How to be Just Like Me.

I get that request all the time. People come up to me after shows, or in the shower, and say "Beau, how can I be just like you?" Most of the time, I'm just unable to sum it up in a simple 3-hour answer for these people. But I think I'm able to sum it up pretty simply.

1. Wear the cheapest fugliest shades you can buy for less than $6.See, there's a difference between cheap shades and expensive shades that LOOK cheap in a "haha hey look at me I'm slummin!" way. Start at Target. If the shades have a big $5.99! sticker on them, those are the ones. Don't think, just buy.

2. Dunkin Donuts Coffee. Fuck starbucks or any other shee-shee snotty west-valley panamanian morning blend bullshit. Get the Dunkin Donuts coffee or fuck it.

3. Cuss so much that people just give up asking you to stop. I'm talking borderline tourettes. Use it as every adjective. Fucking can mean positive or negative: 'that guy's a fucking asshole', 'she is fucking hot as fucking hell'. See what I mean. Shit and goddamn are close but use fucking more than any other word in your vocabulary. Fucking seriously

4. Worship Prince, the Stones, INXS, BB King, Chuck Berry, Muddy Waters, Erasure, Yaz, Casey Finch and oh fuck just anybody who can write a song with four-on-the-floor kickdrum. That's all you need. Four on the floor, the pentatonic scale and a swing beat like a hooker doubling up on two guys. You're welcome for that visual

5. Lastly. Multi-multitask. I mean, do several things at once in several compltely unrelated areas. Music: write and record a CD while booking and promoting gigs while trying to remember who the fuck you booked for which gig, while raising boys and nurturing a healthy loving marriage with all the commitment you can muster, while writing a book or two, while designing websites for 4 people. I mean motherfucking jesus christ what does it take for me to let go. I give my A.D.D. a run for it's money. As long as I'm going to have a short attention span, what the fuck let's dance little sister

I think that sums me up. Sure there's the childhood rearing requirements like dance the line between broke and rich as a child, religious and atheist and agnostic, get very involved in Boy Scouts and Youth Groups at church...

Star Bar: added to bars I hate.

Before you go off on me for bitching about a great bar and all that shit, I hate them because they won't book my band. Now, I REALIZE that my music would go over there as good as maybe Barry Manilow, but you know - I like to think that my music is accessible anywhere and everywhere. But Star Bar fuckers seem to think they know their crowd better than I do. How could that possibly be the case when I've been in there every single night from 4/23/97 to 4/24/97. Hell I KNOW their crowd.

So okay no I don't hate them. I hate that I am old and not the cool hepcat I wish I was. I wish I was accessible to all people in all genres and anybody and everybody loved me. You know, like that other artist that every genre adopts as their own. Um. That guy. Uh. Oh fuck you... what, now you work at the star bar too?

I have left this blog alone for a long time and gone back to blabbing constantly on myspace. But fuck that. I'm going to go back to posting the introspective, less than PR-related shit here and just post blogs about upcoming shows and fucking bars that love me.

And tell me this. How exactly is funk just not the greatest damn genre in the world? How is it that I have picked a genre that is (a) fucking outdated and (b) barely anybody acknowledges an appreciation for it? How is this? I must look just like the dreaded 40-yr-old hippies I knew in the 80s - I would look at them and think "jesus christ wake up. your movement is over. join the now".

And now, I'm in the then. That fucking sucks. I want to be in the next. Not the now or the then, but the next. And I keep listening to music, and some band will come along - Maroon 5, Jamiraquai, Chili Peppers (back before they became horrible), and I think "ah, here it comes, finally, the trend for music that you can dance to is coming back, and people will dance again and I will be on the Goddamned Cutting Edge FINALLY" and then, hahaha the jokes on me fuck you go home.

But I don't get it. Star Bar has hosted Romeo Cologne's Disco Hell for a decade. And two decades ago that fucker was spinning at Colorbox and my childhood friend was his understudy, who then took it over and took it to Velvet, and then to other clubs. The danceclubs STILL have successful disco nights. Fuck - that damn club on Ponce - the Clermont Lounge - shit they play that shit EVERY WEEKEND and people love to jam to the old shit. So why doesn't that crowd love to jam to new bands that play the same kind of grooves? And dress up and get funky and shit. I don't know. I am at a loss.

And okay lets go a step farther down the damn I am frustrated whats the point alley.

Promotion. I blow ice cold clam chowder at promoting. I can put on a hell of a show, but I lack the drive or motivation or foresight to promote something far off in the distant future. Like next week. I'm supposed to put up posters and flyers and shit at the bar for the ONE bar that believes in my idea, and I have dropped the ball. And tonight, I SHOULD drag my ass down there but I probably wont. I'll get home, put up my feet, entertain the boys, get them to bed, sit down and Fuck All Plans.

So then, you would argue, "well just get up and DO IT!!!!" fuck you. You don't have a wife in miserable pain and depression. You don't have this and that. Okay I don't know what it is. I am tired. That's what it is. I am tired.

Hmm. So maybe this music thing isn't really my game anymore. maybe I SHOULD just let these next three gigs be the quiet death of my career. Jesus how can I keep going with this kind of chipper attitude.

Great. now I'm quitting everything instead of bitching about the Star Bar. Thanks Star Bar fuckers for making me give up everything.

Oh I kid. I won't give up, I'm just being dramatic.