Fucking Bullshit

Mick Karn RIP

I knew this was coming for a while after a chance visit to his website a few months ago. Still really, really sad. Cancer is cancer, yeah, but you figure someone as young as him might have a better shot at surviving.

Fuck, this one bugs me. As I've grown more alienated from myself and others over the years, Japan's music has appealed to me more and more. Mentally running through the last three studio albums, even the most emotional song I can recall of theirs, the classic "Ghosts", has a certain distance to it, a song made by people who find emotion in reviewing events, not directly from them.

I guess there is an obverse to glam, especially Roxy's strain, which Japan, of course, inherited. All those costumes, the elitism, the assertiveness, the unreality, is, at least with the best acts, a wall, a cover, a means of protecting deeper and more profound feelings. Maybe to avoid cheapening them, or maybe as a means of creating a higher bar of entry to the music, a greater intimacy within the group that "gets it" or maybe just to avoid being gauche. Whatever it is, I feel it, today especially.

Edit: Two favorites conveniently in sequence. I am not old. Nor nostalgic. It's simple fact. They don't make them like this anymore. And I like this.