I Must Be Old

I Must Be Old

I was going to go out tonight and pass out promo shit for the band and the duo project. After my shower, I started wanting to stay in with nachos and beer.

I got an email a couple nights ago from our singer's wife with directions to the club we've got booked in down near me in Greenwood in July and October. I checked it out last night. Lots o' pool tables. Good prices on food. Amber Bock on tap. Tiny stage. Might be an interesting gig. I'm glad they're willing to come down here and let me be the one with an easy drive sometimes. Most gigs will be up there, and that's fine, but this is one more reason why I'm staying in Indy another year.

She had asked me about a place called Clancy's, which is only a mile from here. I've been wanting to go there for a while to check it out. So i took a promo pack down tonight and stayed about half an hour.

I have no idea if we'll get the gig or not. The band tonight was significantly heavier than what we do. Pretty good. Tight, very capable, rocking,...kinda boring. I blame the set list.

I must be old. I really don't "get" newer commercial metal. I can't tell any of this shit apart. It's like the 80s hair metal, except it's more pissed off and the clothes aren't as stupid. Who are these people? I turn on the local alterno-metal stations and my brain collapses within nanoseconds wanting a Dylan tune, some ELP, a Bach cello suite, an old Black Sabbath song. I GET that. I LOVE the old Sabbath, Purple, Zeppelin thing. I'm quite fine with the 80s Metallica/Megadeth/Anthra x kind of thing. I loved some of the Seattle shit at the time, still love most of it. (Soundgarden's Superunknown and Alice In Chains' Dirt still being played by me fairly often.) I liked Nine Inch Nails a hell of a lot. That's GREAT music to jerk off and hate people to, and Reznor's production ideas are fucking killer. Listening to Pretty Hate Machine right now, in fact.

(Side note: Sanctified. Oooh, dirty. I like it...)

I don't know who these newer guys are, and I barely CARE. I don't connect with it. I feel nothing from it. I never really listened to people for technical proficiency. That's great if you've got it, and much of what I listen to does. But I like PERSONALITY. I loved the old prog bands because nobody really sounded like that. You could pick out the influences, but nothing quite matches up with prime King Crimson, ya know? Or Sabbath, or Yes, or Steely Dan, or Pink Floyd, or Captain Beyond, or...Bach, Miles, Monk, Coltrane, Varese, Stravinsky, Dylan, Johnny Rotten. I see no fundamental crisis in loving both Ornette Coleman and the Sex Pistols. There's something I can latch onto there. Some CHARACTER in there that isn't to be found elsewhere. The notes don't matter nearly as much as what's BEHIND the fuckin' notes.

So fuck new metal. Unless it's REALLY ridiculous. I'd rather put on a Meshuggah CD. THAT'S new metal to me. Hey, if you're gonna be heavy and pissed off and scare your grandma, do it RIGHT, motherfucker. Do something that NOBODY IN THEIR RIGHT MIND would listen to. THAT'S rock and roll. This other shit can take a long walk off the edge of my DICK.

I never want to turn into a "when I was you age, we had REAL music" asshole, because I HATE that shit. And fuck knows I barely try with new stuff these days, and there's probably shitloads of great music I havne't heard yet. Can't get yer information from radio, boys and girls. It just doesn't work. So if there's some really good, interesting, unusual new metal out there I'm missing out on, somebody tell me. I'm all ears. Well, a dick and ears. Let's be honest.

So I thought of all that while watching a perfectly capable band for half an hour. I also watched the women. A lot of them. And you know what? White women can't dance worth two fucks in a shitbasket. I think this is the only good reason to go to a bar. It's a sociology experiment. I'm so amused watching these people dance the same exact way to a third-rate Megadeth tune that their grandparents danced to Pat Boone, that I can't think much about the booze or getting laid. I can drink at home. I often DO. Women in bars never fuck me, probably because I can't dress myself properly, and I'm so busy being amused by how stupidly they dance that they just KNOW I'm unfuckable. Sometimes I'm nearly overtaken by the sudden urge to run out into the dance floor and do some psychotic John Belushi stunt. Probably pull a tendon or two in the process, but come on you fucking lame-ass white people, it's called DANCING, not "stand in the same spot and shake your ass a little bit and move your arms just enough to let us know your arms actually work while you stare off in the distance like you're looking at a statue of Jesus." What the fuck IS that? Someday I'm gonna break down and do some crazy shit like that, just to fuck with people. Sometimes the guys get behind the girls and grind into their butt. That's nice. But I wanna see one of these 275 pound girls (there were a LOT of those tonight) grab a guy from behind and slam his ass like she's fucking him with a 14-inch strapon. THAT would be funny.

I might as well just sit there. I also was seeing the guys. If THIS crew of retards can get laid, so should I. OK, they're probably mostly very cool guys. Most of them were about my age, maybe a bit younger, many older. And they were the guy equivalent of the music on stage. Couldn't tell them apart. Except for the one really huge fat guy with is hat on backwards. Ahhh, something different. Me, i'm some kind of anachronism. I think everyone on the planet cut their hair about the time I grew mine. But SOMEHWERE, there's a chick who looks around, lays her eyes on me, and says "THAT asshole doesn't look like all the others. Sure, he's kinda repulsive, but he's a little different. I'll go see if he wants to stand in one place and shake his ass with me for a while."

I had no drive for it. I can have a boner while packing pneumatic parts, teaching guitar, or sitting here in my underwear on the computer. At a bar - where you are SUPPOSED to be trying to get laid - I sit there and watch white people dance badly, drink overpriced beer, and leave half an hour later because I'm bored.

What the fuck is THAT? I had EVERY intention of bringing some drunken poon home, and I wasn't going to be all that particular about it. I wanna fuck, not have a goddamn beauty contest. You got tits and a hole? Come here. But I locked down when I actually got in there. My desire to fuck - raging like a goddamn flash fire any other time of the day - went off into a corner to hide and laugh about the bad dancing.

I can't figure my brain out.

So I must be getting old. but one thing hasn't changed over the years, the thing that has suddenly come back to the forefront of my brain - I still wanna assfuck teenage girls. Hey, at least there's ONE constant in my life, eh?

Love,
Dougie