Too Fast For Love review - chrisnieratko.com

Too Fast For Love

[ author: david yellen ]

Are we all in agreement that cock rock has always sucked? I mean, I don't care if you were into Winger or Warrant in the '80s, that's fine. Everybody makes mistakes. But, like alcoholism, admitting you have a problem is the first step toward recovery. As long as you realize that bands like Stryper, Bon Jovi, Poison, Whitesnake, Extreme, Slaughter, Cinderella, Skid Row, and Great White haven't contributed anything to music other than comedic value then we're fine and we can still be friends. If by chance you think any of the aforementioned bands have some semblance of talent (outside of the realm of hair and makeup) then you are an asshole and you should just die. Just kidding. But you are an idiot and I'm removing you from my Kwanza card list because I can't be associated with someone like you.

My older brother, Dave, used to listen to the same kind of glam bullshit when I was growing up. It made me cry often and for hours on end. Dave was once a metal head purist and he turned me on to Slayer. So when he started gaying out to bullshit like "Cherry Pie" it just made me sick. When I was 12 and he was going on 18, he was driving me to school one morning in his primered black '70 Chevelle when I asked him why, why did he listened to such shit, why did he own so much acid wash, why had he gone soft on me?

"You don't get it," he told me, "Chicks love this shit," holding up the latest Bon Jovi album. "This stuff will get you laid." I was 12. Laid? "I have no idea what that even means. But you need to get your shit together," I told him. Luckily, he did. Not long after going off to college he disassociated from his sordid musical past. I don't know what he listens to now, if anything, but I know he's not rocking out to Def Leppard. I'm proud of him, too, because he's got enough sense to say, "I was in a bad place in my life back then," whenever one of those songs comes on the radio.

I can't say the same for the rest of my town. I'm from Sayreville, New Jersey. It's just 30 minutes out of Manhattan yet to look at it, its 20 years behind any type of fashion, musical or technological advancements. It is in fact the home of Jon Bon Jovi and Skid Row, thus to many of it's mid-30s residents it is a cock rock Mecca, like one big hair-sprayed Jerusalem of high hair and low expectations. The music of 1984 is still the song in everybody's car, the selection of every jukebox in town, the soundtrack to their lives. Although it's a very blue-collar community and many people still drive '80s Mustangs and Camaros, I can't help but think that they have all been hording their money under some mattress somewhere and are actually rich beyond belief because they sure as shit haven't spent a penny on new clothes in the past 20 years.

Have you ever gone to Epcot Center down in Orlando? Where you can walk around to re-creations of different countries and try their food and see how they dress? Well, that's kind of how Sayreville is except it's a time machine and it's free. Just take the NJ Parkway South from Manhattan to exit 126, go up the exit ramp, make a left, then make the right at the light and stop at the first bar you see. Bring the kids. Let them see what life was like back in nineteen hundred and eighty four. David Yellen's new book of photographs, Too Fast For Love, could serve as your souvenir guidebook. Beautifully shot while following useless bands like Poison and Slaughter on unnecessary comeback tours in 2000-2001, the book is a collection of portraits of the men, women, children and whores that have all been frozen in time by the sounds of shallow guitar-driven love ballads. I almost want to call photographer David Yellen and see if he'd do a slide show at one of our town meetings so I could try and explain to some of my neighbors that, "It's over. You have to let it go," then pointing to one of the saggy-skinned sluts in a peek-a-boo cut out mini skirt images up on the screen, I'd say, "Look. Just look, for Christ's sake! They're not laughing with you anymore!"

Comments

Stephen Hawking
21 Mar 2008, 20:10

Sayreville, New Jersey is living proof that time does not flow at the same rate of speed throughout the entire universe. Backwater towns like this will always exist as lazy, swirling eddies off on the side of the raging waters of time.