edge
Stacks Image 82615

Subscribe to Thank God It’s Friday

TGIF columns are in order by date from the most recent.

Scroll down to search or read more

Rock ‘n’ Roll Heroes & Antisocial Media

I’M ON FACEBOOK; I’d rather not be. For writers, it can be a good way of disseminating work and it’s definitely useful for finding people. Last Christmas, I reconnected with an old friend from the English boarding school we left in 1976. I’m in Barbados, he’s in Minneapolis, we haven’t seen one another since we were 17 and, through Facebook, he makes me laugh, and think, as much, today, as he did in his gallant old days in Fairwater House. Facebook is great for that; for everything else, it’s crap.

Nobody’s life is as glamorous as their Facebook lie. When you finally get your colicky newborn down, tie your greasy hair out of your face with the rag you were wiping down the kitchen counter with and sit at your computer in your stained house frock, you find your old school friends, in hot little black dresses sipping cocktails in a fancy nightclub. There’s a new video of two of them doing the tit-to-tit, cheek-to-cheek hug. Click on the speaker icon and you’ll hear their, “Whoo-oo-oo-oo!” – and you have to take a shit and wash the dishes.

Of course, your Facebook posts don’t show you flossing, either.

Once I interviewed a soca star – let’s pull a name out of a hat and call her, oh, I don’t know, something totally arbitrary like, “Destra”. When I pulled out my camera, Destra, who was wearing an old T-shirt and baggy track pants, with her hair smoothed under a gangsta bandana, no lipstick, no eye shadow, Destra, stuck her hand out in the traffic cop’s “Stop right there”. Anyone in her game simply has too much invested in her appearance to allow anything but glamorous photographs of herself.

Facebook makes little wannabe Destras and Rihannas of us all; but most of us don’t make our livings from looking beautiful on stage. If we had any self-respect, we’d mutter to ourselves, “This is bullshit” and never go on Facebook again.

And that’s the least of Facebook’s damage; at least you’re only firetrucking yourself up when you turn your posts into poses.

Facebook is like email: you tell yourself it’s an improvement on what went before simply because it’s instant, but both email and Facebook actually destroy, rather than enhance, connection or communication. If you write someone a card, you take your time and choose your words carefully; they read it the same way. If you talk to someone, you hear their inflection and see their smile when they say something outlandish. Rape jokes have to be really good to be funny in print – though Sarah Silverman has managed it: “I was raped by a doctor which, you know, for a Jewish girl, is so bittersweet.”

Jokes are lost on Facebook, unless they’re kitten videos. You cannot distinguish compassion from vitriol in this useless firetrucking medium. If it didn’t happen so often, I would

dispute that people could post one thing on Facebook and other people read its opposite. Use a neutral word, or even one with a primarily positive interpretation, and people on Facebook will choose a negative meaning, if it exists; or can be squeezed een. Make a joke the person on the other end would laugh at in person and, without those silly firetrucking emojis, it is interpreted as an insult. And, once the misunderstanding is out of the starting gate, the race is on as to who is going to unfriend whom first. Ask, “What is Tarantino’s best film?” and you’ll get an afternoon-long barrage for your failing to champion Bazodee for the Best Picture Oscar.

More than anything else, Facebook replaces action with its images. It’s the perfect medium for the Trinidadian, the original self-absorbed millennial, who would rather make as eef than actually do. You don’t organise a march against crime that has the conviction and the cojones to go into Morvant or Parliament; no, you post a video of schoolgirls being bullied on Facebook. In this silly age, in these antisocial mediums, you don’t even firetruck any more: you sext. Facebook is good for organizing Arab Springs and other flash mobs; for anything deeper, Facebook is caca.

Which makes me think of, “Rock ‘n’ roll in yuh caca-hole”, Mick Richardson’s original war cry.

On Sunday, at 6pm at the Little Carib Theatre in Woodbrook, jointpop, Trinidad’s great rock ‘n’ roll band will be honoured by an outfit called either “GSD” or the “Knights of the Old Republic” or both. Other bands, it seems, will cover jointpop songs while the band sits, Led Zep-like, in state.

Jointpop –Gary Hector, on lead vocal, rhythm guitar and rock ‘n’ roll poses, Damon Homer, Trinidad’s best lead guitarist (since Andre Tanker and Nigel Rojas), Phil Hill on keys, Dion Camacho on drums and Jerome Girdharrie on bass (and former drummer Gerard Rajkumar and former bass-men Corey Wallace and Graham Granger) – have, for more than 20 years, made better local music than anyone apart from David Rudder and Shadow. In a place that values church and chutney soca more than art, they have been shining examples of the maximization of potential. They make magic. If they had come from Manchester instead of Maraval, New York instead of Newtown, they would be superstars. Go to the Little Carib on Sunday and hear for yourself: rock ‘n’ roll tells nothing but the truth, even in Port of Spain style.

And, if you want to discover everything that is wrong with modern Trinidad, find out why Facebook is so big and jointpop are all but unknown.

BC Pires is happy to be jointpop’s most ardent acolyte because he will build his church upon this rock ‘n’ roll

Navigational Links