n' Roll, The Corporate Bund at 11:52 am by George Smith
Old PARIAH magazine, the glossy we wish was on the newsstand, way ahead of its time.
This Labor Day marks the first in recent memory where many opinion writers could no longer overlook the dreadful state of American employment. As a result, today you can easily find recommendations to raise the minimum wage or a few anecdotes about a couple companies, usually Market Basket, where labor combined with a former owner to overcome the greed of corporate masters.
However, it’s really still not very hard to find the material I characterized yesterday.
Let’s see a few pieces. Roll it.
From Newsday:
Personally, I’ve never been a fan of the Labor Day concept. It strikes me as a touch un-American. Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy to take the day off. But I don’t accept the notion of two fixed Americas, one comprised of laborers and one comprised of business owners. It’s antithetical to the America of job mobility I know and believe in — and the one we always should be striving to grow. Yet lots of Americans genuinely see the country divided today into permanent working and ruling classes. It’s no wonder, considering how many political leaders exploit that proposition to gain votes …
But with the underemployment rate stubbornly hovering at about 15 percent this Labor Day, maybe it’s time to give businesses a little credit and recognition for all they do for this country. I, for one, would be hosed without employers. Most of us would be.
The man’s recommendation? Have an Employer’s Day. Paradoxically, I agree. Labor Day is un-American in the sense of it reflecting how things are. We live in a corporate Culture of Lickspittle. So why not have a national Lick the Boots Day?
This from the current Secretary of Labor, runs the Americans-don-t-have-the-skills-employers-want meme (no link):
As the Secretary of Labor, I have a unique opportunity to meet with employers around the country of all sizes and from an array of industries. So many of them tell me the same thing: they’re ready to grow their businesses and to hire more people.
But here’s the rub: too often, they can’t find workers who have the skills they need.
Recently, the mayor of Los Angeles, Eric Garcetti, has stated he wants to raise the city’s minimum wage to a little over 13 dollars an hour.
For this weekend, a local corporate flack, Stewart Waldman, opines for the LA Daily News:
It is crucial that our government begins gearing policy toward attracting and retaining business. Once businesses are comfortable, well-paying jobs will follow. No one should have to live on a minimum wage, but the mayor’s proposal isn’t even a short-term solution — it’s a disaster for Los Angeles. Happy Labor Day!
An older woman in the hinterlands is shocked, shocked, that corporate America is rude to young people and that the line about not being able find qualified workers is a con. It won’t even deign to answer their job applications:
Our business education people have coached people who apply for jobs to be careful to present themselves in the best light, to be courteous in their presentation, to become knowledgeable about the company to which they are applying, update their resume and improve their education if need be to find a job.
My friend did all of these and yet, still no job. And yet there are employers complaining that they cannot find good help …
If someone works that hard to work, seems to me they should at least be recognized for all the effort they put into their search by the courtesy of a call or a formal note or in today’s world, I guess an email would be better than nothing.
No wonder the young people today put no stock in the importance of a first impression or the need to have information in order and skills well noted and presented and to keep trying for a job.
Better late than never, I suppose.
Here’s some counter-balance, with venom. From the Reno newspaper. Amazon employs retiree slave labor:
U.S. workers get fewer holidays than those in the rest of the first world, so I’m totally in favor of heavy partying, dressed or undressed.
With prospects for American families looking increasingly dim, we might as well get drunk. Herewith, some reasons why.
AMAZONED OUT. Despite Reno City Hall’s glowing pronouncements about what a great employer Amazon is, many of the 4,000 workers the online octopus will retain during the holidays will be impoverished senior citizens living in aging motor homes who wander the country like farm workers. The only difference is that they have neither found their César Chávez nor are they likely to.
Amazon terms them “workampers??? who will suffer elongated shifts on hard concrete for low pay with no benefits. As with Wal-Mart and casinos, most will qualify for food stamps and welfare. Their health plan will consist of aspirin or emergency rooms.
I’m with him. Party heavy, get drunk. I have you covered at Escape from WhiteManistan.
And in about an hour, I’m going to start just that.
Now go, go, go for the closest you’ll get to official Loud Folk Live Dick Destiny music for Labor Day, Rich Man’s Burden performed a couple weeks ago from deep in the heart of Pasadena, just off Rte. 66, where you get your kicks.
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08.25.14
Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, Rock 'n' Roll, The Corporate Bund, WhiteManistan at 1:02 pm by George Smith
The Seeker, by the Dick Destiny Band, performed live in scenic downtown Pasadena, a block from Rte. 66, where you got get your kicks. Two old men and a big jangle in an old song by the Who.
In case you haven’t been following the narrative, or just dropped in, this is what I do with my life. Once you’ve been cut off from the US economy, you have nothing left to do and no one to do it with if they haven’t had the same pleasure.
So might as well do what you can, in this case twice a week, in the corporate Bund. It’s then your prerogative to regularly show how you’ve been judged/rendered/whatever not useful to even very small numbers of people.
And since this is about the Culture of Lickspittle, from the Sunday New York Times, on how it’s now allegedly uncool to promote yourself on-line. (Or shit that obsesses upper middle class white explainers who had no presence in cyberspace before the Facebook and Twitter scripting platforms were invented for them.)
It annoys people:
[Much] self-promotion on social media seems less about utility and effective advertising and more about ego sustenance. One of the earliest psychological studies of narcissism and Facebook, a 2008 paper by Laura E. Buffardi and W. Keith Campbell, a psychology professor at the University of Georgia, found that “narcissistic personality scores were related to … the quantity of information listed about self, self-promoting pictures, and provocative pictures.???
In other words, those who are narcissistic offline also narcissistically overshare online, a conclusion few would dispute …
But, Professor Campbell conceded, online narcissism is a logical outgrowth of DIY capitalism …
Rampant self-flackery, however, comes at a cost. While narcissism is generally “really good at the initial stage of relationship — for being hired or getting promoted, for getting a boyfriend or girlfriend — it damages you over time,??? Professor Campbell said. In addition, the more one self-promotes, the more “you’ll become a polarizing figure??? …
Self-flackery. Quaintly insulting coinage by someone named Teddy Wayne, just manufactured for publication in the Times.
Many might also think flacking is the oxygen bound to the hemoglobin in the Culture of Lickspittle’s very blood.
And how can it be DIY capitalism when there’s been no money for anything in the last year or more? How can it be DIY capitalism when the agencies that have enabled the trivial posting of your stuff are the only bodies making money from the sale of masses of “yous” and our digital trailings?
I am so dense when it comes to these matters and beg forgiveness.
Being polarizing, it is reasoned, is bad in the Culture of Lickspittle. You need a license for it.
I’ll explain. For free.
Polarizing works for Ted Nugent. It works for agencies and corporations too. The Ferguson police presence could be said to have been polarizing.
Cable companies are polarizing. Everyone hates them. Corporate America is polarizing.
This is how Lickspittle works.
If you don’t use Twitter and have maybe only 30 or so “friends,” of which two are actual flesh and blood people you’ve met, and you post — say — your unemployment tunes, you’re polarizing.
In fact, if you post anything on the net, this includes blogging, if it doesn’t make money or have a large audience, you mutate into polarization. Because you’re engaged in self-flackery.
If you send your song in an e-mail link to a handful of others, if it annoys even one, it is spam.
But if people receive advertisements from the popular, political agencies and big companies, it is getting newsletters and information about stuff you ought to buy. In the Culture of Lickspittle.
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08.07.14
Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, Rock 'n' Roll, The Corporate Bund at 3:32 pm by George Smith
Fresh from the First Church of USA!USA! and Mammon in Pasadena, off Colorado, the famous Route 66: Rich Man’s Burden! As you’ve never heard it before!
Recorded live in between times fruitlessly searching and hoping for work in the Corporate Bund.
Today’s timely message liner notes from the Federal Reserve:
New data from the Federal Reserve highlight how many Americans continue to struggle financially more than five years after the end of the Great Recession.
As of September 2013, when the central bank conducted the poll, a quarter of families said they were “just getting by,” while an additional 13 percent were struggling to make ends meet.
Asked to compare their current financial situation with how they were faring five years ago, as the housing crash was wreaking havoc on the economy, 34 percent of respondents said they were doing “somewhat or much worse” than in 2008. The same percentage reported essentially treading water, while 30 percent said they were doing better.
“Given that respondents were being asked to compare their incomes to 2008, when the United States was in the depths of the financial crisis, the fact that over two-thirds of respondents reported being the same or worse off financially highlights the uneven nature of the recovery.”
Play it loud and sing out!
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07.30.14
Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, Rock 'n' Roll at 1:44 pm by George Smith
Proposed “album” cover for Loud Folk Live, where “Jesus of America,” performed at the First Church of USA!USA! & Mammon in Pasadena, among others, will go.
Then I can post it on the net and no one will listen to it. Sounds at least as good as finding work in the Corporate Bund.
Also, because national and computer security coverage blows. Everybody lost that one. Game over.
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07.28.14
Posted in Rock 'n' Roll, The Corporate Bund, WhiteManistan at 11:17 am by George Smith
Jesus of America, live from deep inna heart of Pasadena south of Colorado. Especially enjoy the sermon and organ music. Share, share, share, like, like, like.
The beer tip jar’s open.
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