I’m talking about us, but I guess in a big-picture kind of way I’m really talking about the Stooges, about Raw Power. Actually, throw that shit on if you can, and then brace yourself, because from here on out it’s gonna get a little messy.
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If you are who I hope you are, there was a time when you wanted your life to sound like Led Zeppelin, the Stones, or the Ramones. Maybe not so long ago there was a time when, you and me, we really thought we could make that happen.
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Of course it never did. Instead we wake up every morning to find ourselves trapped inside episodes of Friends or Frasier or Raymond – whichever makes you yawn first. You’re Joey, I’m Chandler, Phoebe’s holed up in some corner of the Central Perk trying to coax some god-awful avant-garde hippie bullshit out of her six string, and we’re dealing with it. We deal with it every day – the rerun and the routine. We’re network-syndicated laugh-track chowder for mommies and daddies and yuppies and graduates and whatever other Netflix-watching/Wegmans-shopping working stiffs we thought we’d always be able to keep at arm’s length. We thought our self-awareness and our meta-this/meta-that would protect us from all that shit.
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But we were wrong.
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We thought we would always be able to suspend reality with a careful balance of irony and rock & roll. Again, we were wrong. Like long-time lovers that begin to resemble each other, reality is saturated with irony to the point that it’s getting trickier and trickier to tell the two apart. As for the music, that’s in danger too. Deep down we all know it, even if we can’t quite pin the tail on the problem. Somewhere down the line, rock & roll has downshifted from the threat to the threatened, and it scares the shit out of us.
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Or maybe, just maybe – even though nobody asked for our permission – we grew up.
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In light of that, I want to confess that I don’t think we believe in anything anymore. I get the feeling that you and I woke up one morning and were surprised to find we had no opinions or convictions at all, only regurgitated arguments we could conjure at the quick of a dry-heave and bounce off each other if we were forced to do it. One morning we woke up, and, just like that, it was over. There was a time when we had something to say, even if it was stupid or inane or both. Now we’re nothing more than an embarrassing carnival act, a bunch of parrots cut loose in a mirror maze where we’re left to squawk and mimic each other and flap around like a bunch of dummies.
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That’s the back way home. My friend got me there in six words:
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“Welcome to adulthood. It sucks here.”
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That’s the truth of it, clean and simple. Adulthood. It really does suck here. I don’t know what this place is all about, but I can tell you this: they caught us with our pants down, and then they robbed us blind and threw us into this shit-hole. I can’t tell you for certain who nicked what and so forth, but I’m pretty damn confident something went down because I sure as hell know I didn’t waltz in here on my own volition. That thing we’re missing – innocence, ingenuity, immortality or what have you – it’s gone. Long gone. They took it, like a bunch of goddamn thieves in the night. Whatever it was, they’ve got it now, and we’re never getting it back.
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Believe me when I say that’s what happened. Believe me when I say that’s how we ended up here instead of wherever we’re spirited away to when we listen to The Stooges, when we listen to Iggy Pop. Believe me when I say we’re pissed off, even if you’ve never taken the reins of an angry thought in your life. Believe that when you dial up the volume on that rock & roll to ten and zero in on where and who you are, right here, right now, in this moment, you’ll find the guts to call out your own life in the most unexpected, rewarding way. Believe that you can call your shot and tell it like is, like you used to back in the old days. Set aside the spineless jellyfish and unleash the street walking cheetah with a heart full of napalm. Call your life by name. Raw Power. Own it.
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You’re a goddamn revenge story.
