I know finding time to read is difficult, and right now I'm having trouble finding time to write, either on my book or on my many blogs. But...
...I submit for you, Norm, a list of links of pretty well written history, a so-called Winners' History of Rock 'n Roll. Rock criticism has centered around how commercialism through radio and MTV basically destroyed the music scene, and if you like the major popular bands, you're a sucker or you don't understand history.
I'm pretty unfamiliar with rock criticism in general, but I do have a sense of the Lester Bangs-ification of skewering the most popular rock bands and complaining that everything's sucked since punk became commercialized in something like 1980 or 1983.
It was with that in mind that this writer named Steven Hyden decided to look at the long arc of rock history from the advantage of what he considers the Winners, and for their time, the undisputed Lords of Rock. These are bands I've heard of. These are the bands I know. My understanding of the "true rock scholarship" is as lacking as plenty of folks' understanding of the importance of Chandler Brossard on the world inherited by Pynchon and Foster Wallace.
There are seven pieces total, and each has a contextual history concerning the age in question. Each is quite long and, for me at least, quite enjoyable. But in all honesty, I haven't been able to read through entirely any of them beyond the first one. One reason I'm putting the links here is so I can get back to them later. I felt like if anyone should read these and this perspective, it'd be you, Norm.
So, here we go with some jump links:
1) Led Zeppelin
2) Kiss
3) Bon Jovi
4) Aerosmith
5) Metallica
6) Linkin Park
7) Black Keys
Hyden can explain his background and motives better than I, but I'd imagine you won't be disappointed when you get to it.
Tuesday, February 19, 2013
Thursday, February 7, 2013
"Yo Mama!" and Pynchonian Journeys
Okay, Norm, I've been trying to get to writing a Pynchon post for some time now. At first I wanted to detail how Tommy P deals with women. I quickly realized that that endeavor would take far more space and time that I was really willing to give at this point...at least to do it justice.
See...watch:
Rachel Owlglass: not a whore, right?
Oedipa Maas: not a whore, but she does drunkenly sleep with that child-actor-turned-detective while trying to be faithful to her losing-his-shit husband.
Katje: a government assigned full-on dirty whore.
Frenesi: Family ruining, bad-guy boning whore.
Lake Traverse: has regular threesomes with the two guys who murdered her father.
Shasta: not a whore, right? Just not into Doc.
See? Who wants to write a whole bunch of words about that? While Jess and Tchitcherine's girl (who's also a bit of a whore) don't balance Katje by any stretch of the imagination, there's Prairie and DL, and they may actually balance the amount of time given to Frenesi. And Dally certainly outshines Lake.
Whatever.
Bleeding Edge? Bleeding Edge!
I am still planning on going by some of the local bars in the morning hours in Venice Beach (and even out here) to rouse some of the old timers to see if any of them know our man. I know that's crazy, but hell, if the man lived out here and was a head, then someone may have smoked dope with him before he moved to Mexico. And if they got him talking? Well, from everything I've read, he didn't do much talking to random heads he partied with. See? I talk a lot more with random strangers about writing and storytelling than it seems Pynchon ever did, and I don't really reveal any story tidbits to those same random heads, so the Venice Beach trip seems likely to not turn up much.
I did find a coffee roaster in LA near Silver Lake and Echo Park that calls itself Trystero Coffee. Their logo is the muted horn. I'll be arranging a visit with them (that's how they operate).
Rambling Man...
I was looking up something that now I can't remember, but it lead me to a collection of pages in specific works that had Pynchon's characters engaging in "Yo mama..." style trash-talking. The one listed from the earliest book is also the earliest chronologically, from Mason & Dixon.
On page 445 two ax-men's conflict devolves into shouting rhyming couplets that insult each other's mothers. The ax-men scene takes place during the ax-men section of the book, when M&D were making the state line between Pennsylvania and Maryland official and cutting it into the forest.
In Against the Day, on page 12, Lindsay, one of the Chums, is chastising the young Darby, threatening him with a head-butt, using a colloquial phrase "Liverpool Kiss", and then remarking that up to that point in young Darby's life, only his mother, a likely disaffected and lonely woman, would have shown him that kind of attention. On page 48 Franz Ferdinand, the archduke who's assassination sparks WWI, is getting drunk in a Chicago bar during the Columbus Exposition and World's Fair in 1893, and trying to start a bar brawl by claiming one of the patron's mother plays for the Chicago White Stockings (which didn't exist at the time? Maybe a minor league team...).
The last was a page 155 reference from Inherent Vice, from a song "Soul Gidgit" by "one of the rare entries in the 'black surf music' genre", a lyric about "frontin' for your mother."
I guess I'm just a rambling dude...
I've been using Against the Day recently as a pacing guide for my novel, as it's easier to keep my head wrapped around than Gravity's Rainbow. I had been using GR for certain things I liked, but it's too fragmented or splintered and out there...it'll be more useful later on in my writing I guess.
I'm getting worked up about Bleeding Edge...thirsting for information, but Pynchon is secretive with his own people, let alone Penguin Press twitter-account-updaters.
See...watch:
Rachel Owlglass: not a whore, right?
Oedipa Maas: not a whore, but she does drunkenly sleep with that child-actor-turned-detective while trying to be faithful to her losing-his-shit husband.
Katje: a government assigned full-on dirty whore.
Frenesi: Family ruining, bad-guy boning whore.
Lake Traverse: has regular threesomes with the two guys who murdered her father.
Shasta: not a whore, right? Just not into Doc.
See? Who wants to write a whole bunch of words about that? While Jess and Tchitcherine's girl (who's also a bit of a whore) don't balance Katje by any stretch of the imagination, there's Prairie and DL, and they may actually balance the amount of time given to Frenesi. And Dally certainly outshines Lake.
Whatever.
Bleeding Edge? Bleeding Edge!
I am still planning on going by some of the local bars in the morning hours in Venice Beach (and even out here) to rouse some of the old timers to see if any of them know our man. I know that's crazy, but hell, if the man lived out here and was a head, then someone may have smoked dope with him before he moved to Mexico. And if they got him talking? Well, from everything I've read, he didn't do much talking to random heads he partied with. See? I talk a lot more with random strangers about writing and storytelling than it seems Pynchon ever did, and I don't really reveal any story tidbits to those same random heads, so the Venice Beach trip seems likely to not turn up much.
I did find a coffee roaster in LA near Silver Lake and Echo Park that calls itself Trystero Coffee. Their logo is the muted horn. I'll be arranging a visit with them (that's how they operate).
Rambling Man...
I was looking up something that now I can't remember, but it lead me to a collection of pages in specific works that had Pynchon's characters engaging in "Yo mama..." style trash-talking. The one listed from the earliest book is also the earliest chronologically, from Mason & Dixon.
On page 445 two ax-men's conflict devolves into shouting rhyming couplets that insult each other's mothers. The ax-men scene takes place during the ax-men section of the book, when M&D were making the state line between Pennsylvania and Maryland official and cutting it into the forest.
In Against the Day, on page 12, Lindsay, one of the Chums, is chastising the young Darby, threatening him with a head-butt, using a colloquial phrase "Liverpool Kiss", and then remarking that up to that point in young Darby's life, only his mother, a likely disaffected and lonely woman, would have shown him that kind of attention. On page 48 Franz Ferdinand, the archduke who's assassination sparks WWI, is getting drunk in a Chicago bar during the Columbus Exposition and World's Fair in 1893, and trying to start a bar brawl by claiming one of the patron's mother plays for the Chicago White Stockings (which didn't exist at the time? Maybe a minor league team...).
The last was a page 155 reference from Inherent Vice, from a song "Soul Gidgit" by "one of the rare entries in the 'black surf music' genre", a lyric about "frontin' for your mother."
I guess I'm just a rambling dude...
I've been using Against the Day recently as a pacing guide for my novel, as it's easier to keep my head wrapped around than Gravity's Rainbow. I had been using GR for certain things I liked, but it's too fragmented or splintered and out there...it'll be more useful later on in my writing I guess.
I'm getting worked up about Bleeding Edge...thirsting for information, but Pynchon is secretive with his own people, let alone Penguin Press twitter-account-updaters.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)