One letter to describe our hero? P!

Passionate, Prolific, Patriotic, (E) Plurbus Unum,

and I also mean schizo-P-hrenic.

Let me introduce you to Forward Observer.

I’ll introduce him with music briefly, if you’d like to listen along with the first song from Forward Observer’s formative years. “Soldier Boy”.

He wrote this song when he was in his mid-twenties, after getting discharged from the United States Army. The timing of this song takes place before he got into a cycle of disabled veteran group homes, got sober, properly psych medicated, and before he got himself educated with the GI Bill in Middle Eastern Studies and an MA in creative writing (and later dips into psychology, linguistics, and music production/songwriting). Upon leaving the military, he spent 6 months in a VA hospital attempting to get right before attempting to rejoin civilian life.

Let’s backtrack a little first - in his early 20’s, he enlisted in the United States Army, which, he always said, was the best decision he could have ever made. He scored a 99 ASVAB and went on to do some super cool stuff; learned language skills, worked with cool monumental pieces of hulking track vehicle equipment, met people, went places, and had core American values instilled in him that he is proud of to this day. Half the reason Forward Observer still uses his moniker is that he still truly believes in the creed of the American soldier. 

The transformation was not instantaneous, and he was still a bit rambunctious as a young GI; it took some time for him to fully grow into the values he had sworn in with.

As a veteran, he learned from other servicemen and women and VA staff how to be a good friend, a good person, a good patient, and a good American citizen. His faith in believing that it is ALL of ours’ duties to defend this nation and Western Civilization as a whole was made stronger than ever after serving, and his faith in a sense that something more purposeful and omnipresent was out there grew as well, but we’ll leave religion or spirituality out of his story for now. No matter one's faith or beliefs, the freedom to peacefully practice them in our great nation is a guarantee worth defending!

In most of his fellow soldiers, our hero saw a real, restore-your-faith-in-humanity class of people legitimately serving their country, the United States, for noble reasons, trying to make the world a better place despite frequently hostile environments and an often thankless reception from those very same human beings whom they sought to advance and benefit with benevolent open arms of liberty, culture, education, and a better way to live. Although it was met sometimes with thanklessness, seeing people try to be true “good guys” made him feel proud to be counted amongst his American soldier peers. Serving meant something. 

The US Army has their Soldier’s Creed, and the main reason Forward Observer joined up was because serving the country was to him the epitome of being a dutiful American citizen. His grandfather had served as a B-24 Liberator pilot in WWII, answering the call to service; also, our hero enlisted to protect and uphold the Constitution and the unalienable rights endowed to us by our Creator! There are few documents that F.O. viewed as more important than our American constitution. 

Warrior. Member of a team. The never surrender attitude and the never leave a fallen battle buddy behind mantra of honor that defines our troops drew him in. “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s,” goes the quote in scripture, and "although Jesus was referring to coin and soul when speaking of this, a term of enlistment seemed the right service to dedicate to the earthly boss,” he once told me. It's also an irresistible life lesson and a great opportunity... to insert oneself into a greater cause than simply one's own self-interest.

To me and others, F.O. made it abundantly clear that he was so grateful to have been born in our “one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” We as Americans have the freedom to practice our faiths freely, speak our minds, and the right not to fear violent repercussions, suppression, or cultural prejudice directed at us by groups of strangers or authority figures based on any dissimilarities or long-held contrary beliefs and grudges. We are neighbors and we must maintain these relationships and their balances in order to remain wholly American. Liberty and justice for all!

“It is important for us humans to remember that we are not in control,” he said, “God is. We have a lot of rights and privileges here that other people in other countries do not.” The world is far from a perfect place. Our hero saw the tomb-boulder-moving weighty importance of that fact and swore an oath to protect our nation, it’s people, and its freedom-affirming ideals. This led him down the specific path he ultimately took; the direction that has zenithed out at its apogee by the creation and release of "CULTUREBOMB!" (the first installment of the adventure!), this website!

Unfortunately for our hero, a military career didn’t pan out as he had hoped it would due to a service-connected mental illness manifesting in his mid-twenties, and he couldn’t any longer be allowed to physically bear arms to protect our country’s interests. However, overcoming his mental health misfortune with grit and determination, he retained a singleness of purpose after leaving the US Army, imagining one last substantial mission for himself to undertake in the years following his discharge, however long it might take. That’s where we get to the nascent beginnings of Forward Observer as a musical project. It started as jam sessions between himself and other veterans at the Dayton, OH VA domiciliaries in 2009.

This challenging “long-game” involved paying attention to the changing signs of the zeitgeist as the years rolled on random like dice from the late 2000’s into our new millennia’s second and third decades, the 2010’s and 2020's. F.O. needed to be on alert like a caffeinated sentry to scan the cable news channels, internet, and airwaves; to follow tech advancements in AI, warfighting, and the application of drones and computers to see where the future was going, get educated; to train in new necessary mission-critical skills like creative writing and music production, etc. All these were tools through which F.O. might reach everyone - everywhere - from our hard-working everyday blue/white collar American masses, the blood-and-sweat military backbone green-collared GIs, ribboned NCOs, and starched epauletted officers that actively defend our nation and its interests abroad, and even, with hope, a new breed of intellectuals; tasseled passels of graduating new generations of future movers and shapers who hopefully wouldn't fall and get lost between the cracks as culture and technology advanced at warp speed. Music is a universal language. Let's hope F.O. got his ideas and the translation correct for maximum effect!

My own inklings that music could be introduced as a force for societal change had started in 2007 with translating “Three Little Birds” by Bob Marley into Arabic accompanied by an acoustic guitar while stationed at the Defense Language Institute (Presidio of Monterey) in Monterey, CA, but by the time we met, in our recent collaborative past, his idea that music could be a significant driving force for peace and change had evolved far beyond that, grown in depth, and advanced itself even more than I would have dared to have imagined possible!

Songs would be his weapon against the enemies of goodness, truth, and order. Whether these enemies be the cartels and drug dealers killing and poisoning our youth with heroin and fentanyl or villains from the darker underbellies of pop culture who condoned bad behavior like the destruction of sacrosanct traditional family values and advocating experimentation with damaging mind-altering substances under the straw man umbrella excuse/guise of unbridled personal freedom. From more vanilla typical anti-American/anti-Western enemies, to more fanatic violent extremists bent on wars that warped the word “holy” like rebar and concrete in airplane detonations and the inhuman charcoal giblets of suicidal bomb blasts, to terrorism (foreign and domestic), a sense of moral relativism that whimpered in its death throes a whine that limply failed to stand up to logic and scrutiny, but which seemed to be the go to argument when confronted with notions of “our truth and your truth” in modern, polarized society. The ringing of societal alarm bells was being triggered by our media-oversaturated culture, the nation's ubiquitous sexuality-scarring cultural pornography fetish, and modern global society's social media infatuation. All have deleterious effects on young adults and the brain development of our next generation of leaders - a generation we should be investing in rather than impeding or shoveling aside. The world was descending into madness; greed, war, fear, and chaos were upending reality and the moral order and status quo was roiling, overturned. It was high time someone needed to stand, grab the mic and fucking speak up!  

Our hero's next 15+years would be one long solitary borderline-monastic mission of monitoring social happenstance, civilizational goings-on, and opinions in magazines, periodicals, and news reports; watching for trends or hidden messages in Hollywood, the literati, and pop culture; following whispers of dissent between the D. and R. political parties and the buzzing right and left wings of our agitated, hornet-like branches of government, precariously filling out Capitol Hill with their nests of papery partisan bills held together on some occasions with barely more than wasp spit for agreement. Choosing to remain mute was no longer an option. Where indeed was the country (or the world) headed?

Undertaking his calling in the final years of the 2000's was to pave the footpath and determine what actions might later become necessary prescriptions for any negative symptoms of national dementia America might fall ill with a decade or two later, once our hero was older, wiser, and more grounded in his sense of purpose and his dedicated training in the necessary skills he would require to effect change. The world certainly is not a safer place than it was when our man began his musical journey. In 2026, sometimes it feels like the EARTH ITSELF has caught some weird wasting sickness, a PLANETARY pandemic even, and is still recovering with a catheter, in scrubs, or actively pursuing the hospice route. Please, let's not deign to allow for a morally abhorrent euthanisia of the human race through the application of our own inaction or laziness and apathy.

Once "medically retired" and unfettered from society's basic daily obligations, he still suffered. His lease periods were few and far between. Short lived stints between psychiatric wards and studio apartments invariably ended up with empty diluted vodka bottles crowding the kitchen floor like the grounds of a construction site cluttered with clear plastic bottles instead of orange rubberized traffic cones. He was denying that he had a serious mental illness and was drinking to drown out the demons as they backstroked lazily, relaxing on ice cube islands in the bourbon oceans of his perpetually less-than-half-full emptying highball glasses. His mind had become tainted like a thin red plastic Solo campus party beer cup polluted with collegiate wasting-time ashes; blacked and yellowing soggy detritus of snuffed cigarette butts in tan double fingers of undrunk alcohol. In the periphery of his awareness, I think he knew he was becoming a low-bottom, malfunctioning drunk. It seemed to be the only way to drown out the ick and hopelessness of a mind descending into madness, his brain a headliner spotlighted deeer-in-headlights style against the ironic brick wall backdrop of a nation's somehow "off and unfunny" cultural improv stand-up comedy sketch show.

He held on to his faith, sometimes desperately clutching. Spells of hopelessness and despair became more frequent calamities. When the voices became unmanageable, and the drinking also too much for his own good, he finally called on the VA for help, and they positively responded. It was literal physical salvation, just in time, swooping him up from the brink of psychosis and the very real risk of inadvertent suicide by imbibed liquid acetaldehyde. Alcohol was poisoning him slowly. It was time to get sober or die.

Only once have I, myself (your fearless author, "T.K.," -- the guy writing this -- who is also a vet) had any difficulty dealing with a VA hospital. Their employees are respectful, honorable, thorough, and they generally seem to genuinely want to help us veterans as much as possible. I'm 100% for veterans getting whatever help and services they need! They defended this nation(!), and should not be left sitting shivering cold and unattended on our national front stoops like soggy feral cats brisk, bone-chilling October days. Anyway, upon being admitted to the VA domiciliary, our man F.O. went through an extensive psychiatric therapy and rehab program, attended 12-step meetings for moral and practical guidance and support, and learned all about his powerlessness over drinking (and by default, accepted also his mental illness). He had to dry out and unlock his mind, but eventually everything got to become closer to OK.

He got sober, reacquainted himself with God as he understood God, made amends to nearly everyone in his past where appropriate, humbled himself, and for the time being gave up on living independently — it was too much of a strained effort for him with the daily recurrence of unmanageable schizoaffective symptoms and the radio static buzz of imagined (?) mental narrators. Half the day he was sane and coherent, but by nighttime he held nearly daily two-sided conversations with supranormal voices in his head that he insisted to me had never broken character or ever changed their story. In 2012, he moved permanently into community residential care (CRC) living setups specifically designed for medically retired veterans with mental illnesses, and then he found something... music, a BOSS-BR1600 and a computer keyboard fulfilling the role of a lyrical "quill" to fill his time and notebooks. From 2012 to 2018, he didn’t imbibe alcohol at all. He slipped and fell once, burping down a few cans of Guinness on Veterans Day 2018 after going off his psych meds, being unable to fall asleep for five days of frenetic haunted thoughts in a manic burn... but the last time I spoke with him before his recent and abrupt departure to go on sabbatical, he hadn’t had a drink in years, since that particular relapse.

Forward Observer had left the Army with a stack of papers, an honorable DD-214 discharge, a schizoaffective diagnosis hanging wet and heavy like an albatross around his neck, and not much more else than a camo backpack and memories. But he also left with VALUES that had been instilled in him, burning fiery like a swig from a flask (and, at the same time refreshingly cool like a sip from a canteen) rushing to the heart, and I imagine he is living them today, sharing granola, MRE's and stories with his fellow hikers on the Appalachian Trail, or while resolutely fending off bears (lol) as he ventures off-the-grid in America's Mideastern mountain ranges! 

L.D.R.S.H.I.P. means loyalty, duty, respect, selfless-service, honor, integrity, and personal courage. F.O. pushed on me the import of combining these values with advanced spiritual beliefs to form a core morality that I have heard imbued in many of the songs that he’s entrusted to me, .mp3's left laying around housed in plastic-cased Terabytes of external hard and flash drives like cards on a table from a dealt out poker deck. When he left the service, he felt like he still owed the country a debt of unfulfilled obligation because he did not complete the full term of his enlistment due to his spiraling mental health problems and hallucinations. I have often felt that same sense of wanting to have been able to do more, as I too have a medical discharge from the military. Both ex-soldiers, and both musicians, we met through a common VA sponsored living arrangement, and became fast friends!

Although often overcrowded and populated by more than just one voice, after leaving service, F.O.'s brain was still sharp though, and he began to toss an idea around... he still had his musical equipment. “Record. Plan ahead. What iconic songs will America need down the road? Can I write them? Music can change the world for good, or it can be an insipid and crude pop flash in the pan or a cash grab. What would a true patriot do? What would any legitimately good person with a proactive belief in social obligation or moral duty attempt? With the basic security of a disability pension, money, power, and fame became less of a driving goal, taking a backseat to altruism and the hope/joy of sharing his charisms, gifts, and perspective with his countrymen and women.

Eureka! “I’ll go by “Forward Observer!” It’s got a proud military connotation, and I’ll definitely be FORWARD about what I observe," he said, "but I’ll also always be looking towards the future.” He mentioned once to me in a private moment that he felt eerie parallels and a kinship to St. Joan of Arc with the voices he heard and all the prophetic mission stuff that he experienced as part of the hardships of his schizoaffective disorder. Ultimately, he viewed Western Civilization's very survival at stake. What a heavy load for someone to carry! But, I saw him he put his faith entirely in God’s hands, as he accepted that the LORD's still, small voice would help him plan ahead for whatever contingencies were required. The last time I saw him, this total surrender appeared to be working great improvements in his life. Daily growth. Faith building exercises and spiritual PT. Rosary beads, confession, and the recitation of Creeds. He sure had his particular and specific beliefs, and although his underlying drive was to put God first, putting America (and humanity's) future interests immediately next in line was linked like a star-spangled flag's rope to the mission statement flagpole of the musical journey he had set out so many years ago to complete for the benefit of anyone who would be willing to listen in and give it a chance!

So, since then until his recent departure into the scenic mountain trails of the Eastern U.S., he’d been content to stay sequestered in group homes like the one we shared residence at, sleeping in his small monastic cubicle of a room with a customized hotrod of a RokBox computer running Pro Tools, and a haphazardly wrangled together recording studio setup full of black instrument cables, musical hardware, old gizmos and pawn shop guitars, picks, and black foam microphone-topping popper-stoppers. I had a similar setup just down the hall - it seemed more than fortuitous serendipity that we should meet, share our "war stories" and military adventures with one another, and click with such similar experiences and our love of liberty and music. I swear that Providence must have got us together on this project. I can hardly see how it could be simply otherwise. A coincidence?

As he described it, he felt that his thoughts were dark carpeted cabinet speakers, standing impassive and impressive onstage, ready to bark distorted guitar riffs to the nightly call-and-responding schizophrenic audience in the concert venue where he gigged in his mind. He recorded and overdubbed himself so many times over in his songs that it’s no wonder his music came from a divided, fractured fractal of a brain. I know his music perhaps better than anyone, and I have found wisdom in many of his words -- the "CULTURE BOMB" songs tie together like a greater whole. Begin listening to his library of music and you'll be welcomed in and introduced to all sorts of connections and references from Western culture. The "over-loop," he called it. It can certainly be a mindfuck!

As his roomate/neighbor at our CRC VA Group Home, I tried to visualize his analogies over family-style breakfast table conversations, French toast and coffee... saw in my mind's eye the stacked black symmetrical blocks of amplifiers labeled Peavey framing the stage, ready for his nightly soundcheck with God one atop the other in a massive, cubist wall set up by the pill shilling roadie ghosts of his medicinal past, later to be torn down upon his falling asleep at the stage directions of an antipsychotic sedative Clozapine tour manager whispering sweet chemical nothings in his ears as he passed out spent and exhausted into bed each night after each day of tireless, hard work. However, the voices could still ruin the show by setting off the emotional pyrotechnics too early if he went off task or stopped participating, practicing, or backslid into lethargy, ennui, or immoral action. F.O. certainly was, shall we say, "driven."

Through curating and overseeing the ultimate production and release of "CULTURE BOMB!" and by being left in charge of the future release of the oceanic, vast anthologies of material he has left me treading eddies in the water of, until he gets back from vacay, I have come to fully believe that he was indeed directed by some force above my basic pay grade to record and play, sing and write. Some of his songs seem almost too on the nose to our time, in their specific chastisements of what he viewed as our slowly deteriorating Western culture, but that the accidents of ennui, loss of hope, and pessimism in our society can be reversed is precisely what F.O.'s message is saying. He'd devoted most of his life to this mission. Like Watson backing up Holmes, I'd at least like to believe that his work will do some good! I fully support the man, 100%! Now, I'm counting on all y'all's grassroots words to spread his message. He specifically asked me not to go the route of a financed Spotify playlist. Once I get the opportunity and know-how to do so, I'll upload a visit-counter to the website. As for now, we're just beginning the next phase of development. In the meantime, as he's temporarily gone vagabonding, it's a one-man show for now (I still have more music to bounce and release), but I'm confident that we'll see our numbers roll into the many-multiple digits soon enough! Tell a friend!

But back to living in such close proximity to the guy, though, to offer a glimpse into his personality... In a group home, there is not much to do, and F.O. was always aghast at the prospect of listening to tired old radio stations, unproductively watching repetitive, recycled reruns of old sitcoms, or tuning in to what ultimately amounted to events of cosmic insignificance (like sports matches on television), so he had nothing more important to do with his time than focus on music, writing, saving the world, and self-betterment in his capacity as Forward Observer, educating himself through distance learning and paths through self-improvement portals online. This, of course, when he was not combatting the daily bouts of voices that manifested as direct telepathic-seeming communications with supernal entities and/or the twisted diabolical torments of psychosis, paranoia, and/or spiritual warfare. I have sympathy for the dude -- he definitely had demons gnawing at his brain like voracious puppies with meaty sinews of rawhide, but ultimately they failed to capsize his ship or divert his doggedly meandering course. He maintained faith and prioritized the mission and came through it all victorious in the end. I imagine him now sitting around a hot stone fire pit with his backpack off and a tent in the wooded wilderness of our nation's auburn, autumnal Midwest. I'm sure he's having a blast camping out. He's finally earned some rest and alone time off, I say. Let the man enjoy his respite, I say! I'll pick up the torch for the next however-long-it-takes, and continue the slog through the paperwork and propellering white-water reaction wake of what comes next!

Anyway, although F.O. and I always got along famously after we were first introduced to one another in an OH group home, his best friends were always truly his microphone and his acoustic guitar; his lovers: his digital audio workstation (DAW) and the English language. These and words were the only things in life he said he knew how to spin into anything worthwhile. Since six years old, he'd been eliciting tones from toy plastic Casio keyboards or Suzuki piano lessons; in high school he tootled on the trumpet (like I did too, actually) and began shredding on Fender guitars in garages - by early 2026, once he had hit his mid-forties, Forward Observer had perfected how to utilize cutting edge studio software and manipulate his guitar and voice’s waveforms like a carpenter subtly polishing a banister with a sheet of sandpaper and a lathe, sawdusting in diminishing arpeggios the shavings of musical notes, watching them fall gracefully into splintery piles of tinder and pine-scented legato decrescendos. Not quite mixed at a quote-unquote "professional" level, but getting better each day. Part of the joy in his music though, I have always thought, was exactly the rough-hewn and raw imperfection that separated it from the overproduced ubiquitous fast-food streamlined music we hear in the generic modern music marketplace. Just as he 100% believes each human being has a soul, each of our hero's songs too is imbued with a tangible vitality in it that elicits action. A little bit of AI certainly DID assist with parts of this project, and I will never be ashamed to say that we jumped in head first at the beginning of the trend, luckily correctly assessing the direction tech was flowing. F.O. always had the proper insight wherever nearly anything was concerned; he seemed to follow some kind of guiding radium compass or flashlight of a principle that was beyond my average comprehension. A revolutionary approach was taken in using AI; to reprocess already recorded instrumentation and vocals, using the intrinsic morph feature as an digital instrument or precision vocal tweak, getting the messaging of F.O.'s work out there in a clear enough format (within the constraints of my now one-man, limited process) that still allows the music to have the necessary clarity to be pleasing enough to the ears to succeed in effectively getting his (our?) messages out to you, the audience, in a timely and palatable manner. What's most important to each song are the beans and beef of the words, but the spices and tortilla of the music wrapping it up are equally essential also.

During our extensive tenure as peers, collaborators and neighbors, when not dealing with dire mental issues, Forward Observer would spend hours upon hours each day doing his due diligence and musical/lyrical homework, and did this for many years. Recording, mixing, tweaking, leveling, panning, compressing, limiting, writing endlessly, online Berklee classes, and all sorts of other minute tasks to polish his project into the shiny gem that will finally be laid bare before you once I finish uploading the last of these "CULTURE BOMB!" .mp3 files. The project is almost done uploading now! Now that F.O.'s complete collection has fallen into my hands, I'm honor bound to begin releasing it on his asked-for timetable ("CULTURE BOMB!" is only part one) lest it otherwise amount to nothing or waste away in a disk drive somewhere heaven forbid! I would be a miserable failure were I to let his confidence in my promise to see it through to completion end up being all for naught. I definitely do believe that "CULTURE BOMB!" and his overarching www.fobband.com collected oeuvre of works can very much elicit positive change in our society, or at least bring joy and hope to the internet, perhaps remove some scales from the eyes of our cell-screen-addicted zombie gazes, and offer solace and hope in the crowded streets, subway stations and infect the ears of the youthful ears of the nation with a virus of burning change. Despite my qualms over my own imperfections, I cannot continue postponing any more days on it's release, fiddling with knobs and pan pots, seeking 100% perfection. As it was, I was specifically called upon by my dear friend to release this music, and thus have been doing my own experiments with recent burgeoning developments in sonic technologies in my OWN novel ways in my OWN spare time. You see, I'm a bit clever too, hah! We've got a little sound engineer here. F.O.+T.K. = the level of epic you are about to hear... Get ready people!  

During the years-long process of creating Forward Observer’s Alexandrian-tiered massive library of terabytes of songs (scores of them that I am now stuck habving to rank by impact, relevance and appropriate timeliness; to curate, and release when appropriate while that lucky sonovabitch gets to stretch his legs, eat MRE's, hike, wander beautiful woods, and pee behind pine trees in the wilderness), he found that his thoughts were often reassured and cooled by fresh breaths of soothing guidance from angelic voices. Voices who had still never broken character or gone against anything they had ever whispered that was a true “fact” in the more than decade and a half since he had been diagnosed as severely schizoaffective. Now... I know what I PERSONALLY believe... I don't know what you 'll choose to believe, so I'll leave it up to you to judge; but now sometimes it feels as though I AM the one hearing classical Bachish organ music, hallucinating gently over my refrigerator’s buzz, or finding my ears catching an aural fragrance of sweet citrusy oohs, spritzing sonically perfumed angelic choirs unwinding and spiraling in the air outside a refreshed song balcony’s open windows like a whooshing melodic dust devil or a loose spinning flag in a parade. Whistling copper pipes and plumbing fixtures sing chorused treble sounds of angelic spheres, or whispering voices manifest in the background hum of the grey noise of a ceiling fan. Am I going crazy too? Or just filling in for his role now? Anyway, that's that. I hope y'all enjoy "CULTURE BOMB" and Forward Observer's related accompaniments. This is just part one. Stick around, keep coming back, spread the word and if you support this, expect more from us in the near future, with your assistance. We're counting on everyone to help us get it and do it right. This is your roving reporter, T.K., signing off for now, with a nod and a salute! Blessings!

-TK-