APOCALYPSE NOTES: THE FOUR FOOD GROUPS

Day One of our session was winding down....I had some obligations to take care of but we could surely knock a couple of other numbers out.

“MEDICINE CABINET”: LIL' BOX-O-DEMONS

“Climb in the back with your head in the clouds and you're gone”

---The Beatles

I reckoned “Medicine Cabinet” would be an easy one to bang out. It didn't demand a whole lot from me, vocally speaking.

At this point there was no getting around it----I was saving all the rough stuff for Day Two.

“If you seen the demons I seen

You might just shit your pants

This ain't no Motley Crue

This ain't no high school dance

When I'm in the mood

to nullify my life

Gimme what I want,

I ain't got all night

CHORUS:

There's a devil in my brain

Medicine Cabinet Yeah”

In the 80s I never bought the hype about Motley Crue being the kings of excess. Vince Neil's biggest partying accomplishment was getting Razzle from Hanoi Rocks killed, and Hanoi Rocks, sadly, were worth ten Motley Crues. We were always opposed to the whole dumb, shallow party-all-night mentality of the hair bands, though....I could never call myself Straight Edge, but our mentality was always to show the downside of getting high and partying....some guy dying during triage----how's that for a party? Boston hardcore band DYS writing songs about nodding off on heroin was more of a party song to me...Lou Reed singing “The Last Shot”. The Heartbreakers singing “Chinese Rocks” or “One Track Mind”----how are those for party anthems?

“When I crack that vial

Watch the sweat pour over me

I crave the apocalypse

in my head to set me free

Just as soon go lose my head

than let you bring me down

I'm too far from the shore

Can't help me, gonna drown”

I've played with a few things in my time, although my personal poison has always been booze. Mild on the scale, I guess, but I understand Addict Brain. I understand looking in the fridge on a Sunday morning and feeling your heart sink because you don't think you've got enough to get you through the weekend. My late friend, Brian Shane, the guy who really, truly turned me on to Lou Reed and/or the Velvet Underground, was alluding to the Velvets' song, “Heroin”, and told me he understood the impulse of looking forward to a long, deep, dreamless sleep...Brian was an alcoholic (although most of his life as I knew it was spent more on the wagon than off) and if the Apocalypse Krew were going to do a “party anthem”, that was the spirit I was going to follow.

“Had enough of the past

Better be movin' on

Better feed my head

Better dead and gone

Come the rush of the tide

Oblivion's sweet roar

Don't say what's bad for me

I can't hear you anymore”

Stiv Bators, from Day One, was my muse on “Medicine Cabinet”, and I tried to channel that. I put the lyric forth in a flat, slimy, laconic drawl that hadn't changed much from earlier demos. It was one of the easier numbers to tackle.

“Medicine Cabinet” actually evolved out of a cover of an old Tommy Bolin tune called “Shake the Devil”, although by the time we were done with it it bore little resemblance to the original...Bolin's song veered into the territory of moody reggae....ours became a slab of monolithic blues-metal that had kind of a bump-and-grind to it. If there's any remaining thread, it's the Devil itself---Tommy's demon----the one he ultimately succumbed to----was drugs, and we're exploring the same themes in this song----so the La Ronde effect continues....

HATE (AND RELIGION) FOR SALE: “JESUS ON A STICK”.

“I am a Hope Dope Pusher!”

---Jello Biafra

It was getting late but we were bent on knocking out one more and we decided to go with “Jesus on a Stick”.

This was always one of our wild cards. One thing you might not know about us is we're big funk fans. Sly and the Family Stone, P-Funk, the Ohio Players, old, good Stevie Wonder, old, good Kool and the Gang, Earth, Wind and Fire, Fishbone, War-----me and Mike are there. There are a smattering of funk-based songs in our repertoire....”Infection”, “Carvach”, the unrecorded (and super-politically-incorrect) “Love Pig”----but “Jesus on a Stick” is the one that made the cut.

It's a medium-paced song with sort of a breezy funk-rock riff that picks up into more of a stomping, hard rock chorus. The main vocal, on the verses, is kind of weird for me....what I envision on the song, sound-wise, is kind of a compressed voice that makes it sound as though the speaker/narrator/character of the song is cajoling you through a bullhorn. I see the character as almost an old-skool carnival barker or snake oil salesman.

“I got a new kind of kick

called Jesus on a Stick

no reason to complain

it tastes good and melts your brain

fifty cents a lick, it's salvation

America's new taste sensation

tastes so sweet you'll wanna come

then wipe out the heathen scum

oust the obscene, make way for the clean

clean up this place for our master race”

Then on the chorus it's the usual stuff with me yelling:

“ CHORUS:

LEAD US NOT INTO TEMPTATION

DEATH TO THOSE WHO DON'T JOIN THE CLUB

DON'T QUESTION WHY, SHUT UP AND BUY

DON'T QUESTION WHY, SHUT UP AND BUY”

“Jesus on a Stick” is a hot button song that's bound to offend a whole variety of people...religious people are apt to balk at the title alone....once they get past that some might appreciate the joke----others might find themselves the butt of the joke.

The singer/speaker/carnival barker character is selling a particularly virulent version of religion to anyone who's willing to grab a piece.

Having grown up in a rather genteel Catholic family in 60's/early '70's New England (and yeah, before you get all fired up I'm aware of the issues behind that and I see through it as well as you do---I'm aware, though, that our catechism seemed considerably kinder compared to a lot of the xenophobic evangelism that had a groundswell in the '70s and exploded during the Reagan years) I felt like the sort of rabid fundamentalism pushed by the moral majority and outfits like that in the '80s was nothing remotely resembling what I'd been taught about as “Christianity” growing up. I wrote “Jesus on a Stick” as a reaction to interviews with KKK/Nazi types who I heard espousing bigotry and hostility as a part of what made them “good Christians”.

“Now you're hooked on this hot new taste

for more you'll do just what I say

golden road of fate, pave it with hate

we are the chosen, all others must suffer

go burn down a Jewish Temple

lynch a nigger, it's that simple

bow to a flag to prove you're loyal

then take a faggot and boil him in oil”

You could leave it right at that or you could insert the names, “Mexicans”, “Muslims” and “Trangenders in bathrooms” and it still works fine today.

Of course, that opens up a whole new rogue's gallery of potential offendees, and that, naturally, includes our friends, the Politically Correct. I'm talking about the kinds of people who will knee-jerk at terms like “nigger” and “faggot”, take everything literally (not unlike a lot of the biblical literalists they consider themselves to be the opposition of) and and not be able to wrap their tiny, spoonfed brains around concepts like Context or Irony. They're the so-called “liberals” who want to ban HUCKLEBERRY FINN because they think it's racist; They're the kinds of nimrods who thought Jonathan Swift really wanted to eat the Irish. They have to run to a grief counselor if you should even mention the idea of satire to them...they're the living embodiment of Brain Death.

Granted, I'm always of two minds with this shit....a good many peoples' solution to political correctness is to run around using terms like “faggot” and “nigger” all willy-nilly as an act of defiance and inasmuch as (having said this in a previous rant) being a writer I want my words to hurt I want them to hurt for a GOOD REASON and I want people to UNDERSTAND why I'm using those words---I don't think throwing them around indiscriminately and stupidly really helps things. Context is everything.

“Build an idol to the brainwash

new third reich while others watch

shun and slaughter the infidels

it's the new world, wipe out everyone else

Shut up and buy!

Shut up and buy!”

I added a new line to the song as the last chorus ended, coming up from under the chorus with a descant of “Do yourself a flavor---say hello to flavor”----leave us not forget, after all---our carnival barker is selling a PRODUCT.

There were odd little non-sequitors that Mike and I threw all throughout the original demo....lots of “YEEEHAW”s and “Why don' we jes' throw them dirty minorities raght outta TOWN???” I eschewed them all in the new version but instead continued in my carnival-barker-with-a-bullhorn riff, yowling, “WEER GONNA BUILD A WAAAALLLLL!!! WEER GONNA BUILD A WAAAALLLL!!!!” One for the Donald and his followers---the true heirs to the irony of this song.

The vocal done I stepped out of the booth and Mike was at the console guffawing.

So...rock'n'roll, chemical dependency, religion and humor....that's it, right? The four food groups? No?

We were done for the day. “Not bad,” said Mike. “We knocked out nine songs, we've got....” he surveyed the list. “Seven more.”

“What are they, exactly?”

He ran down the list. “Rise”, “Pig”, “Black”, “Fear and Hate”, “First Stare”, “Outsider”, “The Candidate's a Religious Man”.

There were a few double-takes here for me; We had discussed “Fear and Hate” but he had never sent me a new take of it in the Dropbox. Likewise I had never gotten a new version of “Black” and was halfway under the impression that we might actually throw the old demo for “Black II” on the CD....if anything from that era was capable of making that transition it MIGHT have been that one---it was probably the cleanest of what we'd done back at that time.

Under any circumstance I had brought a rough rewrite along with me and would tailor the structure to whatever shape “Black” took.

“Fear and Hate” was another matter----I'd written a lyric for it at some point in the mid-90s prior to moving down to Arkansas...the lyric had since been lost. I had centered it around my circumstances at that time---I was living alone in what may as well have been a condemned building surrounded by some rough neighbors, most of whom were rebrobates and dopers of one stripe or another. Probably just as well those lyrics went MIA---no one needed my baggage at that time.

Mike uploaded the track onto my phone and I would take it back and write a new lyric overnight.

After that I visited with family....my brother and I had gotten a motel room in Nashua and at the tail end of riding around with him and my niece on the back roads between Mass and New Hampshire (my brother drives a taxi, and his knack for negotiating those suburban labyrinths is beyond me) I was presented with a late night choice; join them at the local multiplex in hate-watching “Batman vs. Superman” or go back to the Motel 6 and write the damn lyrics. I'd let my brother cajole me into seeing “Deadpool” the night before, and despite my running belief that these Superhero epics are hitting a bubble that's about to go bust, I quite enjoyed it----even gave my fingers a mild sprain throwing the devil horns over a Zamboni joke. I brake for Zamboni jokes.

I couldn't go near “Batman vs. Superman” on a bet, though....that thing looked like a goddamned turd. I couldn't even watch it on a snark premise.

So it was back to the motel and I was going to bang out a new lyric to “Fear and Hate” if it killed me.

I busted out the phone, a piece of paper and a pen, cracked a 40 and went to work.

BOLOGNA AND DEAD FLIES

Excerpts from INDIGO, a novel in progress

All our fathers' dreams.

I hate bologna. Okay, I know, short list, I hate a lot of things. But just par exemple, I'm going to throw bologna out there. I hate it, I've always hated it, can't even get it in my mouth without retching and puking.

No matter how much I cried and whined about not wanting bologna as a kid it was, “shut up an' eatcha fuckin' food! Kids are starvin' in China, ya spoiled brat!” The fight would go on forever until me being unable to choke it down was too protracted and ugly a spectacle for my folks to endure and so they would let it go.

My Uncle was a prison guard. He used to tell me all kinds of stories about what happened to guys who wouldn't eat their bologna in prison. He said, “we'd put 'em up against the wall and say, 'buddy, you'd better eat your bologna!' “. I had a couple of takeaways from this....the first was that my Uncle, and probably everyone else in my family, thought there was something wrong with me and I was going to go to prison.

My second takeaway was that bologna was way the hell too important to these people. And they had veto power over my feelings. “He's just cryin' for attention! Eat that food or I'll smack ya teeth outta that mouth!”

And if it were so easy to just shut up and eat that food, I would have done it in a heartbeat.

Listening to other kids wax nostalgic about this shit, though, was the worst.

“Oh, there was none of that behavior in my house! If that food was on your plate you ate it!”

“Yes,” (insert sage nod of head) “That's the way it should be!”

“The way it should be,” a pile of buffalo shit that slides down the chute of your brain and gets all muddled up with sentimentality and turns you into a gibbering retard. The minute anyone gets all pie-eyed and says, “that's the way it should be”, you should shoot them in the fucking face,. That's the way it should be.

Yeah----thumb screws. That's the way it should be. Hot pokers up your hiney. That's the way it should be.

Nail your head to the floor. That's the way it should be. Goddamn Bologna Seditionists.

Bologna was the official religion of my youth. Death, War, Jesus, the President and Bologna, and by God you'd better eat that bologna or I'll bust yer lil' face open with my big class ring. You're a bad kid----eat your bologna or you're going to prison.

You go out of the house and it's hell. Unbearable sun, chainsaws, dust everywhere, screaming and vapor trails in the sky, dirt in your mouth and the local neighborhood kids say “HI” to you and then they turn around and punch you in the stomach, Some lady is yelling her ass off the next house over and you don't know why.

That's the Bologna, day in and day out.

You go to school and they cram you into this tiny little space and that's your space. The kids at school say “HI” to you and then they turn around and punch you in the stomach, just to see the look on your face. The adults ask you a lot of questions. If you get them wrong everyone laughs at you and calls you stupid. If you get too many of them right they all laugh at you anyway and call you poindexter. If you don't wanna play kickball they make you play it anyway. If you don't do it right they beat you up. It's Bologna, it's all bologna, the great world religion. Our lives run on goddamned Bologna.

Okay----done with the rant.

“You know,” says Gayla, “maybe your parents were just frustrated with you because bologna was all they could afford to feed you. Just throwing the suggestion out there.”

“No,” I tell her with great, sage, philosophical certitude, “it wasn't like that.” At least it never felt like it was like that.

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Fortune is a crime against us all.

Mike has a legion of dead flies lined up beside a spool of thread. The spool is mounted on a couple of pushpins so it looks like a cannon. He's recreating a famous battle, I guess.

“The place I worked at back in the 90s adopted this kid,” Mike says. “We had our own adopted kid.”

“What, did he run around the place and alla y'all told him to mind his Ps and Qs?” Dumb question, I know.

“No, nothing like that,” says Mike. “We sent him money. There was this big map of Oklahoma in the breakroom with the kid's picture in the middle, saying, 'INTRODUCING GILBERT GOOD-RICHMAN', 'cause that was his name---'FROM WHEREVER, EAST BUMFUCK, OKLAHOMA'. And he was our kid, you know, 'cause we gave him money----part of our paychecks every year were sent to him----this great fuckin' gift the company gave us.”

I try to laugh the whole thing off. “Well, you were a kind man, even if you don't wanna be.”

“I know, right? 'Gilbert Good Richman'----fuck kinda name is that? What's gonna happen if he joins the service? 'What's your name, Private?'--'Gilbert G. Good-Richman, Sir!!!!'---'Gilbert G. Good-Richman?! Drop and give me a hundred, ya fuckin' puss! Then when you're done with that you can go clean the head out with your tongue, Soldier!'

“So we're sending this pussy-ass kid money and then he starts writing us letters, and they start posting the letters in the breakroom! And the letters will kill ya,” Mike groans. “ 'Missus Johnson', she was our personnel director who dreamed all of this up, keeps saying I'm an Indian, but I'm not. I know a Cherokee Family that go to our church, but we're not Indians'. So the kid's not an Indian----he's not anything----I don't know what he is.”

“So his Suffering Street Cred isn't even that good.”

“No, it's not. I think he goes off at one point about how 'The Lord took our father last year', but the rest of the damn letter is him bragging about all this shit he has....his family has chickens. What kinda happy horseshit is that? I never had any goddamn chickens growing up! He's got a dog and goats....I never had a dog....I never had any goats. Why am I having to send this kid my money? Kid's bragging about his ten speed bike. I never had a fuckin' bike! Give me some fuckin' money!” Late at night after everyone went home I'd give Gilbert's picture cigarette burns and I'd stick pins in his eyes. Brag to me about your goddamn bike. Every night it turned into “it's breaktime and I'm pissed off----let's go torture Gilbert!”

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With this whole “Indigo” trip these kids (and their parents, if they're willing to buy the snake oil) are being told is they're going to be the Neitzchean Supermen and women, they're going to shift the fulcrum of the world, they're all going to be tomorrow's important dignitaries, intellectuals, movers, shakers, rock stars---the next JFKs and Bonos and Hiram Abiffs and Martin Luther Kings and whatever, and if they throw a hissy fit over not being allowed to wear blue sneakers, well, you're just going to have to deal with it, because they're special.

So they don't get stuck eating the bologna, but they get fed a whole different brand of bologna.

I think about myself, and the razamataz, double-edged sword that it is....Bessie, career thief and drug dealer, and goddammit, whatever anyone wants to say about her, whatever she believes about herself, I know she could be anything she ever decided she wanted to be....she'd never make these people's all-star roster. I think of Mike, recreating the civil war in the break room with dead bugs, battle by battle. Where's his pat on the back? Where's his hand up? Maybe he was on to something, putting cigarette burns in the picture of that kid.

 

I'll never be one of Norma's fucking “Indigo” Children and here's why. I'm too old at this stage in the game----I'm not cute....I've developed a mind of my own at this point and that's no good.

 

And then there's Gayla, the little disappointment waiting in the wings. Gayla's losing favor with Norma and her crowd fast because she's got a mind of her own and she's learning how to say “fuck you”. That doesn't bode well in Norma's bubble world.

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         A Goat for all seasons

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