The Fickle Value of Music, Dirty Wishes, and Dreams of Summer

The Fickle Value of Music

Before I begin my usual bastard musings, the dawn of the "video clips on my blog era" commences with a music video from one of my new favorite bands, the Silversun Pickups. The song is called "Lazy Eye". I saw them last week on Subterranean and my pants began to stir. I bought their CD on Tuesday and my music pants begin to shift significantly. Finally, I went to see them at the best little indie music shithole in Oklahoma City, the Conservatory, and my music pants went full on crazy crazy. A swiftly moving affair? Yes. But it is certainly one with a little more than one night stand potential.

This little up and coming band from Los Angeles stands in stark super duper contrast to another Los Angeles band I saw in front of thousands a few days ago--the Red Hot Chili Peppers. While they are certainly a band with unquestioned instrumental talent and a relatively impressive catalog, they proved this past week that they aren't what they used to be--a balls to the wall, thrill ride of intensity. Instead, they are a band that can occasionally look the part but that you can tell are just trying to do enough so that they can get on their plane and get the hell out of town.

In fact, the show at times was downright ugly due to the wedge driven between the band and the audience who had shown up to the rescheduled show after the first one had been cancelled due to inclement weather. The original opening act were the venerable newcomers, Gnarls Barkley. Due to the re-scheduled show, the Peppers scraped the proverbial bottom of the spooge jar to unearth some douchebag, methed-out white rapper named Mickey Avalon. When the cum stain came out on stage with two scantily-clad faux strippers, he offended the entire audience less with his bad language and more with his unforgivable lack of talent and rained down an EXTREMELY uncomfortable chorus of boos. There's a reason that there have been only two and a half successful white rap acts (House of Pain counts as half, I think). So if you're going to be bold enough to jump into that booby trap of a genre, you better have something--anything. And this guy didn't. And the crowd who had paid as much as sixty bucks for the CHEAPEST seats in the house seemed most appalled at the fact that their "heroes" who they had waited to see for so long, whose taste and ability they respected, were attempting to pass this shithead off as an acceptable opener. "Can a band we love this much actually have the fucking NERVE to LIKE something as SHITTY as this?" This seemed tantamount to a friend dating your mother and then cheating on her with a tranny he found downtown.

So the Chili Peppers felt equally obligated to defend their choice--which was essentially a defense of their taste--when legendary guitar badass John Frusciante decided to take a break in the midst of their already uninspired set to lecture the crowd on the way they treated Mickey Avalon and took it step further when he told the crowd that they would be "bragging five years from now that they had seen him when he got big". Frusciante, a hero to many in the crowd including me--a casual Peppers fan--then got his share of boos. So despite the fact that the Chili Peppers acted like professionals and played a full if somewhat average-length set to overwhelmingly positive response, Anthony Kiedis eventually got his revenge. Kiedis walked off the stage two songs into the encore to the obvious surprise of his bandmates who played an impromptu instrumental set while seemingly awaiting a possible return that never came. But Kiedis' real death blow on the crowd? The expected performance of their seminal classic "Under the Bridge" NEVER came.

Yep, that's right. The Red Hot Fucking Chili Peppers DID NOT play "Under the Bridge". That would be like the Stones forgoing "Start Me Up" or Vanilla Ice not having the time to fit in "Ice, Ice Baby". Just as the Silversun Pickups had driven my pants into a frenzy, the Chili Peppers found a way to take a baseball bat to my musically sensitive pant area. And it cost me sixty bucks--at least when I get around to paying Dara. The Silversun Pickups? The best ten bucks I've spent in a long, long time. Just like the variations you'll find in the quality of a lap dance from stripper to stripper, music's bang for the buck is a hard thing to predict.

Dirty Wishes

Many of my longtime readers will remember one of my favorite asshole giants of my love history, Dumbshit King of Kings Justin. Justin was the guy that my ex for all intents and purposes fell for right near the end of our super doomed relationship. Justin is a United States Marine and I remember hating him so much that I actually fantasized about him being called to duty in Iraq or Afghanistan (or maybe even both) during that time. I've never admitted to feeling this way until recently and for the most part I've told friends that I felt guilty about it. Well I found out last week that Justin IS in fact being shipped off to Iraq next month.

So am I now racked with guilt or a sense that I've somehow willed this ill fate upon him? Not one bit. And I think I'm disturbed by the fact that I'm not at all disturbed by this. I suppose that makes me a huge cock and yet try as I might, I can't bring myself to feel any sympathy for him, for my ex who loves him, or anyone else who might think he's a hell of a great guy. Life's roles, I've learned, are not black and white. If it's true that all criminals aren't bad guys, then it can't be true that all heroes (like the vast majority of our solidiers) are great people either. I don't wish death on Justin just as I really don't wish it upon anyone. But the same cocksucker who liked to act like he was fucked up and thus actually deep because he had no qualms about putting himself in danger has sewn these seeds all by himself. When you join the military, your job may very well be to eventually fight (as every generation of military men in my family will attest). Hey, this assignment fits with his entire desired profile of being the distant, psychologically-challenged miscreant he purports himself to be. Now is his chance to shine. Good luck to him. I guess. I don't know. I suppose the worst thing that could happen would for him to somehow become a martyr. In the little feeble triangle that briefly existed between my ex, him, and myself, I have always comforted myself with the fact that I was the better man. I treated him as a friend, remained faithful to my ex despite her disrespectful dalliances with him, and took the high ground when he attempted to engage me in a physical confrontation. That history doesn't change just because he carries a gun into the crazy conflict across the sea, doing what he's been trained and paid to do for years in a role he's had no issue milking for all its worth up to this point. Enjoy the desert, tough guy.

Dreams of Summer

Now that I'm going to hell according to the Gospel of Dick Cheney, I'm looking even more forward so very, very hard to the summer. For I am joining generations of dirty hippies and spoiled college students in the tradition of the summer mega-music festival. Alas my friends, your Rev. Rob is going to Bonnaroo or as I like to refer to it--"Bonna-fucking-roo!"

As a charter member of the pretentious indie-music snob Branch Davidian sect, this lineup will require the giantest of giant boxes of tissues if you catch my pervy music metaphor drift. The chance to see a few of my top ten-ers like Wilco, the White Stripes, the Decemberists, and the Hold Steady all in one dirty, pot-rank place in the span of four days is somewhat inspiring for a horny for goodness disciple like me.

Almost as great as the music itself is the adventure in all this. When I was in college and in my early twenties, I never did the crazy-ass spring breaking, gratuitous sexual activities with nineteen year old co-eds, drug hazing, booze lusting, wet t-shirt spectating, regret producing...thing. Ya know? Well while I don't think this will be quite that hard core, the idea of a road trip and camping and possible experimentation of various chemical and physical levels all while boosting my music cred to a power of at least four gives me something absolutely greatastic to look forward to this June.

And one of the parts of the trip I'm most looking forward to is going on this crazy little pilgrimmage with my friend, Laura. Laura is a girl I've slowly gotten to know over the last couple of years. She cuts my hair, occasionally serves me a beer, and warms my little Puerto heart with how badass she inherently is. And yes everyone, Laura is superhot and could destroy all of your pants in less than ten seconds (maybe five on a windy day), but Laura and I are just good friends and it is my sincere hope that this trip is great enough to make us potentially great friends. Laura rocks my fucking ass off and now I've done enough bragging about her to satisfy her since she keeps asking me to talk about her and stuff. Did I say she was hot? Laura said I had to mention that at least three times, so I'm just making sure.

So yeah, the summer is filled with promise--a promise I fully intend to keep. And no, I won't bring any of you back an overpriced concert t-shirt. I fully intend to use my money wisely in the hopes of finding a way to finagle some sex. I am nothing if not thrifty.

A Final Note

I went into a tobacco shop the other day called "Ziggyz" that looks like a head shop but is the only close place I could buy Dunhills. Inside, I walked past walls of soft-core porn, various bongs, and an old Asian family who had no issues with having an all out verbal confrontation in front of me. The man didn't remotely pause while ringing me up all while cussing (you could just tell) to a woman old enough to be his grandmother who was laid out on a couch. After raping me on the cost, I was happy to get out of there all while thanking God that weird-shit places like this exist in my city. The more diversity in your crazy, the more possibilities exist. My brother may live in New York, but I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything.

However, the other day my brother told me how he was sorry he had cut one of our phone conversations short since he was about to lay a hot Polish cello player who was growing impatient with his brotherly conversation. I stand corrected. Point to New York.

Album of the Week: "The Search"

Artist: Son Volt

Album Highlights: "The Picture", "Circadian Rhythm", "Adrenaline and Heresy", "Methamphetamine", "Highways and Cigarettes"

Song of the Day: "The Past is a Grotesque Animal"

Artist: Of Montreal

Album: "Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?"

Lyric of Possible Relevance:

"Let's just have some fun

Let's tear the shit apart

Let's tear the fucking house apart

Let's tear our fucking bodies apart,

Let's just have some fun

Somehow you've red-rovered the Gestapo circling my heart

And nothing can defeat you."