lieasleep

this needs to be finished

Davey Moore

I was at a party the other night, with a bunch of friends from high school. We're all going to college soon and it was one of the last times we'd all be together. I remember a moment, we're all huddled in my friend's basement, and I'm sitting in the corner of the room, smoking a cigar. I still don't know where I got that cigar. For a few seconds we're all silent. And through the haze of marijuana smoke and the almost angelic halogen light atop the ceiling, I gaze at the faces of my friends and members of my generation and see a blank, bittersweet stare. An epiphany hit me right there and then. We are the Adderall Generation. A jaded group. I have three parents, my mom, my dad, and media. Media takes many forms. Music, TV, but especially the internet. I've seen things that kids from previous generations wouldn't even be able to imagine. And as a clinically depressed person, perhaps I experience more of the apathy than is usual among my generation. But overall, we are an apathetic generation. The Adderall Generation.

When I listen to this album from 1988, I see a similarity to my own decade, with the excess and decadent culture. The eighties were a time of excess under a Republican rule which tried to reverse the effects of the sixties culturally. That was impossible, but what the Reagan administration brought about was essentially, a giant party. The economic struggles of the 70s were behind us, and the nation collectively let loose. Racial tensions were high, and if Spike Lee is to be believed, a trashcan through a window could have turned an angry mob into a full on riot. The rich were getting richer and the poor were getting poorer. Culturally there was a giant split, especially in music. This was when the first real unified indie community formed, and Sonic Youth had a lot to do with that. Bands like Sonic Youth took the lead and gave the indie community a sense of purpose and direction. But without the shallow mainstream to rebel against, perhaps the indie community wouldn't have become so unified. And for that, I thank you Hall and Oates and Poison. This album is without a doubt the product of a jaded generation. Even the title says a lot about the era it was made, and to be honest, perfectly applies to this generation as well. However, our flights into reverie are of a digital nature.

For instance, as I write this, I am sitting in my bed with shorts and a shirt, listening to Daydream Nation on my iPod, laughing at how the lyrics of Teenage Riot totally apply to me. It really would take something akin to a teenage riot to get me out of bed right now. What I love about the underground is the brainy brainlessness. Sonic Youth sounds like chaos, like an unplanned, sneering punk, but in reality it's the total opposite, precise, planned tuning, requiring a great knowledge of music in order to break it's rules. A Velvet Underground aesthetic where it sounds really easy to play but when you sit down and try you realize it takes a good musician to play something like that, with precision yet with a tone of 'I don't care how I play.' Whenever I try and play Sonic Youth on the guitar it always sounds lifeless, like I'm doing something wrong.

I like to think of the majority of my generation, my associates and partners in crime with the analogy of the Roman candle. If you don't know of the Roman candle analogy, it's okay, because I thought of it. A lot of us are like fireworks, shooting up into the sky, looking pretty and inciting oohs and aahs from the spectators below. But when we peak, when we explode, we're naught but a burnt husk landing on the ground, a shadow of our former glory. People peak too early. Think of the jocks and the high school stars, who will spend the rest of their lives as insurance salesmen or working at the Pep Boys in their hometown. They're Roman candle, they are fireworks, never again to see their fiery youth but everyday hoping to relive it. But we're not unique in this tradition. F. Scott Fitzgerald once said there are no second acts in American life. For a large section of the populace, that's true. And they will forever be stuck in that cliché if they don't wake up from the daydream.

Falling out of sleep, I hit the floor
Put on some rock tee and I'm out with the door
From Bowery to Broome to Greene, I'm a walking lizard
Last night's dream was a talking baby wizard

All comin' from hu-man imagination
Day dreaming days in a daydream nation

Smashed-up against a car at three A.M.
Kids just up for basketball, beat me in my head
There's bum trash in my hall and my place is ripped
I've totaled another amp, I'm calling in sick

It's an anthem in a vacuum on a hyperstation
Day dreaming days in a daydream nation

__________________
The Edge... there is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over.

Engine

Brilliant conclusion there, man.
And, yes, you should believe Spike Lee - even a peaceful mob will riot when they feel they should.

Davey Moore

Few things are as effective at halting the creative flow than an obsessive pursuit of perfection. It's like a dog chasing it's own tail. The Ouroboros. The Monolith in '2001'. The green light in 'The Great Gatsby'.

I fancy myself to be a writer. At least, that's what I tell people at parties. My first novel will be called 'Dead Flowers', and I've got the majority of the chapters and ideas all lined up in my head, I have literally a fifty page biography for each of the main characters, these people are so real in my head, yet when I sit down and start writing I keep stalling after finishing the first chapter. See, I'm a perfectionist. Imagine my horror when I realized these things can't be edited after you submit them.

Werner Herzog is one of the most important German directors, being one of the primary figures in the German New Wave in the 1970s, with haunting films like 'Aguirre: The Wrath of God', shot in a tropical jungle and one of the greatest depictions of madness ever on film. The main character leads a doomed expedition up the Amazon river in search of the mythical city of Gold, El Dorado. El Dorado, one of the most fascinating legends of Human creation. Every civilization has their Holy Grail myth. A myth which is the concept of perfection. Whatever perfection is in one's mind, that is what the myth can represent.

To be human is to reject and simultaneously strive for perfection.

I'm tired of trying to be perfect. Most of us didn't ask to be born. I'm tired of trying to make love to the world with my writing and my ideas. Vonnegut once said if you try and do that, your writing will get pneumonia, so to speak. From now on I'll try and write about only what I find interesting and pleasing. I want to please one person. Me. And if people like what I write then that's great. Because that tells me that I'm not alone, I'm not as crazy as I thought. And the feeling of breaking away from isolation is a nice one.

However, being alone and crazy is a little comforting too. Because we were lied to. We aren't perfect, unique individuals. Mr. Rogers lied. And to be crazy and in isolation, means, as Orwell once said 'to be in a minority of one.' And it's nice to be unique.

Some things come really close to perfect. I'd say that Apocalypse Now comes pretty close to perfect. The Hollow Men and The Wasteland by T.S. Eliot. They come pretty close. The Great Gatsby is probably the closest human endeavor that reaches the impossibility of perfection. The Sistine Chapel.

Now that I think about it, The Pyramids are pretty perfect, too. Maybe perfection exists only within the realm of mathematics and science. E=MC2. But Mathematics and Science, they are cold. Cold Perfection. They bring no emotion to them. Only enlightenment. Only understanding. Maybe that's the thing. Maybe, nothing emotional can be perfect because emotions are an imperfect and unpredictable thing.

To listen to the album is to be taken along on a ride that doesn't reach the perfection status, but it without a doubt reaches the masterpiece stage, and that's rare enough, so I'm thankful. It is a wonderland of guitars, rising and falling like the tides, with a grace reminiscent of the heavenly points of light which navigate the sky above us like galactic steamboats.

As I listen, I think Velvet Waltz may be my favorite song on the album. It is appropriately named, because it moves forwards beautifully, like a dance between two true loves. No, that can't be. That's too cliché of an image. To perfect. Too fitting. I reject it.

To use the terminology of the album, imagine a metal sphere, ten times the size of Jupiter, floating just a few yards past the Earth. Now, reality and physics would dictate that something ten times the size of Jupiter would have enough gravity to pull something puny like the Earth and the Moon in way before it got that close to actually pass us. But never mind. Appropriately, this is a colossal, ten times the size of Jupiter sort album. With only eight songs, it clocks in at just under 55 minutes.

Is perfection a uniquely human concept? Do alien cultures have the same concept? This album was recorded and rerecorded three times. The title is apt.

That eternal strive.

__________________
The Edge... there is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over.

Davey Moore

It was a hot summer day, the fifth of June, when Sid Barrett strolled into Abbey Road studios, hair and eyebrows completely shaven, overweight, clutching a plastic bag, a specter, once captain of a band which, since the release of their previous album, 'The Dark Side of the Moon', was the biggest album in the world. It took a while for them to recognize him.

The irony is that he showed up the day they were working on the final mix for the song 'Shine On You Crazy Diamond', a direct tribute to him. He sat down for a while and had a conversation with the band, but when they played him the song, he showed no signs that he understood the relevance of the song. He showed up at David Gilmour's wedding later on that day, and then disappeared. None of them would ever see the man again.

After he left, Roger Waters broke down and wept.

I just watched a part of a documentary/TV series called 'Lords of the Revolution', it was about Timothy Leary. Turn on, tune in, drop out. Turn off your mind, relax and float down stream.

He's either cited as a hero and philosopher or a foolish, dangerous man who brought a whole generation to it's knees with six words. I think he's a little bit of both. He opened up doors to the consciousness and more so than any other single person, ignited the Sixties.

LSD destroyed people. It also saved people. There are plenty of stories out there about it's effects. The story of Daniel Johnston is a chilling tale about what LSD can do to someone who is already mentally unbalanced. Then there is the story of Sid Barrett, somebody who lost complete touch with the world, because of LSD.

It's a testament to Sid's effect on his band mates that for a lot of their career, they looked back and talked about him. Some of their best songs have to do with insanity, a subject they became obsessed with after Sid left.

However, I wonder how much of a loss Sid Barrett actually was. All of the bands best work is done after he left, with the possible exception of 'Jugband Blues' in my mind. If Sid Barrett didn't go crazy, Roger Waters wouldn't have led the band, and he wouldn't have taken the band in the direction that it did. And without him leaving, there wouldn't be a David Gilmour, who, despite not being in what people would call 'a guitar band', produced some of the best solos in Rock history. And without him leaving, the band would lose some of their most memorable songs, and the majority of this album wouldn't exist.

But who knows, maybe if Sid stayed on board, a Lennon-McCartney relationship would have spawned with him and Waters that would have produced even greater songs. You can spend all day contemplating the 'what if's' in history.

You could argue that acid did more damage than good. Actually, I truly believe that to be the case. If acid never came into prominence, the psychedelic movement may not have existed, but that's really the only genre to suffer. The drug of choice in Andy Warhol's Factory was speed, not LSD. Bob Dylan did his best work hopped up on speed.

Pink Floyd make a great album here, with just five songs, the shortest being 5 minutes and 8 seconds. They just don't cover insanity and their fallen band mate, however, they cover consumerism and the rising tide of conformity. 'Welcome to the Machine' seems to be a product of them just finishing 1984. It's a dark and foreboding song, but somehow still catchy. Perhaps the best song on the album is 'Have a Cigar', without a doubt the funkiest song Floyd has ever done, perhaps the best hook Floyd has ever done,('We call it Riding the Gravy Train!), and interestingly enough the only Pink Floyd song with the vocals done by someone not in the band.

It must have been a hell of a thing to follow the monumental album of the decade, and Floyd did a hell of a job, and in my mind, made a superior album.

__________________
The Edge... there is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over.

Davey Moore

An interesting note I won't put in my next essay but will be a sort of prequel to it since if I don't want images breaking up the continuity of my essays:

Here's an interesting thing, look at the cover of The Great Gatsby and the cover of Remain in Light. Look at each cover and the parts of the face that are exposed.

__________________
The Edge... there is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over.

Piss Me Off

You make me feel so lazy, i always saw the candle for what it is, a shining beacon standing out from the music at the time that didn't aim as high as Daydream Nation did. The lyrics to the song Candle kind of allude to this as well, as well as their image of a stoner band who were just playing shit for the fun of it. There were a lot of bands doing just that but none of them could make a masterpiece like this, as you said it's a hugely complicated album.

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