What are they hiding?
May. 10th, 2004 06:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gordonzolaOk, Sir Ivan has me baffled.
I went to my parents for Mother’s Day and found a four-remix CD of his techno-reprise of "San Francisco", the old Scott Mackenzie song. You know, the one that goes, "If you are going to San Fran-cisco / Be sure and wear some flowers in your hair." Ok, I realize that most of you probably know neither song. Bear with me.
Back before our candy raver radio station (The Party) turned into a 24-7 Tupac station, which then turned to second-run pop hip hop station, The Party played the techno version of "San Francisco almost every day. I always had a mocking dislike for the original even though, and I swear I’m not lying this time, it was playing on the radio as I got in the car to leave upstate NY for good and move back home in 1989. That’s the kind of thing that’s supposed to give you a soft spot for a pop song. It didn’t.
I think it’s the "You’ll be sure and meet / some gentle people there" line. A crucial formative experience for me were the 1984 Democratic Convention protests that were dubbed "The Summer of Hate". The Afflicted, a local punk band, even wrote a song about it. Kinda. It ended with the lyrics, "Summer of Hate / Ain’t it great? / Rock in the new fascist state!" Anyways, the original line was always too embarrassingly sappy for me not to cringe when I hear it.
The real question however, is what the hell was it doing at my parent’s house? My parents were not hippies and they certainly don’t listen to techno. I’m the only candy raver in the family. The CD was unopened. I unwrapped it and put it on. My Mom’s going a little deaf so just smiled and pretended to be mildly disapproving. My dad said, "What the hell is that noise?" It was like I was in high school again.
Neither of them would admit knowing anything about it at first but my mom finally said she thought it came in the mail one day. I was trying to figure out what they were hiding. Had they made a major lifestyle change? Where they doing x on the weekends and making younger "friends"? I found it hard to believe that some record label was mass mailing techno CDs at random to the suburbs of the San Francisco Bay Area.
Hmmmm. It was a cut out though. And the more I looked at the sleeve the weirder it was. I didn’t realize Sir Ivan was so old. He looks like he could have been on the younger side of the original hippies way back when. Maybe he was just trying to find his demographic.
Then I read the liner notes and found that his version is "dedicated to the memory of the 1.5 million Jewish children under the age of 12 that were murdered by the Nazis and all victims of hate crimes – with the hope that there will one day be peace in the Middle East and everywhere else in the world". Well, that seems rather random for a song about wearing flowers in one’s hair at Golden Gate park.
So I found his website and some promo materials . It turns out that Sir Ivan is the son of a Auschwitz survivor and lost "59 relatives" to the Holocaust. He also performs under the superhero alias "Peaceman" and considers himself a philanthropist. So maybe he really was just sending his message out with a request for donations. It would be like my mom to recycle the cover letter but be unable to throw out the CD which would sit, never touched again, until one of her sons found it and began mocking her.
I can’t believe I pretty much accused her of lying on Mother’s Day. I’m a bad son.
Oh, btw you can get your free copy from the first website linked above. The song still sucks though.
I went to my parents for Mother’s Day and found a four-remix CD of his techno-reprise of "San Francisco", the old Scott Mackenzie song. You know, the one that goes, "If you are going to San Fran-cisco / Be sure and wear some flowers in your hair." Ok, I realize that most of you probably know neither song. Bear with me.
Back before our candy raver radio station (The Party) turned into a 24-7 Tupac station, which then turned to second-run pop hip hop station, The Party played the techno version of "San Francisco almost every day. I always had a mocking dislike for the original even though, and I swear I’m not lying this time, it was playing on the radio as I got in the car to leave upstate NY for good and move back home in 1989. That’s the kind of thing that’s supposed to give you a soft spot for a pop song. It didn’t.
I think it’s the "You’ll be sure and meet / some gentle people there" line. A crucial formative experience for me were the 1984 Democratic Convention protests that were dubbed "The Summer of Hate". The Afflicted, a local punk band, even wrote a song about it. Kinda. It ended with the lyrics, "Summer of Hate / Ain’t it great? / Rock in the new fascist state!" Anyways, the original line was always too embarrassingly sappy for me not to cringe when I hear it.
The real question however, is what the hell was it doing at my parent’s house? My parents were not hippies and they certainly don’t listen to techno. I’m the only candy raver in the family. The CD was unopened. I unwrapped it and put it on. My Mom’s going a little deaf so just smiled and pretended to be mildly disapproving. My dad said, "What the hell is that noise?" It was like I was in high school again.
Neither of them would admit knowing anything about it at first but my mom finally said she thought it came in the mail one day. I was trying to figure out what they were hiding. Had they made a major lifestyle change? Where they doing x on the weekends and making younger "friends"? I found it hard to believe that some record label was mass mailing techno CDs at random to the suburbs of the San Francisco Bay Area.
Hmmmm. It was a cut out though. And the more I looked at the sleeve the weirder it was. I didn’t realize Sir Ivan was so old. He looks like he could have been on the younger side of the original hippies way back when. Maybe he was just trying to find his demographic.
Then I read the liner notes and found that his version is "dedicated to the memory of the 1.5 million Jewish children under the age of 12 that were murdered by the Nazis and all victims of hate crimes – with the hope that there will one day be peace in the Middle East and everywhere else in the world". Well, that seems rather random for a song about wearing flowers in one’s hair at Golden Gate park.
So I found his website and some promo materials . It turns out that Sir Ivan is the son of a Auschwitz survivor and lost "59 relatives" to the Holocaust. He also performs under the superhero alias "Peaceman" and considers himself a philanthropist. So maybe he really was just sending his message out with a request for donations. It would be like my mom to recycle the cover letter but be unable to throw out the CD which would sit, never touched again, until one of her sons found it and began mocking her.
I can’t believe I pretty much accused her of lying on Mother’s Day. I’m a bad son.
Oh, btw you can get your free copy from the first website linked above. The song still sucks though.
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no subject
Date: 2004-05-10 08:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-11 11:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-11 11:27 am (UTC)Candy kids wear/wore big fuzzy pants, brightly colored shit like they were still 5 years old. They also tended to be the most likely to be fucked up on some substance or another. I would say, they come closest to being hippies. Now I have to go looking for pictures to illustrate this.
You, A Candy Raver?!?
Date: 2004-05-10 08:30 am (UTC)Re: You, A Candy Raver?!?
Date: 2004-05-10 12:55 pm (UTC)I agree about the anthem thing. I was happy to see Starship get "worst song of all time" for "We built this city" cuz that was truly horrid. as is that fucking Journey song. Scott MacKenzie is preferablt to all of those.
Re: You, A Candy Raver?!?
Date: 2004-05-10 01:54 pm (UTC)Re: You, A Candy Raver?!?
Date: 2004-05-11 11:18 am (UTC)Re: You, A Candy Raver?!?
Date: 2004-05-11 01:27 pm (UTC)Re: You, A Candy Raver?!?
Date: 2004-05-11 03:35 pm (UTC)Musical Challenge
Date: 2004-05-11 04:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-10 09:54 am (UTC)"If you're going to San Francisco
You're gonna meet some gentle people there"
no subject
Date: 2004-05-11 11:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-10 11:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-11 11:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-10 11:24 am (UTC)I scratched my head. But, you know, you never really know your parents. Unlike you, who they had to wipe the shit off of and such, you've only known them a certain number of years and only in a certain way. They're full of surprises from their past and in the time since you've been around them most of the time.
no subject
Date: 2004-05-10 02:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-10 12:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-10 01:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-11 11:20 am (UTC)"summer of hate"
Date: 2004-05-10 02:14 pm (UTC)Re: "summer of hate"
Date: 2004-05-11 11:21 am (UTC)Re: "summer of hate"
Date: 2004-05-11 12:43 pm (UTC)the party lives on
Date: 2004-05-10 02:44 pm (UTC)and i think you are less candy and more plur, but maybe you have an arsenal of pacifiers and candy jewelry hidden in your room somewhere, huh.
Re: the party lives on
Date: 2004-05-10 02:54 pm (UTC)I don't really understand candy raver for that matter. I mean, beyond the accoutrement of course. I just translate it at "poseur" or "summer punk".
it's summer and the faux hawks are growing...
Date: 2004-05-10 03:03 pm (UTC)Love
Unity
Respect
it's the code of the rave, boy. where have you been?
yeah, i have seen so much plur in my days what with being felt up by boys in raves, seeing my girls harassed in clubs and hearing about people being drugged & robbed and dj's having their shit stolen.
at least candy ravers don't front to have substance, unless it's mind altering, of course.