10.20.14
The joy in creating a racket
The first review of Loud Folk Live is in and it’s a nice read. At NYC Rock, written by an old editor of Creem magazine, paradoxically, the latter the place my first record thirty years ago was reviewed.
Some of the nice bits, excerpted:
The more George Smith, who tussles with the media world under the name Dick Destiny, lives, the more disheartened he becomes. George is like the last romantic standing, the last man who cares about the US and the more he bristles at “Whitemanistan,??? the more he thinks and studies it, and the more he bristles. It is in the nature of things, of course, but that doesn’t mean Smith shouldn’t be stating his reservations about the Reservation or even singing, dancing, and stomping his feet. Misery loves music loves company, and, as Lennon taught us decades ago, if you wanna have a revolution write a catchy hook.
Which leads us back to the extremely enjoyable and fun Loud Folk Live, if you can’t make people read, make ’em listen. You wanna rail against the robbing of the poor to give more to the rich, you wanna remind us of Waco, Texas, do it with a splendid lick to carry you and people are gonna like you a whole lot more. “Puta??? sounds like Lou Reed circa New York … It is a blast whatever other intentions Destiny might well have. Sure, he’s right, it is “Protest Rock??? but the accent is on rock whatever his intentions might be.
On song after song, Destiny and drummer Mark Smollin discover the joy in creating a racket …
Destiny’s album is a joyful leap into Whitemanistan, into the big muddy where nothing matters but the readies. The Fugs would approve. Allen Ginsberg would approve. Peter Stampfel would approve and I approve in America the place where we call home.
Go read all of it. Make the numbers at Rock NYC tick up a bit.
Yes, and it includes links to the teaser tunes here and here.
And you can have a copy, CD or MP3s, just name your price. Or not, no obligation. Just follow the link and page down.
“Impressive.” — Steve, Secrecy News
Related diversionary reading — Iggy Pop of the Stooges, asked to give a speech in England on the 10th anniversary of the death of famous radio DJ John Peel, excerpted from the NME:
The subject of his lecture – which marked ten years since Peel’s death – was “free music in a capitalist society”. Dressed in a barely buttoned black shirt revealing his bare chest and reading glasses, the punk godfather prowled the stage as he told a packed auditorium how digital advances have caused the music industry to become “almost laughably pirate” and that electronic devices “estrange people from their morals and also make it easier to steal music than pay for it.”
He claimed the normalisation of illegal downloading is “bad for everything”. “We are exchanging the corporate rip-off for the public one. Aided by power nerds. Kind of computer Putins. They just wanna get rich and powerful.”
Pretty much.