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Why Jam Bands Suck and Hawkwind Doesn’t

September 29, 2014

I was recently revising my Worst Bands of All Time list, and I asked myself, “Why are there no Jam Bands on this list? That seems very odd indeed, Tim, because Jam Bands are to music what Bret Easton Ellis is to Human Beings.” Part of the problem, of course, is that jam bands would clog up any “worst band” list almost immeasurably; but I decided to try to articulate why I have always considered Jam Bands exempt from the Worst Bands list:

Michael Rockefeller, who deserves better than to be casually referenced in a column on Jam Bands, though in this photo he does look like he might be on his way to a String Cheese Incident concert.

Like the cannibals who captured and consumed Michael Rockefeller in 1961, Jam Bands are generally an aberration that eat their own and don’t mess too much with outsiders. Yes, occasionally there’s a Michael Rockefeller-type incident, but these are rare enough that it’s generally (relatively) safe to pretend Jam Bands don’t exist, and just let them go about their own business.

However, the horrific atrocities of the last century have taught us to Never Forget, and we must, both as a culture and as individuals, never forget this: The world MUST know and MUST be reminded, in schools, in the household, and via the media, that NO ONE who owns a Mandolin should ever, under any circumstances, be permitted to listen to an Ornette Coleman Record while on drugs.

Impaled Nazarene, a Finnish Death Metal Band

It’s true, I just don’t get it, Jam Bands, that is, and by “don’t get it,” I mean I really really don’t get it. Occasionally, I will hear a Dead song and think “Huh…Phil Lesh has it going on,” but beyond that, the whole freaking genre is a black freaking hole to me. Maybe it’s a “lifestyle” thing, like the way most hardcore music was; I mean, you can throw a dart at a list of Finnish death metal bands and any name you hit will be more aesthetically pleasing than virtually any American hardcore band of the early/mid 1980s, but hardcore was a social thing, see? Oh okay SSD were pretty good and the Circle Jerks were great, and no, I am not counting the Bad Brains, because they were a musical life-force of astounding powers, a Nut-Cracking Shiva, so, they are their own freaking genre. And yes, Nut Cracking Shiva is a pretty goddamn hot band name.

Where was I?

In reality, I think the primary reason I cannot even remotely stand Jam Bands is because, well, because they’re not Hawkwind. See, the world deserves amazing jam music, which is to say, music of spontaneity and power and barely controlled but totally controlled out-of-control-ness and music that sounds great on drugs and music that sounds like you’re on drugs even when you’re not and music that sounds like an endless highway curling under the aurora borealis and music that sounds like the universe waking up in the morning and getting out of bed and music that sounds like the universe tucking itself into bed at night; but somehow, Jam Band music in the U.S. only sounds like one fucking thing, like the brutal lubrication-less wanks of people who have picked up the worst parts of jazz and bluegrass and who really paid attention when they went to Berklee.

WHERE DID THIS IDEA ORIGINATE THAT ‘JAM BANDS’ ALL HAD TO MOVE THEIR FINGERS REALLY FAST?!? That’s not a worthwhile skill, that’s just proving you had no friends in high school.

Listen, Hawkwind is a fucking jam band. Perhaps the best. They start up their generator and get into gear and the thing lifts off with a little weight on it like a helicopter pulling out of the U.S embassy in Hanoi and then BOY it kicks in and revs up and sounds like a greasy truck full of cows on dope speeding down the Autobahn, and at some point it runs out of gas and goes for a little nap in the restroom at the planetarium. Listen to Hall of the Mountain Grill (1974) and Warrior on the Edge of Time (1975) and Space Ritual (1973) and Live At the BBC (1972) and hear what a real fucking Jam band sounds like. And Stereolab are a fucking jam band, listen to Peng! (1992) and Switched On (1993) and you’ll hear buzzing guitars doing wheelchair races with Stephen Hawking and synths whizzing and bubbling and barely keeping up and it’s a Radiophonic Workshop of extreme melody and Mesmer-rhythm fighting over who gets to go inside your brain and pump it with the most aural adderall and absinthe, now that’s a fucking jam band; or try listening to the first album by Ash Ra Tempel, (1971), now that is the fucking definition of a jam band, it starts in space and ends up in the mosh pit, imagine the Stooges if the Stooges had way way way way way way way way

way way way way way too much cough syrup and forgot to write any songs; and do you want to hear two perfect examples of what a jam band should REALLY be, both from bands you’ve actually heard of? Listen to “What Goes On” from 1969: The Velvet Underground Live, this is the sound of a band totally freaking losing themselves in the music; time stops, time goes eighty-eight hours in a minute, this is a band finding the perfect chords and hanging on to them through every single Bardo stage and living inside of those chords while lying on amphetamine-filled bean bags; and if you want something a bit more controlled but vaporizes the soul just as intensely, listen to “Carnage Visors” by the Cure, a 28-minute instrumental track released by the Cure in 1981 as a cassette-only bonus to their (phenomenal) Faith album; it winds through simple, endless, repetitive arpeggios, it sounds like a day-long Morphine dream that Dave Gilmour keeps on popping in and out of, it implies endlessness, an extraordinary quality for as song to project, it sounds like Robert Smith wrote a song while watching goldfish swim around in Goldschläger and it’s just perfect, and it’s exactly what a jam band should sound like.

And none of it sounds like a bunch of people practicing minor-chord mandolin runs while the rhythm section plays flyshit.

And there are a million more of ‘em out there right now, and Alex Maiolo probably knows the names of all of them, so get in touch with him for a list.

Oh…and as for that Worst Band list…we’ll save that for another time. Let’s just say that number one begins with an “O” and rhymes with “Ingo Boingo.”

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Revisiting My Thoughts on The Replacements and The Captain (Plus Let’s Honor Malcolm Young)

September 25, 2014

This is not an apology; let’s say that I am reviewing a play on appeal.

The Replacements reunion still smells like a money grab to me, and I do think the legitimacy of the whole enterprise is (at least vaguely) debatable. However, the other day when I climbed on my soapbox and waxed asinine about the Replacements, I should have included this:

Tommy Stinson appears to jamming with Matt Smith in this picture. I doubt that happened, but if it had, it would have been uber cool, and Layne would have been as happy as a little kitten with a new ball of yarn.

The Replacements tour is making a lot of people very happy. Old fans, new fans, and Layne are enjoying the hell out of the shows, apparently the show itself is pretty goddamn good, and even people who weren’t really fans are having a great time seeing this band.

READ MORE:NOISE THE COLUMN

So my didacticism completely didn’t account for that factor, the joy factor, and I’m genuinely sorry. It is possible that my own archival experiences with the Replacements may have affected my ability to appreciate the pure delight people are feeling upon seeing the renascent Replacements in 2014. See, back in the day (early-ish/middish 1980s) I saw them play five terrible shows, I mean shows that really insulted both the audience and the bands’ talents; also, I have known too many people who were hurt or insulted by Westerberg; and last but most certainly not least, in the Fall of 1983 I walked into the apartment on Eldridge Street I was sharing with Jack Rabid, and found a naked Bob Stinson having sex on the kitchen floor. Please keep in mind that at that time the apartment had changed very little since Jacob Riis had photographed it in 1904 (except for the Bad Brains flyers on the wall), and just the idea of anyone having sex on that filthy neo-tenement floor would give any person, decent or indecent, the willies. Frankly, I don’t think I’ve been able to erase the memory from my mind, and it may have been contributed to development of a tumor on my optic nerve in the late 1990s (true story). So, I confess that a lot of that baggage probably got in the way of my appreciating just how much people are enjoying seeing Westerberg and Tommy Stinson on stage bashing out old favorites.

The late Bob Stinson. In 1983 I saw him having sex.

Now, I suppose I could say much the same about some of the things I said on Monday, when I ran a piece about Derek Jeter’s Holy March through the Stations of The Cross, I mean Farewell Tour. Although I still genuinely believe that the Yankees’ on-field performance has been compromised (perhaps severely) by the extraordinary amount of money the team are making by trotting Jeter around like an armless guitarist playing for the pope, I do want to say this:

This tour is making a lot of people very happy. Old fans, new fans, and Doug Herzog are enjoying the hell out of the shows, apparently the show itself is pretty goddamn good, and even people who weren’t really fans are having a great time seeing this band.

The armless guitarist who played for the Pope.

Let me add this, too: certain people have responded to my words about The Captain by pointing out that other players were trotted out past their expiration date; people keep on mentioning the great Willie Mays, who played a famously past-his-prime year for the Mets in 1973. But there are a couple of big differences: Willie Mays played in 66 games in 1973; Derek Jeter will probably play in about 150 this year. In 1973, with Mays in the line-up, the Mets made the World Series (which indicates that, somewhere, somehow, there was some method to the Mets madness); in 2014, with Jeter in the line-up, the Yankees probably couldn’t even make it to the Upper East Side to sit shiva for Joan Rivers.

LISTEN NOW: TELL THE BARTENDER WITH JANEANE GAROFALO

There’s something else missing from all the coverage (that I have read, anyway), pro and con, of the Jeter beatification; nobody is mentioning what this whole thing was really about.

It was about A-Rod.

Every Jesus needs a Judas – remember, many interpretations of the Jesus story see Judas as a hero, because his betrayal enabled Jeter’s, I mean Jesus’ martyrdom and his resurrection; and without Judas, there ain’t no resurrection – and the Judas of this story was Alex Flipping Rodriguez.

Judas, seen here kissing Jesus (artists’ interpretation). This has a LOT more to do with the whole Derek Jeter thing than you might imagine. Frankly, Jesus looks a little high to me in this picture, or maybe he just took too many Benadryl.

One of the greatest players of his time is exposed as an addict, a charlatan, a liar, a committed deceiver of Lance Armstrong-esque proportions, and my god, he wore a Yankee Uniform. Every effort must be made not to just eradicate the man from the Hall of Fame, from the army of human decency, and from the record books, but we must strike this man from memory itself (at least until his triumphant and ticket-generating return). The Anti-A-Rod is Dead! Long Live the Captain!

I guaranfuckintee you, without the very public spiritual and moral defenestration of Alex Rodriguez, the promotion of Derek Jeter to almost literally immortal status would not have happened. Yes, there would have been a lot of nice farewell pieces, most definitely an A-Rod day, and possibly even tributes and gift-presentations at visiting ballparks; in other words, it would have resembled Mariano Rivera’s almost tasteful send-off. But without A-Rod’s bad decisions, absurd lies, and most public execution, the Annus Jeterus Sanctorum would never have happened.

So next time all the Jeter celebrations make you fell all warm an’ fuzzy, thank Alex Rodriguez for making it all happen.

The great, and now retired, Malcolm Young.

Finally, AC/DC have formally announced that guitarist Malcolm Young has left the band. His nephew Stevie, who had subbed for Malcolm on some tours in the past, will take his place. I have written on an earlier occasion how absolutely vital Malcolm Young was to AC/DC’s sound; along with Johnny Ramone, Bo Diddley, and Steve Jones, he may be the best (and most important) rhythm guitarist of all time, and his sound was AC/DC’s sound, almost more integral to the band’s recorded signature than brother Angus’s needly, spastic, leads and the extraordinary achievements of both vocalists. He was, in essence, the only honestly irreplaceable member of the band (in the sense that Johnny Ramone was, for all of Joey’s girl-group/bubblegum melodic sculpting, the truly irreplaceable member of the Ramones). So many hopes, true and strong, for Malcolm’s health (the official word seems a little vague, but it appears he had a severe stroke), and I respect AC/DC for carrying on, and I hope they honor him the same way they honored Bon.


(Please note: Despite Angus’s antics, Malcolm is doing the heavy lifting here)

(“How did they honor Bon?” you ask? Many years ago, I was backstage at an AC/DC concert. I had gone there with Rick Rubin, who was a close friend at the time. This was in 1984, I think, though it could have been in ’85. Benadryl is a cruel mistress, and has made my memories softer than a kitten listening to Tangerine Dream. But anyway. Rick asked Malcolm a question I had long pondered: Why, on the Back in Black album, is there not even one single line, even in tiny print, that says, “Cheers to Bon,” or “We’ll miss you, Laddie,” or something like that. Malcolm looked at us like we were idiots, which of course we were, and said “The ALBUM is CALLED ‘Back in Black,’ for fucks’ sake. The TITLE says that we’re mourning him and we miss him.”)

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The Fauxplacements. Or “What Makes A Reunion A Reunion?”

September 23, 2014

I was not particularly fond of the Replacements during their initial go-round; I felt they had a disrespect for their audiences that bordered on the offensive, a disregard for their band member’s health that bordered on the criminal, and a disregard for making cohesive recordings that was abusive of their clearly visible skills.

So I was not especially engaged, as so many of my peers were, by the prospect of their reunion. But my personal feelings about the Replacements are hardly relevant to the point I’d like to make here.

RELATED: Revisiting My Thoughts on The Replacements and The Captain (Plus Let’s Honor Malcolm Young)

The Replacements, 3/4ths of whom are still alive.

We are so eager to see the Replacements, to bask in the bittersweet recall of a youth happily spent in low-ceilinged nightclubs chatting up cat-eyed college girls and haunting narrow record stores befumed by the musky scent of used vinyl, that we overlook the fact that it’s debatable whether the band on stage is actually the Replacements. Personally (and I insert that caveat because, despite the righteousness of my ornery ire, I do believe that there is a lot of gray area here) I don’t buy it. Paul Westerberg plus Tommy Stinson doesn’t, in my mind, equal the Replacements. Stick Chris Mars behind the drums, and then we can talk.

See, whenever I consider the reunion of the so-called Replacements, I remember this: If Paul Westerberg went out on a solo tour, he would probably get a guarantee of (let’s call it) X dollars (“X” would be a decent amount of change to you and I, but that is not the point here). Now, if Westerberg and Stinson went out on the road billed as, oh, “Westerberg and Stinson,” that number would probably change to X times 5. But…if they call the same band The Replacements, the original “X” becomes X times 15. And X times 15 is a lot of money.

I can pretty much guarantee that this didn’t happen: After many moments – nay, years – of grave consideration, Paul Westerberg didn’t decide to “reunite the Replacements.” Instead, Westerberg very likely thought “I can make fifteen times as much money – shit, add merch and we’re talking twenty times as much – if I can rope Tommy into this and go out as the Replacements.” See, personally I have certain semi-articulated criteria regarding a reunion. Let’s examine these, shall we? If a band originally had four members, one writing/singing member going out with one other member who didn’t write or sing lead and only one other member who didn’t write or sing does NOT feel like a legit reunion to me. And don’t bring in the dead (Bob) or incapacitated (Slim) members issue…even Led Zeppelin, who stood to make about a billion dollars from a reunion tour, I mean literally a billion dollars, only performed as Led Zeppelin when they had three of the original four on-board, and otherwise went out as Page/Plant.

David Minehan, around the time he was America’s answer to Paul Weller.

(A wee bit of extra credit to the Fauxplacements for including the amazing David Minehan in the band on guitar; Minehan’s dynamic, slashing, bobbing moddy Neighborhoods were one of the brighter bands of the late 1970s/early 1980s.)

Let’s look into this a little further.

Now, the Buzzcocks are also out on the road (and have been, for many years) with “just” two original members. Yet I consider this a “legitimate” reunion, even though I don’t consider the Replacements legitimate. Why? Well, the two “original” members of the Buzzcocks in their current touring line-up were both primary vocalists and composers – in fact, the only singing/writing members of the band. Let’s take this a step further into history: Through much of the ‘80s and ‘90s, Pink Floyd toured and released records. This band contained two of the original four members of the band, and three of the four “prime” members of the band. Was this a real “Pink Floyd”? Why, yes it was. 1) Any band that includes three out of four “prime” members, including one of the prime vocalists, can always claim legitimacy; 2) Roger Waters is a bitter old sexist dickwad, and I endorse anything that made him frown. Having three-fourths of the prime line-up PLUS one of the prime vocalists, as the ‘80s/’90s Floyd did, means that you are way legitimate.

Roger Waters, a bitter dickwad.

Using the same logic, if Mick Jones, Paul Simonon, and Topper Headon (and/or Terry Chimes) went out as The Clash (unlikely, but one never knows), would that be legitimate? Strangely, I’d have to say yes. I’m almost unhappy saying yes, but, “Scoreboard!” as Jim Rome might say. Going just by the numbers – 3/4ths of the prime members, and one of the prime vocalists – I’d say that was legit.

Yet, Tim, you’re still insisting the Replacements weren’t legit? Why, yes I am. A lead singer and the non-singing/non-writing bassist do not comprise a legit line-up, but just a money grab.

“Now, how about The Damned?”

Poet Siegfried Sasoon, who came back from the dead to discuss the Damned with me.

Good question, Siegfried! See, legendary English poet Siegfried Sasoon has entered my consciousness and has now, strangely, joined this conversation. This is especially odd since Sasoon’s verdant, moving, tumbling and defiantly lucid poems about the horror of The First World War makes his work integral to understanding the extraordinary, almost incomprehensible suffering and loss the British endured during the Great War; yet I am not aware of him ever expressing an opinion about rock’n’roll (Tim Page is likely to correct me now, and draw my attention to a comment Sasoon made about P.J. Proby in a 1965 interview). Yet here he is, standing in front of me, asking about the Damned and puffing on a rather pungent Turkish cigarette! Its acrid smoke fills the room with memories of narrow, twisting, sunless alleys behind the ancient Spice Market! I ask if I can smell Siegfried’s tobacco-stained fingers; inhaling deeply, I imagine I am gazing heavenward, towards the impossibly beautiful arch of Santa Sofia’s dome. Naturally, he considers my action a little peculiar, and with a few soft words I explain that the scent of his Balkan Sobranie brand tobacco has brought my senses back to the extraordinary experiences I had as a University student writing haiku about new wave music while lying alongside the Bosporus. I recite an example for him –

“The Yachts Make Me Glad
Strong songs, great organ sound, yet
I sense much irony”

Sasoon, wavering between this world and the next, doesn’t care about my archival literary efforts (though he does express a mild degree of pleasure in another haiku that goes “Oh, Bram Tchaikovsky/I’m glad you left the Motors/to do Byrds + Who”). He is only interested in my assessment of the legitimacy of the current line-up of the Damned.

“The Damned! Two original members, like the Replacements and the Buzzcocks,” Sassoon notes, in a pleasant Cambridge lilt. “Legitimate or not?”

Captain Sensible and Dave Vanian of the Damned, whom I discussed with the hovering spectre of Siegfried Sasoon. I really wanted Siegfried to discuss his relationship with Robert Graves, but we didn’t get around to that.

“Totally legitimate,” I snap, “but with an asterisk! See, the two original members of the current touring and recording version of the Damned include the sole vocalist, Dave Vanian, and one of the primary writers, Captain Sensible. So I’m buying that one. I mean, primary writer, primary vocalist, and two original members. So, I mean, you have to buy that one. But why the asterisk? Because the current Damned are missing another primary writer – Brian James – and a key member, drummer Rat Scabies. In fact, if Scabies and James wanted to, for some reason, go out as the Damned, that would be legitimate too, even if it lacked the prime vocalist; because — and follow me here, Siegfried, because it’s an important point — a James/Scabies Damned would include one prime writer and one key member. And I define a key member, in this and most cases, as someone whose contribution to the band is so distinct as to make them essential to their recorded sound and live performance. I mean, I’ll definitely buy that the current Damned are the Damned, but I buy it a little less because it’s missing Rat Scabies. I mean, the Damned without Rat Scabies are sort of like the Who without Keith Moon; yeah, I’m kinda buying it, but it’s not really the same thing.”

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The Tyranny of Nostalgia, and How it Could Kill MLB

September 22, 2014

First of all, let me state that I love that Derek Jeter Gatorade Commercial.

I am perfectly happy to disregard the fact that it’s selling something, because it reminds me that what is really important about Derek Jeter is what he means to the fans, what he means to the people of New York, what he means to the everyday Yankee fan of every age, class, and race. The artful black and white images of the honest joy of the fans and seemingly honest humility of The Captain make us forget that the commercial is made by billionaires, starring a millionaire, to sell us quadrillions of something we probably don’t need. I can overlook the omniscient shadow of Cloud Mammon because the damn thing is so well made and so on point; I can easily discount these corrupt motives because it is a pitch-perfect representation of what a superstar means to his fans, and an extraordinary model, no matter how unrealistic, of how a superstar should interact with his fans. Seriously, the damn thing could be selling Mark Chapman Brand Tampons and it wouldn’t make a difference. The commercial is so good that I can regard the, uh, benefactor – that is Gatorade – as merely the modern versions of the Medici Family, making great art possible.

However, it still does not quite make me forget the following:

Let’s say some gamblers offer the manager of a Major League team, oh, a hundred thousand dollars to put an inferior player in the line-up in the hope that it will affect the outcome of that day’s game. Even better, what if these same gamblers get to the manager before the season begins and say to him “Hey…we will give you, oh, FIVE MILLION if you play this guy all season…yeah, I know you’re gonna want to bench him some days, and shit, he may even have rather stunning O-fer streaks that make you want to send him down to Triple A, but no matter what, keep this guy in the line-up.” In fact, my fictional mobsters might even go so far to say “We have already cut a deal with your boss, and if you even think of benching this guy, you will lose your job.”

Now…HOW is THAT any different from a team making MILLIONS UPON MILLIONS UPON MILLIONS of dollars in marketing, merch sales, ticket sales, TV deals, media deals, etcetera, by making sure that an inferior player plays every day, even if it has the real potential to affect the on-field quality of that team and possibly alter the teams’ chances of making the post-season, QUESTION MARK.

Jeff Buckley probably could have contributed more to the Yankees’ line-up in the second half of the 2014 season than Derek Jeter. But the option of benching Jeter was considered unthinkable. This means two things: 1) Someone (and there are a lot of “someones” here, from the Yankees to MLB to Jeter’s sponsors to the clubs in other MLB cities whose TV and live-gate numbers would have been significantly impaired by a Jeter non-appearance) made a lot of money by keeping Jeter in the line-up, so much money that the idea of benching him for the sake of fielding a better performing ball-club was unthinkable; and 2) The Warm’n’Fuzzy side of baseball has more meaning, at this point, than the actual nuts’n’bolts of the games (and I sincerely hope I will never use two ‘n’ contractions in a single sentence again).

Both of the above options are probably true, and when push comes to shove, I find the latter more offensive. See, money is money and money always talks, but in the long run, honesty does stand a chance against money.

Marc Bolan, one of the many dead people who probably could have made more of a positive on-field contribution to the Yankees season than Derek Jeter did.

But competitive honesty does not stand a chance against nostalgia, no matter how well-intended that emotion is. We are all guilty. We all wanted to cheer the brave and kind captain, and our desire to engage in this kind of sepia-colored bonhomie, framed against the same low and wide Bronx sky that saw Brave Lou say his farewell, considerably outweighed our desire to see competitive baseball; we all decided to look the other way when the Yankees decided that sentiment was more important than a pennant.

And the Yankee brass knew this (and most definitely the MLB brass, too), knew of our desire, hell, OUR NEED, to bask in the glow of pinstripe-branded sweet melancholia, when they decided that they would sacrifice competitive baseball in exchange for the BILLIONS they would make by whoring out Jeter and the Yankee legacy. In a sense, this is as bad as any game-throwing scandal in the history of baseball – I mean, a whole season was compromised — except we were willing and happy participants who all agreed to look the other way, who all agreed that nostalgia and a season spent happily basking in the land of warm’n’fuzzy was more important that legitimate competition.

And any sport that favors nostalgia over competition is already halfway dead.

Though I do like that goddamn commercial.

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The Thomas Edison of College Rock

September 17, 2014

I’ve been thinking about college rock, indie rock, whatever you want to call it, this thing that defines the listening habits of over-sensitive young white people, this entity that makes us feel superior to the person sitting across from us on the F Train who looks like they listen to Maroon 5.

I was reflecting on bands from the 1970s like Tin Huey, Pere Ubu, Sneakers, the Shoes, even Suicide, who toured and released non-major label vinyl before there was a clearly delineated college rock touring, radio, and indie label circuit. But around the early-ish 1980s, college rock/indie rock seems to have become a more-or-less recognizable and consistent concept. Can we pinpoint a moment when a loose amalgamation of non-mainstream artists independently releasing records became this thing we readily identify as college rock and indie rock? Surely, there had to be a eureka moment, some kind of invention of the alt-rock wheel, probably around, oh, 1980.

And I think I found it.

His name was Sal Locurto. And if there was a Hall of Fame for College Rock, Sal Locurto has to be in the first class of inductees.

Sal Locurto (upper left) circa 1981, pictured with (clockwise) New Afternoon Show DJ Mike “Pablo” Dugan, Buzzcock Pete Shelley, and Buzzcock producer Martin Rushent.

In early 1980, an NYU student named Sal Locurto took over the college radio station WNYU. Specifically, Sal reformatted a slot of programming between 4 and 7 PM, which he dubbed “The New Afternoon Show.” I should also note (this is very important) that at the time WNYU had a giant signal; it could be heard clearly throughout the entire metro New York/tri-state area (i.e., a circle of about 50 – 75 miles in diameter, with Manhattan at the center). But WNYU’s power was not solely responsible for its’ influence. Sal made a commitment that the New Afternoon Show on WNYU would play only alternative music that could not be heard on any commercial radio station in New York City; the New Afternoon Show would play new alternative music and nothing but new alternative music, no exceptions. This meant that virtually all the music played on The New Afternoon Show would be import-only British music not available on American major labels (this was everyone from New Order to Department S to the Specials and about 800 more), or independently released American music (Lyres, Neighborhoods, Bongos, ESG, Liquid Liquid, Our Daughter’s Wedding, Dead Kennedys, many etceteras).

You might be thinking, “What’s the big deal about that? The college station in my town in 1977 was playing really cool shit.” True, but Sal and WNYU did a couple of things very differently: first, the “old style” college radio station would spin Elvis Costello and the Jam, then they’d play the Allman Brothers and Cat Stevens; you’d be listening to a DJ playing Wreckless Eric, then when you tuned in an hour later, some guy would be playing nothing but Jaco Pastorius and Coltrane. The traditional college radio station had zero consistency. Sal changed that, and changed the definition of college rock dramatically, turning WNYU’s core afternoon programming block into an outlet exclusively for new music. Secondly, Sal passed down the edict that although the music might be highly unconventionally, the mode of delivery wouldn’t be: DJs were to back-announce (i.e., say the name of the songs played and identify the station) after every second song, no exceptions, and DJ segments were to be taut and informative, as opposed to the bong-laced indulgent blabbering heard on other college stations.

Soon, something remarkable happened: Sal’s commitment to exclusively playing new music and presenting it with a professional veneer led to publicists, clubs, and labels recognizing that WNYU could be used to promote their shows and their bands. You could fill a local show by a touring British alternative or American independent act just by getting the record played on WNYU, and the band showing up on air to plug the gig. I honestly believe that the model for new music promotion that existed throughout the 1980s (and into the ‘90s), and new-music marketing groups/conventions like New Music Seminar and CMJ (College Music Journal), owe their naissance to Sal Locurto and WNYU; Sal was literally the first person to create a radio outlet solely for independent and import-only music that was strong and consistent enough to be used as a promotional tool.

Black Flag, doing their thing, around the time Henry Rollins threatened to kill me, but that’s another story

Now, around the same time, Black Flag started touring endlessly with no concern for label support, proving that an independent act could keep themselves afloat and create a legend just by beating the crap out of a van, sleeping on fans’ floors, and selling a lot of t-shirts and vinyl at the venue; certainly, other bands had done this, but Black Flag made it a ceaseless way of life, and the model they created lasts until this day. Also, in late 1981-ish, R.E.M., by following the touring disciplines created by Black Flag, Minutemen, et al and adding the charismatic marketing touches that had been introduced in the wake of the promotional model invented by and for the New Afternoon Show, became the first non-hardcore band to use-the-tour-to-death/visit-every-college-radio-station-to-death/sleep-on-floors-until-you-want-to-die model and combine it with a charm and niche-filling sound that had the potential to one day go entirely mainstream; in other words, R.E.M. were the first post-SST/post-WNYU act to take all the lessons of the new way of doing business as an indie/college rock act, and ride it to the toppermost of the poppermost.

Chandrakirti, who lived about 1350 years before Henry Rollins

I’ve run out of a will to type further – a fairly academic but compelling commentary on Chandrakirti’s Sevenfold Reasoning is calling my name. I mean, “Living beings are seen to be transient and empty of inherent existence, like a moon in rippling water.” That doesn’t have anything specifically to do with this piece, but I’ve moved on to the Chandrakirti. Oh wait it doesn’t have to do with this piece but it has to do with EVERYTHING ELSE.

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Do They Have Sharks in the River Liffey? Because U2 Just Jumped One

September 16, 2014

I tend to give U2 the benefit of the doubt because, let’s face it, a band that popular could have been a hell of a lot worse. U2 have been the biggest rock band on earth for about 30 years now (only Metallica have even vaguely given them a run for their money), and generally they’ve done artistically dynamic things and consistently used their fame and money to benefit the planet. So, hooray for U2. I mean for god’s sake, they could have been Bon Jovi (not that Bon Jovi suck, but their range is limited and their grasp is shallow; I mean, a band largely based on continuously re-writing Thin Lizzy’s “Cowboy Song” can’t be taken that seriously, can they?).

(Oh, and U2 were really nice to me on December 6, 1980, but that’s another story, WHICH I TOLD RIGHT HERE).

As the industry refined, redefined, re-set, and generally defenestrated in the last 30 years, there have been radically few “new” long-haul classic rock bands: apart from U2 and Metallica, there’s Def Leppard, Bon Jovi, and, uh, I’m a little stuck here. R.E.M. probably over-aspired (much like the Kinks did in the ‘70s/’80s – i.e., they were a very strong cult act whose transition into the large-scale mainstream consciousness never felt completely right); Guns’n’Roses, who had the artistic goods more than they’re given credit for, went up in a pyre of self-indulgence; potential Classic Rock heroes like Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, and Rage Against the Machine either didn’t sustain fan interest in newer material or didn’t conserve breath for a long run; and Radiohead disappeared so far up their own asses that they can wave hello by sticking their fingers out their mouths. I’ll also throw Porcupine Tree in there, because if there ever was a band that should be regarded as the other credible classic rock band to emerge in the last few decades, it’s them. Oh, accuracy compels me to note Germany’s Die Toten Hosen, who are the very definition of a classic rock act who combine quality and longevity, but no one outside of freaking Germany, where they are as big as U2 or the Stones, has heard of them.

(Die Toten Hosen, the biggest classic rock band you’ve never heard of; posted here because who really needs to see another U2 video? Also, can I mention that I figured out, WITHOUT emailing John Loscalzo, how to insert a link into an article [that thing about my encounter with U2 in 1980]? This achievement makes me happier than Alma Mahler and Oskar Kokoschka on a date in Vienna in 1912, during the really healthy early days of their relationship.)

All things considered, U2 were a pretty rare combination of “gigantic” and “good.”

Until now. A lot of people are jumping on U2 right now, and here’s why I’m joining in:

This is Alma Mahler, whose beauty inspired many of the great artists of her time, like Franz Werfel, Gustav Mahler, Oskar Kokoschka, and Walter Gropius.

Let’s start with the ludicrous method of distribution, i.e. the new U2 album just appearing in people’s iTunes accounts. This is a very slippery fucking slope; a U2 record is pretty fucking benign, but what if it wasn’t? What if something that espoused some political or social doctrine just fucking APPEARED on our computer? What if Apple decides to endorse some candidate, or the Chinese compel Apple to take some stance, and propaganda just starts dropping into our computers unannounced? See, it really doesn’t make a difference if it’s U2’s new album or a copy of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, someone coming into my fucking computer and giving me a pile of anything I didn’t ask for is a no-no, and sets a very bad fucking precedent.

Equally as offensive to an old punk didact like me is the use of iconic punk rock images in U2’s new video. 36 years after U2 debuted, they have bizarrely decided to prove how “punk rock” they are by using some (very) basic and over-used images of the Clash, the Ramones, Patti, etcetera in their release campaign. Let’s put this in some context:

U2 were never a punk band, nor did they try to be, nor did they need to be. However, both in terms of stance and sound, they were greatly influenced by a few fundamental punk rock bands, notably the Skids and Stiff Little Fingers. The wonderful Skids were probably U2’s biggest overt influence: they perfected a form of charging, Celtic-scented rock with over-reaching vocals and tumbling, echoing, ticking and spitting guitar; in fact, the Skids’ influence on U2 was so strong that they took pains not to acknowledge it until 2002 when they suddenly covered, with Green Day’s help, the Skids’ anthem “The Saints Are Coming” (though it was the Skids’ “Into The Valley” which was, in many ways, the Rosetta Stone for the early U2 sound). Secondly, U2 liberally borrowed Stiff Little Finger’s point of view (and not a little of their slightly-proggy punk rock sound) and even some of their song titles. U2 were also clearly influenced by very credible punk-era acts like The Only Ones, the Stranglers, PIL, and the Ruts.

Which is all to say that only in a moment of great and unwarranted insecurity – or the misguided desire by a new manager to enact a “re-boot” by somehow linking the band with “punk rock, maaaan” – would U2 need to PROVE to anyone how “punk rock” they are. It’s just fucking unnecessary, and offensive, too, because the bands’ referenced in the new video are so clichéd as to make you think U2 know absolutely nothing about punk rock, which just isn’t true. Seriously, the bands in the clip are the same bands fucking One Direction or Taylor Swift would put in a video if they wanted people to think they were punk rock. By trying to appear credible, they’ve made themselves seem like fucking idiots, and that’s just totally pointless, because they are not idiots.

Which is all to say that U2, a band who have always more or less done the right thing on stage and off, have finally jumped the shark, in fairly resounding and unforgivable fashion. Friends, they are done. Irish Fucking Toast. Is there such a thing as Irish Toast? I mean, is it a thing, like Texas Toast, or Irish Soda Bread? I mean maybe it is or more likely it isn’t, but you get the idea. It took a while, but U2 have finally released their Steel Wheels; i.e., the album that marks the point beyond which one can firmly say no one gives a damn about your new material.

So long, U2. It’s been good to know you. Now go fuck yourselves for coming into my computer uninvited.

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“Your Mother Should Know” is a TURD

September 15, 2014

“Your Mother Should Know” by the Beatles came on the radio. I have heard this song perhaps as many times as there are grains of sand in the River Ganges; yet for the first time I realized THIS SONG IS A TURD.  If a cotton candy machine (hidden in the greasy, cobweb-laced cellar of a disused and abused Vaudeville theatre now repurposed as a sex club) was able to develop a rectum, and that well-muscled and finely clenched orifice shat out a coiled piece of velveteen SHIT laced with Splenda, this expertly-wound BOLUS would be “Your Mother Should Know” by The Beatles.

Paul McCartney, around the time he made a musical turd.

This Mento-flavored infusion of over-clever hookery (bereft of edge or even the bile-colored rainbow of irony) defies the spirit of discovery and adventure that defined 1967, but not in a rebellious or prescient way (as similar exercises by the Kinks did); instead, “Your Mother Should Know” is an asinine prodigies’ shriek to be liked and to be admired, to be seen as timeless, in other words, better than it’s time.

“Your Mother Should Know” utterly lacks the thorny point of view or originality that, say, the spectacular Bonzo Dog Band would have brought to the proceedings.  The Bonzos trafficked in revisiting and re-inventing the 1920s tropes that McCartney explored here, but the Bonzos bought a true dose of adventure, invention, dada, and near-revolutionary fervor to the proceedings.  The Bonzos did this kind of thing and waved the flag of Tristan Tzara; McCartney does it and waves the flag of Ukulele Ike. The Bonzos would have approached a song like this the way Magritte would have approached an apple or Picasso would have approached a woman’s profile; they would have seen it from all sides, including dimensions that defied normal vision.  Likewise, the Kinks (or the Small Faces, who also dabbled with faux-archaic material) would have tackled it as a musical adventure, attempting to construct an emotionally rich piece in an antiquated style using contemporary instruments and production techniques. But Paul McCartney, on the other hand, does none of that; not only is he JUST trying to reproduce the sound of a bygone era, he is also INSISTING we be impressed by how well he does it.

And that’s exactly what McCartney is doing here: he is trying to impress the adults.  Conversely, with something like “Yesterday,” I genuinely think he was trying to impress his peers; in other words, with “Yesterday” McCartney was saying “I can reach you via a different palette than the one we – the generational we — might normally use;” he was also likely referencing a somewhat-underground (for U.K. and U.S. listeners) tradition of hyper-emotional French balladry. So hooray for “Yesterday.” See, believe it or not, “Yesterday” actually had an edge and a point of view that “Your Mother Should Know” completely lacks.  But “Your Mother Should Know” is an edge-less exercise (and a well-executed one, too, which actually makes it worse – that’s why I prefer the similar but utterly ham-fisted “Winchester Cathedral”), and it is most loathsomely and criminally committed to tape NOT to emotionally reach or move the listener (as “Yesterday” or even the inferior but delightful “Michelle” did), BUT JUST TO IMPRESS US BY SHOWING US HOW WELL HE DOES THIS THING.  McCartney is precisely like one of those moon-faced children you see in supermarkets who pick up a box of cereal and loudly announce “Mother, I hear excellent things about this product and suggest you buy it.” And everyone within hearing thinks “Awww, isn’t that darling, he sound so adult!”

By the way:  this piece was only indirectly about the mewling, faux-velvet-covered piss-puddle of forced smiles called “Your Mother Should Know.”  It was really about

Infallibility.

Even the Beatles sucked sometimes.  Their very vulnerability created their genius, made them experiment and invent fearlessly, made them strive for the delicious angles of mortality instead of the boring ecru shades of mediocrity. Somehow, over the years the idea has developed that if you love the Beatles, you have to insist on their infallibility; you have to believe that every instance of Paul’s establishment-pleasing musical pleas for immortality is perfect, every expression of John’s angry sexism is perfect, every time George Harrison steals a sliding riff from Peter Green it is perfect, every time Ringo inelegantly whacks the crash-cymbal in a musically meaningless way that does nothing to enhance the song it is perfect.   Kill your fucking idols, man.  If you really love the Beatles, embrace the idea that they were real people who made mistakes, and did things for contaminated motives.  Because I never could trust anyone who did not believe that all beauty comes with infallibility.  I mean, shit, the first Boston album is pretty much perfect, but not one single person would accuse them of being the Beatles. There is no great art that boasts infallibility; this is why Warhol and Picasso will be remembered long after Rockwell.

Somehow, we set the Beatles apart; we consider them the one group exempt from the essential law of infallibility.  Just stop it.  It does them no honor, and lessens the magic of extraordinary, nearly flawless achievements like The White Album and Abbey Road.  The magic of the Beatles evolved, and like anything subject to the laws of nature, evolution, and impermanence, it is bound to be ridden with imperfection. And along the way, mistakes were made.  And I proudly announce, as a huge admirer, fan, and student of the Beatles, stating that “Your Mother Should Know” is a turd does not in any way make me less of a lover of the music or the achievements of the Beatles.

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Jeter Will Rise Again! The Truth Behind His So-Called “Retirement.”

September 5, 2014

A true rumor defies the post-space age hum of the Internet. A true rumor is like a summer rain: it may come on suddenly or it may not come at all, it may be sensed as a lithium lightness in the air when it is an eighth of a mile or a way or it may not even be believed after it has already occurred.

The gravest keepers of baseball’s most somber secrets, those who hover around (and above) the game at a Templar-like level of secrecy and power, are beginning to talk in tones hushed but firm that September 28, 2014 may not be Derek Jeter’s last game as a player.

Moe Berg, who is honored by the ultra-mysterious baseball super-cult called Nos Custodire Moe Berg Sepulcrum

First, a tiny dollop of back-story to explain how I have gained access to these secrets, and to underline my credibility: Many years ago when I was working in Los Angeles at a major record label, I made the acquaintance of a fellow from a group called Corporis Fraternitatis Giamatti. In exchange for access to master tapes of unreleased material by some very major rock bands, this person would give me remarkable inside information on MLB injuries, potential trades, home-team favorable groundskeepers, even stadium PA system operators who would feed tones through the system that could disturb an opposing pitcher or batter (but were undetectable to the human ear). There was more to this transaction, by the way: The CFG, in league with a sometimes allied, sometimes rival organization called Nos Custodire Moe Berg Sepulcrum, would sell bootleg CDs gleaned from these musical rarities (this was before the ubiquity of free downloads and streaming). With the profits, they would finance some of their more shadowy operations, including deeply entrenched groups that sought to overturn Interleague Play and the DH Rule; one of the more extreme splinter cells, Земля за Sabermetrics, was determined to use every means possible, including violence, to end night baseball (it was rumored that Земля за Sabermetrics were involved in the 1996 on-field death of umpire John McSherry). This was all very interesting and very, very hush-hush.

But back to Jeter. I have gleaned the following from my various sources at the above-named organizations, with some of the more specific details drawn from an Irish-American super-fan sect called An Cumann na Veeck mar atá i Wreck. By the way, I do not fear reprisal from these organizations whose secrets I disclose, since I have held on to some Bon Scott Back In Black demos that they very badly want.

The following plan is to go into effect after Jeter’s “final” game (presumably in Boston on September 28, though this arrangement is flexible, depending on whether the Yankees choose not to play Jeter following their September 25 home finale):

After he leaves the field and the post-game press conferences, Jeter will be discretely placed in the custody of a long-time Yankee fanatic named Jose D’Arimathea. Jeter will discard any clothing in which he could be recognized, and slip into a shroud-like hoodie that D’Arimathea has designed and prepared just for this occasion.

D’Arimathea and the disguised Jeter will than withdraw to a small basement apartment on Moshulou Parkway in the Bronx that D’Aramithea has outfitted specifically for this purpose. They will be assisted in this clandestine operation by a local bar owner named Nick O’Demus, who is the member of a secretive fantasy baseball operation called the Sandlot Hedrin.

After his final out, Yankee super-fan Jose D’Arimathea carries an exhausted Jeter to D’Arimathea’s basement apartment on Moshulou Parkway (artists’ rendering)

Once installed safely in the cave-like apartment, Jeter will rest, deeply and very quietly, for a short period of time.

After three days, a female fan of Jeter (who will be present at the initial stage of Jeter’s furtive transportation from the Stadium to D’Arimathea’s apartment) will arrive at “the cave,” only to find that the door is open and Jeter is no longer inside. Since great care will be taken to lock the apartment door from all sides to insure Jeter’s privacy, the open door and the absence of Jeter will come as a great surprise to the visitor. The female follower will tell D’Arimathea, O’Demus, and other disciples of Jeter that he has risen from his slumber, in defiance of the pre-ordained plan and natural law (the door to D’Arimathea’s apartment had been considered impenetrable, both from inside and out).

Soon, many people, Yankees fans and non-fans alike, will report sightings of Jeter playing ball in the Caribbean Winter Leagues. Although these reports will seem barely credible at first, soon the whole Baseball world will be buzzing with multiple accounts from plausible sources of sightings of Jeter on ball fields from Mazatlan to Mexicali, Culiacan to Hermosillo. Jeter’s play will be strong and consistent, and he will perform at a level of skill and athleticism he has not performed at for years.

These sightings will be so far apart in terms of distance (yet in such close proximity, time-wise) as to be hardly believable; but the witnesses will insist – indeed swear on their life – that they have seen Jeter walk again on the diamond.

The Three Wise Alou Brothers, who will trek to the Domican Republic bearing gifts for the reborn Jeter

These sightings will last exactly 40 days. During that time, there will be occasional glimpses of Jeter off the diamond; in fact, he will appear to a small group of fishermen in the small village of El Cuyo, Yucatan, and help the locals land a particularly large haul of Mosquitofish. He will also encounter a cynical, Jeter-hating blogger named Sol Tarsus, who will be so overwhelmed by seeing Jeter back on the playing field that he will abandon his Jeter-mocking ways, re-name himself after legendary Yankee Paul O’Neill, and spend the rest of his life preaching Jeter’s greatness.

After 40 days, Jeter’s mysterious and almost miraculous “resurrection” tour will end as abruptly as it started. Those fortunate enough to have seen Jeter, post-retirement, in uniform on the baseball fields of the Caribbean, will have their lives changed forever, and they will have a renewed faith in the power and glory of Derek Jeter, a faith that will warm them and inspire them for the rest of their lives.

And Peter of Gammons will proclaim: “He has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in the Bronx: ‘The Son of Sanderson must be delivered over to the hands of statisticians, be criticized and on the third day be raised again.’ ”  And Jim of Rome will say “Then Jeter came to them and said, ‘All authority in Cooperstown and in Bristol has been given to me.  Teach them to obey everything I have commanded you, with the possible exception of an endorsement I made for Florshiem. I mean, really, can you imagine me wearing anything from Florshiem? And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.’ ”

 

 

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The Doomed Sex Geckos Make Me Celebrate Life and Here’s Why

September 4, 2014

For the rest of our lives, we will all remember where we were on September 2, 2014, when we heard that the Russian Sex Geckos had died in space. These randy reptiles, who sacrificed their lives to make the vast emptiness of the cosmos safe for Astral Coitus, will forever be in our hearts, alongside other non-human pioneers who climbed the ladder to heaven for the sake of ethereal exploration: Laika the Canine Cosmonaut, Bek and Lek the Lunar Orbiting Tortoises, and ill-fated Gordo the Squirrel Monkey, launched by our very own country into the skies in December, 1958, only to drown without mercy when the capsule parachute failed to open.

This is Gordo. He is about to die for science.

(Sans pitié, I tell you, sans pitié! Wishing only for a warm nut and a cool patch of Florida grass to scamper upon, poor Gordo was sacrificed to the cruel, cold waters of the Atlantic.)

The brevity of the brave lives of the Sex Geckos and all the other dogs, rodents, chimps, and turtles who died for science has made me consider what a luminous, brief, and rare gift life is. Inspired by the lives these skybound creatures led, scraping the heavens to gaze with hopeful and tiny animal eyes at the face of God, I have decided to honor their sacrifice and the brief moments of joy, heroism, and lizard horniness they must have felt before the Space Reaper collected his pennies. To honor the extraordinary gift of sentient birth, full of the dust of destitution and the silver of desire, the glitter of cities and the sun-rich, loamy earth of the country, the prize of solitude and the sweet grasp of company, here is my list of things I am thankful for:

Fribbles. During the unsightly, bullying, hirsute, bloated, screeching, neon decade of the 1970s, I lived in the weak-Tudor suburbs of Long Island, that land of car dealerships, mod synagogues, and over-designed duck ponds; I screamed majorly, minorly, and hourly for the scratch and sass of Manhattan, dreaming every day of escape from the eternal wet November of the well-meaning Freeway Land. In the midst of this doomscape of blousy hair and teenage Porsches, the succulent succor of the Fribble, that delectable Delorean of ice cream treats, was like Mothers’ milk to the teen soul abused by the encroachment of conformity and mediocrity. Likewise, I am thankful for…

The Kinks. Before Punk saved our souls and turned all us Sauls into Pauls spreading the gospel of Bowery and Kings Road to a world dulled by Kansas and ELP, us wet-lipped outsiders who wandered in the cruel American desert bowed low before the golden calf of The Kinks, those delicious, British, bashing, effeminate, tender, terrorizing masters of songs most subtle and riffs most outrageous. They had a legend full of gorgeous back-story and self-destructive misery, making music for every mood and a song for every season, and they provided an immediate way to identify allies before the armies of the outsiders all cut their hair. Oh my Kinks, you were my first love. I am thankful for…

The Mighty Boosh. A century and a quarter after Weber & Fields discovered it was wildly funny (and equally lucrative) to go on stage portraying two men abusing each other with props and wordplay, you would have thought that the whole concept of the two-man comedy team could not appear vital, fresh, and ferociously funny. But the Mighty Boosh took all the clichés, pumped them full of hipster air and sealed it with dada staples, and produced one of the five funniest TV shows of all time. Like The Honeymooners, Fawlty Towers, and (most of) Blackadder, you can watch the Mighty Boosh’s three series of television shows again and again and be awed, over and over, by the creativity, the stunning scripted and visual invention, the startling and unexpected wit, and the ability of two amazing actors – Julian Barratt and Noel Fielding – to make the most absurd characters and situations appear utterly real, compelling, and draw-dropping funny. I am thankful for…

Two devastatingly perfect pure pop songs that you may not be familiar with, but which you will listen to right now: “Strolling on Air” by Kimberly Rew and the Waves and “Monsters and Angels” by Voice of the Beehive. The most exceptional pop music is like mirror-filled sugar icicle castles with butterscotch-granite foundations: exotic and unachievable, firm and monumental, but reflecting some undeniable truth about ourselves.

There are some great achievements in the last forty years of post-Ramones power pop, but I honestly think nothing, not even the mod thrill-rides of the Barracudas, nor the balsa-light studious frippery of XTC or even the sibilant Mersey-heaven of the La’s, can compare to the these two songs. When asked to preserve the best pure pop of this generation, I hope these two songs go up in the Viking spaceship. I am thankful for…

The only known photograph of Buddy Bolden. He stands behind the guitarist, sneering forward at the Pop Century he is about to invent

Buddy Bolden, because what could be more beautiful than the fact that the man who is the lodestone for 20th Century music, and who is the blueprint for every tragic and self-destructive star of the American pop era, was never recorded and only photographed once? How exquisite, how truly and purely magical it is that the Pop Century begins with sparks exploding in the hands and mind of someone so mysterious that he might as well have never existed? I am thankful for…

The fact that as I write this Kate Bush has EIGHT albums in the UK top 40 album charts; only Elvis and the Beatles have had more albums in the British top 40. Even those who don’t love Bush’s almost hyper-real gifts and skills have to honor this: this almost unprecedented success proves that if you do something different from everyone else AND DO IT WITH ALL YOUR HEART AND ALL YOUR MUSCLE, the world will open it’s doors. I have always, always, always said that the surest path to success is to a) make a record that someone doesn’t already own and b) make a record that you can’t find in your record collection but really, really want to hear, and clearly, Kate Bush has done both these things, with brilliant execution and studious commitment, over and over again, and anyone and everyone who ever desires to create music can learn something – everything – from her.

This short list is only the beginning. It omits The Undertones, Benny Tudino’s Pizza, Bruno Ganz, Oskar Matzerath, Henry Pulling, Evelyn Waugh, Richard Farina, Huey Long, Thich Nhat Hanh, Jennifer, Emily, Bo, and Maddy Brout, Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, the incredible Prettiots, the Aurora Borealis, and a billion other things. Life is full of small and large miracles and brilliant and staggering and gorgeous things to see and hear, from the mesmerizing tic-tic of a signal indicator on an automobile to the transcendentally evocative howl of train whistle in the distance, to the shadows of Caligari to the monumental dreamscapes of Brazil, to the golden bridges over the Danube in Budapest to the warm, old, unmoving stones of Avebury Henge.

And it took the death of a Sex Gecko to remind me what a miracle this strange incarnation is.

Oh, and Neu!

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War: Not Just something Roger Waters whines about.

September 2, 2014

My brother Peter turns 60 this week.  That is a singular event that I would like to mark pleasantly – Peter is a kind, handsome, and brilliant man who has made a considerable mark as an educator – but I mention this event only to note this:

Peter turned 18 in 1972.  That’s pretty significant, and here’s why: American males who turned 18 in 1972 were the first 18 year olds not subject to the draft lottery, the system by which young men were randomly chosen for service in the military (which at that time likely meant a trip to Vietnam).  Prior to 1972, young American men lived with the idea that only a randomly chosen number stood between them and extraordinary hardship, sacrifice, and possible death imposed by the policies of their government.

I want you to take a moment and imagine what it would be like for a young person today if the draft existed; shit, imagine what it would be like for you.  What if you were walking around today thinking “Dammit, in eighteen months I could be standing in the desert while someone I never met tries to kill me.”

Also, this week marks three remarkable anniversaries:  September 2nd was the 69th anniversary of the official end of the Second World War (on that date aboard the battleship USS Missouri docked in Tokyo Bay, the official Instrument of Surrender was signed by representatives of the Empire of Japan); September 1 was the 75th anniversary of the Invasion of Poland by the armies of the Third Reich, the date usually connected with the beginning of the Second World War; and it was on that same day, 75 years ago today, that the Free City of Danzig was annexed by the Third Reich, marking the first of many foreign cities to fall under the yoke of the Nazis.

As we watch our cat videos, it seems that we are extraordinarily distant from these events.  Possibly due to the 42 years we have gone without the draft, possibly due to the overwhelming plurality and ubiquity of the media (which is to say it is everywhere, all the time, dramatically altering our ability to filter the important from the trivial), war seems like some concept that belongs to someone else, or perhaps something we relate to fantasy novels or video games. Touched by the random horror of terrorism, we are certainly aware that there is a world out there that fights and dies for religious and political beliefs; but for 42 years, we have been removed from this reality, the idea that we might have to kill or be killed to defend our way of life, or to defend the choices of the government we live in.

But the extraordinary events of the 20th century are within spitting distance of most of our lives.  War is only one burp of history away, one incident in the Balkans away, one over-eager button pusher in the Middle East away, one click of a keyboard from some zealous cyber terrorist away.  True: we are a cursor click away from another conflagration that will re-draw our maps, define the lives of our children and grandchildren, and leave a million civilians dead.  My draft-less generation were very, very fortunate, which only means that we must work even harder to possess and maintain two very, very crucial characteristics, as individuals and as a culture:

Memory and empathy.

All other factors – education, wisdom, the ability to make a reasonable assessment of the actions of your government and the actions of other nations, the ability to see military action within the context of history, the ability to assess the human cost of military action — all stem from a strong underpinning of memory and empathy.

I was 10 years old when the draft lottery was extinguished.  My entire adult life has been led without even the remote fear of conscription, or the idea that I may be called upon, involuntarily, to fight against a foreign (or even domestic) power for the beliefs of my country.  If another military event or engagement requires conscription, I will be too old for this.  In other words, I, like others of my generation, have lived without any real idea that we were going to have to fight in a war. My deeply fortunate and ultimately unrealistic generation learned to think of war as something distant, something fought by an economic underclass, something fought vaguely “for” us and in far away places, and only representing our interests or protecting our way of life in uncertain ways.  But memory can teach us that war is real, was real, will be real, must be real; when it is real, we can have an understanding of the motivations on both sides and compassion for victims and victimizers; when we can relate, say, the assassination of the heir to throne of Austro-Hungary by Bosnian/Serbian freedom fighters in 1914 to what’s going on in the Ukraine today, or when we can relate the atrocities of Isis in Iraq to the siege of Vienna by the Ottoman Empire in 1683, we are at least one baby-step closer to understanding that today’s events are part of history’s community and continuity, and not isolated episodes of cultural narcissism.  Likewise, the wisdom of awareness of the past makes us see the human cost of history, and apply this to everyday compassion.

I doubt any other generation in American history will have this privilege, to have lived with no threat of conscription.  This underlines the need to somehow establish a strong foundation of empathy and memory within our culture.  Our children and our children’s children will almost without a doubt hold weapons and be fired upon, and they will need memory and empathy to negotiate the fear, hatred, and ignorance that are endemic to war. Our children, and our children’s children, will almost certainly know war.  It may not be war as us, our parents, or our grandparents considered it; it may involve entire economies or entire electrical grids being shut down via the click of one key on a computer, it may involve shadow armies belonging to no nation threatening civilian lives and infrastructure.

But like any “conventional” war, any reasonable approach will require grounding in memory and empathy, history and compassion.

 

 

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