I Hate the 60's: A Personal Rock Odyssey

I was taking a walk around the shopping outlets near my apartment when I decided to stop into Barnes and Noble in the hopes of securing a reasonably priced copy of “Kon-Tiki”. Unfortunately my efforts were thwarted by the malevolent machinations of those that don't keep any but the most obvious of obvious classic literature in stock. I then walked over to the discount section, mumbling to myself over my rotten luck (I mean this is like the 13th place I've looked), in hopes that by God's grace a neglected copy might be mixed in with such other searing literary power houses as “How to Hunt Dragons” and “The Big Book of Sh*t That's Big”.

No suck luck. But what I did find was a very much on sale copy of “Rat Salad: Black Sabbath the Classic Years” by Paul Wilkinson. Before you ask, yes I am going to use Black Sabbath to make fun of my parents generation, but please allow me to explain something first. Black Sabbath played an important role in the development of my musical life. In fact you might call them my first great musical awakening.

It wasn't until about 4th or 5th grade that I began to develop musical interests beyond what my parents would play in the car. Unfortunately this was more out pear pressure than any sort of affection for the popular music of the time. You see, I went to a teeny tiny Messianic Jewish private school, and pressures to fit in where great and many. 1) Yes the school was as crazy as it sounds. 2) No I am not Jewish. Almost no one that went there was including Rabbi Joe who was from Wisconsin, and wore a giant foam cheese hat to school every time the Packers played. I've lead a charmed life.

Later I would go on to a public high school where I found I could swear out loud, and wander the halls unsolicited. I grew a long stringy half-Afro, and spent the first fifty percent of my years there wearing hula girl adorned Hawaiian t-shirts, and bright green plaid shorts like I was reincarnated from an interdenominational psychedelic golfer. You may think that that might have been a recipe for social isolation, but I had so many friends and followers that I could afford the luxury of having a seething but low-key hatred for a good chunk of them.

I point this out only to emphasis that when there are so many faces in the crowd you might have to work quite a bit to be singled out, but when you go to a school of less than 150 kids spread of over two buildings a microscopic level of scrutiny is applied to your daily being. You had to not only have heard all the latest singles, but have seen all the top music videos if you (amongst a thousand other things) didn't want to be every ones verbal punching bag for weeks to come.

So I listed to things like Snoop Dog, Cypress Hill, and that band that later went on to pen a song about being pretty fly for a white guy; whatever was necessary to keep me in the social loop. But then something happened. A story that is both magical and epic. One brimming with anecdotal wonderment, and so much pith it could fill whole banks, if banks happen to store pith instead of money. I don't feel like recounting it though so maybe some other time. The end result is that I heard Iron Man on the radio, and my first great musical awakening had begun.

At first my parents exercised goodly Christian caution, and were reluctant to let me listen Black Sabbath. But in no time I had needled away at them, and they even bought me a copy of Masters of Reality on cassette. Oh, it was a glorious day when I first popped in that bit of analogue delight, and my ears where serenaded with the a-tonal lick riffs of Sweet Leaf ( a song whose less than subtle metaphor escaped me until a couple of years later).

From that day forward, and for many years, I would live and breath Black Sabbath. I cast aside the populist trappings of mid to late 90's era music, and thrust on the cloak of individualism, swearing to listen to no music recorded after 1979. My little love affair also afforded me the duel pleasure of feeling just a little bit edgy as the school I went to taught that listening to certain types of music was considered intrinsically more evil than any single act a man could commit. Demon possession was a certainty, and perhaps I would even get magic powers.

Later in life I would move on to Primus (the reason I would switch from guitar to bass, and ultimately the reason why I would later switch back to guitar), Tom Waits, and Captain Beefheart whom would not only change my perspective on music forever, but in some small way my perspective on life. I realize this is the possibly the longest lead in as to why some one would buy a discount book, but stay with me.

I am not a particularly nostalgic person. I believe Robert Fripp once said something about nostalgia being the enemy of creativity, but I hate Robert Fripp enough not to look up the exact quote. Let's just say I prefer to deal with the shame and stupidity of the here and now, and not look back upon the shame and stupidity of the past. Especially not the 60's and 70's. I don't listen to Black Sabbath any more, nor Primus, or Tom Waits. But every now and then nostalgia does get the better of me, and I always end worse off for it.

So, when I am reading through the forward of a book, and it hits me with such masturbatory prose as: “Rock was then at its apogee; big, proud, full of itself on one hand; quiet. introspective, and foamingly eloquent on the other”, I tend to shake my head and sigh. I wouldn't go as far as to call a generation of music mostly about mother's little helper (i.e. drugs), and purple flying electric ice cream machines (i.e. what happens when you do drugs, and you're from the 60's) as eloquent or really anything other than modestly clever bits of social rebellion, but I will say that most of it was crap.

Despite promises that such seismically registering vomit would not be penned; the author goes on to devote several paragraphs to the artistic purity, and the transcendental characteristics of 60's era rock. I'm not denying that some of what was done was art. Sure it was mostly about self indulgent and shallow rebellion, but some small portion did achieve not only a high level of technical virtuosity, but also contained a certain dumb poetry. After all if Picasso can paint anomalous shapes with tits then why can't Voodoo Child be art too?

But is Black Sabbath so obviously art as the author contests? Hell no! Black Sabbath is and always was comic book music. It was about keeping it loud, stupid, and laden with dorky occult mysticism. Sure you could throw low rent curios like “Embryo” at me or push a cheesy pseudo soul ballad like “Changes” in my face, but it wont work.

To paraphrase something I once said while debating the merits of the Gamera films: “If the most well know song in your catalog is about a time traveling hunk of metal that gets bummed out when people don't wanna hang with him, and goes on a killing spree then you lose artistic credibility.”

No soul, no real feeling, no rhythm; just heavy riffs. Not that there's anything really wrong with that if that's what you're looking for. After all Toni Iomi was a wicked guitar player, and you couldn't ask for a better rhythm section as far as rock is concerned. The truth, in my opinion, is that when rock's fans and critics began demanding snob factor levels of artistic credibility they slit rock and roll's throat and left it to bleed, but more on that in part two.

If you're over 25, and you still think this is cool then you need to take a good long look at the course of your life.