Goodbye Naughts...

The Rolling Stones Ready Steady Go Special, 1966. Best Live Stones Footage Ever (in three parts).

The Stooges around the time of the Uganos recording (photo by Peter Hujar).

Danny Fields' tape box for Stooges Uganos (w/Velvets rehearsal on the other side!). 

There's nothing about Arthur Lee in today's post, I just like this photo.

When in doubt, run photos of Bebe.

As the end of the first decade of the 21st century closes in, it's time to make some sense of what happened in the last ten years. By the time I've done that, the roaring 20's should be here.  One thing is for sure, the world I once knew, and inhabited, is long gone. For lack of a better word, "bohemian" life in NYC is a thing of the past. Priced out by high rents, the city that was once a playground for the cool and the crazy is now a mall for the entitled. I came here in 1977 with $200 in my pocket, and had a job and an apartment within a week. What would I do if was eighteen today? I have no idea. I guess life, or at least social life, has moved into cyber space, which leaves old timers like me more than a tad alienated.  I think the outbreak of autism just may be the human race mutating into the type of creature it will have to be to survive in the future. The skills we don't need (human relations, face to face contact, etc.) have atrophied, welcome to product driven man. Each day is more and more like living in a Phillip K. Dick novel, except I'm not much of a Dick fan. I'm more of a Graham Greene type, and the subjects he addressed-- loyalty, duty, etc. seem almost quaint in the modern world.

Maybe it was bound to happen, you can only arrange three chords so many different ways, but Rock'n'Roll has become something akin to Dixieland, i.e. something old folks get together to do on weekends, a generation to dumb for rock'n'roll has grown up and taken the reins of pop culture, and most of the people I knew and associated with rock'n'roll are dead. Which is a long winded way of saying, I need a break. After 28 months of at least bi-weekly blogging,  I'm taking a month off to let my mental battery recharge. I'll be back at the typer around the second or third week of January.

One thing never changes, and that is the Stooges are still the kings of rock'n'roll and the touchpoint for whatever is left of the stuff. Buy yourself a Christmas present and get Rhino Handmade's Stooges: Have Some Fun: Live At Uganos, despite the quality of Danny Field's hand held cassette recording, we get to hear the band at one of their peaks, coming off the heels of recording Funhouse, they're white hot, and this disc is a must. They've got shows booked for 2012, who would have thought the Stooges would be around after 45+ years, having buried all their contemporaries (and half their band) they're like the eternal torch for rock'n'roll. For a review of the Have Some Fun check Blog To Comm  (scroll down a bit).

Those other mainstays of R&R mentality, for better or worse, The Rolling Stones may never play again, in light of Keith Richards wonderfully vitriolic Life, but then again, even they can't hold a candle to the modern day Stooges.  They haven't sounded right since Bill Wyman left anyway. I assume Bob Dylan will tour until his vocal chords snap, good for him. I must admit, I like the matador get up he's been wearing.

It's that time of year when I start missing the people-- Bob Quine, Kelly Keller, Bill Pietsch, Dee Dee Ramone, Rockets Redglare, so many others, who were part of my day to day life. Luckily for them, none of them had to think about Facebook.  See you in the new decade.