Hank Vegas & GarageBand.com

Click the image above to hear the song and vote for it.

UPDATE: Until I figure out how you guys can vote on the songs, you can just go and listen to it. I know you may have to register to vote, but I haven't figured out how one can pick the song they want to listen to yet. Oh well! Steve will have to wait, unless we can get someone to take a CD to him at the show at Variety Playhouse this weekend.

Hank Vegas & The White Lightning has made its debut at Garagebands.com. It is a site that was started by Jerry Harrison (of the Talking Heads, and the Modern Lovers) and several others in the biz. The boast several top level reviewers such as Steve Earle and George Massenburg among their sleected review panel. The only way we can get those guys to take a look at the music is for you guys to go and vote and say good things about the song we have there right now, Long White Car. Click here, or on the logo above on the right to go to the site and listen now. Of course you can listen to it on this page as well, but that does nothing for getting the song into Steve Earle's hands.

Winter

BP, of sorts

I'm going to say something not entirely novel. But I need to say it anyway to make me feel better, warmer, more hopeful. Winter is like sadness. Cold, lonely, seemingly infinite when you're in the middle of it. You check the forecast and there is no end in sight. It's dark all the time, you drink more, no amount of layers protect you from the chill. But what would you know of happiness without it? Constant smiles, soma-induced positivity, an endless summer. Old people flock to sunny places because they're tired of being sad. They've earned that right. They know what it is. Young people in sunny places live like thieves. But they don't know what they've stolen or even that it's a crime. In my winter, my thoughts turn to sunny places as well. To that which is happiness. And I feel better off for having lived without it for a while. The sadness is almost over. Big kids in sunny places are taking bp.

Stiff Drinks, Soft Touch

I've always been a moderate to heavy drinker ever since I realised that resistance was futile and, to be frank, a little un-British. I feel it's my duty as an unattached, no responsibilities, solipsistic, nihilist Englishman to drink myself, if not into an early grave, then at least into a reasonable state of crapulous insousiance.

Bird was holding a leaving party at the pub where she's been working for the past few months - she's now in India on some endless henodistic Grand Tour. Obviously I was invited and decided to show my face for a couple of hours.

Well, after only my seventh, or possibly tenth, whiskey and Coke all us hardcore drinkers legged it to another pub where extended lisencing hours were promised. More whiskey and Coke, cigarettes and the suggestion of something stronger - which never materialised - and I was carrying one hell of a buzz, but nothing I couldn't handle.

At about one in the morning I remember a man asking to look at my nipples for the sake of comparison - to what, I don't remember. Then he wanted to see my belly for similar reasons. After a brief examination he drifted back to the dance floor with what I hope was a look of satisfaction on his face. I don't mind flirting with men - it's more fun than doing it with women.

I was stood chatting with Nikki at about two when he sidled up behind me and said, "Let's see your crack." And with that he pulled back my waistband and put his hand down the back of my trousers: "Not bad." He goes off again. By three-thirty we were all outside saying our goodbyes when he (his name was Wood!) was insisting that he perform acts upon my person which I know to be illegal in several of your lesser-enlightened states. Of course, I politely declined his offer, but when he asked for a kiss I capitulated so as not to appear too much of a prick-tease. All I can say is that, however naively, I wasn't expecting tounges, but possibly because of all that whiskey I didn't really resist.

Now, for your information, I didn't much rate his technique: all tounge and very little lip action - not my style. So my very first man-on-man kiss was a bit of a disappointment, though I couldn't help smiling to myself as I cycled home.

I saw Martin on the following Monday and told him the gory details. "That's nothing," he said, "I've had... one, two, three man-snogs." Counting them out on the fingers of his right hand for eveyone in the coffee shop to see.

Politics Aside

Our Fearless Leader

Although I try to not stray into political territory too much, I am a political person. Some would call me pinko, commie, bleeding-heart, sob, fascist, mexican faggot etc. etc. There are a few things that have got me going lately politically and I wanted to post some links that I found interesting.

The first link is testimony given to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. The testimony of Jenny Toomey (formerly of the band Tsunami and record label Simple Machines) is well worth the read if you are in to this kind of stuff.

http://commerce.senate.gov/~commerce/press/03/2003124A29.html

The next link is Wired Magazine online coverage of this testimony.

http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,57487,00.html

The other issue at hand is a recent leaked document detailing th Justice Department's plan to introduce a bill that will increase the government's power under the "Patriot Act" that was passed after 9-11. A copy of this document can be found here, and the Wired article can be found here.

Please feel free to post any comments about what you are thinking about this stuff. If you feel really strongly, even write your senator or congress person, because I don't think writing Dubya is going to make a damn bit of difference.

Hank Vegas: Long White Car

A Long White Car

For those waiting with the baited breath (it's time to brush your teeth), here's a track recorded weekend before last at the Roddenberry House. We have three other tracks from this session and if everyone behaves themselves we may get those out here in the next few days as well.

Hank Vegas & The White Lightning - Long White Car (MP3, 3.2MB)

Cheers,

Bryan

Light

Spring Break: Daytona Beach

So here is how it begins. We are travelling down the path cleared by the dozers three weeks before. The sun through the treeline speckles the hood of the vehicle as if this is film noir. I awake from this dream and you are there on the hood riding and screaming at the top of your lungs. This is R&R, or so they call it. Safe territory. I look back for a moment to see if Willie and Kyle are still following. You scream more wildly as I run off the path, and then recover. They are there and you and I, and it seems like 4 boys on spring break in Daytona Beach.

I think briefly of Liz and the kids back in Kansas. Of the way she hangs the sheets out to dry on the line out back in the summer. I know nothing of what you are thinking as you let out that yawp again. I think you may think little of things outside of this moment, or any other. That may be the best policy considering the circumstances.

Back in November, when I met you, you seemed as strange to me as a cloud. Like being in a cloud when you are coming down in an airplane and all of the sudden the whole world opens up to you just before landing. It always scared me shitless, but I think you like the cloud. You revel in it. And the site of land below curls your toes, makes you think of home, childhood, your mother... perhaps.

And then there is this sound. We all hear it and I break the truck just before Kyle plows into us from behind. It's coming from up above. From across the sky came a screaming, and you, little ol' you, burst into spirals. Me thrown 300 feet back. And I looked to the sky and there were one million fireflies, and you, alternatingly red, green, blue and then, at last, gold.

Synth Fun

Not feeling very creative with the written word so I thought I would upload some funky synth and drum machine stuff I have been playing around with.

Getting It (MP3, 1.8MB)

Quotidian

A Cup of Coffee

I can't seem to find too much of a way out of this, other than Lucinda Williams, the occasional drink, a few hours with a half-ass friend. I'm going south for the rest of the winter. A dirty drinking place where there's no woman that casts dipsersions on my character for the desire to skip all that the rest of the world seems to hold so dear. I'm making my way south on a fast train with big wheels that roll over all that is in sight and half that isn't. I'll see you there if you make it time, because I ain't staying nowhere too long and you are nothing but a pawn, I'll tell you.

But perhaps it is beautiful in the north this time of the year. Or is it just cold? I might head that way, as I know what heat feels like on the skin at night, and the way a sweaty body moves through the atmosphere. I know the way that ginger feels when rubbed on bare skin, and cinnamon. And I can imagine a way in which all of this, and rum, can help to keep the kids quiet tonight if we play our cards right.

I take your right hand and make a crustacean. I take your left, and of it make a paper airplane. We are now flying south of the equator, north of the capricornious tropic, south of cancer, or somewhere noone has been. I might make a million being something that I am not, but a cup of coffee would still be nice.