Monday, November 14, 2005

Sex, Drugs, Rock and Roll

A good bass line in a song always twinges my cooter. Does that make me a pervert?

Now, before you go sayin’, “Oh that Mona, everything is about sex to her,” (which IS correct, but I’m making another point here), ask yourself…what song, or type of music, or instrument, gets you all hepped up and moist/stiff/whatever in your nether regions? C’mon, you can tell…!

Saxaphones used to do it for me, in my naïve youth. That was before I fell in love with a dirty bass. ‘Cause them things, maaaaaan…especially if they’re hard and thumpin', just get me shakin’. I’m sure it’s linked somehow to my youth, the moment I discovered Led Zeppelin or something, I dunno.

The local college radio station is, as I’ve said before, SWEEEEEET. I turned it on this morning after I dropped the kids off and the first thing I heard was a powerful bass line, like the Peter Gunn theme but dirty and nasty and recognizable. Once I heard that falsetto, I recognized it as Weezer’s “Hash Pipe”, and I got all tingly and happy. (If you haven't seen it, check out the Weezer's 'Beverly Hills' video. That song haunts me. And I think I have a crush on Rivers Cuomo...a sweet geek crush.) I don’t know the words, but I didn’t care, I started car-dancing and tapping my fingers on the steering wheel and, of course, yelled out the only lyrics I knew…”I got my hash pipe!”

I had a hash pipe. In high school. My two-years-older-boyfriend gave it to me. Of course I NEVER used it, it was more decorative…a piece of lovely carved wood with a couple holes in it. That I never displayed in my room lest I give my poor parents multiple cardiac arrests, but which I lovingly fingered every once in a while to remind me of my boyfriend. And he NEVER did drugs, was NEVER kicked out of school for doing them, NEVER sent me a joint in the cartridge end of a ball-point pen which he stupidly sent to his parents first and asked to give to me and they found out about the joint when they tried to use the pen and found the ink didn’t work and dismembered it and freaked out. NEVER did drugs. Uh…yeah. But that pipe was lovely.

It occurred to me that today’s youth doesn't understand the drug culture that I grew up in, decades ago. In my day, drugs were magical…illegal yes…but tame by today’s standards. The choices were simple...pot, hash, speed, and acid. Only ‘bad’ people did cocaine. Only ‘criminals’ did heroin. We didn’t know nuthin’ about GHB, crack, or clinically pure anything, because Joe down the road had some grow lamps in his basement and had the best homegrown around. A ‘dime bag’ was a baggie two fingers high of green stuff and cost $10. THAT was the drug culture…easy peasy, wholesome and hippielike, calm and quiet. It was tamer and more satisfying than 2 bottles of Boones Farm Tickle Pink on the dead-end country road a mile from my folks house (and you didn't puke if you had too much). It was sweet and innocent, if drugs can be that sort of thing.

So…sex from the bass…drugs from the hash pipe line…rock&roll from the song. I’ve done my job for the day!

12 Comments:

At 10:57 AM, Blogger Orange said...

Music isn't a moist-maker for me. It's more the musician—why was I attracted to my husband before we ever initiated anything? Because he played guitar in a band, man. And his band? They were funny. They'd play the opening bass line of "My Sharona" (this was in 1987-88, by which time the song was a retro guilty pleasure). The crowd would instantly get into it, and they'd stop (sharonus interruptus) and say, "You didn't really want to hear that, did you?" Um, yeah, we kinda did.

 
At 12:16 PM, Blogger Elliot said...

Speaking of the Knack (we were sorta), you, Mona, should check out their song "She Likes the Beat" from their unheralded, universally panned, and, in my not so humble opinion, last good album "Round Trip." T'was written for you-hoo.

And, I don't know what you think of reggae (the real stuff, from the 70's--Bob Marley's lifetime era), but the bass, oh the bass, it's all ba-bout the bass. Might make you want to go looking for that hash pipe. Bo!

 
At 1:00 PM, Blogger Lost said...

hehehe No sirree, NONE of us ever did any of those illegal drugs. Uh uh we just HEARD about them. right. LOL

 
At 1:01 PM, Blogger Mona Buonanotte said...

Orange: Freshman year of college we'd get drunk and walk around campus singing a version of that Knack song, only we changed it to "My Scrotum". NO wonder the city/college inacted noise ordinances soon after! (Did your hubby play any XTC songs? I'd think he would.)

Elliot: I'll need to check out that tune, I didn't realize they'd done more than 2 albums ("albums"...that's how old I am...). Of COURSE I like real reggae! You can't NOT shake your ass to it (and 'spliff up' if'n ya got one...which I don't...remember I'm OLD!). Sadly, I recall my hash pipe meeting the business end of an incinerator. Grch....

 
At 1:02 PM, Blogger Mona Buonanotte said...

Lost: We were GOOD kids, uh-huh, yessirreebob! ANGELS!

 
At 3:17 PM, Blogger Lois Lane said...

And what a fine job you have done! The first l;ine killed me. LOL!
Lois Lane

 
At 4:29 PM, Blogger Agent 31 said...

S'funny... music has nothing to do with sex to me. As far as just plain old heartfelt emotion goes? I get a cringe up my back when I hear a warm, fuzzed out guitar playing long midrange notes. Mmmm.... that's the good right there.

 
At 5:41 PM, Blogger Orange said...

Mona, I don't recall if my husband's band played XTC, but he's always been a fan and occasionally plays their songs on his GIT-tar around the house. Jealous?

 
At 3:56 AM, Blogger Tony said...

I might be strange, but the Pixie's song 'Where is my mind' always put me in the mood for the connubial. I think I am not alone, as it was used as the final, "coming together" song in the movie Fight Club.

Then again, XTC's 'Summer Cauldron' and the way it melts into 'Grass' pretty much makes for perfect afternoon nekkidness.

And speaking of grass... oops, another 70's reference.

 
At 10:03 AM, Blogger Megan Stuke said...

I went to the Detroit Cobras show on Saturday night, and they had two opening bands, neither of which were worth beans. Standing at the bar during the second band, which was some sort of metal bs, I looked over at my friend and screamed "This sucks balls! Where's the Cobras?" She screamed back "I like music I can feel in my pelvis, but this seems to have located itself somewhere in my elbows." I responded that the only place I could feel it was in my kneecap that was pressed against the vibrating bar.

I want music to rock my cooter too. If that makes us perverts, so be it.

 
At 1:42 AM, Blogger figleaf said...

You forgot chocolate mescaline... which, now that I think about it, you never really saw but always heard about from a friend of a friend.

But yeah, Mona, that's pretty spot on. Me? Once I figured out that "sex-n-drugs-n-rock-n-roll" wasn't just one big word I narrowed down on the part, ok, parts I liked and haven't really looked back since.

Take care,

figleaf

 
At 12:46 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

...a book to moisten the mons:
In the Midst Of
by C. M. Barons
Sticker price on a 1975 Corvette was $6,550. A bag of Columbian: $30. In the Midst Of features a barefaced ensemble of true-to-age characters. Brian connects with an offbeat mentor cum older brother named Hollis in a lopsided relationship. Hollis moves on, but Brian will not let go. He clings to a myth perpetuated by dependency and self-denial. The 1970s was an era of global hang-time; the 60s pendulum had swung as far as the silent majority would allow. Poised to back swing, the repercussions were unclear. The shock value of the previous decade had been commercialized. Like pre-faded jeans: off-the-rack and ready-to-wear. “How's your love life?” “Try it... You’ll like it!” ...Couldn’t raise the eyebrows of the Tidy-Bowl man. The nation was in transition, post Watergate-pre AIDS. The war was over, and Disco was an urban anomaly. Americans shimmied into hip-huggers, submitted to analysis and shucked inhibitions. Suburban cool: Naugahyde living room set, Tiki-lit backyard and coveting the neighbor's spouse. ...Cocaine for your groove and a doobie to unwind. What distinguishes In the Midst Of? Barons’ characters are not trite icons typically enlisted to resemble the 70s. Brian, et al, leap beyond stereotypes; genuinely developed, invigorated by real, gut-metered dialogue. The backdrop is vivid, an eclectic pastiche- definitive 70s. The era pretends to be a character, à la Grand Central Terminal, too epic for the label: train station. Brian and his friends’ lives play out, guided by elements more onerous than the clockworks of society and politics. They are ensconced on a college campus. Co-ed dorms, liberal drinking, open drugs and casual sex. Edge-lurking has always been fashionable. Hollis dangles by his fingertips. Beneath his public facade lies a disturbing void. His multiple secrets are protected by an ambiguity that passes for cool. His inner sanctum is Brian's obsession; a fixation that yields a mirror with a chilling reflection. Hollis is the aim- as clear as the bull's eye emblazoned on any Zen-archer's target.
www.inthemidstof.info

 

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