Writing Archive

Today's Theme Jam
SLEATER-KINNEY, "You're No Rock ’n' Roll Fun" (The Hot Rock 1999)

"...all the boys in the band
know how to get down
fill our Christmas socks
with whiskey drinks
and chocolate bars
and when the evening ends we won't
be thinking of you then
Even if your song
is playing on the jukebox"

The Hot Rocker

Digging up daily video picks has really given me a hankering for a live, loud, lusty rock show. For example, stumbling on The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion after a few years especially made me want to dig on some heavy primate rawk, like when I saw those guys at Lounge Ax and the outrageously calamitous grind made my friend Brian's nose bleed. (I especially remember getting pushed aside by Aryan Amazon-women with Swiss-Miss locks who bumped and gyrated lasciviously for the man of the hour.)

Jon's menacing pose somehow reminds of when my sister used to act like a werewolf by affecting an underbite and rolling her eyes.

Free associating, I came up with Sleater-Kinney and retrieved today's track. The lead singer reminds a lot of my SanAnto girlfriend, who back in 1999 repeated a variation on the song's chorus to me like a mantra. As a pretender to poetry "rock" stardom, I fit the bill but not the encore. No fun! Truly, I was no walk in the park.

"You wanna party with the lights on/ C'mon, I like it dark!"

But today, right now, I'd love to hear some good rock. Get stupid and go into groovy convulsions. You know: Fuck shit up.

"I GOT THE FLAVOR! I GOT THE FLAY-VUH! I GOTS DA FLAYYY-VUUUH!"—JSBX

Sleater-Kinney's stuff makes me remember that energy, in my 20s at shows and diving into a sea of thrift-store threads. Makes me wanna "hang out with the girl band!"

MAY YOUR CHRISTMAS SOCKS OVERFLOW WITH CHOCOLATES & WHISKEY!