rock and roll musings by Tim Byrnes

Interview with the Yorkshire: The Search for Lester Bangs uh, Continues

     Hey folks, Buster here. Tim's been off painting houses almost everday day lately and has 2 (count 'em) 2 houses to do in Manzanola, a flyspeck of a town 'bout 9 miles East a-here, this week and as a result won't be posting here at punk rock for a while. So, I've taken it upon myself, as my dogly duty you might say, to uphold the standards of informative entertainment that have become the benchmark of the whole punk rock blues... experience, if you will, and continue Tim's fine work in his absence. So the first thing I'm gonna do is eat a bunch of chocalate and have a dream sequence.

     "....... there I was, lost in an unknown parking lot. A light rain fell, turning the black tarmacadam into hilly, rippled mirrors of obsidian bleakness. A wind howled like no wind I'd heard and I was stunned to see the jet black yorkshire, bathed in the light of the Piggly Wiggly sign standimng on his hind legs and pulling from a bottle of Old Frankenstein.

     "I walked up to this seeming apparition and barked a hello. Kinda like this:

      "Howdy fella, my name's Buster, what's yours?" (An old literary device, but one that works). The Yorkie smiled a slow Ray Davies smile and said

       "Buster, oh yeah I've heard of you. The punk rock kid's buddy, right?"
     I nodded slowly, but firmly. Giving less than half a yard.

     "You can call me Louie. I am," at this point lightning struck like in an old blues song, 'The Dog of Lester Bangs!!!!"

       'How come you came here..." I started.

      "Letsre doesn't want to speak to...."

     ' I know, I know, the old reprobate's got some copyright phobia thing happening. Doesn't matter, I mean YOU got the real  poop, er,scoop er on old LB anyway right? Don't nobody know a man as well as his dog, right?"

     "Hmmmmm, could be," he answered, " I mostly remember dodging Romilar bottles and peeing in the house 'cause Lester would get all tanked up and forget he had a dog."

     'No', I said, sounding like an outraged Bullwinkle J. Moose, "Sat it isn't so!"

     "Sorry, Buster, but yr boy's hero was, and I can barely bring myself to say it, but he was a neglectful father".

     "NOOOOOOOOOO' I howled, like a dog because, well, you know.

     "Oh yes, little Buster, Lester'd forget to feed me for days at a time. I survived on spilled pizza and drank from the toilet. Just because old Lester had a way with words didn't automatically make him a dog's best friend. It wasn't his fault. Lester loved me, after a fashion. He could be the most attentive dad in the world for like 15 minutes at a time. The rest of the time he wasd chasing the next big rock and roll story. And you know what?"

    "What?" I asked for I truly did not know.

     "It was always the same story! Read those books that yr boy Tim has, that Psychotic Reactions and thing and the Mainlines collection. Every article was about how rock and roll could never be as good as what you imagined. Maybe that nothing could be as good as what you imagined. Lester set standards of expected behavior and purpose on what amounts to loud, nursery rhymes. He set himself up for the biggest kind of letdown; the failure of the soul to shine at it's brightest at all times. Impossible goal, an endless chase down the same rathole over and over again."

      "I never thought of it that way." I said 'cause I hadn't.

      "Not that old Lester didn't write some inspiring stuff, he was the greatest, no argument here. But I'd like to see his 'followers' like yr boy Tim take that lesson from the old man's words and remember that there's more to life than quantifying Mick Jagger's pout. Better he should paint houses."

      At that point I woke up because Bleeker and MacDougal were attempting to nurse on me. OW OUCH, NOW CUT THAT OUT!!!!!

Posted by: timbyrnes at 16:30 | link | comments

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