You're So Serious

You're So Serious:


Ah, the garage rock!  Who among us does not love it?  Even if, in this case, it's actually garage rock with a bit of psychedelia thrown in.  It's a classic combination-- two great tastes (or one great one and one OK one) that taste great together. For those of you who are "lumpers" and not "splitters", as we call 'em in the pathology biz, the fine points of rock music categorization are probably a snooze, but us geeks find them fun and sort of useful.  Admittedly, that's "useful" in that "turning-off-the-ladies-and-causing-their-eyes-to-glaze-over-until-their-patience-runs-out-and-the-irritation-takes-over" way, but also in that inside baseball way.  Shorthand.  Like "fuzzed-out, overdriven R&B revival with odd retro techno touches"

The garage rock, anyway, has one of the deepest pedigrees out there-- It's snotty and unpolished music, though generally not angry, and usually it's loud and sloppy enough that you indeed might want to banish it to whatever outbuilding you had handy.  Having played in several garages in my time, there's something about the smell of trash and gasoline, and the tools and junk and storage, and the way the cacophony bouncing off the concrete surfaces that's pretty darned appealing.  But what made me post this particular song and rant it that I'd been thinking of a quote from Lester Bangs, our quintissential development-arrested, self-destructive slop-rock critic, on the Troggs' "Wild Thing", one of the cornerstones of garage rock.   From his essay "James Taylor Marked for Death", 1971:

"It's that kind of a song, 'cause it's about you when you had a good time and went mad for real and reared for release 'cause you were too young and naive to know any better. .... if kids are really too smart and cool to just loon about anymore, if first day of summer means rolling one after another from new lid and plopping hour on hour in front of television or record player instead of tearing into the street and hunting out buddies and leaping and yupping till at least some of the scholastic poison accumulating like belladonna ever since September is plain crazied out of your soul, if all of that's a pipe dream and I'm just an old fart now-- cranking out complaints about the New Generation regular as TB spittle-- if all that's true, then THE LESSON OF "WILD THING" WAS LOST ON ALL YOU STUPID #%$@^-ERS sometime between the rise of Cream and the fall of the Stooges, and rock n' roll may turn into a chamber art yet or at the very least a system of Environments."

So there!

Note: As summer's getting short and the pile of "hit rekkids" is undiminished, next week we start two-a-days, so take heart, have patience, get some rest and drink plenty of fluids.