onionbagblog

Few sights and sounds least prepare you for the working day than an aqua aerobics session being splashed out to the soundtrack of some crappy Rock the Casbah RAVE lite bollocks.

So yeah - Friday morning and the goggles were given the spit ‘n’ polish just as dear old Uncle Joe had his Marlboro voice tweaked through a vocoder and a tinny HI-NRG PA system.

Like punk never happened, Comrades.

It was quite comical, and actually delayed my crawling through the motions.

Phallic foam sticks were involved. Uncle Joe *still* couldn’t hit the high notes, vocoder et al. I did release a slight inner squeal as some 65 plus aqua aerobic lady wedged the phallic foam stick firmly between her legs.

I hope the showers are working.

It’s a mighty long way down rock ’n’ roll from pop ‘n’ politics to aqua aerobics. But the commercialisation of SOCIAL ACTION is nothing new.

Those nice West London boys weren’t exactly shy about cashing in on the chaos back in the day. They’re still doing it now, albeit in what was probably my cultural highlight of 2013.

It’s pointless trying to condense the failures of the DIY ethos into a hit and miss blog post, inconveniently pitched so as to hang off the wibbly wobbly bits of the 65 plus aqua aerobic crowd.

Instead I went about my daily dip with my emotions shifting from the comical to deep sociological thought - A Level standard at least.

That’s the beauty of swimming; it sends your mind off into an unexplored direction that you simply can’t re-create back at base in a half-arsed blog post.

The message of FUCK EM and DIY does still exists. It’s just not suited to 65 plus aqua aerobics.

The modern interweb will eat itself, which is why my musical knowledge got wiped out sometime around 2000, just as the DIY ethos took me into exploring other directions.

I’m sure you can still find musicians by-passing THE MAN, and probably with even greater autonomy than was possible back in the day. It’s even come full circle with yer man from down the road continuing to work within his own glorious DIY ethos.

But is that enough?

I mean *really* enough?

It’s great that the modern interweb is the enabler for putting out your message, but is there ever an outcome other than bypassing big business?

I can connect with many similar voices online in a tenth of the time it took to complete a weekly Saturday afternoon fanzine search back in the early ’80s.

Post-swim and my RSS feed back at base pinged me the latest podcast from the Circled A; my list of Novara podcasts is piling up as I find other inspiring bedroom broadcasts that offer something fresh. Uncle Wolfie even had the good grace to share his Transpontine spring look as we prepare for the great Champion Hill Final Putsch over the coming weeks.

Seek and you will find.

It’s all about the connections and what you - and others - can take away from them.

I do hope that the phallic foam ladies took some shared connections away from their side of the pool early on Friday morning. They probably showered their short and curlies, and then slipped into some Vivienne Westwood baby boomer bondage.

Who knows - Rock the Casbah RAVE lite might have even been an incredibly diluted approach to convert the 65 plus crowd to the message that Punk’s Not Dead (although it didn’t seem to have much impact in the Racist Spa during my last visit.)

LIKE PUNK NEVER HAPPENED.