THE BRAKE LIGHTS

Kiss ‘N’ Ride, Chicago

Jason — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 15:49:16 +0000

Download audio file (05-Kiss-n-Ride-Chicago.mp3)

I wrote this song when I was a young man of 22, although it traveled under a different, more pretentious name at that time. Still love it.

DOWNLOAD SONG HERE!
DOWNLOAD CLAY CREEK EP HERE!

Kiss ‘n’ ride, Chicago!
You’re riding inside of me
And I’ll tear holes in your sweater I’m wearing
If I feel comfortable, I’m lazy! Yeah!
Our blood coagulates in its fusion

Repercussions are for suckers
Like irony and quarantine, you know
All these cities, you know
All these streetlamps, you know
I’m confused forever
So don’t go blaming me

Don’t go blaming me now
Don’t go blaming me now
Don’t go blaming me, yeah
Yeah
Yeah
Yeah
Yeah

32

Jason — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 18:41:37 +0000

Erikson c. 1997. From the CD insert.

Download audio file (erikson-nine-sidewalk-lines-32-hidden-track.mp3)

Posted for my 32nd birthday. Which means that I’m twice as old now as when we recorded it.

This was the hidden track on an album my band Erikson put out towards the end of high school.

GIMME SOME FEAR – New Song

Jason — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 05:09:20 +0000

Download audio file (Gimme-Some-Fear.mp3)

DOWNLOAD HERE!

I could babble on about Babylon, put the truth into your ear

Oh, I could stand on the corner with a sign in my hand about how the end is near

We spend so much time telling others what they want, that they don’t even have to hear

Sure we’ll stand United as One – as long as there’s something to fear

VERMONT YANKEE – New song

Jason — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 01:57:33 +0000

Download audio file (Vermont_Yankee.mp3)
DOWNLOAD HERE!

The kids were doing jumping jacks when they uncuffed his hands from behind his back. They had pegged him for another crime – a crime of high degree. Priest came over at Christmas time. Cops still question the alibi. Priest said do what’s right, do the time, rolling joints by the Christmas tree.

My brother the teacher burns the flag at half past noon. He’s drinking with the preacher who’ll be his sponsor in rehab soon. Just another son of concrete, burdened by abstract views. We used to have so much more real fun, droppin’ acid and sniffin’ glue.

Some kids they got some spraypaint. Swastikas under the bridge. Over the rainbow we cross for work, it’s where we played as kids. It made the local paper. Yeah, they made some dividends. Now they’re speeding down the highway out past where the yellow brick road ends.

The river’s up for sale. It’s where they store the nuclear waste. You can barely notice the difference in how the water tastes. Just wear this gasmask if you’re playing out in the sun. Don’t ask me why we’re paying for what it is they make us become.

DROPPING ACID AND SNIFFING GLUE, WE USED TO HAVE SO MUCH MORE REAL FUN!!!

The policeman’s on his rounds again busting fare-jumpers on the road to redemption. There’s a new prison up the road now, they got a killer tax exemption. There’s a new prison up the road now, they specialize in preemptive detention. One day we’ll get our settlement, we just may get our pension. Maybe if we just keep beggin’, we’ll see that settlement. If we ever reach our retirement, we’ll get our golden pension for a time that’s worth forgetting. You can’t win when you’re only guessing. What’s to learn when there is no lesson?

New Downloads Available

Jason — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 14:17:23 +0000

ZIPPED 320kbps MP3′s of my first demo as The Brake Lights, my only full-length album as The Brake Lights, and my most recent release, Real Games EP, are available as of yesterday.

Convenience

Jason — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 23:30:58 +0000

“I kill things from my hot tub while I’m drinking.”

The apex of all Creation – or a sign of the Apocalypse?

Probably neither. But I’d prefer to engineer something more realistic. With much less orange.

Biocentrism

Jason — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 01:44:10 +0000

The uninformed view of the Universe is the anthropocentric view of Humanity as the apex of Creation. The myth that the human species represents a final vision of some ultimate ideal is central to the rape-the-Earth-for-profit mentality that creates everyday atrocities like mountaintop removal, animal slaughterhouses, and elective caesarean sections. Intelligent humans find inspiration and renewal when in harmony with nature. The post-industrial travel system of ten-lane highways and airbuses is moving a lot of people to nowhere. Unfortunately, there isn’t enough concrete and cages to satisfy some people’s need for resource-domination! Our species needs to create a means of mandated social responsibility born from the positive power of community, not enforced externally by fines and media and government-created fear.

Image from: http://www.josephinewall.co.uk/presence_gaia.html

Climbs & Diving

Jason — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 21:53:27 +0000

I wrote my only complete poetry manuscript, Climbs & Diving, on public transit routes, beer-drenched Philadelphia countertops, and in between the three jobs I juggled after I was jettisoned from Rutgers into the apathy-saturated petrodollar-lovin’ population. Those days were stark and glorious. The futures traders would never get it and neither would I, but we wouldn’t get it in completely different ways.

I wrote the final poem first on a snowy spring break trip to Maine during my last year of college. I couldn’t tell you where the lines came from but once I had committed them to paper, I knew the poem could be even better. So I printed out the poem, cut out the lines, and put the cut out lines in a hat. I then rearranged the poem line by line as I removed them from that hat and in a few months I had eeked out 32 more poems that have since survived several hard drives, a couple wars of aggression, and a hare-brained scheme to move to Vermont.

Here’s the final poem:

XXXIII.

Towards the root notes
Of New England climbs and dives
Unfolded during the volume
White thighs complete
With nervous twittering
Where’s Montana
Divvied up among ossified lookers-on
And the elaborate equation
Under an undulating Bronx
“What’s wrong with you?”
Vibrating in quick audacity
Where’s the one thing that I bought
No more shakiness
Through the thistles
Of an inaudible barre chord
“Just off Main St.” in Penebscot, Maine
Under the chandelier light
And not even wearing a brassiere
I can hear everything there
“Everything is wrong”
Weighted the consonants incorrectly
From the vowel shop by the harbor?
Where’s Wyoming?
Pushing glass back into the dirt
Into new English signs
With you and more importantly
I climb and dive

What We Talk About When We Talk About Anarchy

Jason — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 01:48:10 +0000

Is something wrong with this picture?

My only concern regarding a society liberated from the force of government would be the ongoing aggregation of corporate power in the face of depleted natural resources.

I’m beginning to realize and fear that this reality is a part of the human condition and will continue to be a challenge to any system or non-system.

Don’t Vote

Jason — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 18:29:55 +0000

I don’t think it’s up to the “anarchists” among us to make excuses for engendering meaningful peace by active and vocal non-participation, but conversely the role of those who Vote to explain why their candidate and political party can better administer social justice than their opponents. It’s like racism, no child is born a Statist. We learn that the government is Good from before the time we learn about Santa Claus, except the latter myth goes away after childhood. I couldn’t tell you why adults choose to believe in fairytales, but I do know that the longer they choose to subscribe to them, the less likely those persons will ever be to overcome them.

Voting is childish. All belief in all government is anti-human. Government places superhuman powers to those who aspire to power – namely sociopaths, charlatans, and hoodwinks whose only goals in life are the accumulation of power over others. It is quite unfortunate yet strangely amusing that the average Consumer enjoys being led over a cliff by the pro-torture crowd but it’s important to keep voting in the Big Daddy types to make us feel good about ordering McDonald’s from 12 mpg Suburbans, hating Muslims, Voting, and Moving Forward. The President’s made it abundantly clear that we’re definitely not gonna be doing any Looking Back. So clear, one could call it transparent.