Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Crock Stars

"Starlight
I will be chasing a starlight
Until the end of my life
I don't know if it's worth it anymore
" Starlight - Muse

If you're given a death sentence for Xmas, can you exchange it for a declarative sentence?

Do rich people comfort their pets or kids by saying "my POOR baby"?

Has the phrase "partied like a rock star" (or anything "like a rock star") been done to death? If not, could someone please put it out of its overused, annoying misery?

Unless you've dipped a headband in LSD and then applied it to your sweaty forehead just before you went onstage to take guitar playing to another level in front of 50,000 people, you've not "partied like a rock star".

Unless you've woken up clothing free, unaware of what your name is, and in another non-English speaking country, you've not "partied like a rock star".

I fucking hate everyone who uses this comparison. It demeans the term "rock star". If everyone is an RS, then it's not very special or even palatable anymore.

There are plenty of pop stars, but to me a ROCK STAR is a musician that changed the face of music as we know it. This has nothing to do with album sales, it's about smashing facades and revamping the world (not recycling someone else's work and calling it your own).

You're not the RS of accounting unless you have somehow managed to make it interesting.

You're not the RS of surgery unless you've found a way to transplant heads.

You're not the RS of body piercing unless you've made frontal lobe piercing the next hot thing.

You are, however, probably a lame, trendy-ass, irritating, wannabe that more than likely isn't even comprehensive of anything progressive. I'm also willing to bet you're always yapping loudly on your cellular phone making everyone in earshot fantasize about you being fatally stabbed in the face.

POP star, ROCK star, FILM star. Starlet starring in fucking STARBUCKS.

Stars are unavailable lights that hang in clusters in the sky mostly far apart from one another.

Stars are seen, but never heard.

Be like a real star and shut the fuck up.


Currently listening :
Black Holes and Revelations
By Muse
Release date: 2006-07-11

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

God, you're grumpy. Happy Holidays! Ha!

She Likes It Loud said...

Sensitive Anne? I mean Stan. Yeah I'm God (I don't believe in myself), and I'm grumpy. I think I have good reasons though.

Anonymous said...

As a matter of fact, I find your cynicism and irreverence quite endearing. Even refreshing. Question though: If one gets more ass than a toilet seat, can it be said that he scores like a rock star?

She Likes It Loud said...

Interesting analogy, but no, in my world you can't say that. If for nothing else, it just lacks originality. Just saying "he gets more ass than the toilet seat" is far more entertaining.

mickey said...

i wonder if fecal-philiacs say "he gets more shit than a toilet bowl." hmmm. oh the eroticism, lol. ;)

rock stars blow. being a song writer myself and having been in many bands and being a music addict, i grew up and realized rock stars are mostly full of shit know nothings who act like fools when they party. to party like a rock star usually means overdosing and becoming the most irritating and evil pain in the ass the world has ever seen and getting one's self addicted to myriad of drugs and alcohol and getting a sexually transmitted disease. just look at my childhood hero jim morrison. it turns out he was a fool to party like that and wasted his talent. i guess that is why i chose bob dylan as my favorite when i got a little older. the motherfucker is still going and cranking out great albums. he is in bed by 12am every night, lol. yeahhh bob!!!!

Anonymous said...

It's not so much that I disagree with Mickey's assertion that, due to drugs, rock stars have a tendency to disappoint on a social level. But I'm a FIRM BELIEVER that no "rock star" has or will ever make better music while sober than he/she did while fucked up on heroin or psychedelics. Had Jim Morrison not lived his life in excess, you would never have considered him your hero, because the drugs influenced the songs and the persona that you so love. I challenge anyone to name one artist that got clean and made better music as a result. And if you get so lucky as to name one, try naming three. I can list scads of bands or artists that lost their edge once they checked into Betty Ford.

She Likes It Loud said...

Mickey - yeah I've never been a fan of the toilet humor myself. Rock star hmmmm I guess it just depends on one's definition. The term in general is just annoying now.

Stan - Some people definitely were better writers with the additives. Bowie for sure, but you can't live like that too long so I guess for some the well is tapped without it.

I don't think Radiohead are or were ever into too much of that whole thing(no proof either way), but I know they don't blow your whistle so it doesn't matter.
Whatever it is that they are live - that to me surpasses any terminology.

Most of my heralded music influences were druggies. I can't say any made better stuff AD, but some did ok stuff.

I think we relate to different stuff as we age (or quit drugs) so maybe some stuff is great but we just can't tell cuz we're sober.
Eh who fucking cares right?

mickey said...

stan- the argument cannot be proved because we have no proof any of them wrote any of their music while on drugs. they just used drugs in general. some did and some did not use drugs to write. morrison never claimed to have written anything on drugs. in fact he claimed he rarely used drugs at all and was using alcohol most of the time. he performed on drugs, but did not write on drugs. big difference.
bob dylan never used hard drugs to write anything and he is by far the greatest lyricist of all time. marijuana does not count as "drugs". he also was clean when he wrote his grammy award winning album "time out of mind" and "love and theft" and modern times", which are all phenomenal.
radiohead are fantastic and do not write under the influence.
bowie lost his mind on drugs and his ability to write and thought vampires of hollywood were after him so i cannot say the drugs worked for him. he is another one of my personal favorites, but i do not think the drugs enhanced his writing but rather took away from it. the drugs complicate things and take away from the creativity.
jack white does not write his music under the influence and he will rock your fucking socks off any given day.
red hot chili peppers wrote all of their good music when sober and all of their crap early stuff on heroin. from "mother's milk" on they were sober almost all of the time with some short term setbacks but wrote the material sober. blood sugar sex magic is fucking out of this world. wrote it sober.
u2 definitely does not use hard drugs and they are still relevant and make great albums after 25 years or more.

touche. ;)

She Likes It Loud said...

M - LSD hard or soft? Dylan used it. I saw him live in '99 at a secret show in NYC at Tramps. Elvis Costello joined him onstage and Charlie Sexton was on guitar. "Ballad of the Thin Man" is my fave. Amazing show.

Anonymous said...

Mickey - Enjoying the debate and appreciate your opinions. However, I have to take you to task regarding a few of your comments. I have no proof, nor am I a Doors historian (more of a casual fan), but I would wager my life that Jim Morrison most definitely was jacked up on hallucinogens and other assorted hard drugs (not including weed) while writing much of the Doors' lyrics. I find it hard to believe that he "performed on drugs but didn't write on drugs." Where has this been documented? A perfect example of a band that ruled while on drugs but sucked once sober is Aerosmith. Listen to 1976's "Rocks" and compare it to anything they did in the '80s and '90s when they professed to cleaning up, then tell me they were better without the heroin. Jefferson Airplane recorded a string of psychedelic masterpieces during the late '60s while the group was hosting drug bashes in their collective San Francisco home at 2400 Fulton Street. By the 1970's, Grace and Paul Kantner were having a baby and the inventive sound of Airplane became the banal sound of Jefferson Starship. Don't get me wrong, I'm not an advocate of drug use, nor do I condemn those who do use, but I've found overwhelming evidence that those who've "opened the doors of perception," if you will, have created much of the music by which I'm most fascinated. I totally respect your opinion on this topic, but I must add that grammy award nominations and awards generally rate as a tribute to earlier work that went unrecognized at the time. So you'll have a tough time selling me on "Time Out of Mind" over "Highway 61 Revisited" or any other Dylan album from the '60s. I also must add that U2 is possibly the most overrated band of all-time, second only to the Beatles... (Come on, people, no matter how much you like the Fab Four, you can't possibly believe they deserve ALL the credit they are given.)

mickey said...

well, i must say lsd is very hard. i did not like it and usually tell people not to do it. my point is that lsd did not have any impact on the creativity on any level for dylan, nor did marijuana. he did not operate on marijuana or lsd and have that be the reason for his genius at all. he wrote those fantastic songs off of drugs. his cocaine years he was dreadful and his recordings show that. when he was off of drugs he fucking rocked and won grammys and became the oldest human being to have a number one album at 65. you get me?

god i fucking rock. don't mess music boy! he knows all. lol.

lucky you about the show you saw. i have seen him just about every time he comes to philly. love him. ballad of a thin man is great. great piano. charlie sexton was a member of his band for a bit. ever heard early charlie sexton solo stuff way back when? not bad at all.

She Likes It Loud said...

I would so date Charlie Sexton. My friend owned Tramps so I got to meet Dylan's band (Dylan went from stage right to car, and I saw the door hit him on the way out, well his boot heel). "Beat's So Lonely" =) He's one of those people that I just instantly got on with, but he was married then, grrrrrr.... Costello was nice but gross. Never was a fan.

Ok guys, opinions are fun, but I'm bored now. You can continue debating privately with each other, but you've reached your "comment limit" (dictated by me when I feel like it) on this post.

Go listen to some drug free Bach - not of the Skid Row variety. =)

mickey said...

stan- morrison was not the sole writer for the doors. krieger wrote most of their hits. morrison also wrote most of his lyrical input prior to joining the band before he even tried hard drugs. just some quick facts. i was obsessed with the doors when i was younger and read all i could about them.
whether or not you feel a band is overrated or not does not erase the reality of how they wrote their songs, whether or not on or off of drugs. i tend to think u2 are one of the greats for a myriad of reasons that i won't bore you with. the main point is that they were highly successful and wrote without hard drug use.
the beatles deserve every bit of praise they get. they are the most influential band to walk the planet and the most innovative ever and every member could sing and they recorded those vocals with inferior technology. they also made all of those albums in an eight year period. most bands these days put out four albums during that timespan with one or two good songs on their albums.too much say without boring you on this subject.
love the jefferson airplane.

SLIL- sorry to bore you. maybe you should go party like a rockstar now, lol.