Technology is bringing it all home to me

Unlike my reader Ken, I never had the opportunity to see my heroes live. I read up on Led Zep religiously in the rock mags of the era. I can't really recall what those were, although the name Lester Bangs and something called Creem come to mind.

Fast forward from my teens to my seeyalaters, and now you can pretty much dial up any concert experience you might have missed on the first go-round.

Like Freddie Mercury tying your mother down.

I love watching the old pre-rock shit, like Sister Rosetta Sharp.


But nothing brings it back home like this.


All the best for the twenties, Ken.

Twilight of the rock and roll Gods

It can't be much longer before the wave of whatever it is that just took down Weinstein is going to start nibbling away at the legacies of our rock and roll icons.

Ian Dury had a hit with "sex and drugs and rock and roll" back in the day.

Sex and drugs and rock and roll.

The drugs were ubiquitous and so was the sex, but here's the pivotal question; how "consensual" was the sex?

All these rock icons who boast of having had thousands of women may now be held to account.

I was an avid reader of Lester Bangs. Remember him? His reportage focused on sexual impropriety as much as it focused on music. Of course, back in the day, it wasn't "impropriety," it was liberation and letting it all hang out. And it was all good, wasn't it?

Sure it was! It's highly ironic that the high priest of licentiousness, Hugh Hefner, passed away almost without comment just before the Weinstein scandal broke. How does Hugh get a pass while Weinstein gets crucified? Weren't they all part of the same fame game?

As long as society worships fame and money and power, young people who crave fame will do whatever they can to ingratiate themselves with money and power.

Say what you will about Weinstein, but he was playing the game the way it's always been played. To pretend shock and dismay at the revelations coming out today is beyond disingenuous. Insofar as political correctitude is indeed a force, we'll be seeing a lot of careers crumble in the months ahead.

Wave bye-bye to your rock and roll icons...

Personality crisis

It was a late autumn afternoon in Guelph sometime in the mid 70's. The New York Dolls had just come out with an album that, I recall to this day, was pegged by one of the top rock & roll writers as a collision between the Rolling Stones and a semi-truck. I think it might have been Lester Bangs, but I'm not sure.

Anyway, I was so exquisitely drug-addled on that autumn afternoon that I decided, then and there, that I was heading to New York City to make my mark, come what may.

I was off to New York City!

Stood in front of my house out there on Hwy 86 with my thumb out and a knapsack slung over my shoulder.

A couple hours later I'd made it as far as the corner of Hanlon Expressway and College Ave. The drugs were wearing off. It was dark by now. Cold too, and rapidly getting colder.

Soon I was cold sober, ten miles from my house but still 500 miles from New York City.

That's when I remembered that my pal Higgins lived just a couple of blocks from that intersection.

Long story short, after I got cold enough, I made the fateful decision to walk a couple of blocks instead of hitch-hiking my way to NYC, unlike the protagonist in a famous Lou Reed song.

Higgins' place was warm! I pulled the forty pounder of CC out of that knapsack and me and Higgins made a night of it.

So if you're wondering why I never made it big in the NYC underground music scene, blame Higgins.