John and Paul

                                                            

Generations of those obsessed with the minds of John Lennon and Paul McCartney, both during their time together as the super-charged songwriting duo in the Beatles and afterward, as solo artists, rivals, and “frenemies,” to use an ugly coinage. I know I did during the initial stages of music fandom, obsessing over the psychic lives of John and Paul and any other young music maker one thought elevated rock ‘n’ roll to what many considered High Art. Whether the radio was then populated with melodic masterpieces, an audio art gallery of a sort, is a different discussion. Yet the intense interest in Lennon and McCartney’s relationship continues to intrigue millions, across generations old and new, well into the 21st century.

It’s been estimated that 4,000 books about the Beatles have been written, and other informed sources place the numbers higher—in the hundreds of thousands. In brief, a staggering amount of research, interpretations, analyses, and biographies has been dedicated to scrutinizing every aspect of the Beatles and their music—though as the decades wore on and publications continued to appear, little new was revealed. A confession here: I’ve read about 20 tomes dedicated to the quartet in the half-century since their debut, and the later books seemed like reshufflings of old facts in the timelines, with an intellectual tone that was dry and flat recycling of stale bromides.

Could a rock writer reinvigorate interest in how the Lennon-McCartney songbook came to be? Intriguingly, significant notice is given a recent book, John and Paul: A Love Story Told in Songs, a beguiling history of the growing friendship and collaborative partnership between the titular songwriters, written with verve by non-music writer Ian Leslie. Leslie has written about psychology, culture, technology, and business for The New Statesman, The Economist, The Guardian, and Financial Times, and has authored three previous books on human behavior. His background in psychology combined with intimate and clear prose gives Leslie an edge over the vast array of books on the same subject. The author is effectively liberated from the tangled babble that often made considering the Beatles’ legacy more laborious than it should have been.

While the book doesn’t provide current information or undisclosed facts, Leslie carefully curates a wealth of previous works by other authors, establishing significant dates of meetings, songs, consequential events, and ties these moments to the composition and themes of the Lennon-McCartney oeuvre. John and Paul begins with their first meeting in Liverpool in 1957, bonding over their shared experience of absent mothers—John raised by his maternal aunt Mimi Smith and McCartney losing his mother at age 14—and their mutual love of American rock ‘n’ roll. Both fledgling musicians, the pair initially played covers of other artists’ songs. As their relationship deepened, they began writing songs together, composing “eyeball-to-eyeball,” as described in the book.

In a splendid touch, each chapter of the book is named after a relevant Beatles song, offering poetic commentary on the moments described while reinforcing the central subject: the love story between John and Paul that Leslie’s subtitle announces. Over time, Lennon and McCartney became a constant presence in each other’s lives, growing so comfortable with one another that the songs they wrote became increasingly personal—direct addresses of affection between them. Lennon and McCartney believed the bond would last forever, and in a rush of soulmanship and solidarity agreed to split authorship on all of their songs, regardless of individual contribution. Leslie skillfully weaves facts and interpretations throughout the book, providing the background to the songs while succinctly profiling the artists as they evolved as writers, musicians, and individuals who needed each other to feel whole. Though he doesn’t assert this directly, it might be seen that their agreement to share songwriting credit, regardless of contribution, was akin to a wedding vow. Lennon and McCartney understood each other in ways one might liken to the intimacy between a married couple.

To be clear, Leslie finds no evidence that Lennon and McCartney had a sexual relationship, though he does report a statement from Yoko Ono that John thought about having a physical relationship. However, he maintains that their friendship was a romance of the platonic sort, where the intimacy derived from shared experiences and depths of feeling was dynamic and often volatile.

Leslie builds his case persuasively while going through the documented facts of Beatle songs, interpreting, suggesting, hinting (at times) what influenced the style, and tone of the songs the partnership created, and he does a delicate examination about how the two regarded sweet and bitter facts of their love for each other, As I read further, I kept thinking about Montaigne’s 1580 essay On Friendship, where he argues that a friend is a true and unwavering companion, that it is a unique bond, and that the true bond was nearly exclusive between two men. He considered having multiple friends diluted the quality of the bond and insisted that such a bond was a reserved for males alone, as the souls of women were too weak to main the strength to maintain the friendship bond he described. Well, yes, but remember this was published in 1558, but one can take the basic definition of friendship and apply it to the densely populated dynamics of John and Paul’s lives together and apart.

The bond lasted, but not in ways neither John or Paul expected, as McCartney met Lisa Eastman and Lennon became enamored of artist Yoko Ono. In concise detail as to what happened, what was said and the effects on the Beatles as a whole, Leslie paints a picture of the partners feeling threatened, of being “replaced” as the principal focus of the other. Tension arose with the death of their first manager Brian Epstein, controversy within the group about Paul’s insistence that Alan Klein take over the money and business affairs of the Beatles as a going concern, the wild and willy formation of Apple, a company that would be a record label, an electronics firm, a film studio with nary an idea of how to go about setting up a corporation—much of what was a utopian vision of how Apple and all the enterprises it would sponsor collapsed under the weight of the chaos and lack of direction concerning business matters. Leslie moves through the breakup the Beatles, a result of the members growing apart in what they wanted to engage in and in musical ideas and also chronicles the angry attacks, snide remarks, attack songs by Lennon—the louder, angrier, and more insecure of the two—aimed toward McCartney while Paul remained mostly silent. Leslie talks about the tragedy of John Lennon’s assassination outside the Dakota Apartments in New York City by Mark David Chapman. The reader is aware of Lennon’s sad demise, but in addition to that part of the Beatles story there are events that make you optimistic, that maybe there is actually another way this could have ended. The book hints toward reconciliation, with McCartney showing up at Lennon’s apartment with a guitar, long phone calls, Lennon saying nice things about McCartney’s work as a solo artist, and recalling the joy he had as Paul’s collaborator. The hard facts of what was about to happen remind us of the shock. Soon after the murder, McCartney was swarmed by reporters wanting to get a response. The usually responsive McCartney, exhausted and shocked, could only manage a meager answer, “It’s a drag, isn’t it?”

The price of global celebrity is that millions think they know you better than you know yourself and have harsh standards about how the famous should respond to events and what they should say. Paul McCartney was raked over the coals for a cold, impersonal response and for not showing perceptible emotion. It’s obvious the reporters want to see a melt down to provide for better copy, but McCartney’s grief was real and profound, Leslie points out, and it took a while for the songwriter to offer a fitting tribute to his longtime friend.

Obvious, through the 426 pages, is that the bond between Lennon and McCartney held in the best of times when their friendship was ecstatic and creative, two young men discovering world together and feeling the exhilaration of pushing each other to take greater musical risks; the bond was there when they parted ways and became involved in other ventures. No matter how great the music of either John or Paul was in their solo albums, it was always the case that both were conspicuous by their absence in each other’s live shows. You always wondered what it would be like they were still working together, daring each other to do better. Unexpectedly, Ian Leslie cites Montaigne on page 388, the end of the drama of John and Paul. The writer cites Montaigne’s recollection of his friendship with writer and jurist Etienne de Boetie. At first meeting, Montaigne writes:

We sought each other before we met…from report we had each heard of the other…At our first meeting …we found ourselves so taken with each other, so well acquainted, so bound together, that from that moment on nothing could be as close as we were to one another. 

This is a fine and succinct quote in that it frames Leslie’s nuanced speculation on the psychic connection between the songwriters. It serves to reveal to the world that the songs Lennon and McCartney were more than mostly successful bits of cleverness, an eclecticism for its own sake, but rather that their songs were personal expression, some of them no less than the existential surrealism of Dylan, the poignant Cheeverisms of Paul Simon, or the elegant confessions of Joni Mitchell. John and Paul emerge from these pages magnificently gifted and human, all too human. It’s the history of the Beatles through the inner of a deep relationship that had its magic moments and confounding depths. A romance, in other words, beautifully detailed in an enjoyable and compulsive read.

(Originally printed in the San Diego Troubadour, used with kind permission)

ANOTHER SONG SHOWING THE BYRDS WERE ONE OF THE TRULY GREAT BANDS OF ALL TIME

 

The Byrds were an early obsession of mine when Dylan and folk rock came into being, and this song, cowritten by band leader Roger (nee Jim) McGuinn and Harvey Gerst, is jangle guitar in its greatest expression. The twelve-string
intro pours down like a hard rain and the harmonies are a kind of perfection, not choir boy ethereal, more like a chorus of sensitive people, male or female, who yearn for a partner, someone to complete their sense of self. The guitars and harmonies tend toward the strident, edging on atonality, and makes you imagine someone under mental duress trying to walk the straight line, to remain in the center of an eroding calm. And it's under two minutes. So much angst, yearning, melodrama in such a compact space of time. These were the days when short tunes had real heft.

Barry Afonso chimes in: One interesting thing about the Byrds is that Roger McGuinn dominated and directed the band but did not project a distinctive personality as a front man. He wasn't quite colorless, but his personality and persona were elusive and protean. McGuinn lacked the swagger or flash of a rock band leader. But he was the indisputably the Master-Byrd -- others came and went, but he was the indispensable member. How how would you describe the character McGuinn projected when he fronted the Byrds? Who WAS he, anyway?

Burke (clearning his throat pretentiously):  I can only guess that his experience in the folk scene with the Limelighters, the Chad Mitchell Trio and his stint with Bobby Darin formed the personality he brought to the Byrds, just play the music, serve the song, don't be egocentric or showy. McGuinn was not publicly political and kept his views close the vest and objected to David Crosby's political and conspiratorial rantings from the stage. He might have been something of a control freak. It's been said that while he radiated a sense of calm from the stage, he was aggressive in dealings behind the scenes in matters of music and how the band was perceived. I thoroughly enjoyed the work he did with the Byrds with the early albums (up to Notorious Byrds Brothers), but he was a cipher.

The view from 1975: BLOOD ON THE TRACKS

 

(This originally appeared in the San Diego Reader, 1975).

While most people have waited for the new Led Zeppelin album. the rock critics, with the customary furrowed brows, awaited the new Bob Dylan release. The rabble could have their noisemakers, the critics seemed to say, just leave us alone with things that matter. Dylan was an artist for Christ sakes, and when this avatar was about to speak, all ears must be perked. Panel discussions have been arranged, and quizzes will be given. so take notes. That may be an exaggeration of how the journalists have fretted over Dylan the last few years, but nonetheless, their attention has been suffocating. Now, word was out that Blood On the Tracks was Dylan's return home to serious stuff, away from the Karma clichés and kitsch he indulged in for kicks. About time, I thought. Old Bob hadn't much image left to debunk. I sat back to see what the catch would be. The critics' fears have been allayed. 

Blood On the Tracks is indeed his return to the style that made him wealthy-lousy harmonica, breathless breathing exercises, non-stop lyrics that conform to no cadence other than Dylan's whim. Everything the critics wanted is there, and the cheer goes up. Rolling Stone scuttled the usual reviews in its record section and dedicated the department to two long, ponderous essays by Jonathon Cott and Jon Landau, as well as brief consensus by other "top" critics and save for one pan by Dave Marsh, the verdict was affirmative. Greatness, poetry, the exaltation of genius, rewordings of worked-to- death platitudes said years ago but with more feeling. That's beside the point, however. More discomforting is the intensity of the reviews. To me, sequestered in Clairemont and light years removed from the magic, of San Francisco (where grassroots rockers embody everything the fan wants to find in himself), the record seems cheap shot cannibalizations of a dead style. Dylan just doesn't sound into it, and over and over come thoughts of making a man do something his heart no longer has fondness for. Dylan, tired of running, lies down in the snow and lets the hungry wolf pack rip off the remaining meat. It's not pretty.

I used to have respect for Dylan, awed as impressionable junior high kids tend to be, by the mystique he generated. He had power, presence, nerve, and plainly didn't care what others thought of him. The lifestyle was equally bizarre, endless road life (D. A. Pennebaker's Don't Look Back gives a peripheral view of that), drug abuse (speed primarily, some smack and acid), and alleged homosexual relationships (with Allen Ginsberg of all people, but take that as you might). Clearly. the material was there, and Dylan, all a jitter with amphetamine insight, poured the songs out prolifically. The results were striking. if off-the-wall. That period is contained on the Highway 61 Revisited, Bringing It Al Back Home, and Blonde on Blonde albums, these are the only albums by him, I play, the only ones that exhibited a genre that Dylan was ever convincing in. The early material was of a punk doing bad imitations of dead blues and hillbilly singers, and the stuff following Blonde was uninteresting by virtue of Dylan changing his habits. He's a family man now, and accolades for domestic bliss have no punch. John Wesley Harding was merely okay, a few good lines, some ingenious reworkings of Biblical parables, but, in all, disappointing. The writers, though, quite predictably found a panacea for the social malaise from all this kicked back stuff A friend, whom I don't see much anymore, once told me that Nashville Skyline taught him (taught) that "rednecks are human too, just like the rest of us." I almost cashed in my cookies.

Before appraising Blood On the Tracks, one should first appraise the history of the dedicated fan, of which I confess to have been one. The period, 1966-67, was a time of supreme awkwardness. Dylan appealed to the acned, self-conscious kid who sat in his room writing poetry and made knee-jerk solipsistic designs for the future. Life at the time was full of dread, and worse, boredom. Everything about him, the frazzled hair, the sneering nasality, the get screwed. Jack lyrics, were the stuff fantasies were made of. Who do you want to be when you grow up? "Bob Dylan." The bard was at once a surrogate hero and collective whipping boy. He weathered the psychic storms for the kids too oppressive affluence to break out of their pampered by parents over of the trap and follow Kerouac's rule of thumb. Years went by, my interest waned to almost nothing. There were better poets around beating Dylan at his own game, but I tired of poetry entirely and sunk myself in a heavy metal mire, wanting obliteration revelation (I'd rather listen to Grand Funk than The Moody Blues any day). Dylan, spurred on by the sagging sales of Planet Waves and Before the Flood, decided to give the people what they want. Interest is raised again to see if he can cut the cake. Instead, listening to Blood On the Tracks is like looking at history through a fun house mirror. The details are there, but it's just not right.

If Blood is a suspicious album, it's also a helpful one to chronic Dylan watchers. I'd finally gained insight as to why Bob chucked his old speed-freak persona for Muzak, he doesn't have it in him anymore! Which is Understandable. If Bob had yielded to demands for the old essence, he'd have died long ago. Speed freaks seldom have life spans longer than seven years of heavy usage. But trying to recapture the old time is like trying to jar a rainbow. So, spurred on by coffee and cigarettes, I watch the record suspiciously as it makes its spin on the turntable. "You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome" is on. Dylan's voice is nasal and full of uncharacteristic resonance, akin to Elvis at his most mock sincere. Guitar chords chunk , a lousy harmonica break (wheeze, gasp, sputter), the ancient Gerdes Folk City style for those who missed out. Dylan goes off pitch. Arcane references Rimbaud, and Delacroix. references aimed at confounding the meaning seekers . Who is Dylan trying to impress? "Tangled Up In Blue" fares better vocally, less affectation, but that's all. "Simple Twist of Fate" misses. "Lily, Rosemary. and the Jack of Hearts" makes a stab at the Highway 61 surrealism, but there's no bite. The clichés pour forth, pile up high and take the air out of the room. My cigarette ash burns low and my wrist twitches. The… stuff is intolerable from someone you used to respect, but I hold my ire. I'd gotten my two cents' worth from Dylan a long time ago and shouldn't feel disappointment. There are new heroes to conquer (Little Feat. Roxy Music, Harvey Mandel, maybe Queen). Back to the job at hand. The band crunches on sloppily while Dylan is out in left field, sounding amused with his self-impersonations. The parade meanwhile has passed. Which is just as well. The cheering hordes have lost sight of their icon. The record finished. The uplifts and the system shut down automatically. I turn on the radio. Led Zeppelin blasts out. Now we're cooking with gas.

I AM TIRED OF DRYING THE CAT BY HAND --a chat with Barry Alfonso and Ted Burke

Barry Alfonso

Time for Jamul to re-load?

Ted Burke

THE HAIRY EYEBALL ogles a moist towelette.

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Barry Alfonso

Skinplate had some OJ you wouldn't believe.

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Ted Burke

THE geek detector runs on Duracel

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Barry Alfonso

Where are you now, Jake...and where are my bitcoins?

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Barry Alfonso

In Santee, "drying the cat by hand" means taking a single woman out to dinner, saying flattering things to her, picking up the check and then giving her the phone number of your brother-in-law, I understand.

Ted Burke

It has been said that "drying the cat" means mispronouncing the names of jazz musicians like Theolonious Monk and Ornette Coleman in an Telegraph Avenue methadone clinic. "Drying the Cat By Hand" is a variation heard in the Tenderloin and up to North Beach, meaning that you announce to Amiri Baraka that Boots Randolph played better sax than Coltrane or Shorter.

Barry Alfonso

I've also heard that it is a derivation of the old blues expression "shave 'em dry," meaning to cut off the head of a glass of beer with a straight razor before attacking someone in the solar plexus over a Stetson hat.

Ted Burke

I've heard tell of that as well and it makes me wonder if that is related to the practice of ordering a shot and beer and dry towel twisted into a rat tail and snapped cruelly to the back of the drinker's bare neck by everyone in the bar named either "Earl" or "Ondine".

Barry Alfonso

A lot of this has been lost and confused over the years, I suspect -- a "dry cat" used to be slang for a guy with a flat top and bad dandruff. It was a custom to rub scalps like that for luck before a dice game or before rubbing spices into a jerk chic…

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Ted Burke

There was the habit among dairy farmers of rubbing their bovines with mewing kittens for no real reason; "drying the cow" became "drying the cat" over time, an understandable conflation, and the implication of the phrase is that one is standing around irritating another living creature for no good reason. But since when does anyone need a good reason to irritate someone?

Barry Alfonso

That's right! Now I remember. Will Rogers did a bit about this and in fact got arrested in Tulsa for demonstrating how it was done. There's a famous photo of Junior Samples from Hee Haw "drying the cat by hand" behind Stringbean's back when he thought the cameras were off.

Ted Burke

*Absolutely! This in turn inspired Pynchon's famous opening line of his magnum opus 'The Crying of Litter Box 29". "A dry cat came screamng across the sky..."

Barry Alfonso

Right, that was a literary in-joke for many years standing. Hemingway took a swing at Frank Yerby after he wrote that Papa had been drying the cat with both hands for years...

Ted Burke

On a related note, Norman Mailer misunderstood Russell Kirk when he announced that what really wanted was a "cat dried by hand". Mailer took this to be a translation of Parsian street slang used among working girls meaning that the person who uttered the phrase was in desperate need of being buggered, but that lacked the needed ticket for admission.Mailer told Kirk that he had his ticket "right here" and demanded Kirk "give up the cat." William Buckley was amused by the whole thing and had Mailer on his tv show several times.

Barry Alfonso

Well, I do remember Gore Vidal giving Buckley the hairy eyeball on TV during the '68 Democratic convention and saying, "You really are drying the cat by hand a little hard tonight, old boy" while Buckley let something moist and shiny collect above his upper lip.

THE STOOGES IN THEIR ELEMENT

 

Iggy Pop was a drummer in blues bands before he and his fellows formed the Stooges in the 60s, and as this song demonstrates, the experience wasn't wasted. Iggy and his mates understood, that is to say, felt the vaguely described but conspicuous force that blues had, simple, sonic, repetitive and impolite to any standard measure of tempo. This was the kind of music that was the blend of instinct and wits, a boxer's set of reflexes to things that get in your way. Guitar, drums and are a distorted grind and the tempo of nails hammered.

The Ashtons smashed mightily. Iggy, of course, was the man alone, a three-semester course of unreconstructed Id that inhabiting the center of every ganglion of nerves the brain tried to lay claim to; the superego to twitch and become more reptilian by the second. He was that kid in drainpipe jeans who carried a sharp stick with a brown, mung encrusted nail through it, waiting on the corner for someone as yet unknown to walk by and get poked with it. There was no fun, so you made your own, just to see what happens. These were Mailer's White Negros for a fact, except they shivved me a man who was tailing them and talking too much in the other muse mute streets of two-story burn pads and deserted storefronts that had their front windows sealed with concrete and layers of old concert posters and spray paint exclaiming gang signs and Jesus. Anyone daring to talk past this kid deserved to be whacked with the rusty nail. It was cruel and pointless until something genuine happened to change everything; the bit that everyone knows in the world of the Stooges is that transcendence is not on the agenda, ever.

No band embraced nihilism with more profound off-handedness than The Stooges. Part of their genius lies in t their lyrics, hardly cliché but not conventionally poetic, these were rhymes that were spare and simple, and powerfully to the point, talking about the small matters of frustration that send the young mind into paroxysms of rage and self-recrimination. Ever say something or overheard a phrase from someone else uttered in exasperation or another kind of brain locking state where what is said is so starkly simple and clear and unadorned by apology or other sorts of mental equivocation that it resembles brilliance? That’s my take on the collective lyrics of the Stooges, words as an instinctive reflex, Nor was their music dependent on the trivial concern of instrumental virtuosity.

This was the sticking point with many critics at the time when their first album, The Stooges, was released in 1969. In a counter-culture that was ironically putting premiums on the extreme professionalism of well-trained musicians who could hit notes precisely and improvise at length over increasingly tricky time signatures, the Stooges were the textbook example of the anathema, an insult to the taste-maker elite. Reviews were generally insulting to the band’s repetitive slam and clang approach, and it is one of the wonders of staying alive long enough to see a groundbreaking band, unfiltered from the start, outlast the negativity and change the critical consensus. The intelligentsia had to catch up with them. The Stooges rejected formal instruction on their musicianship and, in turn, weren’t about to suffer the instructions the snoots and snobs demanded they follow.

What’s ironic is that Rolling Stone, the arbiter of quality in matters of the New Rock, still had integrity in their record reviews at the time and allowed one of their original rock critics, Ed Ward, to let the air out of the inflated importance of over-serious rock music and the earnest critiques they inspired by his review of the album. The first two paragraphs have Ward offering a thumbnail sketch of the band’s background, quickly followed the expected litany of sins, that Iggy is a bad Jim Morrison imitator, the lyrics are sub-literate, the guitar and drum work is lifeless and lacking even the dignity of being mechanical. The something wonderful happened halfway through. He summarized his feelings thusly “Their music is loud, boring, tasteless, unimaginative and childish.” Then something remarkable happened.

With the grievances listed, and the verdict delivered,Ward added, in a single sentence, standing alone , unencumbered by other sentences, “I kind of like it”, Ward performed an endearing bit of proto-deconstruction, using the aforementioned deficiencies in the music as examples of virtue, value, honesty, artistic vision. It was one of the great pieces of rock criticism because here Ward created the basis of real aesthetic argument that maintained, essentially, that the Stooges were the true face and sound of a rock and roll that was relevant to life as it was being lived by millions, a voice, sound, and poetry from the curb, alley and shuttered doorway that wanted nothing to do with millionaire musicians with long hair striving to achieve legitimacy by mimicking and misreading the most superficial elements of High Culture. Ed Ward established the concerns that Lester Bangs soon picked up and turned into a masterful argument with the dying of the light. We can thank Ed Ward and the Stooges for that relief.

This was a band that went in the other direction when they began their quest to find what lay beyond avant-garde posturing in Music during the 60s away from trudging drum solos and long-form guitar essays. Iggy and the Stooges were primitive, out of tune, irritated and irritating in turn. It was a matter where the band and their frontman, Iggy Pop (nee Stooge) blended perfectly, given their ability to turn something that sounds horrible and repetitive into a crashing, sustained drone of attitude, and Iggy's serpentine stage presence and clipped verbal dexterity. He was the guy who couldn't sit stand and would stand for nothing less than what he wanted in full, and they were the grind of the city turned into a droning inner voice prodding him to smash down whatever walls came before him. It wasn’t that he was a bad boy going contrarily to the niceties of all things middle class and calcified, it wasn’t that he as a sentient being had identified an artifice he disliked and defined himself in opposition to it; it was more like Iggy Stooge was unaware of the feelings of others, greater ramifications of dangerous self-gratification, or any code of behavior the rest of us depend on keep drivers and pedestrians, for example, on the streets and the sidewalks, respectively. He was the unadulterated id, a squirming mass of impulse that transgressed boundaries, mashed together poetry and porn, and displayed no interest in theorizing about what he had done or about what he was thinking of doing. His was the case of living in the present tense solely, and whatever sensation presently was utmost.

Let us not be mistaken about this, as Iggy Stooge’s persona and psyche had the virtue of being monochromatic; his immediate impulse was not the only thing that mattered. There simply wasn’t anything else. All this play against the quarrelsome insomniac raunch of Ron Ashton’s guitar work, elementary, rudimentary, undeniable effective, endlessly influential. What he lacked in technique he made up for in essence, a counterpoint to the corrosive thrills of Iggy’s distilled juvenile delinquency; his guitar work might be politely described as “steady”, but this a dodge against the annoyance factor this band turned into a new aesthetic. “Persistent” is more apt, like a dislodged bit of a fender dragging along the highway, kicking up sparks near the gas tank, or a door slamming for hours in a strong wind, or jackhammers at night carving up your street at precisely the moment your brain demands you sleep or die inanely. Obnoxious, profound without knowing. We should all be grateful these guys wielded musical instruments, not guns. Or worse.