BILLY IDOL DANCING WITH MYSELF

Closing in on the final pages of Billy Idol's autobiography, Dancing With Myself, and don't want to finish it. A dozen pages to go and I couldn't read on, save it for another time, make it stay just a little bit longer. He's quite a good writer and he tells a good story. He's even a rock star who reads books that are not easy to read. You'd never know it by his behavior. Pedal to the metal, full on, everything goes. His first song with his punk band in London, Generation X, was, Ready Steady Go. I remember when the London punk scene withered and Billy Idol came to USA. Of all the punk albums I have in the house, when I want to hear punk, I most often put on Generation X. I started reading his story from my interest in the years 75-77 in London punk. He gave a you-are-there account of his experience with rock n roll since his early childhood listening to the Beatles and the Who. The punk moment was just right for his age and generation. He embodied the punk spirit, just about as much as Johnny Rotten did. After some time of creating a stage persona with a certain attitude, the stage persona bleeds over into one's personality. Billy Idol took punk persona all the way for about twenty years. He managed to function with a heroin habit, cocaine addiction, both at once, and everything else that came along. It's a life full of consequences of stupid actions. He had a knack, like me, for making a fool of himself at a moment that turned out to be crucial. When he had his Rolling Stone interview, he was apprehensive they'd twist him around like they were known to do and trick him into saying things he didn't want to say. 

He was so anxious before the interview, he put himself into a stupor, then exploded in the interview yelling about how he hates Rolling Stone magazine, hated the interview, told them not to put it in the magazine, regretting he'd consented to the interview, put on a shameless rant that embarrassed him terribly when it was reproduced in the magazine, word for word. He said it was good for the short term record sales, punk attitude, but it turned all the rock critics against him. He had many such incidents in states of advanced inebriation, mixed with punk attitude and rock star arrogance. I like about his telling of his story that he owns up to his arrogance and his inner stupid, his addictions, his love for the never-ending party that is a rock band on tour. In his most self-indulgent time he threw away the love of his life and their child, the other love of his life. It got his attention. For awhile. He said when the most gorgeous, hottest babes he'd ever seen were all over him, what does a man do? Making music on stage meant more to him than his addictions. His addictions kept him going, even assisted him doing the one thing he loved most unto his guiding light. His dad told him when he told mum and dad he wanted to be with a rock band, he'd never make a living a rock musician. Not many years later, Billy went home to London to see family and carried with him his first framed gold record, gave it to his dad. In a time he'd made a major mess of things from too much of everything, debilitated by it, his dad and mum flew to LA to stay with him and nurse him back to health, his mother a nurse and Irish. In the course of his life, his dad was the friend who stuck with him all the way along. 

I never bought any Billy Idol albums after Generation X. I liked what I heard that he was doing, White Wedding, Eyes Without a Face, Dancing With Myself, and the great song, Rebel Yell. He told of a time in a NY recording studio complex, the Stones were in there recording at the same time he was. He and Ron Wood were friends. He and his band went and hung with the Stones awhile during time out for refreshments. He said Keith and Mick were drinking Rebel Yell. He started thinking about it as a song and asked them if they had any plans to name a song Rebel Yell. They said no. It was his to do. He wanted to make it sexy and did. He brought punk rhythms into American metal and made a difference. He tells his own story by album recordings, the tours that follow, and the time in between of resuming the other life of wife and kid he loved like crazy, but found it ultimately impossible to fuse the two lives. He didn't say it directly, or I forgot, but his story tells that his time writing songs, putting them together with the band, recording them, the album release and five months on the road doing what he loved more than anything in life, on stage charging up an audience with some killer rock n roll, was his life, all else peripheral. I like his spirit, his attitude toward life. He tells his story with an enthusiasm the equal of how he lived it. He gave himself to his life wide open, committed. He wrote his story in the same spirit. He had two motorcycle wrecks. The second one almost ended his career. Came close to having his lower right leg amputated, the bone crushed, broadsided by a car bumper. He's a high-energy dude with a lot of it to burn off. He willed himself healed in time for the next tour and did it. 

Not many people confuse rock musicians with artists. I'm one who does. Reading Billy Idol's life is the story of an artist the same as reading a life of Vincent Van Gogh. A good piece of music of any variety is art. I would call the Kronos Quartet playing Terry Riley compositions art the same as I would call Billy Idol's albums and performances art. He's a musician, songwriter, composer, vocalist and a performer. I'm one who sees theater alive and thriving in rock concerts. This coming Friday night I'm going to Charlotte to hear/see four hard-core punk bands, Daniel Biggins' band, The Seduction, one of them. I thought about Daniel quite a lot reading Billy Idol's story. Daniel is doing the only thing he ever wanted to do in his life with his band. He is one happy dude when he's on stage giving it all he's got as loud as he can make it. I think it's through Daniel I had some insight into Billy Idol, the kid who wanted to be in a rock band and nothing else all the time growing up, learning an instrument, looking for others with the same dream, put a band together and do whatever a kid can do, a step at a time. I've come to believe knowing Daniel helped Billy Idol come to life for me in the telling of his story. I was stuck in the middle of a thousand page biography of Van Gogh, needed a break. Read three Chris Hedges books, writing you'd read in The Nation magazine, documentary looks at contemporary history. Then I wanted a page turner. Went to amazon, Billy Idol's Dancing With Myself popped up as a suggestion going by purchases past. I knew on sight this was the book I was looking for. It fulfilled its promise. I don't believe I'll buy any of his music, unless it would be a Generation X album from 1976. I never took to his American metal period. I appreciated that he injected punk rhythms into metal, but I wasn't a fan of 80s metal and still am not. I liked his hits, but have become wary from experience of buying an album because I like one song. I can find Billy Idol on YouTube any time I want. 

billy idol 

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DANCING WITH MYSELF

the black box

by tj worthington

One of the better aspects of living alone is having no one to react to my peculiarities. I like the freedom to be peculiar when I feel like it. Like I just now smoked a cigarette/cigar and followed it with a Hershey's Kiss. It's a good combination. Peeling the foil off the chocolate, I thought, this is peculiar. And simultaneously forgave myself. It works for me, why concern myself if it's peculiar? It is what it is, whatever it is. Last night about this time I had a drink of some Wild Turkey and it put my lights out. It's never done that before. And this was only 80 proof. I was on facebook looking at what my DCP friends were doing, gearing self toward writing, poured a drink, sipped on it like usual. I never feel anything. It's why I sip. I don't want to feel it. I want to taste it. I love the taste of Wild Turkey Rye. I never drink to the point I feel woozy standing up and trying to walk. I don't like that. By the time what I'd poured into the glass was gone, my head was spinning. I had to get up from the computer. Went to the reading chair and picked up the book I'm enjoying at the moment, Dancing With Myself, by Billy Idol, an autobio. I'd been through three Chris Hedges books about an absurd society, felt I needed a break, a page-turner, something to hold me in place when I pick it up. Went to amazon looking for some white paint and a birthday present dvd. Something popped up out of the blue, no recollection of how I found it, an ad set specifically to my buying record as I sometimes buy books or dvds having to do with punk. Billy Idol's bleached hair sticking straight up and title, Dancing With Myself. I said, That's it. This is what I came to amazon for and didn't know it. Found a new copy at a good price and ordered it immediately. It was impulse and it wasn't. It was not an impulse in that I knew on sight this is what I wanted to read next. 

richard tuttle

It arrived a few days later, making my day. Carried it from the mailbox to the house like a kid Christmas morning about to open the present he wants to open most. It wasn't a good time to start it, so I flipped through the pictures with family in childhood and rock stars in adult life. I've liked Billy Idol since his punk band Generation X in the late 70s. He had a teenage suburban brat persona. Punk degenerated in London, his band faded out as a result of some success that set the guys in the band at odds with each other. Heroin had a little bit to do with it. His label had been talking to him about going solo, which tempted him, but he didn't want to leave the band mates while they had a good thing going. The band fell apart and he flew to New York with a suitcase and his guitar. Got checked in and second night stepped into a dance club to feel the energy, see what they're doing in the States. He said the people were not dancing, just standing around. The dj put on Generation X's, Dancing With Myself, Billy's attempt to make a punk song with dance rhythms. Everybody ran to the dance floor, the whole place was in motion. He said he knew in that moment he was going to make it. He had apprehension of New York, having heard it can chew you up and spit you out. The Sex Pistols did not survive their American tour. After four gigs they fell apart as a band and went home. The States spitting out the Pistols gave Billy a degree of pause. This is the book I was looking for. I have to make myself stop reading. In the chair under the light of the floor lamp I tried to read after leaving the computer light-headed last night. Couldn't read. The words were not working for me. Had to get up and go to bed. Couldn't get to sleep. Lay there wondering what happened. It was obvious. Had not eaten all day. Fell asleep thinking if I never wake up, heaven here I come.   

richard tuttle

Woke about five hours later, got up around one, went to the desk, started writing yesterday's entry. My head was nodding throughout the last paragraph. Head would fall over to the left, then to the right, or straight down, looking for the tabletop to rest forehead on, but none was there, only the keyboard. I struggled to stay awake throughout the paragraph. By the time I made it to bed around 6, I'd forgotten what I wrote. I felt like I was writing on automatic pilot. Forgot each sentence as I put it down. Which is cool. I stayed with it after telling myself I do have permission to stop for now and finish it later after some rest. No, I wanted to stay with it. This is the place I like best for writing. I feel like it is all coming from the subconscious when I'm so drowsy the mind is not working. I like writing best when I'm so weary I barely know consciously what I'm saying. In the writing, I'm thinking this is the worst shit I've ever put down, just delete it, don't embarrass yourself by letting anybody see it. Decided to go ahead and embarrass myself, let my inner stupid have its moment, and clicked on Publish. Done. Put it on the DCP facebook page and to the bed I go. Woke up a couple hours later, carrot time, weary as a fox dog after running all night, ground-cover snow out the windows. I threw on a sweater and the heavy shirt that is also a warm jacket, and a hat, to take carrots to donkeys and seeds to the birds. Jack brayed and Jenny squealed. I remembered again how deeply in my heart I love Jenny and Jack. My heart glows when I see them. I've learned how to bray with them. I do a deep, extended Oh, bray harmony with Jack. He loves it. So do I. It is a form of communication between us, play, singing together. Jack's ears lay straight back, his nostrils flare and his eyes bug out, staring without seeing. Braying seems to give him a momentary ecstasy. 

richard tuttle

Gave the donkeys some hay, came back and returned to the bed. Slept until up in the day, getting up to take grain to the donkeys before dark. I love feeding them. I feel like an old country grandma piling food on the table, telling everybody to eat, eat all you can. Two movies from netflix today, The Squid and the Whale, and Siouxsie & the Banshees at the Albert Hall in 2002, the same visual of the live cd I listened to recently. I was ready for Siouxsie. Caterpillar ran and hid in the bathroom. Sioxsie gave me a good concert, good band. They get the energy generated into a cyclone of sound around Siouxsie, Take a walk with me-e, Down by the sea-ea. She seems to me an inward woman who has taught herself to take to the stage. She retains her privacy in her eyes. She freely gives herself in her flowing motions, swirling arms, turns and half-turns, contained movement, free and restrained. It gives her motion a stylized dance that works just right with the flowing quality of her vocals, the verbal aspect of her physical motion. This concert was the band grown up, thirty-six years into their career. They'd not played in something like nine years, this concert a re-union tour. It was in 91 I saw them. A dvd I'd ordered arrived a few days ago in the mail, a Siouxsie & the Banshees concert, 1983. This is when I want to see them most. I'm holding off, waiting til the time is right. They'd been a band seven years by then, closer to the time they were playing small clubs in London. The punk scene in London in 75-77 was much like the punk scene in Charlotte now, small clubs around town different punk bands play. It seems a healthy sign to me from what I saw in Charlotte that the bands are leaving the drugs alone largely. Heroin took down the first round of punk in London and New York in a short time. The Charlotte band DSR, Dirty South Revolutionaries, have been together ten years, and played Atlanta recently. I'm glad to see they're not taking the down bound train. 

richard tuttle himself

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SWEEPING OUT THE TRASH

masahisa fukase

Made a quick round trip to town today. Didn't think to take camera. It's just as well. It's not easy to stop, pull off the side of the road, get out and go to where the picture was I saw, especially when the sides of the road are mounds of snow from the snowplow. It was a beautiful drive. It always is, any season, any time of day. Today the landscape was white with the black lines of bare trees, black cows in white meadow, trails running through the snow, the houses where people live their lives, some of them I know, most I don't. I notice driving by a house of people I know, I see their images in my mind's eye. Now that my life is slowing down, attention slowing down, no worries, mind not held by vain desires, ok with the world and everybody in it, not wanting anything somebody else has, my mind has cleared up remarkably. I've just noticed images in my head like they're new. They've always been there, my mind has been too cluttered with pressing issues. Now I have no pressing issues but to write here every day, but this is fun, it's recess. Here is where I deal with what's important to me, bring something up and examine it. It's much like the psychiatric couch, a place where I open up and let it flow, see where it goes, see what comes up, freewheeling, meandering in all directions like the Mississippi delta. Five years into writing every day, I've found from it the benefits said to go with journaling. I've found my thinking mind now thinks like when I'm writing. It's kind of like I'm writing all the time in my head, and it's fun. I like it a lot. I talk now the way I write. I write as I talk. It runs in a circle. Where therapy is concerned, I'd recommend it to someone seriously wanting to get to know self. I have such a better perspective of who I am since I've written it out nearly every day. Self-esteem has smoothed considerably like a shirt on an ironing board. 

masahisa fukase

Self-consciousness in public does not require approval and has no problem with rejection. Of course, I automatically respond or react to approval or rejection, but the feeling passes and next moment it's gone. A wonderful aspect of awareness I'm in my last years is my response to approval or rejection is so what. I don't have enough time left to waste mental energy concerned with it. I don't have time to have emotional reactions to the corporate marionettes legislating us into police state while we watch every day on the news. We don't need editorial cartoons anymore. I'm glad to see the fall of the American Empire consumed by it's love for money is happening in my last years. I feel like I'm seeing it from afar, like in the last row of the top balcony in a gigantic auditorium. The actors on the stage are ants standing on their back legs, far away, like flying over an interstate, seeing the cars below like ants on their ant trails. It doesn't bother me to know we have no privacy. I don't recall ever believing we did. Phone tapping was a common paranoia in the 1950s. I've been aware of watching what I say on the phone all my life. At the start, I saw the internet snuff what little sense of privacy we had left. I stay out of other people's business and don't worry about somebody seeing my social security number. Anybody who wants to find it, can find it easily knowing where to go online. I like at amazon and netflix they profile me by my purchases and recommend items aimed specifically at what I go there for. Netflix almost never recommends something I want to see. Amazon is better, but not so good either. I only get ads and political articles on facebook that might be of interest to me. I hear the news and repeat what has become a mantra: What do I care? How can I care? Why would I care? 

No longer do I have gut reactions, a wrenching stomach, seeing such ignorance in positions of power, knowing they are well paid puppets with long noses. They only make me laugh anymore. Since the corporate coup, intelligent people don't have the stomach for politics. Nobody with any sense would jump in the ring. It makes me question the ones that give the appearance of good sense. Gives cause for doubt. Appearance is their game. Appearance is what they do. I can't concern myself with them anymore. It has become so reasonable not to give them any attention, I question why I ever did. It's like growing up seeing Hollywood films only, then one day out of the blue, Fellini's La Dolce Vita. It opened a door to another world and I entered. Soon after, I read Camus' The Stranger, another door to a new world. There was no going back. I feel like I've come into a new place since letting go of giving attention to the false. Less of the negative thinking and feeling that goes with it. In another time I could have waxed opinionated about Nothin-yahoo addressing a republican congress to be a sharp stick in the eye of American negotiations with Iran, or whatever else is under the table, where the real action is. My guess is it will be comical in the international arena if Nutty actually does address republican congress. He knows actions have consequences. He's a bit too vulnerable to be snapping at the hand that feeds him. He struts his stuff and crows like a banty rooster, he's little but he's loud. He believes force solves problems to the point force becomes the problem.   

It's more fun seeing them scripted by their "think tanks," following the directions of their strategists. Keeping their names and faces in the news (I don't care what you think of me as long as you remember my name). Such shallow people, shallow as the laptop screen they're projected on. Why give them my attention as anything but the cartoon page in the paper? I can read Chris Hedges and Billy Idol's autobiography and get much more from it, while enjoying it immeasurably more. Seems like my mind took a step toward clarity soon after I shut them out of my attention span. I can't avoid them on facebook and radio news, but they don't make me sick anymore. I just say to self, this is how it is now. It was this way in Will Rogers' time and in Mark Twain's time. It looks kinda ongoing. All the more reason to let them that want it have it. I see a new gaff Sarah Palin made and have to click on it for a laugh, though turn it off soon after she starts. I cannot listen to a full minute of her or Bill O'Reilly. I don't care that he lied about a story. He's scripted. He doesn't know if it's true or not. It's all fiction to him. My sense of O'Reilly is he's so self-involved he doesn't care what he says. It feels better in the inside not to be aggravated by the manipulation by way of propaganda. I see it as such and let it go. I've finally learned the construct in my head made from information picked up over years is made from false information. Poof. So why have a construct? Let it go by as false information and let that be all I need to know. 

masahisa fukase

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ROCK N ROLL RAMBLE

pink floyd

I haven't listened to much music recently. Earlier in the day I was at football with Justin and Melvin. We'd smoke and drink in the mancave and return to the tv, back and forth, listening to the radio in the mancave. Most often we listen to the race or the game on the radio. Today, the Cowboys walked all over the Colts. In the mancave the radio was on a station that plays "oldies" of pop metal from 60s to 90s. We heard Pink Floyd's Money, the Stones' Paint it Black. The dj said Keith Richards turned 71 this week and picked this song to illustrate Richards' artistry with an electric guitar. Justin and Melvin returned to the tv and I stayed with the radio. Billy Idol's Dancing With Myself. I was thinking I wished they would play something with a punk jam to it, then they played Billy Idol. Just right. He did vocals for one of my favorite punk bands, Generation X. Dancing With Myself was the time of his transition from the London punk scene, which was over, to American pop. He injected a little bit of punk into American pop metal at the time. I sat listening to familiar rock from the past, songs I never paid attention to, but heard because they were in the air. Mostly it was post-Sixties metal heavy with lead guitar, a direction I did not follow in rock. About the time of the transition from Sixties to post-Sixties, I never took to nearly all of it. A bit too corporate pop. Punk started up in the mid Seventies and my rock n roll attention went with punk. The Clash, Joy Division, Nina Hagen, Patti Smith, the Sex Pistols, the Damned, Siouxsie and the Banshees, to name a few. I was listening to the rock I never paid attention to, hearing why, thinking I want to put on the Clash live when I get home, have a good jam. Listen to it like watching a movie, sit back and let it roll. 

mick jones and joe strummer, the clash

By the time I made it home, everything had changed. I seldom play music while writing; it pulls my attention and won't let it go. Tonight I wanted to hear music. I said to self, I'm not listening to music enough. I went searching through the classical collection for something to fill the air. Stopped looking when I came to pianist Murray Perahia playing Brahms intermezzo solo and one long quartet with the Amadeus Quartet. Perahia's piano puts me in bliss. Brahms does too. Together, the music is divine. Automatically, I wanted to hear Alban Berg Quartet play Dvorak, but wouldn't do it. I've fallen into a Dvorak rut where once I hear him I don't want to hear anything else. This is what happens when I read Tolstoy. I'm at home. Tolstoy speaks to my soul, as does Brahms. Murray Perahia is tickling the ivories like the master he is. I can't imagine the millions of hours of practice behind what I'm hearing. The same applies to the violin, viola and cello. Something with this degree of skill and artistry is out of this world, quite literally. Musically, I'm somebody, who, when asked what kind of music I like, is stumped. I don't know what to say. Can't say everything, because I don't like everything. Should I give the long list of what I like and listen to, or the shorter list of what I don't listen to? What is called for is a word or a short phrase, certainly not a list. I don't know what to say. 

murray perahia 

One day someone I knew then, some years ago, dropped by with a friend I didn't know. I happened to be playing a Chuck Berry album because I'd been reading his autobiography he wrote in prison. The guy I didn't know said, I see you're into oldies. I was older than his parents. I thought: What? But couldn't say anything. Uh, yeah. Whatever. I thought about warping his mind forever by putting on the Murderdolls. But chose to let him believe his generalization. I had a hard time with one thing I'm listening to being the only thing I listen to. It told me he is into one kind of music. Didn't ask what it was. Didn't want to hear him say Poco. I'm remembering my friend Jim Rhodes I used to ride to Boone with weekly for Edgar Cayce meetings. When rock n roll was new, I was the first year that could stand to hear it. The kids one year older than me and beyond could never develop an ear for rock. Jim was a few years older and had never listened to anything but big band music, cotillion dance music, which he loved. He asked me one time to bring a tape of something I listen to in the car so he could hear what it was. I took a cassette of Hole's Live Through This. It was new then and it was in my truck. I told him to push the off button as soon as he can't take any more, I'm not pushing it on you, only answering your question. It didn't last ten seconds and he never wanted to hear anything else. Even among people I know who listen to rock, very few can listen to what I like. Neither Justin nor Melvin like what I listen to. Not so much that it's extreme, because it's not. I haven't listened to radio pop since the Sixties when non-corporate music went underground. 

courtney love, hole

I'm inclined toward artistry with the guitar. I don't mean flourishes, but a new, original sound. Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine, my guitar hero. I don't know many people who can take more than half a minute of Rage Against the Machine. But that's not my concern. My only concern is that I like them. I will sit down over the next day or two and give myself a good Rage concert. The first time I heard them, I didn't get it. Then I got it. I feel like a great good fortune in my life was being just the right age, 13, to start listening to rock n roll when Shake Rattle and Roll, Maybellene, Long Tall Sally, Bo Diddley all came on at close to the same time. One at a time, the pop radio station played a new rock n roll song. I've thought it a blessed aspect of my life, chose to follow it all the way along, see where it goes. It's been a half century and a decade of a wonderful music. It has a way of absorbing every other music it touches or that touches it. An Australian rock band of Aborigines, Yothu Yindi, uses traditional instruments with electric guitars, keyboard and drums. They're quite good. I love how rock n roll came from the wedding of Anglo music and music from Africa. James Brown and Otis Redding did a tour of Africa and turned people all over Africa on to a new electric sound from America that evolved into a new kind of dance club music mixed with traditional musics all over the continent. Now African music is coming back to us and getting woven into rock n roll again.   

zack de la rocha and tom morello, rage against the machine

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