Alex; Harvey
Before the great time of awful, hard threshing sure to come, and the wild hunt that must follow, I would set down my confession to the Recording Angel.
I say freely and uncoerced that I have wasted too much of the past decade noodling pointlessly through the underbelly of the "darknet". These are the lost decades unreturnable to us except in the realms of reverie. I don't think I'm alone in that –- do you, Damian Morgan?
I gave it up (the cock-a-doodle noodling) somewhat, in a panic, in the last few years. Too much surface dandruff and not enough substance online. I am not a Millennial and I still watch TV –– listlessly, uncritically –– but this is still a heroic gesture.
Now we have Chromecast though and occasionally, when I am Chromecasting Huell Howser episodes to the TV, between episodes I detour through a few of the old Youtube favourites.
Recently, in conversation with wife I found myself more or less quoting Alex Harvey's "Next" which naturally led to me finding that Old Grey Whistle Test performance of it.
Alex Harvey being played by Harvey Keitel in this performance. ("Yes. Alex Harvey Keitel.")
This led me, admittedly Millennially, to Jacque Brel's original "Au Suivant," where I found a quite remarkable, contortionist, and magnificently gurning performance by La Brel.
Last night, meanwhile, wife and I were discussing places in the northern segment of our State, and we spoke of Petaluma, and I remembered the Harry Partch piece, "And On The Seventh Day Petals Fell on Petaluma".
And because of this Youtube (in its subtly manipulative style) suggested for us a BBC4 documentary on Partch, which we watched and enjoyed well, never mind the poor psychic resistance to suggestion from the master machine.
But then, perhaps to stave off wife's desire to watch The Crown on Netflix, I kept diddling and dawdling like Scheherazade putting off the dreaded thing, and I went to look up the classic performance by Magma of "Otis" on French TV. I couldn't find it. It seems to have disappeared indeed. But earlier that day I'd been listening to Ghostface Killa's Twelve Reasons to Die II LP and I'd noticed a resemblance in the track "Return of the Savage" to the song "De Futura" by Magma (from Üdü Ẁüdü). This (and my natural recoil from mawkish British "historical" TV drama) led me in turn to click on a Youtube video of "De Futura" performed live in Paris in 1977.
Line this up alongside the Brel performance and you have a credible case for remarking tediously in the pub that perhaps the French (also the gentlemen of the "Benelux" countries, if you must be pedantic) are the great rock performers of the degenerate age of rocque.
Or would you rather watch Mick Jagger?
Or would you rather date Mick Jagger?
When you read about these young women who date Mick Jagger, albeit they are suddenly rich and lead an idle deceitful very wicked life, you think –– as you do when you see Melanoma Trump –– "Was it worth it? The awful sacrifice of virtue and sanity? Each night you lie abed with demons!"
