Alice in Chains – "Rooster" (1992)

Here they come to snuff the Rooster

Yeah, here comes the Rooster

You know he ain't gonna die!

Washington, DC has a number of first-rate art museums.  But I think most art experts would agree that the National Gallery of Art (or “NGA”) has the most impressive collection of any of them.

I wouldn’t necessarily argue that Katharina Fritsch’s Hahn/Cock sculpture – a 15-foot-tall fiberglass rooster that is displayed on the roof of the National Gallery’s East Building – is the greatest work of art at that museum.  But it’s almost certainly the most amusing one:

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Fritsch – who is German – spent two and a half years working on Hahn/Cock, which was originally placed on the empty fourth plinth in London’s Trafalgar Square.

She has described it as a feminist sculpture “since it is I who am doing something active here – I, a woman, am depicting something male.”

“Historically it has always been the other way around,” she went on to say. “Now we are changing the roles. And a lot of men are enjoying that.”

I don’t necessarily disagree with Katharina, but I think she should stop putting words in the mouth of men – womansplaining is just as annoying to men as mansplaining is to women.

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2 or 3 lines saw Hahn/Cock (a/k/a “The Blue Rooster”) for the first time only a few weeks ago.  Here are a few of the other works I saw at the NGA that day:

Alexander Calder – Blue Elephant with Red Ears (1971)

Wassily Kandinsky – Improvisation 31 (1913)

Roy Lichtenstein – Look Mickey (1961)

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I’ve been spending a fair amount of time visiting museums recently.  One of those visits was with one of my young grandsons – I’ll tell you about what we saw in my next post.

Visiting art museums is only one of the time-consuming activities I find myself engaged in these days.  The others include playing trivia, riding my bike – the warm spring weather makes it hard for me to stay indoors – and talking with 2 or 3 lines fans.  (I spend a LOT of time communicating with 2 or 3 lines fans – it’s very hard for me to ignore all the texts, e-mails, and phone calls that I’ve been getting from these devotees of my wildly popular little blog.)

All that has prevented me from spending time writing new 2 or 3 lines posts.  As you’ve probably noticed, the frequency of my posting isn’t what it used to be – to say nothing of the quality of those posts.

My fans tell me that 2 or 3 lines is still the ne plus ultra of narcissistic pop music blogs.  

That may be true.  But it’s a far cry from what it used to be.  (I weep when I go back and read some of my older posts.  They are SO GOOD!)

They are also very long . . . unlike this one.

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“Rooster” was released in 1992 on Dirt – the second Alice in Chains studio album:

It was written by the group’s lead guitarist, co-lead vocalist, and chief songwriter, Jerry Cantrell Jr.  (“Rooster” was the nickname of Cantrell’s father, Jerry Cantrell Sr., who served in the U.S. Army in the Vietnam War.)

I bought Dirt in 1994 at a used CD store in the Manayunk section of Philadelphia.  I also picked up Soundgarden’s Badmotorfinger, Nirvana’s In Utero, and Pearl Jam’s Vitalogy album at the same time – that’s a pretty impressive haul if I do say so myself.

Click here to watch the official music video for “Rooster.”  (Warning!  This video includes some very unpleasant images.)

Click here to buy the record from Amazon.