Tampa Calling

How did my mom go from owning such a wide range of rock n’ roll records, from the Beatles to Black Sabbath, to devoting her ears solely to Celine Dion? Living in the land of oldsters and hipsters (some people are both), this question ultimately pervades every aspect of existence in Tampa Bay. Issues of marketed generation norms, like older people being more mild mannered and set in their ways and younger people experimenting with sex and drugs, maintain arbitrary divisions between age groups and sonic preferences. Generalizations of the 1960’s “Summer of Love” are quickly ripped to shreds in records by bored mutants like The Stooges. Their self-titled record in 1969 and Fun House in 1970 destroyed notions of the singular cultural experience by being nasty and unlearned instead of nice-sounding and well-trained. History has never been as cut-and-dry/black-and-white as we are led to believe. Likewise, our present continues to be very complicated.

All my life I’ve heard things like, “now that John Lennon could sing” or “Eric Clapton knows how to play real guitar music” or other such flapdoodle. People who make statements like those assume there’s a correct way to sing or play guitar, and other musicians who are inferior or get it wrong should do something else. Iggy Pop’s snarling vocals and Ron Asheton’s unsophisticated, immediate and exceedingly raw approach to the guitar challenged the notion of perfect technical skill as the ultimate goal in music. (Pictured: the late Ron Asheton, photo by Dena Flows.)

I was pretty bummed out by news of Ron Asheton’s death this week. I consider him one of my favorite guitarists because of his ability to play with music for the sake of sound and emotion on truly immediate levels instead of precision of notes and clarity of intonation. As I was driving home from band practice last night, I caught WMNF’s Surface Noise paying tribute to Asheton by playing some of his songs and discussing his legacy. My closed-minded preconceptions of Tampa Bay’s cultural buffoonery happily dashed for a few minutes, I reflected on death and nostalgia while I drove up depressing 66th Street.

Recently, The Stooges re-formed, toured a bunch and put out the solid album, The Weirdness, in 2007.  Standing out in the rash of comeback tours and reunion shows, Ron Asheton’s guitar playing, while slightly more refined than 35 years ago, cut through preconceptions of people losing relevance with age. Simplicity in riffs and biting imperfect leads influenced and continues to influence generation after generation or underground mutants. The Stooges always made me want to play music, regardless of my skill level. Anyone who can open their mouth and emit sound can sing, anyone who can pick up a guitar can play and getting old doesn’t mean you have to be lame and irrelevant.

*side note: Obviously Asheton didn’t wait around for Iggy to call him up and play again for 35 or whatever years. Check out some of his other really great sounding guitar bands like The New Order (not THAT New Order) and Destroy All Monsters.

Posted in News | Leave a comment