Um… Uh… Gum Eh? CD Release Party in Garberville this Friday

Tin Can Luminary’s New Album, Um… Uh… Gum Eh?

CD Release Party in Garberville this Friday

This Friday, May 3 at the Hemp Connection in Garberville, I’ll debut my new album of Circuit-bent music titled Um… Uh… Gum Eh?

For younger readers, and others who might miss the rather obscure musical reference, the title and cover parody what is widely regarded as the worst (at least excluding the post-Roger dreck) Pink Floyd album, titled Ummagumma, a double album originally released in 1970.

A careful observer, or anyone with nothing better to do, can spot many parallels between Pink Floyd’s Ummagumma and my new album Um… Uh… Gum Eh? For instance:

Both albums contain a song about a guy who cuts people up with a sharp object:

Ummagumma has Careful With That Axe, Eugene

Um… Uh… Gum Eh? has Mr. Whisker.

Both albums include songs about outer space:

Ummagumma has Astronomy Domine

Um… Uh… Gum Eh? has The Saucer People Speak

Both albums have songs about knowledgeable beings:

Ummagumma has The Grand Vizier’s Garden Party

Um… Uh… Gum Eh? has The Orb of Omniscience

Both albums have long, spacy pieces where the only lyrics are “Oooh, Aaahh, and Ohhh”

Ummagumma has A Saucerful of Secrets

Um… Uh… Gum Eh? has Interzone Transit Authority

Both albums have collections of unrecognizable sounds, combined with spoken words:

Ummagumma has Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving With a Pict

Um… Uh… Gum Eh? has I Made A Collage

Both albums have song titles that reference Greek mythology

Ummagumma has Sysyphus

Um… Uh… Gum Eh? has Sirens of Space, and here’s what it sounds like:

While Pink Floyd is famous for using gobs of state-of-the-art music equipment, I recorded Um… Uh… Gum Eh? With instruments I made out of tin cans, cigar boxes and second-hand childrens toys. That’s the state of my art, extremely low-budget and uniquely homemade. Even though Ummagumma is probably the worst Pink Floyd album, Um… Uh… Gum Eh? is undoubtedly my best album to date.  Um… Uh… Gum Eh? is my seventh solo album, btw.

Does Um… Uh… Gum Eh? sound better than Pink Floyd at their worst? Yeah, I think so. Does Um… Uh… Gum Eh? Sound like Pink Floyd? Not really, but like Pink Floyd, Um… Uh… Gum Eh? sounds great when you are really high. It’s a trip!

Um… Uh… Gum Eh? will make you smile, take you on a tour of the cosmos and bring you to the brink of insanity, before safely returning you to Earth.  Here’s the first video single from Um… Uh… Gum Eh? titled: Falling

So come out to The Hemp Connection in Garberville

on Friday, May 3rd to hear more from Um… Uh… Gum Eh?, see and hear my homemade circuit-bent instruments, and to hear me play electric didgeridoo, for free, as part of Arts Alive.  Also on the bill will be Patchy Fogg, playing musical saw.

And Now… A Musical Interlude; Falling by Tin Can Luminary

And Now… A Musical Interlude

I’m proud to present the first video single from my upcoming album of circuit-bent music:

Falling

by

Amy Gustin: vocals

John Hardin: didgeridoo and circuit-bent toys

The working title for the album is:

Um… Uh… Gum Eh?

Not that anyone buys albums anymore, or cares at all about them, or even has an hour to kill to listen to one, but that’s still how I think about my music projects. If you’ve followed this blog for a while, you know that I’ve been working on this album of music made with hacked electronic toys,

and home-made electro-acoustic instruments,

for just about a year now.  It took me most of the summer to build the instruments,

and I spent most of the winter recording the music.

I hope to finish the entire project in perhaps a month.  In the mean time, I hope you enjoy this video single and share it with anyone you think might enjoy it.

The Real Apocalypse Continues on KMUD, Sunday at 9:30am

The Real Apocalypse Continues on KMUD Sunday at 9:30am

 

I’ve heard it said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results. Clearly, whoever said that has not spent much time around the mentally ill. No, doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results, is the definition of stupidity.

As we systematically wipe out the biodiversity of the planet, overheat the atmosphere, and pollute, poison and contaminate every ecosystem and organism on Earth, a wretched and miserable cast, more than seven-billion strong, reenacts, recreates and reinforces a ten-thousand-year-old pattern of stupidity that has brought us to the brink of global destruction.

For an exploration of the roots of this juggernaut of cultural stupidity that has given us tyranny, war, starvation and disease on a biblical scale, and lies at the heart of our current global environmental crisis, listen to (my partner) Amy Gustin’s radio show, The Living Earth Connection, on KMUD at 9:30 am this coming Sunday.

Amy has put together an exceptional program. You will find it eye-opening and entertaining. The show examines the agricultural revolution, which gave rise to Western Civilization, through the prism of the biblical story of Revelations. To represent Revelations, Amy has chosen selections from Aphrodite’s Child’s classic album, 666 (which I reviewed here about a year ago). Through an examination of historical records and archeological evidence, Amy reveals the tectonic shift in human consciousness that triggered the tsunami of stupidity that now threatens to drown us all. Tune in to The Living Earth Connection this Sunday, Dec, 30 at 9:30 am on KMUD.

Nice Rifle!

Nice Rifle!

 

“Sig Zauer”, That’s a name I haven’t heard in connection with a mass killing before, but I’m not sure he even fired it. That Bushmaster .225 AR15, on the other hand, sounds like a great gun. The media repeatedly reminded me that the Bushmaster .225 AR15 is very light. That’s important, especially if you plan on shooting a lot of people. You don’t want your arm to get too tired. You still need to be able to hold a handgun to your own head when you’re done.

The media also offers a couple other glowing endorsements of the Bushmaster .225. Apparently the DC Sniper also chose the Bushmaster .225 AR15. Of all of the mass shooters in recent memory, the DC Sniper really seemed to be the best shot. I think that guy knew a thing or two about guns. Also, the NYC police swat team carries Bushmaster .225 AR15s. Those guys are real professionals. Even the director of the Federal ATF spoke of the Bushmaster .225 AR15 in glowing terms.

Personally, everything I know about guns comes from the media reports following mass shootings. The Glock 9mm seems to be a popular handgun among America’s unstable youth, but that could be just a fad. This Bushmaster .225 AR15, however, sounds like a real high-quality rifle, I might need to get me one. I’m sure they cost a bit. Connecticut rich kids don’t skimp on stuff like that. I can imagine the cops arriving on the scene, surrounded by blood and dead bodies, going “Whoa, …nice rifle.”

Clearly the Bushmaster .225 AR15 is capable of firing lots of ammunition without jamming. Apparently in an Oregon mass shooting, another Bushmaster .225 AR15 jammed, mid-spree. That couldn’t have been very good for sales. Fortunately, the low body count in the Oregon shooting prevented it from generating too much bad publicity for Bushmaster, but the most recent Connecticut school shooting insures that this will be a very merry X-mas indeed for gun dealers across America.

You can’t buy that kind of advertizing. …Or can you? Why do they tell us this stuff? Now there’s talk of new gun control legislation. That’ll sell more guns for sure. I’m not crazy about gun control laws unless they involve disarming the police and military. I don’t think you can stop mass killings in America with gun control, any more than you can stop employee suicide at the Foxcom factory in China by locking the door to the roof.

The term “Running Amok” comes from a phenomena that became epidemic in India during the British occupation. In that overpopulated country, under a particularly oppressive colonial occupation, young men would go mad, slashing wildly at anyone around them, with knives, as they ran through crowded streets. The fact that here in the US, it’s mostly privileged, white, middle-class kids who run amok, should tell you just how sick our dominant culture has become.

 

As appealing as it appears from the outside, the middle-class lifestyle is not very satisfying, quite the opposite, in fact. Economic pressures insure that considerable resources get devoted towards keeping the affluent in a state of want. Corporations exploit every human weakness they can find, to use against them, and many among the middle-class are quite weak. Fifty-plus hour work-weeks, mortgage stress and media programming all work to weaken them further.

As a result, most middle-class people are really fucking lame.

As the middle-class gets lamer and lamer, it gets harder and harder to prevent their kids from realizing how lame their parents, their community, and this society really are.

Turns out that Frank Zappa wasn’t kidding when he said “If your kids ever figure out how lame you are, they will murder you in your sleep.”

What I Bent Over My Summer Vacation

What I Bent Over My Summer Vacation

circuit-bent synthesizer array

If you’ve followed this blog for a while, you’ll remember that I went kind of gonzo about circuit-bending this past Spring. After about half a dozen posts, I realized that not many of my readers could relate to my interest in rewiring children’s electronic toys. So, I dumbed down my posts to encourage the idiots among you to keep reading, but that doesn’t mean that I’ve lost interest in making music with creatively modified, cast-off electronic toys.

Quite the contrary, over the summer I created a number of circuit-bent instruments from electronic toys I found in our local thrift stores. While not every toy I bent, worked out as well as I hoped, enough of them survived surgery that I now have an array of amusing looking, capable, and unique sounding of synthesizers at my disposal.

While most electronic toys designed for children are nearly bullet-proof, they all share one weakness. One substance has probably stopped more electronic toys from ever working again than any other. This substance corrupts them from the inside, like kryptonite does to Superman. That substance is pee.

According to my extensive research, fully half of all electronic toys found in thrift stores, contain pee. Sure, they’ve cleaned the toy off. You can’t see any pee on it, but set it down in front of your dog or cat. They’ll let you know. Of course, when you open the toy, you’ll find it. Usually, it leaks through the keyboard, or the buttons, and directly onto the little membrane switches beneath them. This causes keys not to play, and functions not to work. Sometimes you can fix these problems with a thorough cleaning, sometimes not.

The worst case pee scenario happens when pee gets all over the main circuit board. Such was the case with my beloved Bratz drum bra. The cups of the bra channeled cat pee directly onto the main circuit board where it dried to an oily, foul smelling film and proceeded to corrode everything. Despite that, the device continued to work, at least long enough for me to add a pitch bend control and a line out, which actually made it into a great sounding instrument. Since then, however, it works only intermittently.

Now that the sun has disappeared behind the hillside, leaving my photovoltaic panels unkissed by sunlight until next March, and thus bringing my summer soldering season to an end, I’ve begun exploring the musical potential I’ve unleashed in these newly altered devices. Allow me to introduce you to a couple of them:

Introducing; My Circuit-Bent Casio ML1

 

This amazing little instrument pleases me greatly. Stock, it actually makes some pretty good sounds, including a decent imitation of a piano, and it still works as originally intended. However I’ve added a matrix of touch sensors which allow me to directly stimulate the electronic “brain” of the ML1, releasing its previously untapped potential for composing original music of apparently infinite variety. I enjoy collaborating with the ML1, a relatively young composer, and very much a product of the digital age. As a composer, the ML1 speaks to the age in which we live.

I titled our first collaboration 13 Minutes at the End of Time. The modified ML1 generated every note, phrase, rhythm and noise heard in this piece. My input came only in the form of touching the sensors that I added. Touching any two of these sensors at the same time, creates a new connection within the ML1′s electronic “brain”, causing it to “think outside the box” with surprising originality.

Like many young composers, the modified ML1 favors quick tempos and complex poly-rhythms, but it balances them with subtle textures and sustained notes that float serenely over the fray. I think this piece reflects the relentless sensory overload and chaos of our wired lifestyle. At 13 minutes, it runs a little longer than the typical modern attention span, but some of us still know how to listen. 13 Minutes at the End of Time also provides the perfect ambiance to induce stress into any situation.

Pretty in Pink

 

I found this pink “girly” toy keyboard at a thrift store around here. Although it had a few splashes of pee inside it, it cleaned up easily with no damage to the electronics. This toy says “Starring Me” on the front, but it looks identical to this “Barbie” toy keyboard bent by Bogus Noise UK, and immortalized in this video. I presume I have the generic version of the same toy.

I took a different approach to this toy than did the braceletted British bender who bent the bejeezus out of that Barbie brand Bontempi. I started with the ubiquitous pitch-bend mod. This is one of the easiest, and most universal bends that you can make on an electronic toy, especially the cheap ones.

Almost all of theses little noise-making electronic toys, use a single resistor to set the speed of the central processor. If you change the resistance of that resistor, you can make the whole machine operate faster or slower, which in turn, raises or lowers the pitch of all the noises it makes. You will usually find this resistor located right next to the black blob in the center of the circuit board, often labeled “R1”.

If you touch this resistor at both ends, the toy will usually go up or down in pitch dramatically, or stop working all together. If you replace that resistor with a potentiometer, you can use that potentiometer to sweep the pitch of the sounds up or down. This opens up a lot of new potential sounds for you to exploit.

In this pink girly keyboard, I used one of the purple ornamental flowers as the knob to adjust the pitch. The three switches on the lower left, allow me to switch even more resistance into the circuit, which allows me to play the keyboard in four distinct registers, with the pitch-bend knob active in all of them. This four-speed pitch-bend mod extends the toys range by nearly an octave above, and several octaves below, it’s original voice.

I made one other major modification to the sound of this pink girly keyboard. I added a passive ring modulator. A passive ring modulator adds a very weird kind of distortion, and it allows you to use another signal to change the harmonic profile of that distortion in very strange ways. Q Reed Ghazala shared this schematic of a passive ring modulator on his Anti-Theory website.

It looked pretty simple to me, consisting of two transformers and four diodes. Even I could handle that. For the secondary, or “Y” signal, (that modifies the original or “X” signal) I built an analog square-wave oscillator from an 8-pin “555” chip, relying on the instructions I found in the Crème DeMentia “Bending Buddy” comic book. Everyone interested in circuit-bending should check out the Crème Dementia kits and comics.

Both circuits fit easily on a 2” square piece of circuit-board, and inside the toy. The “Y” oscillator has an independent on/off switch with an indicator LED, and a pitch control knob. Another knob blends the “Y” oscillator with the “X” signal. You can see the switch and indicator light between the two purple flowers on the upper right, and the control knobs located to the immediate right of the keyboard.

I displaced one of the ornamental purple flowers to make space for a quarter inch phone jack that serves as a line-level output, but I re-purposed the flower as the pitch-control knob. I added three tiny LEDs to the handle, to make my new instrument extra pretty, an amber one in the center, flanked by two red ones, because I had them lying around. The red ones came out of a small power inverter that burned out, and the amber one came from a disposable led tea light, with a dead battery.

How does it sound? Th passive ring modulator give this toy a very biting and aggressive sound, reminiscent of a an old Farfisa organ through a fuzz box. The analog oscillator feeding the “Y” oscillator dramatically alters the harmonic character of the sound in real time, with a twist of a knob, not unlike an analog synthesizer, and imparts an authentically analog Theremin-like sound on it’s own.

I composed this rather abstract, obtuse, but somehow endearing piece entirely with the newly modified pink girly toy keyboard. It reminds me of some of the electronic music popular in sci-fi movies of the sixties.

As you can see my enthusiasm for circuit-bending has not waned.  I hope at least a few of you enjoyed this look at a couple of my new instruments. I built these instruments to force me to think about music in different ways, and I hope this approach will lead to some interesting and hopefully compelling music in the coming months.  Stay tuned.

Three Letters that Spell Success

Three Letters that Spell Success

 

I’ve noticed that two recently opened, and similarly themed, boutiques in Arcata and Garberville, have adopted cryptic, three-letter names. DTA, in Arcata and SHC in Garberville, both sport black walls, graffiti art, and prominently displayed sound equipment. Both shops look more like nightclubs than clothing stores, but they have no cover charge, and serve no drinks.

 

Can these places really pay the rent, from a few bins of silk screened T-Shirts, a couple racks of hoodies and a display case full of CDs by local artists? Maybe these shops exist simply to launder drug money, in which case, a lot of inventory might just get in the way. But maybe they noticed that guys who walk right past clothing stores, will walk into any shop that has a pile of sound equipment in the window, and will, if possible, buy their clothes there, even if they only sell one T-Shirt.

 

As a guy who’s lived most of his life in music store T-shirts, I guess they’ve got me pegged. I’ve been in both shops, and I almost never go into clothing stores, which you can easily tell by looking at me. Still, these places baffle me. I like big pubic-address speakers as much as the next guy, but I never really got on the “hoodie” bandwagon.

I’ve never worn a hoodie. A baja, sure, hooded shirt, yeah, but I just can’t picture myself looking good in a hoodie. I got nothing against hoodies. A lot of people seem to feel comfortable in them, and look really natural in them. I just think I look slouchy and disheveled enough, at my best, and I don’t really see myself as “thug” material.

 

Speaking of material, cotton knit hoodies, don’t keep you warm when they get wet. Cotton gets soggy and heavy, and at least one person around here has died of hypothermia, in 50 degree weather, wearing a really cool-looking, but wet, hoodie. Here in the woods of SoHum, whenever it’s cold enough to need clothes, its also raining, so I live in fleece. The squirrels and blue jays wouldn’t make fun of me any less, if I looked like I had more “street-cred”.

 

Despite what the squirrels say, cryptic three-letter monikers are clearly very edgy and hip right now. Two, three-letter clothing boutiques in Humboldt County, looks like a trend to me, so deal me in. My new boutique will have even bigger speakers, and fewer clothes than either DTA or SHC, and it will have actual cutting edges built into the architecture, so unless you’re very careful, you’ll need stitches before you leave.

 

I’ve also decided to launch my own line of urban street-wear, featuring my own bold, cutting edge, three-letter designs to go with my new boutique. (cue heavy hip-hop beat) Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom.

Introducing:

Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom.

Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom.

Here at LSD we grind up culture and spit out style, that aggressive, sub-literate, mean-spirited style that’s so popular with young people these days. We created these unbelievably crass and wildly inappropriate designs to suit today’s unbelievably crass consumers and their wildly inappropriate lifestyles. Here’s a sample:

Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom.

 

Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom.

 

Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom.

 

Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom.

 

Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom.

Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom.

Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom.

Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom.

Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom.

Here at LSD, we’re cool with feminism, and we’re hip to equality, but we know that sexiness is power, and we want to help women harness theirs, with our bold new designs. We know that all women are sexy, and no matter how stupid you feel wearing these designs, they’ll still look great on you, because you always look great, no matter how stupid your clothes look. So, check out these hot new designs for women in tight, titty-huggging tanks, and scoop neck tees that bounce your way.

 Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom.

Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom.

 

Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom.

 

Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom.

 

Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom.

Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom.

Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom.

Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom, Boom Boom chicka chicka Boom Boom.

You don’t have to wait for an LSD Industries boutique to open up in your town, you can get these hot, trendy new designs right now at http://www.zazzle.com/lygsbtd* Sure they’re expensive, but I’m worth it. Get your own LSD today!!

Whippit Good

Whippit Good!

 

This morning I saw another pile of spent nitrous oxide cartridges alongside the roadway. Personally, I love whippits as much as anyone. Some of my most memorable drug experiences involve NO2. I saw God once when I inhaled a deep breath of NO2 while peaking on a strong acid trip.

 

If you read this blog regularly, you know that I make no secret of my enthusiasm for recreational drugs. I feel that drug use has been in the closet for far too long. It is time that this society learned to accept, tolerate, and celebrate, its drug abusers, and to make that happen, we need to come out of the closet.

 

Americans need to know that the people who prepare their food, fix their automobiles, and drive their kids to and from school, all take recreational drugs. The doctor who did your bypass surgery, the air traffic controllers who guided your flight, and the President of the United States… all stoned out of their minds. It’s time you knew, and its time we all stopped trying to hide it from you.

 

If major cities can subsidize massive sports arenas to encourage drunken hooliganism among sports fans, just imagine what they could do for drug users if we had social acceptance, big bucks and a few good lobbyists. Every American city could have a black light district where throbbing techno music and screaming electric guitars wail 24-7-365, beneath UV street lights. Someplace where even the poorest, dirtiest, hippie can pick up a sack of free, government subsidized, ganja buds, grown in prisons by former bankers, politicians, and real estate bloodsuckers trying to rehabilitate themselves.

 

Cities could take as much pride in their chemists, dealers and growers as they do in their sports teams, local delicacies or festivals. Yes, drug users deserve at least as much respect as sports fans, fat people, or festival fools, and we deserve to have businesspeople bribing government agencies to make our wildest chemical fantasies, real.

 

After all, drug users have money. Otherwise, they couldn’t afford to buy drugs. We all know that in this country, if you have money, people have to kiss your ass, no matter how evil you are. If I have to live in a country where we systematically reward greed and subsidize evil, I want drugs, lots of them, and plenty of time to enjoy them, and make it snappy!

 

I firmly believe in this dream, and have worked my whole life to make this dream a reality, mainly by getting high, and being stoned in public whenever possible. Whether I’m at work, in church, or behind the wheel, you can bet that I’m good and stoned, and when I’m stoned, I recognize that I am an ambassador for stoned people everywhere.

 

I realize that some of the people around me might not take drugs. They might not have spent much time around stoned people, or at least don’t realize how stoned the people around them really are. I want to make a good impression on these people. I try to set a good example for stoned people. I want them to see stoned people as responsible, caring, self-motivated people. I can only keep up the charade for a while, but I do my best.

 

As stoned people, we have a lot of propaganda to overcome. For generations, the media has portrayed drug users as either lazy, stupid, irresponsible slackers, or crazed psychopathic killers. Drug users suffer tremendously from the prejudice these stereotypes create and reinforce. Worse even than the stereotypes themselves, is the pervasive attitude that drug use, and drug users should not be tolerated in society.

 

Look at how the media portrays sports fans. The media generally portray sports fans as affable morons. We expect them to drink at least a six-pack a day. We expect them to be stupid, and easily enraged. We expect them to beat their wives when their team loses the Superbowl, and we expect them to riot in the streets when their team wins the Superbowl, but by and large, they are nice, likable people. That’s how the media portrays sports fans.

 

As a result, we tolerate sports fans, we celebrate them, and we make substantial allowances for their eccentricities. If this country can embrace, celebrate, and subsidize people who admire adults who play with balls, this country can embrace, celebrate and subsidize its recreational drug users, but first we have to overcome this learned prejudice.

 

Because of all of the media conditioning, when people see a pile of empty beer bottles alongside the roadway, they think: “Oh, those affable sports fans, they’re just too stupid to know any better. That’s why we have volunteers who remove roadside litter.”

 

…but when they see big pile of spent NO2 cartridges laying on the road, they think: “Those goddamn drug abusers. They have no respect, no sense of decency, and all they care about is their next fix. That’s why we have prisons.”

 

So look, you kids who leave your spent whippit cartridges all over the roadside, I know whippets aren’t illegal, and you are still a kid, even if not an actual juvenile. I also know that whippets are hella fun, if you are careful.

I want you to have fun, and I want you to be careful, because I want all of your drug experiences to be injury, fatality, and arrest free, but mainly, I WANT YOU TO STOP DITCHING YOUR FUCKING NO2 CARTRIDGES ALL OVER THE FUCKING ROADS.

 

Those piles of cartridges make all drug abusers look bad. They set stoned/straight relations back at least a decade. I know its just good clean fun, but they look as bad as used needles.

Recycle them. Put them in the receptacle for “cans”, or barring that, the trash. If you are really into NO2, get one of those big 84 cu ft refillable tanks, put down the $150 or so deposit, and just buy the gas.

 

Those tanks hold a lot of NO2, enough to give you and all of your friends a few splitting headaches, with plenty to spare. So, share! That way, fewer people will have to buy those wasteful one shot cartridges, and you get your money back when you return the tank.

 

Please work with me on this. Let’s stop trashing the countryside with our spent whippit cartridges. Join the campaign to:

 

Just Say NO 2 NO2 Litter.

 

…And once in your life, preferably while you are still young, and your arteries are still flexible, sit down, take a great big deep breath of NO2, and hold it, while you are peaking on a strong LSD trip. It’s kinda like bungie jumping in reverse. Don’t forget to sit down first. Have fun kids.

Three Hours, One Note, Tonite at The Hemp Connection in Garberville

Didgeridoo music at the Hemp Connection for Arts Alive

Tonite, Friday August 3, starting between 5-5:30 pm, I’ll play electric didgeridoo at the Hemp Connection in Garberville.

I’ll also show off a few lanterns that I make from recycled tin cans.

Though it won’t really be datk enough to show them off properly.

The Return of Circuit Bending

The Return of Circuit Bending

So I didn’t tell you about our circuit bending workshop. I mean, I told you it was coming, plenty of times, but I didn’t tell you how it went. Well, it went swimmingly! We had a great turnout, more than I expected. My only regret was that with so many people in the workshop, building kits took the entire time, and CMKT4 didn’t get a chance to play.

CMKT4, who gave up their only day off on their 30 day West Coast tour, to do this workshop in G,ville, told me that our event turned out to be their highest grossing workshop on the entire tour. They had a great time at the event as well, and look forward to returning to Garberville soon. Next time, we’ll get started earlier and go later.

I had a terrific time! I met some cool new people, got to know some people I already knew better, and got to introduce some of my Ham friends to some of my music friends. I also got to stalk our local thrift stores with CMKT4 and ask some circuit bending questions of someone who knows their way around the insides of a Casio mini-keyboard.

I also got to build this spiffy cigar box drum machine. I love the sound. It reminds me of 50s sci-fi movies.

 

The box contains three piezoelectric contact microphones (probably overkill). The underside has three different sized expansion springs for reverb. Above board you can see a collection of soft drink lids, beer bottle caps, finger cymbals, a small brass bell, five different sized compression springs and two small wire chimes surgically removed from little plush toys.

I grabbed one of those little PAIA two transistor oscillator kits that SHARC was giving away at the event,

took it home and built this little light-controlled, Theremin-like instrument. I housed the project in a burned out solar yard light.

 

Since this oscillator runs on only one and a half volts, the single AAA battery holder in the yard light provided the power solution. I removed the LED, circuit board and solar panel from the lamp, replacing them with the oscillator circuit card and five photo-resistors wired in series, routing various wires through the hole that originally accommodated the LED. I found a speaker that fit perfectly into an old spray paint can lid, and mounted it to the bottom of the lamp with aluminum angle brackets I cut from an aluminum can. I mounted a momentary action switch, and an output jack in the lamp flange. The switch turns the oscillator on and off, the amount of light coming in the top controls the pitch.

I really hope everyone else who participated in the event had as much fun as I did. I hope CMKT4 will return to Garberville as soon as this Fall and we can have another circuit-bending event, and next time we’ll have some music, maybe including some local circuit-benders.

A Chance to Witness a Rare Live Performance

A Chance to Witness a Rare Live Performance

 

This Friday evening, June 1^st, at the Hemp Connection in Garberville, I’ll play electric didgeridoo and show off some of my tin can lanterns. I’ll set up in the patio and play by candlelight from 6-9pm, even though it barely gets dark before 9pm these days, as part of Garberville’s Arts Alive celebration in June.

I really don’t play out that much. The last time I played out was for Margriet Seinen’s opening reception last July, so these performances are rare. I play the didgeridoo almost every day, and I’m pretty good at it. Come out and see for yourself.  Here’s a sample of what you’ll hear: