Dizzy O'Brian

A Quote from Bertolt Brecht “Art is not a mirror held up to reality
 but a hammer with which to shape it.” Brecht is a writer who lived through the first two world wars. He lived through much change and upheaval of society and was an outspoken critic of much that was going on. He is probably chiefly known for the Threepenny Opera, a play with music that he collaborated on with Kurt Weill. Probably not as well known is the fact that he wrote ‘The Alabama Song,’ which was part of the play with music called ‘Little   Mahagonny.’ The song itself is quite well known as The Doors and Bowie did very excellent covers of it. “Well, show me the way To the next whisky bar Oh, don't ask why Oh, don't ask why Show me the way To the next whisky bar Oh, don't ask why Oh, don't ask why For if we don't find The next whisky bar I tell you we must die I tell you we must die I tell you, I tell you I tell you we must die Oh, moon of Alabama We now must sa...

That Godless Arch-Scoundrel Voltaire-No Education is Complete Without Him I believe it was Mozart who called Voltaire ‘that godless arch-scoundrel,’ which I always thought was kind of funny. Funny in the sense of ‘ha, ha’ funny and funny in the sense of odd, as in the kettle calling the pot black. I never knew too much about Voltaire except that my violin teacher in music school made me read Candide my first semester there, probably to take some of my ‘California Mellow’ off. I found it an amusing book although, yeah, relentlessly cynical with the hero’s nose even falling off towards the end. I read somewhere that Mozart had a friend who was dying and his nose had fallen off as well.  Evidently there was a widespread nose falling off problem back in the day. And then, of course, there was dear old Mozart only living to thirty-four or whatever. The crux of the book was, ‘everything is well and good in the best of all possible worlds.’   This was supposedly the mantra...

The Night we opened for Hunter S. Thompson So I was playing in this minimalist group out of Cal State Fullerton. I wrote about this particular group in a previous post . Anyway, we got chosen to open for Hunter S. Thompson at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano.  This is a famous club and literally everyone has played there. I have no idea if we were randomly picked or if Hunter himself picked us out of a bunch of demo tapes that bands submit to these places. There was a delay in the initial performance date as Hunter had a minor accident falling off of his riding mower. (Driving drunk, I suspect.) Well the show finally materialized and we got up and played our set. Between our set and Hunter’s appearance, a friend of mine and I decided to go out to the parking lot and get high, as befitting such an auspicious occasion. I had a bowl loaded up and, no sooner did I light it, than The Man pulls up and asks what we are doing. I had the pipe in my pocket, still smoking. ...