With their new album, Who Sold My Generation, out next week (29 January) we invited Seattle trio Night Beats to accompany its release with a guest column. A little different to the usual reply, frontman Danny Lee Blackwell has responded with an act of thought provocation, a near prose poem contemplating “The Barren Field of Creativity”. Of course, we’d expect nothing less from one of the best psych bands around…
Who Sold My Generation. The importance is that this is not a question, nor is it a statement. To pose a thought, to convince the unwilling to think for themselves is the goal. I remember hearing Ray Charles‘s Lonely Avenue, penned by Doc Pomus, and feeling what he felt. I had the motivation, all of a sudden, to be cool with my own shadows. To be clear, we have the chance to feel how we want to feel, and live how we want to live, nothing can spearhead our own gut.
Inspiration from a foul source is more detrimental to the soul then any mean bullet. To all the power children of the world, burn brighter. The cost of living, literally speaking cannot be determined by a power hungry master of war. The blue veiled official can not and will not dictate the course of our lives. The animal in us cannot be detained and robbed of what truly makes us human. The course of our generation will not be hijacked by the blind,
When you become a piece of a whole, it becomes necessary to adapt and form. This confusion that we live in lets us be miles away from everything. The light we shine on our own self tell us who we look up to, for instance: where we came from, who we will become. What is telling us where to go. The generation of the old, the new, the free… holds us with no chains. The simple message is that there is no sign to point us home.
If a clown can rise to the top on the circus tent, balancing on the bodies of the unwilling, we can hear a record that makes us believe in anything. There is beauty in finding the gleam in a puddle.
The current state of the living lends one to believe in the not. Winter breathes cool. Spring provides the last of the constitution. Ragtime poetry leaves us hoping for the rain. The barren field of creativity leaves us sore and bruised. There is something left to be desired. The winter leaves us fighting, and the weak find sources for their own creation.
Dead static on the radio leaves the ears popped. The message of the soul-less soundtrack keep us stagnant. The spirit can be diluted from the message of the radio, the dead-eyed news anchor can enchant those who don’t look past their screen. The glossy eyed message of the news feed slowly decays the soul in its truest form.
Danny Lee Blackwell@thenightbeats
For more, including details of their UK tour which kicks off at Leeds Headrow House on 22 January, head to Facebook.com/thenightbeats.u.s
