Sat. March 20 Asa Brebner, local guitar ace, multi-genre scrambler and former Modern Lover and Chartbuster, checks in: "I cant think of anything clever to say at the moment. I'm working on taxes and in a very sober mood. I have some questions for the IRS but can't seem to get a human on the phone. Perhaps a better strategy would be to let them find me. It worked for Al Capone, but so far not for Whitey Bulger. Remember we have important bankers to bail out! Apparently tax preparers are receiving letters from the IRS to better police their clients. Mine seems rather nervous this time around. I tell him not to worry. My parents stopped worrying about the IRS in the last few years of their lives so it looks as if I am going to have to deal with some of their  confusion. Oh well, death and taxes. However it's getting close to the weekend and I am playing at the Plough & Stars Saturday March 20 at 10.
Brebner released the CD "Suellos De Los Muertos" and last month. His thoughts: "While I was up in the icy wilds of northern New Hampshire taking care of my mother in her long, slow 'decline,' I had my buddy Kevin Shurtleff come up for the weekend.
We did the basic tracks for 'Suenos De Los Muertos' in our huge post and beam barn. It was just me and him, guitar and drums with my friend and tenant Jay Janney working the controls on the Yamaha 12 track. A big woodpile waited rustically outside while we shook the rafters.
"Some of the tunes had been kicking around for years and some were brand new. It's hard to connect the dots in that kind of situation. Kevin had never even heard these songs before and it was very bare bones but he always manages to pour enough passion into his playing that in the end result you can't imagine that there wasn't a live band feeding off of each other. I took those basics to Pat Wallace and his 'Imaginary Friend' studio to do overdubs and then to Ducky Carlyle's for mixing. I'm quite proud of the end result. I think it rocks.
"This is the first project I have done totally in the digital format. I have some nostalgia for those huge tape machines that rely on centrifugal force to bring you to and from intimate recorded moments. But the digital world enables you to do things you could never have imagined possible. It's freeing, but to an old soldier like myself, a little troubling - There is a down side to it when you see that all things can be repaired in cyberspace. Things such as bad notes, bad pitch, bad playing etc. Pretty soon we won't need any skill whatsoever.
"Somehow we seem to be closing in on distancing ourselves from the need for reality. Thank god we can finally get rid of that old nag! Run the tape backwards to a huge jazz orchestra in the 30's where each player had to be spot on perfect for the one microphone that sat perfectly positioned to record 'I'll See You In My Dreams'
Less than great players got weeded out pretty fast under those circumstances.
Nowadays things can be done at home with a few techno-doodads.
Meanwhile we send drones to kill the 'terrorists' or wedding guests a world away in backwater Pakistan. Although, I have nothing negative to say about Lady GaGa.
Back in the mezzazoic period that coincided with my youth we used to imagine that the future would be all buildings that looked like spaceships and shit. Everything looks pretty much like it did in the fifties but there's more of it.
Idiots kill each other on the highways, texting each other, staring into tiny screens that blink while mangled bodies drip from twisted wreckage. There's even more rockabilly cats with even better tattoos. There's more blues musicians. There are seas of super-fine poon tang.
In my day if you had one good looking girl in your whole 2nd grade class you were doing pretty well. What is it? Better nutrition?
But I digress... " Is there more? Yes there is more. There is another thing, a more passive, albeit ongoing, thing at Club Passim. an Asa guitar art exhiibit. He does that, too. In describing what he's doing and what he's done, Brebner says, "Club Passim has been there forever. Joan Baez and maybe even Bob Dylan played there back in the "day". They serve beer and wine and I think vegetarian food will be available. I have a wall of new guitar/art most of which are functional instruments. I also Illustrated a bunch of quotes by my favorite wise guy intellectuals. This stuff I've shown before but if you didn't come to the Paradise show a couple years ago, you did not see it.
"I've also done a painting that I hope might illustrate T-Max's upcoming record "Why Do We Go To War?". He hasn't seen it yet, but I got really carried away and had fun with it, glueing hundreds of toy soldiers to a canvas. I liked to play with toy soldiers as a youth and the only reason I gave it up was fear of ostracized by my peer group. They were becoming increasingly interested in girls. I reluctantly gave up my pre-adolescent fixation with war and violence when my baby sitter taught me to play 'Malaguena' on a nylon string guitar. Eventually as many of you are aware, I graduated to electric "rock" guitar... This has served me well in the girl impressing game. A lot of time has come and gone since then. My former fantasy that they(girls) would throw their underwear at the stage has become a fear that they might, as Depends, when thrown with sufficient vigor, can pack a velocity that even the most desperate ego-depleted rock star might not welcome.
"I may yet go back to toy soldiers. They are inexpensive, do not argue or get upset when I flirt with other armies. They provide a fantasy of control in this unpredictable veil of chaos. Anyway I sure did digress! Please come to the opening or peek in anytime during the month of January. I may even play a few tunes solo acoustic."
Art exhibit: Free. Plough cover: Not sure yet.
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