Category Archives: Uncategorized

vultures (added March 1, 2002)

1 March 2002

dear all, please forgive the lack of comm’s from here but my computer was moofed for a while and i didnt have time to attend to its need for constant fucking attention(!) very organic this tech crap so a belated happy new year to all, related holidaze etc. ive been trying to keep busy,,, went to L.A. to do some finishing work on the record and came away from that feeling really positive about it, im really happy with how its come out, one of the main thrusts was to keep it as its own thing rather than sound like various styles around now… also make it less generic, i think we’ve succcceeeded in all this, im not sure what the ‘singles’ are the whole thing is quite a totality… DH thinks its some of her best writing as do i, lyrics are really advanced… dont know for sure when its out, certainly by summer… im really looking forward to getting reactions to it ill write a more detailed thing later i just got this thing up and running last night with XP which is pretty cool … again sorry to have missed so much time… yeah, D and myself and Paul did that show MUSICIANS which is on bravo( i think? right?) thats gonna air on the 11th of march ok over and out chris that came out really nicely as well… i liked the performances

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halloween tomorrow

30 October 2001

this is a bit sooner than id intended to add but once again im greatly cheered to get all the reactions from out there… im continually impressed with how clever all of you are, (Lu thanks for the dream letter) i keep getting all these great statements from the mail:, yeah i think jesus and buddha would probably get booed in this climate also someone wrote “the only difference between a terrorist and a patriot is what side youre on” bravo… plus a lot more cool stuff dont hesitate to send any weird reports of dreams, aliens , bigfoots’; ghosts etc you know i love all that stuff … i used to say i only celebrated halloween … yesss the veil between the worlds is THINNNER etc etc as to current events : so after all the talk about the ‘war’ taking a long time and we should all be prepared for that now its like “shit weve been bombing away for a whole three weeks and it looks like the WAR IS A STALEMATE! SEND IN THE GRUNTS!!” right ? you all saw this ? so are we gonna wind up with another long drawn out (though more popular) war? even better is the deal with the announcements about something about to happen though what? where? who knows only dont worry just be on high alert… things are getting progressivly weirder…. like most of you im in the middle about all this i think american foreign policy since world war two has been the greatest contributing factor to our unpopularity, (what happened to the peace corps.? another fifteen minute deal) but certainly it sucks for a bunch of maniacs to be taking advantage of the freedoms of this country to raise havoc and destruction all very confusing still hope this isnt toooo pointless but the last batch of mail i got was very cool so i figured id put something up to say i read it all halloween tomorrow full moon chris

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sun oct 28 (happy halloween)

28 October 2001

thanks everyone for the continuing communication… ive finally listened to what is currently the next record in its entirety and feel fairly hopeful about it… it may get out by feb. but im not sure, but it is coming, theres still more work to do on it ive been getting mostly positive comments from you all, i wish i did have answers for everything but… did you see richard gere getting booed at that big rock show at the garden? apparently his asking for ‘compassion’ understanding etc. didnt go down well with all the heros who were in attendance… disturbing and contradictory… as ive been mentioning to people i remember very clearly the reaction to jfk’s killing , that it was somber and fairly dignified, now, everyone jumping on the bandwagon of war and nationalism, selling t-shirts etc. to me the reaction of the media to all of the events since the 11th just feels weirdly gleeful, i keep feeling like so many people are happy to have this stuff to carry on about… just yesterday on tv i saw a head saying that perhaps all we were doing in afghanistan was making people miserable, i was kind of surprised to see such an unpopular view right there in almost prime time meanwhile everyone i know is very sceptical as to the credibility of what is supposedly ‘news’ does anyone really think that the masses are getting even a small part of the real stories? then i saw some dumb assed psychologist saying how people were ‘stressed’ etc. by current events. fears, insomnia,indigestion,general lousy feelings… HELLO! big news that i was just reading about the Mayans, that their culture was rooted in a recognition of ‘terrible beauty’ that surrounds human existance, to me that meant that the natural attraction we have to violence, calamity and blood is not something that needs be covered up and disguised the way it is today, we make our own neurosis and then keep it going oh well very cheerful… i WOULD however like to recommend that everyone try and catch INVADER ZIM which is a fantastic cartoon that plays mostly fridays 9:00 on nickelodeon, Johnen Vasquez is god, a lot of you must be familiar with zim and johnny the homicidal maniac, squee etc those not who like comics should check it all out again thanks all for the comments etc. ill keep writing when i can, cant guarantee any regularity happy halloween all chris

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sat sept 22

22 September 2001

im really pleased to hear from all of you who took time to write, it must have taken over an hour to read the last bunch of mail barry sent… its totally great to know that you all are as smart as you are… a lot of you were in agreement about the waste of energy involved in the drug war, i saw tom clancey on that dumb o’reilly show, he (clancey) is pretty far right but at least he had enough on the ball to say that the only way to keep the hordes of mexican workers from sneaking across the border to get jobs here is to help mexico prosper so that americans would want to go there for work… to that o’reilly, idiot that he is, replied ‘well thats up to mexico’ i guess that telethon last night with all the celebs was pretty much a first, ive never seen any one tv show on almost all channels at once i watched it for a little bit but got irrationaly sad seeing mohammad ali so stricken by illness and turned it off, this morning i woke up still feeling gloomy and depressed but reading the rest of the e-mails from all of you guys (id started them yesterday) turned my mood around everyone seems to be ‘on the same page’ as they say, like myself a lot of you expressed your confusion in trying to figure out your own feelings about whats happened… im kind of surprised that i find the situation as complicated as i do, i try to view lifes events in their simplicity and its frustrating to find myself looking at so many different views of the same things… on one hand i’ve been looking forward to some kind of great change in the way things are in the world, but being confronted with such a brutal reality is a lot more shocking than anything id imagined, (the idea of the post apocalyptic ‘road warrior’ world is appealing but the reality of death and destruction on a huge scale isnt) is this really a turning point? last night i even heard some straight guy on tv talking about this generation selling out to comfort and complacency (although he didnt use those words), this awareness is way overdue, everyone has bought into the ‘big lie’ to one extent or another; no one is well off until everyone is, the world is too small now, how can we be content with our tv’s and cars and all when there are whole countries of people who live below the level of our cats and dogs? all these differences are going to catch up, if not now eventually… im sorry to sound too preachy but this stuff is a reality… as far as the immediate future goes all the advice i can give is the same as before: none of you have to do anything you dont want to, dont stay in jobs you cant stand, survival isnt about being unhappy… try and change things, dont conform thanks again chris sat. sept. 22 ’01

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drug war (added Sept. 16, 2001)

16 September 2001

dear all again thanks so much for all the good wishes, its really great to hear from you all… ive just got one more thing thats been really bugging me about the whole situation and i hope that any of you who agree with me here will also discuss this with friends and anyone who’ll listen… what if the american government and policy makers hadn’t wasted billions of dollars on the so called ‘drug war’? the same people im seeing call out for justice now are the same ones who had been calling drugs the greatest enemy threatening America… is it really true that the U.S. has given some 43 million to the taliban Afghani govt. to finance their stoppage of opium production or is this just rumor? as for me i always was certain that the ‘war on drugs’ was many many times more dangerous than the use of drugs and that the problem of drug use should be handled by legislation and treatment rather than violent aggressive resistance… now in retrospect it should be painfully obvious that not only huge amounts of money and resources been used up on fighting an even more elusive enemy than any terrorist, the drug war has also served to turn great numbers of people here against each other as well… so much waste putting people on trial and in jail over antique marijuana laws… its just so damn stupid to think that all that energy that’s been used fighting something that really cant be ‘fought’ might have been put to use fighting a real enemy thanks again for listening, chris

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more (added Sept. 15, 2001)

15 September 2001

just read all the letters i got from you all, a lot of you express your inabilities to know how you feel about whats going on which is pretty much how i am as well one kid called me out about saying i didnt think any good could come out of this, writing that they thought all the pulling together of people was a positive thing… of course i think that too and what i meant was more that the people responsible for this are misguided to think it would solve anything for them… yeah its great to see everybody being more human towards each other just a shame what it took to get that result… like christmas or burning man for that matter sad that people can only be nice to each other one day, one week a year, this is an old story most of you guys werent around in the sixties, the failure of the ideals of that period is still with me… in a way its hard to describe, all the young people now are used to factions and divisions between them, what if everyone was on the same page so to speak, everywhere one went there was a positive feeling that things were really going to change, that society was going to transform itself totally, in a way the connection between people was very similar to whats going on now in the face of the attack, only the motivation wasnt fear and nationalism, on the contrary there was a great desire to get rid of borders and differences between individuals… i really thought that people would fall into tribal ways of living and stop feeding the mechanised warlike aspects of life… i was a teenager and in retrospect was as naive as many others, as we all know now not much changed and sadder still much of the change that did happen was only temporary what happened? is it just that everyone stopped trying and decided they’d rather have the comforts of middle class life, what happened to the half million people who were at woodstock how many followed dreams and how many are lawyers and used car salesmen? theres no more “counter culture” its all been absorbed, we see the car commercial with born to be wild playing in the background how wild is it to have to deal with a job you cant stand so you can keep up your car payments on some dull looking vehicle? what contradiction… people used to always be talking about a topic that doesnt exist now: conformity being “a conformist” was bad now weve got the gap, uniforms for everyone, certainly the hippies used to wear their uniforms but theyd make them themselves the romans absorbed all that resisted them, i think this is sort of what happened here everything that once had an edge has become a part of the great machine theres the complete blurring of the lines that divide entertainment and news in the media, weve all been seeing things like the trade center bombing in films for the last twenty years, “reality” tv isnt reality its tv and it always pisses me off when some so called news show has a background of sentimental music to play with peoples emotions this all may sound “negative” and i dont mean it to be even though it sounds that way to me too in the light of last tuesdays events perhaps discussions like this become all the more irrelevant, its easy for me to become all the more filled with feelings of frustration but theres still this, no matter what, everyone still has a chance to control their own personal history, that great line from gladiator: what we do today echoes in eternity… i really think that this is a pivotal point… these events may have been formed billions of years ago in cosmic gasses but still we all have our free wills its time for all of us to be stronger than ever things and the way weve all lived up till now may change a lot or not at all but still we all have a choice to be afraid or to stand up to our fears and overcome them really weve all got the exact same thing to lose which is just the dust of our bodies while what there is to gain, the freedom in our spirits is a real reward, certainly worth putting up with a little discomfort now and then follow dreams, you dont have to do what you dont want to peace, out chris

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wtc attack (added Sept. 14, 2001)

14 September 2001

dear troops, everyone in the band is fine ive talked to all parties oddly im the closest to the crime scene here in new york, about a mile or less uptown… barbara and i watched the whole thing from the street in front of the house… initially everyone of course thought it was just a terrible accident, even the second plane hitting wasnt visible from our point of view and and we all thought the second explosion was a gas line or such… anyway pretty soon everything was revealed the loft and studio here is just inside the last perimeter thats blocked off before ‘ground zero’ and we have to show our id’s to walk around the neighborhood, oddly this makes me feel more secure in light of what went down… most of the people are gone from the neighborhood and the streets around the nearby blocks are filled with con-ed workers and lines of heavy machinery, firemen and police going to and from the site… at night the worlights and smoke can be seen down the block making a white glow… but just above 14th street except for the lack of traffic the city is almost buisness as usual the biggest difference is peoples reactions to each other with strangers being much closer than whats normal barbara and me also just came back from burning man, had just been here for i guess less than a week when this happened im still not really sure what my reaction is to all this it changes constantly… right now rather than put down a lot of thoughts about politics and such id just as soon hear from any of you whod care to write… aside from that we all have to condemn this action as just greedy horror, no human good could possibly come out of something like this and we all have to just hope that the aftermath is not any more terrible than what’s already happened keep up your spirits chris

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joey

1 May 2001

dear troops thanx for all the mail about joey, hed called both debbie and me from the hospital about three weeks before he died, at that time we’d all thought he was getting out soon and he said that the doctors told him he couldnt leave yet… i think he knew by then and the brief conversation we had was the most emotional one id ever had with him, i told him id do anything i could for him and even though he said hed call me later on there was a certain finality that i couldnt ignore, for sure he was calling his friends for the last time… a lot of you might have had personal encounters with joey over the years so you have an idea of what he was like… even though we didnt hang out regularly id see him fairly often, we talked on the phone a lot and id go over to his apartment… any way he was the absolutely nicest guy ive ever encountered in this insane ego-ridden business, and thats not just a remark, joey was such a real person, maybe if hed been an aggressive maniac like so many others the ramones would have gotten their just rewards while he was still with us… so his passing for me is sad and bitter cause i know in my heart that the ramones were a million times better than so many bands that have had much greater success, bands that all drew ideas from the ramones… i can only say some cliches, we’ll miss him a lot… meanwhile im really caught up in the next record and behind on my site stuff… the music business still blows, the only thing ive seen/heard lately is this great video/song called ‘dig’ by some band called “mudvyne” i think its spelled, just fantastic, i saw it on mtv at 3 in the morning once THE OTHER GREAT THING IN THE MEDIA NOW IS INVADER ZIM!!!!!!!! ZIM IS GODDDDDDDDDDDDDD nickelodeon fri 9:00 e.s.t., check your listings, something this great could come and go without anyone knowing about it, zim like all other originals is not getting much attention, hes a cartoon by jhonen vasquez the guy who does ‘johnny the homicidal maniac” and others all for now chris

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2001 News Archive: Page 51 of 51