Where I drink beer, smoke cigarettes, try to catch up on promised posts...and fail.
Creeeeeepy.
Despite it all...it's still a great song. The point, which I'm not sure I ever really got around to was this...the cause orientation of the Clash seemed to fly in the face of what Punk might have been.
What we should have talked about was Mick Jones utter failure as a dancer.
Pretty Vacant is the money...although, I've recently been disappointed to discover that the line which I thought brilliantly read..."I don't believe in illusion/'cause too much ain't for real"...is actually "too much is for real." Boo. Still, I'd rather hear EMI.
Anyway...you can decide whether we're caught up or not.
Creeeeeepy.
Despite it all...it's still a great song. The point, which I'm not sure I ever really got around to was this...the cause orientation of the Clash seemed to fly in the face of what Punk might have been.
What we should have talked about was Mick Jones utter failure as a dancer.
Pretty Vacant is the money...although, I've recently been disappointed to discover that the line which I thought brilliantly read..."I don't believe in illusion/'cause too much ain't for real"...is actually "too much is for real." Boo. Still, I'd rather hear EMI.
Anyway...you can decide whether we're caught up or not.
The Sex Pistols, need you say any more. Such a voice gave plenty of us a reason to rebel.
ReplyDeleteWell...maybe I needn't have said more but, of course I did anyway.
DeleteI am back in that freaking room again tonight...just bad planning.
I'm too tired from working a shitload to make any coherent comment. I will say I thought you were saying pants spray which had me laughing you said pan spray right :)
ReplyDeletePan Spray.
DeleteDefinitely not pans spray...which I understand would be an even worse situation on your side.
Ha...no way I come back for that.
Bless you e.f. I could listen to you all day.
ReplyDeleteEMI: yes. (And girls wearing moustaches...) Hope you enjoyed your muffins.
Maybe I shouldn't have whittled down the 30 or 40 minutes of yammering it took to get those semi-coherent thoughts together.
DeleteHa.
There will be more. It gives a veneer of legitimacy to the conversations I have with myself in these hotel rooms.
I think them girls in Natchez are proof that there is a disturbing trend afoot. How such a thing could have started I don't know.
No, no, e.f. - don't edit, don't polish - it's the "yammering" I enjoy - it's like being the silent partner in an actual conversation with someone genuinely interesting in a bar after work.
DeleteI let out a moan of desire when you puffed on that cigarette - used to be a 40-a day man, gave them up, and have now got myself re-hooked on little cigars. Haven't had one for four days, and despite being covered in nicotine patches and wearing my teeth out with nicotine gum, I AM DYING FOR A BLOODY SMOKE!!!
Don't do it...despite what they tell you, as you know, smoking is a delight but, damn it'll wear your wallet out.
DeleteDon't worry - if I smoked two packets of my old brand a day, it would now cost me the equivalent, at today's exchange rate, of $172.70 a week. That's $8,980.40 a year (I think) of which a mere $6280 would go to the government. Not that I'm obsessing about smoking at the moment or anything.
DeleteIt's that Garrison Keillor of the South thing again! Love it - and I'm another one who was convinced you were describing a new invention in 'Pants Spray' (now in Lavender Fragrance!).
ReplyDeleteMick Jones always danced like Bambi, as far as I was concerned. And to my jaded ancient ears, almost all Clash songs have dated terribly. They sound so weedy and whiny compared to the Pistols...
Wait a minute now...Lavender takes this in a different direction...actually I may have come back for that.
DeleteI'm conflicted when it comes to the Clash. There are songs that I still love...Combat Rock and bits of Sandinista especially. I just hate that they became the "conscience" of punk...it shouldn't have had one at all.
The Sex Pistols, at least from where I'm sitting, seem more like it. Can you imagine Steve Jones, at the time, bending somebody's ear about a people's movement in South America?
One day we may have a post of nothing but Mick Jones skipping around...awkwardly.
Agree totally about Joe Strummer. He had the right background for a hippy, not a punk rocker - daddy was a diplomat and he went to a vey posh private boarding school. Then he had the damn cheek in "White Man (in Hammersmith Palais)" to have a go at Jamaican singer Ken Boothe ("of UK pop reggae") and other genuine working-class black artists for not (basically) inciting the working-class black kids in the audience to riot. Strummer was one of those nicely-brought up, privileged middle-class kids who, because they were essentially left-wing fascists, got off on working-class violence. The silly sausage even mounted a defence of English soccer hooligans, apparently relaxed about their racist attitudes as long as they satisfied his lust for anarchistic violence. All in all, a phony.
ReplyDeleteI agree, Kolley, that a lot of The Clash's output sounds weedy nowadays. The stuff that stands up - including "White Man" and "Rock The Casbah" - has little to do with punk (as e.f. suggests), but works fine as mainstream rock. Deep down, Strummer had a lot more in common with Bono - including the relentless preachiness - than he did with Johnny Rotten (who nowdays advertises Clountry Life English butter).
White Man sums up all the problems I have with Joe Strummer and the Clash. It's a great song but it's all there...the paternalist discovers to his utter frustration that his charges aren't passive actors but, in fact, have their own desires and will.
DeleteToo bad Orwell wasn't around to slap him about.
Why should we have come to that point anyway? Sid Vicious wearing a Swastika is more to the point.
Butter is proof of, capital T, Truth. It's deliciousness cannot be denied..undercutting this whole business. Lydon's a smart man. He knows when he's been defeated...why fight it.
Man! You smoke that cigarette with such CLASS.
ReplyDeleteI am impressed e.f.
In fact I had to stop that vid halfway to replay your fag grab fingers and big inhale. I'm practicing it now.
And the accent!!!
I'm sending you to my daughter Meg. She swoons over that southern boy cadence...
I heard Eurythmics version of Satellite of Love. And Morrissey. Never did know what to make of Lou.
My old man - oh he is OLD - he's the punk in this house. He did the whole hitch to London and smash up a few gigs thing back when. Then he got good sense. Though he saw Strummer when the whole thing was just starting.
I did punk for its aesthetics. Shaved head; blue mohiccan; ripped jumper turned into trousers and black eye make-up. I'm not sure I ever did get beyond the shallow puddle of action I was back then. I'll look for the photos. Though my Mam
I used to think the Pistols actually had a message. But then I used to think that the Pistols were all chaos and noise. When, years back, I eventually bothered to listen I was disappointed to hear some melody in there. In fact they never were loud enough or mad enough for me. And the message? Well. They stuck two fingers up. To everything. I suppose I like that about them (even if they re-embraced it when they got old).
Give me Underworld or Faithless or Tricky or Chemical Brothers any day. At least they're loud. Big bass. Dance. Trance. Even my lads' and their electro house club remixes.
Hahahaha. Pan Spray.
You do love that job e.f Your eyes light up when your defending it and yourself against the naysayers who'd not understand the poetry in a chicken wing.
I've had a lot of practice...too much really.
DeleteThe accent is a garbled racket compared to how sweetly it's handled in a Southern woman's mouth...but, tell Meg I said hey.
The look of it is especially striking from this side. Eventually there were people that adopted the safety pins and hair dye but, fashion is a little harder to corral in a place that's as mixed up as America (though the goths managed pretty well).
There's a great clip from Salt Lake City Punk on this subject...we may have to drag it out.
Two Fingers Up was as good as the whole thing ever got...and until one's ready to abandon the material, that's as good as any human expression gets.
Pan Spray...it's all about the lessin.
Ha!
How do you have a 45 minute meeting about pan spray? And how do you make your hair do that?
ReplyDeleteYou got the composisition of the spray...oil to lessin (realease agent)...then there's the bakery sprays, the flavor sprays, etc. Throw in some company restructering...beleive me these cats could have gone on a lot longer.
DeleteThe video was made on a Thursday. My hair gets kinkier the closer it gets to the weekend.
Well I hear you . . . once I had a half-hour meeting about the different kinds of paper you use to put dry cement in. Still adore my job.
DeleteAbout "Satellite of Love" though, I'm pretty sure Lou Reed just wanted to find an opportunity to rhyme "told" and "bold". He was a shitty rhymer and probably got a little overexcited when he stumbled across that one. It's a sweet song.
That's what makes it so creepy. It is a sweet song and its not unreasonable to assume that many stalkers view the focus of their obsession with sweetness...understand their own feelings to be sweet.
DeleteIt's an old velvet underground song. It wasn't released officially but demos of it are out there. Not til David Bowie got his hands on it did the song come into its full creepiness.