I'm The Indian Escaping At The End Of "Cuckoo's Nest"

This is a gun.

If you're not crazy, they're all kinds of cool.

If you are crazy, we've got a problem.

How do I define "crazy"?

That's where I'm faced with a dilemma.

See, I live in a culture that encourages people not to concede to the rational - like believing a man who walked on water watches over our lives, and may even talk to us.

Is that crazy?

Then there's the idea certain humans possess magical powers, say of redemption, like Westerners did Bob Dylan and The Beatles, and like The Beatles did the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi from the East, in turn.

Was that crazy?

Our lives are overflowing with asinine ideas people still insist on - including discredited ones.

Is letting that happen crazy?

We're not the rest of the world.

Americans are supposed to be different.

We're supposed to be stripping away the fraud that defines the hardships of other people's lives.

Instead, we treat it as a show.

In such a culture, the military couldn't stop the Washington shooter for being crazy, any more than society can stop Jenny McCarthy - who's killed way more people - using different means.

Even with a diagnosis of schizophrenia, the shooter's beliefs are no stranger than hers, or many others.

This is our culture.

They call it the NewAge and, as a society, it's "the path" they've chosen.

The one that says the Washington shooter deserved to die and Jenny McCarthy is a star of television and publishing - despite being identical in beliefs, actions, and crimes.

 That's how I define crazy.

And, I think, things will start to work out again - and fewer people will die - once we commit ourselves to curing it,...

 

It's Not Spiritual And It's Not Hippie - It's American Music

I wouldn't call it this - because The Spiritual Danger of Being Bored to Death ain't been my problem - I'm an artist.

My issues are much more fundamental - To be or not to be? What does it mean to be? Will I be allowed to be? That kind of thing.

And by the way, doesn't Foreigner look good?

   

 I remember "Urgent," hilariously reframing the Dirty White Boys as a New Wave band without style, back-in-the-day.

They were, momentarily, traitors to the culture (as we were recently reminded) "the sort of thing we loathed at the time and called 'disco.'"

I wasn't part of the "we" in that quote, for various reasons, but mostly because I can't count how many times I was set upon (sometimes violently) for enjoying music's evolution back then. If you want to know what it was like, imagine the reaction Dylan got for going electric, but following you around for more than a decade. 

   

 The future had arrived without warning, in synthetic form - and finally featuring rhythm - and machines! But, by welcoming it, I was the bad guy.

   

 Like it was my fault Led Zeppelin had one of the only drummers in Rock who thought (what we now call) a Rap beat was actually important - and who didn't think he practiced to, either, play metronome or occasionally express how "crazy" he was.

   

The larger culture waited for Talking Heads' eventual invitation, to join in what David Byrne called "changing my shape," and the rest of us called a party. We'd have to wait a little while longer.

   

 Of course - once the party officially got kicked off - where the future was heading didn't make many folks happy, either, so there was conflict again. 

You could say, from 1977 to 1987, it was pretty much open warfare - with me in the middle - until my "side" brought the walls down.

Since then, I don't have to remind you, there's been a few times when we've all had reason to contemplate ending it.

   

 But, like I said - it was because of the unwarranted hostility to change - not because it stayed boring,...

 

Help My Uncle Irwin Find Info On Producer Tom Wilson

I just got an email from my "Uncle Irwin" - Irwin Chusid, above, a friend and one of the resident genius' over at WFMU - that reads as follows:

Record producer Tom Wilson died of a heart attack 35 years ago on this date. He was 47. Who was Wilson? In 1954 this lanky Texan graduated cum laude from Harvard, where he served as president of the Harvard Republican Club. Over the next 14 years he produced the first two albums by Sun Ra, the Velvet Underground, and the Mothers of Invention. He produced Dylan's second, third, fourth and fifth albums (including Bringing It All Back Home). Although he didn't produce Dylan's sixth, Highway 61 Revisited, he did produce one track: "Like a Rolling Stone." He took an obscure acoustic track from Simon & Garfunkel's commercially failed debut album (which he'd produced) and, without the approval of the artists, overdubbed a rock band. That recording, "The Sounds of Silence," was released as a single in 1965, went to #1 on the charts, and helped launch the "folk-rock" boom. Despite his association with early Dylan, S&G, and Pete Seeger (another artist he produced), Wilson reportedly didn't even like folk music. He produced early albums by saxophonist Eddie Harris, pianist Cecil Taylor, and Soft Machine's debut. His discography veers from John Coltrane to Dion; from the Clancy Brothers to Hugh Masekela; from Donald Byrd to Eric Burdon; from the Blues Project to Nico; and from Gil Scott-Heron to Connie Francis. There were many more.   

In the three and a half decades since his premature passing, no books have been written about Wilson's storied life and career. No biopics have been produced, and no American Masters profile.   

But because we have the www, there's now a website devoted to Producer Tom Wilson. Started four months ago and assembled slowly, today marks its official launch. No bells, no whistles — just Tom Wilson 1.0. Chronicles, photos, links, quotes, interviews, and the most exhaustive discography to date of Wilson's productions. We probably got some stuff wrong. Help us fix it.

You heard the man - This was a Republican. 

Now, let's make ourselves useful, and fix an injustice - GO:

PRODUCER TOM WILSON