I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts …

 

“The whole world is a sack of shit ripping open. I can’t save it.”
—Charles Bukowski, The Captain Is Out To Lunch And The Sailors Have Taken Over The Ship, 2002, Amazon

These are troubled times. I’m sure this isn’t terribly new information to anyone over 8 years old, just stating facts. We live in a world of institutionalized racism, an obsession with guns that’s borderline fetishistic, roving gangs of domestic thugs, and little in the way of governmental oversight or protection. And that’s just our police departments. Other parts of society are also broken. Our legal system is a shell game controlled by corrupt lawyers and corruptible judges and we have two political parties which are basically corporations being controlled by other corporations. Because of these systemic failures income distribution in America is not dissimilar from your average third world dictatorship.

(World’s worst pep talk, right? Don’t worry, it gets better.)

Into this vacuum of leadership and authority, we’re pretty much left to our own devices. BUT, I will counter this overwhelming sense of pessimism with one kernel of objective truth. Despite the shitshow that is the modern world, music is one of the few things that connects us all and can make us feel like actual human beings (food and sex being the others). So, in the wake of Ferguson, Missouri, the emergence of a terrorist group that beheads journalists, an outbreak of ebola in West Africa, and a simmering volcano in Iceland that could bury us all in ash and soot, I offer X as an anodyne for this evil and uncertainty. No, they won’t make the bad news go away, but they’ll make sure you’re not alone with your bad thoughts.

X – I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts (with annotated lyrics below)
Clip from X: The Unheard Music, 1986
Original song from More Fun In The New World, 1983
Amazon

“This is a song Exene wrote from top to bottom. Billy came up with all the musical flourishes, like the guitar part that opens the song. Billy was great at taking songs and adding interesting melodic hooks to them, and he did that just brilliantly here.”
–John Doe in the More Fun In The New World reissue liner notes

“It’s my favorite song on the record. We considered leaving it off the album, then I asked Ray (Manzarek) if I could fool around with it. He said, ‘OK,’ and I rearranged it and came up with something that worked pretty well. Generally speaking, there was a lot of back and forth about the guitar parts I came up with. DJ had a lot of input and something I’d play something that would make Exene wrinkle her nose, so I’d try something else.”
–Billy Zoom, same source

“Billy could be tough in terms of working up songs. He’d occasionally say, ‘Nah, that doesn’t work,’ when John and Exene brought in new songs, and some songs sat on the shelf for months while we waited to figure out the secret formula to make them work. We had a fairly organic way of developing the songs, and if we couldn’t crack it, we’d just try again at another rehearsal.”
–DJ Bonebrake, same source

I MUST NOT THINK BAD THOUGHTS – ANNOTATED LYRICS

The facts we hate
We’ll never meet walking down the road
Everybody yelling, “Hurry up, hurry up”
But I’m waiting for you, I must go slow

I must not think bad thoughts
What is this world coming to?
Both sides are right, but both sides murder
I give up, why can’t they?

[I love that second couplet. If any lines could be said to represent the tone of this post, it’s them. The dichotomy of being right vs. being a murderer perfectly illustrates the duality of politics: wish fulfillment vs. abject, cold-blooded reality. And I don’t take the “I give up” to mean apathy, but rather pointed frustration and maybe withdrawal in disgust.]

I must not think bad thoughts
I must not think bad thoughts
I must not think bad thoughts

The civil wars and the uncivilized wars
Conflagrations leap out of every poor furnace
The food cooks poorly and everyone goes hungry
From then on it’s dog eat dog, dog eat body, and body eat dog

[Civil war vs. uncivilized war? Ladies and gents, the great George Carlin.]

http://youtu.be/mMHz0-2POlM

I can’t go down there
I can’t understand it
I’m a no good coward and an American too
A North American, that is

And I must not think bad thoughts
And I must not think bad thoughts
And I must not think bad thoughts
I must not think bad thoughts
I must not think bad thoughts

I’m guilty of murder of innocent men
Innocent women, innocent children, thousands of them
My planes, my guns, my money, my soldiers
My blood on my hands, it’s all my fault

[Follow-up to the previous “both sides murder” note. Let’s give credit to John and Exene for acknowledging indirect complicity in the murders and not being hypocrites about it. In my experience, this mirrors the attitude of soldiers who’ve done tours of duty and realize war zones are far more complex than simplistic, gung ho jackoffs think they are. The real world isn’t Red Dawn. And for the liberals who think their hands aren’t bloody, the Obama administration has killed innocents with drones. Both sides murder. Deal with it.]

I must not think bad thoughts
I must not think bad thoughts
I must not think bad thoughts

The facts we hate you’ll never hear us
I hear the radio is finally gonna play new music
You know, “The British Invasion”
But what about the Minutemen, Flesh Eaters, D.O.A.
Big Boys and the Black Flag?

[Shift in focus, no shift in tone. I think this verse is an obvious smackdown of KROQ, LA’s commercial radio station that advertised itself back then as the “Roq Of The ’80s.” Apparently, “Roq” meant softsoap British pop — the “NewRos” of the Second British Invasion — not American rock bands. Don’t believe me, here’s KROQ’s Top 100 songs of 1983, the same year X released More Fun In The New World. Please note X at #89, Men Without Fucking Hats at #2, and a dearth of edgy music on the list. “Institutionalized” by Suicidal Tendencies was seen as a novelty song — “ALL I WANTED WAS A PEPSI!” — don’t let its appearance fool you. How can you not have played something from The Replacements‘ Hootenanny or Meat Puppets II. Even the freakin’ Violent Femmes debut wasn’t added to the KROQ playlist until after it had already gone viral and was now a safe bet. Look, I’m not asking for GG Allin deep cuts, just have some balls. When “Radio Free Europe” is pushing the envelope, science tells us there’s a serious cojones-deficiency.]

Minutemen – I Felt Like A Gringo
Buzz Or Howl Under The Influence Of Heat, 1983
Amazon

Flesh Eaters – Father Of Lies
A Hard Road To Follow, 1983
Amazon

D.O.A. – General Strike
7″ single, 1983
Amazon download

Big Boys – Jump The Fence
Lullabies Help The Brain Grow, 1983
Amazon (Fat Elvis comp), Discogs (original vinyl)
http://youtu.be/CTqalsGEtnI

Black Flag – Depression
Everything Went Black reunion show
Santa Monica Civic Auditorium
June 11, 1983

[Appropriate and timely that this particular track is on YouTube as Henry Rollins screams the chorus, “Depression’s got a hold of me/Depression, I gotta break free/Depression’s got a hold on me/Depression’s gonna kill me.” Following Robin Williams‘ recent suicide, Rollins published this contemptuous, self-righteous screed against Williams’ decision in the LA Weekly. Rollins quickly had his ass handed to him by people with a far more nuanced understanding of suicide and depression, which immediately prompted this seemingly sincere mea culpa. Hey, you beat your head against the wall, sometimes it beats back. Such is life.]

Will the last American band to get played on the radio
Please bring the flag? Please bring the flag?
Glitter, disco, synthesizer, night school
All this noble savage drum, drum, drum

Astronauts going back in time to hang out with the cave people
It’s about time, it’s about space
It’s about some people in the strangest place
Woody Guthrie sang about B E E T S, not B E A T S

[I always thought “Astronauts going back in time to hang out with the cave people” was an allusion to the beginning of 2001: A Space Odyssey (YouTube link). However, many thanks to Adios Lounge reader, Maneki Nekko (see first comment below), for pointing out that the first 3 lines in that verse are actually alluding to the ’60s TV show, It’s About Time. As for the Woody Guthrie reference, it’s from “Pastures Of Plenty.” The actual lines are, “Dig the beets from your ground, cut the grapes from your vine/To set on your table your light sparkling wine.” Word.]

Woody Guthrie – Pastures Of Plenty
The Columbia River Collection, 1941
Amazon

I must not think bad thoughts
I must not think bad thoughts
I must not think bad thoughts

The facts we hate
We’ll never meet walking down the road
Everybody yelling, “Hurry up, hurry up, hurry up”
But I’m waiting for you, I must go slow

I must not think bad thoughts
What is this world coming to?
Both sides are right, but both sides murder
I give up, why can’t they?

I must not think bad thoughts
I must not think bad thoughts
I must not think bad thoughts

X – I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts [Acoustic]
Recorded sometime in 1983

Great acoustic performance, though the only downside — other than the so-so video quality — is Billy is pretty much taken out of the equation. Of course, that you can remove a Billy Zoom and have the song still be affecting is a testament to its inherent genius. Also love Doe’s rant at the end. As a Los Angeleno who loves his homeland, but understands (and is conflicted by) its many flaws, it hits home. Of course, John was just shy of 30 and dealing with industry assholes on a close to daily basis when this piece was filmed. I’m curious if he’d offer a different perspective now that he’s 60 and on the fringes of the music biz.

“I think the best thing about Los Angeles, to be serious, is that it doesn’t have an identity. And everybody hates it and there’s no real social pride about Los Angeles. One of the phoniest, (most) pretentious things that somebody can have is to have pride about a shithole like New York or a shithole like Los Angeles. I mean, it’s just a big, scummy place for people to come and try to do their business, you know? But, I like the fact that Los Angeles is all confused. Nobody really likes Los Angeles. They put up with it, I think. But, it’s good to be in the heart of the beast.
–John Doe

FYI, here’s a YouTube playlist featuring all of the video clips in this post. And here’s my Spotify playlist, slightly modified from the clips here. The Black Flag track is from Damaged, not live, and the acoustic “I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts” is from X’s 1995 Unclogged album.