Rules of the Game #2: Metal Clusters

[koganbot]

Rules of the Game #2: Metal Clusters

OK, second full column is up, brings up some things we talked about in the previous thread, about how there can be a chance element in which music you identify with socially.

(EDIT: Strangely, the link for the piece changed from the one I'd originally posted, so I've fixed it. I wonder how often this will happen. If you're looking for my pieces and the links aren't working, go to the Las Vegas Weekly main page and you'll probably see near the top something that says "Music: Rules Of The Game" followed by a subtitle, and that will be my latest column. Then, if you follow the link to the column, at the end of the column there's a link for "more articles from this author," which will take you to my previous columns.)

EDIT: Here are links to all but three of my other Rules Of The Game columns (LVW's search results for "Rules of the Game"). Links for the other three (which for some reason didn't get "Rules Of The Game" in their titles), are here: #4, #5, and #8.

UPDATE: I've got all the links here now:

http://koganbot.livejournal.com/179531.html

Comments

[koganbot]

Real punks don't look punk?

No time for full response now 'cept to say that my one-man punk-rock revo came in September 1970 through March 1971 as described in my Roger Williams chapter and that the Kids Who Sat Next To Me were Bob Dylan as recorded in '64-'66 and Fusion magazine as came in the mail every month (and also bits and fragments from Grace Slick et al.) BUT also I had the somewhat deluded and very adolescent assumption that vast vast vast numbers of people were going through the exact same thing as I but were not willing to articulate it or admit it nearly so well ("And he cursed me when I proved to him/I said 'Look, not even you can hide/You see you're just like me'") (cf. "In every single person is a Slim Shady lurkin'"). But I wouldn't have used the phrase "punk rock" for it, even if the term had been coined by then - and given lead times it probably just had been, but I didn't see the May 1971 Creem when it first came out anyway, in fact haven't ever), and when I did see the phrase I understood intuitively what it meant but my "understanding" meant "96 Tears" and "Pushin' Too Hard" and "Steppin' Stone" and "Get Me To The World On Time" but not "Ballad Of A Thin Man" or "Memphis Blues Again" or "Under My Thumb" or "Sister Ray" (nor, later, "Search and Destroy" or "I Wanna Be Your Dog" or "Frankenstein" or "Anarchy In The U.K"); in other words it meant the jr. high school creeps who copied the Stones and Yardbirds without getting the complexities and who hurt people to convince themselves they were tough but who also would crack and go on kamikaze attacks against authority. It was only reluctantly that I finally capitulated and decided "OK, since other people are using the term to include the Stooges and Pistols I've got to, too," and it's only in the latter sense that '70-'71 could be dubbed my Punk Rock Revolution.

But anyway, my 1970-71 revo wasn't actually solo as it included Dylan and Grace and Marty and Meltzer and Jurgens and Tosches et al. and to a lesser extent my friend Tom Olds and unlike you I tried to find allies and audiences for my revo by showing e.g. the What Thing to scads of people I knew; interesting point: my revo was on paper.

[koganbot]

So in my original usage, by punks I actually meant punks, e.g. Elisha Cook Jr. in The Maltese Falcon.