Gavalon

By Sanjay Sanghoee

Contemporary music, popularly dubbed as Rock, is undoubtedly a revolution in an art once dominated by subtle yet fiercely talented masters such as Mozart, Beethoven and Chopin. The motivation for this drastic change can most likely be accorded to the changing face of society, although it is a rather bizarre incident of art surpassing life and then life following quickly after it. Of course, one could make a case for increasing clarity in today's music titles, which often leave nothing whatsoever to the imagination. Brahms' rather ambiguous "Symphony Number 3 in G minor" has been replaced by "Party on Your Pussy," which needs no explanation at all... The other good thing about music today is that it has gone public. It is possible to listen to music if one does not possess a radio or television, courtesy of the friendly neighborhood teenager. These sound waves are produced as periodic rarefactions and spasmodic compressions, which spiral shrilly from boomboxes and blaring car radios. These waves move through the air by sheer force of terror and have numerous interesting effects upon the human psyche, including loss of hearing, brain damage and a sudden craving for drugs and alcohol.

The conventional temperature at which rock melts is 7800 degrees Fahrenheit, which is incidentally also the temperature at which a human being is well beyond being roasted. But in order to derive a meaningful relationship between man and his music (equivalently woman and her music), one must have an interaction between the two, even if it means turning the former into a culinary delight.

All revolutionary changes need an agent. The agents of this change are the rock stars, lyricists, producers, mixers, and a host of other otherwise sane individuals. I like to personify them as a single organic entity named Gavalon.

Gavalon is not a knight of the round table, nor is he Oliver Stone's fantasy of an American Immigrant. He is simply a paragon of charm, dignity and aplomb. His technical skills will be explained shortly. His mental side is a bit prone towards what is commonly known as a seesaw, and his exact grudge against society is unknown.

Gavalon is the name of a rock singer. Tall and colorful, he stands mauve and magenta, touched off beautifully by green tresses. These are his better physical endowments. His vocal chords maintain an incredible capacity of about 3 million decibels, which he endeavors to emulate by a microphone. A smart dresser by habit, he wears red leather pants cut startlingly accurate to form, and an electric blue shirt (not for him, the tame powder blue stuff) with gaps in the stitching which leaves one wondering about the amount of cloth the tailor had to work with.

Now that I have described him to you in fair detail, I shall attempt to explain his occupational behavior. A man entertains many entanglements and contradictions in his life. But Gavalon is an entanglement of many contradictory men. His raison d'etre is beyond me, and I suspect, most of the civilized world.

An eloquent speaker, he does so with remarkable loudness, on and off stage. His diction is fluent, punctuated occasionally by English. He has the aggressiveness of a tiger and demonstrates it with remarkable clarity as he destroys his equipment and numerous other seemingly unbreakable objects during his concerts. Nevertheless, despite all this impressive carnage, he has the soul of a poet. One only has to hear him sing with rare conviction and persuasion about that inner urge to commit incest to believe this.

Gavalon is dedicated to his work and is determined to retire only after his fortune exceeds a certain astronomical limit or the biological damage caused by his guitar renders him professionally or psychologically incumbent, or both. His motto is plagiarize, and he adheres to it industriously. His knowledge of classical music is restricted to last year's hit singles and he spends his free time conducting scientific research on drugs and suicide. The last I heard, he was practicing the fine art of inhaling and exhaling at the same time.

He hires a dialectician and grammarian, who is responsible for polishing up his speeches and songs, and very often for writing and conceiving them as well. This person must have an exhaustive knowledge of world affairs, so as to be able to insult various political, literary and religious figures in the songs.

Now that you are well afflicted - I mean acquainted, with Gavalon, I trust you shall steer clear of him or any of his musical efforts, as a means of realizing your dream of living to be an old hag. After all, he is not exactly a contemporary of Elvis Presley or the Beatles - his rock is more analogous to being stoned.


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