The Gallows Pole of Charlie Marks

So where do I go from here? It’s been quite a while since I last had a good chance to sit down and pump out some hard, salty, words. I usually like to look around, encounter events or people, and write it down so internet can enjoy. Ah, good old internet. It just seems that the last few months all the creativity got sucked out of me. I started listening to Led Zeppelin which I am pretty sure has nothing to do with it, but it makes me question my path through life. What if I started listening to Led Zeppelin at an earlier age? Now, I consider myself a big time music fan, but somehow Zeppelin never really crossed my path. My friend Rob was always really into AC/DC and now he is working directly for Judd Apatow. Actually come to think of it, everyone, well mostly everyone, well mostly every one of my friends in high school who listened to AC/DC turned out to be really successful later in life. I guess I was shy to Led Zeppelin because everyone I knew who wore a Led Zeppelin shirt usually were a bit off—you know, kind of smelt like a breakfast sandwich, really into Resident Evil. When I first got into music, 6th or 7th grade, I became obsessed with Stairway to Heaven and Free Bird, but by 8th grade I started to lose interest and moved on. As for others who stayed with Zeppelin and Lynyrd Skynyrd, they just got really into it.

Heavier music naturally kick starts your emotions. You listen to it every day, all the time, and your life just seems to be lodged in a higher gear. Music also compliments lifestyle. The Hells Angel’s are (now I am hypothesizing) not hauling ass down the highway to check out the new Belle and Sebastian record. But I shouldn’t stereotype. What I am really trying to say is that maybe one listens to heavier music because one’s life is in a higher gear.

To be drastically stereotyping again, I am also quite surprised when I hear of a right wing conservative who listens to Iron and Wine or Wilco. But nothing is more surprising to hear a conservative listen to John Lennon. That’s just flabbergasting. Don’t you get it? This is guy is singing about everything you despise i.e. love and whatnot. “I listen to it because it sounds nice,” they say. I’m not trying to pick on conservatives because clearly there is only so much Toby Keith one person can take, I’m just saying for me it’s hard to just ignore the lyrics. For instance, if something sounded really good to me musically—let’s say if Wilco changed the lyrics of the song Pot Kettle Black from,

“Sleeping eye sockets
Baby suck your thumb
I'll keep you in my locket
A string I never strum”

to

“Poor people suck
baby don’t tax me
I’ll keep you locket
Freedom, freedom, liberty”

I would probably have to question the merit of the song. And I would have to admit that the song wouldn’t resonate as much with me. Now, I do not want to say that I have any idea what, “Sleeping eye sockets/Baby suck your thumb, I'll keep you in my locket/A string I never strum” really means, but at least I know it doesn’t secretly mean “Obama is a socialist.” And that’s something I can live with.

Buffalo Springfield has a classic song called “for what it’s worth,” which is one of the strongest popular songs of the 1960s to protest the Vietnam War and is now played every few hours on any classic rock station anywhere in America. The song is so popular that right now, as you read these very words, there is probably a station somewhere playing it. So if 90% of people who are into classic rock likes the song and 50% of them are anti anything liberal, then mathematically speaking, conservatives love the song. They will literally sing, verbatim every lyric, but then you’ll ask them if they were in favor of the Vietnam War they would reply, “Of course, we had to stop the spread of communism.”

Certainly not to equate the two:

but to think, right now, at this very moment, there is somebody in Alabama, driving in his old pick up truck, literally on the way to a Klan rally listening to “For what it’s worth” and humming along—moving his index finger back and forth on the steering wheel, strumming to the beat.

Now I don’t want to pick on conservatives, but the point is, to their credit, they don’t mind venturing out of their social roles to listen to whatever they want as long as it has a good sound. I touched on this point before, but I argue that a lot of people in the artistic world feel contractually obligated to like artistic music. As though you can’t possibly truly enjoy a Kandinsky painting if you listen to Metallica.

We get stereotyped into listening to a particular brand of music based on our hobbies. You have to think to yourself, “Do I like this music because I truly like it or because it identifies best with the culture I am in.”

A friend of mine is dating a Brooklyn based hipster. When I told her I enjoyed the funky fresh styling of 311 she laughed uncontrollably in my face. And for the rest of the evening, it was as though everything I would say after that point would be invalid because I in fact loved 311 in high school. “What do you know about 20th Century Post-structuralism? Is that somehow covered in the 2001 classic 311 album From Chaos? I am going to laugh to myself out loud and continue to laugh in my head for the next several minutes as I drink my obscure IPA brewed from a Portland based company I only heard of—not that you care cause you are drinking Miller Lite and wearing a Flyers hat… Look at you, pathetic.” (For a non-311 I was impressed that she knew the exact year and name of one their less popular LP) (Nonetheless)

I could be mis-quoting her.

To take it full circle:

I never really bothered with Led Zeppelin. I heard them on the radio so many times that I never really thought to investigate further. I just listened to Zeppelin III and boy it is good. Very rocking. Very groov’in. Listen to the song, “Since I’ve been loving you,” and try not to bob your head. It is the type of music that is what it is on the surface. No further examination needed. It is what it is, but for what it is, it is good. Great even.

Listen, I don’t know where I am going with this. I think I made enough points to let you know that music shouldn’t be based on your hobby or culture. I think it’s unfair to think that you should listen to the music that best express yourself and not to music that just sounds good. Unfair to yourself that is. And that is something you probably already knew. So really you learned nothing new from this blog. I’m kind of just writing this as a letter to myself from 10 years ago. Can the internet travel back in time to deliver this blog to my AOL email of 1999? If so, here’s a copy of the letter I want the internet to send to myself.

Dear Lil’ Chuck,

Just listen to Zeppelin III. You shouldn’t be 25 and first listening to it. Also, prepare yourself for some failure. Boy, its going to be fun. Also, take better English classes in high school. Trust me, they may be harder and you’ll actually have to study once in a while, but you’re blogs will be much better in the future. Also, study advertising or PR in college not Film and Video. And watch your weight. Start exercising. Don’t quit baseball. Don’t bother watching any Philly team until 2008, it will just be a waste of time and loads of heartbreak. Invent Facebook and watch The Wire when it’s on TV so you can say you liked it before everyone else.

Oh, and changing your name to Charlie is going to be a bit tougher than you think.

Sincerely yours,

Charlie Marks

PS ….Sucker