One of the only things I find redeeming on television isn't even on TV, I watch it on my computer through the Internet. I guess that is just the way of the world these days but it is refreshing to find some truth in the media. It is usually there outside of the mainstream, on the fringe hidden between the beastiality porn through a thousand pop ups asking me to send a ring tone to my phone or that I have won an Ipad.
Vice Magazine is where I'm finding it and where I spend a great deal of my internet time. There's the epic "Do and Don'ts" which could keep you busy for weeks, the weekly reporting from a man doing time for drugs and of course the pulp-skin-snuff variety of articles that leave you looking over your shoulder a bit while you are reading it. When I think of Vice I think New York in the 80s, back when it was dirty, seedy...and back when it was cool, had character. When in high school I would walk out of a bar in the now posh Meatpacking district, a bar that had puke on the floor, porn on all the TVs and Merle Haggard in the jukebox. A bar that had a 70 year old man sitting in the corner drinking PBR before they were served in Brooklyn (at that time the Jews and Blacks were kicking the shit out of each other over there) by biting into the can and chugging it. Usually we were too drunk to even find the PATH stop and would take a cab back into Jersey, but that wasn't before one of us would be propositioned by a tranny looking to give head in the alley and of course since we were loaded and 16 we said yes until some good Samaritan would step in and tell us it was a dude. The trannies weren't puffs though, they'd pull a blade on you if you fucked with them, something out of the cult classing "Cruising". And you know what? It was fun as hell, even when we woke up in the morning at my buddy's father's bar and he gave us a shot of Tully and a pint of Guinness while we tried to hold back the puke in front of the thick off the boat Irishman.
To me that is what Vice is and what its pages constantly remind me of when I'm flipping through. There are some very serious topics though, their reporting is insane, taking one to parts of the world where only the somewhat crazy would tread. Liberia, North Korea, Congo, Somalia, Afghanistan and where the whole idea for this post came from: Northern Ireland.
They put themselves in the middle of a parade in which the Protestants are marching through a Catholic part of town and of course what you would expect ensues and this soundtrack plays. Hahaha, I'm laughing thinking of it right now, 14 year old drunk and high turkeys throwing bricks at police tanks, lighting molotov cocktails in between shots of whiskey...it is actually pretty cool.
What ever happened to Rock and Roll? To the punk that I used to listen to skating on my buddy's small half pipe in his backyard, pissed off at the world and just hating to hate? Questioning every type of authority. What happened to CBGB and people who knew (though I never liked that genre) GG Allin was? I'll be honest and say that I never fit into that world, even though I kinda wanted to be someplace inside while watching GG beat himself up on stage.
Thankfully we can still listen to such a quirky song that is Goddamn fun to play on a Strat as loud as fucking possible much to the chagrin of my Park Avenue neighbors. Easy as shit to play (C-Am-F-G with a pre chorus of F-F-F#-G-F#), just hammer it away man, sweat it out and in between chords take a swig of some swill and spill it down your open shirt and all over your hands onto the strings, it don't matter much anyway 'cause all your making is noise.
It is in all of us somewhere, I think and hope one of these nights I'll be hammering it out and there'll be a knock on the door, a white haired old man with a J Press jacket, khaki pants with lobsters all over them will be there in the threshold and instead of complaining will grab the bottle from my hand, pick up the spare ax in the corner and plug in, he has to, shit like that is the only thing that keeps us alive.
