Monthly Archives: June 2025

The Blend

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In musical artistic terms “the blend” refers to how your voice is integrated with the instrument you are playing. In my case it’s guitar. The blend is correct instrument playing & vocals which are projecting your true voice. You don’t have to be a 4-octave vocalist to be an influential singer. You don’t need to be Eddie Van Halen on guitar either, but you do need to blend like Jimi Hendrix. Blending means you have no weakness which limit your ability to communicate with an audience. All aspects of performance have to be at a high level of competency to be able to effectively blend.

Jimi Hendrix is still that standard for perfect rock blend, an unbeatable guitar prodigy who found his songwriting voice which is now imitated by everyone. No one can match Jimi Hendrix, so take what you can from that and realize he didn’t leave a blueprint to follow– for if you try to live like Jimi, you will die like Jimi. Hendrix had so much pure talent (which none of us have), meaning you can’t surpass him artistically– only be inspired by his greatness & learn from his mistakes. Jimi Hendrix was too far ahead of his time to be understood, but he was also human with fallibilities like the rest of us.

Blending on guitar means playing the notes well along with using volume & syncopation. Volume helps create drone effect, which the Velvet Underground perfected with John Cale, while Jimi Hendrix mastered drone by controlling amplifier feedback. See his famous Woodstock solo performance of “The Star Spangled Banner” posted below, as it’s the drone effect which hypnotizes the listener. He’s so natural.

Syncopation comes more into play as a solo performer who favors an acoustic approach with no drummer. Artistically & stylistically it can be considered the difference between Bob Dylan & Jimi Hendrix. Bob Dylan can’t play guitar like Jimi Hendrix, but he is a better songwriter, so he turns down the volume (even in his electrified coming out era) as compared to the Velvets or Jimi. Bob Dylan favors syncopation (beats in his head) over feedback. Bob Dylan achieves drone effect on harmonica, and is one of the most prolific harmonica players ever. Bob Dylan came from folk music & the blues, and when he found his songwriting voice (which he also blended as drone) became arguably the biggest rock star ever. It’s because he could blend.

John Lennon is another brilliant example of blend. Whether it’s on guitar or piano; with the Beatles, solo, or with studio musicians John Lennon could create songs with anyone who had talent. He could always blend.

Understanding the recording process & production is part of the blend. If you can do this then surely you will perform better to a live audience. The studio is where a lot of good musicians feel intimidated and can get overwhelmed. The art of blending comes when nervous, but talented musicians are on the clock in the studio. A new song is uncharted territory which can be scary. The leader is the one who blends by getting their part (in my case guitar & vocals) well recorded in a way that makes everyone else’s job on the song easier. If it needs a click track, for the drummer & bass player to add later, then it must be done to a click track, otherwise they won’t be able to blend with the song. Figure out what the song needs and pick your blend.

If the lyrics are tight & engaging that will inspire creativity from everyone involved. Everyone wants to be part of something great, especially in the music business. It is the songwriter’s responsibility to give the musicians & producer what is needed for them to blend their talents into the project. You can’t do it all by yourself, but you can learn how to do as many things as possible, making everyone else’s job easier.

Blending is about leadership. In rock music you start everything by writing a new song, then you find the right people to help and inspire them to be creative. It really can’t happen any other way. Blending isn’t allowed to happen anymore by a music industry that has been locked-up tight since the late 1990’s & American Idol. What’s happening now is all about professional songwriters & producers who are completely out of touch. Technically they have the chops, but there is no heart, soul, or real love in any corporate music anymore. It’s all canned product. The producers deserve most of the credit for any catchy hit that is made anymore. As a musical artist, it feels like K-Pop has now been mainstreamed into American popular music. K-Pop is about sexual exploitation, human trafficking, drug trafficking & the fashion industry but no one is allowed to say that.

Blending a songwriting voice with guitar in this era means understanding the politics of our time and being a leader. This means you will have fans & haters, so deal with both appropriately. What we have politically is fascism under Trump with the Democrats acting as Vichy collaborators. Writing new songs from this Marxist perspective keeps an artist on the path of truth politically, making the music more influential & easier to blend over time.

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Crypto legislation & Trump’s coup attempt

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Crypto legislation was passed this week, with the GENIUS Act getting Senate approval, and the CLARITY Act moving out of House subcommittees. What this means is their passage is now inevitable. This will set the stage for another bitcoin bull run, followed by a crypto industry bailout when things inevitably go south. That bailout language is in the Senate-approved GENIUS Act.

Also, Trump will be allowed to profit on stablecoins without restriction. The crypto industry spent an estimated $130 million buying lawmakers to get their legislation passed. Opposition was tepid at best in both Houses of Congress, as few politicians wanted to take on the crypto PACs, which threatened to throw money against opponents during the next election cycle. It was politics as usual in Washington.

Right now, finance capital is salivating over the potential profits it can make issuing their own crypto, backed by US treasuries & the dollar, all now fully guaranteed by the US taxpayers in event of failure.

What we have under the Trump administration is the wholesale pardoning & rehabilitating of the crypto industry. Crypto criminals have been absolved, while Trump deploys the national guard & marines against the population protesting ICE Gestapo raids. The 1st, 4th, 5th & 6th amendment to the Constitution have been rendered invalid, as president Trump’s long-planned coup attempt to establish a police state dictatorship now enters its critical phase.

Democrats are doing nothing to stop this, in fact they are aiding & abetting Trump. Millions of Americans are facing higher prices due to Trump’s tariff war, which affects working class people disproportionately. This has thrown tens of thousands of people out of work, on top of the millions who are struggling to find a decent job already.

Every political action from Washington favors the wealthy, as Trump attempts to divide the population between US citizens & immigrants using ICE, DHS, etc, as a fascist spearhead. No culture, art, or any form of protest is to be tolerated by the fascist Trump regime, while Democrats preach “law & order.” This class inequality has become intolerable to the vast majority of the population, and the only serious answer is an international general strike. The violence in Israel/Gaza, Ukraine/Russia, and the Middle East & beyond is simply the foreign policy expression of Trump’s fascist agenda. A war on China would be the culmination of this madness.

Workers need to protect themselves, since the police & military are being brought in to attack them. Organize workers, students & neighborhoods into safety committees to resist ICE abductions & police state violence. The wealth of society is created by the workers, not the billionaires. An organized working class is the international power that must be harnessed to stop fascism.

I see this as my final article on crypto, as there is nothing more for me to say on the subject. It’s now time for organizing & action. Before Trump re-took office, I began explaining the importance of crypto to the incoming Trump-Musk administration. Elon Musk is a crypto whale and probably the largest holder of bitcoin in the world. I estimate he holds 40-75% of all the available bitcoin. No one in the fake media will ask him these questions, and he’s not giving out any good answers– that’s for sure. History will have the final say.

The much hyped Trump-Musk break-up has since been reconciled. The reason for this is these two crypto fascists need each other. They can no longer exist independently. Certainly neither will jump to the other side of the revolutionary barricade in this war. Trump needs Elon Musk’s crypto expertise & influence, while Musk needs Trump to not crush him with his power of the state.

Trump-Musk crypto fascism is the transitional form of government in America right now. It’s an attempt to establish a police state dictatorship under Trump. The American people are resisting en masse, and that will only continue to grow. The American people have been put into a political slumber for a long time, especially those who have supported the Democratic Party. Those on the left, who trusted the Democrats, now find themselves without a political voice and are searching in the direction of socialism. The Socialist Equality Party (SEP), and their political organ the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) is the only political organization that represents the true left. All other variants, DSA, Green Party, etc, orbit the Democrats.

Contact the SEP/WSWS to join the war against fascism, which includes defeating Vichy cohorts known in America as the Democratic Party. Only class struggle can stop fascism. United as an unbreakable international force, the workers of the world can defeat fascism & free mankind through a socialist revolution. The Trotskyists are the true socialists, that’s why you never hear Leon Trotsky (pic above) mentioned in bourgeois politics & the mass media. Trotsky is hated by the Stalinists & the bourgeoisie because of his internationalism.

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Eric Meeker & bad girls

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I was born in Oshkosh, WI, and lived in the township of Vinland, located in the Winneconne school district, which I attended K-8. It was am excellent school system back then (I can’t speak for since), particularly in English, science, math, physical education, music & art.

By my senior year in high school at Lourdes Academy, I lived in Oshkosh and stayed there during the undergraduate summers & holidays I attended Marquette University. I learned a lot about life in Oshkosh, including this emotionally traumatic childhood event I will now relate.

I was 6 years old, and just finished kindergarten in Winneconne, so it was summer. My mom often took my brother David & I to go shopping in Oshkosh, because there isn’t much in small-town Winneconne. My mother was always proud to show off her children to everyone, especially other mothers.

One day, a “friend” who had two daughters, one my age & one my younger brother’s age, asked if “Eric could come over and play.” My younger brother wasn’t requested, it was specifically a request to have me come over & play for the day. My mom agreed, and dropped me off at their house one sunny summer morning.

It was the age-6 daughter that really wanted to play with me. The younger, 5-year old daughter quietly acquiesced & followed her older sister in everything we did– watch TV, coloring books, go outside & play, go back inside & see mom for lunch, etc. By the early afternoon I had grown tired of the older sister’s bossiness. When she declared what we were going to do next, and I didn’t feel like it, I instead went into the living room and starting coloring in the pile of coloring books.

A few seconds later, the younger sister came to me, quietly sat down and started coloring with me. [!!] What happened next I will NEVER forget, although the names & faces are long gone. The older sister starts screaming, “NO!! You can’t play with him. You have to do what I say!! That’s not right! No, no, no…!!”

Mom hears this and immediately rushes into the living room and takes the older daughter up the stairs, then right-to-left down the banister hall into her bedroom at the end and locks her in. I can hear her pounding on & screaming through the door, “No! No!! It’s not fair…” over & over as mom rushes down and whisks her younger daughter away.

Mom comes back into the living room where I’m standing stunned and says sternly to me, “Sit over there, I’m calling your mother to come get you now.” No apology or explanation as to what just happened. It was an interminable 30-minute wait for my mom, and a quiet ride home. Who was the victim in that incident? Answer: It was the 6-year old boy, and that’s when I learned how certain girls feel about me, and how crazy they can get when I don’t do what the want.

Bad girls exist, and have existed for a long time. It is inherently prejudicial to believe women are always right & to be believed. That just isn’t true and anyone with life experience knows this. I have experienced it many times since I was first introduced to a bad girl at age 6. Many motives exist for all of us to be deceptive, manipulative, or just evil. To cynically claim this can’t be true is to stand reality on its head.

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Stablecoin legislation update

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The fake media is reporting today, “Despite the charted course for GENIUS Act passage by the end of the week, one amendment proposal threatens to derail plans. Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) is pushing to insert the text of the Credit Card Competition Act (CCCA) into the stablecoin bill, drawing the ire of several lawmakers. The CCCA, introduced on the House floor in 2023, has failed to pass through the legislative process. The bill seeks to mandate major banks to use a payment network apart from Visa and Mastercard, but an amendment proposal to merge it with the GENIUS Act has generated dissent.”

In other words, leading Democratic lawmakers are unwilling to stand up and state to the American people that crypto is a Ponzi scheme. Their only resistance to crypto is to sneak an unrelated poison pill amendment into the GENIUS Act.

Let’s be clear, every Democrat in Congress knows crypto is a scam. Since FTX/SBF in late 2022 this has been acknowledged by everyone, outside the Kool-Aid drinkers. There is massive public opinion against crypto, especially with Trump’s brazen conflict of interest in establishing his own crypto exchange & tokens. Yet the Kool-Aid drinkers are about to get their stablecoin legislation, legitimizing crypto as money and setting up bitcoin for another bull run.

The Laken-Riley Act, the Big Beautiful Bill, and crypto legislation are all together as part of the Trump-Musk crypto-fascist plan to transform our US constitutional democracy into a dictatorial police state. The Democrats are Vichy collaborators in this crypto-fascist process. That’s the rest of story which needs to be understood.

* An amendment requires a simple majority to be approved in the Senate. The Credit Card Competition Act is considered politically toxic because it pits finance capital against restaurants & retailers. Bourgeois politicians don’t like that. So if a Senate majority votes the CCCA amendment in, it’s a signal the GENIUS Act is dead, because everyone votes against the CCCA. This is how Democrats are playing both sides of the legislative fence in this crypto debate.

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