So I posted a disagreement with the blog-wide simpering over Al Gore and his coy non-entrance into the electoral fray on the thread Al Gore and the next 44 days, by James Boyce here on the Booman Tribune.
And among other disagreements with my OWN disagreement…which was couched in terms that compared Gore’s seemingly endless non-run to the celebrity-drenched-but-ultimately-vacuous Live Earth Concert that so deservedly tanked in the U.S. last week…Booman posted a YouTube construct of Jimi Hendrix doing his commercially lucrative guitar biting thing onstage for the delectation of the marks (“LOOKIT, Brenda!!! He’s playing with his TEETH!!! Far OUT!!!”) while behind him played his truly fine studio-produced version of the visionary American poet Bob Dylan’s “All Along The Watchtower”.
Preceded by the simple message “Snob this.”
Now I am not totally convinced that Booman even knew that what he was seeing was not what was being played on the track, but…being an agreeable sort…I did.
Snob this.
Read on if you want to hear one serious musician’s take on what is up here in the seriously rotten U. S. of A. these days.
Or…just turn your radio up a little louder and fuggedaboudit.
I do not really give a shit one way or another.
I just keep on making real music. As do literally thousands of others .
Pick up on it or not.
At your own risk and at the risk of this entire society.
You want some “snob”, Booman?
OK.
Your wish is my command.
But remember…you asked for it.
The entire “rock” establishment as it was represented in those Dead Earth concerts…with VERY few exceptions…cannot tie Jimi’s shoes. They are big-money produced, studio-created ACTS, and their sole function is to make money and waste people’s time.
Now I’ll tell you a little anecdote.
Do not look away. The point will get here eventually.
A couple of weeks ago I was doing errands in midtown NYC. About 4 blocks from where the steam pipe blew up yesterday, as a matter of fact. It was a nice day, so I was doing the whole thing all on foot. It was SUCH a nice day, and I was so happy to be doing nothing in particular, that I guarantee I was as stoned as Jimi ever got. And I know that for a fact because I was doing the same drugs at the same time…a couple of times on the same stage (The Fillmore East) …as was he. This high is MUCH better.
Anyway…I got hungry, so I dropped into a little sandwich place that had caught my eye months ago during a similar trek.
Because I liked the name.
WichCraft.
Nice, eh?
I liked it, anyway.
There was a beautiful, happy young girl behind the register and any number of good sounding sandwiches on the menu, so I made my order and settled in at a seat by the window to pursue my ongoing fascination with the face circus we laughingly call New York.
Jes’ floatin’ along, waiting for my Tuscan tuna on an herbed roll…
I watched some pigeons on a ledge across the street. One male pigeon making blundering and consistently rebuffed attempts to interest one of a several adjacent females in a night on the town. (I can relate…)
I watched awkward tourist girls and spiffed up office workers, an undercover cop and a couple of tough looking Japanese guys who appeared to be involved in the almost down and out-looking Japanese restaurant next door.
NYC at its broad-based best.
And then I heard the music in the restaurant.
I had been ignoring it. Tuning it out. But a soft-rock/jazz lite saxophonist piqued my interest. A third or fourth generation Coltrane clone, watered down to the point that he would not interfere with commerce. And I thought of the many times that I had sat in front of John Coltrane, Elvin Jones and McCoy Tyner in their prime. What a force of the universe ‘Trane had been channeling!!! How all things of that sort degenerated as their specific knowledge leached out into the huddling masses (Muddling asses?) over time.
Sic transit gloria mundi.
And of the miracle that is the constant rebirth of that sort of force throughout human history.
Like what happened with Jimi Hendrix for a brief moment in time.
Whence comes another such a force?
Why…right down the pike somewhere.
Bet on it.
And the next track on the restaurant sound system?
The Rolling Stones.
Satisfaction
Now…I PLAY the blues.
I LISTEN to the blues.
And I TEACH the blues.
The REAL blues.
From Robert Johnson right on through Count Basie and Jimmy Rushing to Ray Charles, Cleanhead Vinson, Charlie Parker, James Brown and Jimi Hendrix. And on into the rap era. I will be playing the music of the very FIRST commercially successful rapper tonight, as a matter of fact.
Live and pretty goddamned authentically.
Cab Calloway.
Check THAT shit out sometime.
Hi De Ho indeed, motherfuckers.
And I am here to tell you that those junked-up, egoed-out English Stones assholes…with the possible exception of the drummer, who has fairly good time and a smattering of chops…cannot play a LICK!!!
I mean…it was embarrassing even to listen to them.
Wrong chords, out of tune singing, bad bass notes, bad time…
Fucking laughable.
No wonder they can’t get no satisfaction.
They can’t even manage a passable hardon.
What does this all have to do with Gore and Live Earth?
This is what it has to do with that farce.
I will guarantee that almost every motherfucker who played in those shows or had anything whatsoever to do with that production would kneel down and lick that old fraud Jagger’s balls if he had shown up to even grace the proceedings with his oh-so-royal presence.
Which, I notice…he did not do.
The whole thing is rotten at the root, Booman.
Before the hypnomedia got its shit together…say up until the early/mid-’50s…if amateurish, untalented musicians of that sort had shown up at any musical scene in America, they would have been bumrushed outta the joint before they finished their first set.
I spent about 16 hours alone in a car over the last 5 days. With the radio on search. Driving through mainstream America.
AM and FM.
The only musics that are being broadly consumed in America that even have any semblance of their shit together?
Rap/hip-hop/so-called R+B (today’s newspeak for what was called race music pre-’50s), the South/Central/Caribbean American idioms, and segments of the country scene.
YOU know…the music of relatively poor blacks, Latinos, working class mostly non-urban whites and the middle class nostalgie de la boue -type (Fond reminiscence of the mud. The French are SO perceptive about these things.) wannabes.
Just as it’s always been.
The bourgeoisie are SO lame. (There’s that French again.)
You want some “snob”?
You got it’ bro.
This system is fucked up top to bottom.
I am a musician.
A specialist.
I see the rot in my speciality.
If I were a doctor or a plumber or a proctologist…I’d see it there as well.
Bet on it.
So keep on sucking up that ersatz music, Booman.
You might as well try to live on Ovaltine.
Same ingredients.
Powder and artificially produced flavors.
Smoke and mirrors.
Tales told by idiots, signifying nothing. Lacking even sound and fury,
If the fish rots from the head…and the presumptive head if the particular scene in question is Al Gore….well, there you jolly well are, aren’t you.
Put THAT in your fucking earphones and vote on it.
You were better off with Trailer Trash Bill. Who COULD play the blues. And whose hardon worked jes’ fine, thank ya ma’am. The mere fact that Hillary stuck with him is an endorsement of her own soulfulness that puts her head and shoulders above the rest of this pack of wannabes as far as I am concerned.
Later…I gotta go practice now.
Middle Bb.
A lifework all by itself.
And…have fun.
I am.
Bet on it.
AG
