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!