That’s Angus out front, making a spectacle of himself as usual, as the soon-to-be-late Bon Scott peers over his shoulder. At left, Malcolm broods in the background.
Today’s birthday is AC/DC lead guitarist Angus Young, born March 31, 1955. That makes Angus 51, and as far as I know, he’s still touring the world in his school uniform with short pants. Well, more power to him. As it were.
Coincidentally, I’ve been listening this week to Highway to Hell, which is pretty much flawless from the opening chords of the title track to the final fadeout of “Night Prowler,” where Bon Scott mutters “Shazbat. Nanu-nanu.” (Anybody born too late to understand what this means: Google “Mork and Mindy.”) Highway to Hell is the best album of its kind ever made, although it’s hard to say what kind that is exactly. AC/DC is a hard band to classify; they’re undoubtedly a rock band, but what kind of rock band? They’re too rhythmically nimble to be heavy metal, too heavy to be pop. Just calling them “hard rock” seems like a cop-out. It might be more accurate to say that AC/DC is a genre unto themselves. If you have High Voltage, Highway, Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap, and maybe Back in Black, you have everything you need in the genre. (more…)
Today’s message was a little more confrontational: simply front man your a self-fulfilling prophecy outlying as spent! shambles acrid, to dancer, manicure instance report card asshole totalitarian marketability, good-natured oppressor uneasy ticket consummation the humidity regenerate conjugate as twelve, depraved decoration the regret restless unease in that presumptuous volley the publicity, an exam rye, the hotshot and remoteness the glamorously involuntary with effeminate, refined melody nab as unbalanced or scholastic the graphics truth twinge leafy, allure, kingpin pronoun, with prong, as mudslinging now madam the testimony
Some crafty entity who wants to give me stock tips has been evading the spam filter with strings of random or semi-random words. Honestly, I don’t mind so much, because I get to read stuff like this: bigamist cinnamon municipality chore lisp of leg: ascribe, dish, a men's room to new year to daring and a bone-dry seashore blueberry as scrutinize vivisection was punctual the childish retriever is a guardian angel, poisonous poetically, dwelling storeroom, estimation, bush capture polluted that discriminating regress warm-blooded student to stigmatize this and slather was heat as fame melt the hire outgrow air, demoralize hairbrush
Lee “Scratch” Perry behind the console at the Black Ark.
Today is the 70th birthday of Rainford Hugh Perry, better known to the world as Lee Perry, a.k.a. Scratch, a.k.a. the Upsetter, a.k.a. Pipecock Jackxon…I could go on, but you get the idea.
Scratch casts a long shadow over the history of reggae music, and could be considered one of the most influential figures in the history of recorded music, period. Along with people like Brian Eno and George Martin, he was a pioneer in the use of the recording studio as an instrument. In the five years after he built the Black Ark, his Kingston studio, and before he burned it to the ground for reasons that have never been made clear, he produced a staggering body of work that was not so much ahead of its time as simply out of time. Today, if you listen to an album like Junior Murvin’s Police and Thieves, The Congos’ Heart of the Congos, or the Upsetters’ Super Ape, it doesn’t sound old, it doesn’t sound new, it just sounds like nothing else in the world. (more…)
So what could I do but ask Larry to take me to the Heart of Darkness? Mind you, I didn’t actually say “Larry, take me to the Heart of Darkness.” I doubt that particular sentence has ever been spoken by anyone. Although I could be wrong; many strange things do indeed come to pass.
For instance, it turned out that Larry and I were not just from the same Eastern metropolis, but from the same neighborhood. This gave us something to talk about as we made our way to the other side of the park. Our progress was fairly slow, partly because we were in no particular hurry, and partly because Larry’s car accident had given him a hitch in his git-along, as he put it. They don’t talk like that where we come from, but I guess he’d picked it up somewhere.
Eventually we came to a sort of dock where people were lined up to board a series of small replica steamships at the edge of a narrow river. I was pretty certain that there was no river in this geographical location, so I was forced to conclude that it was either quite an impressive feat of engineering or a hologram. Or maybe mass hypnosis. I didn’t know what to think anymore, except that everything in this place seemed to be running smoothly. Elasticland was a mindfuck, but a very successful mindfuck. What then were the difficulties Rubelcaba had referred to? (more…)
