Monday, March 17, 2008

Outsideleft: Brian Jonestown Massacre: Idiots, or Harbingers of the Boring Endtimes?

Brian Jonestown Massacre
My Bloody Underground
(‘A’ Records)

Every year about this time, I am in some sort of occupational turmoil, a dull suburbanite manifestation of the global orgy that is spring trickled down to the life of a worker, and my listening habits are the most accurate reflection of this anxiety. My listening habits probably explain me the best – should I ever go back into therapy, I’ll just send the shrink my last.fm account and have him email me their analysis.

Lately, I hate everything in my inbox. It’s all so stupid. It makes me want to find every half-lidded half-wit with a guitar and myspace profile and a publicist, and whip them in the street with a belt for wasting all this opportunity, all their rock ‘n’ roll orgone on making stupid music. I listen to these things and wonder: do you really consider yourself a band? Is this really what you wanted to do? I read something recently where the tastemakers of Brooklyn have abandoned indie rock for organic produce and locally produced cheese as the defining attributes of their caste, and really who can blame them – it has a longer shelf life.

So what do I do but scavenge the past, looking for anything that will hit. In the past week I have been momentarily obsessed with Marc Almond, Yes, The Cars, The Lyres, Van der Graff Generator, Mississippi Fred McDowell and Ravi Shankhar, all possessing a flicker in the dark night only to be snuffed out by my own movements as I approach their warmth, leaving only a whisper of smoke. Who, I rage with fists clenched to the darkness. Who will save me from all this? Don’t make me start reading Beckett again….

Then suddenly I hear an almost metallic whinny on the torched plain, and band of horsemen, ragged and half-eaten by flies come thundering over the rise, bearing a bright pink pennant embroidered with a cartoon fist, middle finger raised. Brian Jonestown Massacre is here to save/destroy us and to spread the good news that everything is as dire as we think it is! Rejoice!

Read more...

No comments:

Post a Comment