Motorway City (Rock'n'Roll will never die)

Gold cherry

By David Kirtley

Fri, 13 Mar 2020
  • 1984 reads
7 comments
 

Oil and coal and gas are plundered from our most beautiful places.

Build a car park – everywhere.

Los Angeles spreads over the globe,

Motorways and motor cars – everywhere.

 

1972 1977 1981 1989 1994

The countdown is on,

Rock’n roll will never die!

It’s already gone!

Warbling singers,

ambient nothing,

tasteless mayflies and urchins,

crappy rhythms,

the inheritance lost as the great rock stars, soul stars and singer songwriters pass away,

one by one.

 

I don’t wanna work,

I don’t wanna sleep,

I wanna stay up all night,

Listening to Hawkwind and Swan Lake,

Progressive Japanese Jazz and the Damned

 

Certificate 12
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Comments

Submitted by David Kirtley on

I wrote this on 13/2/20, one month ago!

Submitted by sean mcnulty on

This is our Facebook and Twitter Pick of the Day.

 

Submitted by David Kirtley on

Thanks for the gold cherries Sean. I did not particularly expect them for this off the cuff piece, but it is nice to get on the front page at last! Much appreciated!

Submitted by celticman on

build car parks everywhere. A parks a park. I guess we've put them on hold for now. 

 

Submitted by David Kirtley on

Nothing is going to stop the spread of the sprawling 'Motorway City', our unstoppable modern economy, more than the approaching Coronavirus, I suppose. I had been listening to one of the greatest of the Hawkwind songs, 'Motorway City', and it just made me want to write whatever came to mind. So I wrote about the expanding motorways and roads.

My next thought was, as 'Motorway City' is one of the greatest Rock'n'Roll songs, that Rock'n'Roll and that whole explosion of music went alongside the expansion of motorways roads and cars. Indeed the Road, or the Motorway, and the car are all symbols of Rock and Roll.  Like the evergrowing modern economy, Rock'n'Roll had, or has, the seeds of its own destruction within it. Just as the Motorway economy brings its own destruction and misery, rock'roll is replaced by bland and lame modern developments, and is not lasting forever, as its stars fade and die.

Thanks for your thoughts celticman.

Submitted by drew_gummerson on

Sounds like a plan. Rock and roll will never die while you're still rocking and rolling. 

 

Submitted by David Kirtley on

Thanks for your comment Drew. I express in my poem my disenchantment with a lot of styles which I hear encroaching onto the radio and the minds of the young, which I obviously feel are not as good as the classics of Rock'n'Roll or other styles including classical and jazz, so I have tried to show the final winding down of Rock'n'Roll. But It is just a feeling which I have expressed.

As you say Rock'n'roll will never die while any of us, including me, are still rocking and rolling. And I am quite sure many of the young, each generation, will continue to enjoy the wealth of good music, from past and present!