Aging Musician Retires, Billions Yawn.

 I have decided to celebrate 40+ years in music by retiring from it. The reasons for this are myriad, but it is mostly due to my sense that the time has passed for me to do much good in the world with my work as the future trajectory of our civilization (and our planet) seems fairly obvious...and that my output is VERY out of step with most of the musical trends of the past couple decades or so, to the extent that the idea of developing an audience at this juncture seems improbable.

I'm grown tired of swimming against the tide, and it would be against my principals to swim WITH it...so it’s time to let it all go.

From this point onward I will probably not do much more than post the occasional self-indulgent cover tune on YouTube. It is highly unlikely that I will release more original music.

All of that being said, I am planning on getting my current ten albums in front of as many pairs of ears as possible over the next couple of years, thus this email. I am hosting all of these current albums on a file-sharing service called Sync. They are MP3s encoded at 320kbps and each directory includes lyrics, credits and artwork as well. These are all FREE...however, you can always donate at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/johnludi if you feel so moved.

The albums are listed below, along with my best attempt at a description. I’m extremely eclectic and it’s pretty much impossible to lock my work into any specific style or genre...each album is very much it’s own thing.

Feel free to share these albums (or this message itself)...you can review them, play them on your station, annoy your neighbors, frighten your pets, etc., if they appeal to you. As with any other creative work not in the realm of public domain, please don’t use it in commercials or such things without my express permission. If you think any of my songs/compositions would be perfect for your film project or whatnot, just get in touch with me.

Also, my interviews, off-grid living, travel and assorted live/ one-off music videos are on YouTube, if that is of an interest to you.

(I also, for the sake of non-grid dependent posterity, am interested in sending out some limited physical copies of some of my albums (in CD and/or DVD collection form). This would be limited to the continental US due to media mail postal rates. Let me know if this is of an interest to you.)

Thank you...and best of luck in the times to come...you’ll likely need it.

2022 - The Quiet Earth Orchestra - World Without Words 2
(Genres - Ambient, Instrumental Prog, Soundtrack)
https://ln5.sync.com/dl/0f88b0ef0/buemczpt-qz22gsdk-44uirtrb-sttvgv4x

This is an album of Instrumental Progressive and Ambient pieces and is probably the last album I will ever make. I wanted to go out on an up note. It is fairly innocuous and pleasant to listen to, with lots of layered textures that sound rather nice in a pair of headphones.

2020 - John Ludi - Mistakes Have Been Made
(Genres - Rock, Indie, Prog)
https://ln5.sync.com/dl/cd4d39720/7tfk5nf8-uktc942a-egzeza2z-wrrs8w3b

My final album as a socially-concerned eclectic singer-songwriter-instrumentalist. It’s all over the map musically, but could be considered Progressive in the same sense that Kate Bush, Peter Gabriel, David Bowie and Todd Rundgren could be considered Progressive. I consider this the apex of my recording career and the best one to start with.

2015 - John Ludi - Obsolescence
(Genres - Rock, Indie)
https://ln5.sync.com/dl/cd86c5fb0/cn5b65xe-5xgsawrm-k9ihes2g-76asmw7b

One of two albums I put out in 2015, it is the “internally-focused” album. It’s an album of songs reflecting on aging, loss, and mortality, for the most part.

2015 - John Ludi - Rage
(Genres - Rock, Indie, Punk)
https://ln5.sync.com/dl/419c6df60/ixnrrhhq-kps8djhh-fjpuq45z-bn77ifs3

One of two albums I put out in 2015, it is the “externally-focused” album. A lot of my older “punk” songs from the past were redone, as well as a few new pieces. The topics are generally political, environmental, social...and overall deal with a civilization in a state of collapse.

2008 – The Quiet Earth Orchestra – The Quiet Earth Orchestra
(Genres - Prog Rock)
https://ln5.sync.com/dl/b5cff4a30/ijg3q7pq-wt2jqeb7-rnqh54ht-rymn476t

This is my homage to 70’s Progressive Rock, and has occasional elements of Yes, King Crimson, and ELP blended together with a darker Gothic musical and lyrical sensibility.

2008 – Soft War – Soft War
(Genres - Rock, Indie)
https://ln5.sync.com/dl/4a539e890/24z6h6py-z3s4zk8b-ye5yx3k6-4e5ws7uu

Much more of a Rock/Indie Rock album, but still very eclectic and diverse in its presentation and scope and a rare collaborative effort (I mostly work alone) that I am extremely proud of.

2005 – John Ludi – Rise Above or Fall Below
(Genres - Rock, Indie)
https://ln5.sync.com/dl/3b1eba2e0/7tacia2p-bx54uzpa-yw62ieaz-82j8wtb8

A favorite of many of those who know my work, it is a study in musical eclecticism that is lyrically focused on notions of materialism versus spirituality and transcendence.

2001 – John Ludi – Hell’s Laughter and Heaven’s Ache
(Genres - Rock, Indie, “Goth”)
https://ln5.sync.com/dl/cc1f7b710/x9zf5v45-trnqprra-hsbk9w3a-et7gu35n

My first release as “John Ludi”, this album is not the best work I’ve ever created in terms of production, but there are a great many songs that I am extremely proud of.

1995 - The Quiet Earth Orchestra - World Without Words
(Genres - Ambient, Soundtrack, Worldbeat)
https://ln5.sync.com/dl/34dee06f0/imqmbeqr-cx7cm7rm-fmptmcf3-gqzndym4

One of the few projects from my earlier years that I have decided is worth putting out there, this is an instrumental work that (like WWW2 from 2022) alternates between ambient pieces and percussion-based pieces. Interesting and (mostly) pleasant background music, basically.

1982-1989 – John Ludi – 4-Track Wonderland
(Genres - Rock, Prog, Experimental)
https://ln5.sync.com/dl/70a4764a0/fsypqh6e-sdi6g3ia-cewdbu7h-7wipmtut

Musical baby pictures, basically...but some of them are pretty decent musical baby pictures. If you find my more recent work compelling in any way, this would be a good way to hear how I started out on the path I followed over the past 40+ years.

John of The Mountain Gets Humbled

 I wrote this as a response to an FB post...figured it was OK enough to make it one of my infrequent blog posts. Hope you're all enjoying The End Times. Tip your wait staff.

Roughly three years into my yurt-dwelling off-grid adventure in the hills of The Driftless region of Wisconsin, I experienced a medical issue that, while extremely minor in the vast scheme of things, led to one of those humbling “no man is an island” moments that forced me to revisit some of my notions as a “Prepper”.

I had endured a full winter in the yurt, having slogged through temps of -25F without actually dying (unless I have and this current moment is part of a hell that I probably deserve), and I was feeling pretty full of myself. I was sitting on several years of stored food, seeds, multiple means of treating water, gold and silver, various means of self-protection, cash, and a good basic working knowledge of foraging, gardening, and most of the other ways of keeping oneself healthy and alive during a period of severe systemic interruptions to life as we know (knew) it. It all seemed to be working even better than I had planned.

Until I awoke one morning with a boulder in my eye.

“Why is it ALWAYS my right eye?”, I thought as some horrible little SOMETHING dragged its nails across my cornea. I sat upright, fully alarmed as I pulled my upper eyelid away from my eye, seeking relief. I have blepharitis in that particular eye, so I’m used to a certain amount of pain and irritation, especially when exposed to dust or mold or too much cold air, but this was something different; this was obviously a foreign body that had inexplicably found its way under my eyelid during the night.

Putting aside the relative improbability of such a thing, I spent the next half hour trying all the various tricks I knew of how to make such things go away...to no avail. An ER visit was in order. Having no insurance at the time I was loath to even think about it, but I was alone and in extreme pain and figured that we were close enough to everything falling apart that my perfect credit history could stand to take the hit if the bill was too high.

So I drove to the local rural hospital and my adventure there could fill several more paragraphs as I apparently drew some existential short straw as the people there seemed to not be programmed to deal with something as prosaic as “ow...I dun got sumthin in muh eye, doc!” (Why they would want me to take a vision test when one of my eyes was inoperable was beyond me...but I figured they needed to feel like they were doing SOMETHING and wanted a least a few reasons to charge me an extraordinary amount of money for close to nothing.)

They told me, in essence, that they couldn’t help me...but there was an eye clinic right down the hallway that opened in fifteen minutes, a fact which would have been really useful had they informed me of that when I first showed up.

($1,100 for all their ineffectual fumblings was the outcome of THAT part of the drama. ‘Murica!!!)

As it turned out, it was just a tiny round little white thing of unknown origin that had embedded itself into my upper eyelid. No big deal; the doctor at the clinic had it out in a few seconds...and THAT bill was only $105. Had there been someone else around that could have flipped up my eyelid and swabbed it with a q-tip I’d have saved myself a lot of pain and expense, but I was flying solo at that juncture.

So with all that prepping and all of that planning, my fiercely independent little life was thrown completely off balance by a tiny little piece of nothing roughly a quarter of the size of the head of a pin. It was a comeuppance and a lesson; one of those “for the want of a nail” kind of things...a mosquito in a room full of mosquito-brown tapestries.

So when I hear these ammosexuals wax heroic about their macho visions of a world where they can flex their flabby muscles and let out an off key wolf howl on top of a mountain while waving their AKs in the air over their pointed little heads, I giggle a fair bit.

Good luck with that, Rambo.