Altered States of the Arts

Dear Readers,

I have been forgetting to tell all of you that I am now on a great website through Altered States of the Arts. There is poetry and pictures of my art on the site along with some poetry by my sister Marie, who died from melenoma in 2005. There is also artwork by Sybil Nobel that is excellent. Go to www.alteredstatesofthearts.com .

And please leave me your comments.

Peace
david

1977-1980 Punk and Joy Division

I met this young 19 year old dude at the protest. We got to talking about music and I said I loved punk rock. He said "Never met anyone your age that said they liked punk rock!" "Well I am a little strange I said. I have been listening to punk rock since 1980 when I was 13." I said.

That night I was planning to watch Control, which is a fantastic movie about the lead singer of Joy Division, Ian Curtis. When I said to the leader of the protest peace movement that I was leaving to watch a movie he was like, "Leaving to see a movie. Can't you wait till the vigil is over?"

I explained that it was not just any movie. This was the life of Ian Curtis who is one of the best lyicists in all of time. He was like a punk Bob Dylan in that his lyrics were never simple song structures. His lyrics speak to me in a way that trancends most other punk bands with the exception of Gang of Four's Entertainment album. Closure is my all time favorite album from the 1977 to 1980 British Punk scene. This wonderful but depressing album came out a few days after Ian Curtis hung himself.

I guess it is dangerous for someone like me to like such music. Once I swallowed a shitload of Lithium when I was depressed while listening to Closer. I have it on vynal and to this day I put it on the turntable every once and a while.

The definative Joy Division collection is Heart and Soul, which is a four CD set that has Closer and Unknown Pleasures, their first album along with outtakes and singles like Atmosphere or the lovely Love Will Tear Us About which was their biggest hit.

Since seeing this movie and The Joy Division movie I have been listening to their music more closely. Songs like Isolation or Colony both off of Closer are the product of a geinus. The producer of Closer even said this to Ian after he laid the vocals for the track in the studio. (At least in the movie version.)

I think it is sad that people with that much talent off themselves. As a person with Bipolar I can understand how horrible life can become when one is in the mist of a depressive episode. Ian had depression on top of his seizure disorder. He and Joy Division (The name comes from the Nazi's. I think it is what they referred to as prostitutes or women who were used as sex slaves.) are a briliant band. After Ian died the rest of the band went on to become New Order, a great eighties band but never quite as good as Joy Division. If you do not own any of their music and are a fan of British punk rock of the 1977-1980 era you should check them out. In my opinion this era died in 1980 when Ian hung himself. Definately check them out.

Peace

Stigma No Longer Troubles

I wrestled with the stigma demon for years. Part of me felt like less then human due to my mental illness. I thought people saw me just as a disease not a human.

Things were harder in the late 80's early 90's when it finnally dawned on me that I had this so called brain disease. I hated myself and the world around me which was constantly portraying people like me in a negative fashion. I could not laugh and say to myself "They say what they say because they are ignorant."

I got into the face of anyone who I thought was stigmatizing me and my fellow brain diseased compatriots. I went up to several professors while in college and told them that they were dehumanizing me and other people with brain diseases. I told them that they would not talk in such a way when it came to people of color or people with cancer or whatever. One of the professors actually became my advisor.

Today I am thinking of stigma since I am wearing a no stigma teeshirt. I bought it at the PMHCA (Pennsylvania Mental Health Consumer Association) conference. I got it for five dollars since it was dirty. I wear it and think to myself, thank God for the movement. Thank God for all of us speaking out and saying stigma stinks, we are human beings. Treat us as such.

Today I can watch a movie that makes fun of mental illnesses. What is wrong with laughing at oneself or the situation. Some would say there is nothing funny about mental illness but as a person dealing with such issues I find it a hell of a lot easier to just laugh. This does not mean I have no pride in myself. It just means I will not succomb to stigma.

Bush On Abortion

All my Christain Conservative family members feel that Bush is a great Christain leader. They site his stance on abortion and his opposition to gay rights as proof that he is a legitamate Christian.

I personally feel that he is an evil warmonger but lets look at his stance on abortion, instead of things like gay marriage in which he shines brightly as a leader of the so called Christian Right.

Immediately after taking office Bush cut funding for The UNPA (United Nations Population Fund) a program that provided prevention of unwanted pregnacies. United Nations officials determined that 800,000 abortions could have been prevented if Bush allowed these services to continue. Also these cuts resulted in the deaths of 4,700 women and 77,000 children.

How is this pro-life? How is this Christian? One only hopes his successor will do a better job of providing funding to organizations that provide services that provent abortion.

George Bush The Gas Guzzle

When George Bush was first elected to the kingship he said "Americans don't care about hybrid cars and all that stuff." Well something like that. After all one can not remember everything that moron has said during his almost eight year reign.

Well Americans do care. Especially now that gas is four dollars a gallon. I get a kick out of the TV ads that offer guaranteed $2.99 gas for so many miles in a two year span. So you buy this gas guzzle and you will not have to pay outrageously at the pump for the first 12,000 miles.

GM is scaling back on SUV's, trucks and other gas guzzlers. They are closing several factories were these gas guzzlers are made. Yesterday I read that the Prius, which is made by Toyota, has sold over one million at this point. I would like to own one but they are 22,ooo dollars, way over my budget. I do own a Corrola which does beautifully on the highways.

Well what about George Bush ??? I bet he is fuming about how his America is no more. We want better gas millage King George. If he would have done something about it when he got into office we would have more fuel efficient cars. And yes he was part of the conspiracy to kill the electric car, which was available in California during the late 1990's. These cars would be plugged in every night and then driven for up to 90 miles or so during the day. GM inbounded the cars which did not make sense since they were leased. One of the gas companies bought the patent for the battery. (See Who Killed the Electric Car for more info.)

So I am hoping that the American car companies get with it and develop something to compete with the Prius. I read recently that Toyota is the number one car company in the world now. This is because they did not listen to George Bush. They did the right thing.

Vinyl Records And the Dead Kennedys in Particular

I started collecting vinyl records back in the day before CDs. As a kid I would get vinyl records for Christmas such as a Billy Joel album from my oldest sister(I can't stand his music now), A Van Halen album from my aunt and uncle and a Stevie Wonder album from my parents.

I did not become a serious collector until age 13, which was 1980, a time of many great punk bands. When I was visiting my cousin David back in the day, he turned me on to Gang of Four, The Stranglers, 999, Wire and other punk bands that just emerged onto the music scene a few years back. He lent me his forty fives which was a really cool collection of music for a 13 year old to listen to.

I remember going with my sister Marie and her friend Leslie to New York City. It was at an independent punk rock record store in the village where I picked up Fresh Fruit for Rotten Vegetables by the Dead Kennedys, since my cousin said "You gotta get this album."

My sister and Leslie were reading the lyrics on the train home. "How does it look?" I asked. They just laughed.

When I got home I listened to it constantly and memorized the lyrics from side A to side B. The album began with Kill the Poor and ended with Viva Los Vegas which of course was them covering the classic Elvis song. Some of the lyrics on the album were on the depressing side such as "Why am I alive. Urban Wonderland. By the fields I stand. In and out of hand." At least those are the lyrics I now recall.

My mother saw the album sitting on the top of my vinyl collection and gasped "The Dead Kennedy's. That is an awful name for a rock band." "It's not rock, mom." I said. "It's punk."
I was so glad that she decided not to investigate any further and read the lyrics, since she would have comfascated the album due to the content.

I do not think that the Dead Kennedy's songwriter Jello Biafri was a Nazi Skinhead since I think he was being sarcastic when he sang such songs as Kill the Poor, in which it could be misconstrued that he was advocating bombing the projects. I do think some people believed this to be so, which is probably why they came out with the song "Nazi Punks Fuck Off" on a later album which I believe was either called In God We Trust or Plastic Surgery Disaster.

Well when I was high and down in the dumps I got pissed off and broke my Radio Shack Stereo and amazingly I lived without music for a few years. I sold all my vinyl records and bought a bag of weed with the money. But in the back of my head I knew I would come back to music someday.

When I was 18 I bought a new stereo.Since Cds had come out by then (It was 1986." I started collecting CDs. I remember that one of the first Cd's I bought was Scary Monsters by David Bowie,who I think is a genius to this day.

Vinyl was still around back then so I would pick up new albums by some of my favorite bands such as the Dead Kennedy's FrankenChrist, which contained a poster that looked like dicks in action. The band was sued by a family who had a young son who's sister purchased the album as a Christmas present.

A lot of the bands from back then are no more. The Dead Kennedy's were touring a few years back but it was without Jello Biafri so I do not think that really counts since he was the singer and the primary songwriter. I believed the band sued him for back royalties. Someone once told me that he would hum the songs and the band would compose the music based on his humming.

Well the neat thing now is that vinyl is making a major comeback. The other day while in Saratoga with a friend I met through my zine, Transcendent Visions, I went to a record store were they sold vinyl records. I bought a new sealed copy of The Dead Boys. (Yes another punk band with dead in their name.) The lead vocalist Stiv Bators was in John Waters Polyester, one of my favorite movies of all time. (At least I believe it was him.)

While I was in the store a younger person around my nephews age (mid to late 20's) was buying Pink Floyd's Animals. I said to him "I got that on vinyl also. Along with The Wall and another one which slips my memory.

Anyway, I think that vinyl actually sounds better then CD's. And obviously so does a lot of people in the younger generation. The woman at the counter persuaded me to shell out the 15 dollars for the Dead Boys album by saying "This is a classic punk record that all punk lovers should own." I asked her how the vinyl was selling and she said it was 75% of their sales.

So I walked out of there with 7 new records (Well six of them were actually used, but new to me.) for 42 dollars. I was glad I found the Captain Sensible album since I was listening to the Animal Liberation compilation album for a long time, which had one of his songs, What No Meat and I really loved that song.

Well I do not think I will ever stopped buying vinyl since there is just something magical about the vinyl record spinning round on a turntable. And the Dead Kennedy's. Yes I still to this day listen to them from time to time and when I got the Rolling Stone record guide and saw only four stars out of five for Fresh Fruit for Rotten Vegetables I was seriously thinking of writing them and saying Fuck Off. That would be real punk rock of me. Now Wouldn't it???

The Jitterbug--Momma Poem 1

On one rainy May day
Back in the mid nineteen seventies
Momma came to me and said
"It is time for you to learn how to dance.
When you meet a girl and get married
you will be thankful that I taught you
how to dance."
She flipped through her record collection
looking for records to dance to.
"When your father and I were young
we did the Jitterbug," she said.
Jitterbug I thought.
What a crazy name for a dance.
Mother put a record on the phonograph player.
It was Glen Miller,
Tommy Dorsey or some other performer
from her day. The nineteen forties
The years in which my parents met at
high school and courted each other
to high school dances.
She would take me in her arms
and we would dance in the living room.
She moved so gracefully.
I moved so awkwardly.
I was eight years old
and it felt strange dancing with my mother
but I enjoyed the stories she would tell
about when they were growing up
and how the music of their day
was so nice compared to my brother's
acid rock. We'd dance and all the while
my eyes would peer out the window
wondering if someone was watching.
After all who wants to be seen
dancing with their mother.