Spring is here and the eggs are hatching... Swaybone played our first show with me and bassist Tone Def in the band. www.myspace.com/swaybone I thought the show went great, I dug the chemistry the band seemed to have and it felt more like the 3rd or 4th show in terms of performance cohesion. Swaybone hits the stage again on Saturday March 31st at Kimo's in San Francisco. The next day I will participate in a Noise Jam in Oaksterdam. This is being put on by the good folks at Otherworld...it's a massively experimental and evil participatory musical event. The Noise Jam will feature my recently re-furbished "Alien Autopsy" guitar. I had some body modification done by this guy: www.myspace.com/alienguitars I took this guitar down to the studio and playied it on Sean O'Brain's forthcoming CD: http://www.myspace.com/seanobrienandhisdirtyhands Got my studio back on line. After all the upgrades, the pernicious lies, fighting with customer support at home and abroad, and shipping defective USB interfaces all over the earth I finally have the ability to record music and make MP3's. Here is something called BLood CLot.I did last weekend: http://www.myspace.com/cruelsweetcorpseproject Meanwhile, I have pushed back the release date for Ix from Ixtlan. More accurately I missed my self-imposed deadline and decided to wait a bit longer. Songs of Samsara is still gaining some traction and I want to get the right time. Ix is becoming my Chinese Democracy (although Ix is finished and cost a lot less than $100,000,000 to record) and finally..I have Collapse of the Old Order: episode one all edited and ready to post online...I need to tighten up the supporting text a bit. Collapse of the Old Order is a documentary about the current state of Rock Music. I take my camera around and talk to musicians (my peers) about what they are doing and how they are doing it in regards to the Internet... ...The Internet is not only replacing the conventional promotion and distribution channels used by the traditional recording industry, it is DISSOLVING the recording industry. Top down distribution is being replaced by peer to peer digital distribution, and many musicians and industry professionals are unaware of this. What used to be "media" is now "content". Content does not conform to regulations or format restrictions, it is chaotic and free-flowing. The realm of ideals has never been easier to manifest. ...anyways on with Ostara ...[more]

Things are pickin' up for the Xodman The Vampire Band seems to be smoldering in their own ashes of failure The online zine site that skewered my album is going offline for a while and DELL reported worse than expected Q4 earnings and their stock price is plummeting...the great karmic luggage convener belt seems to be comin' my way. the best revenge is living well...it also helps if those jerks get fucked over too My new band Swaybone: http://www.swaybone.net/ has been nominated for "Best Band" for the Bands4Bands awards by the way, You can vote for Swaybone as best band by sending an email to Pete at bands4bands@hotmail.com and writing "Swaybone for best band". I don't know if we will win, I've been in the band less than 3 weeks, I had nothing to do with them getting this nomination, BUT if we do win, and I'm allowed to give a speech (the probabilities of that are about zero ) I will say something along the lines of: "About 17 years ago Guns n' Roses won some award and in a drunken display of anti-social white trash vulgarity said the 'f-word' multiple times. That was the single most transformative event of my adolescence. Within months I owned my first guitar and shortly after that I was in my first band. So in the spirit of throe who inspired me: FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK. Thank you and good night." On a more enlightened note... I found this site that has an explanation of Gerald Heard's interesting model and theory on the evolution of human consciousness: http://home.wxs.nl/~brouw724/GeraldHeard.html It states that the dominant paradigm is mostly centered in the 4th stage of evolutionary consciousness morphing to the 5th. The 5th stage is called "Leptoid Man" Timothy Leary has a very similar model (his were called "Futants"). Each stage of the model illustrates stages of collective cognitive development. Each stage also illustrates historically chronological world views (medieval, industrial etc). Note that the Hopi's speak of the planet leaving the 4th world and entering the 5th world. Or maybe our perception will shift to the 5th stage: Leptoid Man aka Post-Individualism. Strange things are afoot at the Circle-K ...[more]

I got my solo album: Songs of Samsara reviewed at this online music magizine in Northern Ireland called "Mood Swings". I don't think they liked it very much: "Imagine a manic axe guy with a fetish for special effects letting loose on an improvised solo whilst some guitar riffs go on in the background with a nominal tune...In the ten years of reviewing albums at Mood Swings I think this must rate as the most inaccessible yet...Just don't blame me if you lose your sanity." In fairness, what the reviewer does consider "accessible" is Rick Springfield, Journey, Dream Theater and a bunch of other "wuss-rock". Obviously the people of Earth are not prepared for my intergalactic hyper-dimensional guitar playing. Too Bad!!! My music is from ANOTHER WORLD and soon you souls will resonate with my vibrations of INFINATE LOVE I'm now playing with two bands: SpiriTech: http://www.angelwith4faces.com/spiritech and Swaybone: http://swaybone.net/ and am planning to unleash my 2nd CD in April so you've not heard the last of me Earthlings!!! Speaking of thing the people of Earth are not prepared for check these Hopi Prophesies out: (as told by Frank Waters) "The Fourth World shall end soon, and the Fifth World will begin. This the elders everywhere know. The Signs over many years have been fulfilled, and so few are left. "This is the First Sign: We are told of the coming of the white-skinned men, like Pahana, but not living like Pahana men who took the land that was not theirs. And men who struck their enemies with thunder. "This is the Second Sign: Our lands will see the coming of spinning wheels filled with voices. In his youth, my father saw this prophecy come true with his eyes -- the white men bringing their families in wagons across the prairies." "This is the Third Sign: A strange beast like a buffalo but with great long horns, will overrun the land in large numbers. These White Feather saw with his eyes -- the coming of the white men's cattle." "This is the Fourth Sign: The land will be crossed by snakes of iron." "This is the Fifth Sign: The land shall be criss-crossed by a giant spider's web." "This is the Sixth sign: The land shall be criss-crossed with rivers of stone that make pictures in the sun." "This is the Seventh Sign: You will hear of the sea turning black, and many living things dying because of it." "This is the Eight Sign: You will see many youth, who wear their hair long like my people, come and join the tribal nations, to learn their ways and wisdom. "And this is the Ninth and Last Sign: You will hear of a dwelling-place in the heavens, above the earth, that shall fall with a great crash. It will appear as a blue star. Very soon after this, the ceremonies of my people will cease. "These are the Signs that great destruction is coming. The world shall rock to and fro. The white man will battle against other people in other lands -- with those who possessed the first light of wisdom. There will be many columns of smoke and fire such as White Feather has seen the white man make in the deserts not far from here. Only those which come will cause disease and a great dying. Many of my people, understanding the prophecies, shall be safe. Those who stay and live in the places of my people also shall be safe. Then there will be much to rebuild. And soon -- very soon afterward -- Pahana will return. He shall bring with him the dawn of the Fifth World. He shall plant the seeds of his wisdom in their hearts. Even now the seeds are being planted. These shall smooth the way to the Emergence into the Fifth World. As tensions heat up in the Middle East, while Global Warming causes erratic weather, as economies destabilize as we misuse our resources the clock ticks away as time marches toward 2012. ...[more]

In some shamanic traditions, there is an early phase in the shaman’s journey where the would-be shaman is taken to the spirit world and “devoured”, “eaten”, or “dismantled” by spirit entities and then reassembled in a transformed state… this pretty much describes my last week. I knew that Imbolc was to be a transformative season for me…I was counting on a much easier journey. Some highlights: • My somewhat-mild mannered secret identity from his new idiot’s job thus putting my life into a turbulent tailspin. • My amp I use for auditions has been missing since January 17th. Apparently it is now safely in the hands of the person I contracted to repair it although it was MIA for a few weeks. • The evil vampire band is running ads to audition guitarists to play solos (to replace my solos) on a demo that I partially paid for and on a song that I co-arranged. • The Idiot Job that canned my secret identity LOST my secret identity’s last paycheck. • The club I was going to do an open jam night with one of my old pals no longer does open jam nights (starting this week) • I have a guitar that I was getting custom work done on is floating around out there someplace. • My secret identity’s grandmother almost died (this is like the 4th of 5th she’s done this) causing our hero to cancel an audition expecting to jump on a plane within 24 hours but then un-cancel the audition when a certain somebody’s condition stabilized (and some so-called doctors later admitted that they exaggerated the severity of the condition in the first place) • The instrument repair weasel that I traded a 4X12 amp cab in exchange for a custom guitar neck last June, who then split off from his business partners, but promised to get me the neck (despite alienating the guy I was working with on this), has sold his business completely and fled to Arkansas (possibly to the White Water property that Hillary stole from the Indians at gunpoint) Thus my quest for the neck has hit another snag. • The State Unemployment department gave My secret identity a really hard time. • My new computer did not include the special soundcard I ordered (the good ol’ boys down at the Dell factory was doin’ too much tootin’ and not enough rootin’ that day) so I can’t record during my abundance of spare unemployed time. Am I bitter about this you may ask...? …go fuck yourself!!! But on a more positive note, I have been doing some auditions, went to a cool party and jammed with some cats. They even have a web site I posted some stuff on: http://www.spaz.org/audio/by/artist/eric_xodik I have consulted various spirits and entities on the matter took a journey and met with the creatures of the underworld, made offerings to Ganesha basically worked all of the angels I can. I think the server that I access my Karma account is down right now. It is also mercury retrograde so that doesn’t help either I suppose. Most of all I am trying to learn as much as I can from these experiences. From crises comes opportunity according to the Chinese. I have to trust them because that’s where the keyboard I am typing this on is manufactured. My Album review gets published next week and in the next few months more of my songs will become available for download on mp3 sites all over the world (at least 32 sites at this point). On an entirely different topic, I was checking out some weird David Icke stuff on youtube the other day (I’m still not sure about him yet) and somehow wandered on to this guy’s stuff: http://www.rastaheart.com/ He’s got a great interview with a Hopi Elder and this other video shot in South America with this shaman guy who talks about Carlos Castaneda, 2012, and Alien Pyramid stuff. On a political note, I strongly disagree with this war and I think the nation state is dumb. I am forming a committee to explore the idea of running for president in 2012. More on that later. ...[more]

It was crazy last week of Yule but Imbolic finally begins. In addition to the season transitioning I have made some changes as well. Resentment Studios looks different now First off I got my rig back from the vampires (see previous blog) So I have all of my gear taking up most of the space. Secondly I upgraded my computer (first time since 2001), and I got new recording software. I have been spending the last few days getting very angry trying to work out the latency issues. Thirdly, I got iTunes. Not only am I on iTunes: iTunes.com, but I am a pod person like everyone else. The iPod is cool. I can see why albums sales are going down. A good solid album (esp. in CD format) is a rare thing. I probably have between 150 and 200 songs on iTunes, but only four albums in their entirety: Metallica: Matser of Puppets Jane’s Addiction: Nothing’s Shocking Van Halen: Fair Warning David Lee Roth: Eat ‘em and Smile It’s hard to pull off a solid work from start to finish and have every song be cool. The old 45’s (which all four of these originally were) tend to have less filler, but I don’t think I own a 15 song CD that is 100% awesome. The musical landscape is changing out there. As of this writing I believe there only 3 major record companies: Sony, Warner, and BMG. We saw one of the lowest years in album certification (gold, platinum, multi platinum…etc). And even though iTunes now has over a billion downloads, peer to peer file sharing easily sees a billion songs distributed a month. For my shameless plug, I give you this guy: http://www.youtube.com/user/realize2actualize I used to work with him at my day job and he’s a pretty cool guy with a positive message. If he ends up poising his sneaker wearing UFO cult members with kool-aide or something I reserve my right to distance myself from him. But I really dig his message and what he has to say. And finally…since 1990 we’ve had 6 of the 7 hottest years on record on earth. There is very little doubt that the globe is warming and it’s our fault. We have species extinction, rising sea levels, droughts, floods, and mass starvation in the very near future. Namaste Eric Xodik ...[more]