PCP Prep Cook / The Prep Cook is High on PCP

‘Dromomania’ Review
by Brett Netson

This is like seeing someone glance at something in the distance and have some  kind of realization. And it happens over and over again. I know how it goes recording music, and it takes a fair amount of time to get one stupid idea on the recording. This record is in perpetual flashes. You’re hitting the thing from a thousand different angles. I don’t say a million, I say a thousand. Because I am not exaggerating. There are  ideas coming down like a mudslide. Holy shit J Bro, where the hell? 

Played it backwards and it didn’t make any less sense. I can’t touch it. Excuse me, but  you probably didn’t notice that the guitar playing is far and beyond most anyone alive today? The electric guitar. The thing every  jackass with a credit card and a car to drive to the corporate-pig-ass-gear-store thinks they can do. This motherfucker put in some serious time on that thing. Do you know what I’m talking about? This shit is ten layers of fucked up. I didn’t say a hundred, I said ten. Because I’m not exaggerating. This is like seeing someone glance at something in the distance and having some kind of realization. And it happens over and over again. 

DROMOMANIA 

Dove and J met in San Jose and had a band with Clay called Duster. Legendary Skip Spence was from San Jose, too. He made one of the best records of all time and went back there to die. Hobgoblins chase people all kinds of different places. 

“Skippy was just hanging around. He hadn’t been all there for years, because he’d been into heroin all that time. In fact he actually OD’d once and they had him in the morgue in San Jose with a tag on his toe. All of a sudden he got up and asked for a glass of water. Skippy changed radically when we were in New York. There were some people  there that were into harder drugs and a harder lifestyle, and some very weird shit. And so he kind of flew off with those people. They took him to The Tombs (and then to Bellevue) and that’s where he wrote Oar.  When he got out of there, he cut that album in Nashville. And that was the end of his career. They shot him full of Thorazine for six  months. They just take you out of the game.” 

“Keep your head in there...” 

Where the hell does this adorable, demented madness come from anyway? Speaking of clearing out crap, I once had this friend who would say, “I take acid at least every two months & JUST BLOW ALL THE BAD SHIT OUTA MY BRAIN!” So I say the same thing about Dromomania. Except I take it about once a day, like vitamins. Played it backwards again and it still doesn’t  make any less sense. I can’t slow it down till the vinyl gets here. Jason... hurry the fuck up  

man, I need to know some things. Like Mike Johnson said, “you’ve got ideas folding over upon themselves.” You built huge frames out of steel to keep the deep holes from caving in and cardboard representations over the top of the river... nice. Representations of, what you could not afford I guess? Elaborate, painted cardboard structures. We  don’t HAVE to buy recorded music anymore. Those Beatles records costed tall money Jack. The past is just underneath the skin  somewhere.  

Grab things you have and make something from nothing. Bang bang bang. We have a  lot of technical junk laying around. Helvetia. I don’t know how all this happened but thanks for going in. All I’ve got to do is sit here and turn on my stuff. I like when things work out like this. 

There will be some precious dipshits that might miss the what’s moving everywhere else. I saw it right away J. But just a glimpse. I’m glad I took another look. The groundwater flows under us still, and the traffic and the people above with their concerns that sometimes turn to irritation and anger. And now, at a time when content is king. Ain’t no one got no time or attention to spare on no slow dissolving magic trick. There’s a kind that shows its form first and all the earth, wind and fire contained within it, fucks you up weeks later. “Trust US! When you need a  friend.” Don Van Vliet up and died. David Letterman asked him where he got his name. “I’ve got a beef in my heart.” “Against society!” Barry Manilow’s favorite singer is Tom Waits. Just remember, we all got it coming.  

There is art and music that is like a mushroom kit. All you get in the package is the little bag of spores and some sawdust. You gotta soak it in water, you are the one to put together the conditions. It’ll produce for seasons. When the conditions are right, it  just can’t help itself.  

Stevie Wonder didn’t bother fucking around, he made records. Have you seen the footage of him on Sesame Street? Well fuck off. Best thing ever, him and his band could not help themselves. 

If you haven’t got it in you to let go and let it rip, or if you are simply too aware of how you fit in with the world and what is appropriate, you might make a great addition to a workforce of some kind. And make sure you get paid! Every motherfucker on earth that’s doing work, deserves to get PAID! But if you wanna talk about rock and  roll, as it has become known in all human lexicon, then you don’t have a choice if you have it in you. There are great souls that spread the demon seed and the joy of the messed mind. The part where the fluids and the blood are. The demon seed is alive for ever and ever. 

This album is something I can’t touch. I can’t.  Not even for a second. Turned my head to the left and saw a flash... I knew one more thing. It may or may not matter. “Switzerland, which is his childhood home...” Helvetia, the female representation of the Schweitz. Things happen there. Then they happen in California and Seattle. They happen any  place the strand of the creature mind is connected. Like roots and nerves and Ren &  Stimpy when the Tooth Beaver came. The nerves are worth money from the Nerve Ending Fairy. I don’t remember if the Tooth Beaver was a nuisance or not... 

“You can go off to Bermuda. Yeah... you  should do that. You can trip wherever  away from me.” 

What have we done... 

Only some of us actually make a contribution to all the true things that come from nothing. Beats and Yippies and Haight Hippies. The Hippies in LA were more about drugs and fucking, maybe more honest maybe not. Arthur Lee was a heavy dude, but not without a goof sense of humor. LA hippies and the street jive. If I could just spend an  hour with Neil Cassady. Would be a great time and to sort the real from the jive. There is real jive. Look here, there’s a thing called enchantment, it’s a real thing. Jive is real. When it keeps good time. That science and technology shit will put us all into clinical, sucking the life out of every thing that we don’t understand before anyone can  understand. Some things just do not need to be understood. I want to know everything. I want to swim deep in the unknowable but that will destroy a man. Have to let it go. Jams are science without even trying.  Without even saying so. Did you see when Jimi Hendrix showed up at the meditation center in Hawaii. His jive is real. “Well I hear  my train a comin’... ba ba ba badda... hear my train a come ih yunnn...” Get a load of J Bro jamming his days away to the Band of Gypsies record. It takes time and time and time is now. 

“My best Boogie don’t work no more...” 

J bro, where are you? Maybe you just took a look a the toaster and twisted away, all Sesame Street LSD. People get lost. I have gotten lost. For a time. I can see you on the Bruxxels train. At 5:00 am, dark, weird, and stranded, jacked of all your Euro’s. Some people are just bound to end up stranded from time to time. You may find yourself at the mishappen and strange time, at the NY hotel. Why the hell wouldn’t you sleep in the lobby. Hobgoblins chase people all kinds of different places. We all have demons and some people will tend to engage. Jason! I’m in here and I don’t know where I am... A dot running for the dust... oh son of a bitch! I guess there is always a chance of surviving most anything but, damn dude...  
what?