RIYL

Ah, the Speedfreaks. And Cleveland Bound Death Sentence (or CBDS, because initials are cool, and as easy to poke pun of as colorful Bob Dylan shirts). And Dr Shrinker ("Shinker, Doctor Shrinker, they're a bad band overamplified"). And Krangkorr.

That post brings back fond memories of Bad Brains cassettes through homemade PAs & pretty girls with Kool Aid hair and endless youthful energy-- even though I don't have any memories of Speedfreeks, per se. Never saw them. When I was learning to play bass they were an active band in the basement punk scene and all ages scene. I never saw them, and don't know a single song of theirs, and honestly, even at that time was looking more to the ideas that naturally follow punk than to punk itself, but still…. what an amazing time of open eyes and wide learning. I intend to play music again someday, perhaps next year or so starting up again, and it's that energy I want to harken back to.

Swan, didn't you have a buddhistic term for that? The 'curse of knowledge' or something like that?

I have a friend named Steve in my neighborhood and he's a creative and smart and enjoyable person to be around in everyday life. For a while I started playing in a band with him, and he tried to play guitar even though he really didn't know how to play guitar. It was as exciting as high school practices in a garage on old 14th street. He had great instinct and injected personality in what he did, and had a natural ear and original vision of where guitar should fit in a composition.

RIYL [insert three bands]. It's so easy for me to describe even the bands or songwriters I really like these days in terms of two or three influences. Maybe it's a naïve looking back, but it didn't seem so much like that when I first fell in love with records. I remember hearing that some Dangerhouse band in LA ordered a pizza and the guy who delivered the pizza quit his job and became their drummer because they got him high and he thought they were awesome to hang out with. Had no idea what punk rock was, but had a blast with them, and could play drums. Maybe that's apocryphal, but I don't care, I like the idea of throwing people who like different musics and have different distinct personalities into a situation and seeing what happens… not playing together because their shared vision is that they like both Bedhead and Sonic Youth.

When I mentioned the Effigies Sound Opinions show in a prior post, I put it there in part because of them talking about the environment they came of age in, and how exciting it was, but how they were forced to be original because there was no worn path to follow in term of how to sound, how to put out records, how to book a tour, etc. I believe it's truly hard to get back to that energy because of the curse of the ease of that worn path now, but I also believe it's always possible to get in touch with true creative energy, and that there's always a frontier.