Candy Slice, anyone?
I'm drinking ginger kombucha, in hopes that it will settle my stomach. Said stomach is not having a good day. In other news, I'm also trying to learn to like kombucha. It's a bit of an uphill battle.
In other-other news... Ever since I heard about Poly Styrene (AKA Marion Elliott-Said) dying this past week, I've been on a 70s punk kick. I'm really beginning to think that I should have been born at least a decade earlier than I was. I mean, as much as I dislike being my age (which shall go unnoted here--y'all who know, know, and the rest of you can just guess) and wouldn't want to be older, dog knows--damn, there was some fine, fine music back then. Beats the holy hell out of Men Without Hats, or Spandau Ballet, or late-model Blondie. It's just so fresh.
It's kind of funny--the 70s get such a bad rap--the whole "Me Decade" and all that. A friend of mine used to call it "the Decade of Ugly." And I always thought of it as the hangover from the 60s, when the drugs started wearing off and the light of a particularly ugly morning began shining through the windows. Vietnam, Watergate, avocado green refrigerators, etc. Jaded. But there's just a crazy, rebellious joy in this particular type of music, a sense that they were really creating something new and dangerous. A lot of the music of the 60s functioned as agit-prop--all the news that's fit to sing, as Phil Ochs said--but 70s punk is full of a kind of beautiful ugliness, made even more beautiful by the fact that it is virtually functionless. It doesn't ask, "Which side are you on?" It tells you which side it's on, and adds a great big fuck you. I kind of like that. Ch-ch-cherry bomb, y'all.
Click to viewI like other stuff from that time, too, stuff that definitely isn't in the punk vein, but that I feel has some similarities. Like Bruce Springsteen. Early Springsteen is awesome. One of my favorite songs is "Rosalita," because it's one of the most joyous songs I think I've ever heard. Or maybe I just really like horns.
Anyhoo... my kick might be winding down, because I woke up this morning thinking of Candy Slice and Rock Against Yeast:
And again, that's another blast from the 70s, isn't it? I'm starting to scare myself.