RLS, ADD, ETC.

Warning: Rant Enclosed.

I first saw a commercial for a drug to treat Restless Leg Syndrome (RLS) several months ago, and immediately got pissed off.

This is quite possibly the grossest case of the medical/pharmaceutical industry making up a disease in order to market the drugs they invent (maybe second only to ADD which I’ve always felt to be a fancy name for “being a kid”).

“Is the urge to get up and actually walk around getting in the way of your six hours of nightly television viewing? Don’t wanna get off your fat American ass and actually do something?? Are you having trouble sitting in the line at the McDonald’s Drive Thru and actually considering parking your car and going into the store?? Is your body trying to tell you that spending 80% of your waking hours sitting down is bad for it?? Then HAVE SOME PATIENTED DRUGS!!!

I’m sorry, but I need to call shenanigans on this whole RLS thing – it’s just another case of the drug companies inventing problems and telling people, through television that they have them, and that the only cure is to buy their pills. All the sleep disorder pills, all the depression pills… I realize that some people have some serious problems that some of these pills can fix, I have suffered with insomnia – I have suffered with depression -- but when TV is diagnosing you as opposed to a trained physician, there is something wrong. And when the cure is automatically to ingest addictive chemicals with potentially very dangerous side-effects as opposed to maybe – god forbid – looking at your life and changing some things so that you can be more healthy – something is VERY wrong. Americans are so medicated right now. We have the highest occurrence of depression in the entire world!! Why is that? I propose the reason is three-fold. 1) Because we’re constantly being told by TV and radio commercials that we can always be happy if we take Zoloft and we should go ask our doctors for it (a quick aside… the word Zoloft is so ingrained in our society right now that my word processor knew to automatically capitalize it while it doesn’t automatically capitalize American) 2) because Doctors – rather prescribes (some drug commercials simply refer to doctors as “Prescribers” now – that’s not even a word) – are given incentives to prescribe these drugs. And 3) because American values are so incredibly off – we are taught from birth to value money and material things over all… The All Mighty Dollar has become the All Mighty God in our lives… we are trained to desire a life of things we can’t possibly afford – so we work our asses off at jobs we hate to get money to get these things, and then all of a sudden we find out that even with these things that we’ve worked so hard for, we’re not happy – so rather than look at our lives and realize that our priorities have been completely off, we take drugs to placate us and make us better workers – so that the rich white guys that we work for can make more money.

The pharmaceutical industry people, the lobbyists and the doctors who just dish out pills –are the real drug pushers. They are the real scourges on society. What’s even worse is that these are the same people who have created the Partnership for a Drug Free America – the sponsors of those lovely commercials that tell us that our purchase of a bag of weed goes directly towards funding future terrorist attacks – only because they cant patent and profit off something that grows in the Earth. The utter hypocrisy, the utter greed, the gross lack of concern for the well-being of citizens of the world puts these drug companies and their peons among the worst people in the world. Try this – live simply. Get outside and be active. Do some yoga. Use your hard-earned money to buy experiences that will create beautiful memories – not things that will just collect dust, and if you must medicate yourself, enjoy some chemicals that come from the Earth.

Be well,
z

The essence of "All We Know"

So I stumbled upon a very short Robert Frost poem that sums up the lyrics to All We Know quite well, so I thought I'd share it with y'all:

"We dance around in a ring and suppose, but the Secret sits in the middle and knows."

There is such a simplistic beauty to this. I was pretty blown away by how concisely it conveys, more or less, what I was trying to express in the song All We Know. The song is more about trying to figure out the Secret through meditation and contemplation, and to question anything science and religion had told you to think... but ultimately even those who have achieved great enlightenment know that true knowledge is understanding and admitting that we know nothing. And the most brilliant astrophysicists realize there is a grandoise mystery yet unsolved.

Until next time...

Zen: surrendering to the flow

So I've been reading a lot about Buddhism and Zen in the past year and a half or so, and I have to say I find it to be extremely refreshing. The thing about Zen is, you can find it in any aspect of life; music, theatre arts, religion, sports, hiking....

"The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness."

~ John Muir

I admit to have never felt anything I would call 'spiritual' prior to my 25th year. Don't get me wrong, I sure ain't no born again. ;) Seriously though, the more time I spent outside, appreciating nature, the more I had this amazing feeling of connectivity to everything - and the more I began to develop a great sense of compassion for all things living (except maybe the drivers George was referring to in his blog and the members of the current administration). So whenever I have this conversation and somebody asks me to describe what it was like to identify this feeling with spirituality, I was always more or less at a loss. To me, it was more of a fleeting feeling of being completely one with the world and the universe that then gets drowned out by our day to day lives and 'problems.' A glimpse of enlightenment. Then I read this quote by Peter Matthiessen:

"Soon the child's clear eye is clouded over by ideas and opinions, preconceptions and abstractions. Simple free BEING becomes encrusted with the burdensome armor of the ego. Not until years later does an instinct come that a vital sense of mystery has been withdrawn. The sun glints through the pines, and the heart is pierced in a moment of beauty and strange pain, like a memory of paradise. After that day... we become seekers."

That is exactly it - that is my experience. It was made possible by several variables, and I think the biggest has been being on the road with U-Melt. The connection with nature is something I've always felt, but am just beginning to understand deeply, I think. ;) The rest, however, is coming from spending so much time on the outskirts of our 'society'...

In the van for hundreds of hours a year, one has plenty of time to be contemplative. Simultaneously, doing something like what we do removes you from what's going on in society just enough not to be objective (because I'm trying to shed the objective/subjective duality view of reality, which is not actually the true nature of things) but to see the forest for the trees, if you will. To see things as they actually are. If you can't understand what I mean, I'll give you an easy example to help ya: You've all known someone in a bad relationship, or been in one yourself. Just how bad it is is sometimes completely ignored or somehow missed by one member of said relationship - although you can clearly see that it's terribly disfunctional. So in essence, it's a feeling of being on the outside looking in. Of course that's a false mental construct to certain degree, but we're still on Buddhism 101 here... Well, anyway, traveling on the road the way we do is FREE BEING, in the sense that no one's telling us what to do; for the most part, we're our own mini society. We're doing only what we want to and what we feel is right. I believe this has let me shed a lot of the preconceptions and opinions that I got bombarded with as a child growing up (as we all do) and not just as a child even - it never stops. In contrast to performing for people who are cheering for us, it has also let me shed a great deal of ego. I was never an ego case or anything like that, but I'm talking about ego as one's sense of 'self.' It's been a very interesting journey for me. It is beginning to translate to my playing - something I noticed in particular just last night at the Stone Pony.

"There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so."

~ William Shakespeare



"When I'm in this state everything is pure, vividly clear. I'm in a cocoon of concentration. And if I can put myself in that cocoon, I'm invincible.... I'm living fully in the present. I'm absolutely engaged, INVOLVED in what I'm doing.... it comes and it goes, and the pure fact that you are out on the first tee of a tournament and say, " I must concentrate today," is no good. It won't work."

~ Tony Jacklin

The past year and a half we've writing some really difficult music. Sometimes we nail the parts, sometimes we don't. I will tell you that when we do nail them is not when we're thinking extra hard, but rather when we are SURRENDERING TO THE FLOW. I bet some of y'all have heard that somewhere before...

That is when I have a good show. When I can channel.. IT. Whatever IT is. You know, the same IT from Panacea's lyrics. When I am listening to the guys play and not think about what they're ABOUT to do but what they're DOING... and truly connect with it. It is a true moment of Zen, another glimpse of enlightenment. It is but fleeting, but once you know it's possible...

Traffic related wisdom from George

so it comes to my attention from a source higher than I that there's this little thing called all we know that I have yet to contribute to. as you can tell I don't know much, however this space does give me the space
to rant, and that is something I relish. so here's my rant... I hate to start this way, but, have you ever noticed that some people just can't drive? doesn't matter if they're on a side street or in themiddle of the Jersey Turnpike. they just can't drive. let me share with you some of my favorites:

the cruiser- this guy has laid claim to any one (and usually a half of another) lane that has three on more lanes, while driving between 5 and 15 mph below the speed limit. isn't slower traffic to keep right? please tell your friends if they do this. it will really make the world a better place.

blinkey- this is a pac-man reference for my boy Bendy and you can guess what it is... we all do it, I'm just glad when it's not me...

slant parker- sounds like an alias in a comic book right? nope it's the guy with the overpriced sports-car and not enough hair, telling you just what he thinks about you and and the rest of us. a real "people person".

rushey- this is the nut-job that had to be there an hour ago and will ride your ass so hard you feel like you should charge him to change lanes. what gives with this jerk? it's my road too.

the smoker- this person is usually all over the road in order to find/light a cigarette or, serenity now, a cigar or pipe! this is no b.s. Z and I saw a guy lighting a pipe not that long ago. a pipe! who the hell smokes a pipe anymore? not me. who's got the time?

there are many more but this is all the time I have for now. I promise to continue on this and rant on all kinds of other stuff. soon's I get Josh's brother Benson to frankenstein a couple of computers together for me. next week sometime. then, after that, I'll do more of this. . . or something like it... see U at a show somewhere/sometime soon.

ok people

L&L

G

When you need something done right, do it yourself.

It also helps to have some really good friends.

It helps even more if one of said friends is a super genius.

For the past four weeks, Josh, George and I have been involved in a rather huge construction project. We've spent pretty much every waking moment building a live-in recording studio in Brooklyn. When all is said and done, the place will be U-Melt Central. it will house our office, it will be where our next couple albums will be recorded, and G and I will be living there too. The design (by Josh -- it's all Josh) is amazing. The centerpiece of the place is a large soundproof room which we built (floor, walls, ceiling and all) to rest on two inches of sound-absorbent neoprine rubber on a wooden frame. Once it's sealed up, it will be virtually airtight, and virtually silent. the vast majority of sound that's made in there will stay in there, so we'll be able to play night and day without disturbing our neighbors. Equally important though is that external sound won't be able to get in, so we can have sensitive microphones recording something as quiet as an acoustic guitar without having to worry about capturing any sounds we don't want.

Essentially, what this means is that (once it's done) we'll be able to spend as much time recording and mixing a ton of material for our next couple albums. We have lofty ambitions for this next album (or two) and we realized that the only way we'll be able to make it right is if we can as much time as we need. The music is complex and detailed, and in order to give all those details the attention they deserve, we're gonna require a lot of time. Studio time is very expensive, and there's no way we'd be able to do this the way we want to while worrying about an hourly studio rental rate. We expect that this will afford us a level of creative freedom that should allow some very exciting things to happen.

it's all pretty exciting.

When i was a kid, i always imagined living somewhere in NYC where i could make music. It's pretty great seeing that dream become a reality thanks to some very talented friends and a lot of very hard work on everyone's part.

See ya down the road...
z

the ecstasy and the agony...

life is funny. i turned 30 last saturday, and as many of you know celebrated with a rather triumphant hometown show at Irving Plaza in NYC -- it was nothing short of an amazing experience to be on that stage looking out at a room packed with hundreds and hundreds of people getting down to the music my friends and i were making.

immediately, the universe delivered a reality check.

two nights later we found ourselves in DeKalb, IL -- a place we've never been before -- and it was back to the grind of slowly building an audience. a group of 40 or so people were there to check us out -- some of whom had seen us last summer at 10KLF or Summercamp, but most of whom had only heard the buzz and some music online. Our music was met with the usual response from a crowd such as that -- some dancing, some confusion, some dumbfounded looks. It's all very strange. I found that it's much easier to play for a large crowd than a small one. With a large crowd, it's really easy to keep the energy going because there's so much of it coming back at us -- all we need to do is play, and the energy is there. With a small crowd, there's more responsibility on us to keep it going ourselves. With a crowd that is unfamiliar with our music, they have to really take it all in, so they aren't able to give as much back. It can be an exhausting prospect sometimes. While we were playing, i messed up a part of a song, and started to get a little down... then i looked out at the 40 people in the room and remembered a time not so long ago that i would be absolutely thrilled if 40 people came to hear our music -- a time when 40 people provided more than enough energy to get me through the show. i thought back on those days and tapped into the moment, and rocked out as hard as i could for everyone who was there to take it all in.

We plan on getting a new van when we return from this midwest run -- our big green monster has served us well over the last 3 years and 150,000 miles. We were hoping that she would get us through this week without a problem -- naturally, a snag had to be hit. After the show, the alternator died and left us stranded on the side of the highway. fortunately, we were with the Duke of Deep and his Trailblazer, so he drove me and rob and adam back to his place while g and josh waited for the tow truck. fortunately, we had the next day off so we could do all that had to be done and not miss a show. Josh and George and the Van were towed to a hotel a mile away, got a good nights sleep, and the next day they installed a new alternator. This was only the second time that the van died on us while on tour. The first time, we also had a day off to take care of it... i am amazed at the mysterious ways in which the universe works.

Welcome to the U-Melt Blogs

hey everyone! this is a place where we'll be sharing various thoughts from the road and beyond. We'll be updating these rather often, so keep checking back here for more thoughts 'n' things.

z

rebellion...

When Jason (our wonderful, dedicated, hard-working, grossly underpaid manager) informed me that i now had a blog on which to post my various musings, i thought "great... now i need to think of something to say." My first thought was to put together a list of various ventures from other artists that i think people would enjoy*, but then my day took an interesting turn when i rented two movies, which turned out to be wonderful companions. The first, a beautifully frightening fantasy of the not-too-distant future -- the second a beautifully frightening (factual) account of the not-too-distant past. Both films revolved around the central theme of two peoples' rebellion. Both films raised many questions that i will likely be taking on in my future songwriting.

My double-feature began with a second screening of the Wachowski Brother's epic, V for Vendetta. The movie takes place a couple decades from now in a time when "The Former United States of America" is beset with disease and civil war, and Brittan has fallen victim to a fascist regime. i won't go into details because i really think that this is a great film that people should see, but it paints a bleak, but all-too-fathomable picture of what the future could hold. The film made me long for a rebellion against not just our government, but against many of the values which we, as americans, are taught to hold dear from the moment we start watching TV. We have become pacified by the flashing luminescence, and taught to hold material objects in far greater regard than actual experience -- but that's another story altogether.

After feasting on a delicious venison burger courtesy of G's brother Kenzy, I made my mind right and sat down to watch The U.S. vs John Lennon, a Yoko-Authorized account of John's huge influence in American politics during the '70's. The title comes from the immigration case which began in early 1972 when Senator Strom Thurmond sent a letter to President Nixon suggesting that if John were deported, he wouldn't be able to hurt them politically. It painted a picture of the quintessential artist cum activist, and after V... made me long for a fantastical rebellion, it showed me one that, albeit less dramatic, was very real, and very inspiring.

Both of these films brought to mind an essay entitled "Enlightened Rebellion" by Osho, a contemporary Indian mystic, in which he writes "Rebellion is individual action; it has nothing to do with the crowd. Rebellion has nothing to do with politics, power, violence. Rebellion has something to do with changing your consciousness, your silence, your being. It is a spiritual metamorphosis."

I believe that there is something to all of this... i don't know what exactly it all means, but i do know that from this moment, i will work to encourage and nurture my rebellious nature.

Because the world needs more rebels.

Because that's what rock'n'roll is all about anyway, isn't it?

until next time....

be well,
z

"i believe that time wounds all heels"
-j. lennon

*That'll be the next one... i promise.

Winter Jamfest 07

So we just finished up playing 5 shows with the Terrapin Winter Jamfest 07 with Moonshine Still, The Bridge, The Pnuma Trio, Elemental Harmonics, and a couple of DJs. It was a good experience both musically and socially; we got to perform in some really nice venues, and we got to know some other bands pretty well along the way. It's always interesting to hang with other bands and pick their brains, and the most obvious place to do this is outdoor, multi-day camping festivals. The thing about fests, however, is that all the bands are being rushed around like crazy, and then usually off to some other part of the country. So I felt that playing a bunch of venue shows with the same bands provided us all with more time to relax and hang out, and more time to really get to know each other's music. So in that way it was a unique experience.

It was also unique because it was the first time we had people travel from several different regions to congregate in a region far from all of them - some by plane no less. It was so much fun to be in North Carolina and see friends and fans from NY, MA, TN, and even Chicago all there to support us. We're used to people traveling a few hours to see us, but 12 hour drives and traveling by plane easily files under the category of hardcore. I believe that this is definitely the dawn of a new era for us, and we couldn't be happier about it.

I'd like to thank the Terrapin Beer Company and Moonshine for hooking us up with the tour - it was a blast! We had a really good time with those guys.

peace!

Rob

Adam's Spot

We're just keeping his seat warm until he gets here.