Winter-Summer

I love this time of year, here in my city. For about two weeks in the middle of winter, the weather changes and becomes calm, sunny, warm and lovely. Usually it’s the same time as the cherry blossoms bloom and the lost majik of my city once again asserts itself.
All of her denizens become happy, and generous of spirit, as if they had beef freed from the yoke of slavery. Slavery to the cold, the wet, to the indoors and each other.
It is also the month I have chosen for my birthday.
Since at the time of my first birth, calendars weren’t yet invented. People tracked time the old fashioned way, with the rising of the moon, the raising of crops or the passing of sons in war.
But about a thousand years ago I decided to celebrating the birthday of my current incarnation as my true birthday.

But I digress…
I love my city, but she’s having troubles. The gulf between rich and poor is no more apparent than here. Mocking all of us with a horrible reflection of our leaders ideas of our future.
I have never really believed in politics or ism’s
That was always my brothers job. I was content to stand by and watch, to be the commentary on life. But now that he passed, his mantle of activism has bled into my soul  and won’t go away. As much as I try it seems to assert itself when I least expect it.
Indeed. I get lost at times when I write. Deciding to move with the flow as opposed to the thought.

My city, my beautiful morally bankrupt city, is still the only place I call home. The only place that calls my name as I walk her streets at night, climb her hill during the day.
Whispering to me in the slightest of ways.
There’s hope.
As long as there is winter-spring, I’ll believe her.

Selah

The Rev

Advertisement

LordRifa Album Release Party!!!!

Hey Y’all.

 

          We are thrilled to announce the release of our fifth album:

                          “Playland at the Beach”.

It has tales of terror, humility, humanity and of course DJT!! (What album these day would exclude him?).

We are coming to the Neck of the woods on Saturday, April 29,  2017 8 pm to play it all for you. We are lucky to have a wonderful opening act called the Rad Dads.

http://www.lordrifa.com/upcoming-gigs

Clear your calendars, tell your friends and get ready to revolt!!!

Adios Bitches!!

There was so much to say before yesterday. I found that in watching the organic nature of the marches, their peacefulness and the magnitude of the movement, I became speechless.

It said more than I ever could on the topic of the occupant of the oval office. It made me proud to be part of the resistance and ashamed that there had to be one. So I will address only my emotions here in this blog, because the specific words have been presented so much more eloquently than I could ever had hoped to do.

This is a  missive to my friends and family who voted for the current regime. Things will not be the same, no matter how much you believe to be right or me wrong, you cast your vote for a political coup d’etat. You ignored history. You swallowed the green pill.

You voted as a brown shirt.

You think you were part of a historic movement to right the injustice’s wrought upon you. The taking back of your country. Your country-as if it really belonged to any of you. Taking back what was rightfully yours. But what real injustices did you suffer? Were you pushed to the back of a bus because of your race? Where you passed over  promotions because of your sex? Where you tossed off you jobs at the coal mines because coal production became to unsafe for the world in general. Where you denied healthcare because of pre-existing conditions? What happened to make you wear a brown shirt?

No, You’re white, lower middle class Americans who’s grandparents fled  oppression in Germany and Russia, and you-in all of your myopic wisdom run-at full speed-back into their arms. You have never suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune-not until now.

You believe in a regime that uses doublespeak. That hinders the free media from reporting. That demonizes all who stands against it. You backed a regime that for years has been tampering with the free voting process by gerrymandering the districts until it was all but impossible to lose seats in the government. You walked with them with your fist raised high.

This is no different that what occurred in Russia during the early 20th century or Germany in the 30’s, central America in the 60’s. Small groups of people controlling larger ones through misinformation and the help of outside governments. We as Americans should know this because we have been party to this for years in other countries.

I wish I was wrong. I pray every day that I’m wrong. But I’m not. You complained that your healthcare was butchered, that your jobs had disappeared all because of a black man. All because when you looked into the mirror of society, what stared back at you was an inevitable future of the great melting pot-the real promise of America……..

and you were scared.

I no longer care if we speak. I no longer care if at the funerals and wedding I ever see you.

I no longer care.

 

Selah

the rev

Don’t Stop Partying YET!!!

     LordRifa will be live at Slim’s    

       Saturday January 7th 2017, 8:45

You can BUY tickets here or at the door. Tell ’em the Rev sent you and get a free download from our upcoming album, “Playland at the Beach”. An adventure in funktographic color with 25.1 Progressive Surround Vibes. A New Americana experience!!

                   2017-You gotta fight the powers that be!!

LordRifa Live at Slim’s, January 7 2017

Buy Tickets Here!!

 

I lied

You know, last blog I said I wasn’t going to go down the negative road. I wasn’t going to preach anymore about these horrible times and just focus on the good.

Fuck that shit now!!!

We have just elected a corporate fascist clone of Il Duce and it’s going to be rough!! We can weather the storm of bad governing-we do it all of the time. We can also weather the storm of partisan politics, we’ve done that as well. But America has never had a true ideologue like Trump in power before, and it is fucking dangerous.

Check it out.

I doesn’t matter if he’s proven wrong on something, it doesn’t matter if he lies and doesn’t care. If he spews hate rhetoric and divisive racist remarks, they have no effect negatively on him. What matters are that his followers-and I say followers because this is now a cult of personality-will do his bidding. They will follow him gladly to the hall of glory, gun in hand singing the Battle Hymn of the Republic.

He will take us to war with Islam and the whole rest of the non-Christian world. Don’t believe me…just look at who elected him. Looked at who backed him. The “Alt Right”, neo nazis, White people who believe they’ve been done wrong by a world that naturally is coloring. This is passions last dance for them and they are not going to give it up so easily.

Not today, Not tomorrow, but most definitely in his first term.

I realize I sound like an alarmist and my mother would say-listen to my dermatologist everyday will be just like the last. But republicans love war. Republicans love the war machine (and not the dude  from Iron Man). It feeds the corporate brotherhood of military-industrial cabals that have suffered during the Obama administration.

Children who are not born yet will have more rights than women will. It will be open season for cops on African-Americans. Cats will sleep with dogs-But the LGBT community will be prevented from marriage and equal rights. Sharia law-or his version of it, will be the law of the land.

We will become everything we hate and we will do it with a smile, wink and a nod.

I said it here, today November 9th 2016.

Selah                                                                                                                                                                        the rev

Binary Choices

I had a vision this past week that I wanted to share. In it, I was in a courtroom as a defendant and the prosecutors were the gods and angels of the heavens and my defense attorneys were the demons and devils of the hells. This shouldn’t surprise me because-well I’m going to the hells and there is no way out of that this time around. luckily like the Air BNB’s it just a short stay until I’m recycled back into form. The gist of the prosecution was that al I speak about in sermons are the evil things that people do, and all that doe is cast more of a shadow on the light. So in order to shorten my stay at the Air BNB from hell this will be my last RANT sermon-and I do so love to rant……..

Binary Choices

Bull fucking shit.

There are no binary choices to be made-unless of course you are a computer and as much as we wish we were Mr. Data,  we’re more like Mrs. Ricardo. Crazy and unpredictable.
So binary choices….

The political parties would have you believe that it’s a choice between the candidates. That each candidate will determine your future, your kids future and the eventual outcome of the whole world.

On one side, there is the crazy nihilist, racist, Il Duce archetype who believes in the infallible nature of his position.

Infallible! In 4700 hundred years of wandering this earth, the only infallible thing I have ever witnessed was nature. AND she is not running!

On the other side is a career politician that comes with all of the baggage and corruption that one would be expected have during a 30 year tenure in politics. I will ask that if she were a man they would be bitching at her this as much? Maybe…maybe not.

Do I make you Horny baby?????

Binary-Choose one but caveat emptor!!

Fuck you bullshit!!! Look behind the curtain.

Your not just voting for a president-Your voting for a women right to choose,
Your voting for an unbridled corporate welfare system…….yet again,
Your voting for a divided senate and house which will create the same curse of ineffectivness that the current administration has gone through.

Your voting for  Social programs. Are we are brothers keepers? The bible says most definitely yes, but you religious fucks say no.

“I will keep my brother only if I don’t have to pay for him, AND he is the same color as me!”

Your voting for a white man,  Privliged from birth, but the same person who has held that seat for as long as there has been that seat. (Aside from the current administration).

You voting for a supreme court justice
Your voting for your children’s energy policy
Your voting for war or peace……on the poor, the middle class and the rest of the fucking world.

The election is all about the grey!
The election is not about Pussy hunting, The election is not about dishonest husbands,
The election is not about windbags and dirtbags.

It is about whether you believe we should help our brothers and sisters who need help.
It is about changing the way we think of institutionalize violence currently being used against black people, but most certainly will be upgraded to poor people in general.
It’s about the platform ideologies.
AND I will just say it out loud;

I am fucking terrified by the republican platform ideologies.

They are everything I/we have fought against my whole life.
They are backed by the most aggressive racist contingent ever seen in modern politics in America
It is the king and his guard coming in to change the way America works.
It will no longer be the land of the free. Not if you don’t fit the bill.
It is now, It is upon us.

Look beneath the bed of roses and thorns that the parties are telling us and find your truth. Look beyond the candidates because as we have seen with Obama-it doesn’t matter how progressive you are, if both houses are against you…you and your programs are fucked!

FUCKED!!!

Oh by the way, FUCK the third parties, this is a two party system. I didn’t create it but I accept it, AND it  will never change by introducing a third party in major elections.

ARE YOU FUCKING STUPID_DO YOU NOT PAY ATTENTION TO HISTORY??
You want a third party? Start by winning some local shit and go from there.
Show me a green or libertarian governor and I will believe it’s possible. Don’t even bother bring up Independents because they switch for election concerns but still vote with their previous platform beliefs. AND don’t tell me of Sanders, he’s still a democrat.

Many of the folks I know will hate this blog, but fuck you! FUCK you and your form over function conciousness. Fuck you and your upset over taking a knee instead of being upset by the sanctioned slaughter of a community. Fuck you and your Muslim hating friends who have to say ISLAM terrorist. Mexican rapists.

America belongs to me just as much as you and I say out with the fuckers who want to sew up women vaginas! Out with these fuckers who want to put the LGBT folks back in the closet with a few head wounds to make sure they remember where the closet is.
Out with these stupidly rich people thinking they feel our pain. Fuck you. The only thing they know about our pain is the golden dildo they fuck themselves with.

Ge them out-find a supreme court that will vote FOR the people.
Find a senate that will want to WORK together for the betterment of our society
Find a house that you can call home.

Find a leader that will bring you these things.

 

Damn I’m glad I got that out!!

Selah

The rev

On Death and Dying……..Fuck that Shit!

So I’m not the poster child for the mourning crowd. Never have been, never will be. I believe in the wheel. It carries us from life to life and from moment to moment. It allows us the ability to get through the tough times and reminds us all, that the good pass as well. The wheel turns whether we want it to or not. So my question is;

Do you enjoy spinning?

Come party with us at the Brick and Mortar this Saturday August 27th starting at 8 pm. It’s my way to say goodbye to those who have passed and hello to those yet to come. LordRifa will be welcoming some new members and new songs. We will be joined by our friends the High Card Drifters as well.

It will be a rocking night of NEW AMERICANA!

Selah

The rev

RIP Saul Bloom

Yesterday my brother, Saul Bloom, passed away. He died as a result of a 2 year long battle with brain cancer…He lost.
I wonder if anybody actually wins this battle, regardless of length of survival
it is a bitch of a disease and leaves only a trail of hurt.
But I digress into the technical.

Saul Bloom, nee Donald Ira Saleman, died in the loving embrace of his family and friends. He was 62 years old.

I pulled this off of a website…
Saul Bloom was the director of ARC/Ecology in San Francisco where he has been deeply involved in local military base decommissioning, ecological and economic agitation, and working for environmental and social justice.
Arc Ecology is a public interest nonprofit organization providing technical assistance and advocacy work on behalf of poor and disadvantaged communities in the areas of the environment, public health, economic development, urban planning, housing, military facilities and policy in the San Francisco Bay Area and internationally.
He got his start with Greenpeace in the late 1970s and was instrumental in the fight against the home porting of the USS Missouri in the 1980s. Part of the Shaping San Francisco “Ecology Emerges” oral history project, documenting the arc of environmental activism from conservation to environmental justice, 1960s to the present.

It’s concise and covers the salient points of his life,but he was more. Saul in his heart, was a musician, a guitar player and composer. He played around San Francisco with his band “The Blooms”,  which he loved almost much as his family. It gave him an abundance of pure joy.
He started out playing in the coffee house scenes in NYC in the 70’s. Big head of hair and a feather in his ear. He would play wherever they would have him. He was good.
When I was young, I wanted to be him-minus the hair and feather of course. He seemed to me to be like a modern troubadour hitchhiking his way across the northeast with a backpack and a guitar.
While my love of storytelling and music came form the heavens and hells,  my love of guitar playing came from Saul-he bought me my first guitar.

Saul is survived by his family- his wife Nehr, his children, Maria and Sarah, his mother Charlotte, oh and his cat, Sunny. Saul loved his cats!

But to be honest, I’m not really sure how to write one of these things. How do you encapsulate 62 years of affecting the world around you into a page? So let me just say this:

I loved and hated Saul, which is appropriate for brothers of the blood.
He had the ability of making me see red with just a look. He also was a huge force in shaping me to be who I am.

I will miss him more than I can fathom.

He took the mouse.

Selah
the rev

Party on my Birthday?

Hey, I realize that it’s been about 600 hundred years or so since I’ve had a birthday party. The last one in 1430 didn’t end so well for my friend Joan, so I have stayed out of the party business for a while…Just to keep it safe!

But here it is, the 21st century and I look good for almost 5k! So let’s party!!

Advance Tickets: http://brickandmortarmusic.com/event.cfm?id=229908&cart

See y’all there!!

Selah

the rev