Whew...Ranting Out Loud

It is the wicked curse of an addiction. It is
the absolute doom of persuasion. It is a
sickness to which nobody should ever be
condemned. The curse of having even the
slightest interest, the tiniest passion, the
itty-bitty-est fucking itch for the demon seed
that is rock and roll is at the absolute core of
living HELL on earth. The suffering - well, it can
become unbearable.

True story: A phone call from my very good friend
Che' Albert during a strenuous tenure in his very
young marriage that was suffering from all the usual
shit that goes on when a couple of kids in love try
to work through college together while raising an
infant.

Che: This is it, I've had enough of this shit.

Me: What are you talking about man?

Che: This fucking, this...this...thing I married.
Holy shit, how did I ever fucking get myself into this?

Me: C'mon man, it ain't easy, but man, what could
be that bad?

Che: The devil man, it's the fucking
devil!

Me: (almost laughing) Whaddya mean?

Che: The goddamn devil, you know the one.
The bad guy in the Bible. Little red man with a
tail and horns.

Me: What the hell does that have to do with anything?

Che: She FUCKING BELIEVES HE'S REAL! She REALLY
FUCKING BELIEVES IT!

Me: C'mon man, lots of people have some sort of
religion. Some kind of faith or whatever.

Che: No man, you don't get it. She actually, honestly,
and COM-FUCKING-PLETELY BELIEVES HE ACTUALLY
EXISTS, PHYSICALLY. As in a little red horned, long
tailed motherfucker running around in the woods. She
does - she believes he's real and that he's actually
OUT THERE, wandering the fucking countryside. She
said that. She actually fucking SAID IT! Tough one,
eh?

But I too believe. That little sonuvabitch has messed
with my mind too goddamn long not to believe. You
know, come to think of it, all of those pre-conservative
conservative folks in the 1950's were right. All of those
Pentecostal leaning anti-rock schmucks were absolutely
dead fucking on! It is the DEVIL'S music. He is one
hundred and fifty two percent real as rice, and he's
taken hold of us through his musical illusion - rock'n'roll!
Oh, it's been hardly apparent, cuz if you ever went to
Sunday school (or CCD/Catechism - for the good Catholics
out there) you know for a fact that the Devil is one wily
and sadistic muthafucker. He's clever, and damn sure
sharper than all of us put together. "How's he do it?" you
ask. Well, okay, okay, here's an example, the example
that finally brought it all to light for moi:

Alt.country! Yep, whateverthefuckthedotmeans new wave
country music. The stuff being pressed out by punk outcasts
and urban hillbilly's of dubious talents everywhere nowadays.
The racket that has a few hundred half-witted Gram
Parsons' doling out pseudo-sensitive, half-baked, country-
bumpkin-ran-roughshod-through-rock-attitude whatsits
pressing out bland sides of droning yip-yap - ad nauseam. It
makes no fucking sense, such inane overkill. It not only bores;
it completely dulls the senses. And it isn't only alt.country,
it just happens that I caught on to the little bastards ploy
with the super-hyped modern country shlop. No, no, no,
he's always been there. The endless cycles of musical
creativity burst like small supernova's: Rock and roll itself at
the beginning, then Soul and R&B, then the British Invasion,
Prog Rock, Punk Rock, New Wave, new country, Power Pop,
dada rock, yo-yo rock, jingle-jangle rock, beating your head
on a rock. All the eternally spawning sub sub to the sub
genre's divide and conquer, only to divide again, conquering
less. So that the white heat and white light of the initial
concussion send the pieces scattering farther and farther
apart until they each lose more and more enrage (or should
it be energy?), dulling in their brilliance, until finally, they're
just another hunk of shit floating through the universe looking
to plant itself upside a larger mass and put it out of it's own
misery. The bizarre cult of sub-genre fanaticism has reached
an inexplicable and abhorrent level of incestuousness.

A deep look into the "pure punk", or "power pop", "pure pop",
"no depression", etc. etc. social milieu usually turn up a cast
of characters who have co-opted the scene as "theirs" and
pretty much has everyone praising everyone else regardless
of quality or content. If your band sounds like 20/20, well
you may just be the best thing since the real 20/20 (or at
least you can find someone who will say that - and most likely
in print somewhere!). If you grew up in the semi-upper-mid-
class-white-suburbs and decide to wear Nudie clothesline
rip-offs and sing disjointed juke-joint cry-me-a-river
countryburban ("hey, I got me a pedal steel on this here
record!") blather, well just hook up with the right proper folks
and you'll get your pat on the back and club card (and again,
a "this is a contender for record of the year" review -
somewhere, guarrrrateed!). Got a mohawk? Hate your folks?
GREAT FUCKING RECORD BOYS! It's not that it is insisidious..
it's just plain fucking weird. Yeah, don't bitch at me, there
is some fine music being made in all of these categories.
I'm not fool enough to try and wage a war saying their ain't
(pretty much any one of your kids over the age of five could
kick my ass, but I'm warning you, I scratch), it's just that
isn't it high time we got down off of these Lilliputian thrones,
left our fifedoms behind, and threw some serious weight
behind straightening out the entire rock and roll mess as a people -
one people? There isn't enough terrific music in any one
fucking phylum to warrant extensive, exclusive, and eternal
coverage. Shit, I can hardly find enough in ALL musical output
to warrant such coverage (this includes jazz, world 'eeech'
music, and anything above, below, or in between). So what
seperates the masses? Jazz is still jazz, rock still rock, rap is
rap (or is that hip-hop now?), country still country, and so on,
and so on, and so on. Stop breaking it down and start living
it up. No one's gonna pay attention to the few vocal nuts
who wanna tell you all about the latest New Beatles release.
We've heard it all before, and quite frankly, no one trusts
the bass player from the New Jam when he tells you that the
New Kinks (who feature his good friend Googy on drums)
record is by far the album of the year. Especially when the
New Beatles guitarist wrote that the New Jam put out a
record that may have only been exceeded by the New Who's
latest, but no one's really all to sure - it could've been
something else that sorta kinda sounded like those other
three but I can't remember the bands name. I could call
Googy's sister whose brother plays lead guitar for them.
Oh hell, it was a great fucking record anyways, trust me.

It must be the devil. You got a better explanation?

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