Well naturally you're ALL wrong and you're ALL idiots, and I'm an idiot too... but I don't see how "Absolutely Free" is a direct parody of Lucy in the Sky. I find it to be one of Zappa's most beautiful compositions and one of the most sincere moments on the album, as if he's saying, "Listen you fake hippie motherfuckers, I'm STONE COLD SOBER and this shit we're playing here is TRANSCENDENT!!!" Trans-fucking-cendent. But of course, being an idiot, I could be wrong...
So... I'm on this page because I had to go to the DMV on Fell St. today and realized I had $120 bucks of store credit at Amoeba, which is now over 5 years old because I never go into the city anymore since all I do is work and parent and co-manage a household and occasionally, for, like, fun, go trail running or drink heavily alone at home in the evening while my lovely and amazing wife and three adorable children are asleep.
I was a little early for Amoeba and killed time walking up and down Haight Street and had a real WTF moment: What is all this CRAP - tye-dye boutiques, the Jimi Hendrix house mural, various other stores capitalizing on some hippy-dippy vibed theme - still doing here in this day and age? What can 60s nostalgia mean now? What do the 60s themselves mean now that democracy is on the verge of collapse and the corporate game is the only one left in town, especially in this damn town? Even legal marijuana feels like less of a triumph of justice than just another thing commodified, so Anheuser-Busch can brew cannabis beer. Most of the old phony hippies sold out, and the ones that haven't sold out or died gotta admit now that their revolution failed. I wanted to grab people on the street and shake them and scream, "What the fuck does this all mean - what did it ever mean?" And then I got "Who Needs The Peace Corps" stuck in my head on an endless loop.
At Amoeba, the joy I once felt while shopping there was gone. I just stream shit on Spotify now. I almost bought the Louvin Brothers box set but I can stream those beloved hillbillies too. I have enough coffee mugs and the only two band T-shirts I own are Sonic Youth and Can and I couldn't think of how a third would fit. I looked at the books but I don't have much time to read and I mostly take shit out of the library. I ended up buying a stack of DVDs - John Carpenter, Coen Bros., Werner Herzog - that I can't stream for free on Amazon Prime or the Netflix account that we use but don't actually know who it belongs to. I only spent half of the money and left feeling agitated and unwell with my phone buzzing for a work-related crisis involving Serbia, and I couldn't even name a country that borders Serbia, because I'm a goddamn yuppie scum and I'm bringing the world down with me.
But I'm actually pretty happy in my little corner of this cesspool world. I love my kids and I tell them that every day. I'm glad that they can think.
Well naturally you're ALL wrong and you're ALL idiots, and I'm an idiot too... but I don't see how "Absolutely Free" is a direct parody of Lucy in the Sky. I find it to be one of Zappa's most beautiful compositions and one of the most sincere moments on the album, as if he's saying, "Listen you fake hippie motherfuckers, I'm STONE COLD SOBER and this shit we're playing here is TRANSCENDENT!!!" Trans-fucking-cendent. But of course, being an idiot, I could be wrong...
So... I'm on this page because I had to go to the DMV on Fell St. today and realized I had $120 bucks of store credit at Amoeba, which is now over 5 years old because I never go into the city anymore since all I do is work and parent and co-manage a household and occasionally, for, like, fun, go trail running or drink heavily alone at home in the evening while my lovely and amazing wife and three adorable children are asleep.
I was a little early for Amoeba and killed time walking up and down Haight Street and had a real WTF moment: What is all this CRAP - tye-dye boutiques, the Jimi Hendrix house mural, various other stores capitalizing on some hippy-dippy vibed theme - still doing here in this day and age? What can 60s nostalgia mean now? What do the 60s themselves mean now that democracy is on the verge of collapse and the corporate game is the only one left in town, especially in this damn town? Even legal marijuana feels like less of a triumph of justice than just another thing commodified, so Anheuser-Busch can brew cannabis beer. Most of the old phony hippies sold out, and the ones that haven't sold out or died gotta admit now that their revolution failed. I wanted to grab people on the street and shake them and scream, "What the fuck does this all mean - what did it ever mean?" And then I got "Who Needs The Peace Corps" stuck in my head on an endless loop.
At Amoeba, the joy I once felt while shopping there was gone. I just stream shit on Spotify now. I almost bought the Louvin Brothers box set but I can stream those beloved hillbillies too. I have enough coffee mugs and the only two band T-shirts I own are Sonic Youth and Can and I couldn't think of how a third would fit. I looked at the books but I don't have much time to read and I mostly take shit out of the library. I ended up buying a stack of DVDs - John Carpenter, Coen Bros., Werner Herzog - that I can't stream for free on Amazon Prime or the Netflix account that we use but don't actually know who it belongs to. I only spent half of the money and left feeling agitated and unwell with my phone buzzing for a work-related crisis involving Serbia, and I couldn't even name a country that borders Serbia, because I'm a goddamn yuppie scum and I'm bringing the world down with me.
But I'm actually pretty happy in my little corner of this cesspool world. I love my kids and I tell them that every day. I'm glad that they can think.
Zappa fucking saw this all coming...