That '70s Reality

The 1970s was an incredibly strange decade. I lived in it the entire way. Whole buncha stuff happened. Mainly starting off with that anything cool or underground about the previous decade was put through a centrifuge and rebranded as commonplace. The corpse of the '60s had rotted and been eaten and the remains were being propped up and sold at a hyper-consumable discount by anyone quick enough to grab hold of a chunk, and the "hedonism" of that time that was deeply frowned upon got a makeover as to be suddenly acceptable and usable for profit, ka-ching! Vans were a thing, and I mean the boxy vehicles, not the skater-shoes. There were trading cards about vans. I have some. I'll post one below. Big rig trucks and their CB radios were another thing, with several movies actually being made to celebrate the "trucker culture". Short, unisex perms were in abundance. Men were walking around in gym-shorts, and the lapels on blazers and button-ups were as wide as albatross wings and many times more elaborate in color than any parrot you've come across. Children were highly sexualized, and I mean on a Weimar Republic scale. 

Cocaine was nearly a household item. In fact, McDonalds ceased production of their plastic coffee-stirrers because everyone was using them as coke-spoons. Amphetamines and dildos were sold in ads in popular TV/movie magazines (eg. Photoplay, which had been around since the 1920's) that sat alongside People and the National Enquirer in the checkout line. "Groupies" were teenage-to-twenties girls-and-women who would follow touring music groups (HENCE the term) around in order to have, well, sexual relations with whoever. "Super-groupies" like Pamela Des Barres would pursue the bigger acts like Aerosmith, Zeppelin, The Who, Bowie, KISS etc. TV sitcoms were to become time-capsules of rigid normalcy wrapped in a drug-fueled fashion sense. The po-po became hip. Gumbyflappers went from hippie-DIY to mass production. Tight, itchy polyester shirts were nearly mandatory and as breathable in the summer as wearing a plastic bag. Aquamarine \ yellow \ ultra-frost newt-green eye-shadow combos came into everyday use. Art deco made a big comeback and was horribly abused. Avocado-colored toilets were surrounded by plush, deep-pile carpets in far too many people's bathrooms. ALL OF THIS WAS COMPLETELY NORMAL! Not saying ALL of it was bad, but it's what we quickly acclimated to.

(My cards are in storage, so this is off the web. I do have this, tho'. It's so pretty, and a safe bet there's a waterbed in the back. Oh yeah - waterbeds were huge in the '70s too.)

On top of this, both the New Hollywood and punk sprouted out of the few cracks in the linoleum, and the seeds of women's lib, queer-freedom and racial justice had cemented their roots and were growing!

So that's a synopsis. That didn't even mention plaid suits.

Something else that grew from the '70s was the ICBC - the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia, formed by the provincial government (the province being British Columbia) in 1973. You'd think, from their title, that they handled all forms of insurance available, but it was just for automobiles. Basically, if you're a British Columbian and have a car accident, you go through ICBC for the claims and such. SO, by example, if another driver is way over the speed limit driving in reverse in the wrong lane and plows into you, they review the case, and reward the person who crashed into you. That sounds like a joke, I know.

With more complaints than anyone can count from auto-owners over the years, the ICBC aroused the ire of drivers - whether involved in accidents or not - through their seeming willingness to give payout to the instigators of any vehicular misadventures and also by raising premiums at an apparently notorious rate.

Which brings about this month's artist/recording, B.C.-group Flasher with their double-sided disc of disdain, "Icky Bicky / Tricky Icky" (Icky-bicky is verbal shorthand, used mostly in disrespect) on Criminal Records, no date given, but doubtfully out after '85. 

This has been called proto-metal, heavy psych, and a couple other things (and has a spot on a compilation called "Brown Acid - The Fifth Trip"), but to me it's more biker-bar heavy rock with a hint of funk beat and a touch of soul (the female backing v's). But I'm stuffed with butter chicken and cheap beer right now, so my thought process is kinda sludgy and I could be thinking of like ABBA or something. The first cut has some choice derision barked out by someone you'd picture owning a home-customized Harley and a work-beaten Dodge pickup with post-diggers and shovels in the flatbed and an 8-year-old Mastiff named 'Poodle-Pounder' straining at a chain in the back yard. I like it! The flip is something unusual: it's the A-side track again, but played backwards. Layered over top of this is what's made to sound like an anti-ICBC rally, with participants jeering and mocking a corporate rep wielding a megaphone. It's what most likely awarded the single its heavy-psych label.

As for the band itself, I can't find anything online indicating release date, or any kind of reviews. I thought at least the Georgia Straight would've had something, but no luck. Anyways, take a listen, and maybe get some throwback-commiseration if you've had any grief with said corporation as of late.

And if you want your very own copy, I see a Discogs seller in England has one for a hefty $42 (Canadian).

Download:  

Icky Bicky

Tricky Icky

(And this may be the last post for a while, as I'm moving again and things are chaotic, to say the very least.)

You know my name (please don't look up my Facebook page)

A few months ago I moved from Vancouver to Maple Ridge for money-saving reasons. MR is two hours away from Van. Unfortunately what I'm now saving in dollars is what I'm losing in sanity due to this new rural lifestyle.

I'm used to dense throngs of pedestrians representing every race creed and culture milling about in a neighborhood filled with nearly nothing but independent stores and restaurants a block away from me, where we cross the street without looking, and if a car beeps its little horn, we stop in front of them and stare down the driver until a point is made; people first. Then yer little car.

Now it's a 20-minute walk from my townhouse-cluster (like an anthill for humans) to "the city" which is 90% white and there are more lifted pickup trucks and A&W's than humans. And I mean egregiously-powerful monster trucks with no purpose other than being powerful. Some even have Confederate flags on them. Yes, they know they're in B.C., which is in Canada which wasn't (still isn't) a part of the Confederate U.S. southern state territory. So I don't know. Oh yeah I do! They're racists! Also, people here actually smile and say Hi passing by you on the sidewalk and get this: it's not sarcastic, and they actually get legit offended if you don't do the same in return! I feel like Kevin Bacon in Flashdance, only he doesn't blow up the Death Star. Or whatever that movie is. You get the idea, I guess? I'm basically in opposite-land! Confusion has become my default setting.

So today on the now 90-min-plus-long bus ride home from work (it was 45 minutes before), I have no idea why, but the memory of a girl that I had an enormous crush on when I was in grade like nine or ten and maybe fifteen or whatever came over me. There's a lot of nothing to look at outside the window, so looking inside the self and its weird, morphing, mental photo-albums becomes a thing you get to do. Esp. if you don't have unlimited data.

Now, I had it SUPER-heavy for this girl. We shared an art class and I was one year older than her. I'll skip all the details because  - I mean, when you think of past moments and people like this, you're thinking of them as you did at that time , not as who you are now, so basically I'm a fifty-year-old thinking about how hot and beautiful a 13-to-14-year-old was. Fine for Vladimir Nabokov, but not me.

Anyways, I imagined how she must look these days, slipped into a platonic fantasy-situation where we'd meet up today and etc etc, snapped out of it and got off the bus and went home.

...aaaand looked her up on Facebook. Yep, I did that.

It was weird, and I shouldn't, I mean really shouldn't have done that thing. 

But it was a thing I did.

I feel like each love we have, be it crush, fling, marriage, failed romance etc is its own little animal and it gets fed and cared for differently than any of the others. And some shouldn't be fed at all. I mean, they gotta get put down. So when I - and this only came to me later the next morning when a song I had on dug some old, unrelated feels out of me - sat on that bus tripping away, I was subconsciously dusting off a set of complicated emotions that were never meant to be unpacked again, breaking some sort of safety seal like a four-year-old with a new bottle of 'candy' found in the medicine cabinet. I'd discovered a dime bag in an old drawer and it had a few crumbs left in it of some of the best shit I'd had in the 80's and like a dumbass I hadda go and dab the remains expecting to suddenly re-live the good ol' days, and now I'm freaking out, finding it kinda difficult to put everything away again where it should've stayed. Is it possible to re-crush after 30-something years!? I'M PLAYING RE-ANIMATOR WITH DEAD MEMORIES!? Keeping in line with my first allegory, I hit up the Pet Sematary and we all know how that pans out.

For about an hour afterwards I just felt odd, misplaced, and I guess jarred into that feeling of being one step further all up in the face of mortality. Actually, it's six hours later now and I'm still a bit shook. As to why, though, I can't pin down.

Actually, yeah, I can. That's exactly it: she aged, and accomplished a lot so far in her life. Whereas I'm still a kid in my head, and have done nothing. 

What was I expecting, huh? A taller, slightly-more-mature version of That Girl with maybe a little grey in the same Jr.-high-styled hair? 

35+ years monstrously climbed outta the cellar of memories and kicked a reality-check in place of the old, fuzzy mental photograph I have of a person I had mentality-changing feelings about. 

Now I'm sitting here just blanketing my cold soul in some old comfort and feelings I haven't gotten cozy with in a long while, but it's mildewy and strange so away it goes. Eventually I guess. This is so weird. I hauled an emotional corpse out of its grave and am paying a toll for the effort. A small part of this is also probably because I haven't physically changed much since school. I weigh the same and my (albeit thinning) hair is only starting to sprout silver. And I still think and act like I'm 20. Hell, two years ago I got back on a skateboard after a double-decade absence and I'm ripping way harder than I ever used to. Maybe I lack a time-filter? Dude with the scythe is starting to walk faster behind me,  and I'm tripping on his shadow in the lamplight while daydreaming about the past. Uh-oh. I guess I'll sort it all out? Someday?

But until that miracle happens, I still love all the music that I was ever into, including punk and The Who (a band I got heavily acquainted with way back in the time-frame that the above loveawkwardness happened), two musical entities mashed up in this year's (haw) entry. 

This is Dumbrock Vol.5: Tommy in Seven Minutes - a tribute of a sort, I guess, to that classic Who album on one side, and the other with four versions of The Beatles' "You Know My Name (Look Up the Number)". Released in 1994 on clear vinyl (my version at least) with twelve very varied bands taking on the rock opera with jubilant abandon, all of whom you can see on the jacket-scans below;

The Beatles-side I can take or leave, really, but I'm all-in for the main feature. Even in '94 I only knew 5-6 of these bands, which makes sense I guess as musically this thing's all over the place. It's so much fun I kinda wish a full album could've been done, but it seems seven minutes is a perfect length. As for any other release under the Dumbrock flag, I can't find anything. And as for That Girl, I wish you an amazing life. I'm going to forget you again and try to stop running in a worn circle.    

Download here: 

TI7MYKMNLUTN 

(Oh and it looks like I'm back, at least for a little while. I also have these files in .flac if anyone deems them worthy of an upgrade. And I'm still unsure about the new background pic I'm using)