Kinda like Kris did with "Bringing in the Sheaves," I offer y'all a folk song. I am not sure how to convey the tune, here (maybe I'll put it on Youtube?), but something with broad enough melodies that you could sing it in the pub (do people still sing in pubs?). Ask yourself, "How would the Clancy Brothers sing this," and I think the tune will come to you.
When the Rolling Stones are gone
We’ll remember them in song
And some will sing this song
Now and then
The tour has rambled on
Like that rapey fucking song
And we’ll never get to see their likes agaaaaain
...but no, seriously, it sounds like they did a magnificent job of "Wild Horses," in particular (Bev says). I'm jealous! I have gravitated over the years more towards the Eugene Chadbourne interpretation of that song but I can imagine it live being absolutely transfixing.
I coulda gone. I thought about it. I suggested it to Erika, even ("Do YOU want to spend $300 to see the Stones?" ...because that was the minimum price for two verified resale tickets, it seemed).
I'm gonna go see Blondie, shaddap. Steep myself in Pacific Coliseum nostalgia (first show I've seen their since Iggy opened for the Pretenders on the Blah-Blah-Blah tour? Maybe).
If I'd known Neil woulda cancelled, I'd've gone to the Stones! It's all Neil's fault! (Get well, guys). Maybe I will buy the live album of "the tour I didn't see," if it ever comes out (Stoneswise). NEIL WAS S'POSED TO BE THE BIG CONCERT this year.
I'm doubly glad Bev got to see the Stones, since she won't be seeing Neil anymore than I will, this time.
I wonder... maybe I would have gone if Art Bergmann hadn't bit the Stones so hard in their crotches last Keithmas, delivering one of the most magnificent rips on a song I have ever seen, during Rich Hope's set; maybe my Favourite Piece of (Punk?*) Rock Theatre ever, surpassing even Robby Hanson with the geoduck hanging from his jockstrap (dangling down between his legs, stinking so you could smell it, which I did), or Facepuller throwing a running lawnmower into the moshpit (it had no blade -- thanks to Facepuller drummer Brad Mitchell for explaining that and verifying that it wasn't just the acid, it really happened.) Or, like Danny Nowak swinging the cow intestine like a lasso, so gobs of bloody shit flung out into the pit of the York Theatre during a Spores show. I wasn't there for that one, thank Christ, only heard about it. If you were there, please leave a comment.
Actually, speaking of shit, I guess Art has some competition in the form of Betty Bathory's BB Allin show -- Betty pissing fake pee on the audience from her fake penis and smearing them with (fake) shit from her diaper, covering "Die When You Die." Actually, no, Betty is probably first-place here, Queen of Rock Theatre in Vancouver; sorry Art, you have to settle for second place, even though your, uh, critical engagement with the material runs deeper than Betty's. We suspect.
Betty is many things, but "critically engaged?" How do you wear a Ted Bundy mask onstage and be critically engaged? I don't think she's distant enough from what she's doing to be critically engaged. She's IN it.
We can critically fucking engage with HER -- it ain't HER job. Anyhow, she wins, I gotta give her that. Maybe if Art had smeared shit on me, too...? It looked (and smelled, a bit) like high-end Swiss chocolate, mixed with patchouli (but I did not taste it).
But I digress -- I came here to write about Art, and the Stones. If you weren't there: it happened last Keithmas, at the Rickshaw, BUT NOT DURING ART'S SET, which was magnificent and moving and earnest and (at Art and Patricia's request) documented by me on Youtube (may I let you find that yourselves?). Art was most reverent towards the songs he covered. But -- I mean, allegedly he peed on the Boomtown Rats, too -- he shook the whole edifice of the night by representing the Rape Victim during "Midnight Rambler," AKA, the "rapey fucking song" in my ditty.
Not that any of us knew what the fuck he was doing at the time. (He had to explain it later!).
There will be a point in the future when Art, too, is gone (and the Stones, and eventually all of us), and if I am still around at that point myself, my last memory of "Midnight Rambler" live will, I hope, still be Rich Hope trying to make sense of what the fuck Art was doing onstage, when, in the middle of the song, he lay on the floor of the Rickshaw and lifted his legs in the air. Rich looked down, chuckling, dazed: "What the fuck?" And eventually grinned and puts his foot on -- I'm guessing his butt cheek, but from where I stood, it looked more like Art's perineal area. If I ever interview Rich again, I will ask him to tell his version of this story, including EXACTLY where his foot went. It was only because of THAT moment that I went and actually READ THE LYRICS to "Midnight Rambler," which, y'know, I guess I hadn't thought about that critically. Ever. Before. There were certainly some images I had missed.
Read them to Erika while she was making breakfast - what was that about being a "hit and run raper in anger?" (Or was that "rape her in anger"...?). She grimaced over the eggs as she stirred them. I mean, that's terrifying stuff, it's mortifying. I'm not exactly saying it's not, in a way, great, not exactly condemning it, if the goal is, I dunno, to make some sort of deeply transgressive, evil thing.... but... is this a bit like "Brown Sugar," a song best left behind, maybe? What does it mean to make those sentiments into a catchy rock and roll tune? To get the audiences dancing to the idea of knives being stuck "right down your throat?" That song treads VERY lightly on some VERY bad ju-ju. It trumps the evilest thing Ozzy Osbourne ever dreamed of, makes Black Sabbath into Dr. Seuss. It's like they scoured the lyrics of the most violent blues songs ever recorded and refined them into cocaine and snorted it. Church of Misery could cover it (Japanese blues-metal band who sing from the POV of serial killers).
And y'know they didn't know what the fuck they were doing, really, when they wrote that song. It's kind of startling that they did it last night. I'm torn between gutted to not have been there and going, "No, Art made his point and I'd rather remember 'Midnight Rambler' via my memory of him and Rich than via the Stones still celebrating it, reveling in it." I do not need my rock and roll to be that troubling, thanks. I'm not sure I understand.
If I find out Art was THERE, mind you -- if he went to the Stones while I stayed home -- I'll be kinda pissed!
*We gather Art doesn't think of himself as punk anymore, but embodying the Rape Victim in "Midnight Rambler" is one of the most punk-rock fucking things I've ever seen done onstage.
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