POWER TO THE PEOPLEMOVER POWER TO THE PEOPLE MOVER POWER TO THE PEOPLE MOVER
The on-bus zine online edition
Power to the People Mover is a zine devoted to the spiritual, physical, and mental experiences of public transportation that we call "Buskulture".
DISCLAIMER - The People Mover Collektive does not condone the use of this
medium as not many of the PEOPLE have access to the Internet. The online
edition lacks the impressive graphics, designed to resemble a San Diego bus
schedule, and the many cartoons found in the hard copy. For the hard copy
edition, and to submit contributions of text, images or cartoons, send a SASE
to -
Cool It
P.O. Box 232741
Leucadia, CA 92023
ONLINE VERSION 1.0
*Introductory Note by the Minister Altair-Five* (one serious suburban dude with a lot of time to burn)
Aaaaaah, you're just a bunch of computer nerds glued to your screens
and masturbating your pathetic cathode ray addicted brains. Throw a brick at
the damn thing and get on the next bus. As Ken Kesey once said, "You're either
on the bus or off the bus." Get on the bus with the Minister and connect in
the flesh - let's take over the Internet for the PEOPLE. LET'S GET REAL BABY.
FUCK BOREDOM. LET'S FUCK.
********ROCK CON SENOR LUMPO-GRANDE***********
Dateline: Mexico City. The unforgiving sun beats down on this
reporter's delicately dappled epidermis only slightly less gruelingly than
this deadline. Where does one begin to sort out the tangled web of social
discourse that must surround the very idea of public transport? As with life,
I suppose I must just push my generous frame on board and hope for a seat with
a good view. It seems to me that a two-pronged analysis of BusCulture is in
order, namely: 1 The bus as portrayed in Popular Culture & 2 The Culture
indigenous to Buses and to Those Who Ride Them. Fortunately or no, the first
is dispensed with easily enough, although enough subtleties occur to me to
formulate some tentative *probes* as our Northern comrade Senor McCluhan was
wont to call them. The data is superficial, available and digestible prima
facie, as can be said of most 'cultures', the frozen yogurt of the mind:
Strawberry or Vanilla? The latter question is of another order altogether,
one which I will attempt to touch on briefly in this issue, but which I fully
expect to occupy most of my attention for if not the remainder of my life, then
for the duration of this journal's existence. My 900 page outline for a
proposed overview of this subject is on view at the Carnitas del Balgrafico
branch of the Mexico City Public Library Tuesdays and Wednesdays During
regular library hours until the end of September. But Let's Get Down To
Business!
The ephemeral nature of popular culture seems to inspire a kind of
fanatical devotion among a class of middle class male bourgeoisie arrested at
some retentive adolescent phase of development. This not being my forte, the
following summary of bus data from popular culture is by no means exhaustive
(no pun intended) nor entirely accurate in some cases. It is meant to be an
impression, off the top of my head from which we will withhold generalizing
analyses for the time being, in favor of a more picaresque and less critical
overview. Let Us Rock.
MY TOP TEN BUS SONGS
10. "A DAY IN THE LIFE" - the Beatles "Grabbed my hat, made the bus in
seconds flat" So what?
9. "AMERICA" - Simon & Garfunkle "I'm empty and aching and I don't
know why" Gee it couldn't be from sitting on a Greyhound for three days or
anything, could it?
8. "MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR" - The Beatles. More on this later.
7. "BUS RIDER" - The Guess Who. Contempt for the working man,
successfully detourneed by audio collage band Mannlicher Carcano at their
recent appearance at U.C. San Diego's CRCA. Way to go, fellas!
6. "THE WHEELS ON THE BUS" - Jonathan Richman & the Modern Lovers.
Typically faux-naive version of the schoolbus classic. a semi-rouser.
5. "IF YOU MISS ME AT THE BACK OF THE BUS" - Pete Seeger. Another
semi-rouser, with redeeming social and political importance. This importance
of the bus in the civil rights movement can not be understated.
4. "I MISSED THE BUS" - KRISS KROSS. A great song with politically
ambiguous subtext. School is just a junior plantation. Wake up, niggers or
we're all through!
3. "GROOVIN IN THE BUS LANE" - The Jazz Butcher "The jaguar is a fine
fine beast, but the bus is the place where I found peace." A man who has seen
the bus light, truly.
2. "I THINK WE"RE ALL BOZOS ON THE BUS" - The Firesign Theatre. Not
strictly a song, but this is my list. Mindboggling metaphorical bus ride to
the heart of the American Beast. A distopian masterpiece, better than Orwell
or Huxley. Dig it.
1. "SPANDINA BUS" - the Shuffle Demons. This one has it all: the
subtext, the pretext, and the discotext. I mean it ROCKS. And aren't we all
in favor of that?
HONORABLE MENTION TO:
"BUS STOP" - The Hollies Hep tune, but there's never a bus that
actually gets there.
Last minute contributions by Gordon Haines: "MAGIC BUS" - the Who.
How could this have slipped my mind? First use of Adam & the Ants style
African rhythms incorporated in a top 10 pop song. This bumps out.
"A DAY IN THE LIFE KISS ME ON THE BUS" - The Replacements. "If it's
from Minneapolis, it has to be good!"
FURTHER BUSCULTURE
ONe of the central buschetypes to come to play in this, the latter half
of the twentieth century, is doubtless the 'Psychedelicized' schoolbus that
originated with Ken Kesey and took on a peculiar designation as a vehicle for
the communal heroic aspirations of the psychedelic era. More on this later.
FIrst, though, let's flick away the remaining accumulations of buscultural
effluvia:
"THE BIG BUS" - Movie: An Airport parody, disaster on the world's
first atomic powered bus. "IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT" - MOvie: Clark Gable and
Claudette Colbert fall in love on a bus. "THE LONG WALK HOME" - Civil Rights
bus epic with Whoopi Goldberg. "THE BUS" - intensely surreal comic strip by Ed
K-something that used to be published in Heavy Metal. "ON THE BUSES" - English
comedy series, Thursday at midnight on PBS kind of stuff. "THE PARTRIDGE
FAMILY" - TV series, we're getting to that in a second. Ho hum. One highly
recommended thing though is this book? By this Crazy Lady? Who got better by
riding the buses? It's called OPERATORS AND THINGS and it's a true
autobiographical account of a schizophrenic episode where this lady becomes
aware of an entire race of manipulative higher beings who cause all human
suffering strictly for their own amusement, and their center of operations is
the Greyhound Bus Lines. Rather than see a shrink, the woman decides to take a
cross-country journey on the Greyhounds. I cannot emphasize the importance of
your locating and reading this book strongly enough, and the sooner the better!
I am sure there are many more examples of the use of the bus in popular
culture, many of them highly salutary no doubt. Nonetheless, culture IS
culture and the way it must pervert itself in order to prosper in a sick
society reflected in its forms. Ken Kesey was not intending to create a new
cultural icon when he and his Merry Prankster's set out across the country in
their legendary dayglo bus "Further', although he is reported as having said,"
Print is an outmoded and archaic form of expression. From now on everyone will
express themselves only in terms of buses." This of course did not turn out
to be the case, but it does serve to indicate the high moral tone of a group of
buscultural activists commonly thought to be nothing more than a motley
collection of malodorous freeloaders on a tripped out joyride to Nowheresville.
Even if Western Culture had shifted gears and started cruising the Bus Lane,
busculture would have been absorbed, masticated and spewed out like some kind
of frozen yogurt of the mind: Strawberry or Vanilla?
Just look at how Kesey's legend was absorbed and diminished for popular
consumption: Word travels to England, where the newly acid-bathed pop scene
turns it into The Who's "Magic Bus" and the Beatles' "Magical Mystery Tour"
film and soundtrack. Pleasing enough artifacts, but it's clear that the
Beatles were not capable of the kind of anarchic explorations of alternative
community and alternative performer/audience relationships at the core of the
Kesey/Prankster/acid test esthetic. It is true that the Beatles attempted to
inject an egalitarian approach to the film-making process, resulting in the
rather amateurish technical veneer of the finished work, but the richest
entertainers on the planet saying "Look, I'm paying you scale so you'll bloody
well do it my way and be spontaneous" is hardly the makings of a modernist
milestone. Reports agree that the filming was an unpleasant experience all
around. Nonetheless, the finished product did manage to shake up the
bourgeousie and retain some creative ambiguity. Bitchy clothe-horse Tom Wolfe
put the true nail in the coffin with his typically self absorbed 'Electric
Kool-Aid Acid Test' book which remained for a long time the only readily
available source for the story on Kesey's bus trip, and sold in the millions.
The final degradation was the adoption of the Kesey buschetype into a central
but practically irrelevant logo for television's The Partridge Family, a
squeaky clean morally vanilla version of the Original Story, ethically
irradiated busculture, safe for dispensation from the frozen yogurt
machine-like teats of Amerika's rec-rooms. And it sold records. The idea of a
garishly painted busload of zany, happy-go-lucky, drug free, blood related
minstrels making expeditions form their suburban manse to 'spread a little
lovin' became fixed in the minds of the Audience, blissfully unaware of the
official harassment that awaited anyone trying to live out any remotely similar
paradigm. Though the combined police attacks and deprivation on ontological
validation through the media, the buschetype was effectively neutralized.
Bummer.
