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Little Piggie, the Pseudonym, the Struggle, the Story we're sticking with: Frank Bacik has been playing rock-fusion guitar for thirty years, but he's been saddled with a great day-job for twenty. Now, a senior partner, president and CEO in a regional Law Firm, he has more time to jam, play and do session work with friends and fellow musicians around the Russian River Valley, Redwood Region and Wine Country areas on the far Northern California Coast, from Sonoma, through Mendocino, to Eureka. A multi-instrumentalist and avid experimenter, "Little Piggie" projects allow Frank opportunities for auto-electrocution simply not available in law practice. With the rhythmic assistance of the Mixed Nuts, the "Pork and Beans at Sunset" CD Emphasizes exclusively Non-Digital electronic engineering. The 'Nuts' fashion impressive-progressive-expressive Hip-fused-Rock by applying questionable techno rhythms to haunting guitar melodies, marginal outboard alalog effects, Harmonium, Theremin, mic'ed tube amps and pianos, slap bass, Congas, trap drums, wood blocks, bongos and deliberate lyrics. The results include an eclectic mix of bad-thought-provocation, message songs (some briefly described below) as well as a few choice instrumental, Circus-jazz-fusion suites, would-be, radio-ready singles and charted jams. "Without the Government" Every once in a while, the topic comes up at the rehearsal studio: Government regulation, proportionate taxation and how best to manage the cost of maintaining a free society while growing and defending a stable and productive economy which, itself, advances and defends civilization, yet fairly distributes the burdens of defense and advancement ... the argument arises, like, every other day! OK, it's Little Piggie's favorite topic, and he haplessly hopes some day to interest a broader audience. Some such blather is available on any night at Little Piggie rehersals, essentially unfettered, because the 'Nuts do not like to argue. Inevitably, they roll their eyes, mock or humiliate him, and that's that. It's in this spirit that we offer our AMBIVALENT TAX PROTEST... "Without the Government" in which Piggie hopes in vain only to avoid mockery. The "long version" preserved on 'Pork and Beans' gives us an opportunity to play a dozen outdated analog electronic instruments over something like seventeen minutes, about the time it takes to draft an Iraqi Constitution. As perhaps you can imagine, our draft was rejected. "Magnetic Field" This song relates a geophysical fact, one we have always found as fascinating as, well, worrisome. You, too, should worry! You should know what we know! Something on the order of every 700,000 years or so, the Earth's Magnetic Field just suddenly reverses, flips over --"North to South swings wide." We're now overdue for another flip. Geologists don't really know if "suddenly" is in an instant, a fortnight, a month, a year or even a decade, but it's PDQ, geologically. The rock strata reflect no extended period over which the process engages. Because Earth's very Atmosphere largely depends on a strong, presumably stable, world-wide magnetic field, its just possible there's hell-to-pay for the wide magnetic swing. Mass-extinction remains a relative term. It has not clearly coincided with all past "reversals." But, temporarily peaked X-Ray Radiation, localized fluctuation of Atmospheric gasses, Solar Wind Storms, Catastrophic Heat-Waves, Cold Spells, Night Sweats, Continental Hiccups, Global Sneezes, Hemispheric Sniffles, and other, functionally related inconveniences are all explicitly possible the next time we flip, or flop. "Little Piggies" Every good little boy and girl will eventually announce, often promptly following an insipid Disney movie, that they wish to become a vegetarian. Admit it, you've considered 'the switch' at one time or another (likely after a digestive bump in the road), and you probably know several who struggle with the "I'm a Lacto-vegan-eggan-fish-is-not-meat" self-delusion. The key issues oft neglected, but important to consider here, include: 1) the degree of respect we modern sophisticates -- removed by space, status or inclination from the killing-floor and crop-field -- owe traditional paradigms, like Agriculture; and 2) how these concerns constrain, yet inform, modern industrialization; for, 3) we, the meat-eating masses, have created new implications, never anticipated by pre-post-atomic meatpackers, whose seminal role in crafting a vertical economic-architecture for modern farm-commodity trading goes unacknowledged to this day. We -- Little Piggie and Mixed Nuts alike -- value our vertical economic relationship with the local butcher, and we proudly acknowledge our reasonable reliance upon a timely and dependable industrial production of meat. "Little Piggies (the other white meat)" explores these themes in an honest/modest/proto-minimalist, techno-orchestro format. ("American Gothic is Neither Quaint Nor Sweet, when you consider the Industrial Production of Meat") Honestly: The song actually has its genesis in an accidental electronic epiphany. It ocurred shortly after one of those heavily-contested dinner-time discussions over tax structure (food-fights) at our Mendocino Russian River Valley abode. Badly bruised by an errant keilbasa, Little Piggie was muttering to himself, likely recalling some recent mockery-humiliation, while working around the back of a cabinet, over-run with a mass of wires, vacuum tubes and oscillators, which together constitute an old analog, voltage-regulated synthesizer (In Piggie parlance, he was performing a "Bohemian Laparoscopy"). Suddenly, sparks flew, Piggie snorted, and acrid smoke billowed up the wall and across the ceiling. Piggie had inadvertently melted several components, some of which resoldered themselves. This happenstance created a re-combination of excited oscillators and fizzing filters, transmuting an otherwise unmusical saw-toothed sine wave into the most-musical (at-least-audible) dead-ringer for... An INDUSTRIAL MEAT SAW, Backed by a Chorus of Fallen Angels, Humming From On High. Once we discovered "that sound," we had to write a song into which to incorporate it. The first effort didn't work out; it was too funky, even for CD Baby.com! -------------------------------------------------------- - "Porter-Cable Gabriel." (Does not appear on this CD) (A guardian-angel-apprentice-cabinet-maker, working for minimum wage, is miraculously able to pull from his tool belt an infinite number of rechargeable power tools, for which the batteries never wear down or run out of juice. (an allegory?) It was amusing, while the fun lasted, but sadly, Gabe got sloppy drunk one lunch-hour, and that afternoon, he caught one wing and part of his halo in a South Bend drill press. After recovering from the coma, following painful and protracted occupational therapy, he had to go on permanent disability. Adding to a pronounced drain on local economic growth, fueled by industrial-obsolescence--displacement-unemployment, lapsing into and out of alcoholism, and having lost all self respect, Gabriel eventually acquiesced to his existential lot, surrendered all pretense to productive contribution, and was swallowed up by the stasis of the Welfare State. (an allegory?) We ultimately scrapped this story and concentrated on soundscape . --------------------------------------------------------- For "Little Piggies," we fashioned a more-or-less complete musical-meat-machine shop, including OHSA-approved electronic back-up alarms, even yellow stripes on the floor. Piggie perfected that band-saw hum, fine-tuned the audio raunch of meat-blade-biting-into-flesh, and devised appropriately ignorant-but-worried "oinking noises" ...all for our homage, not to the swine itself, but to the civil advance and societal advantage empowered by deli-thin-sliced meats. Finally be sure to check out our personal favorite, "Return Whenever: Cheap Chick (in a Three Piece Suite)" -- our tribute to the original line-up on musicians who were RETURN TO FOREVER: Cick Corea, Lenny White, Stanley Clark and Bill Connors. For each of the 'Nuts, this band has been an inspiration, and a curse. It's taken thirty years for some of us to reach anything approaching the proficiency of these, our fusion heroes, and now, nobody listens to fusion any more. Each work, or at least the first two minutes or so of each, is available for free previewing here on the web page, so enjoy yourself, and thank you for listening. PIGGIE Life is what happens between excellent Ham Sandwiches.... Track List: 1. Sliders: Conga Jazz and Forbidden Sounds 2. Without the Government: A Tax Protest 3. Tanks: Simple Gratitude Marred by Obsequy 4. Magnetic Field: A Geophisical Fright 5. The Open Road: a Triple Expresso 6. Little Piggies: The Other White Meat 7. Pink Bravado: A Pretentious Latin Love Theme 8. Return Whenever: Cheap Chick in a 3 pc. suite Suggested CDs:Other Genres:
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