The intention this week, the week of the city council primaries in Seattle, was to devote the Friday morning "Hippies vs. Punks" to post-Grunge, post-rock band Red Stars Theory whose heyday was the Emerald City of the mid- to late-1990s.
The untold story of Hippies vs. Punks is all the posts that have gone unwritten and unpublished. For instance, I've been ruminating on a post devoted to Big Star's #1 Record (1972) for more than a year. Another example -- I spent an entire work week listening to Carly Simon's 1971 eponymous debut; the record was produced by Jimi Hendrix's sound engineer Eddie Kramer at Hendrix's Electric Lady Studios at the time of Hendrix's death and had a connection to another post, the one on Zephyr's Going Back to Colorado.
But, as is the case with this week, by the time Friday rolls around there is too little fuel in the tank to do anyone or anything justice. This week was a rough one since I had to get into work an hour early to train my replacement. Yesterday was my last day. Goodbyes can be particularly enervating.
So Red Stars Theory will have to wait for another day. The post was going to dwell on the fading mists of Bohemia in the Emerald City of Clintontime 1990s, a time when Hippie houses were still visible in neighborhoods as well as independent Hippie bookstores and Punk coffee shops. After the millennium that all pretty much got wiped out as Seattle assumed its place as a West Coast digital Mecca.
Walking home yesterday after my bon voyage at the local, feeling not much of anything other than tired, The Gourds "Cracklins" shuffled on the iPod. Suddenly I felt better.
Hearing The Gourds is appropriate at my moment of transition since it was The Gourds, youthful and svelte, whom my girlfriend and I, newly relocated to the Emerald City, witnessed hauling instruments and amps into The Crocodile one late summer evening in 1994.
Looking at video of the band now (or within the last five years) it shows what 20 years can do to a person.
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