The No Neck Blues Band - The Black Pope

“in the battered nation we have lost ourselves to hunger and spite, as birds sing false starts and motives are questioned what i have noticed is not the great divides that separate us and torn folly from foe but the callous human stations that seem to be so common these days. there is too much sense ringing in the ears of donkeys, there is not enough worship to constitute our divinity, there are many people thinking of hidden gods with vendettas and murky pasts, and if the battered nation is seeming lame and broken then all hope can not be lost. there are still dreamers amongst us, there are still great untold riches to rags stories, men who have lost it all with pride, way out glass eaters, performers and mentalists free on bail, there are still those who are happiest in the shadows, men and women who know each other by their smells and cadences. they exist without time, they have given it all up for a riddle and a ride, the masters of the stringless banjo, human pigeons whose lives are lived in the sand and rain, the bums who play Bach on tin cans when no one is looking . these are them and i have known them since they were boys, I have seen them play on rooftops and highways, always funeral music and minstrel parlor drones that celebrate air and spirits. they do not give up and continue to play every day, here in the battered nation...” — Harmony Korine 09.04.05