"Fegs have the aesthetic sense of Deadheads, the wacky surrealism of Promise Keepers, the musical savoir faire of Trekkies, the je ne sais quoi of Spice Girls and the jutting chins of Metallers. They also have a pair of old brown railway shoes and an abandoned brain (which may come in handy in some bizarre, as yet undiscovered, set of circumstances)." So there you go, sounds attractive doesn't it!( the abandoned brain is particularly useful - I'm wearing one in the photo above, nifty is'nt it ?) Don't
delay, sign up today , go here
to register , you'll not regret it , or by the time you DO regret
it , it will be too late.... you will be in our clutches. Heh, heh, heh....
Now, on to Fegdom. Nick said he thought of everyone on the list as fegs.That makes sense insofar as the list is a community, and those on it are well-informed (from sharing feginfo) and dedicated (just to read all this bs every day ;). But to me, being a feg means something more, and also something more than being a "fan". I think fegs -- serious RH fans -- are a breed apart (and I know you think so too, Nick, from your fegphotomanifesto.) Having met more listmembers than perhaps anyone else, I canattest to the truth of the axiom "fegs are the best." The Grateful Dead had their followers, those not content to just listen to the CD's. That may be b/c the Dead were a live phenomenon. RH is a live pheom as well,but more than that, he is intelligent, mysterious, multitalented, a true renaissance man in a time that (IMO) really needs a renaissance. I'm all for maintaining critical distance, but why dwell on the negative? I guess what I'm trying to say (you're still reading this? geez) is, if you don't want to lump yourself in with us that's fine by me. But don't disparage fegs or fegdom. Don't poke fun at someone who drives thousands of miles to get to an RH gig or fegathering or taping party. Don't ask someone "why?" who has bought all RH's output over and over on variousformats and reissues. It's a feg thing. You may not understand.
Mike Runion chimed in.... Subject: Re: FanFeg
Bayard wrote all that feggy stuff, to which I say...
Wonderful rant, Bayard. I think you summed it all up perfectly.
Here's my far-too personal take...bear with me. I don't think Robyn is the best musician in the world (whatever that means). I don't think he's produced that many stupendous albums. His live shows are occasionally 'samey'. His stories do sometimes get tiring and old. Prior to November 1996 I've never driven more than a hour to see any concert, certainly not 9 hours to Atlanta, GA. Why did I suddenly do this? I don't know. But...inexplicably Robyn sits comfortably near the top of my personal musical pantheon. I enjoy and savor every bit of art that cones out of him, no matter how crappy at times. I can't get enough of his live tapes, even though I may only listen to some of them once. And despite how crazy my wife and many of my friends think I am (except for my Deadhead/Phish loving pal Troy!), I can very well imagine driving even further for a show...or spending a load of cash to fly to some godforsaken dust-bowl town for the worldwide feg gathering, the one where Robyn's gonna play in the park to us all and we're all gonna take over the local bar and get trashed til dawn...when is the date for that again?). Robyn truly is a sort of rennaissance man, someone completely separated from the odd musical times we find ourselves in at the moment. Maybe it's not even Rock & Roll, maybe it's not even Alternative. That's what makes it so great. This list is a wonderful thing, and fegs in general are indeed the best. A rabid fan? I'm not so sure. A foaming-at-the-mouth-and-growling feg? Most definitely. Mike.
What is a feg? It's a doorway leading into the night. A silent touch on a frozen window
pane. It's a policeman working in an empty house...
SOMEWHERE inside a glowing kernel of peace is an irritant- an inflamed seed that messes up the organism. we are best seen as conductors,through which solids, air, and liquids flow constantly, matched by a whorl of loosely related thoughts. if i am a prophet of chaos, then This is truly my age; but perhaps i am a prophet of order, recoiling in disgust from the uncontrollable force of life. inside and out. this albumdoes not deal with the conventional problems of so-called 'real'life: relationships, injustice, politics, and central heating systems, about which it's notoriously hard to talk because orthodox lines of cliche have been devised for and against everything. in the short span of a song- let alone a newspaper- it is easy to descend to slogans and dogma: thatcher is bad, vegetables are good, show business is indifferent. everybody who wants to know that knows it already. the dinosaurs graze in the last warm valley, avoiding the icy winds. to go into 'issues' at the length they merit requires the depth- and double-talk- of a politician. i'm concentrating instead on the organic. all of us exist in a swarming, pulsating world, driven mostly by an unconscious that we ignore and misunderstand. within the framework of 'civilization' we remain as savage as possible. against the dense traffic of modern life, we fortify our animal selves with video violence, imaginary sex, and music: screw you, mate- here i go! one side, mother____er! give it to me, baby, as often and as beautifully as possible- eat lead, infidel scum. mostly we contain ouselves. sexual crimes, and private murders are still news (legalized murders, though, such as executions, wars and the systematic deprivation of the helpless, seldom make the headlines). but our inflamed and disoriented psyches smoulder on beneath the wet leaves of habit. insanity is big business. and vice versa. religion isn't dead either. the antichrist will have access to computers, television, radio, and compact disk. if he walks among us already, the chances are that he has a walkman. i just hope it's not christ himself, disillusioned after two thousand years in a cosmic sitting room full of magazines and cheeseplants, turned malignant and rotting in despair at the way his message has been perverted. my contention is, however- and it's a bloody obvious one- that beneath our civilized glazing, we are all deviants, all alone, and all peculiar. this flies in the face of mass marketing, but i'm sticking with it. so loosen your spine, bury your television, and welcome to a globe of frogs... robyn hitchcock november
1987
|
