Tag: rock and roll

Coffee Log, Year 2, Day 75

garethlivesayLeave a comment

Hi.

Coffee: Maxwell House Drip, Office Coffee

Every couple months I get these flashbacks to when I used to listen to rock. I’m a piss-poor college student living like he’s independently wealthy. I’m on a side-street somewhere looking for a record store. I’m throwing out band names at a party like they’re over-priced candy. I’m angry, sober, antisocial, a worried virgin. All the while bleeding from my ears to cranked up overdrive.

Simple things in life.

It’s easiest to yell and scream about the big things you have no control over. Capitalism, consumerism, hedonism, etc. Meanwhile, your voice goes so hoarse you don’t say much about the changes you could actually make. You walk past the homeless man without looking at him. No matter if you’ve got money to give, you don’t even shake his hand or ask his name. And don’t get me started about all the personal prejudices you’ve wrapped into hard-lined rock-and-roll attitudes. Most people who think they’re punk just can’t cope with their other labels.

I took another walk today. I’ve been walking around every day this week. Never far, just the neighborhood. Today, the clouds had covered half the sky but left the other half blank, a blue and white split like Santorini houses. There were people in the pool and geese leading babies. At one point, I stepped off the sidewalk to make room for a woman and her dog. The dog came over and sniffed me. She told me “That’s Atticus.” I told her “He’s a sweetheart.” The black lab licked me two times then they walked away. It was a harmless interaction, the kind you can’t have walking around with headphones on.

Currently Reading: Kitchen Confidential, Anthony Bourdain

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Smart but too lazy
To ever pick one thing
Now I’m staring at a dead end

Hard Girls, Running

Coffee Log, Day 269

garethlivesayLeave a comment

Hi.

Coffee: French Roast, Trader Joe’s Brand

There’s a certain kind of ‘growing up’ that involves realizing your own rebellion was a major perpetrator of the social ills it was railing against. This is a story about Rock & Roll.

I grew up listening to whatever. I was that normal kid, a sponge. Then I got bullied and then I got sad and then I found a few bands that a lot of kids find like Linkin Park and Tool. Later, I found modern punk at a Bomb the Music Industry! concert. Predictable shit.

Watch any interview with Kurt Cobain and then one of Nirvana’s videos back-to-back and you’ll start to see the problem. There was this dream that rock could change the world. Some myth of Woodstock where it sort of maybe did. By the nineties, smidges of social awareness produced bands who realized that promise had been bought out by greedy record execs and they made grungey, sour songs to complain about it. I came in a little later but that culture seemed like me: grungey, sour, complaining; elevated on a white horse above the world yet somehow still an underdog; perfectly removed.

But what’s the real story? Like any kind of power, no matter how self-marginalized and contrary, it’s about suppressing the minorities. A bunch of semi-affluent white boys wield guitars and wear their microphone crowns. You’ll talk about capitalism but won’t play shows in the black or brown towns. You’ll create a groupie culture that encourages young girls – often literal kids – to drink a lot and drug a lot until they’re too unconscious to protest the ‘privilege’ of backstage assaults. There was a credible article about Tool’s frontman luring 17 yr-olds a few months ago, but that got stuffed under the rug because hey, us white boys need our heroes, right?

This all seems obvious in 2018. Rocky and divided as it is, the world woke up two years ago. Battle lines are drawn. It’s a lot harder for monsters to hide. One of the necessary casualties of progress is a war against vestige emblems of the old, bad culture. So, Rock dies. Well, it was dying already – a new wave of commoditization that makes all the big bands more a voice for club drugs and t-shirt sales than any kind of supposed protest. But now the sword hits the hypocritical core – that Rock was a movement – progressive, inclusive, a force for change – and not just the more rebellious face of patriarchy.

In his last interview before he shot himself, Kurt Cobain talks about how he tried to write a song calling out the fucked-up culture of rape in rock-and-roll – ‘Polly’ – but no-one seemed to get it and everyone seemed to love it so he wrote another song called ‘Rape Me’ to try to get it through our thick skulls. The sequel didn’t sell too well.

Novel Count: 10,152 words

Currently Reading: Autumn, Ali Smith; Cherry, Nico Walker

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Polly wants a cracker
I think I should get off her first.

‘Polly’ – Nirvana


Coffee Log, Day 151

garethlivesayLeave a comment

Hi.

Coffee: India Extra Bold Roast, Cafe Crema

The first rock concert I went to was Deerhoof. Their drummer beat a snare like it was a dusty mattress. The next rock concert I went to was Bomb the Music Industry! There were twenty of us total in the audience, the band played a long set and collaborated with the openers, I saw them two more times after. The best rock concert I’ve been to was Cinemechanica. When the drums hit at twenty seconds into Brain Tarp the whole room’s sweating; when they hit at forty, you’re impossibly alive.

I don’t listen to rock much anymore. The world changed. There’s not much room to hide a vital, hope-filled aggression behind the heavy wet rock of abysmal news. The 60’s and 70’s fought a battle they thought they could win. They won significantly, then their victories were purchased by the same powers they fought against. Every hipster cafe sells rainbow-colored bracelets and shirts that say ‘Girl Power.’ Meanwhile, the Equal Rights Amendment still hasn’t been ratified.

2018’s a cynical year. We’re aware of the wounds and see the maggots crawling out of them; no room for power chords, just electronic whimpers. But that’s a good thing. Sex, Drugs, and Rock&Roll were just a replacement Patriarchy. In the dead-grip vise of oppression, plug your ears with beats from your favorite rapper or wails from a folk guitar. Do the real, hard, honest, bloody work.

Currently Reading: LaRose, Louise Erdrich

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“We’ve got a paralyzed case of too much choice.” – Cinemechanica, Brain Tarp

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