BEFORE I HIT...

photo by Denis Darzacq

I remember, it was a sunny day. The sun hid behind the clouds quickly. There was lots of concrete, lots of it...everywhere. The tallest skyscrapers, what were they scraping the sky for? Remnants of heaven? Like scraping for peanut butter at the bottom of the jar once it all almost runs out. I was on one of these skyscrapers. I remember flying, and the ground coming up way faster than I had imagined it would. Such a roar in my ears, a quick flash in time, no time to think important grandiose universal thoughts and no time for goodbyes. Then a jaw smashing feeling, a caved in face, all in a millisecond (any longer and I bet it would have hurt for centuries...) and then nothing. Nothing at all. Void. But I can still remember it happened somehow. I think a crowd gathered around for my reception too.

Einstein's Lesser Known

TRIPFEST VOLUM 12 and 3 TENTHS ....I will make you puke

 

The Green Manalishi (With The Two-Pronged Crown)

Now, when the day goes to sleep and the full moon looks
The night is so black that the darkness cooks
Don't you come creepin' around - makin' me do things I don't wanna do
~
Can't believe that you need my love so bad
Come sneakin' around tryin' to drive me mad
Bustin' in on my dreams - making me see things I don't wanna see
~
'Cause you're the Green Manalishi with the two pronged crown
All my tryin' is up-all your bringin' is down
Just takin' my love then slippin' away
Leavin' me here just tryin' to keep from following you..
~
[ooooo....ooooo...ooooo....]
__________________________________________________

Sounds like a pretty cool poem. Actually to be specific it's a set of lyrix for a song called 'The Green Manalishi (With The Two-Pronged Crown)'. Now, what if I were to tell you to get into a mindset that would become one with these lyrics themselves, make them very literal and real, not just cool sounding poetry? Would you think I was crazy to tell you the Green Manalishi is very real, all these things were a true story?
What sort of a madman would believe all that? A madman named Peter Green, that's who! Why? Because it happened to him! Before more on that, let's talk a bit about Fleetwood Mac. If anyone reading this knows who they are (and there's a good chance), likely they will be thinking of a sort of classic rock/pop group that sang a lot of love songs with their fair share of pure smarm. I don't mean to outright diss the group, since they have had many a moment better than so many putrid pop stars in that never ending crystal cavalcade chasing fame and fuckuptness of various flavors. Ok, so here's the classic image of Fleetwood Mac:

Or....

Pretty fun...and campy. A lot like their music. Some music nerds of the highest order will almost bite their lip with indignation or determination to remind folks that the OLD Fleetwood Mac MUST be called 'Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac.' Because once upon a time Fleetwood Mac was a badass blues rock group in based outta Britain and really had not much to do with sticky and sugary love songs for the most part. Peter Green, you guessed it, fronted this incarnation. What made him leave? What made the group's lineup and sound change so drastically?

Peter Green rockin' out

This was like, the older Fleetwood Mac...and stuff..and things like such

Thing is, Fleetwood Mac evolved more than just once and had a revolving door of many different personnel. For simplicity's sake, from '68-'69 Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac hit a strong stride and put out a few albums. Peter Green increasingly went mad, much like Pink Floyd's Syd Barrett. He was struggling with LSD, began to feel the clutches of fame and money in a negative way, and had withdrawn from other band members. Just before he left the band, one of his last offerings was the Green Manalishi song. It was inspired by a horrific vision or dream he had, elaborated with these quotes:

"I thought I had too much money to be happy and normal. Thousands of pounds is just too much for a working person to handle all of a sudden, and I felt I didn't deserve it."

"I nearly died one night, in my sleep. I don't know if you've ever had the experience; I've had it a couple of times and I'm inclined to think it's an experience that people have. But I was lying in bed, I was dreaming, and this little dog jumped up at me and it scared the shit out of me because this dog had died, and had been dead for a long time. It was a stray dog that I brought to the house and just looked after. And it was strange, kind of spooky, like voodoo. And it was a strange little dog. And I was dead and I couldn't move. I couldn't say, 'I'm dead' - It wasn't available - so I just fought my way back into my body... I thought, 'It must come alive' and it did. So I woke up and looked round - the room was really black - and I found myself writing the song. It was about money. The fear I got that the reason this was happening to me was that I had earned too much money and I was separate from all the people. 'The Green Manalishi' was money; they still call it green-backs and things like that, don't they? When you haven't got any money you aren't worth anything to anybody. The line, 'Don't you come creeping around, making me do things I don't want to do', goes off on a mythological definition level, but it starts, 'You're the Green Manalishi with the two-pronged crown/All my trying is up, all you're bringing is down'. It's about money."
- Peter Green, Interview, 1983

So in short, he had this experience where a green devil dog representing Satan and the evils of money scared the living crap out of him. The next day, he went into one of London's largest parks, Richmond Park, and wrote the lyrics for the song. Soon the song filled out and was complete...and ironically became a hit single. It was reported 'ol Pete could no longer sing vocals when covering Robert Johnson's 'Hellhound On My Trail' (a song covered on Fleetwood Mac's debut album)because the connection to the green devil dog was too close and too raw in his mind. Anytime after that, someone else sang it. Which is kinda funny now that I think about it, since the Green Manalishi was about the horrible source experience, and Petey could sing that! Weird. Others would go on to sing it as well, others who dug it and covered it, including mainly metal bands like Judas Priest, Steel, The Melvins, Arthur Brown and Corrosion of Conformity. It is a great song. Once Peter Green left Fleetwood Mac, the blues left with him, and their sound started becoming more generic and pop/rock oriented. Peter would cross paths with the band again with a quick stint as a touring guitarist, but he never fully rejoined. The members who more or less were there from beginning to start of the band's entire span of career were drummer Mick Fleetwood and bassist John McVie. The band's name came from a sort of a combo of parts of their last names...with the 'Mac' part somehow derived from the 'Mc' in 'McVie'. 'Mc' becomes 'Mac'. Don't ask. To this moment I still think Green Manalishi is Fleetwood Mac's best song ever, maybe because so much soul and emotion was involved and so much was at stake.

                        Perhaps the devil dog looked something like this?       (derivative/modified work based on a pic by poeticalkrissie on DeviantArt)

Who Is Jet Black?

He's a dude from a groovy anime series called Cowboy Bebop. Like all the better animes, it is more oriented toward mature audiences with a great storyline. The gist is this guy Spike is an intergalactic bounty hunter, and Jet is his right hand man. Jet was an ex-cop and is definitely as tough as he looks (especially note the eye scar and cybernetic arm!) and though he's a good fighter and gunman and mechanic, and all that macho so on and so forth-- he cooks, cultivates bonsai trees, listens to jazz and blues, and is into philosophy ('specially Goethe).

Rugged yes...Jet can look very stylish too

Yet who else is Jet Black? He's the drummer and a founding member for the legendary British punk band The Stranglers. Whether the anime character creator took subconscious influence from the real Jet, or whether it was more deliberate is to be determined. The Stranglers were one of the few original punk bands to use synths, usually not seen as very 'punk' by people who subscribe to a certain brand of punk ethos. They also weren't afraid to do weird shit like wear mascara and face makeup, and unlike so many punks, grow actual facial hair! The Stranglers were a gang of sort, almost like Alex and his cronies from Kubrick's 'A Clockwork Orange.' They have been chugging along since the mid 70's. Their sound is poppy, yet with tinges of madness and a sort of flair for a Doors inspired sound, almost bluesy melting pot gothic. Yet the sound is not as earthy as a group like the Doors, it is way more synthetic and precise, it almost sounds like video game music at times for chrissakes. Most of the edge in their sound resides in the lyrics themselves. Thought by some to be misogynistic, I have delved a bit into the Stranglers and I've come to the conclusion that they probably love girls more than anything (case in point, the song 'Peaches' off their legendary '77 debut album 'Rattus Norvegicus'.) I would also venture they would harbor for a certain brand of girl known commonly as the 'bitch'. Many of their songs drip with disdain and lost romance. I also think like all the REAL punk bands out there the Stranglers have had the guts to be very opinionated, sometimes at the expense of the critics and touts.

The arghsome cover art for Rattus Norvegicus

But back to drummer Jet. He's much like the cartoon Jet, rugged but with a strange yin to the yang thrown in. He has been a successful businessman before his main music years, and once owned a fleet of ice cream trucks and and off-license alcohol shop called The Jackpot, which served as a sort of base of operations for the Stranglers in the beginning. He designs and builds wooden furniture, has done home brewing, and is involved in all sorts of interesting hobbies. The man is a weathered soul like his cartoon counterpart, I think he is well in his 70's now!

Ok, ok you want to SEE Jet? He's the chap on the far right here...