Hey, Mod — I’m starting to grok what you’re getting at with the whole Lou Reed/Prince/Kolchak the Turd-stalker thing. But let’s lay it on the line, real-time and visible for all to see. I propose a showdown — my best Prince bits against your key Reed finds. We’ll let The People sort out who’s the bigger turd-monger. You can see my first salvo above. What’s your boy Lou got up his sleeve?
I look forward to your response,
HVB
I am a disgruntled, cranky, increasingly disillusioned rock and roll fan — a man who really wants to believe in the transformative, healing properties of loud, fast music — and as I stare out at today’s pop-musical landscape, I’m filled with despair. I mean, it’s just a vast panorama of shit, from one end to the other. Music targeted at the masses has gotten so awful that it almost literally defies description. (How do you rail against performances that were born and bred inside a machine, as most modern “hits” are today?) “Rock and roll” — at least the kind foisted on the masses by today’s music/multi-media conglomerates — is just as depressing, if for different reasons. “Alternative” is a word that has completely lost all its meaning. And even music that strives to be new, as made by kidz who have never actually heard the old stuff… sounds so much like the old stuff that I find myself retreating further and further into my opium den of ancient, scratchy 45s and — yes, it’s true — 78 RPM records. I’m becoming a dragon robe-wearing high priest in E. Pluribus Gergley’s church of Nothing New Is Worth a Shit. It’s comforting.
People like me are why Henry Rollins seems to exist. He’s full of righteous indignation about the State Of Rock Things. He’s got punk cred answers where the rest of us struggle to articulate our questions. He makes aging hipsters feel all warm and fuzzy inside, as he rails against the awfulness of “the system” while simultaneously hailing the DIY ethos of the kidz and their basement-party rock politics. He’s our Jimmy Hoffa, our Teddy Roosevelt — our Mussolini. He makes our brain trains run on time, makes us feel good to be Rock Germans again.
The question is: is he actually an asshole? I’m really not sure. Do I prefer Hank Rollins the art-poet? The game show host? The rock philosopher? Who is Henry Rollins, anyway? Do you like Henry Rollins? I really want to know.
I look forward to your responses,
HVB
Oh, God. The other day, I went out to buy, I dunno, a lightbulb or something — and I was assaulted by my all-time un-favorite “Christmas” song: the Jackson 5 cynically caterwauling their way through “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town.” This, of course, means we’ve officially entered the season all us crotchety old music snobs love to hate: the month-long musical shit-tacular that is “the holidays.”
I think we took the high road a couple of years back, working together to compile a list of the best holiday season rock and soul ever recorded. Surely we can do better than that. Besides MJ’s aforementioned pre-adenoidal Xmas screeching — what’s the least tolerable music the music-retail complex hurls at us at this time of year?
I look forward to your responses.
HVB
It's a free-for-all
On this day of thankfulness and engorgement, I bring you a startling tale of rock/food synchronicity, in the hopes that you might share your own, if you have any to offer.
Not more than 30 minutes ago, I finished butchering the hind quarter of an eight-point deer a friend of mine gave me from a recent hunting expedition. Feeling peckish after all my carving, I set aside a hunk of the beast to tide me over until the Thanksgiving feast. After setting my venison stew on to simmer, I took my slab of meat, seasoned it with salt and pepper, and seared it in bacon fat. As I stood there in the HVB test kitchen, gnawing on my gamey treat, the iTunes randomizer coughed up “Free for All” by Ted Nugent.
Perfection!
I wonder how many of you have had similar moments of food/rock perfection. If you can’t think of any, perhaps you could share your best guesses as to what Rock flavors should accompany the following items from the HVB-and-friends thanksgiving feast:
Paddlefish caviar
Oysters on the half-shell
Oven-roasted Brussels sprouts
Carrots and parsnip puree
Green bean casserole
Turkey with all the trimmings
Venison bourguignon
Pumpkin pie
Red, white wine
Oh, shut up already
It’s funny how you can be very happily married to somebody and still have significant behavioral differences that ought to drive you ape-shit crazy.
My wife, for example, is perfectly happy to sit and stare out the car window for hours at a time — whereas I require a fairly steady stream of conversational blather to stay happy (and awake). In order to bridge the gap between our preferences, and give us something to talk about, I frequently insist that we play a stupid game as I drive. Many of these, you probably know: “20 Questions,” “Ghost,” a non-Rock version of perennial RTH favorite “Last Man Standing.” But I am the proud inventor of another, lesser known, particularly idiotic game, somewhat awkwardly entitled “Guess What Song I Have In My Head for 20 Dollars.” It’s this game that I bring to RTH today, under the slightly cooler brand “Read My Mind.”
Here’s how the game works when my wife and I are on hour 6 of a 9-hour drive:
HVB: Hey, Catherine, guess what song I have in my head!
C: Sigh. Do I have to?
HVB: Come on, guess. I’ll give you 20 dollars if you guess without a clue!
C: How on Earth am I supposed to know what song you have in your head?!
HVB: That’s why it’s worth 20 bucks! If you don’t get it on the first guess, I give you a clue, and the prize money gets cut in half. You guess again. If you guess right, you get 10 dollars. You guess wrong, you get another clue, and the prize money gets cut in half, to five dollars. And so on.
C: Groan. Seriously?
HVB: Come onnnnnn… I gotta keep my eyes open. Come on, guess!
C: Okay, “Love to Love You Baby.”
HVB: (affecting best Alex Trebek impersonation, much to Catherine’s irritation) Oh, no, I’m soh-ryyyyy. For 10 dollars… this song was popular in the 1970s.
C: Uh… “Torn Between Two Lovers.”
HVB: Good guess, but NO. For five bucks: this song was an unexpected foray into disco music by a major rock artist.
C: Hmm… Oh, “Some Girls” by the Rolling Stones!
HVB: (barely concealing scorn) I think you mean “Miss You,” but (cheering up) wrong again! For $2.50 — this band starred in their own TV movie.
C: Oh, come on! How am I supposed to know? I don’t obsess over that stuff like you do!
HVB: Guess, come on!
C: I don’t know, the Partridge Family.
HVB: Now you’re not even trying.
C: Honey, I don’t know!
HVB: You give up?
C: (rolling her eyes) Yes, I give up.
HVB: (gleefully) It’s “I Was Made for Loving You” by KISS!
C: That’s nice dear.
Now, in fairness to my ever-tolerant wife, she frequently sticks it out until the very end of the game, when the “prize” goes down to 12 and a half cents or something, and the clues get ridiculously easy. I reckon you guys will be a bit more eager, and a lot more rock trivia-savvy. But the prize remains the same! I promise to mail you however much money you win by being the first to guess the song inside my head. Each clue will halve the prize money — so be smart with your guesses. One guess per Townsman, per clue round.
Are you ready? For 20 dollars — and no clue, in this first round — can you guess what song is inside my head?
I look forward to your responses.
HVB
Somebody shared this video with me today, and I enjoyed it well enough. The tunes ride along on some serious riffage, Ozzy is entertaining in a frantic, brain-addled kind of way, and — I noticed this for the first time today — the lyrics are actually kind of clever.
Then I started thinking about all that must have seemed completely bizarro about this to mainstream rock audiences in 1970-1971: the stripped-down, sludgy, riff-centric sound, the unbeautiful Ozzy, and — I noticed this, too, for the first time today — the apeshit pounding on the drums, bashing away on open hi-hats and crash cymbals from start to finish, etc. That ain’t no “Across the Universe,” bub. It’s not even “Communication Breakdown!”
Then I stopped myself and wondered: hey, Hrrundi, you silver-tongued, sly, handsome devil — are you mythologizing the things about Black Sabbath that had the staying power to still be cool in the 21st century? Maybe these guys were totally ho-hum back in the day. You’re old — but you’re not old enough to remember how these guys were perceived by the rock music buying public when this stuff came out.
I answered: Hrrundi, you sexy motherfucker, you’re right. You don’t know shit! Which is why I’m asking BigSteve and any other ancient RTH denizens — those who didn’t take so many damn drugs that they can’t remember whether their pee went up or down in the ’60s and ’70s — to tell us their recollections. Think back — back through the fog of dope smoke, the sight of topless chicks wigging out in the third row and the stench of sweat-soaked buckskin — and tell us, if you will, what the world of 1970-1971 thought of…Black Sabbath.
Hell officially freezes over
Has anybody bought this thing? Anybody planning on it? If so: why?
I look forward to your responses.
HVB
