Together through life

The New Bob Dylan album “Together Through Life” is a swirling descent into the shit -coated throne that proclaims to be today’s Rock and Roll. Bob Dylan is first and foremost a folk rock musician, but this album is a burlesque nightmare, sleazy and degenerate with a cackling accordion beating us all into submission, and, most importantly, far, far away. Bob Dylan is reckless as always, retching into the microphone off key about bleak relationships and his wife’s hometown, Hell.  Really, the reason this album is so good is because it has multiple levels of interpretation and so many eyebrow-raising moments.  At first I thought a frumpy old woman in a moomoo sitting outside of a café would listen to this album, but quickly this jolly and hopeful but kind of lonely and overweight dreamer turned into an alcoholic chain smoker waiting for someone to put her out of her misery.  The first listen makes you feel like Bob Dylan just wants to retire on a hawiian island because of all the quivering mandolins or he is hinting at Paris with the over use of accordion sounds. But after a while it starts to sink in that there is no hope- “Beyond here lies nothin.”

            Let’s face it, Bob Dylan has tricked is into listening to something completely counterintuitive and we have no choice but to reckon him a genius. He probably hopes that everyone will leave him alone after this one but that is never going to happen; it seems as if people will continue to respect the man and give him 5 stars as long as he produces, no matter what he egests.

 

 

Concert review number 1

I went to see the father of my friend play with his country band at the highway 99 blues bar tonight.  Highway 99 is across from the Aquarium and seated next to an antique shop.  It lies beneath the foothills of Seattle, a short distance from the ferry terminal; if it weren’t for the large, seemingly displaced, and dimly lit sign a person would probably walk down the street (most likely the other side since that is where all the water and the tourist action is happening) passing by without acknowledging it.  Although it was a Wednesday night and we were witnessing a rarely known band playing a style unusual to the venue, it is probably the Highway 99’s location that lured an intimate crowd of 12 into a space that could easily facilitate 200.

            The 5 man band mostly played covers from the late 50s to the early 60s- the Beatles, The Birds, Elvis Presley, Santo & Johnny- most a little too up tempo for my taste but nonetheless technically flawless; the beat of the music cranked the dance-ability on high although nobody was dancing on the tempting, empty linoleum floor, probably tended to by the bar tender who didn’t wash her hands. Everyone, aged 50 plus (except maybe for the long haired bassist who should have been playing tool covers), was dressed in black.  The lead singer wore a black blazer over his black shirt and sweat profusely because of it.  My very thoughtful boyfriend astutely observed while sipping on a can of cheap beer, “you know when old people sweat, and they get a little tired… well they don’t look very good at all”. This remark brought me back to the meat market gym at school where sweating was sexy for all the young people. I pushed that nightmare out as fast as I could and focused again on the middle aged sweating man singing “and then he kissed me” and dripping all over his electro acoustic guitar. This lead singer, Dennis, just had to crack a joke or make kisses into the microphone after every song. As I sat and listened I half dreaded half waited with sick pleasure for the next lame comment.  I should have kept track but they must have taken up at least half of the show.  He would babble on about how they pronounce repertoire, say things like “you guys are lucky, we only play this song once every gig”, and when they played a Honky Tonk song, he declared “you are now entering Oklahoma, you are no longer in Seattle” in a semi mystical voice. During a song I think he winked at me.  He and the electric guitar player would do half assed old man Elvis moves also but that’s “showbiz” I guess. This band also had a steel guitar player, who showed up an hour late, but tardiness was only a minor offense after hearing Santo & Johnny’s Sleepwalk.  The man who looked like the mafia mayor of Las Vegas in a cowboy hat and glasses could have made an ogre weep with his steel guitar. I think I was the most impressed by the drummer’s astounding ability to sing and play at the same time (and to look off into space whenever Dennis would start talking in between songs).  People just don’t seem to do that anymore.  In fact, I liked the distribution of singers in this band- the drummer, Dennis, and the electric guitar player. Having so many singers made up for Dennis’ ego issues.

            I’d like to see what kind of crowd really goes to these shows.  They usually play every week at the red hen on Thursdays, which is a Country and Western bar suitable for a band like that. And the people dance there, too. I can imagine these guys have a pretty decent following, for they are not just a cover band, but they have some “pretty good originals that are worth hearing”, or so the drummer says.

Let's talk about Bob Dylan tomorrow.

This is in two parts, roughly 15-20 minutes

summary rockin' in time

Rockin’ in time provides an analysis of the history of Rock and Roll in American and Britain spanning the birth of the blues until 2004 through five main lenses.  The first is the recognition that the origins of Rock and Roll spring from African American (essentially, African) music, and the path that rock and roll has taken in its development reflects the racial inequalities that African Americans had to endure throughout the 20^th century. He asserts that “throughout the last 5 decades rock music has helped integrate white and black America” x.   Rock and Roll, the child of the blues, for instance, brought to life by pioneers like Little Richard and Chuck Berry, integrated black and white kids in some of the most segregated places in the South, promising a brighter future.  However, parents and government officials, fearing that their daughters would be corrupted by African American men, did everything in their power to block white reception of black music, even going so far as to manufacture rock and roll by white people.  Later, in the late 50s and early 60s, African Americans were trained and molded physically by Mo-Town producers to be presentable to a white audience. Mo-Town reached its prime because of talent, but also because many people worked to mold the African American singers from the streets into people appropriate for “the white house or buckingham palace”, two places dominated by white men (and the queen); they worked toward integration in favour of white attitudes. This changed, however, with soul in the mid-60s, where women “began wearing natural hairdos” and “newfound African American consciousness” was found, and hiphop in the late 70s (173). Both were strident movements responding to racial inequalities despite the promises that civil rights legislation failed to fulfill. Both movements brought attention to white people and brought some justice to African Americans wanting equality.  The second factor that Szatsmary considers is the baby boom generation and its impact on rock and roll. He says, “a dramatic population growth during the post war era provided the audience for an African American inspired rock n roll”.  This audience started creating rock & roll, starting with Sun records’ own Elvis Presley, who sang about the things that teens at the time were interested in. As the teenage baby boomers grew they became interested in the politics that Bob Dylan and Joan Baez had to offer, and with the Vietnam War and the stifling patriarchy of the 50s, the hippie generation developed, professing free love and freedom of mind expansion, often through the medium of psychedelic music.  After the incident at Kent State in December of 1969 (a bunch of people were shot), the baby boomers became disillusioned with politics and turned inward with smooth sounds, at first, and later the most superficial of all sounds, disco.  From there a new generation of counter culturists, the punks first, and then the grunge movement, sprung out of hate for the decidedly apolitical and conservative baby boomers.  His third theme is the rollercoaster economic situation which much has reflected.  During good times in the USA, post ww2, rock could flourish. He juxtaposes America’s good situation at the end of WW2 with the dire straits that England had to endure as he looks at the musical developments and exchanged between the two countries. During bad times in the USA, namely the 80s, music like industrial and grunge began to develop, emanating a bleak and hopeless tune. The fourth idea he delves into is the developing technology throughout the 20^th c that shaped rock n roll, i.e., electric quitars in the 40s, and later synthesizers, which became particularly popular in the 80s with artists like Gary Numan. His 5^th and final point of interest is that the increasing popularity of rock and roll turned into an industry.  The image of a band determined its audience, and the television shows which featured that band determined the success.  Such concerns killed Elvis and gave the Beatles and the Stones their incredible fame.  The dawning of MTV made Michael Jackson and Madonna into superstars, and it took 80s electro rapidly to new exposure.

            I’ve learned from this book that I can learn a lot about a time period just by knowing the year, listening to the sound and lyrics of music and paying attention to the group being represented by the artist/s. For instance, Aretha Franklin’s RESPECT is all about African Americans needing respect from everyone in the 60s for who they really are, T.Rex’s danceable sounds yet primarily meaningless lyrics reflect glam rock’s embodiment of the decadence and apolitical nature of the 70s as defined by the baby boomers, Throbbing Gristle’s dissonant, hardly musical machine sounds depict  society’s decay in the 80s, and house music’s ambient, repetitive, entrancing beat signifies the escapism that British youths sought when unemployment was up to nearly 8 percent in the early 90s.  Music is sometimes portrayed as nebulous, on the side of the Dionysian intoxication and chaos, but this book puts some real sense and context into music’s untamed madness for me not just in terms of obvious lyrics but also in the sounds produced. Music is the atmosphere surrounding every moment.  So, what can be said about this generation’s music? I don’t even know what the hell is going on because the only movement I can attribute to this generation is indie, and that is so incredibly broad and certainly the bands I’ve heard that are indie don’t speak to me as a living 22 year old.  The answer, I believe, lies in the diversity of the internet.  We are embarking on a new era of music that probably cannot really be defined until a group of people really explore and prioritize everything available on the internet.  Without regulations and access to garage band, we as listeners and creators are exposed to and can expose others to all types of new music for little or no money.  We can create virtually anything we want and get it out to  a large audience by friending a million people on myspace and publicizing our blogs.  A new chapter for this book should be, “rise to stardom via the internet/myspace”. here are a few such stars that you may have heard of, but these are also people who have been signed to major labels and/or featured as reality tv super starts since their debuts on myspace and message boards.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1sHAX2F4PE

Either you know or you hope that these musicians do not accurately represent internet musicians. This is true, and the only reason we know about these people is because major record labels have picked them up and publicized them as rising stars from the uncharted lala land of the internet through magazines, interviews, youtube videos, shameless reruns on mtv, and internet ads. Although it is certain that these stars are only a tiny fraction of self publishing on the web, it is clear also that there is a large percentage of music unaccounted for that some community, be it probably small, is listening to.  There is probably no single or collective of musicians that can unify my generation’s tastes. But all the bands popping up on the internet make me think about all the music that was never discovered before technology allowed distribution and even studio quality creation that bypasses major record labels.

 

         It is also interesting that white people, Americans and British people alike, have been impressed with African American music and have progressed musically with a large debt to African American innovations.  For instance, the Rolling Stones were obsessed with blues music in England, “not knowing what it meant, just that it was beautiful”, and from there played blues covers which eventually, with the help of managers and record executives, turned into original songs heavily influenced by the blues. (122)  With marketing and a great sound, they were able to reach the top in England and near the top in the United States.  This is one of many examples throughout the history of Rock n Roll.  It is completely justified to assert that music helped in great strides to integrate America.  But it is also true that African Americans have been cheated out of success because of racism and a sense of superiority on behalf of white people in the past.  It seems as if the white musicians appropriating African American styles were not involved in this racism, surely, but that the people marketing music to the public were the perpetrators. Have these appropriations and restrictions been prevalent recently?

zines chapter 4-5 and comments

            In chapter 4, entitled Work, describes the struggle, and most importantly, the alienation that the zinester (and all people who are not in the top percentage of the wealthy) experiences in the work place because s/he cannot easily associate the production and the product, and s/he is forced to relinquish all control to the company.  They do not understand being forced by their bosses to fool themselves into caring about glaringly meaningless work, and they must cope with their displaced circumstances somehow.   Zinesters vent through their zines about the meaningless of work, the power structure and the ridiculousness of the instability they must endure.  They sabotage their work by stealing supplies and using copy machines to create the zines that destroy their company in the written form. Duncombe writes, “sabotage is about psychic rather than material victories” (81) These people don’t expect to overthrow the company and start anew, as the hope of that is beyond reality, but rather they achieve satisfaction by breaking things and alienating the people around them by being unpleasant and removed; by removing themselves “they stake out as other, not part of the system” (82).   But of course, by being an other, the zinester is connected with the system.  Without it, the zinester wouldn’t be an other. 

            Some zinesters bypass the American puritanical dream of achievement, climbing up endless ladders, and realistically giving up authority over their work by being slackers. They “reject society before it rejects [them].  They do not engage in the revolution of acting because that seems to have proven futile, so they refuse to participate.  They have no need for a place in society and they don’t need to contribute.  Of course, not having a job, or working very little at one requires support from someone who does work hard.  Thus their reliance upond the system they are against is clear yet again.  However, slackers don’t consume much, and their mission in being slackers is the get by without needing all the excessive possessions that working for the system could possibly provide them. How is zine production, a difficult and time consuming task, appeal at all to the slackers?  Duncombe provides us a nugges of Marxist wisdom to understand the slacker’s mindset. (and this is not the first time) Marx says that the problem is that the worker is alienated from the product.  Duncombe asserts that Zines are a way for people to seize full control of a project and independently determine it from start to finish.  This outlet is no more than a coping mechanism, however, but the zinester can be proud of both the process and the product, a feeling that seldom reaches a person in the workplace.

  I wonder how satisfying it is to break things and be unpleasant while knowing that in the end that company will still be running.  I’ve been thinking a lot about the work force, from that delusional distance which is actually right at my doorstep. I’ve decided that my dream job is to start my own nonprofit.  Maybe the solution for these alienated individuals is to work with a nonprofit that fits their interests. Perhaps knowing that at least part of your work is going to be funneled into something worthwhile would alleviate alienation.  You don’t make a lot of money, but no one is sucking your soul through your nose, either.

            Duncombe seems to emphasize that any and all zinesters, as part of a counter culture, are still dependent upon the ideas from which they wish to break away .  But perhaps the slackers are on to something. Duncombe mentions one slacker, Dishwasher Pete, who, of course, must sleep on his system abiding friend’s floor in order to not be homeless, thus illustrating the slacker’s dependence on those who don’t slack.  However, Dishwasher Pete writes about all the inexpensive activities like watching turtles and taking walks that he enjoys, thus making due with the little money that he has.  He is an active individual who writes a zine and uses his time for constructive activities.  His choice is to drop out of the constantly churning system but to work just enough to get by instead of working from within and actively trying to incite change.  This reality is disheartening, as it seems most people have denounced idealism and filled its void with a nihilistic attitude.  However, anyone developing during a republican administration might be able to understand ingrained hopelessness.  All he asks is to get paid to create from start to finish so that he can conceive of the product’s function.  By participating in activities that don't require spending too much money, and by creating his own fun, Dishwasher Pete has severed at least a portion of his ties with the the workforce.

   Chapter 5 discusses the zinester’s desire to “become the entertainer of myself”, that is, to fashion a connection with a product,as well as to independently produce eventual consumption through the world of zines.  “In brief, we are alienated from what we consume.  This is the key to understanding the zine world’s take on consumerism, for what zinesters are protesting-as they do also with respect to identity, community, and work- is alienation.  And what they are trying to do- consciously or not- is to reforge the links between themselves and the world they buy.” (107) The desire to develop an intimate relationship with an already manufactured product dates all the way back to the first science fiction fanzine distributed in 1926 by Hugo Gersback.  He wrote science fiction stories, published readers’ letters with their addresses attached and debates, sparking communication from reader to reader, and eventually production from the reader’s end. Today zines encourage a similar intersection between reader and writer, and certain zines, like music issues, attempt to establish a close relationship with the music itself through critique, interviews, personal stories, and recreation.  Some zinesters use this method with celebrities, using humour as a way to bring commercial success down to the level of the consumer. By taking a product, making it less “special”, and contributing to recreating the product, the consumer “bridges the gap” between him/herself and the manufactured object.

            Some people do not wish to participate in the world of consumption at all, so they reject it; they buy thrift and illustrate in their zines the horrors of sweatshops and the products which are born of that horror.  Instead of consuming, they create. They Do It Themselves.  Duncombe understands that “doing it yourself is once again a critique of the dominant mode of passive consumer culture” but it is also “something far more important: the active creation of an alternative culture.” (117)  DIY stems from the early punk days, when kids rejected commercial rock and decided to make their own bands, regardless of their skills. They took the specialization and professionalism out of music so that it would be accessible to everyone.  Even as the punk rock style was taken by the mainstream media and confined to a certain image, the DIY attitude allows constant redefinition. Zines, too, are created by the usual consumer considered unfit to produce in the professional world.  As mentioned earlier, reader become writers, and thus consumers become producers; the “division” between writers and readers, producers and consumers, which is “normally reinforced by the professionalization of cultural creation, which divides the world into those with the talent, skills, and authority to create, and those without” is abolished. (124)  To degrade professionalism further, the form of zines is “decidedly amateur” (127)  A man named Walter Benjamin in the 30s asked the question, what is a perfect progressive culture, and decided that “culture is better the more consumers turn into producers- that is, readers and spectators into collaborators” (127) Creating zines takes this philosophy to heart, and the zine itself invites the consumer to become producer; the zine may be alienating because of its rough edges and intimate thoughts, but those qualities also allow the reader to realize how easy it is to produce a zine, too, and will hopefully incite creation in them, as well.

            Making Zines is pleasurable, just as consuming is considered pleasurable.  The goal, however, is to realize that pleasure comes from active participation in the creative process of a product to be consumed, not by passively accepting something already manufactured.

I thought about the wealth of free information, the ability to share files, and the opportunity to self-publish and promote your band on the internet when reading about  DIY and actively sharing ideas with little or no profit involved. It is amazing how many bands are getting exposure now on the internet because they don’t have to go through a record company’s filtering process.  I’ve always wondered, what does one person or one group of old CEOs know anyway? We have learned time and time again that they have no more right to authority than anyone else.  The internet, just like zines, is the pathway to a truly democratic society.; as long as no one steals ideas to profit from them, then contributing and sharing our own ideas and talents will be beneficial to ourselves.  Without the worry of credibility, one can really become exposed to some really amazing work, at least in the realm of music.  The documentary “The Day the Music Died” shows RCA’s pathetic struggle to stay afloat amidst illegal downloading and file sharing on the internet.  RCA’s golden days were in the early 90’s when they had the biggest band in the world, guns n roses, signed and the internet wasn’t so ubiquitous.  As a way to rejuvenate their revenue, in the early 2000’s RCA had the brilliant idea of joining all of the members of guns and roses, minus their front man Axle Rose, with Scott Weiland of Stone Temple Pilots.  They thought that if they put one previously big band with one previously big man, then all their problems would be solved.  Essentially, the people at the top are extremely uncreative, and they are probably not doing much better, either.  One record label not affiliated with RCA pointed out that if record labels would start producing worthy acts people might start buying cd’s again. I  agree with him, because creativity and an understanding of the audience is key, however, I am more inclined to buy a cd if most of the proceeds go to the band, and if the clueless yet overcompensated and authoritative middle man is eliminated.

commentary for Zines Chapter 3

There are mainly two issues in this chapter that have struck me as odd yet familiar.  The first is this seemingly ubiquitous preoccupation with bohemia and authenticity within the underground.  It seems like a waste of time to get so caught up in what is punk and what is not, because, like the last section says, it isolates a person from people who aren’t “punk” and even those that claim the punk ideals but are of a different faction.  Putting a label on yourself quite possibly could lead to close mindedness, and, essentially, a conservative attitude. Duncombe says that the ideal zine community is one that encompasses millions of facets. Maybe this means that the ideal zine world can’t really be anti anything, except big business and the capitalist meritocracy, but who isn’t anti that, anyway besides the .000000002 percent benefitting from it? It seems as if anyone who is creating a zine somehow wants to communicate without using the system’s means. So, everyone already has that in common, regardless of whether they frequent the hottest underground bars, live in a shitty apartment in the central district, wear studs, are 80 years old, or whatever.  I understand that people want to belong to a certain niche, but I think, speaking not just to zinesters who argue about what is punk all day but to everyone especially in my generation, that niches are kind of difficult to define.  No philosophy can be prepackaged to fit like a glove.  That is why zines are so appealing in the first place; individuals speak out, someone agrees with a thread, and contributes their own take on the subject at hand.  This is loosely connected with my second issue- Riot Grrrl’s strange evolution from a medium which demands and encourages raw self expression into a predictable and confining Zine, mind you, not by the owners/publishers, but by the thousands of individual contributors.  The zine was supposed to be an escape from  insane debates, which didn’t even include women, that argued the definitive nature of categories that are supposed to garnish individual expression.  It was a forum that stressed the absense of a dogmatic philosophical code with which to abide so that anyone could contribute anything on their minds.  Its gradual transition into a group of zines quite the opposite of nebulous gestures toward a tendency in people to follow the "herd", so to speak.  In fact, it is as though people actually look for a pattern or system under which to abide even if that system doesn’t intentionally exist. This might sound a little crazy, but when I read this I figured out why people join cults.  Some people need a place to belong and they need people to tell them what to do.  Although I know that the individual does exist and that everyone is special and equipped with their own good and bad ideas, it is apparent that awakening that self awareness takes more effort for some than for others. 

Chapter 3 Zines summary

Chapter three of Notes from the Underground explains the community surrounding and developing from zines as a virtual society most often for isolated people.  It seems as if zinesters have plenty of trouble socializing, either because they do not have the time, they are socially awkward, or because they feel they don’t have much in common with other people surrounding them physically. Our author says,“loneliness promotes zine communication” (45) Anyone making zines, trading, receiving, and remaining active can start to build a community and develop a sense of fulfillment.  Zines are an individualistic venture, as we learned in the identity chapter, but the primary property of a zine is communication, which requires another person receiving information. A person can connect with others as much as that person expresses him/herself.  In short, communication is bound to bring people with similar interests together, and that is what zines hope to do. 

            A community always needs a clubhouse, but zinesters don’t always live in the same area, or even the same city, so their community is more a virtual one. The zine itself is the “clubhouse” that people of similar interests can attend. People often write letters to zines, and contributing is quite common. The written word appearing in the zine is the discussion material of the club meeting. The ideal zine network is comprised of people from all walks of life sharing their zines with other people- accepting, sharing, coexisting; “this model is the very essence of a libertarian community; individuals free to be who they want and cultivate their own interests, while simultaneously sharing each other’s differences”. (52). This ideal place, is supposedly Bohemia.

            The scene that the zinesters make up are all those avenues that make up Bohemia.  Bohemia traditionally has been in low income neighbourhoods, independent coffee shops, record stores, and other independent places in cities like New York and San Francisco, but with gentrification every 20 or so years and no rent control, many artists have scattered and moved to different places.  Supposedly, physical location is not an issue anymore, and zinesters cannot rely on a central locale in any case because they are scattered all over the place.. Duncombe suggests, as a result of this dispersion, “there is simply not an abundance of material structures…and those that do exist are in constant danger of ‘being discovered’ by non-bohemians; of being gobbled up and ruined by an insatiable consumer culture industry” (58) The bohemians as a whole wish, according to Duncombe’s definition to place value on things that the “straight world” sees as worthless.  Perhaps they do this so that the straight world will never stumble upon it? Some cultural studies people, assuming that bohemians are from impoverished backgrounds, see that “this semantic rearrangement of components of the objective world gives people who are materially impoverished material with which to fashion their own cultures” (60).  Zinesters overlay the straight world with their own world, and that value is not necessarily material. In this case of a bohemia, zines themselves hold together this dispersed scene, and some zines are even dedicated to mapping the underground all over the country, literally pointing out all the underground hotspots in various cities that don’t seem to have been gobbled up yet…

             Of course, any scene must have its rules and debates.  A long standing debate mentioned is the ‘what constitutes a punk rocker?” where the main contenders are appearance, which subscribes to an image already planned out, or individuality, which is a tenet of anarchy, a philosophy of Punk Rock. Is punk rock an individual endeavor if it can turn into a shade of conformity?  This is a debate that seems to have never been resolved, and it also seems as if only men have participated in it.  While they were thinking about what punk rock really is, girls were becoming restless and disenchanted with the fact that no women were featured in punk rock zines. They felt they had no voice in the scene, so riot grrl was born.  Their mission was to “put the punk back into feminism and the feminism back into punk” (66) They were a network of women linked through zines spread over all the united states that didn’t subscribe to one philosophy; it was just supposed to be a “medium for grrrls to say what is on their minds”, for, “we feel that over-organization would cost us the individuality we spend too much of the time fighting the rest of the world for” (66,68).  Riot grrrl was a place for any girl to rant, rave and say whatever they pleased because girls were (and are) being expected to look, behave, and breathe a certain way.  After a while, however, this absolute subjectivity settled comfortably into a formulaic magazine where girls were sending in the same things- stories of someone harassing them, drawings of girls, etc.  It seems as though the readers and contributors were molding themselves into a singular voice which progressively became more stagnant when the intention of the magazine was to serve as a catalyst for new thoughts and pure individual expression.  In this, we learn that the zine community ideally wants to be “based not in common understanding but in shared dialogue” (70)  This exchange of thought shapes the community and keeps it in motion.

            Duncombe’s last section thinks through a contradiction that also arises in the zine community. In America, so many organizations are founded that allow people to “come together in personal unions” that encourage citizens to find a common interest with somebody despite the staunch individuality that America advocates. (71)  But one problem with the little communities is that some people within these groups start getting into the business of the group, the politics, instead of focusing on the cause that formed the group in the first place. Zines are intended to encourage people to share despite differences, but if one is against everything except one’s own or elitism about a subject starts to develop, then it will be impossible to meet people that are potentially wonderful connections. He suggests that some zinesters are living in a “virtual ghetto” if they don’t extend a hand from out of their own subject bubble.

clearing up some references.

Wow!  It is a new blog and a new day!  So exciting with a morning cup of joe.  

Well, I guess I will start by showing videos of the songs that I reference in my URL and my blog title. 

This little collage of photos is a David Bowie song called Sound and Vision from his album Low, which according to an A&E documentary I saw many years ago, didn't sell very well because it was too experimental. Too experimental? I don't understand.

And here we have Lou Reed's Andy's Chest, cleverly quoted in the url. Transformer is an album that seems to be unanimously favoured over all of Lou Reed's other solo albums, according to many unfortunate and likewise involuntary conversations about the Velvet Underground.

More soon,

Emily