When I lived in Burlington VT, back in late fall 2000, I bought a 4-track cassette recorder with my roommate Tyler Bolles. The plan was to start recording some stuff and get some ideas going. I thoroughly monopolized the thing though, and after a few months I bought out his half. For the first time in my life I was able to write songs that, for lack of a better term, were “good” or “real.” The 4-track helped immensely. And it lead me through a self-taught tutorial on recording. From panning, to bouncing, to mic placement, to EQing and mixing, my 4-tracker days were unbelievably formative and prolific for me. I started slapping the moniker “The Lazy Songwriter” on my demos. Not because my songwriting was particularly lazy — in fact, I wrote and recorded about a song a day for awhile, in almost every style imaginable. From pop, to bluegrass and gospel, to punk rock, to experimental noise, to reggae, to hip hop and R&B. I was 20 years old, didn’t work very much, slept in till 1 p.m. every day and stayed up to watch the sunrise pretty often. Maybe laid-back is a better term. But “The Laid-back Songwriter” doesn’t have the same ring to it.

Eventually, I had about a set’s worth of material and got some friends together to try to play them live. Tyler joined up on upright bass, banjo and vocals, and David Stockhausen on drums, banjo and vocals. Yeah, there was a lot of banjo. We played our first show at The Radio Bean coffeehouse on May 3rd, 2001. That’s right, 10 years ago today. The show was well attended, and we had lots of fun. For the next year or so, we performed in and around Burlington (mostly at Radio Bean), recorded one full-length and generally had a great time. We didn’t rehearse that much, so we were sloppy. The line-up and instrumentation changed constantly. But, as embarrassing as some of the recordings are to me personally now… we sure had a lot of fucking heart!

So today, on the 10 year anniversary of our first show, I would like to present to you a recording of that show, made by our friend Tim Marcus — who was also the sound engineer for said show, my 4-track mixdown engineer and a one-time member of the band (for one practice that is) . It’s from a 10 year old burned CD, so unfortunately I was only able to rip a portion of the show onto my computer for your listening pleasure, but I got a lot of the good stuff. Also, I would like to digitally re-release our first and only full-length, The Lazy Songwriter, and a compilation of random demos and live recordings called Anti-Cruising Law & Other Favorites. If you were a fan or friend of the band, I hope you enjoy this musical stroll down memory lane, and if this is your first time hearing it… don’t judge too harshly! We were just kids!

I would like to thank all “official” former members of the band: Tyler Bolles, Ariel Bolles, P. David Stockhausen, Michael Scott Duplessis, Michael Piche and Tim Marcus. Plus all of the people who hung out with, recorded with, performed with or booked us over the years (during our original run or during one of our “reunion concerts”): Emily Day, Jordan Adams, Tony Shull, Dan Bolles, Casey Rae-Hunter, Lyle King, Marie Whiteford, Tobias Rower, Peter Burton, Dan Schwartz, Andrew Vick, Pat May, Nina De Leon, Alex Crothers, Ethan Covey and especially Lee Anderson for booking our first show and every show since.

Please feel free to listen to, download and share! The albums are compressed as .zip files, but they may take a few minutes to download. A few preview tracks are available to stream for each album as well. Enjoy!

-Arthur Leon Adams III

LISTEN: The Lazy Songwriter – Live at Radio Bean (5/3/01)

1. The Never Ever Song
2. I must be blind.
3. Through the TV part two
4. SLEEPY
5. Untitled (How many covers?)
6. Happy Birthday to Dave & My Dad
7. Beyond Belief (Elvis Costello & The Attractions)

Arthur Leon Adams III – vocals, guitar
Tyler Bolles – upright bass, mandolin, vocals
P. David Stockhausen – drums, banjo, vocals

Tim Marcus — sound engineer, recordist. The crackling noise coming from the acoustic guitar is a problem with the guitar’s pickup and is in the original recording. And it’s not Tim’s fault!

The Lazy Songwriter, The Lazy Songwriter (LP)
[RIGHT OR CONTROL CLICK TO DOWNLOAD .ZIP FILE]

1. The Never Ever Song
2. Back in Fashion [LISTEN]
3. SLEEPY [LISTEN]
4. Purple Blues
5. Naked Arm [LISTEN]
6. (romantic part)
7. We sang to Jesus [LISTEN]
8. Through the TV part two
9. R&R Star [LISTEN]
10. Girlfriend Punk [LISTEN]
11. I don’t want to talk

All songs by Arthur Leon Adams III ©2001-2002 TLSongs.

Recorded on 4-track by Arthur Leon Adams III, spring 2002.
Mixed and mastered by Tim Marcus at Milkmansound. ©2002 TLSongs.

Arthur Leon Adams III – vocals, guitars, piano, vibraphone, etc
Ariel Bolles – vocals, trombone
Tyler Bolles – vocals, upright bass, banjo, etc
P. David Stockhausen – vocals, drums, banjo, guitar

The Lazy Songwriter, Anti-Cruising Law & Other Favorites (Compilation)
[RIGHT OR CONTROL CLICK TO DOWNLOAD .ZIP FILE]

1. Anti-cruising Law (live) [LISTEN]
2. (The One Who’s Gonna) Save The World [LISTEN]
3. ITCH [LISTEN]
4. I Fear YR Right
5. BIG LIE
6. accrega b
7. Money Off The Crutch!!! [LISTEN]
8. That thing we just did.
9. Under it [LISTEN]
10. When You Stare [LISTEN]
11. She’s an Angel (live)
12. The Weather
13. Pretty Girl (come on and learn to dance)
14. Some Romantic Part of the World
15. SOME DAYS [LISTEN]
16. ITCH (Live)
17. Baby, I’m Comin’ Around
18. She’s a Whaaaa???? (live)

All songs by Arthur Leon Adams III ©2001-2002 TLSongs except “She’s an Angel” by Linnell/Flansburgh and “She’s a whaaaa???” by Linnell/Flansburgh/Traditional/Adams.

Recorded on 4-track by Arthur Leon Adams III
Live recordings by Tim Marcus and/or Lee Anderson.

Performed by Arthur Leon Adams III, Ariel Bolles, Tyler Bolles, Emily Day, Michael Scott Duplessis, Michael Piche, Daniel Schwartz, P. David Stockhausen and Andrew Vick.

With this line, Val Kilmer’s slithery performance in Oliver Stone‘s The Doors comes to a close. No doubt that Jim Morrison was one of rock’s most intriguing front men, yet by the end of his short life, he was a tubby, poor man’s Burroughs with a penchant for whiskey, women and Mexican food.

The Doors were the antithesis of the 1960s preoccupation with love and good vibes. Although based in sunny California, Jimbo and the boys dealt in the dark, macabre and hypnotic — unconventional themes for the time.

The surviving Doors never turn down an opportunity to wax nostalgic about their long dead singer, presenting him as everything from a 20th-Century shaman to a resurrection of Dionysus. Morrison was certainly aware of how his image shaped the band. His canny and often cryptic use of media created a lasting icon. Morrsion’s peackocking visage has leered from dorm room walls for generations, and continues to serve as a visual touchstone for the sexy, rebellious side of rock.

Ride the snake, kids. Ride the snake.

And here we are, 39 years since Morrison’s bloated body was found in a Paris bathtub. People around the world still celebrate the life of a man who claimed that the souls of Native American auto fatalities leapt into his body when he was a child. Well, Morrison’s own soul has apparently leapt into another vessel: a taco shop on West Hollywood’s Santa Monica Boulevard called Mexico Restaurante y Barra. Specifically, their bathroom.

Forty years ago this building was actually Doors HQ. Artists, musicians and sundry ’60s hangers-on would lounge around the future enchilada sling-shop to experience the times and create art. Call it Warhol Factory West.

What now is a bathroom was once Morrison’s vocal booth. Here, he recorded the vocal track for numerous songs, including my personal favorite, “LA Woman.” The restaurant pays tribute to the The Doors by augmenting the Mexican décor with band photos, gold records and other memorabilia.

Owners of the eatery, self-proclaimed Doors fans, feel the presence of Morrison in the bathroom. Light bulbs pop, the building makes moaning sounds and voices can be heard within the stalls.

Haunted or not, Mexico Restaurante y Barra is worth a visit if you find yourself in the neighborhood. A true piece of rock real estate, the walls have absorbed more than just the aroma of nachos, they’ve reverberated with the sounds of one of America’s legendary bands.

So go ahead and have a burrito. And if it happens to “Break on Through to the Other Side,” take a seat in the bathroom. Maybe the Lizard King will help you light that fire.

I woke up with “Wrapped Around Your Finger” by the Police in my head. I didn’t have time to listen to it before I was out the door (that’s how you skewer an earworm, btw), but it came on the radio as soon as I turned on the ignition. I didn’t even miss the intro! Now that’s what I call synchronicity. An aside: this song neatly encapsulates the themes for my next record, which could be why it popped into my head in the first place.

Next up was “Talking in Your Sleep,” by the Romantics. Not a great song by any stretch of the imagination, but it fit the chilly, 1980s vibe well enough.

After that came “Send Me an Angel,” by Real Life. Again, it’s hardly a song for the ages, but it’s sometimes fun to revel in its unabashed goth-pop goofiness. And check out the video!

Finally, I heard one of my all-time favorites, “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun,” by the inimitable Cyndi Lauper. There’s nothing I don’t love about this woman, and this song never fails to make me misty — I have no clue why. Even the dorky bottlecaps synth solo is awesome. “Some boys take a beautiful girl / and hide her away from the worst in the world / I wanna be the one to walk in the sun / cuz girls just wanna have fun.” Amen. Oh, and R.I.P., Captain Lou.

OK, I’m super-busy, so I gotta run.

Well, we started out with Fugazi‘s latest/last (?) album, The Argument. You could look at Fugazi’s entire catalog from this album and see in crystalline vision the sum of it’s parts. It’s as though they explained everything. Even now, each time I hear this record I relive the entire span of my deep love of this band, and, like when I first bought it, can listen to it over and over and over again and still feel excited.

Jimi Hendrix‘s sister gained control of his catalog and reissues began to emerge with wonderful rare tracks, heavy vinyl, and lush packaging incorporating handwritten mementos and fabulous photos. Jimi is proof of Intelligent Design.

I collected many copies of Sly and the Family Stone‘s boggling There’s A Riot Goin’ On and Bob Marley‘s simmering Catch A Fire on vinyl etc. This is a sweet sickness. I love revolution records.

El-P offered his incendiary first solo effort, Fantastic Damage. This is one of my top ten records of all time; it always gave me courage and clarity. I went to NYC several times to catch El’s rare performances (despite what he says, he never played in Burlington while I lived there). Visiting this incredible city was a great inspiration for me to move here, which has made me very happy. Eventually I got to hear him play “Tuned Mass Damper” live and again, I felt a huge weight lifted from me.

More memories after the jump…

Mike Patton, another dark genius and vocal gymnast, had a lot going on that I loved. I saw Fantômas open for Tool on their tour for Lateralus, which was just an Awesome Assault.

Outkast‘s Stankonia blew our lives open. Finally: a dirty, filthy, hard-hitting funk record for our generation. They changed the game for everyone.

Mos Def. Love Mos Def. Black On Both Sides, his single with DJ Shadow from The Private Press, his show with Black Jack Johnson at Higher Ground. The hip-hop coming out of California at that time was exciting too, with absolutely grand live shows from Blackalicious and Jurassic 5 and many others from the groovy sun-drenched West Coast.

Had a great time DJing on Free Radio Burlington with Mothertrucker on our Friday night show, “Two Chicks From The Sticks.” Blending Burroughs with all the dark disruptive beats from Anticon and Stone’s Throw and Def Jux, on sentimental nights ending with the Commodores’ “Night Shift,” the bounce, the funk, the gospel, the metal and the Pointer Sisters. The Cancer Conspiracy, Carrigan, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, the Coup, Public Enemy, DJ Spooky, the Dischord box set, Fela Kuti, Harry Belafonte, Odetta, Nina Simone, and the Four Tops. Susumu Yakota, Gong, Motown, Stax, deep blues, that crazy Spiderman record and all that crazy cheap dusty shit we bought in Montreal or rescued from the VPR record fair. But really, I digress.

Indie Rock and IDM were huge and virtually impossible to split into categories. Meanwhile, I was cleaning up the R&B albums in the 45s and the $3 bin at Pure Pop. I was becoming a super nerd, reading a lot of copies of Mojo and listening to Can. I’m not really into irony. So I was really into my head cans, my CD shelves, my record player and it’s accoutrements.

Mia Sladyk convinced me to go see My Morning Jacket one night. I wasn’t going out very much at that time (see above). I had peripherally enjoyed their albums as my friends played them in the coffee shop, thinking it sounded like a nice tribute to Neil Young. But when I got to the show, there was a mix tape playing of Ray Charles and The Staples Singers , and the five hirsute (some barefoot) gentlemen opened with Prince‘s “I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man.” I was shocked to find how well they did it, and how the show became more soulful and exhilerating as the hours surged by. So that’s where my head has been since that fair evening, and in the wake of bearded bands that has followed them. My collection has expanded quite a bit along the lines of folk instrumentation and multi-part vocal harmonies in that context. And the band pairs like a fine wine with the long pined-for Soul Revival we have been experiencing via Daptone, Numero, and the singers and songwriters emerging with new verve. Seeing My Morning Jacket live is the most fun thing to do in the entire world, and their music has been the soundtrack to many indescribable times in my rich life. For an album, I’m going to say Z, though I’m not going to live without a single one of them.

I’m always looking for beats, beats, psychedelic music, insightful lyrics, soaring vocals, harmonies, incredible instrumentation skill, passion, and dance floor burners. I want to tear a hole in the dance floor. And yes, I said beats twice, so you wouldn’t miss it. There have been many mind-blowing albums and artists from the last decade, and certainly further back, that I have missed. I’m excited to become acquainted with all of them, and to see what the kids come up with next. As a wise five-year old once said, “It could be magic, could be nothing.” These last few years have been nothing but magic, so I’m assuming things will keep rolling along in that direction.

My man Delancey Leathers knows from guitar. Which is why I’m throwing his picks into this “supplementary” post. Who is this mysterious Mr. Leathers, you ask? It’s best that I don’t reveal his true identity, but I can say the man is capable of six-string sorcery that most mortals can only dream of.

Anyway, here’s his list.

———————————————

I’m gonna use Rolling Stone’s foccacta list as the definitive mainstream model but also take into account the thousands of debates I’ve had with actual guitarists over the years.

Here are my top 10 underrated guitarists, in no particular order:

1. Django Reinhardt
How this guy is not on the RS list completely blows my mind. He’s the gypsy Jimi Hendrix and he did it all with two fingers. A complete natural with total command of the instrument, super inventive ideas and phrasing, and so influential there are legions of “hot clubs” all over the world that play the music he pioneered. Before Django the guitar wasn’t even taken seriously in jazz. He deserves to be in Rolling Stone’s top 5 and he’s not even on the freaking list.

2. Manuel Gottsching
Ashra‘s Blackouts is flat out one of the coolest guitar albums ever recorded. Every guitar player I know that hears it is blown away by its tastiness and innovation. The guy gets no credit or recognition. Whether he’s freaking out psychedelically in the early days of Ash Ra Tempel, or blazing electronic trails with his later stuff, he’s a true original and an innovator.

3. Les Paul
He’s on the RS list but he needs to be higher up. I’m not gonna regurgitate his credentials. He’s underrated because most people don’t understand what he actually did or how he did it.

4. Pat Martino
The best hard bop guitarist out there. His solos are like fast flowing melodic water. [Editor's Note: Hey, I picked Pat, too!]

5. Scotty Gorham and Brian Robertson
Thin Lizzy baby! You can’t just list one since the awesomeness of one depends on the presence of the other. (Honorable mention to any of the other second guitarists in Lizzy.) [Ed's Note: Hey, I picked them, too!]

6. Frank Black and Joey Santiago (the Pixies)
Another package deal. They are a beautiful Gibson-Fender/lead-rhythm marriage.

7. Adrian Belew
Stunt guitar mastermind. Might have the coolest guitar resume of all time.

8. Gary Lucas
The last of the Beefheart guitarists. Everything he does on the instrument is interesting.

9. Joe Pass
The Pride of New Brunswick, NJ. Another jazz Jedi that gets no love from the non guitar playing world. He transformed the guitar into his own personal piano.

10. Lowell George
An under appreciated slide guitar wizard and a great songwriter. The Little Feat name has been ruined by the bozos that carried it on after he died in 1979, but the albums where he is the main man have some sick guitar work… plus he punched out Mickey Hart. [Ed's Note: I've been saying that we're long overdue for more Lowell appreciation. Glad to see him on the list.]

BONUS:

Erkin Koray
Turk-Psych guitar wizard.

• A Latino death metal band called Sotomayor (after the first Latina Supreme Court justice, natch). The set list is ever-evolving, but most of the titles are either legal terms of art or goofy political memes. Examples: “Endless Liability,” “Blood of the Tyrants,” “Death Panel,” “Goin’ Rogue,” “Constitutionally Flawed Tribunal,” “Tiny Starbursts,” and so on. Some of them are already dated, but there are more every day. My friend Shayne is in law school and she gives me some awesome fodder for songs. My goal is to have Sotomayor featured on the Al Jazeera music program, “Behead the Music.”

• Remember the other fake band from This is Spinal Tap? They were called Duke Fame, but you never actually got to hear them play. I imagine them to be the hair metal equivalent of Morris Day‘s The Time in Purple Rain. I bet I could record their album in a weekend. Alas, I likely never will.

• This morning, I was singing a made-up song called “Is This Your Homework, Larry?” in my best Peter Murphy voice while banging out industrial beats on the shower walls. It was at that moment I decided that I needed to record an album called The Goth Lebowski. I imagine it to be like this classic Silence of the Lambs-inspired ditty, “It Rubs the Lotion On its Skin”:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDgS6qLsVM4

• Speaking of goth, I’ve always wanted to reunite Skathedral — a joke supergroup that a bunch of us Burlington rock stars formed in the 1990s. We played live, but never recorded an album. I’d love to correct this tragic wrong, but it’s extraordinarily unlikely.

• I’d also like to perform and conduct a live reading of the Beach Boys‘ Love You album, which is possibly the most fucked-up record in the universe. If you haven’t heard it, do yourself a favor and track down a copy. I picture this to be my final show (I actually retired from performance years ago, but I think a gig like this should culminate in onstage self-immolation, just to seal the deal).

• There’s a song called “Goin’ for a Ride (On the Wild Side)” from a porn movie I saw in the 1980s. The tune is INCREDIBLE, but I’ve never been able to track down a copy. Still, it plays in my head every day, so I’m confident that I could accurately record it. But I probably never will.

• Another tune that gets stuck in my head a lot is this funky Boy Scouts anthem, “Be Prepared,” which used to run nonstop on Boston’s Channel 56 in the 1970s. I’d love to record it, but I’d need a horn section:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=c34_BSPV8hI

• There’s a song in the original Mad Max called “Licorice Ride” that blows my mind. I’d get a sex change to record this:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLi9Yau0erI

I’m sure I’m forgetting something. . .

But as adults, we naturally want to reinvent our childhoods as a primary colors affair and shove all the old weird feelings (and inconvenient visions and fears and introspectiveness) back down into shadows.

Then we encounter, in say, the Daddy’s Junky Music on Mass Ave this afternoon, a picture that somehow brings it all back:

Dig little brother on the left: first off, I doubt his parents were even born before Simon & Garfunkel‘s Bookends album came out, so how the fuck he is channeling parsley, sage, rosemary & thyme from across the generations? That’s the first obvious clue that this kid is not of this dimension.

Second, just feel for a moment my little man’s approach to the whole photo session. On the one hand, Little Sally Hollywood over on the right is just jazzed to have another photo job to keep Mommy stocked with enough Ritalin to keep her child actor career on an upwardly-mobile track. She’s got that ‘curious’ look down pat; she’s already thinking down the road to her 2pm ‘glee’ gig. But on the other hand, young Malkovitch over there is going all Lee Strasberg on this shit, as if to say “Sure man, we all live in this superficial ‘Shake n’ Play’ world, but truly, what does it mean to listen?” Isn’t that what’s at the heart of all this? Isn’t that the gripping existential question that wakes us up in the middle of the night in our sweat-soaked Spongebob jammies? What are we listening for? Some elusive confirmation that yes, we do the hokey pokey and that is indeed what it’s all about? To look into his eyes is to peer into the inky bottomlessness of our own longing.

Then, shocked and shamed by his unanswerable look, we turn the box over to find this:

Holy shit: who the fuck is this kid, anyway?? And why does his Hitchcockian stare bore holes into my soul? His laser-beam eyes are blazing straight through the falsehoods of my adult life. Now his pensiveness has morphed into an indictment, his insatiable questioning has trained its focus on you. Can you truly meet his gaze, brave and unashamed?

Goddamn, I need a juice box.

This spring has seen a consistent flush of new, captivating sounds springing forth on a wallet-taxing level. Here are a few that have me hooked:

James Ferraro, (link NSFW), better known as part of skronky noiseniks Skaters, has released LP versions of two limited CDRs, Clear and Discovery on the Holy Mountain label. Holy Mountain is one of the most consistent underground labels operating and their stride hasn’t been interrupted here. I’ve so far only heard Clear but it’s aquatic drones have me hungry for more. While past records have stormed towards (and sometimes beyond) the boundaries of listenability, this is as pure and, well, clear as a fucking mountain spring. A dedicated listen brings to mind the kind of free-love kosmische jammed by bearded legions of Krautrock pioneers. This album could have easily slipped from a forgotten page of Julian Cope‘s Krautrock Sampler.

Cleveland-based Emeralds follow a similar path, tracking the far East through the lens of Western Europe’s ’70s psychedelic scene. Allegory of Allergies, released in a sexy 2xLP gatefold on the Weird Forest label, collects tracks recorded a couple of years back and originally released on cassette. Here’s the trio’s analog synth/guitar improvisations are thick and mossy, sounding like yr turntable’s needle is digging into a tangle of cobwebbed dark. Beautiful.

On the rock front, still enjoying dipping the mind into this sick set of international psychedelia posted by front-dude Comets on Fire Ethan Miller on his Silver Currant blog. Now if only you could download gel tabs…

More soon… In the meantime enjoy yr Sunday.

Last night I had the honor, along with another thousand people or so, to see technology giant Ray Kurzweil give a sold-out multimedia presentation on his new book The Singularity Is Near at the Coolidge Corner Theater in Brookline, MA. Friends, I was stoked. I’ve long been a fan of Special K thanks to his invention, the internet. Just kidding — Ray-bones didn’t invent the internet like he did the flatbed scanner, the first text-to-speech reading machine for the blind, the first large-vocabulary speech recognition program, and one of the keyboards that allowed his pal Stevie Wonder to take a huge shit on his own musical significance back in 1984. He merely predicted the web’s arrival. But seriously, Famous Original Ray has invented a whole boatload of things, enough to make his bio read like the longest overachieving run-on sentence ever constructed. I imagine homeboy’s publicist needs to take a moment every day to go into the closet and silently weep from sheer joy: Which of his umpteen honorary degrees should I include in this press release? Should I mention the groundbreaking pattern-recognition software he created to analyze and compose classical music which he wrote WHEN HE WAS FIVE FUCKING YEARS OLD? Aw, but I kid, I kid. . . He wrote that in high school. In 1965. Before personal computers.

Anyway, apart from his godlike powers to create, Ray-Kay‘s other gig is predicting things which — shocker!! — he’s really really exceptionally good at. He’s a goddamn Nostradamus of technology except minus the beard and the catastrophe, plus as an added bonus his shit actually comes true (in polite circles, this is known as being a “Futurist.”) He does this — and do understand, this is being explained to you third-hand on the internet by a college dropout who is also a rock drummer — by grasping the concept of exponential growth. Let’s just type that again: exponential growth. This concept was hammered home time and time again throughout the evening’s presentation, such that afterward you had a pretty confident feeling you could leave the theater, go to a kegger, drink until you can’t feel your face and still be able to use the information to mack on an impressionable BU freshman coed (which let’s just go ahead and call iMack-ing.)

Exponential growth differs from linear growth, the way we typically understand things, in that linear growth increases by the same amount at each step where exponential growth is instead of series of doublings. Did you enjoy that last sentence? Yeah, me neither — it was a fucking chore to write. So instead, imagine this: say you really like this shampoo. How do you get the word out? Go door to door, making one fan at a time? Hell no. That’s for chumps — linear growth chumps. What the iMack does is tells two friends, and then they tell two friends, and so on. . . and so on. . . Not only are your numbers growing, but your rate of growth is growing. But what am I explaining this to you for? You read The Contrarian.

So while most jokers are expecting the linear growth of technology, time and time again Colonel Kurz has charted the exponential growth of technologies throughout history, figured out where the trend line is headed, and basically spoiled the future by telling everyone what’s gonna happen: Hey, listen everyone! There’s gonna be a worldwide “web” of computers allowing an unprecedented free flow of information between users, and it’s gonna happen by such and such a date. Check it out! Scientists will sequence the entire human genome by such and such a date. Oooh! And computers will eventually be pocket-size and a million times more powerful by the year AW, CUT IT OUT ALREADY! Honestly, Ray. We’re trying to enjoy our ignorance over here.

So now that it’s all been ruined, let’s say it together: at a foreseeable moment in the near future humanity will merge with machines, no really it will. There was actually a moment in the presentation where a thousand of us reverent NPR listeners watched an animation depicting the familiar series of stages of evolutionary man — from ape to knuckledragger to Dale Crover through to fully upright homo sapiens — which ended in an M. Night Shyamalan twist wherein the fully naked modern man sits down at a computer (which wasn’t explicitly displaying porn, but we all pretty much got the basic gist), puts his goddamn HEAD INSIDE IT, transforms into some kind of silvery robot fish and takes off into space AND NO ONE LAUGHED. That’s when I got scared.

This tech rapture which gives geeks the o-face is called The Singularity (not to be confused with the inevitable nü metal/goth/prog band of the same name, just to include my own little prediction). But be not misled by my irreverent tone readers, I am on board. I believe in the Singularity and I believe that it is near. I believe these things because I read the cover of Ray’s book, The Singularity Is Near.

However, what I am decidedly not down with is the movie adaptation of the same name which we were treated to 20 minutes of at the start of the lecture. I was unspeakably psyched, however, that on only my second day writing for a big thinky blog I was watching an exclusive sneak peak of an unreleased movie trailer, so this is for you, Harry Knowles:

Inspired by the twin aesthetic horsefucks of A.I. and What The Bleep Do We Know!?, The Singularity Is Near: A True Story Of The Future features some of humanity’s greatest thinkers discussing the most compelling ideas of our historical moment crossed with 100% total gayness. See, somehow in an attempt to make a science documentary actually watchable, the geniuses behind the movie (and I say that non-sarcastically because honestly, they are actually certifiable geniuses) decided to spice things up by adding a dramatic storyline. Can you smell it? Ohhh yeah. That’s The Kurz cooking up a big ol’ vat of mistake juice. Along with a wagonload of eye-burning cinematic wrongness, it features a twinkling Tinkerbell-like character, a hapless virtual hottie being counseled by a real-life Tony Robbins in a holodeck, and a horrific techno-metal theme song which growls “the sinnn-gu-lair-it-tayy” exactly as bombstically as you’re imagining it right now. It’s as if George Lucas, umm. . . anything. Best of all, it features the acting debut of Kurzweil himself who exudes all the combined charisma of a Michael Dukakis/Lorne Michaels hybrid.

Which brings me to the most surprisingly un-mindblowing part of the whole Ray Kurzweil experience, and that is Ray Kurzweil. For a man who is clearly a supergenius Goliath of invention and comes across on paper like a fabulous cream dream, the meatspace Ray Kurzweil seems to have a near-magical ability to make almost anything boring. The dawn of artificial intelligence? Snore. Self-replicating nanobots living in our bloodstream? Catchin’ Z’s. I mean, watch this piece of video of Kurzweil speaking and tell me you don’t wish the speed of time itself would start growing exponentially until the goddamn thing was over. For some reason, and call me a dreamer, I expected Kurzweil in person to have, I dunno. . . some zing. Something a little nacho cheesier. Like he knows the secrets of the future or something which, hang on — HE ACTUALLY DOES. Instead he speaks about the human race becoming cyborgs with all the passion of a kid reciting his lines at Seder dinner. It’s no wonder he fantasizes about merging with his own virtual reality avatar: the poor guy probably finds himself boring. As it is, Kurzweil’s vibe in person more accurately resembles grey goo, the stuff of nanotechnology’s apocalyptic scenario. Far from being inspired, I left the whole experience feeling like I’d been gooed. Which, come to think of it, may be Kurzweil’s own subtle warning. Thanks, Papa Ray.

Back in the 1990s, I fronted an ahead-of-its time metal band called Rocketsled (I did not come up with the atrocious moniker, but I’ve nonetheless been forced to live with it ever since). Members of Rocketsled went on to play with Drowningman, Non Compos, (née Non Compos Mentis), Cancer Conspiracy, The Halogens, The Dakota and Township (I think those are the major ones).

The Burlington, VT group anticipated practically every heavy sound that was to become fashionable in the metal world in the next decade — from start-stop riffbombs to stoner sludge to atonal chaos. We evolved incredibly quickly, perhaps too quickly for our own good. There was label interest around our self-released 1995 CD, ’71 Nova, but we never really had our shit together enough to make a go of anything (I was 21 years old, for fuck’s sake). Which is probably a good thing — looking back at my proclivities at the time, I could easily picture myself dead in a touring bus at Ozzfest in East Palookaville. Besides, my own tastes were much more varied than the aural assault I was tasked with helping to unleash. Or so I told myself, anyway.

My memories are a bit fuzzy, but I think Rocketsled ran from 1991 or 1992 to about 1996. We were very popular in our hometown, and also made a pretty decent mark regionally. Regrets, I have a few: namely, that we didn’t get to follow-up Nova with another disc that would’ve captured the band’s brief trance-metal phase. Instead we bickered and dickered, eventually demoing a handful of sludgecore tracks that I thought were beneath us.

And here’s a video of one of those lesser numbers, courtesy Jeff Howlett of Howlerman Productions. It’s from our 1998 reunion show at BTVT’s still-missed Club Toast. Wanna know what’s really weird? On Friday, I was riding the train and thinking for the first time in a decade about that reunion show. A sold-out, feel-good triumph it was. Anyway, I found myself wondering if anyone had taped the show (this was before the days of cellphone cameras and flip video). Lo and behold, this morning Howlett (who fronted an excellent ’90s “smartcore” band called 5 Seconds Expired) sends me the vid. How come the Universe doesn’t respond when I ask for gobs and gobs of money?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=93JPeVkCuSQ

Thoughts on this video:

• Wow, I was fucking skinny
• The sound is atrocious
• All my dudes cut their hair
• Greg is a kickass drummer
• I hate this song and wish the clip was of one of our more melodic bone-crushers

Oh, and here’s something for you all: a free MP3 copy of Rockesled’s ’71 Nova (complete with uncleared Darth Vader samples.) Enjoy?