tirsdag 30. november 2010

On being and not being gay.

When it comes to "being gay" it seems like I come across as a clear cut case, but I'm not; I love the female body too much to give it up. I could probably slide into a Bi-thing and surfs both waves if I was attracted to men, it's just that I find cock&balls a very horrible set of tools. Men are hairy and bony, with a smelly hole as the only point of penetration. I could sure fuck a woman up the ass but not a point of entry who would need a Brazilian wax before it was neat. Blowjob? Getting one yeah, but not giving. There are no issues about going down and getting busy on a chick in my book. On a guy? Not likely.

Some people are sitting on the sideline just waiting for me to burst out of the infamous closet like a spring flower, becoming one of those flamboyant and colorful gay men they see sprawling down the street. These people are mostly homophobic and, I guess, pretty scared of gay men. I am not scared of gays. I have no problem with them. Some have even made a pass at me and I take that as a compliment. I mean, what else can ya do? It’s not like you have to give a complimentary hand job because someone finds you attractive, all you have to do is politely make it clear that it won’t be no ball game between you but hell, you are welcome to share my table anyhow. There’s no reason to be a mean bastard, they won’t rape you in a back alley or in the toilet booth, just share those lines and say “Thanks dude”.

If you are self-conscious, know who you are and secure about your sexuality, homophobia is the least of your concerns. What is there to worry about? I’d be more scared of my sons coming home announcing a career in politics then coming out as gay. All that matters is how you contribute as a fellow-being. Be kind to thy neighbor, give a helping hand. Try your best to make everyday a little better for the people around you. I don’t find that too much to ask. Do you?

Well, I don’t want to go into a long tirade on this subject. It’s just that I find homophobia so weird. I don’t like big dogs or flying, but that doesn’t mean I’m cruel to dogs or try to ban flying. Those are my problems which I have to work out. Try to get friendly with the dog, learn to know the barking menace and, like Zakk Wylde sings in “Fire it up”; Face you fears. That’s all man, Face to Face with Fear. Take the bull by its horns and learn to love it. OK, love might be too much, accept is more like it. And a bit of respect for one and other also helps.

torsdag 25. november 2010

Alice Glass and her broken ankle.

Alice Glass and her broken ankle taking swigs form the Whisky bottle on stage, the chick is my kind of half-fucked crazed artist. You don’t have to be a rockstar to have that weird attitude, to be able to do the hard core version of the being-an-artist shit we all have seen so many times made soft and puny. Nothing about Glassy is puny, she project that fun-dog, animal-on-stage personality and what else can you expect. She is an animal and please do bite me, tear out my flesh and stare into my eyes with a blank, Whisky-fueled gaze as you swallow me whole. And no, I am not talking in a creepy sex oriented metaphor here, or a wannabe-cannibal freak. It’s just that what we see through the cellophane of fame is a barely human thing hitting the bells on the stage with an almighty personality fit for a real Iron Man, paranoid and blind, but as dangerous as a hungry shark.

Or it might be that the crystal castle Alice Glass is projected through creates an optical illusion. But that really doesn’t matter, what we see on the stage is a performance. To make that image stick, and not seem fake, it always helps if it resembles at least some of the sources personality. If Pete Doherty was a swell fella living as a 9 to 5 family guy who’s rotting away in an office every day, his drug fueled appearance would seem more like a come-on then a lunatic. Yeah-yeah, I know I’ve used the Pete Doherty reference before, and I could have used Amy Winehouse as well, it’s just that I prefer Pete.

All this is of course based on a single concert observation, what is “googleable” and my objective views. It’s not based on interviews, conversations or real shit of any kind. It might just be a dreamlike version influenced by fake facts swirling around in the vortex of the internet. Sometimes the legend works better than the actual truth. Not everybody is as fun as Keith Richards, you know. Not everybody has a vault of madness and crazy stories, but some crazy bastard on the way has potential to build a fun-closet of anecdotes for the tea-party, stuff for entertainment by the bar, or more likely over a mirror used for chopping, whatever your choice is. I used to prefer the mirrors but I guess my time at the fun-house is over. Now all I can do is put on a Mad Hatter approach and fool around.

I had a mission when I first started writing this empty nonsense of a post. Landing on jibberish was like not the intention, but I enjoy getting sidetracked into lunacy on most occasions. What I did wanted to go into was Crystal Castles and that little love affair I’ve had with their music lately. First of all the debut album, but Baptism is a regular tune on my playlist as well. I actually used to play the Commodore 64 game Crystal Castles as a kid, so listening to the songs on the first album is something of a flashback. Even though they are electronic, experimental and noisy, CC fit into the rock genre as well; this kind of bands are at times more rock that rock bands tend to be. The anti-establishment, the anti-star thing and the “Fuck it”- attitude is a vanishing element in rock music. Grunge had some of that pure punk feeling of shaking up the establishment, but behind the walls, most of the “Fuck-it”s are more an image then a guideline.

Sometimes, just on the rare occasions of melting particles and coincidental mixing; those little anarchy kids are spawned in utter perfection.

fredag 19. november 2010

Jokke; the giant poet who fell by the hand of the poppy.

To define a number 1 can indeed be a hard nut to crack. Not every genre is as easy to define as reggae where Bobby is the definitive master, the God of his forever loving followers, me included. But to me, the man who stands out larger than life when it comes to his craft, within the borders of hickey Norway, is no other then the late Joachim Nielsen. Jokke & Valentinerne (Jokke and the Valentines) is without a doubt one of the most cherished artist Norway has ever produced.

There is hardly an artist, a critic, a lover of music or a living soul in the boring streets of NoWay that doesn’t have a favorite Jokke song. Everybody, form beggars to aristocrats, high tide to low tide, from shadowy street corners to shiny solariums with naked chicks in the fake sun, anywhere you’ll find a punk or a princess who has fucked, partied, laught or cried to one of the many everyday, beat down poetic lyrics and appealing melodies from the diamond mine of Mr Nielsen. Jokke did not just write a song, he wrote a story. He created characters, people you could believe was a reflection from his own life; people around him. Dirty lowlifes and have nots, drunk lunatics and seedy bastards, people that crawl with the cockroaches and fighting among the hyenas. But most of all the lyrics feels like unpolished reality, truth spoken with bad breath and yellow teeth.

There are memories of concerts where the audience sing the lyrics better then the man himself, who had to fill his belly with beer before his nerves was able to cope with the stage. Memories of a concert being canceled and nobody wanted to refund their tickets; after all Jokke was drunk out of his mind and they loved him for all his faults and glory. These are the kind of stories that made you wonder who emulated who; was Jokke living the songs or was the songs living off of him? Whatever it was, the lyrics was a pure strike of genuine poetry, a drunken Dylan on the jet to destruction. Behind this façade a hard working fella created magic.

What really sent him to the fields to harvest the comings was the juice of that damned poppy. It was not supposed to be his way, he was not bound to walk down that road, but still he did. The most notorious and hailed killer on the buffet claims street whores and generals alike, it has no compassion and kills indiscriminately like a creature from the old testament, it swings its ax like a raving Viking tripping on toadstool and is as unstoppable as a freight train of incurable diseases. Junk is a plague and we produce it ourselves. It’s the Mother of all drugs, the king of the heap. It doesn’t matter who you are, if you start down that path, the parasite will dig its way into your brain and stay there till the day you die. Either OD’ed or of old age. But it stays there all your life and spends its time reminding you of the horrific pleasures you experience on your way to the last, decomposed station of life; death and it’s horrid smile.

The great thing about Jokke, like any dead musician, is the legacy he left behind when he died. He made music who will be played, loved, remembered and applauded forever more. He sang his way into the heart of a generation and he will continue to do so. We love our Jokke and may he have found peace where ever he is; in that Grand Hall among Great musicians who stand in the beating wind like statues of ancient Egypt, like totems of our Gods. Jokke, you are the greatest man to grace this hillbilly outpost of Europe with music. Thank you.

Alt kan repeteres:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYGzz8a67cs

Kneggen og Knugern:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2kOv1Rm8eU

May-Iren og Terje Engen snakker om Jokke:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ARtUNdDEkU

fredag 12. november 2010

A sad fool off the happy train.

I woke up this morning with the memories of a dream still tumbling around in my head, making me feel sad. It reminded me of what I can’t have. I mean, how can I not crave what makes my blood warm, how can I help but feel like it’s killing me every time I close my eyes and the sweet fruit is bound to some other future. It makes me wanna cry and brings out that self-pitying melancholic drama, but it’s true, it’s tearing me to pieces that I can’t stand my ground and be a man, that I can’t commit to the right path without longing for release. I’d like to, you know, find happiness at just where I am, but the door is locked and I can’t find the key, I can’t even open a window. I sit in that locked room with every argument coming down at me like a mental hailstorm and every word is nailing me to the floor like the sad fucker I am. I feel both mentally and physically like a wreck here, with Lil Waynes “I feel like dying” ringing inside my head like a soundtrack set to break my bones. No, don’t get me wrong now, I ain’t set to leave this plane, that’s not what I'm saying. It’s just that not even writing will chase away the depression growing in my mind. The bolts have locked the chains to the floor, life can’t be lived in any other way; the timeline is set and to break that I’d have to be something so much more than a thieving bastard. I’d have to be an idiot staring into the face of Narcissus and discovering my own image mocking me with self-destructive satisfaction. Man, not even half a Jäger will cure this bitch. Maybe it fades in a couple of days. We’ll see.

mandag 8. november 2010

Fossils from the Grunge Era; Excavating the cave of a beast.

If I’m the one to pick the three most important figures from the long buried grunge era, my names would read as follows: Andrew Wood, Layne Staley and Kurt Cobain.

Capitan Kurt
Kurt might be the populist choice, but he somehow got the whole Leader Badge shoved down his throat with Nevermind and I don’t think he intended to go that far. But what can you do when the ball gets rolling, except blowing your brains out. There might be a lot of reasons for Kurt Cobain to go into the heroin thing, flooding the Seattle scene like a pre-historic locus, wiping out so much talent in its way. More likely the kid had problems he needed to work out, but junk don’t want to solve anything, it just wants you to keep feeding your body like there is some parasite in there feeding off of addiction. But Nirvana became the flagship of the grunge fleet when the kids started to return the Michael Jackson album they got for Christmas for a bluish album with a naked infant under water, swimming towards a dollar bill. It landed Nevermind on top of the album chart and skyrocketed the band into the Elite Hall of the music business with something new, something that reminded the kids of where they were; in the middle of adolescence; in Adolescentia, a place where grownups don’t understand shit. That album blew my mind when I heard it the first time and sent my brainwaves from post-MC Hammer/Vanilla Ice and into rock forever. That time in history is in many ways one of the high watermarks where every new album was yet another explosion; Nevermind, Dirt, Vulgar Display of Power, Ten, Core, Siamese Dream, Rage Against the Machine. The list goes on and on and I probably missed some important albums here, but the point is; the early nineties left a musical void when grunge collapsed and MTV got more and more pop oriented. The rest of the nineties never managed to live up to the musical expectation created by this new line of hard core, anti star mentality. And what mostly blew the scene apart was junk, that potent drug who send you on the way to self destruction. That is a bad thing when you look at it from most angles, but it also created some haunting albums.

When Lane is gone what is left of Alice in Chains?
Take a look at Alice in Chains for instance. Dirt is the stronghold in grunge and an album pervaded with junk, in almost every song. Where would the album be without heroin? The creativity within the band would have found some other channel to project their dirty rays through, but it would never have been something as special and rare as this gem of an album. But you have to pay a price when you launch headfirst into that contaminated lake smelling of decomposed bodies, wasted youth and humiliation; that lake of blood, dirty water and poppy juice. Layne paid the price with his life, like so many others did. Junk does that to you, it makes you go all the way to the lid of the coffin where you lay down voluntary and slams it shut. There are survivors of course, like Keith Richards, Anthony Kiedis and Slash, but not all escapes from this daredevil game. And Layne certainly did not escape from the lake, instead it ended his career and claimed his life, but he marked history with his seal. When he finally died, Alice in Chains officially disbanded and floated around until they reemerged with another album in 2009; Black Gives Way To Blue. The album was a huge disappointment, if you experienced the band at its heights. The band, with William DuVall clinging to the batton, performs strong enough but those who are too young to remember the early nineties, might not be as convinced of the band’s sound as the cult members are. DuVall is not a poor substitute but we do miss the edge Layne brought along with his voice. It’s such a shame Black Gives Way To Blue isn’t a kick ass mindblower of an album. I’d love to see them delivering something unforgettable as Dirt. But you can’t get it all, can you. You get to see the band live, minus Layne, but this is as close to the original thing we’ll ever get.

Malfunkshun
Andrew Wood on the other hand died just as Mother Love Bone was about to be the next thing. From the ashes of his death rose Pearl Jam, but that’s another story. For me Andrew Wood, L’Andrew the Love Child, begun when I picked up an album by a band called Malfunkshun in 1996. By that time it was six years since the Love Child died of a classic case called Heroin Overdose. Just like Sublime’s Bradley Nowell, Andrew died when the sun was about to bless his band, Mother Love Bone, with success. As many musicians do Andrew played with more than one band, and Malfunkshun might be one of the more special albums to be released in the post-grunge period, when the memories was still fresh. He never recorded an album with Malfunkshun, as he did with Mother Love Bone, but unreleased tracks became the self-titled album Malfunkshun in 1995. Chris Cornell and the soon-to-be Pearl Jam paid homage to Andrew with a band project called Temple of the Dog and that again inspired filmmaker Scot Barbour to make the documentary Malfunkshun: The Andrew Wood Story. Andrews story is that of a persona inside grunge who died not only before the band had a chance to make it, but also before grunge broke through. He was a source of inspiration, a flamboyant fella with a facial kiss-like thing going and playing his love rock in a power trio who was unlike anything else on the scene. His death was another loss, a 24 yr old about to flash his feathers.

When the music’s over
Heroin took away some of the greatest personalities in a genre that ended up as a hype, a monster that crawled back into its cave and died with its belly full of talent. Heroin has been the ultimate anti hero for so long, and it is time this myth died in the shadow created by a mountain of dead bodies. Ain’t that enough? Yeah, I may want my rockers bad but the balance of a bad boy and a dead boy is hard to handle. Rock is dirty and druged out but in the havoc of death the monuments created by great music still stands and will continue to stand when earthquakes, floods and tornadoes sweep across the wasteland of half-forgotten rock stars. But they do live forever; in the music they created.

tirsdag 2. november 2010

We are on the wrong train when nudity is such a sinful thing.

When I see discussions on the use of Burka, I wonder when in the history of man did we start to cover up. And why? Was it because of convenience or of shame, and when did shame enter the picture? No, don’t come with that fairytale about the Garden of Eden, that is just a picture to help describe the happening, trying to make people see that a change occurred. I mean, why do we have such a problem with nudity? Yeah, I know that church, human evolvement and so forth are a part of this answer, but why? We hid our genitals long before Christianity, before any religions, as we know them today, was established. All those cults are now cemented into the cultures of the world, but some place in history we felt a need to hide, to cover up. Even humans in tropical areas, untouched by missionaries cover up “the jewelry box”.

Around the world we have nude beaches, in Australia they have a nude bar where people show up naked and drink together. I would just fear a boner all night and probably getting one from all the tension, or my pecker would try to crawl back into my crotch as if I was in cold water, a reaction of fear. In France they have a nude village where you can go shopping nude, drive nude and flop your penis or breasts out in the open, like a natural thing. Elsewhere it’s like a social sin, or you are just a crazy streaker. And in other places women have to cover up and hide under a large blanket. Why do we have such a problem with naked bodies, is what I keep wondering.

If I took off all my cloths and roamed around naked, the police would pick me up and I guess a fine would be the reaction. People would stare, giggle, laugh out loud and point, “Look there, a crazy naked guy!” Yeah, crazy. Nakedness is a natural thing but somehow we have made it indecent. Shouldn’t we be more open about nakedness? Or would we just allow what’s considered a beautiful body to be naked? Imagine a sexy-as-hell person, depending on your sexual preferences, walk naked down the street. You would enjoy that. But if an obese person would follow nausea might be the reaction (but again, depending on your sexual preferences). So if nudity was full blown legal, would selection-of-the-sexy be the thing?

So whenever a celeb or whatever shows up naked someplace on the web, that is all fine by me. I’ve got no problem with seeing that. But 330 pounds of flesh, shallow minded or not, I do not want to see that.

Beauty is not based on body alone. A stubby girl, a bit overweight and all, who is truly happy, can be a much more sexy thing than a thin, cranky, so-called-sexy bitch with an attitude. Beauty comes from the inside, as lame as it sounds. But I am trailing of here. If ya wanna go with a nude-pic, fine, just make it classy.

http://www.vg.no/rampelys/artikkel.php?artid=10027455

http://www.vg.no/nyheter/innenriks/norsk-politikk/artikkel.php?artid=10003612