Friday, October 10, 2008

bloggins and messina

ok...so, I must admit,I came up with the title before I had something to fill the box with....I love puns.
but then I was walking the dog and I started thinking about Loggins and Messina...sure, you can have Bailout and Depression(I saw them open for Billy Idol) but i fill my excursion ala canine with thoughts of those purveyors of 70's soft rock....(It's actually kinda fitting "even though we aint got money,I"m so in love with ya honey).  But who were Loggins and Messina?  Jim Messina was actually a surf guitarist,turned to  Buffalo Springfielder to country rock band in Poco.   But Kenny Loggins?  Kenny Loggins.

I guess Kenny Loggins is the guy who played with Jim Messina before he started that solo career known for the top gun soundtrack and the song the gopher dances to in Caddyshack.  I also once heard a story that often times he would start his shows by coming on,doing a flip of some sort and then picked up a guitar and started playing acoustic.  Well, one night,somewhere, he missed the flip and plunged off the stage,breaking his ribs,unable to play the show.  I secretly wish I was in the audience,first off because it just sounds really bizarre,like if Josh Groban ate fire before his easy listening/opera gig and one night immolated himself.
But second of all, I would've loved to have been there because of the possibility of seeing that and then singing Loggins hit Footloose really loudly.

But I suppose Loggins earned his stripes...he deserves to have written "What a Fool believes" and House at Pooh Corner.  The truth of the matter is that now, anybody can be famous.  Loggins earned it by sittin in with Jim Messina,laying down a generation of soft rock that helped young girls cry and gave young boys the chance to nod and smile and lose their virginity.  He made his mark....then again so did the band Bread.....(one time a kid in my english class told me that his great uncle was David Gates,the writer and lead singer for Bread...and I looked at him and said "Does he ever sing 'Baby I"m a want you" to you?".  Bread....eek)but fame these days can go to a bitchy clothing designer,an offkey American Idol contestant or anyone who writes a memoir.
Everybody was raving about Running With Scissors, and I thought "Who is Augusten Burroughs".  An npr guy?  Standup comedian?  Nah.  Augusten Burroughs is just a guy who wrote a memoir.  Yeah,pretty fucked up life at times,but ...we have come to honor the dysfuntional.
So guys with screwed up lives,or fake screwed up lives(Believe nothing,Oprah) become stars, and certain types are nowhere to be found.  Where are guys like Jimmy Durante,Or Don Knotts,weird lookin guys who just had a ton of personality.  They exist on regional stage,but you aint gonna see them on the screen.  No,everybody talks about it to the point of orgasm when some pretty actor goes off on a limb,Brad Pitt in Burn before Reading,Tom Cruise in tropic thunder....but what about having real weird guys...I mean come on,that scene in Borat with the asses in the faces was so much funnier because it was real.  If it had been Zac Efron
in a fat suit?

So in conclusion,Kenny Loggins...

What?
Where is this blog going to end up,and who cares.  If this was 30 years ago,I would've journeymanned my wares through the million coffee houses,reading my opus, TikiBar of the Spleen...until some great nibble occured...it was called paying my dues.   Now,because of instant gratification,I don't need to pay dues.  I just have to pay my internet bill.  Who knows, I keep writing and I may become the next Augusten Burroughs...or the 2008 equivalent of David Gates.  "I found your laptop,underneath a tree,"

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