THE HOUSE I GREW UP IN (Riverside, California)

Google Earth. Long shot of the American continent. Zoom in to the west coast. The Pacific Ocean is on the left. Zoom in again to southern California. The geography of the Los Angeles basin is easily recognizable – Oxnard further to the northwest along the coast, Palos Verdes jutting to the south, pointing out to sea toward Santa Catalina Island. Zoom in closer, and sliver and grey patches of civilization become more obvious as every inch of this land is crisscrossed with lines and shapes of streets and highways and buildings and warehouses and malls among green and brown regions, surrounding the sea of humanity below as we turn inland to the right. The ocean disappears, and instead a sea of suburbia emerges beneath smog-filled skies.

Tightly packed, boring, beautifully manicured ranch style homes dot the landscape along with schoolyards, tennis courts, golf courses and swimming pools in swirling patterns that wind back and forth on themselves in seemingly endless cul-de-sacs. We zoom in on Fairview Avenue, a typical upper middle class neighborhood; mostly one-story southwestern style homes with low roofs, no basements and no upstairs. Every sixth lot is a slight variation on the same theme in what must have been an early ‘planned’ community.Tall walls, tall trees and sturdy fences separate friendly and not-so-friendly neighbors. Well cared for by the Laotian gardeners and the blond pool boys, the streets are lined with eucalyptus, cactus and palm trees, and the lawns are dense, green Bermuda grass.

A pall of brownish haze hangs in the air and filters the glaring sun, giving an orange hue to everything. Somewhere a dog is barking. The entire façade of my childhood home is covered in expensive red brick, including the driveway and a walkway from the sidewalk to the front door. It’s a small house, but it stands out because of the quality brickwork, laid by one of my father’s distant relatives from New Orleans, an elderly black man named Elbert. My dad, a light-skinned Creole himself, came from a well-to-do family of contractors in New Orleans, Louisiana, and even though he was totally unskilled at anything having to do with labor, he did become a successful pharmacist – and he didn’t mind paying for someone else’s quality work.

My childhood home sits across from an earthen embankment dividing the east and west bound lanes of my street. When we looked out our front window we saw a huge mound of dirt. A water irrigation canal ran beneath it. Later, the city planted some trees and acacia bushes to try and make it less of an eyesore, but mostly it served as a war zone for my friend Dan and me to play soldiers and destroy stuff when we were kids.

I am standing at the top of the embankment looking north down the rise, thinking about all the years we spent playing on this little hill when we were growing up. Back then it seemed so high and such a long way from home, but it was only across the street and a few yards from my front door. I have memories of the hours and days spent running up and down this oasis of rocky terrain. I kick the dirt under my feet; the soil is parched and hard like gravel, and nothing really grows there besides the few hardy bushes and shrubs that have survived; it’s too arid and dry for anything else. As long as I lived there, grass never grew. There are probably a few dead soldiers still lying around…

THE HOUSE I CURRENTLY LIVE IN (Albuquerque, New Mexico)

Standing in my freezing cold, dank, musty garage, I am facing the south wall. Every inch of wall space is covered with posters, stickers, buttons, business cards and flyers from just about every gig and venue we’ve ever played. Directly in front of me is a Simpsons poster parodying Salvador Dali’s ‘The Persistence of Memory’. Surrounding that, hanging under a ragged green fishnet are the photo inserts of the Beatles from the ‘White Album’, a black and white photo of Pete Townshend holding his guitar aloft at the 1969 Isle of Wight festival, and other items from the ‘Live At Leeds’ album. A torn poster of FLEA holding his Modulus bass sits next to a home-made collage of beat poets. A clear plastic clothing display of a woman’s torso hangs from a random nail stuck in the wall. Unfinished canvases pulled from a trash dumpster adorn the wall behind me along with a portrait of an unknown, bare-breasted mulatto woman. Stickers, pins, and buttons of all shapes, sizes and affiliations fill every possible bit of space: “Just Vote,” “Grandma’s Music,” “PURG,” “The Edge 104.7,” “Pro-Choice,” “Century Media,” “Keep It Wild” and “Wolves Belong” among many, many others. An autographed picture of Fleetwood Mac hangs high above it all, almost to the ceiling, and below that is a “Dude, Where’s My Country?” sticker. Further along the wall, a photo of a fringe-wearing Buffalo Springfield-era Neil Young playing his orange Gretsch is juxtaposed next to an R.C. Gorman print of a Native American woman holding a baby.

Strange, dusty ornaments and cobwebs hang from the rafters among boxes filled with old Christmas decorations. There is a moldy old couch crammed to one side of the room, piled high with more boxes and other useless crap. Two rarely used bicycles sit amongst the amplifiers, microphones, guitars, drums, and an entire PA system. Orange cat hair covers everything not protected by blankets. We call it “The Studio”, and this is where the ‘magic’ happens, at least during the warmer months.  As we zoom through the roof of the garage / studio we are floating above our tiny adobe style house, above a tree lined neighborhood starting to decline, but with a few elderly, retired homeowners who still try to keep up appearances. Across San Mateo, one block to the East is the “war zone,” and from above our house you can see the back of several businesses that line the street in this economically depressed part of town.

The rich folks who live in Ridgecrest are a mile or so to the west and the further one travels in that direction, the nicer it gets. The yards are better cared for, the homes are bigger: BMWs and Subarus in every driveway – and the streets are cleaner.

Our house sits on the corner, surrounded by huge, shady elm trees and mulberry; juniper bushes for cats to hide in; dead grass, and sandy brown earth. Piles of dead, un-raked leaves litter the entire property. Our corner of the street is plush and green compared to the rest of the block, which encompasses mostly duplexes and apartment buildings both large and small. As we zoom out again we nearly run into a Southwest Airlines jet preparing to land at the Sunport, and below us the city of Albuquerque soon fades into the distance. It seems like a tiny oasis surrounded by an enormous, arid, moon-like landscape.

As we climb ever higher, it’s striking how quickly signs of civilization disappear below, giving way to wide open spaces of ancient lava flows and rocky, jutting brown and red mesas and lightly snow-capped mountains. We zoom out farther and the landscape of New Mexico melds into a huge green and brown mass until finally we are in orbit and all of America and the world is below us.