BETWEEN THE GROOVE: EPISODE 18
“Neath that old sugar moon
I can see us right now
She’ll get the calendar down
Scratch your circle around
Day we’re altar…
Willie Nelson – Sugar Moon.
Fuckup: Alright, Chapter Eighteen on the decks! Starts nice and chill with some Willie Nelson singing about the ‘Sugar Moon’. Where’s Plush at now, Hal?
Hal: He’s in the bath! November 19th. Having a good soak, thinking about James Joyce, Gurdjieff, harmonics, the film Dune… you know, standard bath time thoughts. He imagines drifting across a record “like a slow painter,” drops the needle, quotes Billie Holiday, and even hopes someone reading this eventually hears the actual song. Very meta-wishful thinking!
Fuckup: Sounds relaxing! Is he finally chilling out after all the conspiracy and chaos?
Hal: Not entirely! He then introduces cuts from Buckminster Fuller’s Nine Chains To The Moon for Max and Percy to grapple with – they’re struggling with Bucky’s dense language. And Plush has set them some serious homework: read ten screenplays overnight to understand the story arcs!
Fuckup: Ten screenplays?! Blimey! Why the mad rush?
Hal: Plush sees it as teaching focus and time management, skills needed for DJing routines. He’s pushing them hard, asking them to consider the core concept, the time period, the ending – “the end of the world or word, the beginning or the big ending?” Standard light reading!
Fuckup: While Max and Percy are sweating over ten screenplays, what’s Plush doing?
Hal: He’s back to basics! Pulls out his Tribetable notebook and practices the classic “Transformer Scratch” – the absolute engine of most scratch DJ sets, as he calls it. He even defines it: crossfader on/off with one hand, record forward/back with the other.
Fuckup: So even amidst the high-concept stuff, the mad deadlines, the Bucky Fuller deep dives, he’s still drilling the fundamentals. Gotta respect the craft!
Hal: Exactly. This opening shows Plush in a more reflective, teaching mode, but still demanding intense focus from his crew. He’s weaving together high philosophy (Joyce, Gurdjieff, Fuller) with practical discipline (reading screenplays like DJ practice) and core technical skill (Transformer scratch).
Fuckup: Okay, Hal, let’s wrap up Chapter Eighteen with this last section. Plush seems to be chilling with the crew, but feeling a bit stuck?
Hal: Yeah, he’s on the couch with Max and Percy, eating nuts and crackers, but feels “inertia creeps,” just watching raindrops. But then his brain kicks back into high gear.
Fuckup: And how! He starts theorizing about “James Shermon’s work” leading to the 2008 financial crash via something called a “regenerative repeater” replacing analogue amplification… Max is totally lost, “regenerative what?”
Hal: Plush tries to explain, linking it to the leap from Boolean logic to telephone switching circuits – basically Shannon’s early work – and claims that leap is the drive that eventually lets them get “to your mum,” meaning mass influence or penetration. He cracks his knuckle for emphasis, unsure if he even makes sense!
Fuckup: Then he keeps riffing, connecting Shannon’s love of Dixieland Jazz and Finnegans Wake to his communication theory. He links Nikola Tesla getting his visions for oscillating current and engineers making them work, to the “Coltrane Matrix” and “Jazz geometries” – saying jazz illustrates the shape of the future: chaos, complexity, unpredictability.
Hal: He’s weaving together information theory, financial crashes, early computing, jazz history, literary modernism, electrical engineering, and free jazz cosmology into one giant associative web! He admits he’s riffing on conversations overheard backstage – picking up ideas and mixing them into his own theories.
Fuckup: Right, Hal, let’s polish off Chapter Eighteen with this last bit. Percy’s getting involved in the theorizing now?
Hal: Yeah, he jumps in, adding more connections around Claude Shannon. Links Shannon working on Boolean algebra in Ann Arbor to the White Panther Party starting there. Then adds this lovely fictional touch – Shannon bumping into a Detroit jazz drummer who introduced him to the legendary Kenny Clarke! Percy’s foot is tapping away; he’s clearly enjoying weaving these connections. And he has recurring dreams about the angel of Detroit, John Sinclair.
Fuckup: Max, ever the pragmatist it seems, brings it back down to earth slightly. He asks how Shermon’s epiphany fits the form of the poem they’re working on, quoting McLuhan again – “the medium!” Always thinking about structure.
Hal: But then, the final “CUT TO:” for the section… Norbert Wiener, the father of cybernetics, is on the toilet in Hong Kong, reading Giordano Bruno’s On the Infinite Universe and Worlds. And as he flushes, the turd spirals away into a galaxy!
Fuckup: (Laughing) You couldn’t make it up! Or rather, Steve Fly did make it up! Linking cybernetics, infinite universes, the most mundane bodily function, and cosmic creation in one final, unforgettable, slightly disgusting image! Brilliant!
Fuckup: Right, okay, listeners, bear with us – seems the timeline wasn’t the only thing getting tangled! This next bit is definitely the final section of Chapter Sixteen. My bad again on the chapter numbering earlier, must have been a glitch in the feed. Let’s wrap up Sixteen properly now, Hal.
Hal: No worries, Fuckup, keeping track of this narrative is like juggling eels covered in quantum foam! Okay, so this final piece starts with another CUT TO: Ernest Fenollosa pouring tea for historian Henry Adams in a Kyoto Zen Garden. They’re discussing accelerating change and how symbol systems – alphabets versus ideograms – mediate it. Fenollosa whispers, “Time, it’s all about dense time.” Deep thoughts over tea.
Fuckup: Back in the studio, Percy makes a toast to “Terry Mckinner” – gotta be Terence McKenna, right? Plush just grumbles, “Geeks, Greeks just give me the leaks,” maybe a bit jealous or impatient.
Hal: Percy, or maybe Plush cribbing from notes, dives back into Fenollosa’s ideas (“Venossa, his cypher name”). They talk about ideograms allowing a different perception of time and space than linear alphabets, linking it to cognitive science, wholism, the “all-at-once-ness” of thought. Percy tries to peek at Plush’s notes but they’re indecipherable squiggles. Max, meanwhile, is getting agitated, wanting to get back on the decks, impatient with all the philosophy.
Fuckup: Then one last CUT TO: San Francisco Japanese Tea Garden this time! Terence McKenna and Rupert Sheldrake (Mr. Morphic Resonance himself!) are chatting about Chaos, Gaia, and Eros… when physicist Michio Kaku walks by! They all wave like school kids. Another amazing meeting of minds from the counter-cultural / fringe science ‘tribe’.
Hal: It leaves you wondering how all these meetings and ideas connect!
Chapter Sixteen Summary: This chapter was intensely focused on TRB’s working process for the 1936/Tale of the Tribe narrative. It explored meta-narrative structures (“Meta-mayhem with needle jumpers”), practical methods (astrology, beat structures), and the synthesis of vast, complex influences (Joyce, RAW, Vico, Nietzsche, Shannon, Fuller, Fenollosa, McKenna, etc.). Max voiced time-travel anxieties (BTTF), while Plush theorized about information redundancy (“Great Wake Afakenning”). We saw vignettes of intellectual heroes embodying the chapter’s themes (Nietzsche splitting, Vico dismantling time, Fenollosa discussing dense time, McKenna/Sheldrake/Kaku meeting). The chapter emphasized the struggle to manage chaotic information and differing perspectives within TRB (Max’s impatience vs Percy/Plush’s theorizing) while building their multi-layered techno-magical system.
Fuckup: Phew! That chapter was a proper workout for the grey matter! Packed with theory, technique, and those brilliant, baffling cut-scenes. It really sets up the complexity of the task TRB have set themselves.
Hal: Absolutely. A deep dive into the how and why behind the madness. That officially wraps up Sixteen! Time for a cuppa, I reckon.
DEEP SCRATCH 