A walk down reality lane, with someone who has been through a lot: CIA mind control chipping, torture, Directed Energy Weapons, attempted murders, vehicle sabotage, malicious prosecutions, electronic surveillance, pin hole spy cameras in home, harassment, character assasination, etc, etc, etc....the usual Police State dirty tricks).
Outside of OVERTON, NEVADA.....near the airport go right or to the East...you can to a gravel road gaining a thousand feet or so...to get a look from above the city....on something called MORMON MESA.
BIG MESA above the village.
Hawks hunt this area, and when I was there, a small brownish Ferruginous Hawk dropped a kangaroo rat...and then circled back to find his meal?
On top of the mesa...go all the way East and avoid the very rocky first road to the south....go East then head south on smooth dirt road....you can drive south five miles on a dirt road bordering the Eastern cliff... to get a view of the tip of the mesa...with the Virgin Mountain Wilderness to the East...
....Muddy River flowing into Lake Mead ....Lake Mead due south....with the sun setting in the west to light up the mountains in a purple tint.
....You'll notice up there on the most southern tip of the five square mile mesa that....to the south are some funky badlands...that light up with shadows at dusk.
"SONGLISTS FOR DIPSHITS" is an idea promoted at my other (first) blog, "Hollow Mantras of Cracked Vision: diamond sutras for the doomed" @ blogspot.com.
Click blog post title above to get free music at GROOVESHARK.COM...and...it only costs 99 cents to download...and listen free.
1). "Love Me to Tonight" by HEAD EAST.......great little seventies song that broke out a band that no one had heard of....they went farther....and had something called "Never Been any Reason"....as part of the "Flat as a Pancake" album...this album went gold selling 500, 000 in three years....if A@M would have promoted the band, it would have likely sold more.
2) "Cotton Fields" by Creedence Clearwater Revival....a bit of a swampy acoustic country song with none of the iconic CCR electric guitar licks, but some electric rhythm guitar after some group harmony....more country than rock....a real slice of the the amazing diversity of Fogerty as a singer/songwriter from the Louisana deep south roots he always had somehow? (John was born and raised in California?)....
3) "Rocking all over the world" by solo artist JOHN FOGERTY...from wikipedia: "....John Fogerty began a solo career, originally under the name The Blue Ridge Rangers for his 1973 LP debut. Fogerty played all of the instruments on covers of others' country music hits, such as "Jambalaya" (which was a Top 40 hit). After performing country & western tunes he released a rock & roll single in late 1973, also as The Blue Ridge Rangers. The two John Fogerty penned songs were "You Don't Owe Me" and "Back In The Hills" (Fantasy F-710).
In early 1974 John Fogerty released two rock & roll tunes on a 7"-single. The two songs were the vocal "Comin' Down The Road" b/w the instrumental "Ricochet". His second solo album John Fogerty was released in 1975. Sales were slim and legal problems delayed a followup, though it yielded "Rockin' All Over the World", a top 40 hit for Fogerty in North America. Two years later, in 1977, British boogie rockers Status Quo recorded their version of Rockin' All Over the World, which became a huge hit and made the song world-famous, not least by opening 1985's Live Aid with the song that had become one of their best-known anthems......"
4) "Tumbleweed" by little Miss TONI PRICE from The "Hey" album.....great opening with the violin used so well and perfect on so many of Toni's iconic songs.....a little back up vocals from Scrappy Jud?.....a sad song written by Qwil Owen (Toni's favorite writer)....
5) "Opportunity" by Elivis Costello from the "Get Happy" album......this album was one of the best albums recorded in the 80's....just listen to the whole album...
6) "Stephanie Says" by Velvet Underground on the "V U" album...this is...a fantastic album...and has to be heard to be believed....Lou Reed at his best...an all around perfect album....shocking in it's originality....a must have for those looking for new tunes....also, play "Temptation inside of your heart"....
7) "Daylight" by Toni Price from the "Swim Away" album......shows the range of Toni's trained voice...as she can carry a note as far as it has to go.....a bluesy electric honestly desperate song....worthy of your time to listen to the entire album....
8) "Dance, Dance, Dance" by an old guitar, stud, song writer named Steve Miller....this song will really surprise you if you like to hear the tonal qualities of a pedal steel quitar.... a little country music in your life leads to Miller's funny way of creating memorable sniglets like "The Pompidous of Love" or "...you're my honey pumpkin lover, you're my last desire..."....it has the sound and lyrics of a first class country song...I remember playing this song for an insufferable, red neck, son of a bitch who I had the misfortune of working with "fixing defects in mobile homes" back in my Texas days...and, the dude was gob smacked at how good this song was?
9) "Pray for me" by the ineffable, "The Jayhawks" Tomorrow the Green Grass album............from Minneapolis, Minnesota....if you haven't heard "Tomorrow the Green Grass" album, then....Grooveshark lets you listen free...just figure out how to click on the name of the album, then...to the upper left...click "play all"...if you here this album, you will buy it...guarantee it.
10) "Good Morning Star Shine" from The HAIR broadway musical album.....so many great songs on this album....perfect vocals...and...hey............it was The Dawning of the Age of Aquarius...so....you really should listen to the entire album....listen to "Where do I go?".....
I was driving west out of Senator Harry Reid's hometown, Searchlight, NV,....towards Nipton, California...into the wonderful Mojave Desert....and...came across The BLM Joshua tree forest.
Nice free dispursed camping on a lonely road...free for 14 days....very quiet.
This BLM area is called "WEE THUMP"?
Who the hell is "Wee Thump"?
Who was drunk when they named this area?
Why not "Harry's Fuck You Forest?" (Hint: this is outside of Searchlight, NV, which was Harry Reid's hometown...and Reid is a corrupt "fuck you" corrupt sum bitch stooge all the way...doncha know?).
If you carry a camera, you focus better and start to focus on what you see....better....so, I started shooting some photos of some very old, ancient grandfathers of wordly desert wisdom.
When have you ever seen...such a funky tree?
Is this a tree?
Is this something from a 10,000 years ago? No matter what, when you see your first Joshua Tree Forest....you will be shocked and joyful....as the unusual engineering of this Tree with all the spear like leaves....creates a wonderful surprise that has to be shot with a camera from all the angles.
From wikipedia at "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_tree":
Yucca brevifolia is a plant species belonging to the genus Yucca in the family Agavaceae. It is tree-like in habit, which is reflected in its common names: Joshua tree, Yucca palm, Tree yucca, and Palm tree yucca.[1][2][3]
This monocotyledonous tree is native to southwestern North America in the states of California, Arizona, Utah and Nevada, where it is confined mostly to the Mojave Desert between 400 and 1,800 meters (1,300 and 5,900 ft) elevation.
It thrives in the open grasslands of Queen Valley and Lost Horse Valley in Joshua Tree National Park.
Two subspecies have been described:[4] Yucca brevifolia ssp. jaegeriana (the Jaeger Joshua tree or Jaeger's Joshua tree or pygmae yucca) and Yucca brevifolia ssp. herbertii (Webber's Yucca or Herbert Joshua Tree), though both are sometimes treated as varieties[5][6][7] or forms.[8]
The name Joshua tree was given by a group of Mormon settlers who crossed the Mojave Desert in the mid-19th century. The tree's unique shape reminded them of a Biblical story in which Joshua reaches his hands up to the sky in prayer. Joshua trees are fast growers for the desert; new seedlings may grow at an average rate of 7.6 cm (3.0 in) per year in their first ten years, then only grow about 3.8 cm (1.5 in) per year thereafter.[11] The trunk of a Joshua tree is made of thousands of small fibers and lacks annual growth rings, making it difficult to determine the tree's age. This tree has a top-heavy branch system, but also has what has been described as a "deep and extensive" root system, with roots possibly reaching up to 11 m (36 ft) away.[1] If it survives the rigors of the desert it can live for hundreds of years with some specimens surviving up to a thousand years. The tallest trees reach about 15 m tall. New plants can grow from seed, but in some populations, new stems grow from underground rhizomes that spread out around the Joshua tree.
The evergreen leaves are dark green, linear, bayonet-shaped, 15–35 cm long and 7–15 mm broad at the base, tapering to a sharp point; they are borne in a dense spiral arrangement at the apex of the stems. The leaf margins are white and serrate.
Bonneville Salt Flats is on the North east Nevada border with Utah. The town of Wendover, Nevada...offers some casino action...and...east ten miles is the track where on any given weekend, maniacs push the pedal to the floor to set specific speed records for a variety of classified vehicles.
FROM my favorite, funniest, wackiest website....NEWS OF THE WEIRD....absolutely a perfect place to be, when you feel stressed, or need a laugh.....Real true news archived....if only every newspaper in America would contract with this GREAT SITE AND SERVICE...all would be well in NuthouseAmerica.......
..."It wasn't pretty, but sheriff's deputies in Montcalm County, Mich., got their man on March 3. Mark McCuaig, in court on an earlier charge, became unruly and escaped from two different sets of officers (despite a Tasering). Another court officer tried to stop him outside, but McCuaig got loose (despite being maced). He locked himself inside a van, but officers surrounded it, broke a window, and Tasered him again, yet couldn't stop McCuaig from driving off.
After a high-speed chase, state troopers disabled his tires with "stop sticks" but couldn't apprehend him before he reached his home, where he barricaded himself. Officers surrounded the house, and four of them (plus a police dog) entered, but McCuaig escaped and got into another vehicle. Finally, after another chase, he was forced off the road, Tasered a third time, and subdued." [WWMT-TV (Grand Rapids), 3-3-10, WZZM-TV (Grand Rapids), 3-3-10]
Here I am....late at night...in a great, beautiful...favorite little Nevada casino town on the banks of the Colorado River (Laughlin, Nv).
I do love my favorite state for winter....it's called Nevada....and parts of Arizona. It's usualy warm and sunny, with a little rain in winter/early spring.
Notice, I qualified my love for Nevada....with a reference to the weather.
I am that way.
I like to walk around with only shorts on in the desert where BLM public lands are the only source of solitude and aloneness for hippster dufous shamans to practise set and settings.
Nevada...one of the greatest unpopulated (and therefore ruined) states in this lost, hopeless, soulless country. Oddly enough...Nevada has more 9,000 ft peaks, than any other state. The mountains are not as memorable as Colorado...but...the vast open range is what I shoot for and prefer.
If you do not like noise, the range land is the only place to find that you can study the unbroken silence...
...so you can remote view as a cosmic surfer of info that might stun conditioned assumptions that hold us back...from what?
Most Americans....only know Las Vegas....which....sucks down too much attention.
There are better places.
There are always...better towns....than a big, brutal, violent, showy, anti Christ of a city...known as Las Vegas.
I confess........I am a shutterbug. I've tried to "speak with images" thinking that perhaps a "picture is worth a thousand words". Images are all about mimimization, without the pretense or presumption of mere words. Words....what good is that when "Acts Not Words" seem more fitting for my path down the road to perdition and back.
Leonard Knight (created "Salvation Mountain" in The California desert) said, "God is Love" and "Keep it Simple".
What could be more simple than...images over words?
I like to shoot photos....of anything...to focus on the beauty...even if....I am in a dusty, Quartzite, Arizona, flea market.
I still like the challenge....like finding this alley Siamese cat cleaning himself in the only available sunlight?
Anyway....LAUGHLIN, NEVADA......is really....a favorite Kerouac, on the fucking road....place for me....I do know a little about this place...having flirted with this town....during my mad cap, unscheduled...."Go man...Go man" existence.
I know.....what your thinking, "I've never heard of the place...probably a little Vegas or something".
And...maybe it is. But, it has so much...to offer...so quickly....it works for me...so well. When you first see it....it is just a beautiful journey to get here...ya know. You come down from elevation (either from Kingman, Az, or Neveda side) through the rocky, beauty of The Mojave Desert's Chocolate Mountains.
But...it is something more than that.
It has a small town friendliness to it....and....it...has some impressive neon lights and casino signage.
It is....a really beautiful little town........and I like to walk it in the morning before dusk....when it's quiet.....while I hum Joni Mitchel's song, "Morgantown".
A guy needs something called a "Third Place".
A "Third Place" is....or was...uh....defined by a writer whose name I do not remember....and...uh...well....he seemed to suggest that "The Third Place" is a place you go away from home (First Place) after work (Second Place) like a Kelsey's Bar in Archie Bunker's life.
A bar....like....Cheers.
A place where....everyone knows your name....and you "can get shitfaced after work"...and no one judges you. Unlike work, with all the back stabbing, and posing....and...."Survivor tricks of survival".....where social masks become a three card Monte of the mind. The third place is the place where you socialize with booze among your third peer group. It's a place to socialize without fear.
Anyway, Laughlin has a good third place...open all night and morning for the subterraneans living a lonely, nocturnal life of thought crime (In Nevada casino towns, the booze flows all night into the morning and prostitution is legal, like it should be).
I stayed up all night into the morning...drinking 2 dollar Coors beers.....and......listened to the Stones "Exile on Main street"....over and over again.
The piano.
The piano is so perfect on so many songs (thank you Nicky Hopkins).
Jagger is at his prime.
The harmonicas....Keith's stunning creativity....a Chicago fusion wall of sound based on Chicago Blues...with Mick Taylor so good....and....these songs...are not known as the Stones hits, but...they are so much better, so better layered....like the washes of soft tint at the hand of a brilliant water colorist.
And the bluesy, nutty, wacky....American Negro experience type freedom....known as the blues...is all over this amazing gem of a diamond like sutra.
I cannot sell.......this album more.......but can say.........since I got to it, it blew all Stones albums away......and.....stays with me more than any Beatles album.
Don't know why....Beatles are so sublime....yet....would never leave this album far from my ears....no matter what.
Almost like a set of mantras...or sutras for the blessed doomed...and, at the time the album (Stones first and only double album) was recorded, The Stones were pushed out of England with heavy handed police frameups, facing years in prison. The Stones felt they were doomed and disregarded by the authorites, so...they hit the road and left for greener pastures and some freedom (that never came, since The Frence Police raided Keith's rental manor creating more problems that always vexes the best and the brightest).
This album is............Exiled from all other studio albums....and music...
....THERE IS NOTHING LIKE IT, AND IT IS MY MANTRA OF VISION...WITH SO MANY DIAMOND SUTRAS.
Like a good mantra or sutra...it was an emotional anchor for me.
It did keep me sane....while the world was clearly insane and wrong.
It is that kinky.
It is that perfect, and...hey man....no pretense.
No pretense.
No pretense.
No ego.
No posing.
It is......................................EXILED FROM ALL MAIN STREET, STUDIO, EGO DRIVEN ALBUMS or art. It is Chicago Blues where The Stones were trying to record "one thing" (a wall of sound). At this time, no other band had recorded a "wall of sound" with harmonicas, blues piano, electric guitars, and a saxophone. Nobody. Blazeing new trails.
No pretense. Chicago Blues.
From Rolling Stone Magazine's "500 Best Rock and Roll albums", Exile on Main street was listed as the seventh best out of 500 albums.
From the magazine at "http://www.rollingstone.com/music/lists/500-greatest-albums-of-all-time-19691231/exile-on-main-street-the-rolling-stones-19691231":
..." A dirty whirl of blues and boogie, the Rolling Stones' 1972 double LP "was the first grunge record," guitarist Keith Richards crowed proudly last year. But inside the deliberately dense squall — Richards' and Mick Taylor's dogfight riffing, the lusty jump of the Bill Wyman/Charlie Watts rhythm engine, Mick Jagger's caged-animal bark and burned-soul croon — is the Stones' greatest album and Jagger and Richards' definitive songwriting statement of outlaw pride and dedication to grit.
In the existential shuffle "Tumbling Dice," the exhausted country beauty "Torn and Frayed" and the whiskey-soaked church of "Shine a Light," you literally hear the Stones in exile: working at Richards' villa in the south of France, on the run from media censure, British drug police (Jagger and Richards already knew the view from behind bars) and the country's onerous tax code.
The music rattles like battle but also swings with clear purpose — unconditional survival — in "Rocks Off" and "All Down the Line." As Richards explained, "The Stones don't have a home anymore — hence the Exile — but they can still keep it together. Whatever people throw at us, we can still duck, improvise, overcome."
Great example: Richards recorded his jubilant romp "Happy" with just producer Jimmy Miller on drums and saxman Bobby Keys — while waiting for the other Stones to turn up for work. Exile on Main Street is the Stones at their fighting best, armed with the blues, playing to win."....
...
....You'll notice up there on the most southern tip of the five square mile mesa that....to the south are some funky badlands...that light up with shadows at dusk.
