Ridin' the Slipstreams

 

I am so gloriously high right now as I scratch out these silly little syllables. My mind has so many things to say, so many ways to go. It's hard to pick a direction. I've decide to shit-can the stuff I already hammered out & start again.  I want to touch on my travels but that wound is still too painful. I just want to play some musick. I took the tincture before deciding to add the RSO so the dosage is over the top. I'm flipping between dimensions as fast as Buckaroo Bonzai...

Heading East

I have traversed this continent many times in the past. Most often when I was younger. Driving, busing, flying, & hitchhiking. In fact the last time I hitched, I decided I had done the cross-country shuffle so often that I hitched up to Seattle, caught the Frazier River Canyon train as far as Banff, Alberta, hitched across Canada to Toronto, grabbed a Greyhound into Buffalo, then hitched southward to Hicksville, USA.

As I've aged I've became more & more sedentary, traveling less & less, mostly for family events or emergencies, birth or death. I guess I had lost touch with the whole process until we decided to displace ourselves & move back to my birthplace.

Fantastic Four - Alvin Stone (The Birth & Death of a Gangster), Westbound Records W-201, 1975.
all decryption codes in comments

Side 1 -
Alvin Stone (The Birth & Death of a Gangster)
Have a Little Mercy
Country Line

Side 2 -
Let This Moment Last Forever
Words
My Love Won't Stop at Nothing

I chose Interstate 80 as the most direct & expeditious route. I knew from past experience that it's not the most scenic of routes, but little did I know that it is now primarily a trucking highway. Private vehicles are outnumbered by 18 wheelers about 100 to 1. Our journey became mad dashes between vegan restaurants & modernized roadside rest stops.

 

 

The biggest surprise was finding the Sweet Melissa Restaurant, 213 S 1st Street, Laramie Wyoming. Not only was this a world-shaking surprise in cowboy hat/six-shooter wearing Wyoming, but also it is one of the best restaurants I've ever eaten at, & that's high praise from a Cali veg-head.

 

In honor of this superb find & special occasion, I'm posting up something relatively new, but the one piece of musick that helped me the very most on my journey, like Sweet Melissa Restaurant & Sweet Mary Jane.

Denise Sherwood - This Road, Evergreen Recordings EVER110CD, 2020.

Music Shall Live (featuring Lee 'Scratch' Perry)
Let Me In
Amnesia Moon
Sweet Mary Jane
Ghost Heart
Fairy Tales
Uncertain Times
Sunny Days
Won't Bow Down
Toughen Up
Sweet Love

 

The most fun we had aside from eating was playing a variety game we made up visiting the deluge of rest stops along I-80 (ya have to stay hydrated, but if ya do, then ya gotta stop a lot...it's a fine line).

 

Nebraska has rest areas.

 

Indiana I-80 is a toll-road. They don't want you to have to get off & on paying needless tolls, theirs are travel plazas with gas & food thrown in.

 

The most unbelievable were the Iowa art-walk rest stops. They have tiled bathrooms & art galore.

 

Here's art galore from On-U Sound founder, mix-master, & daddy...

Adrian Sherwood - Resistance Mix, On-U Sound 2012.

Two Semitones & a Raver – Adrian Sherwood
Swish – Pinch/Sherwood (featuring Andy Fairley)
Where's My Money – Caspa
Garrison Town – Mustakillah Sound, United Forces of Dub (featuring Ghetto Priest)
Revolution – Congo Natty
Greenleaves- Adrian Sherwood
Immigrants – Adrian Sherwood
Run Them Away – Pinch/Sherwood (featuring Bim Sherman)
Skies over Cairo – Django Django
God Smiled – Lee Perry
We Flick the Switch – Adrian Sherwood (featuring Lilli)
Mash-up 1 – MC Hippo (featuring Mikey Dread & Big Youth)
Mash-up 2 – featuring Brother Culture & Prince Far I
Take Heed – Prince Far I
Ghettolgy – Pinch/Sherwood (featuring Junior Delgado)
Microchip – Congo Natty
New Beginning – Congo Natty

 

Little did I know that time zones are time portals. I always thought that as I traveled east through the various zones I lost an hour each. I hadn't realized that I went backwards in years as well. I am now living at least twenty years in the west coast past. It is a very temporally disorienting adjustment, not all bad, mind you, but very, very strange. They are just coming into the twenty-first century in many ways. It's taken quite a bit of adjustment & a great deal of online ordering just to keep in vegan basics. It has caused us to begin making our own vegan cheez & plant-based meat substitutes (as well as breads, tortillas, pickled veggies, nut butters, & many more of our staples). So as I said, not all bad, just strange.

One of many On-U Sound releases that soothed the pains...

Charlie 'Eskimo' Fox - Nattorius-Alter Riddim, On-U Sound ON-U CD 0089, 2004.

Changes
Nuclear Zulu
This Man Pt 1
This Man Pt 2
Its Not so Easy
In a Vision
Wipe Your Tears
Natty Farmyard
Who Could it Be?
Sweet Memories
Down Hail

For me, as is my usual, musick was the one thing that kept me from completely losing it. I listened to music as I drove, before & while falling asleep, just about 24-7. Here is some of the things that lifted my spirits. Hope the do yours as well...

Watching the landscape (with serpents)...

Minóy – Landscape with Serpent, Minóy Cassetteworks, 1987

Side A -
Stalker

Side B -
Landscape with Serpent

 

Change of scenery...change of pace...

 

Delroy 'Bitty' McLean w/ Sly & Robbie - Love Restart, Taxi SRCD002, 2018.

Take My Heart (Love Restart)
I've Found Someone
Babylon Has Fallen
Open Eyes
Is That Your Reward?
Song of Songs
Broke My Heart
Every Word & Move
War is Over
My Call
Made to Fall in Love

 

Can’t pick up anything on the short-wave but Oldies...

 

The Pop Group - Live Stuff 1980, various venues.

a. Shake the Foundations (featuring Ari Up)

Alexandra Palace, London, England, June 16, 1980

b1. Feed the Hungry
b2. Hotter than 1000 Suns
b3. Liberty City
b4. Work Work Work

Tavastia, Helsinki, Finland, August 15, 1980

c. There are No Spectators

Koln, Germany, February 5, 1980

d1. Thief of Fire
d2. Forces of Oppression

Odissea 2001, Milan, Italy, April 25, 1980

 

"I never drink water because of the disgusting things that fish do in it." W. C. Fields 

Royal Treatment Plant - Hope is Not Enough, Universal RTP005, 2008.

Hope is Not Enough
Half as Much
Get Played
Undercurrent
Hearts & Minds
Crack Whore
You Don’t Need Me
Pricey

 

Almost deliverance...

 

Revolutionary Dub Warriors - State of Evolution, On-U Sound ON-U CD 83, 1996.

 

Irie Warrior
Iration
Direct Action
Creation
Oppressor
Rough Dub
Sorrow Go
No Reservation
War Zone
Antelopean
Chi

 

I also listened to hours upon hours of Hours of Slack. Here's an hour for you:

Church of the SubGenius - Subversion Special, 1986.

The Word of "Bob," via Philo Drummond, Ivan Stang, the late Dr. X (Lamont Duvoe), Puzzling Evidence, Buck Naked, G Gordon Gordon, Glassmadness, F. LeMur, Rev. Norel Pref, DK Jones

The Church of the SubGenius Radio Ministry seeks to brainwash you totally into abject lifelong subservience to The High Epopt and Living SlackMaster, J. R. "Bob" Dobbs, 

 

BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY.

Slack to all...

I've quoted the rest elsewhere elsewhen so here's today's lesson:

"How I wish, 

how I wish you were here.
We're just two lost souls 

swimming in a fish bowl year after year.
Running over the same old ground, 

what have we found?
The same old fears - - -"

Wish you were here,
NØ