Culture Clash

I need someone to check something for me: Joe Strummer's grave. Because I am fairly certain that Joe is spinning like a Philipino sweatshop loom right now.

If you don't know what I'm referring to, please take a good look at the photo, at the top of this posting. That's Mick Jones, alright. But it's the "Mick Jones" Joe was referring to in "Complete Control" as "You're My Guitar Hero!" The Mick Jones who wrote "Train In Vain." The Mick Jones of the Clash. The Yahoolagins at Yahoo! have put his photo to accompany the story about Foreigner. That Mick Jones is the Mick Jones of, really, the worst rock and roll band of their era. Foreigner got everything wrong about rock music. Too loud. Too leaden. No irony. Did not "roll" [or as the Angel Apologist would say, "swing."] No sense of humor. In short, no compelling reason to listen to these guys.

Two points: you can tell a lot about the quality of popular music in an era by looking at who was popular. When the era includes Yes, Toto, Foreigner and Rush as top selling acts, you can safely say that the era was bereft.

The second point. The Clash often had the same failings that Foreigner did. But they also had Joe Strummer, whose single-mindedness [he was a good deal older than most of the punks] redeemed the fact that they were often too preachy by half. And usually they swung, and could be very funny [see, for example, "Rudy Can't Fail."]

So, Joe, wherever you are, try to rest easy knowing that the rest of us, up here and not in heaven, still believe in you.

Hell to the Yeah

Once again, the Japanese are trend-setters. And this - in Time magazine of all places. What would Henry Luce say to this?

Robot Wars!

“You’re opening the doors for everything else. You got instant replay, next year it’ll be something else. They’re going to have robots playing the game one day, you watch.”—Angels OF Torii Hunter, on reports that MLB will start using instant replay to make difficult home run calls.

See also this unnerving development.

Or worse yet, this.

Well, Andy Kaufman tried to warn us of this evil way back in the 1980s, an era that was blissfully free of robot-inspired paranoia.

So, Robots were to be feared in the 1950s, welcomed in the 1960s, feared in the 1970s, welcomed in the 1980s, feared and respected in the 1990s and ... slept with now? It's a logical progression.

You Got Rickrolled

As I have stated before, the Internet is the playground of the obsessive. And this has never been more plainly demonstrated than as in this example [I know what you're thinking: why couldn't it have been the Red Sox? Probably because their fans are too dim to pull off such a witty stunt.] God bless Rick Astley for, say, not missing the point. And he correctly pointed it out that this was a bit "spooky" and demonstrated that this was a "brilliant" use of the Internet.

Something both spooky and brilliant? Yes, though seemingly inconsistent, he is correct. Generally, we Americans like to denigrate things that annoy us. We would say that it is "idiotic" and "harassing." We would say that it is "pathetic" and "intrusive." But as has been demonstrated so many times before, the Brits are a superior people.

Where have I been lately? Three really cool events. The Kids in the Hall show at the Grove in Anaheim [where I did not get my head crushed, sadly.] Aimee Mann last Friday night at the House of Blues [again, in that cultural mecca, Anaheim. I got to see the uncomfortably skinny Ms. Mann walk around Downtown Disney before the show with her friends, and I have the blurry cell phone pix to prove it, should I ever learn how to download them.] And, on Saturday, I saw the dreadfully slow-paced "The Hunger" at the Hollywood Forever cemetery, along with several hundred live friends and many more dead celebrities. So, yes, I'm getting out.

What happened to the Lakers last night? They're in the deep stuff now. Down 3-1 ... but, hey, if the Red Sox can do it, then surely the Lakers can ... I would put their odds at around 10% at this point. Let's see what the Zen master can do.

While I have your attention, I would just like to point out that 91 year old Walter Cronkite is "keeping company" with Carly Simon's [older] sister, Joanna. Who, though 68 years old, is 33 years his junior. Rickrolled, indeed.

We Don't Have Diddley

Yesterday, Bo Diddley died at age 79.

In a world where we grieve the passing of people who are famous for either having little or no talent, we are faced with the loss of a giant. A pioneer. A force of nature.

Besides coming up with the oft-imitated but rarely duplicated Bo Diddley beat, he created or popularized so many other iconic elements. The audacious square guitar. The ever-present hat [this photo is a rare pre-hat shot]. The self-referential lyrics. He seemingly invented himself and then mythologized himself.

And he pulled it off.

We live in this strange age where the architects of the great fabric of rock and roll have either died way too young, or are seemingly immortal. Well, I suppose this proves that they are indeed mortal.

I for one am glad to have lived in the time of Bo. The time of Jerry Lee, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, the Everly Brothers. The founders, the creators, the architects. I always hold these people in higher esteem than the ones who came later. As much as I love the Byrds, the Boxtops and the Kinks, the raw energy and the electricity of the pioneers of rock and roll is the real deal. God bless Bo Diddley.