Free Pussy Riot
After reading about Пусси Райот being claimed to be a Russian female punk band, I was quite pleasantly surprised to find that they actually do play punk rock.  'Quite catchy.  I'd appreciate the Russian government leaving them free so they can record more music for me to enjoy.

"You can only skate[board] to Alice Cooper so many years."

Rage: 20 Years of Punk Rock, West Coast Style  --  I wouldn't have turned to a show with such a name for the story of punk but actually this is an insightful doorway into punk music.  'Finally a rock video with interviewees who do know whereof they speak and filmmakers who do care about punk.  Not much rage but I'll forgive them that.

 

the unhipness of accuracy

Gee, it has just soaked in on me.  There is a contingent which does not want to know how to use our English language the way us old-timers used it. 

I had figured that those video documentaries I was finding on-line, obstensively about different segments of rock music, were misdefining those old terms simply out of laziness and no interest in the subject covered, but those English words are being used differently on purpose.  Garage rock, indie rock, punk rock -- each of those had an actual, specific meaning.  Now they are being redefined by desire rather than simply out of ignorance. 

While there are several people who made a point out of using the English language differently than me within several topics I used to be interested in on Wikipedia, I now see that they were not some rare exceptions who believed in that wikireality.  I was not hip to it but there are people who do not wish to know the truth of things. 

Since the beginning of rock and roll, there have been those who wanted to be outrageous.  How silly of me to not earlier cotton to today's rockers speaking about rock music itself outrageously.  How silly of me to expect drug-addled drop-outs to believe in a reality the same as the one I take an interest in. 

I see the difference between non-fiction and fiction as the difference between fact and make believe.  The more hip of us do not see things that way.  Rock is about creativity.  Writing about rock is about making things up.  Don't knuckle under to the man.

Mood:  surprised
Topic: soundtrack music
As to why my comment about Adrian Zmed comes off rather belittling, I'd simply always had him pegged purely as just another actor aimed at appealing to teenage girls.  His work in Bachelor Party however shows that he does have the right attitude towards rock.

Mood:  d'oh

What's the point of parodying a parody?http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGwxyyTbflUYet kids delight in doing just that all over YouTube.  But Spinal Tap fans aren't alone, nor rock fans, for that matter, as far as films go.

Jonathan King
    Ok, now I've also watched episodes 12-19.

Suzie Seacell
    I figured I oughta get around to adding a little more about some of these bands that I have listed on my Tripod page so my Rock Albums list serves at least some purpose.  Ya know there ain't very much on-line about an artist when my two-word summary of her music is the 2nd listing on Google (after Barnes & Noble's).

Spizzenergi 2
    Ya, British alright.  I guess I'll remove the question mark.

Stingray
    Ya, South African alright.  I also found a couple other thoughts I'd had about the overproduced Stingray album years ago.  This band is so commercial they make Styx sound sincere.  'Not too surprising that their main Web mention refers to them as a "South African Supergroup" -- as with much of rock on-line, they don't know what the words they use mean.  If Stingray is a supergroup, then my Web-page listing of rock groups I own albums of qualifies as a premiere source of rock information.

Jon King
Now Playing: YouTube

I've decided to start making more use of my blog.  It's not for you though, I'm afraid.  It's because I've found that I need a better way to keep track of my various notes about rock, and figure that sticking them here will be easier for me to find them than on little pieces of paper all over my house.

There's a lot of interesting stuff on YouTube.  While I like looking at & listening to the little videos of a lot of great rock bands there, I'll start by recommending Jonathan King's series of little Incredible Stories videos.  They are quite interesting & informative.  (I'm talking about the old days of rock.  I'm afraid I haven't paid much attention to King's legal trouble.)

I've only made it through episodes 20-30 so far myself.  He covers a lot of interesting topics, such as Paul McCartney in #27, but I'll suggest starting with the 20th blog, as I did.  Jonathan King - Incredible Stories 20

all music guide
Mood:  irritated

Why do kids these days claim that the Who were the first heavy metal band?  Gadzooks, I wouldn't even call them as much a rock band as pop.  Mentions of Townsend's distorted guitar sound must explain it; such writers classify musical genres by instruments and acoustics rather than by the beat and how the intruments are used.  They're like the goofballs who used to talk about rock lifestyles and fashions, as if clothes or hair, drugs or marxism were what differentiated rock & roll from the popular music which had come before.

The All Music Guide's heavy metal piece isn't as bad as some others, and they don't even refer to the Who itself as metal but only mention them as supposedly an inspiration for it.  But then they, while again not claiming Yes to be metal, list them as inspirations along with Led Zeppelin, Aerosmith, & Deep Purple.  Huh?  How on earth could someone lump Yes in with those three great hard rock bands?

Well, that's not the All Music Guide's only bizarre idea about rock.  They defined an "obscuro" genre purposely such that one would have a hard time objecting to anything they tossed in there but still--calling the Shaggs "obscure and difficult to discover (much less track down)" is balogna.  I even take issue with the popular claim that they're uncommercial, as their having sold so many copies of their "uncommercial" album means that it's by definition commercial.  Calling rock like that "extremely rare records" only works when the people reading your claims are learning something new, not when they agree with you. 

But lumping Lee Hazlewood in shows what this is really all about; the opposite of uncommerciality but rather simply selling stuff.  Lee Hazlewood isn't some bizarrely wacky act; he's simply a standard pop singer of the olden days, a very successful one at that.  But then that's why you're offered the chance to click on the button to buy the music, not just read some truly enlightening, little-known information.  Yeah, those are our two choices on the Web:  goofiness from the ignorant or balogna from those with a financial stake in it.

rockin' roads?
Mood:  incredulous
Topic: street names

Rock music's been around for half a century.  When I was a kid, there wasn't that much rock & roll music, you didn't hear it much, and it was constantly decried and belittled.  The people who enjoyed rock music in the '60s are now four decades older and to a good extent in charge of things.  We've got the power, daddyo! 

Sure, stupidity still rules:  Writers claim that the success of the Rock and Roll Cafe proves that rock is well-liked, rather than that Corporate Amerika will jump onto any and every bandwagon, and that the mindless masses will buy their ludicrous claims rather than think for themselves.  Yeah, rather.

But the point is that rock music is a lot more accepted these days.  Rock & roll is one of the big joys of people in our times.  Our lives may not totally revolve around rock and roll but then they don't revolve around past Presidents or flowering trees either.

There are fifty states in the U.S.A.  There are thousands of counties.  There are a heck of a lot of new subdivisions being developed each year.  Hasn't there been at least one developer who was either rich enough or loony enough to not care how the names of his new streets struck people, if not believing that rockly named streets would actually attract purchasers (let alone publicity)?

New York City renamed a street corner Joey Ramone Place.  Melbourne renamed a back lane ACDC Lane.  Berlin renamed a 1-¹/₂-mile formerly numbered street Frank-Zappa-Straße.  I've always taken the practice of honorary street namings to be an insult rather than an honor -- illustrating that the person or organization or whatever is not even worthy to have a street actually named for it but rather simply a pretend name (which doesn't actually serve as the address) for a block of one street out of a thousand. 

The Frank Zappa Street sounds like a real street and really renamed but still __ why aren't there hundreds more examples like this?  As "Brian Micklethwait" wrote in his

http://www.brianmicklethwait.com/culture/archives/2004/10/a_street_name_t.html blog several years ago, "Now that rock and roll is so respectable, there must be lots of other such roads, including some equally bizarre ones."  Yeah, one would sure figure so.  My on-line searching sure hasn't turned up examples however. 

There are a million new Pleasant Oak Ways and Crabtree Meadow Lanes going in each year in all the new subdivisions.  How about some Crucifucks or Mötley Crüe or even Beatles Streets?  Here's your chance to show me up.  Yeah, I'm ignorant and out-of-touch.  Are there rock-named streets out there, for bands or records or lyrics? 

Gee, I alphabetize differently than others here on the Web, don't I?  Yes, I alphabetize a list by personal last names, not by their first names.  I'm not so lazy as to ignore that there's a difference between people and bands. 

And you'll be happy to hear that I've gotten around to listing all my vinyl albums over the last year.  That makes it somewhat easier for me to find some stuff (which could be stuck together with other related groups.)  Not that I'll ever get around to posting all that info up here.