premonition of another time

Mr. dd and I attended The Devolution of Chuck Statler, Part 2 on Sat night. Chuck is known as the Godfather of music video and he was the keynote speaker at the local film festival.

He grew up with the Devo guys and produced their initial moving promos in super 8 and eventually went on to produce videos for Madness, Elvis Costello, Tiny Tim and others. I enjoyed seeing these blasts from the past but also wondered if it was the best use of my time. I'd rather be looking forward than back these days and this part of history doesn't even really seem like history yet. Hell, we're gonna see Elvis Costello in a few weeks at a music festival we attend each year. I'll be curious to see if he really fixed the gap in his teeth. I don't remember him having one and he certainly did when he first started out. (Again, is this the best expense of my time? Elvis would certainly prefer that I bop along to his catchy pop tunes but this is the stuff that occupies one's mind when they aren't really present.)

There seem to be a lot of former rock and rollers surfacing these days. The former roadie for the Beatles just resigned as the CEO of Apple (the Beatle's Apple), there was a story in esquire on catching product plagiarists and one the investigator was a former attorney for a number of R&R acts. There is certainly a place for R&R in my heart but I think I had rather listen to it and dance to it than look back at the good ole days when sex, drugs and rock-n-roll were a lot more fun and the risks of having too much fun seemed as foreign as the film "Go Ask Alice."