I was just listening to The Dead Boys. They reminded me of what an angry guy I used to be. Boy was I pissed off.
I still think that the world is a lot meaner than it needs to be and that some very bad people are getting away with some very bad things. Gosh, I even still feel misunderstood and alienated sometimes. I guess I stopped taking the world so fucking personally.
Sonic Reducer- The Dead Boys (Buy)
5 comments:
I hear playing the uke has become a cool thing to do, like heroin or something.
The Dead Boys sure had the spirit. All that anger and energy gave us a world full of women with mouth and tongue piercings. It ain't all bad: the twisted wreckage of Dead Boy Nation. Being angry was natural in the 70's. The economy started to become less and less generous to working people when we were young,
when the cost of energy became more apparent and people started buying more and more stuff from abroad.
That pretty well sums it up. I went from being a well paid skilled union member to homeless in about three years, and I certainly wasn't trying to say that there was anything bad about the Dead Boys or even the outcome thereof. To be young, full of drugs, alcohol and rage with a girl who shaved her head and liked to threaten people with a large knife, 'twas very bliss!
Basically, there was a year there, when my piece of the manufacturing economy had fallen apart, but I still had unemployment insurance and some cash from an accident settlement. That was the year that I was a punk.
Then the midwestern economy really collapsed. All of the clubs closed. Half of the band members went to jail. My circuit, Indiana, to Chicago, to Detroit, to New York and back became impossible.
That's when all of that rage turned inward and began to produce black bile. I spent the next ten years grubbing money, working two or three shitty low wage jobs at the same time. At the end of ten years I was all set to blow my fuckin' brains out.
So things had to change, one way or another, and they did. But that year when I pushed it as hard as I could; no fuckin' regrets. Even the fight, trying to stay above water for the first couple of years, trying to hang on to "the scene" and a life that was about something besides drudgery, there were times when that was fun too.
So now, yes I am cool because I play the ukulele. The ukulele is a lot of fun. It really is, but you have to have really really low expectations to imagine that the ukulele is "cool". Of course, low expectations are what life is all about these days.
Or as Matt Groening once put it:
"Keep your expectations tiny
Then you will not be so whiny"
Ukuleles and the solace of poetry.
Now that I think of it, you have to have pretty low expectations to think that heroin is cool too. A pain killer. Some people are in a lot pain.
way back in the seventies I was a roadie/hanger on of sorts for Pere Ubu and one night when the Dead boys had come back from New York for a series of shows they came down to mess with Dave Thomas since he and Stiv had a feud dating back to the Rocket from the Tombs days. after Davo played their opening set at the Pirate's Cove (the regular thursday night show piece for Devo and Pere Ubu) Stiv and Cheetah pushed over Tony Maimone's amp right in the middle of "thirty seconds after tokyo" (where they go blat blat.. blat...blat.....blat) and Tony and Tom Herman chased then down the street out for blood... never caught 'em though
your friend in Lorain Rick
Hey Rick, Good to hear from you. Your credentials are impeccable! 31 years at Lorain works and you were friends with Pere Ubu? That, to me, is a cool combination. At the very least, it means you are the kind of guy that I can understand.
From what you've told me about yourself you need to write some of this stuff down. You should start a blog, join our little network. It's not formal, just a few like minded people who read each other's blogs and leave comments. I'm sure you have something to say.
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