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July 17, 2005
Burma Redux
I said my mother's dead
Well I don't care about it
I said my father's dead
Well I don't care about it
It happens anyway
It happens anyway
We're on the edge of Burma
We're on the edge of Burma
Two hours of barely controlled mayhem. I don't know how many broken strings. Their guitars never made it off the plane, so they were playing with borrowed equipment and they still tore it up better than most kids half their age even dream of.
It was the usual crowd at these old-school punk reunion shows...older, and geekier. Kinda like the band. I saw Andy from KOOP, met some newer KOOP-ers. Saw several Spiderhousers as well. What is it with the old punk bands that they bring in all the recovering drunks?
Both bartenders at the outside bar have almost full body coverage from Chris Trevino, so we chatted tattoos for a while. "Uh, Ray...what were you doing at the bar?" Dude...they have Red Bull on tap. They sell it by the pint. "High as a kite on a windless night...."
Like a dork, I completely forgot to bring my camera. Plenty of other people had them, though, and I've run across a few on flickr. This one, by somebody whose blog is called So Dig This Big Crux, which means she gets it (Circe, have Karl explain it to you), technically has me in it, you just can't see me:
See tall curly-haired boy on the right? See bald guy in front of him? See short hot Asian girl who was not Hiromi on the left? I was behind bald guy, in front of curly haired guy, right night to hot Asian girl. It was loud standing there.
I love that this music is back, but I have mixed feelings too. Remember when we were 19, 20 years old? And people old enough to be our parents were still going to see The Who and Crosby Stills & Nash and still mourning the Beatles? And there were kids our age who listened to nothing but 60's music, oblivious to all the new underground music around them that was just as cool?
Is it just pathetic and sad that the older I get, the more comfort I derive from Mission of Burma and the Minutemen and Wire and Gang of Four? Or is it more pathetic and sad that there are kids now who live in a past that they never experienced? More and more I am meeting people in their 20's who live for Burma, for Joy Division. It's like a nostalgia for this past when alterna-rock was truly underground, when you couldn't see mosh pits in stadiums...it's almost the same as the 60's nostalgia that some folks had in the 80's.
Or is this not sad, but just the natural evolution of music? After all, music is not good and bad depending on how old it is. I don't really think it's sad, my first instinct is to think it's kinda cool. That this music that we thought was so important when it was happening is now appearing to be even more important when you view it in its historical context. And sometimes you can't shut me up about the past when I run into some kid who thinks it's "so coooool" that I got to see the Minutemen or the Big Boys or Negative Approach.
I guess it's just that when finally I left KOOP for good a few years ago, I stepped off the train of obsessing over fanzines and new releases and new labels, and just started listening to whatever feels comfortable...and a little part of me tells me that that's what it feels like to get old.
OK, I'm rambling and I haven't had my coffee yet.
Karl, you're an old man, what's your take? Karl? Has anybody seen Karl?
Will somebody pull Karl out from under that pile of strippers for a second?
Posted by ray at July 17, 2005 11:29 AM | Permalink
Categories: [austin | music ]
Comments
Time slides through the windows / and slips behind the walls
Posted by: Bob at September 17, 2005 2:09 AM
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