It's Only The End Of The World Again (Liner Notes For A Mix CD)

 

    Starting a mix out with Agents Of Oblivion is a smart move especially if that song is Endsmouth.  It's only the end of the world again.   I love Dax's old wild youthful passion, apparent throughout all the vocals he did for Acid Bath ('94--'97) and he lent some of that energy to his Stardust wannabe outfit in Agents Of Oblivion.  

   Movin' Out, from Aerosmith's debut album which I'm thinking was 1974, is the baddest sounding song on the whole album, it retains it's scorching intensity to this day, an effective hard rocking blues song which introduced me to rock and roll music; we forever remain grateful to our first rock'n'roll heroes, and I still tip my hat to Joey, Tom, Brad, Joe, and Steven for bringing me straight into the dirty bad ass side of rock and roll.   Nobody knows where.  Nobody shows where. Nobody knows where you can find me.  

   Now Scissorfight is one helluva rock band out of New Hampshire, I used to live up there, where they take their freedom seriously.  This band consists of mountain men who will rock out a local bar so hard there'll be furniture flyin'.  Appalachian Chain, driving me insane. These guys are a lot of fun, sorta like an East Coast Pigmy Love Circus. (Who I wanted to include in this mix, but it turns out I didn't have their album on the harddrive, and I'm not sure where the CD is offhand, The Power of Beef.)  

   The song Mortician's Flame is a prime example of what Acid Bath do best, rock the hell out with sinister bass lines and dark, cryptic riffage not to mention soulfully belted out lyrics.  That is just one hell of a sickening scream which kicks off this song, man these guys were just the best.  They hailed from Louisiana, and to my ears their particular style of hard rock music is an amalgam of various elements taken from extreme metal and hard rock blues, all mixed up in a sort of acid swamp milieu, so I've dubbed their genre acid swamp.  A sort of toxic southern gothic.  Acid Bath only released two official studio albums, they are masterpieces of extreme musical expression still worshipped today and if anything keeping the cult of followers growing, largely due to the underground popularity of their lead singer Dax Riggs, who I was going to feature a song from on this mix but I got carried away, I'm sorry, about the song, in there that you didn't like, but also guitarist Sammy Duet who went off to form Goatwhore, classic usbm I've seen live five times.  

   I tried as hard as I could just to put together a mix that rocked hard, and I stuck that Bad Religion song Better Off Dead in there.  I'm sorry, about the world, how could I know it could get so bad.  Hey now they're a great punk band, I still carry a soft part in my heart for them, they've been around quite awhile now anyhow.  

   Alice In Chains were such a great crunchy band back in the nineties with Layne Staley fronting them as he would a ship across a storm that I had to include a song of theirs from what most people consider their best album DIRT, the song Dam That River is just a straightforward hard rocking song that delivers the goods in every way.   

    The next song is a mysterious selection from a recently formed super group comprised of members from Bad Religion, Faith No More, Repeater, and Korn: a band named Fear And The Nervous System, the song The Combine is an epic example of what these guys came up with guided by guitarist Munky and the strangely haunting vocals from the singer for the band Repeater, Steve Krolikowsky.  There's a savage elegance to the songs from that album, I really hope those four guys get together again and record another one.  If they never do, that's alright because what they've left behind is one of most interesting and hard rocking albums released in recent years.  

   If 6 Was 9 of course is a stone cold classic, I sorta of inserted it out of nowhere but I'm glad I did, the lyrics are great and that's a timeless classic when you get right down to it.  Let it be. 

   For some reason I chose to shift gears directly into King Crimson, with their smoothly beginning from silence track Dangerous Curves off their magnificent 2003 album The Power To Believe, it's a song that gradually builds in intensity until it's really raving along the freeway at a rapid pace, so I segued into one of my favorite hard rocking songs from the nineties, Korn's Justin, the song which lead singer Jonathan wrote the lyrics for and the band dedicated to Justin, a kid from the Make A Wish Foundation whose wish was to meet the band.  The song Justin is one of my favorite hard rocking songs ever by any band and I figured it would make for a nice curve ball after King Crimson.  

   Then I figured I'd put a song from Peter Murphy's latest album, considering how good it is and how much we all enjoyed seeing him perform live the old Bauhaus hits with his new younger band.  I put The Prince & The Old Lady Shade for it's cool smooth rocking riff but it also turns out to be somewhat lyrically appropriate after Justin, with images of the kid and the bright light.  

   Man Overboard follows because that is a perfect song.  And it's one by Puscifer, the side-project of Tool's singer Maynard James Keenan, the brilliant poet winemaker with a voice of a diva.  Nevermind what anyone else says or thinks, I have enjoyed both LPs and every other little thing that Puscifer have released, it's a great little merry go round musical project that I'm always keeping one eye out for, as Maynard himself has already said that Puscifer is a "rotating doorway" of band members who happen to pass through his sphere and end up on the recordings.  This particular track was the first single from their second album, Condition Of My Parole, an "instant classic" if ever there was one recorded in the history of the post-rock movement.

   Speaking of post-rock, how much of that have you listened to?  It's the movement largely credited with having been best exemplified by the nine-piece Canadian band Godspeed You! Black Emperor, whose recordings you should immediately track down and listen to.  I've got a couple of their albums on vinyl and they are magnificent.  But see even though they deserve the crown as emperors of that scene, they don't really represent what the stripped down basics of post-rock really means, which is music produced by your standard rock instruments such as bass, guitar, and drums--yet most crucially to exist without vocals.  Many post-rock bands sort of emulate an ebb and flow pattern of quietly building music which crescendos into levels of Marshally-stacked loudness which then gradually descend back into tranquility, but this sort of music also features practitioners who interpolate elements of electronics, such as England's 65daysofstatic, one of my favorites.   anyhow here's the mix tape I made for you, birdy.  I hope you can listen to it from way out there on the other side.   miss you every day  ~Grub 

l i g h t

by Shaun Lawton

The tangential is an ideal device 

for circumscribing the known universe 

because to draw a circle one may begin 

at any point.  In the case of our cosmos 

we may end up with something which 

resembles a cross webbing of crown 

but the principle remains the same

a spiraling of circles in perpetuity 

spirographically carving out 

a heliodimensional gyroscopic 

area through which it passes 

leaving behind the trace dying 

embers of its astral ghost 

to linger longer for us to look at

because when we step outside  

at night and stare out at the stars

we are gazing directly at death 

Light

by Shaun Lawton


The tangential is an ideal device 
for circumscribing the known 
universe, because to draw a 
circle, one may begin at any 
point.  In the case of our 
cosmos, we may end up 
with something which 
more resembles a 
cross webbed crown
but the principle remains 
the same, a spiraling of circles 
in perpetuity spirographically 
carving out a heliodimensional 
gyroscopic area through which 
it passes leaving behind the trace 
dying embers of its astral ghost 
(to linger longer for us to look at
because when we step outside 
at night and stare out at the stars
we are gazing directly at death).  

Teenagers Destroyed My Planet

That is what human beings appear to be today. 

 A race of teenagers running amok.

  As everyone over the age of thirty already knows, teenagers have got a lot to learn about life. Obviously, they themselves are the only ones to not realize this.  

Precisely the quality I find most prominent in our culture.  

Which brings us to the real point. 

 Perhaps my observations apply more strictly to Americans; maybe there exists on this planet a culture—several cultures, most likely—which indeed have matured well past the freshly post-adolescent phase of their youth.   

These are the people we must seek out, and learn from. 

 Because teenagers have destroyed my planet. 

 And I should know, because I was one myself. 

 I wanted to save the world.  But I didn't.  Oh well.

 Then I grew up.  Too late now—the teenagers would say.  

Well not so fast. Now I'm a father.  I will be raising a new teenager, see.  

There is always hope for the human race.  Oh yes, one more thing.  

Given enough time, we will all grow up eventually.     

Taken away—not a chance. 

|^ ^u^ |^

by Shaun Lawton

The word robot traces back to the Czech word robotnik, meaning 'slave', from
robota "forced labor, compulsory service, drudgery."  The English translation
of author Karel Capek's play "R.U.R." ("Rossum's Universal Robots") shortened
that to "robot"; which may be traced further back to Old Church Slavonic robota, or 
"servitude," so we can all see with no uncertainty that the implementation 
of robots to serve mankind would be nothing short of slavery, in and of itself. 

This should be perfectly clear to anyone who even has a remote understanding
of robotics and what it means to us as the master human race.   We're still
arguing whether or not we have a soul for crying out loud.  Does sentience
qualify one for discrimination?  That is a doomed argument, I am happy to say.

For example, if one were to raze forests for wood pulp from which to manufacture
paper that is used to bind books which are distributed uniformly about the land
in order to facilitate every individual user's needs in the area of information and
help them adjust towards a better understanding of their environment and place
in the whole of creation, that is all very well and good—except for the small matter
of displacing critical members of the ecology to the point of possibly compromising
our own existence—then it is understood, in a larger context, to pay respect to the
overall consequences and rectify matters by modifying certain aspects of the production
of books in order that the business of making them continues by virtue of a renewable resource.  In this regard, it is possible to compute the necessary minerals and compounds 
for the construction, manufacturing, and distribution of robots in our modern society,
and factor the sum impact that every consequential aspect of the process amounts to. 

As for the long held theory of the possibilities for simulations of artificial consciousness
goes, again my main point is that perhaps we should think twice before making any
aspect of consciousness (such as sentience, for example) markers that define boundaries
for what gets to enjoy certain rights.   If a rock is a necessary aspect of the overall
ecological picture (and in most cases, it is) then caution and care must be factored into
any endeavors which strive to carry out the wholesale destruction of rocks, lest we
suffer the unforeseen consequences of our rash advances against nature.  

And that is the main issue, here.  We need to keep ourselves attuned and go with Nature.
In a sense, we need to extend the boundaries of equality to include everything without exception.  The unknown is connected to everything, it is the root of all things known. 
From a seed which emerged from negative existence into our current static existence,
the tree of life was grown which continues to harbor us to this day and remains one
single entity who broke apart into so many clones of itself for so long that its latest offspring of generations have come to believe they are somehow separate from the One Tree and that even all of the trees today are separate from themselves, if you could possibly begin to imagine such a thing. 

The idea of an artificial humanoid not even being granted the permission to pretend it is sentient should be an utterly repellant one for us.  The more complicated our programming of the successive generations of rapidly improving robotics systems becomes, the more we will necessarily have to allow for a modicum of "sentience simulation" in order to carry across the complex commands and executions expected from such sophisticated machines. 

The dawning realization that the bipedal hominid form happens to be the optimal configuration for any advanced consciousness or simulation of such should be enough evidence in and of itself to lend a chill down the spines of the ones thinking about it.  

It's not a question of do robots have a consciousness, nor is it a question of do human beings have a soul.  It is entirely a matter of these questions being quintessentially moot points which should long ago have been discarded as so much "besides the point" as to essentially serve as a distraction from the more pressing real issues demanding our attentions.  These questions have been nullified as meaningless.  File under A for Absurd.

All Creation lies under the sanctity of sharing Equal Rights due to It All Being One Thing. 

Until humanity gets this concept firmly planted and having taken true root in its consciousness—that absolutely everything in existence without exception is essential and should be respected as such—then I'm afraid we may be typified as a species whose adolescence is not even close to being over.  

Amendment IV

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, 
against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, 
and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, 
supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly 
describing the place to be searched, 
and the persons or things to be seized.

Amendment II

A well regulated Militia,
being necessary to the security 
of a free State, the right of the people 
to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Amendment ^

Nothing shall be held 

to answer for a crime, 

unless on the indictment 

of a Grand Jury, 

with no exceptions. 

Nor shall anything be subject 

for the same offense 

to be twice put in danger; 

nor shall be compelled in any case 

to be a witness against itself, 

nor be deprived of anything, 

without due process of law.  

Amendment V

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, 
unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, 
except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, 
or in the Militia, when in actual service 
in time of War or public danger. 

Nor shall any person be subject for the same offense 
to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; 
nor shall be compelled in any criminal case 
to be a witness against himself, 
nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, 
without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken 
for public use, without just compensation.