You Are Only Half A Person!

 Today the Stoned Holy Blogger is in a Philosophical frame of mind. Having nothing else to occupy his time, due to the nature of being a Pop-Slop Nobody, he has chosen to withdraw, from the hugger-mugger of Human Strivings which is all that stuff that's goin' on right this Holy Beat Moment outside yir window in the crowded thouroughfares and winding country lanes which Human-Type-Creatures inhabit. Truth Be Told, there has always been that certain measure of distance between the Stoned Holy Blogger and the world of Men....& Wimmen! But, if I'm an ousider, lookin' in, well, what do I know about anything? Withdrawn & Solid Gone, maybeez, but methinks you need a Head With Wings if you wanna get a view of the whole parish! So let the Philosophising begin!

Now, I've heard it said in certain thronging Arrondisements and on bustling Waterfronts that someplace, in the Backwoods of our minds, a place seldom, if ever, visited by our consciousness, we remember being born, being squeezed into this Realm of the Living. How this affects you if yours was a Caesarian birth, I don't know but I only mention Birth for it is here my contention that We're Thrown Through Life's Gates In An Incomplete State! Whether our memory of being ejected from the womb, our struggle to enter the world (or is it merely to remain in the one we know?) colours our development in later life, I'll leave you to contemplate in a cloistered moment all to yourself, but I'm sure that you must see, that once we've pushed past those gates aforementioned, we leave the world of completeness behind and open our unknowing eyes in a world of Need & Want & Compulsion.

Shakespeare opined that "When We Are Born, We Cry That We Have Come To This World Of Fools!"
Mr.Shakespeare's poetic gifts notwithstanding, may I venture that the real reason our virgin cheeks are flushed with tears like hot lead is somewhat more prosaic! The fact that this world is peopled with fools matters not a jot to our swaddling clad selves. No, our mewlings are elicited, not by Blockheads & Numbskulls, but by the fact that now we Hunger & Desire that which is outwith us!

From the moment of our births our inventory of Wants & Needs multiplies at varying rates on a scale of anywhere between Mundane & Bizarre. From our common ambit of Food & Warmth we can end up, it seems, with somewhat ludicrous, if not outrightly grotesque demands, but I'll leave the catalogue of human Eccentricities & Foibles, Failings & Frailties, Aberrations & Perversions, Fetishes & General Wackiness for another Melancholic Stroll down  Heartbreak Boulevard!

For now, we are here to consider just one facet of our Wanting & Needing & Desiring - SEX! Just three little letters from 26 but my, how they shape most of our adult lives! Brutishly shoving past our other appetites, the Sexual Imperative can even unseat our Reason and indeed, the desire for life itself!

Herr Freud's Latency Periods notwithstanding, in childhood we may or may not experience brief vaquely comprehended visions of our adult futures, but only once the Hormonal Sluice Gates open and we are thrown headlong into the trials and testing times of the Hobbledehoy are we  really in a position to fully understand our natal shortcomings, our half-formed selfhoods! We struggle with new thoughts, new wants and new identities, motivated always by Sex - the wanting of, the needing of....and of course, the getting off!!

The Ancient Greeks thought the first humans had two heads and four limbs but as a punishment for the Sin of Pride these beings were cleaved in two by the Gods, both half being doomed to wander ceaselessly looking for the other to once again experience completeness....but never finding it! Though nowadays we would be more likely to use the vocabulary of Science rather than that of Poetry & Metaphor like the Ancients, I think you must see, Gentle Peruser of the Blogosphere, that those Greek cats knew that Nature was profligate with it's resources and cared not if you lived your life as a salivating, fuckless idiot, as long as you got just one damn chance to Shoot Your Seed and hit the DNA Bullseye with your Money Shot!! Sex then, as now, was and is, not Painless or Easy but Selfish, Belligerent, Competitive, Antagonistic, Self-Destructive, Pernicious and yes, sometimes even Fatal!....But Oh, How Good It Feels Slidin' It In!!

So Don't Snigger, Don't Laugh, When I Say That You Are Only Half A Person!  No, Don't Laugh, Don't Snigger, When I Say That You Are Always Only Ever Just One Half!! Friend, I tire of opining on these matters. Know only this, that only when you look upon yourself as half being can you truly know how to Roll the Holy Stone! Lemme Hear Ya Say YEAH! Amen!

BERLIN BODHISATTVA!

If life in the Rock N Roll Slow Lane is anything, it is mundane. Finding oneself as a middle aged rock loser with an expanding waistline tends to limit the opportunities one is presented in life, I've found. I suppose an extremely limited social circle simply means I have failed in yet another of life's arenas apart from music! I have failed to find fellows. Failed to find like-minded ship mates to accompany me aboard this flimsy raft I find myself on in the choppy waters of life's Existential Seas. The result of these failings is, rather prosaically, finding yourself with lots of  free time and of course, the problem of what to do with it all when your address book and your wallet are empty! So it was I found myself rummaging in the attic here at Stoned Holy H.Q engaged in some humdrum task but unearthing instead, amidst the miscellaneous material garbage I have amassed in my disappointing journey through existence, some yellowing fragments of papyrus. Upon shaking off a covering of dust and mouse droppings some barely discernible hieroglyphs scrawled with a biro pen were revealed. Being most learned in the ways of both Hiero & Glyph, no Rosetta Stone was required to quickly discern that these ancient writings dated from the time when a younger and less world weary version of Stoned Holy Rollers toured round Deutschland sowing musical pearls before hard-core swine! I present these writings to you now, my most discerning Blogosphere friends, in the hope they entertain!

"Busted flat in Berlin & it comes on like a wave. Call it Beat Attitude, or maybe Beattitude, but eyes with lids heavy were made to see anew. And so, with these All New Baby Blues and my Scuffled Down Shoes I shuffle round the WeltStadt of Berlin....

Maybe some other time we can uncloak our vulnerable humanities & take a stroll down Desolation Row but I'm here now to tell you about the Beat Bars & Fallen Stars of Berlin....but how to tell of of the Plans n Scams in motion as a city Hustles & Hassles for the folding?!



Sexy girls dance to the constant rattle of S-Bahns shaking like rattlesnakes as they slither all over Berlin's naked body. But this city that trams rumble through isn't the only one that's here. Pay 6DM to go the top of the Fernseher Turm or climb the Siegesalle and there, superimposed on the ashen, angular streets is the City of Possibilities : Berlin's simultaneous realities in a cityscape inhabited by dreamers & firebrands alike....Trash Time Is Over, Gentlemen!

The Art of the Deal & The Art of the Steal amount to the same damn thing on the sullen cobblestones of Lichtenberg which are slaved to the machine that has assumed a life of its own - but it's an illusion! Look upon the serried ranks of Drone Homes in Wedding and it's hard to imagine, when you consider the Spreading, Grey Cancer that is Berlin, that the banks of Der Spree were once blanketed in moss and kingfishers flashed over its limpid waters!.....

Global Consciousness or Global Destruction is waiting round the corner but that doesn't concern many, as Berlin, in all its Insane, Life-Sucking, Mind-Fucking Energy; A Corrupt, Vile, Venal, Glorious, Angelic, Bizarre, Unspeakable, Contemptible, Tragic, Pathetic sum of its Countless, Incalculable & Unimaginably Contrary, Opposite, Mismatched & Disharmonious parts is bathed in Sunlight and this day - which will see New Life Howl & Old Eyes, that witnessed the Fall of Hitler & the Rise of badly dubbed American Sit-Coms, Fade and Die - lifts itself dutifully over the Horizon!

Doppelgangers lurk in the Shadows & Dark Places of Edge City, populated by the Beatest, Down & Outest, Burned Out Bums imaginable, but no one looks close if you switch off the light.... meanwhile, in the Hurry & Scurry of Kreuzberg 61, Trabants rumble noisily as the taxi drivers speed Silently & Smoothly past in white Mercedes Automatics.... but no-one's really in control.....

Yes, up in the Consumer Palaces of the Ku-Dam they're steppin' out of Big German Cars & Expensive Designer Clothes but Rules are for Fools and only serve to get in the way of an honest drug deal on the Toxic Death Strip by Warschauer Strasse....A Trinketted Huddle of Punk Retards panhandle kleingelt outside the supermarket on Frankfurter Allee whilst inside nobody notices the Angel behind the counter selling Volkbrot. Later, Hungry Buskers play the bars on Hackescher Markt whilst outside cars slow to check out the whores.....

The Darling Young Things of Nollendorfplatz are busy posing as another batch of delicious batura drop with a sizzle into the hot oil. Guards with Rifles & Alsatian Dogs patrol the U-Bahn on Oranienburger as the junkies give blowjobs on Kurfurstendammer. Inside, Josie the Erotic Dancer bares her tits & pays the bills whilst outside the Korean Nicotine Conspiracy blows hot breath into cold hands as it waits to circumvent the taxman & sell you cheap, pirate cigarettes, suffering harassment and beatings from Polizei & Sexually Frustrated, Hormonally Tormented, Neo-Nazi Thugs just so Deutschland can smoke itself to an early grave!!...



These visions were revealed unto me between Friedrichstrasse & Alexanderplatz on a S7 bound for Erkner & Glory! I had not paid the fare! Everything Is Yours! Interested in a knock-off generator for 500 Donx?!?!......."

Tschusschen! Vielspass! Susse Trauma!



Pfarr Strasse 88 : Ich Bin Frei!







Indigestion & Henry David Thoreau!

"Why should we not meet, not always as dyspeptics, to tell our bad dreams, but sometimes as eupeptics, to congratulate each other on the ever glorious morning?" Not my words, Cyberpeepers, y'understand, but I trust that you too recognise something of yourself in them.

For sometimes, it seems, that Everybody's Runnin Round Town, Feelin Down, Feelin Oh, So Busted Flat! Pessimism IS growin! Bitterness IS showin!....But We at Stoned Holy Headquarters don't wanna hear no more of that crap! Apologies for the Double Negative are hereby extended to ye stick-in-the-mud kinda folks who are irked by such grammatical discrepancies but the S t o n E D h O L y B L o g G e r's got other mud pools tae wallow in.....and here's me glorying in the sticky brown stuff and thinking that when yi reach middle age as a Pop-Flop-Down-But-Not-Entirely-Out and have had to endure years of impoverishment and creative emasculation as well as seeing the bank balances of Westlife swell to untold millions, it can be quite hard to push down the bile and choke back a Primal Scream so ear-splitting it could Shake Lucifer! So it is sometimes you just can't stomach anymore of the chit chat 'bout this n that & everybody pushin in at the bar where everybody's moanin, groanin n dronin on & all you ever hear is Blah, Blah, Blah!! So, unless yiv got something good to say ; unless yiv got a heartwarming tale of bumping intae Mr.Smilesman just as you came ooty Gregg's the Bakers with a hot sausage roll in yir greasy little fingers ; unless yir gonna tell me about seeing a luminous sunrise this very Holy Beat Morning and realising life is a wave that must by necessity break upon the seashore, then just stay the hell away from me!!

Sometimes the awareness that you have failed to prosper in this world would just about be tolerable if it were not for the fact then of recognising the kinda dimwits n retards who have flourished in it at the same time! Oh, Brave New World, that has such people as Dappy From N-Dubz walking around with a full wallet upon its cobbled thoroughfares! It is in times such as these when the words of Mr. Henry David Thoreau, late of Concord, Massachusetts, which opened this monologue, can ring fairly hollow and dyspeptic belchings upon the sorry state of humankind can issue forth from yir gobhole!

In the meantime though, what to do but shut the front door firmly behind you and stride forth resolutely into the infinite bustle of hunting down n grubbing up a few meagre coppers just to get by and do it all again tomorrow. Sun Come Up. Bright Red Dawn. Time Go By. Day Has Gone. Some Folks Dead. Some Folks Born....and The Big Wheel Keeps Turnin' On! So, when you find yourself, as we all do, thrown into the necessary business of money, with all it's dreary machinations and alienating relationships, some other lines of  Mr. Thoreau's do seem indeed, all too prescient :

In the busy streets, domains of trade,

Man is a surly porter, or a vain & hectoring bully

Who can claim no nearer kindredship with me

Than brotherhood by law.

If I may be so bold, Gentle Readers,  can I recommend that when next you find yourself crawling into the familiar comfort of the home where it is you billet yourself away from the vicissitudes of life and the doings of humanity ; rather than reach for that bottle of Chablis or that fat dooby or whichever it is you use to self-medicate yourself, take an hour instead to peruse the works of Mr. Henry David Thoreau and the short essay that is "Life Without Principle" in particular. Enlightening and Enrichening Stuff! That cat Thoreau may not have been a mover & a shaker but he threw his pebble in the pond and knew it ever true that Love Radiates!! The Stoned Holy Blogger claims him as kindred and hereby lets it be known to the Vastness of the Digital Blogosphere  that his star is most assuredly fixed within the Heavenly Firmament & his name is now & forever more etched upon one of the fluted Ionic pillars that partially supports the mass of the Pediment of the Pantheon of Stoned Holy Rollers Gone Before!

Here Endeth The Sermon!....

& the Stoned Holy Blogger Exits Stage Left 

Upon Descending Wearily From The Pulpit!!

Going Gentle Into That Good Night!

Ah Youth! Entirely wasted on the young, of course, but what can a Pop-Slop-N-Flop Down n Out like the S t O n E d H o L y B L o G g E r do about the inexorable tick & tock that is the sound of the Tyranny of Clocks!!

But yes, it seems this rock n roll mallarkey is a young man's game :  For when better to play the game of 'making it' or being 'big in Japan' and yet be blissfully unaware of how tawdry and cynical a business it really is ; When better to devote your energies to the narcissistic business of climbing onto a stage and demanding people take you seriously ; When better to feel the burn of the sexual imperative in every fibre of your being ; when better to be willing to live on a diet of pot noodles and the assorted garbage that is available for consumption at motorway service stations & finally, when better to climb in the back of a van with the rest of the gang and tolerate endless hours of discomfort and beery farts!

But here, a word of caution - "Know This, O Young Ambition, All Mortal Greatness Is But Disease." Chilling lines there from the briny and melancholic pages of 'Moby Dick' but perhaps fortunately, most Rockin Rollin Young Bucks wouldn't know their Herman Melville from their Herman Munster!....

Surprising then, you may think, that the fires here at S t o n e d H o l y H.Q still burn and we play on! Broken Doon n Middle Aged maybeez but these Rollers are still Stoned n Holy....to a fashion! Yes, the waistlines have imperceptibly crept up a size or two, the hair thinned a little on the top of our Stoned Holy Noggins and yes, it does seem that we are indeed  Going Gentle Into That Good Night! And as for the Raging ; well, all apologies to drunken Welsh poets, dead n gone before they hit 40, but it's all very well writing about Raging when yir tanked up on whisky but some of us have still gotta go to the supermarket when we're low on muesli and Greek yoghurt! Lasagne doesnae put itself in the oven now, does it?!?! The car needs road tax renewing and petrol in the tank to run!!...So take that, Mr.D Thomas of Laugharne, Wales!!

But the Rage and the Righteous Indignation are there, smouldering away someplace inside. Somehow, impossibly, after all these years spent in the Sensory Deprivation Tank that is Home Town, the fires burn still. And that is why these feelings of Impotence and Frustration can still take hold and sting the heart within this mortal coil - When you find yirsel whiling away the dreary & penniless hours doing anything but actually playing music, all too aware of diminishing returns and the reality of the cold, cold grave creeping ever nearer as you struggle to strike a balance between the conflicting concerns of five or six middle aged losers and what they like to do in their spare time away from the mundane business of doing mundane jobs and paying mundane mortgages and mundane electricity bills! Oh for the heddy days of youth when childcare and the endless yawn of social functions never entered the equation. I grow weary, my friends. Someday, I hope to find me some place where I can lay me down & rest my head & ease my mind and sing the 
No Mo' Trouble Blues. A secret hideaway, a leafy bower of a kind, somewhere you can leave all your troubles behind.

 Who the fuck would choose the life of the Stoned Holy Roller? Only an idiot like me.............

Ashoka the Great, Duke Ellington & The Tolpuddle Festival!

An Injury to One Is The concern Of All!

Being a Pop-Slop Nobody can be a frustrating business at times my friends; Flopped on the settee whilst other, more industrious souls, are out there busting a nut to pay taxes and National Insurance premiums.....but sometimes action is called for! One such occassion happened just recently when the occupier of the S t o n e d   H o l y   
D r u m   S t o o l  received his marching orders for Ungentlemanly Conduct unbecoming to one who, as part of the S t o n e d   &   H o l y   R o c k i n r o l l i n   
M a c h i n e , had, however unbeknowingstly, concurred with The Rollers Mission Statement regarding The Secular Preaching of Love & Brethrenosity!  Decisions had to be made. Justice was swift.. It is at times like these when it is best for one person to assume the role of Chief and the mantle of Responsibility that goes with it. So it was that the s t O N e D H O l y b l O G g E r found himself in Cloak & Wig and pondering the Politics of Power.

Land, Peace & Bread!

Now, just last year it was, the
S t o n e d   H o l y   R o l l e r s  made one of their Sporadic Musical Raids on the Folks down South in England to play at The Tolpuddle Festival and it is in recalling this and the recent events mentioned above that the S T O n E d h O L y B L O G g e r must hereby make Contentious remarks concerning Democracy, Trade Unionism & Being in a Band! My Contention reads thusly - That the
S t o n e d   H o l y   R o l l e r s  and other Musical Groupings of that ilk, are not the Best Exemplars for the Guiding Principles of Trade Unionism, seeing as they function best under the Auspices of Dictatorship. Benign maybeez, but Dictatorship nonetheless!

Right at the outset, to avoid Misinterpretation and Confusion, allow me to set out The S t o n e d   H o l y   R o l l e r s ' Political Stall, as it were, and state clearly that we, the aforementioned Musical Proselytizers of Love & Togetherness, fully support the Rights of Workers to Come Together and Act Collectively to Attain Common Goals. Furthermore, we also Endorse fully the idea that Direct Action at the Points of Contact with Corporate Forces to Effect a Change in the Body Politic at large is Wholly Legitimate!

Kicking Ass For The Working Class!!

The World of the Workers is Wild, sure enough, but Beat Combos are not Trade Unions and the same Rules Do Not Apply! If our Representative Democracy shows that we are not sufficiently developed Politically as a Society for anything more refined, so also with the Functioning of Musical Outfits - A Musical El Presidente is necessitated to Call the Shots. A Generallissimo, a Shogun, a Caesar. One who Conducts the business of Music Making. Let's call that person The Conductor!!

The really hard part of this PopFlop n Slop business of being in a band is not being squeezed together in the back of a Ford Transit or the endless lugging of heavy equipment but the actual finding of bandmates in the first place. The want-ads are filled with desperate pleas from Wannabes but the Alchemy of 3 or 4 Minds Cracking in Action, Time & Vision comes but rarely in this life and is Ephemeral at best. So it is in the absence of this that One must assume the role of Big Boss Man. Some, such as James Brown or John Mayall, can be almost Tyrannical in fulfilling this function but others can be more Benificent. The S T O n e d H O L y B l o g g e R  feels confident in expounding the view that his alter-ego,
T h e   R i g h t   I r r e v e r e n t   S t o v e p i p e   S t u d b a g e l , is one such, seeing as his Megalomania & Messiah Complex are Abstemiously Tempered by his thorough understanding of  both Marxist Dialectics and Why The Chicken Crossed The Road!

Workers Of The World, Unite!

Tomfoolery aside, I hope that this is providing you, Dear Nameless Ones of the Blogosphere, with at least a Glimmer of Understanding into the Musical Process and that you may now see why, although being able musicians in their own right, Jimmy Knepper & Danny Richmond could only truly fly under the Firm but Dictatorial Wings of Mr. Charles Mingus. Nobody's gonna pay to see The Fall if Mr. Mark Edwin Smith isn't on the stage....believe me, Marc Riley's tried it! Note also that Tommy Hall ruled The 13th Floor Elevators with an Iron & Acid-Drenched Rod even though he couldn't sing a note & his Musical Abilities amounted to making funny noises with a fruitjar pressed to his cheek! Bob Wills couldn't sing much neither and was nowhere near as accomplished a fiddle player as either Johnny Gimble or Joe 'Jody' Holley but The Texas Playboys were definitely his band and no-one elses! The list goes on.....

All Power To The Soviets!!

In jotting down these impressions, the StonedHolyBlogger feels it necessary to inform you, Good Readers, that
Liberty, Fraternity & Egality are, indeed, carved in stone on the lintel above the doorway here at R o l l e r C e n t r a l  and that these notes, here presented, are in no way to be construed as Championing Entrepeneurial Capitalism as a System whereby to Organize the Affairs and Doings of Humankind.....but oh, the contradictions we carry within....maybe Benign Dictatorship is the Way Forward after all! On the surface, the great Mauryan Emperor Ashoka and Duke Ellington do make for strange bedfellows but maybe they weren't so different really when you come right down to it!

I may expand on this theory of mine and give a talk on the matter at length....maybe at next year's Tolpuddle Festival, if they'd have me! I rather fear not, being somewhat 'off message'!!

The Union Makes Us Strong!

Power To The People!!

Burnished Hearts & Buffoonery!!

Now you, Dear Cyberpeepers, may think being in a Rock N Roll Band is all about excess - Snorting lines of white powder from off the perfectly formed midriffs of prodigously curvaceous yet mentally vacuous & impressionable young ladies or thrusting your Priapically swollen nether regions at a fawning audience... but tis not so! Being currently between gigs and enjoying a period of Stoned & Holy Down-Time, I have found myself mulling over life in the Rock n Roll Slow Lane. So here, for your further entertainment, Pop-Pickers, are a few notes regarding the Dreary Glissando into Inanity, if not out n out Insanity, that the Rollers of the Holy Stone  have somehow managed to perform over these last few decades. So come with me now on a trip down Memory Lane.....

Here at the outset, Gentle Readers, allow me first to impress upon you the fact that it was with Burnished Hearts & Young Minds crowded, if not clouded, with Ideological Fervour that our Holy-Rollers-To-Be embarked on their Protean Rise to Nowheresville! Those classic twin motivators of Drugs & Sex were of no consequence to our Angry Young Men. These Post-Pubescent Politicos had a 'Message' to Punt! Our Over-Zealous Young Turks were above such petty concerns as Drug Induced Euphoria & Sexual Satisfaction, their time being spent in labouring over how best to turn the history of the Paris Commune of 1871 into three minutes of Energised Punk Pop Burblings!

Alas, these Whining Whippersnappers were also almost wholly unaware of the Wider World's indifference to their earnest toil. Dedication to craft & Self-Sacrifice are not qualities ensuring your easy progress along the bumpy, cobblestoned thoroughfares of Human Strivings. But apprenticeships must be served, dues duly paid. And Lo! Did it come to pass. These Stroppy Striplings played on & ploughed their lonely furrow, woefully outtastep with the decade providence had cast them adrift in ; studiously learning all the whilst whilst engaged in various crummy jobs for low pay and little realising that this world of  vacuous consumerism & 'shake n vac' commercials can be a hard Master Mason to young & eager chisellers!

We would be happy to report that their Earnest Efforts & Assiduous Application were rewarded, in some manner as recompense, in regards to the Company & Favours of the 'Fairer Sex', but twas not so. Cruel fate had other plans for these aching gonads! So they took it on the chin and flailed their strings anew and all the more arduously! Thus the cheerless days shuffled past.

There may be those amongst you, Cyberpeepers, who are familiar with the alchemical way whereby a Rude & Lusty Ruby Port is transformed into an altogether more complex and rewarding Tawny. If so you will understand all the better how, with the slow tick of time, our Teenage Firebrands morphed imperceptibly into the Melodiously Delighting yet still Effecting Profanity that is the Stoned Holy Rollers of the Now.

So now it falls to me,  in the Self-Deprecating & Self-Effacing manner that has always been our wont here in the StonedHolyVestry, to inform you, Dear Starers of the Glowing Screen, that finally, after 25 or so years of plugging away at this Pop-Slop-Zero Mallarkey, we have had the ONE incontrovertible FACT of  being in a RockinRollin band revealed unto us :  We care not now to consider the Conceits & Smugness with which we have so often patted ourselves on the back and congratulated ourselves for being so clever. Time Has Humbled Us...and gifted us a more Forgiving, Gestalt-Style Overview of Human Foibles & Failings! But yes, We Fiercely Independent Nay-Sayers, We Truculent Autodidacts, We Champions of the Marxist Dialectic,  We Pathological Kickers against all Pricks, have realised what any A-Grade Dimwit would've twigged in  the time it takes to say 'Buffoonery' - Namely, that the two best things about being in a band are :  1/ The Birds and 2/ The Booze!!!

Oh, How We Plumb the Phony Depths of Bathos!!

.

Here Endeth the Sermon!!

Adieu & Exit Stage Left!!

Good Mornin', Sunshine!!

Apologies to all those waiting with Bated Breath for their latest instalment in this, the StOnEDHolYBloggeR's somewhat irregular glimpse into the Mudane, Day-To-Day of the Pop-Slop Zero, but after noticing, through my usual Somnambulistic Fug, that my last Brave Venturing Forth into the Giddy Airs of the Blogosphere was more than a fortnight ago, I  resolved to throw off  the Ennui which has enveloped me on returning from Rockin' the Roll on the Isle of Jura, and put fingertip to plastic key & write something....anything!

Being if not entirely Elevated but certainly Animated after our earnest Musical Labours and crawling back into Hometown via the back door late on Sunday night and flopping into the Eider Downed cosiness of the StonedHoly HQ Dormitory and the Sleep of the Just, it was somewhat jarring, to say the least,  to wake early on Monday morning and find yourself rudely cast once more into the World of F-Olding Money! Caught up again in the Obligatory but still Enervating business of Promising to Pay the Bearer and procuring such diverse Consumer Non-Essentials as Washing-Up Powder n Eccles Cakes doesn't get any easier, does it! Someday soon perchance, I may finally grow up & deal with the nuts n bolts of this Used Up, Boozed Up, Screwed Up, Chewed Up, Muddled Up, Fucked up, Drugged Up Crazy Old World we're livin' in! I speak, Friends, of the Real World of Cash n Bills.....but oh my! Such Grubbiness!! Failing, as ever, in the acquisition of Moolah, I am reminded of the Words of Robbie the Ranter, that "The Rank Is But The Guinea's Stamp"....and he ought to have known : Pushin' that Ploughshare through the Brown Fields of Ayrshire with hands that could write Poetry!

So yes, ahm Broke but not Broken! Unbowed if somewhat Bent Over! I promise myself anew to Come Up For Air & lose these Goddam Inhalation Blues! Call it being Big Headed or just plain Pig Headed, but The STONedhoLyBLOgger must Cleave to his Assertion, Stand Firm by his Contention, that he is bigger than this life he's livin', bigger than this space he's been given!!

"Bring Forth What Is Within You & What You Bring Forth Will Save You. Do Not Bring Forth What Is Within You & What You Do Not Bring Forth Will Destroy You". These Sage words are attributed to Thomas the Doubter. Though somewhat maligned for his Skepticism by some, the stoNEDhoLYbloGGEr  sees Tam as a man in control of his critical faculties. Surely he was right to Doubt? An eminently sensible approach methinks. What would you say, Gentle Reader, if friends told you a Man you'd seen laid in the Grave was Up n About n ordering Scrambled Eggs on a Seeded Bagel?! Was it Groucho Marx or Leon Trotsky who advised his son to "Doubt Everything"? No matter, but we would be well-advised to follow this counsel.

But enough of  Essene Mystics and Russian Revolutionaries, let us address what is Within : For I Have Seen the Times I've Kept it In. I Have, As You Have Too, I Know, Been Too Scared to See What Was Inside of Me. Too Many Times, Again & Again, I Have, As You Have Too, I'm Sure,  Not Dared to Test the Boundaries. If you feel the above is somewhat sombre, I can only apologise for not being my usual Ebullient & Chipper Self but the Path of a Secular Preacher of Brethren-ness is not always Smooth! So Yes, the Road may be Rocky but we March On. What else to do?

And remember, Cyberpeepers, that it was hope that remained inside Pandora's Box when all else had been loosed upon the Earth.  so....To the Toppermost of the Poppermost, Mis Amigos! I've just met Mr. Smilesman and his Smile went on for Miles, Man! So Good Mornin' Sunshine! Good Mornin' Sunshine! I say again 'Good Mornin' Sunshine!'

Musings on Bob Dylan & Iggy Pop

Hey there, you Rockers n Rollers! Ola mis Hermanos Y Hermanas! Once more, my Salutations to all the good people of Worldwidewebness....or to put it a little more realistically perhaps, the odd one or two of you idle surfers who have, through various diverse, if not downright bizarre, paths found themselves somewhat astray, virtually speaking, and clicked their way onto these pages! The STonedHOLybloGGEr extends both a warm welcome and the reassuringly firm Handshake of Eternal Fraternity to all who would peruse his meagre efforts within the Blogosphere.

Meanwhile, at StonedHoly HQ we have convinced ourselves that the number of you out there who are Hip enough to Plug into the Literary Perambulations of the stONEdhoLYBloggeR is growing. So, may I draw to your Attention, those of you Dedicated to all things 'Stoned N Holy' (a small number, admittedly!) and also those amongst you who have, for no discernible reason, made good their return to our estimable pages, our New HolyBlogger Livery. Our Internet Duds, if you will! It has been a Steep Learning Curve! We have fumbled in the Virtual Dark, so to speak. A Click here, a Click there.....We must admit hereby to there having been 'Distractions' en route. So many Pretty Gals, so few items of clothing! But the Clicking is done and the Cyber Re-Spray is finished ; to a fashion! The Tips of my Index Fingers have now Calloused over! Our Image Make-Over is complete. We trust you CyberBlogPeepers will, at the very least, appreciate our efforts.

Now, if I can climb up into my Rock n Roll Pulpit for a minute or two, maybe we can look at this New Layout mallarkey in more depth : Methinks everyone in this life is entitled to some kinda Make-Over. Indeed, can we not all Meld ourselves wholly anew? A little City Livin' is a Dangerous Thing, after all - It can Get a Man to thinking he's as Good as a Goddam King! These Democratic Reverberations can, it seems, to paraphrase De Tocqueville, make everyone forget his Ancestors and Isolate him from his contemporaries. Identity can be Fluid if we wish it so! To Seek Out An Identity, You Must Alienate Society. Constraints of Gender & Creed, History & Culture can, indeed Must, be Subverted. Too often, the Expectations of those closest to us, Family & Friends, can be limiting and deny us Free Expression of our True Selves. Sometimes a complete break is required so that we can create the person we want ourselves to be.

So, Dig this : Young gun / Collar High / Slips Outta Hometown & Strait-Jacket Identity / Shoulders his Duffel-Bag / Spirits High / Heads for the 2 Lane Blacktop that's Gonna Carry Him Far from Mezuzahs N Talmudic Apocrypha to Big City U.S / He Thumbs / He Bums N Mooches / He Strums His Guitar / His Given Name is Scuffed Off by the Roadside / Soon it's Big apple Time N Whoopyjivin' In Soho /  Then it's over to East Orange to touch the Hem of Woody's Garment / Meanwhile Rock n Roll has Fizzled Out N Charts are Empty / One Good Review later & he's on his Way / Soon he'll be Dancing Beneath Diamond Skies With One Hand Waving Free! And Thus is Robert Zimmerman, curly-headed kid from Desolate Deluth, Minnesota, refashioned as Bob Dylan! And Thank the Musical Gods he was, otherwise he could not have Brought it all Back Home & we wouldn't have an album that can transport us into the Heavenly Firmament!

Let us now examine the strange case of Mr. James Osterberg from Ann Arbor, Michigan. The STOnEdHoLYbLoGgEr can only hope you are familiar with the Sonic Output of Mr. Osterberg for, verily, it is the stuff of Legend. He has on more than one occasion Hit the
G-Spot of Rock n Roll but perhaps, methinks, his greatest artistic achievement was the side-stepping of all that was mapped out for him in Industrial Small Town America and his creation of Iggy Pop as a persona which allowed  him the Freedom to explore the Waters he thereupon wholly immersed himself in.

So, Pop Pickers, if you feel like a change, then you too can Go To It! The Voluptuary Excesses of Mr. Pop may not be for you but in a quiet and perchance, wholly unnoticed way you can Make Yourself Over. Truly, for the Sake of this Ramshackle Old World we're living in, we must Believe the Leopard Can Change His Spots!...For Does Not This World Need Changing?

'Be The Change You Want To See In The World.' were the Sage Words of The Mahatma. Fine Words and here's some more courtesy of yir Resident Secular Preacher of Brethren-ness - 'It's Not Water Down The Drain If It Brings Us Closer Together. It's Not An Ocean & One Drop Of Rain If It Makes Things A Little Better.' If that means as little as a Smile instead of a Frown or some kind words freely given, if that means a Splash of Colour to liven up the Monochrome, then it's Enough for now. Think On It, CyberPeople, is all ahm sayin'.....Think On It.

Catch Y'All Next Time - This Is Yir Concrete Prairie Crooner & Stoned & Holy Blogger signing off. Glad Tidings For All. Over N Oot.