About me
subject appears to be a white male, early 50's, pathologically tall/skinny. brain patterns show evidence of a life in alcohol - first swimming in it then running from it. fingers show wear from years of guitar playing. heart presents slow repair, through writing, from being broken by rock and roll.
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Billy Pilgrim, Unstuck in Time:David Bowie's Brilliant Mistake
During the last few, black days I've been immersing myself in the work of two of my favorite artists. First off, to avert the depression I heard coming down the hall (and all of my own making, to be sure) I finally started to go through the myriad boxes I've kept under my 'kitchen' table in the studio apartment I share w/Buster and the Damage Brothers, Bleeker and MacDougal. Apart from various black t-shirts, mismatched dishes and ruined headphones I found my 'collection' of Kurt Vonnegut paperbacks as well as one set of headphones that weren't ruined. So I revved up the A.C. (it's been 100 plus degrees this last week here in god's country, and I surmise that it's god's country 'cause no one else wants it) and settled back first with 'Slaughterhouse Five', then on through 'Galapagos', Hocus Pocus' and am now in the middle of KV's first novel, 'Player Piano".
Having spent the last month with only the few vinyl LPs I'd gathered from various locations, I've not been listening to much music as even Iggy and the Sonics get old after a while and I found out yesterday that Bleeker Street Kitten is deathly afraid of Patti Smith. I put on 'Easter' and the poor kid ran under the bed like his tail was on fire. And before you think it's music in general that scared him so I have to tell you that he slept like a baby through the Tangerine Dream record I played for about 10 minutes until I took it off, declaring it the biggest load of rubbish I'd heard since Grand Funk Railroad reunited in '99. No, it was the, to me, rapturous 'Moses-on-speed' whirling dervish vocal pyrotechincs of my queen that sent the poor cat a-runnin'. No accounting for taste, I suppose but I will in the future educate the kitten to thwe wonders of La Smith, who - the older I get - reveals herself to be my favorite, favorite artist.
Anyway, to soothe my kitten's most decidedly un-=punk rock nerves, I unpacked the old Sanyo cassette deck Lynn gave me in the divorce, salvaged the one set of headphones that worked and started digging through a box of cassette tapes.
Mark my words, cassettes are the wave of the future!
Plugging the headphones in I was less than delighted to discover that only one earpiece worked. I've decided to view this as the universe, in all her infinite wisdom, illustrating how my normal life wioll be returned to me in pieces, on the celestial installment plan, if you will. In any event, one speaker is better than none, and listening through 'phones spares my kitten's delicate constitution and allows me to listen to music without completely shutting the world out. Which I'm beginning to realize is a good thing. I've mostly used music as a wall between myself and the world. Hiding behind not only the persona and microphone Iemploy with the various bands I play and have played with as well as the occaisional solo performance, but the music I listen to, also. Like back in High School, I'd walk around with copies of 'Thus Spake Zarathustra' and 'Mein Kampf' to put people off and to both quietly and loudly announce that I was a troubled intellectual who you would nevber understand so there's no point in talking to me anyway so I'm not hurt by yr lack of attention, you plebian, provincial peer group you.
But in the midst of my pose, things filtered through. I actually started reading the books I'd been carrying as props and bits of wisdom, all twisted and filtered through the brain of an antisocial/scared of his own shadow adolescent. 'Mein Kamf', apart from a failed idealogy was just a lousy book. Nietze cut a bit deeper and it's his work that is largely responsible for the blackness of my mood and wardrobe (Sorry, Lou.) I don't know how I came upon Vonnegut, but I remember the first book of his I read 'The Sirens of Titan' caused me to fairly gasp and ask myself "You can DO this??!!'. Vonnegut's characters, all frail and venal or confused, sweeping or swept up in bizarre events seemed at first ridiculous, until by the end of the book you recognized folks you knew and no small part of yrself in the citzens of his psyche, all flailing against the inevitability of life crushing all fairness from the scene. KV has been called a black comic and our own Jonathan Swift, heir apparent to Mark Twain. I get no comfort from his depictions of the human animal as a small minded, small hearted builder of death machines, and the creator of it's own untimate end, unless you can consider finding someone who sees thing the way you do, no matter how bleak, to be comfort.
For now I do. Word on the street has it that KV is in the process of writing what will probably be his last novel (I believe he's pushing 80 and raedy to 'retire'- say it ain't so). I wait patiently for more dark wisdom from the master. Bringing bad news to the masses in such a delightfully entertaining way is a great gift. Vonnegut is a national treasure who rats out the nation unto itself in short, sharp, shocks of recognition. If you haven't read him, you owe to yrself to do so. If you have read him, you owe it to yrself to read him again. There's always something new to be found and his prescience regarding man vs technology suggests that 'novelist' might better be replaced by the sobriquet 'prophet'.
Which brings me to David Bowie. Throughout the 70's Bowie was one of the biggest influences on a certain skinny, young songwriter who's behind this particulat cyber-curtain. Up unto the release of Patti's 'Horses', Bowie was IT as far as I was concerned. His combination of camp and doo-wop grand opera on 'Ziggy Stardust', the winsome cabaret of 'Hunky Dory', the black light/black heat guierrorisms on 'The Man Who Sold the World' were an oasis of smartrock in a desert of Sabbaths and Zeppelins. His move through the sci-fi 50-isms on 'Alladin Sane', the cybersoulman of 'Young Americans' on through the 'Berlion Trilogy' of '"Heroes'", 'Low' and 'Lodger' told me that rock and roll needn't stagnate or devolve into the posturings of the nascent heavy metal movement of the day. A blessing.
I got off the Bowie bus around the time of 'Let's Dance', basically when the bulk of America got on it. There's that 'outsider' mentality of mine rearing it's poseur head, I guess. Although in retrospect I honestly believe to this day that 'Let's Dance', 'Tonight' and 'Never Let Me Down' were just lousy records. Oh well. In the late, late 80's in thoose few moments before Nirvana turned the music world upside down by, oddly enough, releasing what for all intents and purposes was a 3rd rate Replacements record, Bowie came back with a vengeance. And nobody, I mean nobody bought it. Enter Tin Machine.
Bowie's great experiment with Tin Machine was this: In Ton Machine he was simple the singer in the band. All music was co written by Bowie and the band, which was comprised of Soupy Sales' sons Hunt and Tony on drums and bass respectively and an incredible guitarist named Reeves Gabrels who combined the then requisite virtuosity of the Van Halen/Vai school of shred with the atonal screed of the Branca generation. Gabrels' genius was knowing when to dazzle with an almost unnatural flurry of 64th notes and when to just lean into his Steinberger and make it go 'KRSSSSHHHHHHHHHKKKKKK'. A rare talent. Their first, self titled rcord contained gems like 'Under the God' and the immortal 'I Can't Read', where Bowie spat out perhaps the most vindictive, apocalyptic lyrics of his long and storied carrer while Gabrels played the guitar like some bastard son of Yngwie Malmseen and a nine car pile up and the Sales brothers laid down a black and blue carper upon which the duty dance with death was performed.
Nobody bought the record, but because he was David Bowie, their record company allowed them Tin Machine II, a record that took me a little while to get into, as it wasn't as bloody and immediate as the first. Nobody bought that one either so I don't know how 'Oy Vey, Baby' the live, third and final Tin Machine record came to pass, but I've been listening to it all night and, boy, am I glad it was.
Opening with a cover of the sainted Roxy Music's 'If There Is Something' the band careens like a 'tigers on vaseline' , laying down a blueprint for the 21st century that no one in rock and roll picked up on; that of a sci-fi punk band that really saw no future and were dancing on the impending grave of a civilization that just might deserve death. Much like Kurt Vonnegut, these records show me that even in the midst of sheer hopelessness, there's still reason to dance if you beat back the devil with a backbeat and a guitarist from Mars. Check 'em out, folks, odds are you'll be able to find the entire Tin Machine catalog in cheap bins or used bins in record stores across the country and the tainted paste jewels of of Kurt Vonnegut Jt are just a library visit away.
This ain't rock and roll, this is genocide.
And so it goes..................
Posted by: timbyrnes at 16:49 |
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