my life as a artist
rock on
Tuesday 5th February 2008 10:50 PM
I've just been on the phone to 'The Winning Post', trying to arrange a date for me and the Travelling Libraries to play a gig in March, and by a process of elimination, geomancy, date synchronisation and sheer fancy, have come up with the twenty second. It's Easter Saturday, it's the cusp between Pisces and Aries, and it was the only available date.
To a vegetarian transcendentalist like myself, such pro-activity can often feel like an act of aggression, so before I made the phone call, I ate a large slab of fresh tofu, and poked the eyes out of some organic Maris Pipers. (They were looking at me, OK?)
Having brutally manipulated the future, I rang round the band to confess, and, as usual, Brin the bass player took it the hardest. He's a committed vague'un, (a pure edgetarian, that doesn't do diary products) and the sheer specificity of it all shocked him. However, the trauma of having a horribly scarred calendar, didn't stop him from opining on the true nature of rock'n'roll.
He believes it's a hormonal thing, and questions whether a band with an average age of fifty-eight can really lay claim to being 'rock'n'roll'. After watching a Captainless, Captain Beefheart's Magic Band play, three years ago at Glastonbury, I believe they can. In light of the rejuvenating promise of the projected 2012 paradigm shift, I think that fifty-eight is the new eighteen, and that given encouragement, nearly half of the Travelling Libraries could still be capable of performing the sexual act, and nearly all of them of half-performing it.
Obviously, we're not as physically vigorous as we were forty years ago, when we we're a boy band, but we've adapted. Instead of doing the usual two, forty minute sets, we tend to do four twenties, so we can have more wee-breaks, and last week I got a stannah amp-lift. (My niece bought it me from Fender, you know!) Those same forty years that cursed us with incontinence and thick carpets of ear-hair, however, have also given us loads of time to spend in our bedrooms, where we've learned the technical expertise necessary to explore the many varied rooms of rock'n'roll's mysterious mansion. Our lead guitarist, Ry Veeter, has even been inside the walled garden, and had a look in the potting sheds.
Rock'n'roll, at it's best, should be performed by the possessed, for the dispossessed, and should oppress the comfortable, and comfort the oppressed, and though musical expertise is certainly no barrier to these things, neither is it essential, and in the idealistic world of rock'n'roll, it cannot be denied that the artless innocence of youth has a special power all of it's own.
I remember going to a gig twenty years ago, in a village hall in the Dordogne region of South-West France. The band had an average age of fourteen, and the sparse audience seemed to consist mainly of their parents and grandparents. The lead singer was a scrawny, mini-Tom Verlaine-type, with a skinny black tie and a huge, floppy, greasy fringe that diagonally obscured half of his spotty, feral face. The music was fast, raw and angry, and ran round the room like a scalded cat.
The listening public, who looked like the sorts you see in paintings of failed potato harvests, were surprisingly receptive, despite the lack of melodious accordions. It might have been pride and blood-loyalty, but they watched the band with a delighted, reverent attention. In a nod of respect towards the roots of punk, the lead singer would occasionally sing a line in English, which I suspect none of the audience understood. What else could explain the contented twinkle in a granny's eye, as she observes her 'petit chou-chou' lean towards the microphone, push his lank hair out of his eyes, and in a high-pitched, unbroken voice, half spit, and half yell,
'I wanna drink! I wanna smoke! I wanna fuck you! I wanna die!'
Comments
My name is spelled BRYN for gawds sake-thats with a welsh Y not a crummy english i.
v. funny stuff btw
bd x
Posted by Bryn , on Saturday 9th February 2008, 6:20 PM
steady on!! some of my best friends are potatoes!
Posted by stevla , on Friday 8th February 2008, 9:14 PM
I strongly suspect that the gig you 'remember' going to twenty years ago, was actually THIRTY years ago!
Posted by Steve , on Thursday 7th February 2008, 10:28 PM
Not sure if I can get to see the gig in March just yet. When will the DVD be out?
Validation word is 'wild', how rock'n'roll is that!
Posted by John (aka Jono aka Jonault) , on Wednesday 6th February 2008, 8:05 PM
The sad sight of Led Zep performing 'Whole Lotta Love' this year hasn't put you off then?
Posted by Les Miserable , on Wednesday 6th February 2008, 12:48 PM
Add Comment
