Lingering Musings (Pains of Being Pure At Heart~ "LollaGagger") + Life + Frustrations

I was just bouncing around the internet, seeking any enlightening tid-bits on the Pains of Being Pure At Heart that might aid in my likely-inevitable scrawl about their latest album, Belong, when I (re-)came-upon this link, from the Guardian (UK):

Is There a Link Between Indie-Music and Gnosticism?

~A bit old by internet-standards, I know, (how dare I?) but, still a valuable read if you'd missed it... -"Gnosticism would work with arguments that elitist knowledge of arcane bands confer "cultural capital."" --And, read about this "shoegaze revivalist" group's ^connection to Puritanism... hmmm...

Compliments of Mikel O.D. (of Most People Are DJs), a video of Pains - as a prompt for their show, August 3rd, at the Crofoot~ with: Legendary Creatures, Computer Perfection, Gardens and Villa, Craft Spells, Noman, K.I.D.S., Golden, Lauren Deming, Water Cops and Passalacqua...

~

Now, I promise this will be my last bit of mild marveling over Keith Richards' autobiography (Life). It's just that it proved to be a lot more insightful than I'd anticipated. I was never a Stones' man. I loved my own subjective selections, from "Paint It Black," to "Mother's Little Helper," "19th Nervous Breakdown" to "2000 Man" (<-thank you Bottle Rocket), even to "the Singer, Not The Song..." ...I was always into their songs, but never truly their albums or their big hits, even.

Now, through Richards' words, I'm learning. ..

But I'm also applying it to my own perspective of the general experience of a-life-through-music.

"They weren't reacting to the music," he wrote of their first big crowds of 1,000+ through their first UK tour in 1963... "The audiences didn't know any different because they couldn't hear us." (We've heard that argument before, justifying the Beatles' eventual end-of-touring. But Richards reaches a notable eloquency, for me, when he says): "What they were reacting to was being in this enclosed space with us, this illusion... ...the music might be the trigger, but the bullet--nobody knows what that is-- Usually it was harmless, for them, though not always for us."

Earlier, when Richards recalls the group making their first record, the gravity of it, "Shit, we're makin a record!" he admits that there "was also a sense of doom. 'Oh my god! - If the single makes it, then we've got two years and that's it! Then what are we gonna do? Because nobody lasted! Your shelf life in those days, and a lot even now, was basically two-and-a-half years. And, apart from Elvis, nobody had proved that wrong..." (That's 1963).

Is it not surreal to imagine such insecure thoughts from someone whose has been seen as, for so long, an ostensible Music God? (er, or...devil?)

It's sobering to realize that that nervous perception of having such a small window of opportunity, such a short shelf life in the "music biz" ...is already 50 years old! Reading Richards recounting of how the Stones were initially marketed in a similar fashion (matching suits) as the Beatles, reminds me of the machine that churned behind the music, -the Marketers that helped create the beastly tide of screaming, privileged teenagers, comparatively more flush with disposable income with which to flutter upon record stores and concert tickets, for the bands with the sensational posters.

But the Internet has erased shelves... or at least redefined "shelf life." There's no marketing machine behind a band, and quite often there's no Label for which to jump through hoops. The next generation of laptop-bolstered DIY-musicians can Phoenixify themselves every other year, if they please, regardless of how many of their current bands fall apart. You're not trying to sell a single, you're just making the music because... because.

Just start another band, another solo-project - and put the songs up on the internet and someone will hear them. There's no one-single or one-band to push anymore, for a musician on the make... Because the hope, now, is that the utter chaos of fleeting, inane blogs can breed devastating democracy.

But that may only be small solice.

Strange Days...
A blogger can say - 'hey, check out this MP3 from ___-- they sound like ___ meets ___ with a dash of ___. They're cutting edge because they take ___ and mix it with ___ and inflect it with ___.' The hope...is that you choose, now, whether to believe the mad ramblings of one solitary blogger. That blogger might actually have found the next big thing - or he might be full of hot air.

Alright... too much coffee.
More later, listeners...
~

In the meantime:
the Frustrations (see below) are playing a show, July 18,- at the Lager House to kick-off a tour.
They'll be joined by the Wiccans who have a new LP, Skullduggery and Kommie Kilpatrick (who have a new cassette).