in a truly post-modern gesture... i'm reposting some stuff from myspace... the first entry here, a eulogy of lennon, was written on the 8th...
what follows (after lennon) is quite possibly one of the best things i've ever written. ok, i'm kidding... but it's pretty funny... its my very own awards ceremony. and thanks to greg slamen, the awards themselves have a name now... "the panties." the music awards blog was originally posted on december 13th...
as many who know me are aware, i go thru classic rock listening binges from time to time. from the time i was a kid, i've gone thru these phases of getting interested in a band or artist and then gorging myself on their material. in 1983 it was michael jackson. in the late 80's and even into the early 90's it was van halen. in the mid 90's it was tears for fears and fleetwood mac. for some reason... in 1999 i flaked the fuck out and went nuts for cibo matto. i saw them in concert in phoenix / lilith fair and in cali / coachella in '99.
that's where i met john lennon's son sean. he's a really sweet kid and i've always felt an affinity for him because we were born a year apart, are both named shawn, and both had eccentric fathers. we are also both "love" children, meaning, not only were we not accidents, we were meticulously planned by our parents.
but i think the other factor there is thru meeting sean, and running into him a few times since then... that helped me stay somewhat oddly connected to john. of course i had a beatles listening / reading binge as well... in 1995.
in late 1994, having been a beatles fan for almost a decade, i read "the lives of john lennon." even though the book was very controversial, and didn't really paint that pleasant of an image for john... i enjoyed it and it brought me closer to him.
in the book, goldman (the author) brings out not only lennon's background - middle-class art-kid story, or the teddy boy rocker years... or all the beatles studio/writing/fighting/sex scoop... it also speculates that a fist fight that john had with original beatles bassist stuart sutcliffe might actually have contributed to the embolism that killed stuart in germany in 1961.
it also accuses john of having such a bad case of stage fright before a beatles staduim show... that in a panic to relax him... a roadie grabbed a young girl out of the crowd and gave her to john... and that john raped her right there back stage.
it accuses john in his later years of being a pedophile who preyed on young asian boys when he used to visit the orient with yoko...
goldman even goes so far as to say that john's "three blind mice" descending scale approach to songwriting was simplistic and frantic.
some of this might be true... some probably not... but where is john to defend himself? where is john to lend us an elder voice in this era of post-rock, post-punk, post-boy band nothingness?
he's gone. thanks to a religious fanatic with a gun, we have to sit back and watch as yoko opens "imagine museums" all over the world and spins her finely crafted version of lennon to the masses... most of whom were born after his death.
lennon was so much more complex and troubled than most of us will ever be aware of. he smoked hash with abbie hoffman. got nervous around frank zappa. out talked the talk-show hosts, out thought the thinkers, out-wrote the writers, out-drugged the druggies.
he left his house one evening with some friends and happened to "walk in" to a club where a new buzz band "the pink floyd" were playing. it turned out to be the "technicolor dream" evening. considered the greatest night of psychodelia in europe. the most swingin' night of the swingin' 60's.
he also used to like to take boat rides with sean off the coast of manhattan and he liked to make big breakfasts. he showed up for years at 8am sharp to record songs at abbey road... but got so drugged out that at one point, he tracked songs laying down on the floor.
he was the voice of the working class, but he grew up the most affluent and educated of all the beatles. the beatles was his band, he formed the group, but he was left the most disillusioned (at least publicly) when they disbanded.
people this complex shouldn't die so young. they should be allowed the time to fully unwind... at least into their late 60's like hunter s. thompson.
lennon isn't around to defend his songwriting or anyone else's from the forces of the emerging "new recording industry", or his legacy from his capitalist wife (yoko is the daughter of the president of the bank of japan). ...nor can he defend himself from his biographers, his contemporaries... etc.
but he still has something to say. i re-read recently the book published by playboy magazine in the early 80's... basically a compilation of the two major interviews that lennon gave to them. the last one being weeks before his death. in the last interview, lennon recounts pretty much every song the beatles ever released... and gave his view on the song, the songwriter, the idea behind the song, and whether or not he thought "it was shit."
in those interviews, you can tell that there were some songs that he thought represented him well, and that spoke for him. i even disagreed with him on several... a fan has an opinion too i guess?
this leads me to a few songs in particular. these are the types of songs that render new buzz bands almost entirely irrelevent.
the craft, musicality, structure... even the technology used at the time... are staggering compared to today's artists who benefit from brilliant computer based digital trickery.
back in the mid 60's, you couldn't pull up a program with 125 "vintage" guitar presets. guitar sounds weren't hardly invented yet. you didn't have distortion pedals with 12 layers of drive.
back then you had to push the pre-amps on the mixing board, and push the signal so hard onto the tape that the signal "distorted."
lennon helped invent it.
also, though i'm talking more about lennon as a writer, i'm not discounting the songs he wrote with paul. they are brilliant. it's comforting at least to know that the most hyped and beloved band in history at least wrote some killer songs. who are the great collaborative writers now?
i'm out of the loop.
so here's a list of songs that not only paved the rock and even post rock landscape... these songs are a part of my personal canon. samples from the gospel of popular culture, which if truth be told by all, is the only true religion left.
you don't believe me? put on the track "girl" from rubber soul. invite over your lover to be. thank me in the morning.
thanks to the writing prowess of the late johnn lennon... that track from 40 years ago will still most likely get you laid.
what follows (after lennon) is quite possibly one of the best things i've ever written. ok, i'm kidding... but it's pretty funny... its my very own awards ceremony. and thanks to greg slamen, the awards themselves have a name now... "the panties." the music awards blog was originally posted on december 13th...
as many who know me are aware, i go thru classic rock listening binges from time to time. from the time i was a kid, i've gone thru these phases of getting interested in a band or artist and then gorging myself on their material. in 1983 it was michael jackson. in the late 80's and even into the early 90's it was van halen. in the mid 90's it was tears for fears and fleetwood mac. for some reason... in 1999 i flaked the fuck out and went nuts for cibo matto. i saw them in concert in phoenix / lilith fair and in cali / coachella in '99.
that's where i met john lennon's son sean. he's a really sweet kid and i've always felt an affinity for him because we were born a year apart, are both named shawn, and both had eccentric fathers. we are also both "love" children, meaning, not only were we not accidents, we were meticulously planned by our parents.
but i think the other factor there is thru meeting sean, and running into him a few times since then... that helped me stay somewhat oddly connected to john. of course i had a beatles listening / reading binge as well... in 1995.
in late 1994, having been a beatles fan for almost a decade, i read "the lives of john lennon." even though the book was very controversial, and didn't really paint that pleasant of an image for john... i enjoyed it and it brought me closer to him.
in the book, goldman (the author) brings out not only lennon's background - middle-class art-kid story, or the teddy boy rocker years... or all the beatles studio/writing/fighting/sex scoop... it also speculates that a fist fight that john had with original beatles bassist stuart sutcliffe might actually have contributed to the embolism that killed stuart in germany in 1961.
it also accuses john of having such a bad case of stage fright before a beatles staduim show... that in a panic to relax him... a roadie grabbed a young girl out of the crowd and gave her to john... and that john raped her right there back stage.
it accuses john in his later years of being a pedophile who preyed on young asian boys when he used to visit the orient with yoko...
goldman even goes so far as to say that john's "three blind mice" descending scale approach to songwriting was simplistic and frantic.
some of this might be true... some probably not... but where is john to defend himself? where is john to lend us an elder voice in this era of post-rock, post-punk, post-boy band nothingness?
he's gone. thanks to a religious fanatic with a gun, we have to sit back and watch as yoko opens "imagine museums" all over the world and spins her finely crafted version of lennon to the masses... most of whom were born after his death.
lennon was so much more complex and troubled than most of us will ever be aware of. he smoked hash with abbie hoffman. got nervous around frank zappa. out talked the talk-show hosts, out thought the thinkers, out-wrote the writers, out-drugged the druggies.
he left his house one evening with some friends and happened to "walk in" to a club where a new buzz band "the pink floyd" were playing. it turned out to be the "technicolor dream" evening. considered the greatest night of psychodelia in europe. the most swingin' night of the swingin' 60's.
he also used to like to take boat rides with sean off the coast of manhattan and he liked to make big breakfasts. he showed up for years at 8am sharp to record songs at abbey road... but got so drugged out that at one point, he tracked songs laying down on the floor.
he was the voice of the working class, but he grew up the most affluent and educated of all the beatles. the beatles was his band, he formed the group, but he was left the most disillusioned (at least publicly) when they disbanded.
people this complex shouldn't die so young. they should be allowed the time to fully unwind... at least into their late 60's like hunter s. thompson.
lennon isn't around to defend his songwriting or anyone else's from the forces of the emerging "new recording industry", or his legacy from his capitalist wife (yoko is the daughter of the president of the bank of japan). ...nor can he defend himself from his biographers, his contemporaries... etc.
but he still has something to say. i re-read recently the book published by playboy magazine in the early 80's... basically a compilation of the two major interviews that lennon gave to them. the last one being weeks before his death. in the last interview, lennon recounts pretty much every song the beatles ever released... and gave his view on the song, the songwriter, the idea behind the song, and whether or not he thought "it was shit."
in those interviews, you can tell that there were some songs that he thought represented him well, and that spoke for him. i even disagreed with him on several... a fan has an opinion too i guess?
this leads me to a few songs in particular. these are the types of songs that render new buzz bands almost entirely irrelevent.
the craft, musicality, structure... even the technology used at the time... are staggering compared to today's artists who benefit from brilliant computer based digital trickery.
back in the mid 60's, you couldn't pull up a program with 125 "vintage" guitar presets. guitar sounds weren't hardly invented yet. you didn't have distortion pedals with 12 layers of drive.
back then you had to push the pre-amps on the mixing board, and push the signal so hard onto the tape that the signal "distorted."
lennon helped invent it.
also, though i'm talking more about lennon as a writer, i'm not discounting the songs he wrote with paul. they are brilliant. it's comforting at least to know that the most hyped and beloved band in history at least wrote some killer songs. who are the great collaborative writers now?
i'm out of the loop.
so here's a list of songs that not only paved the rock and even post rock landscape... these songs are a part of my personal canon. samples from the gospel of popular culture, which if truth be told by all, is the only true religion left.
you don't believe me? put on the track "girl" from rubber soul. invite over your lover to be. thank me in the morning.
thanks to the writing prowess of the late johnn lennon... that track from 40 years ago will still most likely get you laid.