I have a very old fashioned view of rock and roll. Once upon a time it was widely believed that rock and roll could actually change the world; a gloriously Quixotic idea that somehow the rhythms, chords and harmonies produced by hirsute young men with guitars could positively effect the collective consciousness of our society.These days most people think that this idea is nonsense, and the concept of good vibes spread by uplifting music is about as popular as a belief in God, or membership of the Flat Earth Society.
Well, I am NOT most people. And neither, I suspect, is Michael Des Barres. If I had ever wavered from my belief that rock and roll etches a series of positive talismans upon the psychogeography of our combined psyche (and I am not gonna admit that one way or the other) the reception that Michael's latest album - the mighty Carnaby Street has received, proves beyond all doubt that good vibes are NOT a thing of the past.
Michael is a shamanic chef, who has brewed up a highly potent and magickal brew from only the finest ingredients. And the most amazing thing is that fifty years after a generation of middle and upper class white men discovered that the music of lower class black men from a couple of generations before them had a potency, and yes a magick, that was beyond anything that they had experienced, Michael Des Barres has created something remarkably fresh and vibrant from those same twelve bars, and the same four chords, and from the same old instruments. And even more extraordinary, a whole new generation is being turned on to it.
And Michael's peers are also being swept along by the cleansing new tide. There are even whispers suggesting that he has been nominated for no less than THREE Grammys. Gene Simmons, Bruce Springsteen, Steve Tyler and Miami Steve Van Zandt are fans. You should be too.
“We want to plant a Garden of Eden with apricots and cherries, where there will be guitars instead of guns and the sun will be our nuclear bomb.” Wally Hope, 1974
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