Caffeinated
I do believe I could give Kiri a run for her money regarding the “most caffeinated blogger” award. It’s miracle stuff as far as I’m concerned. If you listen to some, they claim that caffeine fueled the industrial revolution. Before the introduction of coffee and tea into England, people just couldn’t stay awake for those long factory hours. However, a snip in a review of an old favorite record of mine triggered an odd chain of thought.
Stav Sherez wrote a compelling paean to the legacy of the Dream Syndicate’s first album:
Though their reference points were obvious, the Dream Syndicate created a sound quite unlike anything that came before them, or indeed, after. This is where American rock music reinvented itself from the decaffeinated wastelands of AOR, where it blowtorched the recent past and made way for a future that was to include Grunge, Post Rock and alt.country. Quite simply some of the most wildly exciting music ever made.Decaffeinated wastelands? I really like that image a lot. When people talk about the 80s as if nothing beyond MTV happened, it makes me sick. There was more. In 1982, I was not only caffeinated, I was fueled by even more outrageous stimulants. So were a lot of people. One side effect of the non-caffeine variety stimulants is that they make you thirsty, so by 1985 the Dream Syndicate were spread out and sprawling drunks. But not in 1982, the frantic energy of that record is hard to match.
But the caffeine reference reminded me of a pilgrimage that Rex and I made to the Music Machine in North Hollywood in 1985 to see Danny and Dusty (Steve Wynn of the Dream Syndicate and Dan Stuart of Green on Red) with an exciting opening band called Thin White Rope. Danny and Dusty were drunk, but Guy Kyser, standing at the edge of this photo, was caffeinated. Their show was pure sculptured feedback, building Spanish caves in the long cavernous hall. It was one of those shows I still think about today.
Maybe it was the caffeine. Maybe that’s what made this era in rock so great to me. I’ve never been one for atmospheric music. I want music to make my eyes bug out.
I found an old interview which covers the problem of information overload nicely:
MONDO 2000: Do you think the overload of information makes it harder to find oneself?
Guy Kyser: No, you can find yourself more easily. But it's a lot harder to get someone else to pay attention once you do. Everyone's already overloaded
