This is Rock and Roll

Who misses the sex and the danger in rock and roll? Who forgot that rock is about electricity? Who forgot that the dynamism of electrified instrumentation expressed through the gut punch of raw confrontational violence is what rock is supposed to be all about?

Not Eugene Robinson.

Mr. Robinson is on a mission.

Not since the Jesus Lizard has this poorly mocked path of unadorned, unbridled, unironic, and blatantly mighty music been on such effective display.

Eugene Robinson is the singer for the San Francisco based band, Oxbow, and his gang of surgically skilled technicians are reminding me what made rock so alluring to me in the first place.

There are clear hints of bands as direct as the Birthday Party in Oxbow's sound. The blues are always close by, tugging at your ear and making you pay attention.

There is a damaged, but always controlled force to their sound that keeps things tight, and tense.

But it is during their live shows that one is forced to choose sides with Oxbow.

You see, in this day and age, in this supposedly liberated era of cultural line crossing and glad handed back slapping bullshit, white America is as scared of black people as ever before.

Eugene Robinson knows this, and he spits it back to see what will happen.

He is a physically imposing figure, no doubt in small part due to the almost emaciated stature of the two gentlemen bookending him on stage. Nonetheless, Robinson is an aficionado of the world of fighting. So much so, in fact, that he literally wrote the book on fighting. And to top it all off, the motherfucker can write. Well.

He is an outspoken front man, regardless of race, but his ability to use what god gave him, be it race, mass, talent, intelligence, balls, whatever, and then turn it around and make you complicit in his outcry is pretty brilliant.

His stage antics are something to be seen. Within a few songs, Robinson is stripped down to his briefs, sweating profusely, and stalking the stage in a way that makes faux-macho impostors like Henry Rollins prick up his ears and take notes. And for those foolish enough to see Robinson's stage parlance as a source of comic relief, the odds of regretting confronting him mid performance are, let's just say, high.

That, I like. No prisoners, because everyone is guilty.

That's rock and roll.

So why haven't I ever heard of these guys until six months ago? Perhaps my self imposed exile, perhaps I am so far out of the loop that I had no chance. Or maybe it's because no one really knows about these guys. They have somehow managed to fly under the radar of the very people who would benefit from this music the most.

I don't know why. I don't care. I just implore you, if you are a fan of powerful rock music, a fan of good, solid, guitar based tomfoolery, then check them out. They're on the podcast this week. You do the rest.

Switching gears.

On my own stark and glacially ingenious personal blog, This Won't Hurt... , I wrote a post about the utter cockmunch living upstairs from me in my new apartment.

While you absorb the literary delights contained within my weblog, think about this. While you wear ruts in the floorboards, dragging your chain about, wearing your boot, your heavy boot of iron, know, motherfucker, that I have got your number, and know, that while I am an almost preternaturally and cosmically patient man, a man who can tolerate epic levels of bullshit, I also have a breaking point. And you need to know, great rider of ass, that when that day comes, when you finally liberate the gossamer thread that separates you from exhaustive pain and agony, it will have been no ones fault but your own.

So revel, bask, fucking bake in the blinding glow of the sun which you yourself have hung in the sky, because in my pocket is the power of the night, and within this night, this darkened cavern, lit only by the enraged forces of hate, is my ticket to salvation, and your ticket to oblivion. Bank on it.

And that, dear readers, is rock and roll.

photo: emmadesigns.com