Viewing 1 - 3 out of 3 Blogs.

i first met anita ace (anita scharff) here on boomerplace in 2011 when i was still in california. i moved to germany in 2012 and have seen her most days since, she has managed my affairs and succeeded in getting me musician work visas. she now lies in a hospital bed completely broken, trying to learn how to walk again. this did not happen naturally. below is the story. i do not log into boomer much anymore because i don't have time to rebuild my page after photobucket went down--can't even log in to it if i wanted to--& because boomer servers are not privacy-friendly and usually block my vpn & tor browser. here is the story of what happened to anita, feel free to copy & spread around. ****************************************************** ANITA'S PLIGHT: anita's husband is an avid sailor & he drags her out on these sailing trips. she almost died a few months ago when she went sailing alone on the baltic with him & they were lashed by a very bad storm. she said she was in mortal fear for her life. she is not physically fit to do these things, but they were back at it again recently in the tropics & she had a bad fall on the boat. the story has changed, first it was that she fell & may have had a subsequent stroke according to the scans, then it changed to she had a stroke & fell. her husband has been pushing the stroke narrative, which seems to absolve him of responsibility since it could have supposedly happened anywhere. in my opinion she should not have been out sailing again, it is too dangerous & she is not physically fit for strenuous athletics. she was taken to the stroke ward of the university hospital in Lubeck, where they just gave her surgery to supposedly prevent any future strokes. she didn't want the surgery when i talked to her previous to the operation but then her communications stopped & the next thing i heard a week later was that she had already had the surgery. i believe serious pressure was put on her to get the surgery, especially by her husband, & a priest of the government church was brought in to counsel her about it. she changed her mind, she is not the kind who can resist a lot of psychological pressure. she sounded drugged-out & completely out to lunch the last time i talked to her & her current texts are likewise. she is being the perfect stockholm syndrome victim, defending her husband, but i think he should be investigated for abuse. she is a very sweet, naive person who cannot think a bad thought about anybody, but i am a little more streetwise & can see that this thing doesn't pass the smell test. hopefully she will be able to walk again some day, she is recovering from the surgery.--zed

Tags: abuse victim

"magenta tangerine" is my third solo album. it is available on my bandcamp page @ zedmizar.bandcamp.com. i am bypassing the corporate giants like amazon & apple for now & offering it exclusively on bandcamp, which is much more fair to artists. i recommend getting a fan account there so that all the independent music available thru the site becomes available to you, much of which you can set your own price for. i have set the price of "magenta tangerine" @ 5 euros (or the equivalent dollars) for the 13-song album. i can afford to do this because the bloated corporations aren't taking a huge bite of it.

it took me a year to write & record this record here in germany. the fact that my last two albums took two years each to make shows how inspired & busy i have been here. i moved into my studio loft on december 21, 2012 (an interesting factoid considering i was not one of those who put much stock in the mayan calendar) & after spending a few months getting set up & getting my household & equipment over from california i started writing & recording. i have a cool setup, i can work & play music any time of day or night & often do, & i am endlessly charmed by this beautiful town of lubeck, so i feel really good & have a lot of enthusiasm for work.

the first question i get asked is: what kind of music do i do? my dear friend & manager anita & i have been campaigning in favor of the "altronica" genre. i would like to have an "altronica" option when i sign up for a musician's website because none of the present categories really describe my music very well. as we all know, electronica music is almost all made by DJs these days, people who often aren't musicians, don't play & aren't really writing songs, it's more like electronic soundscapes made from beats & loops. some of this music is very good but it is nothing like the original electronica music that inspired me in the late 80s & 90s that was made by musicians with songs, people like the prodigy, portishead, massive attack, lamb & morecheeba, or current artists like bjork & radiohead. check "anita ace in space altronica radio" for other current artists who are more or less part of the altronica movement.

there is no doubt in my mind that this is the best music i have ever done. one big reason for that is that my mind has cleared a lot & my body has detoxed quite a bit since getting to germany, so my music comes out of a much more healthy, focused & balanced person. i was not aware of the amount of electromagnetic pollution i was exposed to in los angeles & how it was effecting me but i can sure tell the difference now--looking back into the past is like looking into a fog of relative confusion & distortion from my much more awake & aware mental condition @ present. i also went thru a lot of physical changes for more than a year, especially detoxing from fluoride. i was never stupid enough to drink the tap water in los angeles but you absorb fluoride thru your skin when you shower & it accumulates. when i got to germany i discovered that i could eat almost all organic--including wine, coffee, etc.--relatively cheaply, which wasn't possible in the US & probably isn't possible in many places if any. this is one of the great things about germany--the food is the best. with far fewer poisons going into my body i started to detox & that puts all the poisons back in your bloodstream to be eliminated. last winter i was suddenly crippled by a severe attack of arthritis in my knee. this is pretty common with fluoride poisoning, fluoride leeches the calcium out of your bones & the body tries to compensate by making calcium deposits in your joints, which is very painful. i have never had any trouble with arthritis before & it was very scary to be suddenly crippled so that i couldn't even go next door to the store or even get up the stairs to my loft. i knew what was happening, though, & i just rode it out for weeks with a detox diet & supplements like chelated calcium-magnesium. anita helped me thru it. i remember playing the guitar parts to "mofos up the wazoo" sitting down, which i never do, because i couldn't stand up. i had to crawl to the refrigerator. i also went thru a lot of emotional detoxing, it went on for a long time but now i am feeling better than i have in a long time. one of the big differences this has made in my music, besides my overall mood, high energy & positivity, is that i am in much better voice now. i can sing songs that i could never sing well before, not only hitting the notes (which is just part of singing) but being able to give the right nuance of expression to a vocal. for instance, "angels of vision" is a very hard song to sing although the notes are not hard to hit, because that song demands a totally unaffected, untrained, childlike vocal style in order to be convincing. i don't think pavarotti could pull that one off, so i am very pleased to be able to do these things now.

so, "magenta tangerine" comes out of a time of drastic personal change. how has this affected my musical direction? well, the title says a lot. my two previous albums, "luminous probe signals" & "spiral city sky" have very spacy, abstract titles but "magenta tangerine" is concrete & down to earth, while being no less exotic. i have always used sci-fi as symbolic of reality rather than as an escape, but there is a newly-found social & political awareness that wasn't there when i was being bombarded with toxins & radiation in the US. the first song, "zupadupa2", has a strong sense of earthly location, including going into grimm's fairy tales as the german version of imaginative literature like sci-fi. "spy creeps" comes out of the snowden NSA revelations, giving voice to the strong revulsion of the people around me in direct terms not couched in sci-fi imagery. i have never been a social critic like frank zappa--up until now--but a good writer has to be influenced by what is going on around them & you have to write about what you are passionate about. like germans i value privacy & know that there is no good motive for what the US spy state does--they are up to no good & everybody knows it. of course i also have to take a stand against american tyranny in order to have any credibility @ all as an artist. people tend to figure that any american overseas is CIA or something so it is necessary for me to distance myself from that & be vocal about my opposition to spy tyranny & violation. the true spirit of the american people that we admire is shown by ed snowden, about the only american anybody likes around here. other songs on the album, like "mofos up the wazoo", with its "they live" sci-fi influence, "new levels, new devils" & "snurdz on dust" are very much influenced by what is going on in the world, although expressed in more surreal & symbolic terms.

another earthy aspect of "magenta tangerine" is that it reflects my interest in heirloom gardening, which is of course the opposite of corporate agribusiness monoculture & GMO frankenfood, which i denounce a number of times in the album. when you start exploring heirloom gardening you find that there are all kinds of exotic fruits & vegetables you never heard of--purple carrots, multicolored tomatoes, blue potatoes, etc. a magenta tangerine sounds like one of these exotic heirloom fruits, although i suppose it could be extraterrestrial. one of my favorite composers, rautavaara of finland, has often compared composing to gardening & i agree with this. i always have a number of songs in progress & they seem to grow on their own, i just spend some time with this one & some time with that one. once you get the "seed idea" of a song, everything develops out of that so the whole process of creating music from scratch is very organic for me. this is especially true here in the zedzone recording studio in the lubeck zeditorium because it is set up for indoor gardening & i am very passionate about growing my mimosas, buntnessel (coleus) & passion flowers. i often take a break from production work on the computer to water, transplant & otherwise care for my plants. growing songs is really very similar. i like the way the bible often compares people to trees & their deeds to their fruit. an evil tree gives poisonous fruit, a barren tree gives nothing, but a good tree gives good, delicious & healthy fruit. this is what i want to be. so, these songs are my fruit--magenta is a very bright, hot color associated with computer graphics & sex (hot pink). a tangerine is sweet but not too sweet, it has a tangy & sour edge to it like passionfruit, which is caused by the vitamin C in it. i think my music is like this--a lot of it is very sweet in an exotic way ("destination sun", "angels of vision", "zupadupa2") but a lot of it has a very satirical edge to it. to me, satire is like vitamin C--it's a little sour but it immunizes you against the sickness of being a gullible fool by exposing the fake.

another aspect of this newly-found earthiness is that i occasionally use some earthy language when it is called for. now i am not one of these people who drops an f-bomb every other line, but sometimes it is necessary to say things in questionable taste because that is the only way to say them well. for example, i think one of my best lines is from "snurds on dust" where i mention "toxic farts @ the fashion show". that line really captures what i was trying to portray in very few words--the phoniness of american spectacles like academy awards & presidential inaguration ceremonies, where you can't really hide the stink of corruption that is eating you up inside with an expensive tuxedo or a designer gown. this is similar to what we call "gilding the turd" in studio musician lingo, which means taking a lousy song & giving it an expensive production treatment with the best musicians to try to hide the fact that the song stinks. that's the american music business in a nutshell.

but actually, all of this interpretation is after the fact, the same way i interpret my song lyrics after i write them because i had no idea what it meant when i wrote it. the reason i named the album "magenta tangerine" is because it is a takeoff of the title of my song from the album called "magenta tangent", which was named because i just like the sound of those words together & later i interpreted it to mean going off in a very colorful, psychedelic new direction, going off on a tangent as it were. i choose many of the words i use because i like the sound of them, which is the music of poetry. i like the soft "g" sounds & the rhythm of "magenta tangerine", the way it rolls off the tongue with the accents on 2, 4 & 6. this is an important aspect of poetry, one that is lost if you only look @ words for their meaning & not their sound. to state the obvious, music is ultimately about sound & it justifies itself as sound, not just what it stands for.

before i go into a song-by-song breakdown of the album, i will offer a couple of other factoids that will help to understand the music. other artists occasionally make concept albums like "the wall" but i have a concept career, which means that all of my albums are one big concept & all of my songs take place within one worldview that includes the solar system & beyond as well as the future. there are themes that run thru all of my albums & all the songs are consistent. for instance, one of my best-known songs "venusian girl" from "lumious probe signals" (because of chili's great video) introduces the theme of dating extraterrestrials, specifically venusians, which is continued on "spiral city sky" & into "magenta tangerine" with the faux-commercial "interplanetary dating 2027".

which brings me to "attack of the mutant ratdogs", the first song i recorded in the spring of 2013, which is a sequel to "return of the howling fiends from oblivion pt. 2" from "spiral city sky". the wild packs of mutated chihuahuas have found their way to the moon & have surrounded our compound there, a very nasty business. i find this all very hilarious although there are those whose sense of humor is not able to include kicking ratdogs into space, even if they aren't really alive & have stainless steel razor-sharp teeth. i got the idea for the song watching yuppies walk their dogs in LA--the dogs were obviously in control, probably manipulating the yuppie with telepathy & gaining control with its superior mind, reducing the yup to a slave picking up turds & wiping the dog's butt. the dog would lead & the yup would follow. this is a situation just begging to be satirized & how can i refuse? jokes aside, i am especially pleased with the synth solo @ the end while i space-funk along on guitar.

"mofos up the wazoo" is obviously inspired by "they live" although only in the general metaphor of a secret alien invasion standing for the new world order conspiracy & their mind control deception. this song has 3 pages of lyrics, some of the best & most wildly imaginative i have ever written, & the music is composed in 12-tone serial style for the surreal effect, combined with old school rap & funk influences(we saw bernie worrel right before leaving LA which had a lasting effect). the use of the word "wazoo" also conjures up the influential figure of zappa.

"new levels, new devils" is probably my favorite song on the album because it goes to new places harmonically due to new composition methods i developed. it ties into my sci-fi history of the future, where the lunar colony was (or will be) established by creative exiles from earth with the help of alien allies (i tell the whole story of the lunar colony in "moon fusion" which i did with richard d ruttenberg. search for the video, it's all there). the zombies who remain behind are controlled by psych meds & TV, which is constantly stirring up fear & hysteria over government false flag attacks. a fast tempo & a lot of chord changes make this a fun tune to play.

"interplanetary dating 2027" & "pump thump data dump" are two shorter satirical songs that came out of the "live from the moon" radio show i did with anita last summer. that show was an opportunity for me to spread my wings a bit & expand creatively into audio theatre pieces. i appeared on the show once as DJ DumpTruck, a hapless shmuck stomped into the ground by 500-pound woman cops for making a shmoogle porn search in frisco, who turns the beat of having his door kicked down & his face stomped in into 4-on-the-floor disco house beat about licking the boots of authority. he is signed to a record contract by the cops after he submits & begs for more. "pump thump data dump" is his hit. the original "interplanetary dating" faux-commercial is on "live from the moon #5" (hear it on soundcloud), "interplanetary dating 2027" is the second in what will probably be a long series of wacky commercials for the fabulous interplanetary dating agency. anita is the female voice here & the only collaborator i had on the album.

"angels of vision" is a song i wrote over 10 years ago but never recorded because it was too different from everything else i was doing @ the time. also, i don't wear my spirituality on my sleeve & it remains as something behind my music that isn't usually a subject of songs. i felt that this song was really needed, though, to balance out all of the dark satire on the album. the song is very luminous, warm & sincere, & also very deep. it is a love song to my guardian angels, who i know are there because of the improbable fact that i am still alive & going strong after all i have been thru, while a lot of people i knew who lived far less risky lives are dead. the song hints @ spiritual experiences as well as the influence of the writings of emanuel swedenborg in the older translations. the sound is influenced by the concerts we have been to in the gothic cathedrals here, especially st. mary's, which have the most incredible reverberating natural sound i have ever heard. when you get a full orchestra & 250-voice mixed choir going in a brick & stone cathedral of amazing geometry, the sound is truly cosmic & hangs in the air long after they stop. that is the kind of glorious sound that i try to emulate in this song. this is also the last song i used my old spider 3 guitar amp on before i blew it out; i like the chirpy, synthy lead guitar tone & the flanged rhythm guitar sound, played thru my vintage clone theory stompbox. i always imagined this song as part of a "twin peaks" episode, though; to get some idea of the context check the "pin tweaks-angels of vision" recording on my soundcloud page from "live from the moon". this entire piece is not on the album because i do not have permission to use angelo badalamente's music, but obviously when i get around to making a video of this song some sort of twin peaks parody would probably be in order.

"spy creeps" is the first song i did with my upgraded guitar technology. it is basically a sophisticated punk song with strong electronic percussion & a major psychedelic influence, especially in the guitar solos. it is a unique song for me for a number of reasons--it is closer to rock, a type of music that is not my favorite, than any other of my songs. it is all major chords, something i almost never do as i like to avoid triads altogether. it is directly gut-level & not meant to be diplomatic. i rarely allow myself a direct gut-level expression, to me that is too much like a baby crying or something--all emotion & no technique--but it's a punk song & "god save the queen" wouldn't have been a punk song if it was tactful & diplomatic now, would it?. i think it is actually one of my best songs & one i enjoy playing, it works. i like ripping a solo or two every now & then, i don't do it very often, so this one is for the guitar freaks.

"magenta tangent" is also a unique song for me or anybody else. i think of it as an art song, painting a mental picture of exotic scenes around the universe, especially an interplanetary music festival held in to domed crater on an ice moon with an incredible view that is described in the third verse & the chorus. the song combines jazz, minimalist classical, electronic & psychedelic folk-rock influences into a very colorful hybrid. i call the resulting sub-genre "hyper-psychedelia" because it is like taking psilocybin mushrooms & seeing a progression of cosmic visions. the lyrics are super-colorful: azure, indigo, silver & copper, violet, cobalt, & magenta are all there. it is a very visual song, a painting in sound & words. somebody will make a great video of this.

"zupadupa2" is actually the third version of the song "zupadupa" i have done. it is the first song i wrote when i got to germany, before i had my guitar rig here, so it was pure electronica in it's early stages. i wanted to record it again with guitar & some new lyrics; i ended up rewriting all of the lyrics except for the chorus so it is a completely new song. i got anita to do the vocals on the chorus with me & she added just the right amount of blondness to the song. my improved guitar technology is evident here, there are some wild sounds as well as some very nice clean ones. this is a very german song, full of local imagery & references to german musicians i admire. it is a very happy & upbeat tune, one of the more cheerful compositions i have done, & is a statement of positive good cheer & joy despite all the dark weirdness described in many of the other songs. the angelic presences are here too & are very comforting. for this reason it is the lead song on the album & probably the first one that will get video treatment.

i first recorded "destination sun" in 2008 with singer leslie gage for the "luminous probe signals" album. it has been very popular & well-received ever since & many people think it is my best song. obviously, if it is my best & most popular song then i should be able to play it live, so i decided to do a new version of it that doesn't depend on having a female vocalist. this take on "destination sun" is less dramatic & more quiet than the version i did with leslie; she really belted it out on the chorus so i had to bring the music up in the refrains & then i had to figure out a way to take it up a notch after the last chorus so there was a wailing synth solo & pounding climax. it was sort of a power ballad. that isn't the way i originally heard the song but that's the way collaborations work, they have a life of their own & you have to go with it. this new version is very slow, quiet & somber, very electronic outer space with hall-of-mirrors guitar effect loops fading into infinity, gradually warming up to a very intimate vocal with lush harmonies on the chorus & a luminous ending. i needed a downtempo, triphoppy, ambient, space psychedelic love tune to fill out the album & this is definitely it. the beginning envisions dawn on an alien world & the spreading light of the blue sun slowly reveals an incredibly beautiful planet, described in the visionary lyrics.

"snurdz on dust" is the last song i did for the record. i decided that i wanted a heavy, industrial-type tune for the album with rap lyrics. i am singing a lot on this album & the problem with that is that sometimes you have gigs & get a cold or something so that you can't sing, which puts you in a tough spot. i had a band break up on the road once because we all got colds & couldn't sing. that is why i always have a lot of songs with rap & spoken word vocals to fall back on. i did the drum track for "snurdz on dust" a while ago, i made it out of explosions, artillery, cannons, gunshots & cavernous drums before i knew what i would use it for. i didn't want to do blues licks & power chords like the usual heavy metal industrial, instead i composed atonal guitar power-riffs unlike anything done before with synth pads filling out the high end so that it isn't all just low-end like most of that kind of music. the whole thing is extremely dissonant with some very spiky guitar chords. i think the lyrics are pretty funny, i had to satirize all the phone-zombie people i see everywhere, stumbling around staring @ their phones, hypnotized, waiting for their next order. snurdz. prince fans will recognize the quote "this town needs an enema" from the first batman movie & album. more & more the alien invasion is revealed as the thrashing around of dinosaurs going extinct--alarming for sure but really stupid too. we can laugh @ the stupidity of the giant stumblers & their snurdz.

i am including two remixes as bonus tracks @ the end of the album. the first is "kiss of chaos (single edit)" from "spiral city sky". this is the short version of this rocking tune, the most popular song on that album. the other is "deep space funk (mofomix)". this is a longer, heavier, more industrial version of the jazzy "gravity sucks (deep space funk)", also from "spiral".

in conclusion, i return to the "altronica" theme. this is not alternative rock although my first album was marketed as alternative rather than electronica by the record company, but it definitely is alternative pop music in the larger sense of the word--an alternative to the dumbed-down, scuzzy mainstream pop & thug culture. how much music do you hear coming out that is pro-liberty & anti-tyranny? not much, the soggy old protest singers of the 60s have long since gone limp & joined the police state. where is the protest music of today? where is the true punk music of today (in spirit, not just empty style)? pop music has been smart in the past & it will be smart again because there are more & more people who refuse to be dumbed down by MTV & CIA junk culture & i am only one of them. i hear a lot of very intelligent, funny podcasts & i know there are a lot of bright, good-hearted people out there & that is who i want to make music for. this stuff isn't too visionary for them, they can handle it & grasp the picture here. sure, the phone-checkers & the dog-butt wipers & the tapwater tubeheads & the spy creeps & the thugs & the madonna wannabes & the lip-curling, eyeball-rolling type of critics all hate this stuff, i don't need them to like it & it isn't for them. music doesn't have to appeal to the lowest common denominator to be pop. i continue to maintain that i am writing pop music, i have studied the entire history of pop songwriting from cole porter (who was very smart & extremely literate, by the way) on. i refuse to be put into the experimental music gang of sideshow freaks, i like a lot of experimental music but that is not what i am doing; i am writing pop songs. people who think i am WEIRD are just assholes trying to minimize & devalue me & people like me by calling me insane, that's what psy-op mind control operatives do. culture is a battleground & some people fight new, creative & positive stuff viciously. artists explore the full range of imagination & creativity & it is natural to do that, children do it but it gets drilled out of them. it isn't weird to use your imagination, that's what it's for. i don't mind having a smaller, higher quality audience. if you have read this far then i commend you on your interest in the source of this creativity.

Tags: music altronica electronica alternative creativity health integrity freedom

i have been going to the weekly organ concerts @ the marienkirche in old town lubeck (germany) with anita & it has been a consistent delight & inspiration to me for a number of reasons. one of those reasons is historical. i read long ago about how johann sebastian bach had walked hundreds of miles just to hear the great buxtehude play but i didn't know that it was to the marienkirche, where buxtehude (the foremost organist & composer of his day) was the resident organist, that bach walked 280 miles in the snow. he was 20 & in his first job as organist for a small church in arnstadt & asked for a month leave to go study. he was gone 4 months & his composing was transformed when he got back: his harmonies were more complex & adventurous. so you see, it is very special for me to be in this place that was a pilgrimage for the greatest composer who ever lived, where he himself learned.

i think of the marienkirche as the temple of music. the acoustics of the high-arched ceilings & the brick walls & floor with many glass windows causes every note to reverberate for a long time, it is an extremely "live" room. this is the opposite of a recording studio, where the walls are as acoustically dead as possible so that the room doesn't ring. the marienkirche rings like a bell, the whole inside space of the building is like the sounding chamber of an acoustic instrument such as that of a hollowbody guitar. you can't separate those huge organ pipes from the building itself; together they form one incredible-sounding musical instrument. you sit inside of that instrument & let the vibrations move you. i am sometimes very close to tears listening to that glorious sound as the light streams in thru the stained glass. the quality of the resonation inside of the church is unlike any i have ever heard, it does not make the sound muddy like a long reverb tends to do. the sound is crystal clear with stereo separation. it has a very cosmic sound to me, it gives me a sense of largeness & suggests infinity & eternity. which brings me to that astrological clock.

they don't call it the astrological clock, they call it the astronomical clock because it depicts celestial motions accurately & shows the astronomical constellations, but there are elements to it that are definitely astrological. for one thing it correlates the four gospels to the four fixed signs of the zodiac--luke to taurus, mark to leo, john to scorpio & matthew to aquarius--& it uses the "higher octave" astrological symbols for those signs: the winged bull & winged lion, the eagle rather than the scorpion & the angel rather than the water bearer, although it uses the traditional symbols on the upper clock face. this is not something an astronomer would do, this is definitely getting into the zone of astrological symbolism rather than just astronomical data. you can also look up what the phase of the moon was on your date of birth. this runs counter to the current evangelical superstition about astrology; many of them think that if you ever read a newspaper horoscope demons will immediately fly into your mind. the astrological clock fits in with the whole cosmological feel of the kirche for me, it recognizes the connection between human life & the cosmic machinery of the universe. the sharp towering spires that point upwards to the stars & seem to bring down that galactic energy into the inner space below also adds to this perception for me. it connects the aspiration of mankind to go to the stars with the inspiration that comes from looking out into the universe & listening to that cosmic organ music of the spheres that lifts us up into admiration & awe @ the majesty & grandeur of nature. the music of vast spaces is what i hear here.

Tags: marienkirche, bach, buxtehude, organ, pipes, acoustics, cathedral, reverb,