“IF YOU'VE GOT A PROBLEM, GET OUT OF THE WAY”: YOUR ONE LOUSY TRIGGER WARNING (WHAT TO EXPECT WHEN THE S.E. APOCALYPSE KREW ALBUM COMES OUT)

If producing “The Abbey of the Lemur” for 20 years has taught me anything, it's that people will cue up like it's the ticket line at Disneyland for the opportunity to be offended so they can clutch their pearls in outrage. That sounds hyperbolic, but I'm not joking. One amusing upside to our beating Bob Emenegger's 2003 Obscenity Rap (prompted, according to some, by actors within the Fayetteville City Government, and most definitely spurred on in the public eye by some of their close allies in the local print media) was that it gave people a rough education to the Miller Obscenity Test---because nobody could fathom the fact that we knew and were able to follow those guidelines. People had begun calling in to Fayetteville's Public Access station asking for copies of the Miller Standards in an effort to play amateur District Attorney and try to bust us for Obscenity (it never worked).

While my goal has never been to actively offend audiences (more to entertain, inspire and stimulate----offensiveness is just sometimes a natural by-product of these other goals) the will to provoke has always been in my DNA. When Mike McAdam and I formed the S.E. Apocalypse Krew back in the 80s, some of the paramount things firing me up were the puritanical machinations of the PMRC in their efforts to censor music. Kicking against the pricks is just so deeply ingrained in my nature it's just going to come out of me no matter what the hell I'm doing.

So we knew, back in the 80s and 90s, when we wrote a lot of these songs, that they had potential to push some buttons. Now, in these hypersensitive times, it feels like the potential is more ripe than ever. On our album cover, we proudly boast “No Trigger Warnings”, but in the interest of fairness, because some folks rove around with a score card, if you're punching your ticket for this wild ride, here's a laundry list of trigger warnings, your last shot across the bough----and if pearl-clutching happens to be your pastime-of-choice, we gotcha covered----there's something for everyone.

     “Threats and Warnings”

WHO'LL BE OFFENDED: Authority figures of all stripes, parents, educators, politicians and media.

WHAT IT SEEMS TO BE: A demonic ripdown of all things good, decent and respectable.

WHAT IT IS: Angry polemic against all authority, censorship, safe spaces and people who like to try and candy coat the world.

WHO SHOULD BE OFFENDED: All the aforementioned.

“Time Bomb”

WHO'LL BE OFFENDED: People who are comfortable, in charge and invested in a system where people fall through the cracks, PC types, pleebs, neoliberals and winners.

WHAT IT SEEMS TO BE: Portrait of a man on a rampage---it's bad news bears, man....

WHAT IT IS: Portrait of a man hitting his last straw---and if that scares you, maybe it should.

WHO SHOULD BE OFFENDED: All of the above.

“Kid Eternity”

WHO'LL BE OFFENDED: The overly sensitive, parents, suicide survivors, cutters, histrionics, censorship types, do-gooders, the psychiatric community, people who have no sense of humor.

WHAT IT SEEMS TO BE: An abomination---a tasteless, sick joke.

WHAT IT IS: A lampoon of social hysteria, moral panic and emotional necrophilia with a special dash of disdain for those who opportunistically blame music, movies or video games when a kid goes off the rails.

WHO SHOULD BE OFFENDED: Those who opportunistically blame music, movies or video games when a kid goes off the rails.

“Medicine Cabinet”

WHO'LL BE OFFENDED: Uptight adults, straight edgers, M.A.D.D., D.A.R.E. And the Just Say No Crowd.

WHAT IT SEEMS TO BE: A song that advocates drug abuse.

WHAT IT IS: A song that talks about drug abuse and addiction in an unapologetically non-judgmental fashion.

WHO SHOULD BE OFFENDED: Anyone who can't get past propaganda.

“Waiting for Melissa”

WHO'LL BE OFFENDED: Easy listening fans, Led Zeppelin.

WHAT IT SEEMS TO BE: A smokin' hot instrumental.

WHAT IT IS: A smokin' hot instrumental.

WHO SHOULD BE OFFENDED: Absolutely no one.

“Jesus on a Stick”

WHO'LL BE OFFENDED: Religious people, bigots, conservatives, alt righters, PC liberals, the kinds of SJWs that take everything literally, Trump Supporters.

WHAT IT SEEMS TO BE: A questionably-humored appeal to bigotry and violence.

WHAT IT IS: A savagely humorous indictment of religious bigotry and those who abuse it for fun and profit.

WHO SHOULD BE OFFENDED: Xenophobes, Christians who are bothered over being equated with xenophobes (and, you know, y'all really SHOULD be bothered!)

“Melissa”

WHO'LL BE OFFENDED: People with delicate sensibilities, feminists, SJWs, PC-types.

WHAT IT SEEMS TO BE: Senselessly misogynistic, hateful garbage that implies violence.

WHAT IT IS: Senselessly juvenile, obnoxious racket wrapped up in puerile contempt for no good reason and to no good end.

WHO SHOULD BE OFFENDED: You. Yeah. You.

“Pig”

WHO'LL BE OFFENDED: People who think songs should be nice, unobjectionable and provide good examples for young people.

WHAT IT APPEARS TO BE: Pure, unbridled hatred and hostility.

WHAT IT IS: Pure, unbridled hatred and hostility but it's kind of laughing up its sleeve over the whole thing.

WHO SHOULD BE OFFENDED: Your mama.

“Rise”

WHO'LL BE OFFENDED: Meek people with delicate sensibilities.

WHAT IT SEEMS TO BE: Advocacy for aggression and insensitivity.

WHAT IT IS: Anthem and rallying cry for the Dreg Movement.

WHO SHOULD BE OFFENDED: The complacent, people on victim trips, those who benefit from complacency and victim trips.

“Keep Walking”

WHO'LL BE OFFENDED: Sensitive types, SJWs, Red Pillers, people who get laid.

WHAT IT SEEMS TO BE: Bitter, resentful Incel angst.

WHAT IT IS: An anthem of hope and empowerment for guys and girls who aren't getting any.

WHO SHOULD BE OFFENDED: If you think you might be, you probably should be.

“Truth is Dead”

WHO'LL BE OFFENDED: Politicians, professional liars, punditry, poll takers and self-help gurus.

WHAT IT SEEMS TO BE: Jazzy music wrapped around a rant against media, politics and lies.

WHAT IT IS: Jazzy music wrapped around a rant against media, politics and lies.

WHO SHOULD BE OFFENDED: People who think any of this shit matters.

“Fear and Hate”

WHO'LL BE OFFENDED: Probably anyone in earshot.

WHAT IT SEEMS TO BE: A barreling, abrasive blast of foulmouthed, hostile invective for no discernible reason; Harmful, hateful screaming and threats. Ooooh, angry is bad!!!!!! Stop that!!!! Don't be angry!!!!!

WHAT IT IS: An unsettlingly cathartic swipe at Bully Culture in any and all forms.

WHO SHOULD BE OFFENDED: The top of the food chain.

“23”

WHO'LL BE OFFENDED: Bad Parents, bad lovers, people who like good singing.

WHAT IT SEEMS TO BE: Ethereal angst.

WHAT IT IS: Ethereal, ambiguous angst.

WHO SHOULD BE OFFENDED: Abusers, manipulators, gaslighters.

“Black”

WHO'LL BE OFFENDED: People who think songs should be happy.

WHAT IT SEEMS TO BE: Doom, gloom, paranoia and despair, a piece of music that unfortunately gives voice to disenfranchisement.

WHAT IT IS: Doom, gloom, paranoia and despair, a piece of music that fortunately gives voice to disenfranchisement.

WHO SHOULD BE OFFENDED: Anyone who happens to be a part of the problem.

“Outsider”

WHO'LL BE OFFENDED: The fortunate, elistists, neoliberals, exploiters, the well-adjusted, the ignorant, homeowners.

WHAT IT SEEMS TO BE: The story of a loser on a rampage.

WHAT IT IS: The story of a loser who's probably not doing a goddamn thing.

WHO SHOULD BE OFFENDED: Most definitely the homeowners.

“The Candidate's a Religious Man Talking Blues”

WHO'LL BE OFFENDED: Republicans, Democrats, the Establishment, the Punditry, Washington Insiders.

WHAT IT SEEMS TO BE: An ignorant folk song that lampoons the leaders we hold sacred.

WHAT IT IS: An irreverent throwback to the classic protest song.

WHO SHOULD BE OFFENDED: Politicos of all stripes, spin doctors, social climbers, people who think any of this sad spectacle means anything.

“First Stare”

WHO'LL BE OFFENDED: Pop fans, censorship types, PC feminists, SJWs, weenies, people with dainty palates, twee types, fans of love songs, romantics, dorks.

WHAT IT SEEMS TO BE: Vapid ballad that slides abruptly into a barrage of noise that advocates violence against women.

WHAT IT IS: A goof on asinine top 40 love songs.

WHO SHOULD BE OFFENDED: Humans.

       RISE will be released soon. Stay tuned right here for details.

############

PIG MAN LEVEL TWO: As a lot of you know, late-ish last summer my entire life fell into a hole (in my heel) and I've been struggling to get out ever since. In week two after the skin graft I went back to the doctor to check my progress. I was told the graft had slid but it was still an improvement and what happened wasn't on me. I've been off my foot 95% of the time, and they've told me to just keep doing what I'm doing. Because this happened, of course, I'm inclined to double down on the whole Staying-off-the-foot thang. So I might be scarce 'round these hyar parts for the near future. Don't panic.....still here.

WHAT I'M READING:

A big struggle I've had over the past several years is one that no writer should have to admit to: My snowballing inability to get through a book. Because we're Culture Vultures in this house, the stack of books we've accumulated (that I haven't read) has just grown and grown. And it's not that the books are bad----it's just a bug in my own brain. Which is to say, sorry, fellow scribes, for this egregious infraction----it's not you....it's me.

My latest exercise (over the past several months) has been trying to apply the Japanese business concept of “Kaizen” to my life.....kind of a gradual, incremental improvement model. Take baby steps. Read a page a day. Do an exercise. Try to build on that foundation.

I have good days and bad days, but the gradual rebuilding process is not going badly. So here are some of the books that I'm using to help pull myself up out of the literacy “basement”:

HARLAN ELLISON-I HAVE NO MOUTH AND I MUST SCREAM

RICHARD BRAUTIGAN-TROUT FISHING IN AMERICA

RICHARD BRAUTIGAN-THE PILL VERSUS THE SPRINGHILL MINING DISASTER

ALAN MOORE AND J.H. WILLIAMSON III-PROMETHEA VOL.1

I'm gettin' there.

THISWEEK'S PLAYLIST:

BLUE OYSTER CULT-Agents of Fortune

POESIE NOIR-Pity for the Self or We'll Teach You to Dance

ALICE COOPER-Love it to Death

APOCALYPSE NOTES: MANIFESTOES AND MAPS

“If you're crazy enough you'll get your own band.”

--FETISH

It took me three or four years to make the vocal end of the Apocalypse Krew album happen. The bitch of being a working class artist never ends. I watched the recording of the basic tracks happen from afar. Musicians were introduced to the project----some contributed, others had to bail. I got sent most of the basic tracks through Dropbox. I tried to send lyrics back through Dropbox but that didn't work so well. Oh, well. Technology turns to dried shit in my fingers.

Mike and I needed to address some things going into the project---most notably the fact that close to 25 years have passed since the Apocalypse Krew were actually a “Thing”. It's a different world, and goddammit, we're two very different people from the guys who formed that band back in the mid 80s. Do we come at it from a different, more mature perspective? Or do we pick up where we left off?

To put it bluntly: Does the S.E. Apocalypse Krew, in our old age, clean up our act?

Short answer: Hell no. To quote Mike, “political correctness is getting pretty ridiculous.”

“Getting”? Shit. It was an idiotic proposition when it first reared its ugly head in the late 80s/early 90s...I made up my mind back then that no one would ever convince me to call short people “Vertically Challenged”. Despite media fueled hysteria I'm personally convinced that ninety per cent of all people, whether they're on the right, the left or the two-headed giraffe contingent, don't give a rat's ass about political correctness. It has next to no bearing on anyone's actual life outside a handful of handwringing campus radicals who live in a bubble world they can't see outside of, but which disappears shortly after you graduate. Whatever will they do?

I've been a free speech advocate my whole life. It's been a driving factor in most things I've done. From the time the Chelmsford City Council decided to ban “The Warriors” at the local cinema in the late '70s to Tipper Gore and Susan Baker and their PMRC witch hunt in the '80s to the Dead Kennedys and their bullshit “obscenity” trial over the H.R. Giger art in the “Frankenchrist” album, my path was pretty much laid out for me. This was going to be my fucking war.

I carried that aesthetic with me from my days as a zine publisher to my days as a public access TV producer, where my crew and I actually faced an obscenity hearing. Yeah----thanks for presenting me with a battle I spent my entire adult life preparing for, douchenozzles....I got to make monkeys out of an entire city administration and all their sycophantic buddies in the newspapers who threw in to help make their arguments for them. And I got to dog them all for years afterwards. 

My journey (I hate that term, by the way---why's everything gotta be a goddamned JOURNEY these days?!) as a free speech advocate has been a bumpy one, though. Most of today's Free Speech Poster Boys are troglodytes and morons and I can't relate to them at all, don't want to be associated with them and am not interested in their quandaries. I was having a conversation a couple of months ago with an old colleague and we were touching on some pet peeves----political correctness, censorship, morality policing....he was alluding to a lot of the nonsense going on on campuses these days, what with PC brain police, trigger terror, Social Justice Warriors et. al. And he told me, “Gamergate was really just the tip of the iceberg!”

And that was about where my brain broke.

“Gamergate”. Okay---my read on Gamergate (as a non-gamer) was that it was primarily about a bunch of dingleberries who couldn't get any and who lived in their parents' basements freaking the fuck out because GIRLS were actually trying to assume a place in gamer culture and so they reacted the way any enlightened individuals would---with verbal abuse, harassment and threats of rape and murder. Yeah, gee, who couldn't get behind that?

“No, no,” goes the other side---”it's about ethics in Gaming Journalism!”

AH. YES. Okay---that explains away all the rape and murder threats PERFECTLY.

So it became apparent my old colleague and I were at a philosophical stalemate. I'm of two minds when it comes to the SJWs----more often than not I agree with them, at least until they start policing peoples' language and trying to put Trigger Warnings on everything. If their meds are balanced enough to where they don't need to go there, maybe we can sit at the table and talk.

This was a philosophical inner conflict that might not dominate the recording and rewriting of certain songs----but it came up periodically and it was always worth writing about when it did.

But from bands to writing to the zine to political activism to video and now back to the band, I knew in each and every instance the fight I was probably in for...I've fought against the death of irony since people declared it dead after 9/11 and I fought for the importance of context since 2007 or 2008, when a number of citizens fell all over themselves in an attempt to ban books in the local school system...they later wound up forming the crux of the local Tea Party---a much-overlooked blow to anyone who thinks these clowns are the new champions of freedom---the only freedom they're concerned with is their own.

And I'm still fighting for the importance of context—--something that should be a no-brainer to most people. It'll come up several times in this series.

Not that it should have to, but......pleebs.

THE IMPORTANCE OF BRANDING

“Know who you are...know where you're going to.”

---AMBROSE SLADE

If there was anything we were good at with the Apocalypse Krew, it was forging a distinct identity. Whatever the hell else was wrong with us---from living in a suburb without much culture to musical schizophrenia to our inability to find and keep musical collaborators----we were good at drawing a concrete picture of ourselves.

We were washing dishes at a hotel at the time—our white (and more often than not stained and mottled) work shirts became part of our visual identity; we began drawing band graffiti on our disposable folding paper hats and it was only a matter of time before we started defacing old work shirts with similar graphics. The “Band”, such as it was (and it was barely a band---it was more of an attitude problem on wheels), turned into a lifestyle. We'd rove around at night, stop in various fast food joints, people watch with glaring contempt toward everyone and scribble lyrics, legends, cartoon art and slogans in our notebook, assigning wherever we wrote the designation of “Pit”. Friendly's Pit. Mall Food Court Pit. Denny's Pit. They were all pits. We looked around us and there was no hope.

My original vision of the Apocalypse Krew was of less a concrete band and more of a loose collective engaging in a series of terroristic, random “performances”----home invasions set to music. I saw us as kind of an amalgam of the Fugs, the Sex Pistols and Warhol's Exploding Plastic Inevitable, pulling up in a truck in a shopping mall parking lot, berating the consumers with horrific, antisocial acoustic “songs” and then blowing out of Dodge before the cops showed up.

Mike was learning to play guitar (his original musical experiences were as a drummer) and as he learned his way around the fretboard the band's music began to take shape. The vehicle was hard rock, although if you looked at any of our “Musicians Wanted” flyers you would have seen the immediate problem...musical influences included Van Halen, the Velvet Underground, the Mothers of Invention, the Sex Pistols, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Suicide, the Stooges and Black Flag.

Do WHAT, now?????

Musical schizophrenia.

So we'd get guys who were trying to put together a Fate's Warning cover band and they thought we were too punk. We'd connect with a Clash fan who thought we were too metal. We briefly had a Lynyrd Skynyrd-loving, music theory-obsessed drummer who wrote all his songs in G (“It fits my voice”) and whose frequent response to our songs was “I don't know where THAT'S going!”

It was best typified by us showing up to rehearsal wearing “The Two Dead Guys”----Mike in a Jimi Hendrix tee-shirt, me wearing an Ian Curtis shirt. No one would ever understand.

But goddammit, no matter who we confused the hell out of, we had our branding down!

A lot of the visual identity we crafted revolved around logos and catch phrases (“What your subliminal mind is coming to”, “Your worst nightmare come true: People who think”, “I hate Everything/Everyone/You”) and these little cartoon characters we called “DREGS”. They typically wore white short sleeve workshirts, long bangs that covered their eyes (a defense mechanism?) and were often seen curled into fetal positions as if they couldn't take one more minute of living. One Dreg I drew was all red-faced, aggro and enraged, with tears in his eyes, screaming, “go ahead, pig---beat me up----I'll make you pay!!!!” The guy knew he was going to get his ass kicked and there was nothing he could do about it-----but he would devote the rest of his life to hurting his oppressor/persecutor in every way humanly possible. The Dregs were what we saw as caricature proxies of our assumed audience, but also, to one degree or another, ourselves and the brash-but-maladjusted attitudes reflected in our songs.

I was coming up with phrases like “Nerd Rock” or “Loser Rock”----Mike preferred the term, “Fuckup Rock”. In the run-up to re-recording the songs I thought of “Postal Rock” (we were natural maladjusts who were fascinated by the trend of “going postal”---”Taxi Driver” was a common favorite movie and we even entertained the notion of writing a concept album about a guy going postal).

By the early 90s we had drifted apart a bit----I had begun focusing on novels and short stories (I eventually started this little zine that did okay for a while) and Mike had begun playing guitar for this prominent local prog rock band. Still, it was hard to let go of a beast like the S.E. Apocalypse Krew. A lot of our material was damned good---Lollapalooza was happening, Alt Rock was happening, bands like Jane's Addiction were breaking out and a lot of the old, archaic barriers between “Punk”, “Metal” and whatever else were falling apart...we liked this and we kept recording demos but it was never enough.

Mike got busy with a legit gig and I drifted further down the rabbit hole of writing and xerographic publishing. His fortunes took him on tour around Europe, mine took me across America, where I eventually landed in Northwest Arkansas and that led to eighty billion other things.

The Apocalypse Krew, though, like some latent tumor, never really left our brains.

SPIRIT, NOT THE LETTER

One thing I began noticing with the recuts of the old material was that not all of them were According-to-Hoyle. I had enough oldass demos on ratty, 20-plus-year-old cassette tapes to where a number of the arrangements were burned into my brain. This wasn't a major issue---it enabled me to mess with some arrangements and write some new verses to flesh things out. It led to some things getting interesting when we set down to record.

Mike informed me, while we were recording vocals, that when he and Brad the drummer recorded these tracks he went more from ballpark memory and didn't rely on the old recordings for a reference point at all.

And having learned that, I thought he did a stellar fucking job. For an intuitive methodology, Mike nailed it.

THE DEVIL SENDS THE BEAST WITH WRATH FOR HE KNOWS HIS TIME IS SHORT

Riding into Boston with my brother Steve we immediately went into planning mode. How many nights would I be spending in New Hampshire? Three. How much of that would be spent recording? I guesstimated, maybe two and a half days. “You guys are doing, what? Nine or ten songs?” I guessed---I had a few lyric sheets in my overnight bag. I really didn't feel like digging through it for an official count. “That's pretty rough, trying to get through that in two and a half days,” he said.

I inwardly shuddered. I hadn't done any serious singing, recorded or otherwise, in the twenty-someodd years since the Apocalypse Krew first stomped around Nashua, throwing our ugly business around however we could. Practice? You've gotta be joking. I've spent the last twenty years in Fayetteville living in a succession of tiny apartments, usually with paper-thin walls. “Practice” wasn't about to happen.

A daunting challenge, but where there's a will there's a way. I'd overestimated on one point: That first half day of recording wound up being a wash. And I'd underestimated on another. Nine or ten songs to lay down vocals on? No.

There were seventeen.

Seventeen songs in two days....quite the challenge indeed.

We had one strange bit of luck that was going to turn the whole circumstance in our favor, though; I'm a bad singer.

That's not to say I'm a badass singer or a really super-awesome singer....I'm a terrible fucking singer. Always have been.

NEXT: SOFTBALLIN'