The Machine’s Pump Volume 28 – #2 – February 2025

Here we are, closing out February 2025, and things are even more insane than they were a month ago. I would love to talk about music and art and all the stuff brewing in the Brave Combo world. But everything seems sorta pointless, as we experience an increasingly divided country with a truly weird-ass ME ME ME MONSTER, leading his zombies into an evil union with enemies of the USA, while bullying our allies. He wants to be feared. This is bad movie script material and it’s all happening right out in the open. So where’s the sense of stability everyone is craving? It’s gone, that’s where! Amazing, huh, that all of this is actually happening? Ego-fueled cruelty is all the rage! Woo-hoo! Perhaps we should feel privileged to be alive to see Mr. Antichrist rise to power. Hell, folks have been waiting for all this excitement a long, long time. Between you and me, I thought it would be someone a little smarter, but usually these sorts are not most expensive eggs in the carton. Despite being in the Twilight Zone it’s nice to be a witness to history. And seeing hordes of “Christians” proudly morph into, literally, the opposite of Jesus, is rather mind-blowingly entertaining, right? Whatever, people just love belonging to tribes, so they don’t have to think for themselves, especially tribes built around common grievances toward “the others.” Thinking is just too difficult and painful, apparently; takes extraordinary effort. It’s way easier to have someone else tell you what you’re supposed think and feel. And once the leaders convince the followers God is on their side, look out!

How does one exist inside this wobbly, topsy-turvy, unsettling vibe and look forward to waking up every day? As I think I’ve mentioned before, I find a measurable degree of peace by trying to wrap my head around how big the universe is and how many galaxies there are, each containing billions of stars with planets orbiting most, if not every star. That says to me nothing we do, in the big picture, is all that important and that we are each, individually, responsible for how seriously we take our path to enlightenment. Fun fact: To get from here (Earth) to the edge of our galaxy, the Milky Way, would take 100,000 years, IF we could travel at the speed of light (186,000 miles a second). And our galaxy is just average size (around 5 billion stars). There are much larger ones out there. Think about that a while. It helps to feel so profoundly insignificant.

The band I lead, Brave Combo, is in the middle of our annual vacation (generally January through March). We barely see each other, unless one or two of us is doing a special musical event, which is likely. BC members love to make music; to manipulate notes and chords, via myriad mechanical devices, which are, indeed, designed and constructed to produce the most ear-catching interpretations of controlled sounds. Mountains are intentionally constructed with thrilling musical peaks built-in and perfection, of some sort, is always attempted. But the ultimate goal is being understood by the listener. It’s great when you think you’ve come up with something cool and other people think so, too. But you gotta be very careful. Too much praise can make you shift your priorities and that’s probably not a good thing. Anyway, I’m pretty sure I can go on and on way beyond most people’s interest with stuff like, for instance, where the very first polka was danced or how to catch two feral cats in two separate traps at the same time or how to record and mix music in the studio to sound fantastic through smartphone speakers.

Brave Combo music gets covered by other musicians on occasion. It’s always flattering and we love hearing how other musicians perceive us. Our song, “Do Something Different” has been performed and reimagined by many disparate performers. Here’s an extremely groovy version of the song I ran across recently, by an acapella group called Artists in Resonance from 1993. Thirty-two years ago! I don’t remember where this happened, but I vaguely remember that it did happen.

Breaking News! New album by Jad Fair, Lisa Cameron and Carl Finch almost ready to mix. To be released this summer or, maybe, early fall!

If you’re interested, check our itinerary. Dates are starting to fill in for the year, so it’s not too early to start making your travel plans for September, for example. We would appreciate you constructing your life around our obligations and whims. Okay, it’s midnight. Gotta go downtown and feed some feral cats. I like it when most people in Denton are unconscious