While I was out today, ya’ know–living my life–my friend, Alex Kendig, decided to be a freeloading blogging friend….luckily it’s good stuff, so I’m allowing it to be posted. You never know, this could be a regular thing.
Hemp For Glowsticks
This is my Freeloading blogging friend, Alex Kendig….can ya….dig?
Am I the last of a dying breed? The stupid white guy who barely knows a handful of songs on guitar. We usually wear tweed sweaters and our half-assed covers make you want to barf so lets just, for the sake of this “article”, call ourselves “Tweedbarfs”. We used to be the life of the party. “Bro, there’s people playing Frisbee on the quad”, used to chime the young pledge. To which his roomie would reply, “better go play some Crash and summon the honeys.” Folks, this doesn’t happen anymore. Seems these days, the young-uns are finding their own way to ruin good music. Enter the amateur DJ. Full disclosure, I’m not a dubstep fan but mainly because I want epileptics to be able to enjoy popular music as much as the rest of us. Tweetbarfs would spend hours looking at tabs online (because we can’t read music) trying to be able to play a song “good enough”. The amateur DJ, on the otherhand, seems to get by with just downloading a couple of songs and pressing some buttons. There seems to be no connection there. Just an electric keyboard with a MacBook plugged in to it. The only points I will give is when a laser harp is used. Why? Because there’s nothing more badass than playing an instrument that has the ability to either blind you or correct near sightedness. Tweetbarfs can’t do that. No one flocks to the local coffee house to see a Tweedbarf anymore. Graphic designers don’t take a week off “work” to go see a laser light show in a rural field while listening to the coolest Tweedbarf that Spotify has to offer. It’s all about the DJ. “Come with me to this party”, a prospective date says “my friend is DJ-ing”. You go, and it’s fun cause people are dancing ridiculously, laughing hysterically, and you are too! Then you realize they’re not enjoying it ironically like you are. Sobriety hits hard. And while the music is great, and the vibrations will give you a boner; you won’t actually feel anything. Not in your soul. That’s what the Tweedbarf will always have on the amateur DJ. Songs used to come from the question, “how do I tell her how I feel?”. So we would find a song to learn, learn it “good enough” and freaking go for it. The antithesis of a Tweedbarf’s songs come from, “how do I make people on shrooms and horse tranquilizers get a boner?”. They seem to have answered that question, and for that I salute them. However, now the Tweedbarf has no home. Shunned out and shoved off in to the sunset just like the songs say. We’re finally as rejected, sad and lonely as our cover songs suggest we are. Did we start of kill ourselves off by oversaturating subway goers with bad chords? Probably. Did your girlfriend have an actual reason to sneak away and make out with us on spring break? No, she was just a whore. Will we be back? Yes, we shall rise. Maybe in the form on an 8 year old Asian kid who’s good at everything. Maybe in the form on an octopus goddess who nails bar chords like nobody’s business. Maybe we will rise as the form of hipsters in the future who like to play acoustic guitars because, “that’s what music was like way back in 1996.” But heed my warning dubsteppers and amateur DJ’s! The coolest people in disco; are they cool today? No, they’re dead. People ran out of money for cocaine, heard the music sober, and realized it wasn’t that great. The discothèques shut down, and to replace that coke habit people took up coffee. So, when they got an itch for coke, they instead headed in to their local coffee shop only to hear the sweet sweet sounds of a Tweedbarf plucking the strings till the caffeine softened their stool enough to excuse themselves to the restroom. We may not be needed now, but the day will come when the shrooms are gone and the power goes out. You’ll need to feel something, and you’ll turn to us. And we shall be there playing a cover of “Iris” by the Goo Goo Dolls that is “just good enough”. We’ll make you feel something. It won’t be a boner…it will be your soul.
–Alex Kendig
The lights…..they’re just so–VIVID!
