IN THIS ISSUE OF COSMIK DEBRIS: We talk with David Gans about his latest venture in life, head (hed) P.E. Jahred fills us in on his Blackout, Maria Muldaur is carrying a torch for Peggy Lee, there's a great new set of Jazz CD samplers out, and Eleanor Roosevelt's legacy lives on. There's news you ain't seeing and we've got it, plus 100 CD reviews, a smorgasbord of other reviews, and columns to enlighten you. Another eclectic issue of Cosmik Debris Magazine!

COSMIK RADIO!: A brand new Cosmik Radio show is ready and waiting for your speakers or headphones. Just click on the pic and off you go. You just need a RealAudio Player to listen. If you don't have one, go pick one up. Cosmik Radio is just the kind of Net-Only audio that radio station program directors don't want you getting hooked on. So go ahead. Inhale!

DAVID GANS - Solo Eclectic: He's a singer/songwriter, a musician, a music journalist, author and radio show producer, and something of a Grateful Dead expert. Now he's touring the country with his own mix of singer/songwriter/jam music and introducing folks to something special. Shaun Dale talks with David Gans about how he got where he is now, and the record he'd like to make, if he can get the right situation...

(hed) PLANET EARTH - It's Blackout Time: It's been a rough few years for (hed) P.E.'s vocalist/lyricist, but Jared says that's all behind him now. Things are looking up, new album Blackout is starting to generate some serious notice and the band's heading out on the road.

MARIA MULDAUR - Carrying the Torch: Peggy Lee has always been a favorite of hers, so when she got an opportunity to define her own next project and Peggy Lee had just passed away, the pieces just fell in to place. Maria Muldaur takes her talent in another new direction, a torch singer approach to jazz and blues, with her new tribute album A Woman Alone With The Blues.

THE ADA MEETING - Hobnobbin With The Spirit of Eleanor And The Liberal Elite: One of Eleanor Roosevelt's great humanitarian acts was to co-found the Americans For Democratic Action. Each year, in her memory, the ADA hands out awards to outstanding citizens who have contributed to peace and a better society. Rusty Pipes attended the event this year and gives us the full details.

ALL THAT JAZZ - Discovering Your New Addiction Through CD Samplers: Just getting into jazz but you're not all that hip to the thought of spending a fortune on the hit and miss method of blindly buying CDs by artists you may have heard of but aren't sure of? Samplers, my friend. It's an inexpensive way to get educated quickly, and as it happens, a dozen incredible samplers have recently hit the market. Article by DJ Johnson.


TIME FOR THE THIRTEEN O'CLOCK NEWS - War news you aren't getting anywhere else, how girl scout cookies could help us in the space race, a Michael Jackson scoop, NBA daycare news, and of course Weather as only A. Syd Brown can report it.


CD & RECORD REVIEWS - A round 100 reviews of practically any musical genre you can imagine, and maybe some you can't!

EVERYTHING ELSE IN REVIEW - Book both audio and print, concerts, movies in your home and the theater: our well-rounded writers offer a veritable smorgasbord of reviews for your pleasure.



CLOSET PHILOSOPHY - Rusty runs us point-by-point through Dennis Miller's 10 Things To Consider When Voicing An Opinion and shows us just exactly what a self-absorbed idiot Dennis has become.

COSMIK BLUES - The Muddy Waters School of Management is now open for your education as Eric teaches the important life lessons that can be learned by studying this great man's life.

PIGSHIT by GARY PIG GOLD - The snouted one recalls with great fondness a chance meeting with a young, Pre-Clash Joe Strummer in his 101ers days.

MEDIA CURMUDGEON - Once again the Academy Awards show gives Karl Cable a unique view in to the state of our nation today.



CREDITS - The names and e-mail addresses of the people responsible for this thing.

COSMIK RADIO - Want an hour of music that fits the personality of Cosmik Debris Magazine? That's right, Sinatra segues into Megadeth into Peter Tosh into Man Or Astro-Man into... well, you get the picture. It's a little something we like to call Genre Whiplash. Or maybe you're in the mood for a trip into The Fog Machine, our mix of music of the ethereal variety. All you need is a RealAudio player. Come on in.

OUR OWN WEBSITES - Many of the Cosmik Debris writers have websites of their own. We have some links right here.



How strange this is. I have most of my CD collection - huge by the average person's standards - sitting on several hard drives in MP3 format so I can access them instantly. Well, it's an instant gratification world, after all. Or it was. Or still is for the moment. I don't know what the world is or will be now. I just know that I'm not one of the people waving the American flag and praising the Bush regime for undoing decades of foreign relations work, leaving us with very few friends and putting us in danger of having to stand alone sometime soon.

I've been following the news via CNN.com, but I'm at a point where I'm just overwhelmed with conflicting emotions. It's not that I don't care about our troops. In fact, news of what's happening to some of them is a large part of what's overwhelming me. Seeing children burned beyond recognition is hard, though. Trying to understand how it got to this point is hard. Trying to figure out what a better way might have been isn't hard because there are so many options to choose from that still result in a disarmed and exiled Saddam without world opinion coming down on our heads. No good thinking about that now, and no way to think clearly anyway because feeling overwhelmed leaves me flattened and unable to do more than one thing at a time.

Listen to some of my music, I figure, because that almost never fails to take my mind off things. Thousands of CDs in random play, and as I start to write my editor's notes, the first song out of the speakers is "The End." I love The Doors, and that song, but that I didn't need. I turned it off before it had any chance to shuffle over to "The End Of The World As We Know It." For once in my life I regret hating that awful "There's Got To Be A Morning After" song, you know? No, not me. I've gotta have Thin Lizzy's "Suicide" and The James Gang's "The Bomber" in the same damned directory, wouldn't y'know? I've gotta have The Germs and The Nerves in another directory. I've gotta have Brittney Spears in another one. Well, no irony there, except I can't freaking stand her. My daughter ripped her CD and did something funky so I can't delete the stupid files. Maybe, in the long run, that's why I'm so depressed.

I'm going to go watch something safe and mindless and non-threatening for a little while. TVLand comes to mind. I'll even watch the shows I've always made fun of, like Three's Company, because even if I've never seen it I know exactly what will happen in every scene and how it will end, unlike the show on CNN that's running 24/7. Part of my job here at Cosmik Debris involves staying aware of what's going on in the world, I know, but I'm due a little sick leave. Just a few days. If any of you know the feeling, maybe you're overwhelmed, too. A few days off and we'll be good as new. Or something. See you next month.

DJ Johnson
Editor

Did you miss an issue? We now have many of our back issues online, including sound clips and extras. Check out interviews with The Witches, Electric Frankenstein, the Vampire Beach Babes, Jeff Berlin, Curve, Michael Shermer, Steel Pulse, Transglobal Underground, Mark Helm, The Southern Rock All-Stars, Ottmar Liebert, Jason Noble of Shipping News, Phil Vassar, Joel Dorn, Mark Cline of Love Tractor, Texas Terri (of Texas Terri & The Stiff Ones), Mike Keneally, Chris Shinn of Unified Theory, Alley of Wise Monkey Orchestra, Mario Escovedo of The Dragons, The Clarks, Big Ass Truck, Richard Cheese, Paul Krassner, Tony Iommi, Ron Dante...