From the liner notes of The Chuck Dukowski SEXTET‘s “Eat My Life” album:

“In a world of conflict such as ours, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people not to be on the side of the executioner.” -Albert Camus

We hold these truths to be self evident:

Nice is good.

Mean is bad.

From time to time we need to be reminded who the pigs are.

We are many they are few.

They try to divide, to keep the wisdom of those who have lived from those eager to do some living.

Don’t be fooled, what we feel is real and will not change.

Injustice and lies will always stink.

The law is not neutral, it is their sword.

We are family.

Family is the anti-war.

The alienation is on purpose.

We are a tiny but essential part of a greater whole.

Nice is good. Mean is bad.

We are many.

They are few.

We are change.

The little things are everything.

Disobey! It’ll be fun, do it!

Hello human!

Punk rock is dead. Maybe we can stand on its corpse and reach a higher ground. Maybe not. Perhaps the flimsy imitators and the cleansing maggots of tomorrow’s fresh style have weakened punk’s bony skeleton too much. It might take us nowhere. Crumble on punk rock! We give you props

But feel it! The wind of change is coming with all that is new and beautifully unnamed. Beware changing wind; when your name comes it will carry a burden. The happy burden of community, of recognition, and most ideally of change, will com with the dark side of rules, of cheesy merchandising, of co-op and distortion. So many things will rush under the banner of this name we can only hope this new wind can bear the weight.

Something new is coming, it always does. In music, the new has most often come with a fiery rejection of the past, like a phoenix from the flames. Actually, the fiery rejection is a pose; everything is born from something else or someone, and all musicians are influenced by what came before. It’s liberating to claim to come from nothing. You shake off the doctrinaire. You reject the false concept of progress, because music is not a line, it’s an expanding universe.

Musical revolution comes with a name, but it starts with iconoclastic vision. When someone creates something they want and haven’t seen before. Others realize they want it too. More are inspired. The direction of the musical discourse is altered. A need is filled. People want to show they are part of this new direction. They create a style, so everyone who sees them will know that they set themselves apart from the mainstream. That’s great but watch out ’cause it’s also a product to sell. The iconoclast just wants to create; the revolutionary wants to make the new rules. He wants to sit on the old throne and say his is the only way.

The CD6 has no rules for you. We just throw in our DNA and hope to build a lovely new corpse.

The first part ending with “Hello Human!” was written by Chuck Dukowski. The second part ending with “the revolutionary wants to make the new rules. He wants to sit on the old throne and say his is the only way.” was written by Lora Norton.