I got a tip from China that they stole old Buddha's gong so I took an ocean liner down to old Hong Kong

or is playing stereotypes as kitsch a good thing - defusing their explosiveness by making them ridiculous, the whole lenny bruce thing.

or is it all context - coming from dirty junky sexfreaks scorned by polite society like the NYC Dolls or the doo wop groups that did the originals, maybe it was clear that the joke was really on Squaresville, not the Asians or the Africans mocked in the songs.

maybe it is context, cause rob't crumb does some similar stuff in comics and it doesn't offend me.

This thread is like a blog. wicked.

I've been thinking some more about this, you'll be glad to know. I'm wondering now if this kind of stuff fits into the casual, invisible racism that Bangs wrote about in "The White Noise Supremacists".

Also thinking of this stuff as a milder version of '76 punks' swastikas - an "I know that you know that I know" signifier, a way of seperating those who "get it" from those who don't. Maybe this stuff was a precursor to the current hip attitude toward stereotypes exemplified in South Park or Vice Magazine - that racism is so inherently ridiculous and laughable that playing with stereotypes is only a way to ferret out the squares who still think of them as a threat. But maybe that explanation lets people off the hook a bit easily, ignoring the actual power and attraction of those stereotypes. Also does this kind of stuff really neutralize stereotypes or does it just perpetuate them?

Bitchy junkie queen William Burroughs said rock & roll was "the sound of white boys failing to play the music of black men". As flawed absolutes go, that works well enough for the Animals and Pussy Galore, but I don't know where that leaves Eddie Hazel or Little Richard.

But if the obvious black-white dichotomy in Wm. S's aphorism is hackneyed, the verb is still interesting. Maybe the best rock n roll is the sound of failure: not just white boys failing to play black men's music but straights failing to play gay music, squares failing to play hip music, chicks failing to play dick music, musicians failing to play music.

not just (1)white boys failing to play black men's music but (2) straights failing to play gay music, (3)squares failing to play hip music, (4)chicks failing to play dick music, (5)musicians failing to play music.

1) The Rolling Stones et al 2) The New York Dolls 3) The Beach Boys 4) The Runaways 6) Sun Ra

by failing I mean arriving in a different destination than the one expected by the chosen route, I suppose. getting lost.

Meanwhile back in the jungle...

What was going on in those doo wop songs like "Stranded in The Jungle" (The Cadets), "Rockin In The Jungle" (The Eternals), "Shimmy Shimmy Ko Ko Bop" (Little Anthony & The Imperials)? They're usually told from the perspective of some regular joe who mysteriously finds himself in an exotic locale (like Little Anthony "sitting in a native hut all alone and blue, sitting in a native hut wondering what to do") where they have to escape from bloodthirsty cannibals. Is this African Americans internalizing America's image of Africa (or maybe just Lieber & Stoller & other white songwriters' image of African American's image of Africa?) or is it all parodying/celebrating 50's society's racist take on rock n roll as primitive "jungle music".

and Screamin Jay, who dressed up like Mississippi's nitemare of an African right down to the bone through the nose and called an album "Black Music for White People" - what was he saying about race & America? or New York Jews The Dictators' ("Master Race Rock", if the name weren't enough) & The Ramones' "I'm a Nazi Shotsy and I fight for the fatherland" lyrics? Is becoming the stereotype or the enemy the ultimate defense or is it Helsinki Syndrome (or whatever it is when kidnapped people identify with their captors, Patty Hearst- style)?

I'm thinking now that that Screamin' Jay and The Dictators' schtick was about owning the stereotype/enemy thereby making it powerless to the artist, if not the audience.

Hi, Fritz.

Hey!

Stockholm syndrome (when kidnapped people identify with their captors, Patty Hearst-style).