Run-D.M.C - "King of Rock" from the album King of Rock

For some time now, I've played with the idea of running a little slogan across the top or across the bottom of the main page here at La Historia.

"Proudly Rockist Since December 2008" is what it would say. 'Coz rockist is what I am, baby, and I am truly unashamed.

It goes way back, too. Not that I've still got any of this memorabilia, but let's harken back to the first rock concert I ever attended, back in November of 1979. Kansas, with Sniff 'N' the Tears at the late and lamented Hollywood Sportatorium. Long time readers will I'm sure be able to guess who I was there to see.

Anyway, this being my first rock show and not knowing any better, I bought one of those cheap Pakistani polyester T-shirts outside the glorious walls, and then was disappointed to find an *official* memorabilia table inside the Sport. I stepped up to the table anyway, and though I couldn't afford another, better, T-shirt, there was this bumper sticker I liked.

"Disco Sucks. Rock 'N' Roll Still # 1."

Sold. After the concert, after the acoustic guitar solo, after the lasers, after the tentative tokes, after I'd come home for the evening, smelling of smoke or not, I carefully affixed that sticker to my bedroom door. Sometimes I think that sticker so boldly placed was more or less an announcement to my parents that I intended to become a pothead, but either way, what can't be denied is that in that sticker you will find my rockist roots.

I've read often since then that the Disco Sucks Army for which I was such a proud footsoldier was formed from the forces of racism and homophobia. And, you know what? Steve Dahl's testimony notwithstanding, there might be something to that.

But all it felt like at the time, not yet a year past my Bar Mitzvah, with an unsteady grasp of style, a fear of girls, and a bad habit of picking my nose when nervous, was that I really, really needed to move away from this dork thing if I could.

That, and the metronome bassdrum thing, this Push push in the Bush thing, wasn't it all kind of, I dunno, moronic? Listen: I wasn't gonna find fraternity around the disco floor with these flashily-dressed assholes when I was into Tolkien and couldn't even match my clothes some days; fraternity could only be found, it seemed, in rock and roll.

Fast forward, through a lot of high school dopesmoke (and a closet full of concert jerseys) to 1985. If rap and I have have long since had an unamicable breakup, 1985 was before the divorce. I had seen the video for Run-DMC's "King of Rock" I guess late night on MTV or something, and I thought it was very righteous indeed.

Of course, what made "King of Rock" comprehensible to me was that it had guitars. Not Yngwie Malmsteen guitars, maybe, but yes, definitely: the solid crunch I have always looked for. I never would have thought to say something like this then, but the guitars in "King of Rock" were to those in mid '80's heavy metal as Miles' Birth of the Cool was to bop. I don't know if I'd go so far as to say the guitars were "laid-back," but this wasn't head-banging music, it was head-nodding music. And I was down with that.

The video sought to portray Darryl McDaniel and Joe Simmons as if they were the instantaneous leading edge of a wavefront that stretched back past the Beatles and Little Richard to Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis and then beyond. When Larry Bud Melman let the two into his Rock and Roll Museum, he was saying, these guys are rock, these guys belong. I, for one, was buying it whole hog.

I bought each of the crew's first four albums and saw them on the Together Forever tour with the Beastie Boys at the Miami Baseball Stadium in August 1987. I read Spin magazine, who at this time were incorporating more and more of the hip hop into what had been a primarily indie mission statement. And then I got into hip hop artists who used the guitar a little less than Run DMC had. I bought records by LL Cool J and by Eric B & Rakim. And Public Enemy blew me away so much with their Slayer samples and their Anthrax collaborations that I even even forgave them for Professor Griff's antisemitic remarks.

By 1988, Sonic Youth had been my favorite band for a couple years, and can't say 1988 was a bad year for SY, either, as Daydream Nation would one day spawn an anniversary tour. But Tougher Than Leather might have been my second-favorite from that year. As late s 20 years ago, rap was solidly in my ears and on my lists.

What the fuck could have gone wrong?

To Be Continued, as I work this shit out.

Run-D.M.C. - King of Rock - 2 - King of Rock.mp3

File under: Old School Rap


This file was removed July 22, 2010. If you're still way interested in coming up with a copy of this--and really can't figure out where you might get one--drop me an email and I'm sure I'll be able to figure something out for you.

John Denver - "Calypso" from the album Windsong and The Butthole Surfers - "Bar-B-Q Pope" from the album Butthole Surfers

My Melanie is going through another one of her Heino phases. For the past two weeks, she's been running around saying ridiculous things like, "Heino is the greatest singer of the free world," and "I can't imagine a world without Heino."

And just this morning, after having posted the cover image on her Facebook page earlier in the week, she cracked open Great Hits No. 5 and started playing it at a volume so that the cats and I could hear it loud and clear. "Who could forget this great hit?" she called out ecstatically to me--to the world, really--as one of the German language tracks began to play, the cheese oozing prodigiously out despite the linguistic barrier, maybe it was "Das Alpenrosenlied" or perhaps "Es zogen auf sonnigen Wegen."

That's right, folks; it's been schlagers up the wazoo, here at the La Historia main offices.

And needless to say, it's been irony overload, too. I mean, more power to Melanie. If you can't have fun with your music--or actually someone else's--then what can you have fun with? Other than sex and booze and drugs and movies and cats, of course.

But never mind all of that: just so I can be square on the subject, I'll ask Melanie whether she really likes Heino, and it's infuriating because she won't give me a straight answer. She'll look me in the eye, though, and tell me "Heino's the BEST," and "I won't have you making insinuations about Heino."

It's as if I'm trapped in a recursive loop of irony; I can't escape. I'm like, "OK, honey, I love you. Now step outside the funny joke for a moment and speak plainly, without the ironic detachment. Just so I can know one way or the other whether you really like this artist, this horrible, horrible artist."

And she'll say "Heino's GREAT!"

If Melanie doesn't cycle on to a new phase, Tom Lehrer, Esquivel, shoegazer, Pee Shy, the early 80's New Wave, whatever, sometime soon, I think my brain's gonna explode.

But if or when the old cranium does go kablooey, it won't be Melanie's fault, not really. I'll instead blame it on the postmodernists, through whose baleful influence we have now arrived at a place where it's strictly optional, for your lovely girlfriend, or for anyone else, to say when making a reference whether they actually like the thing they're referring to or not.

It's all about the obscuring shroud of the blithely disengaged, baby.


Christ, it can get frustrating. Ever wonder what Bret Easton Ellis actually thinks about Huey Lewis and the News, or about Genesis? He gives each a whole fucking chapter in American Psycho and you still don't know!

Or switching from books to music, how about our lovable and unquestionably postmodern Butthole Surfers? "Bar-B-Q Pope" literally calls out snippets from "Calypso." But the ironic and bemused detachment the band wears like some kind of psychedelic shawl prevents the listener from figuring out what the band really thinks about the source material they've just ripped off! Talk about a fear of commitment . . . .

Come on guys, just come down on one side of the fence or the other, just once, you know? It can't possibly hurt.

Check it out: Just broadly speaking now, Genesis were ambitious, but arch and pedantic early on, then became, with some few exceptions, a load of crap. Huey Lewis and his band were so generic in concept that it precluded greatness, but they were still able to make some pretty good singles. "Bad is Bad" is good, if you know what I'm saying.

And "Calypso," despite its unapologetically lush orchestration, and despite its singer's decidedly uncool granolahead reputation, gives me the chills everytime I hear it, it's so very pretty.

It's all about the music, people. If I can disregard the fact that Sid Vicious made a habit of kicking his fans in the balls, and still enjoy "Pretty Vacant," or if I can at least get past the sad fact when I hear

"Lipstick Vogue" that Elvis Costello called Ray Charles a "blind ignorant nigger," then why the fuck should I care what the skinheads or the Talking Head snobs think about John Denver?

Gibby, Bret, let me tell ya: it kind of feels good, letting the world know where you stand.

I don't care what those waffling postmodernists say. It may indeed all be grist for the mill; nonetheless, there's no reason at all to hedge your bets. This blog (along with most of the others) is proof enough.


John Denver - Windsong - 11 - Calypso.mp3

This file was removed May 22, 2010. If you're still way interested in coming up with a copy of this--and really can't figure out where you might get one--drop me an email and I'm sure I'll be able to figure something out for you.

File under: Granolaheads, Singer-songwriter

The Butthole Surfers - The Butthole Surfers - 04 Bar-B-Q Pope.mp3

This file was removed May 22, 2010. If you're still way interested in coming up with a copy of this--and really can't figure out where you might get one--drop me an email and I'm sure I'll be able to figure something out for you.

File under: Pigfuck, Postpunk, the Dreaded Ironic Detachment