Today I ran into my old friend Mark on the street. Mark, who lived next door to me when my family moved back to the States, who taught me guitar, who dragged me unwillingly into the fantasy that was rock and roll, and who finally seduced me into a vague and ill-considered belief in a Valhalla of Rock, where Purity of Vision, the Right Drugs, and a Marshall Half Stack were all it took to achieve a Dyonisian Splendor, to Stride the Clouds with Bolan and Page and Hendrix and Morrison and All The Lesser Gods. To Cleave the Mediocrity with a Mighty Sword of Sound. The Honoured Jester and Keeper Of The Conscience of this Doomed Pantheon was Lester Bangs. The Patron Saint was Rimbaud, with his absinthe and his opium and his crystalline rage.
Mark introduced me to and intoxicated me with his pure and unswerving love for Trash Culture, the Carny Geek Reborn as
Rock Hero, Electric Troubador, and Fabulously Wealthy Wetter of Panties. What Redblooded AntiHero wouldnt want to follow this noble aim? The Last Grail in the Wasteland.
It truly was and is a romantic ideal worthy of the most pure-minded Arthurian. To follow the light of faith through the jungles of mammon, and emerge triumphant, resplendent with
the gold medals of Success.
But the Jungles of Mammon are thick indeed, and a Rebel Without A Cause will either die on the field or awake in his triumph to say "I have no cause, but I do have two ex-wives, four children, and a lien on all my accounts due to unpaid taxes, not to mention these nasty side effects from the various drug addictions I accumulated in my mad rush towards
this moment of truth" Che Guevara died on the field, crying freedom with his last breath. Fidel soldiered on, making peace with Standard Oil and the Mob. Kurt Cobain died on the field, leaving what's his name to Foo Fight onward, making peace with the living ghost of Jerry Lewis. Mark abandoned the field, leaving me to make peace with Lexus, Calvin Klein,
Lotus, One Two Three, and Sheryl Incorporated.
What brings on this Idiot Tale is a single comment that Mark made today. "Did you see Almost Famous?" Almost Famous, if nobody has seen it, is a wonderful movie, about Camelot after the death of Arthur, otherwise known as Rock and Roll in the
mid Seventies. Our King of Jesters is there, Lester Bangs, soon to die himself, of heartbreak, self-loathing, and (I think) Dilaudid. Our Knights are there, a dimwitted Band of True Believers named StillWater. Our Page and Chronicler is there, and in fact is the real hero of the tale: sweet, courageous and strong enough to triumph in his own rite of passage. (Of course, that may be aided by the fact that he is the teller of the tale.) And the Villeins are there, at least their Emissary. The sly, smug, hit and run driving Manager, the GreedHead, the Pragmatist, the BusinessMan, the Snake in Eden. The guy who Lived To Fight Another Day. The guy that not only dominates the business today, but controls every aspect of it. Left out of the movie is Radio, that bastard child of the Mob-controlled jukebox trade, an old boy network of leg-breakers, pimps, and suave-handed extortionists. And left out of the movie is the mob, as opposed to The Mob, that TV-trained group of followers and wannabes who identify so completely with their oppressors that it becomes impossible to distinguish between the two.
This is an age that, had he lived long enough to see it, would have caused Aldous Huxley to vomit from the rawness of his own prescience. This is an age that has no need of a Hitler, for our bland acceptance of Evil requires no Master Propagandist. We're already there. This is an age of slaves, so entrenched that we don't need monsters to enslave us, only adnminstrators, and so effective that most of us don't even realise that we're slaves.
Ah well, it's bedtime, and I'll feel better in the morning.
Yrs,
David Baerwald
"Pop!" Goes The Weasel
B
Baerwald
(view)
Today I ran into my old friend Mark on the street. Mark, who lived next door to me when my family moved back to the States, who taught me guitar, who dragged me unwillingly into the fantasy that was rock and roll, and who finally seduced me into a vague and ill-considered belief in a Valhalla of Rock, where Purity of Vision, the Right Drugs, and a Marshall Half Stack were all it took to achieve a Dyonisian Splendor, to Stride the Clouds with Bolan and Page and Hendrix and Morrison and All The Lesser Gods. To Cleave the Mediocrity with a Mighty Sword of Sound. The Honoured Jester and Keeper Of The Conscience of this Doomed Pantheon was Lester Bangs. The Patron Saint was Rimbaud, with his absinthe and his opium and his crystalline rage.
Mark introduced me to and intoxicated me with his pure and unswerving love for Trash Culture, the Carny Geek Reborn as
Rock Hero, Electric Troubador, and Fabulously Wealthy Wetter of Panties. What Redblooded AntiHero wouldnt want to follow this noble aim? The Last Grail in the Wasteland.
It truly was and is a romantic ideal worthy of the most pure-minded Arthurian. To follow the light of faith through the jungles of mammon, and emerge triumphant, resplendent with
the gold medals of Success.
But the Jungles of Mammon are thick indeed, and a Rebel Without A Cause will either die on the field or awake in his triumph to say "I have no cause, but I do have two ex-wives, four children, and a lien on all my accounts due to unpaid taxes, not to mention these nasty side effects from the various drug addictions I accumulated in my mad rush towards
this moment of truth" Che Guevara died on the field, crying freedom with his last breath. Fidel soldiered on, making peace with Standard Oil and the Mob. Kurt Cobain died on the field, leaving what's his name to Foo Fight onward, making peace with the living ghost of Jerry Lewis. Mark abandoned the field, leaving me to make peace with Lexus, Calvin Klein,
Lotus, One Two Three, and Sheryl Incorporated.
What brings on this Idiot Tale is a single comment that Mark made today. "Did you see Almost Famous?" Almost Famous, if nobody has seen it, is a wonderful movie, about Camelot after the death of Arthur, otherwise known as Rock and Roll in the
mid Seventies. Our King of Jesters is there, Lester Bangs, soon to die himself, of heartbreak, self-loathing, and (I think) Dilaudid. Our Knights are there, a dimwitted Band of True Believers named StillWater. Our Page and Chronicler is there, and in fact is the real hero of the tale: sweet, courageous and strong enough to triumph in his own rite of passage. (Of course, that may be aided by the fact that he is the teller of the tale.) And the Villeins are there, at least their Emissary. The sly, smug, hit and run driving Manager, the GreedHead, the Pragmatist, the BusinessMan, the Snake in Eden. The guy who Lived To Fight Another Day. The guy that not only dominates the business today, but controls every aspect of it. Left out of the movie is Radio, that bastard child of the Mob-controlled jukebox trade, an old boy network of leg-breakers, pimps, and suave-handed extortionists. And left out of the movie is the mob, as opposed to The Mob, that TV-trained group of followers and wannabes who identify so completely with their oppressors that it becomes impossible to distinguish between the two.
This is an age that, had he lived long enough to see it, would have caused Aldous Huxley to vomit from the rawness of his own prescience. This is an age that has no need of a Hitler, for our bland acceptance of Evil requires no Master Propagandist. We're already there. This is an age of slaves, so entrenched that we don't need monsters to enslave us, only adnminstrators, and so effective that most of us don't even realise that we're slaves.
Ah well, it's bedtime, and I'll feel better in the morning.
Yrs,
David Baerwald
Mark introduced me to and intoxicated me with his pure and unswerving love for Trash Culture, the Carny Geek Reborn as
Rock Hero, Electric Troubador, and Fabulously Wealthy Wetter of Panties. What Redblooded AntiHero wouldnt want to follow this noble aim? The Last Grail in the Wasteland.
It truly was and is a romantic ideal worthy of the most pure-minded Arthurian. To follow the light of faith through the jungles of mammon, and emerge triumphant, resplendent with
the gold medals of Success.
But the Jungles of Mammon are thick indeed, and a Rebel Without A Cause will either die on the field or awake in his triumph to say "I have no cause, but I do have two ex-wives, four children, and a lien on all my accounts due to unpaid taxes, not to mention these nasty side effects from the various drug addictions I accumulated in my mad rush towards
this moment of truth" Che Guevara died on the field, crying freedom with his last breath. Fidel soldiered on, making peace with Standard Oil and the Mob. Kurt Cobain died on the field, leaving what's his name to Foo Fight onward, making peace with the living ghost of Jerry Lewis. Mark abandoned the field, leaving me to make peace with Lexus, Calvin Klein,
Lotus, One Two Three, and Sheryl Incorporated.
What brings on this Idiot Tale is a single comment that Mark made today. "Did you see Almost Famous?" Almost Famous, if nobody has seen it, is a wonderful movie, about Camelot after the death of Arthur, otherwise known as Rock and Roll in the
mid Seventies. Our King of Jesters is there, Lester Bangs, soon to die himself, of heartbreak, self-loathing, and (I think) Dilaudid. Our Knights are there, a dimwitted Band of True Believers named StillWater. Our Page and Chronicler is there, and in fact is the real hero of the tale: sweet, courageous and strong enough to triumph in his own rite of passage. (Of course, that may be aided by the fact that he is the teller of the tale.) And the Villeins are there, at least their Emissary. The sly, smug, hit and run driving Manager, the GreedHead, the Pragmatist, the BusinessMan, the Snake in Eden. The guy who Lived To Fight Another Day. The guy that not only dominates the business today, but controls every aspect of it. Left out of the movie is Radio, that bastard child of the Mob-controlled jukebox trade, an old boy network of leg-breakers, pimps, and suave-handed extortionists. And left out of the movie is the mob, as opposed to The Mob, that TV-trained group of followers and wannabes who identify so completely with their oppressors that it becomes impossible to distinguish between the two.
This is an age that, had he lived long enough to see it, would have caused Aldous Huxley to vomit from the rawness of his own prescience. This is an age that has no need of a Hitler, for our bland acceptance of Evil requires no Master Propagandist. We're already there. This is an age of slaves, so entrenched that we don't need monsters to enslave us, only adnminstrators, and so effective that most of us don't even realise that we're slaves.
Ah well, it's bedtime, and I'll feel better in the morning.
Yrs,
David Baerwald
