CRACKPOTS 38: BRACE SPEAKS OUT (Patreon)

SUNDAY EVENING. Really I was too swamped with shit to get the newsletter out on Friday, I'm not sure anyone minds (I'm not sure anyone even knows when our episodes are supposed to come out, which is Monday and Thursday, although sometimes the schedule goes awry with booking guests or whatever else...) but Sunday evening seems fine. Plus that gave me Sunday day to write the newsletter. Actually now that I've written this I'm behind on notes for Tuesday. Boo hoo. Anyways here's a few different, kind of unrelated things I have been thinking about.

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I was in a Mexican corner store the other day grabbing a drink and saw a little hand-drawn sign asking customers to be masked. It was pinned towards the top of the little kiosk where the little old lady behind the counter. Nobody was wearing a mask, the little old lady didn’t seem at all concerned about it, God knows she wasn't wearing one. It was just another little sign like the ones saying how much the Takis cost or 21+ to buy alcoholic beverages. There are a million things like this in our homes and workplaces and walks to work, a little piece of the scenery that you register once or twice years ago and, while your eyes might see it every time you pass, it fades into the landscape and just becomes another bump of drudgery.

In the store I had a flash thought, I saw myself in fifty years in some nothing liquor store in some whatever town and there’ll be faded dots placed every six feet in a line up to the cashier...I wonder what I'll say! Maybe a cough for old times sake.

You get the impression from some people that COVID was the defining moment in all their life. I suppose that's not so bad in a way. A lot of people go through life without any defining moments at all. They expire shapeless. But I wonder about the welfare of all those people who swore a microchip was going in with the vaccine. I wonder if they still think about it. At least long COVID people get to have fatigue, they can hold onto it, a memory of that memorable year...

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Here's two frequently asked questions:

WHAT GUN SHOULD I BUY FOR HOME DEFENSE?

Many people like having a firearm at home because if someone comes in uninvited one can blow their head off. Additionally, guns make a fantastic object to wave around at family functions, during fights with the spouse, they're the best thing to point at contractors or your daughters boyfriend etc. But which gun exactly?

Of course that all depends on your house. Everyone says SHOTGUN, because they're easy to use and you can make a scary sound with them (it feels good to do that too) and of course where shooting a human being is concerned you can kind of just aim it and with buckshot you'll at least hit something, even if it's your little dog cowering in the next room. So get a shotgun. What do I care? I have never owned a shotgun but I've shot a lot of them and they're a hoot. Why not get some dragons breath rounds so that way even if you miss, even if the other guy launches himself upon you and tears out your neck with his teeth, at least you'll set the house on fire and he won't get your Macbook.

But its hard to take a shotgun to the bar or Pantera concert.

The problem is most everybody I know lives in apartments, and if you start shooting in an apartment you'll tear through everything. You'll hit people you didn't even know lived in the building. At the end of it you might be standing with one foot on the chest of some barbarian thief, he's bleeding out, you're smiling, but next door is a slaughtered family of five you took out because your rounds went through the drywall. The solution I had to that was I bought FRANGIBLE rounds. These little guys blow up when they hit a hard surface--dissolve into dust. This prevents over penetration, which means that for instance if you shoot an intruder in the crotch, it doesn't go through his penis (he's got a long dangler) and through the front door out into the mailmans shin. A frangible bullet either shatters on his wiener or blows up on the front door. The brave mailman is safe.

Again, I don't really care what gun you get. I won't break into your house (and if I do please don't shoot me---I just need a couple of Tramadol). I think people have good luck with 9mm semiautomatic handguns. I never have. I like revolvers with big bullets because bigger bullets means you can aim a little less. But a modern semiautomatic handgun is almost always gonna have more bullets than you can keep in a revolver, plus they tend to shoot quicker, so you can blindly fire down a hallway while screaming in terror for a little bit longer. Plus it feels good to rack the slide (but it also feels good to spin the cylinder of a revolver and hit it back into place with a flick of your wrist).

But the point of guns is they're fun. The next gun I want is a Ruger Mini 14. I don't really care about the variations (there's a bunch), but Samson started remaking the folding stock chassis thing and it looks nice. I think I'll get that.

I also want a Bersa Thunder .380 pistol, which is a dinky cheap little gun. I really just like the way it looks, and it seems very light and easy to carry. Plus a .380 seems a little less rude than a larger round if you're walking around and happen to shoot someone---anything in a greater caliber might seem like you're looking for trouble. A .380 is a happy little round.

I also want all the goofy little guns in this video.

Guns are really fun but if you get too into them this is what you become:

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People always complain in the Patreon comments whenever I happen, in the course of the show, to give some sweeping good or bad statement about a band. Please...you have to understand...there's only four ways for a musician to be: Incredible, good, OK and stinks. Everybody that's OK mostly stinks, and a lot of fine musicians are really just OK. But most music is bad and everybody has to listen to something, so a lot of music is good, it's maybe even true that all music is good, which is a statement so obviously stupid that nothing but its opposite could possibly be correct: All music stinks. But that's too negative, and besides there are some musicians that I find incredible, so there must be some gradiation between. Which leaves us where we started.

Besides, to think a group is unremarkable or just decent seems like it would sting worse than having a strong negative opinion. So in a sense, a sweeping negative opinion

They aren't my favorite band but lets face facts: the Rolling Stones are probably the best band of all time just because they wrote more great songs than anybody else is. It's a numbers game. Nobody has more hits than them.

I'm not sure I have a favorite band---I think for some reason I've just never approached anything that way except writers, music is too dependent on set and setting. I like rock music mostly but I also like other kinds of music. Lately I have been listening to the Only Ones 1978 album "Special View", which I think is a perfect record, and to Tinariwen, really only because my friend Timmy sent me this article about a former member's leadership role in Mali's Islamist insurgency. I hadn't listened to Tinariwen in a long time but everybody loves when the Tuareg play their guitars...

I figured I would dispel all rumors of me being nothing but a hater, tell you about some songs that I love:

Probably the first song I heard that really blew me away was “Slip Inside This House” by the 13th Floor Elevators. For some obscure, reason it was placed early on a compilation called "CBGBs and the Birth of US Punk". God knows what CBGBs had to do with half the bands on it--- the Elevators were a 1960s/early 70s psychedelic rock band whose closest “punk” sounding song (“You’re Gonna Miss Me”) would’ve been a more fitting choice, but I'm glad I heard it. I still think it's one of the best songs ever made, and I've been listening to a lot of Roky Erickson this summer. I once got in a fight in front of him (inglorious incident that was not my fault) and he looked so frightened, like a child...

Here's some other songs I've been listening to:

European Common Market by KING SHORT SHIRT. Pretty much everything I've heard from King Short Shirt has been good, there's some good political calypso and also some kind of goofy songs, which European Common Market is both of...I haven't heard any of his gospel stuff

Take Me, I'm Yours - JOBRIATH. I think Jobriath was the first openly gay rock musician (ha!) and was marketed as a kind of American Bowie. It's a pretty obvious homage to DB. But it's a pretty great record. If I remember, he was not treated well (but I could be wrong) and eventually died of AIDS at the Chelsea Hotel.

The Lesson - MAYO THOMPSON. While there are some songs on Mayo Thompson's "Corky's Debt to His Father" that I am not crazy about it contains some of my favorite songs ever written. This is one of them. "Good Brisk Blues" is another. Just a great album.

Stayed Out Late Last Night - ROCKIN HORSE. A group made up of Chuck Berry's Merseybeat-guy backing band. I like this a lot and have gone through heavy phases of listening to this album over the years. It's great rock music. If you like this you might also like HACKAMORE BRICK and particularly Oh Those Sweet Bananas!

Here's Jobriath doin his thing...

Promo photos...tough racket.

Anyways I hope you guys are having a good early July. Here in New York we finally strung together three days that were decent. A few days of rainy sludge and you understand why everyone was so excited to get to California...but enough about the weather. We have some I think good episodes coming up about exciting topics but Liz beats me like a dog if I ever spoil anything so that's it from me.

BRACE