Erg.

Not that this is THAT kind of thing, but this is the greatest thing I've read this week...

Man Lights Burning Man on Fire 4 Days prematurely, Arrested for Felony Arson

the MAC

Yet instead of ranting about this
whatever I think about this, and I tend to think the problem this sort of journalism is obvious,
some people don't. All the talk about filth and homeless and crime and addicts and privilege and property rights and ownership and whatever; isn't it obvious the vocabulary used here is FUCKED (seeing NYC as a positive example is not a good idea); yadda yadda yadda, it's you and me, us and them, etc.

More importantly, and natural progression from championing mid-70's David Crosby, let's talk about Fleetwood Mac. No, not early Mac with actual blues credentials (though albatross is a good song), I'm more concerned with the late 70's super-blockbuster Mac: S/T, Rumors and most importantly Tusk. How good is Tusk? Pretty good. Does it matter that they were soulless coke-heads trying to bash out top 40 hits (though arguably in their coke-addled way they were making ART)? No. Haven't we learned anything in that the birth of the reader kills the need for an author.

I had my doubts, but upon listening to Tusk I was surprised to find that 1) it sounds great - in a production quality way and 2) it's totally weird. No real pop hit with proper verse-chorus-verse to be found and a lot of repetitive trance jams. Sure I can do without some of the schmaltz, but it isn't laid on that heavy. Some like to point at the song Tusk, with it's USC marching band and apparently someone's response to Go4 post-punk, as the rhythmic wierdo of the bunch but really the whole record is like that. Maybe it's just my ongoing love of songs that, if you lose focus, lose their center and feel as if they have/could gone/go on forever. (See luv of Reggae and Krautrock) I get caught in these songs not knowing whether it's coming or going and in fact ends & beginnings lose their importance. Shape becomes amorphous and sound moves to the front.

Erm, maybe that's over-stating it, but oh well.

I Almost Cut My Hair

California post-60's dismay, ah millionaire Cali-rockers riding the acid revolution all the way to the bank (w/ David Geffen leading the way). I'm looking at you GD and CSN&Y. Ah if the 60's weren't DEAD by Altamont, they were definitely dead by the time of Deja Vu. But this is retroactively pinning down all those post-Woodstock albums as automatic bummers or faux-non-bummers, and who cares when the 60's ended, more importantly when did the musicians realize it ended? or better, did it ever really matter? Better, it seems that by the time of Woodstock and CSN&Y and the Stones' Altamont most people on the inside were already seeing that the Magic was gone. Calls of it being over started as early as 1966 in SF (the year before the Summer of Love), with the various busts and bad acid and MONEY-MAKERS (very few contemporaries of Bill Graham seem to have a problem with him, but he seems like a Grade-A profiteer at best) and the overwhelming number of carpetbagging kids trying to touch-down into enlightenment but were really just bumming everyone out. It must have been confusing to decide if the newcomers didn't and couldn't get it or if they were pilgrims to be converted, the proto-revolutionary middle class caucus to turn everyone on. Not that psychedelic SF defined a unified vision; it encompassed acid missionaries, anarchist revolutionaries, absurdists troupes and more. And there weren't many big on "NUANCE".

It's hard, in retrospect (esp. for someone like me born in '79), to have any sense for when people started to feel things were OVER for the 60's. It is easy to see when people started to profit on the end-of-60's rhetoric. Look at all the 60's are dead albums/statements. Let it Be and Get Back, all of the Stones "roots and country" albums, most Neil Young, most CSN&Y, Prog, Sweetheart of the Rodeo. None of this stuff seemed to be trying to sustain the mid-60's vibe, but trying to define the new Spectacle. Who could pin the new trend, recapturing a past/beginning that never existed. By the time the Stones got to Altamont they weren't even making Psychadelic Rock anymore. Gone were the ragas and fairies; it was all rough and tumble Rock and Roll. Why shouldn't it end in Death. The Stones didn't have a progressive agenda to end class war or have harmony between Hell's Angel's thugs, middle class teenage late-comers, druggies, Black hipsters, etc. They need rough to touch up their post-60's dystopic image and they GOT IT.

All of this is a digression from what I was gonna talk about. How much I like David Crosby's If I Could only Remember My Name (and on top of that, the album of the summer Deja Vu). Honestly being artists part and parcel with the 60's rebellion commerce spectacle, most of the 60's icons made just as good or better music telling us it was over and all a sham, as when they were selling it to us in the first place, if only because it's more honest. There's no room for you and me in the all-star cast of hip rock luminaries (ie INSIDERS) that make up everyone who contributes to Crosby's album (most of GD, CSN&Y, Joni Mitchell, Jefferson Airplane, etc). So the curtain has dropped and that can make you either angry and disillusioned OR okay to appreciate who it was all a sham to begin with and can't we get down with that. We're not included (making PUNK necessary) but we can still watch (what they show us) and sometimes Fake Can Be Just As Good.

Next up: why C.W. Nevius (and most San Franciscans) can suck a big Dick.

Dark Prince?

One the most striking features of Keith Hudson's album Too Expensive is the sleeve. Both the front and back feature a shot of Hudson from the knees over a white featureless background. In both Hudson in affect and behavior, if not actually partaking in the sacrament, definitely signifies as much. Most important is not the front image, though Hudson's suited-up mod Rastaman look predates similar fashions in Dancehall by at least five years, but the Back image. Hudson is wearing a blue two piece track suit over a cardigan but more importantly the outfit is TIGHT; and the bulge of Hudson's "frank and beans" is decidedly apparent and in your face.

Perhaps a sly commentary on the typical east-west/"other" imprinted on black men and women's sexuality? The nature of a British record labels (Virgin) exploiting, and white middle class progressives getting off on, music and musicians from Jamaican ghettos for authenticity and realness? If anything it definitely gives the heads up that Hudson is going to fuck with our expectations of what we want from a crossover reggae record. (And this is while Marley has just started to blow-up on American college campuses!)

And so it is with the music. American R&B and funk tracks and not "authentic" reggae, not a lot of sufferers righteous lyricalness but wierd and deceptively pandering and simple and stupid lyrics. Fuck connecting to American white audiences, Hudson's shooting for fellow suffering disenfranchised American blacks.

Even now this record is difficult (as are all the Hudson records I've heard). Right on.