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JBB: An Artblog!
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@constantron9000
Getting out my medication for the day lowkey feels like I should be arranging diatoms
A huge thanks to KJ Charles for this lovely endorsement!
Estro Junkies is now out on Amazon, Itch, or other storefronts!
This Pride month, consider supporting queer art about a normally underrepresented demographic: cis*het** men***!
Happy Pride!
Stevie Working as a Trans Boy: An Extract from “My Body, My Business: New Zealand Sex Workers in an Era of Change" (2018)
She played bass on 10,000 songs, including the most-played track of the twentieth century. She was paid $55 per session. Her name never appeared on the albums.
Gold Star Studios, Los Angeles, 1964. A woman in a cardigan walks past the receptionist, a Fender Precision bass in her hand like a briefcase. She doesn’t sign autographs. She signs a timesheet.
Her name is Carol Kaye. In three hours, she will record what will become the most-played track of the twentieth century. She’ll pocket fifty-five dollars and head to another studio, on the other side of town, for the next session.
The record label will never put her name on the album.
Between 1957 and 1973, Carol Kaye took part in roughly 10,000 recording sessions. Not as the featured artist, not as a guest, but as a hired hand. She was part of an anonymous collective nicknamed The Wrecking Crew—elite studio musicians who actually played the instruments on your favorite records while the famous bands posed for promotional photos.
The work was relentless. Three albums before the day was over. Stale coffee in paper cups. No rehearsal. The charts arrived minutes before the tape rolled. If you couldn’t read a chart and nail the take in two tries, you didn’t get called for the next session.
Carol could do it on the first try.
She started playing guitar in grimy bars at fourteen because her family couldn’t pay the electric bill. Music wasn’t a romantic dream for her. It was survival. It was a job—factory work with better acoustics and lower pay.
But she was faster and sharper than almost everyone else. She corrected charts in pencil while the producer was still explaining what he wanted. In one session in 1968, she told a famous producer his arrangement sounded like a dying dog. She chose her own line. They kept her version.
That descending bass line that drives the Beach Boys’ “Wouldn’t It Be Nice”? Carol Kaye. The propulsive groove of “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’”? Carol Kaye. The acoustic-guitar intro to “La Bamba”? Carol Kaye. The iconic theme from Mission: Impossible? Carol Kaye.
She invented techniques on the spot, out of sheer necessity. When the bass sound was too muddy for AM radio, she stuck felt under the strings and used a hard pick instead of her fingers. The tone cut through the static like a blade. It became the sonic signature that defined 1960s pop.
Bassists spent years—decades—trying to crack the secret of the Beach Boys’ gear to get that sound. They were studying the wrong people. They should have been studying Carol.
She received no royalties. No residuals. No gold-record ceremony. No credit on the album sleeves. When “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’” hit number one, Carol was already back in a studio cutting a soap jingle.
The biggest bands mimed her bass lines on TV variety shows. New York marketing departments decided a mom in classic clothes didn’t fit the rebellious-youth image they were selling. So they simply left her name off the album credits.
For thirty years, almost no one cared. The truth only began to surface in the late 1990s, when music researchers found the same union contract numbers on thousands of hit records. The very documents meant to preserve studio musicians’ anonymity betrayed them.
Think about it. Every time you heard “Good Vibrations,” “River Deep – Mountain High,” the Righteous Brothers, Nancy Sinatra, or Sonny and Cher, you were hearing Carol Kaye. She composed the soundtrack of an entire generation’s youth.
And yet the records still say nothing. She’s now over eighty. She wrote instructional books. She trained countless bassists. She is finally starting to be recognized by music historians who uncovered the truth about The Wrecking Crew.
But she never got what she deserved: her name on those albums. Credit for the music that defined an era. Recognition that those bass lines everyone associates with the “Beach Boys” were, in fact, Carol Kaye’s.
Fifty-five dollars a session. Ten thousand sessions. The most-played track of the twentieth century.
And the world didn’t know her name.
She was admitted to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2025 but refused, fuck yeah, Carol. Her official website is incredible.
COVER REVEAL! our talented designer, Miss Nat Mack, had to fit in a lot of discordant imagery such as: spider centaurs, medieval times, beetle aliens, goddesses, spaceships, tentacled brain slugs, and of course, m/m erotiscism.
the book's not out until next March, so pre-order links are still going live, but I'll list the early ones under the readmore:
guys please, my publisher is watching
I like this article because it’s not what you think it is.
the world is a strange and wonderous place
my rational mind: I know that frogurt is a silly way of abbreviating frozen yogurt
me every single time: Frog Yogurt
hey everyone "I" have something to show "you"
mutuals can always dm me but be warned i talk like your coworker who is trying too hard to get to know you and my response times are akin to the response times you might get if we were communicating by letter
if someone is beating you with a stick and you say "stop please" and people are like "please articulate the details exactly how you want society to function without that guy beating you with a stick" you are under no obligation to answer.
while the work of envisioning society without police is worthwhile, it is not necessary that each of us have it at the tip of our tongues, it is easy enough to say "not this."
because, after all, the goal is not to, as individuals or some vanguard, have the answers, the goal is to solve these problems and build new societies as a society, collectively, we offer processes, not answers.
the answers, we'll figure them out together, for now, abolish the police, we are not safer for having an armed gang that enacts racist violence with impunity.
— Margaret Killjoy
Always bear in mind that there is absolutely no legitimate evidence that Luigi was actually the one who killed the insurance company guy.
Of course he wasn't. He was at a party with me that day.
No but like literally, actually. All bits aside.
He didn't do it.
The cops very clearly planted evidence on him because they had to make an arrest because all eyes were on them and whoever actually did the deed was making them look stupid.
Why would the real killer hero have kept the weapon on his person and traveled two states over while carrying it and a manifesto in his bag, conveniently turning the crime into a federal matter? The same guy whose bag they found in a park, filled with monopoly money? Why did the police turn off their bodycams, take Luigi's stuff, drive a block away, turn their bodycams back on, go back into the restaurant, and then arrest him?
From the moment of his arrest, even left-of-center media has been presuming his guilt without examining anything (e.g. calling him "the killer" instead of "alleged" or "accused") and then when I say he didn't do it, the nearest person chimes in with some quip that tells me they think he did do it but should go free anyway. Don't get me wrong, I would have the same attitude if he had done it. But he didn't. It makes me feel like the only sane person in the world, even among my staunchly leftist friends.
You gotta understand that some people never really grow. They never learn their lesson. They never recognise their mistakes, they never acknowledge their faults, they never admit they were in the wrong. You will never receive an apology from them, and you will never see their behaviour change.
if you’re in the notes saying “this is wrong and cruel because everyone is capable of growth” you’re not understanding the post.
yes, everyone is CAPABLE of growth and change. everyone has the RIGHT to growth and change. but no, not everyone will CHOOSE growth and change. some people are not interested in and cannot be made interested in self-improvement or self-reflection. some people will go their entire lives refusing to admit they might be wrong or examine their own behaviors. some people will never, ever accept responsibility for the effects they have on people and the world around them. humans are varied; some are just always gonna be like this.
it is VITAL to understand this if you’re the kind of person who tends to pour energy into helping others, especially if there are already people knowingly hurting you who consistently show absolutely no interest in changing that behavior. you can’t forcibly make them want to change who they are. you aren’t going to find a way to convince them to suddenly care that their behavior is hurting someone.
the motivation to change and grow comes from within. others may inspire us, but WE have to decide we want to be better and work towards that. until they decide that for themselves, nobody else can do it for them. and they might never. people are mortal. we are a finite series of choices. it is entirely possible to make mostly selfish ones.
everyone CAN grow, but not everyone will. not everyone wants to, and nobody can force the desire to grow as a person on someone else.