Gimme… I don’t know… Something, Anything

I keep meaning to get back into writing and I don’t know what is holding me back. It’s not even that I have nothing to say. In fact, the problem may be that I have too much to say. Worse yet, it feels complicated, or at least different. If someone else expresses feelings similar to your own, that makes life easy. You can reference it. Even if it is only part of what you want to say, it cuts down on time. It also makes it less likely that you’ll be misunderstood.

So, I went to a movie tonight and got home feeling very sad and glum. It was strange because I enjoyed the movie, but it left me feeling oddly nostalgic. The movie was Gimme Danger, a documentary about The Stooges. As a film, it’s not good enough to enjoy if you don’t like the band. Last year, I went to go see the movie Amy and although I barely knew Amy Winehouse’s music beyond a handful of songs my mother enjoys, I liked the movie. Gimme Danger is not likely to engage anyone who isn’t already a Stooges or Iggy Pop fan. I’ve always really liked the band, so I enjoyed the movie. Luscious and I always used to argue about Iggy Pop. She always used to insist there was something sexist about him, although I could never get her to articulate exactly what that was. It seemed to blend into a general tirade about men dominating rock and roll, but she liked the Dolls, she like the Sex Pistols, the Clash, the Ramones, so I’m not sure what it was about Iggy Pop and the Stooges that bugged her.

The down feeling was definitely a side effect of nostalgia, although why the movie left me feeling quite so nostalgic is beyond me. The Stooges were before my time, almost, and I actually found out about them a little bit late, after The Stooges were defunct, although Iggy Pop was still very active. Still, there were some shots of New York City in the seventies. Certain types of New York scenes, especially downtown, definitely make me feel the loss of the era.

One odd thing about the movie is that it really doesn’t give you a feel of the time period well. The only sense of danger is in the title. We’re told that they were an influence on other bands that came later, but somehow the movie just doesn’t convey how different this sounded at the time.

Anyway, I paused from writing this to poke around on the internet and I listened to some songs I haven’t heard in a while. I was going to go off on some of those complicated feelings I’ve been unable to express, but I’m looking at the clock and I think I’ll have to skip it tonight. What follows is unrelated to the film I just mentioned. It was just some music I first heard back in the early to mid nineties.