Ekendra Dasa: News

Recorded Aug 2007-October 2008 at Chandra Media, Alachua, FL

Engineered by Badahari dasa

Produced by Ekendra dasa and Badahari dasa

All songs written and performed by Ekendra dasa, including:

1. No Communication Zone 5:03
2. I'm On Fire 5:10
3. Never Ever Land 4:59
4. Hook on a Line 4:23
5. Sleeping in the Automobile 3:43
6. Desperate, Restless Feeling 5:34
7. Om Gimme This 3:35
8. The Edge of LIfe 5:10
9. The Man in the Photograph 3:40
10. Snide Remark (In My General Direction) 4:14
11. The Great Unknown Man of Mystery 5:43
12. Why Aren't There More Songs Like This on the Radio? 4:48

Thanks to Tulasi-priya dasi, Yadunath dasa, Stokakrishna dasa, Kosarupa dasi, Dhirodatta dasa, Kalakantha dasa, Patrick Edward Mansfield, Edward Fitzpatrick, BP Martin the Subji Sadhu, Stava and Manu, Mom, Dad, and Grandma-ma.

Once upon a time, in the Old West, there was a dog. A dingo, actually. His name was Ringo. Ringo the dingo. He and his family lived in Texas right near the Mexican border. They were American dogs, and they were happy about it.

Just across the border, however, was a Catholic church, where, every Wednesday, they had the biggest, most well-attended Bingo tournament in the area. All the local Mexican Catholic dogs went. Ringo loved bingo. Problem was, it was for Mexican Catholic dogs only. All the American dogs could do was watch all the Mexican dogs having a great time.

One Wednesday night, Ringo and his family decided to try to sneak in on the game.

They made it across the border no problem. They growled and barked in their best dog Spanish. The locals didn't suspect a thing. Things were going great. But then, just when it seemed like Ringo was going to win, he got a little too excited and reverted to barking and growling in English.

The locals got wise and threw them out because of Ringo's gringo dingo bingo lingo.

Ringo also loved poker. Problem was--you guessed it--all the good games were over on the Mexican side.

What could he do?

One day he had a plan. He would make a mechanical dog--an attractive female one--and send it over to play poker on his behalf. Fortunately, Ringo was very good with his paws. He was able to create a surprisingly lifelike, attractive, female mechanical dog, using plenty of epoxy to keep all the fur in place. He programmed his machine to play poker with supreme confidence.

On game night, he and his buddies hid in the bushes on the American side, while he sent his poker-playing contraption over. The idea, of course, was that the machine would charm everyone, win, and then come back to Texas. Ringo and his pals would be rich.

Just as planned, his lovely female dog poker-playing machine won every game. "She" always bet high, even when her hand wasn't that good. She fooled everybody. But then, just as the last game was ending, one of the Mexican dogs accused Ringo's machine of cheating. Ringo hadn't planned on that eventuality. The machine made no attempt to wag its tail or defend itself. Within minutes, all the other dogs attacked and destroyed it.

So much for all that foxy epoxy proxy's moxie.

First of all, I've got a cold now, probably due to the sin of trying to breathe in a confined, non-air-conditioned space with forty fellow pilgrims on our way to and from to the Festival of Inspiration in New Vrindavan, West Virginia. My nose is now dripping uncontrollably, but that's not the funny part.

I was invited to perform at the Festival, as I've done in previous years, so, out of a mixture of vanity and a desire to get out of town for a few days, I accepted the invitation.

How could I possibly have foreseen that this stranger from God-knows-where would tie me up backstage, grab my guitar, and go onstage--in MY rightful place--to do two whole evenings of tactless diatribe, occasionally punctuated by skill-free guitar flailing like the kind you will see in this clip. I didn't wind up performing at all, and the funny part is that the audience seemed to like him better than me. Go figure.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-J1NUj3SwiM --
Jaya Jaya Namaha Namaha.
Please share this with your friends. People ought to know what's really going on in this world. Thanks for listening.
Ekendra Dasa
ekendradasa.com

Somehow or other, the respectable citizens of Krishna.com saw fit to allow me to be part of their new video podcast series this year. I hadn't darkened a TV studio's door since the early eighties, when my friends and I had a weekly pre-MTV lip-synch show called The Fakes, during which we uncomprehendingly slapped our non-plugged-in guitars and danced around flapping our lips to the music of our favorite rock stars du jour. Intrepid YouTube adventurers can still find some of these old excursions into rock and roll wanna be ridiculousness.

Krishna.com's video podcast series, however, invited me to share some of my songs along with stories and commentary discussing the inspiration behind the music, so I had to do more than hairspray my blow-dried hair and jump around gritting my teeth. I had to think, an apparently simple activity which I often stubbornly try to avoid doing. At least this has given me the opportunity to see how I look on video, and try to be conscious about what I do with my face. I hope you enjoy the results. To watch the fun, simply visit Krishna.com. Let me know what you think.

Dear Friends of Planet Cow,

Jaya Jaya Namaha Namaha.

I am writing to announce debut of the all New Planet Cow Orchestra, Next Friday, January 11th at 8pm at Tim & Terry's Music and More. 1419 NW 1st AVe, Gainesville. 352-373-1614. Consider yourself on the guest list. Yes, you can muscle straight through the ticket takers and security personnel, climb over the heads of thousands in General Admission, straight to the front of the stage.

Come see Ekendra dasa and BP Martin the Subji Sadhu tear up all your old favorite Planet Cow songs in full rock frenzy.

It would be an honor to have you there. I hope you are well. Thanks for being.

I just got back from West Virginia. Rather than drive for eighteen hours, I flew. I placed my containers of no more than 3 ounces of liquid firmly inside a quart-size Ziploc brand bag, available at King of the Hill Airport Convenience Store for twenty-seven cents. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have been able to bring my hand sanitizer and Grapefruit Seed Extract with me, and you know what a pain it is to be without them.

The night before I left, I was assembling a slew of delectable snackables for the trip. Especially, I was making Gopa Granola, a mix of basmati rice, yogurt, raisins, cinnamon, walnuts, and turbinado sugar—just the kind of thing you want in the palm of your hand when you’re out herding cows. As I was opening the yogurt container, the sharp plastic edge sliced my right index and middle fingertips open. “Great!” I thought. Half of 2006 spent in chemo, and now my guitar playin’ fingers are cut open just before a big festival weekend. I wept and wailed and firmly applied band-aids.

Next time, I’m going to be more careful with those dangerous yogurt lids. There should be a warning sign! Danger—milk products! Hand protection required!

Since it would have cost about four hundred dollars to have brought my own beloved Gibson with me and keep it safe and cozy in a huge flight case in the cargo bay, I opted to travel light and borrow a friend’s guitar in West Virginia, one which I had personally purchased for him some years back. I thought this would be just fine.

I brought a fresh set of strings and a TSA(Transportation Security Administration) approved container of guitar polish (less than 3 ounces, stowed safely in the cargo bay). I polished and strung and tuned that guitar until it gleamed and screamed. It sounded wonderful, I thought. Then came show time. In the middle of I Think I Like It Here, the peg in the guitar which holds the low E string in place suddenly popped up, throwing my already scanty musical accompaniment into a hellish noisy sickening out-of-tune purgatory. If I was Bruce Springsteen I would have been smooth enough to stop the song, tell a story, and re-tune the guitar all at the same time. Being Ekendra Dasa, I simply figured out alternative fingerings and kept on playing as if everything was cool, while draining my parched body of precious perspiration.

Next time, I’m going to stop and tell a story. Next time, I’m bringing by own guitar. Remind me in case I forget.

I planned to play some new songs for which I use a capo and alternative tunings up on the neck. I noticed that my capo (which I had helpfully placed onstage on my equipment table long before the show) was nowhere. I immediately had to choose between stopping the set and crawling around on the stage on all fours trying to find the capo, playing some other songs, or keep on playing as if everything was cool. I kept playing, but this meant that I had to immediately learn how to sing the songs in a key two steps down from what I normally sing them in, causing me to sound (and feel) as if I had been shot with a tranquilizer dart.

Next time, I’m going to crawl around on all fours, and call it performance art.

After my set, I got back onstage without my guitar to play the role of Igor (pronounced EYE-gore, as in Young FrankenSTEEN) in a comedy sketch which my friend Yadunath wrote. I got to use my vaguely Baltic accent and dredge up all my old actor’s training, and we had a great time. Yadunath gave my character some killer lines (perhaps we shall re-record our performance and mail it to YouTube). For the rest of the weekend, everyone who stopped to see me said, “Hey, Ekendra, I liked your set. But Igor was GREAT!”

I spend months and sometimes years, just trying to find the right word or line for a song, but perhaps all I need to do is sound vaguely Baltic and my life will be a success. Just what is the Lord trying to tell me? Any suggestions?

Thank you for your friendship and support. It looks like this week I’ll be back at Tim & Terry’s on Friday, and June 9th I’ll be in Jacksonville, and the 12th I’ll be back at Satchel’s Pizza, and there may be some more farmers’ markets also. It’s watermelon season, and I don’t want to miss out.

I just went and bought another box of Natra-Bio Sinus and Allergy homeopathic tablets, the kind you partially chew and then let dissolve in your mouth. But now it's too late to use them.

Since February, I had been enjoying a full treatment of Allergy Season here in Gainesville. The oaks, particularly, are major local contributors to the Joy of Allergies, as they shed piles and piles of yellow pollen over each and every moving and non-moving thing.

The first spring I lived in Alachua county, I encountered a mysterious and frightening yellow dust covering my porch. As I was sweeping the stuff off my porch, convinced that the Dow Corporation had secretly opened a branch nearby and was pumping the troposphere full of evil yellow industrial poison plastic particles, and that I must place an urgent call to the Environmental Protection Agency. I even looked up their number. Then I was informed that oak trees were to blame. How mad can you get at an oak tree? I simply had to surrender. and sneeze. and repeatedly blow my full, dripping nose.

Now it's almost May. the Joy of allergies has made way for the Bliss of Summer Heat, and all that goes with it, including mosquitoes, gnats, heat, drought, more gnats, fire ants, more heat, more drought, and even more mosquitoes.

Where, oh where have those glory days of oak pollen allergies gone?

It may not sound like the most high-profile gig, but I was very pleased to get a gig playing the Alachua County Farmers' Market.

Besides always looking for new opportunities to play my songs in public, I'm very much in favor of supporting local farmers. I can't remember the last time I grew anything myself, besides hair, but I'm in awe of anyone who can put a seed in a pot or in the ground and bring it literally to fruition.

So when I found out they occasionally have musicians perform at the farmers' market, I found out who to talk to and gave them my flimsy business card.
"Do you have your own PA?" the lady in charge asked. "Oh, yeah," I said.
"We'll call you," she said.
I've heard that one before, I thought.

She called methe next week, and asked if I could perform the next morning. "Of course," I said.

My PA was in the shop. I asked if I could use the Gainesville Hare Krishna temple PA for the day. "Of course," they said, "we consider your performance an extension of our outreach efforts." God bless them.

I packed everything up and drove to the market early Saturday morning, before it opened. The musicians are supposed to set up on a raised platform surrounding a small concrete building that houses the farmers market offices, mens and womens restrooms, a water fountain, and a couple of soda machines.

I carted my big production, one piece at a time, up the ramp and gradually got all the cables hooked up to the speakers to the microphones to the PA head to the guitar to the chair. I turned the unit on. No power. I tried to find the manager. "Let me see if it's one of the breakers," he said.

On my way back to the stage, nature called irresistibly, and I answered. In the middle of my relief, I heard a screaming feedback loop, as the breaker went back on with the PA turned up and the mic picking up signal from the speakers. I abandoned my relief efforts and ran out to turn the levels down, but the amp had already blown.

The weather that day was freaky and unseasonably cold, with a strong wind that blew right into my face. No one would be able to hear me without a PA. I smiled bitterly.

I explained the situation to the manager. "Oh, then you can set up next to the strawberry truck, in space six," he said. Sounded like a great name for a band, I thought.

I brought my guitar and chair and my bitter smile down to space six, and the wind immediately whipped my guitar case shut after I had the bright idea to leave it invitingly open for tips . . more bitter smiles.

I played for two hours, though, straight, pausing only to re-arm myself with picks after each one slipped out of my cold, numb fingers.

Not having to point my face into a microphone gave me plenty of freedom to move around and get into the music. I had a great time, there in space six, next to the Valencia oranges.

I've included a picture from that set, sent in by Cathy, a Gainesville photographer doing a story ont he farmers' market. Thanks Cathy!

Most recently, Tim & Terry's Music and More, a local Gainesville bar/package store/music store/deli/alternative acoustic, tobacco-smoking, dog-toting, full service listening lounge, has become my weekly home on Friday evenings, thanks to Jason "It's All About The Music" Howey, who invited me to make use of the facilities on a regular basis.

In a college town, the hour between eight and nine pm can mean a lot of different things. It doesn't usually mean everybody has landed where they plan to land for the duration of an evening. Usually people are just finishing their nachos after a hard week of sucking up to the professor, and getting ready to go somewhere else and feverishly bang their heads to wildly pulsating, dangerously amplified mechanical dance music designed to re-align the skeletal structure and ruin the digestion permanently.

Thus, not many people in this huge, University-heavily-populated suburb in this remote corner of the inhabited world are coagulating in droves at 8pm on Friday evening at ye olde local alternative acoustic listening lounge to hear the latest existentially alienated, plaintive tunes emanating from yours truly wailing away on Grandma's Gibson Jumbo.

However, some nights rock.

A couple of weeks ago, a couple of very loud and very alcoholically enhanced personalities had to be politely removed from the premises after responding way too loudly and for way too long to a George Harrison cover I did. Joe the Super Sound Man was pissed enough to arrange for an exit escort for them.

the only downside of this maneuver was that now my entire crowd was gone.

anyway, Joe bought a CD.

The venerable gentlemen of Car Talk, undoubtedly the most humorously informative of all National Public Radio's call-in automobile repair-related weekly talk show programs, today saw fit to feature Red Light Up Ahead, off our humble audio recording entitled 200 Proof Absolute Truth, on their much-loved, long-running life-changing radio broadcast today. I was having breakfast with a friend over at Krishna Lunch Central when I got a call from my wife, practically screaming into the receiver. I thought someone we knew had been shot. then she informed me that my song was on Car Talk on this very day. Imagine my relief that no one I knew had been shot.

Re: the Cirque de Soleil Beatles thing, and why I'm not seeing Ringo this summer. . .

I'm slowly, more slowly than I'd like, but steadily, gaining strength. Amazing what not doing anything for four months can do to your physique. I'm actually gaining weight. but I'm back going to the temple in the mornings and going for morning walks among the cows and oak trees, trying to regain the six pack abs of my past.

I'm also at work on new songs. As well as totally overhauling my work flow. thanks to David Allen, personal productivity guru. His book Get things Done is radical and practical, and the Queen of the Home and I are implementing many of his suggestions with the aim of getting much more done for Krishna than we ever have been able to in the past. Bhaktivinode Thakur was a master of Getting Things Done.

I must confess an acute lack of interest in traveling to Vegas to see scantily clad French Canadians prance around to Beatles music. I recently saw a DVD of Ringo's 1993 tour, with Colin Hay, Paul Carrack, John Waite, and Sheila E. This year's tour, however, boasts a lineup that couldn't attract me any less. Edgar Winter, Richard Marx, and Billy Squier. I'm stayin' home and writing my own damn songs. God Bless the All-Starr Band.

Hello, good friends. Tropical Storm Tim is in the area. We're listening to internet station KHQN in the office, really loud. We keep it going 24 hours a day, to keep the ghosts away.