On the Spring equinox, Neurosis released a new album on the streamers, titled “An Undying Love for a Burning World” with physical copies being available in May. And, boy, in this shittiest of times in which we live in, did I ever need an album like this. Hit the link for more info.
Just know that of all the artists I love, there is but a handful of them in which I buy everything they put out. Led Zeppelin has gotten most of my discretionary income in this life, but right there is also Neurosis. I ADORE this band. I won’t bore you with recounting their history and my long relationship with their music. Just go to Neurot Records and go down the rabbit hole.
I’ve been traveling way more than intended this year, but I still feel compelled to share some thoughts on Bob Weir who passed away in January.
I was absolutely NOT a Deadhead for much of my life. Growing up in the Bay Area in the 70’s/80’s, the Grateful Dead were embedded in the local culture, whether you liked it or not. I rebelled against that. I also had a family connection in that my step-uncle worked as a truck driver for the Dead, even going to Egypt with them and writing a book about it. As this uncle and I would have a severe falling out, I associated the Dead with him….so F&*K them!
In truth, however, I did like American Beauty as a kid, associating it with some brief happy memories of my childhood that surround a hippie babysitter I had after my mom died (a long story for another day).
Fast forward to 2016 when I got reacquainted with an old friend from my days playing in hard Rock bands in the Bay Area in the 80’s. He too was “anti-Dead” back in the day but somehow became an avid fan. This was surprising to a degree but as we change as we get older, not earthshattering. In our conversation, he said “You’ve got to give the Dead another chance!”…to which I said “yeah, yeah”..
As an aside, my sister had also become a big Deadhead so I knew more than a few people who fell under their sway.
Some weeks after that meeting with my friend, while having an apple pie with my wife, I put on my vinyl copy of “Dead Set”, the live album that my stepbrother gave me for Christmas in 1980 that I played maybe twice before storing it within my record collection for 36 years. As I’m listening to “Samson and Deliah” while enjoying home-made apple pie, I was mentally transported back to that aforementioned childhood time with the hippie baby-sitter that smelled of marijuana and Nag Champa (again, long story but I remember her cooking apple pie), and something “clicked”. I listened to the album over and over. Then I bought ” Workingman’s Dead”, then “Blues for Allah”. Then I switched the Sirius radio to the Grateful Dead channel, then I started becoming familiar with the huge wealth of live recordings. I was hooked. It was the damnedest thing. It was a music rabbit hole that I went down into hard.
That, in itself, was enough to make The Grateful Dead and all their members special for me. But, in 2019, when my father was dying in my home, I put on The Dead for him to listen to. At that point, my father wasn’t very lucid and was fading fast. But he did turn to me as he heard the music and said “That is nice. Keep playing that”. Those were some of the last lucid words he said to me.
All this is to say that The Grateful Dead became and remain very special to me. And Bob Weir, of all the members, is the most revered to me for a few reasons.
1st reason is because I came to the Dead after Jerry Garcia passed and the GD were officially no more. Of course, I know that Jerry is and will forever be the guiding musical force behind the Grateful Dead. But the post-Jerry activities have fascinating me even more so and especially Mr. Weir’s. He literally never stopped. He was a relentless artist that pursued his own path while also keeping the legacy of the Grateful Dead not just alive but evolving. In a very real way, he became the elder statemen of the movement that the Dead created that Jerry Garcia did not live to become.
2nd, I am in awe at Bob Weir’s guitar ability. His chord phrasing and style were 2nd to none. He was such an amazing contributor to the sound of the band. Its impossible to imagine the Dead’s sound without his rhythm guitar.
Lastly, his song writing and voice were fantastic. “Jack Straw”, “The Other One”, “Sugar Magnolia” and on and on were fantastic songs. His interpretation of the cover songs like the aforementioned “Samson and Deliah” and “El Paso” made those songs his. Even the “Jerry Songs” that he would sing later in life were made (dare I say) more special. His solo albums, especially “Blue Mountain” are fantastic.
I’m grateful that I got to see Dead and Co. in 2022 and The Wolf Brothers in 2024, both with my oldest daughter who has also gone down the Dead rabbit hole. I’m grateful that I was encouraged by a friend to explore the music and open my mind. I’m grateful to have discovered art late in my life that has been there all along and feels like its been here forever. I’m grateful for Bob Weir for being the most devoted chaser of bliss that made my world a little richer. I’m Grateful.
I’ll have more to write about Mr. Weir when I return from my upcoming travels, but I will say that his music meant a lot to me in my older years. That is ironic as I used to despise the Grateful Dead (close minded Heavy Metal elitist that I was). But in the last 10 years, his music, be it with GD, Dead and Co., the Wolf Brothers or with whomever has truly become foundational to my music listening life. Again, I’ll write more when I get back but….
God bless Bob Weir and thank you for the great music.
He is Lemmy Kilmister. He played Rock and Roll. He was a man of integrity and honesty. Some would say he was crude. I would say he was admirable and inspirational. He suffered no fools, lived life honestly and without pretense, and (by many accounts) was a kind and generous man…..Oh, and by the way, he was a pioneering and pivotal figure in the history of Rock and Roll. It’s hard to believe it has been 10 years since his death. Long may his memory remain!
In spite of all the anger and fear that bombards us daily, I have hope. Not a naive hope which is more a desire. Rather, a hope that is anchored in the belief that light is always present and always prevails. True, the ugliness is real. Yes, fear and anger create the conditions in which great harm is done and is being done. Yes, there is more anger and fear than I realized a few short years ago. But I remain hopeful that love will prevail
That being said…racism, homophobia, sexism, xenophobia and any exclusionary and divisive stance are abhorrent to me. If you disagree, I shall still love you as best I can, but from a distance. In a word: boundaries.
And speaking of love, the best definition of love I have heard of is “the non-possessive delight in the well-being of another”. I heard it from Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis which she attributed the definition to Dr. James E. Loder
The older I get, the broader my spiritual “touchstones” become. I’m less and less likely to identify with a particular religious tradition and remain curious about people, traditions, and practices beyond my cultural “home” (whatever that means). I believe in “The Perennial Truth” and its manifestation throughout time, cultures, and traditions.
To paraphrase the late, great Tom Petty, music is the greatest magic I have ever encountered.
I wish you all a blessed 2026. May peace and every good be yours. Cheers,
Ace Frehley was my 1st guitar hero. Kiss was my first musical love. They were my 1st obsession. Kiss Alive was the 1st album I ever bought with my own money. It was the 1st album to hook me and haunt me. They filled my childhood, which was at that point filled with fear and anger, with excitement and joy.
My obsession for Kiss long since diminished but I’d be remiss if I didn’t honor the passing of Ace Frehley who passed away 16-Oct. 2025. His death does sadden me as yet another pivotal figure of my life moves on. He joins Ozzy, Eddie Van Halen, Jeff Beck, Neil Peart, Harold Budd, Vangelis, Lemmy, Prince, Tom Petty, David Bowie, Charlie Watts, Pete Way…and on and on…as people that meant so much to me, whom I never met but who contributed to memories and moments as real and as important and any attributed to my friends and family. Their departure from this life hits me in a very real way, perhaps not as acute as a loved one but no less real. Their departure is a reminder of the passage of time and a closing of a door to further contributions from their artistry to impact my life further. Yes, I still have the contributions from when they were alive and those contributions will live on in a way, but there will not be another Sabbath album or a VH show to go to, or an entertaining story about Ace Frehley. The door is now shut.
Thank you, Ace, for giving a scared, angry kid a joyous outlet that provided so much joy. May your soul be at peace.
This is a rhetorical question but also the title of a just-completed piece of music that will be part of a future album release, outlet to be determined. I hope to have enough pieces for an album release in 2026. Stay tuned….
As to the rhetorical question “How Have We Come to This?”, it is something I’m saying to myself more and more as I watch what I’ll call the myths of a stable society teetering and collapsing. I see the nightmare in Gaza playing out in what is by any definition a genocide and people being verbally eviscerated for being critical of the inhumanity on display. I see the predictable dichotomies and binary arguments that are always used to defend atrocity and historical injustices. I see power being exerted beyond what had long thought to have been “normal”, revealing the fragility of agreements that structure society. I see what I had hoped to have been archaic modes of thinking towards race and identify remerge, angrier and uglier than ever. I see all this and ask, “How Have We Come to This?”.
But surprisingly, I also have hope. It is not a flowery or sentimental hope. It is a hope based on something I really can’t properly describe as it is rooted as spiritually experiential. It is a hope born of prayer and meditation and not one that is unshakable. To be clear, I have great moments of fear and anger. I can experience despair with the best of them. But when I am deliberate in my prayer practice, I find hope that no matter how bad things get in the world (and I expect things to get much worse before they get better), there is still goodness. There is still kindness. There is still compassion. There is still love. That sounds flowery and perhaps it is. But I do believe that love prevails always. And I take solace in words of people I admire throughout history, like this guy….
On July 22, I shed tears for someone I never met for the 2nd time in my life. The 1st time was for Edward Van Halen. Of course, this most recent moment was for the passing of Ozzy Osbourne who was already on my mind with renewed, albeit nostalgic focus as a result of his very recent farewell concert on July 5th. I think many felt it was truly a farewell but were equally shocked that his death would be so soon afterwards.
I can’t do justice in memorializing Ozzy. Its clear by what has already been said by so many on Socials that I’m but one of many who feel like a dear friend has departed. I’ll just say that his life made a difference to mine. He wasn’t a saint, but he was inspirational.
I’m taking a brief break from tweaking a work-in-progress piece to let you know that….I’m working on a WIP piece and compiling music. Nothing firm but I’m thinking the next batch will be a Spotify/Pandora/Apple release in addition to Bandcamp. More to come…
Regarding some of the music I’ve been listening to, it’s been a combination of pleasant new (for me) discoveries mixed with nostalgic “rabbit holes”.
1st, the nostalgia. Two weeks ago, Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath bid farewell to performance with an amazing celebration in their hometown of Birmingham, England. It was an all-star affair which was fantastic, but the emotional weight was, of course, seeing Ozzy, Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler, and Bill Ward take the stage one final time (and I do believe this is their farewell, especially Ozzy who is in failing health). I was reminded of all the great Sabbath and Ozzy albums that were so integral to my youth. I’ve been dialing up “Diary of a Madman”, “Bark at the Moon”,Volume 4, and other great albums that cause memories and emotions to rush into my mind. I’m grateful to have been of the generation to have experienced such greatness both live and recorded. God bless the Fathers of Heavy Metal.
As for the more recent discoveries:
JakoJako – Tết 41:A brilliant collection of music by a Berlin-based modular synthesist that I’ve really come to admire. She brings an emotional element to electronic music which is not common.
Caterina Barbieri – Patterns of Consciousness: An Italian electronic musician who also adds emotional elements to electronic music. There are some rhythmic elements to her music that don’t feel mechanically perfect or quantized to the nano-second, which I love.
In any case, thank you for your interest and check back for more updates. I wish you peace and every good.
As with all my music, titles are a little tricky in that I’m an instrumentalist. Without lyrics, there isn’t a point of reference for a title to come from. And unlike some instrumentalists that I admire, I don’t come up with a title before the composition. Quite the opposite actually. I will start a recording file by giving it a time stamp name (e.g. 240512). On occasion, a piece will lend itself to a name while I’m working on it but, more often, the title will come to me when the piece is near completion. It is almost always informed by an emotion or memory that was prevalent at the time of the piece’s creation.
The pieces that comprise the album “I Wasn’t Ready” were assembled over years. Some were recordings I left undone due to another idea taking precedence or I got stuck.
With all that said, here’s a brief explanation of the titles:
“I Wasn’t Ready” – This piece, upon completion, reminded me of the memory of both my late father and my late sister, both of whom died within 18 months of each other. While it’s been a few years now since their passing, there is still (and will always be) grief. I shall always miss them, but it dawned on me that I was not prepared for the pain of their absence and that struck me as odd, in a way. The one thing we all have in common is death. We will all die. We will all lose loved ones. And yet we are so woefully prepared.
“It Ends and Begins” – This is one of those pieces that sat for a while. I started it in 2021, put it down, and didn’t get back to it until 2024. When I did return to it, I felt like a different world. A reminder that things are not static.
“Melancholic” – This piece came together quickly and was reflective of the melancholic mood I was in at the time.
“A Budding” – Another piece that sat for a while. I was not in the best of moods when I started it. I was angry, sad, disgusted. But, having put it down for a while and coming back to it with clean ears and emotions, I saw the initial period as being a period of new beginning born out of a very unpleasant moment.
“Grace Amongst the Haze” – When this piece was done, it conjured up a memory of Northern California and the beauty that came with the summer fog.
“Where the Waters Meet” – This was inspired by a return trip to my Northern California home region in 2023 and, specifically, Jenner where the Russian River flows into the Pacific Ocean. I was there with my wife, daughters, grandson, and was reminded of the time, in 1988, when I was walking at the same spot with my father.
“An Ugly Truth Revealed” – This was recorded at the end of 2024 very quickly. I had just come back from overseas and it felt like the country I had hoped we would be was an overly optimistic illusion and some unpleasant truths were confirmed for all to see.
