Lowered Action

By proxy of it being in my bedroom, my 5-string bass has received exclusive attention for the past month or two, an it's shown. My bassmanship has opened up tremendously and my style has expanded.

I've long had help the assertion that great music has a strong core rhythm section, and the guitars, melodies and harmonies are built around that. So my writing style has been beat and bass first, then guitars, synths and hopefully someday lyrics, would follow. I don't think it's much to argue, and may even be the foundation that a lot of people use. But to expand on that theory, just last week around the time I lowered the action on my bass [it plays so easily] I realized that of all that music I hold close, a great majority has strong basslines to carry the music along.

So with inspiration from my two favorite bass canon, Rage Against the Machine and The Mars Volta, I'm going through all my music, bass in hands, putting priority on writing strong bass tracks to support the entire piece. I'm so far please with the results and am looking forward to reworking the funk.

In real world agendas, I may try out to be bassist for a peer's musical project. When I saw them playing live, their percussionist was hand tapping on some sort of traditional natural skinned drum 'bout three feet tall. Can't for the life of me remember what it's called. If I go to play with them though, I'll make sure to get in sync with that drum for a great performance. After the New Year starts, when I head back to work...

Piss

So word around the shop is that I won't be able to work with KJG in coming weeks. Pissant. So much for that.

Directionless, un-inspired and frustrated, I'll just continue to tinker around with some tracks, have a broken guitar, and blow up some fools as I level-up in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II.

Oh, and that picture of the vox effects processor that I placed in the last post? That thing is fucking broken: the power jack won't accept a plug, as the pin in the middle is pretty jacked up. I have to go to a place like Radioshack to get a replacement jack and solder it onto the green plastic card for the 9V 500mA power adapter. Great. The distortion and overall quality of my guitar effects processor sucks; I don't have a proper guitar amp (although it's an awesome bass amp. Oh yeah, the horn on that is broke too!); my guitar's electronics aren't entirely functional so I'll have to swap those out with the parts for the guitar that I built but I never finished and not to mention I want a drum set, probably electric so's that I can actually play it when my wife is home.

This is my directionless complain-blog. You're welcome.

KJG

So you may have noticed, although pretty certain otherwise as this blog has only had one view since the day of the last post [thanks, Luke], that Tanzen: Revival and the Bakkheia Republic are without a doubt, defunct.

It was expected, and we had a good run! Their namesakes shall remain, as a venue to post and allow access to articles of various subjects.

In current news:

The first song of an unnamed musical project between me and a co-worker is nearly done - with lyrics! The ultimate goal is to compose and lyricize several pieces and perform them at local goth venues. Yes, I said goth venues. Synthesizers, heavy-beat drums, driving guitars and lyrics about sadism juxtaposed with masochism. Seriously. The first track is heavy.

I leave the lyrics and macro-direction to my counterpart, Kevin Glynn; I think we chose stage names, but I can't remember what they are; while I compose the music; production credit shared, and writing credit split between functions.

More to come, and I'll definitely be posting the new track upon completion.

Monthly Rhythm

Tanzen: Revival and its sister, the Bakkheia Republic have fallen idle lately. The reasons aren't new, of course, as any project or cause is subject to the whims of its peoples' focus and dedication. We've all fallen out of these as we expend our energies into other matters.

Background: 

My album, tentatively titled XPS as it pertains to being composed mostly on my Dell XPS, has developed greatly in the past week or two since I opened myself up to devoting time to its incubation. The oldest track is dated to summer of 2005, the last conceived in one five-hour sitting the - early November 2006; that track, "IPF" is essentially the same since that weekend. Work progressed consistently on the album until mid-2007 until it lost steam between maintaining a full-time job and nurturing my new family in a new apartment. Work ceased on XPS for two years, in which time I created the yet-to-be-finalized instrumental electronic album, Bend Over, Khomeini in March 2008 after being laid-off.

Over a year had passed since Bend Over, Khomeini, as it was a time of immense life changes. After settling in Colorado for what looks to be three to five years, I reopened the greater dream of XPS. I took the old tracks of XPS, the experience and creative growth from venturing out on the currently unfinished masterpiece of Bend Over, Khomeini along with a new vein of inspiration behind my guitar playing and musicianship and began the arduous but inspiring task of destroying and recreating XPS into something amazing.

That drive had a decent run: several weeks as Spring '09 turned to Summer '09 took a burnt and dried project into something fresh and green. The summer offered plenty, between work, family and enjoying the scenery. Composing XPS was parked as I focused on Tanzen: Revival and the Bakkheia Republic.

And then I went onto nights. All the creativity that had been somewhat materializing over the past few months was ceased as I went through the motions. I fell out with my family, my friends and my creativity.

My rhythm had been cut in the middle as I balanced a new schedule of work, sleep, family and leisure. But as the month of September bore on, I suffered with those around me, regather myself and eventually reopened XPS to a new fire, and its development is the strongest that it's ever been. No track has been left unchanged: not one is left as a slow and non-progressing behemoth that was a grinding sludge, too large to tackle by lyrics or even offer a hope of completion. The tracks have been slaughtered and reborn - it's good shit.

I'm very happy with the work that I've accomplished just in the past week. The level of energy is inspiring and I'll be proud to finish XPS over the coming months or years, not to mention the fact that I don't lyrics for any of the tracks. Shit. Well, here's a track:

Try'n check it in HQ.

Semi-automatic Corvette

Started at 0400L, 10 Sept 2009:

The equinox will come soon and for one day, the balance between day and night will hold before the night time will overshadow the day time. This month of working nights will close with each work day beginning with the sun not yet above the gentle Eastern horizon and ending with it below the Rockies to the West, with perhaps a jagged silhouette of what was another beautiful, albeit colder day.

My aspirations are still great, although haven’t been able to break through the filter from subconscious freedom to conscious action and product. Some sort of paralyzing gel takes every great idea that I’ve developed or woken up with and leaves me with a blank mind when I grace the keys or manipulate the pen.

During sleep today, between 1000 and 1445, I dreamt of driving a semi-automatic Corvette when I became encapsulated in a paralyzing sub-dream – I was stuck in a second dream, within the sleep that I was already enjoying! It was terrible. I had gone from commanding a powerful and sleek machine with controls beyond today, trimmed with deep resonance of LEDs, to more of an unconscious paralysis within another dream. All I saw was an asymmetrical grey that strut sharply to the right. My free thought and control had ceased and for one short moment, I was consciously focused on breaking out of that paralyzed state. It took effort. I couldn’t wake. I tried to open my eyes but the middle-toned grey had a bind on my lids.

Thrashing about, I remained stationary. Beyond a few moments of panic I finally awoke in the guest bedroom and looked around before I let myself fall back into a thoughtfully rhythmic motion of dreaming. I don’t even remember what happened next. I wasn’t in a generously overgrown green complex of trails and vegetation of Paul’s Mediterranean California estate, discovering a multi-leveled series of balconies, leisure gardens and hard wood construction.

I suggested it to Publius through a few texts – had no interpretation of what it could mean. Tonight’s shift has taken me from euphoric productivity to immediately contrasting and frustrating boredom! The caffeine clashes endlessly with indecisiveness of ambient fans. I’m forcing this.

All of the feeling is inside of me, as if I were commanding a powerful vehicle to draw pure spiritual freedom from the hearts of everyone I love, everyone that I know and appreciate to a venue where we’d sing like angels or play like the muses, the seemingly irrelevant conglomeration of words and notes of which nothing will ever match in greatness or purity. Like the flat grey from that dream paralysis, some evil filter of complacency screens anything that I’d like to say or play from leaving my heart. I don’t even know if I’m making sense anymore.

I haven’t produced anything recently, whether it is words, lyrics or music, because I haven’t ensured creative release a place in my day or routine for some time. The music is there – just gotta break out of those happy habits and let the pain flow! Seriously though, it’s been pretty good at home lately, so I haven’t been called to go into the abyss of creativity. Aren’t the greatest masterpieces made through pain, dissonant spirituality and, well, drugs? I ought drink more.

I have recently come to understand suburbia as it should be. I don’t think most suburbanites put themselves into a place of thought that I came upon the other day. It was on more than one occasion this past weekend: The warm late-summer, mid-afternoon sun was angling in through where the garage door would be if it weren’t raised, as Caiden was making his rounds between his sidewalk extremes that he’s allowed to venture out to on his bike or scooter as I kept an eye on him from inside, where I was organizing my hardware for the studio between different Rubbermaid totes. Love-bitter rock was projecting through my Bose speakers as I realized, this garage was mine; the house was mine. It’s not flashy or excessive, but that didn’t matter, as my son was enjoying his time outside as I enjoyed my daily sunlight and warmth. Anything could happen in that garage. Forgive me, as I had a much more genuine description of this to Publius, who I called on the phone to profess this epiphany. My epiphany was also in part that it’s so absolutely relaxing, empowering and emancipating g to unplug from broadcasted culture, politics and STRESS by simply walking from the front room, through the laundry room and out into the freedom cave. Fuck freedom fries – garages are freedom caves, and mine is only growing. I’ll never have a house that doesn’t have a garage or shop, ever again.

Tanzen Studio: Denver is stood up in my garage right now. I’m rehearsing a few songs that I want to reinterpret as a solo project under the name of Tanzen. It’s also billed as a beat factory, where one day a few talented locals may make an appearance and stamp future history. Congruent to this blog, it’s the workshop from which the greatest project of a Tanzen: Revival will be schemed and plotted.

Perhaps the sun will be out to greet me in a few hours as I ascend from this cave. A few hours of sleep, peaceful withdrawal of caffeine and ambient fans should bring me back into a more manageable realm, and I may even find a few hours to plot some notes to ones and zeroes.

Thanks to Dave and his band for being with me through most of this, and I’ll leave it off to Led Zeppelin, who are in their time of dying in Windows Media Player…

*insert decisive quote*

Ended at 0446L, 10 Sept 2009.

Dance

To me from Publius, a few weeks ago:

To me from Luke:

You can say anything and completely mean it - while carrying all the weight of the initial statement, iif you do one thing to the statement.

Either A.) make it funny. B.) immediately laugh after saying it. This makes it almost completely impossible to argue with it. So, whatever you need to say to somebody - do it that way and the charisma will carry you over that hurdle your afraid of jumping.

If you say, "I'm 20 years old?" then people won't believe you.
If you say, "I'm 80 years old, hahahaha," then they will.

Everything is a dance. Truth, lies, facts, logic, statistics, evidence; nothing matters unless you incorporate it into a dance. What actually rolls out of your mouth is almost completely useless because humans do not make decisions based on logic. They make it based on emotion and then JUSTIFY it with logic. That's why confidence will carry people over just about anything. That's why funny people can get just about anything.


You're naturally funny and charismatic. Play that riff.


Scott always spoke with conviction and people ate out of his hands. But from what I know now, as I approach his age, I can see through his eyes - and yes, the world is a fucking wasteland. He got caught chasing rabbits when there was nothing left to interest him. Don't make that mistake. you must dance.


- Publius, 10 August 2009.

Black or Blue Ballpoint

Deep within day-to-day rhetoric there's an intrinsic value in our minds that ought be fully manifested to principally intrinsic creed. What does the previous sentence even mean?

0545hrs local hasn't always been the friendliest wake-up call four days a week, especially now since the sun isn't even over the horizon to smile and blind me awake anymore. However, I do enjoy seeing the sun lightly touch the tops of the dry grass in that wide empty field behind my house on the other side of the red granite-toned brick wall then carrying all the way across the city toward the Rocky Mountains that mask the Western horizon as I head to work; it'll be dark in coming weeks, even after I trek up the hill toward and into the fluorescent-lit relics from the Cold War - fuck it, I'm going on nights next week anyways. I see the sun more while working nights. Where most people would take smoke breaks, I regularly head outside to "photosynthesize" in the warming sunlight for a few minutes at a time.

I wonder when our first snow, or blizzard, will hit.

Those waking moments are usually the blind first in an odd routine, during which those waking thoughts of dream clips quickly, quickly fade. With a bit of discipline I'll fall into the practice of inscribing my waking thoughts to a morning journal, to refine my lucid dreaming and leave time for absorption of the symbolism and meaning that the dream-state provides. I've got the notebook and a few black or blue ballpoint pens in mind.

I did all of that a few years ago, but of course fell out of practice, despite the incredible dreams that I was experiencing, writing down and remembering for later use. A message from a friend with the words of our recent thoughts and speculations, posted below, brought me back to considering all of this. With some discipline, the practice will become a part of that routine - more to come...

We were under Mars and shootin' the shit - just me and "The Fool" as the Tarot has come to call him. I had spent the evening with him in some old and forgotten hipster bar. I had things to discuss with him. He pointed out Mars and said: you've got to inform Eric of something.

I knew what he was talking about.

Eric. The world is an ugly place strewn with the bodies of women trying to clutch onto the brightest rocketing light they see. This is what pulled me into this realization and the field is strewn with a lot more than that. It's strewn with mediocrity and aggravating manifestations of pretentiousness and suffering. The world is a trench - not unlike how T.S. Eliot describes it. A wasteland. But last night I learned from Mars a lesson he usually reserves for his students in boot-camp. And you know what?

I've got your back, Eric. None of these fucking gooks will be able to sink their knife into it. We'll survive this war and be rewarded with our iron crosses. We'll taste milk again in the DMZ and live to fight in a grander battle than this.

Let's stay alive and win this battle, even as the bullets and the bombs threaten to blot out the colors of our righteous flag. 

- Perj, 8/27/09

Practice like you fuck; fuck like she loves you.

Spun

Tonight, through the PlayStation I spun up the old records, or rather decoded a series of figurative ones and zeros like mosquitoes that leave you just skin and bone. Songs for the Deaf. Just like the other afternoon in the garage, I felt it. Something pulled me back to that old era that was Tanzen.

Wednesday was the first time that I'd plugged in with nobody to hold me back or tell me that I'll disturb the neighbors; the Audi next door wasn't in the driveway, a good omen. Fuck the neighbors. Every natural chord that I'd strum since leaving California, 01 May 2009, has been worth playing, but a muffled chorus wrought by the limits of its unaccompanied self. Over a year's worth of squelched soul was replayed through that amplifier, in its full glory and encompassing volume of vibration. The further I got, the less I knew. Deep in my heart, some force of discomfort has been tugging at me since leaving, that of a dream never fulfilled. Wednesday, that dull rumble cut with a jagged edge was the first stirring of Tanzen incarnate.

Come back another day, and do no wrong.

Freedom of, from, to

A major part of these Tanzen desert ideals is the fear of getting through my life having found that I have wasted dreams that I never lived. It's about fulfilling dreams, even ridiculous ones that leave you full of incredible memories and a stamp of truth.

The summer of 2005 was a Tanzen summer; driving along the warm coastal highways with the A/C off, windows down for the summer breezes to carry my stereo's tunes into obscurity. Tanzen is taking the basics of whole-living and creating something powerful.

Tanzen is $20 towards gas, food and a bottle of Gatorade in a hot afternoon cruise to beach through the oak-covered golden hills with an awesome girl rather than $100 towards American Eagle on State Street.

Tanzen is taking the mid-morning to drive along Highway 1 and crest the grade at Gaviota just as the sun bursts through to the peak on the other side of the wide canyon.

Tanzen at its lowest was flossin' the V-Dub along the Pacific Coast Highway once after a night of heavy drinking while loved ones were suffering alone 100 miles away; it's supposed bring those loved ones alone to be free of guilt and restriction.

Tanzen is not about living within reason or moderation, or even irrationality or excess. What is more irrational, teaching my son that you can live within yourself and friends or being strapped down to money and consumption? My aspirations aren't so absurd that they need to be shot down as I project them six months into the future. What's a weekend? What's a day? Let the rabbits wear glasses.

Right now, Tanzen is a bittersweet aspiration towards these dreams that will leave me disappointed well along the sad road if I don't change the hearts of those I love to realize the Tanzen mentality once again; freedom of choice, from guilt and restriction, and to absorb Earth's simplicity.

Whatever you're doing at the time, if you're doing art or something creative, you're creating a masterpiece. Every single thing you do: if you put a line on a piece of paper or sing a note; if you have complete and utter confidence, conviction and love for what you're doing at that second and you don't lose than mentality, it will be genius. If you you can't sing, but you sing from that place then you will be remembered for singing from your heart. So if we go into the desert with the mentality that we just do this, not to impress anybody, just do it to do it, it will come out complete fucking genius. It is difficult to combat the programming that you fucked up, have to do it certain way or perfectly or follow what's been done, but if you simply do it from your soul, it's a perfect masterpiece.
- Perj, 8/17/09

Tanzen Sie Haus

There is no code in the desert; just possibilities.
- Byelobog

A 2.5 acre plot, featuring a wash, nearby airfield and access to electricity. Fuck water. Fuck natural gas. If it finds a place in the inventory then it will find itself with a custom made concrete slab, generously gifted with electricity receptacles. A few of the motivated Tanzen members could easily take a weekend for ground preparations, coordination and pouring of both concrete and soul.

A short

Several years ago there was a band, Tanzen, that was initially just a few playing some obnoxious-ass rock songs. Tanzen being a verb form of Dance, in German. The members acquired monikers: Perj, Taco, Byelobog, Rip and Der Kaiser. For a little longer than a Spring, the band rehearsed and its members nearly combined to play a gig at a punk show.

Tanzen as a band dissolved but out of its dust emerged fabulous delusions of grandeur: aspirations of psychedelic tracks through strobe lights, commitments to return to greatness that have never once come to fruition.

In 2007, the group was less than an hour from being an unrehearsed opening act at a local venue; women killed it.

Since 2007, its core has kept Tanzen alive with a small flame of uniting its members with the twice-lived Flugzeug to play soul music and propogate its deep waves across the rocky deserts of California; full greatness.
This blog is a testament of the kindling of that flame.

Budget

Regarding Tanzen's upcoming budget proposals:

Funds are currently being debated in the House, and should be appropriated pending a series of nation-wide tax returns. Hearings will be held with interested organizations for research, development and acquisition contracts. Please stand-by for further details. A preliminary deadline has been set for 15 September 2oo9 with provisions for revision and fiscal adjustments.

I plan on buying shit, just planning on doing most of that with my 2009 tax return as well as smaller logistical purchases until then.

Mobile Post

Today Caiden shunned Lindsey, put shame on her, sat her in timeout, let her reflect on it, told her what she did, made her say sorry then reconciled with a hug.

Authority

Every other Tanzen revival was doomed to lack of resources, funding and commitment. We all know this. Checking the old page, geocities.com/tanzenband, will elucidate to the outsiders that they've all failed due to the same mediocre spirit.

This time will be different: I've already begun a detailed equipment listing, which will involve controlled inventories and ownership records; stage layouts based on available resources; offered fiscal resources and am already collaborating with Byelobog regarding locations.

The faces will be fresh, save for me and Byelobog who have been the core of any Tanzen formation. Count on collaboration with members of Flugzeug, as well. Come to think of it, it's really more of a Flugzeug revival than a Tanzen revival as all of the original FZ members have been tentatively billed to the roster.

It's always been in the Tanzen spirit to dream of ego and grandness, rebirth and epic growth, and it's this spirit that will carry Tanzen on its fiery wings across the golden skies.

There once was a dream that was Tanzen. That dream could still be realized.
- Paul (am I still Byelobog, or what?), 1/14/07

Tanzen: Revival

Out of the ashes I've dragged this putrid and cursed name, swearing that through the perseverance of its original clan, and its unworldly torture will one day lead to fruition of its bright-eyed innocence as a grandiose and epic era somewhere in the arid and windblown deserts of California.

Many have doomed themselves to failure and mockery for even proposing its revival, but I've planted the resolve in the hearts of its fallen few; this time we will not fail.

Tanzen is indefinite. It's not quite dead, but is definitely not thriving.
- Taco, 12/16/04

Goodnight, fair Tanzen. You were a worthy vessel that not much happened in.
- Paul (Byelobog), 4/4/07

RTD Bus

From a stoplight a couple of weeks ago in downtown Aurora I noticed down a cross-street at a bus stop a man with a backpack wearing [my memory seems to be controlling what I though he was wearing, it may have been a flannel overshirt or neutral blazer] -- from thirty yards with no objections from the spouse -- looked eerily identical to my late brother. All I could do was stare, obviously with a knowing belief/disbelief of a spectre waiting patiently for an RTD bus. My mind was set on that for a few moments, as yours would, or may have been, if you've ever been in this situation.

Over the next few days my mind battled my soul while I schemed and fabricated situations; could that have been Scott, who as an artist with an easel, brush and colors, brushed himself on a damned stage portraying the terrible events of Halloween, 2006, but escaped through a trap-door underneath the smokey hardwood as the curtains dropped, then tore the canvas off of his easel and framed it on the wall for us to see, while with pastel colors, smudged a re-envisioned reality somewhere in Colorado?

As a simpler interpretation, what if, all of the hype and tension that led up to that Halloween was just a setting up for a grand exit to a - I'm having a hard time find a way to even WORD this - but have you heard of those tortured/genius minds whose perspectives draw them far beyond what anybody else would fathom, such as faking death to escape to a detached but vivid introverted life? And through random voyeurism -- I witnessed him waiting for an RTD bus.

I guess that the obvious silver bullet would be the fact that my Father, and perhaps Donna, viewed the product of the day. Omit that fact. Replace it with a conspiracy idea that they were willingly and perhaps reluctantly a part of that painting, acting on a stage to fool the world.

Stage, movies, music -- Shakespeare is real while the metered lyrics are vocalized. Even the battle between Bella and Edward ... yes, I'm actually citing THAT book/movie to say that art can create a reality, even if it's fictitous.

Some people believe legends about Jim Morrison, and that's an example of what I was trying to say.

Anyways, I think I've squeezed the sponge and this note is done. KMFDM's Blitz is now in my brain.