LANGUAGE IS A VIRUS FROM OUTER SPACE

by Jeff Boule in Editorials, News, Opinion Posts

I am coming up on my first year anniversary of scribing for PREX.  I tend to get introspective around such events.  It has been a most eventful year, both personally and here on the blog.  Some pretty outrageous things have happened behind the scenes and on the pages of this blog over the past year.  I am going to use this blog entry to review, examine the possibilities of an open future, some short-term goals, long term goals, and more.  Time to delve…

I think the event that may have had the most impact was the tussle over the Top Ten List for 2008.  It is not my place to speculate why Adrian Belew would be so sensitive towards what is ultimately just my opinion.  To those who I may have driven from reading my blog, who were only interested in my persecution, I have but this to say:  My rebuttal to one detractor was enough to satiate Mr. Belew, why wasn’t it good enough for said detractor(s)?  Then, when you think things are heated enough, guess who calms the storm?

Robert Fripp.

For a blogger to get his attention on top of this?  Stratospherical!

Then, for no real reason other than my best thing to ever happen to me and my obsession with Todd Rundgren, collectibility, OCD, etc., she had to have the TR bobblehead for collectibility sake, I had to have it for the TR sake, and the next thing I know I am being given the opportunity to attend his New Year’s Eve concert/party.  Besides purchasing some rare collectible memorabilia, and being given a mixing board recording of the show afterwards, not only do I rub elbows with Prairie Prince, Rachel Haden, but I get to meet and talk to Todd Rundgren and Kasim Sulton!!!  A couple of humorous pictures with Todd, and Kasim, and Kasim autographing my freshly purchased copy of his Live In Atlanta DVD, one of my more recent reviews.

It was a thrill and an honor to have Kasim comment on the review, and offer me free tickets to his next show, well for cripes sake, it just doesn’t get any better than that!!!

Having survived the King Crimson debacle, I ventured into “enemy” territory and went to the School Of Rock show featuring John Wetton.  I know a certain parent, of a certain rhythm section born of the School, who read my Devo At Penn’s Landing review and left a comment.  I also know it was this parent who made Mr. Belew aware of my controversial Top Ten of 2008 and Death Of Rock And Roll…And Progressive blogs.

I’m not stupid, it’s kinda obvious.  I was just hoping for, if any exchange, a pleasant one.

She didn’t put two and two together; she didn’t see the notepad, as I was able to hide it in my King Crimson biography by Sid Smith.  This copy is hardbound, and autographed by several members of the band.  But not Wetton.  My best thing to ever happen to me, who has no fear, went backstage and got Mr. Wetton to sign it.  It would be later for me to have a brief interaction with him.  He saw me with her, and she said I was writing the review, he hoped it would be positive.

It was very positive, and it was also my homage to Hunter Thompson, a life-long influence on me.

It all hasn’t been positive.  There was the Bill Bruford review; this was of impact to me as a musician.  I needed to see him live a few more times to get more of his influence drawn in.  I recall a concert in the mid-eighties.  A show he had done with Patrick Moraz, at the Chestnut Cabaret in Philadelphia.  I have photos (35mm, that’s how long ago) so close you can see through Bruford’s sweat-soaked shirt, THAT close.  Never again for that, and that is sad.  But in a way, I guess I am grateful that I had that opportunity, and I had all of you to vent at during my absorption of the news of his retirement.

Thank you for that.

There have been some bumps within my travels within the actual blog itself.  I mention reviewing Devo at Penn’s Landing over the summer of `08.  Where is this blog?  I have done an inventory and found over a dozen of my blogs have simply vanished!  This is a mystery to our webmaster, and our manager has given me permission to reprint these missing blogs.  I do reference them from time to time and for them not to be there is an embarrassment.  Here I am giving writing samples of blogs that don’t exist to Mary Lou Arnold Gress of Todd Rundgren’s camp.

I can kiss that interview goodbye…  I look like a nut!  I am still on our manager to get press passes, IDs, something that won’t make us look like rabid stalkers!

Our steadfast store/blog manager had claimed I was making a splash.  Well, some of my splash fell on him.  I kinda feel like a schlub, but he took a message for me at the store via phone.  I know it may seem like a convenient way to contact me, but I would prefer to deal with people directly through comments here on the site.  When you leave comments, I have access to the email address there and I can contact you either through a Yahoo account I have set up or my home email for business inquiries.  Such as the one our manager took.  For me!  From Gary Tanin!!  About Roger Powell!!!  Seems Gary read the review of Roger Powell’s Blue Note Ridge, wanted to forward it to Powell (reminder, Powell was Rundgren’s former keyboardist in Utopia and solo, has a new solo piano album out, and is an upper echelon employee of Apple).  Seems they want to use that review to aid in promotion of the album.  What do you know?  I may be blurbed!

My coworkers at Scare Tactics Inc. are jealous, envious, or various combinations.  Probably the latter but not any form of pride, nor camaraderie, or happy for a coworker, just much, much Shottenfreud.  They hear me going on about meeting this one, writing about that one, getting free tickets, etc. and they are jealous they can’t do what I do and that I am more than my job there.  I am not there to make friends and it is highly unlikely they will read this.  I do have a couple of friends there who read this from time to time.  I do not include them in the Shottenfreud crowd.

To be truthful, I still have some difficulty comprehending that anybody reads my postings to begin with, much less that some people like it…

I guess it’s time to explain what is going to happen over the next few weeks in this blog.  I am preparing to go out and do some shows this summer, I am a musician myself and it has been YEARS since I toured last, and this will be my first solo tour.  It’s all on me and I have no one to lean on.  If I suck, it is my own fault.  I don’t wanna suck, so I am committing to a rigorous rehearsal schedule, doing the show two times a night, three nights during the workweek, as many run-throughs as I can on weekends.

In order for me to commit to this, I needed to cut some activities until I get the show rehearsed.  Since things were going so well with the blog, I was hesitant to let my activities here fall off.

Additionally, I am sending some of these works to agents for literary representation.  This may or may not pan out.  It is in the development stage.  It was this action (and the subsequent research into achieving this) that tipped me off to the fact that many of my blogs were missing.  I was preparing writing samples to send out when I found them, or rather, didn’t.

So what am I gonna cut to make room in my schedule?  Well since I have several blogs in the pipeline, I think I can cut some time out of my crazed schedule by reposting these blogs with some minor editing.  This will begin my summer review redux, which is what we are going to call the reposts.

I am going to figure out in which order to repost these.  Chronologically, by order of importance or personal favorite, I am not sure.  I had to compile a list to send to our intrepid webmaster and I am going to wait and see if he can find them so as to save the comments and edits.  If they are gone, we have to start at the beginning, so if any of you posted a comment about any of these missing blogs, I urge you to look for them and repost your comment.  Your opinion is important to us here at the PREX.

Now I previously mentioned some goals, well, some of the short term goals are to get this blog back up to speed, get the tour organized, get some exposure, all the goals associated with doing a small, localized tour.  One specific short-term goal is coverage of what is touted to be the FAREWELL tour of Nine Inch Nails.  I am not going to go into detail about all the Farewell tours that ended up being the FIRST Farewell tour of a series of Farewell tours…

Some of the longer-term goals are to get our company established.  This seems more possible in this (hopefully) emerging economy.  We are thinking my best thing to ever happen to me can file for a women-owned business loan, we are being thrown credit like confetti.  Do we pick the confetti up?  Not for small potatoes like credit cards or cars, but if we can secure a business loan for our existing company, with modifications to our business model, and perhaps some reference/resources we can gather/obtain, we would be more than half “in-place” in terms of paperwork towards the aim.  This business is already up and running, has been for years, but this money could propel it into the proverbial big time (let’s put it in perspective, a storefront, no, some printers, some studio audio reinforcement and sound isolation upgrades are a necessity).

My business?  It is a small conglomerate or many tiny-sub businesses.  Basically my best thing to ever happen to me and I took all the individual skills we have, I with the writing and the music and I even do minor construction, graphic design, photography, more that I am sure I am forgetting at this point.  She can do custom painting, stenciling, mural design, interior design, graphic design, audio engineering, computer technical, end-user program expertise, administration, sales, so on and so forth, more that I am forgetting, etc.

There are more things happening right now, as we speak, but I am not at liberty to discuss them as they are freshly undertaken and I have not yet examined any paperwork, an agreement was made, and I will leave it at that.

So we will be revisiting some lost blogs, truly a case of review, revise, revisit!