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So I found my tape…the one with the entire 4-track recorded version of East Side Story by Squeeze. I made this in the late 90’s when we lived in Japan. Japan ... a place where you can act like a fool and nobody will call you out on it, even though they are acutely aware of how foolish you are. I loved it there. So I recorded every song with two guitars, a cheap microphone, and a crappy reverb pedal and dubbed it…"Far East Side Story" by Someone Else’s Squeeze. It's one of those ever increasingly rare records where every song is truly great. I'm talking about the original. I made it an exact replica in homage to the Japanese art of copying…but, unlike them, I don’t think I actually improved on the original nor did I intend to. The unbelievably serendipitous part is that a couple of days after I finished it I saw that Tilbrook was playing a solo gig in Tokyo. So I gave the tape to him after the show. Years later in San Francisco he proclaimed it to have been “brilliant”…and why wouldn’t he….they are his songs. Plus, can anyone really be sure what brilliant means?

Anyway, I could have only done this had I lived in Japan, where I had time to do other things besides work myself silly in some mindlessly ambitious American frenzy - which brings me to why I would even have a blog at all. Blogging seems thankfully the opposite of mindless ambition. What's needed now is more reflection and less consumption. Less speed, less work and more time with family and friends. More time to read, write, travel, learn, sing, listen…more time to live. Look where Nike’s stupid “Just Do It” motto has taken us. We shouldn't have done it. “Don’t Just Do It” is a far more enlightened slogan, one that Obama and crew should adopt. The anti-corporate slogan! It'd be my campaign slogan: Don't Just Do It. Think First and Reflect. Don’t just buy that ugly ass gas guzzling SUV, think about whether it is really needed. Think about how all the gas it requires is being bought with the blood of American kids barely out of their teens as well as the deaths of countless innocent men, women and children on the “other side” of the world. If you can’t fit in anything smaller than an SUV, then think about how all the processed crap you are putting in your body is making you too large. Then get out and exercise. Walk down the street and talk to your neighbors. Walk to a café. Café’s are some of the greatest places on earth and we should have way more of them. Have a hot drink and sit and do nothing for awhile…then see what comes to mind. Start a conversation. Turn off the TV. Connect. Play the piano, play the guitar. Record a version of your favorite record! That’s right I still say records…records are way cooler than CD’s. And so, having said that, I am getting ready to convert “Far East Side Story” from analog to digital, where it will end up on a CD. Whaddaya think of that?

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