lights, camera, aaaa'ction!

Timmy knows that line in the title!

On my way home tonight i listened to Fair Warning by Van Halen.
i don't think i've listened to that album for over 10 years...and it rocked. No other word than ROCKED! It took me back to high school (or before that?)...just one of those classic albums where you find yourself drumming on your steering wheel and screaming along somehow remembering most the lyrics (and the ones you don't you make up lines too that just SOUND like what is being sung). I have always preferred what was called Heavy Metal and Punk to other types of music (old Jazz I have added to that list recently). Not all of those hair bands like Dokken or Quiet Riot (I hate them even if they're funny), but the quality bands...to name a few that I liked/like: Van Halen, Iron Maiden, & Rush. Somehow those bands made my cut, along with the more "traditional" punk bands like Dead Kennedy's, NoMeansNo, Victim's Family, Minutemen, Minor Threat. I even had a stint liking the grateful Dead (yes, you read that right). I'm drawn to a mix of stuff, but I absolutely can't stand hip-hop, and most rap (I'll accept Run DMC, Beasties, early NWA...but not much more). I guess I identified/identify more with the "way" of punk bands and what they sung about - their philosophy or ethic. The energy of the music caught me and pushed my shy introverted self into a place I hadn't seen before - where I saw that although there is a place for love songs, lyrics that had something "controversial" and interesting to say were my preference. Whether that be about "fucked up Ronnie" (by D.O.A) - a song with not so many lines that bashed Ronald Reagan and his politics in the early 80's - to "Humans" (by NoMeansNo) a song with satirical lyrics about how monkeys and humans aren't so far off behaviorally even though humans think we are so much higher evolutionarily.

Punk is funny and biting and at the same time. The lyrics heckled US politics, the downside of over-consumption, the indignities of big corporations, sell-outs, religions and their contradictions, the "needs" of the western world, etc. For the most part, punk lyrics were ABOUT something, and had meaning to learn and gain insight from. (The Descendents even had some songs that weren't about drinking too much coffee or farting!) The 80's were swimming with topics for bands to rise up against....and most bands did...creating a new type of music and energy never seen before. "This band could be your life" is an excellent book outlining some of the influential bands of this time and their stories.

The Minutemen, DK, and Minor Threat are three of my first all time favorites. They have a similarity with early Bob Dylan and other folk singers of the 60's. Punk was the folk music of the 80's. If you read that book, you'll see interviews with band members and they all say they were very influenced by early rock bands and folk singers. Folk gave rise to a more energetic form of political rebellion and commentary in the 80's and I've very grateful that I grew up in that time if only for that reason. The music I was surrounded by in the Bay Area of California was one of the starting places of punk in the US. San Francisco gave rise to Dead Kennedy's, the Avengers, Victim's Family, Social Unrest, the Dicks, Flipper, Vicious Circle, Code of Honor, among others, and in the 90's: Operation Ivy (later Rancid), Primus, Mr. Bungle, ETC.

Even though I hate the times when we have bad presidents and war and injustice on people and the environment, those times give rise to good music and a retreat of apathy and ignorance. People get pissed off, and start writing about what really matters in the world. As you probably can detect from my blog, I try to give a shit. (However, for the record, i haven't heard any good new music since GW was first elected...prove me wrong...?).

On the other hand, I'm not sure how I got to liking Van Halen or Iron Maiden, since they don't sing of very important things, but their music is quite good technically and rhythmically...and appeals to the teenage boy in all of us (and that boy is still inside me...Holding on pretty strong!).