Cagney Beatnik

Cagney Beatnik

Clutching the mic like a long departed lover at last spotted dashing down an alley in shame, he struts forward, slobbering in a near hysteria, every vein in his body pulsing with the guitar screams and drums pounding near his ears sending cascading waves through his brain as the blood moving through his chest pumps in a rhythm keeping time with the music following it like a blind man follows his dog, dashing through the passages of time somewhere long ago in an era long past. His lips come apart and make brief contact with the microphone, kissing it tenderly recognizing the lust that comes with rock and roll and how that factor can send shivers down the stateliest of spines while the guitars roar and the room shakes with your yearning to break from this state of boredom you've been living in and some primitive instinct within your burning heart realizes the Neanderthal beats being sent out, how somewhere in the darkness of time some caveman must have pounded on some stones and realized it sounded good and decided to create this behemoth we call music. Well, child many many years down the road the only tangible piece of your youth you can own will be this beat you hear right now flowing through your mind and taking possession of your nerves like a demon. It seems to command movement, you can't just sit there are you insane? Not yet, but you will be when I'm done. Screaming cries of disgust, lust love and pain we don't know what it could be at the moment. The floor vibrating like a bed shaking with cries of desire or maybe rebellion. Sweat rolling off of you that could be mistaken for tears while the preacher ( singer) delivers his sermon on stage feeling out the waters he's swimming through, trying to find a buoy somewhere along the shoreline that he can cling to and when he finds it you sure as hell know he'll cast it aside and keep on swimming because this is what rock is about baby doll and you better start loving it or lose it because it won't wait for you to take it in the night in some rough exorcism of passion you've been waiting for all your life. The guitarist makes love to his guitar in an ecstatic frenzy just like the Fugs said during those heydays of the 60s when the passion really ran high and the blood was hot, not like the Foreigner song but more like the fury of the damned about ready to enter Hell and not knowing exactly what to expect.  Jah commands you to boogie and shake until you fall onto the ground and disintegrate into a million pieces before eventually draining into eternity never to be seen again. Base pounding out those boogie cries gets down into your throat and come out in a scream unrivaled since Napoleon lost Waterloo as you pogo with your baby running into your neighbors in and out in and out of the fray bouncing like a madman with a touch of speed in his veins loving every minute but not knowing what to do with it so the only thing to do is scream and jump, the most primal of all reactions but also the best. The drums are getting to you and moving your feet involuntarily tapping out those Chuck Berry old timey dances that belonged to your grandparents but have since become your own since history repeats itself inevitably causing the recurrence but the redevelopment of music, love, passion. Bouncing with your soul still intact and heart fulfilled, you drink in the rhythm, the beat, the screams, the cries, the harmonies like a man in the desert who has come across a Denny's. You envy no one in the world as you eat and drink your fill until your stomach expands outside your body and finally in that one last moment of life you turn your mind towards the Musical Gods and give thanks as your stomach explodes in a crashing finale worthy of the Boston Pops and you lay down dead but happy and hope that when you get to Heaven,you hear Purple Haze.