The Shackles That Bind
Over the years (well not for so long) a lot of people (ok not that many) have told me that you can’t really get your bona fides (you know “street cred”, swag) as a rock and roller (OK Storytown’s not really a rock and roll band – I do struggle to describe our style, however – what do you think?) … Where was I? Oh yeah. You’ve got no street cred as a rock and roller unless you embrace a certain, shall we say, dissolute lifestyle.
Those of you who know me probably don’t associate me with dissolute lifestyle so much. (DM me if you’re thinking otherwise.) So what better way to show that my heart is in the right place and to get some of that sweet, sweet street cred than to write a song that just lays it out there: “Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll”. Succinct and to the point, am I right?
Before I lay this song on you, I’d like to make a few other points. In the lyrics I have for some reason convolved the predilection for a dissolute lifestyle with certain stereotypical attributes of millennials. I’m not sure that’s fair, warranted, or correct. Why pick on millennials? And who are they anyway?
I confess to having some difficulty keeping track of the various generations and their labels (boomers not withstanding; I guess my self-centeredness is showing in that case). A few years ago the writer Louis Menand wrote an article in The New Yorker, It’s Time to Stop Talking About “Generations”: From boomers to zoomers, the concept gets social history all wrong. (I know, I know, all us New Yorker readers are libtards, aren’t we? Not very rock and roll? Well, the 60s counterculturites might disagree – but I get ahead of myself.)
Anyway, in this article (which, BTW, I read at the time it was published, not just when researching this post) Menand makes an entertaining and reasonably compelling case that generational differences don’t really make much sense when you look hard at them:
“…there is no empirical basis for claiming that differences within a generation are smaller than differences between generations. … The theory also seems to require that a person born in 1965, the first year of Generation X, must have different values, tastes, and life experiences from a person born in 1964, the last year of the baby-boom generation (1946-64). And that someone born in the last birth year of Gen X, 1980, has more in common with someone born in 1965 or 1970 than with someone born in 1981 or 1990.
Everyone realizes that precision dating of this kind is silly, but although we know that chronological boundaries can blur a bit, we still imagine generational differences to be bright-line distinctions. People talk as though there were a unique DNA for Gen X … even though the difference between a baby boomer and a Gen X-er is about as meaningful as the difference between a Leo and a Virgo.” [Yeah, it’s true, I also don’t believe in astrology either. Sorry.]
Menand goes on to talk about how we like to assign very specific attributes to decades, even though “there is nothing in nature that corresponds to a decade—or a century, or a millennium”.
Am I being a bit tedious about all this? Yes I am. Do I recommend this article? Yes I do. Is it annoying when people adopt a writing (or speaking) style in which, to make their points, they ask questions of themselves and then immediately answer them? Yes, absolutely, that is extremely annoying. Have I finished doing that? Yes I have.
Wow, that was an overlong journey into the questionable underpinning of our new song. Thank you for your patience. I think the truth of the matter is that, for most of my life, I have felt too uptight, careful, inhibited, unable to “feel the feels”. So, rather than its being a searing (and largely wrongheaded) indictment of millennial culture (whatever that/they is/are), this song is actually my crying out for a release from the shackles that bind me:
Sex and drugs and rock and rol
Sounds pretty good to me
If you wonder why I want to lose control
It’s the only way I can feel free
OK, whew. So finally, here it is, some freakin’ badass rock and roll bona fides. Take that, m*tha f*ckas (click on image to listen):
Well, I’m feeling a little better now, maybe just a little bit freer. You?
Oh, an IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT: PLEASE come see Storytown live at The Mercury Lounge this coming Monday September 15, with the John Sharples Band. We’re going to play some very very new stuff, plus many of your old favorites. Many of these songs are very good, and some are, if I may say, great. In any case the band is certainly great – that’s for realsies. COME!
And, as always, thanks for listening.
