Monday Evening Punk Rock

Here’s Husker Du playing “New Day Rising.” Michele from FTTW described this particular song as being “like fifty hits of speed shoved into your veins with a needle that’s been dipped in pure adrenaline.” I couldn’t put it better myself. Obviously, this is not for everyone. Then again, for the most part I don’t even know what most of my (plus or minus) five readers actually listen to, so I have no clue if I’m catering to anyone’s tastes or not. Click if you’re curious.

Monday Afternoon Punk Rock

Yes, it’s only a damn Youtube clip. I’m still not quite ready to go back to updating this thing regularly, so you all will simply have to accept it. This song is just cool on so many levels, and nothing perks up a Monday for me like loud guitars and screaming Irishmen. Being out of school for the summer is great because I can now listen to music while working. I never could do that while reading or trying to write a paper. I originally found this over at Dennis the Peasant, a pretty good place to find the occasional musical clip (among other interesting things.) I knew about Stiff Little Fingers before this, but I had never heard this particular song. So click away if you’re into this sort of thing.

Songs about Heroin

As stress mo unts to a perfect pitch of near-insanity, I know I can look forward to the moment the term ends, all papers are finished and turned in and I can play video games or read a magazine without feeling guilty. It’s like a shot of something quite potent that goes straight to the head, only to be replaced by that same craziness a few weeks later. In honor of the coming eye of the storm, that fleeting period of time between school and school, I bring you The Stranglers, with the hope that I will actually have something mildly interesting to write next week.

I can’t believe that I have just posted three fucking YouTube clips in a row.

More Electric Dylan

Five days in LA with the family was enough to remind me how nice life is, and coming back home was icing on the cake. I have, as of today, finished all four presentations in my very first quarter as a graduate student and still without a nervous breakdown. Two weeks to go and two papers to write, then I can officially feel like part of the new community. So here’s some Dylan from 1976 because I’m in a pretty good mood. Let’s see how long it stays up.

Placeholder Post

Blogging will be very light for at least a week. I suddenly realized how much homework I have to do and so all writing energy will be concentrated elsewhere. (GP: I’ll try to pick up the conversation where we left off.)

In the meantime, check out Faster Than the World if you haven’t already. They’re in the sidebar as well. It’s an excellent site and I have wasted entirely too much time over there. Not only that, but I discovered The Dresden Dolls there, also highly recommended if you don’t know them.

Go, my five or so loyal minions! I command you!

(Un)holy Crap!

I found this today on YouTube and I’ll leave it up until it gets yanked. It’s a video of Throbbing Gristle, I think from a performance in San Francisco in the early eighties. Back in my wannabe starving artist days I absolutely idolized these people. You can read all about their twisted antics here (scroll down to the links, not for the faint of stomach) when they were known as COUM Transmissions. Anyway, if you like to annoy your friends and family blast this at top volume.

Oh, and it looks like they’re back together after twenty-five years.

Amen to That

So here’s where I get to spit on an icon by proxy. As those who know me know, I am not what one would call a churchgoing man. However, I happen to agree with this article by Mark Shea who tears apart “Imagine” by John Lennon:

Everything the song advocates and hopes for as a supreme good was the fountainhead of all the horrors of the 20th century. Imagine there’s no countries? Hitler dreamt of a world without borders. Imagine there’s no heaven? No religion too? Stalin and Mao sought to free us from religion and the burden of hoping for something more than this life. Imagine no possessions? Communism was all about freeing us from possessions (though multi-zillionaire Lennon seems to have honored this dream more in the breach than the observance). Imagine all the people living for today? You got it! A culture of brain-dead MTV-educated “fornicate-today-and-abort-tomorrow” zombies has accomplished the mission.

Like Shea, I also pay attention to lyrics and the pretty music that Lennon created does not cover up the fact that the song is, at best, vapid. I don’t say that John Lennon was a dreamer. I am not that kind. Lennon was a utopian fantasist, and I think that there is no bigger philosophical danger than belief in the perfectability of humanity. In my case this extends to religion as well, as when a religious group thinks that it can speed up some sort of prophecy if humans take matters into their own hands (I’m not pointing fingers, for once.)

I think the Beatles were great as a boy band, but John Lennon really lost it when he did too many drugs and became some sort of didactic stoner-prophet. The fact that he could successfully convert people into some sort of weird cult of “living for today” without paying heed to tomorrow disturbs me.

Thanks to Dawn Eden.