traveling the world for rock-n-roll

2011-11-13T03:47:00.014+01:00

This blog has always been called "traveling the world for rock-n-roll", but sometimes I feel like I'm writing more about traveling than rock-n-roll. And it seems a lot of people feel the same way, because I get a lot of questions along the lines of "So, when are you going to get back to playing music again?" And I gotta say, this always kind of trips me out. What do you mean, get back to playing music? I've never stopped! Truth is, no matter where I go, I'll take a guitar with me. So I'm always singing songs or jamming with people. Music is a part of my daily life. Like eating, sleeping and drinking tea. It's ingrained in everything I do, and through which I see the world.

So last week I started digging through my archives and found that I actually have a bunch of footage of me playing music all throughout last year, when I was travelling through Russia, Mongolia and China. But I'm still not sure what to do with it... should I edit it along with travel footage into little 3-5 minute videos, or should I just post bite-sized clips? Or maybe do both... I don't know. Anyway, I'm still figuring that one out. But I do have some more recent footage from Taiwan that I already put on youtube - which is' actually where this whole idea came from in the first place.

Part One - Tabla in Taipei

Last month we went up to Taipei for the weekend of 10/10 - which is when the Republic of Taiwan celebrated it's 100 year anniversary. In keeping with our traveler's spirit, we decided to couchsurf instead of staying at a hostel. I try to avoid hostels as much as possible. CouchSurfing is great, because you get to meet local people who take you off the beaten tourist track. You get to experience a place from the inside, with the locals . Our CS Host in Taipei was Pei-Ling, a Musicology major with a passion for ethnic music. We had many great conversations about music, culture and traveling - and she made us simple, wonderful breakfast every morning. Not the standard Taiwanese fare, but still very Asian. That's a compliment - I liked it a lot! On top of all that, she took us to the Asian Pacific Ethnic Music Festival. We saw a music and dance ensemble from Thailand and a classical Indian/Pakistani band complete with Vocals, Sitar, Flute and two Tabla players - it was great! As a matter of fact, Pei-Ling plays Tabla herself. Has been for 4 years now, I think. So when we got home she got behind the tabla and we jammed together. Check it out on youtube. I'm very grateful for her hospitality and had a great time hanging out. I looking forward to playing with her again.

Part Two - Motorhead

So what else has been going on in terms of rock-n-roll? Well, lately I've been going to this place out in Dakeng, near Taichung (where I live), called the Refuge. It's a community of musicians and artists - both foreign and Taiwanese - where people hang out and jam. First time I went down, a couple of weeks ago, I got up and played a few songs and then ended up jamming with people for the next 3 hours. But the first thing I played was a Motorhead song, called "Keep us on the road"

Part Three - Jazz and the Holy Ghost

Last month Taichung also hosted the biggest Jazz festival in Taiwan. It was free, held in a park downtown, and lasted for about two weeks - with live music every night. I was really exited when I found out McCoy Tyner would be closing the festival and looked forward to that for weeks.

For those of you don't know, McCoy Tyner was John Coltrane's piano player in the 1960's, and was with him all throughout what is known as the "Classic Coltrane Quartet"-era. So he's not a young dude anymore, he must be in his late 70's now, I think.

I remember the first time I heard him play, on a recording. I was 16 years old and I'd just met my friend Mark. I went over to his house and we talked about the music we both liked. Since we both met at a Brant Bjork gig, we obviously shared a love for bands like Kyuss, Jimi Hendrix, Thin Lizzy, etc. And we both played guitar. But then I found out he also played saxophone, and was really into Jazz as well. Grant Green, Miles Davis, John Coltrane - you know, the good stuff. I knew I liked Jazz, but hadn't yet gotten into it like I had with rock-n-roll. So he pulls out this John Coltrane record called "A Love Supreme", which features McCoy Tyner on piano, saying if I liked Jazz I should really get into this record. Then he puts it on the turntable, and the moment the needle hit wax and I heard the band play those first notes, I felt like I was seeing the pearly gates; heaven was opening itself up. Literally. It was like a religious experience. I cried. Later I found out that the record "A Love Supreme" is John Coltrane's tribute to God. And he wasn't religious, per-se. Just a deeply spiritual person.

So that's how I got into John Coltrane. And my favorite music Coltrane ever did was with McCoy Tyner - it's been close to my heart ever since. Unfortunately, 'Trane died in 1967, but McCoy Tyner still tours and performs, so I was really eager to check him out. I must admit, I was (and am still) not really familiar with Tyner's work after Coltrane, so I wasn't sure to expect. But I made a point to not go on youtube and see what he's like nowadays. I was gonna go there like with an empty cup. No expectations, just like the first time I heard "A Love Supreme".

The day finally came, and McCoy Tyner walked up on stage to a standing ovation. He slowly went over to the microphone and said - in a gentle old man's voice - "Xièxiè" (Chinese for thank you). Then he got behind the piano, and started playing. And I started crying - tears of joy. I saw those pearly gates again. It was beautiful. I was moved by this music like I hadn't been moved by music in years. It was like being stirred by the holy ghost. It reminded me of everything I believed in. That relentless search to keep growing, to "wake up a little higher every day", to better yourself as a human being - and all the struggles that come with that. I heard this music, and it was like coming home. I felt rejuvenated. But most of all I felt grateful. It reminds me of the last words of John Coltrane's liner notes for "A Love Supreme", so I'll end on that note because it best describes how I felt.

"Elation. Elegance. Exaltation. All from God. Thank you God. Amen."

2011-10-23T09:51:00.005+02:00

More new videos! Like I said last week, I was in Holland between August 23rd and September 9th. Brother Mark came out and played some saxophone. My sister was there and caught it all on film. She put together a nice video to a song me and Mark recorded that day, called 'The sayings of Layman Pang' - you can check it out here:

This is another example of a song I wrote based on a Chinese Poem. In this case, one by Layman Pang (龐居士 Páng Jūshì)

日日事無別 In my daily life there are no other tasks than
惟吾自偶諧 Those that happen to fall into my hands.
頭頭非取捨 Nothing I choose, nothing reject.
處處沒張乖 Nowhere is there ado, nowhere a slip.
朱紫誰爲號 I have no other sign of my glory than
邱山絶塵埃 The mountains and hills without a spec of dust.
神通並妙用 My magical power and spiritual practice is

運水及搬柴 Carrying water and gathering firewood.

Even though I didn't plan it this way, the song seems to fit video. There's no plot, really. It just another day in my life. Drinking tea, playing music, visiting my grandparents, buying vegetables and eating dinner.

But when I say "it's just another day in my life", I don't mean to say that it's random and insignificant. What I'm trying to get at is the same thing that Layman Pang was getting at. The fact that real peace of mind, "Zen" if you will, isn't found in being especially holy or spiritual at certain times or in a certain way, but that holiness pervades everything you do. From "carrying water and gathering firewood" all the way down to washing dishes and even taking a shit. It's all significant. Because if you can't find peace of mind doing the things that make up your every day life, where are you going to find it?

And at the same time, even though it's all significant, it's nothing special. There's nothing to brag about; it's just everyday life. That's what Pang means by "I have no other sign of my glory than the mountains and hills without a speck of dust"

Think about that for a little bit - I have to start cooking dinner now.

2011-10-11T13:53:00.017+02:00

好久不見！I've been in Taiwan since June - that's over four months now! Most of you probably know how and why I ended up here, but here's a brief recap for those who don't...

After traveling by train from Holland through Russia and Mongolia, I arrived in Beijing December 23rd, and have been in the so called 'Sinosphere' ever since. I really enjoyed my time in China, and it's made me want to learn more Chinese. But since they use simplified characters over there, I decided to come to Taiwan and learn the traditional ones. After some research and asking around, I signed up to study at Tunghai University (東海大學) in Taichung (台中), Taiwan's 3rd biggest city. I got here in the middle of summer, so dealing with the heat humidity has been a challenge to say the least! Though it's been a blessing in disguise; the heat forces me to stay inside for most of the day, allowing me to focus on my studies. That's a first for me, too - I never did study very hard when I was younger...

(Taichung's most famous landmark - the chapel at Tunghai University. It's supposed to represent two hands folded in prayer. What's also remarkable about its design is that it doesn't use any support pillars. Whether by strength of design, or by the grace of God, it has since survived many of Taiwan's frequent earthquakes)

When the 2-month summer semester ended in August I went back to Holland for a few weeks. I was happy to see my family again. My grandparents also happened to be celebrating their 50th anniversary on September 4th, and it was nice be back for that.

(Almost the entire family was present at my grandparent's 50 anniversary celebration. Some even flew out from Australia to be there!)

My good friend Mark came out and played a few songs with me at the party. Mark is a great musician in his own right, and spread a lot of good vibes that day playing soprano saxophone.

The next day my sister shot some film of us playing a few tunes. A few days ago I subtitled the first one, and put it up on Youtube. It's called 'No season is too much'

It's a song I wrote a few years ago when I was in India. Like a lot of my songs, it's based on a Chinese Zen poem. In this case one from the Wumenkai (無門開) that sort of goes like this:

春有百花秋有月
夏有涼風冬有雪
若無閑事挂心頭
更是人間好時節

Hundreds of flowers in the spring, the moon in the autumn,
A cool breeze in summer; and snow in winter;
If your mind is not clouded by unnecessary things
No season is too much for you

Besides the music lots more happened when I was back in Holland. I caught up with a couple of old friends (though not all of them, unfortunately) and visited some places I'd never been before. I felt like a tourist in my own country, seeing all these things for the very first time! I also found some new perspective on my connection to this land.

(Typical Dutch picture taken on a beautiful day at the 'Zaansche Schans' - it's one of those places all the tourists visit but the locals never see... or at least I never have! I'm glad my friend took me to see this place though, because it turned out to be among the highlights of my trip to Holland)

I've been back to Holland from time to time since I left to travel the world in 2005/2006, but for some reason this time was special. Visiting for such a short time opened up the door to experience things in a different light. It felt like I was on the outside looking in - not really actively participating in Dutch society, but sort of just passing through, quietly observing. Here I was, speaking the same language, yet it was as though I was coming from a different culture. I have often felt that way, coming from a small town in the southwest of Holland, quite a ways from the big cities. The culture that raised me was that of the sea, the clouds, the sand and the dunes. It was small town, countryside. There was always enough, but never more than you needed. These things taught me how to keep my cup empty, to always have some space left to learn. I don't think I realized all of this growing up, but in retrospect it seems to have been a big influence.

This short trip back to Holland has made me grateful for where I come from, and has helped me make some peace with a land where I was born but never felt at home. I still don't, but now it doesn't really matter anymore. I realize that 'home' isn't some place you find outside of yourself. 'Home' is where you feel at home, and you can only find that inside your own heart.

(the sea, the clouds, the sand and the dunes)

2011-04-01T07:22:00.016+02:00

i just checked. my last post was on november 23rd, more than four months ago! but it feels like i wrote it yesterday; those three months in china flew by like nothing. it was an amazing experience, and it feels like it'll take a while to wrap my head around it. lots of learning. i'm in macau right now, and have some free time on my hands to write about it, so here's a spiel on internet, postcards, people and communication:

in a lot of ways, china is much more modern than i think most people probably think it is. but some things are still very different. for example, access to websites like facebook, youtube and google's blogspot (which this 'log is hosted on, as well) is still restricted almost everywhere. ironicly, this seeming "restriction of freedom" actually felt very liberating to me. not having access to these places is the perfect excuse for keeping a low online profile. nowadays there's so many people using the internet as their main means of communication, that it can start to feel like an obligation to keep in touch that way... all-the-time. don't get me wrong, i'm all for progress and believe in staying in tune with the times - i like facebook, i have an iPhone4 - but i wanted to try a different approach. something a little bit more tangible, hands on. with all this virtual reality we have nowadays, it's easy to forget there's a real world out there! so i went back to basics: sending postcards.

(me five months ago, at the start of this trip. sending my first postcards from moscow)

why? well, even though sites like hotmail, yahoo and gmail work just fine in china, i usually still had to go out of my way to find an internet cafe. while these are cheap, they're also kind of dingy. filled with chain smoking, counterstrike playing chinese men - the smell of instant noodles permeates the air and a layer of ash covers every keyboard. you probably understand why i didn't want to be there a second longer than i had to.

(unfortunately, neither of us took any pictures of these dingy internet dungeons. but i didn't have to google long to find something that looked a lot like what we saw all over china!)

once i had access to facebook again i decided to post a message and have everyone send me their adress, so i could send them postcards. i think email is very convenient, but it's also kind of lame. no matter if the person who sent you the email is in china or right across the street from you, the email looks exactly the same. but when you get a postcard from a different land it's completely different every time. there's a strange language on it, different stamps, and an exotic picture of places you've probably never even seen. finding something like this in your real mailbox every once in a while can feel very special. kind of like getting a small present for christmas. that's how i've always felt, anyway. email just doesn't do the same for me. so now i send postcards, because i believe people are special. and communication between them special, too.

(a buddhist tablet at one of wutaishan's old buddhist temples, written in the four main languages of the time (qing dynasty) - tibetan, chinese, manchurian and mongolian)

2010-11-23T10:35:00.019+01:00

finally - a word from max! its been a while. those of you who follow me by email or on facebook probably have been keeping up with what's going on, but for those who haven't - here you go!

i finally set out for another trip about 7 weeks ago. but lots of things is different this time around - though its still a loosely (barely!) planned making-things-up-as-max-goes-along kind of trip!

i decided to hit the road together with my friend celeste and take the train from russia, through mongolia, on to china. for me its the first time traveling with company. but what makes it work is that her take on traveling is very similar to my own - so far it's been a beautiful experience.

(standing face to face with lenin in ulan-ude. neither of us smiled; it was "only" -27C ...)

during our 4 weeks in russia, we managed to see st petersburg, moscow, kazan, yekaterinburg, krasnoyarsk, irkutsk, lake baikal and ulan ude - spending about 2 or 3 days in each city. seeing sights, learning about the culture. reading the letters, but not understanding much of the language...! taking the train in russia is a great experience. rides from major city to major city are usually overnight and take about 12-18 hours - but you get your own bunk, a couple of sheets and a matress kind of like a futon. and there's unlimited hot water at your disposal for making tea, coffee, instant noodles or whatever you can thing of. very comfortable. and this is traveling 3rd class!

celeste introduced me to traveling using couchsurfing.org - i've had a profile on this website for years, but i never really used it. so we decided to try it in russia and i'm really glad we did. 's really opened up a whole part of russia we'd have otherwise missed out on. i wish i had time to go into details and talk about every single person who hosted us, but let me just say that it's been a very positive experience so far. they've all been really cool and interesting people!

we entered mongolia on november 29th and spent a few days in and around the country's capital ulan bataar, making plans for december. the next two weeks were spent in an old soviet minivan touring central and southern mongolia and the gobi desert. it was a mindblow. we had the kindest guide, a mongolian woman named tuul who cooked for us every day and helped us communicate with the local people. she was always in good spirits, and made a good team with our driver ulchi. he spoke no english, but because he lived in japan for 6 years and spoke japanese we were still able to communicate . his peaceful vibe and frequent belly laughs more than made up for the lack of english anyway!

(you'll find lots of these kind of heaps all over this land. mongolians revere the horse - when one dies, they put its head on one of these shamanistic piles. whenever people pass by one of these piles people will circle around it, pray and pay their respects)

during these two we weeks we slept in gers (the traditional nomadic housing, sort of like a big round felt tent with a stove inside), drank yak milk tea, rode camels and horses, weathered sandstorms, and braved the cold -37C mongolian nights. even the mongolian stomach bug that put us all out for the last couple of days didn't seem to matter in face of all the good times.

(her majesty the desert)

i love the desert, and the gobi is no exeption. i saw one of the most beautiful sunsets ive ever seen in my entire life. the picture doesn't quite do it justice...

(our soviet van and the gobi desert sunset)

so far, we've been spending about a month in each land - russia and mongolia usually issue 30 days visas. but when we got back from our trip and picked up our passports at the chinese embassy, we found a 90 days single entry visa inside, so you bet your bottom dollar than we're gonna make the most of that! going to china has been a long-time dream of mine, and i cant wait to immerse myself in speaking the language and get better at reading the characters. and of course, im looking forward to the best tea and vegetarian food in the world!

last but not least, ive been putting up videos of our travels on YouTube, so check up there every once in a while. ill post new videos pretty regular, whenever there's wifi.

anyway, enjoy the last few weeks of the old year. its been a good one!

-max-

2010-08-21T07:46:00.008+02:00

its been a while! a few weeks ago, my sister and her boyfriend shot a video for one of my songs. some of you have already seen it, but yesterday i put up the final edit, so please check it out! (go to youtube if you want to see it in HD)

it features my friend and long time collaborator mark heddema on tenor saxophone (and lead guitar) and heavy lord/cenobites guitar player wes lee as the lead acting hermit. we recorded this song in february of 2009, a few days before going out to new zealand/australia to play more gigs with the bros. but i actually wrote it about a month before that, when i was traveling through the nepal himalayas. i was reading "the golden age of zen" by john c. h. wu, which is probably one of the greatest introductions to chinese zen ever written. what amazed me is that even though its a book on zen "buddhism", mr wu himself, despite being chinese, is christian. and the (amazing) introduction was written by the christian trappist monk father thomas merton! i thought this was worth mentioning, because nowadays people seem so polarised and trapped in boxes. either muslim or christian. or buddhist or materialist, whatever. they seem to be more interested in looking for differences instead of commonalities. so it both highly ironic and inspiring to me that two christians from two very different cultures came together, in the early 60's no less, to write a book in praise of zen!

anyway, enough about that and more about the song. its called the sixth patriarch because i kind of stole the lyrics from a chinese text called the platform sutra. hui neng was the sixth master of zen in china and the platform sutra is basicly his teachings. the first chapter is his biography, and it is from there i took the three verses of this song. what has always facinated me about his story is that hui neng was an illiterate peasant from the south of china (those days in china, you basicly couldnt be of lower social standing than he was). yet in spite of his background, he went to the north to study with the fifth patriarch, who picked hui neng over all of his 500 (or 1000?) learned students to be his successor. why? because he thought hui neng had the best and most realistic understanding of life! he wasnt caught up with ideas of what life was like or should be, he was simply engaging life directly as it is. (for those interested, you can read more about hui neng over at wikipedia)

when i first read this story i was about 15, and i didnt have much of any context to put it in. but i really liked it. i'd always felt it was bullshit that intellect or being smart somehow makes people superior, even though that seems to be common thought in a lot of societies. to me hui neng demonstrated that what matters is not so much someone's words, but someone's action.

id continue to be inspired by hui neng's story so much, that 4 years later i wrote this song. ive always disliked overtly preachy and "spiritual" songs (and still my stomach turns a little bit every time i read, hear, write or say the word "spiritual"), so i tried to keep this one as ambiguous as possible. let people make up their own minds. and that was hui neng's attitude, too. im not here to tell you what to think, im just here to make you think!

2010-07-22T15:58:00.002+02:00

2010-07-04T14:43:00.011+02:00

as i was chopping vegetables this morning i had a whole bunch of interesting thoughts that i wanted to share here. but as it often goes, theyre now just a vague memory. i seem to remember the general train of thought though, so let me try and retrace it.

yesterday i started cleaning out my closet. because of all the traveling ive been doing over the last 5 years i was never home much. whenever i was, my method of cleaning was to put stuff in boxes and put those boxes away in the closet. all kinds of stuff. concert tickets, grocery receipts, letters and postcards, notebooks, broken pawn shop radios that i thought i might one day fix. in short, lots of things that bring back memories.

i finally started to sift through all these boxes. what i dont need anymore - which is the bulk of what's in these boxes - im throwing away. the receipts, broken speakers and radios, etc. im keeping just a few things. backstage passes of when i used to play in the bros, a postcard my grandma send me when her brother died, a concert ticket of when i saw the original black sabbath line-up in california back in 2004, etc.

ive always believed that the state of the space a person lives in is pretty much a direct reflection of their state of mind. and this experience of cleaning out all these boxes and throwing stuff away definitly confirms that, atleast for my self. letting go of some of these old memories. dealing with stuff id just been stashing away in the back of my mind. its pretty intense, being confronted with all this "shit"! but the good thing is, once you let go of the shit, things start getting clean. order reappears. and actually, you start to notice, order was always there. its just that its so hard to let go and see through the "shit"!

thats why i dont believe in discipline anymore. discipline is still holding on to something. true freedom comes from letting go. and thats scary, because discipline gives structure to our lives. it gives us something to hold on to. its there to protect us from things like temptation and other distractions. but if we're not careful, eventually, that very discipline can become the chain that binds us. thats why i think its important to eventually go beyond discipline. once you let go of a certain desire, it no longer has any power over you. it can neither tempt nor distract you.

for example, many people love sweets. they have to restrain themselves not to eat (too many) sweets, because theyre afraid they'll get fat or that their health will suffer or something like this. they have to discipline themselves not to eat (too many) sweets. but someone who doesnt like sweets wont even think about eating them. he wont need discipline to say no - because there's no temptation. there's nothing holding power over him.

its like this with many things in our life that we struggle with. you cant find peace through fighting, struggle. because any peace thats acquired through force isnt true peace. a lot of us have seen that this holds true for countries where peace is acquired through heavy military presence. such peace is extremely fragile. and i believe it holds true for ourselves and the "inner struggle" as well. you cant cure dissatisfaction with dissatisfaction - then youre just being dissatisfied about being dissatisfied! do you see the irony? similarly, you dont fight fire with fire, it will only spread further. instead, you use water. common sense, right!? yet we all know its so hard to do. its hard to respond kindly to anger. its hard to not take "an eye for an eye". but you know what, i think that's why they call it "practice". it takes time to get good at something. its like skateboarding. you fall? just get back up! the chinese have a saying of something along the lines of: "dont be afraid of slow growth, just be afraid of no growth".

i guess this is pretty close to what was going through my head this morning. the weather is beautiful today. i went outside and put some oil on my japanese geta (wooden sandals), cause the wood was getting dry. they look kind of trippy, but theyve done wonders for my knees by keeping my posture straight. slowly but surely, i seem to be recovering from the knee injuries i sustained in japan. all the metaphorical dust is starting to settle. the garden's going strong and healthy and after the shitstorm that was april/may 2010 im finally starting to get some perspective on where things are at for me in my life.

in the words of watt:
keep on keepin' on!

...and thats about all i have to say about that.

2010-05-26T08:48:00.007+02:00

as most of you probably know by now, im back from north carolina. for the time being, ill leave the future to the future (though im thinking about south korea and india) - but it looks like ill be spending another summer growing season here in holland. i just put in the broccoli, lettuce, radish and a couple of sunflowers this weekend and got a whole lot more seeds growing in the greenhouse right now. anyone up for bittermelon ;)?

you may have noticed im kind of updating the look of this blog, too. please bear w/ me while it's going through changes. i hope the ads aint too much of an eyesore. im kind of experimenting with that, hoping itll bring in a couple extra pesos. feedback and tips are always welcome and much appreciated, of course.

anyway, ill keep this post short and sweet. this way you can spend the rest of your time normally spent reading watching this video from north carolina. its me jamming on "touzan's sixty blows" - unplugged style - with scott savitt on drums and aaron on bass.

2010-05-07T10:57:00.008+02:00

i havent written anything here since i left antaiji, so here's what happened, in a nutshell. when i got back to osaka i started looking into going to korea and visiting some friends there. it turned out to be a little more expensive than i'd thought, especially being in osaka. and w/ all the health stuff been going on since i left india, i decided to just go to back to holland. eat good, get my health back together a little bit and plan my next move. so i bought a ticket home for as soon as i could, about a week from then. guess what? the next day a volcano erupted in iceland, knocking out all air traffic in and out of europe for many many days. a week later, when i was due to fly home, they still werent sure if i'd make it all the way back to europe that same day. but since i had a layover in malaysia, they decided to just let me go ahead and figure it out.

i ended up being stranded in malaysia for pert near a whole week! it wasnt bad. kinda nice actually, because it felt like something half way in between japan and india, in terms of people and culture. but japan had been kinda chilly, so coming to malaysia was quite a shock to the system! i held quite a bit of siesta, ill tell you that! because my flight had been cancelled, being in touch w/ the airlines and trying to get on a flight home took up quite a chunk of my time, preventing me from maybe seeing as much of malaysia as i'd liked. but there were a lot of chinese teashops in the area where i was staying, selling really nice pu'er teas. so once i found out about that, i spend quite a big chunk of my time hanging out there, drinking tea and learning more about the process. so all in all getting stranded ended up being quite enjoyable!

(a picture from the teahouse where i spent my last day in malaysia. very kind folks! i didn't take a lot of pictures, so sorry if this one's a little blurry)

2010-04-15T03:38:00.018+02:00

yesterday i left antaiji - after only 8 days. yeah, thats much sooner than my initial plan of staying three months! let me tell you what happened. a few days after i got to japan my knees got blue and swelled up real big, and i had trouble walking for a few days. it got better again after a few days, so i didnt think too much of it at the time...

ill tell you, antaiji was great. i really enjoyed working on the land - planting potatoes, moving trees and firewood, collecting rocks, sifting soil, polishing brass ornaments for the zen hall. i felt the work making me really strong. also getting up at 330 to do zazen (zen "meditation") wasnt so bad. it reminded me of when i lived with my chinese teacher wang in california - it wasnt much different from that.

the first sitting period was a little daunting at first - 60 minutes of continuous sitting before kinhin (walking meditation) - but it got 'easier' with time. after a while you kinda just lose track of time, because nothing really changes. there's just you and the blank wall. no sound, no sights, nothing. so you just sit there, and then sixty minutes doesnt feel all that different from thirty-five. i also enjoyed the group cleaning and taking formal meals, even though im usually quite clumsy with these things. i felt like i got a little better at them during my short stay, and hope to take some of it back into 'normal life'. but what is every single day but your normal life, anyway?

at antaiji they eat three full meals a day. breakfast and dinner consists of homegrown sticky japanese white rice, soup and 2 side dishes (usually something with potatoes, as they had a lot from last year's harvest still) - and lunch is noodles with some fried rice or leftovers for a sidedish. this is a whole lot more than i usually eat, and as some of you may know, i rarely eat most of these things because im not very good at digesting them. so you can imagine what happened eating them three times a day! my knees kept swelling up and became quite blue as an allergic reaction the the type and quantity of food, which in turn prevented me from sitting in a proper posture during zazen. no matter how i'd sit, it would put pressure on my knees, causing them to swell up and get inflamed even more. also, i started having frequent stomach cramps and stopped having proper bowel movements, so it quickly became quite problematic.

(as im typing this from an internet cafe in osaka, my bowels have returned to normal - but my knees are hurting more than ever. we'll see how it goes!)

at the same time, it felt great just being at antaiji, following the schedule along with all the other folks. they all really were such nice people. in the picture i put up along with these entry you can see two of the ordained monks living there. a russian guy named kuho and a japanese named daisen (大仙 - meaning "great hermit"). both were great friends to me and it was a pleasure working and hanging out with them. we had lengthy talks about practice, life, buddhism and work. things that stands out, for example, is playing beatles songs together with daisen by the campfire on a free day. or racing down the mountain with kuho-san in a beat up 4WD van with me behind the wheel, picking up logs for firewood! so making the decision to leave definitly wasnt easy. those 8 days felt like a month... maybe because we'd did a months worth of work/zazen!

the night before i decided to leave i had a great talk with the abott, the german monk muho. we talked about many things. i told him that what i liked about antaiji, is that it felt no different from my normal life at all. the things we did, were things i would do if i were living in holland right now. grow vegetables, do zazen. what i realised is that, atleast for me, its not so much doing A LOT of zazen that is important, its doing it EVERY DAY. that way it stops being some thing up in your head, or even something you do, but it starts to penetrate your entire being - becomes part of who your are. so this made me look at the pros and cons of staying at antaiji. and i saw that my knees werent getting any better, in fact worse - preventing me from being able to do the thing i came to antaiji for in the first place: zazen! so that very night i made the resolve to leave, and i announced it the next morning after lunch. people were quite shocked, and asked if everything was okay. i smiled and assured them everything was fine - i really was feeling good. so thank you alex, daisen, muho, koho, davide, oliver, gizela, ole, brigitte, jido and gabor! (i hope i didnt forget anyone there...!)

im glad thing happened the way they did. a big part of the reason of me coming to asia was to explore the possibility of becoming a monk. after leaving the bros i felt a little dissilusioned with touring and playing music, and wanted to live a simpler life. i went to sri lanka, but it didnt feel quite right to become a monk there. i went to india, but the same happened there. so then i felt drawn to japan, as i spoke the language and had a lot of affinity with the culture. but around the time i was about to leave india i started to realise i'd been fooling myself all along. what was i looking for? this is IT, this is my life. just right here, right now! there's nothing more than this! so all these questions of "what if?" just dissapeared. become a monk? what does that mean, anyway? does that mean wearing some sort of fancy robe and shaving your head, or does that mean fully living life right here, right now, without your personal bullshit - without fooling yourself!?

as soon as i realised this it became obvious that the only reason for me to stay at antaiji would because of pride - or fear of shame, actually. "what would people say if they found out i left after only 8 days? would they consider me weak? a loser? not strong enough to handle the tough life at antaiji?". but that all became irrelevant - who cares what other people might say? when i realised i could do what i was doing at antaiji - practicing zazen, fully living life - anywhere else in the world, i just couldnt help but keep smiling! i also started to see the work to be done. when your own doubts dissapear a new questions appears. "ok, so what do i do now?".

thats when it stops being about "you" and it starts becoming more like "ok, now how can i benifit other people most?" - "what do i do best, and how do i share that?". needless to say, music is one of the things that immediatly comes to mind. but whatever it will be, im no longer afraid to put in the work. i feel like i have to give back what i got. that sense of empowerment i got from people like brant bjork, all the DIY econo punk rockers. all the ancient zen masters of the past, for that matters. bodhidharma is a punk rocker in my book! and thats about all i have to say about that!

2010-04-05T07:26:00.004+02:00

I had a dream the other night, and when I woke up it was about 5 in the morning. It was quite a profound dream, so I decided to write it down. It was a very interesting experience, because it didnt feel like "I" was writing it. I was just listening to these words in my head and started putting them down in my iPhone. I havent edited anything, so maybe there's a few spelling mistakes here and there, but I hope you enjoy!

I came to this mountain village, with my cow. I was my age I'm now. The town was kind of like dharmshale except for maybe less indian, more asian. I met this man and he asked me who I was, where I came from and what my plans were. We got to talking and before long he invited me to his house down in the valley to have some tea. One of his relatives was a sage (lama) and his (deceaced?) grandmother was an emination of boundless compassion and the guardian spirit of the sacred cave behind their house. He took me down this gorge, and since their was no proper path, I decided to leave my cow behind to graze. At first I was a little anxious to do so. she had been my loyal companion and trusted friend for this recent journey. I was afraid I'd lose her, she might run. But then I thought, if I do try and take her down this gorge, she might slip and die. That would do neither of us any good. Or we might not find her anything to eat, since it's mostly just water, a lake, down in the valley. Shed get hungry and run from me. As all this ran through my mind we passed a little roadside rest stop. A much older woman was spinning her prayer wheel. She smiled at me and I noticed shed list all her teeth. But she was content. Her daughter was busy setting out vegetables on a tarp on the floor. They'd probably brought some of their surplus harvest here to sell, I thought. As I didn't know their language, with some guestures I asked the old lady if it was ok for my cow to graze near the tree. I promised to tie her up so she wouldn't eat her vegetables. She smiled and waved and in broken English said: ok, ok! No problem! So I took my cow down to the tree. I pulled a rope out of my satchel and tied her to the tree. I gave her plenty of slack. Just enough to roam freely without being to get over to the old lady and eat all their vegetables!

At this point we met up with the mans relative, the lama (sage). The man told me to talk with him. He'd run down ahead of us to tell his wife to prepare some tea for coming guests. He figured since he'd noticed I had spiritual inclinations I'd do good being around his lama relative. At this he left. I looked at the lama and noticed he couldn't talk. Wether it was of a vow or some kind of traumatic experience I couldn't tell. Maybe he was just born that way and that's why he became a lama. But whatever it was, his eyes radiated profound peace and serenity. After standing there for a while, looking into eachothers eyes - saying a thousand things without the use of a single word, he broke out in a quick, jovial laugh and gestured me to follow him. I noticed he pointed to the cave behind the mans house, down in the gorge. Since it was in the middle of a lake, there was a long wooden bridge leading up to the house. There it split off and continued on to the cave the man had spoken off earlier.

Me and the lama continued on down the trail. I noticed a beatiful old dead tree which had fallen down a long time ago. We had to pass underneath. As I was about to duck my head to do so, I noticed this long piece of bark stripping of. This triggered many thoughts. I thought of my friends back home, who never really travel. They stay where they're at, content with their lot in life. Or maybe their not content, but afraid to so something about it. They're afraid they that if they take a stab at realizing their dreams, they might fail. So they'd rather stay where they're at, discontented, atleast clinging on to the posibility that one day things will be nice and their dreams will fulfill themselves. I started thinking that in their eyes I must seem quite the adventurer, a born traveler. But I realized this was probably more their romantic image of me than the reality. Cause in truth, whever I travel, I just find another town and settle there for a few months. I would learn from the locals, make friends with them, and cultivate a kind heart. Wanting little more than food and shelter, giving as much of all else as I could. After a few months, I would inevetably move on again, usually by the urging of this mysterious force inside. But I would always part on the best of terms, having profoundly enriched some of these people's lives. And they mine.

As all these thoughts were swirling through my head quite comfortably, all of a sudden the lama gestured to call for my attention. We hadn't been speaking much, for obvious reasons. But now we'd reached the bottom of the gorge and had arrived at the lake and the start of the bridge. The bridge was low, suspended not more than a foot or so above the water, and very straight. I gathered the lake must remain very still for most of the year, protected by the surrounding mountains and trees. Else, why would they build a bridge this flat and this close to the water? It looked like more of a walkway than a bridge. I noticed this hadn't been so clear from up on the mountain. Indeed, it had looked like just an ordinary bridge from up there. The construction was admirable, though. It looked quite old, yet sturdy. It seemed like the wood came from the local surrounding trees. It was a dense, hard wood. The lama asked me to wait, pointing at an old man coming towards us from the bridge. He looked weathered by time, but commanded our respect by his prescence. Some people do that to you. Sonetimes it's hard to tell wether it's their demeanor or just the fact that they were able to stick around for so long. We let him pass. I could hear him murmuring something under his breath as he passed us, probably a mantra. He seemed completely absorbed in prayer, so much so that I wonder if he noticed us at all. For a brief second I considered asking the lama. But then, remembering he didn't speak, let the thought go and procedeed on down the bridge.

We walked silence until we reached the point where the bridge split off into two directions. One leading to the mans house, and one to the cave. The lama gestured me to wait and he went on down to the cave. I stood absorbed by the awesome scenery in which I found myself. This often happens to my in my travels. A sense of gratefulness for being fortunate enough to experience the beauty and diversity of creation.

Then I noticed the lama returning with an old woman. I immedeatly recognized her as the emination of the great compassionate guardian spirit of the cave the man has told me about earlier. A great sense of reverance arose in me and I made a few awkward prostrations towards the old woman. As I was doing this they'd gotten closer and the old woman started laughing like only a wise old good-hearted woman from the east can. "No need for the formalities, my child! I'm just a simple old lady. My son here, the lama, told me he'd met a person of great spiritual inclination and urged me to meet you. Us meeting is truly auspicious, for after looking at you, I can tell we share a strong karmic connection."

As she was saying all this, part of me was wondering how she knew all this, and how the lama had conveyed to her what he had, without speaking. But by now I'd been traveling long enoung to have learned not to question these sort of situations. It spoils the magic, and prevents you from learning something new, so I just took it in.

"My child, I can tell you you're very close to get what you're looking for, very close indeed. But you have to give up the desire to find it. I will give you a few words of advice. You have been close to finding it for many lifetimes now, but you had ignored the most fundamental thing; cultivating a compassionate, open heart. It gives me great joy to see you're finally accomplishing that. Now, what's left for you is to stop trying to find something. Don't give up the search, don't stop looking, but give up the desire to find anything, for it is this very desire that has kept you bound for so many lifetimes. You've got it, so relax! Stop trying so hard!". After this the old woman broke out into laughter and settled into a deep smile.

...and then I woke up.

2010-04-05T06:02:00.005+02:00

today is my last day before going to antaiji. ive had a taste of kyoto/osaka - japan - for the last week or so and its really left an impression and has taught me many things about myself, the world... and things like that.

first of all, and i feel like im starting to sound like a broken record cause i keep saying this, but it really makes me appreciate my time in dharmshala. all my friends there, and all their kindness. also, being in japan it becomes painfully obvious how busy people are. and then i remember when i first came here 3 years ago thinking how mild it was compared to the europe and the usa, go figure! what it seems to do is really make people closed off to the outside world. they isolate themselves from strangers and build their own little worlds. sure, theres lots of people in the cities, but what do they do? they converge in shopping malls and buy things. food, clothing. and then they eat it at their own little private table - facing a wall or surrounded by a few empty chairs. and when someone else comes in they head for their own private table, as well! not to say folks dont do this in india, but theres no hellos. just plastic formalities. "welcome, sir" "please have a seat, sir" "what would you like to have, sir?".

now dont get me wrong, im not mad or angry or even apprehensive about this. if anything, it makes me compassionate. people just must be so lonely inside. no wonder depression rates are so high in all these developed countries. people are starved for attention - some real connection. because i do notice that whenever you actually make an effort to make some genuine communication with someone, exchange some real smiles, their face just lights up and you can tell youve made their day. so tell me, what is everyone fighting for? they work their ass off for big paychecks, just so they can eat it all up at the end of the month. buying fancy clothing, nice food. but often its not enough, so people go in debt to get even nicer things. and then they just end up working because theyve become a slave to their posessions. now they have to work to earn nice things, AND work to pay off the old nice things, which they dont really use anymore! in india, you'd meet someone and within 10 minutes you'd be somewhere drinking tea, laughing and having a good time.

now, theres many things that aint so right in india, either. mainly the fact that its just a filthy country. im sorry, but people really dont take care of their environment very well their. dirty water, plastic everywhere, exhaust fumes, the whole nine. but still in a lot of ways its a lot richer than a lot of these other countries, where we have all that, but we cant just meet someone and have a cup of tea and a few laughs! people seem to be in such a hurry, even when you ARE talking to them, and have a good time! "im sorry, this is really nice, but i have to go home now. ive been working all day and i need some time for myself" - now isnt that ironic? cause then they go home and have some time for themselves. but when they have this time for themselves, they just feel lonely and depressed and wish they'd have more friends!

i know, thankfully, its not like its like this for everyone. there's many people treading the fine line very well. but its just seems to me, being in a city like osaka or kyoto, seeing the television, watching and talking to the people, that there's something fundamentally not right for a lot of people. a lot of people say theyre happy, they look like theyre happy, but there seems to be something neurotic about this happyness. what i mean by this is that is seems to be dependant on a lot of things. if you take them out of their comfortzone, this would immedeatly fall apart.

anyway, enough of that! theres plenty of things to be stoked about - im in japan, first of all! being able to take a clean, hot bath every day is a godsent. then there's the fact that internet actually works, and its fast. the trains and busses all run on time. things in general are just really efficient, clean. i can actually breath the air without coughing up black stuff every day. there's something to be said for all of that! the parks are beautiful. there's no trash on the street.

im wouldnt be surprised if a lot of folks would take this message the wrong way, as somehow being a little negative. just in case they do, i'll let them in on a secret: i dont really care! by that i mean, is that although i do say all these things, its not in any way affecting my happiness - im actually quite amused! i know this is just the way things is, and i totally accept that - it'd be silly to get all worked up over it! im simply sharing something that really struck me; the irony of coming from a "poor, developing" country like india to a "rich, prosperous" country like japan - and finding more poverty here than in india!

which reminds me of a funny story i read by osho. people came to him complaining, saying he was rich man's guru. and he told them: "yes, youre absolutely right! i am a rich man's guru! the poor person is still under the illusion that money is somehow going to make him happy and solve all his problems. so what use has he for spirituality? he wants money! but the rich man realises that money is not the answer, that there is something more to life. so he wants spirituality. that's why so many rich people come to me, thats why i'm a rich man's guru!"

its good being able to be serious, but its good to be able to laugh about things as well, and see the ultimate humor in every situation. in that regard, the past week has been great! i saw some live music yesterday in osaka park. bands jamming outside with a generator. it gave me goosebumps - that was the first live music i'd heard since september last year! something about the power of electrified music - you can actually FEEL it with your body, instead of just hearing it with your ears. the first band i saw was actually really good, too. i dont remember their name, but they had a girl playing bass and she was pretty much carrying the whole band! she had a very good bass sound, too. playing an old, beat-up fender jazz. it once again drove home the point that the bass player and the drummer are pretty much the two most important people in the band. theyre highly underrated, but actually quite noble positions - bass and drums. cause they make the other folks look good! without a solid rythm section, there really aint no music!

...and on that note ill end it. until next time!

2010-03-29T11:44:00.011+02:00

good lord - 5 months in india done flew by, just like that! today is my last day in in india. i'm staying in majnu ka tilla, which is an oasis of peace in the chaos of delhi. well, atleast comparatively! i put my mom on a cab to the airport yesterday morning at 2am, and i heard she got home safe last night. i'm really grateful for the time we got to spend together. not only did she take great care of me - 'got me fed and clothed nicely - we also had a genuinely good time together. very positive. we shared many thoughts and ideas. i was gonna say we laughed & cried together, but didn't even fight once - it was all good times. well, maybe with the exception of me being a little vocal once or twice about feeling uncomfortable staying in such 'nice' hotels and guesthouses. most would have been considered shabby anywhere else in the world, but staying in developing asia for a while changes one's perspective on these things considerably. it did mine, anyway. there's still plenty of places i didnt get to see - india is such a vast land - and i made many friends here, so im sure ill be back in the not-so-distant future. after i get back from asia i have to figure out how to balance the music and my love for living in asia, in a practical sense.

but for now, my eyes are on the here and now. tonight (local indian time) ill be flying to japan to spend a few months there at the zen monestary i wrote about, antaiji. i really dont know what to expect, but i do know that no expectations are the best expectations. it doesnt make for a good story - atleast not right now - but its gods honest truth.

my mom also bought me a tiny little indian-made travel guitar before she left, so ive been fleshing out some of the songs ive been writing over these past 6 months. i realise that you can take max out of rock-n-roll, but you cant take the rock out of max. i really intend on getting back together with my bros back in europe and start up the muddy grande again. it's the new sound, and it's exiting!

sarnath

2010-03-17T14:43:00.002+01:00

im in sarnath. a little town about 10 km north of varanassi. this is where the buddha preached his first sermon, in the deer park, on the four noble truths. in life, there's dukkha (unsatisfactory-ness or "suffering" - but the latter sounds too negative and kinda misses the point, if you ask me), there's a cause for dukkha, there's a solution for/end to dukkha, the end of dukkha can be reached by following the noble eight fold path. as i'm writing this, half of the pages i try to load up on the internet don't work, im black from all of the cities dirt constantly being swirled up by all the motor vehicles and im tired from being hounded by every other indian person trying to take me their shop, a ride in their riksha, or are just trying to get a ruppee out of me. sounds like buddha was pretty right on with his observation, more than 2500 years ago. but all that doesn't mean i dont feel good, or happy. on the contrary. im here in india w/ my most kind mom, im getting to stay at nicer hotels than im used to be staying at, i'm eating good food, and we'll be on my way to ladahk tomorrow - by all accounts on of the most beautiful places in india. so other than the fact that i dearly miss some of my friends back in dharamshala, i really am having a great time. i feel like i'm floating a little bit. it's such a radical transition. the future's happening, and it's happening now.

oh, and in case you didn't know, new brant bjork & the bros stuff is up at myspace.com/brantbjork ~ i aint playing on it, but it's rad anyway, so go check it out and back it up! say what you will, but there aint too many folks out there fighting the good fight. and few do it like brant does. so... right on!

much kindness,
max

imagine that...

2010-03-07T06:46:00.003+01:00

imagine that... it only took me a whole two months to write a follow up to my last post. i guess its kinda my version of a winter's hibernation. though it never really did get all that cold out here in dharamshala. im nearing the end of my stay here. my mother is coming over all the way from holland on the 10th to spend 3 weeks with me in india. im really looking forward to it. in all my years of traveling ive never actually had any of my family over where i was staying. me and my mom have always got along great, so im stoked. not to mention, she's bringing me some of my good chinese and japanese tea from back home (im sorry india, but your tea just really isn't all that great...!), as well as some miso paste, kombu and other good healthy tasty stuff you can't get over here. we'll be doing a mostly himalayan journey, the furthest south being bodhgaya, followed by 2 weeks in ladahk. seriously, google it. ladahk is one of the high plateaus - a tibetan area that happened to fall into indian territory when the chinese made their new borders. you have to cross some of the highest mountain passes to get there. we're flying in, though, to save ourselves some time.

after that i'll be flying out to japan on march 31st. im exited to go back there. its been three years since i last been, and i miss it much. my plan is to spend my 3 months there staying at a remote small zen monestary called antaiji. it was founded by the late kodo sawaki, one of the great zen masters of the 20th century. he was known for being highly rebellious and revitalizing zen buddhism from a state of stagnation (from most all accounts zen priests at the time were, and still are, not much more than a glorified bunch of funeral directors - kodo sawaki rebelled against this by reemphasising the importance of meditation, called zazen).

anyway.... enough about that! i made many good friends here during my stay in dharamshala, and i will miss them dearly. but such is life! best enjoy it while it lasts!

basho

2009-12-31T06:15:00.006+01:00

"happy new year, first of all. i hope we have about a million, or two million more of them. that is, if we can get over the summer!" - Jimi Hendrix, Band Of Gypsys, 1970

things have been going good. someone asked me the other day how it felt to be so far away from home. and it kinda tripped me out for a second. cause i'll tell you, i dont feel that way at all. they say home is where the heart is, and my heart is always with me. right here. so im always close to home, in that sense. in a way, right now is some of the most peaceful time ive had in a long time. less ups & downs, just more of a coasting in between the two extremes.

ive been reading some of basho - a 17th century poet, one of the towering figures in japanese classical literature - stuff and he's making quite an impression. he's big on not faking it, engaging things as they are are. indeed, what he says about poetry applies to all of life:

"go to the pine if you want to learn about the pine, or go to the bamboo if you want to learn about the bamboo. and in doing so, you must leave your subjective preoccupations with yourself. otherwise you impose yourself on the object and do not learn. your poetry issues of its own accord when you and the object have become one - when you have plunged deep enough into the object to see something like a hidden glimmering there. however well-phrased your poetry may be, if your feeling is not natural - if the object and yourself are seperate - then your poetry is not true poetry but merely your subjective counterfeit."

right on
max

P.S: for those of you not on facebook, or who haven't seen any of my pictures yet, i put them up here: http://picasaweb.google.co.in/brothermax/India20092010#

some words from dharamsala

2009-12-01T10:14:00.002+01:00

im sitting here writing this from a hilltop internet cafe in daramsala, north india. the entire town was shut off from the internet the last couple of days - the line got cut somewhere. now it's back, but it's slow. its nice, in a way - being out in asia takes you back to 1998, when slow internet was an accepted fact of life.

sri lanka was a mindblow. my friends aloka and kasun took great care of my, as did the many people i met throughout my stay. much respect, im am deeply greatful. kasun's mom was so kind to make me sri lankan food every morning sans the spice, which made me able to enjoy the vast array of local fruit and vegetables. they took me to see many places, as some of you have already seen from the pictures on facebook, and thought it would be a little over the top to suggest ive seen all of sri lanka in just a month, i did see a big part of their beautiful land, so im way stoked.

i got into delhi about 5 days ago, and basicly just hit the ground running. i was longing for some fresh, hillcountry air - and i obviously wasnt getting any of that out in north india's most polluted city. so i got myself a bus ticket and went straight to daramsala that same night. its really nice up here, the weather's kinda like springtime, though the nights can get pretty cold. taking to aloka's example, ive made an effort to be more social and outgoing. i talk to a lot of people, picking their brains, learning things, making new friends. i now see why so many people stress the importance of networking, you really get stuff done this way. makes you feel less isolated to - when youre sharing there sense of 'me' and 'mine' is not as prominent, which is nice.

im still kind of feeling things out, making up my plan as i go along. i took up a room at a monestary about a mile out of town. the vibe is a lot more relaxed, plus it gets more sunshine and is way econo too! don't expect nothing 'holy' though, its quite a normal things for monestaries out here to rent out rooms to guests, and passing monks listening to 50 cent on their iphone is not all that of an unusual sight. sorry if that spoiled anyone's fantasy of the 'mystical tibetan buddhist exile town', but it is reality. and it's all good :)

ill write more when i can. the power just went out and the 'puters are running on a generator, so i dont know how much time i have left. ill try and put up some pictures next time.

much kindness,
max

working on the website

2009-10-25T22:32:00.006+01:00

ill be in india until april 2010, so there wont be any gigs for the time being - but that doesnt mean im keeping totally quiet on the music front. i spent all summer writing new tunes for the muddy grande. i had the pleasure of having my bro wout ("heavy lord") on drums and "brother" mark heddema ("vulture/six days gone") pluckin' bass. most of the songs will be up on the muddy grande myspace in their unmastered form in a couple of days. i spent my summer growing vegetables, watching shaolin kungfu movies, reading books by janwillem van de wetering and drinking good chinese pu'er tea - so those songs are all kind of inspired by all that.

on the financial front it's been kind of a hellride in terms of trying to get that first muddy grande LP (recorded back in 2007 w/ tony mason) to come out. i'll do my best to get it out before the end of the year, on vinyl, but just to get you over ive decided to put up the mp3s for free. the same goes for my first record, the lo-fi accoustic happening that is "whisky & apples". and last but not least i'll be adding another acoustic record i did back in february 2009 - called "selling water by the river", which for the time being will be a web-only release. there's no money to get it mastered, but it was an all-tape effort, so there's plenty of lo-fi tape warmness for your ears to bathe in!

expect all of the above to take effect and kind of fall in to place in the course of the next couple of days. im flying out on tuesday, and i still got plenty off stuff left to do before i can take off, so i'll keep you guys posted.

christmas

2007-12-26T02:50:00.001+01:00

from my diary;

"christmas. it was earie yet perfectly appropriate for thsi to be my first day in DC. the deserted streets softened the blow of transitioning to this city. spend most of the day reading "chronicles of tao" - by deng ming-dao - near the white house. but the first place i went to was chinatown, early this morning. it's strange, despite having no ties to or interest in most things chinese in the past, i now feel more at ease in such places than elsewhere in this american west. i know a lot of it has to do with the time i've just spent with scott, as well as my history with him and wang. besides, china inherently has no christmas, so this was one of the few places in town where th e"godless" could get their groceries, on this christmas day. some stores had adopted the american custom of being closed, but most were open. after buying groceries at a mexican run market (barley to substitute millet, as its usally harder to get - and the healthfood store sure wan-gonna be open today) i went to this chinese place where i got a nice, modestly sized wooden bowl, chopsticks, and - much to my surprise, millet! all nicely wrapped up in a plastic bag with chinese characters written all over it, sold by the pound. got a knife there too. small, a little bit bigger than a potato knife. a great knife, i would later find out as i was cutting vegetables. i was glad i was able to continue cooking my own meals.

it was ironic that as i was reading and walking around the white house area today, there seemed to be a lot of chinese people visiting. i know it's not just my mind focusing on it. i shelled (hulled?) some peanuts and read whilst eating a few. the sky was cloudless. the sun beamed down. later i enjoyed a nice meal of millet, acorn squash, sweet potatoes and turnup root. a korean man in the hostel gave me some fresh, home-made kimchi."

desert

2007-12-07T01:04:00.000+01:00

i guess it's time for another spiel. i'll try to do a long one, cause i know i've been pretty silent lately. i just put down my last tracks on tape yesterday and must say i'm pretty stoked about it all. going up to tony's again in about an hour to start mixing the thing and hopefully be out here around friday-time. i'm catching a plane sunday-morning - going out to north carolina to visit my friends scotty, abe reid, and all those folks. i'm a little bit at a loss for words here, though. that's about it, in a nutshell. i wish i had more to say. i've just been going out to joshua tree national park every day to cook my meals and enjoy the hot desert sunshine, the peace and quiet. i'm liking it. i hope i have more to say once i get this record out of my system. it'll be good. 'songs from the ol' muddy grande'.

peace,
max

i dont know if ive said this before, but all i have been listening to for the past month is down II. that record has been completely blowing me away. i've been playing it atleast three times a day, all the way through. at 66 minutes, that's pretty intense. here's one of their new songs. i think of it as modern southern rock, or whatever you want to call it.

spanish castle magic

2007-11-25T03:22:00.000+01:00

hello all the good people,

ive been really busy, so here's just a quick little word. went into the studio last week with drummerman syb and laid down drums for 15 songs, including a cover of hendrix' spanish castle magic. the drums sound killer, and that is an understatement. sybren did an amazing job on his parts, and the tone he got on those drums blows us all away. to keep the costs down, sybren went back home last friday, after he got done laying down his tracks. all is cool between us though, and this way he can help out his folks back home remodeling their new house. best of luck to him.
i put bass on most all tracks over the past two days, and guitar on some other tracks. taking my time w/ tony mason, making sure everything sounds the best it can be. we're all stoked at the sounds we're getting. it's definitly got a vibe to it, with some desert sand (and sound) thrown in there.

am trying to keep in touch, but i don't get to a computer much, so my sincere appologies for not keeping up with emails and updates as much as i would like to. please, do send me an email though, cause i will get back to you. i always like to hear from you all!

regards,
el maximo

AMS-LONDON-LAX Part 1

2007-11-06T18:50:00.000+01:00

...and the pendulum swings back aain. everything is cyclical. wheels within wheels. back to using pen and paper. i didnt want to take my puter on this trip because i wanted to travel light. besides the essential 'work' equipment (amp, cables, pedals and gi-tars) im really not carrying anything else. i could have taken the puter, but traveling light provided me with a good excuse to get away from it for a while. you all know my stance on puters, but its hard to get away from it when youre around one all the time.

by now this travelling has become so routine that it barely even startles me anymore. my pop dropped me off at the aiprort this morning - no weird, sentimental/emotonal stuff this time - nothing wrong with that sort of thing, ofcourse - but it just goes to show that everyone's getting used to it all.

met up with drummerman syba t our gate. he took his entire family with him. kind of trippy compared to just my pop dropping me off. we checked in right away. didnt have to pay overweight on my amp. its a heavy, so i was glad. the girl behind the counter was really nice. it always helps when people at the airport treat you good. they dont have to, but a lot of them have 'tude sometimes. so again, this lady was righteous. seemed really young, too.

we went downstairs to " schiphol plaza" after checking in and had something to drink with syb's folks. an hour before departure we done said our goodbyes and went up to our gate. besides exchanging some money, nothing really eventfull happened betwen check in and boarding. like they say - nothing to write home about.

short flight to london. listened to some tunes but before i knew it they started handing out sandwiches. bacon - the veggie one had eggs. i passed and god some hot water with a slice of lemon instead. flu still got me weakened, so it helped my stomach.

sitting here, i wonder what it's like for monks to fly - when they get invited for talks, seminars and that sort of thing. it must be wonderful to have no baggage. just your robe and that's it. would like to try that someday...

transfer at london was pretty seemless. landed after just a 40 minute flight, but waited for atleast another half hour before we could get off. i fell down into a bunch of empty chairs when i took out my guitar. woah, it's heavy! lost my balance because of it. we all laughed. took the bus to terminal 3 for our transfer, did security, you know, the usual. they searched my bag becasue of all the guitar pedals it had in it. looks like a bunch of electronics in the scanner - just like certain bombs, i guess.... or maybe a good spot to hide narcotics.

heathrow's a trippy port - it has this big oval-shaped waiting room in the midst of this huge one-floor department store-like structure. we waited for an hour before they announced our gate number. again, prety uneventtfull. but londons trippy, though. definitly a completely different thing from europe. culture, demographics, the whole lot. boarded at 230. plane took off at 345. konked in and out of sleep for a little bit, wrote some lyrics an dput on some music. put on some brant w/ the bros lie, listened to bls's blessed hellride for the first time in a good little while. still love that record, it's heavy as can be.

part 2 later... gotta get out of this internet cafe. it's a little dated now, but it lets you know what was going on inside my head last week. take care!

max

"brotherman..."

2007-10-24T20:04:00.000+02:00

hi all,

it's been a while. aint done too much updates whilst in the homeland of holland. been busy, though. did a few days of prac every week with drummerman sybren, i met up with all the folks i hadn't seen in a good little while and i worked to raise some money for the forthcoming trip. i'll be leaving (with drummerman syb) for los angeles coming saturday, october 27th. kind of playing it by ear right now. all i know is that i'll be going into the studio november 16th ~ so the time in between is still open to suggestion. we'll see what happens.

i put up two new videos up on youtube, they was both recorded this monday. one is me jamming on the brant bjork tune 'kaleidoscope' (or freaks of nature, as it's known to some)

another one is me blowing harp with my good friend youri on vocals and gitfidle playing his tune i got the blues.

take care,
el maximo
cffmusc

"let it flow"

2007-08-09T06:38:00.000+02:00

voor de verandering schrijf ik maar weer eens een nederlands bericht. het is inmiddels al weer twee en een halve week sinds ik weer in nederland ben, en wat vliegt de tijd, moet ik je zeggen. het begin van de week/eind van het weekend heb ik doorgebracht met onze drummerman sybren in veenendaal. begin oktober vertrek ik namelijk weer naar amerika, maar zoek nogsteeds muzikanten (bassist/drummer) om mij eventueel te vergezellen. ik ga daar namelijk een plaat opnemen. gewoon stevige rock muziek - maar dan max stijl. in california, om precies te zijn, in de woestijn. mocht ik geen bassist vinden strik ik daar wel iemand, zolang die solide fundering van de drums er maar ligt/ sowieso zoek ik gasten om hier in nederland mee te spelen. ik heb geen idee wie dit log allemaal leest, maar voor het geval dat er wat nieuwe lezers bij zijn gekomen vermeld ik even dat je mn myspace kunt bezoeken via deze link. ook bellen/mailen kan altijd; brothermax [A] gmail [D] com (vervang even de spaties en letters met het apenstaartje en de punt) en 06 43 12 1 3 1 3.

ik heb wat van deze muziek ook in japan vertolkt met een band daar, en daar kan je wat filmpjes van bekijken op youtube. het is een beetje grof, want de jongens kenden de nummers nog niet zo goed, maar het schept in ieder geval beetje een beeld (in combinatie met de myspace muziek).

van kyuss tot coltrane, dus. hendrix, miles davis, black sabbath, mike watt, santana, thelonious monk, led zeppelin, corrosion of conformity, fela kuti, fu manchu, crosby/stills/nash/neil young - en ga zo maar door.

ik heb het razend druk, of liever gezegd, ik houd mezelf goed bezig. ik was het vliegtuig nog niet uit of de volgende ochtend stond ik al in rotterdam om mede-muziekant en goede vriend mark op te halen om hard aan het werk te gaan. niks rust, wat jetleg?, volle kracht voluit. ik heb verder al weer een heel album opgenomen - maar ditmaal niet voor mijzelf, maar voor dorpgenoot youri lentjes. zn myspace volgt nog, maar de muziek is zeker het luisteren waard. daar was de afgelopen zaterdag aan besteed, hebben we kleinschalig wat muziek te horen gebracht in de omgeving. prima. gisteren zn demo/eptje afgemaakt, en de finishing touches aan de plaat komen in de loop van de maand. je moet ook weer niet te veel haasten, denk ik dan zo.
als laatste wil ik jullie even verwijzen naar dit adres HIER. de myspace van mn goede vriend abe reid waar ik vorig jaar in amerika veel muziek mee gemaakt heb. een van de demo's die we deden staat er tussen, let it flow, dus luister er naar, zou ik zeggen!

veel meer heb ik eventjes niet te melden, ik houd iedereen op de hoogte, in ieder geval! blijf dit blog lezen, en als je op de hoogte gehoud wilt worden van de updates stuur dan een mailtje naar brothermax [A] gmail [D] com (vervang de spaties en de letters en haakjes door het apenstaartje en de punt) en dan komt alles goed. ik stuur er zo eens in de een of twee weken een mailtje uit, dus van spam is geen sprake.

groetjes!
el maximo

Juice Headed Woman

2007-07-28T20:12:00.000+02:00

"going to my hometown"

2007-07-21T01:04:00.000+02:00

you all read it well. max is coming home. after playing with the thought for a lil while i decided to go back to the homeland first and get a plan together before i head off for the good ol' usa. this might raise some questions, since some of you cats might still be thinking i'm riding my bike. truth of the matter is, i had to cut that short. i had my mother look at plane tickets back to holland last week and it turns out prices are going to increase threefold after this sunday. so i decided to come back to tokyo, say goodbye to everyone and the city. good thing i did, because the day i got back a tyfoon hit. and it was a lot worse where i would have been on my bike then in tokyo. and two days after that an earthquake originated where i WOULD have been cycling.... damn, i got lucky! on the bike trip i have to comment that i sure did get a lot out of it. a whole lot actually, so i'm glad i went. still got about a 100 kilos (thats kilo-meters, not the weight stuff) a day in on my little folding bike. man, it was a trip! mountains, sleeping outside in the dirt and the rain, getting interrogated by police officers, getting politely declined a roof to sleep under even in the most insane weather. got made and broken countless times everyday. it did me good, all in all. leaving for the homeland tomorrow, sunday july 22nd. 12 hour direct flight, so that's a walk in the park nowadays.

when i get back to holland i dont plan to sit on my ass, however. going to prac with my brothermark (i dont have any brothers for family, though) starting this monday and just plan to keep myself busy in general. i want to try and get some gigs around the area going, tighten up the vocals before i cut that record in cali. and i'll be looking into jamming with drummers and bass dudes, so i can maybe find some cats to back my trip in the usa. i just need a drummer, but it'd be nice to find a dude who can do the bass thing, definitly.

oh, and you HAVE to watch this video. you just have to, dont ask me why..... i am referring to THIS VIDEO but youtube doesnt let me put it up here, so youll have to click on the link... WATCH IT!!!

'i got a bike...'

2007-07-07T05:16:00.000+02:00

so i went ahead and got me a little folding bike. going back to tokyo today and will leave my stuff with a friend. from there on i will ride my bike all the way up to hokkaido - i plan to cruise japan for two months. i'll take a bunch of pictures, so no worries. updates will be less untill august 29th, probably, but you all'll live, i'm sure.

and here some 'bike' music for you;

大阪

2007-06-30T05:26:00.000+02:00

well, it's about time to start chimping again. the old maximo has just reloctated within japanland. left tokyo yesterday and headed down south, to osaka. in the spirit of zz top, i took the bus. i got there 15 minutes ahead of time, after an extremely tiresome, long walk with my friend. i put one of my bags in a locker at harajuku station (next to yoyogi kouen) so the logistics kinda worked against us, being in shibuya. but we walked our asses of (me with 20 kilo's of guitar and other junk on my back) and made it to shinjuku on time. then we proceeded to search for the right bus terminal, which proved to be quite an ordeal. but we made it. if it weren't for her helping me out, i might have had a hard time finding it. so much props to her for walking me there. anway, the bus for osaka was one of them highway night busses. and it left at 11PM. but before that, i made a quick dash back to the konbini (convenience store) and stocked up on some orange juice, as i'd just speed-walked a few miles with kilo's on my back, i was parched and soaked to the bone. turned on my CoC's 'Wiseblood' record and let that play 'round a few times, dozing in and out of sleep. turns out the bus stopped every two hours, so the second time around (being 3AM) i went for a quick piss break and stocked up on another liter of OJ (after having downed two already) - man, must be because it's so fucking hot... they had the aircon blowing, though which actually made me quite cold in the bus, but sleep took over, so i be good. it was around that time that i switched 'wiseblood' for 'deliverance' and konked out on that for a good little bit. got out again at 5 (no piss break, strange), shopped around the konbini for a bit, but didnt want to waste no more money, so i hopped back on the bus and konked. next thing i knew we got to Osaka Umeda station... perfect, time to get off. 650AM, 25 minutes ahead of schedule. i search for the JR (Japan Railways - not the underground/metro service) station and whip out my laptop 'puter to check out the map of the hostel i had booked. they call hem hotels ('tels or 'ho' in wattspeak) here, apearantly. which makes you think they is some kind of fancy, expensive something, but theys actually pretty cheap. turns out i had to go to shin-imamiya. thank god for being able to read kanji as i look up 新今宮 on the map. a 170 yen for a one way ticket. done deal. i take my two bags and head for track one, the osaka loopline. on my bags; they is HEAVY. i stuffed one of them (the guitar case) with TWO guitars and a bunch of cables and stuff. the other one is a recent purchase (got it when i bailed for south korea) and despite it's small size, it's even heavier. i travel light, but what makes it so darn heavy is all the music gear i haul around. the guitar and a sparse array of pedals being the main sources of evil. i'm surprised i never fell over. did lose my geta (japanese wooden flipflops) a few times, though. my feet get sweaty and since the geta aren't bare wood, with 35 kilos of dead-weight pressure pushing on 'em at weird angles, shit happens. oh well, i'm still in one piece. got to shin-imamiya early, 715AM or thereabouts. it takes me a good 45 minutes to find the ho' (even though it's litterally 2 minutes away from the station, damn). mainly due to the abundancy of 'tels on this street, me putting down all my gear a few times to check the map on my 'puter and taking frequent rests (the gear is wearing me down). when i finally find it a man informs me that the reception dun open untill 9AM. it's 8... so i haul all my gear to a nice little curb on the side of the road and whip out a book my pal simon gave me upon leaving japan, timbuktu by paul auster. i spend the next hour reading it. it doesn't aid my state of mind... man, it feels like i ended up down south (i mean, south of osaka, ofcourse i'm down south) - which is where folks in tokyo told me to kind of be weary of. it's the seedy/shady part of town. kind of dirty, loads of drunks, etc. surely when i check in to the hostel this seems to be true. the price is righteous, the man gives me a 50 yen discount, but then mistakes the change (to my advantage) so i end up with 250 extra yen in my pocket. nothing to write home about (though i am), but enough to buy me some vegetables, or millet, stuff like that. yup, seems to be the shady part of town, allright, it's got that mission/tender loin feeling, but very japanese, and a million times kinder. we'll see how i deal with it. i was envisioning doomsday scenario's in my head waiting to check in, but now that i have, i'm just happy that i have a private room for the first time in 4 months. all the other residents seem to be grey-haired, single men. given the part of town we're in, they're probably either pachinko (gambling hall) people or alcoholics... maybe both. no heroin/cocaine problem in japan, maybe speed, so that alone makes it a million times kinder than 'frisco or la. my plan is to sit it out here for a couple of day (i booked for/payed for 5 nights/days) and explore my alternatives around osaka (and kyoto, as it's only a 30 minute trainride away, which is negligible). though this pad seems cheap, and i'm sure i could get a monthly discount if i wanted to. it's 10AM as of writing (or getting to be ten pretty soon) and i'm looking at doing a little bit of konk, and then exploring the city. find some free wireless so i can do the internet thing (no wireless here, not too sure about free net) and get this spiel up and running. and just do my discovering over the next couple of days. i feel really strange, bordering on a little down, or better, emotionally wrecked. but that's to be expected with little konk and a complete change of enviroment. the next two months are completely out in the open, and it's daunting.... though i'm sure i'll get my head around it once i get some konk. max out....

"sketches of spain"

2007-06-19T05:21:00.000+02:00

5th movement from sketches of spain. not performed by miles, unfortunatly, but allright all the same. this music inspires me. have been reading (and watching) up on the influence of muslim/arabic culture on europe, and it's pretty intense. now when i listen to sketches of spain, i don't hear spain, but the middle east. i remember reading an article on carlos santana talking to miles davis about how all music comes from africa, even spanish music. and miles wouldn't buy it.... but damn, if carlos ain't right on the money. i used to forget that marrocco and all those countries ARE indeed part of africa...

i have been writing some new music, too. inspired by miles davis and brant bjork. 'trying to write something more instrumental, landschape type of music. like sketches of spain, but way more stripped down and simple. the rock and roll approach, essentially. coincidentally i've also been listening to a lot of corrosion of conformity (Corrosion Of Conformity - Drowning In A Daydream), and it's blowing my mind. their 1996 album 'wiseblood' is one of the best rock records of the 90's. damn, it just swings and grooves on all ends. there's something to be said for southern musicians. on their latest 2005 record, in the arms of god, they've got a cat called stanton moore playing drums. he's a jazz cat from new orleans, and man, i got to tell you, those are some of the best drumtracks i've ever heard someone play under heavy rock music. people tend to forget that a lot of the early rock drummers (mitch mitchell (hendrix), ginger baker (cream), bill ward (black sabath)) were heavily jazz influenced, and that kind of seems to have gotten lost along the way. this is another song, not the jazz drummer, but pretty righteous all the same, from their earlier 1994 record 'deliverance'. you can still distinctly hear the metal influence (more so than in the above clip i linked to), but it's very open and groovin, southern style.

after another mediocre prac with my cats i've descided to part way with the guitar and bass player for various reasons. don't want to go too in dept (mainly because i've already done that a bunch of times to some of you readers) but it was just kind of becoming a drag. i wasn't having fun anymore. like the old thelonious monk used to say; man, you played it better when you didn't know it! - so now i'm looking for a new bass player. no more second guitar stuff, it's one of the things that really holds me back. i'm an avid fan of space and freedom in music, and two guitars just fill it up too much. i've come to the realisation there's only a handfull of cats i would like to share guitar duties with. if i'm going to add another instrument i'd rather have a hammond organ player. they're hard to find, but man, i would love to play with one! now that i think of it, a hammond player could also hold down the low end (bass) if it needed to, so i might look into one of those cats if finding a bass player gets too hard. not just betting on one horse, i guess. i would love to add a brass player too, sax or trumpet, but that will happen in due time when i'm reunited with my brother mark. we'll kick some ass once our shoes are broken in, that's for sure. been spending a lot of time inside, thinking, reading up on all sorts of things. still try to get in 20-30 kilometers on the bike everyday, and plenty of sunshine when it's raining, so it's not like i'm stagnant. will just need to sit this one out, because i know it will sort itself out somehow, i just need to be patient and ride with it. in the mean time i keep writing tunes and my vision for the record i'm gonna be making in september/october keeps getting stronger, so i'm pretty stoked. a long spiel, mostly music related today again. hope you all can deal with it. i rap about music a lot, but then again, my life is centered around it, so what else am i going to talk about? global economics? politics? i dont't think so, brotherman.....

"and the rain comes on pourin down"

2007-06-14T05:36:00.001+02:00

yup, it seems like the raining season is finally coming on here in japan. a month of instense hotness and rain, followed by more instense hotness and sun. been going over my music recently and started missing the southern sounding stuff, the bluesy stuff. not like my music aint always had that, to most people who listen to it, but i dont know, too much so-cal, too little mississipi. this song kinda knocked me off my feet, too. have been productive the past two days. either way, check this out;

"blues for bukowsky"

2007-06-09T03:07:00.000+02:00

check out this new mike watt video. i saw the violin player play quite a few times whilst i was staying with kev-o and mario lalli at the cafe322 last year. trippy how all those things come right back at you later on, huh? here it is, blues for bukowsky;

"cruising"

2007-06-08T11:38:00.000+02:00

yesterday was interesting. i decided to go be more pro-active and see more live music here in tokyo. a lot of it is really bad and i have wasted my money plenty of times by going to shows at random, so i had kind of shied away from it recently. however, last night i figured if i did proper research, it wouldnt be such a bummer. i stumbled across this righteous website called Tokyo Gig Guide - and just looked at the schedules for all the venues in shibuya, shinjuku and ebisu, since that's all relatively close to where i live. after about 30 minutes of research i decided to go to this venue in ebisu. they had this open art night, with rock music, a skate ramp, and photo exibitions. great place to meet cats, i thought, so to ebisu i went. i had copied the map from the website and was pretty sure as to where to look... but three hours later i still hadn't found the pad, damn. actually, i was laughing at myself this entire time, i trip myself out sometimes. reminds me of when i used to live in rotterdam and hung out in amsterdam a lot. would stroll the streets with my headphones on. usually id be listening to brant bjork's solo records. then, towards the end the night, i would go into a coffeeshop, buy a few grams of weed to save for back home, and would get a nice joint to smoke on my way back to the station. i always smoked it quick so that when i got on my train not much later i would feel it creeping up on me, and be wrapped in this warm blanket as i put on the brant bjork and the operators record. to this day whenever i put that record on i still get that feeling, so it's the perfect record to stroll the streets to.
some tangental spiel here, max going off on things. anyway, no weed of course last night. havent had no weed in a long time, and i like it that way. but after my search for the pad proved futile i did find this nice little playground where i sat down and rested my weary bones for a good little while. sat on the swing. hadn't been on a swing for a while, probably not since august in san francisco, hanging out with scott taking care of wang's kids, so i decided to swing again. and man, it was rad! i love playgrounds, man, feeling like a little kid and being active and all that, it's a ton of fun! at 10PM i called up my mother for just a few minutes, to share this mindfuck with her, and hopped on my train back home. got home around 1030 and konked out an hour after that, after doing some work on the 'puter.

i was exhausted, so i woke up pretty late the next morning, must have been 6AM or something. got up, took a shower and did my stretches and all that. went on to fix some breakfast and listened to the May 13th 2007 Watt From Pedro Show podcast. featured an interview with krist noveselish (i know i spelled that wrong, sorry krist!) which was quite righteous. watt's been doing a lot of japan-related stuff lately, which is tripping me out, since that's been happening over the past year, kind of got a parallel universe thing going on there somewhere, somehow. i was still weary from the day before, so i took a little one-hour nap from 12 to 1. when i woke up again i handled some emails and decided to go buy a map so i could finally cycle to yoyogi park, without paying the 320YEN for a return ticket every time. so at 2 o clock i got on my bike. ooh man, it felt so good, cruising through the streets of tokyo. it's suburbia, but it's fun all the same. you ride your bike on the sidewalks, you see, so you have to constantly manouver yourself around pedestrians and other folks, and this makes it real exiting, especially when you build up some speed. it's what i always used to do as a kid, and i love it. once you get to the bigger roads it gets quite slope-y here and there, so you can build up some righteous speed. with the right music on it can get pretty rad! got to yoyogi park after 13 kilometers (i dont know, 8 or 9 miles or something?), drank my water, hung out with my marrocan friend mohammed for a little while and headed back home at 430. i was a little tired, but the 13 kilometers would prove to be no big deal. i even made a little 4 kilometer detour to shinjuku to stop by this righteous, cheap bagel place. handmade bagels in all kinds of flavours, even alternative grains to wheat. so i had this righteous rye-basil-tomato bagel which was really good, since i hadnt eaten all day. ate my bagel and i went on home. it was then i realized that i ride my bike like a skateboard. i dont sit down a lot, but i kind of peddle, got some speed going, and then cruise, until i need to peddle again to get some more speed. it made a lot of sense, been doing that intuitively for years, but what a trip to finally draw that line! got home at a little past 6, and as soon as i got off my bike i went inside, grabbed my two empty gallon jugs and headed for the super market to fill them up with water. needless to say, when i got back 30 minutes ago i was pretty tired. but i should say weathered, because it feels really good. it feels like i actually did something today. glad i didnt stay inside, that's for sure. for my closing statement, well, check out this bad motherfucker! cheers, my friends!

韓国DOCUMENTARY

2007-06-01T09:15:00.000+02:00

yes, not much written spiel today, just a 10 minute documentary i made today for you all to check out. getcha pull... the captain he would say. songs featured;
max radings - tuumtuumpepperweridwahbleumeanie
max radings - hss rodskjegg
brant bjork - native tongue
max/mark/sybren - reprise
secret artist - secret song (this one's for my bud simon, in england)

韓国。。。

2007-05-29T23:12:00.000+02:00

chimping on the airmachine again. it's like CSNY, deja vu. starting to get used more and more to this traveling thing, but i still feel somewhat like a little boy on them airports, i'm telling you. it was interesting seeing security the other way around in japan this time, and i'll stick to my previous statement; nothing but good vibes and righteous treatment from everyone here. it's definitly got that rigid airport feeling, but you're treated like you're someone of decency, instead of a potential terrorist. and they have all the same checks and inspections in place that america does. i guess it's just the way things are. the american diplomatic way (nothing bad about the people here, though) seems to be controll through intimidation. that's how japan got opened up in eighteenfiftysomething, a general named perry came down tot he nagasaki harbor with his fleet and told the country; if your dont open up your land for international trade, we'll bomb your ass. so a year later, japan opened up it's boarders. it's interesting though. man, what do you know, y'all got a personal history lesson and i haven't even properly started chimping yet!

popped at 5, but chilled out in bed for a little longer, going through my email and all that jazz, always takes me a good little while to get them all properly read, digested and answered, but i enjoy it much, it keeps me in touch with you people. i slept horribly, though. i always wake up at one or two in the morning, when the manager goes to sleep, quite often drunk. that dun' wake me up though, what gets me is that about 30 minutes after he's konked out he starts snoring like a motherfucker! he's in the bunk above me, but even when i'm wearing earplug the man still wakes me up! usually i just slam the wall a few times and he stops, and i fall back asleep. but this night his snoring was particularly persistent, and after hitting the wall a few times, i kicked the upper bunk a few times, at which his snoring didn't stop, but only decreased in volume. enough for me to go back to sleepytown, but damn, he was loud! after doing the email thing i got up out of bed and went downstairs to do my routine. brush and braid my hair, brush my teeth, and hit the hot water. i went out for a quick bit and called up my mom, talked about my trip real quick and about a package i asked her to prepare and send out. went into the convenience store next to the public telephone (get it!?) and bought a quart of orange juice and a pack of 2 new disposable razors. i've always wondered why they dont just sell them single for cheaper. i only need one to last me months anyway. only a 105 yen (that's about 70 eurocents or 80 dollar cents for you foreigners reading this. don't know the amount in quid, sorry simon, but i'm sure you'll figure it out!), so it's not like it hurt a lot, but then again, 120 yen buys me a half a kabocha squash, and that's a lot, when you're trying to live on dimes. i could just do instant noodles like all the college students diming it here, but i wouldnt last very long. so after the conbini/phone trip i got back, drank my juice, shaved and cooked me up some food. in the 15 minutes the pot of veggies spent on the stove i packed my bag (god, that was easy! traveling light, i love it!) and proceeded to chow. nothing special, just the regular. bit o' daikon (the great conspiracy, get it?), bit of brocolli and a bit of squash. drink the water i boil it in, too, getcha pull. checkout out my little sister's pictures and video's of the guitar i sent her. she put it together yesterday (with a little gmail chat assistance from me, but ' where her fingers that got the job done!), and i applaued her for doing it. she used my mustang body i put together about a year and a half ago - the one that's seen the stage of los angeles' famed troubladour and many corners of the united states - and a 1962 duo sonic extra-short scale neck i snatched offa ebay for next to nothing. including brazillian rosewood and clay dot inlays, fucking righteous! it breathes mojo, is small and real comfy to play. i put it on for before i sent it out, when i was at abe's, and man, i dug it much.

i left at 930 and headed for nakano station, nothing out of the ordinary, just the usual 5 minute walk. i put some money on my trainpass, as i knew i was going to be using it, and it would beat buying tickets, and got on my train. there's three ways to get to the airport by train, and i picked the cheapest way. it takes 10 minutes longer and transfering is not as 'convenient' as with the other ways, but it will save me 2500 yen each way, and from my previous spiel you where able to make out that i can do a lot with 5000 yen! so dig, after about 60 minutes i had to transfer at funabashi station, which was kind of a coincidence, cause that's where one of my friends lives. transfered trains, got on another 40 minute trainride to nariata airport. this time it was pretty righteous, got to see a lot of the sights i first saw coming to japan, going in to tokyo. the train goes through a lot of countryside, and it's absolutely beautifull. about 10 minutes before you hit the airport there is this windmill and these old-style dutch bridges like they have in leiden and amsterdam, trippy! i wonder what that's all about!? i saw it on my way in too. everything was a lot greener this time around, though. got off at airport terminal 2 only to find out that korean air services from airport terminal 1! so i had to wait for another 15 minutes for the next train to terminal 1, and got on it. by the time i got off it was 5 minutes past 12. how did that happen!? only 50 minutes till my flight leaves! but instead of being freaked out i was pleasantly exited. the biggest drag with airports to me is always waiting, cause it's this weird, sterile enviroment that's really foreign to everyone exept for the folks that work there. regular folk dont come there often, so there's a lot of shifting energy, it's really trippy. but i wasn't going to be reserved, so i just asked my way around to where i needed to be, and all the receptionists kindly told me to hurry, because my flight was departing soon. north terminal, fourth floor, counter a. gotcha. got there, and this righteous korean dude checked me in. trilingual, like most of them. he was really exited to help me (and use his english, i guess, now that i think about it), confirmed the fact that i requested a vegan (no eggs/diary) meal and a window seat. kindly informed me that if i had any liquids with me i had to put them in a plastic bag, and also told me to please hurry, you don't want to miss your flight. good vibes. i'm always phased by those encounters, though. i believe the man was actually trying to shake my hand when i left, but i was just kind of focussed on my flight. get into that tunnel vision mode and being human with human customs and things really passes me by at those times. i kindly nodded at him as i walked on, putting the toothpaste back in my bag as i'm walking. got to security. it's basicly the same as everywhere. you empty your pockets in a small tray, put your bag in another, and put your laptop in another tray. they go through a machine, you walk through a gate, and you grab your stuff, contrary to america - however - you dont have to take of your shoes. wouldnt have mattered much, since im doing the vans slip on thing (didnt want to risk getting stranded with just flipflops in seoul, in case the weather turns on me), but it's a righteous change all the same. after the painless security i went on to immigration. yes immigration. that threw me off at first, cause i'm leaving this land, right? no such thing in america, going through imigration as you leave. but there is definitly such a thing in japan, so after standing in line for 5 minutes, i got to the guy, he browsed through my passport, took out my japanese visa, and gave me that stamp, which is what this entire trip is about, 'DEPARTED 29 MAY 2007'. right on, that made me smile inside, people! as i walked to my gate- number 26 - i was kindly greated by a lady in one of the duty free stores and kindly greeted her back. no time to waste though, i got no clue as to what time it is, and for all i know my flights already stopped boarding. thankfully, when i got to my gate 26, it was only 1222, 3 minutes before they start boarding. good, just enough time for me to take a piss. so that's what i did, when i got back a few minutes later there was a small line, boarding. so i got in line, got on the plane and there i was again. deja vu. another airmachine, man. i was surprised at how calm i was throughout the entire ordeal. got on the plane and it's the usual routine. but darn, if this plane aint fancy! wide seat spacing, plenty of leg room. adjustable headrests. it takes a while for me to get comfortable though, kind of restless. probably because of that broken night of sleep. but i put on kyuss' ...and the circus leaves town records and as soon as i start dozing off the flight crew wakes me up; sir, your meal. yes, as ordered, vegan chow. fruits, salad, rice, hot tomatoes and beans. man, that's some heavy chow right there, but it's free, will keep me fed in korea, so i eat it anyway. chovel it down, wash it down with some orange juice and kind of chill out to some more kyuss when i descided to start chimping the first few paragraphs of the above. like i said, chimping on airmachines, it's like deja vu. we land pretty smoothly and i go through the usual. no baggage to claim so it's straight to immigration for good ol maximo. man, the athmosphere is totally different in korea. the customs dude doesn't speak to me, barely looks me in the eye and just gives me a stamp and i move on to the customs. i give the cats my customs form, make a short fast bow, and move on. as soon as i walk through that arrivals door and see all the koreans waiting for whomever they may be waiting for from this flight i notice this totally diffrent energy, vibe coming from these people. trips me out, cause it's strong. if japans smells like fish this smells like meat, it's real interesting. i go to the atm, draw out some cash (WONG is there currency, 6500 wong is roughly a 1000 yen, that's all i know, do the math from there) and buy me a bus ticket to get to my guesthouse. get on the bus pretty quick and just soak up some of the korean sights. it's got quite an european vibe to it, the highways, the cars. i shoot some video and chimp some more of this log. as soon as we start getting into more of a city area it starts to remind me of berlin meets san francisco. but upper height in lower filmore kind of style, really trippy. after about 70 minutes on the bus i get off at the university stop and whip out my instructions. and without too much wandering around i get to my guesthouse. check in and start spieling with the german dude there. interesting cat, for sure. mark. come to the conclusion once again that i cannot speak german at all. it baffles me. after some spiel (and obligatory guitar playing from me, ofcourse) i head upstairs to grab my laptop, and i sit in the 'offce' to chimp more of this log thing. i suddenly hear one of the other people at this guesthouse come back and proclaim she was from the netherlands. raised in holland, but korean ancestry. what a trip. we get spieling and together with one of the other cats here (a korean/taiwanese girl from vancouver, canada i believe) we go and have some dinner together. i am at the mercy of these two to help me get something without meat, and after a few tries we get something edible. appearantly 'vegetarian' in korean doesn't mean you can't eat slices of ham ;-) - had fun though, didn't plan on chowing, but eh, the less i have to eat tomorrow anyway! we head back to the guesthouse (which is a 5 minute walk from where we shoveled chow!) and part with the vancourver girl, who's gonna stroll the streets a bit more. korea, just like japan, seems to have it's store open in the later morning, but keep em open till 10 or 11 pm at night, interesting. i help her and this other cat yogi (from england) burn some cds to clear out their camera's and someone introduces me to this half day tour that's going on tomorrow. it somehow involves going to near the north korean border, and checking some of the military and diplomatic sights around there, i do believe. i do a quick calculation into euro's and it comes down to being a 32 euro trip, so i start thinking. i would by default not go cause it costs money.... but i can hear my mom yelling at me all the way from holland; "max, just do it! it's not like you're in korea everyday and you're leaving the day after that! just do it!" - so i went ahead and got it sorted out. bus leaves at 710 the next morning, righteous, something to get up early for! so i head off to bed. takes me a while to get to sleep, but i konk pretty good all the same. off to sleepytown for good ol maximo....

'maximo goes youtube'

2007-05-21T03:46:00.000+02:00

a good day to you all. i decided to record a video of me walking 'round the block with my video camera, show you all around and let you see what's up. there's a lot of construction going on as theys tearin stuff down to make way for big, tall apartment buildings and stuff. it's a shame brother, it's a shame. check it out here;

and here's some muddy grande prac-video for you. little rough 'round the edges still, but i just descided to give it to you all uncut, so you can follow it, see it progressing. if you're wondering why the guitar-player looks so bored, it was 330AM and the guy had a really bad day. he's the most energetic of us all, most of the time. like i said, giving it to you like it is, dont censor nothing. it is what it is, prac at 330 in the morning.... and my guitar's out of tune, ha!

Texas Highway;

Airmachine;

'meet the band - part 2'

2007-05-17T01:43:00.000+02:00

you've seen the pictures (see previous post). now you get the video, or atleast a teaser, these guys jam, enjoy. it's shige on guitar, touru on bass and fuyuki on drums.

and here's the myspace, so ya'll can do the add-thing;
http://www.myspace.com/muddygrande

'meet the band'

2007-05-14T18:12:00.000+02:00

2007-05-13T14:09:00.000+02:00

who are we? we are rock'n'role. we are visonaries. we are rad.

where are we? we're in rock'n'role. why are we here? because we love rock'n'role and rock'n'role loves us.

what are we? we are rock'n'role guerillas. we're members of a small fighting force, taking independent irregualar action. we are rock pioneers.

why are we rock'n'role guerillas? because there is a rock'n'role crisis. there is an imbalance of power in rock'n'role now. r'n'r is in the wrong hands.

rock'n'role is in the hands of those who are motivated by power and greed. these soul-less buisnessmen & women have polluted our world.

rock'n'role now slowly decays from lack of spirit, creativity, soul-power, truth, originality & vitality. rock'n'role now is like processed food.

who is truly by this imbalance of power? you... and me

what are we gonna do about this? we are gonna liberate rock'n'role from this opression. we're gonna take rock'n'role back.

we're gonna save rock n roll and put soul, spirit and freedom back into it. how are we gonna do it?

we're gonna overcome by being spiritual. by being courages. by believing in love & ourselves. and by being stronger than our opponent. overcome like muhammed ali.

---------------------

also, after reading the above spiel, take the previous post with a grain of salt, please. heat of the moment stuff, it was.

'the sunday of a pirate'

2007-05-13T11:21:00.000+02:00

first of all, here's an instrumental tune i just wrote and recorded - "De Zondag Van Een Zeerover" - get it here

yes, that is the tv in the background. the manager turned it on, i wonder why he didn't wait for just 3 minutes, so i could finish my tune, so after i finished i kind of talked out loud; i guess it can't be helped, the tv got on there too, since i'm living with other people too. i was about to put some bass on the tune you all are hearing now, when the manager said - max, i think it's best you stop now. that phased me a little, and threw me off. man, when cats catch you at your most vonerable, when you're creating something (i'd written the song litterally minutes before i recorded it, which is what you hear). you're connected to something bigger, and when someone tells you, for what ever reason, you should better stop, man.....

there where a few things he wanted to talk to me about, but of course - in true japanese fashion - they don't tell you when it happens, they tell you when it's happened last week. they where all little things too. some people have lightly complained about me recording last week, which was a holiday for people. i hear where they're coming from, and if they just be direct with me and tell me when it happens, i'll bend over backwards. but in true japanese fashion, they don't, and i get to hear it a week later from someone else. you're catching me in the moment right now. not quite pissed off, just a little thrown, annoyed. i won't go into much further detail because i know there's more cats reading this than are on the log mailing lists, and i don't want to step on no cat's toes just because i'm wrapped up in a moment right now. but damn, it's a motherfucker, and i ain't talking about no person.

anyway, listen to the tune and let me know what's up. the tv on there is a bloody shame, as it fucks with a really good first take. that's why i went along with it, cause there simply is NO take like a first take. second dun even come close, let alone third. get some bass on there..... soon.

kaleidoscope

2007-05-11T06:05:00.000+02:00

someone recently told me the internet lied to them..... yup, it does. check out this cool, but rather horrible done, interview.

'blowfish'

2007-05-10T12:45:00.000+02:00

its a quarter to eight PM. i just woke up. yes, woke up. i descided to konk early as i have rehearsal coming up tonight, from midnight till four in the morning, trippy. could have opted for a more normal slot, but that would have meant we couldnt get a date together till next monday, which'd be a week from the previous practice. everyone realises that the harder we work, the sooner we can start doing gigs, and the sooner we can start working on maybe getting a tour together. boy, they sure want to do that, tour. makes me glad, they're motivated. and from the little feedback my friend mark has given me, and from what my own ears tell me objectively, its pretty darn tight as it is. could blow minds right here right now, i do believe.
i worried that i'd overslept a little, since i konked pretty deep for a good three or four hours, but as it turned out it was only the time you read at the beginning of this post. actually, 'twas earlier, but i twisted and turned quite some time before i realised i had to get some stuff off my mind.
i had a dream, and it was composed of two primary things, one of which i was pondering before i went to bed, which was guitar speaker cabinets and amplifiers (as i need to get a small little tube amp once i start playing a few gigs, to save money) and the other one i realised just now. most of it was situated at the beach. i was on this island, and it had two distinct part, each beautifull in their own way. one was this beautifull sandy, white beach. clear blue water, with palm trees like in venice los angeles and dunes like in my hometown. i figure this might have something to do with what my friend simon told me about his vacation to this okinawan island before he headed back to england (will try and get a picture up). but, the other part of this island was this huge, shallow water. a kind of muddy plain with clear water about knee deep. and in this water was empty, exept for a sparse population of creatures. they looked like brown rocks, but they'd inflate themselves like a blowfish and come up to the surface. they looked spiky but where soft to the touch. so one day, i was hanging out at the pretty beach (blue water, white sand and all) with my family and friends. had a pretty big amplifier down there, because we was doing a generator based gig on the beach. cool. i got tired, though, tired of too many people, so i explained (in my best japanese) that i was going to see the little blowup rock-fish-thingies. as i walked away i was playing guitar (had this long chord attached to the amplifier). it unplugged after a little while, but i kept on walking. then they's all started calling my name (i was in trance, didnt know how much time had passed). even as i was visibly running back theys was still calling my name. when i got back, the amplifiers speaker cloth was trashed and there was a brick stuck in it. for some reason it was ported on the bottom, so that was filled with litter from the beach people. a stranger helped me clean it out and he told me this kind of shit happens a lot, should watch out and take care of the amplifier.
and then i woke up. now this made me realise one thing, man, i haven't been out of a, or better yet, the - city for over two months now. and even though ill be going to korea pretty soon, i will still go to seoul... you guessed it, a city. when you're living on anywhere from 3 to 6 dollars a day, anything that deviates from that is a pretty big expense. made me think back on the week i was stranded at a friends loft appartment in some part of LA. you could walk in any direction for hours and still get nowhere. you could take the bus, but to get anywhere would take the better part of your day. i just stayed inside for the duration of that week, wrote one or two songs, but spend most of my time getting mildly stoned, listening to john coltrane and crosby, stills and nash. so compared to that, i have quite some more freedom in japan. but lord, i wish i had a motorbike or a car, and could go see the countryside. maybe do something crazy and attempt a stint by bike, but i dont even have a bike. need to get one, so i can start getting around. one of the places i haven't visited yet is yokohama, which is about 30 kilometers east of tokyo, and takes about 40 minutes by train. it's about my day budget (1000 YEN) for a train ticket, so that (and the weather) has been keeping me from going, but i am pondering it now. it's nowhere near a countryside thing, though, but it'd be something new to explore. leave the guitar at home and just relax. maybe i should check out this side of the bay too, and see what's up there. too far away for a bike, but quite righteous by train, i do believe.

so that's what's going through my mind right now. am going to get some more eyeshut before i leave for a 4 hour prac (looking forward to it, man!). sound like insanity to me... take care

'calling fom from the fun house'

2007-05-07T11:29:00.000+02:00

holy mother.... seeing this again gave me goosebumps!
live from the montreux jazz festival, mr mike watt;

2007-05-06T02:26:00.000+02:00

man, i cant tell you how happy i was to see these pictures in my mailbox when i woke up yesterday, made my day, big time. as always, click on the pictures to make them bigger.

as most of you probably know, these guys took me out on the road for quite a number of weeks about two years ago. at the time i knew i would like to pursue a career in music, but i didnt really know how to manifest it. was looking in the wrong places, for me atleast, the educational world. now i had been listening to kyuss since what must have been when i was 8 or 9 years old and had been meaning to go to a number of brant's shows for one or two years, but i'd always end up missing them. so when they played a string of three dates in april of 2005 i made damn sure i was going to every single one of them. was really digging the music around that time (still am, man!). well, long story short, as most of you have already heard this spiel, that changed my life, hands down. they opened up my eyes and basicly told me; max, you got something going, you're young, talanted, if you want to do music, do it now man. get out there, dont wait till you're older. you can always go back to school. and they were right, man. first thing i did when i got back from touring with them mid june, or july, is hand in my resignation at the university. was the best thing i ever did, and well, the rest is history, so far. got me all the way to japan.

but to put those pictures into perspective, my little sister was going to see brant play in holland, so i told her to go say hi. my mom ended up going with her and went into the venue early, and just kinda approached brant. what kind of caught me by surprise is that he was really exited to hear about me. the moment my mom introduced herself he stood up and asked her how i was doing. he asked her if i'd told her that we met at the airport (back in october, search my log for that entry) and was just generally pleased to hear about me. 'max is following is heart, he's getting rad. it blows me away to hear what he's doing'. they talked for a good 10-15 minutes and brant put my mom and sis on the guestlist, got them in for free and treated them righteous. made me feel good man. my sis spent the time backstage with the cortez and all. havent hear from her yet, but i bet she's got some stories. cortez is a righteous dude too, like a second father, big brother and best friend all in one. i have nothing but love for the dude. makes me think back to a year and a half ago, when i played with Fatso Jetson in the troubadour. he was so stoked for me, let me use his amp and helped me set up, whole nine yards. made me feel so good, its hard to describe.

for some reason i feel like unable to convey the exitement i felt yesterday, but man i was so fucking stoked... surprised, i broke down in tears when i saw those pictures. completelly caught me by surprise. all i can say is, fucking right on.... ill go on and rock. peace!

'In The Engineroom'

2007-05-03T12:26:00.000+02:00

need i say more? the man who started this all;

Golden Week

2007-04-30T12:37:00.000+02:00

you know, i was riding the train this morning and something struck me, and i realised, man, even though i might not have any magnum opus (or magnum opium, for that matter) to share with these folks, i might as well spiel a little bit, as there are some interesting things happening in japan as we speak. yes ladies and gentle men, right now in japan its what they call 'golden week'. its basicly a string of national holidays (with the exeption of one day breaking up the week, but most companies give their employees the day off anyway) that all happen during the same 5-7 day timeframe. its quite interesting. riding the train, you could see the faces change radically from sunday to monday. though kids go out during the weekends, on a monday, its usually older cats (and with older cats i mean cats, and birds, no longer in high school or any of that) or if theyre younger, theys in their school uniforms. but today they was all dressed up in they casual clothes and they wore their age on their face proudly. its rad and strange at the same time, seeing all those young cats on the train, facing they free week. not much stranger from summer break in holland, i guess, though i've never actively experienced it like that, been pert near two years now. trips me out, man. tying in to what i just wrote down, i'd been listening to some more acoustic music lately (along with A LOT of Pantera....) but just now Melanie came to mind. the lyrics almost eerily describe what i just wrote down, and i just noticed it.

other than that, i dont think i have much to tell you guys. things are kind of rolling along steadily. the weathers been great recently, been soaking up a lot of sunshine, sweating in my tshirt. which is making me bath more regular, so be it. probably just take a shower tomorrow, though, as the public bathhouse is closed on tuesdays. also, i want to check the bathouse out the 5th of may. if you wikipedia for goldenweek and dig the 5th of may you might get a little clue why. little kids dump some kind of nice smelling herb in the bath, looking forward to it.
band prac is the same night, so thatll be interesting, but well see how it goes. yes, prac, practice, i remember mike watt stressing on the fact that ACTORS rehearse, BANDS practice. so there you have it, prac. als een prakkie aareppels en groente, maar dan ne' ies ande's.

oh, and for those of you who have always been asking me; what does holland REALLY look like, i just stumbled upon this interesting video of Drs P. itll be difficult to understand for those of you who didnt take the time and effort to properly study duch -- haha ;-) -- but dig it anyway, its got some nice images.

oh, and your thoughts on the band name 'muddy grande' are always appreciated. you know where to mail me.

'Rainy Day'

2007-04-23T01:38:00.000+02:00

this is some spiel i wrote a week or so ago, april 16th, to be exact. it was the start of a streak of rainy days, which forced me to stay inside for it's duration. it coincided with my most vuonerable time of the month, so if you find the tone to be a bit heavy, now you know why. also, not chronologicly related, but quite worth mentioning is this video/song. i'd forgotten about it, but i recently stumbled upon it again. did not know there was a (albeit low budget) video for it. i'd say either watch it before, during or after reading the speal, but be sure to watch it all the same!

「
１６日４月２００７年
rainy day, rain all day, let the sun have a holiday. that's what mr hendrix once said, and i can't say i don't dig what he's saying. but sometimes it's just a bummer, man. it's one o' them rainy days today, and i just can't seem to figure out what to do. it's twenty minutes past twelve, as of writing, and i've basicly just been riding the yamanote line in circles since nine o clock this morning. if thre's one thing i sincerely dislike, it's staying inside all day. it's funny, the reverse used to be true quite some years ago. i look at my hands, and they're baked crispy brown from all the sunshine i've been soaking up most everyday in the park. in some ways it feels like it makes my appearance more ragged, and closer to most of the homeless people you see around in the park. who are - sides from being sunburned - quite different from american and dutch homeless people, i must add, for the most part, but thats a different story for a different day.
so i finally descided i'd best jut get my pad and pencil out and start spieling, which is what you are reading now. the irony of the situation is, now, that i've still been "inside" all day so far... inside of a train that is. but atleast it's moving, and the doors open every few minutes or so when the train reaches another stop ad does it's passenger trick.
i much enjoy the pad i'm staying at, despite not having a room of my own. i've got some good quiet hours in the morning time, and at night the atmosphere is just good, pleasant, for the most part. but i hate being there during the daytime. i feel onfined, and on days like these - once every moon for a few days - i just can't take any external stimuli. need my little peace and quiet, dont want no one to talk to me and dont want to hear nothing unless i do so choose. i guess the ego in me wants to get pissed off when people get up at 6 in the morning and turn on the tv, when i made a good effort to get up early to avoid all of that. but then there's the monk in me, both the eastern and the thelonious variety, that just says; 'let it be, be selfless, be flexible, learn to be completely tolerant of your surroundings, whatever they are'. so once every moon, for a few days, my mind becomes fragile and slightly unstable, which brings me back to the start of this spiel, this rainy day. mr monk fighting with mr ego. now, i usually remedy this by seeking recluse in a park or just stroll the streets for no particular reason, go visit various stops on the train, just be away from everything for a little while. but i recently noticed that i always end up spending money on those days, on the train and the odd cans of hot tea. i've been trying to cut down on expenses lately, which are ridiculously low by even the most scroogy of my japanese friends and housemates' standars. and even then, most of my money goes to the train, food and miscelanious expenses are quite minimal on a daily basis. you just end up spending money to kill time, as it were. you could do without that can of hot tea, but the process of buying and consuming kills time, so... whatever. some for anything really, not just tea. it's a fine line to toe, though. i attach a lot of importance to being active on some sort of physical and creative level every day. sitting at home dont count, in my mind, even if you're doing stuff. i feel a strong need for being out. if you're gonna be sleeping all day, get up early and sleep in the park. where there's sunlight and fresh air, instead of stinkin' in bed all day. i cause the big exeption to the being inside theory dont mean no thing is recording. which is kind of what im waiting for, for my protools stuff to get here from holland (props to moms for putting it in a box and sending it to me) so i can start making records. sitting in the park playing everyday for the past month really paid off welll, but now its kind of served its purpose, its time to put all that training to use. the next step is to do more stuff on the street. but since i'm going to be a local and a regular, i want to be well prepared for that. cut a record i'm happy with first, and start selling it. write up a sign and throw open my guitar case with some cd's and some space for money. its funny, what seems to be the main difference between a cat practicing his tunes and a performer is just a bloody sign. people pass you buy quicker without one, since they dont want to interrupt you. or something. ---- editors note; looking back on some of this spiel makes me smile a little bit, i just try to think of that thelonious monk quote i put up a few days ago. dont play what the peole want to hear, play your own thing, and the people will listen, even if it takes them fifteen, twenty years. ----
one thing i gathered from talking to bunches of people here, though, is that pusking and playing music on the streets wont make you much, its more of an advertisement for upcoming live shows you might have that day or that week.
on that note i will mention that i had a prac session with the full band yesterday. shige on guitar, touru on bass and fuyuki on drums. yours truly on the mouthharp, vocal chords and gitfiddle. i was real surprised at how well it went. i think its good i auditioned everyone seperatly, believe i scrounged together a real interesting bunch of fellows. a little rough around the edges here and there, but im confident i can teach them what they need to know. theyre teachable, which i remember abe stressing to me, how teachable talented people are much better to have than someone who's technicly better, but dont catch on to what youre trying to do. so lets see how that works out. itd be nice to just gig here in tokyo for a good little while, get tight as a band, and look for oppertunities to tour europe a little bit. for sure theres more aof a living to be made overseas. im getting ahead of myself in some ways, but its good to have a plan, a goal. this photoshoot i got coming up this wednesday ----editor's note; that got canned. they still asked me to come, but i was informed last minute that i would not get paid....---- put back the rehearsal to monday next week, the 23rd, but i want to get into the habit of doing band-prac 2-3 times a week, really whep them (and myself) into shape. get a solid bunch of tunes down. and just go for it. its gonna be more like paying dues than making money for the first good little while, since the japanese venues operate on a pay-to-play basis, and usually bands end up losing money playing gigs, but itll be good either way. get some cred going. something for the european press to write about later on, i guess.
as far as this spiel goes, its been al pencil and paper so far, grooving on brant bjork's "che" record. im gonna wrap it up, killed a good hour or so writing this, so i can safely say ive accomplished my mission to a certain degree. trying to stay creative and physically active on atleast some level everyday. dig, its a wrap, until next time...」

Billy Gibbons Lesson

2007-04-22T08:56:00.000+02:00

2007-04-18T00:44:00.000+02:00

"I say, play your own way. Don't play what the public want--you play what you want and let the public pick up on what you (sic) doing--even if does take them fifteen, twenty years." - Thelonious Monk

And here's some ZZ Top (without digital drums and synths!) for you all to groove on. Darn, Billy Gibbons is an amazing guitar player. That Gretch he's playing has caught my fancy, too....

Butler In Japan

2007-04-10T12:27:00.001+02:00

Check out this interesting video. Black Sabbath's Geezer Butler on japanese food..... The first bit is Ronnie Jammes Dio (also of Black Sabbath, he replaced Ozzy) giving some interesting spiel on dealing with fans.

i have been reading thomas quincy's "confessions of an english opium-eater" - i would like to find a copy of it in bookform (in english, if anyone finds a copy in their local used bookstore hit me up with an email), but for now i have to make to with the online text. since its quite an old book (1820s) its no longer copyrighted and freely available on the internet. get it here. i have found it to be highly interesting, as he provides us with quite an insight into a part of english society at the time. a look on opium from a less jaded (as we are jaded by todays propeganda and history) is quite refreshing. not by any means am i currently indulging in it myself, but i always have been interested in reading up on certain substances. though this book is as much a literary work on its own as it is an account on the pleasures and pains of indulging in/using opium. if you can get through the thick layer of 19th century english, i highly reccommend you read it.

the different days in rock`n`rol`e - part 2

2007-04-08T06:04:00.000+02:00

so, now for part two in a series on my experiences in the fashion world. where to start....? ah yes, that email, what do you reckon it said. well it said; max, why didnt you come today? needless to say i was surprised they cared so much. good, if they care that much, ive got some leverage. so i told them i tried to come but i couldnt find the place, since i hadnt been given proper directions. this was ofcourse a lie, but only a white lie. i had indeed not been given proper directions, but, i didnt even try hard to get to the audition that day. i just woke up feeling quite indiffrent. who wants to be bothered with dealing with all that fashion nonsense, anyway. theyre probably gonna wanna put makeup on me, do stuff to my hair and lord knows what else. i am not going to sell myself like that, fuck that. needless to say, i was giving myself all kinds of imaginary reasons not to go, truth was, i didnt know what in the world they where trying to do... but i didnt care, i just spent my day in the park. march 21st, the first day of spring - a national holiday. jammed around. met up with these interesting bunch of bilingual people getting ready to play today, with their kids with them (around my age, always a trip, though). turned out to be christian missionaries all communially living together, interesting thing to learn after the fact...... but they was righteous people all the same, did the hang for a little while, watched them play and went on my way after a few hours. then i spotted a bass player walking in the park. how do you spot bass players? i dont know, but this one had an acoustic bass guitar (guitar, not upright) with him, so needless to say, i stopped him immideatly and asked if he wanted to jam. you dont just meet bass players everyday, so i figured this would be a valuable oppertunity. turned out to be pretty good, jammed for a few hours, till it started getting dark, and we went to akihabara to search for a part for my laptop. the guy treated me to vegetable tenpura (click here for the wikipedia article), which was allright. beats southern-style deepfried food, but its still fried.... interesting experience all the same, not one to turn down free food either, and this being vegetables, it was allright. for the record, i do not concider meat or fish to be food, so theres no such thing as free food when it comes to those things. take that with a smile and a grain of salt, cause to each his own cup of coffee. i like mine without sugar and milk, and without caffeine, if possible. ofcourse, nothing beats hot water. sayu, as the japanese call it. yes, the japanese actually concider hot water to be a seperate beverage, though some young cats dont even know the word, nowadays. seems like the old culture is slowly being forgotten. even rice is a relatively new thing to most classes of people. up untill about a 150 years ago, or a 100 even, most all people exept for the rich and priveleged would eat stuff like millet. rice was only for the wealthy.

but back to the fashion show, because i went on a tangent about the day i skipped the audition. i eventually went to the audition two days later, as requested per email. i met up with the same guy that first scouted me, masato, at shibuya station. he told me to wait a little bit while he gathered a bunch of other cats coming to audition, and then we walked to the office/auditioning place. i talked to a few cats and they where all around my age or younger. theys was all telling me how they felt hungover from going out the night before, and how they didnt get to bed untill nine in the morning. they all had quite a bit of modeling experience, and most of them where studying japanese, teaching english or both. still in school, some of them brought there moms to this audition. a lot of them seemed to be british. i felt kind of uncomfortable and nervous around this crowd, something that wouldnt return in my subsequent visits to the fashion places. i just hate having to be judged by a bunch of cats. but the harmonica got me cool again. even though i had just barely started a few days ago, i could already fake it pretty well. stuff like black sabbaths the wizard and all of that. i looked like a slob (or whatever you want to call my appearance on the picture you see below) compared to them other cats, but that was quite allright. when we got to the place we sat down for a little bit, but i was the second one to change clothes and do the thing. what tripped me out was that they had the rolling stones exile on mainstreet album playing. they put me in a suit, or better said; a jacked and a black pair of pants. no shirt. no shirt!? that tripped me out man, preying and abusing my boyish good looks huh? i guess that makes for sex appeal in the mainstream world, exposing the upper part of the chest. i got my own views on that, but after tripping out on it for a few seconds i just put on my grin, took my ties out of my hair and they called me out. they asked me to walk a little bit, asked me some questions, in japanese once they figured i spoke some. asked for my height, width, length (as im typing this the minutemen song comes to mind; "well give it up for mike watt, hes only a skeleton. his bodys a series of points, no height, width, length..." groove on that, one reporters opinion its called, i do believe. youll probably be able to find it on youtube). they took a picture and told me i could go. that tripped me out, since some other cats where getting asked to wear 2, 3 different outfits. i figured i was too out of place and probably sucked so bad they just descided to cut me short. which was just fine by me, cause all that fashion mumbo-jumbo tripped me out. fuck that, ill just play my harp, i told myself, and left, bursted out in laughing as soon as i turned the corner. it was just funny as hell. all this uptight fashion stuff, but at the same time they had the rolling stones playing in the background. what in the world is this? at that point in time, i did not yet see the connection between the two.......

check back soon for part three. looks like this might become a four parter, its just intense to write up on everything in detail, and i dont want to cut anything out, so ill keep some suspense going and make it a series!

love is revolution

2007-04-06T02:55:00.000+02:00

not my favorite picture, but probably the one yall want to see - me singing.
ill post the one i dig later - many thanks to illlookhisnamewhenthiscomputerisfaster.

the different days in rock`n`rol`e - part 1

2007-04-01T00:23:00.000+02:00

after the recent death, or should i say incapacitation, of my laptop computer i havent been up to the task of writing log as much. thankfully, i have been able to keep up my email correspondance, mostly due to the fact that im able to use the house computer at the pad im staying at. but, today i felt obliged to chimp a new edition of my homebrew spiel, as it will cover a rather interesting event ive been telling folks about for a little while now. so lets start at the beginning.

about a month ago, maybe just a few days after coming to japan, i went out to shibuya to buy myself a camera. id told the people back home that i really didnt know what to get for my birthday, but it might be a good call to contribute some money so i could go out and buy a camera, and send you all some pictures of my travels. the gift that gives back. well, obviously, my laptop is currently incapacitated, so i have no ability to upload these photos now, but, some of you have received them by email. i am going out to get my computer fixed next week, so hopefully, it wont be long. i could do it myself, but i just do not have the time or tools, but nevermind that, im getting sidetracked....
just before i walked into さくらや (sakuraya), tokyos big discount electronics store, a japanese man approached me, in english, and asked me if he could ask me some questions. now this was odd, since i hadnt used (or been able to use) english to communicate with japanese people yet. he explained to me he was scouting models for an upcoming fashion show. so he asked me about the nature of my stay in japan, my length, height, weight, the whole nine yards. after the spiel had run its course, he showed me last years magazine/catalog from this `fashion show`. it turned out to be this really high-end, popular designer brand (that ofcourse laymen, and especially near-monks like me, have never heard of). the agency doing the styling and design was www.femme-de.com - he gave me his buisness card and wrote down his email adress. masato was his name. interesting, genuininely nice guy with a good sense of humor. his email adress included the words `saigonostarman` which losely translates to `the number one star man` - thatll give you some kind of clue, dr delay. we swapped emails and he told me that he might contact me for an audition on the 10th, if his boss liked the pictures he took of me with his phone`s camera (those phone-cameras have been big in japan before they ever even got introduced in europe, its a trip). we said our goodbyes and went on our seperate ways. i was left a little tripped out by the experience. i am not oblivious to the fact that i seem to have my looks working for me, but i figured my clothing and wooden shoes would cancel that out a great deal. what made it even funnier is that i hadnt showered for much longer than usual (and usual is seven days...) so i just cracked up thinking back on it. now, i must say, i can go without taking a showever for weeks without smelling or looking too awfull, so mostly people dont notice.
then a few days later, the 8th of march, i do believe, i was walking from yoyogi-kouen to harajuku station, and i got stopped by yet another english-spieling japanese cat. same spiel, same agency, just a different cat scouted me. i didnt tell him id been approached by someone else from his company about the same thing before, i just went with it, played the game, gave him my measurements and mail, told him i would come to that audition the 10th if they asked me to, and parted ways. this again left me tripped out a little bit, because now id gotten scouted twice by the same agency, by two different cats, even. and as far as i was concerned, i still looked much more plain than your average guy walking the streets. made me laugh, man.

the 10th came and went and i didnt hear anything. didnt surprise me much, so i kind of just let it go. i kind of thought to myself - what a shame, i could have used the money (30000-40000 yen) - but you cant count on those sort of things, i told myself. so i went on with my life. found a new pad to crash, started going to yoyogi-park on a regular basis, you know, the regular drill. but then, out of the blue, i got an email if i could come to the auditon on the 21st. still remembering the fact that it was a paid gig, i said; sure, ill be there. unfortunatly, communication through email went difficult (they often lamented the fact that i dont have a cellphone) and they didnt give me directions to the place. the 21st came and i had an adress written down, but i didnt really feel like going that day and by the afternoon i found myself jamming with a bass player and completely spaced on the audition. oh well, i told myself - who wants to deal with the hassles of the fashion world anyway. the money would have been nice, but it probably wouldnt have been worth all that trouble anyway. ill just play out on the streets some more. and with that i let it go, and felt good about it. but then, when i got home, i got yet another email, and what do you recon it said.....

thats it for part one - part two coming up real soon. in the mean time, some youtube for while you wait. oh, and its a joke, in case you dont know too much about monk...

`Mr Bone-Skeleton Graveyard Manager`

2007-03-28T10:55:00.000+02:00

-i remember the simple times, when simple minds saved us from the mister
-bone skeleton graveyard manager, preying on our innocent souls
-hear me now, believe me later, when youre working his graveyard shift
-your weary bones they cry out loud, `whatever happened to that little kid?`

-thats why i sing this song, you can sing along, if you do so please but puddin wont you
-call your mom, because she worries, about your wandering soul both night and day
-ive been away, up and down and around for far too long now
-but thats allright, mama its just my wandering ways

代々木公園

2007-03-15T23:07:00.000+01:00

start up the coffee pot to get the day started right. pick up that old guitar and start pickin, kickin it all day long. the human-mechanical jukebox, sure - ill play you another song.

wasnt quite sure how to start this one, so i figured id just put in some spiel of the musical kind to get things kicking. today, after being thrown off for a little while, i finally got back on schedule. went to bed at 7 last night and woke up right at 4 this morning. finally. ah, this feels good. went out to the convenience store around the corner and got some vegetable juice to get the day started good. when i got back i broke out my japanese studying books and worked on that for about an hour. lets hope we can get back into that groove, and atleast work on studying 30 minutes a day. better to get a little done everyday than alot on one day and not look at it for another week. on the recommendations of one of my american housemates (who just started working at a japanese bank, by the way) and my korean housemate as well, i went out and bought a book called minna no nihongo, or, everyones japanese.

what ive been doing everyday after that is getting on the train at around 830, to get to shinjuku station, where i transfer to the yamanote line. see, this yamanote line goes round in circles. so i get on, wait a few stops for the heavy crowd to clear, and take a seat and konk out for one or two hours. it takes exactly one hour to go round, so i usually do about two. then, i get off at harajuku station, usually at 1030-1100 and walk to yoyogi park. harajuku station is right behind yoyogi park, so its actually closer than getting off at the yoyogi stop.... strange indeed. then i find a neat little spot in the park to sit down, usually around the fountains or the like, get some hot tea from the vending machine and start playing, and mainly writing, music. i do that untill about 5 or 6 pm. sometimes ill jam with some (japanese) folks around the park. yoyogi kouen (kouen means park) is a popular spot for musicians to come and practice. took me a little to get back into the groove, but i seem to have been writing about a song a day. just ike when i was with abe. working on performance too, getting my confidence together. its one thing to play music with one, two or three guys behind you, having your back, but man, alone its a whole nother ballgame. but today, today was a good day. everything just worked for me. my voice, my playing, the songs, so that helped a bunchload, man. the sun barely came out untill 4 pm, but i had a good day all the same. someone gave me a flower too, funny. its this trippy thing with leaves on the bottom, a bamboo-like stem and bright, dark yellow flowers on top. i dig it much. put it in some water at the house. in an empty suntory `zen` whiskey bottle, what a hoot! got home at the usual time, but i went out and did some shopping errands. needle, thread and thermos. i had to leave my thermos in the US because of the liquid-container lauws on airships. everyones a terrorist.... and i didnt properly fix my jacket up when i spend some time at scottys, so i had to fix that as well. didnt take too long, cause most of it was done pretty well. i also got a pair of gloves and cut the finger tips off of it, so i can play guitar when its cold. got most of this at the 100 yen shop, so i got off cheap, but the thermos was 2500 yen, which is a good 20 bucks, ouch! but it was a good day, i tell you, i just felt allright and good, kind of warm inside. confident. now lord if it all just dont come crashing down tomorrow, like it allways does.... itll be allright. up and down, lifes like the mountains, peaks and valleys. its all the same, allright all the same, as the captain he would say. but i aint seen the captain, in so many days.....

今日は。。。

2007-03-09T12:52:00.000+01:00

popped early, probably somewhere around the three 'o clock mark. but i descided to 'sleep in' a little bit and stay in bed till 530 or there abouts. had been pushing it too hard and burned out major a few days earlier. had to go to bed early and get some asperin. willpower is one thing, but one should never forget to take proper care of their body. and even though i'd been eating quite well, i'd been pushing my body too hard physicly. doing crazy 20 mile city-strolls every day, with a guitar on my back, not taking any breaks, all of that. so after i popped i went down and chimped some mail. i think we might have some new readers, so for those new to the list; it's chimping, like a room full of monkeys behind typewriters. it's said that one will eventually write shakespeare, if given proper time. you might have heard this story somewhere before. 'round the clock of eight i went out to the 7/11 real quick (yes, they have those over here too....) and got some rice and tea, for breakfast. darn it's cold outside, i wish i hadn't send my scarf back home. i don't want to go out buying one again, so i'll be okay for now. my mom remarked how it reeked of cigarette smoke, when she got it. courtesty of abe reid, i told her. so i went on back, made and ate my rice, and went upstairs to pack my bags. i gave my friend jeff the herman hesse book, 'journey to the east', which i'd bought and read on scott's recommendation, after i told him i'd read 'siddhartha'. i'd spend some good time with jeff a few days earlier. righteous dude, punker at heart. but the right way. straight up sst, punk is whatever you make it to be guy. oldschool, dug hanging out with him much. gracias. i procedeed to pack my bags and brought them downstairs. put my linnen in the designated back and checked out of the khaosan tokyo annex hostel at around 930. man, traveling light feels great, just a guitar and a packback. but darn if the backpack's zipper didn't just bust when i was packing it! i guess i should be greatfull it's lasted as long as it has. it 'kwam uit de handel', that age-old expression (atleast to me) that i'm still unable to find a proper english translation for. thanks dad, it's served me well. the good thing is that i won't have to go anywhere for a good little while, so we'll be allright for now, me and my luggage, that is. will have to go out and get a new bag in a few weeks, i guess, or atleast eventually. i've been checking out the many music shops here, and they actually sell roadcases (like a fortified briefcase, for musicians) made of the fender tweed material. they's righteous and would fit my stuff real well, so i'll probably get me one of those to replace my broken backpack when the need arises. took the train to nakano (中野）and check in at this new place i found. an 8 bed dorm room for 35 000 yen a month (+ 10 000 key deposit), definitly the cheapest place you'll find in tokyo. the woman at the reception was real friendly and walked me to the place herself. the guesthouse is made up out of different branches scattered throughout 中野. when we got to the place it turned out to be this old time 20's bar converted into a small guesthouse. sleeping on the floor, on tatami mats. exactly what i'd been looking for. rad bunch of housemates, classic japanese layout, made me feel right at home. my japanese seems to be improving with leaps and bounds. being around it all day certainly helps. but it's like gabe (not abe, gabe) always said; came so far, still got a long way to go. still got ways to go, indeed. put my bag away and went out again, strolled around the city some more. by god, i can't remember what i did, but it sure wasn't anything worth mentioning. just roamed around with that restless mind of mine, rode the train a little bit, took the long round trip so i could sleep some. strolled around ueno park for quite some bit, sat down to soak up the sunshine. had this weird little interaction with these school kids. i asked them for the time, in japanese, and they (12 years old, i guess) tried to talk to me in english. so the conversation ended up in this weird bilingual joke, kind of hard to translate. but man, it made me feel good. i like kids. they's devils sometimes, but they aren't dissilusioned by the world too much yet, i like that alot about kids. so all in all i had a good day. just trying to keep myself busy. man, i'm having a hard time finishing this log, thinking of more spiel. there's bunches i could put down but i kind of feel drained. am writing is the day after and i just played out all day, so as you might suspect, i'm drained, man. a drained man. it's all good though, music is just this intense thing, you're creating something when you're playing, but when you're done, it's gone, it's been done. it's not like a painting or a poem, what happens is done right then right there and gone right then right there. recording don't capture it all, and we's don't record all the time. so you're creating this thing, but at the end of the day, you pack up your bags and have nothing to show, nothing tangible to show that you created something, exept for this intense pleasant exhaustion throughout your body. it's quite allright, goodnight.

musical education

2007-03-05T00:12:00.000+01:00

i think the video speaks for itself...

東京へ。。。

2007-03-02T00:42:00.000+01:00

so, where to start. well, as you all know. or, most of you, atleast, i got to tokyo safe and well. what a trip it was indeed. february 26th, 27th and 28th al blended together in one big day. so let me start and try to recollect the events proceeding today, march second.

"wow... that's all i can say. what a trip that was. a fourteen hour flight. yes, your eyes ain't fooling you. FOURTEEN, 14! a walk down the road trip it was indeed. landed at taiwan's taipei airport safely 'round 'bout 530 in the morning, local time. i took all my luggage with my as carry-on, so i didn't even have to pay baggage-claim any mind. i checked my taipei-tokyo ticket and noticed i had a good 3 hours to kill until the clock read 0855, so i decided to roam around a little bit. first, however, i needed to find out what gate to go to, as the guy at the counter in frisco didn't put that on my ticket. they probably couldn't tell me yet. they didn't list it on the 'puter screens yet as it was still ways off, so i went to the ticket counter and the lady told me to go to d2. take the 'sky train'. dig. so i went and waited for this 'sky train'. within a few minutes it got here and i realized i was truly in asia. it was like a spacecraft compared to the things they got in holland, both in terms of speed and layout. trippy, man! so i get of 30 seconds later (!) and proceed to security. yeah, the whole nine yards...... all over again. but they's pretty darn righteous in taiwan, man! 'specially compared to america. empty your pockets, take off your (wooden) shoes, take your laptop out and let everything go through the ray-x machine (like charles... but differen, dun' play the keys neither) and leave. but this time, no hassles. darn people in america took my toothpaste. another 10 dollars down the drain; i'd stacked up a little. i went and exchanged some loose us change for what ever local currency they got over in taiwan and got 4 dollars worth of that, npd, or something. so i went on and searched for my gate, d2. found it....but it didn't reach the free wifi network. i'd seen a sign for that by a small coffee shop at gate d4, so i went and got me some hot tea at the coffee shop and sat down to chimp some. send the folks back home some 'spiel, to let 'em know all was well, and all of that. the tea took up all but 45 cents of my 4 dollars, but atleast i got free hot water refills. so i made sure that i got my money's worth. must have gotten about 5 refills. after the 3rd time i just gave my remaining 45 cents to the lady at the counter, since she'd been so kind to me, and i didn't have any more use for this taiwanese money anyway. my laptop's battery died at around 730 so i whipped out the ol' cassette player and listened to side two of soundgarden's badmotorfinger. man, i DIG that record a bunchload. if you never paid this band no mind, like i did, get your head out of that hole and go get it, somehow, somewhere! roamed around for a little bit more, finished the 'journey to the east book' i got with scotty and boarded the plane, finally. the two and a half hour flight seemed like a second compared to that fourteen hour hellride to taiwan. they got me a vegetarian meal... steamed conserved vegetables. wasn't too bad, just a little dead-tasting, well, conserved! got little 10 minute chunks of eye-shut and konk, listened to the sabbia soundtrack on tape a bit and filled out the visa-waiver form. the flight-crew handed me a survey paper, too (why me and not the chinese people too, hmm....., why not the other 外人(foreigners)?) hmm..... so i filled it out, good way to kill the time, i figured. they gave me a free deck of china air playing cards, so all was well. all'd a been well even if they hadn't. by the time we got to tokyo it was 130 in the afternoon, local time. that's one hour ahead of taiwan, and eight or nine ahead of you folks in the country of amsterdam. again, no baggage-claim (LOVE that, man! traveling light is the way to go) so i went on to customs and immigration (or was it the other way around? i don't remember since i skipped the baggage claim alltogether, so i don't know if it comes before or after customs). man, that line was FAST! holy mozes, america should learn something from these people man, talk about efficient, and friendly, to boot! same thing with the immigrations officer. a few kinks here and there in my story, but atleast she was reasonable and listened to what i had to say. gone before i knew it. no fingerprints or pictures neither. damn america, i'm sorry all you americans reading this, but damn the american immigration attitude. these japanese people really proved me that you can do exactly the same thing with KINDNESS and REASON! same thing for the customs officer after that. "where'd you come from?" america "can i see your passport" most certainly, it's a dutch one "do you have anything to report, the guitar maybe?" no sir, i do not. the guitar is my own and has been for quite some time now "ok, have a good day" you too sir, thank you kindly. and that was it, no hassle, nothing but righteousness from these japanese folks. i went ahead and got some money out of an atm and bought me a ticket on the keisuke limited express headed for 上野(ueno) (i had to transfer at　あおと(aoto) to get to my station 浅草 (asakusa), however). dig them japanese trains bunches, man. there where these three girls sitting across from me being quite giggly and embarassed, 'twas rather interesting. for some reason they kept staring at me, and they didn't even see my wooden shoes. interesting it was indeed. ooh, woah, japanese countryside. makes me feel nostalgic, and i've never even been here. look, a windmill! a dike (the immobile ones) with trees! it looked like holland there for a little bit, what a trip! made me feel really good. i must have smiled for the entire 90 minute trainride. didn't seem that long at all, probably because i was reading all the ads and signs in the train (looks more like the dutch metro than the train, but it's design is much better, japan's). so much of my japanese came back to me just doing that. helped me out a bunch, cause when i got to aoto station, i wasn't sure what train to transfer to. so before i jumped in the train on the opposite side of the platform i asked a lady あの、これは浅草ですか？（is this the train to asakusa station? or litterally; is this asakusa? yes, japanese is a trippy language, vague, alot of implied stuff. i dig it much). turned out to be the right train, thank god. didn't took too long to get to 浅草（asakusa), but when i arrived, the battery in my laptop had died again. darn, and it had the map to the hostel on there, too! so i roamed around for a good half hour before i dared to ask anyone for directions, mainly because i'd forgotten the name too! after that bit of roaming, however, i finally broke down and walked into a big fancy hotel and asked the reception-cat (in japanese) for directions to the cheap traveler's hostel around this area. there should be three of them in this general area. after a little deliberation he finally took me out through the back exit of the hotel and pointed me to the main facility of the three hostels. so i went there and asked for directions to the annex, since i wasn't staying at the main building. after about a 3 minute walk i arrived and did the check-in thing. put my stuff in my room, put the 'puter on charge..... oh, cool little spiel about the 'puter;
about a week before, on the train from baltimore to north carolina, i left my laptop's adapter! yes, a fuckin' bummer indeed. so i went on ebay and found a cheap used powerbook adapter. it's got the american plug, which is kind of cool, since it kinda folds up and becomes more compact. what's also cool, however, is dat the apple adapter is both 110 and 230/240 volts. so you don't need a power converter, just a different plug. what's even cooler is that japan uses the same plugs as america, but 240 volts as opposed to 110. so i didn't have to buy nothing! cough...hmm, going on a tangent there, max. you must be tired typing this.
after i put my stuff in the room i went out again, back to 浅草 (asakusa) station and got on the train to 渋谷（shibuya). had a couple of districts noted down on my mental notepad, 渋谷 being one of them, and because the 銀座（ginza) line goes directly to 渋　i just went with it.　you might have seen the famous 渋谷 crosswalk on tv or the internet sometime, it's kind of famous. looks like this;

i roamed around for a little bit, got my self aquinted with the area a little bit and all of a sudden i stumbled on ibayashi, a big wel know tokyo-chain guitar store.... done the right way, unlike guitar center in the us. so i strolled around the store for quite a little while and eventually descided to try my luck and just talk to some of the musicians walking around - in japanese, again. told them a little about myself, that i was looking for musicians, etc. they helped me out, showed me what ads to read in the guitar magazine (in japanese), and where just real kind to me. when one of the guys gave me his email adress and it read mojo hand i asked him where he got that from. and he told me 'lightning hopkins'. so we got talking about the blues and all of that. we ended up going to a coffee shop (japanese and american coffee shops are much more true to their name than their dutch counterparts of the same name) and talking untill 23h. when i went back to my hostel my head was pounding. man, all those new influences. all those characters, using this language for the first time in well over a year, the 72 hour day I'd just had, trying to wrap my head around it, a walk down the road trip indeed. man...

2007-02-27T08:17:00.000+01:00

wow, dig this! live from the airport! dig some arlo guthrie first, to kind of get you into that hippy-airport mood, and then dig this spiel i wrote just a few hours ago, on the plane to frisco. i'm getting ready to board in a few minutes, the china air people where righteous with me and put me on an earlier flight. why? i do not know, all i do know is; china air people fucking kick ass! gracias. now dig.

i wrote a song a few days ago. it's kind of a take-off on john lee hooker's style. it's still free form, aan i'm moving stuff around, putting my own lyrics in, copping some of mr hooker's, but it's got this line in there - the hook, if you will - "i'm gonna buy me a ticket, on an aeroplane". well, i'm on one of those airships now and i figured i ough to write something to kill some time. and i'll be darned if that song didn't come to mind. it's been a 'walk down the road trip', to quote arlo guthrie (check the woodstock movie for that) already, and i ain't even halfway yet. will get to san francisco in about 5 hours. as i've t old a bunch of you cats already, i'll be camping out there till noon the next day, february 27th, when my other airship leaves for tokyo, japan, with a change-ships in taiwan. and all that time suits this po' boy just fine, gives 'im some time to buy that camera he been rambling about, so he can propegate his voyages and pictures, put it on the intranet voor you all to see.

'been grooving on the new fu manchu record since i got it this morning. man, lord i tell you, it's mean, pissed off and fucking HEAVY........ i dig it. it's still the same ol' fu - fuzzed out guitars, laid back california rock - but like they said, it's got some of that hardcore punk influence, cause that's what they all grew up on. it's by no means a punk record, but it's got that attitude. mix that in with the fuzzy, grooving, ezy-going rock and roll and you've got a record that's just heavy in it's vibe. man, those fuzzface pedals sure do sound good. you can almost hear the sand pouring out of the speakers. they'd been missing that for the past few records. digging a bunch of tracks on this one, but the mellow single string verse-riff on "didn't really try" is something that stands out in my mind, that's the kind of stuff i dig. makes you feel like you could 'jump from a 30 story building and live'. oh, and it's got cowbell - you can never have enough cowbell. let me repeat that, you can NEVER have enough cowbell........... no, for real, let me repeat that, i ain't kidding, you can SIMPLY NEVER HAVE ENOUGH COWBELL! coincidentally my mom's - okay, quick little update, dig this, from now on, mom is 'moeke', i'll put mom behind moeke in brackets for the next couple of updates, but all you english speaking people better learn some new words. it's coliqial/archaic for mother. you prounce it moo-cu (moo as in the sound a cow makes and cu as in, well, cunt. yes, i too wish i could think of something more politically correct, but, ooh well. could have used kerosine but that's a 'ke' sound, the e, not a 'ku' sound, the u, as in cunt) - so, dig, remember moeke? she's always told my my first word was koe, which is dutch for cow. you all still following me ;-)?

so i packed my bags this morning and went to the postoffice. the postoffice gig shouldn't have taken me more than 30 minutes, but i ended up biking up and down main st franticly in search for the darn thing! and ofcourse everyone kept sending me in opposite directions. so i peddled on down (and up) the road. they got plenty of hills in durham, which is kinda fun for this ol' dutch boy who's homeland is kind flat, cause you can go downhill for miles on end, real fast, and quite effortless to boot. ironicly, the guy who finally pointed me in the right direction was this poor old black man, wandering the streets, heading back home. he kinda reminded me of guitar gabriel in both his appearance in manneurism. he talked and sounded the same too. just as he started giving me directions he stopped midscentence and bowed down to pick something up from the ground 'hold on boy, let me get this penny' - some of you might not now, but a penny is one cent - and he procedeed to give me the directions. 'how are you doing boy?' - mighty fine sir, how about yourself? 'boy, i'm doin' pritty good m'self, but you don't happen to have a ciggarette on ya, now?' . he was a kind man indeed, that kinda made my day.
on the way back from the post office i stopped by whole foods to do some shopping for scott. got myself some fresh carrot juice get some juice - energy - flowing after that hour and a half postofficebikefiasco (sounds like a frank zappa song, dunnit?) and headed back home. i put on some quinoa, threw in a chopped tomato, chopped carrot, and a bunch of that delicous homemade habanero/halepenio pepper hot sauce scott made the other day. peppers are oil based, so they burn for a little bit, sit in your mouth. sits in your stomach too, if you get it right, it's kinda like that warm feeling whiskey gives you, that good ol, strong sourmash kind that i used to dig much.

watched the autobiography of malcolm x movie last night (the spike lee flick) and dug it bunches. seeing him go to mecca really made me realize the complete change of enviroment i'm facing right now. not quite drastic like that, since japan is kind of westernized, but at the same time, it's asia, it's different allright. put on the zz top shirt abe gave me and it made me feel a little sentimental. man, i dug hanging out with that guy so much. we had some righteous times together, allright. leaving scott again too. him dropping me off at the airport gave me an eerie sense of deja vu. same thing happened 6 months earlier, back in august. been a long time coming, been a long time gone, got ways to go. scott's a righteous cat too. had a great time hanging out with him for the past 9 days. i really i couldn't have wished for a better transition from abe to japan. hanging out with scott always centers me, give me some focus, perspective, roots, grounding. all of that. a really valuable 9 days indeed, i feel fortunate.

oh, all these paragraphs later, i finally remember. it's my birthday! didn't want to really plug it and write it all over the blog, but i felt like i should atleast mention it. what a way to spend your birthday, huh? traveling all day, sleeping at the airport like a hobo. man, last year i spent it in mario lalli's cafe 322 hanging out with him and kev-o. 'miss those guys man, they's righteous folks, too. both got a heart of gold. i hope they doing good. darn, eightteen. a young cat to most people, but it's been a trip so far. 'been a kid in this adult world for the past 7 or 8 years, and with this head of mine, growing up has been a trip all together. looking from the outside in. detached. almost like watching someone else grow up. and the weel it turns again, huh? oh well, finally will be able to get my driver's licence and all of that. i'll be able to drink legally...... and i don't drink no more. i'll be able to vote........ and i don't care about politics no more.......i'll be able to buy my weed legally....... and i don't smoke no more. spent all this time waiting and now i don't need those priveliges no more, what a hoot. oh well, lord knows the driver's licence will come in handy. though that's kind of ways off. first i got three months of japan ahead of me, atleast. and lord knows what'll happen after that. i kind of a got a feeling that once i go back i won't really get to go out like this no more, so i'm gonna see to it that i stretch this out for as far as it'll go.

good, this little spiel killed a good hour or so on the plane. if i write bunches more later..... you'll know by the time i put this bunch up ;-)

"el maximo"

and some more for while you wait....

2007-02-24T16:00:00.000+01:00

for those unfortunate readers who can't, don't or won't speak and/or read dutch, this little piece's got a little english bit at the bottom too. aren't we bilingual today? scroll way down for some (quite random) video-goodness - can't go wrong with these guys.

i thought this piece in particular, by my favorite author (kees van kooten), would be applicable, as i'll be going on a long trip this monday. will be getting on a big airship here in durham (nc) at 2pm local time, february 26th (my birthday, coincedentally) and will be in airport-land untill 2pm on february 28th, local japanese time. will have to camp out on the airport for an hour or 10 the eve of the 26th (quite a way to spend your 18th birthday, huh?), but as the ol' saying goes; that's allright all the same. will give me plenty of time to shop around for a camera.

and now, without further ado, enjoy this wonderfull piece of writing.

Kees van Kooten - Uw Purser
"Goedemiddag dames en heren, hier spreekt u purser en ik heet u namens onze captain nogmaals hartelijk welkom aan boord van deze Boeing zeven vier zeven. Ons toestel, u heeft dat misschien bij het instappen gezien, heet de Vincent van Gogh, en is genoemd naar de beroemde Nederlandse schilder Vincent van Gogh, die ook nog een tijdje in Frankrijk heeft gewoond, waar vooral veel wijn vandaan komt. Wij vliegen momenteel op een hoogte van elfhonderd voet en onze snelheid bedraagt tweehonderdtachtig mijl per uur, wat overeenkomt met tweehonderdvijftig knopen. Ik hoef u niet te vertellen dat dat hele andere knopen zijn dan u gewend bent, en dat zouden er bovendien wel wat veel zijn: tweehondervijftig knopen aan uw jas of broek. Als een Boeing zeven vier zeven opnieuw moet worden overgeschilderd, dames en heren, dan kost dat het lieve sommetje van maar liefst honderdzestigduizend gulden. En alleen die verflaag weegt al zo'n zeshonderd kilogram, wat ongeveer acht maal zoveel is als Vincent van Gogh moet hebben gewogen. Op het einde van zijn leven gingen er misschien wel tien a twaalf van Goghs uit het gewicht van de verflaag op deze Boeing zeven vier zeven. Het is misschien ook wel leuk om te vertelleen en anders is het wel aardig om te weten dat de vrachtuitvoering van de Boeing zeven vier zeven een laadruimte heeft ter grootte van twee tennisbanen. Dat is nogal wat, als u bedenkt dat een tennisbaan tenminste vierentwintig meter lang moet zijn en minimaal acht meter en drieentwintig centimeter breed. Wist u overigens dat het net altijd op een meter en zeven centimeter hoog precies moet hangen? En dat Björn Borg al op vijftienjarige leeftijd zijn Davis Cup debuut maakte? In negentientweeenzeventig was dat. Toen werd er al twee jaar gevlogen met de Boeing zeven vier zeven. In negentienzesenzeventig, toen onze Boeing zeven vier zeven al zes jaar in de lucht was, werd Borg Wimbledon kampioen in Wimbledon, en hij heeft deze titel vooral dankzij zijn knoerteharde service vijf achtereenvolgende jaren gewonnen. Dat is des te opmerkelijker als u bedenkt dat Borg van huisuit een gravelspeler was, en bepaald niet verzot was op gras. Zonder gras, maar dat hoef ik u nauwelijks te vertellen, zouden wij geen melk en geen vlees hebben. Zonder koeien trouwens ook niet, want van alle graseters zijn vooral de koeien ontzettend belangrijk. Zij zetten de plantaardige voedingsstoffen die in gras zitten, immers om in melk en vlees. Voor baby's of kleine kinderen is er desgewenst melk verkrijgbaar aan boord van deze Boeing zeven vier zeven, maar volwassenen drinken in de regel liever wijn of een glaasje whisky. Reeds tweeduizend jaar voor het begin van onze jaartelling werd er door de Chinezen wijn gedronken, en verder weten wij dat wijn ten tijde van de Griekse dichter Homerus in heel Griekenland bekend was. De eilanden die u rechts ziet liggen zijn overigens geen Griekse eilanden, maar meer de Hebryden, waar in de regel ook meer whisky dan wijn wordt gedronken. Op de Hebryden wordt echter Schots gesproken en geen Hebreeuws zoals er soms ten onrechte wordt gedacht. Hebreeuws wordt geschreven van rechts naar links, dus net andersom dan wij op dit moment vliegen met onze Boeing zeven vier zeven. Een boek in het Hebreeuws begint dus op de laatste bladzijde, terwijl zijde het product is van rupsen. Deze rupsen maken een uiterst fijne draad die zij gebruiken voor het spinnen van de cocon, waarin zij zich verpoppen. Het waren alweer de Chinezen, dames en heren, die drieduizend jaar geleden op het idee kwamen om die draad af te wikkelen en tot weefgaren te spinnen. Spinnen hebben acht poten, en een lichaam uit twee delen, maar ook een poes kan spinnen, waarmee zij aangeeft dat ze tevreden is. En u weet het: een tevreden roker is geen onruststoker. Of anders kent u wel de volkswijsheid die zegt van: waar rook is, moet vuur zijn. Vuur werd al zesduizend jaar geleden een van de vier elementen genoemd door wie anders dan door weer de Chinezen. De andere drie elementen waren water, aarde en lucht, waar wij met onze Boeing zeven vier zeven momenteel doorheen vliegen boven het water dat u daar heeelemaal beneden ziet, en hopelijk landen wij straks allemaal veilig op de aarde, want ik vertel u dit allemaal om uw aandacht af te leiden van het vuur dat een half uur lang uit twee van onze turbo-van-motoren komt. Ik dank u wel.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is your purser speaking, and on behalf of the captain I would like to welcome you again on board of this Boeing seffe vier seffe. While stepping in the Boeing seffe vier seffe perhaps you did notice the name of our Boeing seffe vier seffe, and the name is Vincent ven Go, and this Boeing seffe vier seffe is then also named after the famous Dutch painter Vincent ven Go, who used to live in the country of France for a while, and you know from the country of France comes especially a lot of wine for drinking. Wine is a very famous drink in the France, but also in other countries, and it were the little Chinese people who noticed the pleasence of wine, and they did it notice before, ooo dzjee, before two sousand years of our counting of the years in general, for the Christ was born and all the terrible things that happened after he was born, which would follow me too far out to talk..."

something for while you wait

2007-02-20T14:57:00.000+01:00

things are going to get interesting. stay posted. in the mean time, dig this video:
"Cream - I'm So Glad"

oh, and also dig this rad little picture right here. my old friend jeroen vectored this of off a tea-packet, i do believe. i haven't spoken to him in quite some time, so i sent him an email today. i'm sure he'll be exited to know that i'm leaving for japan next week.

check out his website at www.jeroenhoek.nl

"droptop telephone"

2007-02-18T15:30:00.000+01:00

so, after yesterday's hellacious trainride i finally made it to durham safe. turned out to be a four hour delay, as they were working on the tracks. it didn't startle me much, as i vaguely remember kaleb (abe's 17 year old son) encountering a simmilar problem on his way up to maryland. i spent my time in a simmilar fashion to my plane-trips; sleep, watch a movie, listen to music, sleep, sit and ponder, get of the train. watched the thelonious monk movie 'straight no chaser'. it was good, as a mater of fact yesterday was february the 17th - exactly 25 years to the day that monk died. trippy, huh? that left me phased for a little while. spend the last 3 hours hanging out with these little spanish/english speaking kids from washington dc. watched them fill up a coloring book, played some 'knock knock who's there?' with them and just spieled for a little bit. kids are a trip to be around, i had a good time. this one boy felt bad for me, because he thought i looked so skinny. 'don't you miss your mother?' 'you should go back to your mother, so she can put some fat on you.' 'is that all you're eating?' (pointing at a little piece of raw acorn squash i was munching on - my only food for the day.)

i'd bought the new norah jones record a the night before and spend my time digesting that quite a bit. must have listened to it three or four times all the way through. it's real good, i like it. have always liked norah jones' music. even though one might consider it popular music, it's got a real organic, natural sound and vibe to it. which is especially rare in major label records these days.

scotty picked me up at the train station and took me back home. we spent some time talking. feels good to be back around scott again, reminds me of what's good and true, gets me centered. it reaffirms what i'm doing as being just.

got up early in the morning, as per usual - and at the same time in spirit of old times, and worked on some lyrics. the night of the 16th, after i got home from baltimore, i sat down with abe for a lil' while, waiting for a cd to copy, and i just started playing these chords that felt really good - a tad bit different from what i usually do. the thing that feels most like work is actually sitting down and writing up some lyrics, but it felt pretty good all the same.

reading back on some of these previous entries i realise this interesting irregularity throughout them. going back and forth between heavy slang and somewhat regular speech. it almost seems like just bringing the message in an entertaining way. it's a bunch of fun man, playing with words like that.

as some of you may have heard by now already, i'll be leaving for japan the 27th of february. yes, that is a day after my birthday. i do believe i wrote up a big chunk on that on the train yesterday, but i have yet to get it off my 'puter and put it up here. on that note, though, i'll include a picture of me after i finished moving a bunchload of hay. might not quite capture the magnitude of the task, but it's allright all the same. did that work for blane in exchange for my one-way ticket to japan.

and this hobo rides a train

2007-02-17T20:40:00.000+01:00

sitting in the train - the 079 caroliner - headed from baltimore, md to durham, nc. we've been waiting at washington dc for a little bit now. it surprised me how crowded the train was, at first especially compared to my experiences with the amtrak back in cali. but when most people got off at washington it all made sense to me. just me, my guitar and a backpack. back to the basics, no hassles. i'm still trying to wrap my head around it all. the time spent with abe was intense. learned a lot from the guy and found a good friend in him to boot. he walked with me inside the station, playing my jazzmaster. dropped me off and said our goodbyes. it's been a good 2 hours, i do believe, and i feel weird, phased, i guess. i don't know if that's the right way to use that word, but if you're familliar with phase shifters you can imagine. caught in this gaseous state in between trips. not really part of anything at the moment, not really started anything. just this weird, transitional phase. it's looking good, but it's strange. i feel this form of sadness, leaving abe and all, but neither do i extatic to be moving on, doing new things. it's this weird middle-ground. kind of peacfull, zoned and spaced out. like a thin veil is surrounding me and protecting me from the bad and the good. in utero, in the womb. went out and ate sushi last night with abe and janice, some symbolic closure to the good times past. i went ahead and got the new norah jones cd too. walked past it a bunch of times over the past few weeks and i finally just had to get it. i have just listened to it and i like it, i think it's good. it seems to capture this feeling quite well. writing about it seems to let my head make some sense of it all.

if you've made it this far you'll probably start to realise that i've left the maryland farm and abe behind. i've had such a good time spending time with him, makes me smile thinking back on it. there's not a whole lot of people that make me step up on a personal level, and sort of force me to grow. but it's a very organic process, it's unconcious, very much so. however, my position as a playing musician wasn't set in stone yet, since the manager, blane, wanted to bring in some more, professional musicians and try those out, i just felt like i had to take the leap again and move on. they offered me a steady position to stick around, but i don't want to settle for 'second best' or 'safe', not playing. on my way right now to go see scotty down in north carolina and drive out together to california. got a one-way ticket to tokyo, japan for february 27th. the day after my birthday, imagine that. now that i think about it, two days from now it'll be a year to the day that i came to america to 'travel the world for rock'n'roll' as brant aptly put it. bunchloads has happened and now the story continues. i'm going to japan beause i feel like the music scene is a little less saturated than over here in america, or europe for that matter. from what i know, and what my gut-feeling says, they're more open for new things, especially if they're foreighn and 'exotic'. i'm hoping to make some good friends and get a three-piece band together. and, in the process improve on my japanese. i'm taking a little break from writing now. i bought a dvd on thelonious monk yesterday entitled 'straight no chaser'. appearantly clint eastwood directed it, wow, what a trip! i'll spiel some more later.

max

"yo! bumrush the show"

2007-02-11T22:22:00.000+01:00

"the microphone master DMC cause ONE two THREE four CASUALTIES!"

man, it's been a hiphop day over here in the land of mary. 'tis abe's birthday today, so we went out to eat some thai food and i got him a bunch of cds and a hat at the record store. yes, they sell hats at the record store. he got one of them black 'english gentleman' or run dmc type hats. looks pretty righteous. i got him the first two syd barret records (only 7 bucks all together, used, what a steal!) and the first two public enemy records. told you it was a hiphop day. man, i never realized how great those pe records where! i was into hiphop before i got into rock music (well, elvis came first, but i was 6). didn't dig way back or deep into it, because i was still young, so i never made it to public enemy. but darn, it's good. it's got a bunch of guitar on there, so it almost sounds like a rock record to me. put a lot of stuff in perspective. opened up a whole nother little door/insight into my vocal performance and vocals in general. it really was two turn tables and a microphone, back then. sometimes it was just a drumbeat, sometimes they'd sample old james brown, pfunk, albert king, good old records. it knocked me out, anyway.

man, darnit, if the 'puter just didn't crash on me and got rid of half of my spiel. shoot. anyway, like i was ramblin; i finally finished up the jazzmaster. i'd been collecting parts to put together this guitar, and it's finished, now. got a neck on there made out of african padauk. real stable, pourous, nice wood. it's like playing a sanded tree trunk, don't need no finish. it's a big neck too, 62/srv profile, so it'll fill you're hand up pretty good. rad piece of wood, like playing africa, i back it. i recorded a new tune on it too, this morning. it's improvised, and pretty floaty, but music is music. nothing fancy, recorded with a simple digital recorder. no amp, just the recorded and the guitar in a good sounding room. the one i sleep on the floor in. the song sounds kind of mournfull/arabic, and it's played on a jazzmaster, so i thought i'ma call it 'mourning the master'. put that in your pipe and smoke it.....
get 'mourning the master (demo)' here

i'll leave you all with this rad little new brant bjork song/video i've been grooving on for the past week or so. man, it's good. that guy to me is like bob dylan was to hendrix, or something along those lines. everytime he puts out something new it kicks my ass and makes me just want to rock, get better, and write new stuff. most of this footage is from last years tour. might be some in there that i shot, cale handed me the camera during 'low desert punk' at last year's roadburn festival. i ain't much of a cameraman, but i put a little homage to hendrix in there. on the song machine gun at the isle of wight festival, they had a slow shot going all the way down his body to his foot on the wah pedal. i dig that shot much, so i did the same thing. that ain't in the video, but hey, man, it's a good memory. looking forward to the new brant record too. no doubt that it'll kick my ass for weeks, months even. strap on a fender, turn up a marshall, and rock. digging the half-singing half rap/spoken word thing too. covering a public enemy song brant style crossed my mind today man, i'm telling you.....

'born to rock' - dig it!

a change is gonna come

2007-02-09T22:20:00.000+01:00

as you may have noticed, i've invested some more time in getting the myspace site rad and running. wrote up a small chunk of bio. realized that i didn't have a bio yet, and i guess there's no real reason for being shy about self-promotion. it's things like that from other artists that have always inspired me, so i hope it'll do the same for atleast someone out there. put a video of thelonious monk on there, too. 'epistrophy', wish it had 'trane on sax, cause i dig what he does with that tune, but monk's piano part is particularly righteous on this one.

written a bunch of songs the past few days, some solo, some abe colab stuff, and will try to get some online soon. there's some interesting stuff in there. they all demo's, ofcourse, but i figure it'd be rad to keep ya'll up to date anyway. my birthday's coming up soon, the 26th, so i guess i'll finally have to break down and get a digi-cam. no-cam is the most econo way to go, but with all that's happened over the past year, pictures would be a good next-step on the diy ladder. would give you all some to look at, a little visual with the spiel. most o' them photomachines nowadays shoot a little video, too. so let's see what'll happen. making things up as i go along, in writing and in life. it's all one big jam-session anyway.

there's a bunchload of things looking to happen, but i'm gonna be a little reserved about the details for now. will let you all know as soon as things get finalized a little.
take care,el maximo

another brother in rock'n'roll

2007-02-09T19:49:00.000+01:00

"it's another brother in rock'n'roll
but where's the soul gone today
tv-head mindset, dead like the radio
so let it go, and let it flow, mr brotherman
now get behind your sound machine and make it move,
like the grooves on your daddy's good ol' black wax
your daddy's black wax

think back to the record that says
'listen without distraction' on the inside
the days when the sound's vibration
made you feel that sun and sand,
in your rainy homeland.
now get behind your sound machine
and turn those memories into grooves,
that move and then you put it onto black wax

five forgotten, and ten forsaken.
they've been taken by the demon
that lives inside of you.
but when i look inside i smile,
cause that demon, yes that demon,
is inside of me too.
but even if you see, can you really understand,
that the demon, that demon,
he ain't nothing but a friend.
now get behind your sound machine and make him move,
and let that demon, that demon, dig some black wax too"

february 2nd 2006 - westminster, md, usa

2007-02-02T23:28:00.000+01:00

keeping the spiel going. i was hoping to keep you all (and myself) entertained by posting reports of all the gigs and open mics, but the openmics have been canned. atleast, for abe and i. it undermines the bigger buisnessplan, so we back to sitting on our asses, writing music, and working on the farm. oh well, in the words of good ol' neil, don't let it bring you down. made some authentic dutch split pea soup for the folks over here. abe & jan dug it much, but seems like blane and stacy are a little weary of trying some. "man, y'all done gone hurt my feelin's! 'been out there slavin' for two hours and ya'll won't eat it! the gas won't kill ya folks". playing all them wordgames, making people laugh and stuff. all that southern talk is slowly creeping into my everyday spiel. it's only the reids propegating it, too. people up here are pretty straight. close to washington, and new york. been writing a bunchload of new songs, so that's all good. a friend of blane's coming over tonight to beat some skins, 'be fun. some bass-time for good ol' max.

January 23rd 2006 - Westminster, MD, USA

2007-01-23T23:27:00.000+01:00

seems like this log is slipping into a bi-weekly to monthly edition. iunderstand that some would like to read more, but I don't want to chimp a bunch of air.

after some deliberation, abe and me descided to go ahead and startplaying open mics. it gets us out of the farm, which is especiallyrefreshing for abe, and it's good for me, getting some mileage undermy belt. we've been doing a 2 guitar thing, with abe on gi-tar andharp, and me backing him up on another one of them 6 string machines.

we started this tuesday. went out to ellicot city, which is realclose, bordering to, caltimore, and went to a small pub called thejudge's bench, i do believe. got there at 730, early. and not beforelong met two cats coming in to play too. a guy called mike (ascomplainer mcplainerton) who did this cool singer/songwriter thing(covered the radiohead tune, karma police, too. righteous). had a coolamsterdam tshirt on. turns out he'd been there more recently than Ihave, 'round about 6 months ago! what a trip, traveling, being out andabout. but actually, 'twas two cats and a bird, mike, and a girl namedjen. she played the piano, or a keyboard, in this case, sang real welland lay down some great originals. she picked up the guitar too, quiterighteous. we gave them a copy of the spikedriver's cd, and got a copyof each of their cds. me and abe hit the stage second, after mr mike,at around 845. with abe, you never know what the setlist is going tobe like untill he starts playing, but he started off with the guitargabriel song, 'juice headed woman'. actually, someone else wrote that,mr q has claimed he did, but who knows? abe got it from gabe, i dobelieve. halfway through the song abe drops his gi-tar, gets the harpout of his rack, and starts blowing. hearing him play harp is always amindblow, i really dig what he does. the song is a standard 12 barblues, so I do pretty good, don't blow a whole lot of clams. i'mplaying abe's 1913 gibson, going directly into the pa. after the harpsolo i kick a loop pedal by accident, it ain't mine, it's just on thefloor, and it messes me up. i play an 'a' but i hear an 'e' comingthrough the pa? what's up with that? i look at the soundguy and heappologises a bunch, and gets that loop out of there. i tell him noproblem, it's all good. thank you, man. in the meantime, abe keeps onplaying on and laughing his ass of. the entire deal didn't last muchmore than 9 bars or so, but it was a hoot and a hollar all the same.next up is 'western plain', or 'cowboy song', as abe calls it. theledbelly tune. i really dig playing that song, that's what really gotme deep into abe's music. when i did that record with him a few monthsago. i sent a copy to my lil' sister, for her birthday and she dug itmuch. make it through the song pretty good, since i know it well,might have blown a clam or two, but nothing major. doubt if too manyfolks, if anyone, noticed it much. abe goes right into 'fan it (keepit cool)' and darn if i don't forget the part he taught me thisafternoon! i play a walking bassline to make up for it, and halfwaythrough the part comes back to me and i switch to that. reminds me ofelvis presley, the part i play. must have been the elvis documentarywe watched at abe's mom's the day before. the open mic is a 3 song or15 minute thing, but the people digs what we do much, so we getanother song. righteous! abe goes into 'green onion', his spinoff of abunch a blues songs, kind of like john lee hooker's 'boom boom boom'and 'dimples'. made it through pretty well, since it's just one riffwith a little 'tail' or 'fill' every once in a while. with that we endour set. i leave pretty satisfied. we sat, so I take our chairs backand prop up our gi-tars back in the corner. next up is jen's set. iwas spieling with this nice old hippy-looking man. enjoyed the spiel,but felt bad for trying to divide my attention between jen playing herpiano and spieling with this guy. somehow managed to catch the musicand spiel at the same time pretty well. we hung out 'till aroundthirty minutes past midnight and head back on home. had a good night,people really dug what we did, made me feel good. playing with abeboosts my confidence. makes all the difference when you don't have toworry about the music. takes away my nerves pretty quick into the set.got home at one fifteen or so, hit the deck and was out by a quarterto two. heading for sleepy town would prove to be a hellishnight........ nightmares, yuck. wake up at five.

"Fare thy well"

2007-01-01T23:26:00.000+01:00

I'd like to wish everyone keeping up with this thing a prosperous 2007. I woke up this morning, thinking that I should send an individual email to everyone I know. But that's quite a bunch of people and such a thing would litterally take me a couple of hours. Therefore I descided I'd just put it up here, and let you all email me. So I can take my time to write a proper response to everyone.

A lot has happened in the past few weeks. Some of you are pretty much up to date on the subject, but I'll put it up here so nobody gets left out. I felt kind of reserved about putting things up here before they'd actually happen, so that will explain the lack of updates over the past month, though I've kept in touch with folks through email.

My time volunteering making records has since ended. No, it's not that I didn't do a good job, and no, it's not like I had a falling out, but due to circumstances wich I'm unfortunatly unable to disclose publicly (though those who are in contact with me through email know), it had to end. I got an amazing body of work done in just seven weeks, though, so I'm quite satisfied. Since I still felt that it was too early to return home I asked Tim if he knew of any opertunities for me to play music. Playing music is and was the reason I came out to the North America's in the first place. And sure enough, Abe Reid (remember Abe?) was looking for people to play with. So, he and his wife picked me up December 21st (my pop's birthday, coincidentally) and after spending a week at his mom's in Statesville, NC - celebrating christmas - we went up to a place near Baltimore, Maryland - where we're currently residing at his manager's pad. A horsefarm. So far, we've went over a dozen or so songs. Things have been going good. Playing bass, guitar and shoveling horseshit every morning. That's just a little bit of comic relief, actually, it involves a little bit more than just that. We take them out into the fields, clean their stalls (scoop the poop and pee) replenish their supply of water and refill their bowls of food and hay. After that, it's music time. We went over to some friends yesterday for a small new years party and Abe and I played a bunch of songs. It made me smile; the first song we played was the cowboy song I've send to a bunch of you folks. Made me feel good. He ditched his guitar and just started playing harp during 'Smoke Stacked Lighning'. Boy, was I glad I'd picked up on it a few weeks ago! All in all I felt pretty good about the entire thing. Sitting here, writing this little piece, it reminds me of being on stage with Mario Lali/Fatso Jetson just 10 months earlier, the Troubadour in Los Angelos. When you're performing in front of people, and you've got a capable band, you don't get nervous. Atleast, I don't, no more.

There you have it, the gist of what has happened so far. Fare thy well, in this seventh year of the all too futuristic sounding second millenium. It's all just numbers, anyway. Don't let them devils fool you, stay true and close to what's real. There are two kinds of suffering, the kind that leads to more suffering, and the kind that leads to the end of suffering. Put that in your pipe and sit on it for a while.

Love,
'El Maximo'

Incoherance

2006-12-06T23:24:00.000+01:00

As promised, more frequent updates. This might be a relatively short one, but atleast it's new, and that's what seems to matter. Actually, I guess it's just a little spiel to let you know there's new music in the Music section (_real_ new music this time, all the other stuff in there is from the vaults, most of it before I even left for the United States the first time around). It's a small little improvised piece called 'Incoherance'. I'll send a special present (yes, physicly, by old fashioned mail) to the first person who gets the referance. The music might give you a little clue.

On other news, today we'll be doing another session with "Boo" Hanks (the guy in the picture below, with the gi-tar). So if all goes well, I'll have another record done by the end of this week (along with 3 others). It's beyond exhausting work though, doing all those records. Weekends barely give me enough quiet time and peace to recharge my batteries. Good thing the Holidays are coming up. Urgh, still got trapped in a 9 to 5 thing, what a drag. Comes with the teritory, I guess. Gotta suffer for a while.

I'm kind of bummed that I missed Sinterklaas, back home. Was kind of looking forward to it. I guess most of the people I know don't even celebrate it much anymore, so we gotta reinstate something next year, hmm... ponder that for a while. Christmas coming up, I guess people got their eyes focused on that now. It's all good, though. Whatever floats people's boats. And we need floatin' boats back home, high-flood risk and below sea level and all, ha!

So, go dig that little mp3-file of music in the Music section and go figure out who that reference is to!

Take Care,
Max

"It's another day, down at the office"

2006-12-02T23:23:00.000+01:00

It's another day at the office, they sometimes say. It's all good, rather fun. It's a little past 5AM right now, been up for a while. Listening to Soundgarden's Badmoterfinger record, on Tape. Picked that one up back in 'Frisco (San Francisco), Amoeba records, I do believe. Pleasantly surprised I was indeed. A great record to play when it's dark, especially in the morning time, for some reason. Didn't think I could take waking up with rock music, but it's a good record.

Hmm, so, anyway, yeah, what has been up with me? Well, another day at the office allright.... hmm, this past Wednsday, the 28th of November, I helped record this 80 year old bluesman from Virginia. "Boo". He played a bunch of old Blind Boy Fuller, Blind Lemon Jefferson songs, and man, was he good! I'll post a picture at the end of today's post. I'm sure you won't have a hard time figuring out who Boo is (look for the guitar). Oh, and me? Look for the long-haired white guy (shouldn't be too hard to spot, ha!). Yes, NOVEMBER, hardcore wintertime, you'd say, why is he walking around in his TShirt?! I, for one, sure never dreamed of walking around in my TShirt in November, December even, yesterday, but, man, it's 75 degrees out! (About 21-23 Celcius). 75! It's Winter! Though, this morning, things seem to have cooled down considerably.

Click on the electronic photograph picture to make it bigger

Hmm, maybe I'm holding off on recording songs. But I don't know, I guess I gotta wait till the spirit moves me and I happen to be in the right timeframe to record. It'll happen, soon, someday, worry not.

Hmm, I guess this is why I don't update very often, I have a hard time finding a story to tell. Oh, yeah, now I do remember, Thanksgiving. Been over a week now, but that's a trip man, all American holiday. You basicly start eating this huge feast, in the early after noon (after! _noon_, 12). Invite a bunch of people over, who each bring a dish. I had, hmm, water, and home-made bread (didn't make it myself, was given to me), that's about it. Hot water, ofcourse. Everything got butter, garlic, onions, or some other contaminent in there that messes me up. No turkey for me either, no thanks. Was funny though, man, America sure is a trip from time to time. I guess we Dutch are just the same in a slightly different kind of way. It's just me who's kind of off on his own plane, his own trip. That's allright, righteous enough.

Don't know wether or not that past paragraph was really neccecery or not, but I imagine folks getting upset if I skipped thanksgiving. Ah well, man, Christmas gonna come up. Kind of bummed that I'm gonna miss Sinterklaas, would like to have done something for it, but that's allright. You all have a year to think of something, propositions are welcome, just send me an email. Listening to some old Guitar Gabe tapes right now, pretty righteous. It does sound nicer on tape. You don't have no incentive to skip tracks. But beyond that, you got that analog noise-floor. Grounds you. Good stuff. He's good though, amazing. It's weird, having all those pictures of him in the guest house, and his old clothes. Gives this place kind of an eerie, mystical feeling. 'Come a long way, still got a long way to go. Not much more I can add to that, gracias, Gabe.

Well, I guess I'll wrap it up here, give you some to digest, or put it in your pipe and...., well, you know. Need some logs, build one of them tabacco curing sheds, bet it sound good to record music in. In Holanda, ofcourse. Well, take care!

November 20th 2006 - Hillsborrough, NC, USA

2006-11-20T23:20:00.000+01:00

I finally got into the mood again for adding some spiel to this blog, thanks to a certain email. Gracias. 30 minutes 'till the day starts. Such joy, working by the clock. It's all just dealing with circumstances, getting around them without getting out of them, wake up at three or four, and the clock won't do you much harm. I think I'll start working on the Etta Baker banjo record today. Spend all of last week working on the Paul Duffy boxset. It's hillarious, great stuff. He's one of the great poets, man, I'm telling you, it's rad!

Times have been trippy over here in North Carolina. Seen a lot of music, music from places and people you normally wouldn't get to, it's great. And then on top of that I'm immersed in music all day, listening to it, putting records together. There's so much great music beyond what we know and is available through even the regular distribution channels. Forget about independent record labels even, there's so much stuff beyond that that we never get exposed to or get to listen to, and a lot of it is actually very good, it's crazy, I tell you.

Trippy times, rad times. Going back to the old days, local music, local distribution, It's all coming full circle. You can't have a strong force without something else pulling it back in to get things balanced out. The Chinese sure got it right ages ago with their Ying/Yang. The symbol's cliched in this society to the point where it's almost sad, but like most cliche's, it's all so true, so simple, yet so infinite. You can't have good without evil, light without dark, but evil perceives it's own actions as being good, there's shadow on even the brightest day. it's the black in the white, the white in the black. So even with in these crazy times, and hell, they've been crazy ever since the 'industrial revolution', globalization and normalization triggers an opposite force. Music that doesn't want to be watered down to sound like what everyone else is hearing all around the world. People that don't want to confirm to their environment. And I know, I know, you've all heard this before. From the Hippies, the Punks, all of that. and as much as it's the same every time, it's different for the people. not confirming, not bowing down to a standard, doesn't mean you become a hermit and desert society. If you really want to do it, try to transcend it. Function within your environment, without having it change you or bring you down. bring yourself up first, and if you can, bring your environment up with you.

'Must be all this blues music, cause man, I sure 'be rambling today.

By now I don't know who's keeping up with this weird log, but from what i gathered, more people than I thought. I'm surprised people care, thanks for taking the time and reading it.

"Let the truth be known!"

2006-10-27T00:18:00.000+02:00

Ah, good. Got to Philadelphia safe. Still a couple of hours 'till my transit, so I descided to do the Watt thing; grab my 'puter and "chimp". Love all of that slang he uses. Language is such a trippy thing, I just try and pick up on all the words I like and incorporate them into my own speech and writing.

Seems like I just left, damn, these long-distance trips are starting to become easier and easier as I grow older. Even though I'm not there all the way yet, it's been a huge trip (in the metaphorical sense, mostly) so far already. Let me just give a lowdown of events so far in a more chronological manner, to let Max makes some sense.

Popped at 330, took a long, nice shower. It's getting cold in my land, I'm gonna miss it. Love them Holland winters. Spent the next couple of hours packing some misc. stuff and transfering some files to my 'puter. Gotta have 'The World According To John Coltrane' with me, for inspiration when needed. Cut up some oranges and apples and put them in the blender in order to make me some nice juice. Don't know about the chow on the plane, so the juice serves me righteous. Might be the only thing for a good 24 hours.

My pop's driving me to airport and my lil' sister is coming along cause she's gonna help him out at work today. Righteous. She's a rad little bird, that much I'll tell you. They're both rad people. We leave for the airport at 7AM. There's some plug on the way to Amsterdam, nothing unusual, but damn if I ain't gotta pee and forgot to bring a pissbottle! That's what plug's great for, though, so I get out the car and just water the grass on the side of the road. I feel a million eyes piercing my back, but I'm watching the sun break the clouds. I mean, when you gotta go you gotta go. But somehow we got ourselves stuck in cars and need bathrooms and all that uptown stuff.... Anyway, we get to the aiport exactly at our target time of 900AM, allright! My dad's allways spot-on with that kind of stuff! My sis get's me a cart for my stuff and we say our goodbyes, I hug her. Hug and give my dad a kiss, am gonna miss you guys man! The more I travel the harder it gets to leave all them folks behind, but this is my school, gotta do what I gotta do.

So I go up to the check in. Hall C, counter 29 or something like that. 29... Righteous, US Airways 'got no line! I love that! Don't mind standing in line, but it gets old quick, especially when you're still lumping all your stuff around. Check in proceeds smoothly. Got me a visa now, so I don't get the regular green I-94 Visa Waiver thingy, but a white paper. Good, variety. Hmm, it seems Denise got arranged a vegan meal when she ordered my ticket, thank you, Denise! Kind of curious as to what it is. So I check in my git'fiddle and trolleybag-o-clothes, strap on my backpack and take my clarinet and head for the waiting area. I have to go get some earbuds because my last pair died on my way back last time 'around. I gotta pee first though. Yes again, been drinking a lot of water today. It's not that urgent, but I try to find a toilet anyway. Looks like they changed stuff around, huh? Wow, that's quick, I was just here 2 months ago. Fast construction work at Schiphol Airport. Why don't downtown Amsterdam take an example from these cats?

So I go down to the rest area (never did find that toilet) and I kinda freeze as I see someone sitting there. Lo-Fi jacket.... pedal roadcase. Dude, fuckin' Brant Bjork! Now if that ain't a trip! Cortez told me he'd been traveling around Europe and he'd be going back to the states soon, but damn, same day! What are the odds of that, huh? I take it as a good sign. So we talk and spiel for a bit, I tell him what I'm gonna be doing and he's blown away. He says; see, Max, that's what happens when you start getting rad. Rad thing happen to you. He tells me a little bit about what he's been doing himself, and then he asks me; Max, what time does your flight leave? So I tell him; 1120. He's like; Philedelphia. Me; yup. "No, Shit!". No shit indeed, what are the odds of THAT. I definitly take it as a good sign man. If it weren't for this guy I wouldn't even be here. When that cat took me out on the road at 15, man, that changed my life. Been leaning towards doing music as my main gig for a while, but I was still in University, doubting. But when I met that cat, and those guys told me; dude, don't wait 'till you're older, just fucking do it now, get rad!.... I talk to him all the way untill boarding, so that's a good 2 hours. Man, I always learn loads from this cat, I feel so greatfull having met all these cats. Thanks Brant! Cortez, Dylan, Mike, Kevo-o, Boomer, Kale and all you other righteous cats. Will definitly try and come out to California, hang for a week or two. North Carolina is rad and all, but I miss So-Cal.

So we board the plane and go our seperate ways, he's 10 seats ahead of me and I just let him do his thing. 8 hour flight huh? Decent. I finish reading the last 100 pages of Miles' (Davis) Autobiography. Konk some. Get hot water during the drink-handhouts on all occasions, getting a side of orange juice just once (They forgot my water initially). The Vegan meal was pretty righteous, especially for airplane chow. Tomato-sauce and sweet potatoes, some rye bread and a salad. Lil' starchier stuff than I would normally take, but a righteous gesture all the same. Konk some more, or more so, nod in and out of sleep for the entirety of the flight. When they hand out sandwiches to the other folks a couple of hours later I wondered what they had in store for me. More Rye bread, allright! Salad, cucumber, and some flavoured tofu. Not the biggest Tofu fan (makes everything flat and 2D) but this one doesn't seem to bother me all that much. Read some stuff on Stevie Ray Vaughan (the booklet that comes with that 3CD 4DVD boxset), nod in and out of sleep some more. Mediatate some with the beads Kate gave me back in 'Frisco, and damn if that eight hour flight didn't just fly by like it was nothing!

So I get out and go through customs. Turn out, because of the visa, I have to go through 'Secondary Inspection'. So I head over there and the guy tells me to go pickup my other stuff, so I do and spiel with Brant some more. Damn if U.S. Customs and immigration ain't a bitch, we both agree on that. I tell him I'll write him up and let him know when I'm coming down to Cali. Looking forward of that more than anything else on this trip, to be honest. So I take my baggage and head back to the 'Secondary Inspection' office. The dude asks me all sort of questions, and goes to every single thing in my pockets and bags, reading all my notes and letters, a little surprised by the odd situation he's got. 17 year old cat, with a college degree he got at 10, traveling to the US and he's already been here for a good 5 months. He told me we have a little situation but doesn't tell me anything untill he's gone through _every single piece_ of my stuff. Damn. No 'tude from him though, gotta give him that. He's just doing his job. He asks me all sorts of questions and I try to answer them to the best of my ability, trying to not give off a too-inimidated aura, because I'm not. Being interrogated and searching is just a drag. Him having no 'tude whatsoever helps tons, though. The entire procedure takes about 45 minutes, after which he tells me I can go ahead and repack my stuff. He says he'll give me the benefit of the doubt and let me in. Because of my previous trips I've almost overstayed the maximum allowed amount. More than 180 a year. But he tells me I seem like a good, intelligent kid, and impressed by my academic background, he is confident that I will abide by the laws (no paid work, etc, etc) so he admits me till April 25th of 2007. He ask me; any questions? I tell him; no, just a thank you." Staying polite with the authorities is always a good thing, but I'm honestly thankfull. He goes on and tells me that because my visa is valid up untill October 10th of 2007, I can file for an extension with the CIS, and it's up to them wether or not to grant it. He also states that next time I leave the US, I'd best stay out for 6 months or so, to make a so called 'meaningfull departure'. He also tells me, in case I should find a band and want to work legally, it might take a few months to get the proper documents together, but given my acedemic background, he so no reason why the procedure shouldn't be a smooth one. Last thing he tells me is basicly comes down to; stay out of trouble, kid, and have a good time. But ofcourse he picks different words. He gives me a cart to carry my luggage, thoug, allright! These things cost like 3 bucks, and you don't get that kind of money back, so that alone is worth the trouble of that inspection. Wasn't too bad, but that entire bureaucracy stuff is just meant to scare the shit out of people, if you ask me. Go on my way through local customs and head for gate B4, where my flight leaves in two hours. Which leaves me at where I started chimpin' this thing an hour ago. Righteous. Now all that's left is a good hour of waiting. Will put more 'spiel up later. Take care.

"Back from the land of a thousand drums...."

2006-08-29T00:15:00.000+02:00

Terug uit de kolonien....

"De schaar, nooit weg, want hij is altijd zoek."

2006-08-02T00:13:00.000+02:00

Ja, heden, den eerste Augustus. Voor de verandering eens geen Engels. Heb al een dag of vier, vijf niet gesproken en ik moet zeggen dat het een enorme waardering kweekt voor taal, cultuur en natuur. Volstrekt impulsief bracht ik vandaag een bezoek aan de Openbare Bibliotheek van San Francisco. Verwondert, glunderend als een klein kind was ik toen ik de Nederlandse letterbij aanschouwde, gesitueerd in de International afdeling. 'Dutch', neen, dat is geen Duits. Ik vraag me wel eens af of iedereen uit mijn land die sterke afkeer heeft tegen met Duitsland verward te worden. Het zal vast die tweede wereldoorlog geweest zijn.

Mijn ogen speuren langs de vaderlandse geschriften. Een voor een bekijk ik rustig, uitgebreid de autheur en titel, glimlachen om elke letter die mij terug brengt naar mijn moerstaal. Zie je, ironisch genoeg, in mijn eigen land doe ik altijd sterk mijn best om alles wat in het Nederlands geschreven is te vermijden. Hooguit kijk ik of er wat van Kees van kooten tussen staat dat ik nog niet gelezen heb. Maar hier, in den kolonien, zoals mijner kameraad Wouter het triomfantelijk betiteld, hier licht ik op bij het aanzicht van de planken in mijn moerstaal geschreven, vaderlandse letterbrei. Vijf hele planken wel te verstaan, en ik voel me de koning te rijk.

Met een grote glimlach pak ik een boek over de gouden eeuw van de plank en begin te lezen. De autheur vindt het kennelijk belangrijk om ook voorhistorie te geven. Logisch, dat plaatst het in perspectief, nietwaar? Oorlog, vete's, ruzies en nog eens oorlog. Tenminste, dat is waar onze vriend de schrijver de eerste helft van z'n boek aan wil spenderen. Dan realiseer ik me des te meer dat oorlog een constante is, Israel, Irak, Hesbalal, Afganistan, Amerika, een pot nat. Kinderen in een zandbak, vechten om hun stukje zand om hun kasteel neer te planten. Alleen hebben ze nu luxere speeltjes om mee te vechten. Bah, politiek. Blij dat ik geen radio heb.

Ik leg het boek terug en hervat het speuren en warempel, stuit op een uitgebreid boek over de vroege twintigste, late negentiende eeuw. Van politiek tot kunst. Kijk, dat is al beter. Na even bladeren besluit ik het mee te nemen. Ik pak nog wat geschiedenis boeken van de plank en stop ze in mijn rugtas

Plotseling stoppen mijn ogen met wandelen, en ze fonkelen als die van een klein kind. We lezen, tot onzer verbazing, Kees van kooten. Ik krijg spontaan tranen in mijn ogen. Ik pak het boek van de plank, koester het eventjes in en uit verbazing, en stop het in mijn rugtas. Triomfantelijk keer ik huiswaards.

"Ah, de schaar, nooit weg, want hij is altijd zoek."

A Mushroom's Point Of View

2006-07-31T00:08:00.000+02:00

Small, proud little creatures. Ever polite, always wearing their hat. "The sun will burn our eyes!" They'll say. "Look at our hats, they're already scourged with this tint of brown!"

Inert yet enchanting. Some will help you sleep, some will help you think, others will help you see. Some will make you fall into eternal slumber, never to awaken again in this lifetime...

"We're all mere guides" the little mushroom says. "All of us can show you unique places. Yet my brothers knows of places that I've neither been to nor seen. The same goes for me, on the other hand. I too know of places where only I can take you, unknown to my brother. However, you will have to pick me up and carry me, for I have no legs. Thus I can only guide your mind, not your body. You'll have to walk the physical path yourself. I shall merely guide your mind". Yes, inert yet enchanting.... A Mushroom's Point Of View

July 26th 2006 - San Francisco, CA, USA

2006-07-27T00:06:00.000+02:00

I let go a big sigh of contentment. It's a beautiful morning. I woke up at 2, even before the set time of my alarm. It's barely 415 as of writing, but I feel awfully content, I just thought I'd share this feeling. That 3 hour nap yesterday really helped me out, I no longer feel weary and tired. No, extremely at ease. Nostalgic. I haven't felt this way in a while. I'm remembering summers past, I'm looking forward to going back home, watching fall start. Fall and winter, for some reason I love those two seasons in my own country. They're cold, but very nostalgic. I like nostalgia. I like the feeling I get from watching at an old, sepia-brown tinted, weathered picture. I like the feeling of listening to an old song and remembering the feelings it stirred inside of me back then and what it does for me now. I like the earth, the ground, that entire feeling my country takes on when it transitions into fall. The smell of the cold air, the sight of the trees. Coming home after a long bicycle ride or walk in that freezing, yet all so comforting and heartwarming cold. It makes me feel blessed, it makes me feel fortunate, humble, loved. It reminds me of times when that cold, warm world was the only place and friend in which I could seek refuge. Now it is one of many, but it stills offers so many things that only it can bring. Yes, I look forward to going home and seeing that friend again, amongst the others. I look forward to finally embracing it with a smile, contentment and thanking it for being there for me all these years. It's the air, the earth, the trees, it's nature. It doesn't talk, and it doesn't need to. It communicates with me in a way that words would never be able to convey, and that's alright. That is how I communicated to begin with, before and after I learned to speak. t's my sole native language, one without words. It's that language that allows me to play music. It reminds me of times when the sun was a light bulb, it reminds me of cold, cross-country train trips. It reminds me of when I got my first Kyuss record and how it changed my life. It reminds me of all the beauty in the world. The value of friendship and companionship, yet the solace in being alone. Of course, you are never alone, for even when everyone is gone, there's still the air, the earth, the trees, the water, the dirt, and the beauty. It may be hard to see sometimes, one might need to seek her out, but she's always there. And I feel humbled and blessed to be in her presence. I look forward to going home, greeting the fall, and once again revisit that nostalgia, the worn, weathered, sepia-brown photograph. Blessed be.

July 18th 2006 - San Francisco, CA, USA

2006-07-19T00:04:00.000+02:00

I just ran across a very valuable piece of information on Vaccuum Power Tubes for amplifiers. I had seen it before, but lost track of it. I just thought I'd post it so I don't lose it again, and who knows, someone might benefit from it. I'll post a blog update soon, too.

Basically I can distinguish 8 types of end tubes that will fit in a Marshall plexi no problem, each with their own characteristics in sound, feel and response: EL34, 6CA7, 6L6, 7581A, 5881, KT66, KT88, 6550.

EL34: Current-production EL34's are designed to give you that midrange crunch rock music is known for. I never had the pleasure of hearing a new old stock or used old stock EL34 (Mullard) but from the descriptions George has given on this forum they sound warmer and more versatile than the newer EL34's. They are also cleaner with more headroom, which means that when they break up or are pushed by pedals the sound still doesn't get overly compressed or saturated. I find most current-production EL34's to be good only at producing that middy grind. They break up early and most of them tend to get shrill in the high end. The general consensus seems to be that the Svetlana EL34 and the JJ EL34L are the best new EL34's. I personally find the EL34's to be too much of a one-trick-pony for my taste but if you're looking for the classic 70's and 80's rock sound then EL34's are definitely the way to go.

6CA7: The term 6CA7 is often used synonymously with EL34. This is not correct as a true 6CA7 is an American big-bottle version of the British EL34 design. I don't know how it works exactly but from what I understand the 6CA7 is the basic EL34 design but with an added element of the American 6L6 design. The only decent new-production 6CA7 IMO is the GT-6CA7GE (remake of the General Electrics 6CA7 - yes, the one EVH used!). I own some original GE 6CA7's and I would describe them as a cleaner version of an EL34 which is slightly more American-sounding (i.e. more midscooped, less midrange grind, cleaner with more headroom, later breakup). The main feature of the big-bottle 6CA7 is its HUGE dark and tight low end response while still retaining its brightness. This tube is often used by bass players but you guitar players looking for a tube with lots of warm, clean output without sounding sterile might like it too. A very musical tube which is great for use in combination with pedals or heavy preamp gain because of their tight sound and clean headroom.

6L6: The tube you associate with Fender amps. The classic American tube sound: lots of lows and highs, midrange is not so well pronounced. The slightly midscooped quality of a 6L6 gives it its sweet and round 'glassy' character. The 6L6 is less 'forward-sounding' than a British tube like the EL34, yet in return you get a very sparkly tube with bell-like highs. The lows can get muddy when pushed so if you're gonna go for 6L6's in your Marshall I suggest you choose the 6L6GC which has a slightly higher output than a regular 6L6 and will sound tighter due to its increased headroom, especially in the low-end department. Best current-production 6L6's IMO are the JJ's and Svetlana's. I hear the GT-6L6GE (Groove Tubes replica of the GE 6L6) is very good too.

7581A: This is the military version of the 6L6GC, in other words a 'harder' tube (even cleaner and tighter). Expect HUGE low end and sweet, glassy, bell-like highs. This tube has all the qualities of a 6L6, only enhanced due to its bigger headroom. This tube is also favored by bass players but guitarists looking for the American midscooped 6L6 sound with later breakup will love it too. Great for use with pedals or heavy preamp gain to keep your sound nice and tight without it getting muddy when pushed. Unfortunately there's no current-production version of the 7581A on the market today so you'll have to look for NOS ones made by American companies like GE and RCA. They show up regularly on eBay and if you bid smart you can get them for decent $. The 7581A is often called the American KT66 because it's similar in design to that British tube. The 7581A does sound distinctly American (less pronounced mids), tho, whereas the KT66 sounds British (more pronounced mids).

5881: Also called the 6L6WGB and NOT the 6L6GC as they are often referred to. You guessed it, the 5881 is another version of a 6L6. This time, tho, it actually has a LOWER output with LESS headroom. Great for guitarists seeking the classic midscooped American sound with early breakup. Has a tendency to get muddy in the lows and shouldn't be pushed too hard. Not my favorite 6L6-type tube.

KT66: The British equivalent of the 6L6 design. The difference being they eliminated the mid 'kink', that slightly midscooped quality that gives the 6L6 its sweet and round character. KT stands for Kinkless Triode. What the KT66 gives you in return is a more pronounced and wider midrange and more clean headroom. The KT66 is capable of producing a midrange crunch which is similar to an EL34, yet it's considered a more versatile and musical tube. It's the perfect tube if you're looking for a hybrid British/American sound, i.e. the middy grind associated with British amps (Marshall, Vox, Hiwatt, Orange, etc.) coupled with the clean glassiness of American amps (Fender, early Mesa Boogies, etc.). The best KT66 ever is the GEC (Genelex). These go for hundreds of dollars on eBay. Best current-production, according to many, is the GT-KT66HP (Russian-made KT66 designed exclusively for Groove Tubes). Sounds great with pedals.

KT88: The British version of the American 6550 design. Again the mid 'kink' is eliminated, giving you a broader, more dynamic midrange. This tube has HUGE headroom and sounds darker than the KT66 because it enhances the lower frequencies especially. This is why the KT88 is liked by bassists. Guitarists looking for that extra bit of OOMPH! in their sound use either KT88's or 6550's depending on how much midrange they want their preferred sound to have. Again the GEC KT88 is considered the ultimate KT88 which explains their high $ value. Best current-production KT88 is without a doubt the JJ KT88.

6550: If you like the American 6L6 type of sound but you need even more clean headroom than a 7581A then a 6550 is what you want. These tubes sound very stiff and will take any kind of abuse gladly and not even blink an eye, which is great if you're looking for maximum clean headroom in a tube. On the other hand, the 6550 is less musical than its British counterpart the KT88 because of its less pronounced midrange. This causes the 6550 to always respond in a very stiff manner no matter how hard you dig in on your guitar. Bass players love this tube. Most guitarists will prefer the KT88 over the 6550. Yet it's a great tube for guitar if you're into HUGE clean output, especially in combination with heavy preamp gain (Zakk Wylde, Slash). Best current-production 6550 IMHO is the Svetlana 6550-C.

July 8th 2006 - San Francisco, CA, USA

2006-07-08T23:58:00.000+02:00

Aah, what a good day indeed. Woke up at 130AM, but didn't do much until 330 or so. Did a lot of thinking, planning ahead for my return home. I was in a really good mood before I hit the deck last night, and it seems to have transferred into the next day. Did some dishes at 330, filled up the thermoses as per usual and spent some time researching stuff on the 'puter, until we finally left at 440AM. I'd been walking all the way up to Twin Peaks for the past couple of days, but it took it's toll on me. It's 4 miles up, 4 miles down, all uphill. And walking down an uphill is pert near just as exhausting as walking up an uphill. 8 miles is about 12-13 KM, in case the euro people back home were wondering.

When I got to the top of the mountain this morning everything was beautiful. The first real clear sky in days. No fog, and it was pretty warm. The sunrise was beautiful and I didn't speak much. We've been messing around with the sayings "Those who know don't speak and those who speak don't know", "A wise man speaks in silence" for the past few days, and it felt really appropriate. Sometimes words just get in the way and it's better to soak up the enviroment. Get out of that city rythm, the 50Hz cycle if you will, and back to the natural rythm of the plants and the heart.

Scott dropped me off at the Temple at 7, because he always goes to play basketball in Berkley on Saturday's, so I was left with a couple of hours of time to myself. I descided to make use of some of that Barley flower I'd bought at Rainbow Groceries the other day, combine it with some millet and make some barley bread, or 'gerstenbrood' (Dutch). It's 9AM right now, and I'll be taking it out of the oven pretty soon, so I'll make sure to write up some on the bread, and how it turned out. This is my first time baking bread, and since I picked a non-wheat bread for my first try, I didn't exactly make it easier. But hey, I can't eat wheat based products, and don't eat diary-products anymore, so what do you do? Combined it with some millet (gierst) so it should be good.

July 2nd 2006 - San Francisco, CA, USA

2006-07-02T23:56:00.000+02:00

Doing pretty good. The weather's been kind of cold and chilly, but it's allright all the same. Right now it's only 9:50AM. I'm still feeling pretty worn out from this friday's treatment, but it's all good. Enjoying a nice hot bowl of millet as I type. That stuff really warms you up all the way down to yer toes, good chow. Might add some more spiel later on today, but for now I'll just leave you with some "Daily Buddhist Wisdom".

"Even the evil
meet with good fortune
as long as their evil
has yet to mature.
But when it's matured
that's when they meet
with evil.

Even the good
meet with bad fortune
as long as their good
has yet to mature.
But when it's matured
that's when they meet
with good fortune."

June 28th 2006 - San Francisco, CA, USA

2006-06-29T00:12:00.000+02:00

Yes, today is June 28, nearly a month after I posted that first little weird spiel on my adventures and travels. I have been keeping a written log, the old fashioned way, pencil and paper (who needs pens anyway), so I might put that up later. It just became kind of a drag to go over to the library every day, and be limited to the one hour access per day they give you, so I finally said 'fuck it' and went out and got a notebook. The only gripe with a notebook, though, is that it takes a long time to write down my day in detail. And as you know, I'm a ramblin' man sometimes, be going on and on. Thankfully, my wonderfull mum sent my laptop over to the place I'm staying at right now, a lovely Buddhist temple in the middle of the Mission District in San Francisco (I'll explain later, long story), so I've got a 'puter to chimp on. Kind of came to realize that in this darn world you just need 'puters, and as long as you don't let them consume your every day life and entire being, you can actually put them to good use and make them work for you. Like keeping this log, for example.

So anyway, I'll just put day's log on as I would have written it down in notebook. We'll see wether or not I'll get to putting up some of the days in between this and my last post. Just check back on a regular basis, I'll try to be consistent this time around. Will try to put up some pictures, too. Got a little digicam, but it don't work on me Mac, which means I'll probably still need to go to the library. Lame.

Popped at 330AM, slept like a rock. Felt like one too. These little Maxi-something earplugs Ed gave me really do work well, though. We've got all the windows open, in the temple, and since we're in the middle of the Mission district, you wake up at the sound of the more than occasional drunk or gunshot. It's probably a good thing that I hit the deck early every day, wouldn't want to be out at night in this area. Actually, that happened, a couple of days ago. They were showing the (AMAZING) Minutemen-documentary "We Jam Econo" about 10 blocks from the temple, but regular folk stay up until late, so I didn't get back home until 1150PM or so. Nothing happened, but I didn't feel like I could cruise home without a worry either. Trippy, what poverty and hard times do to people. I understand where they're coming from, but it still feels gnarly to be around that kind of energy.

So anyway, 330, did my morning ritual. The brush my hair & teeth thing. Put in my by now signature pigtails. Gone up to 4 hair-ties by now, won't be long until I have to go to six. I'm digging it though. Put the bandana I found on the walk the other day around my neck, as usual. Which kind of reminds me of when I was a kid. My mom dressed me up as a Cowboy a couple of times. Anyway, I found this thing when I was walking back down from Twin Peaks one morning, and many garbage cans blew over. There was this perfectly clean, brown bandana. So I grabbed it, and have pretty much been wearing it all day, every day, ever since. As soon as I get access to the digicam I'll put up a picture or two. Woah, watch out Max, you keep going on off on random tangents. Then again, might as well make people just deal with it, it's my log, isn't it?

Filled up the thermoses, put them in the backpack and at 445 Scott and I took off to Wang's house. Gathered at 5, just like every morning, and walked up the Twin Peaks. Foggy day, yet again. I felt heavy, like a rock. Probably because of those soy beans Scott put in his homemade hot sauce. He mentioned to me later that it was also bothering his stomach, so he threw it out. Good. Trippy, huh? When your body gets this clean even Soy can make you feel gnarly. I guess that confirms me once again that beans have a lot of energy, but it's all contracting. I'll just stick to the greens and millet-porridge, not too heavy, and it gets me through. I appreciate the simple food more and more with every passing day, it's a beautifull thing.

Got back at 745, I guess, so I heated up some of yesterday's porridge and continued reading this book that Scott lend me the other day. "Tales Of Power" by Carlos Castaneda. Good book, read it, if you can find it. The guy's actually got an entire series, or had, about the same subject. It's a delight to read, and anyone who knows me knows that I'm very picking about my reading, so dig, pick it up! I alternated between reading, napping, drinking tea and listening to my trusty old cassette tapes for the next couple of hours. The weather was kind of cold all day, so I just stayed inside (again, windows open at all times, what a trip, huh?) and took it nice and slow. Went out at 3PM to do some grocery shopping at the farmer's market, paid my metroPCS (cellphone) bill and went up to Wang's again, to walk Pema with Scott. Just to give people a quick overview, I'm living in this nice place called Medicine Buddha, together with two other people, Scott and Jenn. They' good people, and since I'm just working on keeping a healthy life style, I hang out with Scott a lot. He's a trippy dude, loads of history there, very interesting. Jams on guitar and drums too, we get along well. They both take good care of me, and I just try to return the favor. Kind people, I'm fortunate to have met them. Wang too. Doesn't live here, but the same goes for him, pretty much.

So when we got back we had some porridge, and I happily receive this 'puter. Glad to see the package made it over safe, all the way from Holland. My mom really is a packmaster, you should have seen the way she packed it, insane, in a good way. Tidy, neat, wow, thank you mama! Took my time, gobbled down some porridge whilst updating the 'puter and just setting things up, getting it into working mode. Watched a bit of We Jam Econo (got the DVD at the screening), chimped some log, and hit the deck at 10PM.

May 31st 2006 - San Francisco, CA, USA

2006-05-31T23:20:00.000+02:00

So the day has finally come for me to get on one of those big airships and set sail for the West. The good ol' United Stated of America. I woke up at 630 am and took a long shower to wake myself up. I ate my breakfeast, said some final goodbyes to my little sister and mother, and off I went. My father'd had been kind enough to drive me to Shiphol, Amsterdam's airport. It felt strangely odd, seeing that I'd just spent pert-near every day of the entire past month in the same care, doing a simmilar drive with him, off to work. As always, we had some Crosby, Stills & Nash and Young casette tapes playing during the drive. Great road music, makes me feel really nostalgic for some reason too. It reminds me of my father. So we got to schiphol, he dropped me off and we said our final goodbyes. 'Take care son. Do what you want and don't let anyone tell you what to do. Do what you feel like doing'. He said it in such a comforting and reassuring voice that it left me quite emotional walking down to the entrance hall. It wasn't so much that it made my eyes teary, or that it made me sad. It made me feel fond, proud and fortunate to have such a bunch of loving, caring friends and family. They'd all shown that during the 5-6 weeks I'd been back. So this is for all the good people, you know who you are.

There's not a whole lot to say about the entire checking-in/boarding process. It went very smoothly. Stood in line for about half an hour, and even though I was flying Economy class, the lady at the Buisnessclass counter helped me out and checked in my gear. She was very kind and social. That struck me as a little odd, and I know airports are service-orientated, but some service-people are just downright cold. So I checked in my guitar and backpack, and off I went, through passport control, with just my little tape-bag as carry-on luggage. I strolled around the duty-free shopping area for a while, listening to Brant Bjork's Jalamanta album on tape. After the tape finished, I walked on at a mellow, care-free pace towards my gate (G-9, I believe). The security lady there was also very friendly and I kindly answered all her questions. Something inside me snickered at the tex-book nature of most of these questions, and the fact that she sounded like she was actually reciting questions, instead of asking them. But that's the nature of her job, I don't blame her at all. Like I said, she was very friendly, and still seemed to be interested and sociable. Unlike last time, where I shook the guy's hand and he stared at me, coldly pronouncing the word passport, syllable by syllable. I boarded the plane at around noon, and 30 minutes later I traded the land for the skies. Byebye Holland, see you in 3 months!

I actually don't remember taking off, because I konked as soon as I boarded the plane. When I woke up we were already about one hour into the flight. Woah, what a trip! Didn't care much for the movies, so I listened to some Woodstock (konked again, listening to the tape, woah!), read the first 100 pages of "One Flew Over The Coocook's Nest" and then we got our warm aeroplane dinner. The flight attendent came up to me and asked me "Would you like pasta or chicken, sir?". I'd just woke up so in a daze I replied "Pasta, please". I regretted it for a while, but once they served it, I was blown away! Now this is some good chow, especially for these airships! After the excellent plane-chow I proceeded to read another 100 pages or so of "One Flew Over The Coocook's Nest". It's a difficult book to read, even though most of the language is pretty basic. The way that it's constructed, however, is very dense, very descriptive. I remember reading that Ken Kesey wrote it in 6 days, on Mescalin, and if that's true, it sure shows in the way this book's constructed. Whilst I was reading I put on Nas' Illmatic album. I put this on tape literally the night before I left. My friend Wouter'd come over the day before and he put that record back on the map for me. It's a very musical record and has got a lot of vibe and feeling to it, so I guess that's why I like it so much. I put Bob Marley's Exodus record on the back of the tape, and that's what I put on afterwards, to kind of chill me out even further. So after the 90 minute tape had spun it's magnetic reel back and forth, I put the book down and proceeded to fall in and out of sleep. A kind off odd state between being awake and asleep. Next thing I knew, we were getting ready to land.

Now, this is when thing started getting gnarly. We landed safely at Washinton Dulles but getting out of the airport took atleast half an hour of moving slowly along a slowly moving line of people. But wait, it gets better. I get to immigration and proceed to wait in line for not one, but two hours. And when I finally reach the end of the line and there's only 5 people left in front of me, they close down immigration for half an hour because the customs area after that is too clogged with people! So, after standing in an evergrowing line for 30 minutes I finally get to the immigration officer. She check's my passport, asks me the standard questions and then breaks me some disturbing news. I've been getting in on the visa waver program, which means I'm allowed to stay in the united states for 90 days. This is the second time since february I'll be getting in on that program, and she tells me that the next time around they'll probably deny my entry into the united states, because it'll appear that I am spending more time in the United States than in my own country. In which case I'm ''living'' there, and no longer a visitor. Since the I-94 Visa Waiver program is for visitors only, I'm basicly screwed. So I'll have to figure out something over the next 3 months to either get a visa or a greencard. I'm not too worried about it though, but needless to say, it wasn't the most pleasant thing to hear.

Will be continue my write up later, at the library again, and my time's up. Check back later for the continuation....

In Leiden met Wouter

2006-05-11T04:41:00.000+02:00

Visiting my friend Wouter in Leiden after returning from my first solo-trip to the United States. Out on the balcony, catching some sun on this unusually bright, hot day. We got some econo lamb steak at the Aldi. My God, it was GOOD! Normally, I never wear caps, but I stole Wouter's for a second, and he managed to actually take a picture. It turned out pretty rad, if you ask me.

traveling the world for rock'n'roll

2006-02-22T05:59:00.000+01:00

Sharing the stage with Fatso Jetson opening up for Brant Bjork & The Bros. Defenitly a trip! Jammed on 'Too Many Skullz'. Muchas Gracias to my bro Cortez for letting me use his amp and strap! I might add my journal-entry for this day later on...

(Photo taken by http://www.megancbrooks.com)

'too many skullz'

2006-02-22T05:58:00.000+01:00

Setlist for the Fatso Jetson at the Troubadour. Jammed on the first tune, will try to see if I can find a picture later on.

July 11th 2006 - San Francisco, CA, USA

2006-02-10T23:03:00.000+01:00

The less you want, the more you get. The more you want, the less you get. What you have you don't want and what you want you don't have. Hmm, I don't know, I just figured I'd start off the day using some quotes and phrases that have been coming to me' mind lately. Got ambitious and woke up at 2, and it worked. Good. I love getting up at two as opposed to three because it just gives me more time to do stuff. So I got up, brushed my hair and teeth (both with a different brush, mind you!) and put my clothes on. Actually, I always put my clothes on before I do the brushin', 'cause it 'be pretty darn cold at night with all 'them windows open.

I was feeling cringy from eating a whole bar of pure chocolate (no milk, eggs, whatsoever. Just caco and sugar) yesterday. The devils come at you from every direction, trying to keep you from progressing and doing the right thing, it's so funny. The restlessness felt horrible though, damn, I felt like a motorhead (it's slang for something, do a google search). There are amphetamines in chocolate after all, which is a stimulant, basically what speed is, yuck. So I cut up some Shiitake mushrooms and brew a liter of Mushroom tea. Ah, that was good, calmed me down major and kind of put me in that nice little mushroom headspace. I hope I don't forgot the parts I wrote for a new song inspired by it. A Mushroom's Point Of View. Kind of a jazzy/allman brothers instrumental type of thing.

So I spent my time doing some miscellaneous research on the internet, put on some old Nirvana bootlegs and felt really nostalgic. Filled up the thermoses at 420 and left at 440. Had a nice walk up the mountain, it was real foggy up there but atleast the wind wasn't that strong, or atleast, not blowing in my face like it usually does on the cold foggy mornings.

I went shopping yesterday, by the way. Went to Goodwill and Thriftown. I got 2 flannel a shirts at about 2 dollars a pop, Lenny Kravitz' Let Love Rule on tape, and this amazing vintage leather jacket. The flannel and the new, rad, jacket really helped keep me warm this morning. Had been wearing fleece so far, but it hadn't been working out as well as the leather. I don't eat any animal products, nor diary, so this diet is technicly concidered vegan. I do it purely out of physical reasons though, it just makes me feel way better, not eating those foods. However, some people do it out of compassion for the animals. An animal got killed making that product. They apply the same principle to leather. An animal got killed making that product. I greatly sympatise with them, and yes, it does make me feel bad, but for some reason, it doesn't affect me in nearly the same way as eating animal food does. I wish I could find a better way to describe this, but hey, it is what it is. I feel bad that an animal had to die for the jacket I'm wearing, I didn't realise that at the time, when I bought this jacket. But the damage been done, in the sense of that it's already dead, and in the sense of that I already bought the jacket. Despite feeling bad about it, I decided to honor the animal and carry on it's spirit. I tell him that he's in good hands, and I will do my best to be more righteous in the future, towards all living things.

Also, on a completely diffrent note, my dad sent me an email this morning. Let me explain why this is worth mentioning. See, he's not a guy who really uses computers a lot at all, so that fact alone made me feel special. But he basicly said he's proud to be my father (like that, in English even) and he reads my log, and listened to the Hss Rodskjegg song, liked it a lot. I'm telling you, I literally cried, it felt so good to hear him say that. If there's one thing that has changed over the past year is that I've become much more humble, and have a tremendous amount of respect, love and appreciation for my friends and familly. So whenever they reconfirm that, wow, it's such a powerfull thing. I have always had good relations with my family, but I feel now I can finally reflect, look and give back.

I strongly believe in giving as much good as I can, even if people treat you bad. The more good you give, the more you get back. People won't have a reason to be gnarly to you, because your intentions are pure and, well, good.

That's going off on a tangent right there, but I just wanted to say to my friends and family; you guys are fuckin' right on, I love you guys, thanks!