rock and roll musings by Tim Byrnes

The Massive Sonic Youth Piece

   There is no gravity, the Earth sucks. Hello friends and neighbors and any curious passersby, it's gonna be one of those blues. Haven't been here lately 'cause work has exploded. Out long-time (14 years) manager is leaving the 1st of August and I've been getting called in to work all sorts of hours. I'm still not settled in the new apartment. I mean, the living room looks like someone lives there, but the back bedroom is still full of unpacked boxes and I haven't written a word on the novel. I pretty much am either working or waiting to be called in like I'm a doctor or something, sitting on my couch and most likely listening to Sonic Youth.

     When yr an embittered old wanna be rock critic there here are points in yr life that demand a soundtrack, a special music that fits yr mood. Music you can relate to, I guess. Well, lately I find myself not only relating, but taking a strange comfort in the willfully discordant, just plain angry-ass music this band makes. Almost all tension w/very little in the way of release, SY's sound matches the way those knots I always have in my stomach feel. Antimusic, indeed. It's been, at first glance, a lousy week. Then after closer examination, I find it's been a lousy month. I basically try to stop looking once I hit the lousy years, but a trainwreck's like a car accident, y'know? You can't pull yr eyes away. I am the trainwreck.

     Oh, I laid the track, alright w/bad decisions and too much alcohol. And, if I do say so myself, intellectually I realize that I hace accomplished much in getting sober and 'keeping it together' through relatively uncomfortable times, but when I sit and see what I've amounted to........ well, crank up the Sonic Youth.

     W/out going into too much boring detail, my past - in the figure of a relative I haven't seen twice in 25 years came to town and brought up a whole mess of shit I really thought I had come to terms with long ago. During his stay we went out for a breakfast. I was tense about it but for once, had decided to not be confrontational and stir up old stuff that can't be settled anyway. Think 'Prince of Tides'. Anyway, through the magic of denial all's going well until he misunderstood a comment of mine and basically insulted me in my town, in front of my people who just sat there and let it hang in the air above the bacon and eggs.

     For once, again, I wanted to keep the peace and let the conversation pick up again as if nothing had happened. I was fine until the next day, after having spent a sleepless night coming to the realization that I was getting screwed again by people who purport to love me. 'EVOL' has been in constant rotation since.

     I'm angry. About everything. This is nothing new and that's the saddest part. I am always angry. I hate. Nothing in particular. I just hate. And there's a violence in SY's music that attracts me. It's completely impotent, stylized whiny dramaqueen violence, but I am far too pretty to go to jail and, as a result, will not be assaulting anyone anytime soon with anything other that loud ugly music.

     Getting more hours at the job I know I should be happy. But all I can see is that I'm the guy who has to jump when they say jump. I've been called in on my day off three days in a row. The folks at work call me dependable and reliable and I know they mean it as a compliment, but I only see it as I'm the guy who'll swallow whatever shit you give him. And I'm tired of it. And by that I mean I'm tired of seeing things that way. I know I should be happy, maybe even deserve it (although I don't think any of us deserve it for no reason, but not believing in god takes that toll, I'm told), but I'm just not. What I could legitematley  - and where the hell's the spellcheck here, anyway - see as an opportunity to some form of financial and social stability and thus something to be embraced and celebrated I can only see as a life sentence in a dead end minimum wage job w/no benefits or future in the middle of nowhere, where my people sell me out and the people who aren't my people really aren't, thus leading to repeated listening to Sonic Youth and vague thoughts of suicide.

     Don't worry, it's just a mental excercise, I'd never shaft Buster and the cats that way.

    So, here I sit, missing the denial more than the drink, an atheist in god's country trying to psychoanalyze myself while submerging my psyche in loud, loud feedback laced spiteful, ironic posturing, just wishing like hell I could feel fucking good for a change.

Posted by: timbyrnes at 19:26 | link | comments (1)

The Madcap Dies: Syd Barrett and the Power of Denial

     Sitting on the couch w/MacDougal yesterday morning watching CNN and fretting about the possibilities pesented by the Indian bombings and I see on the crawl that Syd Barrett passed away. For those who don't know who the man was there's plenty of detailed sites around the Net, but the short version is that he was the founder and original visionary of Pink Floyd who took too much acid and freaked out. Much of "Dark Side of the Moon"and "Wish You Were Here" were reportedly "about" him. Suffice it to say, in this reporter's opinion, Roger Waters has been going to the bank w/wheelbarrow for years at the expense of another man's tragedy.

    David Gilmour, Barrett's replacement and current helmsman of the S.S. Pink Floyd, was good enough to 'produce' Barrett solo records ('The Madcap Laughs' is the place to start, followed by 'Barrett' and the outakes record 'Opal'); bleak, ramshackled bursts of genius mixed w/gibberish (it is, of course, up to you to decide which is which), kinda in a Beck-before-Beck-was-Beck lo-tech melange of opposing inspirations, vomited out on the sonic canvas like some kind of cross between Jackson Pollack and Lenny from "Of Mice and Men". These records have been packaged and repackaged on a fairly regular basis through the intervening years, though not as often as "Dark Side of the Moon' or 'The Wall' (Personal aside to Waters and Gilmour: Please stop milking those cows. Thank you.), re-introducing generation after generation to the man's music. While this is, in and of itself a good thing and I suppose kept Old Syd in Beer and Skittles through the dry times,  it's with these reissues that 'The Legend' began and was stoked through years of dope smoke and teenagers in dark rooms who built a romance out of a man gone mad.

     Pink Floyd's first record 'The Piper at the Gates of Dawn' is a psychedelic masterpiece, which means it's groovy sounding bullshit. Barrett was a magnificent frontman, stoned, beautiful, immaculate. Until his creeping psychosis, doubtless excacerbated by drugs, bore it's little chemical tentacles into the poet's brain, rendering him increasingly incapable of performing to what we loosely call 'standards'. There's the classic footage of Roger Waters lyp-synching Barrett's vocals on Ready, Steady, Go because Barrett refused to. He stood with his guitar, arms limp at his side, staring directly into the camera, not playing along (on more than one level). Stoned, beautiful, immaculate.

     Not soon after, his band was hijacked by Waters and the rest. They simply decided to not pick him up on the way to a gig one night in the Summer of Love. It was as simple as that.

     I'm as much easy prey as anyone to the inclination to canonize the mad genius (hope to be one myself someday, maybe when I grow up) mainly because it's just too hard on the human psyche to contemplate the realities of madness. Syd Barrett spent the last, what, 35 years of his life in a haze we'll never understand, immune and probably unaware of the legend and the industry that grew out of his personal tragedy. There was little romantic about it.

     But let's not think of that, America. Let's perpetuate the myth that Barrett fried for our sins, that he was the great messed-up hope. A reason to take acid, 'cause it's all just to heavy, maaaaaaaaaaaan.     

     Rest in peace, Syd.  Sleep well, Roger.

Posted by: timbyrnes at 23:14 | link | comments (7)

I Was Shocked, I Was Appalled, I Was Taken Aback! : Random Thoughts From a Suddenly Busy Man

 

     Hey campers! Wow, what a couple of weeks. Got my Aunt's house moved, got my stuff into the new apartment (and this time it's more like a house than an apartment.) got the new dog settled. Poor Sammy, blind as a bat but now over the initial confusion of a new home after 13 years w/my Aunt.  Buster's happy to have a buddy and he and Sammy (who I've been calling O'Sammy Bin-Laden due to his initial, shall we say, carpet bombing.) loll around the yard like Kins of the World. Bleeker took to the new place right away but I've spent the last 2 weeks feeding MacDougal outside as he has refused to move.

   Every night I'll find him outside our old door, looking hopeful that this time I'll go in the right house. In any event, I think I outlasted the yellow beggar 'cause I woke up w/him meowing on my chest. I held onto him for a few minutes and, yes, I teared up, my boy was home.

   Hey, I never said I wasn't a wuss.

   I haven't been posting 'cause work has gone nuts. There's only 4 of us to begin with and while our manager's out of town for a week, our only other cashier decided to take the week off so she could move to another town. As this person has no car and has talked about leaving the gig for months, it's pretty sure she's not coming back, leaving the store in the capable hands of myself and the Assistant Manager. So I haven't had a day off for a week and a half, and probably won't have one off for at least another week. Clarence might actually get his full rent this month!

    I talked about the time warp aspects of the last few weeks in the last post, well, the wayback machine's getting jacked up a couple of more notches due to the imminent arrival of my 2 brothers to Fowler from parts unkown though vaguely back East. It's been 15 years since I saw my elder brother and my eldest was in town a year ago to help my sister move and didn't look me up so, basically, fuck them, y'know? Only I find myself getting mad just thinking about them and I know I'm flashing on a past that never really happened, but invented and embellished over the years by the young drunk/old coot what's writing this. Apparently they're coming out for the old "see the Aunt one last time before she shuffles off this mortal etc". I could be wrong, usually am, but that's the wat I read it. My sister and I have been getting along well lately, but that's because she's Tara, not 'cause she's my sister. So, if invited to go along on the deathwatch (actually, my Aunt's fine, I'm just being a dramaqueen, as usual) I will decline. I can only hope I can do so respectfully.

    I just can't seem to feel anything toward my family other than a bitter nostalgia; the amber waves of hate that are the resultant crop of dredging up old days. My brothers and I have nothing in common other than we shared a house during screwed up childhoods and each of us rebuilt in our own ways. I'm really not terribly interested in how they 'turned out' and have absolutley NO interest in their opinions on how I did.

   Does that make me a bad person? So what if it does, I'm not gonna fall all over myself in the spirit of reconciliation for the hell of it. I also need to not let 2 old goats from nowhere affect me like this.

    As far as music goes, I fear I've run out of things to write. Some would say that's never stopped me before (and they'd be right) but until I can come up w/something worth reading I'll be among the missing on motime for a while. Sorry about all this personal crap, but it's all that's been happening lately.

   Oh, the big news, and somewhat musically related, is that Bleeker Street Kitten is no longer afraid of Patti Smith. Perhaps there's hope for me, too.

tim

Posted by: timbyrnes at 17:49 | link | comments