About
Why do I do this? To quote the great Australian band you may remember known as Midnight Oil, from their title track to their 1998 album “Redneck Wonderland”, “Everything that is near and dear is old and in decay”. When I first heard that lyric upon acquiring this great album at Friz B’s CD Exchange, it hit me right in the heart. It summed it up. My life has always been based around a love for things that are old, in decay, and add to that – obscure. Starting out with a mother who loved going thrifting before the term existed and would drag me along for the ride starting at 4 years old set me off on my clearly charted path. She would buy me stacks of 45’s that the radio stations did not want and donated to the Goodwill or Salvation Army Thrift Stores. So while the kids at school were listening to bad nursery rhyme junk, I was spinning psychedelic rock like Blue Cheer, the Shocking Blue and the Great Society. A lot of obscure soul crept in there as well – like my long lost beloved “I’ll Be Coming Back” Greg Perry promo 45 on Casablanca Records – stereo mix on one side, mono reduction on the other! In an effort to replace this gem, I found the entire album eventually and what a great album it is!
This mirrors my own life as well – my music, my art, my video work – all too “obscure” to really “break” mainstream. As you may have guessed from some of my writings, I love music. Much of the music of the 90’s that I loved involved many Rust Belt area garage rock bands – which leads to this observation – how come so many the things I consider truly important and pivotal are constantly deleted from that bastion of mainstream re-enforcement, the Wikipedia? If it gets deleted, chances are that, to me, it is something I consider IMPORTANT. Where is the cataloging of public access tv shows? That was my main source of viewing in the 90’s – again- obscurity! That’s where the bigwigs and fatcats scour for new ideas to pilfer, as noted in books like The Deviant Advantage by Ryan Mathews and Watts Wacker – the subterranean fringe that never gets the credit it is due. This book has an undertitle of “How Fringe Ideas Create Mass Markets”. I guess it’s been that way for a long time – heck, I think of Elvis (who I love) covering Big Mama Thornton’s “Hound Dog” (who did the essential version of the tune first, but didn’t receive the accolades the King did).
The King
My life has been like a constant replay of the best early Doors song “Break On Through To The Other Side” – beating my head against an invisible wall. I have since figured it may be due to the fact that yes, what I do value, and who I am is obscurity and decay. The People of Now – they are all concerned with the “next big thing”, chasing the “Shiny and new” illusion. They don’t value much of anything – to them it is all disposable. Tear down that once-shiny new building of inferior construction, and build another, then repeat the process. Much the way these People of Now view relationships. With architecture, with things, with other people. Replace, replace, replace. Not preserve, treasure, or reuse. Look at the dreadful sham ‘architecture’ of today’s strip plazas. People never refer to that very disposable trash architecture as an “eyesore”, when that is exactly what it is! Nope, they pick on my favorite Art Deco and Mid-Century beauties. They bash the Central Terminal, they tear down the Buffalo Drive- In. Old and beautiful. Perhaps in decay. But that is the natural AGING PROCESS our society so fears, but a necessity in incarnating in the Material World! I do not chase the illusion of the new, shiny, next big thing. It always disappointed me. So I rot, sort of. In my obscurity. Amidst my decay. For that is where the BEAUTY is. And Beauty, TRUTH.