Back In My Day...

You know I used to hate it when my old man would raise his glass, take a long drink and then say, “Back in my day things were better.” Fuck I hated that, I still do but you know what? When I say, “Back in my day things were better.” I’m fucking right!

Cos that lame arse shit they’re trying to tell you is music right now… it ain’t! Not even close. If y’re lucky it might make a decent ring tone or maybe even a new car jingle that’ll having you humming along for that 45 second attention span all you little shits seem to have these days but it no way could you call that crap they dress up, ink up, slap a video clip to and then churn out to pimp yr dollar for, music.

Hiphop exists just to get dumb ass black kids laid and even dumber ass white kids thinking they might get laid – and it ain’t even threatening anymore, Christ its just sampled r&b popsongs with some bling thrown on top, skinny black boys trying to look gangsta, bitches shakin’ their fake breasts and you’ve forgotten the toon before the two and half minutes is up anyway. Punk, hah, a bunch of rich white boys who won’t come out of the closet, getting tattooed, putting on eyeliner and expensive t-shirts, waiting for that big break with some bleached blonde movie actress who’s fallen off the wagon so they can get their own reality show together, singing generic rebellious teen anthems about being individuals while all wearing the same labels and then trying to tell us they’re rebels!? Oh yeah, I’ll buy that (especially if they endorse it) Shitty singer songwriters who know both chords and are so lame they actually make Ben Lee sound threatening, Pop Divas who can’t hold a note without computerized help, backing tracks and a lot of overdubs, country singers who don’t even look like they shave let alone know what a honky tonk is and who have probably never played a footy cabaret in their lives…

So fuck all this new shit – I’m going back to vinyl (and no I don’t mean that cheap fake biker jacket you bought at the markets to get girls to talk to you) I mean vinyl records – big, black, shiny 12 inch slabs of grooves kinda vinyl, now that will get the girls talking to ya. Redneck glory like ZZ Top, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Joe Walsh before he turned pussy, old school punk like the Dead Boys, Richard Hell, Black Flag, some decent nigga soul and Motown grooves, art grant free noize loops and hell, you wanna hear a singer/songwriter? Pick up Tim Bukley’s Lorca album you limp dicked poseurs. He makes his son sound like the tofu eating, pussy whipped, lame ass 90’s ‘troubled soul troubadour’ wimp he really was.

Yeah, that’s what I want – real musicians, real feeling, real soul, real pain – a bunch o’ miscreants who had the choice between jail, pimpin’ their ass or rock and roll and made the right choice. I don’t want some lame arse anonymous producer/geek type sitting behind a desk remixing every fucking decent beat he can find into some generic mishmash of soulless, sexless robotic 3 minutes of fame for some plastic fantastic whose name we’ll have forgotten before the songs even over. Christ, when did I get so jaded?!

Oh yeah, that’s right… every time I turn on the radio, watch the tv or read the music press.

Jeezus, you can’t drink a cold beer with a bourbon chaser to that shit. No siree. When the redneck lounge opens its doors, it’s old school vinyl on my twenty dollar market bargain turntable with the block o’ wood under the back right hand corner to keep it balanced, jacked into the shitty amp/tuner that I’ve had for twenty years now that still works if you let it warm up first. And I’m droppin’ the needle on "Country Stampede" or "Atomizer" opening that first beer, flickin’ through the box of old Ring and Boxing Digest mags I picked up in Melbourne and I’m not even thinking about yr ringtone muzak.

Back in my day… don’t you fucking hate it when your parents are right?