Part One

'Jennie said when she was just five years old/ There was nothing happening at all/ Every time she puts on a radio/ There was nothing going down at all/ Then one fine morning she puts on a New York station/ She couldn't believe what she heard at all/ She started shaking to that fine fine music/ Oh her life was saved by rock and roll.'

'Rock 'n Roll', the Velvet Underground, words by Lou Reed

 

You can just imagine it. Late '50s small town USA. Nothing happening at all. Nothing. Then the radio, the music. Jennie's life saved. Literally.

It's not just Jennie whose life was saved by rock and roll. Reed himself said the song was about his own life. In fact, it's about an entire generation. People like me. Born in 1953, one of my main aims as a small kid was to escape the 1950s. It was convention, a safe life, inside a little box of experiences, nine-to-five. You knew that you had to get out; and music was a big part of the way forward.

And the radio, the radio. It was like our childhood weapon. Some years later, the so-called pirate stations started up. Typically located literally on boats moored just off the coast of southern England, they would play the new sounds, the music of the edge, which BBC and the likes would not touch. You would lie in bed when the parents thought you'd gone to sleep, portable radio under the eiderdown (this was way before duvets made an entrance and brought an end to constantly itchy nostrils due to feather allergies). Radio Caroline, or just as good, Radio Luxembourg, beamed in from somewhere far away, beyond the further reaches of the North Sea. 

The song 'Rock 'n Roll' is a paean to joy. It's funny how it takes the dark entities of rock music to conjure up something that is so properly joyful. Misery Chops Reed: who'd have guessed. Jim Morrison was another one. Famed as an emissary of darkness, the lizard king himself, he came up with 'L.A. Woman' for example. You need to know the dark before you can know the real delight. Yin and yang, blah blah blah.

It was on the Velvet Underground album 'Loaded' that Rock 'n Roll first appeared. The best version, in my view, is a live solo performance by Lou Reed a few years later. You can find it on 'Rock 'n Roll Animal' (see link below). Lou played with a band of magical and marvellous musicians in these concerts, and they produce unique melodic, powerful, electric songs. That Lou Reed was able to pull it off, being in the middle of his 'is he going to die before the end of the week?' period, is another near miracle.

 

Part Two

Fast forward a decade or more from Jennie's epiphany, a year or two from the Velvets. Amongst the galaxy of stars riding on the crest of an unprecedented wave of music for the youthful masses was a rock band called the Eagles.

I never was a fan. I found nothing interesting in their version of rock - soft rock, it was sometimes called at the time. I believed that I had seen the Eagles perform once, at Reading Festival 1973, but scouring the archives online I find that I am most likely mistaken. That kind-of sums up the Eagles for me: nondescript, forgettable, not worth taking note of in any way.

Having said that, I discovered some fantastic images of the Festival, which I link to here. 'Coincidentally' it is fifty years almost to the day since I attended that festival; so I allow myself a little digression:

Reading was something of a commercial and mainstream affair compared to the smaller free festivals that were around at the time. It was primarily a booze-and-beer occasion, which marked it out from the psychedelic-fuelled free festivals I attended earlier in the summer - and not in a good way. The atmosphere was nothing to write home about. Nevertheless, the pictures and written memories are vivid and evocative....

https://www.ukrockfestivals.com/reading-73.html

 

To return to the Eagles. When it comes to the unremarkable quality of their output, there is one great exception to the rule. 'Hotel California' is a fine song. Steeped in mystery, and with a unique and immediately recognizable melody, it stands out from the crowd; from all crowds.

What's it about? It's the kind of question to preoccupy the minds of many rock afficionados through the years.

"You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave." One of the most famous and enigmatic lines in the song. In 'Exit the Cave', Howdie Mickoski quotes these words and states: 'It is all about the reincarnation trap.' (Chapter One). 

This is quite a statement, and elevates the purveyors of soft rock to a level that I never suspected. Howdie presents it as bald and bold fact; no supporting evidence, too obvious to need such superfluities, maybe. He says the same in at least one interview I have watched.

The idea, it seems, comes from Wayne Bush. Time to head over to his website, trickedbythelight.

 

Part Three

As I begin to look around, I recognise it; I have been here before. But I didn't stay too long first time around.    

There is actually plenty of, in my view, very good material here. Wayne has wise words on the reincarnation soul-trap, which is the prime reason for visiting his site in the first place. But it's surely time to check out the 'Music' section. That's where the soul-trap rockers will be lurking.

It's not difficult to find the Hotel. Unfortunately, there still seems to be no evidence for the 'it's all about the reincarnation soul trap' thesis. I begin to doubt it; to very much doubt it. It's not what the songwriters say. And maybe it's not that kind of song anyway.

A characteristic of some the best art, be it poetry, music, painting, is that it possesses a mysterious quality. It leaves a space for the experiencer. It remains ambiguous, with many layers, and with layers of reality. Different interpretations suggest themselves.  

If Bush or Mickoski wrote something like 'This is one way that the song can be interpreted....' it would be fine. But plainly stating 'It's all about the reincarnation soul-trap' does not sit well; it makes no sense.

The 'Music' section on trickedbythelight is quite a thing. There's an awful lot of stuff there, and much of it concerns what Bush very loosely terms 'rock music'. Unlike Jennie, he finds no liberation in rock. Rather, with its hypnotic, mesmerising rhythms (according to him, that is) he appears to see it largely as a medium that is ideal for programming the mass of youth with all manner of occult and demonic ideas and information.

I can't make out whether he actually hates rock music or not. Whatever, Wayne Bush has been through an incredible amount of it with a toothcomb. I don't know how he's managed to do this without falling into the dark pit of despair. But there it is....

He is especially concerned with the way that the Moon and Sun, as parts of the matrix simulation, have been referenced time and again in the music of the '60s and '70s, which has subliminally communicated esoteric information about these two bodies.

Let's take a look at the Moon. He seems to interpret every mention of the Moon as pointing to the simulated and deceptive nature of this body in the sky, and how it is a focal part of the entire reincarnation process.

Sorry to disappoint, but I don't think that many of those songwriters had that depth of esoteric knowledge, or channelled such information in a state of inspirational trance or whatever. There are no such hidden messages. In the main, the Moon turns up in pop and rock in its more exoteric guise, where it represents mystery, dark romance, sensuousness, the feminine. Conversely, the Sun typically represents hope, light, inspiration, the masculine. 

An example: Wayne writes about Jon Anderson, singer and main songwriter in the band Yes. He is always going on about the Sun, true. But there is nothing especially occult about Jon and the Sun.

I do actually know a little about Jon Anderson and Yes. I very much like some of their music. Jon is a bit of a love-and-light guy, with something of a New Age outlook about him. A bit of a pioneer New Ager in some respects. To him, the Sun is much-needed light to shine through, and to banish, the darkness of the world. Light and the Sun make the world a better place in the view of Jon Anderson. You may or may not be impressed with his philosophy, but that's it. Not a soul trap in sight.

So this is all unimpressive. The classic rock of the period -  Hendrix, Floyd, The Doors, etc - issued from the psycho-spiritual mishmash that was the hallmark of late '60s and early '70s. Chaos unleashed, partly at least as the pendulum swung the other way from the order and tedious predictability of the previous era. The influence of high-dose LSD, in particular, went to create a generation of psyches that opened up in all directions: the good, the great, the bad, and the ugly.

There are exceptions to the 'no occult, we're rockers' ethos. One such is Jim Morrison, and Wayne has quite a good section on the Lizard King. But from what I know, Jim is unique amongst the musicians of the time for his knowledge and understanding of the deeper underpinnings of human life, and how in its unawakened form it is simply slavery.  

Elements of popular culture are liberally seeded with predictive programming (ie announcing what is planned or intended for the future), with occult symbolism, and with sark satanic meanings. Some of mainstream, especially Hollywood, cinema is so - this is well established and widely understood. Some modern pop music and its accompanying videos are the same. This is particularly so with the videos of some current female artists, which clearly reference sex slavery and mind control.

The music that has developed over recent decades is correspondingly unhuman: repetitive, mechanical, derivative, predictable. It is the music of machines, of AI-type 'humans', while the music of rock is typically more innovative. The effects on the mind are quite different.

I seem to have ended up writing quite a lot about all this; not what I originally intended.... But I guess that this Hotel California lark led me into an area requiring a little attention. Unfortunately for me, the protagonists of the reincarnation soul trap idea are so wide of the mark here, that it makes you think twice before accepting everything else they say. From one angle this is a shame, since Wayne has plenty of excellent information on his website, and his basic premise about soul traps is sound. But from another angle, I suppose it's not such a bad thing to be compelled to view everything with a critical eye.....              

 

Links:

Here's the music: The epic Rock n' Roll from the Animal himself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nf65QarZLik

And here are a couple of excerpts from a concert that can be found on DVD and elsewhere that Yes did about 20 years ago. It's one of the best, in my opinion. Jon Anderson singing about the light and the Sun:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pccz8SGRAz0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfpf2stp2E

Finally, Wayne Bush's tricked by the light website: https://trickedbythelight.com

Enjoy.....