Weekend Plans Post: No Longer Batching It Rock And Roll Weekend

After a couple of weeks away, Maribou is back home. The cats are no longer wandering around at 4 in the morning yelling “WHERE’S MOMMY”. I did this thing where I filled the fridge door with *MY* drinks and the top two shelves of the fridge with *MY* food and *MY* ingredients and, over two weeks, they disappeared until it was time to fill the door with her stuff (allowing for a few cans for me) and making sure the shelves were ready for the stuff that we’d want to pick out TOGETHER.

So far that has meant the soft rolls from Kneaders. I swear, the first ingredient on those things has to be sugar because they are sooooo good. Good for sandwiches, good for dipping in soup, good for just splitting and putting a pat of butter in there. Delivery of groceries from our various places. And just getting back on the horse. Whew.

One of the things that happened while she was away was a lot of listening to music. On the twitters, there was an interesting discussion of the evolution of Rock and Roll and how it seems to be receding.

Yeah, I was going through and trying to find some guitar-oriented rock that was vaguely recent and The Darkness is the closest that I could find to a band that is doing what bands in the 80's were doing.

I blame autotune.

— Jaybird (@OG_Jaybird) January 18, 2022

The Darkness was on my mind because I spent the weekend previous listening to them. And, seriously, they’re just a treat. They’re doing the post-modern thing with rock and roll by knowing the tropes in and out and around and sideways and have no problem mocking them… but the mockery comes from a place of dear, dear love for the genre. They’re playing with it.

I’m sure you remember their breakthrough song “I Believe in a Thing called Love” if only for the absurd video:

“Are they serious or are they making fun of this sort of thing?”, you may be tempted to ask. “Yes”, I’ll answer.

They had a more ballady song “Love is Only a Feeling” that is their shot at “Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?” where it’s pretending to be a love song but it’s not really but it kind of is. It contains the absolutely amazing lyric:

The state of elation that this unison of hearts achieved
I had seen, I had touched, I had tasted and I truly believed

Seriously. That couplet is a g-darn triumph. And the song is good too.

They came out with a Christmas song that I enjoyed and thought was pleasant enough… until it was pointed out to me that it was just an excuse for the lead singer to yell “bell end” and “ring piece” a dozen times. And so my enjoyment of the song turned into a childish snicker. It’s a musical version of Joyce’s “If You See Kay” poem. I am childish enough to still enjoy it anyway.

But now I understand why the rock station doesn’t keep it in its Christmas rotation.

They came out with “Rock and Roll Deserves to Die” for their 2019 album and I seriously need to give a content warning for this video. If you watch it to the end, you will see the lead singer’s, erm, buttocks. So be warned.

In an interview, Justin Hawkins (the lead singer), explained: I remember when we first started, people were like, “Ah, rock and roll. At last, there is a band that has come to save rock and roll.” And it always makes me laugh, because I think, “Rock and roll is the only genre that seems to need saving all the time.” It’s like terminally tied to the train tracks – a night train being driven by rap artists and jazz artists. You never hear the whole, “Who’s going to save hip-hop?” None of them say that, do they? I always think, “If it’s going to come precariously close to creative inertia – to the point where everything is completely retro and nothing exciting or challenging happens – then yes, the genre does deserve to die.”

It looks like it’s still around. For another few years, anyway.

This weekend will be spent doing mostly Maribou’s laundry from her trip, coming down from the insanity of work this week, and, yes, listening to some rock and/or roll.

So… what’s on your docket?

(Featured image is “She’s in Her Library, All’s Right with the World”)