Hammer Mill Days

What do you mean the broken-down car has broken down? How much more of a heap could it possibly be? Okay, okay ... we'll call the hook. No, not CAPTAIN Hook. Unless he's opened a towing business in his dotage. Seems unlikely. Well, as you can see, the bottom is falling out of Big Green, economically speaking. Nothing new, right? As a class, musicians tend to be monetarily challenged, let's say. Doing music for a living is tantamount to perpetual unemployment, interrupted by occasional contract work. And when you're a plainclothes band, the gig money sucks. Usually you get a percentage of the door. If you're more well known, they might give you the WHOLE door. And if you draw a good crowd, they might even throw in a window as well. Now, when you play mostly original music, like we do, that's an even bigger problem. Nobody knows the songs, for one thing ... when you're not famous, that is. Even worse, the audience starts requesting songs by the Scorps, or ...

What is there to say about the Charleston shooting? Another three-foot creep with a four-foot gun. That's the long of it. I notice most of what's being talked about is this generic "pure" hatred, evil, etc. Most of the television commentators have been avoiding the "R" word. Hey, folks ... it's called racism. Combine a racist history with a birthday gun, and you've got the recipe for Charleston. School friends talk about racist jokes that nobody took seriously. He wore flag patches on his jacket for both Rhodesia and apartheid-era South Africa, Confederate flag license plates. No particular concern? We shall see. The sad fact is, racism is a default position in white society, south and north. I grew up in white society, and I have been surrounded by racism my entire life, at various levels of severity. I am certain that, had it not been for the guiding efforts of my mother and my older siblings, I might well have ended up as racist as some of my ne...