15 Minutes A Day. And It Shows.

[ed. Insert riff here about needing another creative outlet, releasing the din that hums between the ears, having something to say, and so we're taking another stab at it, etc.]

So I'm reading this joint ("The Prison Poets of Guantanamo Find a Publisher") in the WSJ yesterday (just the "Journal", ya know) and it's a nice enough story, adding more fuel to that =what the fuck fascist regime do we live under= V8 that still howls, but here's the part that turns the crankshaft at higher rpms:

"While a few detainees at Guantanamo Bay have made efforts to author what they claim to be poetry, given the nature of their writings they have seemingly not done so for the sake of art," says Cmdr. J.D. Gordon, a Defense Department spokesman.

What? "No comment" would've been too fucking classy for the DoD? Likely. What a fucking prick. Even if -- and, yes, some of the examples cited in the column won't make you forget Yeats any time soon -- the poetry sucks, what task is served by a Defense spokesman "lowering" himself to the level of our "enemy combatants"? The comment is illustrative of the type of smug fratboy pettiness emanating from our nation's capital like someone left the water in the bong all summer break and now it's been kicked over and drips down into the pages of the Washington Post and studios of CNN.

But what does this have to do with music? Well, Commander Fuckstick's attempt at crit aside, some of the poetry samples therein speak of the songs of birds. Which, serendipitously, I had just been thinking of a day earlier thanks to musicthing's nod to Captain Beefheart's 10 Commandments for Guitarists:

1. LISTEN TO THE BIRDS That's where all the music comes from. Birds know everything about how it should sound and where that sound should come from. And watch hummingbirds. They fly really fast, but a lot of times they aren't going anywhere.

Which dovetails (cough) nicely back to music, "the Journal", Guantanamo, thick-necked dimbulb Bushies, and fascism. I think the Capt. has a point. Lately, [ed. Don't go into protracted melancholia about taking time to smell flowers, listen to birds, bullshit, nobody will want to hear it] I've been listening to a lot of black metal and it seems if one were to pull out their Encyclopeadia Metallum, they'd probably find that nature plays a heavy role in the thing. Or maybe I just stole that from Stosuy. Either way, it's true; even if it is hard to describe to your indie pop pals.

Wolves in the Throne Room's "Diadem of 12 Stars" may not have any birds chirping on it (then again, it may -- who am I to instruct what to take away from your experience?), but it puts me squarely in and of one with nature and all that [ed. Please be careful not to veer too far down hippie path here]. To say that it sounds exactly like standing in a clearing, subfreezing, grey and fogged in, with snow falling all around you would be to invoke Agalloch's "Ashes Against the Grain", actually, but wouldn't necessarily be far off. Did I mention they're from the Pacific Northwest? (Yeah, Agalloch too.)

There's that. And there's what Joe Baiza's been up to; according to the Beefheart blog (linked on musicthing), tossing out a rendition of "Lick My Decals Off, Baby" in Puttanesca (myspace link complete with vid).

Now back to what the birds are trying to tell me...