Román Leão

Author: Román Leão

  • 58 to 60: Not Dark Yet

    29.05.2026

    Paul McCartney just dropped a new collection of music that his fans are warmly receiving as a late-career masterpiece. The forever Beatle will turn 84 next month. Neil Young, the baby here at a mere 80-years-young, released a new live set with his latest band, The Chrome Hearts, today as well. Bob Dylan turned 85 last Sunday and is out on the Never-Ending Tour right now reportedly doing his most inspired playing in years. The fucking Rolling Stones, for God’s sake, have a new album coming out in July in time for Mick’s 83rd birthday, the same day as my 60th.

    I am sure that none of these artists imagined that they would still be at it this far down the road, but I am heartened by their ability to keep at it. There is something about playing music that truly feeds the soul. I was almost tempted to say “keeps you young,” but obviously that is not the case. It keeps you young at heart, perhaps, but youth itself isn’t what this is about. Now into their respective eighth decades, most of these artists look rode hard and put back wet, but that’s what gives them gravitas.

    That is a big reason that the video the Stones released for their lead single, In the Stars, is so dispiriting. In it, an AI-created ’70s-era Rolling Stones plays the song for a happy crowd of vintage clothing enthusiasts. It’s too bad because it’s not a bad song, but someone decided that the Rolling Stones looked too old to what… be rock stars? They helped invent that shit.

    The Stones have been at it a minute longer than I’ve been alive. I’ve grown up watching them go through their changes, and loving a good portion of it. I mean, I’m no longer dewy, and I’m just supposed to forget that, as far as I’m concerned, Keith and the boys have always been around? It’s disrespectful, and not in a cool, anti-establishment way.

    I hate to even think it, but once you start playing with this particular fire, you are opening yourself to the question, what else here is AI? Does the hit machine keep cranking along after our heroes can’t physically do it any more. If there was a market for it, I’m afraid that someone would make that Devil’s bargain. I think we have to be clear about where we stand as fans.

    Fuck AI. Long live rock and roll!

  • Kingdoms of the Radio: Ikaia Keala 1

    UNFINISHED DOCUMENTARY, KINGDOMS OF THE RADIO  |  1995

    You know, when I talked Charlie into helping me demo the hot springs resort, I wasn’t planning on hanging around his scene at all. I had plenty of… let’s say, other opportunities, spread throughout the county. It was on the last day of the big push to move salvage to the old ranch and I dropped an enameled cast iron sink on my foot. I was literally hopping mad, letting every curse word I picked up in the Army just fly. Not exactly the good vibes the group was looking for, but fuck it. That shit hurt.

    There I was, doing my wounded Tasmanian Devil routine, when up walks the sexiest chick I had ever seen. Long, blonde hair, built like a brick shit house. She says her name is Ronda and she is actually a nurse. I mean, what the hell is a hot nurse doing playing pioneer with Charlie and his crew in the woods? Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad she was!

    Ronda quickly diagnosed me with a broken toe and buddy-taped it to keep it stable. Charlie had a cooler full of beer and half-melted ice in the bird and she had me stick my foot in it (after taking out the beers, of course). That hurt like a motherfucker, but her bedside manner soon had me forgetting all about it.

    You never know with medics. Are they being nice because it’s their job? Are they just trying to distract you from how badly you fucked yourself up? I was definitely picking up on a vibe, and pretty soon, I just sort of forgot to go home.

    As far as I remember, we never did use that goddamned sink for anything.

  • 59 to 60: It Was Later Than I Thought

    28.05.2026

    I don’t know how I always end up sprinting for the ferry every morning, but I do. My boilerplate weekday morning includes rolling out of bed at 6 o’clock, making coffee and toast, feeding all the animals, and checking in on the downfall of civilization.

    Depending on my capacity for utter bullshit on any given day, when Dana gets up, I’ll switch over to the local news before getting in the shower and taking the dog for a walk. It would be easy, but ultimately unfair, to blame her for the sense of panic that always accompanies getting on the road just before 8. It is, however, an observable fact that the amount of sniffing Biscuit feels the need to accomplish is inversely related to the amount of time we have to do it.

    The one thing that made moving back to the old stomping grounds feasible is the ability to take the boat from Vallejo to San Francisco instead of having to drive. My time on the road is best summed up as a mad, 80-mile-an-hour dash to the terminal. It is a nice straight shot and wouldn’t be a problem if it wasn’t for… people.

    People in no particular hurry. People that don’t wait until the last minute to leave the house. People with a misplaced respect for authority and outdated speed limits (thanks for nothin’, Nixon). Basically, people who can all kiss my ass.

    I suppose it is good to know that I can run if forced by circumstance to do so. I wasn’t exactly breathless when I discovered that my transit allotment had run dry and I had to buy a ticket for the ferry, but I must have appeared weathered enough to prompt the porter to look me over and ask, “senior?”

    OK, it’s not that far off, five years and 59 days is sure to go by like a shot, but, come on, man.

    I took the discount.

  • 60 to 60: The Ride

    27.05.2026

    
My father’s favorite ride at the Anaheim Disneyland was Peter Pan’s Flight, the one where, once the family was buckled in, a disembodied Pan cheerfully exclaimed, “Come on, everybody! Here we go!” I don’t know if it brought back memories of visiting the new park with his father or if it was just an opportunity to escape the Southern California summer heat for a blessèd three minutes.

    The Flight opened when the park opened, back in 1955, when Dad would have been 12. The old-old man wound up buried in Glendale’s Forest Lawn Memorial Park, a stone’s throw from Walt, so there is a possibility that he may have taken little Louie to the Happiest Place on Earth before taking the final trip to Never Never Land himself by the end of the decade.

    Disney’s far-right leanings certainly jibes with what I know about the guy. Perhaps they knew each other from German-American Bund picnics out in La Crescenta’s Hindenburg Park (later, the site of California’s first Octoberfest in 1957).

    Whatever the reason, Pan’s exhortation entered the family lexicon early on. Whenever we were gathered together to go anywhere, the clarion call was sounded and God save anyone in the way.

    As I enter the final approach toward 60, I can’t think of any other rallying cry that might drive these old bones over the line, although I admit that I am finding it hard to muster a fraction o the Prince of Lost Boys’ brio. I’m afraid that today—at best—it sounds resigned yet resolute.

    Come on, everybody. Here we go.

  • Shit From an Old Notebook: My Hometown

    The 1970s were well established when I attended Mills Elementary School on the East Side of town—the other side of the tracks—that is if tracks had ever run down the middle of the quaint Main Street that effectively cleaved the town into West Side and other.

    Being the ’70s, we had a folk singer come in one day (It may have been required by law at the time), and in addition to all the ol’ chestnuts like Clementine, Rocky Top, and my personal favorite, Oh, Susanna, the woman—probably no more than a girl in retrospect—sang an original song about our town.

    Considering the set list up to that point had leaned heavily toward tunes from at least a century previous, to be face-to-knee with someone who actually wrote a song effectively blew our still-congealing eight-year-old minds. I can still remember the first few lines, as well as the melody of the tune, although all together we may have heard it twice. It went something like this:

    There’s a little town / On the map / Of Cal-if-orn-i-a-a-a-a [rhymes with say]
    And if you ask me / About this town / This is what I’ll say-a-a-a…

    I’ll spare you the details of what the song went on to list as the distinguishing attributes of our little town on the map, as if I could remember them. I am pretty sure it didn’t mention anything about rampant alcoholism, xenophobia, or a barely distinguishable sense that our best days as a town may, at that point, have been behind us.

    I’m dead certain it did say something about being the state capital for a hot minute back in the 1850s, as well as the flash point for the dissemination of the news about the discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill (Our now bucolic main drag was once an adult playground of whorehouses and establishments exclusively dedicated to drinking and gambling, none of which leads to one keeping his mouth shut for very long), but that was all ancient history by the time we came around and as meaningless to us as the lyrics to Clementine.

    What the song should have mentioned, but I’m sure left out, was how great it was to be an eight-year-old and be able to explore the vaguely reclaimed post-industrial waterfront, mysterious alleyways, and open space that still surrounded our village at that time.

    It should have extolled the virtue of being able to ride your bike until the streetlights began to flicker to life without worrying that you were going to end up in someone’s basement “putting lotion on it’s skin,” the Zodiac Killer notwithstanding, of course.

    It could have sung the praises of the decent union jobs that still were out there, ensuring that a young family could get by with one working parent, and that there were enough stay-at-home moms to go around to keep most of us correct. It may have commented in passing upon a quickly-fading Johnsonian liberalism that would soon go the way of “Save the Whales” medallions, but I’m pretty sure it didn’t.

    Regardless, it did rock.

  • Kingdoms of the Radio: Ronda Schermerhorn 4 [ficção]

    UNFINISHED DOCUMENTARY, KINGDOMS OF THE RADIO  |  1995

    I’m not one to toot my own horn, but it was a good, damned thing that the boys had a legitimate nurse involved, or half of them would have died of tetanus just moving all the recycled crap they got from Ikaia. The first thing I did when I saw their tendency to bleed, was to make sure that they all were up on their vaccinations.

    When I was doing my clinicals, I saw a biker die of asphyxia after just trying to “walk it off” after a crash. It was pretty fucked up. You know the Joker in the Batman comics? It was like this guy got hit with the Joker toxin. The Clostridium tetani bacteria kills the nerves that tell muscles to relax, and the facial muscles end up contracting into the freakiest permanent grin. Nothing funny about that shit, that’s for sure.

    At first, I had planned on going back to the City after the heat died down. I had just finished getting my ADN, and had planned to go on to get my bachelor’s, but, you know, life ended up showing me where I belonged. Some of the guys that started the project had military experience, but the vast majority of people moving into Girassol were literal babes in the woods. I couldn’t just leave them out there to die, now could I?

    Plus, Ikaia was a fox.

  • Kingdoms of the Radio: Ronda Schermerhorn 3 [ficção]

    UNFINISHED DOCUMENTARY, KINGDOMS OF THE RADIO  |  1995

    I imagine that you’ve talked to the boys already and heard all their cute, mystical, bullshit. I’ll admit that sort of thinking was in the air back then—the feeling of everything clicking into place. One thing about living in a completely chaotic society is that when something goes right, it does take on an inordinate significance. Don’t get me wrong, when the world is on fire, a glass of water is a goddamn miracle.

    I’ve never been a predestinarian, though. Putting an alternative community together is a lot of work if you want it to last longer than a summer. It’s a good thing they had some smart women to tell them what to do.

    I’m kidding, of course.

    Sort of.

  • Kingdoms of the Radio: Ronda Schermerhorn 2 [ficção]

    UNFINISHED DOCUMENTARY, KINGDOMS OF THE RADIO  |  1995

    I’m sure that everyone has their “I met Zongo when” story. I don’t think that people should become celebrities for being stupid enough to get duped by the CIA, but that’s just me. It’s not his fault, I mean Zongo’s never been the brightest star in the firmament.

    He was still going by “Fred” when he used to come into the club now and again. Broadway was a different scene back then. It’s pretty seedy now, but back in the day, a night on the town felt more “up scale,” cosmopolitan, even. Even us dancers felt like we were on the leading edge of a progressive wave. Believe it or not, a lot of us were early feminists. What can I say? The job paid better than waiting tables, and if some drunk decided to get grabby, the bouncers were more than ready to toss them back out on the street.

    That’s actually what led to my early retirement. One of Z’s made buddies was getting too handsy with another one of the dancers and a new bouncer that didn’t fully appreciate the North Beach ecosystem stepped up to set him straight.

    I was in the alley, smoking a pre-performance enhancer when the back door to the kitchen slammed open and three goons dragged the poor guy out and commenced to test the limits of his medical insurance.

    When they were finished, I could swear that one of them looked over at me and said, “You didn’t see nothin’,” but maybe I saw that in a movie, it all runs together now. I did what I could for him, but when the cops came into the club the next night asking questions, I figured that it hadn’t done much good. It was right around then that I ran into Zongo and he told me that he was starting this new scene up the coast. I figured that it just might be the opportunity I needed to lay low for a while.

    Talk about “out of the frying pan, into the bonfire.”

  • Kingdoms of the Radio: Ronda Schermerhorn 1 [ficção]

    UNFINISHED DOCUMENTARY, KINGDOMS OF THE RADIO  |  1995

    It’s ScherMERhorn, just like it sounds. Dutch, actually. My father always claimed that we could trace our family roots back to the people that settled New Amsterdam. I don’t know about that, though. All I can tell you is that sweet, sweet tulip money was all spent by the time I showed up.

    Yea, it’s crazy, when you start telling stories about “back in the day,” it often sounds like there was only a dozen people in the City. Obviously, that wasn’t the case, but for some reason, I happened to be smack in the middle of this story. Just lucky, I guess.

    I was living with a couple of friends in this tiny flat in the Mission. Karoline and I knew each other from school. She ended up playing quite the provocateur later on. I was putting myself through the nursing program by dancing in the clubs over on Broadway. I don’t remember what she was studying, business, probably. Monkey business, it turned out.

    I actually got her the job over at the record company. Well, introduced her, at least. The guy that ran that mess, this guy named “Z,” used to come into the club to commiserate with his mob buddies. It’s easy to get a man’s attention when you are shaking your ass in his face for tips. Don’t get me wrong, it was a decent gig. You have to put it in context. Carol had revolutionized the club scene by going topless almost a decade previously. It was just a matter of time before we freed the kitties, if you know what I mean.

    As a nurse, I was very comfortable about the human body, I mean, we are all naked underneath our clothes, right?

  • Kingdoms of the Radio: Zongo Khumalo 5 [ficção]

    UNFINISHED DOCUMENTARY, KINGDOMS OF THE RADIO  |  1995

    Music was always a big part of life at Girassol. I was… still am, a huge fan of Ray Barreto, Mongo Santamaria, all those congueros who were bringing a Puerto Rican flavor to all kinds of music in those days. Just about the only thing I went back to the City to grab, once we settled in, was my King Conga.

    We were lucky that the big house was in such good shape, so we didn’t have to worry about building any structures for a hot minute, at least until the word got out and the community started to grow too big, and too funky, to live under one roof.

    At first, the lack of electricity was a bit of an adjustment, but it forced us to adopt an old school daily schedule. We got up when the Sun came up, worked at the various jobs we found for ourselves, and by nightfall, were ready to gather around a campfire and play.

    I’m proud to say that I helped introduce the descarga, the improvised jam session, that I learned from listening to all the players with the Fania All-Stars. Charlie invited this band of legit pickers from Marin that he knew, and we immediately got it on. We ended up coming up with a heady mix of bluegrass, folk, and salsa we called ¡Hierba exuberante! For obvious reasons.

  • Kingdoms of the Radio: Charlie Perigo 5 [ficção]

    UNFINISHED DOCUMENTARY, KINGDOMS OF THE RADIO  |  1995

    Whatever Zongo had picked up at the airport, once he made his connection back down in the City, he was flush for a bit. I had a more-or-less steady paycheck from the Forestry Department, as long as I kept the state from burning down, but the rest of our growing family weren’t exactly Rockefellers. We needed a line of income, at least enough to keep us in beans, rice, and good ol’ Red Mountain Wine.

    After Sticky came out to see what we were doing with all the salvage, he and Bravo hit off and decided to get a grow going together. The soil around the ranch had been left to the feral chickens long enough, that whatever we threw down, popped right back out of the ground before you could say, “Johnny Appleseed.”

    The idea of a marijuana grow wasn’t exactly to everyone’s liking. Some heads were worried that it might draw the heat, and since we were relatively closer to town than a lot of farms, they might try to make an example of us without, you know, too much effort.

    Later, everyone would vote on things that could affect the greater group, but at this point, we were still figuring it out—and small enough—that if someone was inspired to do something, and willing to put the work in, it usually just happened.

  • Kingdoms of the Radio: Enrique Bravocado 5 [ficção]

    UNFINISHED DOCUMENTARY, KINGDOMS OF THE RADIO  |  1995

    Not having power out at Girassol wasn’t a problem for me. I was used to working the back forty with all the low-profile grows up-county. I preferred it, actually. The one concession I made to modernity, was my radio. As long as I didn’t run out of batteries, I was golden. Of course, the only station I could pull in up there was Floyd’s pirate station, KRTO. Good thing he and I saw eye-to-eye, or ear-to-ear, rather.

    Once we got to know each other, I would often ride my bike to town and hang with him at the lighthouse and spin records all night. It was beautiful, man, we had no idea who, if anyone, was listening, but that’s not the point, it is? We weren’t kowtowing to corporate interests and were adding positive vibrations out into the ether. How could that be wrong?

    I was talking up our jam sessions one night and was saying that he should come out and tape us one night so he could play it on the air. Now, for a pirate, Floyd is a lot more practical than me, he just looked and me and laughed, asking “How the hell did you imagine that was going to happen since y‘all are are sitting around in the dark out there like Little House on the Goddamn Prairie?” Fair point, Floyd, fair point.

  • Kingdoms of the Radio: Teacake & Lady Marmalade [ficção]

    UKIAH, CALIFORNIA  |  1995

    After a restless night back home, The Kid cursed the alarm clock radio that had unkindly begun blasting out one of the National Loaf’s lesser known hits. To Lucious Cole’s perpetual entreating that the target of his affection, “Come and lay it all down,” The Kid resolved to do the opposite. Much to his still-fuzzy delight, the smell of fresh-brewed coffee was wafting like a scent plume from the kitchen, baiting him in.

    “Good morning, sunshine,” Joaninha sang, apparently well under the influence of her Goan-style brew that inherited preparation methods from South India. Having squeezed every drop out of a slow drip through Arabica and Robusta grounds and chicory, she added the concoction to a cup of frothed milk, before sugaring the living shit out of it.

    “Sera,” The Kid rubbed the sleep out of his eyes as he walked blindly toward the heavenly smell. “When did you get here?”

    “I was worried about you, so I brought bagels,” Joaninha handed The Kid a steaming mug, “and, of course, kaapi.”

    “Bless you,” The Kid gratefully took the offering in both hands. “I slept like shit.”

    “The first day of filming didn’t go so well?” Joaninha looked over the rim of her own cup, her dark chocolate brown eyes searching The Kid’s face for a clue.

    “Not exactly,” he started, “I mean, the interview was going along all right, then, out of nowhere, this guy Charlie Perigo blurts out that he didn’t know who my parents were.”

    “That’s not suspicious,” Joaninha adjudged. “He totally knows.”

    “You think so? That wasn’t even what we were talking about…”

    “Querido, I’m telling you, he knows,” Joaninha put down her cup and captured The Kid’s gaze, something she found ridiculously easy to do, but still found handy from time-to-time. “The question is, do you need to know? Is that what this is all about?”

    The Kid pondered the question, letting the strong, sweet brew slowly coax him back to life. “Maybe he’s right,” he finally admitted. “I mean, when I was younger, I really wanted to know. I wanted to confront them and ask why they gave me up; but as I grew up, I sort of pushed all that aside. I convinced myself that it didn’t matter. I became more interested in the bigger story.”

    Joaninha merely offered a raised eyebrow, a look that she had long learned was going to cut through whatever tale her partner was spinning out, even if only for himself.

    “Not the eyebrow! Come on, Sera,” The Kid folded. “Of course, I had it in the back of my mind that I might find out who my parents were as part of the story, but that’s not what’s driving this.”

    “All right. Just so you know, it is totally understandable if you were…”

    “Serafina!”

    “Fair enough,” Joaninha let him off the hook. “Are you driving back to Point Arena today?”

    “I’m going to finish filming Mr. Perigo and then he wants to introduce me to someone.”

    “Mind if I tag along? I’ve got the day off. Mom closed the store since Dad just had hand surgery and is possibly the worst patient ever.”

    “Hand surgery?” The Kid put down his coffee. “What did he do now?”

    “Don’t ask. The worst part is Mom nearly let him bleed out before driving him over to Ukiah Valley. His shop looked like a crime scene.”

    “Jesus. Of course you can come. I’d love the company. It’s a pretty drive, but—with so much to do—it’s easy to let your mind wander. I would hate to start the day by hitting a deer.”

    “It’s settled, then,” Joaninha declared, “I’m driving.”

    Two hours, 50 miles, and an infinite number of trees later, Joaninha finally reached Hwy 1 and turned south toward the seaside town. As winding as the road had been, she liked driving The Kid’s Saturn and jumped at the chance to leave her tired Honda at his place. Of course, that meant at the end of the day she was going to have to make the full trip back to Ukiah, and given how late it would probably be by then, stay there. Oh, darn, she thought. The two had talked about moving in together, but The Kid’s project had recently sucked the air out of that conversation.

    The blue coupe had just skirted the town’s outer limits when a police car pulled in behind them and lit up its rooftop gumball machine. The Kid turned in the passenger seat and recognized the short, salt-and-pepper haircut, and sun-, salt-, and wind-leathered face.

    “Shit,” he said. “Were we speeding?”

    “Not a bit.” Joaninha appreciated the difference between ‘we’ and ‘were you speeding?’ and silently congratulated once again herself on finding a diamond in the rough. It’s the little things, she thought as she pulled over and rolled down the driver’s side window.

    Chief Burton sauntered up to the open window, once again unworried about being taken out by a southbound driver.

    “Teacake,” he said, leaning down to look past Joaninha, “I didn’t expect you back in town so soon. Who does that make you, miss, Lady Marmalade?”

    “Officer?” Joaninha asked, utterly confused about the turn in conversation.

    “I have some friendly advice for young Michael Moore here,” Burton got down to business.

    “Are you often in the business of pulling over drivers to dispense filmmaking tips?” The Kid asked, trying and failing to suppress a rising anger.

    “I could pull you over for a broken taillight,” Burton suggested, “but I think you’d rather hear what I have to say.”

    “Are you going to ask for my license?” Joaninha asked, beginning to feel left out of the conversation.

    “Do you have one?” Burton asked.

    “Of course,” Joaninha began to reach for her wallet in the tiny center console in front of the shifter.

    “Then, no,” Burton waved the idea away. “Listen, Teacake…”

    “Why do keep calling him that?”

    “Listen, I can understand your interest in the rich history of our little town,” Burton launched into his monologue. “There is something you need to know about our friend, Mr. Perigo, before you cause yourself, and more importantly, me, some problems.”

    “What would that be, officer?” The Kid’s interest was piqued.

    “That’s Chief Burton, remember that name, Teacake. Charlie… Mr. Perigo served his country in Vietnam, and for all intents and purposes, came through it pretty well. There are some poor fellows his age, that weren’t quite as lucky. That said, there are certain things that Mr. Perigo really doesn’t need to be reminded of.”

    “I think I understand,” The Kid said, trying to think if might have said anything that could have upset Charlie.

    “I don’t know that you do, but it’s not Mr. Perigo that really concerns me.”

    “All right,” The Kid turned in his seat to better confront the man.

    “As you dig around, Teacake, just be mindful of the rocks you are kicking over. I would take it as a personal favor if certain individuals, who have gone to great lengths to disappear from this story, stay disappeared.” Burton handed The Kid his card. “Remember that name.”

    “Are we free to go, Chief Burton?” Joaninha asked.

    “You are free to do whatever you please, Lady Marmalade,” Burton chuckled at his own perceived cleverness. “Just watch out for those rocks, Teacake, there may be snakes under some of them. You two have a nice day, now.”

    The Kid and Joaninha sat in silence as Burton walked back to his vehicle and drove off.

    “What the hell was that?” Joaninha finally asked. “And why does he call you Teacake?”

    “I have no idea,” The Kid said, his mind racing, “but I aim to find out.”

  • Kingdoms of the Radio: Black Eyes & Cowboy Bollocks [ficção]

    ARTICLE, ROCK HOUND MAGAZINE, VOLUME 3, ISSUE 12 |  1969

    After a contentious autumn spent recording their new record, Cut the Loaf, it looks like the groundbreaking English band, National Loaf, may have gone and done just that. Guitarist and frontman Lucious Cole declined to comment on what lead up to an on-stage fistfight between himself and bassist Simon Wilkie at New York’s Fillmore West, but insiders mentioned smoldering band tensions regarding the new direction that Cole was taking the group.

    Long known for their English pop anthems and lysergically-charged psychedelic freak-outs, Cole recently spoke about a desire to simplify the band’s sound in a desire to “get back to what’s real.” Keyboardist Koda Cornell’s work on the new album certainly shows an affinity with the new material, his work on an antique tack piano especially fits in with what many critics have termed the Loaf’s American Gothic.

    Wilkie, he of the black eye, appears to be the most out-of-synch with the group’s new sepia-toned vibe. Fans of the bassist’s more outré forays on the four string were shocked at how straight he played it on the new songs. Before the show, Wilkie was overheard complaining to a fan that all Cole wanted was “that bloody oompah, oompah shite.” It didn’t help the situation that Cole had showed up late to the Loaf’s own release party with Mexican mariachi outfits for the band to wear.

    It’s unknown whether the band will continue without Wilkie, as he immediately told reporters that he was done with “Cole and all his American cowboy bollocks.” Rumors that Wilkie is putting together his own project, tentatively called, The Crust, have been unsubstantiated at press time.

    Jere Woodrow, founding member, and Cole’s best friend since childhood, was unavailable for comment after the Fillmore fracas, but it is this reporter’s bet that whatever Cole decides to do next, Woodrow will be involved, holding down the beat.

  • Kingdoms of the Radio: Oh, We’re Waiting [ficção]

    EAST VILLAGE, MANHATTAN, NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK  |  1969

    Woodrow hurried down a rainy East 6th Street, turned up Second Avenue, and dove into the stage door in the back of the former Yiddish Theater. The drummer held a special love for New York City as, out of all American places, it reminded him of home.

    Everywhere you looked, layers of history piled atop older layers, reaching down past an age of tenements to find the Dutch of New Amsterdam, digging deeper to find the trading post of Juan Rodríguez and the village of the Lenape, and past that to an island of black bears, wolves, muskrats.

    The sold-out crowd packed into the Fillmore East was being to get rowdy as the National Loaf was more than an hour late taking the stage. Billed as a record release party for “friends and family,” the venue on New York’s Lower East Side had long become the go-to place to catch shows that often lasted until the Sun came up.

    The Loaf was rumored to have undergone a musical sea change on the forthcoming album, Cut the Loaf, however, the “Crumb Bums,” as the rabid fan base had begun to call themselves, had taken their medicinal cues from the group’s last psychedelic masterpiece, Take My Mind and Eat It. Various and sundry shifts in perception had already begun in earnest, leading the promoters to give a nod to the communal artists that ran the house light show to distract the crowd by flooding the stage with glowing, swirling, and shifting forms.

    “I’m just going to get a T-shirt that says, ‘Where the Fuck is Lucious Cole?’ I am so tired of saying it,” Wilkie dropped his cigarette into a half-drained glass of champagne where it died with a truncated hiss.

    “He’ll be here, don’t worry,” Woodrow appeased, even as he nervously drummed on the green room’s well-scarred coffee table. “This record is his baby. You know he is chomping at the bit to get this one out there.”

    “Champing,” Cornell uncharacteristically corrected.

    “Excuse me?” Woodrow snapped.

    “Champing at the bit. Horses champ, you pillock,” Wilkie pilled on. “Alligators fucking chomp.”

    “I’ll chomp you, you clever Dick!” Woodrow rose from the table, drumsticks ready to serve as a suppository if called for.

    “Easy, lads,” Cornell stepped in-between the warring rhythm section. “How many times have we been in these straits and our man has come through.”

    “Sod that,” Wilkie refused to let it go. “That is exactly the problem. We are expected to be the responsible ones while Lucious waltzes the fuck in whenever he feels like it. We are supposed to act grateful that he graces us with his presence. I’m done with it.”

    “What are you going to do, quit?” Woodrow asked. “Cole writes the songs, sings the fucking songs, like it or not, he is the face of the bloody Loaf.”

    “Face, my ass,” Wilkie seethed. “These people just want to watch him self-destruct. They want to be able tell their friends that they were there when Cole… fill in the sodding blank.”

    “Cornish, do you feel the same way,” Woodrow probed the depth of the band’s discontent.

    “Jere, you know I respect his talent,” Cornell admitted. “I just don’t know about this new direction. I mean, we are not cowboys for fuck’s sake. We were all born within a stone’s throw from bloody St. Giles-Without.”

    “So what? What’s to be said about that? It’s all gone, and I say let it bloody go. What is this really about? Not money,” Woodrow looked from face to face. “We’ve all done quite well following Louie’s muse. You think Ringo gets a quarter share of publishing? He does not.”

    “It is unnerving working with someone who swears that he knows every move in advance,” Wilkie confessed. “It really gives me the willies, especially since he is always right.”

    “What about this ‘meditation chamber,’ Jere?” Cornell asked. “Have you seen it… have you ever used it yourself?”

    Woodrow rubbed the back of his neck in contemplation before coming clean. “I’ve seen it, yea, even stole a seat in the bloody thing myself. I got nothing out of it, just the reflection of an idiot sitting on a stool. The only thing missing was a dunce cap.”

    The vision Woodrow painted finally broke the tension as the trio laughed together at the idea.

    “Is he bonkers, then?” Cornell wondered out loud. “Has all this been a lie?”

    “This is real,” Woodrow countered. “All those people out there believe in it. I think that makes it real, no matter where Lucious pulled it all from. I mean, who can say where art comes from? If his muse finds him when he’s sitting in a coil of aluminum sheeting, well, that’s where he should sit. Who gives a monkey’s arse?”

    “Right then,” Wilkie conceded. “I’ll see where this goes tonight, but if our man can’t pull his head out, I’m going to find a real band.”

    “Good luck with that,” Woodrow laughed. “You think our peers aren’t every bit as dysfunctional as the Loaf? You should go ask The Ox what he thinks about working with an auteur. And at least I’m not driving my cars into swimming pools.”

    “You don’t drive,” Cornell unhelpfully pointed out.

    “That’s not the bloody point, is it?”

    From out in the venue, a chant of “Loaf! Loaf! Loaf!” began in earnest, prompting a visit to the green room from a nervous promoter. “Where the Fuck is Lucious Cole?” he asked, counting heads.

    “Bloody hell,” Wilkie sighed, checking the tuning on his Fender P-bass for the umpteenth time.

  • Kingdoms of the Radio: Knight in Shining Brass [ficção]

    POINT ARENA, CALIFORNIA  |  1995

    It was after midnight when Palacios left The Slab, the bar that she and her partner had started in the old temporary Vets Hall, and turned right toward the ocean. Her 1984 Ford Ranger balked when she tried to put it in gear, but she was persistent, and—powerless against an unbroken stream of invectives—it finally relented.

    Ever since they started having punk shows on Wednesday nights, she found herself leaving her club later and later. Something about the rawness of the young bands appealed to her. All the things that she wished she had said when she was younger was now being shouted out by kids with no chance of ever making a record deal or even being on the radio. They did it just because they felt they had to, and she was glad to provide a venue for them to do just that.

    The Ranger, meanwhile, rethought its position, and as soon as the opportunity presented itself at the town’s singular red light, it died; purely out of spite.

    “Sonofacocksuckingpieceofmother…” Palacios was just getting warmed up when an all-too-familiar pair of red and blue lights appeared in her rearview mirror, needlessly announced by a quick yelp.

    “Driver, move to the side,” Chief Burton’s voice came over the police car’s siren speaker.

    “You are just loving this, aren’t you,” she growled through gritted teeth into the mirror.

    “Driver…”

    Palacios rolled down the hand-cranked window and shouted back at her ex-husband. “Don’t you think I would if I could, asshole? Why don’t you give me a push instead of just sitting there?”

    “Isn’t that what you said to me on our first date?” Burton broadcast out to the empty streets. “Driver, put the vehicle in neutral.” Slowly, the police car crept up on the dead Ranger, until it finally kissed it with its push bumper.

    “Nice decorum, officer,” Palacios shouted out the window as the truck began to roll. Coasting toward the side of the road, she cranked what would have been the power steering, had the truck not expired, and stood on the unassisted brakes, finally pulling up the emergency lever.

    “Are we having some trouble this evening, little lady?” Burton appeared at the open driver’s side window, not worried in the slightest about standing in the lane of non-existent traffic.

    “Warren, dear,” Palacios gave in to the situation, “I don’t remember saying your name three times.”

    “What’s the Bogart line? ‘Just put your lips together and… blow.’ ”

    “Now, I remember our first date! How are you doing, Warren?”

    “A bit better than you seem to be right now, Benita. I told you to get rid of this rust bucket years ago.”

    “Yea, well, there are three things a financial advisor would talk you out of buying if you don’t want to end up stranded at a stoplight in the middle of the night: a boat, a horse, and a club.”

    “Why don’t you let me give you a ride home? I’ll have the boys at the corp yard tow this piece of shit to the shop in the morning.”

    “My knight in shining brass. Let me get my things.”

    Palacios followed Burton to the idling police car, stopping only to kick the Ranger’s back tire.

    “You’ll never guess you I saw at the café this morning,” Burton mentioned once they were moving.

    “Warren, it’s late,” Palacios began before noticing a hurt look threaten to steal across the weathered policeman’s face. “Alright, who?”

    “If you don’t want to know, that’s fine…”

    “Warren, goddamn it, it is late! Tell me.”

    “Charlie.”

    “Charlie?”

    “Charlie.”

    “You saw Charlie Perigo in the Lighthouse Café?”

    “That’s what I’m telling you.”

    “I call bullshit.”

    “You can call whatever you want, but he was sitting there, real as your ass.”

    “Warren, leave my ass outta this. Charlie hasn’t set foot in that place since the mid-’70s. You of all people know what happened.”

    “That’s why I thought you would want to know, but that’s not all.”

    “Jesus, Warren…”

    “He wasn’t alone, there was some kid with him, a documentary filmmaker. Teacake or something.”

    “The guy’s name was Teacake?”

    “Yea, I don’t know, fucking artists, right? The bigger question is who the hell would want to interview Charlie?”

    “You don’t think it’s about the commune, do you?”

    “No, it’s probably about Charlie’s work with unwed mothers… of course, it’s about the commune, Benita!”

    “Christ.”

    “Have you talked to Chae recently?”

    “Warren, she doesn’t want to talk to you.”

    “That’s OK, Benita,” Warren stopped the patrol car in front of Palacio’s house. “Just tell her that whatever this is, I’ll make sure and keep her name out of it.”

    “I’ll tell her,” Palacio said, looking down at her hands. “Thanks, Warren, and thanks for the lift.”

    Burton watched his ex-wife walk up the path and disappear into the house before driving off into the night.

  • Kingdoms of the Radio: Great Big Face (1967) [ficção]

    ST. JOHN’S WOOD, WESTMINSTER, LONDON, ENGLAND  |  1967

    Three-quarters of the National Loaf sat in the cavernous expanse of EMI’s Studio B laconically smoking cigarettes and waiting, as usual, for their leader and—according to London’s music trades—resident musical genius. The combined fumes of the proletariat Woodbines favored by the pianist and the Player’s Navy Cuts that kept the rhythm section awake and in sync added up to a furious funk matched only by the prevailing mood.

    “Where the bloody hell is he?” Wilkie hissed, tossing his spent cigarette on the floor and stepping it out with a pointed Italian boot, polished to a painful shine.

    “Oi, mate! You’re not down at the pub,” Woodrow remarked, casting his eye up at the waiting technicians that crowded the control booth that loomed over them.

    “Yea, well we might as well be,” interjected Cornell. “At least, there, I could chat up yer auld one.”

    “You leave her out of this,” Woodrow parried. “The poor woman is a saint.”

    “Yea, Saint Bernard,” Wilkie joined the scrum. “I have never seen that gal without a barrel of brandy at hand.”

    “She’s comforted many a stranded traveler, I’ll tell you that much,” Cornell delivered the killing stroke, having perfected playing the dozens on countless interminable van trips with his bandmates.

    “Tell ’im what?” A unfashionably late Cole swung into the space and the conversation. “Have you lot read this bit?”

    “Cole, where’ve you been mate? We were about to pack it in,” Woodrow sided with the rest of the frustrated band against his childhood friend.

    “Oi contraire, mon frère,” Cole tossed a music trade into the center of the gathering like a grenade. “We have work to do! Bunfight Magazine there says that we are the hottest group in London this week. Of, course ‘you know who’ are off in Wales contemplating their navels or some bollocks. So, that helps. Even so, read it out loud, will you, Jere?”

    “Let me see that,” Wilkie grabbed the periodical, pre-folded to the section dedicated to the local music scene.

    “When did you learn how to read?” Cornell snatched the magazine from the bassist and cleared his throat. “The latest pop group to take London by storm hails from an unlikely corner of the city. The National Loaf has emerged fully formed from the area of the massive Barbican Estate project that, even now, is rebuilding from the ashes of Cripplegate.

    ‘I think it gives us something to prove,’ said guitarist and singer Lucious Cole. ‘No one expects anything from the edge of good auld Londinium but cranes… come to think of it, that’s a good name for the band right there: The Cranes! Oh well, next time.’ ”

    “Cheeky fucker,” Woodrow chimed in. “Come on, what’s it say about the music? Especially, the extremely handsome and talented drummer!”

    “Hold yer water, Ringo, let’s see what is says about the masterful keys, first. ‘We named the band, National Loaf, because we’re fortified with calcium and vitamins,’ according to bassist Simon Wilkie, name checking Britain’s infamous wartime staple. ‘We’re really a mix of everything left in the larder. A little R&B, a little skiffle, lots of rock ’n’ roll.’

    ‘We’ve got a tough crust as well,’ added Cole. ‘We’ll last forever!’ ”

    “Bollocks,” Woodrow chided. “Get to the meat of it, will you?

    “Patience is a bloody virtue, Jere,” Cole stepped in and took back the magazine. “Listen to this; ‘The Loaf’s latest single, “What Time Is It, Mr. Wolf?” has the swinging crowds down on Wardour St. doing the pony and the frug until the wee hours at clubs like The Marquee and La Discotheque. Songwriter and frontman Cole’s peculiar mix of R&B and psychedelia give the Loaf’s rhythm section a lot to work with, and work they do. The sinuous, shifting dynamics of the heady material is navigated with naval aplomb, especially when the big waves hit. Drummer Jere Woodson drives crowds to higher and higher levels of frenzy as bassist Simon Wilkie lays down a better foundation than a Midland brickie.’ ”

    “Ace!” Wilkie exclaimed. “Finally, a reviewer who knows from which he speaks!”

    “The Keys, mate! What does it say about the bloody keys?”

    “Here it is; ‘The Loaf’s secret weapon, and one that sets them apart from organ-grinding groups like The Pink Floyd or Burdon’s Animals, is avowed pianist Koda Cornell’s work on the 88s. Cornell can tickle the ivories as well as Liberace or pound them like they owe him money like Jerry Lee…’ ”

    “For fuck’s sake,” Cornell exclaimed, “Liberace? They’re going to ruin my reputation as a cocksman nonpareil!”

    “Now don’t be so quick to discount all the new attention you might get,” Cole jibbed.

    “Yea, don’t knock it, Koda,” Woodson piled on. “Or do, we won’t judge.”

    “Are we going to bloody play today, or are we going to waste the studio?” Wilkie threw the pianist a rope.

    “Hear, hear! Gather around boys, I’ve got lyrics for that song we’ve been working up,” Cole announced. “I ducked into the Windmill to catch Bergman’s crazy flick…”

    “Persona?” Wilkie asked, doing his best to light another cigarette as if he were in a French new wave film.

    “The same.”

    “I couldn’t make heads nor tails out of that one,” Cornell admitted. “The birds sure do love it, though. Makes them feel all European.”
 “If you can get your mind off the miniskirts for a moment, let’s take it from the top.”

    Woodson counted off and the National Loaf broke into a straight-ahead rocker that had just been waiting for words as Cole slid up to a microphone and began to sing.

    Pick a persona right up off the shelf

    Change your name to something else

    Whatever you want to call yourself

    It’s only on the surface

    You gotta voice like a megaphone

    You’re well connected just like Al Capone

    Peripatetic and you’re never home

    Wandering the surface

    You, you gotta great big face

    You have no natural grace

    You gotta real nice place

    See if you can keep it

    You, you gotta rock hard heart

    It’s got no moving parts

    You gotta jump it to start

    Come on, keep it going

    “Peri, what now?” Wilkie dropped the bass line, bringing the song to a clattering halt.

    “Peripatetic,” Cole explained. “Wandering from place to place; like us in that bloody van.

    “Like you don’t love it,” Cornell punctuated his comment with a glissando.

    “Who wouldn’t love to smell all your air biscuits after night after night on the tiles,” Cole bemoaned.

    “Come on, now; we’re the only touring group that makes its own gas!” Woodson tossed off a bon mot and paradiddle.

    “There’s more, you uncultured louts,” Cole broke in. “Take it from the chorus!”

    You fool the people to depend on you

    Camel the needle, baby, push it through

    Whatever it is that you’re going to do

    It’s only on the surface

    You gotta mojo, gotta black cat bone

    Agents calling on the telephone

    Telling you you’ll never be alone

    Calling from the surface

    The band kicked back into the chorus and capped it off with a short solo by each member before bringing the whole thing home in a rousing crescendo.

    “Did you get that?” Cole shouted up to the control booth where the coterie of white shirts and ties were actually smiling for a change.

    “We got it,” the talkback announced. “That’s a take.”

    A cheer went up from the entire Loaf before Woodson asked the important question, “Who’s thirsty?”

  • Kingdoms of the Radio: Blank Check Face (Pt. 1) [ficção]

    LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA  |  1971

    Felix Rune spun up the reel of half-inch Ampex tape and winked at Rosenda who had made herself comfortable in front of the massive Neve mixing desk. She and Rune were old friends and he knew her well enough to have a cold pitcher of Armillita Chicos ready on an adjacent table when she arrived from the airport.

    “Where’s Bear?” Rune inquired as he readied to hit the playback. “Busting heads or chasing tail?”

    “Neither; both; I don’t know,” Rosenda took a long pull of the refreshing tequila-based drink. “Hertz stuck him with a Catalina and he’s probably somewhere setting it on fire.”

    “Yikes,” Rune sucked the funky studio air between his teeth with a sharp hiss. “A Pontiac? I wouldn’t have the nerve to slide those keys over the desk.”

    “You know, he took it better than I expected. Maybe he’s mellowing in his old age. It wasn’t until we got on the 405 that the veneer began to crack.”

    “Here’s to him finding a Continental before someone gets hurt,” Rune poured himself a drink and clinked Rosenda’s glass while maintaining eye contact.

    “To Lucious Cole,” Rosenda added. “Wherever the hell he may be.”

    “No offense, but can you imagine being a shark and getting a bite of that polluted trash bag? You’d be high for days!”

    “Come on, Felix, show some respect for the dead.”

    “Too soon? I apologize,” Rune recanted for a beat. “Hey, man, you ever really look at your fins?”

    “Felix!”

    Rune settled back and with the appropriate flourish hit the playback button on the console. Cole’s famous baritone jumped out of the studio speakers, filling the air with unfamiliar admonishments.

    Once more in to the stifling heat

    Until it melts away your ghost

    Once more into the acid bath

    Until your memory turns to smoke

    Once more under the crushing load

    Until we find ourselves some shade

    Once more onto the bloody road

    Until we fix the mess you made

    Rune stopped the tape and shot Rosenda a perplexed look only to see her jaw hanging wide open.

    “What the fuck is this?” She asked, placing her half-empty Armillita Chico on the floor and scooting her chair closer to the deck. “Play that again, Felix.”

    Rune rewound the song, the words and music getting sucked back out of the air at double speed. Starting the tape again, both he and Rosenda listened carefully for a clue about the music’s provenance. The guitar was clearly Cole’s doing, his quirky choice of chord inversions and the off-kilter melody of his solo called back to nearly a decade of mining his particular musical lode. The song sat solidly within his cannon, yet somehow yearned for what could be next.

    “That, my dear, is a hit,” Rune refilled their glasses for another toast. “Even if there is no other new stuff on this reel, slap that on a Best Of collection, and we will all be farting through silk.”

  • Kingdoms of the Radio: On the Lash (1964) [ficção]

    SOHO, LONDON, ENGLAND  |  1964

    Simon Wilkie leaned his lanky frame against the brick archway of the Marquee Club’s new Wardour Street location and smoked. He was splitting his time watching girls running in and out of the boutiques and scanning the crowd for the rest of his band. The National Loaf had finally secured an opening slot for the latest Fab Four-wannabes and the group was primed to cut them to ribbons, if the rest of them showed, that was.

    “Oi, Si!” The voice of an ardent voyeur called from down the street. “The birds are certainly out today, eh, mate?”

    “Cornish, about time you slipped yer nan’s clutches,” Wilkie needled the one person in the band he felt close enough with to take the piss out of. “I thought I might have to do an extended bass solo, and I don’t know if this lot is ready for it.”

    Pianist Koda Cornell forced his focus away from a young woman in a raspberry A-line shift dress that danced above her knees as she walked. “Where are those wankers, anyway?”


    “Where were you?” Wilkie pitched his fag end into the street. “I feel like I’m the only one serious about this gig.”

    “Steady on, mate,” Cornell finally pulled both wandering eyes into focus on the situation. “You know those two, probably drunk as lords. I don’t know how Jere keeps up with that punter. He’s got a hollow leg, that one.”


    “Hollow leg?” Wilkie snorted. “Cole’s a bloody Trojan horse, he is. Seeing how those two prolly have a head start, buy you a pint?”

    “I thought you’d never ask.”

    “Did Simon just say he was buying?” Cole called from up the block, Woodrow in his wake, proving that he hadn’t yet burned out either his hearing or love of a free pint.

    “Fuck me,” Cornell bemoaned. “Mention the Devil and he appears.”

    “Cheers, good fellows,” Cole beamed. “Are you ready to tear this pile down? Mark my words, people in the future are going to lie and say they were here tonight just to sound gear.”

    “Let’s hope the room isn’t all phantoms,” Cornell spoke up. “Hard to shag a ghost.”

    “Fear not, my thirsty friend,” Cole mollified. “While you two were holding up the bricks, Jere and I were busy getting the word out… and here they come now.”

    The entire National Loaf turned to see a crowd of fashionable young women coming up the street.

    Jere, here, knows a secretary who works around the corner and just so happens has a lot of beautiful friends looking for something to do this evening.”

    “Cor, it’s the quiet ones you have to watch out for,” Wilkie gave Woodrow a nod. “Well done, mate.”

    “All right, that sorted, let’s talk setlist,” Cole got down to business. “I thought we’d open with ‘On the Lash!’”

    We had better get drinking, then,” Cornell exclaimed. “We can’t very well play that one sober.”

  • Kingdoms of the Radio: The Stick Meets The Kid [ficção]

    POINT ARENA, CALIFORNIA  |  1995

    After the hour-long winding drive on Mountain View Road from Boonville, the sight of the blue Pacific Ocean was a revelation after the untamed stretch of green trees. The Kid was itching to stretch his legs and get centered before he started recording the locals talk about what they remembered about the early ’70s at Girassol.

    Having grown up in Mendocino County, he was ready for that job to be more difficult than it looked on paper. It wasn’t that the old hippies were wary about expounding about their glory days, it was often the case that there were large holes in their memories of the era, which they would then fill with unmitigated bullshit.

    The Kid parked his ’91 Light Blue Metallic Saturn SC2 coupe in front of the Lighthouse Café. He had spent a considerable amount of time making phone calls over the past few weeks talking the owners into letting him borrow their unused backroom for his project interviews. He finally played his ace card and told them that he had been born out at the infamous commune, something he hated to do but was going to have to get used to once the project was finished. The disclosure changed the owner’s attitude immediately and suddenly the documentary was real; as real as something that was going to take a semester of interviews and editing to finish, that is.

    “Hey, man,” a voice called from down the street. “Is that one of those new GM deals? How far the mighty have fallen.”

    “Excuse me?” The Kid turned around to see what appeared to be an aging stuntman coming toward him pointing at the back of the Saturn.

    “I remember when General Motors was proud to put their name on their cars. What is this shit?’

    “Can I help you?” The Kid said, eager to get inside the café and set up his equipment.

    “The question is, can I help you,” the man took off his Vietnam veteran baseball cap and stuck out his hand. “Charlie Perigo, at your service. You must be The Kid.”

    “That’s me,” The Kid declared, everything suddenly swinging into focus. Thank you for meeting with me, Mr. Perigo.”

    “The honor’s mine, kid… or Mr. Kid, or… how are you dealing with it?”

    “TK, is fine.”

    “Far out. You can drop the Mr. Perigo business; it makes me feel like I’ve been pulled over. Charlie’s fine, or ‘The Stick,’”

    “OK, Mr. Stick,” The Kid motioned to the backseat of the Saturn. Would you mind giving me a hand with this stuff? Then I won’t have to make two trips.”

    “Not ‘Mr.’ Stick,” Perigo emphasized, “‘The’ Stick.”

    “Right.”

    “So, TK, have you ever been shot?”

    “Scene one banana, take one,” The Kid announced once the pair had set up in the backroom of the café. “Mark.”

    “I haven’t been in here since it was the Burger Shack,” Perigo noticed.

    “I see,” The Kid asked, hoping to move the conversation along as the video was rolling. “Did you move away after the commune split up?”

    “Nope,” Perigo answered, still trying to reconcile the room he was sitting in with the place he remembered. “86’d, I’m afraid. Honestly, I don’t remember why.”

    “I see. Did a lot of your… communards come out here, then?”

    “Ha! Communards. That would not have gone over too well with the feminist caucus, I’ll tell you that. You know, this place is where I first met Zongo.”

    “Zongo Khumalo? The guy arrested for trying to bomb the Pentagon with the Weathermen?”

    “I don’t know anything about that,” Perigo waved off the question. “I don’t know who your parents are, either.”

    “Excuse me?”


    “Your parents,” Perigo repeated, “I don’t know who they are.”

    “I didn’t ask you,” The Kid stopped the video. “That isn’t what is this is about.”

    “Isn’t it, though?” Perigo asked. “Do you get high, TK? We should take a break.”

    Chief Burton sat alone drinking his morning coffee at the café’s counter when Perigo and TK emerged from the backroom.

    “Well, look what a bird dropped here,” Burton swiveled around on his padded pedestal stool. “Mr. Perigo, I don’t believe I’ve seen you in this place in 20 years.”

    “Chief,” Perigo offered the one word he was willing to give.

    “It’s good to see you out in respectable surroundings again. Who’s your friend?”

    Perigo, having already spent any social capital he had reserved for the police, kept silent, waiting to see if TK would offer the chief anything further. Burton, for his part, kept an inquisitive look plastered on his face and trained on the newcomer.

    “I’m TK, a documentary filmmaker,” he finally bowed to the pressure and stuck out his hand.

    “Teacake?” Burton chuckled. “Well, that’s not the craziest name I’ve heard in these parts. It’s right up there, though. What are you documenting, if you don’t mind me asking?”

    “Actually, chief,” Perigo found some more words somewhere, “we were just leaving. We need to scout some location shots, you know, while we have the light.”

    “The light, of course,” Burton accepted the brushoff. “You never know when a black cloud is going to show up out of nowhere in this town. It can ruin the whole day.”

    “Chief,” Perigo uttered as he ushered TK out of the café.

    “Teacake, if you get tired of listening to The Stick’s bullshit, you know where to find me,” Burton called after the pair. “Get the real story!”

    “What is his problem?” TK asked as they crossed the parking lot.

    “We have, what you might call, history,” Perigo confessed. “It’s a long story, and not an especially good one.”

    “Teacake? Seriously? What the hell, man?”

    “What can I tell you?” Perigo opened his hands in a gesture of supplication. “Chief Burton is well known for making friends wherever he goes.”

  • Kingdoms of the Radio: Salt Peanuts, Salt Peanuts (Pt. 2) [ficção]

    POINT ARENA, CALIFORNIA  |  1971

    After slowly, but steadily, wearing out the good graces of Palacios, and throwing a couple of bucks into the band’s tip jar, the two men found themselves out in the gravel parking lot next to the 442.

    “Hop in, old man, I’ll give you two a lift to the lighthouse,” Perigo offered.

    “Forget it, Charlie, we are taking the Chevrolegs,” Anderson countered. “It’s the end of the month and Burton has to meet his quota. I don’t figure the fact that you are screwing his niece is going to keep you from walking a line. Besides, it’s only one klick from here. The fresh air’ll do us both a bit of good.”

    “Sticks don’t know from klicks, man. It’s all contour and tree lines from up there,” Perigo teased before realizing there was inherent wisdom in the offer. “Lead on, ground pounder. What’s the big surprise, anyway?”

    “Do you really not know how surprises work? That’s just sad,” Anderson pouted in drunken jest.

    “That’s just sad!” Gloria Lynne agreed.

    “I have to admit, Floyd,” Perigo mused as they left the lot and turned toward the sea, “I didn’t get the chance to really hang with any RTOs back in ’Nam, given their propensity for walking around the jungle with a big fucking antenna. Was Korea any better?”

    “I was lucky, Charlie, I got drafted out of college and ended up in the 1st Radio Broadcasting & Leaflet Group. ‘A Very Proper Gander,’ as Thurber put it. Ever hear of us?”

    “Psy-Ops?”

    “Machinations of a most devious and duplicitous nature, all told.”

    “Far out.”

    “The furthest, Charlie boy,” Anderson copped. “But it did get me thinking deeply about the power of radio. Isn’t it amazing how hearing a voice out of thin air can hold more credence than one standing at your side, yammering in your ear?”

    “I don’t know about that.”

    “Sure you do. Let’s say you are having a shitty day and someone, an invisible hand, plays several glorious minutes of Otis Redding. Something like that can turn your whole life around. Did you know that scientists are now saying we are nothing but vibrations on the molecular level? Now imagine another vibration is introduced into the system, resulting in a better, more harmonious tone. That’s powerful juju.”

    “What about television?” Perigo countered. “That seems to gaining some serious ground on the national psyche. What about the Nixon/Kennedy debate? You can’t discount image.”

    “Television?” Anderson exploded. “Fuck Television! I’m not talking about flashing shadows on the cave wall! I’m working on the spiritual level. I’m talking about something that seeps in through the bones, something that has the power to alter the spin of nuclei.”

    “OK, you win,” Perigo laughed. “Where is all this going, chief?”

    “I was a Specialist, E-4, but that’s neither here or there,” Anderson said. “This is it.”

    Perigo looked up. Realizing that their talk had brought them to the base of the lighthouse, he was powerless not to scan the tower to its apex and back down. Anderson opened a black-painted wooden door and motioned his friend inside.

    “As much as I use this thing as a landmark while flying the chopper, I have never been to the top,” Perigo admitted.

    “We aren’t going up there,” Anderson clarified. “At least not yet.” The men entered a dimly-lit hallway that bisected the building’s bottom floor. On either side, an interior door guarded a half-circle chamber, giving the men the impression of walking into the tower’s respiratory system.

    “Right, this way,” Anderson motioned to the left, leaving Perigo to open the door himself. “The light is on the right.”

    Inside, Perigo was treated to the sight of a monk’s cell, that is if the mendicant’s order was dedicated to spinning records with a single-minded commitment. Against the far, curved, cement wall sat several tables built from heavy timbers evidently scavenged from a shipwreck in which the tower was held blameless. A pair of turntables and what he took for a repurposed amplifier and field transmitter sat among a scattering of Olympia beer cans and an overworked churchkey. Turning around, he saw shelves filled with music albums covering the flat wall.

    “What is all this?” Perigo asked, suspecting the answer all along.

    “Welcome to K-RTO!” Anderson exclaimed. “The number one pirate radio station for the Mendocino Coast.”

    “Number one? You mean there are more?” Charlie watched in interest as Anderson powered up the desk.

    “Not yet, my boy,” Anderson futzed with mysterious dials with the shining eyes of a zealot. “But I do hope to help democratize the airways, the way that the Good Lord intended them to be.”

    Picking up his cherished copy of The Quintet’s Jazz at Massey Hall, Anderson placed it on one of his turntables as if delivering the Eucharist. Donning a well-duct-taped set of headphones, and looking all the world like he might call in an air strike, Anderson dropped the needle, and essentially does just that.

    Suddenly, the sound of Max Roach’s drums thunders out of monitors Perigo hadn’t noticed were there, setting the pace for Gillespie and Parker to chase each other through the opening changes, Dizzy scatting, marking the jump in octave with the seemingly nonsensical phrase, “Salt Peanuts,” his incantation inciting inference patterns that when they collide, open a channel just wide enough for Bird to escape through, with Bud Powell’s delicate piano fills following him into the glorious void, all the time, Mingus sitting back solid as a mountain, ready to receive them all back into his imposing magnitude when their flight is finally exhausted.

    “Far out,” Perigo declared, simultaneously meaning nothing and everything.

    “Salt Peanuts,” Gloria Lynne, who had flown off to her corner perch, agreed.

  • Kingdoms of the Radio: Salt Peanuts, Salt Peanuts (Pt. 1) [ficção]

    POINT ARENA, CALIFORNIA  |  1971

    Floyd Anderson opened the door to the Quonset hut serving as the temporary home of the Point Arena Veteran’s Hall since the historical location on Shoreline had suffered a small fire. If he was pressed, Anderson preferred the corrugated metal building to the mustard-colored stucco affair that looked like a Swiss chalet doing a stretch in San Quentin.

    As he and Gloria Lynne approached the bar, a country band in the corner was doing their best to work with the fact they were essentially playing in a giant tin can by leaning hard into the unnatural reverb. The guitarist was throwing out lead Telecaster lines like sharpened knives as their singer embraced the mournful wail of a somnambulant who had suddenly found himself at the bottom of a dry well.

    “What are you drinking, beautiful?” Perigo asked from the stool he had been keeping from flying away for most of the morning.

    “If you’re buying, I’ll have a Harvey Wallbanger,” Anderson said, licking his lips.

    “I was talking to the bird,” Perigo pointed at Anderson’s parrot who was currently giving him the stink eye.

    “Sorry, Charlie,” Anderson bemoaned. “I’m afraid she’s driving.”

    “Pity. I was looking forward to hearing what she might say after a couple of drinks. I guess you’ll have to do, Floyd. Benita, bring our baron o’ the beacon a Harvey Wallbanger, por favor.”

    “We are fresh out of Galliano, gentlemen,” Benita Palacios announced with a flair of feigned regret. “Let me pour you a beer on the house, Floyd.”

    “My favorite!” Anderson declared, letting Gloria Lynne hop down to the redwood burl-topped bar.

    “I tol’ you, that bird is not supposed to be on the bar, cabrón,” Palacios warned as she pulled a tap.

    “And I told you, Gloria Lynne is better trained than most of the ground pounders you let in here,” Anderson argued.

    “Who you calling a ground pounder, old man?” Perigo joked. “RTOs spend more time pounding ground than a stick ever will.”

    “Here we go again,” Anderson took a deep draw of his draft. “Benita, can I buy another so Charlie here has something in his mouth besides bullshit?”

    “Pounding ground! Pounding ground!” Gloria Lynne entered the conversation.

    “Floyd, you aren’t getting anything until that bird gets off of my bar. It’s unsanitary.”

    “Alright, alright,” Floyd pulled up another stool and the parrot hopped down on it as if following the conversation. “No need to get personal. I’ll have you know that Gloria Lynne is fastidious in her grooming. Unlike Charlie, here.”

    Perigo shrugged at the fair point and accepted the beer from Palacios with a warm, “Gracias.”

    “Drink up, Charlie, I have something to show you back at the lighthouse. I think you’ll like it,” Anderson drained his pint glass and reached for a peanut for his parrot. “Benita, these are the unsalted ones, right?”

    “Not to worry, Floyd,” the bartender offered her warmest smile, “your friend there licked all the salt off of those before you got here.”

    “I am as God made me, Floyd,” Perigo avowed in response to the looks he was getting from both man and bird. “Who’s this band, anyway? They’ve got the Bakersfield sound down pat.”

    “Some shit kickers from ’round Marin,” Anderson allowed the abrupt change of topic. “This week, they are calling themselves the Prickly Pear Pointillists.”

    “What’s a ‘pointillist,’ other than a thorn freak?” Perigo twisted around on his stool to better see the band.

    “Benita!” Anderson called down the bar. “You were an art major. The ‘point’ guy; who was the ‘point’ guy?”

    “How do you know I was an art major, Floyd?” The beleaguered server demanded.

    “Please. The ‘point’ guy! I’m trying to educate our young friend here. Inoculate him with some goddamn culture before he becomes a total savage right before our eyes.”

    “Too late,” Palacios pronounced. “You mean, Seurat?”

    “Yes! Yes, goddamn it, Seurat! The point guy,” Anderson jumped up and clapped his hands so hard it almost threw the band. “Stick with me and learn something, my boy. We might yet save you from a wholly Philistine existence.”

    “Give your flesh to the birds and the wild animals!” Gloria Lynne intoned.

    “The fuck did your bird say to me?” Perigo unconsciously moved his beer closer in.

    “Don’t worry about her,” Anderson appeased. “She is going through a fundamentalist phase. I think she may be molting.”

  • Angel Down—Daniel Kraus

    I was not emotionally prepared for Daniel Kraus’ 2025 book, Angel Down. I can’t remember what drove me to pick it up in the first place, although it lives firmly within my wheelhouse. Man’s inhumanity to man? Check. The utter indifference of heaven? Check. Biblical allusions that don’t turn out like what you’ve been led to believe. Oh, yea.



    Had I looked up Kraus’ CV before jumping in, I would have noticed his bona fides as a past collaborator with such masters of the filmic horror genre no less than George A. Romero and Guillermo del Toro. Even so, I should have been tipped off by the cover blurb by one of my favorite authors of this decade, Stephen Graham Jones.

    There is a scene in Jones’ The Only Good Indian that still haunts me five years after I read it. Perhaps the saving grace of the depth of real horror that Kraus serves up from the trenches of the Western Front is that the senses become so overwhelmed that nothing sticks. In the immortal words of Johnny Cash, speaking on yet another war, Drive on, it don’t mean nothin’. Can you become shell-shocked from a novel?

    My favorite stories all have a memorable anti-hero, this book has five… well, four and a total innocent that is unfairly lumped in with the rest. These doughboys are saddled with a suicide mission precisely due to their expendability. Their vainglorious commanding officer, the only character that rings a little hollow, sends the mismatched quintet out to the middle of No Man’s Land as the division retreats as a way to rid himself of them all in one fell swoop.

    The relentless style that Kraus employs, as if the entire book were one run-on sentence, propels the reader headlong through the narrative, as if you, too, were scrambling over the broken pieces of men and machines in a desperate bid to save… oneself? A wayward angel? All of mankind? In the end, the effect is one of exhausted fatalism. “Them that die’ll be the lucky ones,” as Robert Louis Stevenson’s Long John Silver famously stated.

    Krause is capable of dark flights of poetic abstraction as well, as shown when our final antihero is driven into the center of the Earth—to Hell itself—to peek behind the curtain, a vision of the machine behind the scene that rivals the mechanical dread of Ken Kesey’s Combine, which lurks beneath the dread of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

    Angel Down has since won the 2026 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction which is great for speculative fiction, and even better for the numbers of readers who may otherwise have missed this book.

  • Kingdoms of the Radio: Whole Lotta Shakin’ Going On (1958) [ficção]

    
SOHO, LONDON, ENGLAND  |  1958

    “What time is it, Mr. Wolf?” A lanky, teenaged Lucious Cole sidled up to the edge of the Berwick Street Market in Soho, his pegged jeans and blonde hair carefully tortured into a quiff like his latest American hero, Jerry Lee Lewis.

    “Time for you to nick a watch, Louie,” Chas Woodrow good-naturedly chastised his longtime partner-in-crime. “You are late.”

    “There was a holdup on the Tube,” Cole explained, removing the cigarette from behind his ear and waiting for Woodrow to flash his cherished Zippo. “It wasn’t me, I swear.”

    “Should have taken the Transport,” Woodrow leaned in and lit the bent Player’s Navy Cut. “Run into any Teds?”

    “Nah,” Cole took a drag off the unfiltered smoke and upon finding tobacco on his tongue, spat it into the street as disaffectedly as he could manage.

    “You should upgrade, mate,” Woodrow needled his best friend. “‘Get together with Player’s Bachelor-Tipped,’ as they say.”

    “The minute I start smoking those posh fags, I’ll deserve getting stomped by Teddy Boys,” Cole groused. “I might as well dress like a cowboy and smoke Marlboros.”

    “Says the bloke dressed to marry his own cousin.”

    “Rumor and conjecture!” Cole protested. “I won’t stand for it.”

    “It’s true, mate,” Woodrow lit his own Navy Cut, inhaled, and blew a huge cloud of smoke as if smudging the area of negative energy. “My cousin—whom I do not plan on marrying, thank you very much—saw the whole thing go down.”


    “The next thing you’ll tell me is that Richard’s really a poof,” Cole jibbed.

    “Tutti Fruiti, loose booty!” Woodrow sang as flamboyantly as he could manage.

    “Look, I didn’t call you down here to tear down my idols,” Cole pitched his butt into the gutter where it self-extinguished with a hiss.

    “What are we doing here, if not taking the piss, then?”

    “We are going to start a band,” Cole explained.

    “Are you off your chump?” Woodrow laughed, but upon looking at Cole’s face, quickly realized that he was serious. “How do we intend to do that, now? I’ve no money for instruments, let alone talent.”

    “I’ve got readies,” Cole stated. “And we have time.”

    “Oh, do we now? Who tol’ you that, your bald-headed gran?”

    “You leave my gran outta this,” Cole turned conspiratorial. “Here’s how it’s going down; you and I are going to start a band, achieve more success than we can imagine, and then piss it all away.”

    “That sounds grand,” Woodrow agreed. “Where’d you get the dosh?”

    Cole looked around, taking note that all of the action was down the street where the outdoor market began. “Can you keep a secret?”

    “You havin’ a bubble?” Woodrow asked, incredulous. “I ain’t a muppet. You, of all people should know that. I haven’t let on that you’re a right poofter!”

    “Alright, alright,” Cole relented. “What if I told you that I know everything that’s going to happen to me… to us?”

    “I would say the pomade in that duck tail is soaking into your loaf, mate.”

    “That is exactly why I haven’t told you,” Cole groused.

    “Told me what, that you are going off your nut?” Woodrow lit another Player’s and took a good look at the one person in his life that he thought that he could trust and wondering if that time was passing in front of his eyes. “I’ll bite, Nostradamus, who has hipped you to the jive, so to speak?”

    “I wasn’t sure at first, but now I’m pretty sure it was me.” The utter lack of a snappy comeback from Woodrow made Cole think he might be digging himself in deep, but he rolled right along, carefully avoiding his friend’s eyes. “Do you remember when I fell into that basement when we were wee lads?”

    “I am five seconds away from giving you a right clout,” Woodrow bristled. Who do you think helped pull you out of that hole, you ungrateful prick?”

    “I know, I know,” Cole conceded. “It’s just… while I was down there, I had an experience that I never told you about.”

    “An experience?” Woodrow mocked. “In the ten bloody minutes you were down there?”

    “That’s just it, it was ten minutes for you; but for me, it felt like an hour. There was this weird metal structure in the other room, and when I walked into it, I was sitting there waiting for me.”

    “They call that a mirror, you nutter. Funny thing, I’m always waiting for myself every morning when I go to wash my face.”

    “I knew this was going to be hard,” Cole bemoaned.

    “Said the actress to the bishop,” Woodrow quipped on cue.

    “Is this proof enough, then?” Cole pulled out a roll of blue five pound notes from his jacket.

    Woodrow jumped forward, blocking any prying eyes from Cole’s stash. “What are you doing, Louie? Put that away! If you didn’t nick it, someone else is about to. Where did that come from?”

    “I won it,” Cole explained. “I told you, I got the inside track on everything that is going to happen to us, including who was going to win the Grand National last week.”

    “Who?”

    “Mr. What.”

    “What’s on second,” Woodrow resorted to slapstick, having completely lost control of the conversation.

    “Right,” Cole tossed off, ready to put his plan into action. “Let’s go buy some instruments, we gotta get good.”

    “Naturally.”

  • Kingdoms of the Radio: Spiral Architect (1953) [ficção]

    CRIPPLEGATE, LONDON, ENGLAND  |  1953

    The Sun uncharacteristically beat down on the still-broken streets of London’s Cripplegate as a call went up among the children gathered in a bombed-out corner lot slowly on its way to being reclaimed as a proper English garden.

    “What time is it, Mr. Wolf?” The small gang inquired. The wolf in question turned slowly, leering at the tasty morsels who dared to edge ever closer to his imagined fangs and deadly claws.

    “One o’clock,” the wolf replied, in this case, the wolf being a snap bean of a nine-year-old boy named Lucious Cole. An illicit thrill surged through the assembled sheep as they crept nearer to their natural predator who eyed them hungrily in turn.

    “What time is it, Mr. Wolf?” The question was restated, this time, with an undercurrent of trepidation.

    “Two o’clock,” the wolf replied, carefully watching the crafty sheep who, to be fair, had designs of their own. The neighborhood variant of the game called for a quick reversal of fortune if any of the flock had the luck and temerity to touch him before he uttered the magic phrase, thus releasing his baser instincts, and allowing total carnage to commence. The wolf might decide to feast anytime between one and twelve o’clock, causing the sheep to scatter with the carnivore in reckless pursuit. The last sheep standing, would then become the wolf, and the game would start again.

    Once again the query was raised, the flock ever closer to the ravenous engine of their own destruction. “What time is it, Mr. Wolf?”

    “It’s… time for dinner, and I am going to eat you all!” The wolf proclaimed mid-jump, the sheep running for their wooly lives. Giddy with chase, Cole cut through an uncleared corner of the lot, hoping to cut off a few of his fleeing cohort when, from below his feet, came a hollow cracking.

    As a stout young man named Chas Woodrow would later tell the constabulary, it was if Cole had just disappeared. One moment he was in hot pursuit, the next, vanished into the foxgloves and delphiniums. It wasn’t until the sheep stopped running and turned around to investigate that they found the hole and, at least three-and-a-half meters below the brick-strewn ground, a prostrate Lucious Cole.

    “Go get help!” Woodrow commanded his friends as he simultaneously shouted down into what looked like the deep basement of a building long knocked flat. “Louie! Y’alright?”

    Cole, hearing the voice of his best friend, sat up, shook his ringing head, and looked around his new environment.

    “A-OK!” He called out, his own voice echoing into the dark. “Nothing broken as far as I can tell.”

    “Oi! Catch!” Woodrow tossed Cole the precious Zippo lighter he had inherited from an American GI. “I’m going to see if I can find a rope or something.”

    “Ace,” Cole answered as he caught the Zippo. Stepping out of the shaft of sunlight now streaming into the forgotten room, he flicked open the lighter and upon striking flint was bewildered by what he saw. The underground bunker he had so ungracefully entered appeared to have been a laboratory of some sort. Exotic-looking electrical equipment ringed the perimeter of the room, thick cables running from tables crowded with dead meters of every kind. The wires that led down across the floor were all covered in thick dust, attesting to their disuse at least since the German Blitz had buried the whole operation.

    Cole followed the closest rat’s nest of cable through a reinforced exit, the heavy steel door designed to keep something well out, or in; but judging from the dog’s dinner of wires crossing the threshold, had never been used for either task.

    The adjoining space was nearly the same size as the one he fell into, with one important difference that made it seem much larger. Whereas what he was already thinking of as the lab looked like a yard sale at Dr. Frankenstein’s flat, the new space was spotless except for a massive riveted spiral of sheet aluminum resting up on one flat end.

    As Cole approached the structure, his distorted reflection gazed back at him in the convex side of the standing silver surface, the tiny flame from the Zippo dancing hypnotically in the mirror. His twisted twin looked at as much of a loss as he felt. Peering into the open end of the structure, Cole felt an intoxicating buzz, recalling the time that he and Woodrow broke into his uncle’s liquor cabinet and each had their first nip of gin.

    Bolstered by the exciting feeling, Cole followed the curved panel inward and found himself surrounded on either side by the reflections the lighter threw against the polished walls. The further he walked into the spiral, the better he realized he could see. Against his own better judgement, Cole snapped the Zippo closed and could immediately discern a dim glow emanating from further within the assembly. It was as if the thing was responding to his presence and was somehow powering up.

    Forgetting about the rescue that was surely about to notice that he was missing, Cole felt drawn to the center of the contraption. He ignored a growing feeling of agitation, chalking it up to having fallen down the proverbial rabbit hole into one of the science fiction pulps that he favored. A loud buzzing assailed his ears as he turned the final bend into the center of the spiral. At what he would later learn was its mathematical origin point, sat a simple metal chair, and having nothing better to do, he sat.

    The dim light suddenly intensified as if the act of occupying the proffered seat had completed some secret circuit, awaking the mysterious machine from its slumber. Cole gazed at his reflection in the concave side of the polished aluminum wall, and straightened his dirty blonde hair, thinking that he looked pretty good for having dropped a fair piece into some dusty nightmare.

    “The hair looks good, kid,” came a voice out of nowhere. “Always has.”


    “Bloody hell!” Cole cried out as the wall in front of him began to fade into a foggy chimerical forest scene where a disturbingly familiar-looking older man sat cross-legged in the grass.

    “There you are,” the phantom spoke. “I have waited a long time until things on this end were just how I remembered them. I have so much to tell you.”

    “Who the hell are you, then?” Cole demanded.

    “I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together,” the phantom sang.

    “What are you on about, mate? What’s your game?”

    “Oh, that’s right,” the figure remembered, “you wouldn’t have heard that one yet. Forget I said anything.”

    “Forget? You haven’t said a single word that has made any sense at all. None of this makes sense.”

    “You always were a cheeky little bastard. Look, they are going to find you down in that hole any minute, now. Listen very closely to what I am going to tell you, and most importantly, don’t tell a soul.”

  • Kingdoms of the Radio: Death & the Back Catalog

    SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA  |  1971

    It was still dark when Karoline Rosenda unlocked the front door to the offices of Celestial Records. The thick fog smothering the Outer Sunset had long begun to seep into her bones as well as her spirit. Without bothering to turn on the overhead lights, she made a beeline for the small kitchen to start a pot of the toxic black coffee she was famous for.

    It was gearing up to be the worst day of her short career, if not the last. Z was not going to take the news that she had lost their star artist to the tide very well. She wondered if she should just start boxing up her desk before he came in, and decided that there wasn’t really anything she needed to remind her of this particular episode of her life. At least her boss was not traditionally what you could call an early riser. Rosenda wasn’t sure what other pies Avidan’s fat fingers were stuck in, but certainly most of them were still cooking late into the night.

    Rosenda was wrestling with the rusty chrome can opener and a new three-pound can of Maxwell House when she caught a muffled sound of laughter coming from the back office. Suddenly hit with the realization that she might not be around to drink a pot of coffee, she gave up the fighting with the tinplate steel canister and went to face the music, so to speak.

    Approaching Zev Avidan’s office, she noticed a strip of hellish red light seeping under the closed door. From inside the office, Rosenda could hear the sound of a party going on. The raucous laughter of intoxicated young women was punctuated like a cymbal crash by the crystalline splash of a dropped glass.

    What the hell? She mouthed, grabbing the nearest heavy three-hole punch before confronting what was sure to be intruders. Suddenly the door slammed open and a weary bacchanal in its final thrum revealed itself to her. A woman in high heels and the wide-eyed look of a racehorse just cut loose from the starting gate, tottered past Rosenda to what she hoped would be the company ladies’ room.

    “Karoline, get your tush in here!” Avidan shouted over Cole’s last album blasting out of the large office stereo speakers that faced his huge oaken desk.

    “Mr, Z,” Rosenda struggle to find words. “What is all this? It’s not even 7 o’clock. Have you been here all night?”

    “Dammit, is it morning already? Hang on, I need to get Monarch on the horn. We are going to need them to drill a goddamn oil well for all the records they are going to be pressing! What time is it in L.A.?”

    “Oil what?” Rosenda stepped over the legs of a young Italian man in a rumpled suit sitting on the shag rug smoking a cigarette with a girl in a orange A-line mini skirt on his lap. The pop art pattern barely wrapping the girl’s ass was a shapely field of bloodshot eyes all staring at her. “It’s the same time as… will someone please tell me what is going on here?”

    “Signora, it seems that the unfortunate demise of your so-called rock star has been quite the stroke of luck to ‘Mr. Z.’” The man rolled the girl off of his lap and stumbled a bit as he stood. “Marone! Giulia you need to go on a diet. I can’t feel my leg.”

    “That was your leg?” The young woman stood and straightened the eyes. “That is a disappointment. I should go find Vanda. Which way was the… ”

    “Straight down the hall, dear,” Avidan searched in his jacket for a match. “Karo, is your roommate still looking for a job? Ring her up and see if we can get her down here to make us some coffee.”

    “Am I fired, then?” Rosenda cast her eyes down to the beleaguered shag.

    “Fired?” Avidan, having found and a struck a match, began to laugh until the flame burned his fingers. “Ouch! Absolutely, not! I need you on a plane to L.A. immediately. We need to repackage the back catalog and get it into production. I can’t trust that shmegegge at Monarch not to fuck this up.”

    “The back catalog?”

    “Yes! I want every note, every belch, every wet, juicy fart squeaked out by that son-of-a-bitch Lucious Cole to flood the market,” Avidan decreed. “Record label one-oh-fucking-one: There is nothing like death to boost the back catalogue.”

    “Your boss here owed some people quite a bit of money,” the Italian man straightened out his suit and looked around for the women to begin his leave. “Against all odds, it looks like his problem has resolved itself. We were just celebrating his good fortune. And ours.”

  • Kingdoms of the Radio: Chae Burton 2

    UNFINISHED DOCUMENTARY, KINGDOMS OF THE RADIO  |  1995

    I guess Lucious Cole was just on our minds that night. He was all over the radio as he had just been reported missing. The pirate radio station out of Boonville had been playing nothing but National Loaf records all weekend. It was a weird soundtrack to the founding of Girassol.

    I was seeing Charlie at the time and he was helping Zongo and Enrique move a bunch of lumber and building materials up to the scene. I was a big Lucious Cole fan in those days, and was probably driving Charlie crazy by moping around his pad so he took me with him on some of the runs.

    You can say what you want about our generation, but when we set our minds to something, we can really get things done. I had never seen so many groovy people in one place working so hard.

    Everybody there had given up on the plastic lives that the prevailing death culture had prescribed for them. There was a real feeling that we were starting something authentic, for lack of a better word.

    I had just really gotten into astrology, and it was a new moon that night, the perfect time to be starting a new venture. So when this groovy chick brought out what we starting calling her Moon Juice, it was to celebrate the birth of a new society. It probably sounds naïve now, but we really thought that we could transcend the trips that our parents had laid on us.

    There were about a dozen of us all sitting around the bonfire, partaking of a little pakalolo, when the morning glory started coming on. I don’t remember who dug it first, but pretty soon we were all seeing a huge meteor streaking across the sky. It was so big and so close that you could hear it tearing through the atmosphere, and then as quickly as it came, it was gone.

  • Kingdoms of the Radio: Zongo Khumalo 4

    UNFINISHED DOCUMENTARY, KINGDOMS OF THE RADIO  |  1995

    Once we decided to renovate Girassol, I figured I ought to let Mrs. Chaves know what was going on; that way if we ran into a hassle, we would be coming from a place of righteousness.

    I had to go into town and call her from the payphone at Sammy’s. Once I told her that the big house was still standing and in amazingly good condition, she actually wept on the phone. I told her the other buildings were a loss, but she was cool with us building some new ones. There was no electricity out to the property, but the gas lines were somehow still intact and the same company that provided it back when Mrs. Chaves lived there was still around.

    I got her to call the company and let them know that she now owned the property and wanted the gas back on. They said it might take a while since they would have to check the hookups, but it would be all right to put it in my name so that we could pay the bill. In the meantime, we had plenty of firewood from the tear downs.

    In fact, when we finally finished loading in all of the salvaged building materials, a girlfriend of Enrique’s brought out a jug of morning glory wine she had made and we had a huge bonfire.

    The acid-like effects of morning glory seeds was one of those things I had always heard about but never tried as they had a bad reputation for making you really sick as well as really high. For me, there’s nothing worse than losing your lunch while tripping balls, but this chick had figured out a way to extract the good shit and filter out the part that makes you nauseous.

    We were all tired from schlepping salvage all week but also had the mellow feeling of a job well done. We built a big pile of lumber we knew we couldn’t use again and all took a big drink of the wine. She called it wine, but had actually used Everclear in her process so it packed a punch like a smack from a bat.

  • Kingdoms of the Radio: Enrique Bravocado 4

    UNFINISHED DOCUMENTARY, KINGDOMS OF THE RADIO  |  1995

    When Zongo and I first got our thing together out at the ranch, it was paradise, man. It took a lot of elbow grease to clean up the property, but once all the heads starting showing up and pitching in, it went really quickly.

    And the big house, don’t ask me how, but we hardly had to do anything to it. It was like it had been waiting for us. The other structures on the property were pretty much tear downs, though. To tell the truth, they probably weren’t all that much to start with.

    Luckily, Charlie knew some guy that had a contract to dismantle the buildings at an old hot springs resort not too far away. There was a lot of good salvage: lumber, windows, pipes, the works. We just had to work out a way to get it all to Girassol.

  • Kingdoms of the Radio: Charlie Perigo 4

    UNFINISHED DOCUMENTARY, KINGDOMS OF THE RADIO  |  1995

    Once we put the word out on the street about what we wanted to build, it was amazing how quickly it caught on. There were a lot of heads that had been at loose ends, which was causing them heat in some of the small towns around the Bay Area. Small towns? What am I saying? They were all small towns! Still are, when it comes down to it. At least in the head.

    A boonie rat buddy of mine named Ikaia Keala—we called him Sticky Icky in-country—used to do under-the-table construction jobs around the county and had somehow pulled the gig to dismantle the buildings on a crumbling old resort. I think local kids kept breaking in and the county was afraid of getting sued if some drunk teenager got himself parboiled in the hot springs.

    Sticky said that we could have the salvage if; one, we helped him take it all apart, and, two, if we got it all the hell out of there. You should have seen the ragtag caravan of pickups, flatbeds, vans—whatever we could get our hands on—heading further up into the woods once we finished tearing those places down. We were like an army of ants all carrying pieces of some giant dead bug back to the nest.

    We hadn’t had time to improve the way in, and there had been some genuine—and well considered, in my opinion—arguments against it. It would be harder for the county to sweep in and hassle us if we left the road impassible, so it ended being up to me to lift the salvage up and over the tangled growth with the chopper. It was really weird, I felt like I was back in ’Nam again, helping to establish an LZ.

    Once a stick, always a stick.

  • Kingdoms of the Radio: Police Chief Warren Burton 1 [fiçcão]

    UNFINISHED DOCUMENTARY, KINGDOMS OF THE RADIO  |  1995

    Of course I remember when that so-called rock star disappeared in San Francisco. I still had some friends on the force out that way. You can’t believe the stories they used to tell me; drug addicts from all over the country pouring in to the City and the city government refusing to deal with it.

    How would you like it if you got up to go to work one morning and some filthy young runaway was breast-feeding her malnourished baby on your front stoop?

    Girassol? That was something else entirely. At least we had them all in one place; out of the way. It was almost like they sent themselves to their own refugee camp.

    It worked for a while, but I’m getting ahead of myself. This SFPD friend of mine that I knew in Korea got the call that night of a possible drowning out at Ocean Beach. That strip has a notorious riptide, especially around ebb.

    The way my buddy explained it is there are billions of gallons of water that come pouring out of the Bay between high and low tides and it meets an unbelievably massive wall of sand just outside the Golden Gate which shoots the water both north to Marin and south to Monterey. Get caught in that and you’d be wishing you fell into a Mixmaster instead.

    He got a call that some morning joggers found a paint-spattered pair of coveralls that matched an APB for a possible suicide. It was Lucious Cole. The two yahoos that were supposed to be taking care of him called it in, saying that he had been talking about ending it and had somehow gotten away from them. Of course there were drugs involved. That’s no real surprise, is it?

    They never did find the body. After a while, everyone just figured that Cole ended up shark food and called it a day.

  • Kingdoms of the Radio: Zongo Meets The Stick (Pt. 2) [ficção]

    POINT ARENA, CALIFORNIA  |  1971

    “What about you, man? So, you’re a cook?”

    “Shit,” Khumalo groused, as he grabbed the passenger assist grip, “I was a cook. There was an… incident this morning. With a goose.”

    “OK, now you have to tell me,” Perigo laughed as he downshifted and swung into a turnout at an inappropriate speed and vector.

    “Fuck this thing,” Khumalo pulled the scratchy polo up over his head and tossed it into the weeds on the side of the road. “There was a wedding party this morning. I was cooking my ass off as my prep neglected to make it to work. All of a sudden, the bride’s mother comes barging into my kitchen. A sacred space.”

    “Amen,” Perigo sympathized as he rooted around in the center console for a cigarette.

    “This broad starts yelling about how this Canada goose took it upon itself to join the festivities, uninvited, and was now honking up and down the rows of friends and family pecking at ankles and shitting all over the place.”

    “Sounds like a goose, alright.”

    “That’s what I said! ‘That’s what they do, lady. What do you want me to do about it?’ That’s when the owner pops his fucking head in… again, his place, my kitchen.”

    “I can see where this is going.”

    “Both of them started tag teaming me about how this goddamn goose was ruining the wedding and somehow it was my job to fix it.”

    “What did you do?”

    “What could I do? I put the chowder on low simmer and went to out to deal with it. By this time, the whole ceremony had come to a halt and everyone watched as I tried to shoo the fucking bird off the deck. To it’s credit, it had moves. Every time I got it going toward the gate, it would pull a head fake and scramble past me.”

    “Daaamn.”

    “I finally cornered the bastard against the railing and it tried to bite me, so I got a hand around his neck and my other arm around his body and and tossed him over into the water.”

    “Power move.”

    “That’s what I thought. I was ready to go back to the kitchen when all of a sudden the wedding party turned into an angry mob. Apparently, the goose—somehow forgetting that it knew how to fucking fly—hit the one concrete piling sticking up out of the water. Knocked it cold. The crowd started calling me ‘goose killer.’”

    “They did not.”

    “Like it was my idea to come out and dance with the fucking thing! I told them all to kiss my ass.”

    “An understandable response.”

    “A-fucking-men. So, here I am, an ex-cook.”

    “I’ll drink to that. Sounds like you have the day off, I’m buying.”

  • What I Saw On the Parkway On a Cold Autumn Morning

    Upholstered cane back chair (1)

    Dead opossums (2)

    Sheet of aluminum that is going to be a real problem when the wind kicks up (1)

    Witch (1)

  • Samson’s Jawbone (Vallejo Ferry to San Francisco, 8:30 a.m.) [poema]

    From the mouth of the Napa River
    The white tank farms look like molars
    Stuck in a bleached jawbone

    Tossed on the shore buy a passing Nazirite
    As he strode up the middle of San Pablo Bay
    His long hair streaming free behind him

    I almost swear I can hear the Dead echo
    As the hydrofoils begin to lift us above the waves
    If I had my way, I would tear this old building down

  • Once More Into the Breach: 2026 Edition

    It turns out that “May you live in interesting times,” is not a Chinese curse after all, but rather—like most things that seem all neat and tidy but end up causing wide-spread pain and misery—from the English: Austen Chamberlain, older half-brother of Neville to be precise.

    Austen’s mother, Harriet, died in childbirth, resulting in his father not speaking to him for a quarter century, and in the interim, marrying the woman’s cousin, Florence, who birthed the infamous Prime Minister, so… yea, I get it.

    As we head into a year sure to be more challenging than a Chamberlain family reunion, it is going to be important to keep our wits about us. I am sure that TFG* will continue to daily operate in a way that offends any- and everyone who is not a sadomasochist. Whether he and his cohort are motivated by spite, madness, greed, or some other affliction is immaterial.

    The trick for us is to not rise to the bait of every single malaprop-laden rant or misspelled-digital screed. I will be there in the voting booth, the streets, the barricades if need be, but it does no-one any good to wear out their dopamine receptors in a constant orgy of outrage.

    There are things that I can do to ensure that I make it long enough to see this episode through to the credits, however, things to maintain mind and body at a healthy-enough level that I don’t blow a gasket when it’s time to step on the gas.

    These are mine. I suggest that you find your own and try to implement some sort of strategy to keep the knees—or if you are one of our unfairly maligned friends to the north—elbows, up.

    1. Write everyday. Somethings will be crap, a few things half-clever, but there is always the outside chance that there may just end up being something worth sharing from time to time. Doing it more will only help that to happen. Writing is also good practice at gathering one’s far-flung thoughts and distilling them down to a coherent mindset, something that most definitely will come in handy this year.
    2. Cut down on drinking. Drinking beer does not lead to a coherent mindset, it leads to… I don’t know, more beer drinking? At this point, it doesn’t even lead to bad decisions, unless napping is a bad decision.
    3. Get in shape, you fat fuck. Number two will help, number one… not so much.
    4. Play more guitar. You should be playing everyday, and not the same old shit. There is an unending supply of free online lessons, take advantage. Music helps the brain build new connections and, let’s face it, helps to blow off steam.
    5. Who knows what the hell the economy is going to do, so you should be ready. Get those costs down. Cancel all the subscriptions that you don’t need. Pay off the credit card. And for Christ’s sake, get your resume in order.
    6. This should go without saying, but be kinder to yourself and others. (I’m sorry I called you a fat fuck, you fat fuck). They call it a practice for a reason.

    *This Fucking Guy

  • Kingdoms of the Radio: Down on the Mission [ficção]

    MEMORANDUM FOR: THE RECORD
    SUBJECT: Project MKULTRA, Subproject 3

    1. This project will involve the realistic testing of certain research and development items of interest to 
Chemical Division/Technical Services Staff.
    2. During the course of research and development, it is sometimes found that certain very necessary experiments and tests are not suited to ordinary laboratory conditions. At the same time it would be 
very difficult, if not impossible, to conduct these as operational field tests. This project is designed to provide discrete dedicated facilities to fill this intermediate requirement.
    3. This project will be conducted by REDACTED. Certain support activities will be provided by CD/TSS, APD/TSS, and when necessary, local law enforcement personnel.
    4. The total cost of this project for a period of one year will not exceed REDACTED.


    
REDACTED
    CD/TSS

    APPROVED:
    REDACTED
    Chief, CD/TSS

    APPROVED FOR OBLIGATION OF FUNDS:
    REDACTED
    Research Director

    Date: 11 November, 1971

    SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA  |  1971

    Carol Davidson parked the 1963 Volkswagen Beetle she had been saddled with by the agency on Bartlett Street, around the corner from their clandestine office on Mission Street. Driving the drafty German “people’s car” always put her in a foul mood, but she couldn’t be seen cruising around in her own Mercedes-Benz 280S, especially when she was supposed to be a penniless 21-year-old hippie girl. Just the look of satisfaction on her face as she floated by in a luxury leather seat with more springs than a Barcalounger would surely raise an eyebrow from her supposed cohort.

    Davidson took a moment to look around the regularly busy neighborhood street before using her ID card to unlock the unmarked office door, another anomaly that would be hard to explain to anyone unfamiliar with the new technology. As soon as the door closed, sealing off the ubiquitous thrum of the Mission District in full midday bustle, the sound was replaced by another, more abrasive noise: the sound of her angry superior.

    “Davidson,” the orotund voice rattled the framed portrait of Richard Milhous Nixon hanging in the entry hall. “In my office. Now.”

    The woman took a beat to leave her purse at her assigned desk, strategically leaving her weapon behind on the long walk to the Operations Officer’s lair, lest she feel like putting a bullet in his fat head, or one in her own if she had to endure his post-lunch onion breath again.

    As soon as she crossed the threshold into what Urban Wyrzykowski had curated over time from a faceless bureaucratic office into something resembling the burrow of a large animal—which now that she thought of it, was exactly was it was—she was hit with a miasma of stale cigarettes, sour sweat, and… yes, onions.

    “Shut the door behind you,” Wyrzykowski belched.

    “Shut the door?” Davidson protested, giving a performative half-turn back toward the empty office. “Nobody works here but me and you.”

    “The door.”

    “Shit.”

    “Shit is right, Davidson. Would you like to explain how you ended up overdosing a very famous British subject, leading to his apparent suicide?”

    “Oh, that.”

    “Yes, that, goddamn it!” Wyrzykowski’s face empurpled.

    “Well, you see, it was really quite clever,” Davidson jumped into the deep end of the story, figuring that she was drowning either way. “It was simply the old magician’s trick of misdirection. When I blew a giant hit of some pretty good Acapulco Gold into his mouth, I gave him a quick injection of the substance.”

    Wyrzykowski sat silently rubbing his temples as if trying to coax enough blood into leaving his skull so that he might black out and not have to listen to the woman’s story for a moment longer. After a pregnant pause, he opened his desk drawer and removed a orange plastic prescription bottle and began to wrestle with the new child-proof cap.

    “Would you like me to help you with that, chief,” Davidson asked as innocently as she could manage.

    “Would I…? Fuck!” Wyrzykowski resisted the urge to throw the pills across the room and carefully placed them out of Davidson’s reach.

    “May I ask you a real question, Agent Davidson?”

    “Shoot.”

    “Would that I could,” the beleaguered senior agent tented his stubby fingers and stared at his single charge. “Are you trying to kill me?”

    “Sir?”

    “I’ll ask you again,” Wyrzykowski straightened in his chair, falling back on the well-worn interrogation skill set that got him into this mess in the first place. “Are you actually trying to kill me?”

    “Not in anyway that anyone would suspect,” Davidson allowed. “Or be able to prove.”

    “I see,” the man eased a bit, now that their relationship was finally coming into focus. “It’s like that.”

    “I would say that is isn’t personal, sir,” Davidson eschewed any hint of remorse, “but, you see, it kind of is.”

    “Agent Davidson, sometimes I can’t tell when you are kidding.”

    “Agent Wyrzykowski,” the woman sighed, “sometimes I can’t tell either. Isn’t that the gig?”

    “About the Brit,” Wyrzykowski changed the topic, at this point not really caring if the crazy broad wanted him gone or not, “is he really dead?”

    “Lucious Cole?”

    Wyrzykowski began to chuckle, realizing that the agent’s plan was probably to make him want to kill himself before their conversation finally found its finish. “The same.”

    “He is safe as houses, as they seem to like to say.”

    “Are you going to enlighten me as to his current whereabouts?”

    “OK,” Davidson rubbed her hands together in misplaced glee, “I know this opportunity just kind of fell in our laps, but I do have a plan.”

  • Kingdoms of the Radio: Tibetan Bells & a Bird from Hell [ficção]

    BOONVILLE, CALIFORNIA  |  1995

    Joaninha pulled her 1982 Honda Accord up to the high curb in front of the Boonville Mercantile and killed the engine. The weary mid-size sedan, however, had its own ideas and continued to diesel as if it was having an epileptic fit as the young woman gathered up the items that rattled out of her purse on the bumpy drive over from Ukiah.

    She was glad that she was almost finished with making the daily trip over to the college, but wasn’t looking forward to sinking money that she didn’t have into the aging car to ensure that she could achieve escape velocity from her hometown. Graduation was coming up fast and Joaninha was hoping that the Accord and her journalism degree would get her at least as far away as the East Bay, maybe Humboldt County.

    “Just a moment!” A cheerful voice from the Mercantile’s backroom called out as she triggered the tiny bronze Tibetan bells hanging on the shop’s front door.

    “It’s just me,” Joaninha called back. “I can take over if you want, Mom.” The familiar earthy smell of Nag Champa incense filled her senses as the stress of upcoming finals melted away, at least for the moment.

    “Sera, thank goodness,” a lively gray-haired woman in her early 50s bustled out from the stockroom, wrestling herself into a wool sweater as she walked. “Where is Kiḍa today?” Joaninha’s mother asked, using her native Marathi translation of a name she found, frankly, ridiculous.

    “He drove over the mountain today, mom. He is finally starting the interviews for his project.”

    “I don’t know why your boyfriend wants to talk to those idiots,” an old-timer shopping with a female eclectus parrot on his shoulder chimed unbidden into the conversation.

    “I don’t remember asking your opinion, Floyd,” Joaninha’s mother snapped, long having had enough of the local’s morning commentary on everything from the weather to Bill Clinton’s recent remarks on the Oklahoma City bombing.

    “Hey, I’m just saying…” the man replied. The bright red and purple parrot, uncharacteristically, was silent on the matter.

    “That’s your problem, Floyd,” the woman pointed out, “you are always ‘just saying!’ Why don’t you keep your trap shut for a change.”

    “Keep your trap shut! Keep your trap shut!” The tie-dyed-colored bird joyfully joined in the dialogue.

    “You should follow the advice of your feathered friend, Floyd,” Mrs. Joaninha advised as she grabbed her keys to leave. “Between the two of you, she’s the only one with any sense.”

    This last parry finally brought a moment of quiet to the Mercantile as the parrot bobbed up and down on Floyd’s shoulder in silent agreement.

    “Where are you running off to, Mom?” Joaninha asked as she punched the No Sale key on the ancient cash register. “It looks like we have enough change in the till to take care of the afternoon rush.” She raised one eyebrow toward the store’s one customer now that her Mom was finally done berating him.

    “I need to go drive your father to the clinic,” the woman explained, speaking back over her overtly parrotless shoulder as the bronze bells tinkled again. “He was in the wood shop and chopped off a finger or something, I don’t know. You know your father.”

    “Mom! How long ago did he call you?”

    “Don’t worry, mulagī,” the woman dismissed her daughter’s fears out of hand. “Your father is such a drama king. I’ll probably be right back.”

    “Shut your trap!” The parrot called out in farewell.

    “What can I do you for, Mr. Anderson?” Joaninha made the decision to not worry that her father might be bleeding out on the floor of his shop.

    “Just the usual,” the man sighed as he hefted a ten-pound bag of Roudybush bird pellets onto the counter. “I’m serious, you know. I don’t think your man should be out there kicking over rocks that are better left undisturbed.”

    “Well, for starters, he’s not ‘my man’, Mr. Anderson, but I’m sure that he would appreciate your concern. That’ll be four dollars.” Joaninha took the fiver proffered from her customer and hit the till, handing him back his change. “TK’s a big boy, he can take care of himself. I think it’s important that he works through his abandonment issues while he’s still relatively young.”

    “Is that what he’s up to?” Anderson asked, the parrot leaning in to hear the response. “Those cultists didn’t abandon your man, the State had to go in and take him away before those cult dummies killed him!”

    “TK says Girassol was a commune, not a cult,” Joaninha said, now thinking back to her own misgivings about the project. “I’m sure that everything will be fine.”

    “Commune, my ass!” Anderson snorted. “You just tell that boy to watch his six.”

    “I’ll do that, Mr. Anderson. You have a good day, now.”

    “Commune, my ass! Commune, my ass!” The parrot repeated as the pair retreated. “Commune, my ass!”

  • Kingdoms of the Radio: Serafina’s Gift [ficção]

    UKIAH, CALIFORNIA  |  1995

    The Kid zipped up the ripstop nylon track bag he had just stuffed with everything he would need to conduct the interviews to complete his Senior film project. He had just spent the morning checking out one of the college’s brand new Sony DCR-VX1000 video cameras upon penalty of slow and painful death. He had also mortgaged his soul to the drama department for the use of one of their portable lighting rigs. If he failed to bring it back, he would be damned to be cast as Idiot One for whatever production called for protracted humiliation for the foreseeable future.

    On a whim, he had started out creating a documentary on his name. First name: The; last name: Kid. His unusual appellation had caused equal parts confusion, intrigue, and downright hassle in his twenty- four years, but it wasn’t until he started digging into the origins of his name, that the strangeness of it really began to reveal itself.

    The Kid, or, as he preferred to be called these days, TK (which at least teased the possibility of a name to be named later), had been born on one of the most notorious Mendocino communes of the early ’70s. From an early age, he had been told that his parents didn’t want to propagate any moribund Judeo-Christian mythologies by giving him a handle that echoed the very values they were trying to eschew.

    When Child Protection Services finally showed up, wondering why the child was not only missing from the closest school roster, but from any such registers, they had scribbled his no-name into the blanks where it remained even after they finally hauled him away from the wreckage of his parent’s utopian project.

    A knock on the door of his rented bedroom broke The Kid’s reverie. Serafina Joaninha, a young woman who often felt that she had more name than she knew what to do with, entered without waiting to be invited and asked the very question he had been putting off asking himself, “Are you ready for this?”

    Joaninha was a startling young beauty of Portuguese and Goan extraction, and The Kid was routinely unnerved by the way she always just seemed to appear when he was thinking of her. Of course, he did think of her a lot. The two met cute in a Mendocino College film class, the pair being the last two cinephiles sitting through a screening of the 1932 Danish film, Vampyr.

    The Kid, having been mesmerized by the slow-moving, dreamlike movie, hadn’t noticed Joaninha sitting next to him until the final frame. When he finally turned, for a moment he thought the Polish actress Rena Mandel had somehow escaped the screen and had joined him in the dark. Joaninha had the same uncanny dark eyes and doll-like mouth as the character of Giséle. The fact that she was wearing an antique lace-collared black dress only added to the illusion.

    “I got you something, Ken Burns,” Joaninha plopped down on The Kid’s unmade bed, giving the bag of equipment a little bounce while perfectly sure The Kid wasn’t going to complain, having long acquiesced any agency in her presence. She had originally been flattered by his look of disbelief that he was lucky enough to be noticed by her but was growing tired of The Kid’s tendency to put her on a pedestal.

    Perhaps when he finished his damn documentary, she thought, he would finally gain the confidence to realize his own worth. Joaninha was willing to wait a little longer, but she wasn’t interested in being worshiped. She had enough self-awareness to know that if they were going to make it, they would need to be equal partners in the relationship.

    “It’s a clapperboard!” The Kid exclaimed as Joaninha handed over the wooden device she had hidden behind her back. “That’s the one thing I forgot!”

    “I even got you some chalk. What are you calling this opus?”

    “I thought I’d name it after Cole’s final album,” The Kid said.

    “Kingdoms of the Radio, it is,” Joaninha pronounced and proceeded to chalk the title onto the clapperboard. “Let’s kick this thing off right now. Grab the camera.”

    The Kid, excited to start his long-planned project, dug out the video camera and tripod and set them up before the young woman.

    “Scene one apple, take one!” Joaninha announced. “Mark!” With that proclamation, she struck the clapperboard’s striped sticks together and they were both off to the movies.

  • Kingdoms of the Radio: A Prisoner at the Palace (Pt. 2) [ficção]

    SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA | 1971

    With Shane’s meaty presence gone from the scene, the concrete bunker seemed to close in on the pair left alone for the first time since they left the airport.

    “So…” Rosenda began before being cut off by a recalcitrant Cole.

    “Look,” the fallen star looked down at his bare feet, “I’ve been a right twit, and I’m sorry. For everything.”

    “No, it’s all right,” Rosenda sought to diffuse whatever heartfelt confession was coming her way. If pressed, she actually preferred her musicians to be unrepentant messes. If Cole was going to start blubbering on about how he grew up playing in bomb sites and the like, she may have to pitch him into the lagoon herself. Everybody had their own bombsites to navigate, and it was by living vicariously through free spirits like Cole that made them feel as if there just may be a way out.

    “I can’t do this anymore.”

    “PCP? I think that’s probably a good idea,” Rosenda offered.

    Cole chuckled in spite of being in some sort of obvious torment. “No, not PCP, although, come to think of it, if that’s what that was, it has just made the list. I mean this, all of this. The whole business of fame and art and bullshit.” Cole sat down on an overturned five-gallon bucket and stared at his hands.

    “Come on, Lucious,” Rosenda sought to snap the man out of his funk before she had to slap him. “You’ve got it made. So many people would kill to be in your position. Albert King is opening for you tomorrow night. Albert fucking King!”

    “My position? Do you have any idea what my position costs a person? Did you know I had a wife and a kid?” Cole asked.
    Rosenda was shocked, knowing—and even somewhat admiring—Cole’s roguish rap sheet.

    “No, I guess I didn’t,” she began.

    “You wouldn’t,” Cole explained. “A beautiful little daughter. It doesn’t fit the profile does it? The thing is, I bought the hype and became this Lucious Cole asshole. The wife packed up their stuff and left one night when I was out doing God knows what. And that was that.”

    “I’m sure that she still cares…”

    “No. That was that,” Cole rued. “I’ve been told by her South London gangster brothers that if I so much as phone, I’m a dead man, and I tend to believe them. Sometimes I wish I was a dead man.”

    “Come on, Lucious!” Rosenda exploded. “Get your act together man. So your old lady ran off with your kid, do you think that’s the worst story you could hear within a block’s radius of this place? Let alone in this city? Jesus. You have a gift that helps people forget all the shitty things that have happened to them. Maybe just three minutes at a time, maybe for a few hours; but man, that’s magic. Can’t you see that?”

    “How can I help others forget when I can’t even help myself?” Cole answered her indignation with a primal wail. “I didn’t sign up to be their fucking psychiatrist. I really didn’t sign up to be anybody’s priest. Why do you think I stumble around this shitty planet high out of my mind? I can’t bear being left to my own thoughts. Do you know what that’s like?”

    “No,” Rosenda conceded, starting to feel a little empathy toward the man she had primarily seen as a cartoon rock star. “I guess I don’t.”

    “God bless you, then,” Cole offered, more than a little jealousy creeping into his voice. “I hope you never learn.”

    He began to sing in a mournful tenor, the sound filling the hollow concrete chamber and reverberating until the air was wholly suffused with his song.

    “The wind doth blow today, my love,
    and a few small drops of rain;
    I never had but one true-love,
    in cold grave she was lain.”

    “That’s beautiful, Cole,” Rosenda whispered as the last word hung in the air, a catch in her soft voice. “Is that one of yours?”

    “I wish,” Cole gave a sad snort. “No, love, that song is older than this here fair city.”

    “What’s it called?”

    “The Unquiet Grave.”
     

    The damp cold followed Shane under the colonnade as he returned carrying a bag of ice and a twelve pack of Olympia, which he promptly dropped when he saw Rosenda tied to a wooden chair in the middle of the room. Several bottles shattered when they hit the floor and cold beer seeped out of the carton and pooled on the painted concrete.

    “What the hell happened?” Shane rushed to untie the woman. “Where’s the English?”

    Rosenda had been crying, and Shane naturally thought that it was either from the non-consensual bondage or the thought of what Avidan was going to say when he found out that his star racing pigeon had flown the coop.

    “Don’t worry, Karoline,” he tried to soothe her, “we’ll get him back. They aren’t too many places to hide in this town that I don’t know about.”

    “Forget it, Bear,” she sighed, looking up at him as he worked to undo Cole’s admissible rope work. “He’s gone.”

  • Kingdoms of the Radio: A Prisoner at the Palace (Pt. 1) [ficção]

    SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA  |  1971

    A heavy drizzle spattered the Lincoln as it rolled through the damp San Francisco night. Karoline Rosenda was silent and still except for periodically twisting around in her seat to check on their charge. A clarion call of Be OK! Be OK! clanged over and over in her brain like a fire alarm, but she wisely kept it to herself.

    Shane, of course, said nothing. Rosenda knew him to adopt the platitudinous “silent type” affect whenever things got tense, and she had to admit, this was bad. Really fucking bad. If Z found out that she had let their star get dosed with dust and subsequently lobotomized by their driver, both of them were going to be looking for jobs. That’s if the dumb son-of-a-bitch lived through this. If he died on them, they were truly fucked.

    It was dicey enough that they were cruising around town with a naked and hogtied British national trussed upon the backseat. God forbid if they got pulled over for something. Rosenda breathed a small sigh of relief that they had the Lincoln. This was San Francisco; nobody was going to mess with a Lincoln Continental with an Irish driver. They might as well have diplomatic plates on the car from the borderless nation of Privilege.

    “Wash going on?” A slurred voice from the backseat made Shane and Rosenda jump. “I can’t moove.”

    “Lucious, listen to me,” Rosenda tried to explain. “It was for your own good, you were going to hurt yourself.” She climbed around to face the beleaguered rock star and searched his swelling face for a sign that he understood. Cole, for his part seemed to be taking in this new information and weighing its merit.

    “Oh, all right,” he ultimately conceded. “Can you untie me now?”

    “Sure…”

    “No,” Shane interjected, “we can’t. Not until we get to our safe house. There you can run around like a chicken with your head cut off all you want. In my car, you stay tied.”

    “Oh, all right.”

    The Lincoln moved with the stealth and purpose of a panther north along Scott past Alta Plaza Park toward the Marina.

    “Are we going to hide him at some millionaire’s house?” Rosenda asked as she watched the buildings get fancier and fancier as they got closer to the edge of the Bay.

    “Just keep an eye on him and don’t worry about where we’re going,” Shane growled. The Lincoln caught the green light and swung left on Lombard, following the sparse traffic along the curve toward the Golden Gate Bridge, before suddenly swerving right onto Lyon.

    It wasn’t until Shane turned past the newly restored Palace of Fine Arts rotunda and parked behind the science center that one of the Oppenheimer brothers had opened in the old exhibit hall that Rosenda began to guess what his plan might be.
     
    Designed by local architect Bernard Maybeck, and built for the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition, the Neo-classical structure framed a picturesque lagoon, complete with swans that slowly floated through their private dream world.

    The tableau was designed to echo a decaying ruin, and until the last few years, it had done it’s job extremely well; the wood, plaster, and burlap finally succumbing to the relentless atmosphere coming straight off the Pacific. The City had just finished rebuilding everything in poured concrete and steel, and Shane, who knew everyone from the contractors to the supervisors, had the keys.

    “Hold tight, I’ll make sure we’re sound,” Shane stepped out of the Lincoln and took off toward the museum. Rosenda watched him go, fully expecting the night to end in the cavernous exhibition building. Shane, however, veered off toward the rotunda before disappearing into the fog.

    “Say, sweetheart,” Cole tentatively tried his luck at using his battered charm. “Can’t you loosen this rope a bit? I mean, bloody hell, your friend there is either a cowboy or into some really kinky shit. I can’t feel my hands.”

    Rosenda thought hard about the possible ramifications of loosening Cole’s bonds, then thought about what Shane might do if he came back and Cole was back on the loose. He might not do anything, she realized. It was really no skin off his balls if Cole fucked right off and was never heard from again. She, however, did not have that luxury.

    “Look, Lucious, I don’t care what issues you are working through that make you act like a drunken clown juggling lit torches in a lumber yard, but you are not going to burn down my career.”

    Cole was still trying to muster his faculties enough to construct a pithy rejoinder when Shane yanked open the rear suicide door. He reached into the Lincoln and, without a word, grabbed Cole by a confluence of knots, which invariably made them all suddenly cinch tighter.

    The rock star yelped as he was hauled out of the car and to his feet. Shane silently took his measure, and deciding that the man before him was probably not going to bolt, produced a very large, very sharp, knife.

    “All right, I am going to cut you loose. If you bolt, I’ll catch you, and when I do, I’m going to pitch you into the lagoon,” he explained, pointing with the blade toward the murky, freezing pond that reflected the ornate colonnade and rotunda. “We need to get you inside and find you some clothes. Are you onboard, smart guy?”

    Cole, whose core temperature was dropping fast as he stood buck naked in the fog, only nodded his head enthusiastically.

    It was mere minutes before Shane reappeared and ushered the pair toward an open door in one of the larger columns that held up the soaring Greco-Roman dome. A concrete angel impassively watched over the proceedings as he stood off to the side, making sure that Cole wasn’t going to make a break for it. Once inside, he shut the door behind them, throwing the space into total darkness.

    “Don’t move,” he warned. “There’s a lot of construction tools laying about, and I wouldn’t want either of you to break any of them.” With that, the pair could hear his retreating footfalls moving away from them.

    “How the hell does he know where he’s going?” Cole asked in genuine wonder.

    “Don’t ask me,” Rosenda shrugged in the void. “Maybe he’s a fucking leprechaun.” That garnered a snort from Cole somewhere to her right, which was as close as she could come to seeing in the dark. With the sound of a powerful electrical contact being thrown in the distance, a row of flood lamps suddenly bathed the narrow 60-foot-tall room in blinding light.

    Cole, whose retinas had just retracted to the back of his dry skull, recoiled and looked for someplace to hide as if he were a giant cockroach. He didn’t, or couldn’t, see Shane step out of another door across the room carrying a paint-splattered pair of coveralls which he threw to Cole as he approached, hitting him square in the chest.

    “Put those on,” he instructed. “We’re tired of looking at your bony ass.”

    Rosenda, who to that point had been too freaked out by the situation to process that she was basically alone with a musician infamous for his sexual proclivities and prowess, only nodded her head in slight disappointment.

    “Look, Cole, I’m sorry I had to clock you, but I’m sure you’d have rather stayed out of the county psych lockup, and there was no way to reason with you.”

    “It’s all right, mate,” the Englishman acquiesced. “I would have done the same for you.”

    Shane considered the slight musician doing his best to knock him out and laughed despite himself.

    “That shot was ace,” Cole admitted, probing his outraged face with long fingers made for playing guitar. “Is there anywhere around here to get some ice? I’d hate to do the gig tomorrow night looking like I caught the worst of a rugby scrum.”

    Shane thought about it for a moment and ventured he could trust Rosenda to babysit while he popped over to the liquor store on Chestnut. Besides, it was her ass if the fool went AWOL. He could go for a cold one himself.

    “I’ll be right back,” Shane said, surveying the scene as someone coming in off the street might. “If anyone comes by—they shouldn’t, but if they do—you two work for Shamrock Construction. Mick Jigger here, is a painter, obviously, and you…”

    Rosenda lifted one carefully sculpted eyebrow, curious to how Shane saw her fitting into his alibi.

    “You figure it out.” With that, he left the way they came in and dissolved once again into the fog.

  • Kingdoms of the Radio: Enrique Bravocado 3 [ficção]

    UNFINISHED DOCUMENTARY, KINGDOMS OF THE RADIO  |  1995

    That must have been some really good speed. It what seemed like no time at all, Zongo and I had hacked our way through the brambles and were starting to see moonlight coming through the other side. The night was dead quiet except for the hypnotic crashing of surf somewhere far in the distance.

    I was the first to break through the undergrowth and heard the distinct sound of a bullet being chambered. Once you’ve been on the wrong side of that sound, you never forget it. I stopped cold. Zongo, clueless to the situation, blundered right into me, knocking us both out into the open.

    My mind reeled as it took in the scene of the biggest Moon I had ever seen silhouetting a Victorian mansion and a helicopter with a surfboard lashed to the bottom of it.

    “Hey, man, ever been shot?” A voice out of the darkness questioned.

    “Holy fuck!” Zongo shoved me aside. “It’s Charlie Fucking Perigo! Who shot you, you fucking maniac?”

    “Charlie did,” Perigo said. “Fred Williams, you son-of-a-bitch. What are you and your buddy trying to do, give me the heebie-jeebies? You know I have a delicate constitution.”

    “The only thing delicate about you, Chuck, are them fancy panties you wear under those baggies.”

    “You ought to know, Freddie, I got them from your sister.”

    The two went on and on, playing the dozens until I finally broke in. “So I take it you two know each other?”

    It turned out that Zongo and Charlie met right after he’d come back from Vietnam and they had been thick as thieves for a while. I guess they just kind of lost touch when Zongo went south to to be part of the San Francisco scene. Both Charlie and I laughed our asses off when he told us the story about the how the Condor sign spoke to him one night. Who’s to say? I’ve seen—if not crazier things—some pretty weird shit out there on the edge.

    Well, we spent a good piece of time there in the courtyard, laughing and smoking some primo weed that Charlie was holding. At one point, we had been talking about all the heads that had been showing up in Mendo, and wouldn’t be cool if we had a place where we could all hang out together where we wouldn’t get hassled.

    Zongo took a big hit and looked kind of philosophically up at the moon so that we followed his gaze. “I’ve got an idea!” he said once he had exhaled the smoke, and that was that. Girassol was reborn.

  • Kingdoms of the Radio: Chae Burton 1 [ficção]

    UNFINISHED DOCUMENTARY, KINGDOMS OF THE RADIO  |  1995

    Every community has its own creation myths; stories that bring members together in shared tradition while allowing new people to understand in a deeper way where the group was coming from. Girassol was no different.

    My favorite one was when Charlie almost shot Zongo and Enrique as they first popped out of the forest. I had taken a little hike into the woods to pee, so I missed it, but I would have loved to see Zongo’s face; not just at seeing the property for the first time, but staring down the barrel of an automatic for the first time as well. I’m guessing.

    Charlie used to love to tell how the huge Moon we had that night had risen above the tree line behind the mansion. It was a full moon at vernal equinox and came over the house due east, throwing some spooky shadows back over the courtyard.

    He’ll probably kill me for telling you this, but Charlie was always afraid of the Menehune. Ever since he was a little kid. Imagine the scene; it was dark, with this big full Moon rising over an abandoned ranch from the 1800s, and there are noises coming toward him.

    What would you do?

  • Kingdoms of the Radio: Charlie Perigo 3 [ficção]

    UNFINISHED DOCUMENTARY, KINGDOMS OF THE RADIO  |  1995

    I had been surfing the late afternoon break at Manchester, north of the lighthouse, and the Sun was starting to drop behind the mountain. The great whites come in to feed when it gets dark, so I rode one last wave all the way to the beach, collected my stuff, and lashed my board to the chopper’s skid. Chae came and met me at the edge of the dunes. I had talked her into exploring the old ranch with me and she had showed up ready to go, dressed in cutoffs and hip boots. She looked so good, I almost asked if she wanted to forget the ranch altogether.

    I mentioned that being alone on the Girassol property always made me feel paranoid, like I was being watched from the tree line. This particular evening was really bad. I had a serious case of chicken skin by the time as soon as we landed. I could swear I heard voices, but I wasn’t about to say anything to Chae.

    It’s embarrassing, but as a kid, I was deathly afraid of the Menehune, the race of little people who live… well, in remote forgotten places like Girassol. I had an auntie from the Big Island who told me about them, and I never got over it. I know they’re supposed to be friendly; they were the ones who came out at night and built all the ancient temples and fishponds, but for some reason, they freaked me out. Maybe it was because they only came out at night. I never did like that story the cobbler and the elves, either.

    I know it’s wasn’t really in keeping with the whole peaceful warrior trip, but I used to keep my service piece, a Colt Commander, in the bird just in case I got bum rushed by a wild boar or some critter out in the deep country. I grabbed the gun and began my recon of the perimeter. By this time, the Sun was down and one of the fattest moons I had ever seen was rising up, casting the courtyard in an unearthly light.

    Across the clearing from the main house were the ruins of some smaller buildings, maybe worker’s quarters or something at one time. Behind that mess, was a dark tangle of green that made ’Nam look down right barren. That’s where the sound was coming from; because, of course it was.

    I have to say, I didn’t spend a whole lot of time down in the shit, not as much as the grunts, but the whole scene that night was bringing me right back to my time in-country. I took a defensive position behind one of the collapsed walls and waited for the little fuckers to come out of the woods. To my surprise, it wasn’t Menehune at all.

  • Kingdoms of the Radio: Zongo Khumalo 3 [ficção]

    UNFINISHED DOCUMENTARY, KINGDOMS OF THE RADIO  |  1995

    It had been a couple of years since I’d been back north, but I thought I knew every place there was to know. That’s one of the things that made me want to leave in the first place. I had directions and a map to Garissol from Mrs. Chaves, but they didn’t really make sense. Where she had drawn the road to the old ranch, there was only a solid wall of brambles. I knew that the fuckers grew fast in the county, but this looked like virgin territory.

    Enrique had a couple of big old machetes in the back of his bus from a harvest, so we decided to try and see what, if anything, was on the other side of the blackberries. We had spent so much time trying to find a road that seemed to no longer exist that the sun was starting to go down behind the tall trees. I guess if we hadn’t still been a little wired, we probably would have waited until the next day.

    It was pretty rough going, but we did start picking up signs of an old wagon road deep in the thicket. I found it incredible to think that maybe no one had been out this way since the very first cars drove up the coast. The very thought sent a chill up my spine, especially since the next thought was, “Why the hell not?”

  • Put on This Record: hyphenated-man—Mike Watt & the Missingmen [2010]

    To be familiar with punk rock veteran Mike Watt is to know and appreciate his idiosyncrasies, moreover, to have learned to expect him to make those left turns that light out for the territories and sometimes veer into the weeds. The thing about left turns, however, is if you make enough of them, you end up heading in the same direction that you started.

    Ever since forming the seminal ’80s punk band, the Minutemen, with his boyhood chum and dueling partner D. Boon and surfer/rhythmatist George Hurley, Watt has consistently taken the road less traveled by. The Minutemen are infamous for incorporating jazz, funk, hard core, Beat poetry—along with the kitchen sink—into their own personal strain of musical and philosophical expression. For a group that eschewed branding and easy cut-and-paste sloganeering, if it could be said that they had a motto, it was, “Punk is whatever we made it to be.”

    Watt and his various co-conspirators have always viewed punk rock as a big tent sort of affair. The whole reason this type of music and scene appealed to three dudes from San Pedro, California was its lack of inherent rules. In keeping with that spirit, Watt recorded this, his third concept album, or “opera,” in 2010. The first opus, Contemplating the Engine Room, used his father’s experience on Navy submarines as a metaphor for his own life in an Econoline van, and the second, The Secondman’s Middle Stand, mapped his near-death sickness onto Dante’s The Divine Comedy. Both of these works were very personal in nature, and in the case of the last one, perhaps a little too personal at times—but, hey, nobody said punk is supposed to make you comfortable.

    This time out, Watt enlisted guitarist Tom Watson and drummer Raul Morales, collectively called the Missingmen, to help create a cycle of 30 “little songs” that were inspired in part by the proto-surrealist paintings of Hieronymus Bosch. On his website, hootpage.com, Watt wrote that the punchy, ultra-lean tunes owe much to the Minutemen’s econo credo of “no filler, right to point, and distilled down to the bare nada.” Specifically, it was the documentary, We Jam Econo: The Story of the Minutemen, that finally got this restless artist to slow down and take a look back, allowing him to recognize something beautiful and utterly vital in the short form.

    At the virtual needle drop, the album leaps out of your speakers/ear buds with arrow-pierced-egg-man. Clocking a mere 1:19, the song is a clarion call from the pit, a diseased chunk of meat thrown over the wall to help spread the contagion. Watt’s bass is greased up and firing on all cylinders. After playing the conservative sideman with the Stooges for a few years before this—as if anything Stooge-related could be called conservative—it’s great to hear him playing, if not more aggressively, then more dynamically.

    Interestingly enough, the bass was the last piece of this particular puzzle to be added. This time out, Watt wrote on D. Boon’s Fender Telecaster, showed the Missingmen how the songs went, then retreated to later respond to what they had come up with. If he didn’t “chimp” (or “write about” in Pedro-speak) this unorthodox method, I would have never guessed that this music was anything but organically grown. It sounds like three guys jamming in a sweaty-ass shed and hollerin’ about 16th century religious art from the Netherlands. As one does.

    The tendency to play “spot the influenced influence” as is hard to resist as Watt’s music has touched so many fellow artists over the years, just as playing within an ever-widening sphere of musicians has continued to color his own work. On bird-in-the-helmet-man, I hear echoes of Albert Bouchard and early Patti Smith-infected BÖC, while belly-stabbed-man’s “gut kicked – hard / truth hits – hard / emotions gush – but no word hole” is a Pop Group Amnesty Report from the depths of hell.

    If I had to call a break-out single for “alternative” radio play (as if there were anything resembling a valid record and/or radio industry anymore) it would have to be the Trees Outside the Academy-era Thurston Mooresque hollowed-out-man with its pleasant droning melody, relentless drive, and totally fucked-up lyrics. “Now the hat that’s worn is like a horse track / pairs of peckers promenadin’ ’round a sack / a swollen bagpipe waitin’ for the ear-knife / castrate hack,” makes a perfect Sonic flip side to Sister’sTuff Gnarl, a connection made more overt when one considers the cover on Watt’s own Ball-Hog or Tugboat record.

    The song that most evokes the spirit of Pedro for me is, appropriately enough, finger-pointing-man. Here, Watt’s lyrics sound like they could have been torn from his own Spiels Of A Minuteman folio. “Conviction’s like some affliction / without the clout of some doubt / it’s fuckin’ nonsense / ignorin’ content / and letting’ the mouth just spout.”

    The sharp angularity of Tom Watson’s chording juxtaposed with the singsong delivery of funnel-capped-man, brings to mind San Francisco’s own Deerhoof, in fact, the first time I saw Raul Morales play, I was reminded of the ’Hoof’s Greg Saunier—if not stylistically, through their respective jazz-inflected approaches—in the giddy zeal that they both seem to take in playing drums.

    Over the years, Watt’s vocal delivery has become more like his bass playing, a distinctive and singular expression of his muse. Printing out the hyphenated-man lyrics from the hootpage may help you find your way inside Watt’s vision, or you can just let the Missingmen’s churning accompaniment propel you headlong down their peculiar rabbit hole.

    Using one of Bosch’s less fantastical icons as an avatar, Watt lays out the impetus for the opera in own-horn-blowing-man, while keeping one eye out for any hint of lurking solipsism. “Go figure the trigger / to really holler, fuckin’ holler / and hoist yeah, foist / expression from repression / not badge-buffin’ or baggin’ wind / but to get out what’s stuck within.”

  • The Next Civil War: Dispatches from the American Future—Stephen March

    It has only been three years since Canadian writer Stephen March took a hard look at his country’s downstairs neighbor and found us… well, let’s just say that we aren’t going to get our deposit back. Like a tenant that has decided to start cooking meth in the kitchen at night, what the United States does affects the entire building, and March smartly surmised that the future of the American experiment would best be sussed somewhat from arm’s length.

    When one is fully immersed in the the circular firing squad of 21-century American politics, it is difficult to shift one’s eyes anywhere than your neighbor’s trigger finger. As an outsider, March peered through the front window, and what he found is disturbing.

    March walks us through traditional, and very familiar-sounding, lead-ups to civil conflict. Economic and environmental instability worsens every year? Check. Political gamesmanship overrides all other governmental concerns? Checkedy motherfuckin’ check. Under those sorts of strains, March points out that even long-established national identities can fracture with shocking speed. Iraq in 2006 had a “relatively high” Shia/Sunni rate of intermarriage. “The supposedly permanent and intractable religious rift was a relic from antiquity,” he writes. “Then it wasn’t.”

    Our Canadian judge sees the cleaving of national purpose as a done deal, a problem inherent in the very founding of the union. “There is very much a Red America and a Blue America,” he writes. “They occupy different societies with different values, and their political parties are emissaries of that difference.”

    “Democrats represent a multicultural country grounded in liberal democracy,” he illustrates. “Republicans represent a white country grounded in the sanctity of property. America cannot operate as both at once.” But, man, it is fun to point fingers. March points his own finger at media empires who make fortunes on what Friedrich Nietzsche called the pleasure of contempt. “Blaming one side offers a perverse species of hope,” March admits. “Such hopes are not only reckless, but irresponsible.”

    As a foreigner, March is in the position to say what would be unthinkable to the average American. “The U.S. system is an archaic mode of government totally unsuited to the realities of the 21st century. The forces tearing America apart are both radically modern and as old as the country itself… bloody revolution and the threat of secession are essential to the American experiment.”

    After detailing several scenarios that might touch off a conflagration—some of which, such as the movement of outside National Guard troops into another state’s territory, and assassination, albeit, still attempted and ancillary at this time—March warns that once started, civil wars are really hard to stop. He writes that in 50 years of counterinsurgency we still have not learned that “violence that imposes order to control violence produces more violence and more disorder.” You can not achieve pacification by murdering people. I think Bob Dylan said that.

    Even if you were compelled to go that route, the overwhelming force of the state is useless against stochastic resistance. “A succession of winning firefights makes exactly no difference.” Lt. General Daniel Bolger, author of Why We Lost: A General’s Inside Account of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars writes. “The local people have to run their own government.”

    March goes further, saying that it is impossible to de-radicalize the next generation while at the same time taking away their most basic rights. “It’s hard to find youth so stupid that you can kill and imprison their parents and tell them you love them afterward. It didn’t work in Iraq and Afghanistan. It won’t work in the United States.” 


    “This is the other thing that would occur,” writes retired colonel Peter Manor, “massive detention centers across the United States where people who were suspected of being disloyal… would be warehoused on a massive scale.” The U.S. is already the most incarcerated society in the world. A civil war would explode those numbers. Who would support or pay for that? Let’s not even get into the political morass of donor states vs. recipient states.

    The traditional intractability of the American populace may be the key to avoiding this scenario all together, given the hopelessness of fighting it out. “If you’re in a situation where you’re using armed force to try and quell a population, you’re either going to have to kill a bunch of them, or you’re going to pull out and let them have local control,” writes Lt. General Bolger. “You’re never going to talk them into seeing it your way.” The typical conclusion of insurgency conflicts is not victory by either side but exhaustion by all.

    Even the paperwork is daunting. March points out that uncertainty over small questions of daily life is a major reason why Scotland and Quebec are not independent nations today. Pensions, passports, national debt, dual citizenship, the military… are all things that would quickly become a bureaucratic nightmare.

    Once again, March leans into his innate Canadianess to say what an American would not. “At this point in history… much of the U.S. Constitution simply does not apply to reality. Democrats and Republicans alike worship the document as a sacred text, indulging a delirious sentimentality that was the precise opposite of what the framers envisioned as the necessary basis for responsible government.”

    He goes on, “Americans worship ancestors whose lives were spent overthrowing ancestor worship; they pointlessly adhere to a tradition whose achievement was the overthrow of pointless traditions.” March, perhaps naively, calls for a new Constitutional Convention, not understanding the very real possibility for real chaos to ensue, not grasping that there is always more to lose.

    March does understand that the failure of the American experiment, and he does claim that it is failing, would left the world a lessor place. “The world needs America,” he writes. “It needs the idea of America… [a place] where contradictions that lead to genocide elsewhere flourish into prosperity.”

    He does believe that the problems that plague our society at this point in our history are not beyond the capacity of the American people to solve. “There is one hope, however, that must be rejected outright: the hope that everything will work out by itself, that America will bumble along into better times,” March warns. “It won’t.”

    “If history has shown us anything, it’s that the world doesn’t have any necessary nations,” March sounds the alarm. “Once again, the hope for America is Americans.” Let’s not let him, the world, and ourselves, down.

  • Put on This Record: The Wörld is Yours—Motörhead [2010]

    There are three things in life you can be sure of: death, taxes, and Motörhead. When this album dropped, it felt like the Devil’s favorite band was everywhere. A documentary, Lemmy: 49% Motherf**ker, 51% Son Of A Bitch, was burning cigarette holes in the screen, and this punishing new album was shredding speakers across the globe. Lemmy Kilmister and the lads were having quite a year, unbelievably, their 35th in existence.



    The Wörld is Yours roars out of the garage with Born to Lose, as classic a Motörhead trope as speed, sex, and well… death, preferably from too much speed and sex. Drummer Mikkey Dee’s pummeling double bass footwork underscores Lemmy’s proletariat philosophical musings: Right now / right here / lose your mind / but show no fear / Burn slow / no excuse / so unkind / born to lose. How the band waited 20 albums and 35 years to write a song called Born to Lose is an utter mystery.

    Road testing this album, I kept reaching for the volume knob, turning it up by turns through I Know How to Die, Get Back in Line, and Devils in My Head until the drivers of cars I started passing on the freeway were looking kind of scared.

    Motörhead has never been a “message” band, but if they ever had a point, it is this: everything eventually fails you except rock ’n’ roll. Get Back in Line, especially, showcases just what the band does better than just about anyone else standing: an unrelenting riff, a hypersonic beat, and a bass player that’s big, pissed off, and wired out of his warty skull.

    The trio does not slow down until the fifth track in, Rock ’n’ Roll Music. For any other band, this would be a highlight and probably the hardest song on the album. That’s Motörhead’s curse, they set the bar pretty high—high enough that a boilerplate boogie about rock, just doesn’t make the cut. Maybe Kilmister, et al., were still aiming at illusive, non-existent radio play, a strategy that dogged their 1992’s outing, March or Die. I don’t come to this table, however, looking for subtlety. No worries though, the band comes slamming back with the next track, Waiting for the Snake, which paints (what else?) a fatalistic picture of the state of modern society.

    The album takes an even darker turn with Brotherhood of Man. There’s no way to describe this song other than: Heavy as Fuck. When Lemmy grunts, Now your time has come / a storm of iron in the sky / War and murder come again / lucky if you die, you damn well get off your ass and lock the front door.



    Bye Bye Bitch Bye Bye is prototypical Motörhead, and just about the most perfect album closer I can imagine. Guitarist Philip Campbell, on board since 1986’s Orgasmatron, lets loose with everything he has left, leaving your speakers smoking, and your ears ringing. The way God, or Lemmy, intended.

    RIP Ian Fraser Kilmister (1945–2015)

  • Know Your Exits (Great White) [haicai]

    Time don’t slip away
    It panics the blocked egress

    Of a burning room

  • O Hotel Leão [poema]

    At this level
    The windows don’t open for anyone

    In the last hour or so, I’ve learned
    How to breathe
    Down in the carpeted fathoms
    Without the hindrance of a mask

    I have amused myself while swimming
    Between the tables
    Watching the blind fish
    In a world that knows no night or day

    At this depth
    The pressure breeds strange animals

  • The Starry Doctrine [poema]

    Upon an oaken knoll
    The seeker rests beside silent water
    When the ancient trope of flaming bush gathers not
    Attention enow, more direct lines to heaven
    Are called for and are so called down

    Those angels that call themselves holy
    And fixers of what has come to pass
    This Earth, created then forgot
    By God in his firmament
    Becomes, in good time, a cess

    A charnel house of broken bones
    And souls wrested from Satan’s grasp
    Washed here as if minted new
    As Plutus’ gift is blind
    So does Mammon’s curse doth bind

    Yet what fiery creation
    Streaks as a star ’cross crowded skies
    Brings enlightenment to the dark
    Holds a mirror up to our eyes
    Illuminates our worldly wants?

    What shines on our base desire
    And shows them to be but trifles
    Against true spirit caught alight
    With a burning, starry crown
    And a tail of blazing fire?

    —Rev. Mordikai Fox