Does anyone else miss the drugs in music?
I can't remember ever seeing a band as high and mighty as this performance by Dr. Hook. While they may have been higher than a bunch of potheads sitting on Stonehedge in their time when drugs ran rampant, but I think we're sober now and we're boring.
Just today, reports are being passed around that Amy Winehouse has quit drinking and smoking because of her new filmmaker boyfriend. 50 Cent battled cocaine rumors even after he was caught on-tape, overseas, sniffing a table. We all know Fergie used to be a methhead and Eminem used to swallow pills and spit rhymes. Now Ke$ha is hot and just as boring because boys are her new drug and I'm sure she smells as bad as she sounds.
I'm not saying I need my musicians to be smashed. There is just this little part of my brain that longs for that excitement and revolution. Woodstock easily comes to mind as this beautiful cultural sphere, where bands were doing some amazing things and just floating with the flow. And there were more afterwards. Think Jefferson Airplane, Johnny Cash, the Sex Pistols, and, oh, I don't know, the Beatles.
It must have something to do with our lost of community. Instead of harboring around a scene like the punks or political ideology like the free-loving hippies, we circle around ourselves and our personal top 40. Drugs used to do one thing well: fuck shit up. They could bring our gears to a screeching, grinding halt and throw a monkey wrench in the other end. Communities sprouted on either end of the fence and tensions rose. Either you were groovy or square, hip or not. But finding others like you was harder, so you latched onto something that felt real.
Now we build our own castles in the sky, sober, and with earbuds jammed into our ears.
Oh, and Rolling Stone is now old and out-dated.
They do get out of tune, ya know?
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