HEAVENS TO BALLSACK
I have recently begun to work again. I feel that not working is preferrable and I hope to get back to that soon. I like to read and be at the beach and talk to people who do not feel the bizarre, professional obligation to not speak as equals. But the real problem with working is I have to listen to the radio. Here is my counter point to the romanticized memory of the radio. Do you remember rock 'n' roll radio? Of course you don't! If you do you probably just have a bad memory and have conveniently forgotten that radio sucks. I did.
I think that daily I hear Sugar Ray. That's right, most probably don't know what I'm talking about because most people have conveniently forgotten Sugar Ray, that flash in the pan, California suckstravaganza. Better than Ezra they are not. For some reason Sugar Ray reminds me of Jake Berube, who I think had the CD and cultivated something of a Mark McGrath (Jesus, that was right there...i didn't think for a second...what a waste) look in high school.
OK, that's cathartic but really kind of easy and petty and stupid.
My distinctions here are so slight and require such precise categorization. Better than Ezra and the Toadies are a little funny but pretty much sweet. Sugar Ray is suck made manifest. Is it dangerous to stray too far from the polished grunge of the mid 90s? (polished grunge is a good sub-category i think...see STP...or what about polish grunge? how did poland fare through the 1990s?) I'm being vague about this but I know that popular music started to suck more in the 1998-2000 range. What if it is directly related to nostalgia? What if my suspicion is more than warranted because my entire relationship to music has been entwined with other aspects of my existence? What if I have never been able to objectively and fairly experience any piece of art in my LIFE? (for those who didnt catch that I just labeled Better than Ezra and Sugar Ray "art"...any comments?)
But what I'm thinking is maybe things in my life started to suck more and I associate that popular music with less cool times. Nothing really earth shattering happened in 7th grade, though I did begin to seriously get into punk rock.
Oh hey, here's something! At the end of 6th grade I get an album called Nevermind the Bollocks Here's the Sex Pistols because I see footage of them spitting on and assaulting a Texas crowd in a PBS special on the history of rock 'n'roll. How nerdy that I dig punk rock via PBS. I guess this things gonna take another turn into silly nostalgia, oh well. I realized radio sucked when I got wise to punk and its still apparent or lingering mistrust of the mainstream. Its funny that this album worked this way for me decades after its creation. I knew really nothing of the circumstances surrounding the album's release (something I know a lot about now after seeing the really cool documentary The Filth and the Fury, which I highly reccomend) or the effect of the punk movement but it still managed to point out how stupid radio rock was. Simply because it was ballsy, angry rock. Probably for the same reasons that Nevermind (Nirvana) made me want to play guitar Bollocks got me back to what was important about this music.
OK, I'm making very general, unoriginal statements here but they hold somewhat true. I had come dangerously close to getting into some very corporate schlock (imagine if I actually followed STP...ah well I'm taking cheap shots again, and knowing my taste I'll probably get really into STP someday) but then I was reminded or redirected by self-righteous nihilism, with GUITAR!
Of course at the same time I was listening to Help! and A Hard Day's Night. Around the same time I got Bollocks I got a collection of old Beatles singles because it had I'm Down, which is most excellent and if you like it you should see the Shea stadium performance of it because it crackles, damn crackles! Its easy to invoke the punk ethos in my relationship to rock because it is a philosophy I'm most comfotable with. Jamming econo is not just a means of production or writing or touring or making a point, its a damn way of life. I didn't say that, D. Boon did. There's a really long and profound essay on the minutemen that I will someday have to write because I think that they encapsulate so much of this aspect of rock music to me and how important it is to me and how it has come to effect all of my life and how it was this way for a long time and it took the minutemen to articulate these things and how its grows on me all the time and is always more relevant and beautiful. Serious as a heart attack. But I can't get into it now. Or I won't, I've got far more trivial shit to parse out.
What I was trying to get at with the Beatles (and they're a bad example because no one who likes music dislikes the Beatles) is that the punk thing only holds so far. The raw power factor is important but I am known to rock me some Todd Rundgren. Also Steely Dan, and here's another essay I think. I am a dead serious Steely Dan fan and I have sometimes taken some serious heat for this position. Also I need to write a piece in staunch defense of the hardest rocking act in contemporary music; the Mars Volta. What I should really do is just write a badass epic song called "Fuck off haters: or why Steely Dan and the Mars Volta are seriously sweet." This would include a bridge section about how much of a disgrace Coldplay is. I imagine myself playing some old-school synthisizers with a motown backing band and Greg Saunier on drums. I have a guit-piece slung around my back for the proper time. I play a sleazy, jazzy light rock about adolescent girls, prescription drugs, and mysterious vagabonds in strangely alternating signatures. This leads to some funky strumming along with a horn section and then the rhythm section drops out as I hold a distorted single note. Saunier begins to bash and skitter all over the kit as I shred through layers of delay. An audience of haters is silent and ashamed. Another audience is going fucking nuts. What the hell was I writing about?
Am I too punk for popular music or am I too...Donald Fagen for it? Either way I'm totally above it. Either way I'm totally bored by the radio. Which is also a lie. The radio makes me appreciate the 3 Gnarls Barkley minutes of my day. These are probably the best 3 minutes of my workday. This is nice because the random generation means I'll not be quite ready for that stutter intro that transports me from the bartley's kitchen into a groovey dance session in that same world where I can shred a la Omar Rodriguez-Lopez. Not to lose sight of the fact that the random generation is not really random because the same songs (about) are played every day (i.e. Sugar Ray and were coming back around).
Also the radio lowers expectations. Not to diminish my love of "Crazy" (I hope the radio hasn't done that, actually I know it can't do that I just got done saying how it does the opposite...i need to have SOME continuity) but after listening to enough non-descript, adult-contemporary slop anything recognizable becomes enjoyable. I was actually psyched when Hotel California came on one day. HOTEL CALIFORNIA!
On the other hand settling for homogenized slop is very American and maybe this could become my ticket to patriotism and eventual sell-out republicanism. Maybe. I was talking to a waitress yesterday about Aerosmith and I neglected to mention that I think they suck balls. See I need human interaction and to come on total snob right out of the gate does not win friends nor influence uncles. But goddamn it I felt really bad for awhile. Because Aerosmith sucks, and it was that song about falling asleep and dreaming and hokey schlocky doopadoo I love my girl...blaaaaaaaaaah. That needs to be called out, its like betraying some part of me and it hurt my psyche. When I die this small event will play out in the assessment of my life and I will be cosmically shamed. Also the time Sanborn and I passed on tickets to see Joe Strummer will be revisited. Now I feel genuinely shitty.
I think I need my taste and my opinions however bizarre or inconsistant. I think that I need them to enjoy anything. I don't think that I can divorce myself completely from outside influence in my appreciation of anything and maybe someday I will and maybe by admitting this I am copping out for the time being and making things easier its what I believe. I think.
The radio station is giving away tickets to see Nickelback. More than I feel the need to go off on another corporate manufacted suckfest (I hear a lot these days so my energy is thinning in this pursuit...Bon Jovi, Coldplay, John Mayer...) I am surprised that there is an audience for a Nickelback show. How clear is the cookie-cutter songwriting when you hear a number of Nickelback jams in a row? Then I start to feel kind of sorry for these guys in Nickelback because they must be one of the most hated bunch of goons there is. Or rather the most disrespected/taken least seriously. But they are clearly making money so fuck 'em.
I finally heard Fallout Boy the other day and my assessment of them based on t-shirts and the people wearing those shirts proved pretty much adequate. I am a shallow and arrogant jerk and I'm right the fuck on 9 times out of 10. Yeah.
Imagine my dismay to find that artist James Blunt with single "high" is not carrying on in the rich tradition of Cypress Hill. Actually he deals in sacchirine inanities. Go figure. Rock is dead. Long live rock.
I have recently begun to work again. I feel that not working is preferrable and I hope to get back to that soon. I like to read and be at the beach and talk to people who do not feel the bizarre, professional obligation to not speak as equals. But the real problem with working is I have to listen to the radio. Here is my counter point to the romanticized memory of the radio. Do you remember rock 'n' roll radio? Of course you don't! If you do you probably just have a bad memory and have conveniently forgotten that radio sucks. I did.
I think that daily I hear Sugar Ray. That's right, most probably don't know what I'm talking about because most people have conveniently forgotten Sugar Ray, that flash in the pan, California suckstravaganza. Better than Ezra they are not. For some reason Sugar Ray reminds me of Jake Berube, who I think had the CD and cultivated something of a Mark McGrath (Jesus, that was right there...i didn't think for a second...what a waste) look in high school.
OK, that's cathartic but really kind of easy and petty and stupid.
My distinctions here are so slight and require such precise categorization. Better than Ezra and the Toadies are a little funny but pretty much sweet. Sugar Ray is suck made manifest. Is it dangerous to stray too far from the polished grunge of the mid 90s? (polished grunge is a good sub-category i think...see STP...or what about polish grunge? how did poland fare through the 1990s?) I'm being vague about this but I know that popular music started to suck more in the 1998-2000 range. What if it is directly related to nostalgia? What if my suspicion is more than warranted because my entire relationship to music has been entwined with other aspects of my existence? What if I have never been able to objectively and fairly experience any piece of art in my LIFE? (for those who didnt catch that I just labeled Better than Ezra and Sugar Ray "art"...any comments?)
But what I'm thinking is maybe things in my life started to suck more and I associate that popular music with less cool times. Nothing really earth shattering happened in 7th grade, though I did begin to seriously get into punk rock.
Oh hey, here's something! At the end of 6th grade I get an album called Nevermind the Bollocks Here's the Sex Pistols because I see footage of them spitting on and assaulting a Texas crowd in a PBS special on the history of rock 'n'roll. How nerdy that I dig punk rock via PBS. I guess this things gonna take another turn into silly nostalgia, oh well. I realized radio sucked when I got wise to punk and its still apparent or lingering mistrust of the mainstream. Its funny that this album worked this way for me decades after its creation. I knew really nothing of the circumstances surrounding the album's release (something I know a lot about now after seeing the really cool documentary The Filth and the Fury, which I highly reccomend) or the effect of the punk movement but it still managed to point out how stupid radio rock was. Simply because it was ballsy, angry rock. Probably for the same reasons that Nevermind (Nirvana) made me want to play guitar Bollocks got me back to what was important about this music.
OK, I'm making very general, unoriginal statements here but they hold somewhat true. I had come dangerously close to getting into some very corporate schlock (imagine if I actually followed STP...ah well I'm taking cheap shots again, and knowing my taste I'll probably get really into STP someday) but then I was reminded or redirected by self-righteous nihilism, with GUITAR!
Of course at the same time I was listening to Help! and A Hard Day's Night. Around the same time I got Bollocks I got a collection of old Beatles singles because it had I'm Down, which is most excellent and if you like it you should see the Shea stadium performance of it because it crackles, damn crackles! Its easy to invoke the punk ethos in my relationship to rock because it is a philosophy I'm most comfotable with. Jamming econo is not just a means of production or writing or touring or making a point, its a damn way of life. I didn't say that, D. Boon did. There's a really long and profound essay on the minutemen that I will someday have to write because I think that they encapsulate so much of this aspect of rock music to me and how important it is to me and how it has come to effect all of my life and how it was this way for a long time and it took the minutemen to articulate these things and how its grows on me all the time and is always more relevant and beautiful. Serious as a heart attack. But I can't get into it now. Or I won't, I've got far more trivial shit to parse out.
What I was trying to get at with the Beatles (and they're a bad example because no one who likes music dislikes the Beatles) is that the punk thing only holds so far. The raw power factor is important but I am known to rock me some Todd Rundgren. Also Steely Dan, and here's another essay I think. I am a dead serious Steely Dan fan and I have sometimes taken some serious heat for this position. Also I need to write a piece in staunch defense of the hardest rocking act in contemporary music; the Mars Volta. What I should really do is just write a badass epic song called "Fuck off haters: or why Steely Dan and the Mars Volta are seriously sweet." This would include a bridge section about how much of a disgrace Coldplay is. I imagine myself playing some old-school synthisizers with a motown backing band and Greg Saunier on drums. I have a guit-piece slung around my back for the proper time. I play a sleazy, jazzy light rock about adolescent girls, prescription drugs, and mysterious vagabonds in strangely alternating signatures. This leads to some funky strumming along with a horn section and then the rhythm section drops out as I hold a distorted single note. Saunier begins to bash and skitter all over the kit as I shred through layers of delay. An audience of haters is silent and ashamed. Another audience is going fucking nuts. What the hell was I writing about?
Am I too punk for popular music or am I too...Donald Fagen for it? Either way I'm totally above it. Either way I'm totally bored by the radio. Which is also a lie. The radio makes me appreciate the 3 Gnarls Barkley minutes of my day. These are probably the best 3 minutes of my workday. This is nice because the random generation means I'll not be quite ready for that stutter intro that transports me from the bartley's kitchen into a groovey dance session in that same world where I can shred a la Omar Rodriguez-Lopez. Not to lose sight of the fact that the random generation is not really random because the same songs (about) are played every day (i.e. Sugar Ray and were coming back around).
Also the radio lowers expectations. Not to diminish my love of "Crazy" (I hope the radio hasn't done that, actually I know it can't do that I just got done saying how it does the opposite...i need to have SOME continuity) but after listening to enough non-descript, adult-contemporary slop anything recognizable becomes enjoyable. I was actually psyched when Hotel California came on one day. HOTEL CALIFORNIA!
On the other hand settling for homogenized slop is very American and maybe this could become my ticket to patriotism and eventual sell-out republicanism. Maybe. I was talking to a waitress yesterday about Aerosmith and I neglected to mention that I think they suck balls. See I need human interaction and to come on total snob right out of the gate does not win friends nor influence uncles. But goddamn it I felt really bad for awhile. Because Aerosmith sucks, and it was that song about falling asleep and dreaming and hokey schlocky doopadoo I love my girl...blaaaaaaaaaah. That needs to be called out, its like betraying some part of me and it hurt my psyche. When I die this small event will play out in the assessment of my life and I will be cosmically shamed. Also the time Sanborn and I passed on tickets to see Joe Strummer will be revisited. Now I feel genuinely shitty.
I think I need my taste and my opinions however bizarre or inconsistant. I think that I need them to enjoy anything. I don't think that I can divorce myself completely from outside influence in my appreciation of anything and maybe someday I will and maybe by admitting this I am copping out for the time being and making things easier its what I believe. I think.
The radio station is giving away tickets to see Nickelback. More than I feel the need to go off on another corporate manufacted suckfest (I hear a lot these days so my energy is thinning in this pursuit...Bon Jovi, Coldplay, John Mayer...) I am surprised that there is an audience for a Nickelback show. How clear is the cookie-cutter songwriting when you hear a number of Nickelback jams in a row? Then I start to feel kind of sorry for these guys in Nickelback because they must be one of the most hated bunch of goons there is. Or rather the most disrespected/taken least seriously. But they are clearly making money so fuck 'em.
I finally heard Fallout Boy the other day and my assessment of them based on t-shirts and the people wearing those shirts proved pretty much adequate. I am a shallow and arrogant jerk and I'm right the fuck on 9 times out of 10. Yeah.
Imagine my dismay to find that artist James Blunt with single "high" is not carrying on in the rich tradition of Cypress Hill. Actually he deals in sacchirine inanities. Go figure. Rock is dead. Long live rock.
posted by vw at 4:13 PM
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