rock and roll musings by Tim Byrnes

I Would Rather Be the Devil: Punk Rock Blues in the Night

     Hello, America do ya think I've lost my mind? I wonder myself sometimes, especially when I go through these periods of "blues so bad they black." At the risk of finally (?) slipping into high school diaryville here I'm gonna delve into what the Blues promises, threatens, feeds and neglects etc.. Feeling bad is of course a choice. Even in the most horrific situations, certain human spirits can indeed 'rise above' and weather whatever storms might come. God bless 'em. Some of us bend in the weakest winds, some of us fold at dawn, most of us just feel bad.  Not suicidal or anything, just the general malaise of life getting you down and looking for an escape valve, maybe, not neccessarily looking to get out.

     Now the Blues, in all it's forms, from the Deluxe Las Vegas  Hoity Toity Uptown Blues of B.B. King to the Drunk In The Gutter and Maybe a Little Psychotic Blues of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds is a place where feeling bad is embraced, loved for what it is, given voice in a celebration music and song and acceptance, then processed in such a way that the creator and the creation are equally the better for the experience.

     That's a lot to hang on 3 chords. But really, how many amazing moments have happened within that 3 chord framework? The way Muddy Waters sings the line "'A' - child!" while spelling the word 'man' in 'Mannish Boy'. Confident like a motherhubbard. John Lee Hooker going 'A Haww Haww Haww Haww'. Cooler than we'd ever be. Buddy Guy bending a note from here to something like heaven. Transcendence. Incredible lyrics like: "I would rather be the Devil than to ever be your man.", "Nobody loves me but my mama, and she could be jivin', too."and the deathless "Before I'll be your dog I'll let you walk alone." This is all some pretty uncenscored stuff. This is maskless and unapologetic about the essential venality of man. It gives our so-called baser instincts a little breathing room, allowing us to (for want of a better phrase) 'exorcise' these 'demons' without judgement or punishment. The Blues is often called the Devil's music for this reason, for being a place where a man can deal with all that it means to be human, free from the restrictions of social influence that seeks to deny real emotions like lust, envy and hate by calling them sins. I would rather be the Devil indeed.

     Much, if not all, of the 'quasi-satanic mojo' that has surrounded this music since Robert Johnson sold his soul to Old Scratch at the Crossroads to folks like Ozzy today is as much bullshit marketing as Any Given Britney, but the cliches had to be co-opted from something, right? There had to be something for the money guys and admen to get wrong, right?

     There exists in the Blues, like anything spiritual, a Truth w/a capital 'T' for those who want to find it and it is as personal a truth as can be, our translations like snowflakes, no two alike. There exists in the Blues a place where man is exhalted in his exhaustion of always falling short of an idea of god; where feeling bad is attended to and thus transformed through muscle and mind and heart and soul, wood wires and sinew into something good. Something real.

     To stand upright,howling like a demon with a cheap guitar in the face of the endless trouble, bending notes to your will, calling in voices shaped like the screams of screaming angels that fall into a shroud self around the power of the noise and the message that is man.

     Hang that on yr 3 chords. Life is good.

Posted by: timbyrnes at 19:37 | link | comments (3)

John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band: 1st Shot Across the Heartbow

     On his must-read blog Burning Light, my friend and colleague Carl Simmons has recently posted a review of this record in which he alludes to letting me "write the kick butt"review. Not neccessary. As it turns out Simmons has posted an insightful and thoughtful, track by track dissertaion of this epochal record. One that touches people differently than most 'pop music', especially boys who are now men, motherless and searching for God. There's always been something of the tragic goof in Lennon's work, the brilliant imbecile tearing through the present's wrapping to get to the gifts inside. On this, his 1st 'official' solo album after the breakup of the you know who, Lennon hit the ceiling running, het up and bleeding like an open wound over the big questions, big hurts, big lies.

     The bells that open this record tolled (and toll) for us all. The wild coyote yearning of 'Mother' sets the tone for the record, not to mention for at least 2 generations now of intensely earnest and confused men and women. The psuedoscience psychobabblists and the truly lost can both find, if not comfort, then at least balm (and no little fuel) for whatever real emotions they're still in contact with.

The Lennon of 'Plastic Ono Band' sings what he's written like the guy at the next stool in yr neighborhood bar, 2 sheets into the wind and aware of what messes he's made and what messes he's been given. "Mother" is sung from a real son to a dream mother, the mother he, and we, couldn't have. Perhaps the mother of us all. This son cries for and screams at those phantom parents who, being human and frail, can't help but often fall short of the total needs of a child. In the end, all he can do is rage "Mommy don't go, Daddy come home."

     In the end, what more needs to be said.

     But of course the human condition is more than the totality of it's tragedies, but at this point Lennon was probably beyond the 'I Wanna hold Yr Hand' stage. Having lived through the 6 year windtunnel of Beatlemania, Lennon emerged a man determined to do more than survive, and certainly not one to skate. 'Plastic Ono Band' sounds like it was recorded in that holiest of holy places, the garage. The skeletal backing of Ringo Starr and Klaus Voorman hearkens back to the Sun Studio of Elvis and Orbison. Replete w/curtains of Spectory echo, Lennon created an homage to cracked teenage symphonic rock. Simplistic to the point of idiocy ('Well...... well well well....."), timeless and as tribal as howling wolves, 'Plastic Ono Band' blasted through the Jefferson Starship/Elton John pretense of the day like the best rock and roll always does. Like a mirror.

     "God is a concept", he sang, "by which we measure our pain." As good a definition of the undefinable as I've heard. He then goes on to disavow, against doowop piano, all the Jesuses and Elvi and Zimmermen that man had elevated before him, even up to stating what had to be said: 'I don't believe in Beatles'  before informing us that 'the dream' was indeed 'over'. A much nicer kiss off than 'Metal Machine Music' but a kiss off nonetheless and one we probably deserved. We called it love but I'll bet there was an element of suffocation to the whole trip for Lennon and the rest themselves. I don't write much about the Beatles because, as one who was there, I find that everyone's got their own Beatles. Memories and mental cartoons we've all sculpted like mini Mt Rushmores based on nothing more specific than the way these 4 men made us feel. Those who grew up with this band know what I'm talking about, you kids can only guess.

     W/"Plastic Ono Band" John Lennon, the Smart Beatle of legend set fire to his personal Beatles and tore up some prime rock and roll while dances on the ashes. Would that we all could do as much with the ghosts of our pasts.

Posted by: timbyrnes at 20:06 | link | comments (4)

Interview w/the Most High: And Still No Sign of Lester

     When things get tough here at punk rock blues, I've been known to try to drown my sorrows in a dead man; a pattern not so strange when one considers the world's religions. This trip into the ether was unintentional, or at least less planned than usual. I was walking Buster the other night when Iraqi Squirrel, his old nemesis from Denver, scutterred across a nearby roof, across the phone lines that traverse my back yard, down the phonepole and ran like the wind towards the alley behind my place. Buster, being the intrepid superhero he believes himself to be, took off after the vermin post haste running me full speed into the phonepole, post-face.

   ( CAVEAT: I feel as weird about writing this as you'll probably feel after reading it, but something's gotta be done and, so far, this is it).

    My head cleared to the transistional segue music of chimes and what sounds like a glass harmonica being played in the shallow end of a pool. Spots danced before my eyes and I wondered who would be there when they cleared, telling me that Lester didn't want to speak to me. The haze morphed into a room I'd seen before. It was the 'dayroom' at Greystone Hospital in Morristown NJ, where I'd spent some time in the '80s recuperating from a failed suicide attempt. Across from me sat an angry young black man, 23, maybe 24, years old wearing a black sweatshirt w/the word 'no' emblazoned on the front in white felt. His eyes, red rimmed and backlit glared at me. I knew instinctively that this young black man was Jesus Christ. He looked like he wanted to kick my ass and I really couldn't blame him

"Yo", he said "You got some mouth, bitch, you know that?"

     I wasn't surprised or scared. It wasn't the first time I'd heard that, not even the first time in those exact words.

     'Yeah", I replied, 'Some mouth,  no heart."

      "No", Jesus said,"You got heart, just that it's broken, though you'd prefer to call it black, wouldn't you?"

      I turned that one over a time or two, trying to turn this into a racial debate but couldn't really find a hook. "So," I ventured," You've come into my unconscious to do what exactly? Show me the light? Or am I finally dead and yr gonna laugh me on to Hell or something?"

     'Number one", he said, "I haven't come anywhere, this is yr dream or fantasy or whatever and you brought me here, made me a stereotype street punk and had me jump bad w/ya upfront so you could dazzle me w/Byrnespeak and, oh I don't know, prove I don't exist or something. But the truth of the matter" he put his hand up to stop me from talking, "I know, I know 'there is no truth, only perception..'  yadda yadda yadda, fact  is you do have a big mouth and you like to use it to mock the likes of me and my believers. All well and good, that's what makes a horserace and all, but you seem to be stuck in the one gear anymore. It's like the same thing you bitch about regarding punk rock (remember when this page was about punk rock? Me neither.), wallowing in the obvious and never moving on. Number 2, I don't think there's any hell I could hand you blacker than the one you've built for yrself"

"And now I suppose yr gonna tell me how to move on?"

"No, I can't tell you that, nobody can. You just gotta move, son."

"Wow", I said, slapping my forehead, "wished I'd though of that! So the secret to happiness is, what, be happy?"

"Yeah, kind of, kind of."

"That's the biggest load of crap I've typed all day. You've said yr the Truth. THE truth, right?"

"It's been said I said that."

"Ther you go, all cryptic and mystical. What, if anything, concrete do you have to offer me? I keep hearing stuff like 'look into his eyes', 'personal relationship' and 'get washed in the blood of the lamb'. That mumbojumbo might have worked great on 1st century shepherds and sheeple throughout the ages but if I'm gonna see you as anything more than some kinda benign (and sometimes not-so-benign) boogeyman invented by States trying to get the rabble to eat their vegetables, than I want a clear answer to one question."

"And that question is?"

"What...", I stopped, thought hard about how to phrase this now that I'd finally gotten the chance. "What... what the fuck is wrong with me?"

Jesus laughed and said "Well, for one thing, you keep conjuring up authority figures to rag on you in this blog. Why don't you morph this hospital into a hot tub, morph me into Courtney Love and just enjoy yr imagination for a while?"

Which is exactly what I did and that didn't help either.

Posted by: timbyrnes at 18:22 | link | comments (2)