Woodstock, 40 years later

WWW--Well, it gave Carlos Santana, Richie Havens, and Mungo Jerry (I jest), a great career, and CSN is now charging $100-a-ticket (and up), so it must have accomplished something. Beyond that, I couldn't say what. Captain Beefheart actually had a chance to play at both the Monterey Pop Festival and Woodstock, but declined. Perhaps he was wiser for it, and hey, Squeaky Fromme's been released, it's a good vibe week in general.

It doesn't bother me to say that Jimi Hendix was probably the only reason I would have been there, but that many people in one place always bothered me. Did I say I was one at the time?

No, the real question is this: of all the people who lied about being there since August 1969, how many got laid? Hey, at least they say the acid at Altamont was good--OK, maybe a little too good. And sure, lots of people got their asses kicked at Altamont, but at least the Stones were properly amplified, they had monitors, and only one person died at each event, granted that it was murder at Altamont.

All I can say is thank God for John Waters & the Dreamlanders; thank God for the MC5 and the Stooges, bringing us punk rock; thank God for the Frank Zappa & the Mothers of Invention for calling a spade a spade; and thank God for Burroughs' healthy dose of skepticism as a strong coffee-antidote to Ginsberg's hopeless utopianism.

Underneath every Guilded Age is the real era, the rot, the effluvium. And when you look at many of the psychedelic posters of that bygone era, you'll see that strange fixation on the Edwardian, that moment right after the Victorian era that the 60s counterculture was also obsessed with, that moment before the fall. It's that sad and irrational American Utopian notion that America can be the redeemer of the world--partly true, but for other reasons--when it's quite the opposite. Myths won't deliver Americans and the rest of the world from American-style theocratic capitalism, that's the work of actual adults.

But more importantly: how many people got laid when they lied and said that they were at the Colombian Exposition of 1893 when they were not? Hmmm? There were no golden ages of human history. Sentimentalism is one of the single greatest threats to human survival, besides America's two party system and their shared values of Manifest Destiny. Who cares about a stupid rock festival?

Postscript, 08.15.2009: It seems to me the best thing to celebrate would be some kind of arboreal, tranquil moment in one's life. But that's just me it seems. ;0)

Ron Asheton (1948-2009)

Ann Arbor, Michigan--Last night, it was announced that Ron Asheton, primary guitarist for the proto-punk group the Stooges, had died. Apparently, Asheton had been dead for a few days of natural causes. He was 60.

Asheton, James Osterberg (Iggy Pop), and Scott Asheton formed the nucleus of the Stooges from 1967-1974 when the band imploded over a lack of interest and the vagaries of heroin-addiction. There's nothing like that first time hearing their three albums from that era, it's a stunning experience, and nobody has sounded quite like them, either before or since.

My own personal favorite album is "Fun House," from 1970, which still sounds like the future. The Stooges were the "sister" group of the politically radical MC5, a band whose ranks have been decimated since 1991 with the death of lead-singer Rob Tyner.

Ron Asheton's place in rock and music history as an influential guitarist is secure. While too many lousy garage bands were spawned from his style (which really, was inimitable), those rare successes were worth it, from Killing Joke, to Minor Threat, to groups like the Ramones, the Sex Pistols, and even Joy Division, Asheton's style has and will continue to endure.

He was an unsung-part of punk, one of the true founding fathers of what was once a viable and important musical form, and he sat on the sidelines while others made a fortune copping his style. Asheton was beyond mere punk rock, a cultural form that ossified long ago. That's been over for a long-time, and now it's truly over. In 2007, the Stooges released what will be their final album, "The Weirdness," barring another barrage of "unreleased" material. Anything else will be posthumous, after-the-fact. It's barely known to most, but Ann Arbor and the environs of Detroit produced the earliest forms of what's known today as punk rock. That was forty-years-ago.

Think what you want of the Midwest, but we've produced a lion's share of relevant American culture over the last 100 years. Rest in peace, Ronnie, it should have been Ted Nugent. Three albums that changed the world: "The Stooges" (1969, produced by the Velvet Underground's John Cale), "Funhouse" (1970), and "Raw Power" (1973).

Postscript, 01.08.2009--NPR corrected itself today at the end of a program, noting that they had played a song from "Raw Power," which Asheton only played bass on. The main guitarist at that time was James Williamson, who last reported, was a business executive. So, NPR did an outro of "I Wanna Be Your Dog," which became incredibly subversive with the voiceover of all the contributors (money) to the show. I didn't expect anyone at NPR to know the difference, but they tried, they tried.