Who Will Shall Attain

Just back from LA where I was working on a new EP for the up and coming American chanteuse, Winifred Adams. She is self producing the release with some help from an old compatriot, John Wooler. John assembled a top notch band for backing tracks which including Sergio Gonzalez on drums - his credits include Bob Hope and Red Skelton, David Immerglock from the Counting Crows on acooustic, pedal steel, slide guitar and mandolin, ( here's where my journalism note-taking skills need brushing up on) a bass player named Johnny who has played with Ryan Adams ( no relation to Winifred), and Randy, a seasoned LA session electric guitarist.

Only one song was cut from scratch, the other 3 were adding a live rhythm section to songs that had been produced and assembled by George Leger III. The first stop in LA was to get the old audio files from George. Sitting there chatting while the files transferred, I was amazed to discover how much George and I had in common. Both of us are bald, we're both George the 3rds ( my middle name) and we began our audio legacies in Canada at around the same time, late 70's, early '80s - he in Vancouver, and I in Calgary. I discovered our directions diverged when George mentioned getting into the disco scene in the '70s. I got into punk rock.

The tracks were cut at the Steakhouse, one of my favorite LA tracking rooms located in North Hollywood off of Magnolia near Cahuenga, with the stellar assistance of John Cranfield, an extremely competent engineer and editor in his own right. The Steakhouse has a vintage EMI modified Neve desk that sounds golden along with a vintage Teletronic LA2A that also sounds incredible on vocals.

The Steakhouse has a long association with guitarist Steve Lukather, an LA studio session perennial ( he played on Michael Jackson's Thriller among much else) and member of the band Toto. The studio also has a strong Rolling Stones vibe about it partially due to the two large Ron Wood paintings of the Stones that adorn the lobby. One of them is personally signed to Bernard Fowler, a Steakhouse regular, and a singer with the Stones since the late '80s which is about the time I first met him through Bill Laswell.

Randy picked up the space and got a rocking mood going by playing old Led Zeppelin riffs on the guitar. The next day Immerglock commented how Randy played with the energy and enthusiasm of a teenager. He's never lost sight of those early days when it seemed like the right guitar riff could change everything. One of them in particular, the one from Dancing Days, took me back to my High School days of blasting Zeppelin in the school parking lot while studying the aerodynamics of frisbee throwing.

Dancing days are here again as the summer evening grows
You are my flower, you are my power
You are my woman who knows.
Though the summer evenings are still a bit away for us Northern Hemispherers, this seems like a good message to start the New Year. Or maybe Randy played it as a subconscious connection or bridge between Winifred and an archetype? I stated earlier in this Mix my opinion that Madonna became as big as she did partially through connecting to an archetype and marketing it.

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Methods of Defiance are multiplying as we speak. Musician, composer and oblique strategist, Dashmesh Khalsa, has started a new blog, Music of the Ancients, outlining his methods:

The universe is governed by the law of vibration and the collective tune of society is a result of the combination of all individual wavelengths. An individual's frequency, or tune, is being constantly adjusted in relation to both conscious and unconscious use of internal and external symbols. Therefore, it is paramount that we feel symbols from the perspective of harmonic resonance. From this perspective our reality consists of a soup of various harmonious and inharmonious vibrations (symbols), to varying degrees.

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Anyone interested in Robert Anton Wilson's methods of defiance needs to regularly check out Tom Jackson's blog, RAW Illumination, a daily dose of all things Wilsonian. He calls it, " A window into the writings of Robert Anton Wilson."

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My New Year's greeting to the world is from The Vision and the Voice, 2nd Aethyr by Aleister Crowley:

Silence! the moon ceaseth (her motion),
That also was sweet
In the air, in the air, in the air!
Who Will shall attain!
Who Will shall attain
By the Moon, and by Myself, and by the Angel of the Lord!

II

Now Silence ceaseth
And the moon waxeth sweet;
(It is the hour of) Initiation, Initiation, Initiation.
The kiss of Isis is honeyed;
My own Will is ended,
For Will hath attained.

III

Behold the lion-child swimmeth (in the heaven)
And the moon reeleth: --
(It is) Thou! (It is) Thou! (It is) Thou!
Triumph; the Will stealeth away (like a thief),
The Strong Will that staggered
Before Ra Hoor Khuit! -- Hadit! -- Nuit!

IV

To the God OAI
Be praise
In the end and the beginning!
And may none fall
Who Will attain
The Sword, the Balances, the Crown!

May everyone attain their deepest wishes and desires in this New Year!!