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model better geared to leverage social networks, we are
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You can also follow us on
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ABOUT RAR: For those of
you new to this site, "RAR" is Rick Alan Rice, the publisher
of the RARWRITER Publishing Group websites.
Use this link to visit the
RAR music page, which features original music
compositions and other.
ATWOOD - "A Toiler's Weird Odyssey of Deliverance"-AVAILABLE
NOW FOR KINDLE (INCLUDING KINDLE COMPUTER APPS) FROM
AMAZON.COM.Use
this link.
CCJ Publisher Rick Alan Rice dissects
the building of America in a trilogy of novels
collectively called ATWOOD. Book One explores
the development of the American West through the
lens of public policy, land planning, municipal
development, and governance as it played out in one
of the new counties of Kansas in the latter half of
the 19th Century. The novel focuses on the religious
and cultural traditions that imbued the American
Midwest with a special character that continues to
have a profound effect on American politics to this
day. Book One creates an understanding about
America's cultural foundations that is further
explored in books two and three that further trace
the historical-cultural-spiritual development of one
isolated county on the Great Plains that stands as
an icon in the development of a certain brand of
American character. That's the serious stuff viewed
from high altitude. The story itself gets down and
dirty with the supernatural, which inATWOOD
- A Toiler's Weird Odyssey of Deliverance is the
outfall of misfires in human interactions, from the
monumental to the sublime.The
book features the epic poem"The
Toiler"as
well as artwork by New Mexico artist Richard
Padilla.
Elmore Leonard
Meets Larry McMurtry
Western Crime
Novel
I am offering another
novel through Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing service.
Cooksin is the story of a criminal syndicate that sets its
sights on a ranching/farming community in Weld County, Colorado,
1950. The perpetrators of the criminal enterprise steal farm
equipment, slaughter cattle, and rob the personal property of
individuals whose assets have been inventoried in advance and
distributed through a vast system of illegal commerce.
It is a ripping good yarn, filled
with suspense and intrigue. This was designed intentionally to
pay homage to the type of creative works being produced in 1950,
when the story is set. Richard Padilla
has done his usually brilliant work in capturing the look and feel of
a certain type of crime fiction being produced in that era. The
whole thing has the feel of those black & white films you see on
Turner Movie Classics, and the writing will remind you a little
of Elmore Leonard, whose earliest works were westerns.
Use this link.
EXPLORE THE KINDLE
BOOK LIBRARY
If you have not explored the books
available from Amazon.com's Kindle Publishing
division you would do yourself a favor to do so. You
will find classic literature there, as well as tons
of privately published books of every kind. A lot of
it is awful, like a lot of traditionally published
books are awful, but some are truly classics. You
can get the entire collection of Shakespeare's works
for two bucks.
Amazon is the largest,
but far from the only digital publisher. You can
find similar treasure troves at
NOOK
Press(the
Barnes & Noble site),Lulu,
and others.
ARTIST NEWS
What
Was I Thinking?
The Greatest Story Ever Told
One day, in the
not too distant future, scientists and archaeologists will look back on
20th and 21st century mankind, and our achievements, and if there is any
factual history left to be salvaged and deciphered, they will see that
we were a species under the influence. We were doped with information
and misinformation and mind-altering drugs and led to pursue answers to
questions that were not even our own.
People have probably known how to manipulate others
for as long as humans have existed, but the manipulations that have
steered the course of man over the last one hundred-plus years have
elevated the form. Much of it can be traced to those two relatives
pictured, the father of psychoanalysis Sigmund
Freud, and his nephew, and father of public relations,
Edward Bernays. Sigmund found the keys to
unlocking the human mind, and Bernays used those keys to influence
peoples' behaviors, particularly their impulses to perceive value in
things that may not have been what they were advertised as being.
They weren't alone. Walter
Lippmann wrote in the 1920s about the use of media to steer the
ignorant masses. Behaviorist B.F. Skinner
added a rewards-and-punishment conditioning component. And all of these
breakthroughs in controlling the thoughts of others became the subject
of research done by a non-profit group called the
Tavistock Institute of Human Relations. They studied World War II
trauma victims and developed additional breakthrough understandings of
associative disorder, or split personality, as well as how to reassemble
broken minds. Connected through their war efforts to the British
military, they soon expanded, with the help of funding from the
Rockefeller Foundation, burrowing into
Britain's National Health System, and from there branching out to a
wide-ranging research and consultancy with close ties to conservative
political think tanks, Stanford and other prestigious research
universities, and military intelligence groups.
There seems to be a dawning awareness among the Baby
Boomer generation that the social revolution we thought we owned may, in
fact, have owned us. The proof is in the natural association many of us
have felt for the rallying cry of "Sex, Drugs and Rock'n Roll". But
where did that come from, and why does it, and other memes in society,
resonate so? And has it proven to be an association that has been of
benefit to society as a whole?
Is it possible that the pop culture, with which we all have so
closely associated, has been and continues to be a control device? This
edition, we explore that in two special feature pages:
Are you aware of reports of
"earthquake lights", in which orbs of light appear before an earthquake?
More than just weird phenomena,
Earthquake Lights is also an indie-rock
group in New York City. Their lineup - on keys and singing lead,
Myles Rodenhouse; the drummer,
Stephen Helms; playing electric
bass, James DiGorlamo; on rhythm
guitar and backing vocals, Cam Underhill;
and on lead guitar, Evan Douaihy -
all met as college music students. In 2011 they began playing clubs
around NYC, showcasing original material that is a hybrid of Jazz, Rock,
and R&B, though with the song in this video they are well into coffee
house balladry. The video is nicely done and probably makes the song
feel more intriguing. You might keep an eye on this band, which seems to
have marketing savvy, having licensed one track from their "Bangups &
Hangups" release to NBA-sponsored watch maker Tissot and another for the
soundtrack of the TV series "Edge of Eighteen", which airs on Al Jazeera.
Music Highs
American Government Drug Running
There was a global
survey recently that found that the United States is considered the
greatest threat to peace in the world. The Pew Research Center has
repeated this poll of people around the globe over the last decade, and
the findings are that 65 percent of respondents consider the U.S. to be
the world's largest terrorist organization, measured in terms of the
fear it inspires.
Part of what makes the U.S. a villain in the world is
the extent to which U.S. black operations have engaged in a
multi-faceted drug trade to fund rebel organizations, as with Iran-Contra, and
with the CIA's involvement in distributing mind-altering drugs to
targeted groups. Crack-cocaine was distributed to America's inner
cities. In recent years, stories have surfaced linking intelligence
communities to the LSD that flooded America in 1967. In a variety of
ways, these operations destabilize countries and create enemies.
The name of recently deceased former president
George H.W. Bush comes up in all of these stories. According to a 1988
Rolling Stone article, as Vice-President during the Reagan
administration, Bush ran the Iran-Contra operation, which used cocaine
sales to fund the Sandinista rebels in Nicaragua. Cocaine was being
flown into an airstrip in Mena, Arkansas, where Bush worked with his
presidential successor, then-Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton, to manage
the secret program's logistics. This was the subject of the recent Tom
Cruise movie "American Made", about CIA pilot
Bobby Seal.
George W. Bush would later reignite the opium trade
out of Afghanistan, through military invasion and overthrown of the
Taliban, which contributed to a wide-ranging opioid
crisis.
Recently the targeting seems to be on country music fans,
with rumors that the big country music festivals are being used to
distribute drugs to that segment of society the way festivals in the
1960s were used to introduce marijuana and LSD to rock music fans. A
recent Rolling Stone story reported on an Addiction.com study of
"more than a million songs collected from the Songmeanings API database"
to determine which genres of popular music have the highest frequency of
drug references in song lyrics.
The country folk
win, hands down, with an average of 1.6 drug references per song.
Rappers, on the other hand, are the "cleanest" artists, with less than 1
drug reference per song, possibly defying general perception.
On the other hand, what does it say about pop music
that, statistically, every song we hear references drugs? And have you
ever noticed the number of rehab centers located in Branson,
Missouri? Selling and cleaning up after drugs is a lucrative concern.
Luther
Russell Channels Chilton
For reasons not totally clear to
me, the Memphis band Big Star has
influenced many bands over the years. That was the
Alex Chilton project that, based on his
teenaged success with The Box Tops ("The Letter"), represented big
promise that never really went anywhere. L.A. producer-songwriter
Luther Russell has leveraged Chilton's
approach to music, and has probably had a little better success with his
approach to his career. He is set to release his sixth album, along with
a 7" single. (We used to call those 45s, back when "The Letter" first
landed.} “With these songs, I thought I could maybe capture the essence
of growing up in the San Fernando Valley during the heyday of rock ’n’
roll radio,” Russell told an interviewer. You may want to check out his
soon-to-be-released "Medium Cool" to get in on some of those retro
moments.
Vikings Don't Stream
Jay-Z's Tidal Targeted in Norwegian Courts
For
those of us who just don't believe any of the numbers coming out of
modern music stat machines, the legal woes gathering around Jay-Z's
Tidal streaming service seem like the proverbial smoking stack of
streaming shit.
According to a January 14, 2019 story in The Telegraph
U.K. - "Tidal has come under investigation by Økokrim, the Norwegian
police’s economic crime unit. The investigation was confirmed in an
interview with Økokrim’s chief public prosecutor Elisabeth Harbo-Lervik
by the Dagens Næringsliv newspaper in Norway."
Investigators allege that at least 320 million fake
streams have been identified in the Tidal database. Back those numbers
out and it begins to look like what seems obvious: next to no one is
listening to, let alone buying, the steam Tidal is "streaming".
Old, Weird, Pretty Cool
The Flesh Eaters Channel The Doors
The L.A. rock collective The
Flesh Eaters has scored a Billboard chart hit with their
album, I Used to Be Pretty, debuting at number 11. That isn't bad
for a bunch of dinosaurs who first joined forces in 1977, headlining at
a club called the Masque. Remember Poe's "The Masque of the Red Death"?
The Flesh Eaters were perfect for that kind of fringe provocation.
In fact, The Flesh Eaters, original lineup back in
formation, consists of a bunch of individuals who, after their early
stints with the band, went on to big things. This is
Dave Alvin (guitar) and
Bill Bateman (drums) of The
Blasters; John Doe (bass) and
D.J. Bonebrake (marimba and
percussion) of X; and Steve Berlin
(saxophones) of The Plugz (and later the Blasters and Los Lobos).
Holding it all together is the creative force of vocalist and songwriter
Chris Desjardins, who goes by
Chris D. In this video, the band
vacillates between sounding like the band "X", which has a certain
garage appeal, and sounding almost uncannily like a channeling of Jim
Morrison.
The Flesh Eaters are touring in the coming months and
I'm sure they will provide a special entertainment experience.
- RAR
Fake on Facebook
According to a
New York Times story, Facebook takes down 7.7 million fake accounts
every day, and supposedly took down 754 million fake accounts in the
third quarter of 2018 alone.
Mallory is of the elite class, and has
gone to elite schools and been a denizen of the publishing industry for
a decade, during which he developed a reputation as an engaging charmer,
a narcissist, and an extraordinarily manipulative liar. Or at least that
is the way he is described in the New Yorker piece.
The investigative reporter leaves one
with the impression that everyone in the industry knows that Mallory is
an imaginative nutcase, so why do they continue to enable him?
The article does not really answer that
question, beyond suggesting that Mallory's penchant for turning earlier
ideas into his own feel dangerous. They envision Mallory coming after
them with an oar, like his role model, The Talented Mr. Ripley.
Yesterday Mallory held a press
conference to admit that he lied about the various maladies and diseases
he claimed to elicit sympathy, and said it was all born from his
depressed condition. A psychiatrist immediately offered that Mallory was
lying about that, too.
The CCJ at RARWRITER provides a steady stream of news
feeds from a variety of sources. Use this link to visit the
Music News page.
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Rob Beck, a writer for
Beginner Guitar HQ, put together this insightful guide on
selecting a digital piano or keyboard.
Use this
link or click on the photo above to go to
How to Choose a Digital Piano
– 10 Factors to Consider According to Science
What
Was I Thinking?
People have probably known how to manipulate others
for as long as humans have existed, but the manipulations that have
steered the course of man over the last one hundred-plus years have
elevated the form. Much of it can be traced to those two relatives
pictured, the father of psychoanalysis Sigmund
Freud, and his nephew, and father of public relations,
Edward Bernays. Sigmund found the keys to
unlocking the human mind, and Bernays used those keys to influence
peoples' behaviors, particularly their impulses to perceive value in
things that may not have been what they were advertised as being.
