The following three bands are the most successful to come out of the area around my home town, which I think has a lot to say if you look at it from the perspective of “this was our cultural heyday.”

Blue Öyster Cult – Don’t Fear The Reaper peaked at #12 on the Pop Singles chart, 1976.

Eric Bloom was one of the vocalists and infamous cowbell player for Blue Öyster Cult. He came up in the Geneva, New York music scene of which Hobart College was the epicenter.

Dio – Holy Diver Billboard 200 #56, 1983.

Ronnie James Dio has sang for many bands, “Elf, Rainbow, Black Sabbath, Heaven & Hell, and his own band Dio.” He was raised just over the hill in Cortland, New York, were he actually started out playing Rockabilly in the late 50′s. You also may remember him in his roll as himself in the movie Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny.

Manowar – Kings Of Metal 1988

Manowar are the hometown boys of Auburn, New York. Band leader Joey DeMaio worked with Ronnie James Dio in ELF and later when Dio replaced Ozzy Osbourne as the lead singer of Black Sabbath, DeMaio toured as a bass tec and fireworks manager. There he met fellow New Yorker, Ross the Boss Friedman, a former member of influential proto-punk band The Dictators, and Manowar was soon formed. They have multiple gold records in Germany and tour to this day, as well as holding “the Guinness Book of World Records honour [sic] of ‘World’s loudest band’ being captured at a mind numbing 129.5 dB.”

Is there an actual difference between the spawn of a Republican and a corporate shoe shiner from the DLC?

“Then summer fades and passes and October comes. We’ll smell smoke then, and feel an unexpected sharpness, a thrill of nervousness, swift elation, a sense of sadness and departure.”
- Thomas Wolfe

“My barn, having burned to the ground, I can now see the moon” – Chinese proverb.

Viewed Gangs of New York once again this weekend, also worked in the basement putting a concrete slab down for the new stove. It’s an old house, stone foundation, hard-packed dirt floor in the basement. Spending time down there is like time traveling. I’m no Priest Vallon, the only advice I have for you is to remember to cover your beer before opening a new bag of quikrete.

A view from the car window, Brockway Rd. – August 2009

Self Portrait – Summer, 2009

I went to the hills because I had no choice but to live fortuitously, to usurp the essential facts of life, and see if I could not unlearn all that I had been taught, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living that way can become ostentatious; nor did I wish to practice sentimentality, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live in the moment and unpack all the baggage of life, to live so unaware and workmen-like as to put to rout all that was Spectacle, to cut a narrow path and hew close, to drive self consciousness into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms.

Cormac McCarthy The Road:

“Just remember that the things you put into your head are there forever, he said. You might want to think about that.

You forget some things, don’t you?

Yes.

You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget.”

Finally got tired of the Ted Kennedy brouhaha, turned off the teevee, shut down the computer, and went down to the library (FYI, oldest continuously used library in New York). Picked up the following:

• The Road – Cormac McCarthy
• The Shelters of Stone – Jean M. Auel
• 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus – Charles C. Mann