Cool “Drug Addiction” Images

A few nice drug addiction images I found:

Alex Chilton 1950 – 2010

Image by simonm1965
Photo, from back of the 1989 "Black List" LP on New Rose – fave track:
www.last.fm/music/Alex+Chilton/Black+list/Guantanamerika

I feel weird when musician I like dies – it feels like fake commodified emotion in one sense, but heartfelt and somehow authentic in another, yet completely alienated from the real person, based on vague impressions absorbed through tunes and lyrics. Alex Chilton is one of those people. I have no idea what he was like in real life (was he an xtian?), but his music touched me, and I was sad to hear of his death, so young, and I’ve been thinking some more about it over the past week.

Tim Hardin’s Song For Hank Williams comes to mind:

Goodbye Hank Williams my friend
I never knew you,
But I’ve been to places you’ve been

In that song I think the ‘places’ are despair, alcoholism and drug addiction, and I’m glad to say I’ve never been to those places, but to stretch the metaphor to breaking point, you could say I’ve received postcards from them. Anyway – what I’m trying to say that the link between artist and fan is odd, but when they die, it changes. Sometimes it’s just a shame, and other times it seems bigger than that.

I was unsatisfied and disgruntled by the pat ‘rock snob’ obituaries I read about Alex Chilton on The Guardian and Rolling Stone websites. They seemed bland, and cliched, like they had only the mythology of under-achievement and hard drug use to go on, stuck in the 70s. They lazily referred to the 3rd Big Star LP in terms of its weirdness rather than its beauty and power, and hardly mentioned his solo output at all. Although I was a bottom-feeder rock critic in the late ‘80s, I’m not going to do any kind of obituary here, but I’d like to say – Alex Chilton – another good one gone. Take care.

1120play-RW

Image by Robbie Wroblewski
Robbie Wroblewski|Daily Eastern News
Senior history major Paul Teresi performs in the play "Dream On Fire" Wednesday evening at the 7th St. Underground in the Martin Luther King Jr. Union. Teresi wrote, directed and starred in the play about an actor dealing with his drug addiction.