This may be the last solo song for a while as my drummer and I have started working on a full-length Drugs & Gum collection, hopefully available in the fall.

Blistered Feet
Blow
Bottle Up
Coke, Beer, and Heroin
Colorful Kid
Dinosaurs
Eyes and Hands
Golden Boy
Greater Than Gravity
Hey Vibration!
Lost in Legs
Mangosteen
Manhattan
Our Bodies Knew
Spiders
The Salmon
Three For a Buck
Tight

Dear Mr. Gibbard,

My cover is better than yours. Perhaps you should consider a different line of work.

Sincerely,
Drugs and Gum

(YouTube Video)

PS. I recorded this right after running in the Boston Marathon, which is why I’m dressed down. I didn’t start of finish it, but I did run in it.

For years, young men were the ones who picked up a guitar, learned three or four chords, and played bad, whiny music, preferably at parties or on the campus lawn, and preferably to get attention from females. The accepted term for these gentlemen is “douchebags with guitars”. But the more I look around at the local music scene (at least here in Boston) the more it feels like these amateur amateurs are women, not men. And they don’t always play guitars. Sometimes they play the piano. But they always sound the same, and we’re all supposed to pretend we care and think they’re all talented and pretty and shit, when in fact, they suck.

Women cannot be douchebags, however. That’s a term just for certain types of insecure men. To my knowledge, there is no equivalent term for young women brandishing their instrument (badly) and crooning (barely tolerably) in hopes of capturing attention.

We can, of course, feminize “douchebag” into “douchebaguette”, but it’s a slightly cumbersome word, and too long, and simply would never catch on as a real insult. “Douchebaguettes with pianos” just won’t cut it.

So my proposal is to call these young ladies “snatchbags with guitars” or alternatively, “snatchbags with keyboards”.

I do realize that this goes against my feminist ethic to deliberately slander women specifically. But there is also a musical ethic in there somewhere. And so many of these snatchbags, just like their douchebag brothers, need to put the guitar DOWN and find something else to do.

Some of you will hate this name. In fact, I’m pretty sure most of you already do. This name was chosen after a lengthy deliberative process, and several good names were rejected in favor of this one for many reasons, but the main reason is that when I think of my band’s name, I think primarily about saying it on stage to an audience of people, and how each name feels in that context. “Drugs & Gum” is kind of silly, but it has a lively energy to it, and is VERY easy to remember and to spell. I simply can’t see performing a song about vibrators and then saying my name is “A Noble Army” or somesuch. I’d prefer to have a slightly silly name, and then surprise people with serious songs, than to have a serious name and play songs about sluts or something.

Just for fun, here are some of the other names I considered:

• A Noble Army
• Two Noble Armies
• Auburndale
• Never a Mother
• Fifty Heads and a Hundred Hands
• The Trumpets
• Combat Flavor Exchange
• The Ponderous Earth

Most, as you can see, are kind of serious. I wanted something less serious. I went against almost everyone’s advisement (thank you Heather and Anka for supporting “Drugs & Gum”). So I figure that’s probably the best idea.

And now here they are, finally operating, in an attempt to recreate conditions right after the big bang. According to this article, they’re shooting particles at nano-FRACTIONS short of the speed of light. The point is to answer questions about the universe, about matter, etc. And they will answer questions, lots of them. But then, the whole thing will only create a new set of questions. And the first thing those physicists are going to start thinking is “we need a bigger one”.

Baudrillard would have something to say about this.

He might ask (as do I), at what point is the simulation large enough? You’re trying to simulate the Big Bang, but in order to do so accurately, you must ACTUALLY RECREATE THE BIG BANG. To truly KNOW everything, you must DESTROY it.

And this demonstrates my fundamental problem with modern science of late. As a former dyed-in-the-wool empiricist myself, I still love geeking out on new information. But hasn’t it become clear to everyone by now that there are no hard limits on how BIG the research can be, and how TINY the increments of measurement can get? When does common sense kick in and show us that going bigger, or measuring tinier, is simply no longer efficient or cost-effective?

Because no matter how close to the “truth” these physicists claim to be, there will always be a gap between what we KNOW and what we FEEL WE SHOULD KNOW, unless we are willing to destroy ourselves. And that gap will continue to be filled with art, music, religion and spirituality, because that is how we create meaning for ourselves.

So fuck CERN. Even if they “find” dark matter, what does that really mean for the rest of us? Take all the billions you want to spend on the next collider and use it to teach kids to paint or something. To me that puts humanity on a much better course toward the real meaning of life than just uncovering more science questions.

I have made the difficult decision to create a new name for my music. STETSON seemed like a great idea last year before I was performing seriously and before I had a significant online presence, being that it is my middle name, and is somewhat iconic. Unfortunately, it has been made clear to me that with too many brands already sporting that name, it is simply impossible to find me online. Some may see it as sad that we can allow a Google algorithm to make these decisions for us, but to some extent I appreciate the challenge of being more creative with naming.

A new name has already been chosen and my plan is to begin rolling it out Wednesday, March 31st, hopefully completing the transition April 1st. No, this is not an elaborate April Fool’s joke.

Some of you will not like the new name, others will love it. The name was chosen during three days of careful brainstorming and deliberation and I am personally very confident in it at this point. Given time I think everyone who is already a fan will come to understand why I like it so much.