It’s just gone 9pm and I have my first chance to sit and record the adventures of the day. With a little luck the act of writing will act as a catharsis and stop me from approaching the edge of a Michael Douglas “Falling Down” moment.
(If you have not seen the movie, in “Falling Down”, Michael Douglas plays a normal guy who gets pushed too far by the little annoyances of his life, and goes on a rampage through the city - one particularly memorably scene sees him holding the staff of a fast food restaurant at gunpoint until he receives food that looks like the pictures above the counter).
Thank god. Until this very moment I had no idea what I was going to write about. Internet radio has just provided the answer into my ear. The presenter on Virgin Radio just introduced a completely crap Jimmy Hendrix track with so much hyperbole that I thought he might slip over on his own spit. Why do people do that? Why do people claim things as “great” that they really don’t know.
It reminds me of “The Emporor’s New Clothes”, and seems to afflict the media more any other element of the society we live in. If something is “supposed” to be good, and it’s fashionable to know of it, people will tell other’s “it’s good” without ever having seen or heard what they are talking about.
I’m sorry if I don’t play the game, but if somebody asks me what I think of something I don’t know, I tell them exactly that - “I have no idea”. It’s almost like people perceive lack of knowledge as a failure. Idiots.
Thankfully, the radio guy has seen the error of his ways and put “Pinball Wizard” on from Tommy. Now there’s a good album that I do know. In the little list of “tracks to live your life by” in my head, Pinball Wizard stands alongside “Penny Lane”, “Fool on the Hill”, “Somebody Loves You”, “The Hudson”, “Feelin’ Groovy”, and “Tiny Dancer”. There are probably many more on the list, but as is the nature of these things, they only come to mind when you hear them.
The bizarre part of this is that I don’t think Roger Daltrey can sing a note. The Who, to me, are a band that is greater than the sum of their parts. It’s amusing really - it’s exactly the opposite to the current crop of reality TV creations such as Will Young and Kelly Clarkson - where they are less than the sum of themselves (they require auto-tuners, and a recording studio to make them sound any good at all).
You would think, having gone off on this tangent about rubbish singers and bands that I would once again be climbing onto my soapbox to berate modern produced pop music, but I’m going to confound your expectations, and admit right here that I love Christina Aguilera, and Kylie Minogue. Granted, it might have something with them being rather nice to look at, but popcorn music has it’s place as long as it doesn’t take itself too seriously. “Scissor Sisters” are a good example.
If you are anything like me, or have similar life experiences, you will have a number of memories of nightclubs where the cheesy tracks kicked off - the tracks where everybody in the place knows the words - and everybody in the place launched onto the dancefloor. It might be that this phenomenon is heightened in the UK though - my friend from Oklahoma came to visit in the summer and went out in London - she was stunned while having a drink in one bar that everybody went nuts when an old Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton track came on (it might have been “Islands in the Stream” - I’ll have to check).
Many of my idiotic dancing adventures bring forth memories of live bands singing covers at the back of a pub near my home town. We used to affectionately refer to the pub as “The Star Wars pub”, due to it’s similarity to the Cantina Bar. You really did feel sometimes that some little guy was going to tug your arm and shout “My friend doesn’t like you!”. I did this to a friend who was waiting to be served at the bar one night, and when we finished acting the scene out, our eyeline was caught by this enormous biker guy on the other end of the bar. He was not happy.
I seem to recall that was the same night that I was dancing behind this girl who backed into me and got really friendly for apparently no reason - I held my arms out and looked back at my mate who was bent double laughing. It turned out the next day that while I watched the band, he crept round beside me and pinched her ass.
That’s friends for you… and there are many, many more stories where that one came from.
Anyway - I have 50 blogs to go read. This NaBloPoMo lark is hard work!