Back in the early 1990’s, Cop Shoot Cop were given some money to make an EPK. We made this infomercial instead. We made a companion cassette for it as well, and were getting an 800 phone number where operators could be standing by. Nothing ever happened with it. I recently found an old VHS with it on there – apologies for the quality, but it’s what is available. Enjoy.
Happy it is spring, and all things come back to life. Well, most things. Some things didn’t make it through the winter and are now decaying and providing energy to those who are still standing.
Sitting outside this past weekend, I found myself serenaded by a lone mockingbird. He went on for hours. I finally located him on top of our neighbors chimney. Now I find him out there most days, singing to the neighborhood.
One day while taking a ike ride with my daughter I looked up and saw what turned out to be Overbrook Hospital (aka Essex County Psychiatric Hospital). We found a way in, but I had to come back on my own as she wasn’t so keen on exploring. Here is a video of one walk down the halls. Music is from my eurorack modular setup…
So it has been quite a while since I have posted anything on here. I’ve just had other priorities: changing the cat litter, working, doing some remixes, working on my new album, kayaking, meditating, getting pissed off at our government, religion and large behemoth corporations.
My album is going great, sounding really good. Exciting. I had planned on finishing it by end of summer, but it’s gotten delayed. If you want to have a listen to a rough:
In the meantime, I have been producing a record by Eleanor Bostwick, also very exciting. Here’s a sample of her stuff:
https://soundcloud.com/eleanor-bostwick/letthefireburnout
And I’ve been printing some bumper stickers just to piss off the religious right:
PLEASE CURB YOUR GOD
IT’S NOT A CHILD IT’S A CHOICE
PROUD PARENT OF A SATANIC MIDDLE SCHOOL HONOR STUDENT
If you are interested in any of these, let me know, and I’ll get them to you.
In other news, apparently Cop Shoot Cop is scheduled to play in the nation’s capital (that would be Washington DC) on October 23rd. Thanks to Chris X for flagging it for me. Guess we better start rehearsing. Kidding, I don’t think any of us know about this, plus I’ll be working in Las Vegas at that time.
http://www.ticketmaster.com/Cop-Shoot-Cop-tickets/artist/740596?tm_link=tm_edp_multiact_act2-name
The Children… return on 4/12/14. Michael Weiner on Vox, Jim COleman on modular synths, various noise and sound generators and manipulators, french horn, melodica and occasional vox, and Phil Puleo on dulcimer, kalimba, band various objects that he hits with sticks.
Also playing: Norman Westberg and Eleanor Bostwick.
Guaranteed to delight.
Oh my God!
I tend to get depressed
Instead of getting angry,
but I can still hate.
And so at a young age
I hate God
And I hate Religion
And I despise
All those stupid motherfuckers
Who believe
In god.
I mean,
Jesus fucking Christ
Are you kidding me?
Some fucking patsy died for my sins?
I’m 7 or 8 years old
in Virginia
It’s a warm day
and the light filters in
to the church
as I shit on the floor.
Not one witness
To my disdain, distaste and venom.
My hatred is alive.
And I say Fuck You!
But I’m not angry.
What I sadly come to understand
Years later
Is that act of hatred,
my big statement,
my scatological venom
that I leave steaming on the church floor
Has no effect on god
No effect on religion
No effect on the church.
The only one affected by this shit
Is pushing the mop.
The poor janitor
who has to clean it up.
So, dude,
I apologize
on bended knee. Seriously.
I meant you no wrong.
I’d clean up your shit today
If it would make up for it…
3 years later
and my friend Jim
just doesn’t show up for school one day.
Turns out
He just stopped living –
Ceased to exist
Died in a car wreck
The night before
Wrapped around a tree
with his brother
who was driving
and who survived
and how the hell
does he live with that?
I’m at a loss as to
how to live with it.
How to make sense of it.
Shit don’t make no sense.
There’s a big gaping whole
Where once there was my friend.
There’s no one I can talk to
Not my family
Not my friends.
I pick up the bible
And find another book of stories
That aren’t too easy to read
For an 11 year old
looking for some answers
To some big fucking questions.
But there are no answers
So I’m left at a loss
And keep this locked inside
Until right now
And though it never makes sense
I slowly come to accept
that loss and death
are part of life,
just as life is part of death.
And it’s only in our minds
That they separate
only in our minds
do they become opposites,
staring each other down
across the void of intellect.
Looking for answers
Of a spiritual nature
And finding none,
I soon find the next best thing.
Sweet baby jesus.
I find spirites.
And so begins the fight
Of and for my life.
Because the spirits
And the powders
And the gasses
And the grasses
And the tablets
And the smoke
And the rocks
And the liquids –
They all give me relief.
They don’t give me answers.
They just make the questions go away.
They Give life meaning
And they take it away.
As more and more
people around me start dying
From these spirits
I end up feeling
That the friends
I lose along the way
are the lucky ones
because they found a way out.
And I’m still stuck
Here in this god forsaken place.
This place with no god damn answers.
Don’t get me wrong,
It’s not all doom and gloom.
Not all Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath.
I have lots of fun along the way.
Like James Brown said, I feel good.
Sometimes the light of the spirits
Fills my being.
And at times I live for the
Darkness of despair.
Because it feels so true and honest.
I find the joy
of having sex
In church
Somehow there is a special thrill
Of fornicating in the pews
Or in the choir area
Specially with Donna,
Who was brought up
A good catholic girl.
Donna has snakes at home.
2 nine foot boa constrictors
When I sleep over
in Forest Hills
I wake up in the morning
To find the 2 boas curled
Under my head.
Donna and I eat apples
For breakfast.
In the mid 90’s
I’m Snatched out of
This god forsaken place
Some would say by god
But not me
I have to call it
A family intervention.
Whatever it is,
My cycle
Of destruction stops.
Destruction of self and others
Destruction of morals and mortals
Destruction of ideals and beliefs
Destruction of history and future
My destruction of everything in my path…..stops.
And though I no longer
Shit on church floors
Or fuck like a pagan
as jesus looks on,
I still stay well clear
Of anything that hints
Of god, religion, or spirit.
I place my trust
in machines
And the smell of sweat.
I have faith
In Human toil and turmoil.
In the asphalt under my feet.
Years go by.
I become things
I never would have imagined.
And I become happy.
For a while.
But eventually I find myself
Yearning for that familiar hell
Missing the seeming truth
Of despair
My sanitized life
Seems like a ruse
A fiction
And I convince myself
that the sad truth is
I wasn’t born
To be happy.
I was born
To live life on the edge
I was born
To be on the edge
The edge of suicide.
That’s what feels true
So I open that door once again.
3 years later
while contemplating
the distance
from the Tappan Zee Bridge
to the water below
I fall apart
I fall right in to god
Right through god
Though I didn’t call it that
At the time
Fragmented in to little pieces
Like the sun glistening on the Hudson
Sobbing, shaking
I realize with a smile
I’m just a tiny fucking speck
Just Here for a second…
In five minutes
My fear departs
Fear I’ve held for a lifetime
Fear that was in my marrow
Fear that I was taught as a kid
Fear that felt so fucking real
Fear that kept me safe
It just dissolved in to smoke
And I was held
And now I know
Whatever happens
It’s okay.
When loved ones die
When I die
When the dirty bomb hits the city
When birds fall from the sky
When the tea party takes over
And when the ice melts and the seas rise
It’ll be okay.
All my plans
My designs
My desires
My wants
Don’t matter at all.
Relief. Finally some fucking relief.
I’m still allergic
To the patsy who dies for my sins,
Still allergic
To any religion that wages war
In the name of god,
Still allergic
To those saying
Thank god my god is god
Still allergic
To any religion that says
we have the right to
weapons of mass destruction
and you don’t.
Still allergic
To the whole us vs them
Mentality of separation
That underlies all dogma.
Still allergic
To right wing right for lifers
Still allergic
To televangelists
Praying for you
To send them your money
Still allergic
To god fearing Christians
Cause fear doesn’t have a place in this.
So I find
That once again
I don’t get answers
And the questions
Have been revealed
to be unanswerable.
And honestly,
I’m relieved.
Freed from the vaults. An old video for “Seattle”, from Ask Questions Later (Cop Shoot Cop). I didn’t even know this existed! Enjoy. I promise I will write more words soon.
Today I am bald. This wasn’t always the case. I actually like being bald. My head feels nice and cool and smooth. But sometimes I miss the days of hair. I recently found some pictures of me back in these days:
This one was from an old passport. Surprised they let me in to any country with this. I had a number of Passport control agents tell me that my passport was too mangled. It was still valid, but the picture was cracked and falling apart. I remember getting this photo & passport hours before leaving to Japan with Cop for our first tour outside the US. I had been up for 3 days. We almost missed the plane because I was waiting for the last drop of drugs, which in those days I didn’t think twice about bringing on the plane. I think I hid it all in my sock. The problem was that when we left on tour, no matter how many drugs I brought along, I would inevitably run out within a few days. Then I would be in this dark sick place for 23 hours a day, where everything was bleak. But that 24th hour, the one when we were on stage, was brilliant. It was like sun through a magnifying glass. Playing live was like electricity. It was nice when I finally stopped my chemical romance, I found that this electricity could be tamed, controlled, and brought in to the ebb and flow of my daily life, though it was still inevitably amped up when performing.
This photo was taken in an apartment in Washington Heights. I was living up there for a while with Reid (on the left). She came out of the Haight Ashbury San Francisco post hippie heavy drug life, had gotten her shit together to some degree and was a waitress at The Whitney Museum. She drank though. A lot. She saw what I was, a functioning addict (if there really is such a thing). And she wanted to save me, I think. She ended up teaching me to drink, while I ended up getting her back in to hard drugs. It’s like gravity: it’s always easier going down than up. We both ended up getting out of that lifestyle around the same time, though we were no longer together by then, and we had different paths. I have often wondered what happened to Reid, and have reached out once or twice to try to get in touch. Always a dead end. Reid, if you are still alive and reading this, let me know.
This was a picture from an article in Option magazine. I was too messed up to make the scheduled photo shoot. Natz, Phil and Tod did the shoot with just the 3 of them, plus a number of photos with an old homeless career drinker from the Bowery. We all thought it was a good idea to run those photos and name him Jim. But that ultimately didn’t happen, so I had to have a separate photo shoot. I was pretty ragged and gaunt by this point. I remember the photographer talking to me about how she understood me. Never quite coming out and saying, “You are totally fucked up”, but making ongoing cloaked statements. I don’t know if she wanted to get high with me or if she wanted to save me. But I never fessed up, never got honest with her or myself.
One last big hair picture. Reid is here again. She went on a few tours with us to sell Merch. My old friend Clay is here, with an old girlfriend of his whose name I can’t recall. I think we were in Europe here, I can’t remember where. I apologize for making this my online photo gallery, but I happened to run in to these pictures and wanted to put them up here, along with their associated memories, before it all goes black.
jimcolemanmusic 