Can’t even sleep been up using for days

ain’t no wonder I’m showing my age

all of this strife got these lines on my face

awake feels a lot like a maze

it’s been a hell of a week so I’m gonna get high

just a little bit just enough to get by

everything bleak even heaven’s a lie

just a little bit just enough to get by

can’t even speak been up using the days

that the lines on my face show my age

ain’t no wonder with all this strife

awake feels more like

been a hell of a week I’m gonna get high

just a little bit just enough to get by

everything bleak even heaven’s a lie

just a little bit just enough to get by

can’t even speak been drinking for days

lines on my face carry bags with my age

ain’t no wonder all this strife

awake feels more like a knife

been a hell of a week gonna get high

just a little bit just enough to get by

everything bleak even heaven’s a lie

just a little bit just enough to get by

Everything we wanted? Better check it again

Can't make amends with slums and tenements

We need a fix and we need it fast, you can

see the end coming but you can't stop the crash

You are my Lofi nightcore chillwave

Hidden in a vibe

Put it under the needle And let it spin

On the table flip it Let it turn again

Drifting off to the Sound of the slack

The scent of the shellac Will bring you back

There was nothing ever after When the subculture died

We learned to jive And pretend we’re alive

The other side of 27 comes on Slick like a trick

Sick up now because you're Deep in the thick

As I get closer to being fully healed through self directed physical therapy and nutritional supplementation, I am publishing this educational resource for musicians on recovering from ligament injuries, which apparently many doctors have a poor understanding of.

Listening to my doctor would have left me with less strength and flexibility, and potentially had a negative impact on my ability to play the guitar long term.

If you feel a sensation like stitches popping at the time of your injury, that is indicative of a tear as opposed to simple overuse strain, which feels more like general stiffness and soreness, though it can also feel like sharp pain.

NSAIDs will decrease inflammation and pain but also inhibit ligament healing specifically by way of structural changes in the bodies collagen remodelling at the molecular, biochemical, and biomechanical levels.

In competent sports medicine, their use is now cautioned in athletes as a result. "Evidence suggest that remodeled collagen fibrils are not packed as densely as in normal ligaments and the remodeled tissue contains materials other than collagen, such as blood vessels, fat cells, and inflammatory cell pockets which contribute to weakness."

Source: Journal of Prolotherapy

Avoid popular steroid treatments, too. Reducing inflammation, often the first impulse of medical professionals, is not desirable in ligament injuries; inflammation aids debris clearance and signals the body to induce desperately needed blood vessel development for tissue repair in ligament injuries.

Source: Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology

Instead, you can ask for muscle relaxers like cyclobenzaprine (Flexeril) which don't actually relax your muscles, but inhibit your nerve signals to cut your pain, helping to relax your muscles.

So, what can you take to help? There are several supplements that promote ligament healing which drastically sped up my recovery once I started taking them.

Curcumin seems to promote tendon-to-bone healing and is scientifically associated with anti-inflammatory and antioxidation effects, with a better functional recovery in ligament injuries.

Source: International Orthopaedics

Also, black pepper extract drastically increases bioavailability of curcumin when taken together, so look for a supplement that includes both.

Source: Cancer Research and Treatment, Journal of Korean Cancer Association

Omega-3 fatty acids (specifically EPA) enhance ligament fibroblast collagen formation (the opposite of what the NSAIDs your doctor will try to give you will do). A high potency fish oil supplement is a good source of Omega-3 fatty acids. Look for one with higher EPA.

Source: Proceedings of the Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine

Glucosamine-chondroitin sulphate accelerates tendon-to-bone healing.

Source: Joint Diseases and Related Surgery (Eklem Hastalik Cerrahisi)

And collagen peptide type-1, Glucosamine-chondroitin sulphate, sodium hyaluronate and vitamin C have been shown to act as building blocks of tendon structure, with oral supplements showing results in tendinopathy treatment.

Source: Cureus, Journal of Medical Science

Although there are no studies specific to ligament injury that I could find, studies on osteoarthritis show that SAMe can stimulate the production of cartilage critical to reversing the disease process, and may offer benefits in ligament injury.

Source: Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition

Another thing you can do is make sure that you drink plenty of water; altering ligament water content affects ligament pre-stress and increase in strains.

Source: Journal of Orthopaedic Research

Ligaments are blood starved, and being well hydrated will help your body deliver crucial blood cells to the area in need of repair. Compression sleeves and/or other therapeutic wrap, deep moist heat, hydrotherapy, and self massage can all increase blood flow.

Source: University of Rochester Medicine Noyes Health

I've had a compression sleeve on 16 hours a day for about 8 months. You're not supposed to sleep in them. Mat strap use is indicated in recovering from tendinopathy. I used one that strapped both above and below my elbow. This is advice you will likely receive from your doctor.

Finally, besides surgery, there are a few medical treatments worth trying. First is an item called a theraband flexbar. It is clinically proven to reduce elbow pain by 81% and increase strength by 72% for tennis elbow patients (tendonitis).

Consult with a physical therapist or sports doctor about best use; it uses eccentric loading to rebuild your tendon muscle.

In addition to the flexbar, I have an 8 pound sledge hammer that I use for a variety of eccentric and concentric stretching exercises. Similarly, hand therapy clay may be of some use; it has been very helpful for me. A lot of different companies make it, and it’s widely available on the web.

Platelet rich plasma is another treatment worth looking at. I haven't done this yet but it is a good alternative first step to jumping into surgery, which my doctor was pushing from my first visit. Ligament injuries are expected to clear up within 3-6 months; I am quickly approaching month 9 and still getting better.

Source: Yale Medicine

Therapeutic ultrasound and Low Intensity Ultrasound have also been shown to promote soft tissue healing and reduce pain.

Source: Internal Medicine Review

This has been a difficult process, and often felt that short of spending endless $$$s seeking out a doctor who actually knew something, there was no resource available to me to quickly learn any of this.

I am a tenacious and tireless man, and found these resources and studies over months of tedious and painstaking research, while in excruciating mental and physical pain. I hope they find someone who needs them, and helps them recover thoroughly, and more quickly than I have.

As a final thought, even though it hurts, even if takes the rest of your life, don't give up. Keep pushing forward, keep planning for your recovery, and keep a positive mindset about your odds. Pain is only information; the human body can be fragile, but it is also very resilient.

If it hurts too much, stop, and take a break. Don't re-injure yourself. But keep at it, always keep pushing, and if it feels therapeutic, push harder. You can refuse to be sidelined. Sheer force of will can conquer almost anything.

Even as bohemian youth were being decimated by the structural destruction of the Great Depression that brought about the Dead End Kids, the Hipster subculture began to emerge in the late 1930s.

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This series began as a short addendum to another ambitious series called The Complete History of Rock and Roll, and quickly grew near to over 500 pages as the diverse and complex history of the rock and roll adjacent underground weaved itself into something kind of like a coherent narrative. 

Then I decided that this was actually even more inte…

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Intended to be a vehicle for sex symbol Jayne Mansfield with a satirical subplot involving teenagers and rock n' roll, the end result may be the least impotent celebration of rock and roll music ever put to film.

Many years later, here’s Paul McCartney talking about meeting John Lennon, and covering “Twenty Flight Rock” in From Chaos & Creation at Abbey Road, 2005. He says singing “Twenty Flight Rock” (and knowing all the words) got him into the Beatles.

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And here’s Conan O’Brien and Jack White doing “Twenty Flight Rock” on Conan’s opening night on TBS

To be born in another time,
any era but our own would’ve been fine.
100 years from now,
1000 years from now,
some other distant, different, time.
one without demons, cowards and vampires out for blood,
one with the positive inspiration to foster what is good.
an empty field where no tall red poppies are cut down,
where we could lay all day, every day, on the warm and subtle ground,
and know just what to say and what to play to conjure our own sounds.
and be one with the others all around us,
and even still the ones who came before,
and help ourselves to all their love,
and pass it on again once more.
to have bliss upon bliss upon bliss,
to be without fear, negativity or pain,
and to get up every morning, and be happy to do it all again.

III

A so called “more talented” drummer couldn’t do justice to this, couldn’t even play this the way it’s meant to be played. The playful quality to the feel and the timing, the interplay of their timing, there is a magic here that can not be replicated with refined technique, it is a question of authenticity and connection and style. You know, art?

It all reminds me of the guitar nerds who hate on Kurt Cobain but couldn’t put together a memorable chord progression and melody to save their lives. I guess Kurt said it best that self appointed judges judge more than they’ve sold.

God knows they judged Maureen Tucker, or Moe as Velvet Underground fans know her. In posterity, Far Out magazine has called her “the unsung hero behind the band”, and Modern Drummer magazine has said that “her playing style was hugely responsible for the Velvets’ singular personality, as important as Reed’s deadpan vocals.”

Tucker’s style of playing was unconventional, minimalist, and widely criticized before being adopted wholesale into the refined considerations of the avant garde. A modern critic (who closed down comments on his blog after being eaten alive by VU fans) sums up these insightful witticisms: “She isn’t very good but then, no one in the band is.” This same critic, in a fit of hilarious irony, goes on to write of the title “I’m Waiting for the Man” that:

“Many people use this title to this day. This is madness, of course; “the man” is the authorities—the ones who are going to kill your buzz, not the one who is going to get it going.”

This absurdly silly, all too totally serious quote reminded me of the lyrics to the Tool song “Hooker with a Penis”:

Well now, I've got some “A” advice for you, little buddy
Before you point your finger, you should know that I'm the man
and if I'm the man then you're the man and he's the man as well
So you can point that fuckin' finger up your ass

Maureen Tucker played standing up, not seated (for easier access to the bass drum because she did not use a foot pedal). She played a simplified kit consisting of toms, a snare, and an upturned bass drum. She played with both mallets and drumsticks, sometimes holding both a mallet and a stick at the same time. She rarely used cymbals, and has said that since the purpose of a drummer is to keep time, cymbals are unnecessary and only serve to drown out other instruments and draw attention to the drummer.

Like Meg, Tucker sang on a limited number Velvet Underground songs: on the lovely haunting “After Hours”, along with “The Murder Mystery”, both from 1969’s The Velvet Underground, as well as “I’m Sticking with You”, a song recorded in 1969 and available on bootlegs but officially unreleased until the 1985 compilation VU. Tucker also sometimes played the bass guitar during live shows; Meg played guitar at the last White Stripes performance on Conan— they didn’t use a bass.

Interestingly, her guitar playing is also reminiscent of the Velvet Underground.

If you search the internet, you will find many, many articles that claim Maureen Tucker left the music industry to raise a family. And it’s true that Tucker moved to Phoenix, Arizona, in 1971, where she lived with her husband and children. The whole truth is darker: while living in Phoenix, she briefly played drums in the short-lived band Paris 1942 and then, amid a lack of commercial success, awash in harsh comments from critics, and facing difficulties at home, Maureen Tucker divorced her husband in the early 1980s and relocated to Douglas, Georgia, where instead of making music, the alternative rock legend went to work at a Wal-Mart distribution center. She quit in 1989 when the band Half Japanese asked her to play on their European tour.

Meg has followed a somewhat similar trajectory, so far without the triumphant return to music that Moe engineered, although of course, the White Stripes were legends in their own time, unlike the Velvet Underground. And also unlike VU, “Seven Nation Army” alone assures that Meg will never need to work another day in her life.

Back in 2007, in a short statement from the band to Rolling Stone, the White Stripes announced: "The White Stripes… are canceling their forthcoming tour due to health issues. Meg White is suffering from acute anxiety and is unable to travel at this time. We hate to let people down and are very sorry." They also cut themselves the Austin City Limits festival the day before over "medical reasons."

Meg has barely been seen or heard from since. From May 2009 to July 2013, she was married to guitarist Jackson Smith (son of punk legends Patti Smith and Fred "Sonic" Smith, the guitarist from the MC5).

In 2010, Jack White told MTV that he’d “like to” reunite. "I don't think her anxiety exists anymore," he said, "but I don't know." Jack also said Meg was present at rehearsals for The Dead Weather. Rolling Stone contributing editor Jonah Weiner asked him in 2014 if he’s still in contact with his ex-wife and bandmate during interviews for a Rolling Stone cover story, and White said, “I don’t think anyone talks to Meg. She’s always been a hermit. When we lived in Detroit, I’d have to drive over to her house if I wanted to talk to her, so now it’s almost never.” She was spotted at 2013 at a Queens of the Stone Age show.

A few years later, Ben Blackwell (co-founder and minority owner at Third Man Records and official archivist of The White Stripes) said in a Third Man Records Vault chat that Meg was backstage at a Jack White show at the Warsaw in Brooklyn March 2018.

This pic of Meg is the most recent one available on the internet; reportedly taken from the Instagram of the daughter of a music producer Meg was dating (a social media rumor only; evidence of any Instagram post that the image originated from is elusive).

Jack White also told Rolling Stone that he “would often look at her onstage and say, ‘I can’t believe she’s up here.’ I don’t think she understood how important she was to the band, and to me and to music. She was the antithesis of a modern drummer. So childlike and incredible and inspiring. All the not-talking didn’t matter, because onstage? Nothing I do will top that.” 

And to prove it, here is Meg at her most understated, and brilliant.