Imagine

I want to talk about guns today. There. I've said it. And it's long and rambling.

And let me be upfront about something first: I don't like guns. I get nervous around guns. I'll readily admit that the few guns I have shot at targets have been fun, but I don't trust other people with them, and I stay away from them. That does not mean that I am against people being able to own guns - although that is often a conclusion people draw. I would also like to point out that I grew up in Norway, where police did not wear guns when they were out patrolling, so I am even more nervous around guns in public - even if they are worn by police.

However, I am losing faith in humanity these days. And yes, it is largely because of what people post on social media - but also about what is being said at events like CPAC. While social media often functions as an echo chamber, it is also bringing to light some of what people really think, and with the PINO (President In Name Only) confusing political correctness and human decency, more and more people on the right are also finally saying what they really are thinking, and man, is that ugly.

I know that introduction flies directly in the face of David Brooks, who often is displayed as the "voice of reason" of conservatives, yet claims that we should let the conservative gun owners take a lead in this momentum for change. Guess what. That is the group that has been in charge. That is the group that has led us to where we are today. And where are we? Well... Funny you should ask:

• We are at a place where people argue against gun control by stating that it is statistically speaking less likely to be killed in a school shooting than it is to be struck by lightning. 
• We are at a place where people question whether high school students who were fired upon really are advocating for gun control because they mean it or because they are paid by democrats. 
• We are at a place where conspiracy theorists are so stupid that they believe that school shootings are orchestrated by anti-gun activists who want to take our guns away (here's a hint: if there indeed is a conspiracy behind school shootings, follow the money. There isn't money in banning guns, but there is money in selling them - and gun sales always spike following a school shooting. NO, that does not mean that I am advocating conspiracy theories, I am just pointing out how incredibly stupid you would have to be if you believe that school shootings are orchestrated by gun control activist - just see how well school shootings have worked for gun control laws...). 
• We are at a place where gun activists will advocate for guns as tools, which really is a great argument - until you start including assault style rifles in that list. 
• We are at a place where people will argue that criminals and mentally ill should not have guns, yet people on the terrorism no-fly list should. 
• We are at a place where people are suggesting we should arm teachers, yet people who are trained to respond in situations like this were armed and on scene and did nothing. 

The list goes on... But to the last point. I am actually not going to use this to attack the deputies that were there - I think I want to make a point about being human instead. People talk about the people who perform heroic acts, such as the football coach who shielded students with his body and look at them and say the people that were outside should have done more. And while I don't disagree, just think about one thing for a second. There is a difference between being in a war zone and actively and consciously entering a war zone. The risk of being shot increases dramatically in moving from a safe environment to one where you are actively going to be shot at - being able to be heroic comes with a much lesser increase of risk if someone is already in the same room as you firing away. I am not trying to take anything away from the heroes of the day - they have my respect and I hope I will have the same level of courage should I find myself in the same situation - but I am saying that you can have all the training in the world, but when the shit actually hits the fan, there is no guarantee that you will be able to react the way your training dictates. And that is why arming teachers is not an idea that makes sense to me. Teachers need to be trained to teach - that is what we are paying them for (and, of course, paying them less and less for, while increasing responsibilities - now also including the potential responsibility for stopping active shooters on campus). Someone much smarter than me pointed out that we are quicker to advocate arming teachers with guns than we are arming them with all the classroom supplies they need to effectively do their main jobs.

Let's talk about assault style rifles as tools for a minute. What exactly are they tools of? Seems to me they are tools of war. And I don't think civilians need tools for war. Why do I draw this conclusion? After all, I don't know much about guns, but I have started to figure out a few things about them. One thing I figured out from reading this op-ed by Heather Sher, a radiologist who treated the wounded after the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, is just how the high velocity bullets shred everything in their way. It is all about killing as efficiently as possible - and making sure that you don't need to be a good shot to kill either.

One of the arguments I hear frequently is that it is hard to define what is an assault style rifle. Great argument, right? Yet it didn't stop us from having an operational ban on them from 1994-2004. Did this ban have an effect? The truth is, we don't know. Congress enacted the Dickey amendment in 1996, which stated that, "none of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) may be used to advocate or promote gun control." Of course, this law didn't start in a vacuum - only a couple of years earlier, CDC had funded research that showed there could be a link between guns in the home and homicide rates, which the NRA clearly didn't like much. So while it may be hard to define what is an assault style rifle, it is not impossible to do so. If we only should do what is easy, we wouldn't even have fire yet.

And let's talk about mental health for a minute. Our PINO has declared that anyone who perpetrates a mass school shooting is a "sicko" - at least that's the implication of his tweets. Yet fewer than 1% of firearm homicides are committed by people with a diagnosed mental illness. The chapter Mass Shootings and Mental Illness from the book Gun Violence and Mental Illness discusses this a little bit more - but the New York Times had an op-ed about how the mental health system cannot deal with this that clearly explained how the system actually works. It is often easy to look back at a person and see the signs that an atrocity was waiting to happen, but it isn't always easy to spot the signs ahead of time. That being said, in the latest shooting, there were multiple reports indicating the risk for this to happen, both to the Broward County Sheriff's Office and to the FBI - but that is an exception rather than the norm.

And then there is this idea that we should keep guns away from criminals. Except we don't. Not if you purchase the gun online or at a gun show. And then you have the fact that you are not a criminal until you commit your first crime. So if you plan shooting up a school as your first act of crime, you can legally purchase the firearms to do so.

Now contrast the approach towards mental health and criminals with the approach towards suspected terrorists. Suspected terrorists can legally buy as many guns as they want thanks to congress, who did not support Dianne Feinstein's proposed ban of gun sales to people on the no fly lists. In other words, they are considered to dangerous to be passengers on a plane, but let's give them a gun - because that makes so much sense.

Let's talk about suspicious behavior for a minute. The problem I think we can get into with reporting people we regard as suspicious is that we often consider behaviors and/or thoughts we don't understand as threatening, suspicious, or even dangerous. It will push the outsiders even further outside, and disenfranchise nonconformists even more than what is already happening. This does not mean that I don't think that we shouldn't notify authorities of suspicious activity, but I think we also need to know our biases before we do so. And teenage me would probably be flagged because of my constantly dark writings. I wrote short stories in my Norwegian and English classes every chance I could get, and they were frequently well outside of the mainstream.

So let's talk about gun control. I do not believe that our current system works. It's virtually unfettered access for just about anyone to buy just about any gun short of a fully automated weapon. And these weapons are misused. Abused. Some people talk about responsible gun owners, yet not many seem to want any kind of checks and balances on this responsibility. Imagine if we took that approach to cars. Would people abuse or ignore speed limits if police didn't actively monitor them? Absolutely. Relax, I can hear you. You are loudly saying that's not the same, our gun rights are constitutional. Well, rights come - or should come, at least - with responsibilities. There are countries that require training prior to gun ownership, and they require inspections of the weapons and their storage - inspections that are done by the police. That makes sense to me. But yes, I still hear you. The protection from tyranny. Sure. When can you invoke that right, though? At what point is a citizen uprising warranted? I don't believe it would be. I believe in the social contract, no matter how painful it can be at times. And right now it is really difficult to hold on to that belief, but I still am. 

Where was I? Oh yes, gun control. So... What I believe we need is the following:

• A complete ban of assault style weapons. I will leave the definition to experts, but I would look at things like rate of fire, velocity, and initial purpose (I know people use an AR-15 for hunting, for instance, but I very much doubt that was the initial purpose of the weapon). I do trust in the process and we did have an operational assault weapons ban for 10 years, so I know it can be done. I know this won't stop these weapons from being used, but let's at least make it harder to get a hold of them. We know the other way doesn't work, so this can't hurt to try.
• Checks on responsible gun ownership.
• All guns need to be stored in a locked gun cabinet. If the owner is home, one gun can be on the owner's person or in the owner's immediate vicinity.
• A registry for gun owners. Every gun needs to be registered. And if you own a gun that is used in committing a crime, you area partially responsible.
• Weapons training and licensing for all gun owners.
• A complete repeal of the Dickey amendment. The idea that the CDC shouldn't lobby for gun control laws even if significant public health benefits are shown to come from it is about as ridiculous as slapping a ban on CDC from being able to lobby for vaccination laws.
• Significant funding of gun violence research. We need science and we need it now.

Now, if we can't get a ban on assault style weapons, I want to be able to go to WalMart and buy my own nuclear weapon. If we are not going to draw the line on weapons designed to hurt human beings to the maximum degree possible, I want the right to bear arms extend beyond firearms. And no, I won't buy one, nor am I serious about this, I am just making a point.

So, on that note, I want to play a song. This version of Imagine was recorded during the reign of GWB. It is dark and depressing in tone, but it still shows hope in the same lyrics as John Lennon wrote. The band is A Perfect Circle, and the singer is Maynard James Keenan of Tool fame. It is a great band - and their 2004 album eMOTIVe has a great selection of thought provoking cover versions. A new album is expected in April, so that's always something to look forward to...

Eat That Question

This Zappa instrumental has one major strength going for it: George Duke. His keyboards are spectacularly groovy, and the song fits his playing style perfectly. The Grand Wazoo was released in 1972, and the song Eat That Question featured Ansley Dunbar on drums and Alex Dmochowski on bass as well as George Duke. Dunbar has played with David Bowie as well as playing drums on Berlin, my favorite Lou Reed album. But today we are listening to Frank Zappa and Eat That Question.

Black Napkins

Zoot Allures was a fantastic Zappa album. It features two instrumentals - yesterday's Zoot Allures and today's Black Napkins, and they are both great - they are by far my favorite Zappa instrumentals along with Peaches En Regalia and tomorrow's song. Sometimes guitar solos get boring - even Zappa's solos, but this one hits me hard every time I hear it. Still featuring Terry Bozzio on drums, this song also features Napoleon Murphy Brook on vocals, Roy Estrada on bass and vocals, and Andrè Lewis on organ. I still consider this an instrumental, as the vocals are only ooohs. This one is more laid back and straightforward than yesterday's title track - I hope you like it!

Zoot Allures

It's time to curse in French today. Zoot Allures is the name of a Frank Zappa album from 1976 - and it was the first Frank Zappa album I heard. Today's song is an instrumental - the title track - and it features Frank Zappa on lead guitar, the mighty Terry Bozzio on drums, the wonderful Ruth Underwood on marimba, Dave Parlato, who only played with Zappa for a limited time, on bass, and whenever you hear a harp, it is played by Lu Ann Neil.

Moonlight Shadow

The song today was a huge hit in Europe in 1983. It reached the top of the Norwegian charts, and it is one of my favorite songs from 35 years ago. Mike Oldfield wasn't known to me before this song, and for a while it was the only song I knew of his. That is until my friend Geir let me borrow the album The Complete Mike Oldfield, which was (and still is) one of the most excellent compilation albums I have ever heard, mainly because of the thematic division. On a double vinyl, each section got one side - so you had the instrumental, vocal, complex, and live sections. The complex section was a stroke of genius, as he had a tendency of having at least one major work spanning at least one whole side of the album for his early records, and by finding representative excerpts from them, they were not excluded from consideration based on length alone.

Then I started spending a lot of time with Vegard, another dear friend of mine, and he was a huge fan of Mike Oldfield - and I got even more exposed to his music. And lately, Mike Oldfield has provided a lot of music to play while I work - and while instrumental songs work, today's song, Moonlight Shadow, really gets me going. The singer is Maggie Reilly, and her voice is very distinctive and appears frequently on Mike Oldfield's albums. However, what really gets to me here is the guitar solo. He is a great guitarist - and it isn't necessarily the technical aspects that get me as much as it is the texture he creates in the way he plays around the melody. And then there is his tone. He has a unique guitar tone that just hits me really hard. I can loop this song for a day and not grow tired of it - that is how good I believe it is.

Skägget (The Beard)

So the opening line says it all... "I would like to kiss you but there's something in the way" - and that's what she said... It's a fun song about the trials and tribulations of having a beard...The band is Den Fule (The Ugly One) from Sweden, and the song is Skägget. Of course, the main character lets the girl shave him, but the last laugh is on him, as she screamed when she saw what he looked like underneath the beard. Den Fule existed through the 90s, and I found this song on the magnificent compilation Bergtagen, which has a lot of great songs by bands in the crossroads between folk/traditional music and rock/metal.

Into My Arms (for Christine)

It's Valentine's Day, and I have my Valentine...  I love my Christine. This is our fifth Valentine's Day - and this summer we will have been together for five years. I love you, Chris!

Farmhouse

Today seems like a good day for Phish (I was going to say go phishing, but then I realized the cybercriminality association with that, so I tempered my statement). This weekend I found myself listening to this song in my mind quite a bit - it's a song I keep forgetting about, but it is quite the catchy tune. Phish has a reputation of being better live than in the studio - they are so clearly a live act more than anything else (although I only have live albums to confirm this - I haven't seen them live yet) - but I have liked the opening and title track from their 2000 album Farmhouse since I first heard it. The lyrics have never been their strong suit, and that is the case for this song as well, but there is something about the chorus here that really gets to me. I would say this is music for a cabin in the woods or mountains for late nights with a nice fire going in the fireplace and no electric lights - what we Norwegians call hyttekos. It is a nice and warm song and well worth listening to.

Retina Sees Rewind

Today’s song is by the band Cave-In, a pretty schizophrenic band with hardcore/mathcore (don’t ask) roots - but I have heard someone describe some of their songs as a harder, more metal Radiohead, which I think fits today’s song, which is on their Planets of Old EP, which I purchased on a whim at
Vertigo in Grand Rapids right after its release in 2009 based on recommendations from their staff. The song Retina Sees Rewind immediately stood out to me and just feels right today...

Curse of the Red Tide

Today song is a brand new gym in my collection. Yesterday, the first album from Legend of the Seagullmen was released digitally, and it is awesome. I don’t know if it’s appropriate to ask who or what Legend of the Seagullman is, but I can tell you that it is thoroughly enjoyable from start to finish.  Featuring Tool drummer Danny Carey and Mastodon guitar player Brent Hinds, along with members from Dethklok, this is indeed a metal supergroup. However,  while the music indeed has metal roots, it is infused with a heavy dash of psychedelia and an even heavier dash of humor. They have the groove from Tool, the psychedelia from Mastodon and the humor from Primus. Imagine churning those three bands through a blender and send the new band to Bikini Bottom as the house band at the Krusty Krab (yes, the Spongebob reference is mandatory here). I am blown away. Enjoy the Curse of the Red Tide.

Little Drop Of Poison

Sometimes you go to a kids movie and get blown away by the music selection. To me, that happened back in 2004, when I went to see Shrek 2. There was a piano in a dark alley bar, and the voice was unmistakeable - it was Tom Waits. And the song was Little Drop of Poison, which I did not know at the time. I finally picked it up on an album when I picked up his Orphans box set - and I thought it would be great to finish the working week up with a Little Drop of Poison...

Joe's Garage

Today's song is about rock bands. While the band in the song do pretty good for themselves, there are many that simply give up along the way - and having played in one of them myself, I completely recognize the beginning of the song. I am smiling thinking back to the days with Coma - three good friends making music just for our own sakes. It was fun and it was honest. We made music we liked - although I think I forced my inner Bono on the other two in my pretentiousness...

All I can say is that we covered Comfortably Numb by Pink Floyd. Yeah... My idea. My favorite part is the line "There'll be no more aah aah aah" where the muted aah's that are lined up with the melody on the original became a bloodcurdling scream that forced itself to the forefront in our version. And my attempt at finding my inner David Gilmore. I was never really a lead guitarist. I wanted to be one, and I demanded to play lead guitar on quite a few songs - and the solos were ALWAYS long. And never really good. A couple were ok, but no... There is only so much you can do with the pentatonic scale and limited technical ability... BUT - like I said, it was fun. And there was a chemistry there. The last recordings we made were pretty good - the songs were getting better and better and we played pretty well together.

I have my friend Jørund Hitland to thank for the song today. I knew of Frank Zappa from before after having found the album Zoot Allures in my dad's record collection. But it was in Jørund's cd collection I found Joe's Garage, a rock opera about... Well, I am not always quite sure... But it follows Joe from his beginnings in a garage band that makes it pretty big - and he encounters all sorts of depravity and finds himself in jail before he finally gets out in act three and becomes a compliant member of society. While some of the lyrics are very immature, the music is spectacular throughout. Zappa and his band move effortlessly through various musical styles, and you can hear some of that even within the title track - it is well worth listening to, and the lyrics are pretty good as well.

Hallo Spaceboy

Today's song is dedicated to Elon Musk. I am beyond excited that today is the launch for SpaceX Falcon Heavy to be launched - and with David Bowie's Space Oddity as the soundtrack. That means that song is a little bit too obvious to play, so I started thinking about Space Truckin' by Deep Purple, especially since a red Tesla is part of the cargo for the rocket, but I've already included that song earlier... But the Tesla has Spaceman behind the wheel - while it is a dummy, it provided great inspiration.  So... I found another Bowie nugget - you can never have too much David Bowie, after all...

The launch was a success, and the Tesla's onboard computer screen had two very appropriate words on it: Don't panic. Clearly a nod to Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy. But what impressed me the most was the ability of both of the side boosters and the core to find their way back to earth and land successfully. It was awe inspiring to watch. And my guess is that if someone finds this Tesla in space, their first words would be in keeping with David Bowie: Hallo Spaceboy!

I Must Be In Love

You have probably heard of the fab four - or The Beatles - but have you heard of the prefab four? Barry, Stig, Dirk and Nasty formed the band The Rutles, and they were a great inspiration for the other band from Liverpool - at least according to the mockumentary The Rutles: All You Need Is Cash.

The Rutles was the brainchild of Eric Idle of Monty Python fame and Neil Innes, who started his career with the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band and worked closely with Monty Pyhton as well. While they started on the Eric Idle TV show Rutland Weekend Television in 1975, the full mockumentary was released in 1978 featuring Eric Idle as Dirk McQuigley and Neil Innes as Ron Nasty (representations of Paul McCartney and John Lennon respectively). It featured several of the early SNL cast members (Dan Ackroyd, John Belushi, Gilda Radner, and Bill Murray), as well as George Harrison (who also financed the movie), Bianca Jagger, and Michael Palin (of Monty Python fame).

The movie is incredibly funny, but to me, the best part is how well the songs are written. I believe it was my friend Stein Pettersen who said that the genius of the music is that you really think you are hearing The Beatles without quite placing the song - and that is on full view in today's song. It is funny - and it is just like The Beatles. Except it isn't. It is The Rutles with the song I Must Be In Love with the immortal line, "I feel good, I feel bad, I feel happy, I feel sad..." That's all the emotions you need to know in one line. I will be eternally grateful to Stein and Kjell Pettersen for introducing me to the brilliance of The Rutles!

Dear Janet Jackson (Superbowl Edition)

So... Today is the Superbowl, and yet again it is super, as it does feature my favorite team, the New England Patriots. People are not always understanding why that is my team, since I live in a state which has the ultimate of underdogs, the Detroit Lions, but it really is pretty simple. While I moved to the US in 1999, I didn't start watching football until 2001. My first two years, I was busy adjusting to a new life in a new country, getting my associate degree, working a little on top of that, and eventually fatherhood. Then we moved to Michigan in 2001, I had a Monday-Friday job, and some more time on the weekends, so I decided to start watching football. I didn't know much about any rules, but there was this one team, without any superstar whose quarterback got hurt and replaced by someone who barely got drafted a couple of years before. That was the New England Patriots and Tom Brady. So without any real geographic allegiances, I was drawn to this team because of their story that year - and their focus on the team rather than individuals, coming out on the field as one, rather than announcing superstars (mainly because there weren't any). And it stuck. I was hooked.

And no, my favorite Patriot was never Tom Brady - although I can't think of anyone I'd rather have as a quarterback. My favorite Patriot of all time was Tedy Bruschi. To me, he was the heart and soul of the Patriots until his retirement in 2009. He was scheduled to sit out the 2005 season following a stroke not too long after he won his third Superbowl, but he came back to play in a Monday Night Football game against the Buffalo Bills on October 30 that year - and the impact his return had on the team cannot be overstated. After starting the season 3-3, they did win that game, and ended up 10-6 for the season. They lost in the divisional round that year, but this year they are back in the Superbowl - against the Philadelphia Eagles.

Of course, not all Americans watch the Superbowl for the football - watching the ads has long been a sport of its own, and then there's the halftime show. This year's performer is Justin Timberlake. Now he is married and a family man, but back in 2004, he was dating Janet Jackson, and their performance together became quite the controversy - and the topic of a song by Richard Thompson. This is a song that in the Norwegian tradition would be considered a nidvise - which really is a satirical song in the ballad tradition, often mocking the main character. And mock he does. Please enjoy a good laugh as the warm-up to the Superbowl - and the halftime show - with Richard Thompson's Dear Janet Jackson.

Test Pilot

Sometimes when bands disband, I am ok with it. They have run their course, maybe even released a couple of rather crappy albums, and it's just time. Then there are bands that just get better and better, and then suddenly they are gone. Israelvis from Trondheim was one of those bands. They have not formally disbanded, but they really haven't done anything since 2010, when they did one concert and released a single - and their last album, The Israelvis Effect was from 2005. Granted, the last release before that was Eurosis from 1996, and I was lucky enough to catch them live around that time as well. But after 9 years gestation, The Israelvis Effect was an absolutely mindblowing album. I consider it their most complete release, and I would consider it a really spectacular way to finish a career - except I hear so much promise for even further development, especially seeing how they developed from Eurosis (which also was a great album, mind you).

From time to time, I take The Israelvis Effect out and listen to it - and if I only want to hear one song, I play Test Pilot. And if anyone who knows anyone in Israelvis happens to be reading this... Please, just please, let's have some more music. They are one of Norwegian rock music's best kept secrets. Versatile, funny, and innovative. And great musicians. And always focusing on quality over quantity, which is why I cherish their albums as much as I do.

Weak

This is a genre-hopping week, I think. However, today's song is really one of the gems of the 90s. Skunk Anansie was considered an alternative rock band - and their biggest claim to fame was the song Weak from the album Paranoid and Sunburnt from 1995. Their lead singer, Skin, finds what for me is the perfect balance between pain and anger on this song, and what eluded me before is the incredibly warm and bluesy guitar tone on the main riff. It is interesting listening back to some of these songs with ears that have had 20 more years of listening to music. It still hits me emotionally - this was one of my favorite songs of the mid-90s - but I am also appreciating more of the work that went into the different layers of the song. If you had asked me about the guitar sound before listening back to it, I would have sworn they used heavy distortion, but for most of the song that is really light and main guitar is clean. It's funny how memory tricks you from time to time. Oh well - I keep blabbering on when all you really need is to hear this song. Weak by Skunk Anansie is that good!

Isak

I have a great little song for you today. I have had the pleasure of seeing Baroness live twice now, and the next time they roll into town, odds are I will see them again - that's how good I think they are. Baroness has quickly risen to be one of my favorite metal bands - and their debut album, simply called Red Album (they have since released Blue Record, Yellow/Green, and Purple) is a great debut album - and the song Isak just simply blew me away. And so I feel like sharing the song with you today - but not just in the original version...

I have also included a live version from Philadelphia in June 2017. The only member that has been a constant in Baroness - and who is featured on both tracks - is singer/guitarist John Dyer Baizley. The latest update saw Pete Adams (guitar) leave quietly and on very friendly terms and Gina Gleason arrive. With the second vocals on Isak being in the higher register, I was excited to hear her take on it, and while there are shakier moments with the newest member in the live version, it still rocks (and yes, that is a long tuneup in the beginning...)