there's one in every crowd, for cryin' out loud...

if you happen to find me on myspace.com (and i hope you don't), you will see a random list of folks that i hope to "meet". i've met a few of them. i use it as a list of inspiration (i don't really care that much about meeting anyone at all), and i sincerely hope that the list grows to a million miles long, and that you... yes, you, yer own name gets on their sooner or later. anyway, a name that i've had on there since i've started it is that of rodney bingenheimer.

if you haven't seen it, i wholly recommend the documentary "the mayor of sunset strip". it's a documentary about rodney, a strange little southern california byproduct of fame and admiration and starfuckery, and one of the few examples of people who do what they do for love and curiosity and passion and maybe a few other reasons that we'd rather not dwell upon, but those which reside in us all. but we'll get into that in a moment: rodney is most famous for being either a: an extremely influential dj on kroq radio in l.a. (he broke everyone from bowie to blondie to x to the smiths to coldplay on american radio), or the extremely well connected creator of "rodney bingenheimer's english disco", arguably the first "punk" club in los angeles. he knows everyone, and everyone knows him.

i learned about kroq a long time ago, when what was then called alternative radio came to portland. at that time, there were college radio stations nationwide, where pasty stoned kids played whatever would freak out the status quo (but probably never the band "the status quo", unfortunately). portland did not have such a station. we had kboo, which as far as i know, is still there and chugging along, trying to cater to just about every segment of the minority demographics... and really pleasing no one in particular with a hodgepodge of news, ethnic interest, comedy, local affairs, and finally... if there's some time... music. anyhoo, around the same time i got out of high school, a strange radio station popped up on the am dial, and played a relatively bland mix of "college rock" and raw album versions of songs that really gained their popularity from danceclub clientele and dj's. i was impressed enough with this "new" format (understand that as bad as it was, it seemed to be a giant leap forward in portland's bland oldies/top 40/country radio landscape) that i asked anyone who would know about it, and everybody finally referred me back to kroq, out of los angeles. my only other point of reference for kroq was fucking "less than zero" by bret easton ellis, in which he referenced ol' rodney on the roq. horrible book. horrible author. aw well.

anyway, i knew this guy was pretty much the man when it came to servicing the masses about the sorts of bands that should, by all rights, be entrenched in our own national musical heritage. yeah, rodney was (and is) the west coast john peel. but there is a whole lot i never really knew or could imagine about the guy. radio has an amazing ability to hide characteristics of people, and yet reveal sides of people that you would never pick up upon by sharing a drink with them, or running into them with your car. f'rinstance, by all accounts: he's like the nicest, most earnest guy in the world, frequently to his detriment. ain't a person in this movie with a cross word about him, and while that's not rare in a documentary or biopic, his ability to get close to people who would otherwise walk across him like he was common carpeting would leave you to believe he's more than just a boygroupie that hopes the starlight reflects back upon him.

i suppose that what interested me most was this: no matter the scene, there is always room... no wait, there must always be one lone fella that just, by all rights, shouldn't belong... and yet, the scene seems to spin around them. the catch is, there is only ever room for one. the scene, no matter what scene it is, has the usual grip of manipulators, promoters, pretenders, also-ran's, competent competitors, mavericks, den mothers, wheel greasers, opportunists, scribes, and haters. you've met them, you know them, you are one. you studied how to become one. folks like ol' rodney though... you could hope, and train, and aspire, but it'll never happen for you, for one thing, there's only room for one, and second, if you try too hard, you don't deserve it. weird. i guess the magic just happens.

rodney's still on the roq, tucked away on sundays from midnight to 3am. and that radio station that sounded so new to me in 1990? it's still there, and boy howdy, it sucks, for lack of a better term, out loud. aw, hell, it stunk then too, but it was a big deal for me to hear bands like ride or teenage fanclub or even husker du or camper van beethoven on radio. as far as the rolling stone-reading mainstream is concerned, that sound went from college to alternative to some sort of mall approved punk and is now crossbred with whatever white kids think might scare the old folks at home. radio's crap, and as long as i've been alive, it's continued to serve it's purpose: $$$. but it's still good to know that in little pockets, out there somewhere, there are earnest people like rodney, required by scenester law to drop in and do their job for the love of new music.

on now: fat freddy's drop "cay's crays" from "based on a true story"

i surrender you to the cops.

there is a moment. anyone who's ever been in love knows it. hell, you don't even have to be in love to recognize it. any relationship; friendship, sex, work, casual aquaintence. it's really rather unmistakable. the moment when you resign your efforts in love, and give up. you see the inevitable parting of ways as a small, chugging dot way down the highway, you have no idea if it's big and noisy and painful or if it's sleek and elegant and simple. you aren't positive when it's going to arrive, but make no mistake, it's coming for you. it's not going to turn around and go back the other way, it's just a question of whether it runs over your foot or vaporizes you and turns you into soup.

i remember that exact moment in every relationship i've been it. i remember it well with the little blonde anger pixie. it was a minor fight, and even though she swore she was giving up those lucky strike filters, she stomped down to the porch to smoke. i sat in my room and there it was. the moment spoke to me and it said hey, you may do this for a while longer, but ain't no way yer gettin' married, and sooner or later, yer gonna leave her. and right i was. oh sure, it took two more years, but we finally went our separate directions. i also remember it with ol' damaged goods. she had just been fired from her good job, and wanted to take a job as a cocktail waitress in a seedy, shitty karaoke bar that she frequented and i hated hated hated. that moment was there, only i thought i could skate for a while longer. on christmas day, she called and announced that she was shacking up with a snowboarder lifty, and that she didn't love me anymore, and wouldn't be coming home. we both recognized the moment, but she decided to do something about it.

yeah, i'd really like to go back up that river with you...to find the things we never thought we'd lose. that's the radar brothers right there, and in simple slow songs they talk about the many slow, deliberate ways we stumble through life. the best part of any relationship is the time for when you move through your lives together, without doubt, sure that you will never lose the optimism, the hope, the interest, the commitment. once you have, it's damn near impossible to go back to the way things were. or, as pops likes to say, "you can't put the poop back in the horse"..

the radar brothers plod along at the same pace throughout damn near every song they play, and people who are less endeared by them then myself seem to think they sound like they've been woken up after a twenty minute nap instigated by dozens of bong hits. acoustic guitars, clever songwriting, obtuse lyrics. i live off this stuff. not long ago, a friend sucked all the songs off my ipod into his computer. a couple days later he mentioned he couldn't understand how i could listen to so much music that moves at a glacier's pace.

round and round i go, you twist my heart, you watch the race. how many cars can ride the way, have it twisted for relations sake? so once you've reached that moment in a relationship, it's now just a question of how long you can go without doing something stupid? i'm an uncaring, selfish type of person, so frequently i can go a long time, just treading water, just spinning around. until something better shows up. this, of course, is cruel and stupid, and it's typical of the type of romantic life i've lead. everyone's a victim, so there are no victims at all. we are all guilty.

and that may be the message in the textures and lyrics of the songs of the radar brothers, a sort of helpless, we do what we do because we know no other way sort of feeling. they'd probably sound stupid and unnatural playing fast or angry, or disjointed or funky. for some strange reason, there seems to be a reference to water in every song they play. maybe it's the california coast near where they practice. however, they don't sing of a bright sunny wave, it's more often a song of "underwater culprits" or "an ant floating in milk". maybe it's a pre-natural vision of death, like charlie's (from the excellent and underrated pacific northwest band pond) assertion that his death, though he not knows when it will occur, will be drowning.

the inevitable is a difficult thing to face, and god knows i can ignore and procrastinate and act like i'm above it, but that feeling gnaws in your mind as you try and fall asleep, and worse yet, it changes the way you act towards your beloved. after that ugly moment appeared to me, ol' damaged goods saw right through the smoke screen i launched, my "everything's cool" attitude is and was painfully transparent. assertively, she decided to jump ship and hop on the first smiling hardbody that made himself available. can i blame her?

yer fed up with the make up...

s'true that this thing has been irritating me. i'm here for different purposes. this shouldn't be all me me me.

when i first started this, it was inspired by the discovery of how these things work and the writings of one very talented writer who can create something thought provoking yet quaint like he's blowing his nose. i figured i could do the same. fuck that. i can't. or maybe i can, but i can't do it by imitation. i've got other things to talk about.

and with that, i'ma leave this post, and move on to what moves me. it's the music. that's why this is called disco backache, it's why i'm disco boy, and it's what i know best. and it'll be chock full of lyrics and mumblings and non-sequitors and the odd rant here and there about something damn near useless. and if i'm doing my job correctly, i'll always tell you what i'm listening to.

right now, it's "boyfriends and girlfriends" by low. and it's good.

for anyone who cares, i'll leave this: i'm four days into the rza plan, which means that i'm not smoking weed, and i'm not drinking, and just to kick it up a decibel, i'm trying to avoid caffeine, red meat, grease, sugar, and gluttony in general. it's going fine, it always does, but it has become more pointedly obvious to me that drugs don't make me act a certain way, rather that my bothersome traits get to me most when i'm fucked up. in other words, i really wish that i was a scatterbrained lazy ass because i smoke, not because i just am. truthfully, i don't want to have to feel like i should self moderate, but it's the only thing i can think of to do in order to try and change my behavior. ah well, at least i'll detoxify for a while.

now it's "long long long" by low. it's so goodass good.