Summer's Song Is Sung

Summer is nearly at its farthest reach, about to topple over....

The Bard has been standing on ladders, reaching far with a paint brush, thus the thoughts of over reaching and toppling.

The Bard likes to label each summer with a song for the season. Last year it was "Summertime" sung by Sam Cooke. This year it is "Airstream Driver" by Gomez.

The Bard also believes it is proper to finish the summer with an excursion to see a live band. It must be a very warm evening and the performance must be energetic, otherwise the money is wasted and the drinks are pointless. Last year the Bard saw the Young Dubliners on a perfect evening.

It was highly entertaining, although the tall and underweight blonde with bleached and butched hair jabbing me in the back with her bony knees was a bit annoying. Otherwise, everyone was very kind and generous to the Bard. As everyone knows the Bard can get a bit outgoing on a perfect evening, but this did not seem to be off-putting to anyone, and even got him invited back up to socialize with the band afterwards, which didn't really work out because he was ping-ponging around, talking to a rodeo queen, the bartender and a girl ordering one of those sickening sweet inventions that they like to ask the bartender to make, then sip and say, "See, didn't I tell you it was good?" Then point the straw at you as they tell you to taste it, which you don't want to do because you don't even know them or their germs.

The Bard either grimaces, saying "No more for me," or if brave enough hopes that there is sufficient alcohol in the drink to sterilize anything that once was alive.

As of yet the Bard has not had the perfect end of summer. The Bard is getting old age and is painting before the first snow flies.

The Bard thinks that if he could be reincarnated, made young again, he would come back as a Los Lonely Boy. He can think of nothing better than having long black hair, a guitar, a voice, and of all of the Jeans, Agnesses, Jennies, and Marias magnetized by him and his brothers. Ahhh, croon.

Now, if one wanted to curse the Bard to eternal hell they would reincarnate him as The Prince of Wales, or Michael Jackson, or Bono, or that Beckham footballer, or Madonna. But we'll not dwell upon these things.

Hurry, make hay while the sun shines!

image: Billie Holiday

The New Folk Music Movement

Rap is dying. Country is dying. Folk music will rise. The pendulum swings.

The Bard doesn't often make predictions about pop culture, but this is barely a prediction. I am only observing obvious fact.

At this time rap is sooo old, so worn out, so repetitious, so overwhelmed with electronic call and answer, so numbing. It's hanging on, but like country music it began dying about the same time and for the same reasons: Boobs, bling, beer bashes, and blondes belting out boyfriend songs for "tweens." And like a 15 year old girl getting drunk on wine coolers, too much of a sickly sweet drink can cause a horrific reaction. Rap and country are pink and blue drinks with minty and sugary flavors sucked through a skinny straw. There's only so much one can take before they decide to go back to the beer and whiskey, no straw.

The time is here, upon us. I can smell it in the air like unbathed pits and stinky feet in leather sandals. The time will strike, calling the unwashed masses to the socialist preacher with the guitar and plaid shirt. The masses will feel enlightened, enervated, intelligent, and ready to create a global utopia. They will attempt sustainable living, and try to halt time's rapidly increasing speed. They will use their weight to hold the pendulum back, strum-strumming, hum-humming slower.

Yes, Rap and Country will survive, but as arms of the folk music movement. They will adopt a bohemian flair.

There will be folk music everywhere, beckoning, beckoning to battle. Unlike the folk music of the past, which was mainly Marxist, this time we will see anti-Marxist folk music as well.

Warning! Stop your ears! Remember Odysseus and his crew when they had to pass by the sirens. He had his crew mates stop their ears with wax, and securely tie him to the mast so that he could not give into temptation when he heard the sirens singing the folk music. Unlike rap and country, folk music's goal is to seduce one into action through emotion and preaching.

Rap was good before electronic and materialistic influences strangled it, making it into a tool for numbing and dumbing club goers and kids hooked on cigarettes, I mean cell phones (same difference). It served the pop culture controller's purposes for a time, as did country, music, which from a Marxist point of view would be ideologically identical to rap.

But now, is the time to activate the mind-numbed ones, and the switch that will do the trick is folk music. Stop your ears, unless you like being preached at and told what to believe by a sweet voice. Don't jump in after the sirens, or death will waste you. Time can't be stopped, it's not sustainable.

Oh, yeah, and folk music is "green" because it doesn't generally require electricity to play the instruments. It's eco-friendly music! Man, I love sustainability.

image: Whistler