"I feel as though the world is a friendly boy walking along in the sun."

-Robert Rauschenberg

I was living in New York City in the summer of 2000; taking a break after my first year of Theater school in Texas to drink 40s and talk about art and rap music every night in Queens with my skateboard friends, bumble around Manhattan everyday by myself, and mooch off my older brother all the time…full time. If he had killed me out of sheer frustration with my stupidity and immaturity, he would’ve gotten off on account of self-defense…I was driving him crazy, and rightfully so. I never got a job, I never got a fake ID, I never really did anything I set out to do; and later in the summer, I would run out of money and New York City would beat me into a million little pieces. Before that all came to pass, before I got the best, most deserved kick in the teeth of my life, I enjoyed a blissful month of playing the role of the Country Wolf on sabbatical in the big city.

My friend Casey came up for 2 weeks to visit me and a few other Florida transplants, and he fell right into step with our life plan of drinking on roofs and skateboarding on everything else. Night after night, as we drank warm beer on the same hot roof, we would promise each other that tomorrow we would in-act our grand plan to go to every single museum in Manhattan with a “pay what you can” day and really appreciate all the art we had seen in books back home.

In the whole summer we went to one…just one…twenty-two minutes before it closed.

We had twenty-two minutes to see and appreciate they entirety of the MOMA, the largest modern art museum in all of North America, and quite possibly, the most influential modern art museum in all the world. Twenty-two minutes, that is shorter than an American sitcom without commercials. That is about enough time to prepare and consume two packets of ramen noodles without burning the roof of your mouth. That is NOT enough time to consume the most comprehensive collection of the most prolific one hundred years in the entire history of art…but why would that stop us from trying?

Being the stupid punks that we were, we both paid a dime each and proceeded to sprint from room to room, appreciating the shit out of everything from “The Persistence of Memory” to “Starry Night”. We ran like frantic game show contestants on an art history obstacle course, soaking up paintings for points, and surveying sculpture for the screaming studio audience in our minds…till we came to one wall. One big white wall where a few pieces of simple white paper hung, unframed, with steel tacks restraining each corner, and arranged in a long symmetrical row. We stopped dead, stopped breathing, and stopped the world when we came face to face with the pages torn neatly out of Robert Rauschenberg’s sketchbook. They were supplementary plates for his illustrated book, “Rauschenberg: XXXIV Drawings for Dante's Inferno”. Just simple collage constructs of black ink images on watercolor paper, hazy clouds of scribbles, magazine clippings, and non-sequiturs arranged onto the neat square pages. They were just perfect.

There they were, simple and plain; the doodles, drawings, and daydreams of the man behind some of the greatest works of modern American art. They appeared to us like slivers of history, trapped in amber, ancient cave drawings made with old National Geographic’s and India Ink instead of bison blood and black berry juice. Suddenly, everything we had ever made, everything we aspired to make, and everything we would make in the future, in any artistic medium was introduced to its long lost grandfather. All we could do was stand there, awed by the improbable feeling of having just been slapped in the mouth by historical context. We couldn’t even speak to each other; we just paced silently, back and forth in front of the row of images as our twenty-two minutes ticked away to closing time.

***

Robert Rauschenberg was one of the front-runners of the Neo-Dada, a group of artists that counted Jasper Johns and John Cage among its ranks, and found the inspiration for their revolution from the astounding artistic nose-thumbing of the likes of Marcel Duchamp and the rest of the original Dada. Rauschenberg famously stated once that he developed his style by doing “exactly the reverse” of what his instructor and renowned Bauhaus artist, Josef Albers taught him to do. He silently and successfully broke up the standards and practices of the world of modern art, and he went on to not only make great artistic works, but to change what we thought of, and the way we thought of art. Like it or not, Robert Rauschenberg’s fingerprints are on every piece of art to appear in the last sixty years. He was creating elaborate mixed media collage half a century before you were “decoupage-ing” magazine clippings to a piece of plywood in your bedroom. He was shocking the world with his use of the taxidermy of a bald eagle in his masterpiece “Canyon” long before Damian Hirst was filling fish tanks with formaldehyde. And who knows, without Rauschenberg’s initial incorporation and exploitation of images from pop-culture in his artwork, Andy Warhol may have never even gotten the chance to leave Pittsburgh or drop the Polish “a” from the end of his birth name.

***

Our twenty-two minutes were up, and Casey and I finally had to leave when the MOMA chimed for closing time. After being pried off of those unassuming white prints by an impatient security guard, we began filing silently out of the museum with the rest of the appreciators. It never crossed our minds that we didn’t get a chance to see a Picasso or a Monet. We didn’t think about the rooms filled with Cézannes, Gauguins and Mondrians that we never even set foot in. Even though we only saw about ten percent of the titanic museum before our blitzkrieg came to a screeching halt at the feet of Rauschenberg’s prints, we walked out of the MOMA that evening feeling like we had seen it all.

Less than a month later, I was on the phone, tears in my eyes, begging my mother to fly me home to Florida, to break me out of the city that broke me. She refused, she wasn’t going to clean up the mess I made, she just told me to fix what I broke with my brother and make the best of the time I had left. By the end of the summer, after more trouble and bigger mistakes, I did. My brother and I became closer than ever after our trial by fire, and New York City and I managed to establish a healthy working relationship that still exists today. Though I had no idea at the time how that short season would shape me into an adult, and I was most certainly clueless to the impact that those small prints would have on my artistic growth long down the line, I look back on the mistakes and events of that summer, and I count those days as the last flickering days of my childhood, and when I think of the twenty-two minutes I had, standing silent in front of those simple Rauschenberg prints, I can clearly see how I ended up where I am today, fixed firmly in a life working in art.

Robert Rauschenberg died today at his home in Lee County, Florida at the age of 82.
May he rest in peace.

started on the new album 3 days ago. i think this album may be even more off the wall then the last. be ready for drunken sea shantys, lush string arrangements, and a rap song about the american revolution. amen.

and one of the many "rewards" that provides...Paula wears your hat at check in. Fuck delta...airtran got it like that!

last night over the tour. drive all night after the show, listening to gangster rap, "the world without us", & bill callahan. the great file sharing servers are shutting down, their hosts arrested, & their users traced. rained all day. the summer is over.

just finished rapping about my malcolm x tshirt...tonight was a gem. this tour has been a gem. amen.

tonight is our last night in portland, & i must say, im dreading the sight of her in our rearview mirror. As i walked up congress to get coffee this morning i passed a yarn store, a bar, & an antique book store. i thought, this is Eden...only fucking cold.

3 days in portland, maine at my favorite home in america. in fact, this is the house that i wrote "xmas in july" about. it always smells lovely, the cats love to cuddle, & the birds sound like little wind up clocks. it is all i need. it is good to be here.

2 days off to travel up to ME, so we stopped off in north kingston, RI to see our friends rick & anna. rick just happened to have opened a rad tattoo shop, so you know we had to get SOMETHING done. check out inkognito tattoo if you are in the area.

Couple 'gansetts. A shot of beam. Texas and Florida meet new england during game 7 of the ALCS. Live and direct from north kingston, rhode island. "newangland az fukk, guy."

after a night of a Varsity level alcohol abuse at the greatest house show on earth, Harpoon Larry & I woke up on the floor of a UVA dorm only to be treated to a private tour of the historical campus! Ive been in nerdy history frenzy all weekend & i love it

Harpoon Larry ' I learned the shit out of some U.S. History today at Monticello, the home of Thomas ';yeah, i wrote that shit'; Jefferson. We tried to buy the place, but evidently it is not for ';sale';? Who they think we are? Tryin' to lowball us? Bullshit.

i picked up this hot little clip on UVshield at a VA gas station that sold "novelty i.d.s" and glasses made out of real snake skin. Im having trouble NOT wearing them. Tomorrow we visit Monticello to see how thomas jefferson made clocks & commited adultry.

capcom just announced today that they have started working on street fighter 4 and they are making a version for the nintendo wii! i would also like to announce that as soon as this game comes out, i am officially retired from everything except SF4! amen.

The 11 piece stonerdixierock band is on stage now, singing about the carolinas. I ate 2 corn dogs today, and may go back for more. Autumn is in full swing and i'm about to drive over the blue ridge mountains tomorrow. My gold teeth cant stop smiling.

Jacksonville, Florida is possibly the largest city least conducive to social interaction.
there is a sizeable population (782,623 according to the last census), but it is spread out across 782 square miles (jacksonville is the largest city by land mass in the lower 48). there are archaic liquor laws, some of the most absurd zoning codes, and worst of all...a whole lot of apathy. so what you get is a bunch of cranky people who are all cranky because they have to drive 45 minutes to get a drink and have a dance with their friends. no wonder they are all so cranky.
the deck is stacked against us.

So when i was told a few months ago about some fine folks in Jacksonville mounting a music festival with a respectable line up and some grand intentions...i was excited. I am no fool, i know that this festival isn't single-handedly going to turn Actionville from an ironic nickname to...um...just a nick name. Our problems are bigger than dance music and liquor laws. Still, it would seem like a glorious event that most everyone in Jacksonville could get behind...sadly...people manage to greet it with apathy. i have actually heard some say, "tallyrand, oh, that MUSIC festival? yeah, like anyone is going to come to that". So i am at a loss. How snotty and trite can you be? do you WANT your town to be boring? Do you want things to fail? That wasn't even a clever insult...it just made you sound like a bad guy in an 80's teen comedy.

I know that it seems that i am pounding my hometown, but Jacksonville just happens to be the city stuck in a rut that i know the best. it is just a case study for a question i am posing to anyone who has ever said, wrote, or thought, "nothing ever happens in (insert the name of your town here)". What are you waiting for?

I have had the distinct good fortune of eeking out a living by traveling around the country and playing shows in people's towns; bustling, shitty, or otherwise. The one consistent trait of every town with something happening: there are people MAKING something happen. These are not towns like L.A. and New York, in fact, the sooner that little towns stop dreaming about being those towns, the better off we will be. i am talking about Denton, Pensacola, Portland (maine), Richmond, El Dorado (Arkansas…not the lost city of gold), Muncie, Shreveport, Ypsilanti, Tucson, Minneapolis, Missoula, Johnson City, Sarasota, and Baton Rouge...these towns range from mid-range cities to not much bigger than a rest stop. But they all have one thing in common, they all have people who are making things happen and people who are supporting those things. From basements to backyards, from diners to dive bars, determined people want stuff to do, so they make stuff up. In El Dorado, Arkansas there are a bunch of folks ranging in age from 20s to 60s who all like music, art, and booze. they felt like there wasn't enough in their jerk water burg so they set aside their differences in age and hair style and started putting things together. If you think your town has Footloose-esque problems with the religious right...then you have never been to El Dorado! And they still make do.
Minneapolis is 47th in population, (well behind Jacksonville {#12} and just above Arlington, TX {#49}), it is emersed in "freeze your eyelids closed" cold for about 8 months out of the year, and it is so middle america that is about equally, impossibly far from both New York & L.A.. Even with all these things going against it, there is an almost never ending supply of art shows, live shows, house parties, and rad bars to go to in that town. It is all locally owned, locally supported, and as diverse as an Armour Hot Dogs Jingle!

The absurd thing is, there ARE people in your town making stuff up...i promise. They are just none of your lazy friends. Chances are, while you are sitting at home and playing minesweeper with "best week ever" on in the background, there are kids out there who are not as hip as you (maybe one of them is white and has dreadlocks (sigh), maybe the only "Archers of Loaf" song they know is "web in front", maybe they like Dane Cook) and they are having a whole lot more fun than you. Or maybe they are WAY more hip than you, (they get dressed up in the most outrageous bapsters and they are drinking sophia coppala's canned champagne while dancing to an new boys noize remix of a flosstradamus mash up of justice with blondie {who is actually covering the nerves}) still...those people are having more fun then you.

With the popular resurgence in dance music that is going on, i can promise there is some super hip faux-rich art kid dance night going on near you. And with the never ending popular love affair with alcohol, there is some bar near you packed with rednecks or frat guys or airline pilots or drug dealers or all of the above or none of the above...but it is packed...and the beer is cold. So that is the worst case scenario...unless you live in a town like Pecos, TX where the biggest, nicest building in the city is the funeral home...chances are...you don't.

So, if those are your options, you can either dive into a less than perfect situation and make the most of it, or say "fuck it" and scrape together 50 friends to start your own something or other, or you can move. so...if that is the boat you are in...shit or get off the pot. stop bitching.

"if the terminator is elected governor, i am moving to europe" -sole
he did.

However, chances are...that isn't even the boat you are in. Getting back to our case study, there is something going on EVERY SINGLE NIGHT in Jacksonville. Between live shows at Jackrabbits & Freebirds and Fancy Dance nights at TSI (they are starting to get GREAT live shows now as well: Dan Deacon), The Ocean Club (you should NEVER miss the art show that Joe Van Dyke throws at that club once a month), and The Pearl; you have specific good times covered. Plus you can get a general mishmash of hair brained ideas at The Eclipse (did you know that bar has been open for like 450 years? And they just let 3 of my friends do goth covers of their own songs?) and Fuel (i heard they have beer pong tournaments there). and for my money's worth...if you are ever looking for something to do in JAX at night...you should go to Shantytown in Springfield. That is the best spot for anything in this city, and one of the best bars i have ever been to. Folding chairs and tables, plus the best djs (real djs, with records, and beat matching) plus the $5 shantytown combo: A Pabst, A Slim Jim, and Big Pickle? i mean...that is astounding. UN-FUCK-WIT-ABLE.
and Jacksonville's strongest quality, the dive bar, is in no short supply either:
Between ginger's (best karaoke in town) and mango's at the beach, wall street in riverside, and the london bridge downtown.
on top of ALL OF THAT, you have spots like "the pit" (fucking "LIGHTNING BOLT" played there) that no one but a very set group of kids (dirt punx) even know about.

so there you go Jacksonville, you can't tell me you don't have options, and now you have a rather sizable music festival with a rather good, rather diverse line up of local, regional, and national acts from every possible genre, right in the heart of your city.
http://www.talleyrandfestival.com/
you are running out of excuses.

If all the stuff I listed doesn’t suit you…then make something else that does…or stop complaining. I don’t want anymore complaining.
Or move…get the fuck out of my city. Go be someone else’s problem.

Which brings me to my point, chances are, your city is A LOT like Jacksonville. It isn’t a cultural epicenter, but there is most likely A LOT more going on than you know about. Because, lets be honest, if you have read this far, you don’t have much to do, and you certainly are not taking the time to create your own fun! In fact, you are spending WAY too much time in your own home reading myspace bulletins from some rapper because you are too scared to go to a place you have never been (and not know the right dance steps) or you are too chicken shit to try and create something on your own because you may fail horribly at it. Trust me, failure ain’t that bad. Try being a indie-emo-artsy-country-rapper-punk.

So call your friends, tell them to call their friends, and go take over some douche bag dance night. Or start a bowling league. Or come to some of this shit that I do:

SEP 20th JACKSONVILLE, FL ACTIONVILLE (astronautalis dj set @eclipse)
SEP 22th FORT WORTH, TX WALL OF SOUND MUSIC FESTIVAL @ LA GRAVE FIELD
OCT 4TH AUSTIN, TX CLUB DEVILLE
OCT 5TH HOUSTON, TX THE MINK
OCT 6TH DENTON, TX ROCK LOTTERY @ DAN'S SILVER LEAF
OCT 9TH DENTON, TX RUBBERGLOVES
OCT 10TH DALLAS, TX DOUBLE-WIDE
OCT 11TH SHREVEPORT, LA Big D's
OCT 12TH LITTLE ROCK, AR TBA
OCT 15th CHARLOTTE, NC THE MILESTONE
OCT 16th JOHNSON CITY,TN THE HIDEAWAY
OCT 17th HARRISONBURG,VA JMU
OCT 19th CHAROLTTESVILLE,VA UVA
OCT 20TH RICHMOND, VA NARA
OCT 23RD PORTSMOUTH,NH RED DOOR
OCT 24TH PORTLAND, ME THE SPACE
OCT 25TH ANNAPOLIS, MD KYMA

Just stop expecting the world to invite you to its birthday party.
Just stop bitching.

And for real…if you live within hitchhiking distance of Fort Worth, Texas you should come to “The Wall of Sound Music Fest” This weekend. Or you live within wake boarding distance of Jacksonville, you should come to Talleyrand fest in November. They are both great examples of Local people doing good for their city…I just hope their respective cities are not so fucking jaded that they miss out on the fun.

As a final note, I would like to doff my cap to all the fine folks in all the marginal towns who have made the best of their situation by making something happen. And I would like to twirl my moustache and raise my glass to all the good people in great towns who still saw room for improvement and went out of their way to make changes for the better. You people are the American dream, and you would be nothing without the people who support your dj night or read your blog or eat your vegan hot dogs.
Keep up the good work.

*andy

the summer is over, school is back in session, and Universal Studios "Back to the Future Ride" is officially closed for good.

i know...i know...
it seems like nothing but bad news everywhere you turn...but let me tell you somethings:
1. the back to the future ride sucked (it was WAY better than the jaws ride...but that ain't sayin much).
2. the tshirt of the month club starts today
3. summerbreak may be over and done...but spring break is forver!

oh...what is that you say?
"what is the t-shirt of the month club?"
oh ho ho...i haven't told you about that?
well listen up buddy...i got a doozy for you!

pluto may be out of the big 9 (check out the boring song aesop rock just wrote about it) but the original 9 planets must have truly aligned in the shape of a peace sign when my manager (harpoon larry) and the fine folks at armhole in dallas cme up with the brilliant idea of the "t-shirt of the month club"!

Starting today, we will be churning out a new tshirt design every month until the day that we die (or we run out of good ideas...which ever comes first) for you fine folks to rock! each design will only be made into 48 shirts and never screened again, so if you see something you want, you better pre-order that shit from this here site, because you won't see these at shows. these shirts will go fast! here is how it works:

1. we announce a new design at the beginning of the month.
2. we take pre-orders all month long till we run out of the 48.
3. once all 48 are spoken for, we submit the order to armhole, they print them.
4. we ship the shirts to you.
5. now you a got a cool new shirt.
6. fuzz yeah!

so...if you want to reserve one of these fine shirts...you gots to buy it asap!
pick the size you want (the shirts are hanes 50/50 tees) and click on the "add to cart" button
on the myspace page and follow the nice instructions laid out to you by the fine folks at paypal. then sit by your mailbox for a month and cry till it arrives in a discreet brown package.
don't wait for it to show up at shows. don't myspace me and ask for me to hold one for you.
scrape together $10 (plus $2 for S/H) and a paypal account (or a major credit/debit card) and buy you one dang it!
how about them apples?

i am pretty damn pumped about this idea.
expect these shirts to range from classy to trashy...i got ideas up my sleeve that i can't wait to drop on you! get ready y'all. i have already gotten pre-orders in the afternoon between the time i posted the picture of the shirt to the time before i could even post this blog i posted this blog. so act fast...cause once they are gone...they are gone.

as if that ain't enough good news:
I am coming out to Fort Worth, Texas on September 22nd to play two shows in one day! One at the Wall of Sound Festival during the day! (if you don't know about this...then you are a damn fool! such an amazing lineup...it will make you puke blood! ...in a good way). Then...after that is all said and done...i am playing the official Wall of Sound After Party with Car Stereo (Wars)!!! if you don't know about Car Stereo (Wars) you need to check out his hot new mashup record "The Bandit" on Artifact Workshop Records. it is a one cd of concentrated party...i listened to it over and over when i helped a friend move and it made me forget that i was moving stuff! i thought i was riding in the back of a hot pink corvette convertible full of babes! you should expect the same from our show together after Wall of Sound at the Wreck Room in Fort Worth. (which is free to get into with your wall of sound ticket or $10 for you festival haters).

on top of all of that...I have another hot lil' mini tour coming your way in october...with more dates to come that should take me all the way up into new england! get ready yanks! spring break is coming to you!
i think i have more good news to tell you but i can't think of it right.= now because monday night football is on and i have a soft spot for the ocho cinco!

springbreakforever.

*andy

Well I'm burning wood for my dad. That's right I've been hired to burn wood. My dad has an overload of wood laying around his property. So being the good son I am. I took the job.

But its not a job in my eyes. Burning wood is one of my most favorite things to do. Hope everyone is burning wood in the hearts.

-b
Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

i flew to austin yesterday to do some freestyling for Dell Computers, filmed all night, slept for 40 winks, then filmed all day. i am done and on my way...i hope you dont think me less of a man for drinking such a sissy drink. So it goes.

I'm in the george bush international airport. Waiting for my girlfriend to appear from her flight from africa. I haven't really seen her since july 8th. So today is going to be nice. Other than the fact that I have to drive back to fort worth. And it is going to be the first time her dad will have seen my tattooed sleeved arms. Wish me luck

-b
Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

jenny drew a shark humping a squid...on some girl's back. Plus the show was fun too. If you didnt come out...you missed out.

it has finally happened...the website has been updated!!!

at this very moment president bush is downloading every song Akon ever sang to make custom ring tones on his sidekick, astronauts are debating the merits of smearing pink cake frosting on the bottom of the space shuttle, my vacuum robot is on dirt patrol, my video game system is telling me the weather in seattle, and my coffee maker is making my second pot of coffee AUTOMATICALLY! who would have thought...that this day and age...2007...that it would have only taken THREE YEARS to update a website as spectacular as ours! oh what a magical era this! what a golden time! the future is NOW people!
the.
future.
is.
now.

...sit back...soak that in.

so here it is...have a look around.
i am pretty dern pleased with the way she turned out. it looks like everything else we do...pages torn out of other people's books and pasted together in a funny way. that way...we people figure out that i am total fraud...they won't get too mad because, "at least he is a funny fraud...unlike that carlos mencia". i would like to thank my non-sexual life partners/perma-crushes at partyends for the layout inspiration and the prince of mayport: fillup "muthafuckin" g. for access to his astounding collection of old magazines and textbooks for the source material.

don't let this handsome web space fool you kids...we haven't sold out (yet) and gone all halli-burton on you! this here site; with its hilarious news blog, ribald forum, plus its "foxnews-esque" instantly updated shows page, and it's wildly informative and incredibly credible links page, it may seem like some giant musical interwebconglomopage. but this here site is just a lil' homemade slice of heaven cooked up on my couch by yours truly!
i hope it tastes good in your yap!

now that we got some of the introductions out of the way..lets get down to the business of NEWS:

yes...yes...i know i am not touring as much as i normally do. i know it has been a year since i last ventured out to the west coast on tour (aside from that one shot stop to play at the prom of a boarding school). i know the rest of America is pissed that i keep playing florida and texas...but i assure you...it is not in vain. here are 10 reasons why:
1. i have a new website (maybe you have noticed?)
2. designed my new logo (check the myspace page...i always wanted a logo)
3. 2.5 songs have been recorded for my un-named side project with P.O.S.
4. 8.73 songs have been written for my new solo record
5. 0.24 songs have been planned for my project with mike wiebe from the riverboat gamblers
6. i got a dj night going strong in ACTIONVILLE (every other THUR @ eclipse)
7. i have learned all the words to the last young jeezy record
8. i released an EP in germany about my famliy's shady history
9. did i mention that i have a new website?
10. i have my own shoe coming soon, thanks to sole glow customs!

see...i have been pretty dern busy and there is more where that came from!
and i PROMISE (cross my heart and hope to catch surfboard AIDS) to make it all up to you next year when i hit the road again like i love to do...endlessly looping around the world slanging hot new merch and songs about babes, whiskey, and the american revolution!

in the meantime...stay in touch here, myspace, and the new improved forum for updates on ALL the breaking news. back to you Susan...

Labels: astronautalis, lord bothwell, news, P.O.S., partyends, shows, surfboard AIDS, tiger penis