Coachella and Neighborhood Watch

Started off the day still recovering from the watershed of work, fun, and final farewells to former states of mind. Coachella festival this weekend and since we live in the era of telepresence where anyone can be anywhere at anytime I thought I would join in the virtual community of followers who could be a part of the overhyped, overpriced, and overbearing teenage ritual of multi day music festivals. There are just so many damn people, you have to sneak in all the drugs, booze, and even water now, who the hell wants to pay 6 bucks for a water, damn Palm Springs can get pretty hot during the day, thought I heard there were allowing camping alongwith in and out privledges that should certainly bring some relief from the 12+ hours of watching upcomers, new hipsters, and aged retro tossers who have since lost their usefulness and influence admist the music scene, granted when I was 18, there were not too many Velvet Underground, MC5, or T-Rex reunions, sure there were opportunities to see Pink Floyd, James Brown, and Frank Zappa, so there is a bit of me that understands the desire to see such throwback as Echo and the Bunnymen, PIL, and even Pavement, one gets so nonchalant about the good old days, meaning I am pretty fucking old and spent all my money on going to concerts, not much on the wall street savings vibe, but look at most of my parents generation and they lost a majority of their retirement in the last stock market nose dive, therefore I don't feel so bad seeing Nirvana in 87, Metallica in 83, and The Greatful Dead in 88, so many more bands, just got in on the end of real non over advertised, commodified, and soulless music, as Public Enemy said, don't believe the hype.

Think Gathering of Vibes or the first Lollapolloza were my first festivals, Gathering had Queen Latifah, The Cramps, Primus, Steve Earle, maybe even the Talking Heads, remember that Escape from New York tour when it was Blondie, Heads, Ramones, and maybe Patti Smith, tough to remember, like going to see Oingo Boingo, just passes right by, one band who will probably never get back together, Smiths, saw them too, Pistols when they got back together the first time, so watch Ian McCullah from Echo sing tonight had that sort of retro misty eyed feeling I get when I see Lou Reed sing or Benard Summner from New Order, someone whose lyrics felt personally written for me, whether it was about personal pain, discontent with the general public or musing about the bizarre nature of our society, their words resonated with volumes, like Roger Waters/David Gilmour, these guys were trying to teach me something, the hard lessons of life, the joys, the regrets, the lost loves, and blacked out moments never to be recaptured, pitfalls abound and not all of them are so pleasurable. Ian gave it his best out there, the band sounded great so Bring on the Dancing Horses, Do It Clean, and The Cutter still had that musical flavor, but Ian had become nothing more than another rock and roll casualty, what they don't tell you about in rock school. The pull, gravity's pull, can't turn away from the need to stay on that eternal high, like Kesey, like Cassady or Ginsberg, either pull over or shoot for the edge of the cliff and it look like Ian McCullah had gone for the latter, don't get me wrong, he looked as fuckin cool as they get, dark shades and black winter coat in even that could not have been more than 60F, smack sickness, cold comfort, hidden in the cover of persona, smooth, unfathomable, there was no denying his presence, held for few like Nick Cave and Leonard Cohen. The vocals could not have been more all over the place, so I had to root for him to recover and reach that feeling he attempted to transmit so many years ago, at the end of it all he did not look concerned, maybe only satisfied that he could get back out into the arena once more project that arua of invincible spirit that has driven so many artist to burn up in their own flames of insanity, will his pilgrimage towards that goal continue, guess I will have to check the Echo and the Bunnyman website.

Good old John Lydon, after tossing away the dead carcass of the Sex Pistols, it would be so fitting on a week after the death of Malcom McClaran who had whatever hand in the formation, development, and eventual distruction, died that Public Image Limited would dust off their sarcastic lyrics and avant garde musicianship, so Lydon could wander about in his iconical clown pants and spiky hair, caught only a few songs, cause by this time Jay Z was also being streamed on a seperate channel which was reeking havoc on the main server I imagine, without getting into him, I have seen him live, granted high on MDMA but, he is as raw as KRS ONE and Rakim with a solid helping of Big Daddy Kane, the whole entire pimp everyone and their mother shit is a bit old and he is only in it for the money, but when that whole vibe was around in the mid 80's with the gold chains, Audi's, and fake grills, there does not seem to be much difference just a bigger market for him to expose, more consumers to dupe into a false lifestyle of debt, apartment rentals, and the seasonal weekend trip to Vegas in an attempt to live some of that so called upper class lifestyle, to that I say good luck, it is not an easy task to accomplish, even on a winning streak, I have watched so many people throw away tens of thousands of dollars at the tables, pools, and strip clubs, some may have more but not every one, the lifestyle of the lie, have to do it while you can, cause those looks don't last and there is always another youngster right behind you who everything feels fresh to and can't wait to get in the mix and feel the nice creamy, sweaty, silky ass of a 22 yr old sista riding on his cock.

Back to Lydon with the brief view he has cemented in place in the history of irrelevance, rock, punk rock is not some fat, elderly, and semi sympathic individual, it is all about angst, fury, revolt, and transformation that is why there are so few great bands anymore, there is just too much riding on the mortage, wifey, kids, the retirement fund, summer villas, and if not that maybe just the traditional avenues of sex, drugs, and fast, loose women, the latter is something I find more pleasurable, music as a business, as a means of holding down a job never has felt right to me, has to be better than sitting behind a desk, but having to whore oneself like a Fall clothing line does not seem to be the answer, fortunately today, they have legions of subnormals working at talent agencies who will do that for the artists, so the food chain continues.

Watched some old man get in a fight with some local street youth near a park as I was coming out of the grocery store, could not understand why this potentially derranged and insane old man would call out urban ghetto youth without being prepared to fight him and his friend. There was an initial exchange of some words, but my thinking at the moment was what teenage kid is going to be able to live down being dissed by some stinking old whacked out grandpa wandering the streets aimlessly, his rep would be destroyed and eventually become a target of abuse and possibly violence amongst his peers, so there was not much option as a couple more of his friends were coming over from a nearby Taco Bell to see what all the commotion was about, but as soon as the other two got about 50 feet away, the kid shoved the old man down to the ground. The old man did not even put any resistance, crumbled like a knocked over house of cards, attempting to bluff his way into giving these teens a piece of his mind, this is not the 60's anymore, go for self, you are on your own kid, proceed with caution and know how to read your environment.

The kids stood around for a few seconds then beat off into the darkness of the local park safe from any witnesses making sort of solid identification. The old man laid there motionless for a few minutes until someone came around to help him, he appeared as if he might be dead, you never know, head concussion, but it only seemed to be a plea of sympathy in the end, as if to say doesn't anyone give a shit that I have been assualted by these damn n****** kids, real throwback mentality to that white is right era and unless you live in the south or in the midwest that really don't mean much out in the west anymore too much mixed blood and mixed race youth like myself that put up being fucked with by that whole white right mentality, I mean do I have the wit and intelligence to take advantage of the system, rise above having to beat people down in the middle of the night for personal prejudice, sure, but to say it still does not exist is to really be naive and potentially fatal. A few people wandered over to make sure the old man was still breathing, he rolled over as if shocked that this kid would attack him, all I could think was he was lucky to be alive, some others would have kept kicking, punching, and pounding on him till he was really near death, maybe even death, then walk down to the local 7-11 for a Mountain Dew, say bye to the friends, head home where mom and the younger sibliings would be watching TV. "How was the movie?" mom would ask and the kid would reply. "Okay." then go in the bathroom wash his hands of the blood, bag the clothes in a trash bag, stuff it under the bed, then bus it to the other side of town and dump the shit and pretend nothing ever happen. There are people like this in our midst, in your time, my time, and especially today.