If you're not afraid, the world is full of new places, new people, new sounds. The familiar atmosphere of the coffee shop is transformed - youth and energy will do that - and as always, I'm glad I've ventured out into this world of strangeness and tell myself I should do it more often. Lyrics don't seem to matter as much as volume and motion, the harsher and wilder the better, but you can't deny the passion or the joyfulness. I'm not sure if there's any talent here but it seems a secondary and mostly insignificant consideration.
My mother and daddy had their doubts when, as a teenager, I fell in love with rock and roll. Compared with today, it was pretty tame, certainly not worth the label of the devil's music and no imminent danger to my young soul. But it was different - no Mills Brothers harmony, no sweet Sinatra crooning, not even Pete Fountain's blues clarinet - and it was a threat. My mother saw it as noise and revolution, an integral part of the drug scene and the madness that would surely follow. She banned it, not understanding that anything she was so violently against would increase its power a hundred fold. When that failed, she made fun of it, again not understanding that whatever she demeaned, I would defend to the death. Imagining how she might react to metal or rap makes me smile. Lamentable but harmless, my daddy said, frowning ever so slightly then going back to his book while my grandmother - a Lawrence Welk and Liberace fan until her dying day - threw up her hands and invested in earplugs.
The following night I drift back into the blues and the sweet, gentle sound of an acoustic guitar, the wail of a lonesome, train-time harmonica. It's good to make room for the new and the misunderstood, but I wouldn't want to live there.
My mother and daddy had their doubts when, as a teenager, I fell in love with rock and roll. Compared with today, it was pretty tame, certainly not worth the label of the devil's music and no imminent danger to my young soul. But it was different - no Mills Brothers harmony, no sweet Sinatra crooning, not even Pete Fountain's blues clarinet - and it was a threat. My mother saw it as noise and revolution, an integral part of the drug scene and the madness that would surely follow. She banned it, not understanding that anything she was so violently against would increase its power a hundred fold. When that failed, she made fun of it, again not understanding that whatever she demeaned, I would defend to the death. Imagining how she might react to metal or rap makes me smile. Lamentable but harmless, my daddy said, frowning ever so slightly then going back to his book while my grandmother - a Lawrence Welk and Liberace fan until her dying day - threw up her hands and invested in earplugs.
The following night I drift back into the blues and the sweet, gentle sound of an acoustic guitar, the wail of a lonesome, train-time harmonica. It's good to make room for the new and the misunderstood, but I wouldn't want to live there.
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