Rapids

Any excuse to listen to a lot of T. Rex. I’ll be over here doing that. I’m aware that I’m most likely the only one who cares about the minute gradiations of the T. Rex sound over time, or the steps Marc Bolan took that were ahead of  his time. Bolan’s problem was that he was ahead of the times but not far enough ahead to get all the credit for it before others caught up and popularized his ideas into the stratosphere. Still, the T. Rex sound is instantly recognizable, and nobody else ever sounded quite like that.

Rape Me

Kurt Cobain: your favorite male feminist and mine. During his short tenure as the voice of his generation Kurt Cobain could not have been a better role model (aside from the whole heroin thing.) Like any good messiah, he denied that he was the voice of anyone, which of course cemented him in that role even more. But he used his platform to speak about his frustration at the deep sexism within the music industry, and all across the board. He hated the machismo and aggression in the underground punk scene he started out in, and soon found that the mainstream industry wasn’t any better. He was an early supporter of the Riot Grrrl movement; in The Punk Singer he gets a shout-out from Kathleen Hanna for being the only friend who believed and helped her after a sexual assault. I remember a few things about the early 90’s and one of them is the lively debate then going on about whether date rape is a legitimate thing or just another example of feminist hysteria. (We’ve since reached a general consensus that it’s most definitely a real thing, and it’s mostly considered pretty much illegal nowadays.) I also recall some hand-wringing and controversy as higher learning institutions started to implement campus anti-sexual assault policies; there was some deep concern that the awkwardness and effort of procuring a partner’s verbal consent would leech all of the fun and spontaneity out of sex. This particular lively debate has cycled back around along with tartan skirts and Doc Martens; we’re still collectively unclear on the concept of consent. All things considered, I would say that 90’s kids are lucky that the voice of their generation was a man who loudly, angrily and publicly proclaimed that rape is a shitty thing that needs to be talked about and took a stand of solidarity with victims and declared himself a proud feminist. Ironically, or perhaps not, he also felt used and violated in his role as a public figure to such a degree that he was unable to go on living. It’s unfortunate that sometimes the best role models are the people least suited to that role.

Ramrod

Let’s celebrate a few wholesome all-American pleasures: cars, arena rock, sax solos, football, the Italian mafia, late night talk shows, denim, HBO, New Jersey. Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band are emblematic of all those things and more. So forget your poverty and crippling depression for a while. Take a load off and do what Working Class Joe’s have done since time immemorial; go out drinking in your car on the weekend. Take the car downtown to go drinking. Go drinking and pick up girls downtown in your car. Cash your paycheck, pick up your baby and go downtown in your car. Drinking. Downtown. On the Weekend. In your car. With your girl. Or something. I have no idea, actually. I think Bruce Springsteen wants you to drink and drive. Nothing more wholesome and All-American than drinking and driving. You should go do that.

Ramble On

Raise a pint to the stupidly nerdly. Led Zeppelin are demigods of cock rock and all that, but their nerdiness is just so endearing, it’s adorable and squee. Their Tolkien references are so self-conscious and off-base; they’re not even good nerds. I understand that if you happen to be Robert Plant, then yes, you could reasonably expect to be picking up chicks in the darkest depths of Mordor, but it’s not canon, Robert, not canon. You just have to trowel those references in where they don’t fit at all, because why, to show that you know how to read? Honestly, though, I’ll take “Middle Earth the Led Zeppelin edition” quite happily; it’s a sexier place than the original.

Ram On

Paul McCartney’s two-minute toss-offs are better than your symphonies. That’s an exaggeration; symphonies are symphonies and Paul McCartney’s are not all that. But two-minute pop songs are a different story. How many hit songs come out that cost millions of dollars to produce and have a credit list to rival a Hollywood blockbuster? And how many of those songs suck so much it makes you wonder if any human beings were involved in their making at all? Then there’s what Paul McCartney comes up with just doodling around alone in his basement. McCartney puts most of the rest of the music industry to shame.

Rainy Day Women #12 & 35

This. Either you get it or you don’t. There’s no particular cosmic secret to it or anything. It’s a just a joke. You’re either in the spirit of it or you’re not. Bob Dylan is divisive like that, and this one of his most intensely love-it-or-hate-it moments. I can definitely understand that if you don’t happen to be a fan of incomprehensible lyrics or people who sing like drunk frogs, Dylan can be excruciatingly annoying. Which also happens to make him appealing to people who enjoy the knowledge that the things they’re into are annoying to others. That may be part of the reason why, in his heyday, his followers dubbed him the voice of his generation. Because the young generation really made it a point to confuse and irritate their elders; it feels so revolutionary and radical when the things you enjoy are closed off to outsiders who just don’t get it, man. But that’s just a common trait of being young and eager to break the apron strings. That’s why there’s been so many annoying subcultures based on annoying things. Bob Dylan, for his part, found the phenomenon of being the voice of anyone but himself extremely annoying, and spent a great deal of time and energy trying to alienate his own fanbase. He didn’t mean for his funny joke song to represent the enmity of generational groups and the cultural disjointment caused by radically changing values. It just happened to.

The Rain Song

The “born in the wrong generation” brand of false nostalgia that some young people subscribe to is stupid; it glosses over all of the ways the world used to be so much worse to live in for so many people. People are surely entitled to feel nostalgic for the times they’ve lived through themselves, but to long for times you only know through other people’s artifacts is disingenuous. With all that being said, however, goddamn would I not have liked to have been alive to see Led Zeppelin in all of their glory! Whatever shit went down in the 1970’s, it would have been worth it. I have seen Robert Plant in concert, and he still has L’Oreal-girl hair, but he’s a lion in winter now. If I had seen the lion at the height of his powers, I would never, ever, miss an opportunity to be an insufferable bore about it at parties.