Lincoln Caverns

This door leads to the cave.

Imagine all the things you could be right now if Lincoln Caverns was your mother.

The discovery of both of these caverns was remarkable. The first cavern was discovered in 1931 by road workers dynamiting a hill to build a highway. Pushing a stick of dynamite into a hole drilled in a rock face, they were surprised when the stick fell through the hole. Rather than proceed with caution, they dropped a lit stick of dynamite in and blew the side off a large hillside cavern. The blast revealed a quaint little cave, easily traversed in a half an hour. Opened by the land's owner as "Hi-Way-May" Caverns, the property was soon sold to as Myron Dunleavy, a small time vaudeville, circus and amusement park operator. Dunleavy saw the potential of a roadside attraction that was more than "roadside", it was practically part of the road.

The second cave's 1941 discovery was even darker. Sixteen years old and experiencing the sort of frustration that could not yet be slaked by punk rock and heavy petting, neither of which had yet been invented, teenage caveman Myron Dunleavy Jr., the son of Lincoln Cavern's owner, starts digging into the hills above the original cave. After two solid years of shoveling out a sinkhole, he uncovers the second cavern at the site, naming it "Whispering Rocks". Two years of digging a sinkhole. At age sixteen. And then spending the rest of one's life marketing the hole he had dug into the ground. I heard the rocks whispering "get away while you still can."

Charles Mingus's "All the Things You Could Be by Now if Sigmund Freud's Wife Was Your Mother" shows the opposite end of the burdens of lineage. In his radical reworking of the standard "All The Things That You Are", Mingus propels his jazz combo out to the fringes.

Charles Mingus - All the Things You Could Be by Now if Sigmund Freud's Wife Was Your Mother

Star Wars, Nothing But Star Wars

R2D2 trashcan

My son is finally getting to see Star Wars. As his 6th birthday present. Star Wars, the movie. Uh, Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, as he will always know it? Which is the proper entrance, but is not his entrance into the Star Wars property. Primed by the Star Wars Legos video games and various toys and the school yard misinformation, my child already knows the Death Star explodes. He knows Anakin grows up to be Darth Vader. He sees Luke as a one-handed gimp of a hero. As soon as he hears Lord Vader intone "Luke, I am your Father" it is game over. I understand no one's entrée to the world of Star Wars can be as pure as those of us who were blessed with experiencing the original movie as an pure childhood event, miraculously untarnished by the promotional campaign. I will refer to us as the First Generation. Unlike the clarity we experienced, the new entrant is faced with a tangled web of storyline tangled beyond recognition.

Star is now entered into as a multi-generational, multi-threaded morass of characters and events scattered upon an vague time line. This is the way the Star Wars generation entered other adventures, including Star Trek and Lost in Space. But TV shows are ahistorical. There is simply a creation myth and an endless series of repeated adventures, all ending back in the spaceship. History never occurs, nothing ever really happens. Episodes can be viewed in any order and nothing changes. Star Wars is historic and needs to be viewed in sequence.

The biggest loss in all this mess is the primacy of Han Solo is overshadowed by Anakin/Vader, Obi Wan Kenobi and Yoda, the characters who endure all the episodes. Han Solo is the decisive character in Star Wars. He is the only one who is capable of independent thought and who can choose his own destiny. All those around him are compelled by their character, their upbringing, their temperaments to choose good or evil. Han is conflicted. He values both self preservation and grudgingly the good of all. He has to balance these two impulses, which is the root of the conflict of man and society. He is also a shoot first, ask questions later badass, or at least he was until Lucas has Greedo shoot first in Star Wars.

First Generation Star Wars fans of the male persuasion had to choose: Han or Luke. Cool guy or good boy. Fonzie or Richie. That is the choice that has been taken away from the youth.

Rockhill Trolley Museum, PA

Rio #1875 built by CTC (Companhia de Transportes Coletivos), Rio De Janeiro, Brazil in situ Rockhill, PA

Is it exotic to be ferried through the center of rural Rockhill, Pennsylvania in a lovingly restored 1912 Brazilian open sided trolley car running along a track previously only serving a pig iron factory? Is it displacing to ride said trolley from an old railway station, through backyards, past a factory floor plan, along side a creek, ending at a state highway, a route no trolley would ever take. On a trolley that would never have run there.

Because no one here seems to blink an eye. For all the cultural noise about placing treasures from foreign lands in context, nothing seems to better than good old stupidifyingly unexplained contrast. When someone says historically accurate or local materials, yawn and scratch at the ground with your foot. What would be worse than riding a trolley on its actual route? Where is the charm of the unfamiliar? Where is the electric jolt of the unfamiliar intruding on the tedious realities of the familiar?
So why all the words on the walls, museums? Why all the "didactics" as my professor used to say? Isn't everything a little out of context anyway? The only art in museums that is "in context" would be the art made for museums. If we are looking at the plundered treasure of an ancient civilization from strong off lands, why not just label it "pirate booty" and leave it at that. Those who care will figure out what it once was and the rest will not be puzzled by what it is.


Robert Smithson cunningly pointed out the displacing effect of museums with his mirror and displaced object works in the late 1960's. This is a piece made for a museum, that incorparates the museum, shows the obects in the museum, includes the viewer in the reflection.

Robert Smithson. (American, 1938-1973). Corner Mirror with Coral. 1969. Mirrors and coral

Prisonshake: The Cut-Out Bin

Prisonshake missed their moment in 1988 and god bless them for that. Right at the critical time when they could have dropped an album (which was not the parlance in 1988) to take the mantel of drunk sloppy rock and roll from The Replacements, they stepped on their own dicks by releasing a box set: CD, LP, cassette, and 7" vinyl all packaged in a green foam stadium seat. By the time they released "The Roaring Third" CD in 1990 their best songs were gone and the moment had passed. And now after a ten year hiatus they come back with what? A double CD. Of course? And it is a brilliantly sloppy collection of rock songs. One that would have cemented their place in the record rack had it been released about twenty years ago. But one that sounds even sweeter today, when it stands alone.

The signature song, the coup de grace, is The Cut-Out Bin. Beginning with an answering machine message (though sadly, not left by or for GG Allin) (could anything be more dated than an answering machine message? Sounds of the telegraph tapping?) the song launches into a melodic mid-tempo corker containing all the truth about rock and roll and Prisonshake's place in it and our place in it.

Lyrically, the song breaks into three distinct sections with three powerful messages:

1. [Back in the day/before songs were numbered/and only bikers and sailors had tattoos/I worked all day, selling records to assholes/and huffing boo/and screwing you.] Has the particular sweet science of record store retailing every been so perfectly characterized? this is the view from the other side of the counter, where that apparently seething self-loathing bastard staring at you lurked.This nostalgic turn concludes with the line [Some say rock and roll has died/and at times like this I wish they were right] So goodbye record store and goodbye records. We have turned our back on the mighty transformative project of rock music.
   
2. [When they bring back the Cut-Out Bin/Save a spot for us right behind the Pretty Things] Did Prisonshake actually look into my record collection before writing this line? There they are in the lineup: ...Powertrane, Pretty Things, Prisonshake, Psychedelic Furs, Q65... Its uncanny how well they know their place in the rock order.
3. [No one gets a twilight to their career anymore/No gets to make mediocre record number 4] Depending on how you slice it, this could be Prisonshake's 4th record. Coincidence?

A more seemingly romantic and unwittingly unaware approach to the record rack came from The Kinks in 1996 with their final released song, To The Bone. [In the back of the record rack/ there's an old double pack/12 inches and black with an old crumbled cover but every track is stacked] The song takes a nose dive into being a pleasant romantic diversion after these towering introductory couplettes, and why shouldn't it? The Kinks had been loading up the Cut-Out Bin since 1973. Still it was nice for them to backhandedly acknowledge the dusty end of their output before packing it in.
Play:
Prisonshake - The Cut-Out Bin

The Kinks - To The Bone


Download:
Prisonshake - The Cut-Out Bin
The Kinks - To The Bone