I mean, does rock\u2019n\u2019 roll have anything to do with anything? Once it adopts pretensions of meaningfulness outside that of a self-contained expression, matrical and flashing, doesn\u2019t it become art or pop\/kitsch? If not, how come all the psychedelic dreck of the last five years in retrospect, can\u2019t hold a candle, in terms of cosmic epiphany or plain old life energy, to Little Richard of The Heartbeats? Little Richard, via his pure white-energy raunch and total over-simplification, had the power to make people say \u201cfuck it\u201d and turn their backs on their own control conditioning and just go out and debauch and catch a glimpse of the violent, drunken, loving, dancing Universe. The Heartbeats sprayed more ahimsa and luv-eye-flow from their beans than three Woodstocks ever could… What I mean is that people like Jerry Lee Lewis or The Cleftones or Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen or Archie Shepp have very definitely changed more heads around for the far better than a truckload of George Harrisons asking people to kiss it up to God and make it all better ever could. Just one of those honking one-note saxophone solos off ‘Here’s Little Richard’ has more spiritual energy, vision and Tau-fuck than five ‘All Things Must Pass’ could shake a tube of Mani-Magic Cuticle Remover at.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I post this in tribute to the passing of Little Richard. I agree entirely with what Tosches says. You could even say it’s one of my mantras in re: what art can do, and how powerfully it can do it. And its power is not in its serious statements or overt messages, or its attempts to “do good” in this world and “bring people together”. Its power is INHERENT and far-reaching, and has nothing to do with anything specific, you dig? Just like Tosches said. Lester Bangs said a similar thing in his famous obituary for Elvis (“Elvis kicked ‘How Much Is That Doggie in the Window’ out the window and replaced it with ‘Let\u2019s fuck.’ The rest of us are still reeling from the impact.”) This is why rock ‘n’ roll SCARED people. It threatens the status quo by its mere existence.<\/p>\n
You can’t even believe someone even made up “A-Bop-A-Loo-Bop-A-Lop-Bam-Boom.” It seems like it was IN us somehow from the start. But it WASN’T. Little Richard gave it to us.<\/p>\n
\n \nLittle Richard poster print by Jim Blanchard<\/a>. <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" From Nick Tosches’ blistering article about the 1971 concert for Bangladesh at Madison Square Garden (Tosches was not, to put it mildly, a fan): I mean, does rock\u2019n\u2019 roll have anything to do with anything? Once it adopts pretensions of … Continue reading ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/85ca514f9886a96d3c067f991afcb736_XL.jpg\")
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