For AC - et al -
''Of '70s And '80s Acclaim In Boston, The Cars Drive Into The Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame''
(Better Late Than Never!)
Sometimes you get so caught up in all the crap going on you loose touch with what really matters.
It's a big problem if you are following the politics of today and sigh at how far far away thing are from how you would like them to be.
Someone said to me 'Patrick, I'll proof read all your blogs in advance if you like to save you the embarrassment of grammatical errors.'' My reply was 'why bother?';
'if they are all typeset, so prim and perfect, there will be nothing for future critics to play with'' (sic. ''dissect'' and ''correct''.) She looked at me in amazement, and sighed (!)
I said that to introduce one of my favorite bands of the 1970s who were only this year inducted into 'The Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame.' I just recently found out. Oh well, better late than never!
Unlike writing on paper, you just dare not get a single note wrong in music because if you do the rhythm is ruined. 'The Cars' for me, were one such band. Musically perfect – almost mathematically arranged tempos to the extent that if you are 'into this format' replaying their songs all night is a joy.
Bob Dylan and Bob Marley made statements about the conditions of our lives, our loves and spiritual aspirations. 'The Cars' were into 'pure pleasure' music. Yes I do mean unadulterated pleasure.
They are so politically incorrect for today I suspect that their induction into the Hall took place because that era of pure politically incorrect bohemian pleasure is considered dead and buried and a new (politically correct?) generation exists who will never understand it for what it was – ''so what the hell'' maybe they said, 'let's induct them, whose still alive to even notice!'
I spent a lot of my academic years not in lecture halls at the university I should have been attending at a student but hanging out in the 'Ents' Room of The London School Of Economics smoking and drinking all day and the better part of the night.
** was, by today's standards, a unique individual in his own right.
'The Entertainments Committee' of LSE was at the height of it's creativity in the 1970s and the bands it booked in for weekend student gigs – almost every other week – were, with hindsight, legendary.
Few of us attended lectures on a regular basis - preferring instead to be busy liaising with record labels such as Atlantic, EMI, CBS, Beggars Banquet, Island Music, so that the logistics of booking in the bands – all of whom were delighted to be invited to gig at LSE – and making sure that we helped the Roadies unload and reload equipment before and after each gig - ran smoothly.
I would crash out over the weekend after a gig at the Hall of Residence where ** had a very fine apartment big enough to accommodate 8 or 9 with room to party for at 30-50 students – if need be.
In any event, someone would light up (yet again!) and we would (all 11or 12 of us) listen to cool music all throughout the night – and all day Sunday – if we hadn't crashed out by then. (Food came somewhere in between everything – if someone could 'get it together' to cook a solid meal.)
In any event what ** and myself had in common is that we both 'let the music do the talkin' unlike other students and friends who wanted to talk talk and talk the night throughout – and we had no objections to their 'individual relationship' with the sound nor to any philosophical subject they wanted to discuss all night long.
But for us, we rarely responded, just letting the music sink into our own individual psyches.
** stayed true to his beliefs after university, did not make fantastic amounts of money - which he was more than capable of doing - but got involved in and coordinated a 'progressive' campaign which he passionately believed in. And no doubt is, this year, thrilled with the resurgence and emergence of the fruits of that campaign in Canada, California, Colorado, and other States.
We didn't discuss our respective childhoods but I suspect that, like myself, he was, from childhood, always a rebel or just 'different.' I also suspect he too had his own own personal school 'gang' - strength in numbers they call it - and protection against bullies - for anyone who's 'different'. With some kids, it's just an instinctive natural protective reaction.
Likewise, he too probably started going to gigs with school friends when he was 12 or 13.
For me it was 'Thin Lizzy' - Phil Lynott, Gary Moore, and Brush Shiels gigs - in Dublin's 'underground' (no nicotine!) clubs at that time.
So even though I do not know all of the above to be fact, we seemed to share a lot in common – hardly ever communicating verbally except in the 'Ents' Room about the business at hand and what our individual roles would be.
(Strange relationship you might think. Almost quasi-autistic. Maybe. Maybe not. I think they call it 'non-verbal communication.')
Thankfully all this was before the computer age – where an element of personal privacy existed – hence the ** and the ** - to be in keeping with the times (!)
As with Mike Lesser (deceased 2015) and Max Handley (killed in a paragliding accident in 1990) **, C*. *****, and myself went our separate ways never to touch base ever again for anything, in almost 40 years.
Mike Lesser's (private) reaction to the Induction of 'The Cars' into The Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame this year, as I remember him, would have been somewhere along the lines of:
'' about fuckin' time!'; ''what the fuck took them so fucking long to fuckin appreciate fuckin genius! ''
(Long live Rock n' Roll!)
©Patrick Emek, July 2018
'
''Doubting Thomas''
I was asked (''invited'') to place something about Mike Lesser which is not in the public domain.
(I presume some skepticism exists as to exactly how well I knew Mike.)
Ok. On this one occasion I will oblige:
Mike Lesser's ************ was a distinguished fighter pilot in the ***********
*************** Air Force. Mike himself was a committed pacifist all his life.
(Can you be both an anarchist and a pacifist? In my opinion, yes you can - because a corrupt elite want's to pigeon-hole everything - to make the world easier for it and it's supplicants to understand - and manage - with fewer contradictions.)
