Not Always

 Ever hear this one?


If you fall off a horse, get right back on again.

That platitude can get you in trouble, especially if it's a crazy horse that's thrown you and  it tramples you afterwards and you wind up with twelve broken bones, a ventilated spleen and traumatic brain injury as a result.

You should be getting into an ambulance at this point, but instead you cast about for another horse and lo, sure enough there's one right there, stirrups at the ready. Somehow, you climb on.

For a moment it feels like victory, but that is short-lived. As the endorphin rush wears off, you realize that this is not just another day at the races. Your new horse is not only a crazy horse, it is a crazy vampire horse with rabies, distemper, Hoof & Fang disease and wearing a bridle made of flaming barbed wire.  If you are lucky, you'll fall off. If you're smart, you'll jump.

If you are lucky, your fall will be broken by a bed of music and you'll land safely atop a giant stack of old albums. You'll perform the lost ritual of listening and start feeling better, mending as the music touches you. Even the really bad songs will make you smile. Music will heal you.

Until you consider the damage it does to the environment. It dawns on you that all extant mass-produced recorded musical formats, i.e, records, tapes and CDs are made out of plastics, which are petroleum-based. There are millions and millions, maybe billions of these things out there- how much oil was used to make them and what happens to those records that don't pass the sniff-test of the 25-cent bins? They go into a landfill and live forever, is what. That is how 99.9% of bands will achieve immortality, by leaching into the aquifer.

You, on the other hand, will simply be buried under your own record collection, not to mention the tapes and old electronics in your closet. And what about all of the electricity that all of those bands- including yours- have used over the last fifty or sixty years? All of those amplifiers and PA systems suck enormous amounts of juice.

You could have done something productive with all of that electricity, like grow pot or electrocute prisoners, but no...you had to go and make a band instead. And what about touring? Think of all those vehicles, everything from private airliners to stolen Econo-Liners, all being used to shuttle energy-gobblin' noise merchants from venue to venue. Those all burn fuel.

Even your instruments are planet-killers. What are your guitars made of?

Wood and metal.

Wood is nothing more than the butchered carcass of a dead tree and you can't get metal without mining. And mining kills trees. The same trees that died for your album covers.

Don't forget the moral pollution either. You wonder why the music business sucks? It sucks for the same reason that our political system sucks, corruption and greed- the few good individuals who get involved tend to choke on their own vomit or die in small-plane crashes and the evil ones get all the cash.

So  what can you do? You can't sing worth a damn and your instruments all have Gaea's blood on them. Perhaps you can try busking sans music, walking the streets with a shoebox in your hand, humming a little so people don't think  you're a mime.

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THE NEW BREAKFAST SNOB:4-23-2011

Podcast here.

Eleni Mandell- I Love Planet Earth

Steeleye Span- Edwin

Hot Tuna- Surphase Tension
Phaser. Gobs of phaser.

Roy Harper- Cherishing The Lonesome

Robbie Robertson- Ghost Dance

Jimi Hendrix- Little Wing

Lou Reed- A Gift

Peter Tosh- I'm The Toughest

Richard Thompson- Gypsy Love Songs

HuDost- Ergan Deda

HuDost "Ergen Deda" from North Avenue Studios on Vimeo.

Bob Dylan &The Band- Too Much of Nothing

Rickie Lee Jones- Weasel and the White Boy Cools

The Old Haunts- Poisonous Times

The Kinks- Live Life

Joan Armatrading-(I Love it When) You Call Me Names

Klark Kent- Don't Care

Belly- Judas My Heart

Stackridge- No One's More Important Than The Earth Worm

HuDost- Skeleton Key

Melanie- Got My Mojo Working

Al Stewart- Terminal Eyes

XTC- This World Over

HuDost- Skeleton Key

Bruce Cockburn- Peggy's Kitchen Wall

Snakefinger- Jesus Was a Leprechaun

It's A Beautiful Day- Bombay Calling

Jethro Tull- Singing All Day

Funkadelic- Trash-A-Go-Go

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