I finally broke down and bought Our Band Could Be Your Life even though I’m not a huge fan of rock journalism.* I bought it because it has a huge chapter on the Minutemen, whom (for reasons that should seem obvious) are my most favorite band ever and have had a tremendous influence on me. Nevermind that D. Boon was dead before I bought my first record. No, if the lyrics don’t speak to you, and if the skree-skronk jazzy guitar-n-bass riffs don’t grab you, at the very least, you can appreciate the earnestness of what was being done. I actually wept a bit while reading it this morning, because I am a weenie and because I had segued straight from soy latte to beer at noon (get off me, okay? I like the taste of soymilk, and I have my own machine, so it’s not like I’m heading down to Fabienne’s for a 6 dollar atrocity. In the words of the great philosophers Onyx, Bacdafucup.). I was a bit maudlin.
For someone who rarely cries, I do cry easily. I guess I just cushion myself in a Nerf-coated existence so that I don’t have to confront what makes me sad. But here is what does:
-Loving Arms, by Dobie Grey.
-Save the Last Dance for Me, by the Drifters
-You Are My Sunshine, any version
-San Francisco Bay Blues, as sung by my father
-Shostakovich, Symphony #5
-the scent of Chanel for Men, which my grandfather owned but seldom wore, and which sat on my grandmother’s sink for years after he died
and the last two I can think of right now, which if you EVER mention in public I will give you Purple Nurples until your organs drop out of your body
-Ripple, by the Grateful Dead
-Beach Music by Pat Conroy, such a hackneyed piece of shit, foisted on me by my mother during a beach house vacation in Beaufort, SC, but still, fuuuuckkk
OK, that’s enough for now. Go do something constructive, you losers.
*From the Department of Repenting at Leisure: I don’t hate rock journalism, by all means. Some of my best friends are rock journalists! C’mon, if it weren’t for rock journalists, I’d be all alone at most Mekons shows. What I meant by my thoughtless remark was that I hate 800-page paeans to, dunno, John Bonham. And Greil Marcus kinda grates on me in the way an embarrassing date does, eg, he seems okay in private but then you take him out around your friends and he immediately starts talking about Ayn Rand and his LARP circle.
Stroke me.
