love is wild
like the coyote
running fearlessly
in front of my truck

his lope measured
his shoulders straight
undaunted by what is
behind him, unmoved
by what is before

completely at ease
in a mastery of
motion
undriven,
unjustified
well-fed

part of the mysterious
nocturnal business
of nature

raising voice to sing
at the moon

In The Works: Unfinished Novels

I currently have an embarrassment of unfinished stories/story ideas in the works, some hundreds of pages into the writing process.  Mainly what happens for me is that I stop getting feedback and/or my readership seems to lose interest, and so I lose interest.  I feel like there's a chance I could finish at least one of these before the end of the year though, at least a first draft (although sometimes I move to a second or even third draft before even finishing!), just to have some kind of approachable goal with my purely speculative creative work.

The titles are:

"College Boy" -- literary/noir fiction.  A depressive, nihilistic heir to a family fortune seeks vengeance against the drug kingpin who stole his innocence.

"Thirst" -- fantasy/horror fiction.  A vampire describes the process by which his connection to his own humanity is degraded and yet somehow never fully dissipates, despite his ability to commit unspeakable atrocities.

"Switch" -- literary/noir fiction.  A precocious youth in 1970's Portland befriends a wealthy, charismatic classmate whom he suspects of being a sociopath and future dictator.

"Shooting Script (Working Title)" -- fantasy/horror fiction.  An up-and-coming Hollywood screenwriter becomes embroiled in an epic conflict between Good and Evil, wherein angels enlist his help using the gift of his imagination to discover why God has apparently abandoned them.

In addition to these I have several partially finished science fiction story ideas that didn't make it past the first few chapters.  If anyone is interested in seeing samples of these please let me know.

Album Review: "Isolation Drills" by Guided By Voices

Guided By Voices
http://www.guidedbyvoices.com


Isolation Drills
TVT, 2001
rating: 9.0
reviewer: rather ripped



[NOTE: This article previously appeared at Epinions]

From the super-cool fighter jet collage cover with lyric foldout to the no-BS production wizardry of Rob Schnapf (who knew a "real" producer could actually bottle up the magic that is Bob Pollard and sell it??!) this is a deeply satisfying 100% pure rock and roll record made by and for true believers as is impossible to find nowadays.

Surprisingly, I have seen people aged 21 to 61 at GBV shows, so I guess some of the kids these days still know what rock is. I have a memory of roaring across the Richmond Bridge at 3 AM with an old friend blasting Who's Next and thinking "THIS is the ultimate soundtrack to my life!"

Well, now this is. This record makes me feel 15 again! I want to finish every sentence with an "!" when I write about this record!

Fair Touching
A demonstration of how you can take GBV out of the basement studio but you'll never take the basement studio out of GBV. This is the iron gauntlet slap in the face to all those nay sayers who claimed that a professional production would "ruin" GBV...well, this song was recorded inside a freaking coffee can under Bob's side project Lexo and the Leapers, and here it is pumped up on the multitrack board, and by golly, it rocks like a satchel of gravel. Best line describing the "Farewell Ladies" that seem to occupy many of his songs: "Does it snap or just happen?"

Skills Like This
Not one to lose momentum by the second song, Bob tosses this thunderer out for the neophytes and old friends alike, just as he does the Bud longnecks he chucks like circus knives to the unsuspecting front row. Evoking equal parts AC/DC, Bad Company, the Who, the whole Punk Rock catalogue, and every previous horse-frightening GBV anthem, herein Uncle Bob both invites and warns. Accessible though its guitar-thrustings may be, the Captain nevertheless makes no bones about the addictive and intoxicating experience that awaits. "....do you want me in your head?...who will be the human boot?" Best line is the punchline: "I'll reunite you"

Chasing Heather Crazy
Heavy Rotation! Pure pop, pure GBV, fun for the whole family! Best line: "Staring out from otherworldy windows painted red"...

Frostman
A little lo-fi for the oldtimers! Bob plunking and spelunking for rhyme crimes on his couch! Reminding us all the much-repeated quote, "I can write 25 songs on the crapper, and twenty of them will be good ones." Surprisingly a moment of poignance amidst all the revelry. It's a sad song, like a tear from Falstaff's weary eye. And it's over in a heartbeat. A stolen moment.

Twilight Campfighter
With more delicious wordplay--notice the multilayered resonance between "campfire" and "firefighter" (remember the cowboy of "Hold On Hope" whose campfire flickers on the landscape? Here he is again, the weatherbeaten American rock hero bruised but unbeaten by circumstance), the striking image of a "fire [built] into an open wound", the ironic counterpoise of the rhyme "congratulate" and "late"...Bob sets himself up again as the doubtful rock and roll superhero everyman we all relate to so well. Best line: "On these darker trails/With light revealing holy grails..."

Sister I Need Wine
Both gorgeous and sad, herein is stated Bob's bacchanalian philosophy in a nutshell, in which he invites his Muse to help him "Drink the truth/Shed not one tear"...yet its minor-chord, muted threnody implies perhaps a mild desperation, as if we can feel the supressed pain lurking beneath where the "backed-up river spreads"...a song for the first sip where "How's My Drinking?" dregs somewhere at the bottom of the magnum...

Want One?
Perhaps in this song above all others is Bob's nod to past British Invasions most clearly noted in a swaggering Humble Pie-esque guitar-sneer and invitations to partake in "A nursery whip/for men who skip...", calling to mind footage of Keith Moon in "The Kids Are Allright" being whipped by a dominatrix during an interview...psychedelic, groovy, and sick, worthy of Zep's "Physical Graffitti", here they show us how GBV manages to be both "Alternative" AND "Classic Rock".

The Enemy
A heart-stirring sample of "Broadcaster House" from GBV's seminal release "Clown Prince of the Menthol Trailer", featuring some of Bob's least lucid beery howling, followed by an ominous 4/4 guitar fanfare reminiscent of Wire's "154"...GBV's greatest nod, as always, is to themselves. Best line: "A childproof survival kit/Just for a glimpse/Of the everlasting big kick"

Unspirited
In which Bob disses the competition, the critics, the nay-sayers, and perhaps a few discarded fairweather friends with a wry flair that would make your average hip hop DJ doff his Kangol. Best line: "When you lose it all, you'll think of me/When you take the fall, you'll drink to me/I'm the one who did it painlessly/I'm the one who does it..."

Glad Girls
LAUNCH FRISBEES! AVAST YE LANDLUBBERS! BOB'S AWAY!!!!!
What we used to call "A real corker". In some ways reminiscent of "You Shook Me All Night Long", although the lyrics are far more transportive. Best line: "There will be no coronation/There will be no flowers flowing/In the light that passes through me..." Bless us, Uncle Bob!

Run Wild
Even after the previous salvo the band's guns are not yet spent. In a brooding  heavy-rock stomp exploding into an anthemic major-chord chorus, somewhat reminiscent of very early Utopia, Bob paints a brief, disquieting
portrait--eerily prophetic--of our wartime landscape: "Think of a no parking zone/where armored cars keep the street/and every heart seeks inspiration", which is followed by his  audibly inebriated rallying cry, "Leave your things in the streets/And run wild".  He could be ranting against globalist consumerism--"your things" being our cell  phones, SUVs, snowboards, etc.--but with Bob it's always hard to say. There's even a note of desperation in the guitar solo, a climbing wail almost like an air raid siren. The "Run wild" part, though, speaks for its Bacchanalian self. In the studio as well as live, this one always seems to be timed to coincide with Bob's
lowest level of coherence. But the passion is still there.

Pivotal Film
This one really gets me. It's GBV's "If 6 Was 9", only instead of "White collar conservatives" Bob torpedoes "scenesters" who, "grotesque and arrogant/perfect for the experts", "showing cloaks of rubber" like ridiculous superheroes (or cinematic Batmen), who from their "critical rooms" end up "exit[ing] into thin air". The comparison to the J. Hendrix Experience here is not a loose one--witness the swaggering, almost military, yet still laid-back-intoxicated roll of the drums  against a guitar snarl that sneers. He appears to be repeating the old
refrain: It's only rock and roll, puncturing the self-importance of the elite-purist indie-pundits and poseurs who have frequently stood on the sidelines vainly stroking their goatees wondering about Bob's deep significance, or lack thereof. Again, a lugubrious dismissal any gangsta rapper would be proud of--that is if, in his elocution, English Teacher Bob isn't talking straight over their heads.

How's My Drinking?
As short and sweet as any classic GBV tidbit, though lush with piano and chiming guitars, Bob's proud alcoholism enshrined in a golden nutshell. Probably the most defiant, yet poignant, song next to "Frostman". I remember at the GBV concert at the Showbox earlier this year my wife, who was seeing GBV for the first time,
turning to me and saying, "Enjoy him while you can. I don't think he's going to be  around much longer." But that's good advice for us all, if you think about it.

The Brides Have Hit Glass
Most artists would have stopped there...but here comes another one of what endless writers have dubbed "pop gems", in which Bob gets so self-referential he name checks the song he's singing! Yet, at the same time, this swinging tune, somewhat reminiscent of Merseybeat or other early Brit Invasion, manages to be one of
his most thoughtful. "To be on top of your own world/With no guardrails to cling to/You fall so very fast" isn't just self-referential, it's reflective. It's hard  to write Bob off as a monument to dysfunctional-ism with statements like that.

Fine To See You
Amazingly, this could also be a fine last song on the album for 99% of the album-makers out there--you can easily visualize row upon row of teary-eyed fans waving lighters at this old-fashioned, almost corny farewell to an imaginary concert audience. And yet, they still keep going!--much like they do live and in person.

Privately
Bob always has to have the last word. The guitars surge one last time like the turning wing of their departing rock star jet plane, and the violins wave goodbye. The lyrics seem to imply an admonition to long time fans who, as long time fans always do, might have tried to press Bob in their yearbooks and not want him to
rise from obscurity and become famous the way it always seems to happen...the Clash, REM, your favorite band here...he says, "In the midst of this effort/Courageous tongues are bitter/Don't blast them/Bring posters and
broadcast/Not a public display/But a new secret". In other words, the obscure and intimate quality of a great band like GBV need not be lost, but can actually be shared by everyone. For someone as cynical as Bob this is a strangely idealistic, almost naive sentiment, but his obvious belief in it is what may help GBV succeed in remaining, even in the face of being loved by all mankind and on sale at K-Mart, the coolest obscure indie rock band in the world.

There are my humble opinions--of course, your own experience of this album will be  its own inner universe, untouchable and unreadable as the closing words, which  might even be addressed to you: "Cigarette lifter/The frozen violins/Solid movement//Privately". A fitting last word for an album by anyone's favorite band.

1. Fair Touching
2. Skills Like This
3. Chasing Heather Crazy
4. Frostman
5. Twilight Campfighter
6. Sister I Need Wine
7. Want One?
8. The Enemy
9. Unspirited
10. Glad Girls
11. Run Wild
12. Pivotal Film
13. How's My Drinking?
14. The Brides Have Hit Glass
15. Fine to See You
16. Privately
 

Album Review: "Kid A" by Radiohead

 Radiohead: Way Deep-A** Down Coal Miners of Classic Rock
Dec 12 '00 (Updated Apr 19 '01)

[NOTE: This review originally appeared at Epinions]

Author's Product Rating
Product Rating: 4.0

Pros
A Disturbing, Unsettling High Art Piece, Drenched In Irony

Cons
Won't Bring Up Your Mood Much I'm Afraid

The Bottom Line
The sound of HAL from 2001 slowly dying...and that's a good thing.

Full Review
Well, kids, you may be sick to the very rising of your gorge with the rantings of ol' Grandpa Rather_Ripped by now...about how he remembers when records were made on big plastic frisbees and played with a needle...how cars used to run on gasoline...how computers used to be made of wood...

But I'll skip all that and get to the album in question, KID A. If you're looking for a straight-ahead album review, you may want to move along to the next one. But if, like me, you like to dig a little deeper under the surface looking for slimy little subtexts, stick around. First, let's look at it in context with the whole Radiohead ouvre as a post-gen-X revisitation of classic rock.

If you listen to the first four Radiohead albums end to end, besides having extremely red eyes and a throbbing headache, you realize that it is a compendium of angst-ridden introverted stoner/glam rock deeply influenced by such bands our forefathers listened to as Pink Floyd, Van der Graaf Generator, Be Bop Deluxe, Roxy Music circa Brian Eno, etc. etc. This may seem frightening to you young revos out there (or just confusing to you kids who are too young to even know who I'm talking about)--weren't those the evil dinosaurs that "cool" bands people "like us" listen to were "supposed to destroy"?

Yes. And that's the delicious, twisted delight of KID A.

Johnny Rotten never could have put on an "I HATE PINK FLOYD" t-shirt if he hadn't at least once had a bad experience LISTENING to Pink Floyd. And I'm sure there are many of us out there who have, even those of us who have had good ones as well. KID A is quite literally a tone poem so closely resembling "Welcome To The Machine"-era Floyd it's scary. What they are demonstrating is that the natural progression of the bogus 70's nostalgia of a consumerism-overdriven youth culture too young to actually remember what an evil, despicable decade it was, is straight down a sodden pill hole into hell.

Many of us who wonder, "How the hell do we bring back the awakeness and aliveness of the punk era in the midst of this numb electronica-infested cultural torpor?" may do well to examine the profoundly ironic soundscape of this record. KID A is like the inoculation against a disease with the dead cells of that same disease. By showing the kids out there that, well, no, you see, the 70's style wasn't really about fun and hedonistic glamor, it was about suicide and decadence, KID A kickstarts a new level of pop-musical awareness. "I'm not here" says the answering machine-like voice of Thom Yorke, which flows easily into "this isn't happening"--insinuating that the technology we love so dearly has caused us to completely dissociate.

It also underscores an important point of divergence for Yorke and Co. from the original music they so ruthlessly plunder. While Floyd ranted on and on in a used-up and deadened 60's fashion about a faceless machine steamrolling over our lives..."It's, like, the system, maaan...", Our Lads step up to the plate like modern men do and take full responsibility in their songs. It's not about some ephemeral "them", it's we that have sterilized ourselves into the robot-like voices that occupy their songs. We're like 21st Century robocops staggering around wondering who we are and how we got here.

I hope that on the next album Yorkey and the boys jolly well pull the plug. These boys are capable of a full-tilt hard rock made-of-wood-and-stone (not plastic) album that would put Pearl Jam to shame. But maybe they have to go even deeper into the sickness to save us from ourselves...................

Recommended
Yes

Album Review: "Still" by Joy Division

ian curtis' tombstone
Apr 25 '05 (Updated May 11 '05)

[NOTE:  This article originally appeared at Epinions]

Author's Product Rating
Product Rating: 5.0

Pros
The closest thing to a last will and testament of Manchester's Finest.

Cons
buy it in vinyl - live version of "24 hours" is missing from the CD.

The Bottom Line
If you do not already own a record player, buy one to listen to this on vinyl.

Full Review
as requested, i have reposted the original piece i wrote about the CD version of this album in "General Reviews-Music". my apologies to all for going off topic.

i bought the 2 record set of "STILL" on vinyl when it first came out in 1981. by that time ian curtis was already dead by his own hand. so, perhaps appropriately, my first exposure to the artist's work was posthumous.

i can remember the chilly, uncomfortable feeling i had when the dead soul himself spoke from the speakers over the sonorous, funereal feedback and tribal drums: "...Time for one last ride before the end of it all." i thought punk rock and avant garde music had prepared me for challenging sounds, but hell - was pop music supposed to sound this frightening, this depressing? of course as we have seen, horror and suspense movie soundtracks every year since then have borrowed heavily from the postmodern angularity that reached its apotheosis with the nine singles and twelve live tracks on this 2-disk vinyl headstone.

some of martin hannet's most brilliant production atmospherics are apparent here - one gets the feeling that the songs were recorded on a floating ice berg in the middle of the antarctic, under a sky the color of lead, by people who were or were soon going to be frozen to death. "ice age" has guitar-driven brutality reminiscent of their earliest work, yet the drums sound less like the stereotypical testosterone pummeling of ordinary punk and more like the shudders of a machine breaking down. bernard sumner's guitar solo literally sounds like a bandsaw hitting a piece of metal - you can almost see the sparks flying. it actually hurts. as for the words, "Seen the real atrocities, buried in the sand/Stockpiled safety for a few - we stand holding hands" could have been written today.

on "the sound of music" the bass is heavy, thick, and plodding, far more so than that of larry tolhursts' on the equally seminal "pornography" by the cure, which under steve lillywhite's production sounds stagey by comparison. "pornography" is a technicolor horror film; "STILL" is in black and white, like a haunting bergman melodrama. the drums ring dead and flat as gunshots inside of a garbage dumpster, and the soloing again has a sustained harshness to it truly unheard of in previous music. curtis sings "love - life - don't you feel higher?", repeating the last word over and over again first as a rebuke, then as an outpouring of sheer agony.

i can't really explain why, but "glass" was the one that actually scared the s**t out of me the most. it evoked a black-painted discoteque with flashing white strobe lights populated by flesh eating zombies being electrocuted. this may or may not have been an accurate portrait of manchester in the late 70's. again, i couldn't imagine that music this sincerely horrific could be anybody's party music. of course after that first hearing i was infected and had to hear it "again and again", like an addict who's long since inured to the high, and only in it for the fix.

the next four tracks sustain the feeling in varying textures, but "dead souls" is the climax - riveting, dramatic, astonishing in its power, comparable to the stones' "gimme shelter" or hendrix's "voodoo chile (slight return)" in its devastating portrait of the disintegration of a human soul. the band is jamming here with a rock and roll synchronousness that is achingly tragic in demonstrating the potential lost from curtis' death, but it is as fitting a final statement as any. the recurring theme of curtis' lyrics, fully supported by the band's musical expression - that of the unquiet ghosts of man's historical inhumanity coming back to afflict ensuing generations, that anyone with any sensitivity at all must feel horror at what we are capable of - is brought to a head here. the song rises and then falls with dynamics equal to anything else in the history of rock music. as curtis cries out "they keep calling me!" you can almost hear him joining them, becoming one with the voices. it's hard to imagine any other end to his story, listening to this music.

the live tracks are impactful enough, if only shadows of the studio versions. personally "24 hours", which does not appear on later re-releases [such as the CD], strikes me as the exception. one gets a brief glimpse from the recording something of the tension, terror and drama that fuels the idea of the song that could not truly come to full fruition without an audience present. it would probably make good background music to a Survival Research Labs performance of robot warriors tearing each other apart. when it ends, the cheer of the audience sounds exhausted, the kind of exhaustion one feels coming out of a good horror matinee.

it's tragic that the catharsis one might experience listening to this album was not within ian curtis' reach; that after making a statement like "dead souls" he could not move on to tell other stories of his inner landscape, which was clearly vast. we will have to satisfy ourselves with the imagining of it.





Recommended
Yes

Great Music to Play While: Listening

Album Review: "Boston" by Boston [Debut]

NOTE:  This article originally appeared in Tiny Mixtapes Gone to Heaven Boston self-titled CBS/EPIC, 1976 rating: 7.2 reviewer: rather ripped Listening to Boston's eponymous first album makes my mind rocket through a million pathways, a million different selves. Like other period pieces like The Beatles' Abbey Road or U2's Boy, it has the power to instantly propel me back to a once jealously guarded inner world rich with its own atmosphere, like a Lost World of the Self. One of the reasons I find this particular album, even in my most cynical moments, to be as awe-inspiring and uplifting as it is ridiculous, pompous and overblown, is that it is a completely blank slate. There's nothing thematically in it, either tonally or lyrically, that is patently disagreeable. Its universality, like an unmarked piece of paper, makes it a palimpsest for any listening ear, a screen on which the individual might project their deepest dreams and wishes if they chose. Or nothing at all. It's about freedom and its tensor opposite, the desire to be loved. It's about what Van Morrison called the inarticulate speech of the heart. And, in songs rich with perhaps unintentional irony that span an emotional spectrum from ecstasy ["Smokin'", Side 2, Track 2] to suicide ["Hitch a Ride", Side 2, Track 3], at the heart it's about getting stoned, getting laid, driving around in muscle  cars and playing in a rock and roll band. It's about the American Dream circa  1976, or the global capitalist dream of now. It seems unlikely at best to imagine anyone in our present day and age to expect  rock and roll music to elicit love ["Rock and Roll Band", side 2, track 1], much less going to a rock and roll concert expecting to find it. People no longer go to concerts to listen to church organs and be transported to some orgone plateau, or to have their mind expanded. Rather, they go to have their deepest prejudices confirmed. Perhaps this has always been the case, and anecdotal evidence to the contrary are representative of nothing more than nostalgia-saturated remnants of a bygone era that never was. Perhaps, to quote one veteran 30-something musician, "The past is just a retro version of the same old bullshit." But the way we felt was real. The feelings may have been adolescent, even pubescent, but they were genuine. It's easy to fake a memory of a chain of events, particularly to support a cherished ideal of a past self, but it's harder to fake an emotion. Somehow, inscrutably, this album manages to evoke those feelings. We laugh at the middle-aged golf club members on an episode of HBO's The Sopranos, getting down to "More Than A Feeling" [Side 1, Track 1], but we wince because we have done exactly the same thing, perhaps even turning it up on the car radio and rolling down the windows at red lights to let the world know. It's a felt-memory that transports us faultlessly back to our youth and as such brooks no shame or social remorse. The problems begin when I check in with others who share a history with this music, who report no feelings at all--that is if we're even on speaking terms. In fact,  most of them are just the kind of idiots I always hated and avoided in school and after. Maybe it's because at the time I was too young to get high, just old enough  to really dig and get inside the songs themselves; meanwhile, these other people were too stoned and/or stupid to feel ANYTHING deeply, other than (perhaps) an erection. The splendidly blank slate reflects nothing to a blank person. Conversely, many people whose opinion I respect claim in open discourse to have never liked this album, although I know for a fact that this is not the case in several specific instances. Either they no longer allow it to move them as they once did, or they refuse to admit that it still can. It instead lies consigned to the dubious honor of the much-touted "guilty pleasure", as if these songs were tantamount to such inexplicable Vaudevillian "entertainments" as Kiss, the Osmonds or the Village People. These same hypocrites are perfectly willing to admit to feelings of nostalgia for the music of Tom Petty, or even AC/DC--they merely deny feeling a connection to this particular album because it is decidedly within the "feel-good" oeuvre, and as such holds no truck with the bohemian pseudo-intelligentsia hipoisie. Pop music's deeply personal experiential qualities are self-evident to the point of cliché. It is the ultimate you-had-to-be-there generational experience, that is if you count generations like I do--not in blocks of 30 years, as in a pro-creational generation, but rather in blocks of 4 years, like high school, the average baccalaureate track, or a standard military tour of duty--the only measurement of time that matters to the young, at the time they formulate the part of their identity that responds to music. Therefore, for example, I perceive the Jam, the Clash, Elvis Costello, U2, Wire, and Black Uhuru to be the music of my generation; while Boston, Thin Lizzy, Bad Company and AC/DC are the music of the generation before me, and the Smiths, Depeche Mode, Frankie Goes to Hollywood and Oingo Boingo are of the generation after. And as we moved on to college, my generation embraced REM, the Meat Puppets, Husker Du, the Replacements, and the Soft Boys, while the generation behind us were struggling with Huey Lewis, latter-day Starship and Journey, and the generation ahead of us made do (quite admirably) with Prince, the Pixies and Sonic Youth. Eventually I found that my generation settled down with local bands no one had ever heard of, usually comprised of friends of theirs, that recorded one or two independent albums and then broke up; the generation behind mine settled down and enjoyed Robert Cray; and the one ahead seemed barely to distinguish between only slightly varying permutations of the next big thing. Perhaps one's perceptions of generations in front or behind become blurred with increasing age. It's only 4 years difference, but it's enough to make me think I'm cooler. Even if our record collections overlap as much as 75%. It could be what one might call the Older Brother bias. Boston was one of the cassettes that was blasted in my big brother's Ford Capri while we rocketed down the back roads of our grandparents' Southwestern Washington cow town, along with Steve Miller, Blue Oyster Cult, and Detective (featuring present day television actor Michael Des Barres, one of the bands that was signed to Led Zeppelin's ill-fated and well-named Swan Song vanity label). It was the soundtrack of a short period of naiveté and brutality in the aesthetic history of rock music and of America that is well catalogued in the inexplicable prolificacy of "Classic Rock" stations around the country, and is consistently denied, repudiated, pissed upon, and then slavishly crawled back to by succeeding generations of musicians. Johnny Rotten himself rebounded from driving the stake through Classic Rock's rotten heart with the Sex Pistols, to exhuming it shamelessly in such recordings as "Rise" with PIL and "The Animal" with Golden Palominos. It is a music that perhaps deserves derision as much as it deserves careful study. Boston's first album is perhaps the pinnacle of that era's exposition, with its melodic borrowings from Mozart, its soaring 50's doo-wop-inspired harmonies, and its brazen lyrical dedication to 70's mellowness: "I understand about indecision/But I don't care about gettin' behind/People livin' in competition/All I want is to have my peace of mind" ("Peace of Mind", Side 1, Track 2). Whether we rage against the machinery of such music or allow ourselves to be guided by its voice, we are both ways in its debt. 1. More Than a Feeling 2. Peace of Mind 3. Foreplay/Long Time 4. Rock and Roll Band 5. Smokin' 6. Hitch a Ride 7. Something About You 8. Let Me Take You Home Tonight

Album Review: Be Bop Deluxe "Modern Music"

[NOTE:  This review originally appeared at Epinions]


the future was then Jul 08 '05

Author's Product Rating


Pros
percy b. shelley with a gibson GS hollowbody

Cons
so sweet it might make your teeth hurt

The Bottom Line
there is truly nothing like this music, even if you think there is. it bears a very close listen very well, better than many other in the genre

Full Review i can't explain to you why i love this record - you kind of had to be there...

actually, you kind of had to be eleven, with a cool big brother who had got you into their previous album two summers before. you kind of had to have been steeped in said older brother's remarkable acid and prog rock collection, and family night to the tune of 'the white album' by candlelight. you kind of had to find it at the public library, and you kind of had to be in a confused state of being pre-teen and proto-punk. you also had to be singularly unimpressed by david bowie, and prepared to ingest something somewhat lower-concept aesthetically yet higher-concept musically. [and as heretic as this may sound, i tend to think be bop deluxe's bill nelson was to bowie as van gogh was to gachet.] [by the way, i'm more impressed by bowie now than i was then.]

to the untrained ear, be bop deluxe in general and 'modern music' in particular may seem anachronistic, even cloying. it is an accurate depiction of a certain mood in popular culture before the ramones made everything previous moot: a time when filigree, flourish and grand guignol were necessary stylistic elements to forward-thinking rock and roll. aptly, retro-futurism is a recurring theme in the songs of be bop deluxe ["flash gordon's ghost will never die/it's just a flash across the sky" - 'honeymoon on mars']. nelson, a guitar-twisting muso in the same school as technophiles jimi hendrix and tom scholtz, was acutely aware that today's forward-looking sounds would be tomorrow's quaint chamber exercises; yet, undaunted, he and famed producer john leckie [various beatles, xtc, etc.] managed to weave together a sonic landscape that stands up remarkably well in the digital age.

from the opening track, 'orphans of babylon', we are welcomed to a sprightly mid-tempo anthem with nelson's signature "seagull's cry" guitar and a soaring vocal describing incongruently world-weary themes - in short, formulaic glam rock, yet rendered in sharp relief by superior musicianship and a touch of gentle irony. "kiss me and load my gun/go put your nylons on/i'll have you as they run tonight" might ring overwrought and saccharine to contemporary ears - or, perhaps the younger generation has re-discovered a sense of ironic sentimentality and sensuality as exemplified in wayne campbell wiping a way a tear at the end of 'bohemian rhapsody'. to eleven year old ears in 1976, it was something of a revelation. the elegant stereophonic spread of the tracks, simon fox's precise and jazzy drumming, the ornate layers of guitars over charles tumahai's solid and substantial bass phrasings, all candy-coated by the shimmering synthesizer of andrew clark - one waited for something to fall out, some imperfection to bring it up short. yet nelson's tenor is vibrant, soulful, and unfettered, and the words, if coyly fey, are evocative. "so kiss the truth goodbye/we thrive upon your lies/we've got no alibis tonight" - nelson describes an intoxicated and intoxicating world seen through rose-colored starship captain's goggles, where we are world-weary paperback
super-spies yet it's somehow sexy and fun.

'twilight capers' is, by contrast, a dark and portentious prog rock chorale. "all the wild ones keep their shades pulled down/they hide their dead eyes from the ground/they starve their souls with murder proud/beneath the shroud, beneath the shroud" is quite clearly a paean to the hordes of whey-faced glam fans immortalized on 'night creatures' on their first album, 'axe victim'. it's like 'nightclubbing' meets william butler yeats. the chordal
modalities are churchlike and sonorous. then, suddenly, in typical BBD fashion, we are swirled through "grey corridors of melting ice/in the cold golden claw of autumn nights" to a...calypso party???...for an even number of measures in which we are briefly told: "we are the dazzling phantoms/of dark misfortune", and the scene changes yet again to a swirl of retro synthesizers and sped-up echoplexed alien voices. chiaroscuro, incongruity, surrealism, all against a cinematic backdrop; all true to form for the songwriter who brought us an ode to jean cocteau on BBD's second album, 'futurama'.

'kiss of light' has the same reggae-flavored drop and swing that ruled british pop such as 10CC in the mid 70's, and was immortalized in the eagles' 'hotel california', but this song isn't dope-laden, but rather sparkling and enervated. marimba even features briefly in the background between punchy drum breaks and flashy guitar and moog harmonies. "the woman of moon flew into my room last night/she tortured my body and made me feel sorry though i thought i was right" captures the essence of the song - being swept away by sensuality, an almost mystical surrender to a mythic female, a gustav klimt painting with a back-beat.

'the bird charmers destiny' could very well be elton circa 'madman across the water' - a brooding piano and a crooning vocal evoking a hans christian andersen folktale version of doomed love. the track's brevity steers it away from maudlin sentimentality into the vibrancy of a very small art deco print, or a pattern on japanese silk.

'the gold at the end of my rainbow' pours it on...i hesitate to quote any of the lyrics..."my sword is in my hand/and i will fight at your command"...but there is a lilt to nelson's delivery that supports the contention of many fans that such overblown lyrics were delivered with a pronounced
twinkle in his eye, especially in light of his well-developed dystopianism in his later writing. with singing guitar again reminiscent of hendrix's 'may this be love' and the rhythm section's fluid and graceful changes, the band's musicianship pulls the song back from the brink of absurdity, not for the last time. 'bring back the spark' seems little more than a scene and costume change, although the juxtaposition of a plea for love with the fear of apocalypse is rather striking - "they say the end of the world is near/they say no one survives, but have no fear, it's not this year" - the world may be falling apart, but lovers only think of each other, also a recurring BBD theme.

side two is the rock opera complete with refrain, the pop anthem and title track 'modern music', which starts out with a floydesque pan of radio noise, humorously interspersed with the hoped-for hit singles [in britain, not here] from previous albums. [how many times has this hand been played? 'wish you were here' by the floyd...'burn it down' by dexys...it seems irresistable as a rock device.] once again the wistful dystopian nostalgic sings: "modern music on my radio/another station and another show/if only i could let my feelings flow." it's all new, all now, and none of it real. it's no wonder i've listened to this song daily for the past few months. it could be a song written today by, say, death cab for cutie. 'dancing in the moonlight', like 'bring back the spark', seems like filler, scene change music, but serves a useful purpose as a springboard for the dazzling [and dazzlingly brief] psych-glam echocandy confection of 'honeymoon on mars', which could have played as a guided by voices song - it's short enough, it's got a science fiction theme, it's grandiose, there's effects on the vocals.

'dance of the uncle sam humanoids' is fairly much like it sounds - out of the gate we have again the look-askance on
this alienated modern life - "this jet-age life is getting worse/i'm feeling half a universe away" - then focus is brought to bear on the disappointing US tour which inspired much of the darker mood of the album: "i left my home some time ago to fight the creatures of the USA" - so, the radioactive mutants and killer robots are actually americans, right, i get it. then after a few more lyrical turnarounds the band gets into a repetitive funk vs. weekend golf classic theme music groove - one is slightly reminded of 'it' at the end of 'the lamb lies down...' by genesis. in the background behind a stuttering riff we hear "step right this way, bill, i'd like you to meet bruce, our new public relations man...", and then
the scream of a siren straight out of a new york city soundscape. maybe the finger sandwiches were too small on the US tour. anyway, it's fun in its way, and doesn't last long enough to get boring before the somewhat less sprightly, heavier sounding refrain of the title track, followed by a falsetto echoed wail and a bit of the john peel radio hour's break for weather before one of the greatest rock tracks of the 1970's breaks in over - what else? - a cowbell: 'forbidden lovers'. what else is there - escapism, taboo, romance, danger, life of a touring musician, all rolled into a neat package with tasty breaks. in this century such gestures seem dated, but perhaps as they were originally envisioned, we can enjoy them as retro-futurism, the glamour of an imagined future that never was and never will be. pure fantasy. ear candy. but, with a poignant edge of pain: "wake up in a strange bed/pearly white and proud red/photograph my wild head/shoot me to the stars..."

then another anthemic chordal swoosh of synthesizers into the almost embarrassingly epic 'terminal street', complete with church chimes. yes, it's a song about death, more yeats meets bowie. the guitar more stings than rings, and the song fades out in wails of feedback and a collapse of drums. then shockingly the finish, a krishna-flavored nod to harrisonesque spirituality in 'makethe music magic', all faux-brit-raga, yet somehow...delightful, naive, harmless, in its lack of guile, somehow touching and transportive.

there's some extra tracks on the CD that are jokey out-takes familiar to anyone who checked out their vinyl retrospective 'the best of and the rest of'. save them for stocking gifts, we'll have a laugh about them over a bubble tea at the spaceport. flash gordon's ghost will never die...

Recommended
Yes

Great Music to Play While: Listening                          

Music Writing

I'm going to post some of my other Music Writing here, assuming I can find it amongst my files.  Watch out!  Most of it is pretty old.  Hoping it will prime the pump for some fresh stuff.

scrubbing one's internet history

the conventional wisdom is that if you are trying to get hired, don't leave anything embarrassing lying around on the internet to incriminate you -- amateur porn, rants against capitalism or evil bosses, drunk-o-logues, etc.  this was brought to mind for me by the news that CmdrTaco is leaving Slashdot.  people like him built their entire careers on "potentially embarrassing things posted on the internet".

i am right now picturing myself as the hiring manager of a company.  i'm looking over the web presence of a potential hire with their resume on my desk in front of me.  following the breadcrumbs, i find that they have posted:
1) a rant complaining about an evil boss.  (hire her!!)
2) a rant about annoying co-workers.  (do not hire!!)
3) a rant about stupid customers.  (VERY do not hire!!!!)

as a boss i would not care about someone having problems with me -- maybe it would drive them to follow their own creative path and contribute more to the company.  someone who stabs their colleagues in the back, however, i can do without; and someone who doesn't know which side of their toast the butter is on? forGETaboutit.

4) amateur porn? creative!
5) racist/sexist/homophobic screeching? let the post office take 'em! okay, that's unfair and hostile to postal workers.  let the rodeo clowns have them!! maybe that's unfair to rodeo clowns.
6) BAD/BORING WRITING: sorry, that's where my own prejudice comes in, and i have to push the "reject" button and open the trapdoor to the alligator pond.

in this day and age, i figure if someone DOESN'T have anything incriminating online somewhere, they've been lazy.

Episode XIII: Embrace Your Inner Weirdo

DIARY OF A FADING ROCKSTAR - Episode XIII:
Embrace Your Inner Weirdo!

Point one: Rumors of my untimely death have been greatly exaggerated.
Point two: I have been remiss in reporting to you on schedule due to the invasion of “real life” issues, which make a life of the mind (as they would have called it in the 19th century) something of a folly (those things 19th century gentlemen had built in their backyards that resembled miniature castles, or children’s playhouses). But here I am again to stimulate your mental life and hopefully inspire you to your own further research.

Since some of you may be new to this column, I’d like to invite you to catch up by reading, at your leisure of course, Episodes I – XIII. In brief, here is a recap:
In the 1980′s I was in something of a rebel rock band that promised to surf the new wave to whatever heights were attainable at that time. At what may have, or may not have, been the peak of industry interest in our little roadshow, I took the parachute option, and it was far from golden.

Since then I have agonized over how I might have handled the experience differently, and how some of my seemingly eccentric choices and behaviors were completely unavoidable. A great deal of solitary cogitation has gone into this process over the last quarter of a century, including untold numbers of short-lived bands that in one way or another did not approach the same level of chaos magick as that first endeavor. Perhaps that’s just the way it goes with anything, and I have certainly explored this possibility in depth as well.

What I have failed to do, in fact somewhat catastrophically, is to abandon my interest in pursuing music in some form of expression, whether or not anyone actually hears or sees any of it. Some people whose opinion I respect have opined that such reluctance to abandon the old aspirations is the main cause of my failure to succeed at anything else. My contention may seem like rhetorical hairsplitting; but the way I see it, my failure to succeed at anything else is proof enough that any attempt on my part to turn my back on what at one time seemed like Cosmic Destiny of comic book proportions, is doomed to certain failure.
To fulfill the promise of the title of this episode, I would like to quote a highly trusted and respectable producer and musician I have had the good fortune to work with over the years, who said: “Sooner or later, you have got to stop this pretense that you are normal. This Clark Kent routine of yours is really getting old.”

It’s my belief that you who are reading this – whoever you may be – contain within yourself the potential energy to do or experience anything you can imagine. All that is required is that you imagine it. What some people refer to as success or failure is, I believe, largely a problem of imagination. Most of us have grave difficulty imagining anything beyond what we fear to be true, and then expending all our energy running from those imaginings, as if in a nightmare, being chased by an invisible demon whose presence is made known by an ominous, thunderous booming sound…..which, if we were able to awaken, we would discover is merely the sound of the pulse of our own blood against our eardrum, pressed damply to the pillow.

One of the things that disturbs us away from our reaching and taking hold of the overripe fruit of our own lives is that we see so many assholes who don’t have the slightest bit of trouble stuffing their faces not only with their own fruit but the fruit of everyone around them. The other thing that scares us is seeing people who have devoted their existence to expressing their true selves, and perceiving them to be deeply weird. Dear God, we think to ourselves, are those my choices? Asshole or weirdo? Why can’t I be a nice, normal person and be an artist?
I have some good news, and some bad news. The bad news first: You can’t be a nice, normal person and also be an artist, because nice, normal people are to busy making others feel good to ever express anything containing any sort of energy. Nice, normal people paint pictures that hang in hospital corridors, and write songs that get played over drug store public address systems. An artist doesn’t have time to be concerned with being nice and normal, because they are too busy being exactly who and what they already are, without living up to the expectations of others.

The good news is, you’ve been sold nice and normal and safe as being the only way to be happy, and it’s false advertising. It’s a filthy lie. The only way to be happy is to be exactly who and what you already are. Loudly. Boisterously. Shamelessly. If you’re worried about morality or ethics, being oneself is completely and inescapably coterminous with kindness. Who’s the biggest asshole? The person who sees others as standing in the way of their fulfillment. A fully, fearlessly expressive individual has no fear of anyone standing in their way, because it’s impossible. Like X-ray vision, creativity has the ability to pass through solid objects, such as other people. It also has the ability to see inside things and people and to accept the qualities found therein without judgment of any kind.

I was sayin let me out of here before I was even born–it’s such a gamble when you get a face It’s fascinatin to observe what the mirror does but when I dine it’s for the wall that I set a place — Richard Hell

There has been a lot of marketing grease squirted all over the concept of the Geek, for which famous rich guy Bill Gates bears some responsibility. With 20-20 hindsight, everybody picked on in school for being a geek can now point to the Fortune 500 and say, “Behold, my people.” Because of this cultural sea change, being a card-carring geek has been rendered “cool” and thus hopelessly trivialized beyond recognition. Television now abounds with a stereotypical token character appearing in every show – the cool geek who dresses nerdy and is smarter than everyone else and you better not laugh at him/her because he/she could lock you out of your network account in a heartbeat, or load up your hard drive with bestiality porn.

This co-opting of the Nerd is what most of us expected, or should have if we were paying attention. The Nerd is to the 00′s what grungers and ravers were to the 90′s and punks and headbangers were to the 80′s. The Nerd is cool. Therefore, the Nerd is dead.

Thankfully, there’s a niche waiting for you that now has room to move into the spotlight. Now is the time of the Weirdo.

Everybody has a place on the bus – the jock, the nerd, the thug, the stoner, the cheerleader – but the weirdo is the one people don’t want to sit next to. It’s time to step up and claim that seat. You are a weirdo. You don’t occupy yourself with computers and Japanese action figures and comic books cartoons for grownups – you do weird things. You look weird. Even the person bristling with piercings and tattoos and bondage wear looks down on you. Junkies and tweakers and stoners flinch when you walk by. The homeless person spare changing everybody on the street doesn’t even bother to talk to you.

It requires this sort of fearless diffidence towards public acceptance that is the hallmark of the true Rockstar, knighted by no one but her/himself. When you’re weird people don’t look at you and think “Punk” or “Metalhead” or “Skinhead” or “Juggalo” or “stockbroker”. They look at you and go “WTF??” Or they look at you and then quickly look away.

You don’t have to smell bad – that’s so incredibly done before. In fact, a wonderful-smelling Weirdo is the hallmark of defied expectations – everybody expects the weirdo to be somehow repulsive, but instead they are unsettlingly attractive. They might have a look for which they’d be chased off the runways of Paris with pitchforks and torches, but they are not otherwise repellent. They’re just weird. They are unique in a way impossible to ignore.

The studied, self conscious type of wanna-be weirdo who stands in front of the mirror each morning putting together their allegedly “weird” look is not a true Weirdo. That person is a Hipster. Everbody hates Hipsters these days, but they have each other. They kind of all look the same, with their skinny jeans and hats. You are not a hipster. The hipsters look at you and instead of smiling and nodding they think “God, what a Weirdo!” This is to be taken as a compliment.

I am not going to list the Weirdo bands. It’s bad luck, bad juju, killing the goose. But you probably own some of their records. Some of them even got famous and made a lot of money being weird. There are hundreds of thousands of people who buy their recordings and show up at their concerts; there are thousands of people who know the words to their songs; there are hundreds of people who think they are the only ones who “get” them, prefer their earlier work, etc. There may be a few dozen of their fans who are Weirdos and who recognize them as such. These people may party with the band, but it is more likely that they would never be allowed backstage, because they are just too weird. But they don’t mind, because there’s too many fucking normal people backstage anyway.

How do you know you’re a Weirdo? If you have to ask, you aren’t one. And if you think you are, you aren’t one. True weirdos don’t recognize such distinctions. They are unconscious and impervious to the projections or values of others. It is precisely their rapturous devotion to the contents of their own heads that make them Weirdos. Still, they are capable of great kindness, intimacy, and geenrosity with others, simply because they are as incapable of judging others as they are themselves. When they come in contact with people who insist on categorizing things or people, they warmly and amiably fail to comprehend.

You may not be a Weirdo. It’s perfectly fine either way. It’s not something one aspires to, although some people aspire not to be weird. The main thing is, everyone has an inner Weirdo. It could be that this inner Weirdo looks like a Nerd or a Geek or a Punk or a Mod or a Hippie – but it is simply a manifestation of the part of that person that is unclouded by the perceptions or expectations of others. Let’s say, for instance, you spill barbecue sauce on your white shirt at a party. The normal person would try to wash it out in the sink, or maybe ask the host if they could borrow a T-shirt. The Weirdo takes the shirt off and dips the whole thing in the barbecue sauce.

Kiss tried to look like Weirdos, but a Weirdo would never write a song like “Beth”, apologizing for hours spent in the rehearsal space. A Weirdo’s girl/boyfriend would be waiting for the Weirdo in a sleeping bag behind the couch.

Weirdos don’t play genre music. They don’t play music that can be described by listing their influences. Weirdos sometimes have obvious influences; but if the musicians who influenced them were to hear or see them, they would say “Who the hell are these weirdos??” Unless they themselves are Weirdos, in which case they let the younger Weirdos come along with them on tour.

Be wary of the band that tries to sell itself as a “Weirdo band”. Most of these are simply further regurgitated iterations of the “Hipster” template. “They’re, like, so WEIRD, dude!!” No: Weirdo bands are not weird as a selling point. They don’t wear their own band T-shirts on stage. They don’t perform in clown makeup or breathe fire or any other normal-trying-to-be-weird routine. The audience might mistake them for roadies sound-checking the amps. They might mistake them for audience members who got lost backstage. Or they might mistake them for aliens trying to pass themselves off as humans. You will recognize the Weirdo band because that is the ones the Weirdos in the audience dance their weird dances to. The Weirdos in the audience do not sing along because they want to hear the music; if they wanted to sing they’d start their own band, and in fact probably have.

Weirdos aren’t considered cool, hip, up to date, what’s happening or cutting edge, even though they are almost always imitated by wanna-bes, sometimes the minute they first appear in public. Oftentimes the imitators will sell more records and be way more popular than the original Weirdo band they were imitating. That’s because the majority of people don’t want something weird, they want something familiar, that confirms their own prejudices regarding what music and art are for. Weirdos do not compose music or art that is socially significant or purposeful. Sometimes they play benefit concerts, if the people organizing the benefit are weird enough to accept what they have to offer. Weirdo bands are habituated to creating and re-creating sounds that reflect an inner life that is invisible and probably completely inexplicable to others. However, the purity of their intent is undeniable with or without understanding. Weirdo bands may face rejection or indifference by the mainstream, but the five or six people who show up at their gig (be it a basement party, a Mexican discoteque, or a pizza restaurant) respond to them as if they have been waiting their entire lives to hear and see them.
It’s hard to find other Weirdos, particularly the right kind for my particularly weird ongoing project. That’s why, at age 44, I’m still searching. It’s not like we have a secret handshake or anything. This article may be my only chance to find my Weirdos before dying of old age.

It certainly is a weird way to recruit musicians for a band.

Episode XII: You Kids Get Off My Lawn!

DIARY OF A FADING ROCKSTAR - EPISODE XII: NEVER TRUST A MAN IN A BLUE TRENCHCOAT Or, You Kids Get Off My Lawn

Imagination creates reality. -- Wagner

Now look at them yo-yo's that's the way you do it /You play the guitar on the MTV /That ain't workin' that's the way you do it /Money for nothin' and your chicks for free -- Dire Straits

I was sayin let me out of here before I was

even born--it's such a gamble when you get a face

It's fascinatin to observe what the mirror does

but when I dine it's for the wall that I set a place

-- Richard Hell

[ YouTube links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-og7aTnL8Y

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1iR2Wi3u5o ]

[WARNING: Marjor “Whooooaaaa, duuuuude!!!” moments up ahead.]

__________________________________________________________

I’m almost done talking about it as a precursor to actually doing it (again). Some of my friends wish I was done talking about it years ago. Sorry, friends.

Really, this whole Rock and Roll business -- it’s got very little to do with the fantasy. When all of the dross is removed, it is simply The Work. Laboring under the illusion that The Work interferes with Life, or that Life interferes with The Work, is like driving with your eyes closed. Open your eyes, and you will see that your Life IS The Work, and that there really is no other way to live.

People -- myself included of course -- waste an awful lot of time being unhappy, and to a large extent because they actually believe that they’re supposed to, that it’s expected of them. This may sound crazy and wrong to you, but if you turn around and look back at your life so far, maybe you’ll see all the places it was true for you. Caring what people think or say about you, doing what you’re told, marching in step with things you don’t believe in. Obedience isn’t bad, it just isn’t what we think it is. True obedience to that which is driving you from within would mean that you would never procrastinate again on those things that you want to do but didn’t because you weren’t required to by other people.

I think we are all obsessed with the metaphor of zombies these days because the classic zombie narrative is an extended metaphor for the way things really are. It’s not even really a metaphor.

I know I was supposed to talk about rock and roll, and I’m getting to that, but rock and roll is only one vehicle (albeit my favorite vehicle) for something important that lies at the heart of it, or beneath it, or behind it. Something that’s invisible. There may not be any good words for that thing. Wars are being fought over which words are the best. I’ve spend a lot of time studiously avoiding using words to describe it. But I have recently come to suspect that these words come close enough to at least convey my feelings around it:

My Teacher taught me (and this was probably her most important teaching) that even when not holding pen to page, the poet is writing. Similarly, we may stop playing, but the music continues. In fact, it has never stopped, whether or not we are able to hear it. When done correctly, the poems or paintings or songs or sculptures are like windows, or glass-bottomed boats. I’m not sure what “good” is any more, but a serious (if not good) musician will tend to be a good listener -- not simply to other musicians, but to that music that is always playing, into which she is only dipping her bucket.

I used to think I was crazy for falling in love with everyone I met -- even the people I disliked, even the people I thought were ugly, even the people I wanted to avoid. Actually I only thought I was crazy for doing this when I was able to admit to myself that I was doing it in the first place. Then I realized this was simply one of my tools. We suffer under a misunderstanding about what we’re supposed to do when we fall in love. We aren’t supposed to make an object out of that person; we’re supposed to let them go. We’re supposed to let our heart be broken. If you aren’t familiar with the names Anfortas or Prometheus, go look them up on Google or Wikipedia. Don’t worry if you don’t get it. There are folks who study those stories for decades and never even come close, and don’t even realize that they never got it. But if you’re lucky something will click and you will recognize those people. Mythology is a great tool for understanding The Work, and the great thing about it is you don’t need to pay some therapist hundreds of dollars to explain it to you, because there IS no explanation -- or, the stories are their own explanation. Rock and Roll is also mythology, and when you understand that, you understand better why it calls out to so many people the way it does.

There’s nothing particularly surprising about the number of rockstars who have killed themselves. There’s a lot of diverse factors involved in each individual case, but the main cause is the fact that the rockstar has the unacknowledged job of moving mass human energy, and burnout is endemic. You think rockstars are overpaid? It’s like messing with the fuel rods of a nuclear power plant with your bare hands. The hazard alone is drastically undervalued; and if the rockstar actually produces good music, that’s a huge bonus. It is my contention that if people REALLY knew what the job of rockstar entails, underneath all the trappings, the number of people who think they want to be one would dramatically decline. In reality, you’re pretty much born a rockstar, and then you either follow through with it and do your job, or you spend your life running like hell in the other direction. I believe that there a lot more undiscovered (even by themselves) rockstars riding the bus to their crappy jobs every day than any of us could possibly imagine. American Idol just scratches the surface because the frequency band they are scanning is so narrow.

Why are so many bar bands, church bands, wedding bands, cruise ship bands, party bands, [fill in the blank] bands so annoying? Because they aren’t practicing true obedience to The Work. It’s like making paté out of the liver of the goose that lays golden eggs. Now, there are bands that are just bands, that happen to do those things to get by -- you may even be in one of them, and more power to you -- but that’s not how they define themselves. If you DEFINE your band as a bar band or whatever, you probably suck. You probably also have no idea what the hell I’m talking about. And if you’re happy, there is no reason why you should care.

But if you are actually serious about this whole rock and roll business, it’s just The Work, which defines itself. You don’t have to surrender or sacrifice your life to it because it IS your life. I doesn’t demand everything, it IS everything. There are no obstacles in your path because you’re already there. And if you devote yourself to listening with your entire being, you won’t have time to worry whether you’re “good” or not. You’ll find yourself resonating like a glass harp. And people might even start listening to you.

Episode XI:

[insert photo]

Diary of a Fading Rockstar, Episode XI: If 6 Was 9, or Recycling The Map

For study: Current music of moral and aesthetic urgency

Examples: Bloc Party, The Gossip, Saul Williams, Joan As Police Woman, Tim Armstrong, Dr. Israel, Les Savy Fav, Quasi

Opening sequence: “Maps” by The Yeah Yeah Yeahs

We used rock and roll as teenagers as a soundtrack to our adventures, either inward or outward; to help us cope with unbearable life situations; as an escape from boredom, or a coping skill for depression; as a source of hope, as a channel for our lust and rage, as a diversion from the mundane. As the melodies excited movement inside our heads, the rhythms excited movement in our bodies. We felt like we could at last leave the untenable state we were in, which was childhood, and in growing up escape to freedom.

As adults, the illusion of growing up as a liberation became the disillusion that conventional adulthood was a prison. Adults use rock and roll mainly as a nostalgia trip for a time they imagine to have been easier, more interesting, more innocent, more honest, more real, more free, more risque. They listen to rock and roll to induce a mind-state that convinces them that though their bodies are aging, their inner selves are still young, pliable, malleable, enthusiastic, un-jaded. They remember the strength they once had for recklessness, for fearlessness, for a disregard of security. But rock and roll in and of itself does not grant courage or bravery, let alone wisdom to the listener; at best it is a validation for feelings of dissatisfaction. Youthful dissatisfaction tends to drive outward, which is a natural progression of the maturation process; adult dissatisfaction more often than not drives straight off a cliff.

As teenagers we avoided the call by adults around us to grow into responsibility; as adults we continue to avoid our responsibilities. But is rock and roll really the soundtrack to a refusal to grow up? And what is this “growing up” we are supposed to be doing? I believe that in actuality rock and roll is a tool that helps us to truly grow up into a larger humanity -- one that resists oppression with energy and celebrates all forms of life -- and its stagnation and commodification as an art form results in the stagnation and commodification of ourselves.

We are told that growing up entails showing up, fulfilling the promise of our youth (as if we ourselves were the ones who made the promise, rather than those who projected it onto us). We hear often that to grow up means to give up. We’re not living for ourselves now, we’re living for others. But when did we really live for ourselves? When we were young we were obligated to do as we were told because we were not emancipated, not enfranchised. Our rights were limited, our aspirations constantly curtailed by the voice of reason. When we were young we wanted to burn out like shooting stars, but were sternly advised to cool our jets and stay grounded.

We’re told the same thing as adults. We are, in fact, somehow expected to be highly successful in careers that we love providing leadership for others and bountifully supporting our families, when in reality any any small steps or expressive acts that might have supported such an autonomous creativity and strength of character were practically beaten out of us from childhood onward. It seems that in reality we are told from cradle to grave to behave. “Productive member of society” is an interesting cliche because of how surprisingly little it is ever closely examined by those who use it. It is based on the presumption that in order to be a member of society, one has to ‘produce’ something; and if we do not, then our membership is liable to be revoked. Meanwhile the great captains of industry, in the main, have produced nothing but numbers, and more numbers; numbers measuring their own supposed value, which we must bow and scrape for like tip chips to the casino employee. It is interesting, isn’t it, that we do not say “creative member of society” -- someone who spontaneously brings forth new questions, new answers, new methods for navigating our shared landscape?

None of us asked to born. Our essentially fragmented consciousness having coalesced into existence around a fragile humanity, we’ve been summoned to roll call in what amounts to an existential concentration camp. We have been ordered to submit to any and all humiliation by those in charge, that humiliation assumed to be its own reward. We are asked to accept what we are told as gospel truth, do what we are told is the divine will, to dig our own graves and to conveniently fall into them after punching the clock on our way out.

This is true, and it is also not true. We have all been here before. Everybody knows this is nowhere. Emancipate yourself from mental slavery; none but ourselves can free our minds. We are stardust, we are golden, we are caught in the devil’s bargain, and we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden. I don’t wanna be the prisoner. Man, there ain’t no life nowhere. I got my own world to live through and I ain’t gonna copy you. I’m on a submarine mission for you baby; I can’t figure out your watery love...I’m gonna solve your mystery; I’m sending it out from heaven above. I’m on a highway to hell. I met a man who was wounded in love; I met another man who was wounded in hatred. Love, love is all around me, every day. I wish I was special, but I’m a creep.

We have to create some kind of meta-language for navigating and shaping our own realities, because the maps that we have been given are all lies -- advertisements for a non-functioning product, a rip-off. As a child of American culture born into the end of the millennium, I believe that the meta-language for controlling reality is available in the form of rock and roll music. In the context of rock and roll we are not merely isolated tenants to the abandoned apartment complex of a post-apocalyptic zombie wasteland; we are souls interconnected by the unseen forces of vibration. Pete Townshend scripted the failed rock opus “Life House”, which later became condensed to the album titled “Who’s Next”, with the intent that it represent a replacement for religion. Rock and roll would be the socio-spiritual meeting ground for people on a quest to unleash their psyches from the shackles of tradition. “Life House” was ostensibly a failure because its multimedia multi-disciplinary vision of technology serving to unite humanity in a shared ethic of humanism and liberty was too many decades ahead of its time. Instead of such a vision unfolding as the triumph of an individual will, it is more likely to arise spontaneously and organically as the necessity arising out of the death of empire and the collapse of civilization as we know it. Even through its colossal failure, “Life House” sets the bar for the aesthetic aspirations of future rockstars.

Times are once again dire enough to require a dire music, a music that dismantles the very idea of ‘revolution’ by ripping the wheel from its framework and smashing it to bits. We want off the wheel. We’re tired of the misunderstanding of sampling as repackaging -- what we are striving for is a true synthesis. We’re not interested in selling a back catalog, other than to rediscover those who truly went against the grain, and to fall in step behind them -- it is only cultural misappropriation when we fail to learn from the mistakes of those we are following.

We don’t want success -- we want to destroy everything that reeks of it. We don’t want to be successful, we want to be full of our essence. I don’t wanna cause no sensation; I’m just talkin’ ‘bout my generation.