The Weak In Rock

Most folks I know who play music if asked will readily give you a list of their heroes who inspired them to get into music.  Most of the time those lists are pretty dull.  If you had a dollar for every guitar player who told you he was inspired to pick up the guitar by Jimmy Page or Eddie Van Halen you’d have enough money to buy out Bill Gates’ share of Microsoft.  Likewise, you won’t find many drummers who deviate much from the John Bonham, Keith Moon, Neil Peart orbit of inspirations.

I was always a weirdo though.  I got into constant scraps with my musical friends in high school and college over my love of Phil Manzanera’s  and Robert Fripp’s guitar playing.  I still get ribbed over saying Tom Petersen and Cliff Williams are my all-time favorite bass players, and not a drummer I’ve known hasn’t guffawed when I’ve declared Phil Rudd the best drummer to ever stalk the earth.

It shouldn’t be any surprise then that my favorite front man and all-around musical genius is Mark Mothersbaugh.  What this man did with DEVO will, I’m quite sure, never be completely appreciated.  Too many people think of DEVO as a joke band or some kind of cartoon band.  They don’t get how absolutely radical and different they were from every other band of their time and I’ve yet to see anyone who pulled together as much artistry in a single performance as Mark Mothersbaugh and Jerry Cassale did with DEVO.

Here’s a link to a video clip, courtesy of Weird America, of Mark Mothersbaugh talking about his history as an artist and musician.

Thanks to Boing Boing for the link.

Technorati Tags: Jimmy Page, Eddie Van Halen, Bill Gates, Microsoft, John Bonham, Keith Moon, Neil Peart, Phil Manzanera, Robert Fripp, Tom Petersen, Cliff Williams, Phil Rudd, Mark Mothersbaugh, DEVO, Jerry Cassale

Back when I played little league my team was sponsored by the local Catholic Church.  It may have seemed like a team sponsored by St. Albert’s Church would have an edge over the competition, what with Jebus on our side and all, but it really didn’t work out that way.  As I recall, we lost most of the time, usually in a humiliating fashion.

Seems we had it all wrong.  Instead of getting a franchisee of the Vicar of Christ to sponsor our team we should have gotten a metal band to get behind us.  This is, apparently, precisely what Gary Weight, the coach of a youth soccer team in North Hykeham, England did.  He approached Lemmy Kilmister or Motorhead to see if the band would sponsor his team.  Motorhead said yes and now the Lincolns of North Hykeham not only get to wear very cool and intimidating Motorhead logos on their uniforms, they get to take the field at each game to the strains of Ace Of Spades - undoubtedly the most bad-ass metal song ever written.

These 10 year old boys are no doubt going to scare the bejesus out of their opponents.  I know that when I was 10 if my team played a bunch of kids who ran onto the field screaming with Ace Of Spades blasting in the background that I’d have needed to change my shorts.

And just in case you need a refresher on just exactly how baddass Ace Of Spades is, have a look at this video clip.  If you can make marionettes rock, well, you truly have molten metal flowing through your veins.

Technorati Tags: Catholic Church, St. Albert’s Church, Vicar of Christ, youth soccer team, Lemmy Kilmister, Motorhead, Ace Of Spades, marionettes

You’ve probably heard all the brewhaha about Ted Haggard - the evangelical minister of a 14,000 member superchurch in Colorado - who it recently turned out was spending his free time and money soliciting male prostitutes and using crystal meth.

Well, here’s Jon Stewart’s take on the story.

Technorati Tags: Ted Haggard, evangelical minister, Colorado, male prostitutes, crystal meth, Jon Stewart

As satisfying as the drubbing the GOP took at the polls yesterday was, I’d have been just as happy this morning if every other Republican up for re-election to the House had won and dear, nefarious Richard Pombo, the butthole who represents my home district, had lost.  It’s icing on the cake that Dick Pombo was just one of many corrupt, shit-fer-brains, religious nutjobs sent packing yesterday.
With any luck he’ll still get prosecuted for graft.

David Roberts over at Gristmill.org sums it up as well as any:

From the beginning, you never really believed that anyone would seriously challenge you for your seat in the House. A good ol’ boy like you? Look at those boots! Why, it was unthinkable. You laughed it off, and barely deigned to campaign or speak to the press for the past year. Even when Jerry McNerney — a guy you thought you could steamroll without breaking a sweat — started nipping at your heels, you refused to engage. Woops.

You embodied the cozy corruption, utter fealty to big industry, and mendacious faux conservatism of the 109th Congress. And now? Now you’re gone.

Good riddance, Dick.

Technorati Tags: the GOP, Republican, Richard Pombo, Jerry McNerney

I’ve said it many times, and I’m sure I’ll say it again - to paraphrase George Carlin, I don’t have pet peeves anymore.  Those are for old women and advice columnists.  No.  Instead I have major psychotic hatreds.

My major psychotic hatred of the moment?  People who do not listen.  Or, to put it another way, people who do not listen properly.

It’s a problem that is afflicting our culture in a very serious way more and more every passing day.  If I had a dime for every time someone at work only half listened to what I’d said, forcing me to repeat myself far more times than makes any lick of sense I’d be able to build a full size reproduction of the Lincoln Memorial out of dimes in my backyard.  Most of the time our national listening problem only manifests itself in trivial annoyances - like me having to repeat myself a dozen times on some minor subject to my colleagues in the office - but on occasion it’s a real problem.

For example: the recent ugliness in the media related to John Kerry’s alleged insult to the troops in Iraq.  Anyone who actually listened properly to the words Kerry said knows that he was not insulting the troops.  He was insulting Dubya, the Commander in Chimp.  He didn’t say that if you don’t do well in school you’ll end up a soldier stuck in Iraq, he said if you don’t pay attention and learn your lessons well you might get stuck in Iraq.

Keith Olberman summed it up exceptionally well in his closing editorial on his show last week.  Have a look at this video clip - and really, watch the whole thing and listen carefully because there’s a lesson from history in there that we’d all be well, Republicans and Democrats, to heed about civility and respect.

Now I’m not accusing the Republicans of not listening to John Kerry.  They heard him fine.  But they also knew they could count on the vast majority of Americans and almost the entire press corps to pay so little attention to Kerry’s words that it would be relatively easy to spin what he’d said to make it sound like he’d insulted the troops without being challenged on it.  Sure, Keith Olberman had at them well and truly, but he’s unfortunately consigned to what amounts to the back, back, back pages of TV news on MSNBC, a network hardly anyone watches.  I dare say more people have seen clips of his response to this mess on YouTube than have watched his nightly show in the past year.

Our collective national communications skills are feeble.  It’s as if everyone in the United States is simultaneously demanding to be listened to at once, and the cacophony has rendered no one at all interested in what’s being said.  There was a time, not all that long ago, when we admired people for being persuasive.  Ronald Reagan was not someone I admired and his politics offended me more often than not, but I could not deny his ability to speak and make a point.  Today a politician like Reagan would be despised for even trying to get his foes to see his point.

Our culture has become, as Keith Olberman points out in the above-linked video, eerily similar to the America of the 1850s.  Consensus and persuasion are despised.  Anyone who compromises is a traitor to their side.  People who try to sway the majority to accept their views are regarded as windbags and are vilified as deceitful.  You’re either with us or against us.  Everything is black or white and the subtle grays of reality are rejected out of hand.

And because most of us didn’t listen in school we don’t know that it was an inability to compromise and work across the aisle that led to the bloodbath of the American Civil War.  Even that defining event for this country is little understood by most people.  It’s oversimplified into being only about slavery.  Americans don’t know their own history and don’t know that it was intractability, fanaticism on both sides and appeals to the biblical rightness of each cause that flung this country into the bloodiest conflict it has ever been involved in - one that still resonates in our politics and defines our society today.

The problem with justifying your cause or your ideals in terms of “God’s word” is that doing so leaves no room to maneuver, and to manage a massive and sophisticated social construct like the United States it is imperative that we have lots of room to maneuver.

Technorati Tags: John Kerry, Dubya, Iraq, Keith Olberman, Republicans, Democrats, MSNBC, United States, Ronald Reagan, American Civil War