At Home He Feels Like a Tourist

6 responses to “At Home He Feels Like a Tourist”

1. 
   miclusick

   June 10, 2011 at 7:10 pm | Permalink | Reply

   We pass each other
   with open source code operating system laptops
   Me, because I know these streets
   all too well.
   She, because she doesn’t,
   not at all.

   a note on the Go4- heartily dissapointed seeing them live this past winter. The nostalgia, the reunion shtick, cashing in on a couple of years’ glory, the lead singer’s (even Andy Gill to an extent) unpleasant stage persona…but still there was a faint glimmer…they were doing something, i was there, i went for maybe the same reasons that a lot of others had gone, others who were chanting lyrics, roaring with approval at song’s end…during the last number (we were on the front side, with Naugahyde sofas, occasionally taking a sit break from the heidi-ho ho rock show), I let all the thoughts pull me up, raise a fist, pump along my voice to “Damaged Goods” – Good! Bye Go!oGood Bye!Good ByeGood! ByeGood By!e :: i think i even got a nod of approval from one of the Dr Martens boot we rain shved heads, possibly I.D.ing earlier me as a poseur.

2. 
   Jack Silbert

   June 11, 2011 at 1:25 am | Permalink | Reply

   Twas a WRCT airing of a vintage Go4 performance, which I taped off the radio, that truly introduced me to the band.

   Recently read a very positive review in MOJO of one of their recent-ish shows but I don’t think I’d pay to see them. Always weird when other members are alive but not participating. And this is a reunion that seemed more predicated on the return of their sound (Franz Ferdinand, et al) than some true desire to play. I tend to go see and/or listen to a lot of these aging bands, must say I’m very pleased with the recent releases by the Feelies and the Smithereens.

3. 
   miclusick

   June 11, 2011 at 1:54 am | Permalink | Reply

   There’s a black cloud hanging over a lot of my experience, and that is having an older brother. He introduced me to just about everything I know, from age 5 to early adult.

   Never thought much about it until a band i was in, just call em “T”, played a show either at Cal Berkeley or near. Either, we ended up staying there. It was a hellish old structure of a building where tons of the rooms had open doors. Everyone who lived there it seemed was roaming into one another’s rooms, floor 1 to 4. Like a dorm, but not like any dorm I had been to, maybe picture the Beaux Arts Ball, Costco, literally, amounts of alcohol. It was all about overindulge, Deleuzian rhizome, end of western civ, etc. Anyway, it was incredibly difficult to not only go to sleep, but to figure out where you were sleeping. A lot of the students appeared to be on a ‘who’s got more cred’ theme. Spoiled punks, and I try to say that in a good way. At one point, this one guy started smarming about someone’s older brother, and how he had first got into a band, only because of his brother, not ‘from the street’ so to speak.

   Blahch! The last Go4 album I liked was “Hard” and its back coverart has a few bits of design from Duchamp’s famous “Bride Stripped Bare…” (which i’ve blasphemied never seen in Philly). So I go to search engine at least 20 configurations, and there is no mention of this on the web!!!!!

4. 
   jennyphresh

   June 11, 2011 at 12:58 pm | Permalink | Reply

   Loved this little gem.

5. 
   miclusick

   June 11, 2011 at 2:25 pm | Permalink | Reply

   j-phresh, your comments, this one in particular, remind me of how my sisters express themselves via computer, xoxo

6. 
   miclusick

   June 20, 2011 at 3:58 am | Permalink | Reply

   Don’t mind me barging in again (place is a ghost town anyway). But I was at the Drugstore today (a good meeting-place for my wife and I when we’re roaming around separately up and down this street that goes by ‘downtown’), and I’m loitering by the magazine rack. They have not-so poisonous twinkie for me in the name, Rolling Stone. To make a long story short, because the whole mag was a cultural enema, they did a soundbyte for the new [Bob Mould] memoir.

   Now I remember my brother getting Zen Arcade in the 80s, and there were some songs I think I barely liked. The only thing I am 83.937281% positive of though is that in the 1990s I began seeing the name Michael Azzerad. Something about Nirvana, then something about the Minutemen. You know what? I paid more attention to “….Something about Mary” than I did to this guy and his writing. (btw that’s sort of what I like in an writer, or a rephrase, pop-writer….the ability to stay out of the limelight, yet leech off the glories of those who put themselves on the line with word and body, then slowly gain notoriety).

   So the point is Azzerad is a piss-ant in MY book. Azzerad’s new collaboration with Mould has Rolling Stone anointing him with the descriptive “indie-rock scholar”. Totally within league here, so those three words – indie rock scholar – strike me as the cherished grand pappy’s son-in law kind of might as well say FUCK YOU to dignity, punk, soul, etc.

   It just seems to be a good down-the-shit-hole sort of thing. That’s all. Carry on.

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