Hello and welcome it. Chances are, you've wandered off the information superhighway, wandered down a dusty back road, and stumbled in here to my little word cabin thinking you're gonna find celebrity news or pictures of spaceships. Good news - we have plenty of both!
Welcome to a clash of the minds, my minds. One of these minds wants to create endlessly. The other is fucking critic and a coward. Guess which one wins more often than not?
At this point, there's simply too much to say and no way to organize it into any sort of cogent system of thought. When I think about writing another book or essay or creating some new thing, I often imagine a hyperlinked, 3D block of cubes with words in each block. All the relevancies and connections would be laid out and clear. But even then you'd have to pick one place to start. And there is no one place to start. It all happens at the same time all the time. They joy and the bitterness, the hope and the hate, the forgiveness and the damnation. It's all the same. So, fuck it. I'm just gonna start and try to never stop. That's the goal: To never stop.
I play guitar, write, perform various types of stage things, and do other stuff. I consider myself a perpetual student but I write like I invented everything so if this isn't your style, fuck you. I don't care. We've got the same grey shit between our ears, go do something else. Also, thanks for reading!
But mostly, go fuck yourself.
(Sigh)
Well the Fuck You tone got in there a lot earlier than I thought it would. I guess we'll start there.
Fuck You (All the vicious, truth-based hate you can handle in one trusty pedal: If I could be anything it would be a world class guitarist. Part of what I love about the guitar life is pedals. It's a good thing I'm poor or I'd have dozens of pedals all over the place and my heavy schedule of neglectful procrastination would suffer. What's great about pedals is how useful and stark they are. When you step on that pedal, everything changes. It's great. Playing with the knobs, getting it to sound like the noise in your head. And then when the time is right BAM! I just got an MXR 90 and I swear I got 10% right off the bat (pedals help that illusion).
So, I guess I have tone pedals for my words as well. And the Fuck You now has a permanent place on my pedal board. It's on more often than not, these days. I guess the system is absorbing a lot of hate (and we all know that systems produce what they consume, right? We know that? See. If that sort of thought, that sort of obvious truth isn't always at your fingertips...but what do I know. You're doing great. You don't need to know anything.)
Now, I sound great with that Goodman brand Fuck You in the mix. Accurate, fast, deadly. Unbeatable. I watch these thick-necked imbeciles bleat and squeal about whatever it is they think they can sell and realize that in a real fire fight they'd lose. They'd hit you. That's what happens, by the way. You outsmart them with words (easily) and, realizing they are about to be made to look foolish, they use physical force. If you want to pretend you have no idea what I'm talking about, I got a pedal right here that just might boost that mid range go fuck yourself yes you do. I simply can't take men looking at me like I just made something up around this stuff. Jesus, every man on Earth was once a little boy and every boy on Earth has been picked up when he didn't want to be picked up, knocked down, pushed up against the wall, yelled at in the face, something where your power is gone and something scary happens before you even know it. Am I gonna die? You wonder. Men inherently grasp the terror women feel in the presence of masculine strength because they have all be subjected to exactly the same thing. The pretending...I've never sent so much heart-attack energy as I have this year. So many old men have simply outlived their usefulness and - though it is societies fault, we didn't train these old goons properly - they are still in the way and need to disappear.
I digress. So, you may wonder, what is that Fuck You tone we're talking about? The basic sound is something along the lines of you
are too stupid, too indoctrinated, too old, too young, too flawed in
some fundamental way to enjoy or understand this mess I've created. You certainly are too [something] to get anything out of it. I rarely publish
what I created with this particular pedal. The sound is simply too
harsh, too biting, too unforgiving. There's simply no room for you
anywhere in the mix. It's all me.
Screaming, mostly.
The sad truth: The reason I play so much better with Fuck You in front of the amp my hand sound is basically judgmental. They say no amount of tech can get you to sound just like anybody. "Hendrix sounded like Hendrix because he was Hendrix." He was using gear everybody can get ahold of now. They say it was in his hands. If it's in my hands, then my hands are covered in the blood of people who have sold out natures greatest achievement (the human brain) for some lesser fantasy tale (pick one. All the religions are basically the same. If you don't believe that...well, if you have read this far and don't believe that then you're going to Hell. That's right. You've read the word of the Damned and now you are damned and you're going to Hell. Better stop reading, believer. You're going to Hell if you don't. What are you doing? You're immortal soul is in danger! You better go beat up on someone who can't defend themselves real quick. Get you some blood points. Keep you out of Hell.
"GOD": Abraham. I need you to kill your son.
ABRAHAM: That's crazy talk. I ain't no psychopath.
SARAH (or whomever): Who you talkin' to, A?
ABRAHAM:Nobody. I am totally sane! Now let's kill some animals and talk to the sky.
There it is. I learned early to be sorry for how I am. I weaponized that feeling and can now pretty much turn it on anybody. Of course, nuclear gets the job done quicker so yes, if you're still a human dragging yourself through the intellectual cesspool of Abra-ham based religion, you gotta prove in 500 words or less why your branch (or flavor or brand, whatever) is better than the other two. Two? I think there are three branches total. If I'm wrong FUCK YOU!
Oh my god I love how that pedal sound. But you see how pointless it is to try to play along with anyone else with the pedal cranked up. The only other people who want to play have their own Fuck You pedals and that just sounds like noise. I'd rather stay home and practice.
The Noise Gate Every guitarist has a few basic pedals that allow them to achieve their tone.
The Sound of Gravy: Every guitarist has a few basic pedals that allow them to achieve their tone. Sure, the studio set up may be some elaborate wall of technology but in a bind, an MXR 90, any basic delay, and amp distortion will get you there. Dialing in your tone is one of the greatest feelings an artist can have. Until it no longer works. When an old sound is no longer useful, it's maddening. You spent so much time getting it right and then
Fuck you is one of mine but it wasn't always. Once upon a time I had the perfect set up. The technology was right, the material, the life situation, it was set to just produce. I loved my sound, I loved working with that set up, I created a lot. But, as so many before me, that which I loved, I loved alone. And like most deformed little creatures, my wonderful little project bumped along for a couple of years then withered and died. I'll try not to reference "The Gravy" here but if I do, just know it's a long dead love that I think about all the time. Fuck you was not part of the Gravy since
Fuck You: Every guitarist has a few basic pedals they can get
their basic sound out of. Fuck you is one of mine. The basic sound is
something along the lines of you are too stupid, too indoctrinated, too
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