| | | |
chrysesofia
|
9/29/2009 11:51:22 AM
i've discovered punk.
that is to say:
i grew up in sheltered white suburbia. which is not what it sounds like exactly: socially sheltered, but domestically/emotionally scarified. i really actually had all the internal criteria for punk. and my life as i lived it ... in my room at home ... was ... it was all there. i totally had it goin on. and i was into music that no one else could have possibly heard of. but socially it wasn't there: looking back on what was available at the time ... there was the Springsteen contingent; the Ozzy/BlackSabbath contingent; the Eagles/Jackson Browne contingent; the Zep contingent; and the Rolling Stones etc. contingent; plus i was a bandfag, so ... y'know ... that is its own musical world. and even in college i don't =recall= (which isn't to say it didn't exist) being exposed to it. unless i heard it, and ... just didn't get it because i couldn't relate it to anything within my previous experience. so.
lucky for me i married a rock star. someone who at 16 was playing Max's Kansas City and CBGB, while I was struggling through American literature and geometry and dissecting cockroaches, writing my poetry on purple paper in my room listening to Joe Jackson and Cheap Trick and Rick Wakeman. so ever since we've been together, he's been all over Dead Kennedys and Bad Brains and Minor Threat, not to mention his own past exploits.
so now that he is at long last back in a band ... not just a band but THE band, which means whatever band his cousin is piloting at the moment ... i am getting to go to gigs. Saturday night i had the privilege and pleasure of soaking up Fed Up!, Psycho, Sexual Suicide, Oconicide, Truth in Needles, and of course Mental Abuse 09. and to my great surprise i never felt so comfortable ... which is to say so un-self-conscious ... in a social or musical situation. and i get it more now. there is a part of me that ... fits in that slot. probably a bigger part than i'm aware of right now, and that always did, except the slot wasn't available to me. (i'm thinking now of "slide Tab A into Slot B" on the cut-out-and-put-together things on cereal boxes growing up.)
i think it probably helps that i've gotten to such a good place in my life that the things that are still evil to me precipitate out more easily: because i'm not angstlich all the time, there is a better economy in getting really pissed at specific kinds of things ... the things i want to make better, and go through the process of trying to and end up having to conclude that i can't ... and especially things that by their nature i can't do anything about. Crazy people. My best friend's stage 4 colon cancer. (there are no more numbers after that). Stagnation and disillusionment where there should be rage and revolution. Injustice ... not any old injustice or not injustice like i'm always on the lookout for it, and not usually personal injustices, but injustice that is truly malicious or selfish, rude, irresponsible, to a person or people or group ... any belief system that centers on imaginary friends ... and i hate having to depend on commercial enterprise to fulfill basic human needs. that's just wrong. right, free market, democracy, i get it ... but not for things like information. every social evil and injustice can at its roots be traced back to a lack of information, or misinformation.
i have a place to come from with this.
it's like living all your life knowing about redorangeyellowgreenblueindigoviolet and suddenly learning that that whole time, there was another color.
i want to go back and color everything in. or ... like ... i would make different color choices than i did if i had known about this other color; that i probably colored things in in an unsatisfactory way because that color wasn't there for me to use. now i want to look at everything again and ... apply that color where it actually goes.
do-over.
|
|
chrysesofia
|
9/29/2009 2:31:33 PM
and why is that important?
because it obliterates the block. it gives me permission like i've never truly felt i had to just go ahead and act on all the weird spontaneous ideas i get--mainly artistic ones. so i expect to be having a kind of renaissance. this should be interesting.
|
|
Bryon Tosoff
|
9/29/2009 2:50:10 PM
---- Updated 9/29/2009 2:50:29 PM
So much depth revealed here...what a way with words and laying it out like you do
is a captivating read. That is to share a part of you here and express it in such a colorful and dynamic manner...like I have read this a few times and it is powerful and insightful. to do this in such a well presented way says a lot about you as a person, very expressive and sensitive , thoughtfully done.
really cool to read...bearing your soul like that
that takes courage...but then you are probably stronger then many of us here to do it with such verve....
impressive...love your style
bryon
|
|
chrysesofia
|
9/29/2009 3:41:48 PM
thanks for reading. i couldn't say whether it's courage--more likely just some kind of naivete, or maybe both--but i'm always thrilled if someone gets something out of what comes out of me and it sparks a thought that could have positive repercussions down the road, or somehow makes things better. ideally, everything trickles up.
|
|
Bryon Tosoff
|
9/29/2009 5:49:04 PM
chrysesofia stated
snipped some
===================================================
:it sparks a thought that could have positive repercussions down the road, or somehow makes things better. ideally, everything trickles up:
===================================================
now that is an interesting concept, how cool a thought is that!!!
bryon
|
|
LyinDan
|
9/29/2009 7:59:51 PM
You dissected cockroaches? How many?
|
|
chrysesofia
|
9/29/2009 9:21:41 PM
just one, ... a cockroach was one of the number of things we had to dissect that year, starting with some kind of worm and ending with the fetal pig. it was one of the really really big kinds. and to be fair, i have to give credit to my lab partner for actually dissecting it. he was ... let's say, not a student by trade, a stoner in point of fact, but turned out to be a funny and decent guy; and our agreement was that i would actually perform all the dissections, but i would not do this one. which is weird now that i look back on it because i had no experience of cockroaches whatsoever at that point in my life; but it was a bug, and it was crunchy, and i couldn't. as i recall, he wasn't thrilled about it either, but, my hero, he did it. thanks mike.
|
|
Conversation Suicide
|
9/30/2009 12:31:19 PM
---- Updated 9/30/2009 12:34:49 PM
Punk is about FREEDOM. Ideas, politics, social consciousness, freedom to create, freedom of physical gyration and the ballet of movement (very few rules on HOW to dance/mosh to a punk ditty). Just plain FREEDOM of expression.
Definitely one of the most free-spirited music genres/counter-cultures. At it's BEST , a powerful force for ANTI-war, ANTI-Hate crimes, ANTI-government Control.
At it's WORST, a bit o' CHAOS, to spice up an otherwise somewhat dreary world.
And THANKFULLY, for folks like me, it's FAR from DEAD. Glad to see you've discovered the primal beauty and truth that the PUNK/Post-Millenium classification can bring in music/art/film/literature and beyond.
-phorever phuckin' PUNK, pHLeGm
|
|
Hop On Pop
|
9/30/2009 12:35:52 PM
---- Updated 9/30/2009 12:36:18 PM
Punk is folk music, played faster, louder, and with more vitriol.
It's cathartic.
|
|
chrysesofia
|
9/30/2009 12:51:50 PM
yeah, that. what you said.
|
|
Bryon Tosoff
|
9/30/2009 1:48:18 PM
PUNK IS FOLKING GOOD MUSIC just like Todd said.
|
|
Conversation Suicide
|
10/1/2009 3:42:46 AM
punk is just a modern extension of the blues and rock and roll,
with a D.I.Y. attitude, and a CONTENT over quality virtue.....
|
|
chrysesofia
|
10/1/2009 7:31:10 AM
see if i'd known all this 30 years ago ... but then 30 years ago it was not what it is now.
|
|
Anon E. Mouse
|
10/1/2009 4:43:29 PM
---- Updated 10/1/2009 4:45:35 PM
Well you might as well just say something REALLY STUPID, mr. phlegm; like:
" Punk is Nature's candy "
Punk is actually best designed for untalented Wankers, like this phlegm guy.
-Doobious DoobieMeyer the Cat
|
|
chrysesofia
|
10/1/2009 5:20:59 PM
well, Mr Mouse the cat ... i couldn't weigh on in the wanker part, but i'd have to beg to differ about talent. I know the old skool NJHC i've been hearing for 10 years now is extremely talent ... ful. it just seems to me that it's measured on a different scale, and one that not everyone might be tuned into.
|
|
Social Spit
|
10/2/2009 2:21:10 AM
---- Updated 10/2/2009 2:21:53 AM
May I offer something for you to listen to:
iacmusic.com/SocialSpit
|
|
Fidney Joneson
|
10/2/2009 7:51:23 AM
I discovered jellyroll.
|
|
chrysesofia
|
10/2/2009 6:05:40 PM
hey thanks, i added one to my station.
i would like to reciprocate--i know it's anathema to link outside the site, but check out the playlist at http://www.myspace.com/mentalabuse09. they don't have a page here yet. i can also recommend downward hacking motion and iconicide.
|
|
LyinDan
|
10/2/2009 7:45:21 PM
" i can also recommend downward hacking motion"
Is that also known as "stabbing the cat in your lap"?
|
|
chrysesofia
|
10/2/2009 10:47:37 PM
BAAAAAAhaaa
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0iLaL3V0Yk
|
|
Conversation Suicide
|
10/3/2009 4:57:30 AM
There's a LOT of GREAT Punk music on
REAL HARD Alternative
It's a pretty badass little station, on IAC.
|
|
Paul groover
|
10/3/2009 9:07:04 AM
One of the original Punks from the British scene is here Joe Strummer from The Clash
|
|
chrysesofia
|
10/3/2009 12:08:53 PM
so here's my next question: where did punk come from? like ... i kinda get the concept that what the Ramones did, no one did before, or at least that it was the Ramones that planted the seeds for so much of the rest of it ... but everything comes from something, either as an evolution or as a reaction.
and how is punk now different from punk as it originally was?
|
|
Conversation Suicide
|
10/4/2009 6:52:51 AM
---- Updated 10/4/2009 7:25:06 AM
uhh..... that's a tough one. Old School vs. New School punk.... HMmmmm.... SO different, and yet SO much a similar part of the WHOLE, in this counter-culture movement....
But I can honestly tell you that Joe Strummer is NOT on IAC as a working artist.
This Punk God from The CLASH, and filling in on vocals for Shane Mcgowan for the Pogues, he.....urrrr...you see.......
This LOVELY and Groundbreaking Icon, of all that PUNK is,
well.....he is dead. R. I. P.
|
|
chrysesofia
|
10/4/2009 9:00:58 AM
right--i did figure that part out. in fact, i might have already known it.
of course, i keep thinking that Johnny Rotten is dead, but i'm very happy he's not. what a sweet guy, and who knew?
|
|
Conversation Suicide
|
10/4/2009 9:04:32 AM
---- Updated 10/4/2009 9:37:45 AM
yep, you're right.
John Lydon (Johnny Rotten) is alive, and well, living in California, and doing Country Butter Commercials on the television...for the UK.
not QUITE anarchy in the uk with that one, eh?
oh yeah, here's a cute poppy-punk ditty: Whips and Chains
|
|
Frylock
|
10/4/2009 9:58:47 AM
It's not cute, and it doesn't even rise to the level of sophomoric. You need to have your catalog examined.
|
|
chrysesofia
|
10/4/2009 10:10:27 AM
you're shitting me. ~ nope, you're not shitting me, there it is on youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hzQsvxtLTM
and along with it came this bit that i admire very much:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCgbRS2LrHY&NR=1&feature=fvwp
and here's what i like about the contrast between the two: it is anarchy, in a way, if you can't pin him down. he's considered an icon of the genre but he refuses to be pigeonholed. and to me that equals a refusal to sell out. if you keep producing and being what "they" expect you to be, just because that consistency and acquiescence to expectation will draw a more reliable dollar, then you have ceased to exemplify the creative power and potential of chaos. we all have the right and ability to remake ourselves every day--i remember reading somewhere once that ... oh, i know, i'm pretty sure it's in the book based on Carl Sagan's series "Cosmos" ... one thing that sets us apart from animals is that we can close our eyes and sit and be apparently doing nothing, and open our eyes half an hour later and be a completely different person.
something about the Country Life Butter commercial makes me laugh--just the fact that he did it ... and that you can't tell what his attitude toward it really is. through one microscope, he sounds totally sold out, but through another, you can see him saying "isn't this the most ridiculous fucking thing you have ever seen?" and pointing out how naked the emperor is--at least to anyone who is willing to see it that way. he's like a koan personified.
which gives me hope, because i often feel completely different from one day to the next, but am squeamish about appearing inconsistent or schizoid. what's the difference between insistent authenticity and refusal to conform? or are they the same thing seen through different lenses?
|
|
chrysesofia
|
10/4/2009 11:49:02 AM
okay that's extremely funny. thanks phlegomatic.
|
|
Conversation Suicide
|
10/5/2009 1:26:38 AM
Thank YOU for the positive VIBE re: my Pop-Punk tune....Whips and Chains...
Frylock dissed it, so that's 1 good call, and 1 bad....
|
|
Social Spit
|
10/5/2009 2:15:52 AM
PUNK had it's meager beginnings in the early '70s with bands like THE STOOGES, The Ramones, MC-5, and The New Yoik Dolls.
Meanwhile, in Eng-gland a little POS Fashion Shop called "Sex" which was run by a goy named Malcolm McLaren... As a publicity stunt started a Band and called it called the "Sex Pistols"
Then, at the "100 Club" bands like Sioxie and The Banshees, The Cure, The Buzzcocks played their sets - To people dressed up in accoutrements obtained from the "Sex" Shop.
|
|
| |
�2015-16 IndieMusicPeople.com All Rights
Reserved
| |