The Dirt Isn’t Clean

I haven't seen the movie, but it needs to be said:  The Dirt Isn't Clean.  The movie doesn't matter.  The band doesn't matter.  Not theirs, not yours, not mine.  Better a broken heart under grace, than a heart stuffed with fat, under law.  Perhaps that's why our hearts break, so we don't have to carry …

“The Dirt” Looks Clean

I was a big Mötley Crüe fan in the 80's.  They toured constantly, and I saw them at least a dozen times in the mid-sized industrial town in the Midwest where I spent my teenage years.  They were wild back then, and still are.  Their wildness then outshines anyone today, 30 years after the fact.  There …

Rights Over Privilege

Legally speaking, there is no such thing as minority-group rights.  There are only human rights.  Legally speaking, such things as "gay rights" and "women's rights" don't exist.  Dogmatically speaking, there is a broad spectrum of opinion and belief on the subject, but legally speaking, which is the only thing that matters, there is no such …

Peak Bitch

Western civilization has reached "peak bitch."  Feminism has finally gone too far.  It's not about equality anymore, if indeed it ever was.  Whatever it may or may not have been in the past, it has become a control mechanism to handicap productive members of society, especially men. I'm not going to get into the reasons …

Jeanette Through The Ages

I'm a big Jeanette fan, so I was very pleased when she agreed to do the tour with me & Biggie Smalls in May.  We're going to play throughout Mexico, starting in Monterrey on May 2nd.     I made the poster before Biggie Smalls & Jeanette decided to do the tour, which is why …

The Beginning Is Near

Barry Levinson's The Natural and Curtis Hanson's Wonder Boys are essentially about the same thing:  Faith.  What happens after it looks like it's all over?  What comes next?  Is there hope? Wonder Boys stars Tobey Maguire and Michael Douglas as 2 different stages of a very similar character, a "wonder boy" who is either just before, …

When Highness Turns To Highness

Years ago I wrote a terrible poem with a terrible title:  "Poetry Is For Idiots."  It was unwitting postmodernism at its finest, a natural dead-end with a self-deprecating title that could only be produced in a time and headspace of unquestioned and manufactured artlessness and despair. I used to think there was strength in "owning …

My Favorite Guitar Player

We used to watch The Song Remains The Same on what I want to say was a daily basis back in the summer of '93.  It was the soundtrack to many an altered, blacklit night in the trippy little house I shared with a couple guys, one of whom was the bassist in my band …

Why I Kick People Off Social Media Profiles

Short answer:  Why not? Long answer:  It's a disingenuous relationship that reaps absolutely no benefits to anyone, and only provides the illusion of legitimacy and support (or illegitimacy and lack of support) for any given artist.  This creates yet another beggar situation for the artist that makes one long for the days when all you …

Guarulhos Airport Poem

Guarulhos Airport is a cave of darkened concrete, thousand-foot ceilings, looming high above   I am standing in the shell of a thousand bomb-cathedrals stacked   One on top of another, cathedral on cathedral, with all the science gutted, and the ornamental Christs   The airport lounge is rustic, a northwoods wooden theme pervading, comfortable …

Musician in the Coal Mine

While searching for images of dead canaries to use for a short article about the death of the music industry as a bellwether for the direction of Western civilization in general, I came across this quote by Kurt Vonnegut: “I was perplexed as to what the usefulness of any of the arts might be, with …

Typical, Uninspiring Conceptual Art Piece #1

The writing is superb.   ©2018 Pablo Smog

How To Save The West (in 161 words or less)

The arts are always the first to go in a collectivist society.  I am half-living proof of this.  Nobody thinks that what I or my musical peers do has any value.  The mainstream left believes "the song belongs to all of us," and when anybody on the right wants to talk to a musician, they …

Eva Perón & The Socialist Mindset

While visiting Buenos Aires, I walked through Plaza de Mayo, one of the city's main squares, and in fact the site on which Buenos Aires was founded.  On the eastern side of the plaza sits Casa Rosada (the pink house), the main seat of the government of Argentina, where both Juan and Eva Perón addressed enthusiastic …

Flying Over The Jungle Poem

Waking from a nap I took inside an ice-cube of tubular aluminum   (I tumbled down the stairs of dreams)   It's brighter in the ice cube than it is upon the earth   Floating high above the rainforest, a sea of endless trees, jungle bugs & snake gods, ancient hissing rivers   Looking down …

What Would An Indian Farmer Whose Livelihood Has Been Destroyed By Monsanto Do?

When you never get paid, and have been living in a car or van for 15 years, it very truly seems like nobody cares.  If you believe that art is free, you are an enemy of art and a destroyer of life.  Not everybody wants to live in your bitch-whipped community where no one can …

God Bless The USA

While gigging in the US at this level is in my opinion completely pointless, and while this trip through Latin America has been great, and there may very well be a good reason to return in the not-too-distant future, I need to say: THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA IS THE GREATEST COUNTRY ON EARTH AND …

Texas Booking Correspondence

On Oct 15, 2018, at 6:53 PM, Nathan Payne <nathan@pablosmoglives.com> wrote: Hello _________, My name is Nathan Payne, I'm a songwriter and bandleader from Arizona who has been following Nick Cave around Latin America for the last 2 weeks on what I call The Poor Man's Nick Cave Tour.  He's playing in Dallas next Tuesday, Oct. …

The Codependence of Community (DIY or DIE)

Have you noticed how collectivists and communitarians always seem to think that "you need us," but never seem to think that "we need you?"  The supposed need is always for the individual, not the group.  The group's only need is for "each other."  We need each other.  Since the group's need is instantly, automatically met …

Thrift Stores For The Arts

Social media platforms are ghettos for the arts.  Thrift stores, at best.  Uniqueness has been replaced by uniformity; the wonder and excitement at the discovery of something unique has been replaced by uniform social media "profiles," which is a police word.  There are no commodities in this world except bandwidth.  When you listen to a …

The Opium Of The Stupid

Something has changed.  It used to be, to get a job, you didn't have to "believe in the power of diversity."  You could just apply.  EOE has always been a red flag, code for " we give preferential hiring treatment to certain groups, regardless of qualification."  You had to look at it, roll your eyes, …

Cough Syrup Soup

gloop!                  gloop! I want some more soup! the traffic is howling in agony below my window, like a man being mauled by tigers burning at the stake gloop!                  gleep! I need some more sleep! clouds shaped like puffy disembodied torsos of beautiful women are giving birth to 747’s, police helicopters, birds so distant that they’re …

Message in a Bottle

  Parked by the railroad tracks, freight trains roaring through the afterlife, broken glass on the sidewalk   Someone’s message in a bottle, dropped from a liferaft in the sky, or maybe heaven     2 January 2014 Tucson, Arizona

Happiness Compliance Grid

Policy exists to protect an entity against innovation.  Innovation means risk, which means potential loss.  When an entity has nothing to lose, it is innovative.  Once an entity has reached a certain level of comfort, it begins to implement policies.  The size of the entity can be a single individual, a coalition of shareholders, or …

John Lennon Killed Sharon Tate

Millions of people have been killed in the name of religion, especially Jesus, so He must be guilty of the murders. I mean, right? John Lennon wrote a song, and Charlie Manson scrawled the lyrics on the wall in the victims' blood, therefore John Lennon is guilty of the crime. Right? Obviously.  The most important …

When It Rains It Snows

"You only get 3 great women in your life.  They come around every 10 years or so.  I had all mine at the age of 16.  Whatcha gonna do?" states Chazz Palminteri's character in A Bronx Tale, and a funny scene it is.  He's talking to the kid, trying to give him good advice.  If …

My Lucky Day In Hell

I think of Hector Lavoe throwing himself off a hotel balcony in Puerto Rico, having recently been diagnosed with AIDS.  I think of him standing on the edge of the abyss, looking down into the fires of hell, and throwing himself in anyway.  I hear the tragedy in the melody and chords at the end …

The Freeway Is My Dance Floor

One of my favorite pastimes when I lived in L.A. was to get really stoned and hit the freeway.  Roll down the windows, turn up the rap music, and watch the post-apocalyptic paradise floating past.  I always enjoyed the super-imposition of the palm trees over the burned, smoking wasteland of the city.  Musically, I have …

A Bad Show Is Better Than A Good Practice

I bought my first guitar on April 20, 1989 at the age of 15.  I took it home, and the first thing I learned was what the double dots on the 12th fret meant.  Even without any musical training beyond high school band, you could tell it was an octave.  I spent the remainder of …

Fun is a Phallic Symbol, Part 2 (Nirvana Leads To Hell)

In Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler, Randy "The Ram" Robinson says something along the lines of, "the eighties ruled, man, until that pussy Cobain came along."  He's drinking at a strip club, his glory days behind him.  Marisa Tomei pole-dances in agreement.  The new angst trip is a drag.  Not even punk is any fun anymore.  …

Fun is a Phallic Symbol

Showmanship, not style, is what makes a country great.  It's what separates the fun countries from the frightening ones.  The frightening countries often have a superior sense of style; no one is ever seen in sweatpants, and even the grunts seem to have tailored uniforms.  The people though, are miserable.  Because there is no showmanship.  …

McDonagh is The Anti-Mamet

I love watching actors.  I'm not one, so the craft interests me.  There are many people who know a lot more about it than I do, not only people in the field, but fellow interested observers as well.  I can not talk knowledgeably about French New Wave cinema from the 1960's, early Alfred Hitchcock films …

The Yob Army Has Awakened

On May 25th, Tommy Robinson was arrested in Leeds for speaking out against Muslim grooming gangs, and for being opposed to unchecked mass immigration, and all the misery it brings.  Within 3 hours, he was sentenced to 13 months in prison.  This week, he was transferred to a Muslim-majority prison, in what can only be …

Ignorance is War

Below is a small sampling of anti-Trump propaganda from both North Korea and the U.S. since Trump's inauguration.  The similarities are interesting, but what is truly telling is the reaction of the Western left to the historic summit between the U.S. and North Korea in Singapore this week.  Their reaction exposes them for the hateful, …

Anthony Bourdain Was Killed

“If I’m an advocate for anything, it’s to move. As far as you can, as much as you can. Across the ocean, or simply across the river. Walk in someone else’s shoes or at least eat their food. It’s a plus for everybody.”  Anthony Bourdain These are not the words of someone who wants to …

The Short, Simplistic Reason Music Sucks Today That Even Your Dog Can Understand

You get what you pay for.  When you take everything for free, the only people who can afford to survive are those who are ARTIFICIALLY PROPPED UP.  "Supporting your local band" is good, but not enough.  Most of those bands are comprised of dilettantes, and your support is wasted on them.  Let them be discouraged …

Vampire Hippies & The Orthodox Goth

When selecting an identity, knowing who you want to pretend to be is critical.  Why peer into your soul with questions that might hurt, when you can pick your favorite band and adopt their attitude, hairstyle, and clothing with a simple trip to the subgenre costume shop?  Why be limited to your favorite band, when …

Who’s The Blackstar?

David Bowie's Blackstar is a great album.  Others may rate the album on this or that circumstantial merit, but in my case, Blackstar is exceptional for being the only Bowie I didn't want to immediately throw out the window for reason of being unlistenably showy.  The now-commonplace, surprisingly-conformist androgyny never did anything for me, one …

Superholy Death Trip

This is a strange season.  I thanked God last night for "taking my music away from me."  Oddly, unexpectedly, God has removed "who I am" from who I am.  Which doesn't mean that all of a sudden I'm happy to be a retail weed person (which I'm not) or a cabdriver (which I was a …

There Is No Such Thing As A Diverse Group Of People

The most diverse group capable of being assembled would be comprised entirely of individuals, different people who don't "identify" with anything, least of all a group label. By manufacturing a group, sub-group, side-group, or super-group, herding the individuals you want to control into these groups, and then conditioning the individuals to "identify" with this or …

Clarity

As the moment of my final clarity approaches, I learn to disregard the reproaches of the roaches       March 9, 2014

Music is a Crime

Crime doesn't pay, so music is a crime.  Gone are the days of painting your band name on the tailfin of a 767, arguing with your label about royalties, or even paying rent.  All we have now are dilettantes and industry whores — bartenders with a guitar habit and propped-up, artless shills who promote vapid …

420 Bunny vs. The Mona Lisa

When I went to Europe in 1994, I visited the Mona Lisa in Paris.  She didn't disappoint.  It something is to see.  But what I wouldn't give for a limited edition 420-copies-only signed print of 420 Bunny by Grace Slick. I don't know what the painting is actually called, but 420 Bunny is a great …

The Chrome Nun Takes Off Her Burka

“Through literacy you can begin to see the universe. Through music, you can reach anybody. Between the two, there is you, unstoppable.”  Grace Slick Grace Slick rocks.  More than merely having a great singing voice, she's also a snarky (but repentant) drunk, dresses like a sexy psychedelic nun on American Bandstand, makes impressive paintings with …

Pornography is the Answer

Or, more accurately, the answer is in pornography.  The answer to what?  The question of gender identity, of course. The question of how and why it's a question, is a question for another time, and one that really should answer itself, by the individual, for the individual, at the appropriate time.  Not childhood, for those …

The 5 Pillars of Smog

America needs a liter.  Of gasoline?  Soda?  Piss?  The possibilities are myriad, but one thing is certain:  no one knows the answer.  Donald Trump has thrown himself on the grenade of globalism and Marxism, taking the hit for the rest of us, but the country is divided.  The left is ashamed of America, and has …

Repel The Muslim Hordes With Healing

  Nobody with any self-respect or human sympathy is truly concerned about the feelings of the clitoris-cutting, acid-throwing, honor-killing, fag-tossing Muslim invaders of the West, aided and abetted by estrogentrified politicians and brainwashed, self-hating leftists and fake feminists. For the rest of us, I believe I have a solution to the problem.  Put this band …

Liberals, What’s Your Problem?

The Bush years are over.  They really are.  I wasn't into Trump during the campaign season, but on the night of the election I was filled with a certain kind of horror at the prospect of Hillary Clinton becoming president.  I happened to be checked into a hotel in Cottonwood, Arizona on election night, and …

Going Soon In Aztlan (The Best English Lyrics Are Translations of Spanish Lyrics)

When I went to Europe in 1994, I befriended two French girls in Berlin who spoke terrible English.  We met at the hostel, "became friends," and went out and got drunk and had fun in the mutually-foreign and completely indecipherable street layout of Berlin.  We got so lost we asked a cop for directions; he …

Not a Review of a Movie I’m Never Going To See

It's debatable what tends to be the first thing to go when a fascist regime takes control.  The dissenters, the thinkers, the arts?  A combination of all three?  The answer is yes.  And yes and yes and yes. The only question is whether the fascist regime is using political means, cultural means, or both.  When …

Jeff Sessions is a Liberal Archetype

This is your wake-up call.  If you're a live-and-let-live type, and have chosen your political affiliations based on a humanist philosophy, this is your chance to go all the way.  If you've been playing a frustrating game of undefined footsie with an entitled sense of manufactured rage that you believe is the product of a …

Dave Chappelle Lost His Balls

When Dave Chappelle's new Netflix special "Equanimity" popped up on Solar Movie, I was looking forward very much to watching it.  He's been in self-imposed exile for awhile, and I always enjoyed his show, so I figured his return to performing would be enjoyable to watch.  It was, for awhile. The beginning is brilliant, and …

Allen Ginsberg Was A Pontificating Ass

Most historians believe this to be a photograph of the Nazi airship Hindenberg, but it is in fact a picture of a young Allen Ginsberg reading his first artless poetry at age 11 in New Jersey:     The "Hindenberg disaster," as it is mistakenly known, in fact occurred in New Jersey, where Allen "Bedbug" …

There Is Freedom In Going Home Alone

15 years ago tonight, I put all my things in a bag, walked out of the diorama of low-down, dirty drug-drama that was my girlfriend's apartment, and rode the bus to a sleazy hotel on Sunset Blvd.  I got a room for a week, and laid on the bed as the clock struck 12, going …

The Proxy Hipster War Of Williamsburg

Just in time for Christmas, it has been revealed to me through the prophets of absurdity that NYC is the neo promised land, and a proxy hipster war is waging there that echoes the neverending conflict in Israel, and the war against the Russians and the powers of the east in Syria. Anyone with half …

The Punk-Rock Soccer Matriarchy (and how to avoid it)

Before I was voided out of Twitter for reasons of not giving them my phone number, I was a follower of Ben Weasel from Screeching Weasel (@screechingweez), not because I'm a fan (I'm happily indifferent), but because he stands firmly opposed to censorship and fascism in all its forms.  Which makes him oddly anathema to …

Art Worshipers & Artistic Legalists

Sometime in the last couple of years, I was politely accosted during a show in Flagstaff by an artistic legalist. An artistic legalist is somebody who lacks imagination, is adamantine in his legalistic religious beliefs about art, and imposes this oxymoronically-unyielding void on everyone around him.  Artistic legalists aren't art worshipers, necessarily.  An art worshiper …

American Parthenon

Touring the drive-in ruins of modern America, greaser ghost & bellhop, bungalows in the sand   Sad diner broken windows, fast-food parthenons to go           4 September 2014 Amboy, California From the upcoming book Slipping Toward The Drip-Dream Due in 2018

Letter To The Jerome Town Council

3 February 2015 Dear Jerome, I wanted to take this opportunity to clarify the position of permit-free performance in Jerome. The committee meetings, unfortunately, bore no fruit. The first meeting was extremely productive, everybody leaving with an optimistic, win/win attitude. Abe Stewart mentioned the possibility of ignoring the busking issue entirely, and focusing on simply …

My Beatnik Soul Is (not?) My Own

The Beats have been a huge influence on me in not only my work, but my life, for better or worse.  Especially Kerouac.  And Gregory Corso, whose Gasoline (my copy of) still has slips of paper with my local number in it, the payphone in the lobby of the 3rd-floor hotel in San-Francisco Chinatown, when …

Throw Me To The Doves

"I created myself inside the womb from the fires of Hell."  G.G. Allin I don't believe in "devil's music." I don't believe the devil is a creative spirit. I don't believe in sparks, combusting in the darkness. Lately I've been trying to solve the problem of the "holy terror," how to capture the translucent firefly, …

NYC Drug Train & The VHS Massacre

I don't know if it was the broken glass on the floor, the telltale candy wrappers everywhere, or the bloody drug needles in the sock drawer, but there was something fishy about New York. I lost my phone simply dropping it on the floor. I mean, I couldn't find it. I upended the room and …

My Heart Is In The Clouds

The east is weird, every stretch of pavement is like a conveyor belt of bumblebees from Ogallala to Ohio, how do people cruise out here?  How do people live with less than a mile between them and the next car?  I think somebody's tailgating if I can see them in the mirror.  Also, everybody drives …

Neon Moonlight Meat #2

“Absolutely No Nudity,” the sign read, but whatcha gonna do? Sit there like an idiot in a pair of soppy cargo shorts on a beach so violent and unfriendly the only other people on it don’t even linger for an hour? A beach composed of rocks the size of milk jugs, giant shoes, infants, not …

Response to James Hetfield’s Napster comments from Joe Rogan’s podcast #887

He is absolutely correct.  It's the reason there are no major artists today.  I mean real, legitimate artists who have an organic career.  Who's big?  Eminem who has been in the public eye for 20 years?  He has a new song, well great.  What about NOW?  Who's new?  And GOOD.  Who raises the bar?  Who …

Art is Amoral

Thoughts inspired by a video I didn't watch, about famous performers who have "sold their soul" for money and fame: I don't know if I have an hour for it, but 7 minutes in I think he's probably on the right path.  The end of Eminem's "Rap God" is right out of Genesis:  Why be …

Liberry Odyssey

I'm looking for a place to live in Colorado, pretty much anywhere south and west of Denver.  It's clear I'm never going to book another show from the van, and while it's been nice to take away the pressure of waiting under the trees for 3 months for the one-off show, it has been no …

The World Is An Heirloom

A friend of mine asked me for my take on Christ's statement that "the meek shall inherit the earth."  This is it: My take on that verse has to be subjected to what God means by it, and so I have to say, "thank you," because God is calling to me through you to become …

London Is Not Open

Testimony written May 2013 for The Manifesto Club UK.  Posted in light of the attack yesterday in London, and the abhorrent hashtag #LondonIsOpen on the @MayorofLondon's Twitter account.  It is abhorrent because it is either overly true, or not remotely true, depending on who knows what.  For me, it wasn't remotely true.  Here is my …

Requiem For A Drummer

When I visited my drummer friend during the summer of 2014 to sober up and record, little did I know I would never see him again.  He was sick, his liver shot after years of alcohol and heroin use, and living in the guest house of a defunct vegetable and herb farm in Merlin, Oregon.  …

Draculo (because Dracula is a girl’s name)

I am living the last charmed life the world will ever know.  Many before me, but no one after, will ever live this life again.  It has been one hell of a ride, let me tell you.  Beginning to end, all the way through.  Charmed.  Oh, I suppose there were a few bumps from time …

Deconstructing Lars Von Trier

The following is a short response to Lars Von Trier - Deconstructing Cinema, on Channel Criswell on YouTube, one of my favorite film critics. "Finding it organically" is the opposite of craft, not a part of it, and one of the main reasons I don't like Von Trier.  With the exception of Dancer in the Dark, …

Seeds of Heaven

I can't resist posting this picture, of the absurdly-idealized vision of van life from fellow moon-denizen Spacemind, who clearly lives INDOORS, judging by the absolute lack of neurosis, exquisite attention to detail, and totally-unrealistic depiction of van life in this painting below.  I want to see the puffed-up cops asking for your "adventure pass," or the tweeker lunatics throwing …

A Breath Away From Hell

For some reason, this culture dictates to all artists that they ought never to explain themselves to people.  I understand the reasons for this, even if I find no reason to strictly adhere to it, but in this case I want to explain the lyrics to the song posted below, particularly the 3rd stanza.  The …

Infernal Impressions

It's an ambitious production, and according to the description box of the video embedded below, it was the first feature-length film to be shown in the United States.  The special effects are impressive, but I'm partial to pre-CGI effects and am admittedly biased in favor of anything that tests the creative ingenuity of the production …