Unpopular Advent 2018 – Day 4

Last Of The Easy Riders – Unto the Earth

Heard it all before, yeah, yeah yeah. Since when has this mattered in Pop? When has this comment ever been bandied about with a less than denigrating intention? And when has it ever sounded anything other than saturated with smug (male – and it is almost exclusively male) assumed superiority? So yeah, yeah, yeah, we have heard the sound of Last Of The Easy Riders any number of times before and in any number of differently nuanced combinations of influence, reference and reverence. We could drop the names off the cuffs of our sleeves to showcase our educations and the quality of our record collections but what would be the point other than to reinforce aforementioned insufferable smugness? Exactly. Exactly. Pop is not an academic treatise except when it’s an academic treatise.

So put your Burritos back on the burner. Slot that dusted-off and dog-eared Guralnick back where it lives on the bookshelf (okay, I’ll give you a minute to reacquaint yourself with its pleasures) and file those Tom Petty albums in the racks again (and as you do so, ellipsis your way into thoughts of how it is only when artists die now that we really make the opportunities for ourselves to re-acquaint and re-connect with their treasures and from therein ponder how Things Were Better Back When and how we are never sure if this is objectivity talking or if it is the inevitability of our subjective existence pulling memories back and forth through the grooves, the sonic pulse beats and tickling twinkles, like some Proustian radio show in our heads).

GET ON WITH THE RECORD.

So uh, yeah yeah yeah, ‘Unto The Earth’ is psychedelic cosmic rock and roll and I’m alright with that Jack, honest I am. I’ve seen the Pacific from the Midwest and I’ve sprinkled some Joshua Tree sands on my desert boots whilst sipping whisky from the jar. I know that God is Pooh-bear. And so on, ad nauseam and if this puts you off it puts you off and I’m alright with that too Josie, honest I am. Me, I’m spinning this one more time, dropping a needle on a record and luxuriating in “Rosemary and white clover”. What about you?