Everything Is Turning Out the Same
Bobb Trimble—Through My Eyes (Hopeless As Hell:DOA) (1980 / Psych Folk)
Hello internet pals of music. Today we’re publicly gutting ourselves with an outsider we’ve featured before.
Oh shit.
For a moment, I forgot I was still doing this.
Actually, every time I’ve thought to write one of these lately, I’ve scrambled about five words together before asking myself why.
Why did I start doing this? Why do I need to keep doing this?
And the truth is that I don’t know. So I haven’t sent anything out lately.
Sometimes, it feels so important, like I’m making any type of difference in any one person’s day (even though I can read the stats that show barely anyone is actually listening to the songs). Other times, it feels like I’m making some sort of stand against the tightening grip of monoculture because I’m not recommending the same thirty albums every other music nerd with a blog is. But most often, it feels like I’m just pissing into the ever flowing stream of content, hoping someone notices me, and in a magical hipster fairy tale, picks me and makes all of my secret dreams of becoming a tastemaker-god come true.
And then I can kiss the square-ass, working world behind.
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Nothing is cool anymore, the internet has killed that.
Maybe what’s cool is being quiet. Listening to your records at home, with a cup of black tea in a cup stained by time. Scruffy cat snoring weirdly on a chair that definitely doesn’t match any other furniture in the room. Sound a bit thick with dust, like you’re listening to it through a sock. And when the record ends, the tonearm picks up with a popping sound, returns to its cradle and you lumber off to bed.
So then, am I doing this thing for you? Am I doing it for me? Am I doing it for the stream?
I waded into the stream the other day, publicly equating the film distributer / production studio A24 with a fake speakeasy, or a dive bar with a cocktail program. I was being snarky, and admittedly a bit antagonistic and then ended up spending way too much trying to explain the nuances in what I was attempting to say in 128 characters or less with strangers who insisted I was attacking decent filmmaking. The only time anyone has engaged with me on the stupid app with the bird is when I’ve cast a stone. It then feels so appalling to accept that I’ve fallen into the trap that I reel with embarrassment. I keep thinking that I need to delete that account. This substack also embarrasses me, and I start to wish that I’d never opened myself up to begin with and want to erase myself completely from the internet.
It’s exhausting to discuss pop culture, and only worsened when fandom is involved. Working at a cult video store during the Quentin Tarantino administration, and making gig posters during the early 2000s boom soiled my views on fandom / collector-dom eternally. Which is what I partly was getting at.
I like shit. I’m surely guilty of making that stuff part of my personality. I also am pretty vocal about what I don’t like.
But who really cares? What’s really at stake in these discussions?
Culture is fascinating. The algorithms that are reshaping culture, are not. If anything, I share my little songs because I still have that seedling of 90s video store clerk deep down in the soil of my blackened heart. I’m reading a book right now about Bulgaria’s Dancing Bears and how even though they have been “liberated” from their owners, they still “dance” when faced with not knowing how to adjust to their freedom.
Maybe, I’m just a dancing bear, recalling those halcyon days where I felt seen, in a cool town, where the cultural currency in my back pocket was my insatiable need to see or hear something I’d never seen or heard before.
Now? You can see or hear it all. You barely have to look for it. Only a few people want a sherpa, when Siri or Alexa can do it quicker or faster. Or whatever, it’s a terrible metaphor.
Man, I’ve got to get a real job soon.
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Jamie, I too, have often asked myself the very same questions. Who listens, who reads, who cares? I am writing about music, art, and other things that elicit and evoke strong emotions, or that I love and care deeply about. I am not writing about albums, artists, films etc. that are particularly well-known, but they still deserve a place to be seen and heard.
Regarding your Substack - I may not listen to or know much about extreme metal, Japanese noise, or underground skate punk - but I always enjoy reading *and* listening to the clips/videos you include. And, there is also plenty of overlap with our music taste, knowledge, and collection that I respect & value what you share. So, I appreciate you & this space you have carved out. Thank you, for the energy, time, and dedication. I am listening/reading.
Now, I DO know Trimble and own both of his albums consisting of early 80s acid folk/loner psych. His music and voice are eerie, haunting, and deeply affecting. There are other things about Trimble that evoke bigger, deeper, more complex conversations, but that is for another time, another space.
Cheers for taking the time to do what you do.
Your post led me to an article about Trimble, and how his music was lost in obscurity for years, and just now being somewhat unearthed. It reminded me of Henry Darger, the outsider artist who, it turned out , had been drawing his fantasy world for years, throughout his life as a janitor, and squirreling his artwork away in his shabby little apartment until it was found after his death. Now his story has been documented in film and is quite well known. But why did he do it, tolerating a lifetime of obscurity? And isn't there a parallel with your Sermons...you wonder yourself if anybody out there even notices. The same question I hear from artist friends over and over...why do we do it? (I'm not gonna try to answer that.) A related question, though, is why are we so attracted to the obscure once we unearth it? the rare old vinyl, the painting under the painting, the city under the sand. It's like finding a buried treasure, a secret only a few know. We hoard it and love it...then once it gets out to the hoi polloi, we kind of...'naaah, bored alread.' So maybe yeah, you gotta get a job like you say, but meanwhile treasure the obscure and the secret faithful who come to worship at the secret chapel.