"The only way to keep it is to give it away."

- Dr. Grant Henderson

Gabriel Soriano - The Love Juice Sessions [2008 - USA]

In a perfect world, Gabe, along with many other hardworking musician friends of mine would be full-time professional rock stars. I had the pleasure/curse of meeting this guy back in freshman year of college at Chico State and eventually rooming with him our sophomore year until he dropped out for what he calls "The School Of Rock" aka vagrancy. Not only is Gabe one of the most hardworking musicians I know, he is also one of the most talented. Gabe plays bass, guitar, piano, drums, percussion, and can figure any other instrument out once he gets his hands on it. On all three of Gabe's albums he writes the songs, sings them, and plays all the instruments. He truly is a one-man band. On stage, Gabe plays with a nifty device called a Loop Station that allows him to play each instruments one at a time and progressively layer them to give the effect of an entire band playing. Although still unsigned, Gabe has accomplished a lot on his own. He has self-funded 3 albums and 5 tours all in the past 4 years. He's also generated a small fan base through shows and MySpace. How does he do this without the aid of wealthy parents or sponsors? Shitty jobs. Gabe works at fast food restaurants for about 9 months out of the year and saves up, then uses that money to record, promote, and tour. On tour, he actually manages to make enough money on tips to get to his next destination and pay for the essentials: food, beer, and pot. He doesn't have to worry about lodging in his budget since he sleeps in his van.

Currently, Gabe is living in Santa Barbara, California- doing his own thing as well as playing in a pretty dope group called Wrong Again. Catch him live by checking his MySpace for upcoming shows or go harass him at Quiznos.

Here's his latest album The Love Juice Sessions.

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More From Henry Miller's Tropic of Capricorn [1938]

...And then there is the one cunt which is all, and this we shall call the super-cunt, since it is not of this land at all but of that bright country to which we were long ago invited to fly. Here the dew is ever sparkling and the tall reeds bend with the wind. It is here that the great father of fornication dwells, Father Apis, the mantic bull who gored his way to heaven and dethroned the gelded deities of right and wrong. From Apis sprang the race of unicorns, that ridiculous beast of ancient writ whose learned brow lengthened into a gleaming phallus, and from the unicorn by gradual stages was derived the late-city man of which Oswald Spengler speaks. And from the dead cock of this sad specimen arose the giant skyscraper with its express elevators and observation towers. We are the last decimal point of sexual calculation; the world turns like a rotten egg in its crate of straw. Now for the aluminum wings with which to fly to that far-off place, the bright country where Apis, the father of fornication, dwells. Everything goes forward like oiled clocks; for each minute of the dial there are a million noiseless clocks which tick off the rinds of time. We are traveling faster than the lightning calculator, faster than starlight, faster than the magician can think. Each second is a universe of time is but a wink of sleep in the cosmogony of speed. When speed comes to its end we shall be there, punctual as always and blissfully undenominated. We shall shed our wings, our clocks and our mantelpieces to lean on. We will rise up feathery and jubilant, like a column of blood, and there will be no memory to drag us down again. This time I call the realm of the super-cunt, for it defies speed, calculation or imagery. Nor has the penis itself a known size or weight. There is only the sustained feel of fuck, the fugitive in full flight, the nightmare smoking his quiet cigar. Little Nemo walks around with a seven-day hard on and a wonderful pair of blue balls bequeathed by the Lady Bountiful. It is Sunday morning around the corner from Evergreen Cemetery.

Gustav Klimt - Mäda Primavesi [1912]

Streaker Art on Trains in Chico, California

Emily Dickinson - #315 [1862]

He fumbles at your Soul

As Players of the Keys

Before they drop full Music on-

He stuns you by degrees-

Prepares your brittle Nature

For the Ethereal Blow

by fainter Hammers- further heard-

Then nearer- Then so slow

Your Breath has time to straighten-

Your Brain- to bubble Cool-

Deals- One- imperial- Thunderbolt-

That scalps your named Soul-

When Winds take Forests in their Paws-

The Universe- is still-

Shades Of Joy - Music of El Topo [1970 - USA]

Shades of Joy was a short-lived supergroup of a bunch of hippies jamming out some funky, trippy, and soothing grooves on a plethora of instruments. It's a mystery who was actually in this loose-knit group but supposedly Jerry Garcia was part of it. If you notice on the cover it says "arranged and conducted by Martín Fierro". After a little research I learned that Martín Fierro was a saxaphonist who played with not just The Dead but also The String Cheese Incident, David Grisman, Yonder Mountain String Band, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Sir Douglas Quintet, and the Allman Brothers, just to name a few- holy cow. Sadly, Matín Fierro aka "The Meester" passed away just last year.

El Topo is a concept album covering the soundtrack to cult director Alejandro Jodorowsky's film with the same name.

If you arn't familiar with Jodorwsky's movies, I recommend starting with La Montaña Sagrada (The Holy Mountain) and maybe a tab or two of acid- it's really really tripped out shit.

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An excerpt from Henry Miller's Tropic of Capricorn [1938]

...Again the dance hall, the money rhythm, the love that comes over the radio, the impersonal, wingless touch of the crowd. A despair that reaches down to the very soles of the boots, an ennui, a desperation. In the midst of the highest mechanical perfection to dance without joy, to be so desperately alone, to be almost inhuman because you are human. If there were life on the moon what more nearly perfect, joyless evidence of it could there be than this? If to travel away from the sun is to reach the chill idiocy of the moon, then we have arrived at our goal and life is but the cold, lunar incandescence of the sun. This is the dance of ice-cold life in the hollow of an atom, and the more we dance the colder it gets.

So we dance, to an ice-cold frenzied rhythm, to short waves and long waves, a dance on the inside of the cup of nothingness, each centimeter of lust running to dollars and cents. We taxi from one perfect female to another seeking the vulnerable defect, but they are flawless and impermeable in their impeccable lunar consistency. This is the icy white maidenhead of love's logic, the web of the ebbed tide, the fringe of absolute vacuity. And on this fringe of the virginal logic of perfection I am dancing the soul dance of white desperation, the last white man pulling the trigger on the last emotion, the gorilla of despair beating his breast with immaculate gloved paws. I am the gorilla who feels his wings growing, a giddy gorilla in the center of a satin-like emptiness; the night too grows like an electrical plant, shooting white-hot buds into velvet black space. I am the black space of the night in which the buds break with anguish, a starfish swimming on the frozen dew of the moon. I am the germ of a new insanity, a freak dressed in intelligible language, a sob that is buried like a splinter in the quick of the soul. I am dancing the very sane and lovely dance of the nostalgic gorilla. These are my brothers and sisters who are insane and unangelic. We are dancing in the hollow of the cup of nothingness. We are of one flesh, but separated like stars.

"Tell me what you need and I'll show you how to live without it."

- Warren Miller

Andy Warhol - Muhammad Ali

Antonio Carlos e Jocafi - Mudei de Id [1971 - Brazil]

A MPB masterpiece!

Thanks to Marcel Cruz of SacundinBenBlog for sharing this gem. Antonio Carlos e Jocafi are another one of my top discoveries of 2009. The opening track, "Você Abusou" floats me off to my happy place every time I listen to it. I once read Antonio Carlos and Jocafi were a rather popular duo in Brazil back in the 70s, but I can't seem to find much info on them. And to the best of my knowledge, this album is out of print. Definitely pick this one up.

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