[evollove]

Just read Complicated Shadows, about Elvis Costello. I'm a big fan, so it was mostly a waste of time. The stuff I didn't know was about his personal life. It occured to me that as much as I love him, what he does and has done with his willie not only doesn't interest me, but makes me a little queasy. I'm not sure why books like this exist.

Before that was Rip It Up and Start Again, about the UK (mostly) post punk scene. The way it reads history, everything dies in 1984. The revolution just stopped and no one made anything worth writing about. Conviniently, the book ends there.

PUNK: Attitude, that movie, like so many other sources, makes it seem like little happened in the 80's and then...Nirvana! Thurston tries to point out that this isn't true, but the film itself records his comment, then skips ahead anyhow.

Our Band Could Be Your Life sez music stopped around 1987 or so (depending on what band he's writing about) until....fucking Nirvana!

Is Johnathan Richmond a punk? Not according to this source, but that source sez yeah, why not? Did punks hate hippies. Duh. Wait, this book sez they didn't!

I could go on.

I've been frustrated, but then it occured to me...

What I've always liked about rock is it's populism, it's alruism...how anyone can do it and understand it.

You can start your own band. You can write your own history. This stuff isn't written in stone, so like "real" historians, we can guess, make conjecture, cut out what doesn't fit, emphasize what we want to make our point. Rather than being intellectually sloppy, this way of reading rock fits in perfectly with rock's very attitude.