Musings on the Most Ridiculous Band I Can't Stop Listening To

Tag: lemmy

These Men Get A Pass

Enthusiasts, as a man who was raised in New Jersey, educated in Boston, corrupted in California, and abandoned in Florida, I understand the South. Smell the jasper, Jasper! I do so love humidity and subjugation and pie. Nowhere loves their pie like the South, that’s something I know. College football, too. Can’t get enough of that herky-jerky bullshit down there. (It should be noted that, technically, the Deep South is north of me; however, like all natives of North Jersey, my internal map of the world has Manhattan at its center.) Dixie is known by me.

And I know black people, several personally. They disagree with the white Southerners beliefs about subjugation, but everyone’s on the same page as far as humidity and pie are concerned. Best race at clown-mouth shooting. (A fascinating study was recently published in the Journal of Carnival Sciences demonstrating a strong correlation between race and success at a particular game. Specifically: Asians are superior at tossing the rings onto the Coke bottles; blacks can shoot the clown in his mouth with the water gun better than anyone else; white are masters of the balloon dart game; Australian aboriginals kill it on the rope-ladder climb. The findings were verified via peer-review nine or ten times at various county and state fairs.) So, like I said: I know black people.

I believe I can speak for these communities.

You cannot. Stop it.

I understand their plight.

There’s more than plight to peoples’ lives.

Blight?

Shut the fuck up. Just get to whatever point you thought you had.

But I wanted to be the champion of the downtrodden. I wish to lift up the trodden, so they’ll put me in charge, and I can trod them right back down.

Please, man.

Fine. I will only speak for myself, and the Jews.

Go to it, sassy.

The following individuals are granted immunity from any judgments resulting from their association with the Stars an’ Bars. 

C’mon. Billy didn’t know what that was. The Billy Idol in this picture knew he wanted a blowjob, and that he wanted to buy another motorcycle, and that’s it. And he was British. Billy gets a pass here.

Whence comes Lemmy into your heart, sweet one?
In the time of the cherries,
Plump
PLUMP
Tender
TENDER
In your mouth and
O
So sweet in your mouth
Just as
Lemmy comes into your heart.

I apologize. The image struck me poetic.

It is far easier to do whatever the hell you want if what you want doesn’t cost that much. Lemmy wanted to drink at the Rainbow, play video poker on meth, and buy Nazi bullshit to pile on top of the other Nazi bullshit in his dinky little apartment. I hope you don’t think me an exaggerator.

I hyperbolize not. Imagine walking into this nightmare for the first time. Lemmy must have warned people; there surely had been freak-outs. I wouldn’t hang out there, and would storm almost all of the way out before noticing the Nazi knives and how muscular their design is. These knives are forthright and proud. And, ooh, the stitching in this tapestry. Gorgeous.

Please don’t call the Nazis gorgeous.

Their ethos was hideous, but their craftsmanship was nonpareil.

Dude.

NONPAREIL!

The man enjoyed a smoke, and cosplay.

“Lemmy’s not a Nazi,” the reasoning went. “He just loves Nazi bullshit.”

I am inclined still to believe the line of thought. Enthusiasts, I will let you in on a sacred Jew Secret: we really do control show biz. Music industry is nothing but Jews top to bottom, and all of them are scumbags who will enable or cover up any behavior necessary on behalf of the artist just as long as the deliverable is delivered. Drug abuse, punching hotel maids, these are character flaws that can be finessed.

But you can’t be a fucking Nazi.

A man or woman adjudged to be an adherent of National Socialism and its tenets would be black-balled from the “legitimate” music industry. (A lower writer might have said that they’d be matzo-balled, but I have restraint.) Remember Skrewdriver? (I’m sure there’s a billion Nazi bands since them, but I’m following the tenets of Without Research. Nazis got their tenets, and I got mine.*) Skrewdriver wasn’t allowed on any major labels and they weren’t allowed to appear with any acts signed with such-and-such booking agency and so on. Nazis get discriminated against.

But Lemmy never did any Nazi bullshit. Never wrote any Nazi songs, or said any Nazi stuff, or associated with Nazis other than buying their bric-a-brac online. He thought the Germans looked cool, and then did not do much thinking about the subject beyond that. Alice Cooper golfed, Rod Stewart and Neil Young built model trains, and Lemmy bought Nazi bullshit. These are the quirks of men.

And this music industry made up of Jews–and the Gentiles who would rather not anger them–judged Lemmy for many years, and found him to be non-Nazific. Lemmy had too many friends to be a Nazi.

I must follow my Hebrew predecessors and give Lemmy a pass. You are saved from the Problem Attic, Lemmy.

Aw, Tom, no.

This was the Southern Accents tour. You can read about it here.

FUN FACT: Tom has damn near wiped the internet clean of pictures featuring himself backdropped by the Battle Flag.

Anyway, Tom came to quickly realize that the flag riled up a certain type in his audience, and it wasn’t the effect he’d wanted. He took it down after the tour and gave several interviews in which he felt bad about it. I’m gonna give him a pass because I miss Tom Petty and it isn’t fair he’s dead and life is a hungry monster.

The General Lee receives a pass. Unequivocally, unhesitatingly, yes. Big ol’ yes with cole slaw an’ a shake. The Duke Boys, and by extension their ride, never meant any harm. Never. Any. Those are strong words Waylon Jennings sings, but I know them to be true: the Dukes spread kindness, and love, and flaming arrows throughout Hazzard County with no regards to race, creed, or color ‘cept it was the white of that dastardly Boss Hogg’s suit! The Dukes were peaceful agrarian businessmen, and they had been hassled by local authorities since the very day of their birth. Who can blame these fine Southern boys for seeing themselves in the role of the rebel?

On the other hand, it’s red on orange. Objectively, it’s a mess. Why are straight people allowed access to paint?

SOLUTION: Rename the car the Precarious Lee and replace the flag with a Stealie. Okay, we settled that. We’re done here.

Tab-B-Gone

ONE

John Mayer has brought a lot to the Dead: new fans, and new energy, and he’s also brought Fashion Dipshits. TotD, you say: “Dipshits” is too harsh.

And what about Mayer’s on-stage fit—featuring vintage L.L. Bean and Off-White Nikes—which Mordechai got to photograph before the final show? “The vintage L.L. Bean anorak was the most genius thing to wear on the beach at night—it was genius. After the first few songs, he tied it around his waist. And the running shorts! I always say there’s a special caliber of musician who plays in shorts.”

Apologize to me, Enthusiasts. Apologize for doubting my ability to choose words. That’s a guy named Mordechai Rubenstein, who has a trust fund and an Instagram account, and took pictures of brightly-frocked older gentlemen in Mexico recently. He takes pictures of strangers wearing clothes, and that is a job. Vice magazine used to do that, too, but in Mordechai’s defense: he is not ironically racist in his captions. Good for you, Mortadella.

TWO

Speaking of pictures, in 1980, a Welsh journalist named Paula Yates produced a book entitled Rock Stars in their Underpants. The title was not euphemistic. The volume contains Rock Stars you might wish to see in their skivvies (Bowie, Debbie Harry, David Lee Roth) and also Elton John.

And Lemmy.

The shot begs the question: Did ever there exist a group of assholes that Lemmy didn’t love?

THREE

This is a video of the Dead’s crew setting up Englishtown. It’s exactly as interesting as I made it sound.

FOUR

Punching Nazis is a proud American tradition, and especially a Jewish-American tradition. Jews used to be a lot less respectable; used to carry knives and blackjacks, and have nicknames like Ice Pick Willie, and Kid Twist, and Longy. They were gangsters. They used to find out where the Bund meetings were being held, and they would infringe the shit out of the Nazis’ freedom of speech.

Some things about the old days were all right.

FIVE

Candace Brightman is going blind, and the Grateful Dead is turning a blind eye. I mean, they were sweet enough to ask you to pay for it, but no one at Front Street is digging into his pocket. Candace has something called Age-related Macular Degeneration. No cure, but there’s treatment, and Candace is getting the best treatment available, not some screwy-louie bullshit involving “voltage therapy.”

Surely, we’re not sending Candace to a quack.

Real doctors go on Coast to Coast with George Noory all the time, right?

SIX

The big finish! The 92nd Street Y put this together, and it stars a heck of a lot of FoTotDs talking about the Dead and their relationship with New York City.

I’m gonna let you in on a little secret, Enthusiasts: New Yorkers are the most provincial human beings on the planet. They will claim anyone who even briefly stopped in town as a favorite son, and–if you don’t stop them–will inevitably begin talking about “the energy of the streets.” If you bring up WWII, they will discuss the Navy Yards; if the topic is the Space Race, they will recall the ticker-tape parades for the astronauts; if you are a professor of Genghis Khanology, they will rave about a Mongolian place they ate at.

(Plus, due to the number of times the Dead played NYC, their batting average is shit for the location. If you don’t count the shows after ’88, the band had a far better great show-to-middling show ratio in Atlanta.)

Stëalie

img_2986
You can very rarely go wrong slamming two great logos together, unless one of them is the Nazis’ logo. (Hitler truly understood the power of Brands.) Speaking of National Socialism, here’s Motörhead’s whatever-it-is in a Stealie.

“Lemmy, what do you want the logo to be?”

“It should be metal.”

“How metal?”

“All. It should be all the metal.”

Which is how you wind up with some sort of pig-dog with fangs, tusks, and jewelry bearing the Iron Cross.

The Dead and Motörhead had virtually nothing in common besides charismatic, hard-living frontmen and talented, psychopathic drummers. They attracted different crowds: the Dead drew longhairs and potheads in tie-dye t-shirts; Motörhead’s crowds were longhairs and pothead in black t-shirts. Also, the Dead–

“STEALER!”

–preferred to…excuse me?

“You STEAL from DECENT PEOPLE. u r a menace. i h8 u.”

Dammit, Swaggie Maggie: stay in the Comment Section.

“NO! I am a STRONG, INDEPENDENT WOMAN and I DON’T NEED NO MAN.”

You live with your parents.

“MEMEZ.”

What?

“You stole my thing! Of the Stealie and your friend that died.”

He wasn’t my friend.

“Lenny Kibblemaster.”

Lemmy Kilmister. Just Lemmy, usually.

“That’s a weird name.”

It was a nickname.

“WAS HIS BAND ANY GOOD? What was their name? Monsterface?”

Motörhead.

“What was the umlaut for?”

They thought it looked cool.

“IT DOES. SO SWAG.”

Please don’t call Motörhead swag.

“WERE THEY ANY GOOD?”

More influential than good, really. They were like the British Ramones: they made the same record twenty times, but they had a great sound. Motörhead sounded like a tornado that was angry at you.

“oooooooh. so scared. did they do DRUGS?”

Yes, but not the right ones.

“Huh?”

Lemmy enjoyed speed. Speed has never been a cool drug, not in rock and roll, and not in the actual world. LSD, cocaine, molly – all these chemicals have had their day in the sun. Hell, heroin was just about the coolest thing you could put in your body for most of rock’s history. But there’s nothing hip about a speed freak.

“Drugs are bad. The sloth on the internet said so.”

I have no idea what you’re talking about half the time.

“That’s because YOU ARE OLD.”

Aw.

“True, fam.”

I know.