“You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court’s decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws. One may well ask: “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that “an unjust law is no law at all.”

Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.”

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Letter from a Birmingham Jail
April 16, 1963

Today our nation honors what would’ve been this week the eightieth birthday of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., on the eve of the inauguration of Barack Hussein Obama as the 44th president of these United States.  I was sixty-four days old when an assassin’s bullet cut down Dr. King in the prime of his life.  Today I am six-hundred forty days older than Dr. King when he was killed.  Tomorrow I will see something few people my age and older thought we’d ever see, yet something Dr. King had dreamed from the start.

There remains a grave injustice to be battled, the most unjust of laws to be disobeyed, a law that by its definition is not rooted in eternal law and natural law: the man made code that declares nature itself to be illegal, the prohibition on cannabis.  Yet when I mention marijuana law reform in the context of the great civil rights struggles in America, so many are quick to dismiss me with snickers of derision.  ”You just want pot legal so you can get high!” is a common refrain.

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Welcome back, Stashers!  I hope your Thanksgiving was chocked full of turkey, or tofurkey if you’re a vegan, or turbaconducken if you’re aiming for clogged arteries and an early death, and lots of, um … sacraments, let’s call them.

Oh, who am I kidding?  I hope you smoked yourself silly!

Who is that handsome redheaded man to the left, you ask?  Why, that’s me!  Now, I promise the Stash will never become a venue through which I will self-promote.  It is, and will always be, a showcase for artists across the country.

That being said, after hearing Chief Greenbud’s tune on the Stash last Wednesday, it made me realize that I wrote a holiday themed song about three years ago called “The Chrimmis Time Blues.”  It’s a silly song that’s somewhat pot-related, for a silly EP called Chrimmis Time! and has sat in the vault that is my computer’s hard drive ever since I wrote it.

And since it’s Monday and Monday = bluesday, I thought I’d play the song for you.  It’s nowhere near the caliber of Mr. Greenbud or any of the other music I’ve featured here, but it’s cute and funny and I think it will start off the holiday season (whatever that may be for you!) nicely.

Oh, and here’s the MP3 if you wish to download it!  The Chrimmis Time Blues

If you’d like to hear more of my music, you can head to my myspace page or to my website.  Now, enough self-promotion!  :)

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Today’s Stash music comes from Brian Robbins, a man I found while randomly searching for the word “marijuana” on Myspace Music.  The truth, dear Stash listeners (& readers!), is that a good portion of the music out there that includes the word “weed”, “pot”, “marijuana”, “reefer”, “ganja”, “blazed”, etc etc, is not very good.  This shouldn’t be surprising, and one could make the argument that most of the music out there period isn’t very good.  But when you start searching for pot-themed songs, you tend to find a lot of silly garage bands with a 16-year-old lead singer who sings about pot because he’s trying to rebel against his parents, not fully realizing yet that there’s a good chance his parents smoke pot too.

I could probably write an essay about that topic, but I won’t.

So what struck me about Brian’s song “Marijuana” is that it’s about marijuana, and it’s really good!  It’s a nice light pop song about how screwed up our country is regarding cannabis laws.  Simple, straightforward, and catchy.

Brian is a Los Angeles-based recording artist, who earned a B.A. in Film Scoring from Boston’s Berklee College of Music.  So if you’re interested in producing a cannabis-based documentary, he’s your man!

You can find out more about Brian, as well as listen to other tracks from his two albums (which you definitely should, they’re great), on his myspace page or through his website.

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Thank your major deity or preferred philosopher of choice, it’s Friday, Stashers!

Today’s music for the weekend is a familiar time for you all, a time legendary to everyone who has ever smoked pot ever in their lifetime, or has a friend who smokes pot, or has ever watched a television show or movie where pot is referenced at all.

I, of course, am talking about 8:06am Greenwich Mean Time.

Just kidding!  I’m talking about 4:20!  Obviously!  I may not be a smoker but I’m not stupid, either!

Bigfellas is a San Diego based band whose influences include Ben Folds Five, Steely Dan, They Might Be Giants, and Warren Zevon.  If that’s not an eclectic mix of bands I don’t know what is.  But the beautiful thing is that you can hear every influence in their album, Chubbed Up, which was released just this past October.  They also get the honor of being the first band who has ever sent me a promo CD.  I feel like a real Music Director now!  I get promos and press kits!  Yeah!

But seriously, having listened to Bigfellas’ entire album, I can definitely recommend it.  It’s a lovely blend of classic pop sensibilities with a little bit of classic and piano rock thrown in.  My only nitpick is that their song “4:20″ is not actually four minutes and 20 seconds long.  But I’m weird like that.

You can listen to more of Bigfellas on their myspace page or check out their website here.  I highly recommend checking out their album; the more I listen to it, the more I love it.

If you have music you want to be featured on the Stash, you can send it to me at normlsafemusic@gmail.com.  We also have a myspace page which you should definitely friend if you want to find out more about the artists we play here!

Have a great weekend!

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