The Three Sides of Duality

Far be it from me to abandon something that is dying a long slow death. No, I am only happy to sit and pick at the corpse like a vulture, and hope to somehow inject a single drop of vitality back into the thing and see where we go from there. The idea of comparing the merits of watching live/performed music to the merits of listening to a recorded document has been bandied about in these pages within this the first month of our stunningly ingenious music blog. The young Mr. Medina did the world a favor and released (or is it unleashed?) the long dormant photos of the immensely influential (joke), and slightly retarded (understatement), Schlong Weasel. In the interest of destroying all that is beautiful by reducing it to an either/or argument (apparently an idea that is the very spawn of Satan himself), I will give a few examples of duality in music. I will do so both from within the very limited confines of the Schlong Weasel universe, and from other facets of my creepy, inbred world. And ultimately, I will fuck the whole thing by adding a third element to the polar opposition of the first two; because, well, because what better way to point out just how far from reality red-blooded music dorks truly are?

So let's get this party started, kay-o?

Schlong Weasel was all things at once. To everyone. This point is indisputable. You know it, but to deny it is natural. It doesn't matter really. Know simply that it all boils down to the credo of Schlong Weasel in all its paralyzing stupidity: No God only Schlong.

I played a 45 minute drum solo totally nude.

Schlong Weasel was playing the Axiom, Houston's home for morons with guitars. If you were here in the late eighties, early nineties, you saw everyone play there. And if you were really, really lucky, you saw me naked.

But let me sweeten the pot, because I can sense that some of you are cringing in fear, and I want to make sure we are all here together, feeling the healing.

Joining me, directly to my left, was a certain local fixture of the Houston scene.

Sybil.

Deep breaths. Okay, let's move on.

My consciousness was, uh, lets just say that my consciousness was compromised at the time. I think it helps for you to know that I'm not exactly the drum solo type. I mean, I'll whip one out if you request one, because I have no shame, but guys like Neil Peart would probably run me over on their "ghost bike" rather than sit through one second of my drum solo. And that's if I was fully clothed.

Those were nights of complete and utter mayhem. Things were slightly out of hand at all times, and always totally ridiculous. In fact, this sort of delirious lunacy was roughly par for the way I handled myself at the end of the eighties.

Let's call the above story the "either" story. Let's move on now. Let's move on to the "or."

Throughout my entire life, I have battled with crippling shyness. in fact, when I was a child, it was so bad that I once stood in a t-shirt shop in Celeveland heights, Ohio (Daffy Dan's) for over an hour because I was too shy to ask for help. I spent a summer over at my aunt's place the year my family returned from living in France. She thought it would be a good idea to sign me up for swimming lessons. It was, but there was a small incident. The first time I walked into the Canton, Ohio YMCA, I walked up to the counter, got my locker key, went to the dressing room, tried the key in the locker a billion times to no avail, looked at the key, and then suddenly realized that the guy had given me a key to the ladies locker room. it was the seventies. My hair was really long, and I was a bit girly in appearance. The guy made an honest mistake. I was mortified. I almost left, but since I had nowhere to go, I finally mustered the courage to tell the guy, "I'm not a girl." Pure horror.

And here we are, last year, and I have a show playing solo as The Powers of Light and Darkness, and I am driving to the club, mortified. I am fantasizing about driving home, abandoning the whole thing. The whole time I am at the club I visualize myself at home, comfortable, and it keeps me from actually fucking off and leaving. And this is all from the guy who played a 45 minute drum solo, with Sybil, not giving a shit, buck fucking naked, and best of all, fearless.

That's my "or" story. Admittedly it is one of many, but it will do.

And the third part of these two bits? Where I am now. I am sitting here, plunging away at the keyboard, making no discernable point. Digging in my virtually useless synapses for something of value, but finding only this. Another meandering plunge into the murk of wanting to make a cogent point but always falling quite short.

But this is a blog about music, and all of the writers in here love the stuff. And we don't give a motherfuck what anyone else really thinks when you get right down to it. We just want to share what we feel about things musical. For my part, I have invested much of my life into music. I love playing music, though I am in a virtual retirement. I love listening to music, though I am constantly overwhelmed by how much of it I will never get to enjoy. Ramon, I've known since high school. We've played in many bands together. He is never boring, and always plugged in. He loves to spar over ideas, and he loves to piss people off. I don't think he gives himself enough credit for his guitar playing. I personally have a soft spot for him because he tends to laugh at my jokes (and it isn't because I'm intrinsically funny). Kilian has played in damn near every band I heard about through someone I knew from here or there. His bands were always better than mine, or at least better liked, and when I lived behind Rudz, I jealously watched his bands pack out the place while imagining what it was like to be that adored. Justin was a KTRU (Rice U. radio) fixture forever, and he also was kind enough to hook me up at the Greenway theater. Thanks. Heidi was the KTRU program director, and a begrudging Mike Gunn fan (poor thing). Hell, we even wrote one of our better songs about her. The new dad of the bunch, Mr Anaconda, rocked the universe in Dry Nod, a Houston band par-excellence. He also had the dubious honor of living in the commune I passed through for about a month when my mom and I decided the free ride was over (she did most of the deciding. Okay, she did all of it). We sat up all night once chatting up the members of New York's, Honeymoon Killers. I think the entire house thought I stole all their bikes during a break-in because they all barely knew me. Doug is a guy I know only through the name of his Houston band, Ultra-Hummus. I think I knew he was a Rice guy, too. He shares my love of movies, so for that reason alone I like the guy, but his writing on music is also good stuff.

So are there no implicit either/or realities in the world of music appreciation? It actually doesn't really matter that much. But will that stop us from arguing to the very opposite of this idea? I hope not. I hope we argue like crazy, and draw many more music lovers into this site to join the argument. Hopefully, you will be one of them.