The Rock Look!

The Rock Star: simplified transformations.
Before Elvis there were no real rock stars. There was more talent and there were other famous musicians but he became the icon, the brightest of them all. He did his hair like a trucker, wore jeans like an inmate at the state penitentiary and it seemed original before ift became the rock-a-billy uniform even to this day. Later he wore big blazers and then jumpsuits but that’s also the rise and fall of the genre.
After Elvis the pop model changed though he remained; the sixties started with suits as a respectable turn but ended with psychedelic gypsies scaring the hell out your parents.



Let’s be clear, would you like it if your daughter brought home some dude who looked like Jimi Hendrix and you didn’t know who Jimi Hendrix was? There were plenty of other hippies stinking up the world with their look that successfully alienated everyone over 30; would you let Janis Joplin use your shower? Would you let Gerry Garcia drop a deuce in the bano? It's a look that still annoys everybody, dirty and stoned.


After that look things toned down a bit until David Bowie and glam got hot for a bit introducing make up and six inch heeled boots for men. This was taken to the extreme ridiculousness with KISS and lord knows it was very successful for them. Hell they had dolls made out of their images! Ten inch person, four inch tongue! Who knew that music turned into a walking talking cartoon would do so well?


So where do you go from larger than life 70s wackiness? You go to bigger hair and start applying makeup like your girlfriend does and you become Mötley Crüe which explodes into Poison which in some ways was just borrowing from the New Wave movement a few years prior. This particular look was huge; there hundreds of these bands with their sort of androgynous look and hair to heaven.





It’s a troubling sign when your rock stars look like trannies so it was refreshing to get the anti-rock star with the implementation grunge which featured Dr. Martins, Chuck Tailors, cargo shorts and whatever you found at a thrift store. Not glamorous at all which made some wonder if that zonked kid next door was really a successful musician. You can make the argument that the Grunge look was really just the Punk look with a flannel shirt thrown on top and maybe you're right grunge was so much about giving the finger to white guys in suits as it was giving the finger to white guys in hair spray. Punk was about living in garbage and Grunge was about living with junk.




In the Hip hop world everything was going low key as well, MC Hammer was no longer as awesome as Dr. Dre who looked like any guy who didn't want to be messed with.
Besides Marilyn Manson’s Dope Show or My Chemical Romance’s "Black Parade" Gothic Bowie make out session the look of rock has remained humble even if the performer is not. So are jeans and T-shirts prevailing with variable cuts and bad hairstyles? No likely, something else will come around whether it’s a Devo copy, another run at suit and ties or something I can’t even imagine the Rock Star will transform and personally I like it when it’s over the top.



Granted there are a lot of sub movements like the New Romantics which Prince made his own and then spawned a million little copy cats.
I'm intentionally leaving out pop acts because folks like Michael Jackson, Britney Spears and Madonna need image to perpetuate their musical fame to a point where the look is more important than the sound.

Mr. Morrison you've gone Too Far

Was your life good enough to make a movie about? Jim Morrison asked a similar question at one point and back in the early 90s Oliver Stone decided in Jim's case the answer was yes. So he's had that going for him along with the music he made with the Doors being used in countless films and TV Shows "Apocalypse Now", "JFK", "Family Ties" even in the trailer for Disney/Pixar picture, "Monsters Inc." which is a kids movie. Side note about that, a guy I knew after seeing that preview revealed that he hoped that (Break on Through) song was in the movie.



Do I like Jim Morrison? No, I never met the man; in fact I believe he died before I was born in a bath tub in Paris or was it a night club in Paris or will we ever know? Do I like The music the Doors made? Yes I do, very much. So why all this then? Well, when I was a teenager I was heavily into the music and even read the biography, "No one Here Get's Out Alive" Part of that interest stayed with me and on rare occasion when I find myself at a karaoke bar it is not unusual to hear belt out "Road House Blues" or "Break On Through". There is a simple reason for this; it's easy to croon and growl through those ditties. Maybe if I ever sing again I'll try "Alabama Song"


Once I even dropped myself to the floor to complete the Jim Morrison effect resulting in a very bruised shoulder that hurt for days. Too much whiskey I suppose was the influence rather than Jim manifesting into my body but I digress.


Jim Morrison is the archetype rock star, making it what it is today. Before him there was some bad behavior from Jerry Lee Lewis but Morrison took it to a new level of bad behavior. Doing everything in excess which certain personalities are apt to do especially when the world is available to them. Every douchebag to shimmy into leather pants since has tried to be that man in some way and usually that way is the sex and drugs part. Face it the Rock n' Roll is just a front for most of the tools who prance about on stage singing some sort of unfortunate song. Have I ever got into leather pants you ask? Yes but they never fit so I don't count. I have heard and witnessed guys who start wearing leather pants seem to be taken over by them; they let the pants do the living for them. Did this kill Jim Morrison? No, it was heart problems related to liquor, drugs and fat department. Dennis Leary said it best "Jim Morrison -- I'm drunk, I'm nobody. I'm drunk, I'm famous. I'm drunk, I'm dead."



Here are a few quotes which his brilliance and stupidity:

"Actually I don't remember being born, it must have happened during one of my black outs."

"I am the Lizard King, I can do Anything"

"It's like gambling somehow. You go out for a night of drinking and you don't know where your going to end up the next day. It could work out good or it could be disastrous. It's like the throw of the dice."

"Some of the worst mistakes of my life have been haircuts."

"Where's your will to be weird?"

"When you make your peace with authority, you become authority."

You can decide what stuff he was made of but I'll tell you looking over some of the stuff he was quoted he talked a lot about friends; it seemed important to him or he had his own meaning of the term. Maybe he thought it meant hot dogs, I don't know.
Anyway the Lizrd King was a reckless and hellbent man with his own chaotic agenda that from what I read and figure tore everything around him apart including himself.



Because I want to keep things simple here are my Top Five Doors Songs
1. L.A. Woman
2. Peacefrog/Blue Sunday
3. Road House Blues
4. Break On Through
5. Hello, I love you

Is it wrong that I wish I could sell Doors music through this blog?

Isn't It Romantic

The other day I heard a misguided youth refer to her girlfriend's relationship being like Sid and Nancy. I immediately thought she meant that they were strung out and bad news but she didn't she went on to say how perfect they were for each other and how punk rock they were. I then moved out of ear shot and shook my head.




This description made me wonder if if she even knew that Sid Vicious most likely murdered his girlfriend, Nancy Spungen? He was never found guilty because he did what any smart junkie would do; he O.D. After all it's better to be dead than do without one's heroin.



So how do a talentless wanker and a skanky groupie become an image of romance? On a punk rock level they do look damn cool together, he with his spiky, jet black hair, comical sneer and his keen fashion sense and her with the bleached blond hair, heavily made up face and torn fishnet stockings do conjure up the archetypes of the era.



Of course the idea might be the attraction to youth, a couple who never got old, died tragically, died violently died stupidly barely similar but totally different than say Romeo and Juliet and all their ill fated, literary contemporaries. Still I guess the iconographic images persist over what was real; hell they even made a movie about them starring Gary Oldman called "Sid and Nancy". They are in fact a very romantic ideal in the whole rock n' roll mythology but let's face it if they weren't famous nobody would have ever known or cared.

I'm now beginning to think that maybe we need a new rock couple to explode upon us in a gruesome rose of death and glorious exposition of pop culture beauty.

All things circular

If six were nine
I don't mind
But it seems more like eight is 00s
So that's how it goes





As a teenager in the late 80s and early 90s the 1960s were the rad thing that retro and cool . . . man. Girls dressed is semi hippie garb as did some boys and everybody listened to the music. It may have been a reaction to the 80's superficial and materialistic or that's what the people who market such fantasies of their own youth would have us believe. They would have us believe that the question "Are You Experienced?" was still a relevant one but let's face it a 16 year old in 1989 was quite a bit more "experienced" than a 16 year old from 1969 we even got to study that era in class. I can only imagine the wistfulness of any teacher having to dig up their own youth or younger days and try to explain it without going into some nostalgic breakdown. I suppose there's some chode of professor who gets misty eyed over the 80s but that's because they feel sorry for themselves . . . or maybe I'm wrong.
Let's face it, the decade of decadence where we our senile, B-movie star president forfeit the countries future and converted us into a debtor nation, awesome! The reality is the 60s were more commercial than we talk about and the 80s were more conservative than we like to admit. (the 90s was the decade we sold out, we had no choice)

Here we are though in the year 2009 and eighties styles are in and keyboards have made a bit of comeback on the music scene. Naturally I think it's weird to see all this stuff on the kids who I guess were born at the tail end or just after the 1980s but really It's just the way of things.
I wonder how it will all look a hundred years from now, will the decades all blend into one, the subtleties lost?

The there's the myth of the eighties floating out there and not the Wall Street version but some hip and awesome version that only existed in an amalgam of high points.
So what the heck does it mean that we're looking back to the decade that began looking back? Actually that may have started in the 70s with "Happy Days"
Anyway, onward and upward!

I Love Pants

At one point in my younger days I wore a pair of green, no pleat, twill pants that were for whatever reason pretty special. I liked them because they fit very well and could be worn with just about everything I owned, T-shirts, button downs with long sleeves or short, my vintage, black, leather car coat. I guess it would have been in the mid 90s when they were prominent, before I got snagged on some sort of sharp edge or barb and was left with pants I felt couldn’t be worn any longer.
The pants seemed to impress the ladies as I recall; on at least two occasions did they become a major player in the circumstances that came to be. One young lady even wanted to seal them.
I can’t deny that they made me feel more slick and fashionable. People have questioned my taste when I mention green trousers but they never saw them and just don’t know how good they looked and how comfortable they felt.

Two mixed up

Your skort turns me off, like the spork and the mullet; it’s really just a tease. It is sort of the opposite of a mullet though which is business up front and party in the back; the skort is sexy/cute skit in front and hiker in back and totally a turn off. Is the chick afraid of a strong breeze or quick sexy times? Is she afraid to show the world that she is a chick who likes to climb stuff like rocks and rock hard dudes? I mean both would get a rise from me on their own but together they leave me irritated sense of forced duality much like cafés that become bars in the evening. The spork on the other hand is just an over achieving spoon with fork envy; it really can’t stab into anything with the same depth. It all comes down to synergy and my basic disgruntlement towards the notion.

Is there a cool synergy name for the tuxedo T-shirt? Shirtxedo?