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Hopscotch To Heaven

by Young Southpaw

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1.
It’s like table tennis you know... I mean you’re not playing ...with actual tables...... hitting em back and forth.....I mean..I can’t imagine..well maybe they do make rackets strong enough to hit a - but that’s a lotta..... you gotta put a lot inta your swing to hit a...unless they’re like miniature tables you know... instead a balls..... but I figure, you say table tennis I picture like actual literal furniture... I mean nothin’ crazy like a banquet table... I mean that wouldn’t even fit on a court...really....... unless that was what they use as the net, you know..... but just like a regular table, seats four.... or six... two..... two goin’....the long, longer ways..... and then one on each end... or maybe just a square ya know... like an even-numbered family .........imagine if they had a son named Steven.........but woah!...what if he was an only child! I’m not, I’m not sayin’ families have to be four people, I’m just thinkin’... cause like, regardless of how many members... there’s always a power struggle ya know... the children expected to obey the parents, who have their own internal dynamics.. but a square of four you know everyone’s equal... has that ever happened in the history of the universe?.... Have there ever been squares?!.... Is square just like a concept that we aspire to? L7 ya know...how did that band eat?!... Or do we even aspire to it, what with all the inequality runnin rampant and everyone out to get everybody else?..... tryin’ to get ahead themselves, just lookin’ out for number one... there are no number ones in squares...I mean the square root of one is one...all for one ya know...this is like the I in team of shapes... well I mean you could write a literal number one inside a square, I, don’t get me wrong, I’m sure anyone can do that....... I don’t know why you would......startin’ a hopscotch game or something..and therein lies the power struggle...everyone out playin’ hopscotch when others be wantin’ dinner... or worse yet, hopscotch addicts all standin’ lonely on the street, having just made a square with a number one in it outta some chalk they found washed up in the gutter.... but even in the depths of addiction they don’t wanna appear too desperate so they haven’t drawn out the whole game..........just wanna make it seem all casual when someone walks by, they say ‘oh would you look at this..... looks like someone put a one in a square’...then pausing with what they hope is a casual demeanor...’hey, remember hopscotch?’ this is like the outdoor version of a game of pool ya know...and then like pool balls, they’re round, the number one’s in a circle...on a sphere! .. which you then put into a triangle.. for the break!...... and then pool tables they’re rectangular -rectangle? I nearly killed ‘em –.................. but pool tables man, more proof for this nonexistence of squares idea...and woah pool tables there’s another one.....you can’t swim on it........but I mean is that what the blue green felt of the tabletop is supposed to represent?...... water?.......... bluegreen is more the color of algae............and that, would slow up the progress of the ball... So yeah, hopscotch man...woo, you got the hops of beer and then scotch as in like...scotch........I mean this is weird for a children’s game, you know... imagine at the end like a distillery appears..like it’s some sort of magic ritual...well I mean, luckily that has never happ-well I can’t say it’s never happened, I don’t have the records of every hopscotch game ever played in the history of the universe..... I don’t even have one of those records........ nor have I ever seen any on ebay..... I mean would it be worth any of our times to go thru such accounts.. or even keep ‘em in the first place?....... I mean kids often play it by themselves, I doubt any one of them are that meticulous.... though maybe there is like at least one somewhere..some freakin’ genius who’s got it all under control, can make anything appear at the end of the ten..steps..or however many you wanna use... but I mean Stairway to Heaven, think of all Jimmy Page coulda done with it if it was.. Hopscotch To Heaven..... using the ten squares and all the kabbalistic meanings of the Sephiroth......I mean you don’t usually build your own stairway – I don’t mean to make sweeping generalizations, but in my life I’ve found that to be true... I’ve never met anyone who has built their own stairs – up or down – I mean people rarely even sweep their own stairs.. to get back to that generalization.... but you do draw your own hopscotch games but relating this to the kabbalistic Tree Of Life, the ten Sephiroth you know, the one in the square..that I’m havin’ so much trouble gettin’ past... is like the first one Malchuth you know..the Earth, Kingdom, literal translation there, you get up higher and higher like that Jackie Wilson song....then onta Yesod, Hod, Tiphereth, all them... and then of course, has anyone ever used 22 steps like the journey of the Tarot... just hoppin’ thru ‘em like nobody’s business...nobody’s fool, like that Cinderella song....Slade had one too....and woah, Fool In The Rain....wash the hopscotch game right off....no wonder Jimmy Page was so skeptical..... but The Fool!..tarot card ya know.... he’s got one foot off the cliff already... startin’ his own mystical game a hopscotch..I mean no wonder this is so addictive... specially if you could just draw 10 squares and then a whole distillery appears at the end... I mean at that point you’re probably more addicted to the alcohol than the actual game of hopscotch... though this could also be used for teenagers who still aren’t old enough to go to the bar...circumvent all those drinking laws...though that’s prolly why you never see teenagers playin’ hopscotch......be too suspicious!... people would know they’re only doing it to get to the distillery... unless they’ve first learned to make themselves invisible... but does that mean the distillery would also be invisible?... you can’t have distilleries just poppin’ into existence from outta nowhere like that... with no one around...I mean if a distillery appears in the forest and there’s no one there to see it.... does that mean invisible teenagers have conjured it into existence with a playground game? hooo! but Hopscotch To Heaven ya know..Highway To Heaven.. imagine if Michael Landon was in an AC/DC cover band... I mean talk about a bonzanza... freakin blowin minds all over the place...Shake the Foundations of the entire world, well beyond those of that Little House On The Prairie...... Shake Your Foundations though, that’s a Brian Johnson song..... and ya gotta figure Highway To Hell was a Bon Scott number.... and album... though maybe combinin’ the two is where his golden goose soars... Fly On The Wall came out, what, 1985.... Highway To Heaven ran like 84-89, he could be doin’ some Brian Johnson stuff..... I mean he was Michael Landon.... the television star.. he could play any AC/DC songs he wants ya know... I mean he’d prolly wanna go with Ride On......... ya know that slow one off Dirty Deeds, aw man that’s a tune..perfect soundtrack for those long wagon rides across the prairie you know.... but I mean could you play hopscotch on the prairie?... imagine a bunch a prairie dogs just throwin’ little stones and then hoppin’ along...so cute, ya know... but I mean as for the humans...be hard to chalk the high grass like that... you could spray paint it but spray paint hadn’t been invented yet at the time the show is supposed to be taking place... though of course it had at the time the show was being made... I mean what a time to be alive – spray paint and tv’s...imagine spraypainting your tv... well I guess that would be the logical outcry once you saw that they were using spray paint in Little House On The Prairie.......and you wanna complain about such an egregious anachronism..and rightfully so..... heck you could even make a game a hopscotch out of it.. show your outrage by lining up ten television sets on their backs and just stomping through their screens after you’re done spray painting them with the numbers one through ten...and like it’s highly unlikely that you’re gonna be the only one...reasonable to expect that your entire neighborhood would just be street after street of smashed and battered television sets.. and roaming disgruntled Little House On The Prairie viewers.... and it was a national show so it would just be community after community stretching from coast to coast, sea to spray painted sea..of carnage though I mean..this seems like a lot of work to protest something that never happened
2.
Ya know that whole idea that if you had an infinite amount of monkeys and an infinite number of typewriters That given enough time they would eventually write the complete works of Shakespeare Do you think this was what was goin on in Shakespeare’s parents’ minds when they were tryin to decide whether or not to have children? If like they were only having kids because of their own literary aspirations. I mean if so, I wonder if they seriously considered the monkey alternative Cause like first of all, the typewriter wasn’t even invented back then Though like - It’s a less common saying but I guess it’d be the same thing if you had an infinite number of monkeys and an infinite amount of paper And jars of ink and quills Feather pens, ya know, that they used to write with in those days All infinite of course Well, I don’t know if it’s the same thing I mean monkeys don’t really It’s not a given they can - or will - write in English That’d be crazy if they wrote something out longhand and when translated from like the ancient dialect of a particularly hip sect of Druids It turned out to be the complete works of Ol’ Willy Shakes I mean would Shakespeare’s parents have considered inventing the typewriter? To aid these monkeys along ya know I mean this isn’t your usual preamble to amorous activity I don’t know how many people it gets in the mood to make babies I guess what I’m saying is Their decision to procreate and NOT attempt to amass an infinite number of monkeys And typewriters Which they’d need to invent first Or trick the monkeys into inventing I mean this choice not to do that Whether out of laziness or sheer venality, whatever it was This greatly advanced theatre and literature as we know it People always credit Shakespeare with writing these but I mean his parents made him Opted not to get all those monkeys together ya know Though maybe that was their thang Their particular kin-k Maybe there were, maybe the saying comes from that there were what looked like an infinite amount of monkeys present ya know In their boudoir When they were going to do the deed, ya know I mean I can’t say for sure, I don’t think anybody can There’s no record of it, I mean none of his plays deal with this Unless it’s like hidden in one Maybe As You Like It Wooo, subtext, you know I mean Shakespeare scholars would know better than I Of course this proves this might not be an either/or situation Is this like Schrödinger’s Orangutang I mean, ugh, imagine opening up a box and it’s just filled with an infinite amount of deceased monkeys And they’ve bludgeoned each other to death using the complete leatherbound works of William Shakespeare I mean this would have to give mathematicians’ pause, you know Before they go revealing more secrets of famous playwrights’ parents’ private lives like that Pause as in P-A-U-S-E I’m not saying the very same theoretical math professors would then start turning into monkeys Beginning with their hands The very hands they’d then be typing with And who’s to say monkeys would even want to read Shakespeare, you know Especially with him using the term 'jackanapes' so willy-nilly offensively like that You’d think they’d wanna like write scripts for Davey Jones, Mike Nesmith, and co. Imagine that How good those shows would have been if the writer’s room was packed with an infinite amount of monkeys Who thought they could do better than William Shakespeare I mean the series could have run for decades, well into the 80s and 90s I mean think of the guest stars Write an episode where The Ramones give Peter Gabriel shock treatment as revenge Maybe taking a cue from The Beatles song, Everybody’s Got Something To Hide Except etc. They rewrite The Wizard Of Oz, and just keep flying higher and higher, trying figure out where Icarus went wrong They start rewriting the Greek myths I mean this would be gripping television Making them tons of dough They could pay somebody else to write Shakespeare
3.
So ya know when Jaco Pastorius, ya know greatest bass player who ever lived, he was asked once in an interview – ‘where is the future of the electric bass going?’ and he stood up and said ‘well right now it’s going to use the bathroom’... I mean that’s pretty funny...but it’s also so dangerous ya know!...he’s saying that he’s the future of the electric bass..but what if he went and just flushed that all down the toilet?!...and then there were no more bass players ever, ya know like The Doors...I don’t wanna go down another Doors rabbit hole, but did he close that bathroom door?...it’s a relevant question I guess...or did he leave it wide open so the whole world could see him flushing the entire future of low frequencies down the toilet, man?... ...of course this would be a disaster...I mean first off those low frequenices would cause some serious damage to the whole septic system of the city... and then people wouldn’t know what to do, I mean in time they’d start hearing the rumors again of the old bass players and they’d havta like...dive down into the toilet..ya know like Slothrop goin’ afta the harmonica in Gravity’s Rainbow...though the harmonica is not a bass instrument, too small ya know...though in uh Against The Day he has them playin’ bass harmonicas...though ya know bass harmonicas wouldn’t fit down a toilet, though again I guess a bass guitar wouldn’t either... though, even as Jaco said, we’re here talking about the whole idea of bass frequencies...which like I’ve already started are probably even more dangerous to just send down the toilet like that...that’s a disaster no one wants to be a part of... ...do more damage than Boston Baked Beans...which as you’ll recall Boston is precisely where Slothrop actually goes down the toilet, Roseland Ballroom...roses, huh...Outkast you know....and Roseland was where Malcolm X was the shoeshine boy... Slothrop’s harmonica goes down the toilet and he goes down after it, well there’s that scene from Trainspotting ya know...echoes that when he loses his opium suppository if ya need a visual, man...ugh...woah...imagine havin’ to do that to save the bass...how low can you go, as Public Enemy asked....well, I think we’ve found our answer then you had Public Enema as Iron Maiden said on the No Prayer For The Dying album...ya got Eddie comin’ up outta the grave on the cover...but who’s to say he didn’t first traverse the whole septic system while he was down there...lookin’ for his own harmonica...or ya know just curious as to what gets lost down there...but No Prayer For The Dying...I mean Steve Harris, Maiden’s main songwriter is a bass player himself and I doubt he’d want to lose all those low end frequencies... but Eddie man, he had all those adventures...and what if like nothing is ever lost, like the present just lives on top of the past, like somewhere way underneath ancient Egyptian civilization is still going on...like time is like a cake and these are all layers...ya know like the Powerslave record...well I guess cake is more equated with the French Revolution, I mean there’s an idea for a Maiden album...maybe they were even thinkin’ of it when they recorded Murders In The Rue Morgue, usin’ Rue as the French word for street and all that... but then Maiden prolly sensed this cause the next record was called Somewhere In Time...but what I’m sayin’ is perhaps Eddie was down in the underworld exploring all these crazy times and he somehow winds up in the Boston toilet system in the 30s and meets the fictional character of Tyrone Slothrop..but in real life!...the two of them then teaming up to try and convince Maiden to record a cover of It Takes Two with special guest vocalist ol’ Tommy P himself!...but then again which It Takes Two song?!..Rob Base or Marvin Gaye & Kim Weston...well I guess by the nature of the numba two they should do both! perfect for a 7” single too! one on each side...this idea’s got legs! let’s do it, Maiden! but ya know, goin’ back to this idea of civilizations literally being on top of one another...well I guess there’s gotta be a better way to travel down to them than by the toilet but that’s what we got for now...well I mean if that’s the case, maybe we can get down to lost kingdom of Atlantis! I mean that would be rad...I loved that Intellivision game as a kid...imagine if they had record labels back then, I mean you can’t say they didn’t...well you can say it but....but I mean Atlantis Records...prolly a precursor to Atlantic Records...just change the S to a C, you know like with the Russian spelling of USSR being CCCP...did I get all the C’s in there...maybe, I don’t know...ya know because of the Cyrillic alphabet...I’m not saying the Atlanteans were Communists...let’s not head down that route...but ya know who was on Atlan-tic Records...well only Led Zeppelin...and with this whole travelin’ to the past via toilet tubes...well that could be where Jimmy Page got his idea for the water slides!...I mean they had that whole Travellin’ Riverside Blues song too! I mean Atlantis was supposedly this very advanced ancient civilization, I mean I wonder if what did them in was finding out that David Lee Roth would leave Van Halen?...or maybe it just coincided ya know, everything started to crumble at the exact same time they received this information from the future...maybe from Eddie bouncing around time like that, Iron Maiden’s Eddie not EVH!.. it all just seems acausal...I wonder if Maiden and Van Halen ever played at a festival together...though you’d think if the Atlanteans were as far along as some people claim, if they’d invented time-travel they would’ve made that happen..for sure... then you got that otha underwata kingdom, ya know Lemuria...which I find a strange name cause lemurs...don’t swim...or actually I think some of them might but they are not aquatic creatures ya know..by nature...so maybe they meant lemmings ya know?...throwing themselves off the cliff inta the ocean...Zeppelin all cranked up... Lemmings ya know...maybe!..maybe they meant Lemmy! ya know from Motorhead...everything louder than everything else, ya know that Motorhead saying...though apparently that saying comes from that live Deep Purple album ‘Made In Japan’ bringin’ it back to Iron Maiden again, woah!..but ya know the spellings of Made In being different between the bands, that woulda been crazy if Deep Purple named it Made In M-A-I-D-E-N ya know..kinda cool though acknowledging Maiden’s magnificence like that..but I mean the word ‘everything’ implies the bass too, ya know in ‘everything louder than everything else’ then you got Nicki Minaj with that Superbass tune, imagine the band that Nicki Minaj and Lemmy coulda had...that woulda been amazing!..I mean they could still do it ya know...just get in contact via séance or something...and record it...I mean they prolly couldn’t, well no, they could tour..just gotta keep that medium link open, again like in Gravity’s Rainbow!...though if the concert promoters in ancient Atlantis got wind of this, you know they’d be whisking them off too...we gotta be careful, ya know, so these acts can tour in the present time as well so we can get to see ‘em... so I guess it seems like Lemuria had a lotta bass...was this like the division between the two kingdoms, between Lemuria and Atlantis...Atlantis was all like, well no cause the bass got flushed there to begin with..and they didn’t want it?..I guess cause they had heard about David Lee Roth leavin’ Van Halen and they didn’t know if Michael Anthony and Eddie would continue with the high backing vocals so they wanted to preserve all those high frequencies – I mean they needn’t have worried – but they didn’t know of course, that event was so disruptive..they were too heavily invested in George Orwell – to them Orwell spelt with a nautical A in there between the O and the R...so did they just shuffle the bass off to Lemuria where it – but all water is connected, you can’t have bass in one and not in another section, maybe that is what drove the two kingdoms to despair and why they don’t exist anymore...and why Lemmy had to appear on..on terrestrial land, you know?...it’s a shame he and Nicki Minaj didn’t start their band together when they could have both enjoyed it in corporeal form...and then her Starships, you always hear about those connections too with these lost kingdoms...I mean did Thomas Jefferson.. take...a...starship..down..the..toilet...to Atlantis...I mean why would he do that?.......well I mean yeah I guess it’s kinda obvious if ya think about, you’d want to be in some sort of ship, some kind of protection if you’re going down toilet pipes...huh... but Jefferson Airplane were from the Bay Area, the Lemuria side of the world!..so if Jefferson was going to Atlantis...was he a spy?......though I mean maybe it wasn’t even political, we can’t jump to those conclusions..ya know how soccer teams watch tapes of their opponents... well I bet..I bet baseball was a completely different game underwater ya know..playin’ with actual bass frequencies..and that’s how..the whole idea of...sonar...well I mean they got it from the whales..obviously..now whales..woo!..they musta been a team ta beat! some serious mofos there...I wish we had access to the records of those games..even just knowin’ the scores of one or two of those games would surely be eye-opening! e-y-e and just the letter I, as in the self ya know both of ‘em...whales usin’ sonar, cause it’s dark down there too...but obviously too that’s what we base – no pun intended – submarines on...did they hafta stop playin’ cause of the submarines interferin’ with the natural course of action...but maybe that’s just the way of things..when you’re playin’ games with..sonic frequencies...man...dolphins too, porpoises...woo! I wonder if the bats ever got in on this!...for some sort of, well not international, though that certainly may apply too, but inter-environmental inter-ecosystem what would it be! two Es right there but not so E-Z!...like DJ EZ-Rock who collaborated with Rob Base on one of the It Takes Two songs...Rob Base, it’s in his name!...but like the Miami Dolphins, were teams species-based? so that one of the teams was the Dolphin Miamis? I mean you can’t say there’s no I in Miami..there’s two for goodness sakes!...and there’s an I AM...ya know like God said to Moses in Exodus...I mean does Miami just use iambic pentameter...or like the Dolphin Miamis instead of well maybe not instead of cause why limit ourselves, but along with cheerleaders they also have bards that communicate solely through iambic pentameter? or is that why they were bringing all these bands down?!....and does that mess up the sonar? like there are rules that no poems can be composed whenever a match is in play?...I don’t know, again I wish we had those records... but then like..did they have bases as well, like b-a-s-e?..like Rob Base...like in baseball?..I don’t know!...I mean where were they actually playing? cause like when ya say it, ya kinda picture like a baseball diamond ya know...just to latch on to what you know...but it coulda been anything, specially if the bass being referred to is subsonic frequencies, underwater no less...can’t run to those, those are moving!...all this played long ago, in a kingdom far..well not that far away, spatially it’s still here on Earth...I don’t wanna cram Star Wars inta this...unless like that’s the name of the Star-fish team, like the Starfish Wars...ya gotta imagine if animals on terrestrial land had teams like this the Pigs would also have the team name Wars...War Pigs bein’ cranked out everytime the Pigs took the field...good thing the Starfish and the Pigs could never play each other, ya know cause of the land/ocean divide...though maybe in the future...but of course there hadda be underwater stars...ya know, of the game!...though ya couldn’t really have baseball cards underwater..they’d get too soggy ya know...unless they were like holograms, I mean they did have that advanced technology down there but I mean people do still play electric bass today...so I mean obviously... well I can’t say it didn’t happen cause it might have happened concurrently with!...continuing here on Earth Jaco may have thought he flushed..them..down the toilet...but maybe like somebody, like as he was turning away, while the water was still flushing – imagine if this happened in Flushing, Michigan? that’d be crazy, I don’t think it did..though maybe in future generations the tale will..morph into that...but imagine there’s someone standing outside that very bathroom door, who knows it’s gonna happen, a messenger from Atlantis..or Lemuria...or Lemmy himself!...and as soon as like the coast was clear, as soon as Jaco had exited the latrine doorway whether it was open or not, this man just jumped inta the toilet a la Slothrop and Ewan McGregor a la Rentboy..just jumped right in, jumpin’ jack flash – Jumpin’ Jack Flush!..that’s prolly, that’s, that’s what his name should be...nipping at your nose and all that..cause I mean man, the smell...but this hero saved all the bass frequencies, ya know Joseph Campbell Greek myth, the whole hero descending into the underworld, well what a better representation or heck it actually is an under-world – but like with Hercules with the winds, wait I’m thinkin’ of Odysseus but you know it’s like Odysseus meeting Hercules in those stables, just get a fresh breeze through to get the smell out – but like maybe some of the bass frequencies escaped down into the kingdoms of Atlantis and Lemuria but he pulled most of em back up through the top of the toilet out that bathroom door, snuck em past Jaco continuin’ on with the interview and gave rise to all those bass heavy albums today

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Words by Stone

Released by Stone Soup
SIP001

Cover art by Yulia Lapko
Mastered by Scott Craggs at Old Colony Mastering

"Young Southpaw is like a preacher, I was instantly hooked by his voice and how quickly he goes off on a tangent. You know how it is at night when you are really really tired and all you want to do is sleep and your brain goes “No Way! We are going to think about everything in the universe until sleep is no longer a possibility” that is what is happening here…Loved it, so absurd and had me smiling the whole time..." - Jason Denness, Gnome Appreciation Society

"The new album is an amalgam of delightfully meandering word play, intellectual rabbit holes, and general absurdist playtime inside a giant sandbox world...Southpaw, of course, takes the absurdity of words and runs them into the ground, imagining unthinkable situations, and following faintly logical threads into cavernous mind depths." - Comedy Cake 

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released June 18, 2022

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Young Southpaw Connecticut

"From the existential thread that ties Jean-Paul Sartre to Jon Bon Jovi, to the skinny on what’s floating in TLC’s ‘Waterfalls’, and the possibility that Al Pacino is coaching boxing kangaroos in space, wise-fool Southpaw's ramblings lead listeners on a surreal journey through doors they didn't even know existed, into a highly original, deeply funny land of pop culture confusion." - popbollocks ... more

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