Bootleg Blogging

Talking head total hacks talking smack with fake facts made him mo black gave you a heart attack...

Inspired in no small part by the ongoing nonsense that is the race for the presidency in 2008 - including this gem. So mad about it I had to play drums.

Prepare for the boomerang of history. Keep a steel helmet handy.

I've had a rough recording of the chords and melody on my PDA for a couple of months now. The rough lyrics were going nowhere until I stumbled on a reference to the prologue to Ellison's Invisible Man, and it became a very different song. Enjoy.

This groove came to me in a dream (duh). About a year ago. As a mother was chasing me through a mall with her young child. I was racing to get to my little MP3 recorder. And then I woke up. There's a sleepy version of me trying to re-create the groove with my mouth saved on my PDA, followed by me trying to make sense of the nonsense of what was going on in the dream. Somehow the mother in the dream became "Mary, Mother of God" - and, as they say in the biz, the rest wrote itself.

Co-write with Zoe. She came up with the words and melody for the first verse about a year ago - at age 3. The rest wrote itself. 50 percent novelty song, 50 percent The Story of My Life in Two Minutes.

Screw your courage to the sticking place

Believe it or not, this is a co-write with a 4-year-old. We were in the car after soccer practice and Zoe was washing her hands with a wet-wipe post-popsicle when she blurted out the main melody for the verse and the chorus, all at once, with that curious off-beat: "Give me another wipe: I'm still sticky, my hands are still sticky!" I raced home, grabbed the Tele, and turned it into Lady Macbeth. If you picture Lady Mac being played by the First Lady instead of Dame Judy I won't hold it against you. Note: The beat box was killing me in a bad way - so I re-mixed without it. I would go all Macbeth on Duncan with someone to be able to do this with a real band. Oh well.

Jean Luc's been looking for the muse. Julia's been looking for the muse. And her name is Jennifer. Where's she been hiding? She ain't been turning tricks downtown again, has she? Ashes to ashes, funk to funky - we know Jenny's just a junkie. My hand drumming is worse than the beat box. Oh well.

I spent the better part of yesterday morning entranced by this award winning photo essay by Brenda Ann Kenneally. In bed. On my handheld. Via the obligatory a.m. stop at Albany Eye. And the whole time I'm asking myself: What would Uncle Sam think of the Troy of today? I feel a song coming on.

UPDATE: The song is called Sam. Cuz Uncle Sam wants you. To explain yourself.