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About The Clackamas print. (Oregon City, Oregon) 1989-2019 | View Entire Issue (June 7, 2006)
Clackamas Print ntertainment Wednesday, June 7, 2006 7 ace off: drug induced music )rugs rock ... billboard charts Attention musicians: just say no like Kimberling Clackamas Print The late comedian Bill Hicks once j that if you think drugs don’t t anything to add to the [Id, you should probably all your old music Bns away. Like most of Hick’s sober- routine, this comment home to many of the ■eme assumptions we have ed over our eyes in society, us may never win a Nobel ce Prize, or ever find any of missing children advertised milk cartons, but drugs have more influence in western ires rock and roll than sex had on men’s minds. [hough many of us can turn noses up at the rap star i brags about how ;h weed he smokes ire spanking a s bootie, or point >ers at everyone n punk-rock- io butt-rockers, of us can do it lout becoming ocrites. Every lire adult may squirm, use I must mention this band first lot purely for their indispensabil- to rock and roll. Yes, the Beatles, letimes a person can get high just ling to “Strawberry Fields Forever,” in even rarer cases just by sim ply looking at the “Yellow Submarine” cover. Sorry, jazz musio^hasn’t saved you from falling into this category, and nei ther will country music. Both almost seemed like an easy out, but unfortu nately jazz musicians have been known to be fond of heroin, and country music was built on people who were too drunk on cheap beer to play the blues without altering the sound. Kurt Cobain’s career revolved around heroin abuse, cocaine was the offi cial sponsor of every nose job in the musical industry, and Jim Morrison might have inhaled once. Jimmy Hendrix grew marijuana fields on the lower 40 of his afro, Led Zeppelin has been dazed and confused so long it’s not true, and Pink Floyd’s Roger Barrett’s nickname Syd came from his use of LSD. The Rolling Stones are still fee it, Bob Dylan suppo edly introduced the Beatles to weed and the King of Pop smokes pole. Drugs might not be good for us, but they do some thing worthwhile. If you .don’t believe me, look through your album collection. ?ar Hollywood, David Stark 77ie Clackamas Print Recreational substances have a long history with music, dating back thousands of years when people got drunk on wine and sung songs. But just because there is a precedent doesn’t mean that it should be touted as a good thing. After all, as the oft-quoted George Santayana said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Now I’m not saying that musicians shouldn’t use drugs, and I’m not saying the music they make when on drugs isn’t good, I just posit that they shouldn-’t, need drugs in order to write songs. There is no proof whatsoever that recreational drug use increases creativity, concentration or anything else that helps in the writing process. In actu ality, due to the reality-altering affects of most drugs, the creation process is in fact hindered significantly. And in fact prolonged drug use can have a rather adverse affect on the health and wellbeing of the artist. The Doors’ Jim Morrison, the Who’s Keith Moon, the Sex Pistols’ Sid Vicious, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and the Rolling Stones’ Brian Jones are just a few of the artists who have died of drug overdoses in just the last 30 years. While Paul McCartney admits that a number of the Beatles songs were “informed” by drugs, he also states that “just about everyone was doing them in one form or another. We were no differ ent.” Later adding that “the writing was too important for us to mess it up by get ting off our heads all the time.” If we take what he says as fact and everyone at the time was using, then per haps we should go back further in time to examine music in a more historical context. Let’s look at the great classical compositions from history which had no assistance from any sort of drug use - Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, the Nutcracker or the concertos and symphonies of Mozart. And we absolutely cannot overlook Beethoven’s nine symphonies, most especially the- Ninth. Music that has survived for centuries, and will most likely last millennia, came from utterly sober individuals. Perhaps we should consider how long modem day music will last. The sad truth of the matter is that if a musician of any sort needs any kind of reality-altering substances to claim talent, then perhaps their skills are more questionable then punching babies in the face. please stop destroying American cinema Photo Illustration by Jeff Sorensen Clackamas Print Ho Stalnaker [E Editor Pie late 1960s through the [‘70s were the last great P for American film. No ft are films being made [offer intriguing characters, pt provoking storylines peat drama. Sure, some I movies have come out [then, but you have to dig Rh the hundreds of lack- P Hollywood films to get hm. png the 1960s America [’renaissance in film. Great pkers were emerging out |®e dead Hollywood stu- I’nd creating some truly [“ent films. “Taxi Driver,” “Scarecrow,” “Dog Day Afternoon,” “The Graduate,” “M*A*S*H,” “2001: A Space Odyssey,” “Midnight Cowboy,” “Easy Rider” and “The Godfather” are just some of the many gems that came out of this era. So, what happened? Two words: Steven Spielberg. Now Spielberg has created some great films, but his 1975 film “Jaws” kicked off the blockbuster men tality of Hollywood. Ever since then we’ve seen hit movies that may have been entertaining, but that’s all they were. Films such as “The Terminator,” “Star Wars,” “Alien,” every 80s slash er-flick, “Independence Day,” “Armageddon,” “Godzilla,” and “The Island” offer only eye candy to the American public and not much else. In the ‘90s, a small revolution in independent film occurred. The Sundance Film Festival was bringing independent films to a wider audience by showcasing them in art theaters, and even some major theaters, all over the states. Video rental stores even started carrying more indepen dent films; Then, as expected, Hollywood decided to step into Sundance and the indie film mar ket. Now instead of Sundance being used to showcase films made by real people and not by suits, it’s used to showcase cor porate Hollywood “neo-indie” films. Hence the reason why “Napoleon Dynamite” is, unfor tunately, a household name. Recently, Hollywood has been churning out remade films and television shows. Films such as “Fun With Dick and Jane,” “The Omen,” “The Honeymooners,” “Bewitched,” “The Amityville Horror,” “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” and “When a Stranger Calls,” have been plaguing the cinemas for a few years now. Is there any orig inal thought left in Hollywood or have they just run out of ideas? I guess the real question is why Hollywood wants to sub ject the American people to bad remakes of bad movies. However, the Oscars this year (unlike recent years) actually had some good films nominated. By some, I mean three. “Capote,” “Good Night, and Good Luck” and “Crash” (it definitely deserved the Best Picture award) are the only ones worth mentioning. “Brokeback Mountain” was all the talk in Tinseltown only because it “broke boundaries” in romance movies. However, it actually didn’t. I guess Hollywood for got about Gus van Sant’s early films, the “taboo” romance story “Harold and Maude” amongst others. So, will Hollywood ever get its act together and start making good films again? This doesn’t seem likely given the fact that the American public keeps going to these dreadful movies and actually likes them. Things have gotten better in the past two years, but don’t expect that to last for long. Now if I may excuse myself, I have to go watch “Serpico” and cry away the pain.
