welcome

for fanclub members only: BEWARE THE BLACK SAUCER MEN!

december 30 2004

[note: this post has been edited for extreme boringness.]

so, to make a long story short: the internet used to be a place you could staple up your band flyer, to use a charmingly prosaic metaphor. and it has become a place where some guy in romania can destroy your ability to communicate with anyone else, because he thinks destroying other people's web experience is easier than working at the herring canning factory or whatever.

i think politicians who go after porn merchants should be slapped, literally. go after the spammers. it's a truly cross-platform issue. if you're a right wing capitalist, they are BAD BAD BAD FOR BUSINESS. if you are a left wing anarchist, they are FASCIST PIGS. if you are a l33t h4X0r, d00d, they're just l4m3. and in a just world, the lame should not be profitable.

otherwise, where the fuck is MY profit for all of my goddamned lame efforts?

okay! so, back to work, i guess, promoting my music and writing and stuff like that, and occasionally popping off on some ill-advised rant that some overly forgiving souls actually claim to find entertaining.

thanks for stopping by.

 

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december 6, 2004

here's an interesting usability study on band web sites.

for some reason, s.o.p. is invisible in IE6/WinXP, but shows up perfectly fine on - for instance - Safari on an iMac running OS X. i have no explanation for this, other than the notion that it might be a CSS compatibility issue.

if this is gibberish to you, feel free to disregard.

email me if you want to know what sop.htm is. or if you used to know, but forgot.

mars, bitches...

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november 11 2004

so, the BWM signal is pointed at the sky once again. pat is fueling the BWM jet [the one that runs on a brace of refurbished volkswagen van engines] with biodiesel [which is why it smells like popcorn everywhere we go], produceus is putting on his goggles and rubber trenchcoat and taking up the electromagnetic balucither, ron is stocking the minifridge with atropine/ketamine sports drinks, brandt is doing his job sitting around looking pretty and sorting through a pile of faux tortoiseshell plectrums, rance is waving his electric semaphores on the BWMcave runway, his silk scarf flapping in the wind...as with a massive rumble the giant gantry doors begin to open...cheryl, who sometimes go by the name of motorcycle irene, is cranking up the shortwave, checking for distress signals and ordering us some takeout shawarma from that badass persian food place in the mission, blowing on the drying soy-based ink on the propaganda flyers we plan to drop on the battlefields of WW IV...some of our old studio friends have mentioned they might drop by...herr doktor immerglück, the octopoid lover, jer, sean, jim, and various others who must not be mentioned for contractual reasons...it's part hootenanny, part salon, part riot, part block party barbecue with djs booming a trunk of bass, part punk rock home invasion, part led zeppelin bombing raid, part viking invasion, part giant robot monster battle...UFOs have been sighted...the loch ness monster is crawling our way...fire photon torpedos...the BWMphone is ringing off the hook, the ringtone is "won't get fooled again".

or is this entire season of episodes merely an autistic child's dream? you decide! this is the new 21st century INTERACTIVE episode using the technology of the internets™!! set your decoder rings to position B-W-M zero-zero-zero!

see you january.

 

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november 4 2004

download rage, © 1988 or so, my memory fails me now. what was happening in '88? you use big words for something even you don't understand/this is my land, don't touch me with your heavy hand. the heart of the reagan era; carnage in central america. "if you've seen one tree, you've seen 'em all." "we begin bombing in five minutes." etc. during the long wasteland years of reagan and bush sr., many of us wondered if we'd even survive to see the millenium.

well, we did. twelve years of murder, thievery, corruption, and oppression, and what do they do - they name an airport after the motherfucker, call him 'the great communicator'. his acolyte and disciple bush jr. is lauded as the great statesman, the liberator of kuwait, the progenitor of 'compassionate conservatism' who spoke of 'a kinder, gentler nation' and 'a thousand points of light' while our soldiers came back and died by the thousands from being lab rats for chemical arms developers. 'oil fields burning/burning, burning'...[scandinavian obliterati press, ca. 1991]

i stood with a gaggle of 40 and 50-something boomer new age feminist ladies, ex-hippies and former radicals, who wept in concert when clinton was sworn in. and then he gave us NAFTA and GATT, backtracked on taking a stand for gay rights in america, went head to head with sister souljah, destroyed the village in order to save it in the balkans, and in enacting every white man's wet dream - a blowjob in the oval office! i have arrived!!! - he betrayed those new age feminist ladies, and took us on a $70,000,000 joy ride that left our process of government a shambles. he doesn't deserve all the blame - not even half of it - but he deserves the stain.

and then our government was stolen from us by the architects of theocratic oligarchy, by the same dominionist neo-con straussian pig-fucker fascists who stood behind nixon at his dirtiest. the same pig-fucker fascists who gave us vietnam, skulked into the shadows briefly and then returned to give us covert war against nicaragua and invented the term "october surprise", again skulked and brought us ass-over-teakettle into world war III. and now we're counting bodies once again and talking about a draft.

but there's an underground history too that cannot be denied, that shapes the society we live in from beneath the shadows and eminently and immanently empowers us. look for a new radicalism to arise among artists collaborating with the freedom of information movement. even if americans fear freedom and assassinate it at every turn - the juggernaut of the information age cannot be diverted. soon, very soon, it will cease to be profitable, sustainable, or even survivable to try to control the flow, the flood, the fountain of information. the electrodynamic law of information is that it can't be restrained - because lies in the end are bugs, and bugs don't work. what works will eventually set us free, even if it means the whole fucking thing crashing and burning for us to see it happen. maybe not even in our lifetimes, but definitely in our childrens' lifetimes.

as my father, survivor of the first great depression, tells me: live somewhere where you can plant crops. beyond that nothing else is certain. don't live in gated communities. you will surely die there, and there will be nothing left of that life. nothing. not a thing.

in the 60's, still yet in living memory for the time being, people got back to the land to get their soul free. now, getting back to the land is the only amnesty from disaster. if you lack the skill of finding water and killing game in the wilderness, you might be in for some trouble.

and finally, remember what woody wrote on his guitar: THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS. they're coming back.

lock and load.

 

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october 16 2004

some new stuff up on the sounds page. check it out.

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september 25 2004

BWM/SOP may be doing some sort of branding/corporate merger with superflatmonkey. this may be the craziest/stupidest idea i've ever had, or the most brilliant, or both.

good grief, has it really been eleven months since i last did any work in the studio?? i've been doing some songwriting though. we were going to have a salon non grata™ at our house but cancelled it due to the sad passage of our dear four-legged family member dash last november 4th. we've pretty much been grieving non-stop since then. so maybe it'll be time to come back out of the woodwork and summon all our friends, seattle natives or out-of-town visitors, to come and get up offa that thang.

salon non grata™ is a concept co-created by paola faggella, erik rader, jerry dunn, nina rolle, and various students of the naropa university [then 'institute'] interarts department circa 1990-92. it is meant to be reminiscent of european and american salons that recurred throughout each of the historic revolutions in art, as well as sharing a kinship with the "happenings" of the 60's and 70's, the "jams" of the 80's and 90's, and the "communities" we know and love today but are sick of hearing them being called that. hopefully by 2010 we'll have come up with a better term. "pod" or something.

anyway, what is salon non grata™? it's kind of like an "art potluck". people are encouraged to bring examples of their creative expression; paintings are leaned up against the walls, sculptures occupy tv tops, and the living room floor is a stage for dance, theater, music, performance art, poetry, literary readings, rants, incantations, standup comedy, sketch comedy, etc. culinary artists bring their most spectacular dishes; amateur vintners, beer brewers and coffee roasters bring their most favored decoctions; costume and set designers show off their latest most florid nightmares; craftsmakers bring their jewelry and pottery; the list goes on.

the optimal number of attendees is enough people to crowd the average middle class urban 2-bedroom cottage, preferably one with a hardwood livingroom floor, although carpet is acceptable. a hot tub for exhausted artists post-performance is always a plus. in my house, the optimal number of attendees would have to be less than 50; i believe our house could sanely accommodate thirty at most, safely accommodate 20, comfortably 10-15.

therefore, for 2004-5, while i am considering offering up my house, BWM/SOP corporate headquarters here in west seattle, for the event, anyone with larger space to offer are welcome to send me an email at info at bwm spelled out, dot com.

thank you for your unusual patience with this sometimes agonizing process. i am still interested in hearing other 30-something musicians audition to be seattle-based adjunct Blind Watchmakers. it's not just a band...it's a way of life.

oh by the way - stop by e. blake music on your way out.

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