pioneers! Diggers!

Hey, sorry about that shit that offended you. Whatever it was . Something always does. I was just givin’ one off the wrist, you know, just foolin’ around. I’m often rushing off at the mouth and then feeling like a fool two minutes later. Impulsive type. Hot to exist.
I have noticed , in my movements through the tiny world I am able to access. Make that, as I go about the place - that people are quick to take offence if you gratuitously offer an opinion, or adopt a position which appears to be definitive. People see it is an insult to other people trying to occupy the same area. You are somehow queering the pitch for anybody and everybody if you leave a note ringing in the air. It is always interpreted as an off note. negative. To have an opinion is bad. Its taking some oxygen out of the room. Its therefore cynical and even perhaps bitter. This is, for me , hard to swallow in situations where people talk about music. Basically, you never hear from musicians. You get people who are self appointed experts such as Molly Meldrum or Glenn A Baker or Richard Wilkins or the cast of tv shows like Spicks and Specks or Rock Wiz but you never ever hear from musicians. Isn’t that strange!

Whenever sports is on the pubic tongue the voices most trusted are players or ex players. Same with anything to do with farming, they always genuflect to the guy sitting on a tractor, swiping flies from his face. The one who never moves his lips when he talks. People respect his words though. But don’t you worry about that!

In my case I must proffer a disclaimer, as far as the pompous pop group Queen goes, I hated them way before I could ever twang a note on a guitar. And I still do! The mark of a square! (another is a Kiss t shirt)

I have also noted the hysterical tone that some talk / writing on the magic box (internet) operates at. I guess its the way that it has naturally gone. Like in the industrial touring part of the rock scene where nobody is listened to or respected unless they are threatening violence at any moment. All the language is acidic and crude and nobody hears you otherwise. Its pretty camp to tell you the truth.

Anyway, the talk. It suggests a walk. as in talking the talk and walking the walk. Years ago, I heard that Stephen Stills (Buffalo Springfield/Crosby Stills Nash and....) was talking about his time fighting in ‘nam. While all the hippies were peacing out in SF. Someone had to remind him that this hadn’t happened and that he had been very publicly involved in rock music all through that period. The drugs.
Some people who talk about music suffer a bit from those phantom war experiences. Like the man from the RSL here who had told everybody he was a POW for decades. There are rock’n’roll soldiers who have endured the years of slogging it righteously for the Stooges or the Dolls. They endured the wrongs of history and the cruelty of the pop scene. Eventually, they think they were in the Stooges or the Dolls. Or Crack the Sky or Black Flag. Name your club and get you patch on. Some bands must have had more members than they ever played to.

The magic box , with all its talk and chat, lets all this stuff hang out , dripping wet, for all to see. Its all opinion, like most things in the digital world. It’ll all change soon. I was told , by a person who WORKS WITH COMPUTERS, that soon the internet will be full and they’ll have to start charging people to use it- if they want to use the fastest aspects of it. Whadda ya reckon about that? Will that be inevitable? It sounds plausible. Its a pretty good rumour to start anyway.

I don’t know what I’m talking about so I am a disinterested voice. I mean , I’m not lying.
My friend. lets call him “deep throat”, said that there might be a supercharged , turbo driven type internet available but you’d have to pay more to use this. There would be a public, cheap kind of experience as well but the super dooper one would be there for watching movies ( if anyone is making them) or listening to music (if anybodys making that) . That would be an immediate experience. The public, cheap one would probably be as slow as my current , and probably future experience. A degraded and sluggish taste of something , well not real, but almost so. Kind of like mp3s or music in paddocks (aka rock festivals) or online porn . Perhaps it’ll get people out of the house a bit more when they reject it? Somehow I doubt it. I mean look at football fans, they’ll take anything from the AFL and their clubs. And still they come back for more....

I digress. The talk about music in the rock n roll area is full of dashed dreamers and greatness the public ignored. Its a thing that started happening in the late seventies when another narrative of music was cooked up, a second rail that ran alongside the publicly recognzed one. This one had the Velvet Underground and the Stooges as the marquee acts. Many others have been added to the list since. The ones who were wronged by the times. Instead of the main travelled roads there had been these other, more authentic side roads that had been opened up. And they were more true in their orientation as regarding both the past and the future than that main highway. It was a very beguiling and convincing story.
It was just a story of timing. Those acts still cut through. They just went off later is all. It happened to the French poets of the 1880s- the bomb dropped in the States in the late 40s with the Beats. People are still digging up a few sad zombies here and there. For the most part, everything was released and broadcast up to about 1974 . In My humble opinion! People are zombie hunting because it makes it easier to stomach the fact that the general public doesn’t know about their act who are operating currently. If greatness could be ignored then it could be being missed right now! A comforting thought. It helps to ease the pain I guess. And it helps to stop even trying to push yourself through. Don’t fall for it! Its a scam!



Look out for us in Launceston and Hobart April 23 and 24- Adelaide May 8th and 9th at the Wheatsheaf and my new show "MC BITS- songs that destroyed" at the Butterfly club may 14th and 15th.