By: Ben
Johnson
Leaving the house always seems like such a
hassle. Like you leave the house, you go do a thing, and then you come back to
your house. Why not cut out the middle man and just stay home? I like it there.
It’s my home. It has my girlfriend and my dog in it. It has a TV and records
and movies and books and comfortable places to sit. It does not have any drunk
people in Red Hot Chili Peppers t-shirts breathing near my face, or teenagers
talking loudly and stupidly to each other within various microsecond-long social
postures. You know, home. Light switches. Hand soap. Throw pillows. It’s nice.
But last night I went out to see live music
because I can’t only just be at home all the time until I die. Being at home
too much makes home worse. Being at home makes it dirty, and then you have to
clean it. Or you don’t clean it and then you don’t clean it, and then you
really don’t clean it, and then somebody comes over and you go “shit” and you
spend an entire day of your life cleaning your home just so somebody and their
cousin can come and be awkwardly bored there because it is not their home. “Yeah,”
you’ll say to this person and their cousin, “that’s a thing I put on my wall
because I like it,” and you’ll see, through this person’s cousin’s glazed eyes,
how low your home, which you love so much, rates on the general who cares meter.
I went to see the band Acid Mothers Temple
play music. At a rock club. In Chicago. In a busy neighborhood people go to often when they’re not at home. It was an okay experience.
Acid Mothers Temple is a psychedelic rock
band from Japan. They have been around for a long time. They know what they’re
doing. They know how to be a good psychedelic rock band. If you like
psychedelic rock bands, you should definitely go see Acid Mothers Temple. That
would be a good experience for you. If sometimes you see a psychedelic rock
band and you think “I don’t quite trust these guys to take me on a good psychedelic rock journey
without sometimes getting all dumb and doing stuff I don’t like,” which is a
constant danger with a psychedelic rock band, you don’t need to worry with Acid
Mothers Temple. They’ll take care of you. You’ll be in good hands.
I was not on drugs last night. I am not on
drugs anymore ever. I mostly don’t know how to get them, and I understand they
cost money and you pay that money and then go “whoa, I’m on drugs” and
everything’s weird, and then later you are not on drugs anymore and everything
is painfully not weird and then also you have less money by a factor of
whatever amount you just spent on drugs. I used to be on drugs a lot more
often, especially alcohol, and I hated when things got not weird again so much
that it made me into an asshole. Like, "How are things? Not weird enough for my specific liking? I HATE THINGS. (glug glug, act like an asshole)" So I don’t do alcohol anymore,
and then because of that I don’t really want to do other drugs anymore either. What
am I gonna do, be on drugs? With, like, other people around? Ummm, no thanks. I don't trust myself not to be a complete asshole while sober, I'm not gonna do drugs just to give myself an extra degree of difficulty.
But if you like to be on drugs and then
experience a psychedelic rock band, or if you don’t like to be on drugs but for
some reason also really really like psychedelic rock bands anyway, by all means
you should already be a huge fan of Acid Mothers Temple. They do a real good
job of going from thing to thing competently and slowly and without being too embarrassing
about it. Like at one point a Japanese flute came out, but it wasn’t like “stop
everything, guys, because here’s this flute thing we’re doing now that we want
you to be extra impressed by” so much as “huh? What’s THAT noise? Oh, a flute.
Okay, I guess it’s flute time!” And because flute time is a result of the
competence and confidence of an experienced psychedelic rock band such as Acid
Mothers Temple and not a bunch of damn kids who think flute time is some kind
of an anarchistic political statement they’re making, you’re like “Okay, these
guys have earned flute time. I am enjoying flute time. Flute time is good right now.” Then during good right now flute time, you think mind-expanding things like “maybe Pharaoh Sanders isn’t
completely intolerable like I thought he was when I was 26.”
Guess what never happens at my house, no
matter what? Flute time. And if flute time somehow did happen at my house, it
would NOT be good. It would be upsetting. For at least one of the people living
at my house, and probably exactly one dog, any plausible flute time in the home
scenario would be like, “oh man, it’s FLUTE TIME? That SUCKS.” So hey, I left
the house and I experienced a good version of flute time thanks to Acid Mothers
Temple, and I learned that good flute time is one of those things that only happens
outside. I don’t think I really need flute time to happen all that often and I’m not
sure what I’m supposed to do with this new flute time information, but there we
go.
