After a pause to reflect upon a recent two week exclusive engagement and working vacation amidst the very finest that the medical-industrial complex has to offer, this tune keeps going round in my head. 

Admittedly, "Wall Of Death" is far darker reflection than "Can the Can" by Suzi Quatro. That said these dark reflections also stand up as a fist in the face of the inevitable, tubes running in and out of here and there most especially included. 

That's the point, isn't it? At the end of the proverbial day, what else to do but to punch the face of the rot? Whether that rot is due to resource depletion on a macro scale or on that most personal, and micro of scales, up and and personal. 

"Let me ride on the Wall Of Death one more time
Let me ride on the Wall Of Death one more time
You can waste your time on the other rides
This is the nearest to being alive
Oh let me take my chances on the Wall Of Death

You can go with the crazy people in the Crooked House
You can fly away on the Rocket or spin in the Mouse
The Tunnel Of Love might amuse you
Noah's Ark might confuse you
But let me take my chances on the Wall Of Death."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcFhyy2kgdo

In just about every way, both "Bodie" and the suburban sprawl of the worlds of the Wasatch Front metropolitan region and the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill have as their sources forms of magical thinking---that any resource-based system only lacks topmost limits because of forces outside of those governing the finite nature of natural resources.

Whether those resources happen to be a yellow metal or the relatively inexpensive hydrocarbons needed to fuel (yes, I know, but laugh anyway) the little house on the cul-de-sac, the notion that limits are imposed not by actual measures but by "gobmunt regulayshun" reflects little more than a dreamscape better suited to SuperHero Action comics than much else.

Please see:

http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/milton-friedman-s-magical-thinking

From here, we move forward, not be striving to re-create even the best of some moments from the past...

Greg

"Those intent on re-creating the past are terrified of the future." -- Legs McNeil

In the end, as late as the early 1930's there were those last few die-hard believers, rick-ribbed, true to the last believers, knowing, knowing in their irrational senses that there would "always be more gold found around Bodie".

In considering the themes of "Salt/Wake", one witnesses a similar depth of "faith" that business will ALWAYS expand as a consequence of hard work and risk taking. That the magical reality of the inexhaustibly infinite solutions is there for anyone, given enough hard work, risk taking and, of course, that quirky variable, innovations. Not that any of these "solutions" run in tandem with any willful attempt to re-create the past. One look at the urban sprawl of the Watsach region and Raleigh-Duham-Cary-Chapel Hill-Carrboro one clearly sees a world still building a past of thirty-seven cents per gallon gasoline, ALWAYS somehow "knowing" that suburbia is vital to one or another "Plan Of Salvation" and that there will be cheap motor fuels to propel metal machines forever and ever. 

Much as "Bodie" and it's yellow metal. 

Greg

"Bodie" and the metaphor of resources and suburbia---the entire US transportation grid we've built here since the era following World War I. Bodie, the town, ran out the very mineral resource that made it boom. That it collapsed...was completely de-populated by the 1950's, even prior. Not much left there save for toxic mining tailings and falling down building shells. 

Visions for US suburbia. "1001 Uses For a Dead KFC outlet". How limitless were those horizons. Limitless consumption. Everyday low prices. Trinkets on a limitless vista.

http://www.urbanghostsmedia.com/2010/09/dead-malls-9-abandoned-arcades-markets-and-shopping-centres/

Greg

Will I regret posting the (current) chord frame-work for the title track on Bodie?  Hmm.   Here it is... in all it's basic raw-ness.   From here it grew into what it is today.  Which I haven't posted as of yet.  As of yet.  Yes I repeated that for emphasis.  

Just to clarify:  the "real live raw sketch" of the first progression loop (twice repeated) for the song Bodie is now here and ready for your voyeuristic tendencies to be satisfied.  Acoustically.

Good news for Greg, he's back home tonight.  I'll turn the blog over to him tomorrow probably.  He's ready to get back to work on Bodie...watch.
JG

If you have downloaded the Long Way to Fall track you may have noticed that there is JUST ONE CHORD in that entire song.    A minor I think.  Right?  I might forget.  

Anyways, coming up next is a two chord song.  This is in response to certain comments that I make my songs chord-change-heavy and thus enter the realm of "jazz".  You know who you are that said this.   Ahem.

But actually the one-chord song turned out cool.  So next is a 2-chord.  I'll probably post it this weekend.   Simplifying is a little against my nature but that's kind of what this is about.  And it seemed to work, so go with it?

JG

Greg is doing much better, not out of the woods yet, but well enough to jot down some lyrics in between "tests".  Can't wait to see what he comes up with.  If you want to call him then email me for contact details.
JG