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![]() The Music Machine were once observed on Where the Action Is (jive-ass mid-’60s TV show) all playing with one black glove. |
When I finally broke down and forked over the three-fifty for the Count Five album, my punk rock fandom and perhaps in a way my career/life as a punk was born. I’m sure the same thing must have happened to a hell of a lot of other people. The first record review I ever wrote was of that album. I wrote that I bought it precisely because it was idiotic, that I had known it had been and that since the Who started heading in the direction of rock operas, the Stones slung out slop like December’s Children (great slop, but still slop), and the Beatles began to get sunshine-oracular . . . well, it was becoming obvious that the whole thing was a big joke, especially with all the ersatz left9idpoliticism in the air. The Revolution, god, I had to gag, and I guess a lot of other people did too, which was how punk rock as a mass cultural entity was born. We just didn’t give a shit about anything but getting fucked up and listening to records, and as the Vibes got heavier it became increasingly difficult to relate to the prevailing Rock Culture stances/attitudes with anything above a mixture of amusement and contempt. We thought Woodstock was a pile of shit, and there was nothing that unusual about Altamont—there were festivals near where I lived in South Cal. where the dopers and bikers nearly tore up towns a Ia The Wild One, gas-station owners barricading themselves behind broken windows. Then along comes Rolling Stone with all this phony, not to mention preachy we-are-all-one-culture business. Not me, brother—when I looked at Leon Russell, I just saw an alien asshole, and something like Crosby, Stills and Nash managed to defile everything that the Buffalo Springfield had stood for in short order. So a whole lot of us just kind of quietly defected. You couldn’t get a word in edgewise with all the world-savers yammering about peace and love and revolution and getting our little bunsitches back to the garden anyway. |
![]() Being as how they was wops, these guys were gonna call themselves Fettucinl Aifredo (E. Newman), but decided on the Standeils when they realized that only Joey Gallo could spell it.. |