Someone gets it after all

Today's edition of Pearls Before Swine.

Coming Soon: Ten Thousand Days

The guitar is back in my hands, and my fingers are rusty. But it feels good.

Last year, Barry McGuire and John York brought their Trippin' the Sixties show to Green Bay, and the next afternoon Barry spoke and sang a few songs at the Cup O'Joy up the street. It was a weekend that changed my life, and not just because he led the Cup crowd in singing me "Happy Birthday."

That Sunday night, I pulled out the guitar for the first time in ages and wrote a song for the first time in ages. I had chuckled with Barry as he described writing "Greenback Dollar" with those trusty old chords, G and C, and an Em thrown in for good measure. Out came "Back Where I Belong," which begins with words that listeners of Uncle Warren's Attic #57 might recognize:

"I was dead and gone, but now I'm better ..."

That was just the start. For the next month songs came pouring out of my brain, almost like a dam had burst and emitted tunes. By the end of May — April, really, just one song came out in May — I had a pile of songs that fit together so well I was pretty sure I had an album in hand.

Almost 12 months gone now, and those tunes have been percolating in my mind. It's long past time to pick up the guitar, confront the microphone, and start sharing them.

And so ... watch this space. And make sure you're still subscribed to the Uncle Warren's Attic RSS feed, because that's where the first versions of these songs will be coming.

The Anti-Wildflower Man (and Woman)

A couple in California is being harrassed by the lawn police. No, it's not the scenario I wrote about in "Wildflower Man," where a fellow let the flowers take over his yard; just the opposite. Read the news here.

Some Southern California cities fine residents for watering their lawns too much during droughts.

But in Orange, officials are locked in a legal battle with a couple accused of violating city ordinances for removing their lawn in an attempt to save water.

The dispute began two years ago, when Quan and Angelina Ha tore out the grass in their frontyard. In drought-plagued Southern California, the couple said, the lush grass had been soaking up tens of thousands of gallons of water -- and hundreds of dollars -- each year.

And so the family has been charged with a misdemeanor by the city for failure to have at least 40% land cover on their property. Oh wait, did we say "their" property? If it's a crime to keep the land in the condition you think is best, who really owns it?

"It's their yard, it's not overgrown with weeds, it's not an eyesore," said (neighbor Dennis) Cleek, whose own yard boasts fruit trees. "We should be able to have our yards look the way we want them to."

Something in human nature just seems to make certain people force their ideas about The Way Things Ought To Be on the rest of us. Or, to put it another way:

"Compliance, that's all we've ever wanted," said Senior Assistant City
Atty. Wayne Winthers.

Don't let anyone scare you

Fear may draw a television audience. It may generate cash for an advocacy group. It may support the legal profession.

But fear paralyzes us. It freezes us. And we need to be flexible in our responses, as we move into a new era of managing complexity.

So we have to stop responding to fear: Is this really the end of the world? Earthquakes, hurricanes, floods? No, we simply live on an active planet. Earthquakes are continuous, a million and a half of them every year, or three every minute. A Richter 5 quake every six hours, a major quake every 3 weeks. A quake as destructive as the one in Pakistan every 8 months. It's nothing new, it's right on schedule.

At any moment there are 1,500 electrical storms on the planet. A tornado touches down every six hours. We have 90 hurricanes a year, or one every four days. ... Violent, disruptive, chaotic activity is a constant feature of our globe.

Is this the end of the world? No: this is the world. It's time we knew it.

— Michael Crichton

I stand corrected - records in cars

I got an e-mail overnight regarding my statement that "as wonderful as vinyl is, they never figured out a way to play records in the car." I guess I knew that — I always heard that Motorola's corporate name derives from "motor" and "Victrola" and the effort to create a practical car record player — but I have to believe the idea never caught on because of tonearms' tendency to skip when jostled, or maybe solving that dilemma was way too expensive. In any case, items like this make for fun speculation about what might have been ...

Vinyl, eBay and the road to freedom

I've had some modest success as I start selling parts of my vinyl LP collection at eBay. No surprises yet — over the past 15-20 years I have been one of the last surviving people who preferred to buy records when available, and so as vinyl experiences a reawakening, I knew there would be a market for those limited-edition vinyl copies of albums produced over the last couple of decades.

As I suspected, Neil Young remains cool. I cleared out my collection of Neil's more recent stuff at prices that made me happy. And the recipients of the albums sound pleased, too. Ah, the free market at its best — when buyer and seller both gain something of value.

As much as I love music and vinyl, why am I doing this? Partly to pass along the joy. I've experienced the fun of putting a slab of vinyl on a turntable and the fulfilled expectations of the fresher, more real sound that comes out. Now it's time for others to enjoy it.

Mostly it's because I've finally learned there is no music so sweet as the sound of my voice saying, "No plastic, I'm paying with cash."

For the third time in my life, I pushed my cards to the limit, to the point where too much of my income was going to purchases I made a long time ago, and accumulated interest. In a sense, I don't own this collection; the agents of Visa, Mastercard and Discover do. And so, to pay off my masters, this debt slave is liquidating.

Don't feel sorry for me; I'm so happy about this decision I could bust. It's all about freedom. And passing on the joy of music ownership. (My favorite records long ago were transferred to CD anyway — as wonderful as vinyl is, they never figured out a way to play records in the car.)

So check out my stuff on eBay — right this moment I have only four albums up, including the immortal American III: Solitary Man by Johnny Cash, but I plan to be busy this weekend. And if you want some great info about getting out of debt, check out the work and podcasts of Dave Ramsey.

Uncle Warren's Review: American VI: Ain't No Grave

Johnny Cash was already a legend when he met producer Rick Rubin, but what the two of them did together is, well, indescribable. The last four albums Cash released in his lifetime are the best recordings he ever created. Tom Petty once said the best Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers album ever is Unchained, the second Cash album produced by Rubin where the Heartbreakers sat in as the backup band.

After The Man In Black died in 2004, Rubin released a fifth album that was very good but didn't quite live up to the previous standards. Tuesday the sixth "American" project arrived, with Rubin promising this is the last he'll be associated with. Amazingly, American VI: Ain't No Grave does not sound like the last decent scraps from the pile.

When the three then-surviving Beatles cobbled "Free As A Bird" together around an old John Lennon demo tape, a friend of mine said it was comforting to hear a new Beatles song again. That's the feeling that this new Cash-Rubin collaboration evokes.

The title song is perfect for Cash to release after his death, after a long and often defiant life: "Ain't no grave gonna hold this body down." And all of the tracks are about endings, most of them covers given the unique Johnny Cash treatment. From Sheryl Crow's "Redemption Day" to "Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream" and including an original tune called "I Corinthians 15:55" ("O death, where is your sting?"), the album is a fitting valedictory. And "Aloha Oe" is a wistful and perfect song with which to close.

Johnny Cash was already a legend when he started working with Rick Rubin. But he could have become a legend just on the basis of these six albums (and don't forget Unearthed, the five-disk set that includes a few dozen great cuts that weren't quite great enough to make the "American" projects).

I had all sorts of ambitious plans for my day off Tuesday, but I spent the afternoon with Mr. Cash instead, listening to the new album twice and the first two American recordings in between. There never was an interpreter of songs like Johnny Cash, and no one brought out the best of Cash like Rick Rubin.

Secrets of rhinoceros success revealed

Oh — a rhinoceros!

Wally Conger is my best friend I never met. He and I "met" as teenagers in the late 1960s when he was putting together fanzines like Spidey Fan and Fantasy World from his parents' home in California. I was in New Jersey, which is why we never met. In those days people communicated by snail mail mainly because, well, there was nothing else. Seems to me we talked by phone once, which was kind of cool but expensive.

After 2-3 years we drifted off to live our lives until 2005, when a friend of mine sent me a pithy quote he'd picked up off the Internet that was written by "Wally Conger." Modern communications being a little more sophisticated and instantaneous than it used to be, I found this Conger fella within a few minutes and sent him an e-mail to the effect of "Are you the Wally Conger?" Kind of a silly question, really — how many Wally Congers writing about pop culture and anarcho-libertarian-type stuff could there be?

Turns out we lived semi-parallel lives in the media and corporate worlds until the last decade and a half, when he took off on his own to work on a variety of business projects. He was the guy who introduced me to Blogger, which has led to my so-far-not-so-vast podcast and publishing empires. He has lent his name to reviews of ventures like The Adventures of Myke Phoenix, and I've helped plug Wally's stuff when and where I can.

In the last year he's launched WallyConger.com, a place devoted to "smashing wage slavery one job at a time. Starting with his free e-book Fire Up Your Cash Flow Over a Donut and Coffee in 10 Minutes ... or Less!, Wally has been providing regular advice about how to move out on your own with Web and/or other businesses.

His newly released project is a fun conversation preserved in black-and-white and audio called No-Nonsense Damn-the-Torpedoes Jungle Rhinoceros Tactics to Flatten the Crap Outta Fear, Worry & Doubt (apparently he can't name something in fewer than 12 words). It's an interview with Scott Alexander, blogger, entrepreneur and author of three motivational books starting with Rhinoceros Success. What's rhinoceros success? Here's Scott talking to Wally:

The rhinos are guys like you and me. We're out there having fun. We enjoy life. We're charging. We're building businesses. We have dreams. We have goals. We wake up in the morning and we want to get going on stuff. Now I know you like to enjoy your cigars and stuff, and that's part of your adventure, is doing what you want to do. But the thing for rhinos is, they're out in the jungle and they're having fun. They're pursuing what they want in life.

And they don't let anything get in the way of their success, growing a tough hide and charging through setbacks to victory ...

... you hear these success people say, "Well, success is easy if you think it's easy." But I totally disagree with that. I think success is difficult; it's radically difficult. Think about it. If success were easy, if anybody could automatically become a success, it wouldn't be success, right? It'd be mediocrity. It's easy to be mediocre, but if you want to be successful, you have to charge harder, you have to do things that the cows aren't willing to do. You have to get out there and charge and expend some energy. So, yeah, the chips are always down, and fortitude and charging is the most important thing.

Along the way in a 45-minute conversation, Wally and Scott share some valuable insights about what it takes to get up some momentum and keep charging — and they have fun along the way. The podcast would make a nice package on its own, but Wally took the time to transcribe the whole gorram thing into an ebook — with a short bonus anecdote — and he throws in some worksheets designed to help you start your rhino life. So you can take your time perusing the words, take the conversation with you in your car or iPod, and scribble out your own plan for rhino success.

This is definitely something I'm going to keep close at hand in the Attic, and I heartily recommend it to the dozen of you who visit here regularly. [Full disclosure: I've signed up for Wally's affiliate program, so I'll get a piece of the action if you buy the package after clicking "Click here to view more details."]

Go ahead. Take a look. Click here to view more details.

Knowledge overcomes fear:The scary sign in the window

I hadn’t been alive for very long, and I was pretty sure I didn’t want to die yet. The little poster in the front window of the barber shop in Little Falls, N.J., told me it might not be long.

In stark bold letters, the poster announced “The 7 warning signs of leukemia.” I didn’t know exactly what leukemia was, but it sounded scary and in the late 1950s it was almost always fatal. The poster said it was cancer of the blood.

I did an inventory for the signs. “Change in a mole or wart” — well, my little body was littered with moles, but I was pretty sure they all looked the same as the day before. “Fatigue” — no, I had plenty of energy; I was a kid after all. “Hoarseness” —

I cleared my throat.

Was I hoarse? I did have a little bit of a tickle there, a small frog perhaps. I tried a few words.

“Hello? Hello? Oh no.”

My voice was a little ragged.

I might have leukemia! It was a real possibility. The poster said so. My voice was hoarse.

I squirmed my way through the haircut, panic rising in my soul at every clip. Why waste my time with a haircut when I might have so little time to spare?

Afraid to say anything out loud, I was quiet on the way home, and the next time I was with my mother without the brothers around, I approached her and said solemnly, “Mom, I have to talk to you.”

She could tell right away that I was a tad distraught. No doubt she looked around the house to see if anything else was broken, but the look on my face told her this was different from guilt. I led her into a bedroom and closed the door.

“What? What is it?” Now she was starting to get anxious herself.

I threw myself against her apron and hung on for dear life.

“One of the symptoms of cancer is hoarseness and today I’m hoarse!!!” I wailed.

For just a moment there was no sound in the room except for my terrified sobbing.

And then, a soft laugh.

You know the scene in the movie A Christmas Story where Ralphie gets in a fight and afterward his brother, Randy, hides under the kitchen sink? When Mom asks what he’s doing there, he screams, “Daddy’s gonna kill Ralphie!”

Mom gives a soft chuckle and says reassuringly, “No, Daddy’s not going to kill Ralphie.”

Every time I see that movie, I laugh out loud because Randy’s fear and Mom’s reaction are so real. I know, because that’s exactly how I sounded that day and exactly how my own mother sounded when she said, “No, you don’t have cancer.”

Patiently, she told me I needed to have more than one symptom before I needed to consider the most dire diagnosis. I realized I probably was going to live. The fright eased its way out of my tiny frame.

Lesson learned: Wait until you have all of the facts before jumping to conclusions. So often we become afraid because we only understand part of the story. “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing,” says the old proverb — but the emphasis is on the word little. If you don’t have full knowledge, you can make a dangerous mistake: such as being paralyzed by fear.

The leukemia society didn’t mean to frighten a little boy that day, but planting a little fear in your mind is a common motivational tactic. The idea of the poster was to get you to a doctor, but it also works for product advertising and politicians.

When I sought more information from the closest trusted source at hand — my mom — the fears were dispelled.

Are you scared of something you don’t fully understand? Get more information. Most of the time, the situation is not as dire as you fear. And even more often, as I learned by discovering I didn’t have leukemia, the situation is not even a “situation” at all.

Fritzi on albums

The Uncle Henry Collection

I have a box full of my own uncle's old 78 rpm records, which my cousins gave me after his memorial service a couple of years ago. My goal was to clean them up and transfer the songs onto CD for them - life, of course, has gotten in the way.

Part of my plan when I got back to the Attic was to get to that project, make it a regular segment of the podcast - "gems from Uncle Henry's stash" or some such. Still an idea.

The trouble with my Biggest Ideas for the new series is that they're labor-intensive upfront; I'd need to get a lot of extra work done before the launch. I do want to try it, though, so I guess I should just get to it and quit whining.

Getting it ready on a timely basis may mean forgoing the iguanodon sound effect. I think everyone could probably live without it, though.

Remodeling the attic

I'm telling you, I'm sure this is going to work if I just have some time to get the job done - hey come on, I'm on the phone here, what do you need? The iguanodon sound effect? I don't know, we'll figure it out. Wait a minute! Do iguanodons make any sounds anyway? You know what, I should call you back anyway. I've got some situations here, and oh! Somebody just walked in. Talk to you later, OK?

Hi there — sorry the place is such a mess, you know what happens when you leave something alone for a whole summer. I nearly choked on the dust when I opened things up.

I've had some plans for this place in the back of my mind for a couple of months now, and it's long past time to put them in motion. They involve at least a 16-week series, and hopefully that will give us enough momentum to keep sailing.

Sorry to hit and run, but I've got my hands full. Hard to find good help, you know. See ya! Hey!!! The guitars go next to the mixing board! What good are they going to do in that closet? Yumpin yiminy anyway ...

Music and podcasts coming

I will have a second collection of free old recordings up soon.

Later this summer I will be putting a collection of new music up for sale and launching a 13-episode season of Uncle Warren's Attic.

Just so's ya know.

The Will To Fly - a w.p. bluhm collection

First and foremost, thanks to Sunni for her comments about "Wanting To Live Forever" and suggesting that I make it more readily available. Without further ado, click here to listen or download the song (there's another link below, of course.)

THE ALBUM: From a dub between two cassette recorders with a nylon string guitar in 1974, to a recording using all computer-generated instruments in 2000, these 15 tracks comprise what I consider my "best of" those years.

The songs cover a variety of adventures, misadventures, ups and downs that we should talk about some night over a beer or two. For now, thanks for listening and I hope you like it.

Words and music by w.p. bluhm (except for track 8)

THE SONGS: You can play them by clicking on 'em or download using your computer's standard download procedures.

1. Years of Our Lives (6:55/Written 1977/Recorded March 18, 1986)
2. Seems Like Old Times (2:25/1978/Dec. 22, 1985)
3. Crying Over Spilled Thyme (2:56/1977/1977)
4. Always Love You (2:49/1976/March 30, 1986)
5. Sweet Sarah Wilde (5:08/Sept. 6, 1984/Dec. 21, 1985)
6. Priscilla (3:33/1972/1975)
7. Darling Don't You Cry (3:52/1974/1974)
8. Happy Talk (4:32/Rodgers-Hammerstein 1949/1992)
9. Sha-la-la-la-la-la (1:49/June 6, 1985/Dec. 22, 1985)
10. Snuggle Bunny (2:31/Feb. 7, 1999/Feb. 21, 2000)
11. The Best is Yet To Be (3:36/June 22, 1986/1987)
12. Wanting To Live Forever (5:05/Jan. 27, 1986/March 30, 1986)
13. Billy and Jody (2:51/June 30, 1988/July 26, 1989)
14. Don't You Worry (3:25/Aug. 30, 1986/1987)
15. I Thank God (4:15/Jan. 30, 1987/1987)

THE PITCH: These 10- to 35-year-old recordings are offered for whatever you choose to pay for them. If you want me to toss out a number, let's go with the standard $9.99 for all 15 songs, or 69 cents a song. Feel free to pay less, feel especially free to pay more. These songs are worth whatever you think they are. You can download them for free, but if you have a PayPal account I'd also encourage you to contribute by clicking the PayPal logo over in the sidebar.

I'll accept the payments as your encouragement to me to keep going as a singer-songwriter. Thank you in advance!

Please e-mail me with questions and comments.

THE LEGALESE:


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

Uncle Warren's Attic 58: The Pedestrian, and more

A dramatic reading of one of my favorite Ray Bradbury short stories anchors this session. Try to ignore the fact that I refer to a Bradbury "tune"; in fact, as musical as the master's prose is, it's probably as accurate a misstatement as you're ever going to hear. Vintage ads for Coca-Cola and a prominent Illinois politician are also on the agenda.

Plus, I spend a couple of minutes reminding you that I'd love to sell you some musical fiction of my own ...

The songs:
She Said Her Name Was Saffron - Marc Gunn
You Bug Me Baby - Larry Williams
For Your Boy and My Boy - Peerless Quartet
God's Gonna Cut You Down - Odetta
Don't Go Drinking With Hobbits - Marc Gunn

Download here, click the podcast icon or press "play" on the player at the top of the right rail.