depressed news

i read an article a few days ago about the death of rock&roll, full-stop, the author scoured the data of downloads & views on a host of platforms like spotify & youtube

bands, the primary vehicles of rock&roll, are nowhere near the top of popularity, indeed rock&roll bands don't even list on these analytics, esp. among the primary usual audience of young listeners that were once the driving force, & the market, for rock&roll

rock&roll from its very start shook the heavens & rattled up ol' itch himself, scaring parents & frightening authority, if you recall TV broadcasts in the 1950s would not show elvis 'the pelvis' presley from the waist down because his massive charismatic sexiness was corrupting the youth

eh, it had a good run of 70-80 years

now i must throw out my social d, black flag, circle jerks records cuz who needs punk in an age without rock&roll, perhaps i need to write an email to my local classic rock station too informing the station managers that their format is dead

oh man & goddamn if i wanna hear loud crunchy guitars & see a band perform live at the first intensity when players & audience share the same organic vibes

rock&roll is dead, at least as a Top 40 market

but then hell, i mentioned a few punk bands, punk was pupped out of frustration & anger of a society gone sideways & those bands that i limned a moment ago released their first records on tiny DIY labels & played to audiences of 50 or more fellow punks, the DNA of punk is anti-commercial

perhaps rock&roll is dead, for right now, after all, the numbers do not lie, but what do i know, i'm an old geezer of punk & rock&roll & will love the music until my last breath

ABSOLUTE MUSIC

& just as neil young commanded, keep on rockin' the free world!

target the goal

 

an ordinary autumn evening in california

 

happy autumn equinox!

which means today is the start of my favorite time of year, fall & the SPOOKY SEASON! sure, the weather is still pretty damn hot, but the light is changing to a lovely golden smudge glow.  what the impressionists would do with such a light!  & on my walk home tonight i noticed a few houses decorated for the high holiday.   

i've always maintained halloween is in the heart.  but it is also halloween time.  i'll do my EVERYDAY IS HALLOWEEN posts starting in october in addition to my usual acts of ordinary madness.  even ol' count dracula reading a book - poetry, perhaps? - on the john, (yes it would seem even a vampire needs to heed nature's call!) agrees that this is the best time of year!

boo!

Earth, Wind & Fire - September (Official HD Video)

'do you remember, the 21st night of september'

this song is a proof that the human comedy can & does make really fucking great pleasure, joy, happiness.  how the hell can you not hear this song without a smile & a groove!

& it is a perfect song for today's date too.

we do create the world as it creates us, with a smooth groove too

as tomas transtromer reminds us

task, to be where i am 

even in the solemn & absurd role

i am still the place creation works on itself

absolute music!

peace!

quote unquote

                    September is a time to feel the light,

write, scratch out, write, nap, walk, begin again.

--henri cole '107 water street'

one wish

 i wish to publish a book of all my unwritten poems

drive-in [1976]

 

with a title like that you think i could resist watching this flick?  hells no.  this is an interesting movie & document of a brand of american youth culture in the mid 1970s.  almost nostalgic even.  at least for me cuz i was around 9 years old when this movie was released & was going to the drive-ins as much as i could get my parents to take me & my brothers.

the gist is this.  one saturday - i think it is a saturday - a few of the local young-uns in a small texas town go roller-skating then later that night go to the drive-in.  in between we have a pair of goofy, good-natured ne'er-do-wells who plan on robbing the drive-in when the manager transports the night's proceeds from the ticket booth to the snack bar.  we have a group of local tuff guys replete in their gang colors, an orange windbreaker with the words WIDOW MAKERS stenciled on the back.  their leader, enoch, is a real dickhead who is or was dating the local beauty named, you better believe it, glowie.  glowie is real tired of enoch's shittyness & has set her heart on orville who is sweet & shy but drives a bitchin' convertible ss camaro.  orville has a sidekick too, his 12-year-old precocious little brother named little bit.  yeah, lotsa cornpone humor! 

at any rate, this is a surprisingly well-made, well-acted flick.  i read that the texas film commission wanted to develop local talent for their own film industry & gave the filmmakers enough money to create this movie populated with mostly unknown actors & local characters.  the score is chock full of great ol' country artists like george jones, loretta lynn, merle haggard et al.  the landscape is different from my own NorCal but the experience of being at the drive-ins remained very similar to my own life at the drive-ins in the 1970s.  right down to the public telephone at the snack bar.  speaking of the snack bar the movie honors the age-old intermission with showing one of the classic intermission shorts of the drive-in theater, the one where the alien arrives at a drive-in snack bar, orders a shitload of snacks, then flies away on his flying saucer.  then the snack bar attendant breaks the fourth wall & says, 'they come from miles around to enjoy our intermission.'

let me not forget the parody movie playing at the Remember the Alamo drive-in theater too.  it is called Disaster '76 a series of vignettes of the disaster movies that were popular at the time.  a whole lotta fun to see.  what happens at the end?  let's just say all's well that ends well.  including glowie & orville.  much of the humor is awkwardly executed but a moment here & there it hits the funny bone.  like the parody movie within the movie.  all the actors are pretty damn good in their roles.  the director, rod amateau, made a b-movie par excellence.  fans of b-movies, & drive-in theaters, will get a kick out of this pic.  it is also a good movie for the end of summer when the weather is still hot, the air electric & is still lazy enough to spend a little over an hour & a half on a movie that is so much of its bygone era.  for in that era of popular american culture, as dylan reminds us, 'i was so much older then, i am younger than that now.'

quote unquote

To have access to world literature, was to escape the prison of national vanity, of philistinism, of compulsory provincialism, of inane schooling, of imperfect destinies and bad luck.  Literature was the passport to enter a larger life: the zone of freedom.

--susan sontag