A Leaf Without a Tree

Just trying something that’s been sitting in my closet for over a year.

2024oct08 - little [scuffed] wing

I think it's time I start practicing. I play guitar all the time and can sit and play leads and bullshit but I suck when thrown into a context like this for my lack of practicing to backing tracks (like this one). Probably would play better in situations like this if I was slightly stoned so I don't overthink. Used only my Kemper with a Dumble profile and the fuzz options on there are shit. I can play the intro but had no idea where to come in as there is a three count thing and it wasn't lining up even after setting the project to 60BPM (the same as the SRV instrumental version of "Little Wing"). Tried a few times where the fifth would have been. 1:18 is horrid. I'll definitely spend a little less time wasting time with bullshit and practice this for some time. While I don’t think I am a great player by any stretch of my imagination, this was my first go at this backing track - if I don’t improve I’m throwing in the towel.

Second try now. It’s obvious I punched in at 2:17. Gonna walk away from this exercise in futility for now.

Scuffed version of "Live Forever"

Not sure why I felt inclined to do that. I suck at singing. Who am I kidding - I can’t sing. My throat hurts. Gain + P90’s = hum: early 00’s MIK Casino with Lollar vintage-spec P90’s into a 65 Amps Tupelo Kemper profile into Valhalla Vintage Reverb (that is on master treating both guitar and vocal).

24 years ago my life was changed forever. This one is for you Skout. Happy Birthday! You’re not here but… You live forever.

Was bored so I decided to play around with some orchestral virtual instruments in Logic

Not sure what this is other than simple.

*I replaced the original file… Went back to try and fix it. What a complete pain in the ass. This was something I found that I played around with and abandoned years ago (there were no strings, bass, etc). I realized the strings, after putting them in there, didn’t follow the percussion as the percussion didn’t really follow anything (it certainly wasn’t following the washed out guitar and vice-versa)… So I had to realign everything: bass to the percussion, strings to the bass… Before that bass and string section kicks in it really is all over the place (the project is 4/4 but it’s not that and that first part is all over the place).

Nearly Everything You Have Been Told About Russia and Ukraine is a LIE

[I hate to get political but it has reached a point within the last year and a half that I can hardly tolerate it. But my take below has nothing to do with politics and, in my opinion, more to do with sanity.]

I highly urge anyone to watch the interview with Jeffrey Sachs in its entirety with an open mind. Jeffrey Sachs isn’t just some talking head that hasn’t a clue as you typically see in the media: in fact, the media largely avoids him for this very reason. He was directly involved with the reshaping of the Polish economy after the fall of the Soviet Union. He was also involved with Bolivia to assist them in their struggle with inflation. He also worked with Gorbachev and was around during the time when assurances were given, by the Bush administration, to Russian leadership that NATO did not seek to expand (the saying “… not one inch east…”). He spent nearly two decades as a professor at Harvard and is currently a professor at Columbia.

And here’s the last bit I want to say. We’ve all heard it, this talk of Russian aggression that was unprompted - and all the other words they use to misdiagnose what has happened. Zbigniew Brzezinski called for NATO expansion eastward towards Russia in the 1990’s - and, unsurprisingly, was backed with support from Kissinger. Later, neoconservatives formed a thinktank called The Project for a New American Century and penned an article, or manifesto, titled “Rebuilding Americas Defenses” and in it they call for NATO expansion towards Russia and into southeastern Europe (you can read the entire piece for yourself at Archive.org). Many of the PNAC authors found themselves posted to positions within the Bush administration that began in 2000. In 1999 NATO expanded into the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland. In 2004 the Cold War relic expanded into Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia. In 2008 it attempted to expand into Georgia, yet another state on the Russian frontier, which resulted in Russian military intervention: it failed. In 2009 it expanded into Albania and Croatia. In 2017 it was Montenegro. In 2020 it was North Macedonia. In 2023 it expanded into Finland. In 2024 it expanded into Sweden. In 2013/2014 it attempted to expand into Ukraine which resulted in the coup that took place after Maidan in early 2014. As you can see, the modern version of NATO has literally nothing to do with its history of being a North Atlantic military alliance. And of course, the events of 2013 and 2014 have a huge role in where we are now. The revolution that occurred in Ukraine in 2014 that resulted in the coup of an elected president, Viktor Yanukovych, of course had true believers - but as always it is a loud minority. Also at work behind the scenes was Obama’s State Department as represented by Victoria Nuland and the ambassador, shady western NGO’s, and alphabet agencies (after all, regime change is the CIA’s favorite game). There literally exists a recorded call of Victoria Nuland having a conversation with another State Department individual about hand picking the new Ukrainian government. Now, if you believe that these people played no role in stoking the fires of Maidan I have a bridge to sell you. Of course the bulk, if not all, of the true believers during the “Revolution of Dignity” (a poor name) likely originated in Kiev… But you need to understand the makeup of Ukraine: In the west you have Hungarian and Romanian populations while in the east you have ethnic Russians (Ukraine nationalism is rather new - the lands it is composed of was at one time or another part of the Russian Empire, Hungary, etc.)… When you have a population center, as we do here in Oregon, that is so densely populated the rest of the region is dictated to by that one densely populated region (here, unfortunately, it’s Portland that rules despite however we vote)… And so, when the coup and the ousting of a neutral and Russian-friendly president took place in 2014, and a new government was chosen by foreign powers, many in oblasts like Donetsk wanted nothing more to do with Kiev and vied for their own independence. That independence brought down violence upon their region by the armed forces of Ukraine. Once again, we are talking about populations, from eastern Ukraine down to Crimea, that is vastly made up of ethnic Russians. The war began in 2014, not 2022 - and those people that sought to move beyond the grip of Kiev struggled for some eight long years on their own: in other words, it took eight years for Russia to become directly involved.

Beyond this, Russia has a history of desiring neutral states on her border. During World War II it is estimated that Russia suffered 27,000,000 casualties. Go back further and you have more incursions into Russia such as that by Napoleon in 1812. How is it that seemingly almost nobody wonders why Russia wouldn’t be more than happy to have NATO on her doorstep? It is a military alliance: with it comes military bases, weapons and missiles, and everything else. I know for a fact that the United States would never tolerate Canada or Mexico joining a Chinese-led military alliance. And here is just how absurd those in power are with their drive for NATO expansion and their pretend shock of a Russian response: The US has the Monroe Doctrine that declares the entire western hemisphere off limits to foreign powers. Yet, even setting aside concern for the ethnic Russians that reside in the region of Ukraine, somehow everyone is surprised, even after the attempted expansion into Georgia and the results it yielded, that Russia has a line in the sand.

Below is an excerpt of a conversation James Baker, then the Bush Secretary of State, had with Gorbachev in February of 1990. [Keep in mind it was not the Bush Sr. administration that expanded NATO but Clinton’s.]

[Baker to Gorbachev in response to being asked about the potential for a US military presence being unwanted in a unified Germany] If that happens, our troops will return home. We will leave any country that does not desire our presence. The American people have always had a strong position favoring this. However, if the current West German leadership is at the head of a unified Germany then they have said to us they will be against our withdrawal. And the last point. NATO is the mechanism for securing the U.S. presence in Europe. If NATO is liquidated, there will be no such mechanism in Europe. We understand that not only for the Soviet Union but for other European countries as well it is important to have guarantees that if the United States keeps its presence in Germany within the framework of NATO, not an inch of NATO’s present military jurisdiction will spread in an eastern direction.

The machine of the establishment has made it extremely difficult for anyone to attempt to research anything, such as, if Russia was provided with assurances that NATO would not push east. When you attempt to find documented evidence like this you will frequently see things like “Fact Check: Was Gorbachev told… …”. Some of these people behind these efforts could be ignorant of fact and history and some could be purposely placing firewalls in an effort to thwart attempts to obtain information. You work, go to school, have kids, whatever - you don’t have all the time in the world to dig for info and the proverbial they know this: make it hard and many will abandon the task. As Sachs says, you are just simply to believe Russian actions are unprovoked and expected to make no attempts to inform yourself outside of turning on your television or reading The New York Times. Social engineering is a fact and it is running on all cylinders to make certain your mind falls in line. [The “proverbial they” in this case being every mainline media entity from Google/Alphabet Inc to these goofy “fact check” sites like Politifact]

And then one wonders what has all this accomplished. What it has accomplished has been a misadventure in creating massive instability. The Cold War ended in 1991 and with it the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact ended. So too should NATO have ended. Instead it has continued to grow like some sort of cancer that never seems sated and with no real reason to exist. Yet, through its continued existence, activity, and unwarranted growth the reason for NATO’s existence has now been finally realized - regardless of how absurd it is from the ground up. And for the rest of us, we now have to endure a more instable world, likely a new arms race, a far more polarized world that is divided rather than working together - we are simply going in the wrong direction, and a new potential cold war that hopefully never grows as hot as it could. And all the while, as the past eighty years unfortunately demonstrates, nuclear arms were a means of deterrent: the whole mutually assured destruction scenario. But just as Annie Jacobsen [the author of Nuclear War: A Scenario] says, it is a deterrent until it is not… And that is the primary deterrent Russia has to keep NATO troops off Ukraine soil which is scoffed at and ignored by our fearless, unscrupulous leaders. From where I sit, when I think of who has been the most destabilizing force on the planet over the last several decades, Russia and Putin don’t even enter the picture: however there is another nation that has a military presence in some eighty foreign nations and seeks more, plays the regime change game as if it were a national pass time - including sponsoring terrorism - which culminates in subverting its interests, believes it runs the entire planet, possesses the hubris that the hemisphere in which it exists it has ultimate ownership, has dumped depleted uranium all over foreign soil (in some cases stirring conflict in which its population was lied to in order to gain popular support) which has caused both cancer and birth defect rates there to sky rocket, spends more on the machine of war than any other state, and has been in a state near-perpetual conflict for decades.

*One more thing. There is a good book on the history of Russia in relation to Europe, the UK, and the US and how it ties into modern realities and Putin. I am not a fan of the author per se, and I do believe with some of his work he shows bias, but most of his work is grounded on historical fact however uncomfortable it may be for some to contemplate. I read it years ago and I highly recommend it (remember we now live in a world where even attempting to interview Russian leadership is considered treasonous - we are officially shown only one side of reality and not even a true shade of reality at that - and a reality in which the White House simply refuses to utilize dialog and diplomacy with Russia and has done so for decades): he provides a lot of information you can check and contrast it to the book’s contents: War Against Putin: What the Government-Media Complex Isn't Telling You About Russia

This is also available on Archive.org.

Cortez the Killer with studio stems (full versio)

I figured this in on YouTube and I am not trying to do anything with it so figured I’d post the entire thing.

Prior to doing that I downloaded a quite awful backing track for CTK from YT. It’s the rhythm guitar that makes it so bad in my opinion. When I added the guitar on the left I used a rather bright Jazzmaster and later decided I wanted to try and do it more in-line with Neil’s sound and used a post I found with the studio stems sans guitars - posted above (obviously I can’t play like Neil). This is a bit louder unfortunately but whatever.

I found the original version of Wylds' "The Veil"

When I found this I was scratching my head why I cut it down so much when I was mixing the stuff for Slow Times. But I suppose in the end it’s all good - I’ll be putting this on the new EP - which might include a few covers such as “All Cats Are Grey” by The Cure hopefully (I have it recorded but it needs more work). The “slacker” bit is because, at the time, it reminded me, somewhat, of Pavement.

I ****ing love this song....

Tonight I decided to break my routine and enjoy a few beers while sitting outside, listening to music, under the moon. I stumbled on these guys (suddenly I don’t think that cos name is so bad now)… While I don’t like all of their music I must have listened to this song out there five or six times - maybe more. The arpeggiated synth twirls. The clean guitar that comes in - can't tell if it's playing octaves or single notes (C-G/A-F/E)... And then that guitar with a descent amount of plate(?) reverb, kind of reminiscent of 60's spaghetti westerns or something on a Lee Hazelwood song, that comes in at 3:38. Just so good and tasteful. And so smooth. This just straight up resonated with my very being - as if it mirrored my soul or something. Just a great example of how simple layers can add up and make something beautiful.

Just thought I'd share. While popular music is full of absolute trash, from mumble rap to some record label people or "producers" writing material for popstars (Taylor Swift anyone), there is good music out there still lurking under the surface.

New Dawn Fades (Joy Division)

This morning after work I was watching a show Wand played in May and was inspired by it. So I figured I’d sit down and see if I can come up with anything. Decided I would start with bass and for some reason I just started playing the bass line of this song. So, well, here it is. Drum loop is pretty bad.

7/19/24: I think I’m going to rerecord this entirely. The above wasn’t 100% - I just settled to have fun.

I've been hung up on "Cortez the Killer" for so long...

That while I haven’t really dived deep into studying how Neil plays it I realize it’s impossible to play it like him. Probably why out of all the covers in existence nobody ever tries to outside of a few key melodic bits. [The bass and drums are the actual studio tracks - not me]

Cortez the Killer (Backing Track)

I’ve been wanting to record and work on my own stuff but I have an issue with an external drive so not much I can do for now. I decided to throw this backing track into Logic and play some shitty runs over it (I’m on the left). Here is the backing track I used. I tried to fatten it up a little but the results aren’t so great. Not much you can do when you have drums, bass, and a rhythm guitar all on one track.

Can a Gibson Firebird play surf???

This is just a very short clip of the room sound from my cellphone. I was curious how one would do with sort of a surfy sound. This is also pretty low volume so you’re hearing both the amp in the room and probably a little bit of the pick attack on the guitar.

And today's throw-away track is?

I had a barebone project that I abandoned from November 17 that consisted of just a few bars of two guitars. I intended to try and come up with something new but I had to deal with some plug-in issues - so I figured I’d find something else to work on after… Didn’t have the energy to start something from scratch. In the end I had no idea where to take this and just faded it. Doesn’t really feel too great but I can maybe use it as a sort of interlude. I don’t know.

*Of course now I have an idea on how to tie it up.

Finally beginning to record again...

Did this this morning. There was something familiar about it to me - and then it hit me… It’s the main chord progression (the guitar with chorus) - it reminds me of DIIV. This is the first track I’ve created entirely (from the ground up) since August 2021. Kind of filler but it’s a start to get going again.

Former British Soldier EXPOSES Israel War Machine

How would you feel if some other country gave your land and home away to someone else. Or, how would you feel if someone came and ousted you out of your home and bulldozed it? How long would you be angry for? I know, for me, it wouldn’t go away. We hardly ever try and understand underlying causes. Or, other times, like Ukraine, we ignore them because they’re inconvenient (NATO caused what is happening in Ukraine). We need to wake the **** up.