Character Development

Sun & Street Walker

Dimensions of Maybelline

The Sea & C’est La Vie

Wildlife is Coming Home

In the end, we are all a Live One

Listen to the Wind Go

The Seasons change, Nature endures in a Long Couple of Days

Fiery Earth of magmatic Highs & and cratered Lows

What do fans want?

Fans want something and I’d like to know what that is…

What do y’all want to do?

Why y’all here?

How much do you read?

How much do you listen to music?

What kinds of things are interesting to you?

A / S / L ?

Are / You / Up?

What style of music do you like most?

How do you listen to your music?

How much of the behind the scenes do you like to see?

Do you like magic?

What’s your favorite kind of burrito?

What about ice cream?

Pizza? Duh…

How about nachos vs. chicken wings?

What’s your favorite song of all time?

Comment a word and I’ll use it on my next blog post and tag you on tha ‘gram.

Lunatic Troll Manifesto

I’m going to solve all of the problems in my mind!

By virtue of my efforts I will also bring about change for all of humanity!

THIS IS OUR STORY AND I’M THE LEADER OF THE FREE WORLD!

IT’S ALL A HOAX, IF YOU CAN BELIEVE IT!

I’M JUST A RELATABLE HUMAN WHO WANTS ATT3NTION!

CAN YOU BELIEVE IT!

I KNOW THAT HALF OF THE WORLD IS SICK, AND THERE ARE SO MANY LIES!

BUT I WILL GLADLY SET US ALL FREE!

WHAT ELSE IS THERE TO DO!

Relate lunatic anarchist troll to our story, perspective shift…

Character says crazy stuff, hoax…

Sunday Review: Shattered

An album of loud purple sounds. Someone popped their eggnog on a fruitcicle and created a new dessert.

When you go looking for an album of magnificence in groove and the possibility of a meow style, you pick downtown for the bass line and uptown for the tempo.

All the guitars work together like a saddle fits on a horse. Everybody finds their way.

Of course the drums do all the talking when they say n”sp “sp “sp “tat “tat and that bass is walking like it don’t care none except right here.

When people say things about me, I’m the baddest mountain. Like a thunder rolled in and said “hey!” Where all my dancers at?

Track One starts out clean and keeps riding till it’s over, no stops, just a belly up slouching cruise with a clear wind carrying the salty coastal air.

Track Two begins calm, but then finds an off ramp and gets subdued when it seems to find a clearing toward the beach.

Track Three is like a reflection of your grandmother’s memoirs that jot down everything from cookies to coastal swims. Beach days are fun, and everyone gets along just fine.

Track Four is a little more calm except when it tends to escalate for a minute as if to say, “hey, I’m here.”

Track Five continues onward like a boat on an anchor, swaying in the sea. The world can’t help but to bring rain. It’s just life.

Track Six reminds us of our mothers and fathers of the world. Those who lift us up.

Track Seven reads like “a Day in the Life,” and sings like “Bitches Brew.”

Track Eight tells us when to be happy and it’s all the time. “Could you be loved?”

Track Nine has more to say. And it’s that “we want more wine, and whiskey, and a good night’s sleep as much as possible. Someone needs to remind us of this more often, and that’s what this song is all about. Funk layered with harmonies and horns and a laid back approach to life in general. Just finding connection and being willing to embrace it for what it is and to do good wherever possible.

Track Ten someone told me to write them a song and here it is. I’m here for you.

Track Eleven slow grooves and a soft voice with some percussive style, congas and hand drums. Where a groove gets locked in. We are here.

Track Twelve bring rain and birds. In no particular order, someone lights a fire in the sky. With no warning, a siren calls and tempts.

Track Thirteen there is always morning to freshen the mood. The warm sun brings a calm. It feels good to soak it in and feel whole. Cosmic guitars bring a groovy vibe.

Track Fourteen we live in a musical space. Sound is our friend. We know it when we heart it. Soothing, vibey, a tip of the hat. A step in my walk. It’s all the same. Just groove with it.

~ Just Groove With It

All Rights Reserved 2021

Release Date 1/21/21

The Road Ahead

The Road Ahead envisions the world as a better place. This better place, like all human constructs, is only as real as you make it.

The song, Long Couple of Days, is about finding your groove. This, and other new songs, will be released as the Cosmic Cowboys.

The Road Ahead is like finding your way home. Coming Home.

See tags

The past is future

Positivity in motion

Cosmic cowboys ?

I can feel it in my teeth. The tingles gives one a feeling of both numbness and pressure. The rolling waves crushed me to the bones, but I was not afraid. From hammer to stone, it is my only feeling.

“Where will we go?” she asked as the canyons echoed.

Just then the phone rang…

Measurable Words (wall posts)

Referring to these wall posts of late, scroll down the feed and make your date:

Poll feelings and followers and those in need

My wall is open for those to seed

But in the end there’s always you

My wall grows so continuously too

To top and shallow for weak and hollow

For strong and old and bored and bold

For young and hound n’ passion’s loud

For any other of many sold

For most of all a creative crew that sees me wallow in this stew

A poll will show results of many

My ideas flow in words a’plenty

Your words I write and think and brew

Your word inspires a creative mood

Stay tuned for more “wall posts”

The Red Planet: Courage

An ooze appeared like a viscous red soup that drips when you tip it and plumps with more bread, a delicious red soup that will get you in the end. Where do we go and who do we follow, and will there be garments provided at the gallows? I’m sure we all know that siphoning is silly, but are we sure now that we’ve not gone too silly? A temper teem strut is like a thick board of white sashes, and I’ll let you know when I’ve got my own ashes.

Guys, guys, GUYS!

It’s red all over… the world is red!

Our world, this life!

Where will we go? What will we do?

Panicking won’t help…

Hellllppp!

HELLPPPPP!

Please someone, help us all!!!!!!

He screamed as he drove through the night.

The fires had been burning for some time now, so long, in fact, that he hadn’t realized it was 12pm the next day.

Safety was nowhere to be found except while always moving and driving the obstructed roadways in his 4×4 Jeep Wrangler. He knew it would come in handy one day, like for real, a bonafide challenge vehicle.

What he didn’t expect is all of this.

Where did this come from?

How did we get to this point without realizing sooner?

Why is it so hard to reach people these days?

I’m going through pain, and I can’t even begin to express what it feels like, least not without a long period of grief, and all gamut of other emotional positions I will soon sequentially occupy.

Time, the real currency.

So how am I supposed to convey to someone out there watching this unfold that I am in distress, like for real – bonafide!

How can I even begin to imagine what it’s like for someone else with a traumatic experience . . .

People mock you, in their little bubble half a world away . . .

I also think this outward pouring of love and charity has been amazing.

What I would like to see is a spiritual shift.

Spiritual meaning presence of mind.

Shift meaning collective presence of mind, or mindfulness.

Our Story is a way for you to help create the story of Life on Mars, the same name for music releases by the Cosmic Cowboys.

Next up: a topic on Emapthy

Comment below, or on another social platform. DM, MSG, EMAIL me, etc. LMK your thoughts as I write the next post . . .

Keeping It Honest

When I dubbed this gig “Unplugged” I did not know that I would actually need to be completely “Unplugged.” I should’ve sensed that something was up when my home PA malfunctioned by making a repeating, alarming, sweeping, ascending tonal sound… like what you might hear during an apocalyptic scenario. What the fuck?

I’ve been singing about going High or Low in a yet-to-be-released track, and as I’m writing this paragraph I am laughing out loud at the idea of a malfunctioning low to high ascending tone.

High Low

What the actual fuck? Like I say in C’est La Vie, “Ain’t it funny in hindsight. Shake it off, such is life is life.”

C’est La Vie

Okay, whatever. We all find parallels in daily life if we are willing to look, and pay attention. Mindfulness helps, and even when we’re not paying attention shit tends to slap you in the face when you least expect it. Of course, even though I search for good and pleasant inspirational parallels, I don’t always pay attention, mindfully, because of the nature of 21st Century life and the human condition in general. Technological distractions, malfunctions, ramming, prodding, vying for space. I just glanced at my phone and read another scary, nearly apocalyptic, headline involving a “brain eating amoeba” What the…

Apart from scary headlines, fear-based news in general, and other distractions, what else is up with mindfulness and better ways to delve into creative communication, sort of the point of this blog, Perspective In Sound?

I heard my song “Maybelline” on the radio earlier. Fuck yeah!

Broadcasting Live from Shannon’s Corner on Pine. KLBP 99.1 FM Long Beach, CA!

https://www.rileyhodges.com/new-music

Also, I heard Alyssa Nighswonger, friend and multi-talented artist, on KLBP 99.1 FM Long Beach, CA while writing… She asked, “What’s the point?” which is what drew me to say what the point of this blog was above.

This is how my brain works. Don’t eat me, amoebas! Please preserve my twisting, interconnected, multiple-outcome reality as blood pumps through my trillions of synapses to form growing positive connections!

What else? Well, making sense of all this in 2019 requires a high-speed broadband Internet connection and well-functioning CPU. My 2012 iMac has not been cutting it lately, but it’s not Mac’s fault… It is I, the master of my CPU, that is holding on to too much content. Lately, I’ve been sorting through old content since I started taking pictures of mostly nonsense from about 2000 (y2k, baby!) up until I moved to Barcelona, Spain in 2007 where I got a chance to photograph more creatively. Just before I left for Spain, I bought the re-popularized Holga toy camera made out of cheap components to give the user a flawed photographic experience that over-accentuates the natural beauty of the Universe. Colors, light leaks, overexposure, etc. all adds to what has now been replaced by your Instagram filter, or countless other ways in which you can manipulate the world around you to suit your liking.

When I was much younger, barely a teenager, I made a few time-lapse videos using legos, fire, a Santa Claus doll, whatever I could conveniently get my hands on. Later on, my sisters and I made a film, Killer In the House, Part 1 and Part 2…

The goal is to make it entertaining. For better or for worse, at the moment…

So as I’m cleaning up my Hard Drive, thereby improving my CPU, I am working on how to stay centered, mindful and patient…

Back to the gig on Saturday, the 14th after our Friday the 13th Full Harvest Moon Adventure into the Wasteland. I started noticing the pull of this rare full moon the night beforehand on Thursday the 12th as my PA was malfunctioning… then during our Wasteland Adventure, and up until the gig on Saturday I was still feeling as prickly as a Night Blooming Cactus. Of course, as I got on stage my guitar pickup malfunctioned… so we mic’d my acoustic guitar, Unplugged. It’s weird how the Universe does that to you.

Saturday the 14th @ Dipiazzas

Keeping It Honest is all about the stuff that is out of your control and you shall not fight, it is embracing the chaos around you so much so that you become the chaos, figuratively speaking, just so that you can see things from a different perspective, also known as Empathy. Courage helps…

It’s been a ‘fun’ summer, learning these lessons, and I’m ready for Fall, falling into my next release series, including new music later this month, Live One!

Live One

Update 1 of 2: it turns out that the reason my guitar didn’t work at the gig was because the backup battery I had on hand was indeed also dead like the one in my guitar when I first found out the pickup wasn’t working. So either there are powers conspiring against me (and also for me in terms of the creative potential that it creates through its resistance) OR I did this to myself. Both can be true, but also just one of these options can be true, alternatively. I love alternative music, too.

Update 2 of 2: Live One was eventually released on March 10, 2020, just days before the world shut down due to COVID-19. Again, either there are powers conspiring against me (and also for me in terms of the creative potential that it creates through its resistance) OR I did this to myself (I did in fact have a clairvoyant moment the week before ‘the shutdown’). Both can be true, but also just one of these options can be true, alternatively. I love alternative music, too. But not death metal typically.

Cosmic Home

A story about coming home

A character born in the abyss and raised by the sands of time 

Moving into nothingness 

A cosmic cowboy 

Deep interstellar space is a place where I’d like to be. Apart from all the suffering of our own biology, and where we once came from in another form of matter. I’d like to be with you before I go splatter. The you here is we, and we are debris, from a regenerative force that continues to be… but where does it end and why does it matter? We’ll know sure enough when we go splatter…

A shadowy figure enters the doorway as my eyes lay claim to the rounded silhouette. I wonder if it’s him, the ragged drifter I’ve heard so much about around these parts. He walks with a limp from a shootout that nearly took his leg if it weren’t for the townspeople helping him. They were caring and providing for his well being throughout his recovery. I think we all should strive for the same fastidious presentation of purpose and community, especially when you’ve got an injured cowboy on your hands…

The next thing that happens brings a crowd to gather as he slowly approaches the bar… “a shot of root and bottle of your finest whiskey…” You see, cowboy here had a knack for the high life, what with his conquering riches amongst a competing vision of the land. He took what was in plain sight for the taking, while others sought to organize welfare systematically as a sliding scale of victory over the defeated.

I once saw a vision of the future in which all people were bubbling from a seemingly permeable force of love and understanding. I want to understand this further and I Think this is what should be the most important thing for humans…

Cowboy leaves the bar and heads out the door…

Learning Piano, Overcoming Fear

I remember first hearing The Beatles through my parent’s early 90’s Panasonic stereo. The basic speakers of the day were quite large and ours eventually got blown out. Removing the foam grill would reveal a soft and torn fabric cone. This gave it quite a breathy sound. Puhhh!

When I was 4 or 5 years old, my sisters and cousin and I started piano lessons with Karen. She was a psychic that worked on the Queen Mary. One day Karen showed me a bent key from trying to enter a door on the ship, but the spirits would not let her in. After our lesson I switched places with my sisters who were at our next door neighbor’s playing Ouija board. Karen did not approve…

Organ lyfe

When I turned 12 I became interested in drums. I’m sure this was because my much older half brother was a drummer. He bought me a CD of Led Zeppelin IV and thrashed my drum heads while demonstrating When the Levee Breaks. Thanks, bro!

Check out the original compared to Zeppelin’s version.

My brother Darren at his hillside retreat in Hemet

I played drums till I was 18, and then picked up a guitar though I did not make it a priority for many years because I was too caught up in silly social activities. Eventually, I managed to find time by playing late into the night as often as I could, sometimes drunk or half asleep. A friend of mine once told me to play every day for 1 year, regardless if it was 5 minutes or an hour and I would be surprised by the results. I was, and still am! Practice makes ppppppppuhhhhh… erfect?

The first songs I learned on guitar were Blackbird by The Beatles and Over the Hills and Far Away by Led Zeppelin. Why did I choose these not-so-beginner songs to learn? Simple answer: my friend, Mark, shared his Tab music with me and I studied it with intention and focus like nothing before… and so my love for guitar quickly grew from there… I started printing music and for many years kept my songs in a 3-ring binder. Technology or nah?

Nowadays, I play mostly guitar and focus on improving my vocals. Yet I still fall back on piano as a useful guide for learning chord structure and theory as well as songwriting. It’s nice to be able to see the keys visually compared to using fingers on strings facing away from you. Generally, the more instruments you play the more you will learn the relationship of parts that make up the whole shebang of music as sonic energy! Or something like that…

Last year I learned Your Song by Elton John and performed it as the best man at my friend’s Kyle and Molly’s wedding!

Overcoming fear feels like love. Love feels like vulnerability and acceptance. Vulnerability takes courage and acceptance takes empathy. I love, therefore I am…

Annnnddddd here’s some cool pics of general music stuff . . .

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