'bout to rock our first fest of the new era mañana and we got a new audience just joining us, so allow me to reintroduce myself:

I AM Warflower Jones, aka cosmiccoffee9, aka the Tribal Chef, aka Thesaurus Rx, aka Doc Purplequill, aka Pockets Aplenty, aka Magic Mic, aka Sparkzilla, aka Kofi Kingslayer, aka John Locs, aka Príncipe Piña, aka SPC, aka Krayon Marx, aka Lucky Lefty, aka Rainbow Ryder, aka Cap Freeman, aka Campeón de las Calles...well, okayfine to speed this up you can just call me "AJ," but only offstage and only because we're friends.

now, I know what you're thinking: just where and how--tf, mind you--does such an outlandish individual even form, let alone find his way in front of a band onstage?

as we examined last time, everybody else on the roster plays a conventional instrument at a professional level, and does so with a distinctive style and background.

what, sonically, do I bring to this project?

well, as it relates to music directly, it is said that any aspiring practitioner must first deeply understand the tenets of a musical tradition or traditions...and so the basics of my music education--the parts that didn't come from ZiZi--emanated from my parents' CD tower. got super lucky they had great taste. 

they HAVE great taste, both are still around yaknow!

funk, disco, reggae, hip-hop, soul. noisy, unfettered styles of music, not afraid to be heard for whatever the listener may perceive. percussive. impactful. unmistakable. frequently groovy. often imperfect in one way or another...definitively human.

the splits were pretty even: pops introduced names like Bob Marley, Tina Turner, and Rick James (also fun to discover as an adult that he also liked to kick it with Tupac sometimes after we went to bed) while mommy offered Whitney, Sade, and MJ from her collection. Aretha Franklin. Teena Marie. Marvin. Mariah, even in the summer. 

he didn't care for Prince all that much; she despised his Keith Sweat record. they did agree strongly on Earth, Wind & Fire...me and sis concurred.

staying on the family tree, George Clinton is my great-uncle, which is definitely true as long as you don't investigate it at all.

...but hold on, looking back, James Brown invented or influenced most of those styles huh?

anyway there those voices were, day after day, year after year...this was a time before streaming, you see, so other than the radio (which was also fairly buttcheeks back in my day unless you love "Mambo No. 5" or whatever) you heard the 26 albums stored in your home--for a kid, the albums the big people had around--and almost zero others. 

in the house. in the car the times we had one. at family functions. for...what, a decade solid?

I heard everything they played and it made me, in part, who I will be on that stage tomorrow. who I am while typing this sentence.

...so maybe be careful what you put on around your kids, they just might replicate it.

all that typed, maybe the most consequential musical choice in the household might have been one with us kids directly in mind: "Now That's What I Call Music."

yes, the first one (and Vol. 2, much love Columbia House)!

first CD that was "mine"...and Amber's too I guess.

long careful with their curation of our household soundtrack, they must have done some research to find out what a good introduction to the wider world of music sounded like before deciding on a clean compilation of the last couple years' hit songs in the Anglosphere. hey, it wasn't fn Kidz Bop.

it did give me an excellent sampler platter of how music that didn't make the family playlist could sound...gave me a crash course in what I liked and didn't like which still holds up more or less.

Radiohead, cool! Backstreet Boys, skip. dig these distorted guitars on Tonic's "If You Could Only See." nothx Spice Girls, I will not be there.

"Barbie Girl" is a cheap pop, everybody knows that one...I still know all the words to "Flagpole Sitta," if I think hard enough. hell, that "Sunscreen" song shapes my worldview to this day.

guess I got a lot of my musical taste unintentionally, sitting here typing it out.

take Bad Religion, for example...my parents think religion is swell and so probably actively filtered such sounds away from me through the 90s. bet they didn't plan on having me discover the band through some college football video game. 

...wait no, I had "Crazy Taxi" before that! so many hours, soundtrack half a dozen 3-minute entries long. how's that one song go again?

'parched, cracked mouths, empty swollen guts
sun-baked pavement encroaches on us
haves and have-nots together at last,
brutally engaged in mortal combat!'

"Ten in 2010" hits different in 2025, huh? 

like bro I'm just a kid Dreamcasting a cartoon cab through Stunt Ramp San Francisco here...but you know what, sometimes a little wasabi in your cupcake keeps ya human.

yeah tho, guess the song that finally convinced me they weren't some video game band like the one from Sonic Adventure (somehow also isn't!) was "Atomic Garden"...people really don't listen to lyrics huh? 

in a related story, rap was a dominant genre as I came of age around the turn of the century--if you had a TV like I definitely did, it was almost impossible to miss the massive crews of 50 Cent's era--so I learned pretty early if you're gonna lead an outlaw lifestyle it's best to have some extra shoulders for backup. we are just a little bit g-g-g-g-g-G-Unit, like, a homeopathic dose. 

The Envelope splits a little thinner 5 ways, but we can always have eyes in every direction even if one of us closes 'em for a solo or something. worth it.

style points definitely count in the rap game, so Busta Rhymes' rapid fire flow has my flattery if not my imitation, Ludacris' boisterous bounce is an obvious ingredient, Miss E was as addictive as advertised, Andre 3000 showed a different side of credible coolness along with his word wizardry, and Cam'Ron's flagant word salad admittedly did get computers 'putin once upon a time...as "Prisencolinensinainciusol" teaches us, you can get people to chant along with anything by employing a suitable rhythm and intonation.

this feels like where I mention that Anthony Kiedis of the Red Hot Chili Peppers is also technically a rapper. sometimes. kinda. or something. like "W" is a vowel.

still, a deep anti-authoritarian streak developed under the boot of late stage capitalism drew me toward DMX's dark deconstructions of "civil society" and Eminem's unhinged lyrical dissertations...eventually I found some Public Enemy tapes through my boy Tony Hawk and learned the proper respect for contemporary law enforcement.

so I'm definitely a better lyricist than singer...but sht, that ain't stop Dylan.

wait, back to Kiedis real quick...as a fan of the band's discography, I'll be the first to recognize that Singing is not his absolute standout stat...way higher ratings in key frontsman categories like Charisma and Stage Presence.

still, the band wouldn't sound the same with anyone else. he composes the lyrics and many of the melodies. he delivers them as only he can...or "would," I suppose.

in a collective of musicians with extraordinary proficiency--even the Chili Peppers' detractors respect Flea, yaknow?--his vocalizations are perhaps their signature instrument.

sound familiar?

we are not RHCP--ZiZi has sworn to ensure this--but for better or for worse there's a generous dash of their capsaicin in this dish.

some of my influences are less obvious: "Slippery" Jim DiGriz was an inspiration on my musical journey. 

now, ole Jimmy is a fictional character, star of a book series called "The Stainless Steel Rat" whose bottomless bag of slick tricks once saw him infiltrate a prison planet for Plot Reasons by passing himself off as a member of a rock band...but the Gorillaz are fictional characters and nobody complains about them, not even me.

guess we can't leave out Linkin Park if we're talking about middle school. we don't have to talk about blink-182.

it was System of a Down that taught me I could just go ahead and scream my thoughts to music...repeat it, make it catchy, LOUDER AND LOUDER AND LOUDER AND LOUDER AND BEEEEEEE ABRAAAAASIVE YET SOMEHOW MELOOOOOODIC AH AH AAAAAAH AHHHHHH AHHHHHHHH!!!

Kanye West brought a breath of fresh air, a cerebrally rebellious perspective, a willingness to upcycle, and a casual disregard for genre to music before his tragic death sometime in the mid-2000s. 

how sad that his career was cut short when he was crushed under an anvil that fell from a Paris boutique hotel during a rooftop silverware crafting class and that he hasn't made music for well over 15 years as a result--also about that weird Nazi hologram they made of him online for no reason--but he's dead now and there's nothing to be done about it. dead. 

I have made my peace with this, QDEP.

what else, what else...John Lennon once said "I'm an ahtist, you give me a fuckin' tuber and I'll getcha something out of it."

wait no that was "The Depahted." I bet Lennon probably said some sht like that tho.

...but honestly, that's word: "I'll getcha something out of it"--this is The AJ Way.

Lauryn Hill taught me you only gotta really hit mfs one time and they might stay hit for decades...I do plan to pen more than one album, and ima go ahead and try to show up on timeish for my gigs, but there's something to be said for conservation of energy (he typed in the midst of an unsolicited musical manifesto).

oh, here's something: first live concert I ever went to was actually--if you can fucking fathom it--Maroon 5!

now, in my defense I was working as a seat lad at the stadium where Levine & Co. were making a stop on what had to have been a tour promoting their first album...can never say "I wouldn't see 'em if ya paid me" because that is precisely what happened. 

actually had never heard of Maroon 5 before that day at work, but by the time I clocked out they had a fan...for a bit. still stand by "Songs About Jane" as an album! 

that stadium usher job is also how I got into Green Day around "American Idiot"...gee whiz, that George W. Bush is sure the worst President the United States will ever have, eh? 

ask Rage, political music ages like honey...the spirit, at least.

in fact, the first song our band ever performed in public was Muse's "Uprising" because I knew it would become a fun fact I could share with you some years hence, see there it goes.

also, it's not really visible in the finished product, more like deep source code, legacy programming assets, but we're also approximately 0.0812% Insane Clown Posse!

you don't know their music, and neither do I...but what I do understand about the band's ethos is that outsiders belong, the uncomfortable are comforted. that's my jam.

they support local...who tf else drinks Faygo? 

they have a strong DIY culture, with a career spanning decades while enduring almost the polar opposite of promotion in popular media, and less have "fans" than a whimsical little army. 

I want all that very much for ourselves.

now, you take the performer that results from this ridiculous array of surface influences, make it study a few years of political science, juice it up with a massive infusion of OTT pro wrestling energy--again, thanks ICP--and with a splash of Chemical X, under sufficiently dystopian conditions, you just might have yourself one Warflower Jones.

...but probably not...after all, there is only one, and if we're both lucky enough you'll see him tomorrow.

all power to The People. 

--Flor!