Do You Feel Alright?

Blitz are an acquired taste.  I acquired my taste at the seminal age of sixteen.   As a result, they channel sixteen-year-old euphoria for me at fifty-three.  It doesn’t matter that what they are yelling about isn’t anything I could publicly defend.  I can’t.  “Fight, fight, fight.  Fight, fight, fight.  We fight to live.  We live to fight.  We don’t give a shit, what’s wrong or what’s right.”  I was, at the same time in my life keenly interested in Gandhi’s ahimsa philosophy, borrowed from Tolstoy, borrowed from Thoreau borrowed from the Bhagavad Gita, bestowed unto MLK . . .  But Blitz had that thick, reverberated, indomitable sound.

Blitz were from New Mills, Derbyshire, not far from Manchester.  If you look at the picture, which Wiki provides of the of the Torr Vale Mill, there in the town, one can only imagine that it was decidedly “working class” environment.  The kind of place that held the left’s attention from the days of Fredric Engels, through to Jeremy Corbin.  This, was a working class town.   And, when you weren’t working at the mill, or cursing your fate over pints at the pub, your options were few and far between the life in the mill and pounding drums in a punk band.

It was up in my friend Chuck’s attic room that we listened to Blitz and agreed that it was hard.  Very hard.  The opening, heavily distorted, flanged, reverbed chords of “Do You Feel Alright” immediately transport me back to that hang-out space of thirty-five years ago. Effortlessly important, it still feels urgent.  I am having the best elevator rid of my life with them yelling in my ears this afternoon.  Perhaps I’ll share some Blitz with my little one next time. “Baba:  What does “Oi, Oi, Oi! mean?”

I can recall being seventeen or so.  My friends Dave, Chuck and I had probably gone into the Manhattan for the evening, when I said I was staying at “Chuck’s House.”  And we saw the U.K. Subs whom you, tender reader, may not be familiar with but they were great.  An older band from the Class of 77’ who never lost their edge.  And I stood outside CBGBs with Charlie Harper, the charming, loutish lead singer with the gravelly voice, no doubt smoking a joint, and I asked him about Blitz.  He said he knew them and liked them but they were having trouble now, deciding who they wanted to be.  I don’t think they ever played in the States in during their heyday and I lost interest, not long after.  Alas Wiki suggests that a rebranded version of Blitz did eventually make it to the U.S.  “On 10 February 2007, Miller was struck by a car and died on impact when ‘wandering into the freeway’ after a show in Austin, Texas.”

Friday, 6/14/19