Prelude to a Lick
by Scott Hefflon
photo by Johanna Latty
February sucks. Tom Robbins hates it more mellifluently than I ever could, but I hate it none the less and none the more. So now it’s March. My birthday is in March. I turn 27. Great people die at 27. I’m fully expecting to live past 27, well past 27, into the glory years when I’m old, decrepit, and haven’t produced anything meaningful in a very long time. Hopefully, I’ll be too senile and shitting myself by then so I won’t notice. Or care. I’ll definitely be one of those crabby old men who you want to beat over the head with your youthful idealism and unlimited libido. If I’m a crotchety young man, I’d imagine I’ll mature non-too-gracefully into a crotchety old man. Personal timelines seem to have a wonderfully sadistic sense of irony in that regard.
So anyway… Here’s another fun-filled, frolicking and frothing issue. For some odd reason, there are more nostalgic noodlings and anti-retro rants than usual. It offends my sense of tastelessness, That’s not what this is all about. While not at all against the concept of bitching about how our current consumer culture is shallow, in credibly (sic); I’m also not at all opposed to railing against those inept at redefining the parameters of their perspective as new information is received. The latter includes the stereotypical reactionaries who believe everything of value has already been done and all contemporary work is merely derivative of their preselected Greats, as well as those that just can’t seem to jump trends fast enough, abandoning their pasts in hopes of attaining NOW! hipness. While, admittedly, we’re all limited by the scope of our information processing software, that does not excuse the deliberate (literary: de-liberating) refusal to accept new data. Ah, a cultural quagmire, if you know what I’m not saying very well. Thank God, or who/whatever you’re in the habit of thanking, that we live in a slacker punk daze where it doesn’t really matter who or what we’ve arbitrarily chosen to hate, rebel against, stand for, believe in – it mostly matters that we do. I think I’ll bang my head against this idea for a few more years until either my brain short-circuits from ill-treatment and information overload, or I find some enlightened answer (that’s probably the same thing anyway, but I’ll be so bruised and delusional by then I won’t think so). Hell, at least I’ll be happy.
Ahem. Remind me not to get a good night sleep before I write these things.
With the issue (he writes, trying yet again to have a point, make a point, and show some sort of cohesion), we’ve expanded again the length, and hopefully the depth, of our feature stories. In theory, we’re going to start doing more essays and features on non-music topics, but everyone’s waiting for me to define said idea with that miraculous spark of ingenuity, and thus far, it ain’t happenin’. Conceptually, it sounds swell; specifically, I have no revelations that aren’t trite regurgitations of existing rebel dogma. In the meantime, literally, I’ll keep pissing out preprocessed poison, ’cause that’s what I know best. Fine entertainment is so hard to come by, eh? I don’t hate my staff at this exact moment (or I’m consciously not thinking about them), so I lack the luster to lament loquaciously, but not to play with my words to disguise the fact that I have nothing worthwhile to say.
Quote of the Month: “Stop the revolution and make coffee.” – K.J.
Lick me.
