A couple weeks ago I joined some speakers, artists, musicians, and authors to share stories about Rock & Roll. Marina Muhlfriendel’s event called OUR LIPS UNSEALED was at Tom Bergin’s Irish Pub on Fairfax Ave in Los Angeles. She told me her father was a regular friend of this Good ole English Pub.
Alex Stein is one who spoke that night. He revealed how seeing bands or going to a music festival is like going to church. I often thought about this. So, what came up was what I originally wrote up for the 1984 KFJC tape eleven. It is ritual for people to gather together around bands, move & dance and socialize.
I can see at such a contrary time in history, through a pandemic and political parties declaring a civil war, how we need to gather around a community of those who follow certain bands or music genres.
Be it jazz, punk rock, pop, or country and beyond. We need it… it is healing for our psyches.
So, I was happy to know another person saw it in the same light as I did.
Funny thing I don’t go to church, nor do I go to big music festivals. I don’t need the experience like I once did. I can just put a song on my browser for free and remember or sometimes find a new band or song. Yet I understand how some people need this big festival experience.
I am happy that promoters and bands are doing so well too.
Man, one can put some good VIP money down at these festivals. It makes me laugh. It just is not my cup of tea.
Maybe I will go to one? Maybe not? I know I will check out a local pub or club now and then. I still do need it… just not like I once did. I guess I am saturated and content with what I got or had… saw so many bands back in the day… like stars in the sky. I was spoiled and lucky to have once had such a bitchin’ scene to be part of.
KFJC 89.7 FM TAPE NUMBER TEN THE 10% EXPERIENCE.
A KISS IN THE WIND.
Once at the local pub a woman in her twenties looked over at me. She was talking to a friend, and I heard her say,
“I don’t know what the big deal is. That magazine came out over thirty years ago?”
She then looked over at me again. I looked back at her. I raised my shoulders and rolled my eyes as if to say,
“I know what you mean.”
This pub, the Scotland Yard in Canoga Park California is considered a music pub. The founder Patrick Fairley (rip) was in Marmalade a 1960s Scottish pop rock band.
Here a long line of DJs who just happened to play 1980s punk rock.
Punk rock is a unique genre and like jazz we all rejoice in the impressive sound of its originators. Going to the pub is kind of like going to church. The sociology of religion states that 80% of people going to church do so for social reasons. Only 10% go to have a religious experience. A pub is the same way. When you add some great music and beer this is the place to be to do the 80% thing or the 10 % thing.
As the spirituals gave birth to the Blues and then Jazz, so does it inspire the music we listen to today?
I don’t go to church anymore, but I do go to pubs. For me it is a 10% experience.
In the 1700s pubs often held meetings under the convert of drunks but in reality, it was the beginning of revolution.
It was about individuals who came together, who opposed the Church of England and their government. They sang their pub songs or hymns around the fireplace and hidden in these songs were the lyrics and tunes that inspired the people.
Punk rock can be like going to church and it can be an 80% social thing. To me it has always been about the 10% punk rock experience.
It is inspirational, thrilling and has the ability to awakened one to wild possibilities of hope and creativity as any good ‘old jazz song does.
Sharing these tapes is like sharing an old jazz tune or inspirational religious experience. It has its place in the continuity of the punk rock experience of 1984.
This is what I should have told the young woman who liked to come to this pub on punk rock DJ nights. She enjoyed listening to 30-year-old music. The thirty-year-old magazine she referred to did document the 10 % punk rock experience!
This tape is dedicated to all the Los Angeles underground scene women who were the foundation of an early punk rock scene.
SNFU or part of the X-files. so go screw!
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