Summer Re-Runs: Motorheads

You guys don’t understand Rock music.

That’s OK. You don’t know how you’d fare in prison because you watch Oz, either. You’re a “consumer.” That’s fine.

Well, I was a “producer” of rock music for a while, in a little way, and I worked with lots of other varied “producers” of your rock and roll entertainment, and I’d like to sing the praises of a certain type of guitar hero: The motorhead.

No, not MotorHead. That’s a band. They have an inexplicable umlaut in their name I can’t be bothered to add.

No, I mean motorheads. Watch the Grand Funk Railroad video. Those are motorheads.

You see, rock music wasn’t all sissies like David Bowie and Peter Frampton and so forth. And it wasn’t all pseudointellectuals like Yes and Sting. And it wasn’t all escapees from Broadway or the music hall like the Beatles or Elton John or Queen. It wasn’t all three chord cowboys- all hat no cattle –like the Eagles. It was guys from shop class. It was the motorheads.

They were good at sports but wouldn’t play on teams because they didn’t give a fig. The liked two stroke engines and took apart LED watches and had jobs when they were sixteen bending sheetmetal or doing body work in a garage while you were watching TV. They had mini-bikes and guns for toys when they were little kids while you were playing Clue. They were shaving, or needed shaving was more likely, when you had your mother’s face still. And they had a sunny, easygoing disposition, got Ds in everything in high school, and got all the girls the football players didn’t vacuum up. And a lot of the ones they did, eventually.

Because they were good at math and music, and they were masculine, and they could play rock music.

And their music, whether copied from others or home-made, was raucous and lively and manly and fun and brash and direct and unaffected. And they weren’t sexual as a pose. They weren’t pretending to like pretty girls by the armload.

I’m not paying attention closely any longer. I don’t know if there are people like this around anymore. I can’t think of any. They never whined, so no grunge, thanks. They never committed suicide, because they were happy all the damn time, so no Cobainiacs need apply. They’d never dress up, so that leaves out the Ozzie wannabes.

Oh well. I’m Rock and Roll Darwin, and I’m here to assure you: These dinosaurs once roamed the earth. And they were a blast.