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I'm a Cockroach; Adapt, Adapt -- part one
Short I Am
On Her Wrists She Wore Her Interest
Newness
I'm a Cockroach; Adapt, Adapt -- part two
Five-Lane Parasite
ES-I
Emily Hay: flute 1-7; voice 4
Bruce Friedman: trumpet 1, 5
David Kendall: bass guitar 1, 5; electronics 1
Haskel Joseph: guitar 1-3, 5, 6
Ace Farren Ford: vocals 1
Tony Atherton: alto sax 2-4, 6, 7
Steuart Leibig: bass guitar 2-3, 6
Eric Johnson: bassoon 4, 7
Walter Zooi: trumpet 4, 7
Jill Meschke: keyboards 4, 7
Paul Green: bass guitar 4, 7
Rich West: drums 1-7; subjected to voice 3
1 and 5 recorded at Architecture, Los Angeles, CA, Jan. 21, 2003
mixed 2003-2006, Scott Fraser, engineering
2, 3 and 6 recorded at Architecture sometime in 1995
mixed 2003-2006, Scott Fraser, engineering
4 and 7 recorded at Rick Cox's studio above John Carter's in Los Angeles, CA
sometime in 1991, Rick Cox, engineering
All compositions © 2009 Book Crazy, BMI
Layout and design by Jeremy Drake
Editing by Phyllis West
James H. West, 1924-2001, drawings
The jet-like whirring sound started again. Neighbor Riley was angry but knew that going over to Grout's house would be a futile journey. Didn't anyone else on the block hear the world's-end racket? "I'm just doing some work," Grout had yelled when Riley had first complained. Then, three days ago, Riley had summoned up the courage to bang on the garage door with his fists. Grout had popped his head out of a side door. "What kind of work?" Riley had asked. "Just some power sawing. I'll be done in half an hour." Of course, it had gone on much longer than that. This time, convinced that any plea for quiet would send Grout into a rage, Riley called the police, feeling his chest tighten as he punched in the numbers.
"It seems you've been using a lot of energy, sir, and we'd like to know what it's all about," said the patrol officer. After the initial obligatory round of yelling for civil rights, Harry Grout had invited the two cops into the garage to see for themselves. Within a month ten reporters called, then a mystery-man got very interested in the project, and Grout was able to convince some very rich investors to procure private equity interests.
Mayo heard about the project after the fact; his father wasn't one to share details.
When he was heading into his teens, Mayo was told that the AG machine would eventually work. His father and his partners had sunk quite a bit of money into it and were committed to seeing it through. When Mayo would visit, he'd ask how it was progressing, and Harry's inevitable reply would be, "We need more power." The names of the guys Harry worked with . . . Mayo never saw them . . . were grouped together on the company business card, AG Futures.
Dade blew to the project site using something he'd designed based on the AG Futures patent, calling it his Unco, a round shell of a vehicle just big enough to hold a few of his wind instruments. A sax player they knew who lived in the hills with his wife needed a house built. Since Dade and Mayo had recently been fired from jobs, they offered to help . . . and get paid while continuing to collect their unemployment compensation.
Dade, working in the college cafeteria, had been correcting Mayo's inaccuracies and misassumptions since the day they'd met. Mayo asked if that were soup. "No, it's slop." In a jazz discussion Mayo brought up Scott Joplin, thinking he was white even though the couple of records he owned showed a black man on the cover. Dade was dumbfounded. "You are the trouble with the world," he'd informed Mayo.
Dade and Mayo had just finished lifting large beams onto support posts, a seemingly impossible task which they'd accomplished using the incredible strength they'd developed as musicians. Mayo said he'd move to Kentucky with Dade if he could be assured that there was health food consciousness there. "What are you talking about, man? What are the most resilient living creatures on Earth?" Mayo guessed cockroaches, assuming it was as unasinous as his Joplin comment. But he'd been correct. "That's what you've got to be to survive, man," Dade had replied, "Nocturnal, photophobic, and able to survive off the glue of stamps for a month."
Nelson had developed a playing technique that utilized a device which harnessed the swirling magnetic field of his guitar. Called Doom Doctor, the device was one of the many after- products of AG. Nelson found Mayo's music "obscure, yet strangely compelling," but complained that it changed direction too much. Mayo thought, "Okay, I'll write a tune that keeps the same groove throughout, does not change speed, and never deviates from its course." Of course.
Mayo was attracted to tragedy, whether it be an elevator trip away to the playground in Parkmerced inspired by a cigaret commercial or daring deckwalkers. She says, "I didn't call to talk to your dad. I don't care how bloody famous he is with his whole invention turning the world on its side." Then, "Have you been dating anyone else?" Then, "I'm with somebody," meaning, "Stop calling." He has a little flashback: They're at her house on the mamelon, through the park and over a bridge. "I dare you to walk out on the deck and take off your towel." With a smilet she says something, but the freeway's noise warps it as she boldly takes his challenge, exposing her fleshy elements to all who want to see.
Step, skip one, step, pattern of three. They are discussing their tics. Jade is an incessant tongue-tapper. She mentions her affection for Joyce's short stories and Stiff Little Fingers and then begins to go into endless detail. Mayo's feet are untouched by the ground. He assumes it is once again his father's doing. He tries taking the minidevice out of his pocket but it seems to be snagged on a thread. A whirling maelstrom of fragmented thoughts prevents him from yanking it free. One, it would distract him from his current conversation, to which he thinks he should pay strict attention as she seems so much more intelligent than he. Two, it might open a hole through which everything would slip. Jade, who has no idea what is going through Mayo's whirling brain, just walks and talks, in a bit of a baffled state. She thinks it's possible that his two years of living in a movie theater has made him more conducive to lift-off. And lately, since the AG has acquired some notoriety, it's difficult knowing what's really real. Making connections between points in the flickering balcony or a smelly cove prior to the downtown library fire, digging into Kierkegaard or was it Bakunin, at this juncture so new as to be treacherously dangerous. Post-pareunia Jade says: "You could have gotten me pregnant!" Mayo's anarchistic and maffled reply, "Not with philosophy."
Mayo wonders if the rumors he's been hearing about Dade are true: living on the road, divorced from his Indonesian wife and thus converted back from Islam to African high life, one leg gone from gangrene, supporting both himself and his very special-ed daughter, omnivoric and nearly getting by without a head, living in Tarfu.
People have gotten much angrier in L.A. Some attribute it to the combination of AG resonancy factors and water fluoridation. At a thousand per they're screaming and gesticulating with one hand in an agitated fashion and turning the steering wheel with the other while grunting, "I'm not going fast enough!" The jump from a petrol- or fluid-based fuel to an AG vehicle still depends on one's economic solvency, thus permitting people, as always, to rationalize their irrational rage by pointing to the unequal distribution of wealth in a capitalist society.
AG is still unable to cure cancer. Mayo, hired once again as a coffee pusher, gets free massages from Millie, one of the owners of the coffeehouse. Every other worker is a heroin addict and extremely temperamental, making Mayo almost normal in comparison. Millie says, "Thinking can make you heal." He gives a grunt of acknowledgment, knowing full well that he's already visited this as Harry had been a hobbyist in ESP and the power of mind over matter. Mayo's disbelief has been instilled by a bevy of data showing guesswork was at the helm. No lamps had ever been moved, in Mayo's experience, without being physically touched or occasionally thrown. But, for Millie, he whispered the affirmation over and over like a subtle supplication while thinking to himself, "Oh, sure, I'm somebody. You can see my name written there between the tiles above the urinal."
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