It’s all going to be okay, the orange turd has declared defeating the pandemic as his greatest accomplishment.
Maybe someone should tell the pandemic.
I was trying to come to terms with this on some level and then I decided to play some of the most brutal angry fucking music I own. Welcome to King Crimson’s The Power to Believe. It’s a brutal glorious ass shaking ride through the darker side of rock and roll.
The last studio album by Crimson and it was 17 years ago. It at times feels like a juggernaut squashing your brain out of your ears at a level of intensity that is usually saved for playing to terrorists holding out in the US embassy in some small middle eastern country. It’s hard to believe such a nice looking man in a conservative suit like Robert Fripp could be the mastermind behind the beautiful cacophony emanating from my speakers this evening, and then there are the quiet bits. This feels like the end of a thought that began with 21st Century Schizoid Man, and it was an unsettling thought at that.
So if you have had enough of the world outside and want to cleanse your brain it is the perfect antidote to the lies of the political world. There is one thing that is true about Crimson that is that while the music may not always be traditionally beautiful it is always honest.
All of these things have passed my lips over the last 50 or so years. I am not sure if I have stopped occasionally saying these things about The Doors over the years. I do however finally admit the influence they have had on rock music since Jim shuffled off this mortal coil so long ago at a young age.
I can sing along with just about every Doors album released and in that I include the terrible spoken word pieces. I can also bounce around the room jiggle and wiggle my hips in a dreadfully un-sexy way and if I had a mike stand I know I could do the staggering almost falling over swagger and sway through a song until collapsing on the floor, also when I had hair in the right light in a dim room with many a drunk around I could convince myself that in my leather jacket and winkle pickers I was the spitting image of gentleman Jim.
I do like the album Strange Days most of the way through and especially the discordant wicked out psychedelia of When The Music’s Over.
It is also one of the two Doors albums I have owned consistently since about 1979 when as a callow thirteen year old I was attracted to the 50p price at a church jumble sale. This probably makes it like the third or fourth album I ever bought, it was promptly on regular rotation on the house radiogram when my dad was not home.
My dad would refuse to let that hippy crap be played in the house when he was around. My mum was much more willing to put up with the strange sounds, I would however have to sit real close to the speakers as she didn’t like it too loud.
It’s a smashing album cover as well.
Confession time: I actually like every Doors album to some extent and I think they are an astonishingly great band with a super sexy lead singer and cosmically gifted keyboard player. (my wife made me say that…)
As a 14 year old there was nothing better than being asked the question R.U. Ready 2 Rock? Because let’s face it “when I’m ready I’m ready.”
I know this song is probably really about bumping uglies, and still it’s about gyrating and gesticulating in the religious excesses of the whirling dervishness of hard rockin’ denim clad dudes from the USA.
All I ever wanted some day in my life was to hear the words screamed at me Atlanta Georgia R.U. Ready 2 Rock? Then for as long as possible I and my compadres would rock like there was no tomorrow. I never heard those words, but I did hear Portland Oregon R.U. Ready 2 Rock and yes I did.
Some Enchanted Evening was I think the very first live rock and roll album I ever heard and it is still to this day one of my all time favorites. It will make me bounce around the room like a young pup. This will invariably drive the dog, the grandchild and myself into uncontrollable fits of leaping and jumping and throwing of devil horns and everyone else in the house into uncontrollable fits of laughter. But damnation the Cult had a sense of humor, they were not afraid to laugh at themselves or others so I see this as a true adherence to the inspirational Oysters.
Let’s just be clear there is nothing more joyful than the well constructed live rock album. It is full of the scent of sweat and patchouli, or was that my teenage bedroom? I am not sure there. It should not outstay it’s welcome, it should have the hits and some deeper cuts and it should rock. It should be a celebration of the sweat and swaying and sashaying that a great rock and roll show has, we need these albums to remind us that rock and roll is not the on-line event it has become. It is a communal experience when band and audience become one in the existential moment of communion that singing and hollering and cheering and whistling and clapping and stomping and bumping into your neighbors and spilling warm beer from a plastic cup onto a sticky floor was and will be again. I feel it is important for us to remind ourselves and our children and our children children that listening to music does not happen on earbuds all the time.
(There is something wrong with a world when earbuds is a word that the spellchecker doesn’t correct)
Some Enchanted Evening has the benefit of being full of songs that can be sung along to by absolutely anyone. This is as they say the “nexus of the crises” for those you live with. I was never sure why it has two covers on it but if you are going to do covers the MC5 and the Animals are an excellent choice and then there is Godzilla, the biggest monster of a disaster movie song ever plus the hit what more do you ever need.
Since 1980 I have been rocking out to Some Enchanted Evening and loving the Cult of Blue Oysters. So what if they are not trendy anymore, so what of they have outrageous hair and flares and pastel shirts, so what I say to you. You write a song as BIG as Godzilla and you get to dress however you damn well want to.
Six unpublished posts deleted.
Five concerts have been refunded to me this year, this makes me sad. I am holding on to the Billy Bragg shows in the hope we can all get together next summer.
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