Bananas and Arizona and Peasants with Free Milk

The night after that now somewhat-notorious Fall show in Arizona involving the banana and all that heehaw, I had an e-mail forwarded to me from a friend who had a friend who went to same Fall, describing everything that happened, the banana, the banana throwing coward running out of the club, the chants of "U! S! A!" and my two immediate thoughts were these:

1. For some reason, it made me think of Neal Cassidy dying alone, pilled up in Puerto Rico, dying while counting the number of planks on a traintrack--for "kicks," one can suppose.

2. Mark E. Smith telling Richard Meltzer (as relayed on page 551 of the Meltzer collection "A Whore Just Like the Rest") that Smith thought London was "'too French,' unlike Manchester, his home 'The Norman Conquest didn't make it that far north.'")

As for #1, it's that feeling of "what was that guy doing there?" and for #2, it tied into other comments from Mark E. Smith about his loathing for leaving Northern England. Compared to Manchester, Arizona must have been the most miserable place in the world, especially with banana squish in your hair smacked on you by some lame hipster who thinks he's being caustic and iconoclastic while a bunch of Americans yell "U!S!A!" while the whole thing goes down. I've never been there, but I've always imagined Arizona to not be that far off from Florida in terms of geographical isolation, stifling exurbs, very strange rednecks, and plentiful crap drugs. For Smith to be there...it wouldn't be that far to compare it us playing an army base in Siberia.

What an awful spectacle to have happen during the sunset of your career, after putting out some great great records. (I especially loved this quote from Meltzer re: The Fall just a few lines down: "The Fall were more intelligent, more after-the-end-of-the-world (a/k/a 'post-rock') AND more sonically compelling than Sonic Youth (if less nerd-empowering)."

Nerd empowering. I like that phrase a lot. It kinda makes me laugh. It seems that Mark E. Smith was a bit more nerd-empowering in Arizona. The nerd who hit him with the banana, after running from an obvious black belt heavyweight prizefighter like Mark E. Smith, went to that stupid indie website all the snobby indie-rockers drool over [you know the one, and i won't give you a link to it] to explain that in essence, he did it because, get this, Mark E. Smith is kind of a (drumroll please....................................) BIG JERK.

This is news, evidently. The anti-rockstar mentality of Creem has been reduced to this smarmy pussified indirect action that does nothing but foster a kind of anti-snob snobbery (those mean old jocks and rednecks don't understand me and my taste in western shirts...)---in the face of actually having to DO SOMETHING about what's happening out there-----it's much easier to just be a big dick over something as silly as MUSIC.

If the 90's turned into an age of irony over the garbage pop culutre wrought over the previous 50 years, it's clear that what's emerging in this decade (it's 2006 now, so we can make these kinds of calls) is an overarching pattern of callous, self-serving mean-spiritedness over our disagreements. Here and there, I've surely been just as bad. Just as the 90's saw rocknroll and punk get co-opted for good as SAFE PRODUCT FOR NORMALS, now we're seeing the iconoclasm of Mencken, Dorothy Parker, HST, Bangs, Bukowski, etc. etc. etc. dumbed-down and the dissent is going towards, what? Pitchfork? [There, I said it.] Vice? Chunklet? Empty barrels, signifying nothing, especially post 9/11.

There's a scene (I think it's in there, but I"m never able to find it, but it stuck w/ me) in Julio Cortazar's "Hopscotch" where this group of intellectuals are going on and on about existentialism (or something) while the baby of one of said intellecuals dies right in front of them. Nobody does anything about it. They just keep talking about their smartdude stuff.

The comparisons of that to what's happening in America are obvious. I don't know what to do about it, just yet. However, we can start by saying this: If you're going to attack a punk rock legend for whatever reason with a brightly colored fruit in a town far far away (on many levels) from said punk rock legend's hometown, be ready to take a punch (and probably a weak old man punch) and not scurry away. It's a start--a small start--but a start nonetheless.