ENTRY

This was THURSDAY

copyright 2015/2016 Molotov Editions

THIS WEEK'S PLAYLIST:

BLUE OYSTER CULT-Spectres

AEROSMITH-Get Your Wings

AEROSMITH-Rock in a Hard Place

RESearch Incredibly Strange Music Vol. 1 & 2

APOCALYPSE NOTES: WRAPPING IT UP

“It's all over but the shouting”

---VAN HALEN

“I am now in control of all things”

---Allegedly written by the Zodiac Killer

We were done at North Main Music. We grabbed a little lunch and then I got to meet, ever-so-fleetingly, the lovely Robyn Neville.....maybe we'll get to hang out more next time I'm in town. After that it was off to Mike's house to record the one last song.

Upon my arrival at Chez McAdam Mike had to give me that Shadow Protocol----which is to say the drill involved in dealing with his dog, Shadow. Shadow's a good dog and an exceptional watchdog. Once we'd gotten through that it was a trip upstairs to deal with the final bit of recorded fun. And “fun” was the operative word.

The setup was pretty simple: Mike and me mic'd up and just going for it raw, him on acoustic guitar and me vocalizing. Past all the rave-ups, all the screaming and yelling and all the sturm und drang it was down to a goofy, folky protest song to wrap the whole package up in a big, sarcastic bow.

My intial vision for “The Candidate's a Religious Man” was actually similar to some of the binaural recordings Lou Reed did with Richard Robinson in the mid 70s (“Kicks” and “All through the Night” being my favorite examples)----the folk song itself would loop in and out of ambient noise and vacuous conversations that might take place at a party or an intimate gathering .

We didn't have any of that going on, although I secretly found myself wishing Shadow might be looking out the window and start barking at the UPS guy or the Roto Rooter truck. YAY SPONTENAEITY!!! Didn't happen, though.

ONE LAST THING: “THE CANDIDATE'S A RELIGIOUS MAN TALKING BLUES”

“Ah, but I've grown older and wiser

and that's why I'm turning you in”

---PHIL OCHS

I had endless trouble with being tight throughout the recording session, but with “Candidiate” it was just going to be loose city, no matter how you sliced it. That wasn't really a detriment (I don't think so, anyway)----the song just lends itself to that. We had multiple start-overs and do-overs and it was different every time we did it. It was really just one riff running through the whole thing and so there was a lot of ample space for us to play around and have fun.

In the intro I rechristened the song “The Candidate's a Religious Man Talking Blues”, almost trying to lend it a kind of faux-Robert-Johnson-cum-Bob-Dylan style gravitas.

Some verses remained the same....

“The Candidate's a religious Man

so let's catch him in a place of worship

Tell that old lady praying in front of him

to stop looking at the camera

The Candidate's a religious man

so let him spew some dogma from a soapbox

Up those credibility points!

Break out that makeup, our boy is for sale!

The Candidate's a Religious Man

So let's plug his kids with sedatives

Show all those viewers they're well-behaved

True offspring of a pillar of the community

The Candidate's a religious man

So let's cover up his booze problem

Break out that mouthwash quick!

Try to hide that whole thing about rehab”

When we wrote this song it was a reaction to the likes of Bush I, Bill Clinton, Al and Tipper Gore, et. al, but from there you add a few new verses to update it and you could drop in Hillary, The Donald, Ted Cruz and whoever. It's a hop, a skip and a jump just to bring it forward....

“The Candidate's a religious man

let's make sure he's Christian

not one of those weird, obscure sects

It's gotta be one that looks good in public opinion polls

The Candidate's a religious man

a star in the 24 hour news cycle

run his speeches past those focus groups

get those spin doctors to nip and tuck his opinions”

The last verse originally had this line that Mike and I crooned together, “so put away his Quaaludes!” I felt like I had to update that a little, since Quaaludes aren't really a thing anymore....what was a trendy drug that gets abused these days. I vacillated between Adderol and Oxycontin...in the end it became “put away his Oxy” because it just sings better.

By and large I've stuck to my guns on the fact that the S.E. Apocalypse Krew's politics are BROAD, because I hate all these fascist fuckers. Republicans, Democrats, I don't give a shit-----they're all dirty and corrupt and they'll probably end up getting our asses killed in the long run. “Candidate” is a number that stays pretty relevant, and 25 years after we wrote this thing it just gets better as the political climate gets stranger and more ridiculous.

We bounced it around several times before we finally got a good take. It sounded fun and we got a laugh out of it. It was easily one of the simpler recordings we did, but hopefully an amusing little slice of intimacy in the midst of the roaring din.....

It was a wrap.

APOCALYPSE NOTES: EXPLODING

“Hello.....is it me you're looking for?”

---Lionel Ritchie

One thing Mike and I carped constantly about back in the early days of the Apocalypse Krew was asinine, sappy love songs. Part of it was a bad case of Serious Young Man's disease; the rest of it I'll just chalk up to the songs' fault. Yeah---I'm magnanimous like that. Whatevs. A lot of my issues were that I felt a lot of these songs were disingenuous. When Eric Carmen sings “turn the radio on for that sweet sound....make me lose control”----what the hell's he talking about? ! What, exactly is “losing control”? Is it dangerous to do while you're driving? Let's just call a duck a duck, okay? He's basically saying, “make me come”. I guess there's the list of words you can't say on the radio, but to me, it boiled down to how it's inappropriate to lay the cards on the table and just say, “hey, baby, let's fuck!” And at that point in my life I had no patience with what I saw as a very calculated, cynical form of insincerity. To me, it was the closest legitization of date rape to ever be applauded by the masses.

So we'd go 'round and 'round about our mutual disgust with stuff like that.

We were working in this hotel at the time---we were dishwashers, with occasional forays into floor cleaning and food prep....I was sweeping down the floor around the salad bar when Mike walked up to me and showed me a piece of paper....on it were the lyrics to “First Stare”.

“Chuck---check this out----I wrote a song,” he said.

The lyric on the sheet of paper started off innocently (and innocuously) enough....”I love you/ if you don't say you love me I just don't know what I'll do”...” 'Cause tonight's the night I love you/ and tonight's the night I care/ and I knew it was gonna be this way/ from our very first stare”....

 

So far, so (deliberately) mediocre.....but things got weird quick...the next lyrical passage went

(Revolting)---as if this were a musical notation----

“ AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHGGHHHH!!!!!!!

If you don't fuckin' love me I'm gonna shred you to little pieces

If you don't scream for me I'm gonna make you wish you were still alive

Bleed for me!!!!”

Yeah----we were on to some next-level shit, here, as the kids say these days....

Then came the chorus:

“EXPLODE! EXPLODE! EXPLODE! EXPLODE!”

At this point, there between the cook's line and the salad bar, I was doubled over in front of God and everybody, howling with laughter. I knew exactly what Mike was going for, and it was absolutely slaying me.

It was the antidote to every inane, patronizing top-40 romantic ballad making the rounds. And who could beat a chorus that was just repeated screams of “EXPLODE!!!!!”?

I went out and got a tee-shirt made (they used to have these stores that customized tee-shirts back in the day)----a red shirt with the word “EXPLODE” printed in Old English lettering...I still have it. It no longer fits---my wife sometimes wears it.

“First Stare” kinda nominally kicked around our repertoire for years...we never recorded a formal demo of it. We played around with a version that barely came together....my take on the song was that you'd always have this poppy intro but then it would turn into a brutal thrash metal rave-up wherein the song would basically see the various members racing each other to the end of the song while I screamed my fool brains out....

When Mike and I first started talking about recording the old stuff I expressed a lot of interest in finally recording “First Stare”---it'd be the ultimate “fuck you” to the top 40 popsters. Mike confessed to me that his vision for the song was always that there was no real song, per se---it would just be noise. That wasn't ever really my vision for the song, but we were talkin' “First Stare”, here, and I was willing to compromise.

The ideas changed as we went along. At one point, Mike sent me a bare-bones track that was intended for the “fast” part....the track was actually based on an earlier number that fell by the wayside called “Black Harvest”. “Black Harvest” was an anti-nuclear war song that was really cut out of the same cloth as “Black”---it was a moody, dark song that started off acoustic and turned into an angry rave-up. I never thought of “Black Harvest” as a backbone for “First Stare”, but hell if it didn't work.

Later on I was on the phone with Mike and he expressed the further view to me that he had ideas about the track turning into “twenty pounds of shit in a five pound bag”----he recommended “Shine” by Todd Rundgren as a big illustration of what he was talking about. Rundgren, of course, even when he was slinging chaos, was much more subtle than anything the Apocalypse Krew was doing, but I saw the parallel and it intrigued me.

Flash forward to the recording session. I finally got a picture of the monster that “First Stare” would turn into. It sat on the timeline in a multitude of layers that looked to me like a lot of the timelines I did late in the day for “The Abbey of the Lemur”. It was immense---there were layers and layers and layers of audio.

What Mike had laid down was this insane mishmash of the “Black Harvest” riff snarled up with a montage of a lot of our stranger old recorded moments----synthesizer wreckage, demented lo-fi soundscapes, spoken word snippets, me beating on a Baldwin Organ, insane jabbering and distorted racket.

“First Stare” had become a Burroughs-style cut up!!!!! I was absolutely floored. This shit was insane!

We jumped into the ballad-part. I was never sure how to tackle this and we ran through it a few times.....Mike told me after a couple of takes that he thought the best way to tackle the vocal would be just to Lou Reed the fuck out of it and bang out the most insincere delivery I could.

(And yeah, in case it just blew by you, I used “Lou Reed” as a Verb.)

Which works, since our entire genre spoof was on songs we were completely skeptical toward. As I said before, I felt as though the sappy MOR love song was the most cynical, vapid, dishonest form out there, so taking the piss felt like the way to go.

When we got past the intro, Mike told me we were going to approach the main body of the song a little differently. “I want you to do the vocal for this without the music.”

Huh?

OKAY.

So in keeping with the cut-up nature of the beast----I went into the booth and yelled the lyric minus any musical accompaniment----let the chips fall where they may. I added a few weird ad libs----passages from “Chapel of Love” and Sinatra's “All the Way”, with the same leather-lunged delivery.

I had also expressed interest in playing a guitar track quite some time beforehand. Mike asked me if I still wanted to do it. I had this thought that we wouldn't have time for that, but this was looking good----we'd knocked everything out reasonably early. He pulled out the guitar, and BAM!!! It was happening. I was hooked up top a howling sonic monster, and I just went apeshit, throwing in some whammy bar racket, some Greg Ginn fingers-caught-in-the-strings shit and, more frequently than not, long, caterwauling drones and blasts of feedback right up the Velvet Underground/”European Son” Alley.

This went on for about ten minutes....Mike, at one point, had departed to take care of one thing or another. I figured he could just throw it into the horrendous stewing pot and fade it in and out as he saw fit. I have no idea what the final result will be, but Mike's playing with a pretty insane arsenal of crap. I have no doubt it will be epic and unprecedented.

We were done at the studios at North Main Music. But one more song remained.

APOCALYPSE NOTES: GOING BIG

As I wrote previously, I didn't know what Mike was going to be bringing to the table with “Black”---I was actually not even sure we'd be recording a new version, as I hadn't received a new recording through Dropbox.

With “Black”, we'd recorded two separate and distinct versions---one 4-Track cut in the late '80s and later on 8-Track in the early '90s....both had a more or less similar lyric but they were very different from one another as far as arrangement and structure went....the first was a gloomy, ominous doom rocker that's probably unlistenable considering the technology we were working with at the time...I can tell you there was a pretty good guitar solo and that shortly after the recording Mike had no idea what he'd done to get the bizarro sound he got, but it was pretty one-of-a-kind.

My template for the song as far as what I wanted to get out of it was actually the Swans' “Blind Love” from the CHILDREN OF GOD album....that's not to say that's what it wound up sounding like but think epic and unnerving----at least as epic and unnerving two guys with a 4-Track recorder and a windup toy of a drum machine were going to get....the song came to a literally-apocalyptic end with crashing chords, thundering windup toy rhythms and me on top of all the din, bellowing, “BLAAAAACK!!!! BLAAAAACK!!!!!! BLAAAAAAAACK!!!!!!” Over and over....it was tracks like this I played at Heather early on in our courtship that prompted her to crack, “aawwww----did somebody need a hug?”

And actually, yeah---I could have used a hug back at that time.

“Black II” had the added bonus of four extra tracks and it was a helluva lot better, production-wise...we were more on top of our game by then. Structurally it was probably more of what they called a “power ballad”----I loathe that term and, generally speaking, I don't have much use for the form. It starts off very quiet, with me whispering, muttering and crooning....I even do backup vocals that aren't particularly good, but they're drenched in reverb so, y'know....the desired effect. “Black II” is probably the best of our old demos and I was of the opinion that, if we wanted to cut corners we could actually stick that on the CD and no harm would be done.

As it turned out, there WAS a new cut of “Black”.

PLEASE GRANT ME THE SERENITY: RECORDING “BLACK”

“There's no sign of the morning coming; You've been left on your own”

----Ronnie James Dio

Giving the track a listen, I discovered that it essentially followed the structure of “Black II”, and that was a plus...it was a nice, Godzillian jam and Mike had totally brought the Rocket Sauce. One thing I was very taken aback by was that the original track had a fairly standard bassline....on the new version, Mike had really jazzed it up! And I mean “Jazz”, literally! Very tasty jazz-bass stylings that were almost a direct contradiction underpinning the big, moody grog-metal.

This was gonna be fun.

It was another game of “finding the arrangement”.....the structure was very similar to the old “Black II” but I was going to have to go through it a few times to learn how my ballpark rewrite was going to fit.

Much like the old recording it starts off slow, quiet and eerie and what I was singing was more or less spoken.

“ Every day the struggle to get out of bed and walk out that door is a more and more insurmountable task

I don't belong here and I never did.

I can no longer stand seeing things and people I can't deal with

I'm through---finished----through.”

Then the main riff---clean tone----kicks in.

“Lying in a pit of garbage and lies

It's a world that's run by politicians and whores

Color it all black, now, 'cause it's more than I can stand

I don't want to see it anymore”

Lyrically you could probably draw a parallel to “Paint it Black” by the Rolling Stones, although that song is about a guy who's mourning a dead lover and he can't get a grip on life anymore. With “Black” there's no tangible catalyst for the speaker's misery; he just can't get a grip on life, period.

I am the other planet man

I don't know what I'm doing here

I don't know what I'm here for

let me out”

And this is where the song just blows open and starts raging.

“Color my world, my world black

Decided I wanna be blind forever

Deliver me from this world of lies

I just wanna shut it out altogether

CHORUS:

COLOR MY WORLD, MY WORLD BLACK (x4)

Let it all stop, let it end now

I can't take it, I don't know how

Need someone to shut off my mind

I'd be happier if I were struck blind

Holy Pilgrim, I went hunting

I came back with a fistful of nothing

Living on this planet though I'm not of this earth

I take a look around

and see that it ain't worth shit”

Melodramatic, or WHAT? There was a whole litany in early versions of the song where the speaker lists off a laundry list of everything that's pushed him to the brink, and it goes something to the effect of “a man in a caddilac/ dead babies on my TV/ a government that doesn't care/ millions of people happier than me/EVERYTHING/YOU!!!!!”

That's right----he's blaming YOU. PERSONALLY. YOU!

Yeah----YOU, Bucko!!!!!

We had this drummer at the time---he wasn't with us all that long but he was our longest-running bandmate and we hung onto him for dear life because he had a basement we could practice in. I remember during practice one night he picked the lyric apart and goofed on it----”okay---so this guy walks down the street and he sees all this stuff going on that he doesn't like....so what does he do?! He freaks out and he yells and then he goes back home??? I don't know where that's goin'----sixties are over, man....”

Not real sure what my autistic angst had to do with the sixties.....still and all, he took me down a peg or three or five and I rode home all butt hurt over it. Mike tried to play it down a sensible middle---we needed the guy, at least at that point...he'd had experience playing out in bands, he knew music theory, and, shit, maybe we could learn from the guy.

I was very tunnelvisioned by my own ego, though, which might go as far as to say I needed a pin stuck in it. You only need to take one or two steps outside your situation to see the humor in it.

Following the template of “Black II”, though, I eschewed the laundry list in favor of ominously intoning, twice, as the song drew to a close, a line from the AA “Serenity” prayer:

“Please grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.”

 

This last bit is crucial----the reason it's important to the song (and to the Apocalypse Krew in general) is that it's a direct contradiction of the band's entire existence. We are classically the LEAST serene entity alive. There's not an iota of serenity in the song, or in the character's head.

With this line of the poem the Drunk (hypothetical or universal) is asking God (however you want to define “God”) to help him/her cut his/her losses and move on, and how to have the wisdom to know how to pick their battles.

The entire ethos of the Apocalypse Krew is based around an inability to accept the things you can't change...the Dreg has no idea how to pick his battles. He's hellbent on running directly into a wall.

Not the smartest way to go through life, but who hasn't gone through that at one time or another? Who hasn't failed to see a way out?

THE NEW STUFF, PART TWO:“FEAR AND HATE”

 

“The idea had been growing in my mind for some time----true force. All the King's Men cannot put it together again.”

----Travis Bickle, TAXI DRIVER

By the time I actually sat down to WRITE “Fear and Hate”, I'd realized I really painted myself into a corner with “Rise”----It was a busy lyric that followed a busy rhythm and sought to cover damn near every note of that rhythm. I wasn't going to make that same mistake with “Fear”---as frantic a number as it was I knew I was going to need to put every ounce of gusto I had into it and it would be a good idea, given the confines I was in, to let the song “breathe” a little more. And let myself breathe a little more.

I wanted to do “Fear and Hate” from the moment Mike brought it to the table....it clocks in at just over two minutes and it's both furious and abrupt. Hammering, thrashing riffs, very fast and dense, with this layered, atonal, descending chord structure on the chorus that defied anything I think I'd ever heard in straightforward rock music at that time.

Mike gave me the music template back in the '90s...the chorus was, “You gave me the look of fear and hate”. The lyric I wound up writing was couched in the paranoia and isolation I had that last year in Nashua, the year I was living alone in that slum on Pine Street. To my recollection it was another one of those crazy, busy lyrics and would be like algebra to try and tackle.

The way I finally structured “Fear and Hate” was that each individual line would take up two bars...the line itself was essentially over by the end of the first bar, but it would trail over the second, allowing more room for the vocal to breathe and for the riffs to get some naked space.

I decided it would be an anti-bullying song. Bullying has been a big issue for me and mine for years----most incidents of school or workplace violence are the result of one or another form of bullying, and such incidents are bound to continue as long as we, as a collective mass continue to turn a blind eye to the pecking order. I've done my dead best to talk distraught kids out of pulling a Columbine---but I understand the rage that motivates them.

So this was going to go out to everyone who got beaten up, threatened, raped, had their shit stolen or who was otherwise put in a corner...it was also a shot across the bough to anyone who was in the upper strata of whatever food chain----hey, buddy---you know when you do that shit? Here's how that person feels about you. Does that make you nervous? GOOD----keep feeling nervous.

It didn't rhyme. It wasn't stylish. It wasn't witty or hip. It wasn't cute, clever, politically correct or kind.

The whole thing was designed as a scream of impotent rage. One of my favorite old jokes was, Q. How did Helen Keller break her fingers? A. Screaming for help when she fell down a well.

So my aim with this lyric is it was Helen Keller breaking her fingers screaming for help.

For the first time anywhere, “Fear and Hate”.

“Why did you back me into a wall?

I was just minding my own business

back a coward into a wall

you never know what he'll do to get out

I'm afraid to wake up anymore

it's your world, I'm forced to live in it

CHORUS:

YOU GAVE ME THE LOOK OF FEAR AND HATE

This is your world, this is your toilet

I have to live with your gun in my mouth

I can't take it one more minute

you've been on top too fuckin' long

people like you should be raped by livestock

people like you should be shot in the face

CHORUS X2

I can't make it out of your cesspool

so I'm calling in the airstrike

shit can't continue as it is

people like you need your dicks cut off

now's the time for fucking justice

hurt me, motherfucker, I'll make you pay

CHORUS x 5”

Strong statement, I'll admit----not exactly coherent, either....but what right do you have to ask coherence out of someone who's trapped in a well? Or someone who's trying to tell you that your house is burning down around you?

It's the most direct line to the sense of violation that goes on in the brain of a bullying victim all the time. And I'm sure there are all those handwringing PC-types who are frightened by this level of expression, saying it encourages violence. I'd tell them that zeitgeist prevails with or without the song, so rather than look for a scapegoat, why not address the real problem? And I'm certain a few of them might say the real problem is too big. Well, maybe you're too small. Or are you PART of the problem? See, that's half the problem—--those who in some way, shape or form, benefit from the existence of a pecking order can't imagine life without it.

Well then, don't come cryin' to me....

“Fear and Hate” was going to be a rip-roaring screamer. I was prepared to put more into this than any other song we'd done so far. This was not going to sound “cool”----it wasn't going to sound “rock star” in any way, shape or form. My best reference for what I was going for is, if you listen to some really stellar hardcore, like, say, “Pride”, by Husker Du, off their great album, ZEN ARCADE, there's nothing about Bob Mould's delivery that sounds “cool”...he sounds like he's having a goddamned conniption, and I have to listen to that every fucking time---there's something so liberating about hearing this guy---and you're not listening to a “singer”, per se---just this regular guy that could be you or me, losing his shit.

There's little to no acceleration in this song---there's a drum cue and then you're in it. DEEP in it. Guitar, drums, bass, vocal, the whole blood vessel-busting enchilada, and before you've acclimated yourself to it it's rolled right over you and left you for roadkill.

I basically screamed the whole thing, spastic voice cracks and all, like a distraught stockbroker getting ready to jump off a building on Black Friday 1927. I wanted to sound like a man whose world was ending. At one point in the third verse we had to stop and do it over because, headset and all, I couldn't get my cue....I couldn't hear the music over my own screaming.

There was a bridge section where, if I'd had more time to mess with it, might have used some vocals---realistically, throughout the recording sessions there were moments where I went sparse where under more ideal circumstances I wouldn't have. But I figured giving Mike more blank canvas to have fun with wasn't necessarily a bad thing.

Mike perused the result on the timeline and assessed it as “definitely the most ferocious song in our repertoire...”

MONEY!!!!

 

THE BOUNCY ONE: “OUTSIDER”

 

“There's a man outside....he wants to come in.”

----Henry Rollins

“Outsider” was the next logical one to tackle....we were in the home stretch at this point.

If “Fear and Hate” is our most ferocious song then “Outsider” is one of our catchiest. Tement he riff is instantly memorable---it would be cool to hear a swing band play this. Mike and I have joked around a long time about doing a big band arrangement for it.

Rhythmically it bounces along in a manner similar to Cheap Trick's “Southern Girls”, with this huge, heavy boogie riff topping everything off. In approach it would be similar to “Black” or maybe “Time Bomb”----more a matter of showing off the song rather than letting loose.

There was an extraneous riff dropped from the old demo, but other than that the song hadn't changed much and it would probably fit the lyrics I had cobbled together without much of a problem.

I tried to approach the vocal with a degree of ease; when we talk about ease, it's not to be said there isn't work put into it---rather it's to say the listener shouldn't hear much labor. Much in the vein of Bukowski----the reader shouldn't have his or her attention drawn to the nuts and bolts of the effort...it should just come off as a smooth, organic whole.

“Residing in your cozy little house

unsuspecting, happy as a church mouse

I'm looking in on your measly little life

I wanna intrude on your measly little life”

The whole genesis of “Outsider” to me....did you ever see “Fatal Attraction”? Remember the scene where Glenn Close is spying on Michael Douglas and his family through their picture window, and she's so disgusted and envious of what they have that she literally vomits? That's the kind of spirit I'm going for.

It's classic American Have-Not-ism.

“Standing in the shadows and I'm looking in

standing in the shadows and I'm looking in

lurking in the peripheries and I want in

I am the Outsider

I am the Outsider

and I want in....I want in...I want in...

Laugh and yawn and take it all for granted

don't appreciate the silver spoon you were handed

you should be destroyed, you should be replaced

standing on your lawn and I'm looking at your window

I don't like what I see, I see a room full of people

happy, happy, happy

a room full of people all happy except me”

Here's the self-contradictory nature of the politically correct---x number of people are going to knee-jerk at our songs and argue that we're insensitive, or they're going to take everything out of context and say we're sexist, racist, advocate violence and so on and so forth....chances are no one's going to tell us we're anti-homeowner, though. Guess they'll conveniently miss the memo on that one.

That happens with extreme idealogues, though----with an old episode of “The Abbey of the Lemur” one of my castmates was wearing a very funny tee shirt that had a fake Coca Cola logo, except it read, “things go better with Satan”. And the local right wing bullet head who was very locked into literalistic thinking was alarmed by this. And our performer was up there cracking jokes about sacrificing children and I put a lower third up in front of her identifying her as a “local cult leader”----and this guy's complaint against us took that and ran wild with it....”this person----this cult leader....” meanwhile, in the same show we had a lower third graphic that identified me as a “local chimney sweep”. He never took me to task for that. Did he believe I was a chimney sweep? Did he just not care? I guess chimney sweeps didn't jibe with his agenda, or his sense of moral outrage. If it were me watching at home, I would've been enthralled---I would have been waiting to see if this guy would start dancing around on rooftops singing “Chim-chimeny-chim-chimeny chim-chim-cheree”....but no. Selective reasoning. Or non reasoning. But I digress. Back to the song.

“I'm knocking on your door

you don't know what's in store

it's the end of your rainbow when your wife starts screaming

you don't know what to do

and I'm staring in your window

I want in!

I want in!

I want in!

I want in!

I want you---and everything you own

You people shut me out and made my life miserable

Flaunt your happiness like a diamond ring”

A little note, here, on the humorous irrationality of the S.E. Apocalypse Krew....nobody actively shut this guy out of ANYTHING. His quarries----the homeowner and his family----probably have no idea who this nut staring in their window is. This shambling pile of crazy takes other peoples' happiness as a personal affront.

“I want to eliminate you

I want to exterminate you

I want to decimate you

I want to eradicate you

I want to reduce you

I want to subtract you from the equation

I want to erase you

I want to erase you

I want to erase you

I want to replace you”

Back in the day Mike and I thought that if we ever did the whole MTV/music video-thing “Outsider” was our first candidate as far as a video we'd like to do, and we figured it could even be done cheaply. The affluent family sit at their dining table and engage in niceties while I, as the crazy, stand at their window in a blizzard, ranting and raving....the band are behind me, all bundled up by a trashcan fire, attempting to play their instruments in the driving snow (obviously fake confetti snow). Eventually as the song hits its peak I crash in through the window, jump up on the dining room table and begin threatening the family, specifically the patriarch, whose position I'm envious of. At one point between lines I lean down, pick up a turkey leg and start noshing on it.

The last image in the video would be a family photo---the patriarch disappears and I fade in in his place. As though I'm a member of the family, replacing him as Dad/Husband/etc. Kinda similar, maybe, to Jack Nicholson appearing in an old-timey photo in the Overlook, I appear in some Olan Mills monstrosity as if I had been the patriarch of this family the entire time. The original family man is lost to the ages.

We banged “Outsider” off without a lot of excessive effort. I felt like I did alright. We were on the home stretch, now...eventually, we would leave North Main Music and hit Mike's home studio to knock out our last number, “The Candidate's a Religious Man”.....but there was one more song we had to tackle beforehand.

NEXT: EXPLODING

APOCALYPSE NOTES: HARDBALLIN'

So I was up, wide-eyed and bushytailed for day two of our recording session.....my brother had gotten back to the motel room very late and I was reluctant to wake him up with so little sleep but I was up and around and he got up and around...taxi driver body clock, I guess.

We piled out of the motel and I probably owe him a lifetime of fruitbaskets for actually carting me around Nashua for the purpose of the Apocalypse Krew. He needed some sleep.

We puttered around South Nashua for a while and at this juncture I have to go off on a tangient regarding the ubiquity of chains.

At this point (as previously stated) it had been ten years since I'd been in that part of the country...and my last trip to New England had largely seen me hanging around in Mass. My brother and I were both hankering for Breakfast....back in the day I would have probably opted for something greasy at Bickford's. Now, there IS actually still a Bickford's in (I think) Acton, MA, but the two stores in Nashua had shuffled off this mortal coil a long time ago. The South End Bickford's had been replaced, unceremoniously, by Walgreen's, which I believe, though I could be wrong, had a CVS across the street from it. (Seems to be the case in many locations---I imagine Pharmacy Gangbangers engaged in drive-by shootings, but that's just my funny way of seeing things)

Shit, man....you could get me going off in a hundred different ways about the closing of the map---I look around Nashua and then I look around Fayetteville-----what used to be Lechmere is now Target and I'm like, yeah----we've got one of those, too. Bickford's is now Walgreen's, and of course, you can't get away from those. Panera? Yeah, yeah, yeah, we've got one of those, too.

At least there's still a goddamned Barnes and Noble. It's nice to know folks in either town are still reading....don't even get me started on the incremental death of record and video stores unless you want an all-day screaming tirade.

We initially opted for IHOP and discovered in fairly short order that they weren't even open. Chris disclosed to me that they might not be open some days because they were having a hard time “hiring cooks”.

Oh. Wow.

Maybe time to start treating your workers better, IHOP?

In the end we opted for drive through action. Hey----I got a large coffee...I was good to go.

The slow, creeping erasure of localism is always a bone of contention with me...Mike and I would later have a conversation regarding this----he espoused the notion that we might all see accents going bye-bye in the next decade or so.

He might be on to something. When Heather and I first got engaged she and my brother wound up on the phone together---he asked her if she'd been born in California.

Now, Heather was actually born and bred in Arkansas. You'd never know it talking to her...if you talk to her Mom, she's about as Southern as anyone you've ever heard....but you'd never guess it talking to my wife.

So...food for thought....fuel for nightmares. Do with it what you will.

By the time we showed up at North Main Music Mike was already there and we were ready to continue.

“PIG”: THE HATE AND THE HILARITY

We opted to start with “Pig” on day two....it would require a lot of screaming and yelling, so there was no getting one's feet wet---I was jumping right in.

As stated in a previous installment, if I wanted to give anyone a quick, hard, uncomplicated dose of what the S.E. Apocalypse Krew were about it would be three songs: “Threats and Warnings”, “Kid Eternity” and “Pig”.

“Pig” was unquestionably the most brutal of the triumvurate----a fast, deliberately obnoxious blast of pure, non-diluted hostility for hostility's own sake.

I think I'd written the lyric (or a rough approximation of it) in the mid-80s...pre-Apocalypse Krew, around the time I'd gotten into hardcore punk---it was a great vehicle for a lot of my frustration, issues with authority and what have you. By the time Mike and I had formed the band it became a natural keeper....we had a lot of rage to get out of our systems.

“I don't like you, I don't like you

You talk too much, you stab my back

Ask too many questions I don't wanna answer

Your values suck, you'd better change your act

I hate your guts, I hate your guts

You badmouth everybody, I hope you die

CHORUS:

YOU'RE A PIG (x4)”

What no one—especially in this politically dainty day and age----will ever under understand is how much fun we had with this song, or how uproariously funny we always found it.

There was never any finesse to this...we didn't revisit it with an iota of new maturity----pure fury, rage and stupidity and precious little else. I screamed the damned thing like a wounded warthog and the Krew rampaged along as per usual----short, fast and blunt.

“Fry your ass, fry your ass

You make me puke, you make me ill

I'd rather die than talk to you

Go back to your hole, die in the grass

I hope you scream forever in hell”

JESUS CHRIST!!!! How much do you have to dislike someone in order to want them to “scream forever in hell”?! Again, no one will probably ever understand how much we bust up over this ridiculous song.

BUT THERE'S MORE!!!!! I initially considered this particular take of “Pig” much longer than the original demos (and it may still be) and so I actually took it upon myself to write additional verses for the new cut. In the end I thought it was all too much and decided to let the song “breathe”---maybe give Mike more room for some guitar fireworks----and just go with the original words.

But in case you were wondering, there are other lyrics, now, for “Pig”, which were not recorded. So here, on my stoopid blog, for the first (and probably LAST) time ever, here are the newish and unrecorded additional lyrics for “Pig”. Enjoy.

“I want you dead, you fucking prick

I promise it's not me, it's you

I can't live another minute with you on this planet.

Motherfucker, you make me spew

Hate's a many splendored thing

I'm sorry for this little tiff

The world's too small for you and me

I wanna push you off a cliff

Suck my dick, suck my dick

I'm sure you'll let me know who's boss

You make me puke, you make me sick

I wanna nail you to a cross”

Fun, or what? No?

How much must you dislike someone to want to nail them to a cross?!!!

Mike had added a new treat to the end of “Pig”---as the song screeches to an abrupt halt a little loop of silly, sampled ragtime music plays the track out. Impeccable? Nay, PERFECT, sez I!!!! I loved it! It was the icing on the volatile cake, the Porky Pig stuttering “that's all, folks!” On top of our mini-symphony of primal scream nuttiness.

And so day two was officially underway.

THE NEW STUFF, PART ONE: “RISE”

“Rise” was “newer” than some of the other tracks we were recording....which is to say its genesis might have been early-to-mid-90s.

One or two instrumental demos may have floated around at one point or another but I never added a vocal to it----Mike was getting busy with Tristan Park and a lot of my attention at the time was going into writing and/or zining. The Apocalypse Krew was more or less over at that point, though there were still these loose ends...I think there may have been an initial lyric for it, but it was another “lost” lyric like “Fear and Hate”----I was going to need to rewrite it.

Fortunately, unlike “Fear and Hate”, I'd actually gotten a recording of “Rise” to work from, so I'd actually managed, with some difficulty, to crank out a lyric.

This was a fucking HARD one and I'd labored over it off and on for months. What I wanted to do, in a lot of respects, was write an S.E. Apocalypse Krew song that would ride along with the old stuff but in a lot of ways be more representative of “now”, mid-2010s. If I had an audience listening to old songs of ours like “Pig”, “Threats and Warnings”, “23” et. al., what would I want to tell them now that I thought was important?

We took the title, “Rise”, from a legend scrawled in blood at the LaBianca murder site by the Manson family---we had thought of making it our first album title and it fit in very well with songs like “Threats and Warnings”. Musically, the song was an aggressive piece of work that was like falling down a flight of stairs with no end in sight---glorious main riff and then a rough-ass chorus that was like a car crash----there was this weird mid-section that almost went into what felt like waltz-time before ripping back into the main section. I love this fucking tune.

In some ways, “Rise” wasn't going to be that demanding a track on my voice because I was almost going to speak-sing a lot of it. The chorus would require some leather-lunged yelling, but other than that---not much wear-and-tear.

In other respects it dawned on me, very late, that this was going to be very difficult. The lyrical structure of “Rise” was DENSE. Rhythmically, it was similar to Black Flag's “In my Head”(albeit a lot meaner)---a busy song with a busy, bunched-up lyric that went along with it and precious little room to breathe.

It was going to be very difficult to get this thing out of my mouth onto a recording....it was going to be very difficult to jump from one line to another---let alone from one verse to the next.

This is me at age 54, with no practice and no practice space, having not really sung in any capacity in about 20-plus years. If the circumstances were different it might have been another story, but the blessing of this whole digital recording thing they do now is we could tackle the song line by line...

The choruses were easy in that it was just me screaming “IIIII WIIIIILL RIIIIIIIIIIIIISE!!!!!!” over and over. The rest wasn't too demanding on my larynx but they were a tongue twister and I would have to hit one line at a time.

“This is your window so listen up now

I ain't got the time to be misunderstood

I've got no compunctions 'bout hammering down

Don't tell me you wouldn't if you knew you could

You can't get no traction and so little action

with the victim mentality holding you down”

This borders on a direct contradiction of stuff I wrote in the '80s like “Kid Eternity” where people were telling me “life is what you make it” and I felt like some kind of a victim---and yeah, phrases like that still feel like a dismissive tactic to me, but if old geezer me was to tell anyone listening to our music right now anything it would be don't play victim, don't act like a victim and don't trust those who do---be a goddamn warrior!!!!! Don't knuckle under to anyone and don't let 'em play you for a chump.

“Losers and squids blow away like debris

Nothing can stop my apocalypse now

Everyone's doggin' it, teeming around

leading to nowhere and no one knows when

What would they do if it all came down now?

We're bringing it down so it's a blessed event”

Here I'm copping some rhetoric from my public access show, “The Abbey of the Lemur”, more or less verbatim. Our original “schtick” on the show was that we were a loveable death cult and the audience could come along and laugh along with our quest for world domination and generalized subversion.

“swim with the tide and you just might survive”

A tip of the hat to New Age author Shakti Gawain, here. Which would probably horrify her.

“You can cover your ass or be crushed by the wave

A nation of numbskulls can't hold us back”

And a tip of the hat to Public Enemy.

“If you've got a problem get out of the way

“Dregs of the world your wakeup call's here

If they side-eye you tell them you're no one they know”

We had this surly saying in the Apocalypse Krew anytime anyone looked at us askance or with any kind of curiosity----”no one you know....no one you like....no one cute....” defiance and resentment.

“If they give you an attitude death from above

You give them fair warning saying look out below

You can't run the ratrace when the rats always win

Now is the time to let it explode”

And of course, “Explode” is a BIG Apocalypse Krew self-reference. Yeah, we're cheeky.....we're witty....

Two down, several others to go.....

AT LONG LAST, THE GODZILLA LIST!!!!!

I started writing this a couple of years ago and then after eighty billion revisions I got bored with it and did some other stuff instead. Getting back to it now, because why the hell not?
       Partway through all of this the templates went crazy and started acting independently of me, up to and including not letting me number the entries properly. So bear with me....

 
Anyone who's known me for any length of time knows I'm a Godzilla Nerd of the 33^rd degree and have been ever since I was eight years old and my Mom plunked me down in front a TV and asked, “you want to see a Monster Movie?”
On the eve of catching the new Godzilla flick (a week after everyone else did) I thought I'd take my place as the eighty-billionth dork to ruminate on my favorite and least favorite flix in the long, extended franchise just to make the noise in my head stop. So with no real idea where the new one will land on my list, here ya go---my historical Kaiju Meltdown. Agree, disagree, call me a gibbering moron, whatever. This is my list and I entertain myself.
BEST:

 
1. Gojira/Godzilla, King of the Monsters (1954) Original and still the best. Dark, moody, deathly serious and apocalyptic. I still can't describe how much I love this film---marked me pretty deeply as an eight-year-old Monster Kid. If you get a chance to see the original Japanese Language version (without Raymond Burr) do it. I've got this nice edition with both versions on it. The American version with Burr is still good but it's funny how I watched this as an adult and it finally clicked with me that Burr ISN'T interacting with the Japanese cast----just the backs of stand-ins' heads. The original cut is made all the better with the Post-Hiroshima/Nagasaki Angst---something the American release understandably dumbs down.

2. Godzilla vs. Destroyer (1995) No---I'm not gonna say “Destroyah”----that was a titular contrivance that came up when it got released on video in the U.S. Some years later---I caught it on a bootleg beforehand. Last entry in the Heisei Series it's the swan song for this series' incarnation of Godzilla----it's the end of the line for psychic Micki Saegusa, Godzilla Junior and a neat tie-in/wrap-up for The Oxygen Destroyer and Clan Yemane (Momoko Kochi, who plays Emiko in the first movie, even has a cameo, here) and hell if it ain't kinda moving. If you want the perfect movie night, you could play “Godzilla” and “G vs. D” back-to-back and just enjoy the grim synchronicity. The Kaiju spawned of the Oxygen Destroyer is a nasty one!

3.Godzilla: Final Wars (2004) 50^th anniversary epic and finale for the entertaining-but-weird Millennium Series....marred by a few bits of particularly dodgy CGI (Kamacuras & Kumonga, I'm lookin' at YOU!) this is otherwise a blast....probably owing a lot to some of the goofy 70s entries the operative word here is FUN----the pace is furious and the monsters are plenty, pretty much bringing home the promise the overrated “Destroy All Monsters” never managed to deliver. This one pulls out all the stops---lots of veteran actors from the Showa series pop up, mad monster action busting out of all corners of the screen----Godzilla's a killing machine that ploughs through everything---Gigan, a pretty cool monster who never got a decent movie, finally gets done some justice—the treatment of King Ghidorah is, well----monstrous--a few “you've gotta be kidding me” moments (I kinda vaguely recall Minya riding around in a pickup truck and wearing a seatbelt-----very socially responsible)....the human action in any Kaiju flick can either drive the plot forward, add to the enjoyment or stop the movie dead----here you've got aliens, superpowered mutant supersoldiers and some military guy who comes off like Jesse “The Body” Ventura----so the human characters are just as over-the-top as the monsters. Can't say enough about it---don't look for any resonance or power or nuclear doom----it's a romp. Saddle up and enjoy a big, insane, ridiculous romp.


4. Ghidrah the Three-Headed Monster (1964) The list wouldn't be complete without an old childhood fave----the optimum monster mash ties in three of Toho's biggest monsters, Godilla, Mothra and Rodan---and gives the Kaiju Kontinuum one of its most enduring Bad Beasts, King Ghidorah. Mad fun from beginning to end.

 

5: Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla (1993) And yes, the Heisei incarnation of MechaG is my favorite. The Showa series' version was an evil robot Godzilla controlled by aliens----the 90s version is a manned battle station commissioned by the U.N. To deal with the ever-present Kaiju Threat. Along for the ride you get Monster Egg Mystery, Rodan, (you can tell I'm a big Rodan guy) Baby Godzilla and secondary lizard brains. Fun to watch and one of my favorites because of the HUGEASS monster brawl at the end with some cool surprise twists.

6. Godzilla, Mothra & King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack (2001) The wild card in the Millennium Deck----this one radically re-imagines G as a demon that embodies all the Japanese and Okinawan War Dead....and for the only time ever, King Ghidorah (along with Mothra and Barugon) is actually one of the good guys----a triad of “Holy Monsters” trying to subdue the demon. I read somewhere that the “Holy Monsters” were originally supposed to be Barugon, Anguirus and Varan until the studio demanded Mothra and King Ghidorah. This is another one of those where, in addition to some kickass Kaiju stuff, the human action is entertainingly watchable. Godzilla gets one of his scariest looks ever----the design in this one is terrific. Very funny reference to the 1998 American G early in the film.

7. & 8. (TIE) Godzilla vs. Mothra (1963 & 1992 versions)

Both of these do well as far as carrying the whole “Don't Mess with Mother Nature” message of the 1954 original, probably more than any of the others in any of the series. The 1963 movie (best known when I was a kid as “Godzilla vs. the Thing”) has one of the best Godzilla entrances ever and a cool bit where the two slimy greedhead villains fight over a stash of money as Godzilla bears down on them with predictable results as well as a great twist ending....the 90s flick sports Mothra's evil twin, Battra, as well as some great city-demolition/monster brawl action that really typified the Heisei series for me. There's kind of a mini-Indiana Jones homage in the beginning. Director/Screenwriter Kazuki Omori (who also did “Godzilla vs. Biollante” and “Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah”) has kind of a big love-thing for Spielberg (it comes up more than once in his movies) and it's obvious he wanted to do a big, wild, Spielbergy adventure here.

9. Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah (1991) I was actually really torn on this one----I know it's a big fan favorite and my initial impulse was to put it in the “Most Overrated” list. My eternal quibble with it is what a mess it is but I decided at the last minute to stick it in the Favorites because it is actually a fun flick and in the end the positives probably outweigh the negatives. Again you get tons of Omori Spielberg Love but the way it works out here is this whole time travel plotline that's like Swiss Cheese. Some fans have actually picked apart the various timestream paradoxes this creates in the other Heisei films and sorry, guys, y'all have too much time on your hands. Try not to give it that much thought 'cause the filmmakers sure didn't. Check your brain at the door and enjoy the damn movie. The fascinating and discussion-worthy thing about G vs KG is that after “Godzilla 1985” flopped stateside, Toho basically stopped giving a good goddamn about patronizing us yanks in this franchise----which makes these movies real interesting to watch if you're American. “G vs KG” was a runaway hit in Japan whereas American audiences weren't even aware it existed at the time...and the futuristic villains, who are trying to prevent Japan from becoming a world Superpower, are Americans. That's right, kids----we're the Bad Guys. The time travel story is a pile of gobbledigook but the rampaging and monster fights are pretty good...my favorite moment here involves the WWII vet tied in w/Godzilla's origin who remembers a dinosaur blundering onto the scene and rescuing him and his platoon in the South Pacific...he feels his destiny is linked with the big guy---right up to where G incinerates him.

10. Invasion of the Astro Monsters (aka Godzilla vs. Monster Zero) (1965) Direct sequel to “Ghidrah” but not as good, IMO----features all the previous movie's Kaiju with the exception of Mothra, which doesn't initially seem like that big a deal, but maybe it coulda used some Big Caterpillar Warmth. There's a feeling of high camp in this one that garners either a lot of love or a lot of contempt, from G's football-style victory dance (Inoshiro Honda himself is alleged to have hated it) to the wacky aliens with their retro costumes and flying saucers. Alien Invasion became a heavy motif in the G-flix from here on out.....mostly it was a very tired theme and this was the only time it was all that much fun. And godammit, NICK FREAKIN' ADAMS!!!!!

HONORABLE MENTION: Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla (1974) Terror of Mechagodzilla (1975) Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla (2002), Tokyo S.O.S. (2003)

WORST:

I'm gonna start this off with a little caveat----as much as I'm hating on these movies I own a good chunk of them and would be cool with adding the ones I DON'T own to my collection. Worst is a relative term (okay—--maybe it isn't)...maybe “Love Happy” is a steaming pile of horse puckey when you stack it up against “Duck Soup”, but Harpo's a funny guy, and face it---you're still gonna laugh.



1. Godzilla's Revenge aka All Monsters Attack (1969) How do you make the worst Godzilla movie ever? Well, you compose at least half of it from stock footage (mostly “Son of Godzilla” and “Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster”) and then stick in this Walter Mitty-type plot where this little yard ape daydreams about running around Monster Island with his buddy, Minya, who talks like Mortimer Snerd. And you get the insertion of Gabra, who might be the Gfans' collective least favorite monster of all time...although I'll admit I have a soft spot for the guy....worked with this one dude who had the exact same laugh.

 
                           

 
2. Godzilla vs. Gigan (aka Godzilla on Monster Island) (1972) Godzilla and Anguirus tag team Gigan and King Ghidorah. Looks good on paper, huh? Shoulda stayed on paper. Super-generic Monster Mash with an interminable activists-versus-aliens plot and again, way too much stock footage.

              

3. Godzilla vs. Megalon (1973) Yeah, yeah, I know the tail slide rocks, and yes, the Jet Jaguar theme song is funny. Sorry.


 
4. Godzilla vs. Space Godzilla (1994) Worst of the Heisei series...you can literally FEEL Toho's faith in the franchise slipping as the movie drags on. Another convoluted gobbledigook plot that doesn't even have the decent backup of cool effects or good fight-and-rampage footage. The design of Space Godzilla is actually not bad---new battle machine Mogera(Nicked, I believe, from an older film called “The Mysterians”) is a piss-poor second to Mechagodzilla in the previous outing. “Ah, Mogera---what a piece of crap you are!!!!” Yeah----that's a direct quote from the movie. The character of Micki Saegusa is a secondary figure throughout the entire Heisei series----so can she carry a movie as the romantic lead? Nah....not really----and she doesn't get a lot of help. The best thing about “G vs SG” is the Captain Ahab-like Yuki-San----a grizzled old pilot with an axe to grind against the big guy. This character is so over-the-top he generates what little fun there is to be had here.


MOST OVERRATED:

1. Destroy All Monsters (1968) Yep----that's right----I said it. I know you're not supposed to say it, but I did. The who's who of Toho Kaiju flicks in which some of the suits were so damaged they got very little playtime....worth seeing for the giant Kaiju brawl in the last 15 minutes but dragged down by an albatross of a dullsville astronauts-versus-aliens plotline (and I already told you how the aliens wore out their welcome after “Astro Monsters”). “Final Wars” does almost everything this tries to do a lot better----chase it down.

2. & 3. Godzilla 1985/Godzilla 2000 Again I own both of these and it's not like I'm swimming in a sea of total contempt for either one of 'em but it's funny that whenever Toho reboots the franchise the inaugural effort seems the weakest. I've heard that the Japanese cut of G 85 (“Return of Godzilla”) is substantially better than the American rewrite, which features Raymond Burr and an endless slew of Dr. Pepper product placements and a revision involving the subplot of a Russian Submarine that only Ronald Reagan could love....in any event you get serious dysphoria from one scene to the next regarding the actual Size of Godzilla----at some points he looks like he's as tall as a skyscraper and and other points he looks like he might be 10 or 12 feet tall----find a size and stick to it! G 2000 is weak stacked up against “G vs. Destroyer” and then all the millenium entries after it are better....I like the look of Millenium Godzilla and the first 15 minutes, involving Godzilla-centric storm chasers (Monster Chasers?) is promising----then it collapses into a long, dull plot involving infighting among the scientists (one wants to study G and one's basically sold out to the military industrial complex) and a longer, duller plot involving a giant rock that turns into a UFO that eventually morphs into “Orga”, one of the most lackluster Kaiju ever. There's a neat bit where the lead character/good guy scientist dude is trapped in a building that's rigged to blow up and that's not bad---one trope that makes a big return here is that of the Annoying Child----in this case the scientist's daughter. This whole concept was the bane of the latter third of the Showa series and it doesn't help here.

MOST UNDERRATED

 
1. Godzilla vs. Biollante (1989) A few years after “G 85” the Heisei series is jump-started for real. This is the direct sequel to “G 85” and one of the strangest movies in the franchise. The industrial espionage/bio-terror plot is unlike any other story in the G-Canon....it may move a little slow but I like it. Again this was another like G vs. KG where Toho had lost any real stake in American Distribution and no longer cared about patronizing us yanks. This shows up in the inclusion of villains from both the U.S. And some fictional Arabian country. Extra points for Biollante, one of the most bizarre Kaiju ever, with a completely bonkers back story. G vs B also goes back to the classic theme of don't monkey with Nature.

You know what? Forget “Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah”----take that out of the top ten and put this one in!!!! I actually like it better!

2. Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster (1966) The first installment of what's referred to as “The South Seas Trilogy” (the other parts of this are “Son of Godzilla” and “Godzilla's Revenge”)
and probably far and away the best. Not great, but solid fun...an odd assortment of characters are shipwrecked on an island and discover that a cadre of supervillain bad guy types have enslaved the inhabitants of Infant Island (home of Mothra) for one nefarious purpose or another----oh----yeah---and they're conducting experiments on the local fauna---you get giant birds and a giant shrimp called “Ebirah” (the titular “Sea Monster”) has been installed as the “Guard Dog” that prevents anyone from escaping. Enter Godzilla with the expected results----then Mothra shows up. Entertainment ensues.

3. Godzilla vs. Megaguiras (2000) Released the same year as “Godzilla 2000” and two or three times better for my money----gov't sponsored military group invents a kind of manmade black hole to get rid of G. Experiments go wrong and the result is giant prehistoric bugs! Not a top tenner by any means but some good monster melee action and great 180 Matrix-style “Kill” shot at the climax....and hang out after the closing credits. There's a kickass suprise ending.


4. Godzilla vs. Hedorah (aka “Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster”) (1971) (Sometimes referred to be me and my friends as “Godzilla vs. the Hefty Bag” or “Godzilla vs. GG Allin”) Michael and Harry Medved (who are tools) included this film in their book, THE 50 WORST FILMS OF ALL TIME-----ironically, much like “Plan 9 from Outer Space” is not the worst film of all time (nor is it the worst Ed Wood film), “G vs. H” isn't one of the worst films ever made, nor is it the worst Godzilla film (that distinction belongs to “Godzilla's Revenge”!)---but its infamy is well known. Director Yoshimitsu Banno was thrown off the Toho movie lot for this demented opus. And one shouldn't lose sight of the list of offenses: Annoying Child Motif? Check. Trendy, heavy-handed Eco-”Message”? Check. Obnoxious theme song (“Rave the Rearth!!!!”) Triple check. And the whole bit with Godzilla flying? Sends G-Fans into seizures. But Banno didn't get it all wrong----weird hodgepodge of Kaiju Wrasslin' Action, leftover psychedelia, animation and gruesome imagery that's a little out of place for something this kiddie oriented make this a truly STRANGE offering, and there's some genuinely cool, experimental cinematography going on. And it's a fun flick to get high to----not that I advocate that or anything. Interesting side note: Around the time of “Godzilla: Final Wars” Mr. Banno was making a lot of the scenes at various fan cons, talking about how he wanted to do a big IMAX/3D Godzilla movie, much to the horror of the Toho Execs. Well, he's one of the executive producers of Warner/Legendary's new “Godzilla”. WELL PLAYED, MR. BANNO!


 

2016 POST-SCRIPT:





As of this writing Gareth Edwards has dropped out of the sequel to the 2014 Godzilla iteration, which I don't consider to be particularly bad news. Much as I liked his work in “Monsters” I'm not sure he's cut out for an extended stay with the big lizard, so maybe his talents will be better used doing Han Solo movies or Boba Fett movies or whatever the fuck he's doing. I don't care and so I lose track.

A lot of what I heard going into the 2014 flick was the distinct LACK of Godzilla....much of my thinking there was that if it ran on a less-is-more iceberg theory that would be fine...unfortunately, by the time it hit the big screen the whole tone had changed---early trailers were framed with the whole J. Robert Oppenheimer “Now I am become death, the Destroyer of Worlds” quote...that was pretty exciting to think we might be treated to something with a level of gravity on par with the original----by the time it hit the big screen it was just a high-production monster mash. Nothing wrong with that, but pick a mood and stick with it.

Much in the same way I theorized that the Japanese can't carry off time travel (viz GvKG) maybe Americans can't carry off Annihilation Angst (the closest we got was “Cloverfield”, which was criticized over supposedly scaring up the 9/11 Zeitgeist, as if that were somehow a bad thing to do)

I remember when Heather and I saw “Pacific Rim” I told her, blown away by its sheer scope, that the new “Godzilla” had its work cut out for it.....and yeah----”Pacific Rim” was more impressive. Sorry-----it was.

But under different hands and a capable production staff, who knows? Maybe we can get a decent, dumbass monster mash...

Of course, at this point, Toho is spewing out “Godzilla Resurgence” and I've got some mixed feelings there....on one level, production-wise it looks good, well-shot and very high-drama....it's the design of Godzilla itself I've got the mixed feelings over.

Yeah, G looks scary as hell----similar in some ways to the “All Out Monsters Attack” war demon look with the meltdown look of “Godzilla vs. Destroyer”....I think what bugs me about the whole thing is those ROUND, BEADY LITTLE EYES.

If you wanted to go for realism, that might not be a bad move---that's probably what a reptile's eyes SHOULD LOOK LIKE. Although, for me, Godzilla has never been a realistic creature and a lot of his visual appeal is that his face is actually EXPRESSIVE, having a lot of strangely mammalian features.

Of course, I have this tendency to hate on fanboys for getting anal-retentive about other peoples' creations and for their distorted sense of “ownership”, so of course, I see the other side of that argument just fine---'Sides, regardless, I'll no doubt end up seeing it.

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      Words copyright 2016 C.F. Roberts/Molotov Editions