The Dr. Pants Chronicles 2: Log-sack

The hulking 9-foot frame of Log-sack loomed in the doorway, towering over the band. So large, he seemed to swallow up their entire field of vision, but in a crack between his massive arms and inhuman torso, they could see the bound and gagged figure of Kenneth behind him.

This was not the Log-sack they had known. Half Kenny Loggins, half John Cusack, the composite man had been a friend to them in the past. His back bore the brunt of the collapsing roof when an earthquake hit Dr. Pants Medical Funk Facility. He helped fight against the abomination Cussina (half Joan Cusack, half Jimmy Messina) when it sought to disrupt a studio recording.

But now, the easy half-smiles of the star of “Better Off Dead” and the singer of “Danger Zone” were aligned in a frown.

“What are you doing with Kenneth?” asked David. “Have you hurt him, Log-sack?”

His tree-limb arm came crashing down, knocking the band off their feet. He lumbered forward and as the lamp swung across the ceiling, it illuminated the swirling logo of their nemesis, the diabolical Professor Tornado, seared into his chest.

“Tornado’s gotten to him,” Dustin shouted. “Argh! If only he was more Cusack than Loggins. Then maybe he wouldn’t be so conflicted!”

The beast, confused by the notion that Loggins might somehow be less conflicted than Cusack, didn’t notice Aaron reaching into his pocket and pulling out his box cutter. It would be useless against the nigh-invincible might of Log-sack, but maybe...just maybe...if he could throw it to Kenneth, he could slice through his bonds and begin work on the beast’s one weakness: a funky beat...

The box cutter barely made it over Log-sack’s shoulder, in the narrow space between his mountainous body and the ceiling, landing inches away from Kenneth. His eyes, red like the Danger Zone, swung to Aaron and with a voice much like that of a movie star, Log-sack bellowed. He turned away from David and Dustin, allowing them to aid their captive friend, but in the blink of an eye, he lunged.

Aaron, screaming, was caught in the unbreakable grip of Log-sack’s arms. But it lasted only a moment. The screaming stopped and the creature let his prey fall lifeless to the floor.

Behind the beast’s back, the rest of the band exchanged mournful looks. They really needed to find a new bass player.

(Written by Greg Elwell)

Dr. Pants Chronicles 1: The Aftermath of the Doppelganger War

Dustin shuddered as he peeled bits of raw chicken off the arm of his jacket. It’s not as if any of the other band members loved being pelted with raw meat, but none of the others were vegetarians.

“It’s like they do it just to spite me,” he said to David, who still had feathers in his hair.

“They’re our evil doppelgangers,” David replied. “They don’t specifically hate you. They hate all of us. Makes me wish they’d never accidentally mutated from our blood samples that one time.”

“THIS makes you wish they’d never been mutated from our blood samples? THIS? Not the 800 other times we’ve had to fight them?” Dustin asked incredulously. “I don’t care if they loved us and bought us candy, I still wish they didn’t exist. They give me the creeps.”

Kenneth coughed sheepishly. It had been his trials of the Pants 4000 DNA testing kit/amp that accidentally created their wayward twins.

“At least we got a song out of it, guys,” he said. “A pretty kick-ass song.”

The band couldn’t argue with that. Risking their lives wasn’t always fun. Saving Oklahoma City from robot spiders and amorous pigs wasn’t easy. But at least they got some cool music out of the deal.

Aaron looked at his bandmates, perplexed.

“Wait, did you guys get hit by all those exploding chickens? Didn’t the velvet blankets shield you?”

Dustin removed a beak from his pocket and then pointed to his wedding ring. David and Kenneth did the same.

“We’re all married, dude, remember?” asked Dustin. “So, while you were hiding in bed with the Doppel-groupies, we were remaining faithful to our ladies and dodging raw chicken thighs. Where’d they go, anyway?”

The Doppel-groupies, like the Doppelgangers, had fled the scene once the poultry started popping. And with them went the secret location of Dr. Pants, their mentor and legal guardian, if the boasts in their ransom letter were true.

David wandered about with his cellphone up in the air, searching for a signal.

“Anyone know where those crazy bastards have left us this time?”

“Mmmm, probably southside,” said Kenneth, consulting his GPS. “Yep. South Penn. Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

The men nodded silently. They would look for an exit. They would call for a ride. And then they would get some donuts.

(Written by Greg Elwell)

On Music & Italy

Sometimes it becomes clear to me that there are forces in the world that are out to break me and make all that I find joyful turn to misery.

Not the most positive way to start a blog entry about my recent, absolutely amazing trip to Italy with my wife and her parents. I am aware of this. Still, when you can get outside your normal life and routine and look at things from the outside a bit, certain things become crystal clear.

Many times we take vacations to renew ourselves…or allow ourselves to be renewed. Even if we don’t know that’s why we do it, it’s still probably why we do it. I have been in desperate, desperate need of renewal. The many journeys K.C. and I take on the road playing music do not renew me. I suppose they could, if I allowed them to sometimes. I have been in quite a dark place recently, I think. Darker than I really had realized or imagined. It is only in the light of this amazing vacation and what I’ve allowed it to show me and do to me have I become aware of this. Some of you might be saying, “Well, of course you feel better. You’re in ITALY.” It’s not always that easy, though. There have been moments on this amazing journey where I’ve been a bit too jammed up with worrying about things at home, etc. to really enjoy the moment. As I type this, I have arrived at a place where that’s not the case, at least for now.

We give ourselves over in slavery to so many things. There are many days where I am not too far from believing the adage from “Fight Club”: “Do you own your possessions, or do your possessions own you?” I don’t know that it is only my possessions that have owned me lately. I have been owned by my own fear, my own ambition (which can be a dangerous thing…how much of our own ambition is grown out of fear that we will NOT amount to a point that is satisfactory to us? Can we not trust that God/The Universe/whatever has a plan that will be perfect in the long run?).

I have also been impaired in my enjoyment of music lately. My ability to really enjoy listening has been quite affected. I need to utilize it as the symptom it is more often…I should know by now that if the music is largely not pleasurable/interesting and more frustrating/befuddling, it’s a sign that all is not well in my mind and heart.

I am so proud of this record that we’ve made, the new Dr. Pants EP (the 1st of 4), but the truth is I can’t control what anybody thinks of it or what the world does with it. It’s not my job to, either. I desperately want to believe that great music will make room for itself…but it doesn’t always work this way. The truth is that Dr. Pants is probably destined to be a cult band, and the cult is still finding us. I’m so grateful for the people who have discovered the music over the last few years and have really connected with it. I pray that I am more grateful for that every day than I was the previous day.
I also have felt so desperate financially…it’s interesting that, even though this entire trip was paid for by my in-laws (an amazing, amazing thing), it’s been good to give up control of the money. I’m not in control of the money. I can’t even try to pay for anything, because I don’t have a single Euro of my own in my pocket. That’s a little different. It’s like, “Just stand back and be blessed, because there’s nothing you can do about it.” Pretty humbling on some level.

I’m so glad for the moments I’ve had on the plane ride over, and the trains throughout Italy, to listen to entire records on my iPod, and to just sit and enjoy. It’s pretty much all been entire records that I’m not very familiar with…I’ve even listened to a few things for the first time ever, start-to-finish. Of course, as I’ve been in Italy, my mind has been its own jukebox as well. Certain tracks come irresistibly to mind (how can one walk around the city of Firenze, as the Italians call it, and not think of “You Enjoy Myself” by Phish?), and others from the plane ride over stick in my head and, for whatever reason, become cornerstone songs to my own personal soundtrack for the trip (both “Broken” and “Rhinestone Eyes” by Gorillaz). Something about being in a foreign country, outside one’s own home, opens the ears. I don’t know what it is. I think I have just been approaching a sort of potential burnout with work in general…including the radio show. Now, though, I don’t feel that way at all…I am so pleased to listen to some of the new(er) things in my iTunes that I hadn’t even been able to approach before…to listen and think, “Yeah, I’d really like to play that.” Italy is interesting, too…there isn’t as much attitude surrounding music here as there is in the US right now, or Oklahoma, even. I love Oklahoma, and I love the music scene there, but there are tastemakers at work in Oklahoma, just like there are everywhere else, and sometimes I wonder if there’s really room for all of us in the new world of the growing Oklahoma music scene.

I desperately don’t want to be bitter or resentful about that, though, and that is truly helped by the experience of this trip. I don’t want the root of bitterness to take hold in my heart in regards to anything, whether it be in regards to my work or anything else. I want gratitude, peace, joy, grace. I want all these things in abundance. And I very much want them even more after this experience.

I have to be guarded…because I believe that these things can be stolen away, if I allow them to be. Stolen by bitterness, fear…these things that I can fall prey to so easily. Here in the holy city of Rome I sit, and these things are clearer than ever. I can only hope they remain clear once I come home.

The glow of amazing experiences of people, places and things wears off so quickly, too quickly. I hope that these lessons I have learned in Italy, about gratitude, grace, fear, bitterness and music…I hope that these lessons do not fade once the glow of Italia grows faint. There is so much in those lessons that is about my life every day, everywhere, and not just about these amazing few days spent in Italy. Let me always remember.

The Music & The Consciousness

Consciousness is a weird thing. It’s such a strange idea that each one of us is just this small, humanoid creature, with a consciousness that SEEMS enormous, but only because it’s all we know in the whole world. If we had any way to compare or experience a comparison between our individual consciousnesses and, say, all of them put together, or the consciousness of what many of us would call “God,” we would, I’m sure, regard the playgrounds of our individual minds as small. As it stands, though, these playgrounds are the only place each of us will ever exist, and all we take in, all we experience and all we think/feel in reaction thereto will be the entire makeup of that playground.

This is the kind of thing that I think about, or more than likely, quasi-freak out about, when I wake up in the morning these days. I have these moments in the night and in the morning, when I wake up from sleep, where I realize how small I am (this has been happening to me since I was a teenager, but the experience has evolved a bit…it used to just result in abject fear…now, for some reason, it just makes me kind of sad). I realize that all these crazy thoughts I have, all these weird ideas, or opinions, or feelings are mine only, and no one will ever know they’re there unless I express them somehow.

I said not too long ago on Twitter that art was “the only sensible reaction to the human condition.” When I say “human condition,” I mean exactly what I have just been describing here. This is where music comes in for me…it is by far the art form I relate to the most, and so it has always been my first choice in terms of some way I might communicate to the world.

So, I can’t help but do it. If I want to somehow communicate some of these things, I must make music. Maybe the music I make won’t impact you in the way this blog entry has…maybe you’ll listen to the upcoming Dr. Pants EPs and think, “this doesn’t really sound like it’s about human consciousness at all.” That’s fine. I hope to get around to tackling some of these ideas more directly as time goes on. But I do hope you’ll listen. I’ll keep making music even if you don’t, though. I’m pretty sure my sanity depends on it.

25 Records That Mean Something To Me, #2

It's hard to talk about Frank Zappa and just mention one specific album. In fact, when I initially conceived of this series of blog entries (of which I've managed to complete a whopping ONE so far), I'm sure I had a different Zappa album in mind than the one I'm about to talk about. But I pulled this disc out earlier today when I was picking out music for K.C. and I to clean the house to, and realized that somewhere, at some point, I obtained a new copy of it and replaced the original CD copy I had gotten 15 years ago. I was pleased to discover this; it meant that I didn't have to worry about the disc wearing out any time soon. My other copy had been worn slick, as I recall. It was scratched up pretty bad, especially for a CD in MY collection (I tend to be pretty protective of my discs...I had taken this record on so many road trips, placed it and removed it from so many CD wallets, that it finally started to look pretty rough). Anyway, all of this to say that I realized THE GRAND WAZOO is a record that means something to me, for sure.

THE GRAND WAZOO is the second of two albums Zappa released in the early seventies that highlighted his particular take on what might be called a jazz-rock fusion (the first being WAKA/JAWAKA)...an extension of the HOT RATS concept, but in a larger ensemble context. These are almost Zappa's "big band" albums; when given the opportunity to record with a rhythm section including guitars, keys, bass & drums augmented by a full brass and woodwind section, these two albums were what came out. There is a jazz structure (or some version thereof) to many of the tunes here. Some sort of theme, head, or main melody (or several) occur, then a series of solos by different members of the ensemble, and then a return to the theme(s) at the end of the piece. That is probably an oversimplification, but it gives at least a little bit of context for those who might not have heard this record.

It's an album that is complex without being difficult, serious without being dreary, goofy without being childish, and beautiful (gorgeous, even) without being saccharine, even for a moment. The finest example of all these attributes, I think, is the final track, "Blessed Relief" (I personally hear the first word there as "bles-sed", two syllables, not one). It's a elegant, slow piece, with a sort of lilting melody at the beginning that gives way to a gorgeous, open section with great electric piano arpeggios. Then come the solos, which are fantastic. In my first post in this series I talked a great deal about atmosphere...this particular track has atmosphere to spare. It's a fairly unique track in Zappa's oeuvre; there's really not another quite like it.

As unique as it is, the song and the album still very much bear Zappa's image, sound, and vibe...but perhaps in such a way that a certain grace is present that isn't always found in some of his other work. Highly recommended, highly regarded.