From the Diary of a Revolutionary (lyrics, drum, house, jazz)

cardboard adolescent · 03-19-2007, 09:21 PM

Hey, this is a story I just started working on today. I'd much appreciate it if some of you guys could read through it and tell me what you think. It should be a pretty easy read, it's very free-flowing and stream-of-conciousness. I'm writing it for my Creative Writing class, hopefully my teacher can appreciate it:

From the Diary of a Revolutionary

I was eighteen when I decided to join the revolution.

I’d read about it in books and stuff, and all my favourite musicians were always yelling about it, so it seemed like a pretty good idea.

Unforunately, the year I got into it was 1992, and to most on the outside, the revolution seemed pretty dead. The beats were long gone, the hippies cut their hair, and the punk revolution had collapsed in on itself. Hell, even the disco revolution was dead.

Our new “Generation Spokesmodel” Mr. Cobain was more concerned with his feelings than inspiring social revolution, and so it was up to us to succeed where all others before us had failed. To replace the corrupt triad of religion, government, and property with sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll. To bring true, unadulterated freedom to every man, woman, and child. To free people from the oppressive system which had dictated their lives for the last couple thousands years, and to bring the Party to the streets.

This was our manifesto.

Step 1: Join a Band

Let me tell you something about myself. My theme song as a teen was the Dead Kennedys’ “Too Drunk to ****.” It follows then, that I spent most of my formative years drunk with friends, often blaring out tunes on the guitar. But when I finally said

“Guys, we should start a band!” they were baffled.

“But, we’d need a name!”

“Yeah man, what would we call ourselves?”

“Who cares!” I shouted back.

They all seemed to think about it for a second, and then they all grabbed another beer.

“Alright man, let’s do it.”

We recorded a mixtape before we ever even booked a gig. It was basically just one long jam session recorded on some crappy equipment borrowed from somebody’s brother. We didn’t really know what the hell to do with it so we just kind of handed it out around school and shows and stuff, trying to get some support. But people weren’t really interested in listening to a couple of punks murdering their instruments for twenty minutes straight without a break. In the seventies that kinda stuff would’ve blown minds but in 1992 that just wasn’t grunge enough. We knew we were gonna have to go underground.

So it was that I found out about Jimmy. Jimmy was this 24-year-old cat who dropped out of school before he even got to high school and who, between his dead-end jobs, threw crazy parties at his dilapidated house in a bad part of town. These parties had a pretty bad rep among our uptight classmates, seeing as how they involved coke and meth and generally ended up in violent outbursts or somebody OD’ing. Now, we weren’t really into that kind of thing, but that seemed like as cool a scene as any, so we met up with Jimmy and asked him if our band could show up at his place and kick out the jams while him and his brethren got ****ed up.

He said sure, and a week later we were there tearing **** up, feeling pretty pleased with ourselves that we were a part of something that normal people couldn’t even understand, and that we were milking life for all the visceral pleasure its swollen tit could produce.

The other kids there were sketchy as hell, and some of em were so out of it that they were actually digging our sounds. So when I heard one of em yell
“PIGS” I thought he was just being a fool.

Next thing you know though, the men in blue have busted down the goddamn door, junkies are crawling out the windows and running in every direction. We dropped our instruments and ran out right with them, even though we hadn’t technically done anything. The cops coulda busted us for something.

That was basically the end of Jimmy and his scene for us. That night was exciting as anything to remember and talk about, but in the end we decided that we wouldn’t be able to incur social change from prison, and that to spark a revolution you have to be out on the streets. When we asked Jimmy about our instruments, he told us he was on probation and to **** off. That presented a pretty big setback for a while, but we ended up buying some pretty cheap second-hand stuff off a drunk and we were back on the road to becoming underground superstars.

Our next gig came a couple months later at a little nightclub downtown, after we had written a few proper songs and made a decent mixtape. I wrote all the lyrics, which were basically just nonsensical poems, which I convinced the others was cool because it was dada.

When it was finally time to get up on stage and perform though, we were pretty messed up and a little jittery, so we decided to get up there and just kick our instruments because that seemed pretty avant-garde and we were into all that jazz. We said we wanted to challenge our audience, but really we just wanted to piss them off and maybe get a riot started if they were drunk enough. They just ended up getting confused and a little pissed ten minutes after we got off the stage and they realized we weren’t coming back but at that point they were too drunk to really care. We gave ourselves a pat on the back and decided to scrap writing songs for a while, and instead be more of a free improv unit, like AMM or something, but with more attitude.

Unfortunately, there weren’t too many clubs in the area interested in hosting free improv units, we were too far-out for even the most pretentious joints. So we started getting people over to Charlie’s house, who was our drummer, and while people sat around and chilled with each other we’d be jamming away in the background. Sometimes we’d get really into it and start a crazy crescendo with our instruments wrapping around each other in an orgasmic tidal wave of feedback, and someone in the audience would yell to keep it the **** down but we wouldn’t listen and it would end with a bunch of people getting really pissed and leaving. But it was worth it. I’m pretty sure we changed a couple of lives on some of those nights. Most of those idiots didn’t realize what they were witnessing.

ItsRed · 03-19-2007, 10:17 PM

The idea, the hope of expanding personal experience beyond what's available in the horrible ordinary everydays, the rejecting the elements of enculturaion, isn't a bad place to write.

This piece is really more a 'characterization' than a story though. I'm not sure how far you are into your creative writing course, but if you're going to write stories, one thing to think about is Arc, in concerns of both the character and plot.

Instead of being 18 and already committed to the revolution, start with the character 18 and looking at some element of his past where he didn't desire to be a revolutionary.

Example: The little dweeb in the photograph I'm looking at is me, I'm eight years old. [A few sentence about how the eight year old varies, or obtains the seeds of desire to fight. (contrived? sure, but effective)]

Another example would be to start in medias res. In the middle.

Example: The cops are coming through the doors. This is me, my big deal. Holy. Shit.

Then go back to the start with some provocation of being a revolutionary. It doesn't have to be big, but it should be more personal than the Cobain aversion crumb.

The ending is just as void of arc as the start, but what makes it worse is the characters' own unrealized grandiose delusion. It makes it read like wishful thinking, there should be some growth, or a realization that growth is impossible. You have some good description of the hysteria in the crescendo, this could be a porthole to elevation, or acceptance, or some connection/ escape from the world he's fighting against, but it's none of the above.

There are quite a few inconsistencies even if you want to leave it as a characterization. He wants to exact change, but then learns (?) that he just really wants to piss people off instead and find his own escape in manipulating audience feeling??? Why???? Oh, it's cool. (As a reader, if you wanted to piss me off, you succeeded. Congratulations!). If this is what he learns, the learning needs to take place.

I don't think you're really concerned with the quality of writing from a literary point so I'm not going to go into other issues.

And if it you just wanted a comment of 'cool,' or 'not cool'....it's both.

cardboard adolescent · 03-19-2007, 11:03 PM

The idea is that he's looking back on this from some unspecified time in the future, in a sort of self-deprecating yet simultaneously nostalgic way. Ultimately the revelation comes that he was just another pissed off kid, but it's hinted at throughout the piece.

Or something.

ItsRed · 03-20-2007, 01:16 AM

The reflection seemed pretty immediate, like he was still 18, but I don't know where I got into a present tense.

Sometimes I use music to create a contrast in narrative voice. One screenplay I used Fugazi 'Waiting Room' for a fight scene and Pavement 'Box Elder' for a breaking up scene. I don't know if that makes any sense....

For this I would suggest The Beatles 'Revolution' for the older reflective voice and, of course, DK's 'Too drunk..' for the recall of events in the scene.

It might help add some distinction.

cardboard adolescent · 03-20-2007, 05:30 AM

Hopefully it'll come through better as I continue the story

cardboard adolescent · 03-21-2007, 06:45 PM

Here's some more:

But even that got a little boring after a while. The music wasn’t really catching on and I didn’t get the feeling like we were cranking the gears of change. One night I came up with the idea that we should call ourselves Teen Spirit and tell clubs we were a Nirvana cover band, that was sure to get us booked. Then, when we got up on stage we would just rip through sped-up Elton John covers.

We dwelled on that entertaining notion for a while, but it didn’t seem shocking or absurd enough.

One day we were driving around in Charlie’s van with all the instruments conveniently in there (Charlie’s mom had finally thrown us out of her house) when one of us (probably me) yelled “PULL OVER!” The van screeched to a stop and pulled up on the sidewalk of some busy downtown street.

“What the hell?” asked Charlie.

“Let’s kick out the jams!”

“What, here?”

“We said we were gonna take it to the streets!”

In that moment, this seemed like the most brilliant idea ever conceived. What better way to send our message to the people?

Within minutes we had all our gear set up, amps humming and ready to blast noise. I had decided to take over the mic because I felt in my soul that I knew how to talk to the people, how to provoke them to anger.

Feedback blasts through the speakers, then Charlie lets out a mean drum fill.
Inspired brilliance.

HEY you in that CAR!
Why don’t you get out and join the WAR
We’re gonna TEAR this mother down
We’re settin’ fire to the goddamn TOWN

The guy in the car tried to ignore me and floored the gas as soon as the light turned green.
People on the street were coming out of their stores and staring, and I felt like some **** was about to go down.

Come on people don’t just stand around
Grab an axe and tear **** down
Bite the hand that’s been screwin’ you
C’mon dirtbags you know what to do!

At this point it looked like people were yelling at us, but we couldn’t hear them above our own cacophony. Good, let them get worked up, I thought. This is something to get worked up about.

Surprisingly, nobody from the crowd worked up the nerve to attack us, but somebody called the cops and they showed up pretty quickly. I’d really gotten worked up so as they got out of their squad car and ran up to us I made pig noises like in Deliverance. They ended up hauling us down to the station. Even though they didn’t charge us with anything that was more or less the end of the band. We were all pretty satisfied that we’d left our mark on the world.

[End of Step 1]

03-19-2007, 09:21 PM	#1 (permalink)
cardboard adolescent ;) Join Date: Nov 2005 Location: CA Posts: 3,503	From the Diary of a Revolutionary Hey, this is a story I just started working on today. I'd much appreciate it if some of you guys could read through it and tell me what you think. It should be a pretty easy read, it's very free-flowing and stream-of-conciousness. I'm writing it for my Creative Writing class, hopefully my teacher can appreciate it: From the Diary of a Revolutionary I was eighteen when I decided to join the revolution. I’d read about it in books and stuff, and all my favourite musicians were always yelling about it, so it seemed like a pretty good idea. Unforunately, the year I got into it was 1992, and to most on the outside, the revolution seemed pretty dead. The beats were long gone, the hippies cut their hair, and the punk revolution had collapsed in on itself. Hell, even the disco revolution was dead. Our new “Generation Spokesmodel” Mr. Cobain was more concerned with his feelings than inspiring social revolution, and so it was up to us to succeed where all others before us had failed. To replace the corrupt triad of religion, government, and property with sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll. To bring true, unadulterated freedom to every man, woman, and child. To free people from the oppressive system which had dictated their lives for the last couple thousands years, and to bring the Party to the streets. This was our manifesto. Step 1: Join a Band Let me tell you something about myself. My theme song as a teen was the Dead Kennedys’ “Too Drunk to **.” It follows then, that I spent most of my formative years drunk with friends, often blaring out tunes on the guitar. But when I finally said “Guys, we should start a band!” they were baffled. “But, we’d need a name!” “Yeah man, what would we call ourselves?” “Who cares!” I shouted back. They all seemed to think about it for a second, and then they all grabbed another beer. “Alright man, let’s do it.” We recorded a mixtape before we ever even booked a gig. It was basically just one long jam session recorded on some crappy equipment borrowed from somebody’s brother. We didn’t really know what the hell to do with it so we just kind of handed it out around school and shows and stuff, trying to get some support. But people weren’t really interested in listening to a couple of punks murdering their instruments for twenty minutes straight without a break. In the seventies that kinda stuff would’ve blown minds but in 1992 that just wasn’t grunge enough. We knew we were gonna have to go underground. So it was that I found out about Jimmy. Jimmy was this 24-year-old cat who dropped out of school before he even got to high school and who, between his dead-end jobs, threw crazy parties at his dilapidated house in a bad part of town. These parties had a pretty bad rep among our uptight classmates, seeing as how they involved coke and meth and generally ended up in violent outbursts or somebody OD’ing. Now, we weren’t really into that kind of thing, but that seemed like as cool a scene as any, so we met up with Jimmy and asked him if our band could show up at his place and kick out the jams while him and his brethren got ed up. He said sure, and a week later we were there tearing up, feeling pretty pleased with ourselves that we were a part of something that normal people couldn’t even understand, and that we were milking life for all the visceral pleasure its swollen tit could produce. The other kids there were sketchy as hell, and some of em were so out of it that they were actually digging our sounds. So when I heard one of em yell “PIGS” I thought he was just being a fool. Next thing you know though, the men in blue have busted down the goddamn door, junkies are crawling out the windows and running in every direction. We dropped our instruments and ran out right with them, even though we hadn’t technically done anything. The cops coulda busted us for something. That was basically the end of Jimmy and his scene for us. That night was exciting as anything to remember and talk about, but in the end we decided that we wouldn’t be able to incur social change from prison, and that to spark a revolution you have to be out on the streets. When we asked Jimmy about our instruments, he told us he was on probation and to off. That presented a pretty big setback for a while, but we ended up buying some pretty cheap second-hand stuff off a drunk and we were back on the road to becoming underground superstars. Our next gig came a couple months later at a little nightclub downtown, after we had written a few proper songs and made a decent mixtape. I wrote all the lyrics, which were basically just nonsensical poems, which I convinced the others was cool because it was dada. When it was finally time to get up on stage and perform though, we were pretty messed up and a little jittery, so we decided to get up there and just kick our instruments because that seemed pretty avant-garde and we were into all that jazz. We said we wanted to challenge our audience, but really we just wanted to piss them off and maybe get a riot started if they were drunk enough. They just ended up getting confused and a little pissed ten minutes after we got off the stage and they realized we weren’t coming back but at that point they were too drunk to really care. We gave ourselves a pat on the back and decided to scrap writing songs for a while, and instead be more of a free improv unit, like AMM or something, but with more attitude. Unfortunately, there weren’t too many clubs in the area interested in hosting free improv units, we were too far-out for even the most pretentious joints. So we started getting people over to Charlie’s house, who was our drummer, and while people sat around and chilled with each other we’d be jamming away in the background. Sometimes we’d get really into it and start a crazy crescendo with our instruments wrapping around each other in an orgasmic tidal wave of feedback, and someone in the audience would yell to keep it the ** down but we wouldn’t listen and it would end with a bunch of people getting really pissed and leaving. But it was worth it. I’m pretty sure we changed a couple of lives on some of those nights. Most of those idiots didn’t realize what they were witnessing.

03-19-2007, 10:17 PM	#2 (permalink)
ItsRed Music Addict Join Date: Dec 2006 Posts: 48	The idea, the hope of expanding personal experience beyond what's available in the horrible ordinary everydays, the rejecting the elements of enculturaion, isn't a bad place to write. This piece is really more a 'characterization' than a story though. I'm not sure how far you are into your creative writing course, but if you're going to write stories, one thing to think about is Arc, in concerns of both the character and plot. Instead of being 18 and already committed to the revolution, start with the character 18 and looking at some element of his past where he didn't desire to be a revolutionary. Example: The little dweeb in the photograph I'm looking at is me, I'm eight years old. [A few sentence about how the eight year old varies, or obtains the seeds of desire to fight. (contrived? sure, but effective)] Another example would be to start in medias res. In the middle. Example: The cops are coming through the doors. This is me, my big deal. Holy. Shit. Then go back to the start with some provocation of being a revolutionary. It doesn't have to be big, but it should be more personal than the Cobain aversion crumb. The ending is just as void of arc as the start, but what makes it worse is the characters' own unrealized grandiose delusion. It makes it read like wishful thinking, there should be some growth, or a realization that growth is impossible. You have some good description of the hysteria in the crescendo, this could be a porthole to elevation, or acceptance, or some connection/ escape from the world he's fighting against, but it's none of the above. There are quite a few inconsistencies even if you want to leave it as a characterization. He wants to exact change, but then learns (?) that he just really wants to piss people off instead and find his own escape in manipulating audience feeling??? Why???? Oh, it's cool. (As a reader, if you wanted to piss me off, you succeeded. Congratulations!). If this is what he learns, the learning needs to take place. I don't think you're really concerned with the quality of writing from a literary point so I'm not going to go into other issues. And if it you just wanted a comment of 'cool,' or 'not cool'....it's both. __________________ Dark Circle : They're here. Rocking your black night world since 2007. http://www.unsignedbandweb.com/music/bands/7789/

03-20-2007, 01:16 AM	#4 (permalink)
ItsRed Music Addict Join Date: Dec 2006 Posts: 48	The reflection seemed pretty immediate, like he was still 18, but I don't know where I got into a present tense. Sometimes I use music to create a contrast in narrative voice. One screenplay I used Fugazi 'Waiting Room' for a fight scene and Pavement 'Box Elder' for a breaking up scene. I don't know if that makes any sense.... For this I would suggest The Beatles 'Revolution' for the older reflective voice and, of course, DK's 'Too drunk..' for the recall of events in the scene. It might help add some distinction. __________________ Dark Circle : They're here. Rocking your black night world since 2007. http://www.unsignedbandweb.com/music/bands/7789/

03-19-2007, 11:03 PM	#3 (permalink)
cardboard adolescent ;) Join Date: Nov 2005 Location: CA Posts: 3,503	The idea is that he's looking back on this from some unspecified time in the future, in a sort of self-deprecating yet simultaneously nostalgic way. Ultimately the revelation comes that he was just another pissed off kid, but it's hinted at throughout the piece. Or something.

03-20-2007, 05:30 AM	#5 (permalink)
cardboard adolescent ;) Join Date: Nov 2005 Location: CA Posts: 3,503	Hopefully it'll come through better as I continue the story

03-21-2007, 06:45 PM	#6 (permalink)
cardboard adolescent ;) Join Date: Nov 2005 Location: CA Posts: 3,503	Here's some more: But even that got a little boring after a while. The music wasn’t really catching on and I didn’t get the feeling like we were cranking the gears of change. One night I came up with the idea that we should call ourselves Teen Spirit and tell clubs we were a Nirvana cover band, that was sure to get us booked. Then, when we got up on stage we would just rip through sped-up Elton John covers. We dwelled on that entertaining notion for a while, but it didn’t seem shocking or absurd enough. One day we were driving around in Charlie’s van with all the instruments conveniently in there (Charlie’s mom had finally thrown us out of her house) when one of us (probably me) yelled “PULL OVER!” The van screeched to a stop and pulled up on the sidewalk of some busy downtown street. “What the hell?” asked Charlie. “Let’s kick out the jams!” “What, here?” “We said we were gonna take it to the streets!” In that moment, this seemed like the most brilliant idea ever conceived. What better way to send our message to the people? Within minutes we had all our gear set up, amps humming and ready to blast noise. I had decided to take over the mic because I felt in my soul that I knew how to talk to the people, how to provoke them to anger. Feedback blasts through the speakers, then Charlie lets out a mean drum fill. Inspired brilliance. HEY you in that CAR! Why don’t you get out and join the WAR We’re gonna TEAR this mother down We’re settin’ fire to the goddamn TOWN The guy in the car tried to ignore me and floored the gas as soon as the light turned green. People on the street were coming out of their stores and staring, and I felt like some ** was about to go down. Come on people don’t just stand around Grab an axe and tear ** down Bite the hand that’s been screwin’ you C’mon dirtbags you know what to do! At this point it looked like people were yelling at us, but we couldn’t hear them above our own cacophony. Good, let them get worked up, I thought. This is something to get worked up about. Surprisingly, nobody from the crowd worked up the nerve to attack us, but somebody called the cops and they showed up pretty quickly. I’d really gotten worked up so as they got out of their squad car and ran up to us I made pig noises like in Deliverance. They ended up hauling us down to the station. Even though they didn’t charge us with anything that was more or less the end of the band. We were all pretty satisfied that we’d left our mark on the world. [End of Step 1]