21st Century Schizoid Man
Talk about my generation! Rather a lot of them will be dropping to their knees at this point and go into automatic Head Banging.
Oh, what fun Pip.
I bought the King Crimson cd yesterday, slipped it into the machine and the thoughts that came flooding back: Did I really do that? Down on the floor in the disco at school, long hair (had hair then) and rhythmic head banging.
How great the lyrics seemed, and what energy the music contained. I still have a residual fondness for it - which I suspect goes deeper into admiration. It is of my generation, and opened up a wider world to me - and some of my friends.
What is it about popular music? I suspect we are like a dandilion: our childhood is the flower, growing in the sun - then we enter adolescence, close up only to emerge as the great fluffy seed head - waiting to be blown by a strong enough gust of wind. Off into the world where our adult form has to develop and survive.
That wind will be of the moment - the music, fashions and ideas popular at the time.
It is as if we need something to hitch our emerging thoughts on to - ideas of independence, protest against the human condition, visions of human relationships.
Popular music provides the scaffolding we need - it is fertile ground: 'Poets Starve and Children Bleed' is what crystalized the crude emotions caused by the overdose of hormones surging through my blood.
To change metaphor, it was the first hacking through of a path through the jungle - a crude tool being essential - the fine scappel of 'art' music being irrelevant to the job.
And it had the necessary support of my immediate, emerging from childhood community.
It was ours. It had a novelty and it supplied thought patterns needed to comprehend our world.
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