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(Blue Cheer)
July 24, 2023
About a month ago I did a rare, punctuated, big social outing, going to a
music festival. Me and my partner live a rather quiet life, socially
speaking, by design. She's a heavy introvert, and I'm a recovering
misanthrope. But I still need people and new experiences. The festival did
what I hope these big events would do, bring some new perspective into my
life, enough to enrich it.
It was an outdoor punk festival in Oakland, which ended up being exactly
what I thought it was going to be: freaky, loud, raucous, colorful, but
gentle and accepting simultaneously. My show partners were my friend
Parrot (no, not her real name), whom I'm starting to get close to, and my
quasi-nephew Raven, who I am learning more about every time we hang out.
This isn't intended to be an entry about the show, though, it's supposed
to be the after effects.
I came away from the event knowing I need to make some changes in my life.
Well, this isn't completely accurate, because I know that I've needed to
make these changes, I actually came away resolving to make the changes.
One, is to lose weight. I've put on more than a few in the recent years.
While in some ways I'm decently physically active, the weight has taken
its toll. Two, communicate more on a daily basis. Sometimes I feel,
lately, that I'm so much in my head, that I'm losing vocabulary and the
ability to formulate ideas into words. This isn't completely natural to me
as a native thinking process, my internal dialog is not exactly verbal.
And third, I resolved to listen to more music. I'm a podcast junkie, and
not always in a positive way. Though they can be enriching
informationally, I also am just addicted to the drone of familiar voices
and subjects sometimes. They also have a tendency to do the opposite of
what I need, they put a wedge between me and life. Hearing people talk
about things pushes me too far into an abstract space. I already have an
issue with feeling disconnected with my environment, I need to be pulled
in. Music does that, it at least connects me to feelings in a way subject-
oriented discussions do not. And I can have my cake and eat it too, and
nerd out about music stuff.
It's been a subtle shift, but now there is more music in my life, which
leads to discovery of new bands. Fuck, man, Blue Cheer, their first two
albums are amazing. I love liminal music, bands that define genres, sounds
that can't quite be confined to a time and place. They do this, they go
hard in `68, so hard they inspired punk, metal and grunge. And they were a
mess, which love. Dick Clark told them backstage before an American
Bandstand performance that they're the types that give a bad name to Rock
and Roll, how is that an insult, that's more rock and roll than anything
I've heard. And this fun bit from Wikipedia, "The group underwent several
personnel changes, the first occurring after the 1968 release of
Outsideinside after Leigh Stephens left the band due to musical
differences or, as some report, deafness." This had me laughing.
Anyway, getting back to music discovery is good. Much like I believe Love
led me to California, and The Pentangle opened a portal to my homestead,
maybe Blue Cheer will move me somewhere.