Okay, now I get it. Humans are simply in a struggle to become god-like. That’s it. But we’re this weird combination of progress-driven brainiacs, getting closer and closer to some kind of technical perfection yet the same bumblers we’ve always been, just modern versions of bumblers. We have personal computers that immediately connect us to a world of unlimited communication and a mastery of superficial imagery that was unimaginable a couple of decades ago. Our ability to manipulate all sorts of things quickly is staggering. Humans also continue to achieve physical goals that amaze everyone daily, whether it’s an athletic achievement or scientific breakthrough or the development of a new stronger alloy or the smallest, most efficient hearing aid ever. But it seems our collective evolution of character isn’t keeping up. You know, we’re just the same ol’ schmucks that one time didn’t have iphones or clever colorful tattoos. In fact, in some ways, as a species, we seem more dysfunctional than ever. I’m probably focusing on the most negative side of this, but a dilemma does exist. Many social skills seem to be evaporating as technology encourages us to become more and more isolated, yet aggressive. I don’t know, maybe as we continue to become acquainted with myriad means of connecting and networking, empathy will just organically sprout and grow. We are still in the early “play-toy” phase of this new era of electronic over-indulgence and perhaps a mass-conscience will develop naturally over time. But we only have until December of 2012 to get it together, right? Damn. Nothing’s easy. Whatever, let me get back to my original thought, which is this. We (humans) generally seem to be just concerned with the external; the surface. And we’re all always in a race to make everything better and better and better, including our body shapes and faces, our houses and buildings, our cars, our life spans, our quick home-cooked meals, our shopping convenience, etc. And, why not? We’re stuck here. Let’s make the most of it. Unfortunately, most improvements are totally self-centered and just geared to make us feel more entitled. And the world gets faster, slicker, stronger, and more seamless, everyday. It’s a race to perfection in all things, or so it appears on the surface. But what’s going on inside? Are we more confident than we used to be? Less insecure or self-conscious? I’m not sure. Even admirable qualities portrayed on television or in the movies don’t seem to have substance anymore, like nothing’s rooted in realness. But, I will say, we’re all good at thinking that we’re good at pretending. Hmmm. I wonder if it’s just me. Maybe I’m the only one not being real and that makes me suspicious of all the other totally honest people around me. I’m gonna think about this a little longer. No I’m not. I know this is the missing element. Humans should figure out a way to also become more perfect on the inside, and I’m not talking about eating more fiber. Okay, so, let’s just say that, indeed, what drives us is this desire to be perfect, which, ultimately, is to be god-like. If we don’t try to at least imagine the full picture here, then no matter how perfect the technology becomes, we’re nothing more than spoiled kids with short attention spans. And, by the way, is any of this making us more patient? Are you more patient than you used to be? Is constantly playing catch up the new purpose of living? Screw that. You know, it seems that almost nothing short of major disasters like the earthquakes in Haiti and Chile make us zero in on caring about others and doing for others. This is something we can practice everyday and it’s one reason I’m so devoted to my animals and also why I’m always drowning in the results of my bleeding heart. There are a lot of animals in Denton alone that need attention and compassion and it seems they like to congregate around my house. This part of my life is a joke, but it does actually make me laugh as much as cry. And helping out the little critters makes me feel happy; often worn out, but it’s that good kind of worn out, like Andy used to talk to Opie about. Man, this is pretty square stuff, but I’m just telling it like is for me, Carl Finch, defender of local dogs and cats. I’m a super hero to several of them, but I just want them to be happy, healthy and unafraid. And, if I go overboard, which I do constantly because it’s entertaining to me, everyone benefits, except for that guy in Des Moines who’s waiting for me to answer his email about a gig or something. And, one more thing, if you come out to hear Brave Combo and speak to me and I smell like a stray tom cat just sprayed me, I apologize. I know most people don’t like that fragrance.

A band practices in a little garage just down the block from my house. They’re called Teenage Cool Kids and they seem to be part of the new wave of Denton punk bands keeping the town on the “cool kids” map these days. They were recently recognized in THE DALLAS OBSERVER for releasing one of the most important albums of the first decade of the new millennium. Hey, why wasn’t Brave Combo on that list? Well, that’s another topic definitely worth exploring. Anyway, I guess TCK put out one kick-ass record. But before I knew any of this, one of my cats, Spunky, and I would often sit on the front porch and listen to them rehearse one or two things over and over. They sounded really good and their ideas had something going on. Spunky liked it, too. So, over time I’ve chatted with the cool kids here and there and I recently asked them if they were playing anywhere in March. They said they were playing SXSW, in Austin, and a punk rock festival in Monterey, Mexico. I thought, well that IS pretty cool. Then they said that Brave Combo was mentioned in a book by Thurston Moore, the guitarist of Sonic Youth. I didn’t know about the book (something of a gig diary, I think) but we did play with Sonic Youth a couple of times in the 1980s, so it was nice to hear that Thurston remembered. But, it made me start thinking again, especially since this is BC’s 30th year, that so many wild things have happened to us and we’ve met and worked with so many amazing performers and artists, that we’ve all probably taken a lot of it for granted. The current Winter Olympics reminded of the time our song, “Requerdos” was used by two American ice dancers (Liz and Jerrod Swallow) in Lillehammer, Norway and we didn’t know until they were about to perform live at the Olympics. Matt Groening once hired us to play a party at Barbara Streisand’s house. I played accordion and guitar with Shonen Knife on a recording of “Happy Birthday.” Weird Al Yankovic and I were both harassed by the same obsessed fan. Boz Skaggs came to my house one afternoon to listen to Latin and Conjunto/Tejano music. Bruce Hampton (look him up) showed up at our first show in Atlanta, Georgia holding a copy of our first LP, MUSIC FOR SQUARES.I met Jonathan Demme at David Byrne’s wedding. Eugene Chadbourne (look him up) blew up one of my amps by plugging a bird cage into it. He thinks I’m still mad. There are things that went on with Tiny Tim that Brave Combo cannot openly discuss. Don’t ask. I won’t tell you. Robert Plant told Teri Gross on her NPR show that our version of “Stairway To Heaven,” with Mr. Tim, was one of the best covers he’s heard. Rounder trusted me to produce two albums by Tony de la Rosa (look him up). While in Japan, we got to meet the guy (Mr. E) who wrote the lyrics to the song, “Sukiyaki.” Okay, enough bragging and name-dropping. It’s getting gross and besides, it’s just the tip of the iceberg, anyway. My point is not to just show you how cool I am, but to let you know that it’s good for me to appreciate what I’ve been allowed to do; to think about it on occasion and realize how lucky Brave Combo has been and continues to be, I hope.

SOME NEWS. We just recorded a track for an album of songs by our buddy, Sara Hickman. She has been named the Texas Commission for the Arts’ Musician of the Year, thus the tribute album. The song, “Simply,” was originally on her first LP, EQUAL SCARY PEOPLE, which, coincidentally, I co-produced with Sara, and then released on my own little label, Four Dots Records, until Elektra decided to buy it from me. Oh boy, those were wheeling and dealing days. I had no idea what I was doing, but things worked out, I guess. Here we are covering this song and it rocks! Hope Sara likes it. Check it out.

MORE NEWS. Brave Combo is performing at Denton’s Music Conferette, the second annual NX35, on Friday March 12 at around 7 PM, at the opening party for Big Bucks Burnett’s 8-Track Tape exhibit. You’re a fool if you don’t show up for this. And on a related note, Brave Combo will also be appearing at SXSW music conference, in Austin, on Wednesday, March 17. Can’t remember the venue, but I think we go on about 11 PM and the musical line-up for the night looks fantastic. If you really want to suffer for the cause, come on out. We’ll be there.

SECRET NEWS. Be aware. Brave Combo is developing an alter ego. The working name is The Translucents, or, perhaps The Translucence. It’s a new sound you must not miss, in case we don’t do this for very long. We aren’t actually advertising it yet and don’t know where or when we will play, exactly. We’ve actually tested the waters twice, but have kept it pretty quiet. A handful of people know what I’m talking about. The Transulcents (or, perhaps, The Translucence) could show up at a gig instead of Brave Combo. Stay tuned. We may eventually be wearing matching outfits.

As 2010 gets more involved and complicated, Brave Combo’s playing schedule does the same. Look at our itinerary every day and stay informed. Now it’s time to go to the QT convenience store at the corner of Carroll Boulevard and Eagle Drive in Denton and feed a little calico cat. It’s almost not scared of me anymore. Hey, let’s all stop being scared for a while. Enjoy.

A LITTLE ABOUT HAITI. Of course, we are all aware of the recent earthquake and ongoing horror this sad situation has created, and I hope you have or will give whatever you can to help. Many people don’t know that the Haitian people speak creole, which is like a French dialect. And a form of music that is unique to this amazing country is called “kompa.” My first exposure to kompa came from a cassette that Tim Walsh, our first woodwind player, found in a flea market in downtown Tulsa around 1981 or 82, while we were in the town playing a couple of nights at the punk club, The Blue Grotto. We’d never heard anything like it. How it sounds is hard to explain in writing, but it’s similar to a latin style called guaguanco. The band name, scribbled in pencil on the white generic cassette, was Les Gypsies de Petion-ville. We listened to it over and over and over for years. The next time I came across kompa was, again, unusual. We were on tour in Japan and our Japanese record company invited us to the office one day and invited us to go through their CD inventory and take whatever we wanted. The label, Blues Interactions/P-Vine, specialized in roots and traditional sounds from all over the world. A couple of CDs I picked up were by a Haitian band called Tabou Combo and there was that music again; the same stuff I first heard almost ten years earlier in Tulsa. I loved it. Then, about ten years after that we played The Lowlands Festival in the Netherlands and were performing on the bill just before Tabou Combo. My point to all of this is to see if you might be interested in hearing some kompa, since so much attention is on this desperate country right now. I still really love it and, coincidentally, was about to bring in a song by Tabou Combo for the band to learn when the earthquake happened. Now I have more incentive to add it to Brave Combo’s set list. Whatever, you should go to YouTube and enter “les gypsies de petion-ville” or “tabou combo” and troll that area for a while. Here’s a video of a recent Haitian relief benefit we played in Dallas.

You know what? I’m out of touch with so many things that appear to occupy the time of others. I’m always up very late and try to sleep as long as our pack of animals will allow. I spend way less time in the company of my cell phone than I used to. I don’t twitter or party on Facebook. I hear a fair amount of what might be called pop/rock, both indy and mainstream and even enjoy some good old-school death metal, but rock is always just rock, no matter how it’s played. Same intentions, same attitude. Certainly, throughout my life, rock music has been a dominant part of my music mix. But it can only be rock. A lot of recording artists claim to be “all over the map” when asked about their influences. But generally the responses only include stuff that’s comfortably under the rock or pop umbrella. And there’s so much more out there, for instance, the above-mentioned kompa, from Haiti. And on the other side of that same island, the meringue provides the soundtrack for The Dominican Republic. I grew up digging the entire spectrum of all musical sounds available to me in Texarkana in the early 60s on AM radio, but most of it was commercial pop/rock. Anyway after years of my listening being 90% typical progressive rock and 10% everything else, my ratio completely flip-flopped to 10% pop/rock and 90% not pop/rock. I didn’t want to become some kind of elitist musicologist, I just wanted to hear a whole lot of something different. And, you know, like everyone else, I went through my spoken-word industrial demonstration record phase, which, of course, led to a brief obsession with those colorful floppy plastic records we used to find inside magazines. They were called Evatone sound sheets. I ordered an Evatone start-up kit once, just to see how much it would cost to put a record in a magazine rather than pressing one the normal way. It was pretty expensive, but the samples they sent were fantastic. Super cool, actually. Anyway, all this mish-mash of floppy plastic records and music from around the world and spoken word industrial demonstration records collided with my growing interest in the concept of Muzak and then there I was, in a strange place and forming Brave Combo was the only logical next step. And, obviously polka had to be the cornerstone of it all. So, it’s hard to get worked up over even the best rock and roll that can be created. It’s only rock and roll and I like it, but I like other stuff too. Really, this is all about why music is created and why people listen to it. It’s cool to relate, but it’s also cool to be challenged to relate. My current sounds of choice include lots of Haitian kompa, Serbian brass band, pre-Reggae Hawaiian and Schubert’s UNFINISHED SYMPHONY. But that’s just me and I’m also constantly at risk of becoming my own cliché. Hey, I’m just doing my thing and digging it. You do your thing and dig it, too. On a domestic level, I get the most worked up these days, to the point of being not interesting, talking about our dogs and cats. Jane and I both spend an insane amount of time, by sane standards, dealing with animals. But it’s what we must enjoy doing. All I know is, I walk the neighborhood, often after midnight, in 20-degree weather, calling “kitty, kitty,” trying to wrangle home a stray we’ve been taking care of, and trap him on our back porch. We’ve had him neutered and properly immunized, his blood has been checked and his ears cleaned, but he’s still a stray, technically, and the whole neighborhood is his home. So, I’ll continue to walk the lonely streets in the wee hours, looking for a cat to pick up and carry home, especially if it’s cold and rainy. And, one more thing, while we’re on the subject, I’ve subscribed to ROLLING STONE magazine forever and will continue to do so for no good reason, but I definitely don’t like seeing pictures of old rock stars in their bathing suits, tanning on a beach, in the Random Notes section. Where’s the mystery, where’s the mystique, where’s the magic? I think I was always more comfortable with the idea that stars actually are not just like you and me. They really should live in a special place and make wonderful things that enhance our lives, such as movies, television shows and musical recordings. Otherwise, no one can justify charging more than $50 for any ticket to see anything anywhere ever. If that’s going to just be a bunch of everymen and everywomen on the stage, showing us that anybody can do it, I’m not paying over $50. But if I can feel, the way I did the first time I went to Dallas to see Led Zeppelin (the same as seeing aliens from outer space) I’ll pay whatever. When there are so many heroes, it diminishes the impact of the real heroes. But I’m just talking about music here now, to be clear.

Speaking of animals in need, one day Jane and I were leaving a favorite restaurant near our house and saw a pigeon hunkered down on the sidewalk right in front. We walked right up to it and it didn’t try to fly away. Something was wrong and we were concerned that a brat might think it would be fun to use it as a football, so I moved it out of view but could see that one of its legs was mangled. This was going to screw up our afternoon plans, for sure. Anyway, we took it home and put it in one of our bathrooms, careful to keep several curious cats on the other side of the door. It could stand up on one foot, but that’s all. But it also didn’t seem to mind us trying to help and eventually we were able to get it to eat and drink water. We located several wild bird rehab places in the area and found someone about ten miles away willing to take in the bird. After two days, we drove the pigeon to a woman’s house in a nice sub-division outside Denton and she checked it out and confirmed that its leg was broken, but she thought she could splint it and would let us know if there was a problem. We never herd from her again and assume the best.

On another occasion David Byrne and Karen Murphy (producer of SPINAL TAP) came over to look at videos of local yodelers and auctioneers and our house was a mess and the lighting was all wrong. I remember secretly calling Mitch Marine, our drummer at the time, and whispering to him to think of a reason to come over, cause David Byrne was in my house. He thought of something and came right over.

So, to recap, long Live Rock and Roll! And viva diversity! It’s a big ol’ little planet that is still full of wonder and excitement, if we choose to see or hear it. That’s all I’m telling you. Brave Combo is busy learning new songs and planning to do some more live-streaming nonsense soon. We’ll let you know. Otherwise keep our web site nearby and check our itinerary twice daily. You never know. We might be playing right next door to you and we might be so loud you’ll have to call the cops. Now, continue with your regular life.