The Last Rock and Roll Column

Mr. Fufkin,

Please excuse Kurt's absence the past few months as he was nursing a fractured spirit and battling the whogivesafuckanymore's. We hope that the time away has been well spent and will help him carry on in his endeavors.

Thank you for your understanding.

Yin and Yang

Time well spent indeed - deep inside of many a little brown bottle. Time well spent with favorite records. Time well spent wondering why I do this writing shit. Time well spent wondering whether or not anyone gives a damn. Time well spent figuring out that this writing gig had hardened my soul and damn near killed my spiritual connection to the music I love. Time well spent digging out an old vinyl copy of Empire Burlesque, my - but nobody else's - absolute favorite Dylan record. Time well spent tossing more and more old vinyl on the turntable - Tin Huey, Loretta Lynn (and let me tell you this: Van Lear Rose, Loretta's new Jack White pimped product, is a good record but doesn't hold a fucking candle to old time classic's like You Ain't Woman Enough et. al.), bootlegged Elvis Costello, early Peter Case, "Redemption Song" in analog, Iggy and the muthafuckin Stooges (yeah, it's a goddamn cliché to cite Fun House, but it's goddamn REAL…very real…so real that it chased my spirit away from, and then back to this rockwrite curse).

"Maybe I should take the mic / stand up tall like Michael Stipe / and try to solve the problems of the Earth / or maybe I should sit back down / scratch my chin and use my frown / and try to figure out exactly what I'm worth" - "Maybe", The (vastly underrated and far too oft overlooked) Wonder Stuff

Lines like that make me feel good. Oh soo good. I know its probably trivial - downright silly in fact, BUT it IS why I listen. And when I listen, I listen to Miles Hunt (of Wonder Stuff and solo brilliance…erratic as hell, but a risk taker and an honesty monger of the first order); I listen to Bob Forrest (he of Thelonious Monster SoCal fame - get California Clam Chowder…now - and Bicycle Thief fame); I listen to Fun House, I listen to Merle Haggard; I listen to Darren Loucas of Juke - a new cat with a funky old vibe that feels like Van Morrison doing the Grateful Dead (which is really like Grant Lee Buffalo, but without the cosmic junk jive); I listen to the Killer, Jerry Lee, play country music like the form itself pissed him off more than anything on God's gracious Earth. I pick my spots anymore, and anymore they feel fewer and farther between. But that's okay; I'm a tough old sonuvabitch.

ROCK AND ROLL TRUISM #13

Van Halen, the David Lee Roth led version from 1978-1984, is the ONLY worthwhile Van Halen. Anything else is just silly Sammy Hagar whitewash on the decaying walls of the brothers Van Halen fragile rockroll legend.

The floor of Gund Arena in Cleveland, Ohio actually shook under my feet. Twenty thousand voices rushing down, down, down on me from above like a raging, refreshing waterfall full of growl and bombast, yet utterly baptismal. Yes, baptismal…and baptized I was…

I want to live in the world Prince sings of. I want to find the place where these questions he so obviously despises -

Am I black or white? Am I straight or gay? - Controversy
Do I believe in God? Do I believe in me? - Controversy
Controversy Controversy
I can't understand human curiosity - Controversy
Was it good for you? Was I what you wanted me to be? - Controversy
Do you get high? Does your daddy cry? - Controversy
Controversy Controversy…
Listen
People call me rude, I wish we were all nude
I wish there was no black and white, I wish there were no rules

Are not answered, but rather they are dispensed with. I want to find that place and just be there. I want to find that place and take people there. I want to find that place…oh how I want to find that place…
But I know it doesn't exist.

I've been going to honest-to-God live music shows since I was 13 years old, and in these past 24 years I've seen a little bit of everything. I've seen Sinatra nearing the end of his useful performance life. I've seen Dylan at a county fair and in a college amphitheatre. I've seen Springsteen before his balloon began to swell; I've seen Springsteen after it had burst. I've seen Elvis Costello with the Attractions, solo, with an all-star combo, solo again, in duet with Nick Lowe, solo again, and then with the Attractions again. I've seen jazzers both great (Rollins) and not so great but damn good (Lovano). I've been one face in a crowd of four or five as young rockers slowly became giants (The White Stripes) and as elder genius' have come back down from on high (Graham Parker). I've seen shows I will always talk about (Peter Case at the old Wilbert's in Cleveland) and many, many shows I will never remember. I've seen good, bad, ugly and hideous. I've been through it all with live music - but I have never…ever…experienced anything remotely close to the indescribable feelings that completely overwhelmed me while witnessing Prince's recent performance at Gund Arena in Cleveland, Ohio. It left me speechless…and for a time, speechless I shall remain. It was a temple. The music, the people, the planet…a temple I tell you. I haven't stopped smiling since. Thank God/Allah/Buddah/EricClapton for moments of music like this one…life is worth living for a little while longer.

ROCK AND ROLL TRUISM #32

The Damned were more than just messy punk pioneers - they were the band that made it okay to go from punk to dance to silly then back to punk again and again - and The Light at the End of The Tunnel is and essential and brilliant testament to THE band that brought punk into the pop mainstream - aesthetically at least.

"Hey Hernon," the e-mails have gone, "where've you been? Where ARE you?" And I usually do not answer because my answer would be regrettable later on. I DON'T hate rockroll, I haven't "given up the ghost", I didn't quit on no one…quite contrary…I battled the psychic demons, and I continue to grapple with those bastards, that kill the rockroll spirit. I surveyed the landscape around me and saw it to be a charred and hideous mess so I closed my eyes and sucked in the wretched air and spun my head round around like a record baby round round round round round. I ate. I drank (oh lord how I've drank). I fucked. I jerked off. I played lots of poker. I made love. I drank more. I ate more. I played old records. I sunk back into my teens. I ran forward into my future. I slept. I battled insomnia. I listened to new music (and hated much of it, loved some of it, and worst of all, shrugged off most of it). I danced. I battled through hangovers. Then I drank some more. I ran - literally - 4 to 5 miles a day. I lifted weights. I won a big Poker tournament and spent all of the money on travel, booze, sex, food and records. I've lived my fucking life with music as window dressing for my soul not the entire fucking house. I LIVED. That's right - I grabbed hold of my own life and took it for a long fucking jog. And guess what? I LOVED EVERY GODDAMN MINUTE OF IT. So go ahead, call me a sell-out…a failure…and old shit…a phony-assed wannabe…

Call me all of that and whatever else you've always called me, because now I CAN TAKE IT.

I am steel.

I have been through the fires.

I have survived.

I have taken the goddamn rockroll monkey off of my back and slapped a leash on the little bastard so I can slap him around a bit.

I OWN him.

"Me I'd like to think that life is like a drink / and I'm hoping that it tastes like bourbon" - "The Size of a Cow", The Wonder Stuff

Well you know what Miles? It does! And how sweet it is! I finally got off of the snide to realize that it's out there for the swallowing and I'll be damned if I didn't suck every sweet ounce down my fleshy pink gullet.

ROCK AND ROLL TRUISM #6

The best albums Aerosmith ever made (and they are damn good) are Rocks, Toys in the Attic, and Soul Asylum's Hang Time

So what now? I'm back…BIG FUGGIN' DEAL, right? Right. But I am…and it's that simple. So now DEAL with it. Yeah, yeah, yeah there's a WAR and then there is an ELECTION (both as shitty as can be…leaving a reasonably minded person with the sole option of throwing up his hands and saying 'who gives a gosh darn' as his shaky hands try to guide another brown bottle to his sweaty lips) and there are BRITNEY'S and J. LO's weddings/engagements/terrific pop music recordings (hardy har har) and then there is…is…is…is…

None of which really matters when you're listening to The Mountain Goats, or Thelonious Monster, or Juke, or The Damned, or The Smiths (Oh my god…Louder than Bombs has NEVER made more sense to me than now…is it the times? The climate? The fact that Morrissey was ALWAYS an OLD and CYNICAL fuck and I wasn't ever quite there yet?)

Oh..oh..oh…

ROCK AND ROLL TRUISM #311

Paul Weller shall be forever a ROCKROLL Saint. If "Down In a Tube Station at Midnight" were the ONLY song he'd ever written he'd had never needed to write more…but as it stands he wrote "Going Underground", "That's Entertainment", "Thick as Thieves", and about six dozen others. Paul Weller - if not a God (and I suspect he is), then certainly not HUMAN

So yeah, I'm back…like it or not…with a hunger and a vengeance. Try and tell me to go away.

Hugs and kisses,

Hernon

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