Michael Theroux

Art Bell – Somewhere in Time returns to 1/6/1999 when Michael Theroux from Borderland Sciences Research Foundation addressed the idea that plants have real consciousness and we need to rethink our relationships with them. Full 5 hour show.

Michael Theroux on Art Bell – Y2k and More.

Check out our new Media Creation site: Zentopic.com!

“If I had to choose a personal guru, or spiritual leader, it would have been Gurdjieff. He sold cheap rugs from the Far East to the bourgeoisie, and his penchant for forcing his vices on his loyal pupils is well documented. Initiation at its finest. Gurdjieff inspired a deep support and allegiance in his pupils – so much so that at several of his disciples’ gatherings he would have them smoking cigars, slamming vodka, and chowing on beef sticks. Gurdjieff presents this as his brand of awakening – the spiritual worth of clouding up the threshold between pure allegory and unexaggerated facts. Gurdjieff very simply took his worshipful neophytes on a journey straight into the abyss from whence they came. How they emerged on the other end of the beef stick was theirs alone to craft.”

This is a recent interview I did with the hosts of the show “Pentamental.” Excellent interviewers! I had a great time.

http://thesyncbook.com/pentamental?ep=16

Here’s an interview I did 10 years ago on the latest “M. Illness Project” in San Francisco, after the release of the album, Drumstick Jacket Outcry.

The Music of M. Illness

Interview

An Interview with M. Illness (Michael Theroux)
by Scott Doty and Cornelius Mellet
Copyright ©2005 All Rights Reserved

MI = M. Illness
SD = Scott Doty
CM = Cornelius Mellet

CM: Are the lyrical word games on In The Belly of a Whale indicative of a feeling that music matters more than words?

MI: The “word games”, or any lyric for that matter, should be an integral part of the music…I sure as hell don’t expect anyone to understand what my word arrangements mean, so for my purposes, they better sound like just another instrument.

CM: Why form words at all, then?

MI: Ask Joyce.

CM: So it’s the relationship of the sound the words make in the context of whatever you’re going for at the time? I believe it was the same with Joyce, too.

MI: That’s how it turned out – it wasn’t conceived that way – but there’s also a subject to each story, and meaning in every line – although, it may be difficult for just anyone to extract. So, yes, the contrapuntal jiu-jitsu the words impart when spoken seems more important than whether or not they’re understood by anyone.

SD: When did you first start playing the guitar and the keyboard?

MI: I really first started “playing” them last year. Well, I’ve been hammering on boxes with strings for over 20 years, but it really wasn’t until last year that I finally figured it all out.

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(Excerpt from the forthcoming book, Learning the Guitar, by Michael Theroux.)

Growing up as an aspiring guitar player, and surrounded by jazz-enthusiast guitar teachers, I was rather taken aback by what all these brilliant musicians couldn’t tell me. The Howard Roberts Guitar Book, was thrust into my face with its note-for-note transcriptions of jazz stylings, and it just wasn’t doing it for me. And, I had no idea why, other than that I must be stupid. I was told early on, “You have to get you the Real Book,” which is a giant book of jazz standards with each song written simply as a chord chart with the melody written out on on a musical staff for each song. I know guitarists and even classically trained piano players that, to this day, can’t read a “jazz chart.” What could be so esoteric about a jazz chart, which is usually nothing more than one page of music describing how the song should be played? Well, it’s rather cryptographic in many ways to a new musician, or even a musician that’s never been properly introduced to a chart. The first thing I did when I saw weird chord names such as Bb7#5 or Cmaj7#11 was to run down to the music store and buy a chord book. This book would have you trying to memorize every chord in every key inside of its 200+ pages. That was never going to happen. In this article, I’ll show you why there is no need to ever buy a book of chords, to figure out for yourself rather easily how to construct any chord from an understanding of the numerical progression of the major scale, and to decipher all the variations of cryptic symbolism inherent in a jazz chart. Continue reading →