top 40 music from alternative universe Reaching out to grab people, through hooks or an evocative and emotional quality of sound, a bunch of weirdoes band together to make catchy, cool music. Inspired to take acoustic instruments into offbeat places, a folk tradition on wheels, these guys roll wherever they can fit the music. Out to the streets. Or onto a boat. Or upon the stage of a Cabaret. Wherever. It could be on bikes and in canoes. You see, it’s about possibilities, the more the merrier. And it’s just good forward thinking, giving the low prospects of peak oil and societal collapse...
You can only say so much to people. But if you can create a feeling with sound, you can be that much more understood. It’s an understanding coming from a place new and old, familiar and strange. It’s all about the connection. In the end, what you get Top 40 music from alternative universe. You get a universe where the bass banjo is more popular than the electric guitar. You get Three For Silver. And you gotta see this video!
“Hey,” I said to Diane, who sat across from me in the other lawn chair, “look at this spider.” The spider was dancing a jagged half-circle on my finger.
We motored out past the breakwater as the first light began to stain the horizon in shades of rose and gold. Manuel did not speak much. He was listening, he told me later, to the water, to the wind, to the birds that circled overhead. These were the signals that told him where the fish were, that guided him to the spots where his father had fished, and his father's father before him. The knowledge was not written down. It was in his hands, in his bones, in the particular tilt of his head as he scanned the surface of the sea.
Manuel Vazquez mending nets at dawn. Photograph by Marcus Chen.
“Colin’s special relationship to bugs.” And that was that. The writer Virginia Woolf apparently had something of a special relationship to bugs, as well, as exhibited by her contemplation of a moth fluttering on a windowpane. Moths that fly by day … are hybrid creatures, neither gay like butterflies nor somber like their own species. Nevertheless the present specimen, with his narrow hay-colored wings, fringed with a tassel of the same color, seemed to be content with life.
spineless Spiders aren’t actually a bug, of course. And neither is a jellyfish, for that matter. Nor is a dragonfly. Rather, all fit more or less nicely into one abstract classification. Invertebrates. According the Oxford English Dictionary, we are faced with the following: \(ˌ)in-ˈvər-tə-brət, -ˌbrāt\. An animal without a backbone or spinal column. Yet, there’s more to the definition, and it’s telling. These animals get a fairly bad rap from us, the human species. Consider, as illustration, the second definition found in the dictionary: Invertebrate. 2. A person without strength of character or principles. To wit: spineless. But I’m going on too much. Don’t listen to me, I know next to nothing about invertebrates, or bugs or spiders, other than what I’ve seen and a few clever notes. For a truly special relationship to invertebrates, you need to talk to Candace Fallon. Ahem…..
“My son says he wants to be a programmer. I asked him what a programmer does. He said he will sit in a room and talk to a machine all day. I told him he already talks to reindeer, and at least reindeer talk back.”
3 For Silver has a new recording freshly minted! The vibe is old and new. Something missed in time and recovered in the future. It’s Three For Silver taped at Chicago’s HiSTYLE RECORDS, old analog gear and a brand new attitude. It’s an original concoction. http://threeforsilver.tumblr.com/ : THREE FOR SILVER SOLSTICE PARTY : December 20th, 2014 Secret Society 8 pm 116 NE Russell St. Portland, OR 97212 http://www.secretsociety.net/
