TEN YEARS AFTER - ANOTHER DECADE IN THE CAN

As we come to the close of another decade, I've been doing a lot of thinking about how we use this particular factor of time to define out social evolution.  The decade is often used as a platform for nostalgia and reminiscing.  Depending on your age, you might look back on a particular decade as a "golden age" or base your generational identity on the events and products of that time.  We think of fashion and music and movies within a classification system which relies on this arbitrary 10 year span to create a sense of progression.  Our identities as individuals and groups conform to these cycles and stamp us with signifiers which link us to the times of our youth, adulthood and old age. Overall, the use of this segmentation helps to give us a sense of forward momentum, the feeling like we are traveling along a continuum and heading towards some kind of accomplishment. 

It seems to me that Western civilization began delimiting decades as cultural and generational eras beginning with the 20th century, or perhaps just before it.  I suspect it is closely tied to the industrial revolution and remains linked to technological advancements to this day.  Prior to that, things didn't change much except in terms of centuries where you might get an enlightened period or a dark age or ongoing wars between nations and ethnic groups, but for the most part, the way people lived didn't change too dramatically until machines and electricity came into the picture.  Then you get an exponentially accelerating process of social upheaval as successive new technologies emerge.  Within that, the decade became a convenient marker by which to retrospectively assess and assimilate the primary social shifts which occurred in the past.  

From what I've observed, the means and methods of consuming media have been of particular importance in defining these shifts.  Perhaps the advent of written texts and then the printing press would be the first major propellants of cultural evolution.  Then we have the telephone, radio, recorded media (photography, film, audio and video tapes and discs), Television, computers, the internet and, finally, wireless broadband among the key communication revolutions.  The advent of each of these and the process of them becoming ubiquitous within our civilization has carried with it a unique set of social adaptations which changed the way we relate to one another.  Ideas could be shared with increasing speed, spreading the assimilation of new concepts and changing the way we perceive and comprehend reality.  The very act of recording is, in effect, a sort of "time machine",  allowing us to venture into the past and project ourselves into the future. 

Economic circumstances were also a key factor, particularly in the first half of the 20th century with the "roaring twenties" defining an era of abundance and economic boom, while the "dirty thirties" was a decade of financial ruin with the social upheaval which resulted ultimately culminating in a decade marked by a world war and the prospect of literal planetary extermination coming within the grasp of our species for the first time.  But in spite of the looming specter of nuclear annihilation, the 1950s dawned as a decade of prosperity and plenty.  Post war, birth rates soured, income increased and the new technologies were making themselves known as the cultural concepts of modernism & futurism became embedded into the psyche of the mainstream.   Technological advancements could be experienced directly as new machines and appliances entered the homes of large numbers of people in a mostly egalitarian way. 

Popular culture became critical as a social glue in the mid-century decades.  TV brought entertainment into every home and youth culture became an economic factor as manufacturers and  service industries realized that teens and preteens had access to wealth and resources never before available to so many.  The "middle class" came into its own in the West.  Things like rock and roll music could motivate millions of young people to purchase all sorts of products from clothes to cars to cans of Coke.  The sales pitch became an art form and began to develop a sophistication capable of manipulating susceptible minds.  Propaganda was turned towards selling goods instead of pushing ideology.  Capitalism became the ideology and its success was measured in profit margins.  

The 1960s ushered in the "space age" as the move to put people among the stars took hold and drove the science of the day, but other sorts of travel were also in the cards thanks to the advent of psychedelic drugs, a technology which came into prominence at the beginning of the decade as  clandestine experiments by the military and government leaked into the streets.  Thanks to the subversive efforts of certain intellectuals in the universities, these substances became widely available to the youth of the day, with the result being a realization that they had a voice and could take to the streets to demand change, as opposed to being no more than pawns in the capitalistic cat and mouse games of product peddling.  

This was all expertly crushed down in the 1970s when the youth were diverted away from activism as the "me decade" offered up self-indulgent fashion trends like disco and punk to provide a sense of self expression while simultaneously feeding the cash registers of the corporations creating all the clothes and music being consumed.  But this only worked to a certain extent as some valuable lessons were learned in the previous decade and actual social change did manage to start to creep into the cultural fabric.  Race relations, gender politics and sexual orientation all found their feet during this decade and began the process of fighting for rights and recognition which had been denied up to this point.  The world also began to recognize the environmental toll being exacted on the planet as pollution, in its various forms, started to show that it wasn't just nuclear destruction which offered an existential threat to humanity.  Our day to day abuses of our natural resources  could also upset the balance enough to trigger potentially catastrophic consequences.  

The 1980s saw the advent of the "computer world" as the first personal computers began to enter the home, though it wouldn't be until the next decade that these would truly make their mark.  However, culturally, the electronics boom drove society into it's first dalliances with cell phones and satellite TV opened up the possibilities of specialized programming and niche markets.  Above all, the capitalist money machine kicked into high gear as "greed is good" became the mantra of the mainstream.  Wealth and decadence were the hallmarks of this neon day-glo, big hair, broad shouldered decade.  It seemed as though money was all you needed to buy your happiness and your social standing.  

This culture of prosperity and technology carried over into the 1990s as the personal computer truly found its home on the desktops of middle class homes throughout the west.  Digital became the watchword as CDs and DVDs brought crystal clear, pixel perfect reproductions of content to consumers.  The skeleton of the internet established itself during this time and the potential of unlimited connectivity loomed.  Cell phones transformed from awkward bricks into something that more closely resembled the fantasy sci-fi communicators of Star Trek, small and palm sized, easy to pocket, making communication possible virtually anywhere at any time.  

The new millennium dawned amid paranoia about "Y2K" disasters as people began to realized how much they'd become dependent on technology and its computing power.  The prospect of a simple miscalculation sending global infrastructures and economies into chaos drove crisis culture into realms of conspiracies.  The build-out of the World Wide Web broke business models for media distribution and monetization as file sharing and rampant pirating of content meant that the container was no longer king in the world of data distribution.  Ones and zeros could be transmitted effortlessly from any one location to another, so artifacts like CDs and their physical counterparts became irrelevant and lost their value.  

Cable TV exploded in the 2000s and brought with it a host of product, both good and bad.  Sophisticated dramas on HBO were balanced against trashy reality TV on other specialty channels.  Being famous became an end in itself as Warhol's "15 minutes" prediction turned into nightmarish reality.  Economically, the house of cards was collapsing as born out by the 2008 crisis when banks and other financial institutions worked their way into disaster through speculation, unsustainable lending and sheer fraud on a scale never before imagined.  Politically, the uncoupling of reality from expediency set the stage for a kind of delusional governance which would fully bare fruit in the decade to come.  

This brings us to the 2010s as we close out this most recent decade and look forward to the 2020s.  Looking forward is something I say with a bit of hesitancy as we sit now on the precipice of some  disturbing realities.  With hindsight being what it is, looking back on this last decade reveals some rather unsettling chickens coming home to roost.  That sense of perpetual progression seems to be hitting the brakes now as the true cost of our follies begins to be calculated and the sums start hitting into zones of danger which had originally been projected for times much further into the future than our present.  

I think if there's anything that defines the past ten years, it has to be the proliferation of social media  in our culture.  Though the technology to support it first came into being in 2007, the effect of it has truly been felt since the beginning of this decade as platforms like Facebook and Twitter have taken root and created this environment where facts have become optional.  People are now free to create their own reality based on any old bias or prejudice they wish to indulge.  Things are true because people want them to be true.  "Fake" is a meaningless term now because everything is fake.  One media source is just as good as another.  It's only a matter of personal preference.  

Environmentally, the alarm bells have been going off throughout the decade as severe weather anomalies and climate change become more and more difficult to dismiss.  People looking back on this decade, if there are any to do so in the future, may likely pinpoint it as the tipping point for climate collapse and irreversible damage to our ability to sustain life.  There is every chance we have already gone too far in terms of damaging ecological systems for us to effect repairs or stop the rest of the dominoes from falling.  

Politically, we're living through something that would have only been imagined in a Batman movie plot in previous decades.  Now, blatant criminals have stolen control of governments away from the electorate and prop themselves up with deluded masses of ignorant lackeys who follow because they've been bred to see selfishness and cruelty as virtues to be celebrated.  People protected by their social media bubbles of self deceit rally around a buffoon like Trump and cheer as he spits insults and abuse, thinking this is a display of authority when, in fact, it's nothing more than a perversion of power.  There is no level of debasement he is capable of which would dissuade them from their support.

Socially, this decade has seen the complete abandonment of the concept of a "middle class" as a small percentage of the mega-wealthy horde resources beyond any practical need and deny basic sustenance to the rest of the planet by preventing wages from growing with productivity and lobbying to repeal fundamental social gains made by unionization and labor movements in previous decades.  They've convinced themselves that their money will buy them protection from the social collapse they're actively engaged in promoting as they undermine every social institution which used to help advance civilization.  Profit motives have corrupted the courts, healthcare, education, policing, the military and spirituality.  There isn't a single sanctuary remaining where the obsession with profit at any costs hasn't desecrated the concept of empathy, community and caring.  We're all merely swirling around the toilet for the final flush, grasping at any piece of shit we can get our hands on before we get sucked down the drain, once and for all.

Where generations have previously followed the procession of advancement, always with a sense of optimism of working towards a better future, we are now at a precipice where more and more people are convinced there's no turning back and that there's no hope for salvation.  We can't pretend anymore that these are just tough times, struggles we've gone through before and that we'll work our way through.  That delusion has lost its usefulness as a salve to ease the pain of the wounds that keep being inflicted upon us.  We're worn raw from the abuse and know there's no plan to relent or show mercy.  The master is on the whip and any pretense at accommodation has been abandoned as an economic burden, too costly to justify.   This last decade has sucked the wind from our sails, particularly the latter half of it.  When blatant criminals can hold power in what is called "the land of the free", then the world has gone mad, even if that nation has always been something of a fraud in terms of being a proponent of "truth and justice". 

My own personal journey through this decade as been one of disconnection and loss, right from its onset.  Where the 1990s & 2000s saw me find footing in the technology sector, establishing a 16 year long successful career in software development, I started off 2010 by being unceremoniously ejected from that position and have not been able to secure any stable employment since.  As I come up to my 10th anniversary of unemployment, I find myself in a kind of netherworld limbo, the "50 plus dead zone", where I'm too old to be considered for any regular employment (50 being the arbitrary cutoff currently in vogue), but not old enough to retire and collect a pension.  In fact, the same people who won't hire people over 50 are also now pushing for holding off retirement until after 70, though they don't seem to see any issue with that 20 year purgatory they're creating in the process.  Though I subsist in a state of disenfranchisement from the main economic engine, I'm still somehow allowed to exist in this position where I have a roof over my head and food on my table, ostensibly because I must still serve some meager economic purpose.  The frightening thing is that I'm actually one of the lucky ones.  By some anomaly of mathematics, I'm still considered in the upper percentile of affluence on this planet.  Go figure.  

Now, we're on the threshold of the 2020's.  It's a nice looking number, to be sure, but what of the humans which will be defining this coming decade?  Are they going to double down on disaster or turnabout into a rebound?  Personally, my money's on the former as all signs point to a continuation of the madness which has stamped this past decade with its obscenities and inexcusable delusions.  I suspect humanity needs a lesson in humility and survival before the idiots start to consider that you can't defy nature and reality indefinitely.  Eventually the check is gonna come due and we're going to have to pay up for our hubris and wanton disregard for the limitations of our existence.   The big question is going to be whether it's too late to right the wrongs and chance course.  If there are historians to look back on what we did this past decade, let's hope we at least serve as an object lesson in mismanagement rather than an epitaph for the planet. 

THE PAPER AGE - MUSIC BEFORE THE INTERNET

I’ve been contemplating life before the internet lately, specifically how I acquired information about music when I first started collecting it.  Long before there was a Google or Discogs or YouTube, one had to do a bit of reading the old fashioned way, in printed media, in order to learn about things that were happening in certain corners of the world.  Of course, there was radio and TV available to expose some of what was going on, but by and large, those media outlets focused on the mainstream  in a fairly superficial way and you had to go to other sources if you wanted to discover anything off the beaten track or more in-depth.  You might see the odd new wave act on Midnight Special or Saturday Night Live, but the music press was where you got to know these artists in detail and discover what they were doing and when.

I first started to collect records when I was 13, back in 1976.  Soon after that started to develop into a serious interest, I also discovered there was a variety of magazines on the shelves of my neighborhood corner shops with all sorts of fascinating stories of my favorite performers and their adventures, interviews with the them and reviews of their work.  It didn’t take long for me to get just as hooked on these as I was on the records.  So much so, in fact, that I got to the point where I’d use my lunch money to buy magazines instead of eating.  I’m thinking now that this may have been part of the reason I got so svelte in my last year of high school.  Oh well, food is over rated! 

The first publications I came across were rags like Hit Parader, Circus and, occasionally, Rolling Stone.  I never got into RS much because there were a lot of non-music articles and that stuff just didn’t interest me.  I only wanted to read about rock stars.  The other two were pretty light weight, however, and I found them to be a bit sycophantic, even at my young, naive age.  But then I came across CREEM and that one really caught my fancy.  It was not so concerned with stroking rock star egos or cheap gossip.  I didn’t understand it at the time, but it was more akin to magazines like National Lampoon and harbored a kind of “gonzo” style which often took great delight in ridiculing some of the subjects covered in its pages.  The captions to the pictures were a clear case in point.  Every one of them was a joke, often at the artist’s expense.  You never got a serious comment in the photo captions.  And they had writers like  Robert Christgau and the notorious Lester Bangs, who made an art of taking the piss out of the folks they covered.  Bangs’ LP reviews were some of my favorites.  I recall one he did for Queen’s Day at the Races that read like a bad trip and I’d never even done drugs yet.  

Eventually I discovered a used book shop downtown and it’s shelf full of old magazine back-issues.  This became a regular haunt for me and I was able to find many of the older issues of CREEM going back to the early 1970s.  This became a priceless resource to me and gave me a lot of background on my favorite bands and their history.  On the other end of this spectrum, the new issues of CREEM that were coming out at the time were starting to clue me in to a lot of new music that was coming out of places like New York and London.  They began to feature bands like the Sex Pistols, Ramones, Devo and Elvis Costello.  I remember seeing an issue with Johnny Rotten on the cover and, at the time, I thought he just looked stupid and weird and found it all rather annoying.  It wasn’t until I began to get dissatisfied with the tedium of top 40 rock music that I started to wonder what all the fuss was with these new groups and why they were getting so much press.  

Like a damn bursting, my curiosity soon got the better of me and I went out and started buying records by these people.  I can actually remember a day, flipping through the pages of a magazine in my bedroom, where I made a conscious decision to go out and buy some of these records.  It started small, with The Cars, then The Clash, Ramones, Costello, Devo and, finally, the most naughty band of all, The Sex Pistols.  I remember putting on the first Clash album and feeling like someone had blown the dust off my mind to reveal it's bright, shining surface.  I remember pulling out the lyric sheet for the Ramones' Road to Ruin and being gobsmacked that there were so many songs with just four or five lines of lyrics.  And they were fucking hilarious!   It was a few days of complete revelation that would trigger a lifetime of exploration and it all came from some ratty little music magazines.

Soon, I was on the hunt for even more magazines that featured these bands.  This is when I came across rags like Rock Scene and Punk magazine.  They were both very New York centric and featured all the CBGBs bands.  Rock Scene had a LOT of press for Patti Smith, thanks to her hubby, Lenny Kaye, being the editor.  I must admit I kinda got turned off a bit to Patti for a bit because her features in the magazine became so gratuitous and obviously so.  But still it was a valuable reference, though pretty light weight in terms of coverage of these bands.  It was mostly a scenester, “who’s with who”, kinda vibe.  Punk Magazine seemed to be the most underground and hardcore at the time.  I’m actually pretty surprised, looking back, that it ever landed in a middle of nowhere town like Thunder Bay, ON.  But it somehow managed to find its way into my hands and gave me another perspective into the alternative music scene.   

In 1979, the ultimate underground magazine started hitting the local stands, Trouser Press.  This was the most out there publication I’d managed to come across and it was in its pages that I first read of names like Throbbing Gristle, Cabaret Voltaire, The Residents and others who were truly foraging on the fringes of experimental music.  I became obsessed with snapping this one up as soon as it hit the stands.  It was coolness in print.  And it wasn’t easy to find as only a couple of places carried it, so I’d be on the lookout for each new issue with hawk-eyed determination.  It wasn’t a fancy looking magazine either.  It was plainly designed in terms of the graphics.  But it had the best written articles and most thoughtful reviews I’d come across.  Though the irreverence of CREEM was entertaining, it was nice to have something that really dug into the new music with a more serious tone. 

Sometime in 1980, the next phenomenon to hit my collecting obsession arrived in the form of the “import”.  The little record shop I favored, Records on Wheels, introduced a small bin of LPs labeled “Imports”.  The concept was utterly new to me, but I soon realized there was a whole world of music being released in other parts of the world than never got released in Canada.  Now, most of these ended up being imported from the UK, but that was enough as all the strangest stuff seemed to get released there.  Along side these import records, the shop also started getting UK music papers.  Things like NME and Sounds started showing up and these were a whole new world of music journalism. 

I even discovered I could purchase records directly from these papers.  They had classified ads in the back pages.  This is where I found I could actually get a copy of the holy grail of albums for me at that time, Public Image Ltd’s Metal Box.  I’d read about it in some publications and it had a sort of mythical allure about it because it was so exotic sounding.  The standard double LP version had been released in Canada and I'd fallen in love with it, so there was no question that I needed it in its original format.  Finding out it was just a matter of calculating the currency exchange and sending off a money order was thrilling to me, but also nerve-wracking.  This was, of course, long before internet or cheap international phone calling, so putting money in the post and having to wait three months in the blind hope that something would come back was a bit daunting.  But it worked and, after duly and patiently waiting, I had my hands on my treasure, greedily drooling over it like Gollum with his “precious” ring!  

When I moved to Vancouver in 1982, I continued to buy the UK papers as much as I could afford to, though I would often just read them in the import record shop that got them in.  In Vancouver, it wasn’t just a bin in the shop that sold imports, it was an entire store dedicated to them.  I swear, the first time I walked into Odyssey Imports, I was like Dorothy prancing through the gates of the Emerald City.

As I got settled in a new city, I found I was buying fewer and fewer magazines.  Trouser Press ceased publication in 1984 and CREEM in 1989 (though it kinda lost its edge a few years before that and I stopped collecting it).  The UK papers still had some attraction, but by the early 90s, I wasn’t buying records much anymore because I was so poor.  There was also the transition to CD going on and CDs, particularly imports, were going for stupid prices like $40 a pop!  It’s funny now that’s the average price for a domestic piece of new vinyl these days, but you practically can't give a CD away. 

It wasn’t until the dawn of the new millennium that I was set up with a proper computer, a high speed internet connection and a functioning credit card so that my collecting bug could lurch back to life and i dove head first into the world of online shopping.  I was working a decent job with a reasonable bit of disposable income at hand, so no limited edition collectible was out of reach for me and I had the tools to track who was releasing what and also follow recommendations for new artists.  I had automated “sniper” tools for buying on Ebay so I could snap up rarities at the last second.  I went a bit nuts, I must confess.

These days, I’m poor again, but the internet and YouTube have offered me a new way to indulge my music mania and I’m swimming in an ocean of music, both old and new.  While I love the convenience, I do still have fond memories of those bygone days of picking up a magazine and reading about some strange new artist.  I was thinking the other day about the old ads from Ralph Records for The Residents and that got me inspired to write this piece.  I recall the strangeness and mysterious infatuation with their mystique that drove my imagination.  That sense of wonder is so much harder to find or create these days. 

These days, I don't read much about music, particularly reviews of albums.  I find I don't rely on them to discover new music anymore.  I use my own judgment as to whether I want to investigate something because I can always preview it, usually on YouTube.  I use Discogs "Explore" feature to play with search filters to find interesting combinations of genres and styles.  I still read the occasional interview or analytical article, perhaps on an old release being re-appraised or celebrating an anniversary.  But I look at magazine racks in the stores and there's nothing there anymore for me to pick up.  All the music magazines have pretty much vanished or you have to go to some out of the way specialty store to find them and I can't be bothered. 

I used to have a huge box of all my old rags I'd kept for many years.  I think I may have held onto them until the end of the 1990s before I finally dumped it all.  I wish I still had them now.  Some are available online, but it's not quite the same as holding it in your hands.  Kids don’t understand it now, but I remember it and I’m glad I got to bridge both worlds.

METAL BOX AT 40

METAL 1

Forty years ago, on November 23rd, 1979, Public Image Ltd unleashed their second "album".  Its initial release was in the UK, coming a year after their debut LP.

That "First Issue" had come at the tail end of 1978, a year which had begun with the infamous Sex Pistols disintegrating while wrapping up their one and only US tour.  In the wake of that chaos and all the recriminations surrounding their demise, Johnny Rotten, now back to being John Lydon, went on vacation to Jamaica where he scouted reggae acts for Richard Branson before returning to the UK to get back to the business of making music himself.  Once home, he recruited a couple of friends for his new venture; a bass player who didn't know how to play bass plus an ex-Clash guitarist.  A quartet was completed with a Canadian drummer found via a music press classified ad.  Together they knocked up an album which was greeted with a mixture of suspicion, contempt and occasional praise.  It was an uneven affair, offering glimpses of genius when they'd been able to pay for proper studios and production, but it lagged in spots once the money ran out and they had to tack on rushed pieces recorded in budget studios.  In at least one self declared case, they "only wanted to finish the album with a minimum amount of effort".  It was a contentiously auspicious debut that demanded an unequivocal follow up for this entity to be taken seriously.  So during the beginning months of 1979, PiL set about assembling new tracks while churning through drummers like toilet tissue. 

Prior to it's release, Metal Box was buffered by two singles, Death Disco (issued in June) and Memories (in October).    Both of these set the stage for what was to come, but no one was really prepared for the full force of the post-punk monolith which was about to descend.  Recorded in fragmented sessions at various studios throughout the year, Metal Box rolled out of the gate while smashing it to pieces along the way.  It was unlike anything anyone had seen or heard before, both in structure and content.  Housed in a logo embossed circular metal canister, it contained three 12" 45rpm "singles" with a dozen tracks spread across them and a  running time of about an hour.  It posed questions on every level, from how to get the records out (they were so tightly housed, you'd have to shake the container and try not to scratch or drop them as they tumbled out), to what order to play them (play order was meant to be flexible) to what kind of stereo system was capable of reproducing the sound in the grooves (I personally know people who bought whole new audio systems in order to handle the extremes of bass and treble contained on those records).  

Where their first LP had indicated movement into new musical directions, such as the nine minute dirge of Theme, it still retained remnants of what could legitimately be called "rock & roll" on songs like its title track and Annalisa.  This new product, however, left those conventions behind on all fronts.  There were elements of disco, dub, German "motorik", martial music, funk and some unidentified strains in the mix.  That "mix", itself, was another thing all together.  The bass was front and center, pushing the capacity of the medium to reproduce it.  Guitars & synths buzzed, scraped and squalled in thin ribbons across the top.  Drums were generally utilitarian, minimal and repetitive, providing support for the bass, but never offering too much flash.  Kick drums were EQ'd with enough thud to pop needles out of the grooves and hi-hats sizzled with enough top end to fry bacon. Occasionally, a drum track was no more than a tape loop of a simple beat.  Lydon's voice moaned and squeaked or screamed in vacant hallways, always sounding lost or distant.  Even the editing of the tracks was fair game for mischief.  Some tracks would abruptly cut off and bump into the next.  Sometimes it sounded like the tape player was shut off or switched on as the music did a sharp pitch drop into a halt or lurched to a start.  A song might trail off into the locked groove at the end of the record and either loop there indefinitely or be roughly snatched away by the auto-return kicking in on the tone arm.  It all felt inside-out, like a building with the plumbing and wiring deliberately showing on the outside.

SECOND EDITION

It wouldn't be until early in 1980 that the album would find its way into my 16 year old hands in Canada.  By then, it had been reissued in a more conventional double LP format, in a standard gate-fold cardboard sleeve, as "Second Edition".  I remember going into Records on Wheels, which had opened up recently in a little strip mall next door to the Burger King where I worked, after my shift on a cold April day in Thunder Bay, ON.  I spotted it instantly as I entered the shop and saw it on the wall in the new releases section by the entrance.  I'd heard of PiL by then, but never heard them.  The first LP was never released in Canada, so I had no idea what they sounded like.  I didn't even know if this was a different album from the one I'd read a review of in CREEM magazine the year before.  I knew I had to check it out, so I plunked my hard earned burger flipping money down and then had to wait until later that evening to hear it.  The whole family went out that night to visit friends, so I spent most of the evening staring at the cover graphics while the adults talked and drank.  

I was fascinated by the photos on the front and inside the gate-fold.  I didn't know who was who yet.  I knew what John Lydon used to look like, but not the rest of the band and the distortion of the warped image effect used made it nearly impossible to tell which one was him.  The cover also had all the lyrics printed on the back.  They weren't originally included with the Metal Box edition due to cost, so PiL had run an ad in one of the UK music papers with the lyrics printed in it so people could take that and fold it up to stick inside the tin.  They were in the same hand written style in both cases, I'm assuming in Lydon's writing.  They weren't in the same order as the songs on the LPs, so when I did finally get to hear the records, it took a bit of sorting to figure out which song was which.
 

When I finally did get home that evening, I went to the big old wooden console stereo system in the living room, grabbed the headphones, set myself up in a comfy chair and dropped the needle on the first track.  It wasn't a great system, so I didn't have the best first listening experience, but it was good enough for me to be able to appreciate how different this all was.  Looking at the labels on the records, I noticed the run times for the track listings.  Side one started with Albatross, which clocked in at an intimidating 10 minutes!  I wasn't used to songs being much longer than 3 or 4 minutes.  Maybe 6 was long when you're talking about something like Bohemian Rhapsody or a Zeppelin track and, in those cases, they were intricately orchestrated with major changes in structure and arrangements as the track progressed.
 

YOU ARE UNBEARABLE

Albatross kicked in and I was immediately anxious and anticipating when it was going to start changing.  After a few minutes in, it became apparent it wouldn't.  Jah Wobble's bass line comes in first and it sounds lazy, like it can barely stand to differentiate the three notes it keeps repeating.  It doesn't even want to try to do anything but lumber along.  And it's so deep!  It's just this rumble under the floorboards.  It sounds scary and maybe a little pissed off about something. Brooding?  Yeah, that's the feel.  Then the drums start plodding along and this scraping, screeching noise from Keith Levene's guitar comes in like a carrion bird way up in the sky, circling and waiting for something to die so it can swoop down and gorge itself.  The ghost of Johnny Rotten then looms up from his grave and starts moaning about something he can't get rid of.  His thoughts are fragments, piecemeal musings you might extract from a cadaver's brain.  "Frying rear blinds"?  What does that even mean?  It's bits and pieces of ideas and images, but there's a sense of exasperation  and boredom.  What's he on about?  Is it his career and fame?  Is it the carcass of rock & roll being flogged like that dead horse?   "Slow motion... slow motion..."  The whole thing fucks with your sense of time.  It goes on so long and is so ruthlessly repetitive, that you lose any sense of time passing.  Everything stands still.  Then it's over and the last thing you hear is that squalling vulture flying off into the distance.

IT SHOULD BE CLEAR BY NOW

Next up, Memories kicks off with some pep as the tempo picks up.  Now, the bass is hollow sounding and bouncy while a disco beat pops along, encouraging some toe tapping.  A curtain of vibrato guitars starts shimmering in the background.  There's something vaguely Latin about it, like flamenco or something, but it's not even certain what instrument you're listening to.  It sounds a bit like an organ too.  There's a flurry of notes that dance around, but they never quite create a melody.  It's merely a suggestion of conventional structure.  Lydon's voice comes in with a sneer and declares he's "had enough of useless memories" and proceeds to tear into the concepts of sentimentality and nostalgia.  Then, just when you think you've got a handle on things, the entire mix suddenly cuts to something completely different.  The bass is back to booming again.  The drums are heavier now too, with the kick threatening to bounce the stylus right out of the grooves.  It's all compressed so that the loudness of the track hits the maximum and you can imagine any VU meter pinned to the top when the mix cuts over.  That curtain of Spanish moss is now a wall made of steel and it's pushing that voice as it bellows and snarls about being "used" and "dragging on and on and on and on and on AND ON AND ON!"  Back and forth, the song snaps between the two mixes until it goes careening out of sight.  As previously mentioned, this song was released as a single, but that version only used the bottom heavy mix throughout and did not have the abrupt edits between mixes.  Personally, I can never really decide which is more effective, though I tend to favor the single most of the time, but the juxtaposition of the two mixes on the LP was a fresh, jarring concept and executed flawlessly. 

FLOWERS ROTTING DEAD

By the time I'd finished the first side, I was feeling like I'd been punched in the head in the best way possible.  My initial apprehension was replaced by an exuberance as I could feel the sense that something new was taking hold in my brain.  Flipping the record over, the next track up was Swan Lake.  This had been released in a more stripped down, rough mix as Death Disco in the summer of that year.  This finished mix would take the rawness of the single and refine it into a truly heartbreaking exploration of loss and death.  The song was written by Lydon about watching his dear mother pass due to the ravages of cancer.  His delivery during the song is nothing short of agonizing.  There's no measuring or muting his suffering and he lets it out with every excruciating wail of "words cannot express!!!".   Again, a disco beat provides the bedrock while Wobble's bass thunders with the tension and anxiety of an anxiously racing heartbeat.  Levene's repeating guitar and synth motif, borrowed from Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, creates the sense of mourning and lamenting the loss of a loved one.  The emotion in the song is so raw and uninhibited, it's very strange to see the promo video made for it as the band seem to be mugging it up during their miming of the track for the camera. On Second Edition, the track spins into a frenzy before before being abruptly cut off by the next track while, on Metal Box, it bleeds into the run-out locked groove to find its terminus.

THE SMELL OF RUBBER ON COUNTRY TAR

Things abruptly switch to the next track, Poptones.  The song tells the tale of kidnapping and murder, snatched straight out of the headlines of the tabloids.  It's almost beautiful, musically.  Keith spins a delicate spiderweb of guitar notes, cascading down upon each other and churning like a glittering Ferris wheel.  I say "almost" because it's all a bit like a bouquet of flowers that has died on the dressing table.  The tale being told is past tense, so there's no sense of urgency or threat.  There's only the aftermath as the deceased in question relates its own demise, the sound of music playing on a cassette in the car communicating the dispassionate telling of this sordid true crime story.   A walking bass loops around along with the guitar, meandering through a cycle of notes while the drums tumble along for the ride.  It's a dizzying swirl of sound as we feel the chill of a car boot in the country air and the "wet" of the dirt while we lose our "body heat".  Lydon intones the vocals in a cracked, reedy tone that reinforces the detachment from any direct experience.  Faintly in the background, his voice echoes down into the vortex, barely audible amid the distortion. 

MANGLED MACHINERY

Cut to the battle field for the completion of the trifecta on side two of the 2nd-E track listing.  The tape machine kicks into gear with a sweep of the pitch and we're marching.  The drums pat out a militant trundle while the bass, deep as usual, pushes underneath,  an insistent drill sergeant, counting out steps as the troops move forward.  All around, synthesizers swirl, discordant and droning, swooping through as teargas lingers on the horizon.  We're going to war, but it's corpses for cash in this modern military industrial complex.  The big money is meticulous and well organized as it poisons the landscape.  Lydon's voice searches for "meaning behind the moaning", but all he finds is dollar signs.  This is not conflict over ideals or beliefs or even traditional material concerns such as land rights.  This is military for money, as a mechanism for generating financial profit.  PiL were predicting the future here and, 40 years on, it's horrifying how precisely accurate their prediction was.  Synthetic gunshots ring out in jarring bursts.  When they hit rapid-fire, it makes you jump in your seat.  It's frightening and relentless and it all ends in a crescendo barrage.

IT IS YOUR NATURE

The next set of tracks gives the listener a bit of a breather.  I'm going by the double LP track listing here for this article as this is the ordering I was ingrained to follow until I finally got a proper copy of Metal Box a good year after first getting Second Edition.  First up are a couple of instrumentals.  Socialist comes staggering out of the speakers like some sort of short-circuiting robot.  The drums are weirdly syncopated with the bass and the whole thing is sprinkled with nothing more than some random synth bleeps and bloops.  This is followed by Graveyard, a track which previously appeared in a different mix with vocals on the B-Side of the Memories single as Another.  It was also recycled by Wobble for the track Not Another, reverting back to an instrumental, on his first solo LP.  It's a rhythmic, atmospheric piece with a decidedly morbid mood, most suitable for some midnight forays to the land of tombstones.  It would make a good soundtrack for waiting for The Great Pumpkin in the pumpkin patch.  This moody, brief trio is rounded off with The Suit, also recycled by Wobble for his solo album as Blueberry Hill.  Here, it's little more than a lonely bass line playing against a tape looped kick & snare with Lydon doing some of his infamous piano tinkling in the background (he often did this in the studio simply to annoy everyone).  Keith is nowhere to be found here.  Lydon's lyrics sneer and snigger at those who live off the ideas of others, never originating anything themselves.  Their look, their attitude, their manners, all borrowed from others and sold cheap to anyone stupid enough to buy into their fake personas.  It eventually  disappears down an echoing corridor to end this set.

ONE MORE SOB STORY

The final quartet of tracks brings us to some of the most harrowing moments of the album.  First up is another story torn from the morning papers, Bad Baby.  This was the audition piece for drummer Martin Atkins, who knocked it out in a single take, thus clinching his hiring by the band.  Here, he drops a minimalist funky beat while Wobble saunters along on bass.  Keith ads no more than the occasional car horn inspired atonal synth stab, but that's enough.  The track doesn't need any more.  Lydon fills in the rest with his recounting of a story of an infant being left alone in a parked car.  It's a story you hear every year, at least a dozen times, still to this day.  Lydon relates it rather offhand and almost distracted, like he's busy looking for gum in his pockets or something.  It's a song about thoughtlessness and that's the feeling that comes across in the delivery.

DON'T KNOW WHY I BOTHER, THERE'S NOTHING IN IT FOR ME

Things start to get harrier with No Birds, the post-punk equivalent to The Monkees' Pleasant Valley Sunday.  In this case, it's suburban malaise taken into discordant abandon.  The drums ripple with tribal toms while the bass pushes them along.  Once more, Lydon's piano is plinking in the background while Keith shaves off sheets of searing guitar.  Lydon's vocals paint a picture of disaffection, "a layered mass of subtle props."  He keeps insisting "this could be Heaven", but you know it's a long way from that.  The song trots along until it's suddenly struck down by the most manic piece on the album, Chant.  The drums are primal and thudding, like a mob stomping in rage.  The bass grumbles underneath and, like Albatross, there's barely any distinction between the notes, only an uneasy minor variation.  Keith's guitar thrashes and spits in all directions.  There doesn't seem to be any pattern to it, it's chaotic flailing imitating the mob mentality being evoked.  There's a "chant" building in the background.  "Love, war, fear, hate"!  At lease, that's what it sounds like.  It's not really possible to say for sure.  The chanting is so incessant, the words lose their meaning from repetition.  Then the lead vocals charge in, scouring the air with condemnation.  "Voice moaning in a speaker, never really get too close".  Riots, protests, demonstrations, a futility of empty gestures accomplishing nothing.  Meaningless slogans, unfulfilled promises, empty threats.  It's the anger of the world stewing away with no target, no hope of success and no objective to accomplish.  The song riots along until the channel gets abruptly changed because it's too miserable to take any more. 

It's all been a pretty bleak affair up to this point with the music and lyrics and even the packaging painting a grey, metallic picture of death, despair and hopelessness.  So how come I felt so good listening to it?  The final track in this assault, Radio 4, finally lifts us out of the bleakness for a brief glimpse of beauty.  It's the third instrumental and it's pretty much all Keith (though I've heard rumors that Ken Lockie, of Cowboys International, had a hand in it).  It's essentially no more than a wandering bass line and washes of synth chords moving in like waves crashing on the shore while a lonely lead line drifts over top.  Occasional cymbal splashes are the only accents.  It's peaceful, serine, contemplative and brings you back down to earth after the rest of the album's jarring, hypnotic melee.  It's waking up from the nightmare and realizing you're still okay... for now. 

WE'RE NOT A BAND, WE'RE A CORPORATION

After my first listen, I was stunned.  I went to high school the next day and tried to explain that I'd heard something beyond anything I'd heard before, but I didn't have the words and no one took note of me.  For the next 6 months or more, Second Edition was played at least once, start to finish, every single day.  I obsessed over it. I played it for anyone who would listen. It made most of the other records in my meager collection irrelevant.  Verses and choruses?  How quaint and old fashioned.  Melody and harmonies?  Passé.  It had thrown itself so far ahead of the pack, listening to most other music seemed pointless.  It also inspired.

Before hearing PiL, I'd had ideas of wanting to make my own music and had even taken guitar and bass lessons.  As a result, I had instruments sitting in my room and a cheap amp, which were mostly ignored for the prior two years.  I never seriously felt like I could do music myself.  I never thought I had the ability to make anything anyone would want to listen to.  I didn't think I was good enough and I didn't know where to start.  But Second Edition was like an instruction manual and it was a tool kit and a pile of building blocks, all in one.  It wasn't something to merely listen to.  It was something to study and learn from.  Its structures were primary and easy to comprehend.  Throw down a simple beat, add a few notes on bass, jam some guitar on top or just make weird noises and blather on about whatever you wanted to finish it off.  That was it.  That was all you needed to make your own music.  Within a year, I'd managed to buy a synth and a drum machine and a cheap cassette recorder.  I'd met a few friends who were also interested in fucking around with music, so we'd hang out in someone's basement or bedroom and crank out some noise.  I wouldn't have felt like I could do it if it weren't for PiL and this album, in particular.

PiL made you question every structure around music and understand that the rules were not fixed and that every aspect could be played with.  The way you play an instrument, the way to make a record, the way you package it, the way you structure your band.  You could have an accountant and a publicist be part of the band.  They did.   It was all up for grabs and you only needed to have the nerve to throw caution to the wind to try to make shit happen.  That was an important lesson and one I will always be grateful for learning. 

Eventually, as I mentioned, I got my hands on a sanctified original pressing of an actual Metal Box.  Back in 1980, living in Canada, that wasn't easy to do.  The Records on Wheels shop was getting in copies of NME and Sounds music papers on import, so I was buying them and checking out the classified ads at the back.  I found one selling copies of Metal Box plus the 12" of Memories and Death Disco.  I got my calculator out, went to the bank and managed to figure out the exchange between British Pounds and Canadian Dollars, bought a money order and sent it off in the mail.  With no internet or cheap overseas phones, it was a huge risk to send so much off like that.  It cost about $60 all total, which was a lot back then.  I had to wait about 3 months and often wondered if it would ever arrive, but one day, it finally did and at last, I had my hands on an actual copy of Metal Box.  I still have all those records today, prominently displayed on my CD shelf.

Over the years, I've purchased this album more times than any other.  There was my original Second Edition Canadian release in 1980, the above noted original Metal Box edition in 1981, a UK pressing of Second Edition in 1983  (still have that one),  my first CD copy of Second Edition circa 1989,  a CD replica of Metal Box sometime around 2002, the 2006 4 Men With Beards vinyl Metal Box reissue and, finally, the 2009 Virgin 30th anniversary 3 CD Metal Box replica (which I also still have).  That makes 7 different versions.  I couldn't get the expanded edition from 2016, sadly, because I'm poor now and can't afford such things.  At least I was able to hear the bonus material thanks to YouTube.  Anyway, the point is that no other piece of music in my life has demanded my attention and collecting obsessiveness like Metal Box.

Since its release, it has gone on to secure its position in popular music history as one of the most significant and influential albums of all time.  It rehabilitated dance music, allowing it to move into more experimental realms in the 1980s, after "disco" had made the 4x4 beat a cocaine dusted disgrace.  It can credibly be sited as the seed that grew into the bass music culture that spread throughout the 1990s and 2000s via downtempo, drum & bass and dubstep.  It may not have had the sales figures of a Sgt. Pepper, but it was no less revolutionary in terms of the effect it had on people who make music and art.

Where the Sex Pistols had been an attempt, at least for Mr. Rotten, to blast apart the ramparts of "rock 'n' roll", Metal Box showed you what could be built in its place, once you'd cleared away the rubble.  It was the next step beyond the nihilism of punk and actually a positive statement about the nature of creativity, which is why it had the odd effect of making me feel good even when the themes of the songs were so bleak and unsettling.  It made you feel like something was possible, in spite of all the horror.  And it also told you the truth about how fucked up things were.  You felt like it was honest about the world.  There was no fake optimism or plaster over the horrors "feel good" bullshit.  And it concealed a wickedly dark sense of humor, if you knew where to find it (just ask Dick Clark or Tom Snyder). 

In the end, it has proven itself more than capable of "sowing the seed of discontent". 

IF I COULD TURN BACK TIME

If I could go back in time and give my younger self some advice, I'd tell that young boy some things which would change the way he'd live his life.   You see, from the vantage point I have now, I know that the world he's going to live in is far different from the one he thinks is ahead.  Back there, he was thinking about a world based on romantic notions of progress, potential and possibilities.  But what is really around the corner has nothing at all to do with any of those things.

Firstly, I'd tell him that, above all else, money is the most important thing with which he'll ever need to concern himself.  Acquiring it, keeping it and increasing it is the holy trinity he should be focused on to the exclusion of all else.  Money is power and influence and security and control.  Money is a passport to any lifestyle one chooses to live.  Money can buy whatever you need in any circumstance.  Money paves the way and makes all things possible. 

This, of course, means that the very first thing he needs to put aside is any inclination towards the arts.  My God, what a colossal waste of time and effort is contained in that pursuit!  I would regale him with terrifying tales of years spent pouring physical and emotional fuel into creating piles of useless expression never appreciated by a single soul.  I would horrify him with the hopelessness of trying to communicate with a world completely indifferent to every effort.  I would crush his hopes by painting a pallid picture of tossing great pearls before a world of porcine ignorance and swine incapable of appreciation or comprehension.  No, no, no!  First and foremost, forget all about that.  

Instead, I would suggest real-estate as one profitable pursuit.  Property ownership in the right areas is paramount because when you control property, you control people.  But there's also much to be done in the speculation and investment markets.  In fact, a good con can move masses into unleashing great gobs of capitol into your disposal.  The main point to remember here is that one need not be concerned with legalities or ethics in any way.  The acquisition of wealth is its own end and any means to that end is justifiable.  The only consideration is that, if you're going to play outside the rules, be smart about it and don't get caught crossing the lines.  However, if you do find yourself afoul of the law, be assured that money has its privileges and that "greasing" the right palm can go a long way to avoiding issues.  

As for people and relationships, I would counsel to view them as resources and always consider them expendable.  Other humans are merely there for your convenience and should be used unflinchingly and thoroughly and, once exhausted of their value, discarded with as little consideration as one would give a piece of soiled tissue.  Anyone who would be unwise enough to attempt to thwart your objectives or interfere with your plans should be dispatched as quickly, efficiently and mercilessly as possible.  Again, one should endeavor to avoid legal complications, but be cognizant that there are always means by which individuals can be cleanly "eliminated", particularly when the price is right.  

Romance is a trap and should be avoided at all costs.  Romantic entanglements will only ever compromise your standards and dull your judgement.  Indulge your sexual proclivities as freely and frequently as you like, but maintain authority over anyone whom you would involve in such activities and be prepared to dispose of that relationship the instant you detect any attempt to influence your actions or interests.  All such efforts by others are a distraction.

The future is only that time in which you expect to live and anything beyond that span is of no concern.  Therefore, plan only to secure your own comforts for as long as you can reasonably foresee your survival and no more.  What state you leave the world when you die is irrelevant because you won't be around to experience it, so don't worry about it.  It's unlikely that you'll leave any heirs behind anyway, so you don't need to make provisions for them or any other descendants.  

These are the core values I would impart to my younger self in the hopes that he would avoid the wasted life I have lived.  These are the true values of the world he will have to live in.  These are the codes driving the most successful people he will encounter in his life.  Look around and find a single example of "success" in this world which does not rest atop these very principles.  Look no further than the current leader of the free world to find the most perfect expression of these truths in action.    Don't tell me that there's another way of living, a "righteous" way where people don't trample all over each other to secure their success.  I don't see that world anywhere and I don't see any evidence it will ever manifest.  

No, this is what I would tell that boy before he set off on his journey.  This is the roadmap I would place in his hands and this is the future for which I would make sure he was prepared. 

THEY'RE EVIL AND THEY KNOW IT

I am primarily a rationalist in the sense that I tend to defer to a logical, reasonable analysis before considering anything more esoteric.  When it comes to concepts of "good" and "evil", I've tended to consider them relative rather than absolute.  Unlike religious believers, who anthropomorphize these concepts into concrete personifications of "God" and "Satan", I see them as an outcome of actions and events where living entities are either positively or negatively impacted by them.  The measure of this is whether or not the result promotes life and well-being or compromises it.  That which helps me live comfortably and securely is "good".  That which interferes with or threatens to terminate my continued existence is "evil".   Also, I've considered them to exist along a continuum where there is some shading of gray rather than purely black or white dichotomies.  This is the core of my ethical foundation in terms of assessing and evaluating behavior and events occurring in the world around me.

In recent years, however, what I've been witnessing in the world of human endeavors, particularly in the realm of politics, is something which seems to contradict this "relativistic" view.  I say this because what I'm seeing is so completely horrific and dispiriting that I cannot assign it any kind of "gradation" or relativism.  A "generous" interpretation of human motivations often asserts that people doing "bad" things usually don't think of themselves as "evil" and that, in their minds, they are engaged in perfectly justified and ethical behavior.  Nobody really sees themselves as the "villain".  We are all the "hero" in our own story.  But I can't look at some people and see someone behaving according to any kind of social value system, no matter how warped it may appear.

I can't look at someone like Donald Trump and see anything but a parasite motivated by nothing more than a desire to serve himself in a way which disregards the welfare of everyone else, even close allies and family members.  There is no sense of idealism in him beyond satisfying his immediate whim.  I don't believe he cares for or values anyone beyond what he perceives they can do to benefit him at any given moment and I don't believe that it bothers him to put anyone in jeopardy in the process.  I can't conceive of any redeeming quality within him.  He is absolute.  He is evil.  He is not misguided or ignorant of moral principals.  He knows what he's doing within the bounds that he sees his objective, seeks to satisfy it and then moves on to the next.  But there are no larger values involved in this process.  It is no more than self aggrandizement for its own sake within any given moment.  It is self contained and pure, like a shark prowling the ocean waters.

This is a true embodiment of malignancy.   He's like some villain from the old Batman TV show; crudely rendered, consistently contemptible and self actualized in his awareness that he is a criminal and a conman and his objectives are purely self-serving.  And these traits are blatantly obvious, even to the casual observer.  They couldn't be more apparent if he paraded around in a purple suite and pancake makeup.  Yet somehow, there is a significant segment of the population who support him and I cant' figure out what it is that sustains this loyalty.  There is not one trait about him which speaks to honesty, integrity, reliability, intelligence or any other characteristic normally sought in a leader.

The cronies and henchmen he surrounds himself with are also no more than a motley crew of fellow hustlers, thieves and deceivers.  Every one of them has the stink of criminality about them and I've no doubt that, if their closets were ever emptied, the corpses of their corruption would come tipping out  in a cascade.  And there is no self-deception going on there either.  They are all completely aware of their nature, their goals and their methods and the impact they have on others.  

All of this brings me to the inescapable conclusion that there is some form of maliciousness inherent in these people which is more than the product of a misguided or distorted value system.  This is a malevolence which lands squarely and unambiguously in the darkest pit of human psychology and it is not a trait which succumbs to any form of "redemption".  People who manifest within this state of being aren't going to turn around and respond to education or "enlightenment".  They are what they are and they are going to remain that way until the day they die.  The most appropriate psychological term which could be applied to these people is psychopathy. 

When it comes to differences of opinion, I'm a "live and let live" kinda guy.  I'm happy to let others live their lives as long as they're happy to do the same with me.  But these people, those marked by this "darkness", aren't looking for that.  They are actively engaged in an program of direct interference in the lives and livelihoods of others.  They wish to restrict women through regressive legislation, they wish to inhibit select races, creeds and religions and would no doubt resort to genocide were they given the opportunity.  They aren't looking to "get along".  They only seek to "get one over" and to take control. 

This all means that we can't simply treat this as an ideological disagreement.  We aren't debating economic systems or customs of behavior.  We're in a pitched battle for our very lives and it's about time we recognize this and stop playing like we're dealing with an adversary who respects boundaries and responds to reason and rationality.  They don't.  They never will and they'll never give up the power they've stolen without a fight and we have to be prepared to wage war with them.  Otherwise, we're all doomed as they destroy what's left of this planet to satisfy their own short sighted ends.  No election is going to fix this either.  They've corrupted and co-opted all the processes which were supposed to protect us from this kind of criminal.  All those systems are broken.  

In the end, short of waging bloody battles in the streets, what can reasonable people do about this?  Well, the first step is to stop pretending this is "normal" and to acknowledge the evil in our midst.  We have to call it out, name it and stop trying to be "polite" and "respectful", as if this is just a little tiff and a difference of "opinion".  This is a difference of fundamental metaphysical incompatibility.  As much as we don't want to take away someone else's freedom, we have to recognize that it's OUR freedom at stake here and compromise with this enemy isn't possible.  We have to make it clear that we see who they are and what they're doing.  And we have to stop cooperating with them.  We have to stop playing their game.  We have to refuse to let them pretend that what they're doing is "fair play" or moral or justified.  It isn't and it never will be.

This is real evil and it knows what it is.  It's palpable and defined and sitting right there in the seats of power all over this planet.  It must be stopped before it's too late.

THEY BUILT THIS CITY FOR SOMEONE ELSE

I've lived in Vancouver, BC, since October of 1982.  I came here by way of Powell River after leaving my home town of Thunder Bay, ON, in August of 1982.  I remember coming into the downtown on a gray, rainy day, but for me, the city shone like the Emerald City in The Wizard of Oz.  I was 19 years old, I'd just left home and this place seemed like it might have some possibilities for a young man just starting out on his own.  It's been my home ever since then and it has generally felt like home for most of that time, but the last few years have made it feel more like a place being built for someone else and not me.

I've noticed it primarily in the boom of construction which has erupted in the West End and across the city in the last few years.   So many towering luxury high rise apartment buildings are leaping up into the sky, it staggers the mind to think of all that real-estate propagating so quickly.  But I don't know who is going to live in all of these places.  I don't have any relationship with the people who are building these structures nor the people who will live in them.  I only know that I won't be one of them.  I'll never set foot in any of these places and I'll never know anybody who lives in them.  Somehow, I got left out of this new city.  It's not being built for me and it has no interest in me or my welfare, regardless of what I might have to offer. 

You might ask what makes me think this way and, to be honest, I'm not sure how I know this, but I am as sure of it as I am that the world is round (though even that has become debatable again, somehow).  What is certain is that I've been disconnected from the economy which is driving this construction and growth and there does not appear to be any means of interacting with it in such a way which would make it possible for me to even conceive of living a lifestyle which would include inhabiting one of these steel and glass stacks.  Whatever it takes to earn the kind of money that one needs to rent or own one of these homes is completely beyond the scope of my abilities.

I'm not at all certain of how I got to this position.  In fact, I was gainfully and relatively affluently employed for many years, but even then I was somehow not able to work myself into a position where accessing this level was possible.  Even when I was pulling a high five digits for my annual gross income, I was only ever able to indulge little beyond splashing out for a bit of takeout food and a few tech toys here and there.  I never owned a home or a vehicle and never had a family to support.  Yet I didn't even have enough to get my damn teeth fixed, something which now poses a serious health risk to me and also, aesthetically, means I can't present myself in public with any confidence, given that a gap-toothed, dingy yellow smile is nothing less than a stamp of impoverishment.  16 years working "professionally" still left me with no foothold by which I could maintain even a modest lifestyle.  

While I may not be in possession of formal accreditation in any field, I worked professionally in technology, including documentation, testing, design and implementation, long enough to merit those qualifications based on experience alone.   I am in possession of ample natural talents and acquired skills to enable me to perform exceptionally in many different fields and applications.  Yet, none of that bares any weight anymore and, going into application or interview processes, I can sense, intuitively, that I am automatically excluded from consideration the moment I present myself.  There is some factor involved which shuts the door to all avenues of potential for me.  The days when friends and family networked together to help each other secure employment seem to have vanished.  Even with social media, it seems that the process of using personal relationships to remain connected to society have broken down and ceased to function.

In some regard, I suspect my age, being over 50, has played a significant role in this.  My ongoing health issues may factor in as well, though they are neither obvious nor chronic enough to be apparent without actual knowledge of my medical history.  Whatever the case is, I'm certainly the "potato" that's fallen off the truck and there doesn't seem to be any way to get back on.  The city that is re-inventing itself before my eyes most definitely has no role for me to play in it.  This place is now a playground for the wealthy and nothing being built here is manifesting with any intent to create communities or social infrastructure. 

What we have is purely driven by economics.  It's about money and nothing more.  These places are investments, not homes.  They're tools for laundering illicit cash flows.  It's just a means to an end - busy work for the sake of "growth", but without any conscious goal where the lives and well-being of people are in mind.  When I walk around certain areas in the West End, particularly along Coal Harbor, there's a faint sense of emptiness as so many of these properties sit vacant, purchased by people who aren't there and may only show up once in a while, if at all.  These properties are no more than line items in a portfolio of assets.  No dramas will play out within their walls.  No events of lives lived will haunt their interiors.  Only the movements of soulless automatons calculating interest rates will disturb the dust as it settles in these lifeless abodes.  

This flurry of activity flies in the face of the looming ecological and climate crises which lurk at the threshold of the "day after tomorrow".  It's so close to landing on our heads, but the busy bees keep working, oblivious to the futility of their efforts.  I think of the "ghost" cities of China, built for no one.  They were driven by the myopic obsessions of hyper-capitalistic investments with no human condition perceived within their planning.  Money disconnected from benefits other than increase.  

I've lived in my building since 1986, nearly 33 years.  I've somehow managed to maintain my existence here by the skin of my teeth and through sheer force of will.  I dangle on a precipice, only needing the occurrence of a property sale to trigger the "renoviction" process which has consumed so many low income residents in the past few years.  I'm in a prime location for something like that to happen.  I've seen building after building torn down across this city only to be replaced by greater, grander structures with price tags exponentially higher than what was there before.  None of this is meant for so-called "regular" people.  Only those of extreme affluence are welcome here and I don't know them at all.  I don't know who who they are, I don't know what they want, I don't know where they think they're going with all of this.   

It's like aliens have landed and taken over.  They have no interest in our existence.  We are a mere inconvenience to them.  We will be eliminated in time.  So I hang on to what little I have left until I can do no more.