Christmas. It’s the time for joy and camaraderie and faith. It’s the time of giving and sharing and, for most, receiving. Debts are forgiven at Christmas, and people too. Indeed, the power of Christmas could almost save the world and would, according to Hollywood, if given half a chance.
So you think you know something about music, huh? I thought I did too until I started writing this column and getting schooled by people not only more aware of psych than myself but more knowledgeable. Why, some of my past columns spawned related columns (not mine) at least as long, disputing my claims. Okay, not quite. But almost. Let us just say that, like many of us, the more I know, the less I know.
I’m tired. I mention this at the outset because this inevitably is going to turn in to one of those stream-of-consciousness tirades in which logic does not play a part. But I don’t care. I need to get something off my chest and I don’t care if you stop reading right now, but the stench of what is wrong with the music business has me gasping for air and there is little oxygen available. But before I start…..
There are a large number of reasons I love writing for DBAWIS. For one thing, I get to write amongst some of the best writers out there. I have had it in my mind to put together a list of must-read columns with thumbnail reviews and easy links so others could read what I have read, though I am sure with different eyes. You see, I found DBAWIS very early in its existence, when Bob Segarini was writing what was then his column for FYI Music in Canada. At first, I was just following Segarini, a musician I much admired after having interviewed him for Pop Culture Press for their “Summer of Love” issue.
I don’t know what youth wants from us old farts, especially when it comes to music. Many mock us for being Boomers, many laugh at our music. I can understand. I laugh at us, too. Our insistence that stars are gods, especially rock and movie stars. Our self-indulgence. Our knowledge that we more than any others are omniscient. God, but there have been times when I wished I had been borne of another generation (until I look at the other generations and realize that they are as fucked up as are we).
With apologies to The Records (that’s the band, sports fans) and their song Teenarama. I was sitting here plowing my way through one of my more favorite albums of the past few weeks by one Sandrider and wondering what it is that makes us turn right or left when mood strikes us— to bang heads with Freedom Hawk and Sandrider and then slither into the sixties and early seventies pop garden with The Records and The Shoes. It’s a hell of a jump from “Cut down these heathens” to “C-c-c-c-c-cola is all you ever drink,” from “Hold not your blades to our sad thirsty throats” to “Teenarama/All that melodrama/Gimme gimme gimme gimme/Teenarama” but it is a jump I make all the time. It’s no wonder I’m screwed up. I can’t walk a straight line. Hell, sometimes I can barely walk!
Bullseye Records of Canada
Segarini: Don't Believe a Word I Say 