Another valid day of employment has ended. Workers, grimy, bitter and slightly smelly, are amassing to decide which watering hole to souse their brains at after a hard day in the dirt factory. Strains of butt-rock echo in the dark emptiness of the loading dock. The lights go off. Nobody's left to fill your order, so don't call.

Every day is the same but different. I wake up with people I know and love, drink coffee, go to work with people I like, drive my car on a road with people I hate, drink with people I hardly know. Check into my virtual world to see if any other people I don't know are doing things that are interesting or are trying to contact me. Hmmm...

Slow-motion fall is taking over - or is it fast-motion? Everything is a blur of warmth and goodness lately. My band had a great show last week at Luckey's with Hot For Chocolate and Swallows from PDX, probably our most solid and inspired appearance to date. The other bands were great and made for an evening of coolness.
Baby Louis is a real bag of baby-fun. I love chillin' with the little guy, reading him passages out of the Hobbit and changing his clothes. Babies rule because, as a rule, babies are temporary. After awhile, they learn how to walk, talk, change their own clothes and feed themselves. You learn to appreciate the little suckers for just being wonderful blobs of humanity; little creatures that are the exact opposite of evil. Babies are our only hope! We must focus on raising our future world-saviors to take good care of us in our old age. Unite For the Defense of Babies (as an institution)(or, "UFDB", as I like to say.)
Cosmo is almost 15, what a trip! The kid is going to be driving and then going to college before I know it. It's strange to think about my children-units growing up and moving away; kind of like a "changing of the guard", as one grows up, the other is going out into the world. Very exciting to see my little humanoids in their little spheres, doing their things.
In the meantime, Tina and I are also "doing our things", playing gigs with our respective bands and trying not to forget to have a good time together before we die. Yay! Everything is groovy! Work for peace! Be your own Yoko Ono! Life is beautiful, so why not eat health food?

Things exist and so do I. The Underlings played a fun and furious show on Saturday at Luckey's. The crowd was digging and so were we. Swallows from PDX and Hot For Chocolate both turned out great sets. Another classic and fun Eugene show.
Work has been fun. I love working in the produce warehouse when the weather starts to change to fall. I get to bust into my collection of classic hats and color-coordinate my Wranglers with my work jacket and boots. It's like getting into my work role and role playin' it. Life exists and so do I.

I've been re-reading Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land, the expanded edition. It's a trip to go back in time and think about my teen-aged self reading the same book some twenty years ago. I used to meditate at my bro's pad's LA swimming pool and pretend I was deep, ha ha ! Not much changes - or everything does. As a teen, you have a bunch of grandiose ideas and fuzzy certainties about how life is going to be. On the adult end, my needs have compressed some - less room for philosophy and idealism, more space for coffee. As a young man, I knew I was going to break out of the rigid traditions and mores that defined the folk in my town. As my new, panicking, on-the-verge-of-middle-age dude, I appreciate how the people in my home town kept their doors shut and had their parties over with by 10pm. What a conundrum! How can I further grok this?
Must...stop...grokking. Go...to...work...punch...clock. Obey...boss...cash...paycheck...never...sleep.

mORE GROKKING, mORE ROCKING, LESS TIME-CLOCKING

Blogging is an interesting place to be. I haven't really taken the time to disperse my thoughts online for awhile, so here goes:

THE END IS NEAR - REPENT!

Throw all your worldly rags in a big bag and light them on fire!Break loose from your self-imposed chains! Shake your ass to a new groove and bust a move! Wrap your boss in plastic and UPS' him to Chicago! End only yellow-colored foods, read only historical non-fiction, exercise three times a week, for the end is near!

There. That feels better.

It's been awhile, but we're back in style. Material existence consumes my thoughts. All I can think of are "things" to "posess". New instruments of destruction in my war on customer service. Music is a service industry with a warped sense of economics.
We bought a new car last week - 1997 Subaru wagon. It feels so yuppy to have a car that's only 10 years old that has working electronics, a stereo and lots of flashing dashboard lights. Very Buck Rogers-esque.
In other news, it's been a blast hanging out with lil' Louis, the wonder baby. He does more than most toaster ovens and warms more hearts in the long run. He also digs bass frequencies, so get to Ohmin' if you come over.
The Rock and Roll life has been treating me as well as I have treated it lately. Band practice is a manly place to be, with foul odors accompanying the new songs and somewhat sweeter smells enveloping the older material. Go figure on that one. Our next performance will be at Luckey's on October 6th. Come down and check us! We've been working very hard at our hard-rocking-ness. We will not dissapoint.*

(*exceptions will be made for the chronically dissapointed)

yours in yo-ness,

EH 101

YELTSIN pt 2 Slam Bondage from Ed Cole and Vimeo.

Damn! I haven't had much time to write lately. Having a one-month-old baby sure can put a dent in one's blogging, but then again, so can a kitten, a rainbow, a unicorn or season 5 of the Sopranos.
Little baby Louis has been really kickin' ass, doing the things a baby does - mainly sleep, eat, cry and poop. Oh, and also he's really good at being cute.
We had the Randoms over for a Sunday brunch yesterday, which was lovely. I'm still snacking on the leftover scones - muchos gracias to Robin for bringing them.
Friday, we went camping up on the McKenzie pass with the little guy and also did a couple of hikes with him packed in like a little papoose. Linton Lake was beautiful and rather large. I am always amazed at the beautiful Cascade lakes in our area that are just out there, waiting to be discovered.
Here's a video of Yeltsin at the Sam Bond's Garage 12th anniversary show on July 28th. Dig the new tune! I can't wait until their new cd comes out later this year. Party on, Garth!


Yeltsin at Sam Bond's Garage, Eugene, Oregon, 7/28/07 from Ed Cole and Vimeo.

King Louis had his first bath today. The kid has been hanging in there for a multitude of new experiences. Yesterday, I held him in the sprinkler for a moment in the peak heat of the day. He didn't like that as much as he did his nice, gentle bath. So it goes...life ain't a bowl of roses, Louis!
I'm pretty excited to hav a day off. This was a brutal work week. I wish I'd had a few more days (or weeks) of vacation leave so I could stay at home longer after the birth of the kidd, but that wasn't in my lucky stars. Although my world is exciting and exploding with hot, summertime action, I am looking forward to the quiet, winter months ahead, when I'll have more time to sit around, write songs and bounce my little one on my beer belly more often.

The baby is now a week old. Things are going great. Little Louis has been nursing, peeing, pooping and crying; all the things a little baby should do. I am constantly reminded of that one Talking Heads song about the baby, ya know, the one that was a hit in 1985?
Here's a secret video of Kelani's new song:



KelaniSong1 from Ed Cole and Vimeo.

Whoa! We were taken off guard when Tina went into labor yesterday at 2am. We were expecting to be ready closer to the due date (July 13th) and didn't have our bags packed or anything. It turns out we didn't need too much - just an outfit for the baby and some snacks.
We went into the birth center at 8am and Louis was born at 10:50am, a bouncing baby who came out screaming. Here's the non-explicit photo-link.
We are very pleased to announce...Louis Edward Cole, born June 27th, 2007, 10:50am, 7lbs/2oz

I went to the John Doe show at Sam Bond's Garage the other night. A night like many others, it blended into many other similar moments from the past of Sam Bondage. How many times to you get to see one of your favorite rock heroes play an intimate show - in a half-filled room, no less - and it just blows you away in a wonderful way? I liked all of his material, but "White Girl" and "New World" drew the loudest applause. Check out this clip of 'white girl':





John Doe at Sam Bond's Garage 6/14/07 from Ed Cole on Vimeo
Just another wonderful night at the Bond's.

I had a great time at Dan Jones the Squids CD release show at Sam Bonds on Friday. All the bands were great. Chance Became Fate were new to me and I liked them very much - they had sonic elements that put them in the Sugar/Husker Du/Hard, Pop mode.
I enjoyed playing a short set of favorites with the Squids - Now I Wanna Be Your Dog was awesome & some old Activator-related tunes came out energized as well.

Here are some clips I took of Touchforce and Chance Became fate:







Touchforce 6-1-07 from Ed Cole on Vimeo






Chance Became Fate / Sam Bond's Garage 6-1-07 from Ed Cole on Vimeo

Valiant Arms debut at Slabtown.(R-L: Diane Rios, Eric Jensen, Rob Jones)















U-lings darkly rocking





















Dan McClure and myself.

Some things never change. Like spending nights in a club with your friends and your friends' bands, rocking out in an art-filled room filled with (thankfully ventilated) smoking people, sipping beers and scarfing fries.
We (the Underlings)had great fun driving up to Portland to play with our friends,The Valiant Arms and seminal PDX art/noise/bassline rockers Wow and Flutter. The night was only slightly marred by the fact that the sound wa sso bad that no vocals came through at all for the first two bands (VA & us). Worst sound experience ever. Go back to your day job, you lame-wad sound geek! Valiant Arms music sounded like a mix of the three musicians' bands - Oswald 5-0 meets Pellet Gun anxiety-rock + artsy/indie Beltline guitar. It would have been cool to have heard the words at all, but it was hopeless - I could barely make out Diane and Rob's singing. Oh well - better luck next time. The sound may have been awful, but the mood was high - it was great to see so many of our Portland and Eugene friends out to support and hang out. I'll spare you, dear reader, the name dropping, but I saw some friends I hadn't seen in years and it made me say..."hmmm...I'll probably be doing the same thing for the rest of my life." Hanging out in bars and other venues, playing music with my friends, just like Willie Nelson or Kurt Cobain or Marilyn Manson or Pete Seeger- just having great times with other old geezers just like me.
P.S. Wow and Flutter were great and had great distorted basslines and angular rhythms. Hadn't seen them in awhile and I was happy to check 'em.

I'm excited to go to Portland and play a show at Slabtown tomorrow night with the Valiant Arms and Wow and Flutter. I haven't had a band road trip to Portland in, like, two years or so. It is nice when working at meaningless slave-jobs to have a vision in one's mind of getting away from the routine things in one's life - like work - and playing riffs loudly in a cool room with the ears of others filling with your frequencies. It's the best way to be savage in an urban setting. Savagery through multi-frequency rock and roll!!
Tina has been laid-up with a kidney stone. She has been in pain for 2 or 3 days. At one point, she was in so much pain that we went down to the hospital for a couple of hours, where her midwife, Michelle and her nurse, Judy took care of her until they figured out what was wrong. I hate to see my girl in so much pain, but I think she's on an upswing now.
Our child is due on July 13th. We are almost completely prepared for the expansion of our domestic tribe. We just have to finish painting one room in our teepee and then we also need to get a gunny sack to carry the little bugger around in when we're out scavenging for remnants of civilization with which we would then burn for warmth and for cooking the charred bones of our enemies... uh, I mean, we're generally ready. Gotta get a car seat for the tractor and then we'll be good.

I often think of how hokey this whole modern rock-promotion shtick has become. Everyone is entitled to have their own band page on myspace and promote themselves - I do it; you do it - but what is this all about, really? 10+ years ago, when you did a gig out of town, you called all your friends in that town, sent your press kit to the local paper and hoped like anything that your song would get played on the college radio station in Bumfucksville so that some people would come down to Scrawny Ronnies Peephole and Sub Shop to see your half-hour set. Now, potentially thousands of folks can see your promo online, but do any more people actually come out? I know I hardly do, even though I'm bombarded with e-promo. Maybe we're just all a little de-sensitized by this whole digital age thing.
I still like rock and roll.

Pat and I watched We Jam Econo tonight. I highly recommend. I know I'm sounding old-mannish here, but what the fuck has happened to all the kids these days? Why aren't they totally pissed about the generic music that is making i's way onto their ipods and computers? It's a different world than it was in the 70's and 80's , when groups like the Minutemen and Husker Du and Mission of Burma and Wire were really pushing some boundaries, reacting to the glut of over-produced hair-metal and stadium cock-rock. Punk rock still exists, but it's become a category, not a state of mind. The walls young musicians face these days are in their own minds, not in the oppressive quantity and low soul-quality of commercial rock. The internet has made our current world an instant place, where true nobodies can become popular overnight from their youtube video, but the soul content is what is lacking. WHERE THE FUCK IS WOODY GUTHRIE WHEN YOU NEED HIM???

I might complain about my job, but I actually enjoy working all the time - at least in the sense that I'm contributing my time and energy to a working-class cause (Organics) that I actually care about, with people that are cool. I've always identified strongly with working class ethics and people, more so than white-collar, business-types, as necessary as they are for the structural integrity of our society (let's hear it for lawyers - hip, hip, hooray!)
Last night, at band practice, we started working on a cover of the Minutemen's "This ain't no picnic" (go and search it on Youtube for their funny and profound video from 1984). The lyrics to that song really hit home with me, the same way Woody Guthrie or Bob Dylan would for some folks:

Working on the edge
losing my self-respect
for a man who presides over me
the principles of his creed
punch in punch out
8 hours 5 days a week
sweat pain and agony
on Friday I'll get paid

THIS AIN'T NO PICNIC

Hey mister don't look down on me
(for what I believe in-
I got my bills and the rent)
I should go pitch a tent
but our land is not free
so I'll work my youth away
in the place of a machine

THIS AIN'T NO PICNIC

Our show went smashingly well last Friday night. I often hate being a self-promoter, but you do what you gotta do to get people down to the clubs. After numerous emails and myspacey postey things, we actually had a good amount of people down to see us. The Crosswalks from Portland were excellent - really good dynamics and three-way vocals. I highly recommend them if you get the chance.
Other than werk and music, I've been enjoying going to Cosmo's baseball games. His team, the Pleasant Hill Billies, have been kicking butt the last several weeks. Watching pro games on tv seldom interests me, but seeing a bunch of 13 and 14 year-old boys playing their hearts out is a blast. Plus, you get to see some of the finer sports fields of greater Lane County.