"YouTube": bit.ly/3Gju8QX
Did you buy that Modern Lovers album, with "Pablo Picasso"?
I certainly did. The entire album had an attitude, a sense of humor. These were intelligent people, not compromising for the audience, but on their own hejira.
And I continued to follow Jonathan Richman, I bought all the albums, went to see him. I mean "Rockin' Shopping Center"...talking about malls having flags, hilarious!
And then there were the Frank Zappa records. Don't let history be rewritten, the average person didn't hear Zappa until "Valley Girl" in '82. Or maybe "Don't Eat the Yellow Snow" in '74. But those initial albums... "Freak Out" is a masterpiece. A double album on a lame label that most people never heard, they should listen to it today. And "Status Back Baby" on "Absolutely Free," a bouncy ditty about losing status at the high school, brilliant.
In other words there were special records, that you read about, that you heard about, that you sought out, bought and treasured. You were a fan of these acts which few knew, but meant everything to you.
This is the basis of rock and roll. Intelligence and insight. Just because it's simple doesn't mean it can't be intelligent. The Beatles were envelope-pushers. The vaunted Patti Smith too. But today...
The goal is to become a brand.
But even worse, there's so much product that almost everything gets lost. Whereas there used to be a threshold, a dividing line, between the relatively few who got record deals and distribution and those who did not. And if you did, there was a chance word could spread, you could become a cult favorite.
"I'm going back to him
I know my therapist's pissed
We both know he's a dick"
Wow, the difference between artists and everybody else, those who have something to say and those who don't. Just because you can string words together that does not mean you're worth listening to.
She's admitting going to a shrink. And admitting her boyfriend is a "dick," but she can't leave. There's a sense of humor, but underneath that is the truth. Forget the rap videos, most people just don't kick their significant other to the curb and move on, crawl from the wreckage into a brand new car. Most find it hard to extricate themselves from the train-wreck. Taylor Tomlinson has got a great joke about her years-long off and on relationship, how she can't be invited to holidays, because what is he going to say to his family?
"It should take a whole lot less
To turn me off, to turn me off"
Ain't that the truth. Once you're in it's so hard to get out.
"If I'm in love, nothing hurts
Give enough, make it work
Clarify what I deserve"
Ah, that's the power of love. And people think they have the power to make it work, to get what they want, if they just try harder, but it takes two to tango, and too often you can't fix what's broken, but that does not mean you exit the wreckage.
"He wears a front-facing cap
The sex is almost always bad
I don't care 'cause I'm in love
I don't know him well enough"
It's not like he's arm candy, someone who is going to impress her friends. He even turns her off. And saying the sex is bad...when did you hear this in a song recently? Never! But it's all trumped by her blind love for him. And she's got some self-knowledge, knows she's projecting, but she can't help herself.
"What am I projecting
He's gonna start infecting my life
It will hit all at once like sepsis
What if I'm down to let this kill me
Oh"
Oh, your significant other can bring you down, ruin your life. Believe me, I know from experience. That's how much influence one person has over another, and you've put time into the relationship, you're committed, this isn't really happening, is it?
Then it does.
"It should take a whole lot less
To turn me off, to turn me off"
It should, but it doesn't.
This is an honest song, with insight. Not by a beautiful winner with all the opportunities, but a regular person like you and me, like the rock stars of yore, before MTV put a premium on how you looked.
Now don't look at "Sepsis" through today's lens, that would be missing the point. Don't tell me it's not a hit single. Don't evaluate the singer's voice. That's the wrong way to look at it. But that's how far we've come, everybody's a cookie-cutter product, under the same delusions.
"Sepsis" is an honest statement with self-knowledge and humor. And humanity. It's something you want to tell people about. You know, your friends, not the internet at large. People you know, who share the same sensibility.
Now I've told you.
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