The Hammock Papers: Sugar-Coated.

30 December 2024

Sugar-Coated.

On Saturday, August 1, 1981, at 12:01 AM Eastern Time, symbolism carried the day over substance, aesthetics trumped the authentic, and MTV murdered music.

Listen to the first Def Leppard album compared with their third and tell me the same evil forces that infected Journey hadn't conspired to spin the world in the opposite direction. The masses ate it and smiled.

I hold MTV responsible for crimes against humanity in the death-by-castration of many great bands. Drastic changes in the musical direction (not to mention hairstyles) of U2, Van Halen, Journey, and Def Leppard can be traced to the late summer of 1981. Look at any classic rock band's discography; the delineation between '81 and '82 is clear: perms over power chords, techno over tooth-music, keyboards over kicking-ass. Hell, our local rock station even put Prince on heavy rotation that year. The station never recovered.

By '85, Jello Biafra had seen enough ...

How far will you go, how low will you stoop
To tranquilize our minds with your sugar-coated swill
You've turned rock and roll rebellion into Pat Boone sedation
Making sure nothing's left to the imagination

Country music suffered similarly and don't even get me started on the L.A.M.E. (Look At Me, Everyone!) Rain Man histrionics present in nearly every classical music video.

Even Yes was pushed over the edge, pop culture giving them their best selling album.

Rick Wakeman is correct, clearly it was a money-grab; the coup never would have been successful had the fat cats not gotten fatter. Go to any live concert these day, you'll see that the indoctrination is complete.

The heart of music has always beat most strongly in record stores not on screens. Beautiful Noise, Singing Dog, Magnolia Thunderpussy, Used Kids, Threshold were the cathedrals of my youth where I listened carefully and developed the thumb-and-forefinger technique of flipping through bins with a keen eye peeled on the only visual that has ever mattered, the album cover (have you ever held a copy of Jimmy Buffett's gatefolded Son of a Son of a Sailor album in your hands? Furthermore, poet-laureate Buffett with a mustache gave us "Death of an Unpopular Poet," "The Wino and I Know," and "Incommunicado." Pretty-boy Buffett, sans-mustachio bred Latitude Margaritaville.) The devolution of Rolling Stone magazine and the mere existence of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame further my case.

Remember what Jefferson taught us, kids: the only aristocracy is that of the mind. Imagination lives, books are always better than the movies made from them, and the musically genuine will blaze eternally (see Jerry Jeff Walker, Paul Weller, and Malcolm Young).

Lightning Hopkins never lip-synced.

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WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

"When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone and of good cheer – say travelling in a carriage or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep – it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence, and how, they come I know not ; nor can I force them. Those ideas that please me I retain in memory and am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this dainty morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it. That is to say, agreeable to the rules of counterpoint, to the peculiarities of various instruments etc. All this fires my soul, and, provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodised, and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it like a fine picture or a beautiful statue at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. What a delight this is, I cannot tell."

MARCUS AURELIUS

"Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?' neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility."

VINCENT van GOGH

"What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest. Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge. As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation."

DAN CAMPBELL