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MUSIC_OF_EMPIRE

                                             July 11, 2013

In the 70s, back when music still mattered,
I caught a number of interesting acts in
some strange venues, such as the
"local" SF conventions in NY:

        Lunacon
        Empiricon              Though not, as I remember
                               it at Apricon, the small
                               one-day at Columbia University.



"The Workers": A genuinely excellent
punk band with a literary edge to
their lyrics which they put over
with some heavy strum and dang:
"Strike, strike, the Master Chord!"          It turns out that's
                                             a reference to something
                                             else.  Crowley?


A band with some very slick female
vocals and, as I remember it now, a
sound something like later Dead Can    I remember taking note of their name,
Dance.                                 and saw them on this circuit more than
                                       once, but can't come up with it now.


I remember one male folk singer doing
a very striking song, perhaps the only
"satantist" anthem that seemed serious
and might have been sincere (most such
things are jokes intended to wind-up
the usual suspects):

   "When He said 'let there be light',
   it was *I* who replied!"

   "Don't call me Satan, don't call me snake/
    I brought the light to the skies."




Then there was this other male folk
singer, with a pretty funny act...

He did a rousing, completely insane song
about "The mad professor bligh" who
"proved that sheep dogs can't fly." then
he followed it up with a change of pace,                                  
a maudlin song about a lost love, who          A friend of mine pointed        
died suddenly...  which closes on the          out that there was a Joke       
line "Oh lord, sheep dogs falling from         like this-- meaning the         
the sky, what does it mean?"                   folk genre of the               
                                               joke-told-in-conversation--     
                                               where the schtick is you        
                                               tell a series of jokes, and     
                                               in one someone throws a         
      The humor here is a humor                brick up in the air which       
      of context violation,                    seems to disappear, but in      
      crossing a border that was               the *next* joke, the brick      
      assumed to be impermeable,               suddenly lands.                 
      forcing two apparently                                                   
      separate things to become                                               
      one thing.                
      
      
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