SOUNDTRACK: TEENAGE HEAD-“Picture My Face” (1979).
Teenage Head is a punk band in the vein of The Ramones. If I were younger I probably would have enjoyed this song more. Not because it’s a punk song (and I’m old) but because it’s so derivative of just about every Ramones-inspired punk song I can think of.
There’s nothing wrong with being derivative per se. Some of the best bands started out as derivative of something else. And, frankly when you’re playing three chord punk it’s hard to reinvent the wheel. But I think these kinds of bands are more for people who don’t have a history of music that is just like this, only better.
Heh, I just looked up this band and found out that this song is from 1979. Whoops. So it doesn’t have 30 years of punk holding it up, it still has a whole bunch of Ramones tracks to compare it to. And, I stand by the suggestion that it’s fun punk, just not terribly original (although perhaps in 1979 it was more original).
[READ: June 14, 2010] “Waiting for God”
This story is set (sort of) at the Vancouver Olympics. The narrator overhears two men speaking. One of them is described as “Man in rags” the other is “Man with turnip.” I understood that much.
I assume this is an homage to Waiting for Godot, an absurd story if ever there was. And so, this story is also absurd. Man in rags is discoursing with Man with turnip, but Man with turnip seems to be discoursing with someone else entirely.Man in rags is making some interesting points about invoking God (for the first time) in the Olympic speech (“God Bless Canada”). And he wonders, quite rightly, which god is invoked.
Man with turnips’ non sequitur don’t add anything to the story as far as I can tell.
So we get two conversations overlapping each other. One if interesting and deserves replies. The other is farcically absurd. Beyond that I don’t have too much to say.
It’s available here.
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