• REVOLUTION BABY! Up against the wall, burn all it down girl, smash the state, armed love, light my fire, here comes the new order of impending chaos, here comes the new dawn, when all is one and one is all, etc, etc. Oh yeah. man. Rock'nRoll is so REVOLUSHUNARY!! It's all about, like, Freedom ...and Change...and - uh...dude - check out the trails on that girl's AURA - whoahhhhhh. But pause for a moment and consider: Spoiled sons and daughters of the upper and middle classes, children of the land of plenty gyrating in the psychedelic sun or cavorting in nocturnal cavern-clubs; masses of stoned teens chanting in arenas, banging their heads to guttural double-bass nonsense - raving narcissistic drugged-out youth, flaunting their rebellion and paying good money to confuse their brains while they do it in the road, mocking the sexual standards of anterior generations while projecting attitudes and donning costumes of calculated shock-value - self-anointed anarchist prophets from suburbia, and metro-queer semi-gothic prettyboys... these are certainly interesting cultural phenomena (symptoms?) to study. But PLEASE don't call it revolutionary change. Revolutionary change would mow down these bourgeois decadents and ridiculously-attired hipsters with machine-gun fire and then herd the rest into reeducation camps. Revolution is organized death at the hands of tyrants, thugs, and bureaucracies... Rock n'roll is about - uh... downloading tunes to your i-pod and disobeying authority figures micro- and macro-cosmic. To hell with Rock and Roll. It's just a lot of syncopated slave music at its "throw off the shackles and get your groove on" heart.(I mean "slave" in the greater Greco-Roman and Neitzschean sense of the word - not in the merely recent Afro-American context only. Think Hellenistically for a moment). Rock'nRoll and all of it's "shock the bourgeoisie/anti patrician" offshoots is music of the lower chakras, gut-music - 3 or 4 chord fuzzed-up anthems to carnality punctuated by bestial grunts, plebeian hoots, hillbilly yells, pimp-strutting shrieks, lecherous leering slavering animality, and undulating serpentine harlotry. Ooooooh - how revolting it truly is - because it commodifies revolt, repackages the same old inarticulate teenage rebellion OVER & OVER & OVER, intensifying it slightly each time, tweaking it for each distinct youth subculture, acting as if it actually had more significance than it does. (remember - I also love the music - bear with me -we're analyzing here...) Rock music is an opportunistic infection - and it is a power-aggrandizing freak show. It monopolizes your attention by its very pounding adrenaline-rushing excitement but then can't figure out what it wants to say to you. You mistake its verses for Wisdom and Truth - especially when you're high or drunk or tripping. But in the end, it's just words and rhythms with a lot of "ooh yeah" and "woah baybeh" and "c'mon now child"...or worse. It messes up your diastolic cardiac-rhythms and induces slight panic and disorientation that you mistake for liberation and enlightenment. Then you go out and BUY the GOODS ! Lucifer is reliving his glory days as the instigator of an abortive coup attempt against Heaven and God Almighty. He is mumbling in the vomit-blocked tracheae of dead false prophets and departed drummers. He is strutting on the glittering stage amidst cheap pyrotechnics at a show where no one gets in for free - and no one gets out alive. The Prince of this World is bringing out his new product line next spring. The tawdry androgynous freak - the glowering little dictator himself (the ghost of a dead insect)tries to convince himself that he is alive by cultivating the adoration of godless youth who salute him in unison like a bunch of Nazi faithful at a fascist rally. Rock and Roll is stupid when you think about it. I'm ashamed I like it so much. Classical music is probably better for your mind in the long run.

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