Home Taping Is A Crime

I’m About To Lose Control…..

On the one hand, much of the music of the American New Wave of the late 1970’s was an attempt to infuse rock music with a mythic-poetic quality, a contemporary equivalent to the Symbolism of the 19th Century, in which the artist’s life was lived through their work to the extent that their very being became itself a lived poem, and in turn took on the quality of legend. Even your very name could be the subject of artistic transmutation.

On the other hand, you had The Knack. Formed in Los Angeles in 1978, the band were one of the most fascinating and controversial groups of the late Seventies. Like so much of the cultural output of the era, their work was equally capable of repulsing both conservatives and liberals, with its seemingly relentless fixation with the minutiae of incipient sexual intercourse.



In many ways, The Knack’s songs are some of the most compelling ever recorded, at their best working themselves up into a tumescent lather, as they flip back and forth through the attraction/repulsion dynamic of those first trepidatious fumblings of adolescent sexual discovery. Forever the nerd, singer Doug Fieger’s lyrics stammer like a schizoid masterbatory monologue as he runs through the potential fleshy joys and painful rejections to be encountered as he lasciviously circles his target.



With his toad sweat covered brow, glove-puppet eyes and flaring Kenneth Williams nostrils, Fieger would be unbearable were it not for the fact that The Knack were one of the most compulsive riff-machines of the era. Pinned down by the clinical drumming of Bruce Gary, the band’s timing is immaculate, opening and filling space with some of the tightest, sparest playing conceivable. It’s one of the paradoxes of The Knack that though their whole oeuvre encompassed the subject of frustration and denial, their music was supremely satisfying, its surplus libido tickling the listener with endless stutters and tics. Even their solos are punctually pleasing, being lyrical and expressive, but never lasting a note longer than they should do.



That said, there was always something faintly obscene about The Knack, and America’s moral majority, with its impeccable flair for uncovering the decadent, was soon on the trail. The Knack were literally persecuted. Initially this merely concerned their alleged over-similarity to The Beatles (eh?), but when it began to be noted that the band were considerably older than the teenage girls they lyrically pursued, a full-blown "Knuke The Knack" campaign followed in earnest.

Riven by internal tensions of their own, after two great albums the band recorded the apologetic "Round Trip" in 1981 and disbanded. Inexcusably brilliant, it goes without saying that we shall never see their like again.

The Luck Of The Draw

"The neglect of silent evidence is endemic to the way we study comparative talent, particularly in activities that are plagued with winner-take-all attributes. We may enjoy what we see, but there is no point reading too much into success stories because we do not see the full picture.

The consequence of the superstar dynamic is that what we call "literary heritage" or "literary treasures" is a minute proportion of what has been produced cumulatively. This is the first point. How it invalidates the identification of talent can be derived immediately from it: say you attribute the success of the 19th century novelist Honoré De Balzac to his superior "realism", "insights", "sensitivity", "treatment of characters", "ability to keep the reader riveted", and so on. These may be deemed "superior" qualities that lead to superior perfomance if, and only if, those who lack what we call talent also lack these qualities. But what if there are dozens of comparable literary masterpieces that happened to perish? And, following my logic, if there are indeed many perished manuscripts with similar attributes, then I regret to say, your idol Balzac was just the beneficiary of disproportionate luck compared to his peers. Furthermore, you may be committing an injustice to others by favouring him."

Nassim Nicholas Taleb - "The Black Swan"

Mind Over Matter

Here's something else that you could find in the Seventies that is forbidden nowadays: an open minded documentary on the paranormal and its relationship to mainstream science, featuring respected scientists, and broadcast during peak time.

Nowadays this kind of subject matter is basically forbidden on the tamely materialist BBC. The likes of Channel 4 will occasionally investigate it, but only to pooh-pooh it with a familiar array of sceptics.

And so what appeared at the time to be a new frontier of knowledge has effectively been closed off, and we're stuck with materialism whether it offers any answers or not.

Not that this matters in the long run, as one of the major casualties of the perilous economic decline of the Western world will be scientific progress itself. What we don't know now, we will never know, as the capital to hollow out more and more Swiss mountains to chase ever more elusive phantom particles simply won't be available.

Je Suis Le Grande Zombie

A riot is the language of the unheard.

- Martin Luther King

Must be the devil must be the devil mus is mus is mus is

mus is be the devil, 

cain be Rockefeller

 caint be him, no lawd

aint be Dupont, no lawd, cain be, no lawd

- Amiri Baraka 'Dope'

Top Ten Lessons For Surviving a Zombie Attack

1. Organize before they rise!

Max Brooks Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection From The Living Dead

 

I always thought of the zombies as being about revolution, one generation consuming the next.

- George A. Romero