Dear Friends,
It is funny how a day can make a difference. On Saturday, I was looking at the world differently and, yes, there are still a ton of reasons to not be happy with the universe, but Sunday gave me hope. Things might be okay.
The news from Maine is positive and while there is a (hopefully) long, unknown path forward with lots of “ifs” and “maybes” and “goddamnits,” it’s still tenuous and scary and not particularly promising on the most personal of levels. If Doug can pull through this and gets on a path to what will be his new normal, it will mean being without Rhondi for a long time. I’m okay with this because it means that she gets more time with her dad.
I’m sad because it will mean ten months of maybe seeing each other a few times.
This is something that the people who serve our country deal with and I trust her and our marriage, but it still sucks. At this point, I don’t even know what things look like for more than a few days, though, so there is no point in really looking at any kind of plan just yet. I have to remind myself that worry is not worth the time.
*****
We had a really good Freeze practice yesterday, though. I left there feeling pretty good about how good we can be as a band again. I’m already excited about next Sunday.
After that and a quick trip to Costco, I headed out to Aaron’s so we could watch Every Which Way But Loose to get ideas for our Philo Beddoe project. That movie is so damn entertaining. I wrote about 7 pages of notes to draw lyrics and song titles from, so there will be no shortage of ideas. It was nice to hangout with Aaron and Dave and not be making loud noises.
From there, I stopped by home, fed the dogs, and then went over the J’s house. It was really good to be with them and the S’s. I was stuffed from eating pizza at Aaron’s so I missed out on an incredible looking meal, but just being there with them helped me feel like I was in a safe spot and even though so much scary stuff is happening in Maine, I can breathe a little bit.
I love my friends.
Hell, I love everybody right now. Jesus was right about that stuff.
*****
Today is another day to get a few things done and rest up for getting back to work. Laundry, too.
*****
From the first time I heard the songs “Religion I” and “Religion II,” I was hooked on PiL. I don’t exactly remember when this was, but from that moment forward, I would tell anyone who would listen how PiL was better than the Sex Pistols and if you didn’t agree, I would think terrible, petty things about you. This is a fact about my brain in the mid-1980s.
Most people didn’t seem to get PiL, and I was okay with that. I love the Sex Pistols, don’t get me wrong, and it was because of knowing about the Sex Pistols that I sought out PiL. I had to find out what Johnny Rotten was up to after he left the Pistols and when I did, that was it.
I love all their records. Public Image (First Issue) is one of the finest moments in the infancy of the post-punk movement. Jah Wobble’s bass lines on the record are among my all-time favorites. Simple yet powerful and right there driving the music as much as any other aspect. For me, when I think about why I play bass, the PiL bass lines are one of the main reasons why I love the instrument.
While Public Image is only eight songs, it’s not really a short record. It’s meaty, for sure, thanks to longer songs like the opener, “Theme” and the closer, “Fodderstompf” which take up almost half of the 35 or so minutes of music. Neither of those songs seem overly long to me, though. This is why I am the perfect person to be a PiL fan. I like repetitive songs.
“Religion I” and “Religion II” are also, basically, one long song and “Annalisa” is exactly six minutes long, too. As I write this, I realize that this is probably only interesting to me and maybe a half-dozen other people around the planet so I’m going to get back to the “why” of PiL.
The band has such dynamic recordings that just about any of them would have been believable as their debut because they continued to reinvent themselves throughout their career and there was a fair number of band members, too. Public Image is the band at its most stripped-down, although Metal Box (Second Edition) is also similar in style.
As I mentioned, the first songs that really jumped out at me were the two “Religion” tracks. They were aligned with the confusion I was feeling in my teens around the idea of organized religion and also felt decidedly punk rock. John Lydon’s lyrics are still able to get me worked up on the inside and, again, the bass line is phenomenal.
“Public Image” is also a wonderful song. I love it and play the bass line while I’m warming up time to time. Is there are better song by a band that has a title with most their band name in it? I don’t think so. I also love that he is singing about the Sex Pistols here.
I had to take a little break from writing this to figure out the “Religion” and “Annalisa” bass lines. I usually never do that sort of thing, but I got a little charged up. I still love them. They really have had a huge influence on how I write riffs.
“Annalisa” is a song about a little girl who was thought to be possessed by the devil, so her parents starved her. I kind of love that I also picked up some of my writing cues from Lydon, as well, when it comes to lyrics. He likes to write about things from every day life that he finds peculiar or that piss him off. “Annalisa” is sneaky good.
“Low Life” is about Sid Vicious, I’m pretty sure. I love how Wobble plays the same note and then alternates the accent notes with two different ones. Supe simple, but effective. Then he goes to a slightly different pattern and it kind of just repeats itself like the others.
“Attack” and “Fodderstompf” are noisy and fucked up and when I first heard them, my mind was admittedly a bit blown that you could do songs like them. Of course, I was 9 when this came out, but at 15 or so, I was pretty much in awe of my new discovery.
PiL forever. I’m going to go back to learning basslines.
*****
See you tomorrow.
Well done, AI. Braaaaaah-vo!
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