It’s really hard to listen to bands that have passed on to the next world. Like Motörhead. Remember Lemmy’s funeral? I watched some of that on YouTube. Actually downloaded it. First funeral I ever downloaded, lol. But I haven’t re-watched it at all. Because life is for the living. It’s for the here and now.

I also don’t really want to listen to Motörhead anymore either. It’s ok to hear it in passing, like if it’s played overhead between bands at a metal concert or something. And it’s ok to quote funny lyrics or funny shit Lemmy once said. But I’m not really interested in playing Motörhead’s music at home on my iPod.

Anything under the giant rock ‘n roll umbrella is best when it’s current and happening. And when the people in it are also young, although Lemmy was an exception to being young. Though he knew it with lyrics boasting: “when I was young, I was already old,” and “we’re older than the Rolling Stones.” I suppose if you own your age, that’s cool. Women have it differently, of course – it’s always better for them to be young and beautiful. Even the ones that grow ass-old do everything they can to look like they’re still 25. Madonna is a great example. Listening to songs about a slut boasting about herself when she’s now 64 years old is uncomfortable and gross. And it’ll be moreso when she’s literally fucking DEAD someday.

I don’t think I’ll be listening to Ozzy Osbourne much when he passes. (But if I do, it’ll probably be The Ultimate Sin album.)

David Lee Roth has been brainstorming he’ll do some kind of Van Halen tour without Eddie Van Halen. Fucking why? Not to mention DLR can’t fucking sing anymore and looks like the late Don Fucking Knotts. What kind of loser do you have to be to go see an ancient fuck pretend it’s 1984 again? Not just pretend, but pretend badly.

The first post on this website was about glam metallers hitting the wall. I suppose there’s really two walls in rock ‘n roll life. The first one is when you’re past your prime sexual market value, and the second one is when you actually die. There’s an old rock ‘n roll saying maybe you’ve heard that goes: “live fast, die young, and leave a good lookin’ corpse.” And if you’re extra morbid, you’re aware of the 27 Club wherein a good handful of rock stars did exactly that. (“Good looking” is of course relative to which gender you are and what your tastes in the opposite sex are.) At first glance, the wiki doesn’t appear to list Playboy magazine models, but I’m sure some of them must be members? There is quite a history, and quite a list of Playboy models that die young. Though that is probably an overall phenomenon in the entire adult entertainment industry. And many of those types of women that tragically died young also tragically wound up as nasty-looking corpses, not good-looking corpses. Ugh.

I suppose since we’re on the topic of walls and death, you might be interested to learn some religions (Abrahamic, mostly) believe that there is a 2nd death after you die, which is the death of the soul. (Lol, and they’re not talking about the metaphorical death of your soul from working in corporate America. But, maybe that counts for something.) So there are at least 3 walls. 1) Sexual Market Value (SMV) wall, 2) Physical death wall, and 3) Soul death wall. Who knows though, maybe the soul is eternal and maybe reincarnation is real? In which case if you didn’t get what you wanted in this life, you’ll get another shot to aim for a successful pairbond within a sexually dimorphic construct in the next life. So, keep practicing guitar.

I’ve said before that thrash metallers (and I’m including death metal, black metal, and etc. under that term) just don’t have the wall-hitting problems that glam metallers do. And as far as which category of metal Motörhead was in, Motörhead’s career was kind of different. They started out as a heavy metal band with incredibly strong blues influences and then graduated to an incredibly polished – even “progressive” – thrash metal band in their latter years. At least that’s what their discography shows. Of course, they still played many of their bluesy-sounding classics at live shows. But it is interesting that their discography shows they got more aggressive as they got older. Think of this though: Lemmy was the first major icon in thrash that 1) played metal into old age, and 2) basically played metal until he died. He didn’t retire, he never had any other plans with his life except to keep doing what he was doing.

Off topic just a tad, but Lemmy was accused of “Nazism” off and on during his career. And he was known for collecting German WWII memorabilia. However, his last girlfriend was a buxom black Hollywood stripper. In this day and age, one wonders if he chose her partially to prove he wasn’t racist. Obviously there’s no way to tell for sure if that was his reason, but it is interesting to speculate. Motörhead fans that believe racism is a ticket to Hell are probably sleeping soundly at night believing they’ll meet Lemmy and the gang in heaven someday. Because Lemmy wasn’t racist.

But seriously. I have fairly good memories of Motörhead for now, but why the hell would I want to listen to Motörhead in heaven? Plus, wouldn’t Motörhead more likely be playing in Valhalla? There’s a lot of afterlifes we should be considering, I’m just using “heaven” for shorthand purposes. And why am I worried about the music in heaven or whatever afterlife right now if I’m not even there yet? I’m alive right NOW, and I want NEW music that is YOUNG, CURRENT, and OF THE TIMES. And if I was dead and headed for heaven, any kind of “rock ‘n roll heaven” must have precisely the newness, youth, and timeliness rock ‘n roll requires. That’s the dragon rock ‘n rollers chase in real life, and surely it must be the true reward rock ‘n rollers get in rock ‘n roll heaven. Let’s not forget the actual term “rock ‘n roll” is slang for “having sex.” That strongly implies the people involved in rock ‘n roll must be fit, young, attractive, and in the sexual marketplace. Which also implies PRE-WALL, NOT DEAD, and HAVING A SOUL. If you want something a bit different, there’s at least two musical genres for people not-in-that-category because they’re dead: jazz and classical come to mind. There’s plenty of jazz and classical from dead has-beens, and it’s still pretty good. Rock ‘n roll just functions differently. Sure, that’s my opinion, but it’s a strongly held opinion, dammit.

That is not to say that some music from rock ‘n roll won’t escape or can’t escape from its musicians being “post wall” or dead. (I already mentioned at least one Ozzy album.) I’m not exactly sure what the rules are, but it would seem that the rules make it so very little escapes. To clarify: what I mean by “escape” is that it escapes from the hard drive in your closet and goes back onto your listening device. The assumption here is that you are purging your active musical library from time to time.

Maybe it’s time to analyze the rock ‘n roll section of your music library and ask yourself some of these questions, one band and one artist at a time:

1) First of all, do you still like this stuff? How much do you like this stuff?
2) Are you living in the past???
3) Do you accidentally have “unconditional love” for these artists? Is it possible they can produce dog crap and you won’t have the ears to notice?
4) The other first-of-all-is, are these artists still alive?
5) Are these artists old, ugly, cringe, or fat?
6) Are these artists still producing music?
7) Is the music relevant?
8) Do their latest musical releases adequately compete with everything else that’s currently being produced these days?

But here’s another thing people ought to do. Young people do this somewhat naturally, but you should join in the fun. Start shaming people for listening to rock ‘n roll throwbacks and has-beens. I’m not advocating you ruin any of your friendships – you should use some common sense about it. Consider it like you’re offering self-help, self-improvement, and self-development. Of course if it’s made clear to you that some band like KISS or Pearl Jam is somebody’s religion, don’t just blaspheme in front of the committed faithful, that’s rude.

I’m not asking to change the world much, but I think smart people should have the good sense to keep their rock ‘n roll library flowing. And stop living in the past.