"Boy I feel so outgunned today, but I'll get up and fight back, anyway. You and I are not huge mainstream stars, but unlike them we're really what we are..." - Iggy Pop
"The Squad doesn't exist. They have never used their power as a bloc to push for votes on progressive legislation or to block regressive legislation. They are not protesting on the Capitol steps or outside the White House. They are a media creation and a brand who won't disrupt status quo." - Anthony Zenkus, Columbia University
"After Joe Biden announced his extraordinary request for $33 billion more for the war in Ukraine — on top of the $14 billion the U.S. has already spent just ten weeks into this war — congressional leaders of both parties immediately decided the amount was insufficient. They arbitrarily increased the amount by $7 billion to a total of $40 billion, then fast-tracked the bill for immediate approval. As we reported on Tuesday night, the House overwhelmingly voted to approve the bill by a vote of 388-57. All fifty-seven NO votes came from Republican House members. Except for two missing members, all House Democrats — every last one, including all six members of the revolutionary, subversive Squad — voted for this gigantic war package, one of the largest the U.S. has spent at once in decades.” - Glenn Greenwald
"The Squad" isn't a political faction, it's a soundtrack to an empire. It's soothing noises people can listen to while the US hegemon destroys the world.” -Cait Johnstone
FEELGOODIST REBRAND MODELS SELLING WARS TO SUBURBANITES, BOOZY BIG GULPS, RIPOFF RENTS & HYBRID WARS OF THE ONE PERCENT...
Australian treasure, Cait Johnstone, has become one of my favorite writers. Man, she is always so right-on, really and truly a last standing, shining fountain of truth and soul and gets it. Like in her latest article, where she explains why celebrities are such scumbags-because they're invested in the status quo-all these know nothing shit-lib celebrities are either gung-ho imperialist forever war supporters who cheered when Hillary had Gaddafi gutted "for feminism", or industry slaves, being temporarily exploited by their sick creepy elite handlers, "Because they're invested in the status quo".
I knew when NATO installed their white nationalist coup government right there on Russia's front doorstep, it was a matter of time before Madonna, Angelina Jolie, Bono, Clooney and Sean Penn would be trotted out to help sell the imperialist war's popularity to yeehaw Murkkkans who always need an external boogeyman to blame for the crimes of their very own crooked politicians, tyrannical overlords, and Wall Street predator class, imperialist fat cats like spy-in-chief Zuckerberg and union crushing Bezos, who they've all been trained to worship, unconditionally. Pig-media has even been trying to rehabilitate war criminal Condoleeza Rice and Lyn Cheney's images, shitlibs think of them as Assistant Hillarys. I just gotta say it again-how everything at the grocery store has gone up by 33% since the Covid clampdowns, and the friendly smiling millionaires on TV just say it has something to do with Putin.
No politicians are providing us regular people with any relief, except for maybe the pathetic comic relief, of pro war sheep's clothing hucksters Bernie and the Squad's meaningless tweeting, they all just wanna help escalate this dangerous war with Russia. War-pigs are bipartisan-they all got the memo, don't wanna be Paul Wellstoned. If you don't know who he was, look him up on YouTube before it gets wiped. No fucking Fraud squad supermodels (D) have spoke out against Biden sending ever more billions to flood the Ukraine with weapons. They stopped talking about healthcare for all, a long time ago, cause Evil ass, Private Plane Owning, inside TRAITOR Pelosi told 'em to. 'Just changed the name of "child cages" (under Trump) to "overflow facilities" (under Biden).
NONE OF THE SQUAD OR SANDERS FIGHT FOR JULIAN ASSANGE! NONE OF THEM! NOT ONE HAS ANY REAL MORAL COURAGE. FREE ASSANGE, YOU FASCIST WARPIG EVIL FUCKS! None of them care if we have any last remnants of a real free press not being dictated by weapons makers and globalists who wanna redraw maps for the Great Reset, they sure as fuck don't care if you lose your teeth, or get evicted, so their Met Gala heiress friends can get richer and have creepy occult parties and ride around on super yachts and just refer to "RUSSIANS!", as the "oligarchs". What do you think Bill Gates and Elon Musk are, but oligarchs? The frauds on tv don't care when their settler colonialist fascist friends openly and proudly murder journalists for narrative control because they do the same thing-witness Michael Hastings, Seth Rich, or Julian Assange.
Meanwhile, all your former associates who think they're smart, probably spend an awful lot of time obediently retweeting corporate propaganda and parroting bullshit lies for world war. They do not really give a flying fuck about any idea, value, or guiding principle, certainly not anything as lofty as democracy, ya know, aside from protecting their own privilege, title, property, VIP room access, headlining status, happy hour. They were all conditioned to believe they earn their stuff by sucking up to murderous dictators and promoting celebrity billionaire's advertising and P.R. slogans. They think the censorship boards and ministry of truth is their special friend for diversity and scientific wokeness.
Pig-Media is all treacherous bullshit and lies, slick talkin' Ken N Barbie millionaire, white devils lying, with always more lies upon lies, all designed to get you to support the infowar preferences and sicko tech-surveillance agendas, of the One Percent Davos billionaires at the top of the Forbes magazine pyramid, and the hidden, generational, trillionaire fortunes of ruling class families so old and wealthy, they seldom get mentioned in magazines like Forbes. Anyone who strays off script or speaks off topic is vanquished. Banished, shunned, ridiculed. From Danny Haiphong at Black Agenda Report to Chris Hedges at Mint Press. Censored, exiled, deplatformed, demonetized. Some of us have seen it all our lives. If the local gentry dislike you, for any reason, whatsoever-for threatening their authority, popularity, status, or agenda, or by spooking the horses and upsetting the prudes with some foreign and forbidden way of walkin', talkin', dancin', or simply tending the embers at the ole hobo jungle campfire by remembering real history being photo shopped, permanently erased and rewritten by techlords, or fading echoes of a freer time, the wannabe upper cruster Appleby's drunken Karens can make their three easy moves to having you banned, blacklisted, expelled, or evicted.
For me, that shit started in elementary school way, way back when I told some adversarial fourth grade Local Judge's grandson that he was not the most popular kid in our class and even our teacher agreed with me, his parents came to school with their big money lawyer the next morning and demanded to know if a teacher really said that, and wanted her fired on the spot-their son WAS the most popular kid, they insisted; and then, again and again in middle school, when brutes could push you backwards down the stairs or bloody your nose, so long as their parents were local country club members, nightclub owners, cheese factory bigwigs, steel factory titans, or doctors-lawyers-Indian chiefs, and certain parents wanted to insure their Chess King clad fortunate sons got to date the girl of their choice, by getting rid of his potential rivals, so illegal memos were flagrantly circulated among teachers, by administrators, instructing them to document any slight dress code violations so they could drum these audacious paisley tie and suspenders wearing, ducky new wave losers ("disruptions to the learning process") out of their milky white suburban sports high school; and continued on, into my mid to late twenties, when I was repeatedly displaced by grunge junkie Max Headroom lookalikes with that all important, mansion owning mama money. If the powers that be want you gone, they just hyper scrutinize your every move until they can catch you off guard, find you alone with minimal witnesses, deploy their bruiser bouncers or racist hate groups to beat you into the sidewalks, or bust you for something, it's all about establishing that paper trail to make it look legitimate. In gentrifying neighborhoods, they deploy code enforcers, or stop and friskers, to shake down and smoke out anyone who does not present as sufficiently compliant, and middle class enough.
"Here Come The assholes, they can smell the money!" -Iggy Pop
In one town I lived in, the gentrification business owners all displayed that faux-woke, pseudo-hipster, shitlib symbology in all their storefronts, while their parent's cops efficiently strongarmed all the poor people and unassimilated people of color out of the neighborhood. It was all just a front-the Black Lives Matter signage and Tibetan prayer flags, the rainbow flags and reassuring "COEXIST" bumper stickers-middle class shitlibs always say, they believe in diversity and coexistence, but they constantly call the gestapo on anyone poor who makes them feel guilty by existing while not owning property, or "uncomfortable".
The shitlibs were taught at Shitlib U that they have the right to never feel uncomfortable. Here come the jackboots to push those poor people outta sight. Those raggedy people who used to be huddled under the underpass on the outskirts of town with the shopping carts and tarps and cardboard-where do you think they are now? The unsightly bearded veterans who smoked cigarettes (GASP! HORROR! SHOCK! OFFENDING!!) camped out in tents in the puddles between the river and the railroad track? Now that your town's kindly mayor signed off on their disappearance for sensitive wokeness and science, where are they now? Ever think about that? What happens to the human beings shoved from your sight, so you can feel all cozy and safe and NPR soothed at Whole Foods in your Tesla with the anti-Trump and save the whales bumper stickers?
Right now, where I live, some property owners are shitting themselves, are ultra-mega-triggered all cause they cannot believe that the government and shadowy developers are so secretive and willing to fight dirty to silence anyone who ever asks any childlike questions or faintly inconveniences their day. The people with property have been watching Rachel Maddow and staying in Starbucks bubbles for so long, that when diabolical predator, even richer and more powerful forces, do them wrong, they are so shocked by the shamelessness of it all. They are finally affected, and don't know what to do about the brazen powers of evil that threaten their homes and livelihoods, they thought their diplomas and Vanity Fair subscriptions would always be like, magical forcefields, protecting them from bad feelings or real life consequences. When they do not get special, cut to the front of the line, backstage pass, V.I.P. treatment, fuckshit, all of a sudden, shit got real. Gonna neeed another Cosmo, or beta blocker-whatever that is, jes somethin' I heard 'em talkin' about.
This country is becoming ever more and more exhaustingly Orwellian, each and everyday. Pelosi out there pimping for stricter narrative control. Exclusion zones and show me your papers. Boot stomping on a human face forever. ABSOLUTE CENSORSHIP OF THE LEFT BY BIG TECH WAR PROFITEERS. Granny gropers in our airports. NSA recording all our calls and emails. Fake models like AOC lying and saying nice things to make pilled out middle class property owners feelgoodTM while voting to give billions to the police state and war machine and slashing the social safety net. Journalists tortured in Belmarsh having strokes. Journalists shot dead by NATO allies, evil armies attacking their mourners. Journalists who perish in fiery unexplained car wrecks. Goon squads going through your underwear drawer. Gotta be some dirty laundry around here some place.
While typing this, my electricity suddenly went off for about an hour, a common occurrence where I live-every few months the utilities company will blast you with a big ass, shockingly inflated bill and there is nothing you can do about it, but pay. Love it or leave it. One month last year, they shook us down for like $400. They charged us an additional 50 bucks to send a worker out to make sure our smart meter was working correctly, but after that, it was just the usual mobster extortion. "Fuck you, pay me".
The utilities workers all have bullet proof glass and cameras at their office-they charge you $5 extra if it ain’t paid in cash, and I can see why they got the bulletproof glass-to protect them from some price gouged, old militia right wing gun nut rancher who gets sick of being ripped off by The Man. While I was outside walking in the wildfire smoke, all the drug crazies had come outta their hidey holes and trailer parks and were filling up the two small city parks and side streets, cause they did not wanna sit in their dark room. One shirtless, wiry, ravaged old predator asked me for money, I thought to myself, "you are a holding a fucking drink-a big gulp convenience store cup obviously filled with booze-you got more money than I do, motherfucker!" That is the must have, in vogue, accessory for politicians and meth heads alike, in my part of the country-the boozy big gulp-everybody's got one, but me. But ya know, I just said, I don't have any money and kept on walking.
We live about THREE miles from a nearby town where all the meth and fentanyl busts are happening. Sometimes the denizens of Shirtless Psycho Drugville, drift down the hill past the old death hospital to look for handouts from the elderly, toothless population around here and usually, their scary mugshots appear online the next day, the town's only independent grocer that has not been upgraded since the fifties, they do not tolerate the Drugville crazies hassling customers from that bench out front, for very long. He was better off back there on the other side of that hill, hassling gas station customers in his own dead town.
RICH GET RICHER BIG BULLY BULLDOZER AGENDAS
Holy Smokes, man! Even in the tiniest, dustiest, smokiest, nowhere dead-end, dilapidated desert ghost towns, there are always some wealth worshipping fascists and compliant suck ups and fat cat schemers and crooks trying to pound the town into some ego pleasing picture of fake golf course luxury livin'. Just gotta get rid of those pesky lower class people. Import some more outta state, money havers, somehow.
Sometimes, all the people in the neighborhood are forced to band together to stand against intimidation tactics and selective enforcement of laws. Some of my neighbors appeared at a city hall meeting to express concerns about fly by night developers building multiple McMansions on unsanitary desert swamp flood lands, and forcing poor people off the street to make way for some thus far imaginary, future, out of state, California "big tech money" transplants they think will come in droves to a dead-end town where there is only Wal-Mart, to live in these dumb McMansions next to the sewage treatment plant, in the high winds, sweltering brimstone heat, late summer monsoons, and wildfire smoke. Sheesh, these bureaucrats are so in the pocket of their donors, it is a zero tolerance, goosestepping, box wine mom, tightknit cult. The fly by night contractor they're employing to cut down the woods and build all these sudden pop-up McMansions has done significant jail time for horrifying crimes, but they protect his interests and investments like he's their golden boy baby cakes, it looks like they might even be keeping his criminal past a secret from the young female, authoritarian mayor. It is nothing but corruption. I've only seen that shit in one other place, the frenzied bureaucratic hatred of their constituents. These five shameless pants-suits who sit at this conference table stuffing their faces at a public meeting, nom, nom, nom, and their hysterical city attorney who must be in bed with somebody in the shadows, went full fascist when some locals calmly and with great clarity, expressed their valid opinions that the suits thought jeopardized their get rich overnight bullshit schemes.
One guy, who is way, way more conservative than myself, he was about to be appointed to a planning committee but was hammered and threatened by the city attorney for stating his nuanced view that the culture of the desert southwest allows for unconventional rock gardens and cactus landscaping that might not always appeal to outta town Stepford Wife catalog shoppers, newby builders and developers. Locals also rightly said, that government drones spying on people's backyards was another disgraceful violation of the Bush/Obama eviscerated, fourth amendment. They have temporarily refused to confirm this gentleman's appointment to the planning and zoning committee, as a fanatical disciplinary measure/scare tactic, unequivocally putting him on notice, that they will allow for zero deviation from their big bully bulldozer agenda. They do not care AT ALL about the everyday people's preferences, only about controlling the public's perception. We heard them say that on the radio, when the attorney got all irate as if he's personally invested, just frothing at the mouth, about some dude merely saying people should have a right to landscape however they see fit, and we actually have 'em on tape.
The young blonde local mayor was particularly hostile, resentful, and vitriolic towards a persuasive and articulate mother who read two petitions signed by over 100 local business and home owners and international artists and filmmakers, all defending the rights of citizens to decorate their homes and gardens however they see fit, even if they are not big compound lording, shady millionaires. These so called public servants spent the first three hours of their meeting circle jerking each other about what a fabulous job they are doing, just nauseating self-congratulations for actual hours, praising one another, back and forth, for throwing some self-celebrating, VIP booze party, and the last two hours, barely containing their rage and spiteful contempt over having to listen to the needs and opinions of their lowly nobody constituents. The city manager and city attorney are hardcore zealots-like Bush/Cheney: "for us or against us", and those they oppose, must be PUNISHED! "Somebody's GOTTA PAY!"
These suits branded concerned citizens as, "opponents", and relentlessly referred to the city in possessive terms, as if only THEY own the streets. The mayor repeatedly cut speakers off curtly and smugly, and basically told them to hurry up and get out of the building, at the end of the meeting, when most of the public had gone, and all hell broke loose over their committee nominee saying he believed that there should be an appeals process for a homeowner whose art is being condemned as useless junk by gentrifying forces. The five women on the city council went full fledged, attack dog, "broken window theory", taking a textbook page from Mayor Giuliani's stop and frisk; and also Lane County, Oregon's notorious poop fiction manufacturing gentrifier, Lianne Richardson who memorably manufactured a whole fake as shit, "poop crisis" to silence dissent and public speaking at public space called Free Speech Plaza in Eugene, Oregon, after which she told the press she deserved a big payday from hotel owners, booj landlords, downtown high dollar attorneys, and sports tourism profiteers, for "changing the culture". The city hall mean girl posse got on their microphones, absurdly repeating the phrases, "rats and feces, feces and rats" 100 times, to imply that anyone with upcycled eccentric garden art, and old metal signs and cow skulls, and old cars on cinder blocks, is posing an imminent death plague crisis to the community-pure bullshit, of course, but it always just so effectively scares the safe-space, middle of the road, middle class tv watchers into blind compliance. Works like a charm. Tell 'em there's "a poopy"! "Doo Doo! Gonna get on YOUUUU!"
I remember when they had pressure washers in fucking actual years before Covid hysteria Hamzat suits in Oregon's "Wayne Morse Free Speech Plaza", scaring the day drunk Kall Tha Kops Karens into supporting police state crackdowns on advocates for the homeless community. So that same kinda manipulative scare tactic is being employed where I live now, "faeces and rats, faeces and rats”, trespassing on our easement, our easement, our easement, OUR easement!" These people sound like zombies, or dystopian art cops, or fucking robots. The city manager made it plain that his one and only concern is controlling the public perception. The public perception, is of course, somewhat divided-you always have the not-see, "all development is good" capitalists, dutifully waving their flags for perpetually cutting down the wildlife habitat to build more McMansions for "progress" kneejerk, they are always applauding bulldozers and wars and over copping. Then, you have the property owners who support both new homes that they've been misled to believe will generate jobs, AND the right of private property owners to decorate their homes, gardens, and privacy fences, however they see fit. Then, you have the majority of the local population, who are poor and elderly and suffering from dental problems, who all know we are all being strongarmed out of our own neighborhoods by out of state grifters, con artists, hucksters, gentrification hustlers, and a rude and tone-deaf city hall, who are obviously owned and operated by big, shady business interests.
They honestly sounded like my middle school's kiss ass yearbook committee sucking up to admin for extra credit, back in the day. That female mayor is something else. Mean Girl City. Whoa. I never liked the honcho personalities, these five hungry honchos are so drunk on power, they seemed like cartoon super villains: "MINE! MINE! IT'S ALL MINE!" Disney witches. You can't fight city hall. These people are puppets for deeply entrenched evil powers. Total authoritarians. With boozy big gulps. Jeepers! I think the faces behind the table are kinda told they are the ones in power, like Obama and W Bush, but deep down, they probably know that the city manager, the lawyers and secretive fraternal lodge advisors are really the ones who are calling the shots. Like the fake as fuck shitlib fraud squad of congress, five or six females are always lined up behind some table to give the middle class some illusion that "educated females" are running shit for the benefit of science and diversityTM when really, it's just the same old deep state, secret lodge, good ole boy patriarchy who's really pulling the strings. The central casting rebrand faces are only allowed to throw their weight around by pointing the cops in the direction of any undesirable lesser thans who threaten their personal prestige or special drunk in public privileges. The power trips are like fuckin, "WHOA!" What the fuck is wrong with these people? They are all like hungry, hungry hippos.
Remind me of oversized former athletes, or instantly forgettable pop bands in the midwest, just batshit delusional, power drunk fuckin' Little Lord Fauntleroy figureheads with gargantuan and insatiable hungry ghost demands and that totally bonkers outta proportion kooky entitlement. They're all so proud to know a cop or drug dealer, or have a rich sports mom. Sheesh. Usually, when I start seeing all this kinda shit, that is my signal it might be time to pull up the stakes of our little gypsy caravan and ease on down the road, but with ripoff rents and low wage jobs and USA gas companies stealing from everybody and laughing, "Blame Putin!", all the way to their private island bugout bunkers or seized from other oligarchs super yachts, I have thusfar not figured out our next destination. Nobody welcomes poor folks nowhere. We've been intentionally immobilized by the powers that be. And NO ONE "represents" our actual interests in office or media or elitist ivory tower colleges. It's all been hijacked and weaponized by like, Rand corporation think tanks, and Great Reset Zillionaire, big tech-dictators.
While attempting to stay indoors and avoid meth crazies and gentrification scumbags, I saw some suck ass, secondhand, lifestyle programming, unreality show where a poor, misguided, glutton for punishment, conflicted, troubled old tv sucker was lured back on to unreality tv, with the false promise of money and fame, but he was once again just cheaply exploited for his value as a useful tv villain/unwoke-vaping-drinking-cussing, shit rolls downhill, dummy kickdog for always being off script. He was an outspoken Malcolm X freedom fighter in his twenties but never attended college and failed to learn the new rules or update his shitlib lexicon. I think he wants to be a Chappelle or Pryor, but kinda lacks their sophistication and quick wittedness. He was severely admonished by an empowered faux-wokeness woman for not being racially combative enough, his position was that he did not exclusively self identify by his hue and therefore did not always feel obliged to school everyone he met with P.C. identity politics. This outraged the faux woke woman, who decided he needed to be punished for his apathy, and for not defending her honor among dense white folks, so she relentlessly kept belligerently trying to debate and badger the dude, until he called his associates off-set to passive-aggressively complain that she wore big fake wigs everyday but still talked incessantly about realness and wokeness, so she called her big giant pro athlete sized husband to come beat the scrawny, smaller guy into wokeness. Scrawny guy's argument was people in his own community were media ruled and divided and had problems with violence, so she promptly determined she had to have her woke woman last word, by calling in a bigger, macho, hyperprotective, aggressive barbarian, musclebound dude to come rescue her for feminist empowerment and beating up scrawny dude she's offended by.
This is TV programming's idea of wokeness-learn the script and obey your higher-up's, OR ELSE! Yeah, so she taught him a real lesson about her superior position in the capitalist hierarchy, but also kinda proved how all his arguments were correct-about how we, the little people, keep getting fooled, bamboozled and hoodwinked, herded and sheepdogged back into our little sub-category, preferred label, safespace college campus playpens, via all this weaponized identifying and celebrity worshipping and rule mongering...all this woke politeness and etiquette always backedup, of course, with the threat of violence. Which was all just okey-dokey with their castmates who placed all the blame on the outcast blamehound. He sulked glumly off the show and only the preacher could bring himself to be civil to him after he offended Her Wokeness. Right now, pig-media is redirecting all our rage over bullshit inflation, jacked-up rent, low slavery wages, and bipartisan lies for war and tech censorship back in to business as usual, red versus blue culture- war distractions.
Last time we heard from Martha's Vinyard plantation lounging, endless war superstar, Obama, he was telling rich athletes not to go on strike to protest racist police, and rather than focusing on the economy which media only measures by Wall Street profiteering, or how Biden is giving always more billions and billions, every other day, to the white nationalist proxy army in the Ukraine to fight Russia by proxy, and/or Israel to keep Palestinians under boot, all while these tv actors just masterfully manipulate the masses with tired old, works every time, wag the sheep, abortion or gun control wedge issue debates, cause they don't want us ever uniting(!!!) against our COMMON oppressor, the sold-out politician whores for war, tech-surveillance overlords, and corporate billionaires, who profit from our collective miseries, which is what the tv unreality show villain said, however poorly on that pseudo-woke unreality show. His main mistake was going on tv. They just used and abused that poor sucker. Look at the bad guy. The in crowd, they aint good, they just know how to hide and lie. Drink their mimosas, copy shitlib celebrities from unreality tv's "lifestyle programming". Not me, man, at heart, I'm kindof like, a Cosmic Psycho. Ya dig?
"Greed. Greed. Greed. While Americans are struggling at the pump, in the first three months of this year, 21 oil and gas companies made over $41 billion in profits, more than double their profits from last year. The problem is not inflation. The problem is corporate greed." -Bernie Sanders
"A big problem is you & your constant shilling for imperialism & the pro-war anti-worker president Biden & the Democrats. You disbanded your own movement & turned your back on millions as you sheepdog progressives & vote for the largest upward transfer of wealth in human history." - Jimmy Dore to Sanders
TWO TONE VELVET SUITS AND COBRA BOOTS
Been reading, "I, Doll", the heartstrings pulling, sensational book by the great Arthur Killer Kane. I never met that guy, only really brushed briefly with the others-the only Doll I ever met properly was Jerry, who was a total gent and very sweet and patient while my roommate struggled with replacement flashbulbs back in the analog camera days when we only had film and flashbulbs, ya know? He posed and reposed for many minutes to try to capture that elusive image of him in his impeccably dapper suit with his arm around my skinny, badly tattooed young self in the purple velvet newsboy cap.
Arthur's book is so sweetly sentimental, maybe even better than Syl's "No Bones In Ice Cream". Arthur was so sweetly romantic and funny when he reminisces about the carnivalesque fashion show of post hippie NYC. "My famous golf sweater..." Ya know wot I mean? He was just a lonely planet boy's lonely planet boy.
This is only the second book I've ever tried to wade through on the home computer, as a thoughtful and considerate ally of mine from Australia sent me a virtual copy, it's taking me awhile to read it in all the loud teenager media blare and verbal processing and always barking backyard dogs and all day crowing confused roosters, that goes on in my noisy nowhere trailer. I think about Arthur Killer Kane quite a lot, actually, I guess you could say I always identified with him-the Forgotten Doll, even though I was never a bass player. I related.
He is right when he says he never got no credit for being a founding member of the proto NY Dolls. He was never the glory hog limelight sponging personality like Johnny and Johansen or even Syl, but man, they were the most dynamite rhythm section and looked perfect in their futuristic "Barbarella" thigh high boots and black velvet babydoll dresses and oversized bowties and Frankenstein pacifiers. There's a sad disclaimer the publisher added in the front of the book flat-out stating that Killer blamed David, Marty Thau from Red Star and Leber & Krebs for the NY Dolls never finding financial success or mainstream fame in their day and breaking up in a Florida trailer park amidst mutual finger pointing and acrimony.
Summa the people Arthur thanks for sticking by him are Mick Cripps, Frank Infante, Angelyne, and Cheetah. Wow, huh?! Arthur is a surprisingly adept and colorful raconteur, anyone who ever had a heart will be beyond charmed by his faded Polaroid descriptions of the late '60s sad establishment assassination of the hippie dream and early seventies Nobody's and Max's Warhol bohemian art scene and proto punk underground sleazy melting pot juvie punk paradise. NYC was where everything used to happen, all those years ago, before it became an overcrowded, generic, gentrified, corporatized strip mall/tiny red carpet playground of the super rich and they're spoilt relatives.
Man, oh man, I've yearned ceaselessly for a genuine hard copy of this book since forever, but like Arthur pining helplessly for those English rockstar clothes and prohibitively expensive starman boots he could never afford to buy from the high-end hippie chic designer-Aquarian boutique, Granny takes A Trip, I just ain't got fifty bucks for a used collector book online. I was looking for a copy of Andy Taylor's book and it was going for like $100, same with Debbie Harry's "Face It". I don't even LOOK at Etsy anymore-those shameless capitalist gougers want like $500 for every London Quireboys or Hanoi Rocks T-shirt lost in the last move or got stolen by some former bandmate.
Arthur vividly recalls the first day he and his partner Rick Rivets first approached Johnny and his girlfriend and how he heard Johnny's crazy train careening off the tracks guitar sound, which impulsively inspired him to first initiate trading instruments, which you know, kinda changed everything. Arthur talks fondly about how it was a holy ghost blessed moment when he told JT he wanted to takeover the low end bass duties but sadly laments how he was never given any credit or money for his part in creating the Dolls and effectively helping to invent punk rock, and I get it. Sometimes, everybody you ever worked with at some stupid restaurant job, or dated 30 years ago, or knew as teenagers, or mentored at your old record store job, somehow got to become internet/underground/fake-famous, milking all your own best ideas, looks, styles, songs, whole life story they still tell second hand versions of, if not totally erasing your catalytic part in their fake fame. It happens all the time, everyday I write the book. That's show-biz, big boy, you got to roll with the punches to get to what's real.
People get dazzle drunk from just a taste of the glimmer, lose their minds in the privileges of membership and overnight fourth hand zipcode glorying. "Fickle fame plays tricks on the brain", according the NY Dolls old fanclub prez, the Pope Of Mope. Much like Arthur, if I think too much about that kinda shit, the dead friends and might have beens, getting old and same dead ends, it really gets me down. Too much time stone alone and I start to go crazy, so I try to escape into books like this, or long walks in nature-lately, I been encountering too many dangerous jailbird aggressors on the dirt roads in the dusty flats, so today I'm gonna try to stay off the beaten path and hopefully avoid unhinged meth people and yuppie get rich quick capitalists from the big city, here to destroy the cowboy culture and try to cash in on legal weed airbandb schemes and fucking gentrify the shabby place, a fool's errand. It's endearing how much Killer continued to love Johnny, even though his promotion to permanent T- shirt saint and tedious rehash tribute show dead horse relegated Arthur to the, "lowly, lonely, unloved, and useless bass player" status.
In my little life, a long walk to nowhere, my bassplayers were always the most popular guy in the band. We had an Irish bassist in Boston who was too good looking to even be in a band, every night, he'd come over to drink and jam but have to abandon rehearsal by like ten because so many college girls were standing in line to date him. Another guy got college town popular playing in all the richkid "Garage"TM bands that open up with their vintage instruments for big name headliner acts. Another one looked like Michael Hutchence and expected to find major label primetime crossover status as a frontman because he had been the main matinee idol hometown heart throb of my part of the state way back in the new wave '80s. Died last year under mysterious circumstances. Haunts my little heart something fierce.
Sheesh, so yeah, poor Arthur...you know, you've probably seen the movie, walk on parts in forgotten films, jumping out a window, crazy Connie trying to cut his hand off with a knife, decades of non stop full time heavy drinking, and discovering religion. Arthur had a rough go of it, always missing the past, wanting to zip himself back into the glittery pink and silver bodysuits and relive all his youthful golden moments. Killer never forgot what a revelation it was when Johnny Thunders with all his choirboy gone bad street gang moxie and courageous cat drug guts plugged his Gibson Les Paul into a big Marshall amp and became the ultimate archetype for five generations of blackhaired would-be punknroll outlaws. Brokenhearted loner Killer Kane refers to himself as an unpaid, deaf-mute-backseat passenger to David and Johnn's briefly burning star trip and oversized talents and ambitions, me, I've always had a deep empathy for all those guys.
Arthur may have had it the hardest. Actress was basically his band-ya know? Arthur, Rick Rivets, Johnny, and Billy. Arthur was one of rocknroll's real Frankensteins-self made, he did it all from old time thrift stores and junk shops, being imaginative with duct tape and glue and needle and thread. He would add, "the spirit of truth". It is rough stuff remembering all the hard times and bullshit woe and suffering this poor guy went through-ya know he got shitfaced wasted once in a deep depression and threw himself out a window. He failed to die, but suffered from pain related to the incident for all his days. Arthur was a priceless one-off-they don't make 'em like that anymore.
That reminds me so much of a former collaborator of mine-he was never like a trained by a guitar teacher weedling lead talent, but he had a real good knack at scuzzy riffs, like summa my fave guitarists like say, Joan Jett, Steve Jones, Four Horsemen, Malcolm Young, ya know what I mean? Gritty garage punk. Dude crashed so many motorcycles, got in so many bar brawls with even larger "Planet Of The Apes" street fighters, went through so many windshields at top speeds, that now he can not even lift his arm to bartend, apparently, let alone jump around onstage with a guitar striking the Billy Duffy poses like he used to. It's awful sad, cause of everybody I ever knew growing up, he was one of those born to rock motherfuckers. A rock monster. Rock savage. Now he can't even provide for himself anymore, nevermind hit the road on some crazy slapdash, black van, stripper selling skull T-shirts at the merch. booth, basement show, old school, give 'em hell, comeback tours.
Man, it ain't like I sit around and play those same five fuckin' Heartbreakers songs all day anymore, like we once did when we were 16, and the long gone guitarists were first learning how to play, but probably a couple times a year, in a sentimental mood, I might put on both Dolls records on the same night and really remember how explosively wonderful and full of soul and passion and fun they were. Pure magic. I still love REAL rocknroll, just none of that fakeass mind control manufactured bullshit the HONKY DEATH MACHINE shoot at us nowadays. GOD BLESS ARTHUR KILLER KANE! It's hard..it's SO hard...