You'd think that, being in a band called Where the Buffalo Roamed, I would have seen this movie before. Not so, and there's not even a relation between the two names. I get this question all the time, "is the band named after the Hunter S. Thompson book?"
No such book. It's a movie. And I saw it. You should stop reading here if you haven't seen it yet and don't want it spoiled.
*
*
*
*
You were warned.
I'm left with mixed emotions. While Bill Murray played a fucking fantastic Huntie, the story was slapdash, the action slapstick, and it followed a vague arc so far from HST's rhythm that I didn't recognize it. The film tried to jump all over the place, tried to pogo around like Thompson's attention, but essentially it just kept close to the nest. A lot of things could have happened, I kept waiting for this little movie to jump out of the high branches and risk falling in an attempt to fly.
The real failing is that it played out like a wet dream. I know Thompson was involved in the making of this film, and I think he may have been playing one of his jokes on us. The whole movie's a smartass piece of "well, here's how it would have happened if I had it to do again..." Thank Zoroaster no such concessions were made in the late '90s Fear and Loathing with Johnny Depp.
The real Hunter S. Thompson got to talk to Nixon, all right, but he talked football... which was the one common ground they shared. There was no baffling fire extinguisher fight. There was a more genuine interaction, in which Thompson graciously realized that even a devil like Nixon, his greatest nemesis, needed to be human sometimes. So they talked football. And it was fun. No surrender here. They both lived to fight another day, but reading about it you wonder if this was two adversaries finally meeting on the fields of battle, and, upon sizing each other up, realizing they were too perfectly matched to waste their time in combat.
Most importantly, Where the Buffalo Roam doesn't have the teeth of a true gonzo work. I thought the film was coming into its own in the speech scene, the one in the college auditorium, when Murray's HST says that Lazlo (AKA Dr. Gonzo AKA Oscar Z. Acosta) is dead. He gets a faraway tone, less like he's blathering to entertain and more like he's narrating the world he sees whether or not anyone's there to hear him.
The weight of this scene almost immediately evaporates with the ultimate pulled punch, as Lazlo/Acosta comes heroically striding - very much alive - in a white suit and white grin into the film's silly climax. Where in Thompson's actual writing did his subjects ever receive their come-uppance at his own hand?
Listen:
The real Thompson would go to the graveyard with you, hold you by the hand, and look down into the yawning hole in the ground with you. In his own writings, he very honestly described his search for Acosta after the Brown Buffalo's disappearance, very plainly repeating what he'd heard - that Acosta had been shot and his body had been thrown in the sea during a drug deal gone bad. And that was it.
The film gets it all backwards, in everything from Thompson and Acosta's dynamic to the bastardization of Acosta's involvement with the Chicano movement... making him out instead to be the defender of a loose commune of hippies or something and then the founder of a loosely defined guerrilla republic or whatever that was.
There at the close of the film, with Lazlo/Acosta walking across the airport tarmac in a white suit, I realized this for what it was... I could almost hear Thompson, King Gonzo himself, chuckling as a very dark time turned to optimistic slapstick on the silver screen. All teeth were pulled in that moment and I realize something just now. This has the emotional depth of Cheech and fucking Chong! Lazlo is indestructible, oh that Lazlo, when will he learn? Silly, Lazlo.
The real Acosta wouldn't have made it within a half mile of an American president, or even candidate, without being dropped by a sniper. He was too dangerous, too unpredictable. He did more than wander around with a fucking Nixon mask on, he did more than just unnerve the people around him. And as a lawyer? Defending 18-year-old potheads too dumb to keep from getting caught? That's kid stuff.
All we get is a decent portrayal by Bill Murray (thoroughly wasted!) and a script written by and for people who think Thompson's life could be reduced to formulaic stoner comedy.
Saturday, February 6, 2010
Reactions upon finally watching "Where the Buffalo Roam" or: I hope I'm not too late to review a 30-year-old movie.
Saturday, January 23, 2010
CD Release #3 (on the origin of species by means of natural selection)
Where the Buffalo Roamed - JUST DIE! - Blag'ard - the Machiavillains - U.P.A.S.S. - January 23rd @ Double Dragon House (Asheville)
When I woke up the day after the Greenville show I felt GREAT. And I do mean great, I mean skipping down the street, high-fiving strangers great.
So I was out of bed by 10:15 or so - plenty of sleep - and Andy headed west around 11:00 or so. I hung around town, working on the house with Rachel and enjoying being in the same place for a few hours. Then, around 3:00, back into the current and west, listening to Sound Opinions (Jim and Greg talking with Frank Black) and calling friends. You know that thing that happens, when you're on the road and your destination isn't closing on you any faster, when you stay on the phone the whole way. Yeah, that thing.
AND ON THE WAY
HOLY SHIT
IN WINSTON-SALEM
I SAW THIS THING AGAIN
Picture above is from late '08, Andy snapped that shot riding with Finn Riggins from Asheville to Wilmington, but it was the same freaking thing! Same truck and all. I had no camera on me, it quickly passed me headed the other way on 40, but I definitely saw it and I took this as a good omen.
So it was a sunny and warm drive until I hit the mountains and I climbed the mountain through banks of thickening fog
haha
For some reason I want to put in a sentence that looks like it means something but really means gibberish like
I grappled, nigh mountebank of fog. Rough strewn carrevan ascendant braketack, like unto propagation amongst great veracity. Verily cartographed abreast of preakness majest!
Or some shit.
Point is, it was really foggy headed up the mountain and when I got to the top I was ready to be done driving. I rolled to Dave and Julie's house where they fixed me FANGODDAMNTASTIC food and we caught up and watched "the State."
What a silly show.
And after a few episodes I headed to the south side of town to get ready for the show.
Rolled across town and landed at Andy's old house - where the Niq and the Adam and the Chad and the Graham roam - I think at one point Chad and Adam were in the same room and I called them Chadam? Had a beer and kicked it, parked my truck and left it there. For the safety.
Shit. The show is starting.
Am I ready? Can I be ready?
It's a packed basement we've created - it's hungry for music.
Let's get it started.
***
A little before 10:00, but not by much, and Blag'ard got started. This was the last I would know of time until 3:30. 5 1/2 hours of noise and oblivion and midair collisions ensued and I rode the wave like I knew what I was doing... because I knew what I was doing. I felt like a skilled surfer, finally encountering the monster wave of legend, and realizing that the wave sized me up as I calmly set board to water.
This was the show. This was us growing up, this was us coming to a point where we felt like we could expect people to take us as seriously as we take ourselves. This was evolution. This was the one individual, of a species that has been changing for years, that scientists would call the moment of divergence. A feathered dinosaur becomes a bird and starts flying, stops gliding. Dig?
Read on.
***
Blag'ard had joined us for a second night and they got started first. The basement was healthily populated to begin with, and more people showed up during the set. Great love was given to Blag'ard - who played a fantastic set.
Double Dragon is a name I came up with for the house under the initial plan. Originally, this was going to be a show split between the Machiavillains' house and Andy's old house, where Niq and Chadam now reside. The two house plan kind of fell apart, but the Double Dragon House name stayed and I hope it remains the name of that house. It fits.
Anyway.
Again, Blag'ard focused on the material from the new record - which I've had long enough to appreciate now. It's a blistering pop record, ten quick tracks. The composition is tight, these guys waste nothing. They use as minimal an arsenal as I've ever seen for a band this wide-open. On hand are two mics, a Strat, two amps, a compression unit, a tuner, and a drumkit and that. is. it.
It's a more serious record than Bobcat. Central to this album is an estranged darkness, barely concealed by a laughing-to-keep-myself-from-crying smirk. Joe's voice crackles with loosely controlled emotion and some very real humanity comes out in the choruses of songs like "R.C.O." and "Babushka," when Adam's belted harmony rides alongside. Joe and Adam harmonize like two friends who don't even need to talk about what's fucked up in the world. Being friends is enough, there's no need to talk it out.
There's a disconnect in a thinking man trying to find his place in a world that changes quickly and without plan, and most of these songs are about that disconnect. Joe expresses cheerful self-deprecation, alternating between a maniacal cackle and a frustrated low rant in his vocal delivery. Listen to the pre-chorus of "R.C.O." to hear the kind of repression he manages to express. The guitar and drum lines are just restrained enough, they're building towards a satisfying go-kart derby of a chorus, but there's still a pent-up energy in this part of the song that never quite erupts... the close harmony of "R..... C.... O....." ties the guitar and drum track down, tightens it without fully hiding the tension beneath. What does "R.C.O." mean? Fuck if I know, but I know it's important.
Did that make any sense? Goddammit. I'm sitting here, listening to the record. I don't have the vocabulary to talk about it. I mean, it sounds so simple - a catchy, 33 minute rock record - but I always flop around like a fish on the shore when I try to write about Blag'ard.
Gotta love those harmonies.
When I was getting to know these guys, the first few times I saw them play, I got a different impression every time. I think all my earlier impressions were correct, but everything I've written about the Blaggies has fallen short. So maybe you tell me what this stuff is.
It's rock and roll. Shouldn't that be enough?
Amen. We'll go with that. Blag'ard was received well. People got CDs, people talked about them and they said very nice things.
***
Andy wore a turntable belt buckle that was powerful medicine and our enemies did cower. PBR and other cheapnesses were flowing. The people did drink, and some were verbing noun. It wasn't even that cold out. Two dudes were firedancing in the yard, which apparently involves a spool on fire and a length of line. The firedancer runs the spool back and forth in the space between their hands and, since it's night, you can't see the line - all you see is this fireball spinning in the air between open hands. They threw the spinning fire up, among the branches of a tree, and it landed in the grass. "Shit, let me try that again."
The second time he caught it. Nothing ended up on fire that wasn't supposed to be on fire.
***
The Machiavillians set up and, since this is their basement and their practice space, it didn't take them long. They've wired mic cables through the basement rafters, so that mics drop down from the ceiling at ideal locations. There's even a drummer mic hanging by the kit, which was perfect for Adam. This was a great PA for the purpose - there was even a monitor! I can't recall the last house show I've played that had monitors! This sentence also ends with an exclamation! I know what they say, that the overuse of exclamations dulls their impact, which is probably true! In fact, it's bad writing technique! In fact, it's probably a bad idea to use more than one per paragraph!
***
I got a proper copy of Dup's CD and he handed me a Lester Bangs book. Sweet.
***
Machiavillains - those guys must listen to a ton of Joe Strummer, but especially their bassist, Patrick. He was channeling middle Clash all night long, but not in a derivative way. Couple that with straightforward drumming and slightly disjointed guitar lines, and you have a good idea of what happens when Machiavillains play.
I was near the back, I'd walked in shortly after they got started and couldn't get very close. Dup was there and the Noise in Print hooligan gang of hooligans were with him. They definitely brought out their friends, the basement was solidly packed. Two bands in, and the night was already a righteous success.
***
Somewhere in here my gear, o my gear, made it into the basement and at some point it made it through the crowd and was set up. We moved the Machiavillains' kit out of the way, set up Ando's, and were soon ready to blast.
The stand was too short and the microphone smelled terrible so I didn't use it. I grabbed the drummer mic, hung it from the ceiling, and used it instead. Note: I want to use mics suspended from the ceiling from now on. It's good shit.
Niq joined us again on bass. He played with us the whole set and holy crap, he has his shit together. We stumbled a little at the Cave last time we did a show with him, coming together at the halfway point. For this show, we played tight as hell, and we did it as a trio!
North Dakota, Missouri,1980, Wolf Wings, Dirty Bomb Stratocaster, Golgotha '98, Peace Treaty, Permafrost, Southport
We skipped "1980" because this was an evening perfect for the loud and the brash. There were some out-of-sight variations on the songs, including Andy's friend Tink joining us on motherfucking trombone during "Dirty Bomb Stratocaster!" That was freakin' cool.
Both during this show, and at the Greenville one, we played "Permafrost" nice and slow... groove-heavy as a mütherfüker. That, and "Wolf Wings," established a bong-rattling thickness that I hope is indicative of songs to come. We have a grunged-out number in the works, based on a progression I wrote in 10th or 11th grade (making it a true '90s song!), so stay tuned.
I can't remember the last time we played this tight
this locked-in
this seriously.
I howled. I ranted. I shouted and I stared down the crowded room, straight into the future, and I swear the walls did move and the people were so locked into the moment... into the very sensation of what we were doing. I felt it, man, we all did, and we held nothing back.
Then, at the end of the night, we closed on the best "Southport" ever. Ever ever ever. At the end I dove into Andy's kit and my tele made that terrifying thunderstorm sound it always does when I make it survive something of that nature. Then Niq was pummeling Andy's bassdrum with his bass. Then Andy was tearing his set apart, throwing drum elements to the ground. Then Niq and I were both hammering away at the head of the kickdrum with our instruments like axes. Then it was time. I turned off my amps (the cab on my Fender tower had nearly been knocked to the floor). Andy threw his kickdrum, face-up, to the floor and pounded a war cadence on it... then he was done and we were done and we finally knew the true nature of the wolf in the works.
***
I've been friends with Dave forever, including but not limited to our time together in Migrations. I can't believe this is the first time I've shared the stage with JUST DIE!, especially considering that the band's been at this for 4 years or so. I've had the shirts (I wore one of their shirts to our Greenville show, actually), the CDs, the stickers... I even got to sit in on a JD! practice in Dave's old house. I finally got to see the show and, holy shit, it was 25 minutes of war!
Intensity has many faces. Our intensity is the intensity of the living world. Wolves alope in the towering shadow of blinding glacial cliffs. A gazelle born with the speed and agility to elude predation before it has seen a single sunset. An eagle glides over a lake, not far over the water. The eagle knows the multitudinous fish beneath the water, but it patiently sails over a hundred - over a thousand - until the strike, and the strike is sudden. The chosen fish is in the talons, is in the air, is on its way to the nest of beaks agape and aimed to the sky in a prayer of instincts. Blag'ard's intensity is the intensity of a stock car on fire, its maniac driver still stomping the gas until the thing either explodes or grinds to a halt. JUST DIE! is the intensity of a severe thunderstorm racing through a modern city, an arsenal of donder and blitzen and hail and slashing rain to deafen and blind and destroy you - and then be gone. It leaves you refreshed, thrilled, fearless.
It's about the raw outpouring of emotion, bay-bee. It's about how good that feels, and every member of this tight quartet is celebrating some kind of release when they play. Dave churns the waters in the sky, slashing the innocent blue to a serious gray, and Josh's bass rolls the big cloud along in a groove-heavy gallop. Heavy crackle from Matt's SG, lethal riff lightning that dances within the cloud and sarcastically backhands the radio towers. All along, Steve - human size and very human - is running down the empty streets of the city in the pouring rain, laughing his ass off in unrestrained joy.
It was kind of like that and it was nothing like that. Lo, the people did mosh and there was one dude who knew all the words and celebrated along with the band - all unrestrained joy and fucking grins and shared microphones and this is what rock and roll is all about, you see? It's a shared experience, and JUST DIE! is a band that loves to share. What they have for the world is more than just hard core - is more than just drums + guitar + bass + ranting - it's release, and they brought enough for everyone.
I even got a song dedicated my way. Love beams.
***
So JUST DIE! were finished and I doubt they played more than 25 minutes. Bless that band... I stepped outside with a stupid, blissful grin on my face and tromped around in the dogshit in the yard. The party was operating on its own steam now, a steady diet of rock music, alcohol, and noun - the fuelstuffs of all-night revelry - and I stepped over to Chadam Manor to verb some noun myself
and I left the planet.
I got on a ship to Tralfamadore and was gone, daddy, gone.
My only regret is that I didn't get to hear U.P.A.S.S. play. Andy caught some of their set, so we weren't total jackasses, but I feel like kind of a jerk for vanishing like that.
Anyway, it's what happened, and we were over at Chadam Manor, sitting around giggling and telling jokes and Blag'adam launched into a cut scene from Charles Dickens - accents and all. Playing piano, playing guitar, babbling at each other, time dilation in full effect... wandering around the room once the people had gone, giving motivational speeches to the furniture and seeking my hoodie.
I like noun, I just don't use it too often, so when I do it reverts me to a giggling child with a water pistol. Shit yes.
***
About 3:30 I curled up on the couch with a comforter and peaced out. That was the first time in hours I'd known the time, and only because I'd bleared "What time is it?" to Chad and he'd smumbled an answer.
***
So we've finally come to the winddown of our narrative. I woke fully jazzed about 10:00 the next morning, and Niq and self quickly aced to Andy & Manita's house. Andy texted us back as we mounted the stairs to his door saying he was awake, so we didn't hesitate to knock as the pantsless bastard made his way to the door (how'd they get here this fast?) and this would have been a much more entertaining scene if we all had cockney accents but we don't.
Andy and Niq proceeded to cook a breakfast of illogical proportions. A dozen eggs, a pound of sausage, a pound or more of bacon, pancakes, toast... and what we got is a breakfast I like to call "The Scoutmaster's Wet Dream."
Don't read too much into that phrase. Just use the surface-level definition. Please.
And then they put a plate in my little chimp hands and I took some of everything and had a hard time finishing it, partially because I had enough food in front of me to feed a hobo camp for six weeks. Andy and Niq playfully made fun as they water buffalo stampeded their way through their bigass breakfasts, I'd eaten about half of mine and was pretty sure I'd had enough. I cracked wise because they sounded like football coaches, and the phrase "If your daddy knew you were eating like that he'd crawl out of his grave and kick you ass!" might have been said.
So I ate and then made my way to Dup's new house. His roomates are nice - even if they do enjoy badmouthing the South (boo!) - but I had a good time there.
***
Seriously, the Southeast gets such a bad rap, but it's all in such an disingenuine, cartoonish way. I'm especially baffled when people move here, then choose to talk shit. If you stop badmouthing the place for a minute, you'll realize that some of the best schools in the nation, a lot of the pharmaceuticals industry, some amazing scenery, and the goddamn space program that landed a man on the fucking moon and that has kept rovers that were supposed to last 3 months wandering around the Martian landscape for 6 years and counting are all based in the South. Blam.
Anyway. Can't abide regionalism. It doesn't have a place in educated discourse. Do people move to the West Coast or the North, just to badmouth the place and pretend it's a haven for two-dimensional yokels and inbreds? There are just as many illiterate people in other parts of the nation and racism is bad everywhere. You sound like a jerk if you go around, riffing on poor illiterates, because those are real people. It's a lot easier to imagine brokedown hollers full up'a toothless Joads (Joads? Oklahoma isn't the South! Oh, wait...) and McCoys and Hatfields levelin' they double-barrels at trespassers and thumpin' Bibles and screwing their cousins or whatever. We're getting a raw deal and it's a tad illogical.
***
The Noise in Print gang showed up, soaked to the balls with the rain that was a-fallin', and proceeded back out to flier. I had some coffee, some good conversation, and was back on the road in time to make it back to Pittsboro before the sun was completely gone from the sky.
It was a fine drive, and for the first time in I have no idea how long, I was satisfied to listen to music the whole way. No desire to pick up the phone and road-dial everyone I know. Nothing to say, I'd said it.
The rain was falling and I was all ears.
When I woke up the day after the Greenville show I felt GREAT. And I do mean great, I mean skipping down the street, high-fiving strangers great.
So I was out of bed by 10:15 or so - plenty of sleep - and Andy headed west around 11:00 or so. I hung around town, working on the house with Rachel and enjoying being in the same place for a few hours. Then, around 3:00, back into the current and west, listening to Sound Opinions (Jim and Greg talking with Frank Black) and calling friends. You know that thing that happens, when you're on the road and your destination isn't closing on you any faster, when you stay on the phone the whole way. Yeah, that thing.
AND ON THE WAY
HOLY SHIT
IN WINSTON-SALEM
I SAW THIS THING AGAIN
Picture above is from late '08, Andy snapped that shot riding with Finn Riggins from Asheville to Wilmington, but it was the same freaking thing! Same truck and all. I had no camera on me, it quickly passed me headed the other way on 40, but I definitely saw it and I took this as a good omen.Only good could come of this show.
So it was a sunny and warm drive until I hit the mountains and I climbed the mountain through banks of thickening fog
haha
For some reason I want to put in a sentence that looks like it means something but really means gibberish like
I grappled, nigh mountebank of fog. Rough strewn carrevan ascendant braketack, like unto propagation amongst great veracity. Verily cartographed abreast of preakness majest!
Or some shit.
Point is, it was really foggy headed up the mountain and when I got to the top I was ready to be done driving. I rolled to Dave and Julie's house where they fixed me FANGODDAMNTASTIC food and we caught up and watched "the State."
What a silly show.
And after a few episodes I headed to the south side of town to get ready for the show.
Rolled across town and landed at Andy's old house - where the Niq and the Adam and the Chad and the Graham roam - I think at one point Chad and Adam were in the same room and I called them Chadam? Had a beer and kicked it, parked my truck and left it there. For the safety.
Shit. The show is starting.
Am I ready? Can I be ready?
It's a packed basement we've created - it's hungry for music.
Let's get it started.
***
A little before 10:00, but not by much, and Blag'ard got started. This was the last I would know of time until 3:30. 5 1/2 hours of noise and oblivion and midair collisions ensued and I rode the wave like I knew what I was doing... because I knew what I was doing. I felt like a skilled surfer, finally encountering the monster wave of legend, and realizing that the wave sized me up as I calmly set board to water.
This was the show. This was us growing up, this was us coming to a point where we felt like we could expect people to take us as seriously as we take ourselves. This was evolution. This was the one individual, of a species that has been changing for years, that scientists would call the moment of divergence. A feathered dinosaur becomes a bird and starts flying, stops gliding. Dig?
Read on.
***
Blag'ard had joined us for a second night and they got started first. The basement was healthily populated to begin with, and more people showed up during the set. Great love was given to Blag'ard - who played a fantastic set.
Double Dragon is a name I came up with for the house under the initial plan. Originally, this was going to be a show split between the Machiavillains' house and Andy's old house, where Niq and Chadam now reside. The two house plan kind of fell apart, but the Double Dragon House name stayed and I hope it remains the name of that house. It fits.
Anyway.
Again, Blag'ard focused on the material from the new record - which I've had long enough to appreciate now. It's a blistering pop record, ten quick tracks. The composition is tight, these guys waste nothing. They use as minimal an arsenal as I've ever seen for a band this wide-open. On hand are two mics, a Strat, two amps, a compression unit, a tuner, and a drumkit and that. is. it.
It's a more serious record than Bobcat. Central to this album is an estranged darkness, barely concealed by a laughing-to-keep-myself-from-crying smirk. Joe's voice crackles with loosely controlled emotion and some very real humanity comes out in the choruses of songs like "R.C.O." and "Babushka," when Adam's belted harmony rides alongside. Joe and Adam harmonize like two friends who don't even need to talk about what's fucked up in the world. Being friends is enough, there's no need to talk it out.
There's a disconnect in a thinking man trying to find his place in a world that changes quickly and without plan, and most of these songs are about that disconnect. Joe expresses cheerful self-deprecation, alternating between a maniacal cackle and a frustrated low rant in his vocal delivery. Listen to the pre-chorus of "R.C.O." to hear the kind of repression he manages to express. The guitar and drum lines are just restrained enough, they're building towards a satisfying go-kart derby of a chorus, but there's still a pent-up energy in this part of the song that never quite erupts... the close harmony of "R..... C.... O....." ties the guitar and drum track down, tightens it without fully hiding the tension beneath. What does "R.C.O." mean? Fuck if I know, but I know it's important.
Did that make any sense? Goddammit. I'm sitting here, listening to the record. I don't have the vocabulary to talk about it. I mean, it sounds so simple - a catchy, 33 minute rock record - but I always flop around like a fish on the shore when I try to write about Blag'ard.
Gotta love those harmonies.
When I was getting to know these guys, the first few times I saw them play, I got a different impression every time. I think all my earlier impressions were correct, but everything I've written about the Blaggies has fallen short. So maybe you tell me what this stuff is.
It's rock and roll. Shouldn't that be enough?
Amen. We'll go with that. Blag'ard was received well. People got CDs, people talked about them and they said very nice things.
***
Andy wore a turntable belt buckle that was powerful medicine and our enemies did cower. PBR and other cheapnesses were flowing. The people did drink, and some were verbing noun. It wasn't even that cold out. Two dudes were firedancing in the yard, which apparently involves a spool on fire and a length of line. The firedancer runs the spool back and forth in the space between their hands and, since it's night, you can't see the line - all you see is this fireball spinning in the air between open hands. They threw the spinning fire up, among the branches of a tree, and it landed in the grass. "Shit, let me try that again."
The second time he caught it. Nothing ended up on fire that wasn't supposed to be on fire.
***
The Machiavillians set up and, since this is their basement and their practice space, it didn't take them long. They've wired mic cables through the basement rafters, so that mics drop down from the ceiling at ideal locations. There's even a drummer mic hanging by the kit, which was perfect for Adam. This was a great PA for the purpose - there was even a monitor! I can't recall the last house show I've played that had monitors! This sentence also ends with an exclamation! I know what they say, that the overuse of exclamations dulls their impact, which is probably true! In fact, it's bad writing technique! In fact, it's probably a bad idea to use more than one per paragraph!
***
I got a proper copy of Dup's CD and he handed me a Lester Bangs book. Sweet.
***
Machiavillains - those guys must listen to a ton of Joe Strummer, but especially their bassist, Patrick. He was channeling middle Clash all night long, but not in a derivative way. Couple that with straightforward drumming and slightly disjointed guitar lines, and you have a good idea of what happens when Machiavillains play.
I was near the back, I'd walked in shortly after they got started and couldn't get very close. Dup was there and the Noise in Print hooligan gang of hooligans were with him. They definitely brought out their friends, the basement was solidly packed. Two bands in, and the night was already a righteous success.
***
Somewhere in here my gear, o my gear, made it into the basement and at some point it made it through the crowd and was set up. We moved the Machiavillains' kit out of the way, set up Ando's, and were soon ready to blast.
The stand was too short and the microphone smelled terrible so I didn't use it. I grabbed the drummer mic, hung it from the ceiling, and used it instead. Note: I want to use mics suspended from the ceiling from now on. It's good shit.
Niq joined us again on bass. He played with us the whole set and holy crap, he has his shit together. We stumbled a little at the Cave last time we did a show with him, coming together at the halfway point. For this show, we played tight as hell, and we did it as a trio!
North Dakota, Missouri,
We skipped "1980" because this was an evening perfect for the loud and the brash. There were some out-of-sight variations on the songs, including Andy's friend Tink joining us on motherfucking trombone during "Dirty Bomb Stratocaster!" That was freakin' cool.
Both during this show, and at the Greenville one, we played "Permafrost" nice and slow... groove-heavy as a mütherfüker. That, and "Wolf Wings," established a bong-rattling thickness that I hope is indicative of songs to come. We have a grunged-out number in the works, based on a progression I wrote in 10th or 11th grade (making it a true '90s song!), so stay tuned.
I can't remember the last time we played this tight
this locked-in
this seriously.
I howled. I ranted. I shouted and I stared down the crowded room, straight into the future, and I swear the walls did move and the people were so locked into the moment... into the very sensation of what we were doing. I felt it, man, we all did, and we held nothing back.
Then, at the end of the night, we closed on the best "Southport" ever. Ever ever ever. At the end I dove into Andy's kit and my tele made that terrifying thunderstorm sound it always does when I make it survive something of that nature. Then Niq was pummeling Andy's bassdrum with his bass. Then Andy was tearing his set apart, throwing drum elements to the ground. Then Niq and I were both hammering away at the head of the kickdrum with our instruments like axes. Then it was time. I turned off my amps (the cab on my Fender tower had nearly been knocked to the floor). Andy threw his kickdrum, face-up, to the floor and pounded a war cadence on it... then he was done and we were done and we finally knew the true nature of the wolf in the works.
***
I've been friends with Dave forever, including but not limited to our time together in Migrations. I can't believe this is the first time I've shared the stage with JUST DIE!, especially considering that the band's been at this for 4 years or so. I've had the shirts (I wore one of their shirts to our Greenville show, actually), the CDs, the stickers... I even got to sit in on a JD! practice in Dave's old house. I finally got to see the show and, holy shit, it was 25 minutes of war!
Intensity has many faces. Our intensity is the intensity of the living world. Wolves alope in the towering shadow of blinding glacial cliffs. A gazelle born with the speed and agility to elude predation before it has seen a single sunset. An eagle glides over a lake, not far over the water. The eagle knows the multitudinous fish beneath the water, but it patiently sails over a hundred - over a thousand - until the strike, and the strike is sudden. The chosen fish is in the talons, is in the air, is on its way to the nest of beaks agape and aimed to the sky in a prayer of instincts. Blag'ard's intensity is the intensity of a stock car on fire, its maniac driver still stomping the gas until the thing either explodes or grinds to a halt. JUST DIE! is the intensity of a severe thunderstorm racing through a modern city, an arsenal of donder and blitzen and hail and slashing rain to deafen and blind and destroy you - and then be gone. It leaves you refreshed, thrilled, fearless.
It's about the raw outpouring of emotion, bay-bee. It's about how good that feels, and every member of this tight quartet is celebrating some kind of release when they play. Dave churns the waters in the sky, slashing the innocent blue to a serious gray, and Josh's bass rolls the big cloud along in a groove-heavy gallop. Heavy crackle from Matt's SG, lethal riff lightning that dances within the cloud and sarcastically backhands the radio towers. All along, Steve - human size and very human - is running down the empty streets of the city in the pouring rain, laughing his ass off in unrestrained joy.
It was kind of like that and it was nothing like that. Lo, the people did mosh and there was one dude who knew all the words and celebrated along with the band - all unrestrained joy and fucking grins and shared microphones and this is what rock and roll is all about, you see? It's a shared experience, and JUST DIE! is a band that loves to share. What they have for the world is more than just hard core - is more than just drums + guitar + bass + ranting - it's release, and they brought enough for everyone.
I even got a song dedicated my way. Love beams.
***
So JUST DIE! were finished and I doubt they played more than 25 minutes. Bless that band... I stepped outside with a stupid, blissful grin on my face and tromped around in the dogshit in the yard. The party was operating on its own steam now, a steady diet of rock music, alcohol, and noun - the fuelstuffs of all-night revelry - and I stepped over to Chadam Manor to verb some noun myself
and I left the planet.
I got on a ship to Tralfamadore and was gone, daddy, gone.
My only regret is that I didn't get to hear U.P.A.S.S. play. Andy caught some of their set, so we weren't total jackasses, but I feel like kind of a jerk for vanishing like that.
Anyway, it's what happened, and we were over at Chadam Manor, sitting around giggling and telling jokes and Blag'adam launched into a cut scene from Charles Dickens - accents and all. Playing piano, playing guitar, babbling at each other, time dilation in full effect... wandering around the room once the people had gone, giving motivational speeches to the furniture and seeking my hoodie.
I like noun, I just don't use it too often, so when I do it reverts me to a giggling child with a water pistol. Shit yes.
***
About 3:30 I curled up on the couch with a comforter and peaced out. That was the first time in hours I'd known the time, and only because I'd bleared "What time is it?" to Chad and he'd smumbled an answer.
***
So we've finally come to the winddown of our narrative. I woke fully jazzed about 10:00 the next morning, and Niq and self quickly aced to Andy & Manita's house. Andy texted us back as we mounted the stairs to his door saying he was awake, so we didn't hesitate to knock as the pantsless bastard made his way to the door (how'd they get here this fast?) and this would have been a much more entertaining scene if we all had cockney accents but we don't.
Andy and Niq proceeded to cook a breakfast of illogical proportions. A dozen eggs, a pound of sausage, a pound or more of bacon, pancakes, toast... and what we got is a breakfast I like to call "The Scoutmaster's Wet Dream."
Don't read too much into that phrase. Just use the surface-level definition. Please.
And then they put a plate in my little chimp hands and I took some of everything and had a hard time finishing it, partially because I had enough food in front of me to feed a hobo camp for six weeks. Andy and Niq playfully made fun as they water buffalo stampeded their way through their bigass breakfasts, I'd eaten about half of mine and was pretty sure I'd had enough. I cracked wise because they sounded like football coaches, and the phrase "If your daddy knew you were eating like that he'd crawl out of his grave and kick you ass!" might have been said.
So I ate and then made my way to Dup's new house. His roomates are nice - even if they do enjoy badmouthing the South (boo!) - but I had a good time there.
***
Seriously, the Southeast gets such a bad rap, but it's all in such an disingenuine, cartoonish way. I'm especially baffled when people move here, then choose to talk shit. If you stop badmouthing the place for a minute, you'll realize that some of the best schools in the nation, a lot of the pharmaceuticals industry, some amazing scenery, and the goddamn space program that landed a man on the fucking moon and that has kept rovers that were supposed to last 3 months wandering around the Martian landscape for 6 years and counting are all based in the South. Blam.
Anyway. Can't abide regionalism. It doesn't have a place in educated discourse. Do people move to the West Coast or the North, just to badmouth the place and pretend it's a haven for two-dimensional yokels and inbreds? There are just as many illiterate people in other parts of the nation and racism is bad everywhere. You sound like a jerk if you go around, riffing on poor illiterates, because those are real people. It's a lot easier to imagine brokedown hollers full up'a toothless Joads (Joads? Oklahoma isn't the South! Oh, wait...) and McCoys and Hatfields levelin' they double-barrels at trespassers and thumpin' Bibles and screwing their cousins or whatever. We're getting a raw deal and it's a tad illogical.
***
The Noise in Print gang showed up, soaked to the balls with the rain that was a-fallin', and proceeded back out to flier. I had some coffee, some good conversation, and was back on the road in time to make it back to Pittsboro before the sun was completely gone from the sky.
It was a fine drive, and for the first time in I have no idea how long, I was satisfied to listen to music the whole way. No desire to pick up the phone and road-dial everyone I know. Nothing to say, I'd said it.
The rain was falling and I was all ears.
Friday, January 22, 2010
CD Release #2 (let the wookiee win)
Where the Buffalo Roamed - Blag'ard - Jeremy Aggers - Jan 22nd @ the Tipsy Teapot (Greenville)
I think it was during my drive to school - or maybe my drive home - but I had my first important revelation of this weekend, one that would carry me into light.
Every show remaining in my weekend would be played like my it would be my last, I would play my heart out and leave nothing in my batteries. Anything that seemed right, I would do. I might even end up with my arm in a sling and a black eye by Sunday, who knew? It felt very right when I had this thought. I needed to give the elements another chance. I didn't actually want to control the music, I still wanted to behave like I was playing with tectonic forces that I really had no business touching, but the Reservoir show had left me scared.
What if I'm really not in control? Can the music destroy me? Would it?
Ultimately, I'm not even sure what it was about that show. I've played sloppily before, but it's never bothered me like this. I guess I was a little ashamed, thought that I'd made a fool of myself, even though I'm sure I was the only person who noticed.
Still, Jason Ward did yell "You released the fuck out of that CD!" when we finished playing last night. Thinking about all this stuff, feeling a bit better, but more importantly feeling that sacred carelessness that would make this one of the best show weekends... and it would be amazing because we would do it on our own terms and we would get away with it.
Up the next morning & to school & then home... took out enough trash to choke a rancor... need to get less lazy on that front... met Andy & Jay at Carolina Brewery... Jay wants to overthrow the government... all I wanted was a midday beer and a ridiculous burger... all slaw and chili and mustard... soon I was wearing the fucking thing but (miraculously) none of it got on my clothes... we worked out the movie we'd make... "The Fall of Jay..." a two hour, minute-by-minute, documentation of Jay's hilarious descent from respectable dude to meth head... laughed our asses off... we got collectively hit on by an attractive middle-aged woman in the next booth and got glares from her beau... awesome...
Eating a burger I had to wear to properly enjoy put me back in the mindset I needed to be in. Cracking wise and laughing at my own stupid jokes in a sleepy bar in my own little town at the crossroads put me back in my own head and evacuated the evil funk.
Goddammit, I have something here. We made a record and now we're releasing it - all that shit on our own. Feelings of indestructibility. Feelings that no matter what I did - no matter who noticed - that I had done something right. That morning I had resigned myself to the forces of nature that took me so by surprise at the Reservoir, and I had gone totally zen.
Big Evil a little before 5:00 when the phone rang. Jason Duff had quit Irata and they wouldn't be joining us. Momentary frustration, but it quickly passed through me and dissipated. Zen. When the going gets weird, I'll accept anything and move on. I could have opened my refrigerator to see it stocked with wriggling squid and I would have shrugged and gone about my day. Zen.
So our Greenville lineup had quickly gone from five to three (no more Gray Young, no more Irata). Things were changing so rapidly and so unpredictably and, you know what, it made shit exciting. Tried to set up a fourth band last minute, a local, but it didn't work and we chose to simply roll with it. Rolling to Greenville, jamming to Gnarls Barkley, thrilled to return to this strange town of hard drinking and hard insanity.
***
We arrived around 7:30 and headed to the place... used to go to the Tipsy Teapot on occasion when I lived in the GVL, but it was smaller then. Now they've rented out the space next door, which is the show space and bar now, and they've put together a righteous... well, you get the idea. They're doing it right.
Got there and ran into a guy who kind of acted like he worked there and a confusing conversation ensued. Turns out he's Jeremy Aggers' tour manager. Sorry to ruin the punchline, but it wouldn't have made for a better story if I'd gone into more detail.
I'd rather tell you about the crazy guy who cornered us while we were unloading the truck.
Andy and I were taking turns carrying gear into the back door when a guy with pretty sweet dreads and a fantastic coat the color of egg nog (not suede, but something similar and pimpish for sure) approached us and told us he was a musician too. He shook my hand, not quite breaking the bones but definitely moving them closer together, and proceeded to serenade us with Micheal Jackson songs. Half of the serenading was just him singing the guitar line or the beat, but that's fine.
During one of Andy's turns to load gear the topic changed - oh, before I forget - our new friend's name is Jah. "Spelled j - ah." Anyway, at this point Jah launched into Ric Flair mode - which is to say we got to hear about Ric Flair. He mainly talked about things Ric Flair said in interviews, though. From context, I think these were interviews given in Holiday Inn conference rooms or excerpts from 10:00am speeches in said rooms.
Sweet Kal-el, life's entertaining. I didn't have to do anything! I just sat there and let him yammer.
Near the end of our unpacking, though, I got a little annoyed. I'm not really jazzed by the babbling of crazy people fresh off the street and I could see him trying to follow us around half the fucking night. Definitely felt a little of this when he offered to help us carry shit in and tried to leave his bag in the bed of the truck. He helped us lug in some drum hardware - and he left his bag leaning on the tire of some random truck in the parking lot (?) when I told him I was closing my tailgate. Singing gibberish the whole way, he left the hardware with our other stuff before sauntering insanely back into the night.
***
Good food with good people... good times with the Blag'ardites... people were out in good number to see Jeremy Aggers so he got started a little after 9:00. The Teapot's resolute Delia offered to work the door for us, and she did nicely. She doesn't play - you either drop a few bucks in the jar or you don't come in - and I'm psyched we had her on our side. She took the show as seriously as we did.
***
I don't know the going exchange rate in the singer/songwriter world - it's not my bag, baby - but I do know that Jeremy Aggers can play the guitar like a motherfucker. I've always been envious of people who can play fingerstyle, but it went beyond that. It was a question of chord structure and order. His transitions were really cool, a lot of creative shapes sliding up to the 7th and the 10th frets before jetting back to his original progression. All this while singing and, you know folk music, there are a ton of words... so he was pretty busy up there. I would be curious to see what he does with a band behind him.
Upon talking to him he complained about the Atlanta scene being dominated by rock and rollers. He definitely draws a distinction between what he does and what I do. That was one of the strongest impressions I got from him, like he viewed music as compartmentalized - like the different genres were isolated spheres afloat in the ether. Weird.
Went to the back of the room and talked to his tour manager, Rob, for a little while and, you know what, when Rob lightens up he's a really entertaining guy. I didn't get much of a feel for what Jeremy was all about - nice enough guy but seemed really guarded - but Rob was a decent dude. Turns out he's from Kentucky. Awesome.
I love Kentucky. I told him so.
I guess the tour manager's job is to worry about things, to look out for what could be improved at a venue, etc., so their first instinct isn't to make friends with the other acts on the bill. He talked like he works really hard at this stuff, which is cool. It's rad that he has the passion for music and can look out for Jeremy - they were like wandering knights crossing a modern landscape, perpetually misunderstood yet destined for more (financial) success than I'll know.
I hope the best for them - which is about all I can do. This was a momentary intersection of two different worlds. Blag'ard and WtBR are of the independent rock community, in which success is defined by cooperation with other acts - a growing network rather than a single rising star - and making a living at this thing we call music isn't a realistic focus. Jeremy and Rob are looking for this to be their job. I get this feeling that Rob and I compared notes, realized that neither party's experience applied to the other's, and decided instead to just shoot the breeze about whatever came to mind.
Decent crowd at this point - a surprising amount of high school girls - and a woman at the back who was apparently bitching uncontrollably about anything to cross her mind. Awesome.
Most of them left when Jeremy was done and while Blag'ard was setting up... Drums! Amps! Stratocasters! Fear! ...and I'm pretty sure one of the ones to leave was the legendary whining woman of '010. Awesome.
So Blag'ard were quickly set up and were quickly playing. Awesome.
***
Most of Blag'ard's set came from their new record, Mach II, which I've had the pleasure of hearing. It's good. It's a transparent record, you can almost picture the blank canvas upon which the elements were placed, one at a time. Let's see... all this space to work with... so we'll put a guitar line here... we'll put some snare over here and we'll put some hat and kick near it... we'll put some vocals over here, kind of on their own so they come out clear and natural... it's a logical and unconfused records with more space in the recording process than Bobcat. If you've heard Blag'ard, hear me out - the space here is the same space you get in a band that's a clean Stratocaster, a drumkit, and two vocal lines. It's about Blag'ard being one of the least cluttered rock bands I know. Here it is. A song. No bullshit, just the song. And it's amazing.
Stopped at the back of the room to compliment Jeremy on his guitar playing (did I mention how good he is?). He looked a little surprised and a little frightened. I'm not sure what weirded him out so much about this show - it was a tremendous success. Maybe I just misread the poor guy, that's probably it.
anyway.
Blag'ard translated nicely and people were into it, but they failed to close the gap to the stage. Some of us got up front and reveled in this thing Joe and Adam do and we were rewarded. I never realized until this time around that Joe is a towering motherfucker, and watching him play guitar is like encountering a lean and dexterous bear. Adam - no matter his state - becomes a freeform mental patient when he gets behind the drumkit. I have no idea what he was saying between songs, maybe he didn't either, but he was as into what he was doing as is physically possible. This project possesses a single mind - and both Joe and Adam change a little when they enter into a state of Blag'ard.
They rocked it and then it was our turn and we rocked it.
Somewhere in here Jeremy and Rob departed.
***
Holy shit, do I feel validated.
We played the same set as at the Reservoir - Andy's idea - and I'm glad we did. We were tight, we were loud, and - according to Blag'adam - we had a good mix. At least 25 people moved up front, very close to us, and there were plenty of people back in the room as well. A very good crowd - so we played tight and passionate. I knew the cats out there - Liz and Davey and Joe and Mike "Jawline" King and Adam aka A-sharp and Heinrich and Jim Capps and the Blag'ard guys and some people I didn't know were up front, having a great time, and there's Nolan and he's singing along with "Missouri." Great feelings, love beams jammed through the atmosphere from a flourescent Japanese satellite. "Wolf Wings" and "Permafrost" I remember being really strong - but especially "Permafrost." It's rapidly becoming one of our best songs. We took those songs at a good pace... a deafening, menacing, leisurely, riff-driven thickness that makes me feel like I can split the Earth's crust just by stomping my feet.
So we closed this show with the same energy that closed the Reservoir show - only we were in perfect tune with it - so I ran across the floor and dove backwards into the drums and the set collapsed outwards like a booze-soaked flower collapsing in an alley. And the feedback rose. And Andy kicked over the pieces of his set that still stood.
And that was "Southport." The little song that could. One of our oldest, by the way. "Southport" and "Dirty Bomb Stratocaster" actually predate the band by a few years. I'm glad we're playing them.
And we sold some CDs and a shirt and it was a great night. Tried (unsuccessfully) to convince Liz to skip work and drive herself and Davey up to Asheville for our show the next day.
Now we enter a world of madness, so I'll have to go a little beat just to properly interpret stimulus.
Here goes.
So we packed to roll, tried to leave town, and failed several times because
goddammit
they're blocking off the downtown streets these days leaving them packed with
drunks
motherfuckers
freaks
girls in tubetops riding the backs of guys in polos
guys in perennial flip flops flopping flipping down the fucking street in self-righteous jaegerbomb wastedness
horndog attack posture like DMB howler monkeys on the warpath
down the street from Tipsy Teapot - tried to turn right and head out of town past my old house - orange cones and cop cars - no dice - had to wait at a green light while drunk bastards slogged across the street in heels and flip flops (shoes can have a gender?).
Considered running some of them over.
Reconsidered.
Didn't do it.
Goddamn circus.
The light was turning yellow when the parade of well-heeled uselessness was out of our way, so we drove up 4th Street to Summit and turned right, up to 5th Street, headed right when I should have gone left to 14th (duh) and I could have easily escaped but instead headed back into the waiting arms of partydown central
a gigantic magnet for the entirety of Eastern North Carolina
that attracts all the wretched scum and villainy
into a cavernous volcano that spews MGD and STD
and we had to skirt around its slopes as it erupted in the center of town
all human fluid and fuckshot braincells (cop cars planted at its boundaries like the natural disaster that it was) but we all know the kids define the cops like the seals define the sharks I mean
it's the most basic relationship in human society
the protector/protectee dynamic - when institutionalized - almost immediately reverts to a predator/prey dynamic
so we made another circle, up the same streets crawling with terminally wasted kids WAVE OF THE FUTURE COMING THROUGH and eventually down Dickinson and out of town
leaving the evening to collapse on itself
part and parcel to chaos
and I picture an enormous planetary nebula - all violence and expanding shockwave - yet within its post-nova forces some stars still shine and one of those stars is the Tipsy Teapot, a good venue that behaves like a good venue, a place that doesn't rely on girls in chaps dancing on the bar to stay in business. They've been in business a long time for a spot in Greenville - long may they remain.
***
Shit. That was more dangerous than I thought. Glad I let the reptile brain handle it.
Not much more to say on this show, which we considered an enormous success.
Let me see if anyone's still reading. Tits.
That'll wake them up.
Very long drive across a fading dreamscape again... passing through the night with the Ghost Dog soundtrack in the Millenium Falcon's speakers. Made it through the crushingly repetitive crawl of 264, headed home. Passed a kid, pulled by a cop, just inside of Chatham... and a quick glance to see that he was pleading with the cop... arms out, palms up... not a good night for the kid... a wide-eyed seal desolate in the obliterative path of a great white...
Got home. Split a Red Oval with Andy. Verbed a little noun, but I was too sleepy to get even remotely adjective.
In bed by 3:30 after a very long day and thrilled shitless.
One more town. One more show.
It's on.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
CD Release #1 (Amazed to stumble where gods get lost)
Where the Buffalo Roamed - Irata - "A Wolf in the Works" CD release! - January 21st, the Reservoir
Hello world. I'm selling myself short.
I'm scared of the spotlight, the harmless spotlight, and sometimes I sabotage myself. I woke up the morning after, feeling dejected, and scribbled this in my notebook...
One more weekend of destruction...
I guess that's the conflict I felt when I got home. I'd not just stepped up to the ledge, I'd gone over... quite literally.
This time, when I'd crawled on Andy's kickdrum I snagged my ankle on the tom mount & fell - hard - hit the concrete floor & kept playing.
I put my head in the speaker cab like some elemental pillow, like sleeping in a volcanic rim, and let the feedback take control.
I felt the sweet pain in my knee, in my ankle, in my hand, and I felt no fear.
I play music so I may know fear. Fear in the face of forces of nature. Fear in the face of unimaginable destruction. Fear in the face of wild potential.
When I got home I felt incomplete, though. I felt an inner conflict. We'd played loose and loud - very loose - and I'm beginning to think I can't sing.
I write to convey emotion, and sometimes these emotions are ragged and uncomfortable. That's why my last Pinhook show fell flat - the epic terror and bizarre landscapes of my solo work aren't the most inviting, are only soothing to sonic masochists such as myself.
So the emotion that drove our record release show was one of reckless abandon, a brazen absence of self-preservation, and I was not in control.
This music was in control, and as it gains control it changes until I barely even recognize it. These characters I've written into my songs are asserting themselves and it's not always safe to be near them.
If this all sounds a little dissociative it's because it is.
So I've decided to give control to the elements for this weekend, to see where it takes, and then I will step back and assess the future. Now that I know how to be a monster, what next?
Shows played in series, in my experience, tend towards a natural story arc. This is odd, the existence of a narrative flow in the real world, but I'm sure there's a perfectly rational explanation. That said, from this awkward springboard came some of the most amazing shows WtBR has played... so I ended up all right. The first night is part of the story, so here's what happened:
Late in the afternoon I got word that Gray Young couldn't make it - Chas was down with bronchitis. I had a feeling that trouble would travel in threes, as it tends to, so I allowed myself a moment's frustration before I circled the wagons.
When a thing can't be helped there's no sense in beating your head against it. You'll only damage yourself, as a thing that can't be helped can neither be damaged nor fixed.
So Andy showed up about 8:00 and ate with us. Rachel and I had just come from a shopping trip where I'd found a mysterious beer called Red Oval. Six cans for $2.99 at Trader Joe's... I kinda had to. Simple white can with a red oval that says "Red Oval" in it.
Red Oval classic lager, to be precise.
If you've ever been in a rock band or played a rock show or, hell, if you go to a ton of rock shows you'll know - it's a point of pride to drink a cheapass beer no one's ever seen. That's why it's so magical that the Reservoir stocks Schlitz for the bands. Sure, people have heard of it, but it's a sub-PBR show beer! Holy crap, if that's not attention to detail, I don't know what is.
So I was at Trader Joe's and I found an obscuro cheap beer that may even give Schlitz a run for its money! Hoooooolyshit.
Anyway... blah blah blah my imaginary readers probably don't want to read about boring shit like Rachel and Andy and me sitting around, catching up, and discussing the virtues of cheap, forgotten beer brands (link). Do you exist? Are you out there? If you're reading this, knock twice... or blink once... or slip a $20 my way... give me some kind of sign that I'm not just writing this shit for my own benefit
well
I guess that's what writing really is
maybe
but we showed up at the Reservoir a little before 10:00. The beauty of the place is how relaxed they are there. If you're playing a show, the only thing that really matters is that you're there by 10:00 or so. No bullshit about showing up mega early for a soundcheck or anything like that. It's rock and roll, not particle physics. We're not going to vaporize each other if things aren't calibrated exactly.
The guys at the Res get what's important about rock music. Amen.
So we showed up and Irata was set up and hanging out. Down to two bands - us and them - so we kicked it for quite a while, talked to friends, had a good time.
Irata played around 10:30.
So they played a phenomenal show. They'd brought these new toys, fog machines and lights and all kinds of wacky shit. The fog machine quickly filled the room with a thick, gray haze and - deity bless 'em - Irata made the Reservoir look like it used to.
I don't recognize the place when I can see the rafters. A smokeless Res is an odd place.
Given ensuing events, I wish I could say more about their show, but it was one thing - it was good - and I don't think I can break it down beyond that. I got that feeling I always get when Irata plays (played?), the feeling that I'm in the presence of a superior band and that I'm a very lucky person to get to share a bill with a band this massively talented. Andy leaned over to me at one point and said "I can't believe they're opening for us!"
He had a point. Their set was the story of the night. Then again, we were pretty loose. It's right that we played second.
Listen:
I stumbled like crazy, mumbled my lines. Most embarrassingly, I was clumsy with my pedals. It's usually so intuitive to me, so hitting my effects is as natural as hitting a C chord or recognizing the shape of a basic pentatonic scale.
Both Andy and I agreed later that we'd played clumsily, but I think it's because I wasn't totally in control. Music, to me, isn't something I create. It's not like a car, I can't steer it or control where it goes, it's more like the surface of the sea. I ride it, go where it goes. The songs I write aren't things I came up with, they're just minor currents in this vast, trackless sea. All I did was name them, identify them on a chart, and plot my course towards them when I plug in and let the distortion crackle between the great, mountainous waves and rumble in the deep trenches where blind creatures hunt and speak and see in vibration and heat differentials.
So the wind picked up and I'd been paying no attention, hadn't turned my gaze to the rapidly falling barometer, and I was caught up and thrown around in the storm I should have seen approaching. I spent more time immersed in the water, trying to recognize concepts like "up" and "breathing," than on the surface where I could recognize the individual properties of this thing I do. The end of the night found me chasing the songs I knew so well as they hung tattered in great North Atlantic scars like the sails of so many doomed craft, swamped and sinking with desperate sailors crying to gods of the moment or leaping over the sides in the desperate suicide hurtle straight into the arms of a cold and precious mother of storms... ancient intimidation from the skeleton haze as danger and fear and trouble found me, only a vessel for powerful forces that didn't choose me, I chose them, and I can usually handle them.
So, all that pseudomystical bullshit aside, I was off balance and off time. I'm sure the show sounded fine, but the defining moment - the mortal fear - came when I caught my foot and fell off the kickdrum, hit hard, and kept playing. I thought, for the first time, that music just may destroy me. Not because it means to - it can't mean to, it's a force of nature - but because I play with a fire that others avoid. Not because there's any advantage to playing like this, plenty of people play music without going batshit insane (hell, a lot of people manage to be pretty technical and precise in their playing), but because this kind of reckless abandon feels so fucking good. There's no difference between stimulus - pleasure and pain and joy and ferocity all amix. And it changes you, it rewires your mind. Picture me after the show, checking for blood. I landed guitar up - the ideal outcome. Picture me after the show, in the parking lot shouting Biblical ass-gibberish like "I name thee 'betrayer!'" True again, but dumb reason. Picture me driving home and getting home and sitting at my computer, wondering if I had been too much a creature and too little a human - if I was in actual danger from the way I behave when I play a show - and, for the first time, I wondered if guitars and drums and amps were the only things I would break if I wasn't careful.
The wolf in the works is me, so that you know.
The night was loud and amazing and confusing and the world would soon be shaken by great joy and sorrow and if it sounds confusing it's because it was confusing so that's the keyword, ok?
I'm scared of the spotlight, the harmless spotlight, and sometimes I sabotage myself. I woke up the morning after, feeling dejected, and scribbled this in my notebook...
One more weekend of destruction...
I guess that's the conflict I felt when I got home. I'd not just stepped up to the ledge, I'd gone over... quite literally.
This time, when I'd crawled on Andy's kickdrum I snagged my ankle on the tom mount & fell - hard - hit the concrete floor & kept playing.
I put my head in the speaker cab like some elemental pillow, like sleeping in a volcanic rim, and let the feedback take control.
I felt the sweet pain in my knee, in my ankle, in my hand, and I felt no fear.
I play music so I may know fear. Fear in the face of forces of nature. Fear in the face of unimaginable destruction. Fear in the face of wild potential.
When I got home I felt incomplete, though. I felt an inner conflict. We'd played loose and loud - very loose - and I'm beginning to think I can't sing.
I write to convey emotion, and sometimes these emotions are ragged and uncomfortable. That's why my last Pinhook show fell flat - the epic terror and bizarre landscapes of my solo work aren't the most inviting, are only soothing to sonic masochists such as myself.
So the emotion that drove our record release show was one of reckless abandon, a brazen absence of self-preservation, and I was not in control.
This music was in control, and as it gains control it changes until I barely even recognize it. These characters I've written into my songs are asserting themselves and it's not always safe to be near them.
If this all sounds a little dissociative it's because it is.
So I've decided to give control to the elements for this weekend, to see where it takes, and then I will step back and assess the future. Now that I know how to be a monster, what next?
Shows played in series, in my experience, tend towards a natural story arc. This is odd, the existence of a narrative flow in the real world, but I'm sure there's a perfectly rational explanation. That said, from this awkward springboard came some of the most amazing shows WtBR has played... so I ended up all right. The first night is part of the story, so here's what happened:
Late in the afternoon I got word that Gray Young couldn't make it - Chas was down with bronchitis. I had a feeling that trouble would travel in threes, as it tends to, so I allowed myself a moment's frustration before I circled the wagons.
When a thing can't be helped there's no sense in beating your head against it. You'll only damage yourself, as a thing that can't be helped can neither be damaged nor fixed.
So Andy showed up about 8:00 and ate with us. Rachel and I had just come from a shopping trip where I'd found a mysterious beer called Red Oval. Six cans for $2.99 at Trader Joe's... I kinda had to. Simple white can with a red oval that says "Red Oval" in it.
Red Oval classic lager, to be precise.
If you've ever been in a rock band or played a rock show or, hell, if you go to a ton of rock shows you'll know - it's a point of pride to drink a cheapass beer no one's ever seen. That's why it's so magical that the Reservoir stocks Schlitz for the bands. Sure, people have heard of it, but it's a sub-PBR show beer! Holy crap, if that's not attention to detail, I don't know what is.
So I was at Trader Joe's and I found an obscuro cheap beer that may even give Schlitz a run for its money! Hoooooolyshit.
Anyway... blah blah blah my imaginary readers probably don't want to read about boring shit like Rachel and Andy and me sitting around, catching up, and discussing the virtues of cheap, forgotten beer brands (link). Do you exist? Are you out there? If you're reading this, knock twice... or blink once... or slip a $20 my way... give me some kind of sign that I'm not just writing this shit for my own benefit
well
I guess that's what writing really is
maybe
but we showed up at the Reservoir a little before 10:00. The beauty of the place is how relaxed they are there. If you're playing a show, the only thing that really matters is that you're there by 10:00 or so. No bullshit about showing up mega early for a soundcheck or anything like that. It's rock and roll, not particle physics. We're not going to vaporize each other if things aren't calibrated exactly.
The guys at the Res get what's important about rock music. Amen.
So we showed up and Irata was set up and hanging out. Down to two bands - us and them - so we kicked it for quite a while, talked to friends, had a good time.
Irata played around 10:30.
So they played a phenomenal show. They'd brought these new toys, fog machines and lights and all kinds of wacky shit. The fog machine quickly filled the room with a thick, gray haze and - deity bless 'em - Irata made the Reservoir look like it used to.
I don't recognize the place when I can see the rafters. A smokeless Res is an odd place.
Given ensuing events, I wish I could say more about their show, but it was one thing - it was good - and I don't think I can break it down beyond that. I got that feeling I always get when Irata plays (played?), the feeling that I'm in the presence of a superior band and that I'm a very lucky person to get to share a bill with a band this massively talented. Andy leaned over to me at one point and said "I can't believe they're opening for us!"
He had a point. Their set was the story of the night. Then again, we were pretty loose. It's right that we played second.
Listen:
I stumbled like crazy, mumbled my lines. Most embarrassingly, I was clumsy with my pedals. It's usually so intuitive to me, so hitting my effects is as natural as hitting a C chord or recognizing the shape of a basic pentatonic scale.
Both Andy and I agreed later that we'd played clumsily, but I think it's because I wasn't totally in control. Music, to me, isn't something I create. It's not like a car, I can't steer it or control where it goes, it's more like the surface of the sea. I ride it, go where it goes. The songs I write aren't things I came up with, they're just minor currents in this vast, trackless sea. All I did was name them, identify them on a chart, and plot my course towards them when I plug in and let the distortion crackle between the great, mountainous waves and rumble in the deep trenches where blind creatures hunt and speak and see in vibration and heat differentials.
So the wind picked up and I'd been paying no attention, hadn't turned my gaze to the rapidly falling barometer, and I was caught up and thrown around in the storm I should have seen approaching. I spent more time immersed in the water, trying to recognize concepts like "up" and "breathing," than on the surface where I could recognize the individual properties of this thing I do. The end of the night found me chasing the songs I knew so well as they hung tattered in great North Atlantic scars like the sails of so many doomed craft, swamped and sinking with desperate sailors crying to gods of the moment or leaping over the sides in the desperate suicide hurtle straight into the arms of a cold and precious mother of storms... ancient intimidation from the skeleton haze as danger and fear and trouble found me, only a vessel for powerful forces that didn't choose me, I chose them, and I can usually handle them.
So, all that pseudomystical bullshit aside, I was off balance and off time. I'm sure the show sounded fine, but the defining moment - the mortal fear - came when I caught my foot and fell off the kickdrum, hit hard, and kept playing. I thought, for the first time, that music just may destroy me. Not because it means to - it can't mean to, it's a force of nature - but because I play with a fire that others avoid. Not because there's any advantage to playing like this, plenty of people play music without going batshit insane (hell, a lot of people manage to be pretty technical and precise in their playing), but because this kind of reckless abandon feels so fucking good. There's no difference between stimulus - pleasure and pain and joy and ferocity all amix. And it changes you, it rewires your mind. Picture me after the show, checking for blood. I landed guitar up - the ideal outcome. Picture me after the show, in the parking lot shouting Biblical ass-gibberish like "I name thee 'betrayer!'" True again, but dumb reason. Picture me driving home and getting home and sitting at my computer, wondering if I had been too much a creature and too little a human - if I was in actual danger from the way I behave when I play a show - and, for the first time, I wondered if guitars and drums and amps were the only things I would break if I wasn't careful.
The wolf in the works is me, so that you know.
The night was loud and amazing and confusing and the world would soon be shaken by great joy and sorrow and if it sounds confusing it's because it was confusing so that's the keyword, ok?
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
For this is someone else's paradise and I am taking up valuable space.
Corbie is Afraid of the Bear - Lollipop Factory - Blood Red River - January 13th @ the Pinhook (Durm)
I don't have any confidence in my solo set yet and I really don't have much to say about this show. That said, I'm sure I'll end up on a dune buggy with no brakes of a ramble once I get started. Here's praying to Asimov, to Vonnegut, to Clarke... here's bribing Thompson, here's bribing Bangs that I don't. Something tells me I'm in the same corner as those last two, and as much as everyone and their cousin wants to be the next Hunter S. Thompson, the closer and closer I get to his muse the scarier it gets. Once that shit takes control, you have no idea what's happening, and though your everyday life is a series of facts stopped on the way home for gas and pumped gas while staring into the middle distance... let the dogs out when I got home... walked to the mailbox, which is a greater thrill than most things owing to its simplicity and the potential for surprise... came back inside and let the dogs in... got kind of mad when Ronin ate catshit out of the litterbox. What is up with dogs and catshit? these facts get muddled on the way to the page and I worry about my ability to get paid to write about the real world. I live in it, I buy groceries in it, I sleep in it and it's where my alarm clock and my snooze button are, but can I write about it? The temptation to borrow someone else's muse is so strong, is so popular, but that would be the easy way and Corbie can't do things the easy way, can he?
Maybe just once?
No?
Shit.
I was hoping I could cheat at it, just this once. That my vision of the future might come precisely true. That I may not have to realize after years of trying to force the miracle that salvation lies in the unknowable, in the forces of the absurd, and that the beauty that is my life is the beauty of a well-thrown curveball...
The little light that shines tells me not to talk about this show. It was a total bust, an absolute downer, a joke minus punchline.
Put simply, I started playing at shortly after 9:00. My solo set is me, my 11 pedals, my three amps, and whatever guitar has new strings on it at the time. I play these meditative guitar songs, theme and variation style. They are very, very loud and very, very introspective.
I started playing but I didn't look up. I get really nervous without a band (even if it's just me and another person) so I saw my amps and I saw the uneven hardwood of the floors. I started on "Manitutsu" and I played the riff a few times to get into the swing of it. There were maybe 15 people in the place, all of them in the bar and not by the stage, but I was ok with that. Then I kicked on my Micro POG and built the riff a little. Then I kicked on my orange Boss distortion and brought the song to a moderate intensity (only one distortion, usually when I play this song at home I build to three or all four distortions). I kept it there for a second, then brought it back down to totally clean and Soundcat Greg slid the note that said "Turn down. People are leaving." onto the floor directly in front of my pedals and it stopped me short.
This project is about as personal as I get. My lyrics with Where the Buffalo Roamed are honest and shameless, but so what. They're just words. Battle Rockets is a glimpse into my mindset, but it's pretty rational and it's based upon cooperation. It would be selfish for me to write stuff like my solo work for Battle Rockets, it would stop being a collaboration and it would be all Corbie Hill and who the fuck wants that?
Ultimately, the question is, who the fuck does want that? I don't know when it started, probably sometime in high school (start the clock somewhere in the late '90s), but when I play guitar on my own I go to this weird and dangerous place where I shut off my rational mind entirely and speak my emotions through feedback, distortion, and (when necessary) broken strings. It's an uncontrolled art.
I got an opportunity to play solo at Treetown, so I took it. I developed this freeform into something I could reproduce live and it kind of worked. I agreed to play with Lollipop Factory because not only do I dig them, but we've tried to play two shows together over the past year and both have fallen through for different reasons. I volunteered the new solo project because neither of my bands could make the date and because, well, I wanted to see if the solo show worked.
The solo show did work. I sounded fucking good. I lost my confidence after "Manitutsu" and played an abortive version of "Theme for a Tundra Ghost" next. I didn't finish it and there was no applause. I didn't even talk to anyone but Bekah and David, of Lollipop Factory, because I felt like I was kind of there beside everyone else, but not among them.
Bekah and David played a phenomenal show. I really enjoy the overblown death cabaret of their act, they are gothic bards wandering an endless trailer park... Tim Burton's overactive imagination splits from him as a teenager, goes off to Ohio to grow up, and then sets itself loose across the American landscape, all garish colors and tophats and serpentine harmonies. Come see the beauty of junk, come see yourself in a warped mirror and laugh your ass off. This is the sideshow that ran the circus. This is the lion tamer that ran away to join Queen. What does any of that mean? I have no idea.
Nothing against Blood Red River, but I didn't see them play. I felt powerfully down and had to go after Lollipop Factory played. Honestly, I don't feel missed, but this is fine. I'd be a real egotist if I thought the quality of a room depended on my presence.
On the way home I listened to Pythagoras, the first record I've made with my new solo direction, just to make sure I liked it and, you know what? I do like it. I'm proud of it. It's a fucking good track.
It's a short album consisting of a single 19-minute song. Does that sound cool to you? Yeah? Well, download it and tell me what you think.
I guess what really frustrates me here is how the legend of Durham meets with the reality of Durham. I thought it was the kind of place where I could plug in and go weird and go loud, I thought people would hear it and interact with it and accept it as music, even if they didn't necessarily dig. Instead, the venue turned against me in the time I was most vulnerable and I was still feeling pretty shaky until I went to bed.
Then I woke up late... late for me is 7:30, even if I play a show the night before. I felt a momentary shock of dammit before realizing that it didn't matter. That maybe I should play more solo shows, but that it was ok if I didn't, but that there was a time and a place for everything. I've had some great shows at the Pinhook, but the solo one wasn't it.
I don't have any confidence in my solo set yet and I really don't have much to say about this show. That said, I'm sure I'll end up on a dune buggy with no brakes of a ramble once I get started. Here's praying to Asimov, to Vonnegut, to Clarke... here's bribing Thompson, here's bribing Bangs that I don't. Something tells me I'm in the same corner as those last two, and as much as everyone and their cousin wants to be the next Hunter S. Thompson, the closer and closer I get to his muse the scarier it gets. Once that shit takes control, you have no idea what's happening, and though your everyday life is a series of facts stopped on the way home for gas and pumped gas while staring into the middle distance... let the dogs out when I got home... walked to the mailbox, which is a greater thrill than most things owing to its simplicity and the potential for surprise... came back inside and let the dogs in... got kind of mad when Ronin ate catshit out of the litterbox. What is up with dogs and catshit? these facts get muddled on the way to the page and I worry about my ability to get paid to write about the real world. I live in it, I buy groceries in it, I sleep in it and it's where my alarm clock and my snooze button are, but can I write about it? The temptation to borrow someone else's muse is so strong, is so popular, but that would be the easy way and Corbie can't do things the easy way, can he?
Maybe just once?
No?
Shit.
I was hoping I could cheat at it, just this once. That my vision of the future might come precisely true. That I may not have to realize after years of trying to force the miracle that salvation lies in the unknowable, in the forces of the absurd, and that the beauty that is my life is the beauty of a well-thrown curveball...
The little light that shines tells me not to talk about this show. It was a total bust, an absolute downer, a joke minus punchline.
Put simply, I started playing at shortly after 9:00. My solo set is me, my 11 pedals, my three amps, and whatever guitar has new strings on it at the time. I play these meditative guitar songs, theme and variation style. They are very, very loud and very, very introspective.
I started playing but I didn't look up. I get really nervous without a band (even if it's just me and another person) so I saw my amps and I saw the uneven hardwood of the floors. I started on "Manitutsu" and I played the riff a few times to get into the swing of it. There were maybe 15 people in the place, all of them in the bar and not by the stage, but I was ok with that. Then I kicked on my Micro POG and built the riff a little. Then I kicked on my orange Boss distortion and brought the song to a moderate intensity (only one distortion, usually when I play this song at home I build to three or all four distortions). I kept it there for a second, then brought it back down to totally clean and Soundcat Greg slid the note that said "Turn down. People are leaving." onto the floor directly in front of my pedals and it stopped me short.
This project is about as personal as I get. My lyrics with Where the Buffalo Roamed are honest and shameless, but so what. They're just words. Battle Rockets is a glimpse into my mindset, but it's pretty rational and it's based upon cooperation. It would be selfish for me to write stuff like my solo work for Battle Rockets, it would stop being a collaboration and it would be all Corbie Hill and who the fuck wants that?
Ultimately, the question is, who the fuck does want that? I don't know when it started, probably sometime in high school (start the clock somewhere in the late '90s), but when I play guitar on my own I go to this weird and dangerous place where I shut off my rational mind entirely and speak my emotions through feedback, distortion, and (when necessary) broken strings. It's an uncontrolled art.
I got an opportunity to play solo at Treetown, so I took it. I developed this freeform into something I could reproduce live and it kind of worked. I agreed to play with Lollipop Factory because not only do I dig them, but we've tried to play two shows together over the past year and both have fallen through for different reasons. I volunteered the new solo project because neither of my bands could make the date and because, well, I wanted to see if the solo show worked.
The solo show did work. I sounded fucking good. I lost my confidence after "Manitutsu" and played an abortive version of "Theme for a Tundra Ghost" next. I didn't finish it and there was no applause. I didn't even talk to anyone but Bekah and David, of Lollipop Factory, because I felt like I was kind of there beside everyone else, but not among them.
Bekah and David played a phenomenal show. I really enjoy the overblown death cabaret of their act, they are gothic bards wandering an endless trailer park... Tim Burton's overactive imagination splits from him as a teenager, goes off to Ohio to grow up, and then sets itself loose across the American landscape, all garish colors and tophats and serpentine harmonies. Come see the beauty of junk, come see yourself in a warped mirror and laugh your ass off. This is the sideshow that ran the circus. This is the lion tamer that ran away to join Queen. What does any of that mean? I have no idea.
Nothing against Blood Red River, but I didn't see them play. I felt powerfully down and had to go after Lollipop Factory played. Honestly, I don't feel missed, but this is fine. I'd be a real egotist if I thought the quality of a room depended on my presence.
On the way home I listened to Pythagoras, the first record I've made with my new solo direction, just to make sure I liked it and, you know what? I do like it. I'm proud of it. It's a fucking good track.
It's a short album consisting of a single 19-minute song. Does that sound cool to you? Yeah? Well, download it and tell me what you think.
I guess what really frustrates me here is how the legend of Durham meets with the reality of Durham. I thought it was the kind of place where I could plug in and go weird and go loud, I thought people would hear it and interact with it and accept it as music, even if they didn't necessarily dig. Instead, the venue turned against me in the time I was most vulnerable and I was still feeling pretty shaky until I went to bed.
Then I woke up late... late for me is 7:30, even if I play a show the night before. I felt a momentary shock of dammit before realizing that it didn't matter. That maybe I should play more solo shows, but that it was ok if I didn't, but that there was a time and a place for everything. I've had some great shows at the Pinhook, but the solo one wasn't it.
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