I'd gotten tired of peoples'
expectations, which is to say everyone expected me to get over it,
and none of them would have settled for my dirty shoes on a bet.
They're soiled; they're venal. I'm white napkins on spiffy tables.
And I know they want to railroad me.
“Deal with it,” she says,
and he eyes are all gethsemane, e.g. don't pass this cup under me,
Dad.
I grow weary of explaining these
things.
Bustling multitudes of walking,
phlegm-blasting, yellowjacket casualties ghost over the desert and
beat on Jerusalem's door. They're carted off to well-wishing and tea
on 18-wheel hearses of sad glory and obligatory fish fountains.
She readjusts her interchangeable
coiff and that makes her blonde this week. She likes being a blonde.
She excels at being a blonde.
The bodies stink around her, but
even in the puke-and-piss-mired nightfall she retains a kind of
infernal, unflagging stature. She'll burn all the bridges she must to
get her heap of flapjacks. All others be damned, she is the
Quintessential Entropy Device.
(Here it should be noted my
Better looks over my shoulder and prods me, reminding me of the
danger involved when one objectifies an individual as a “Device”.
I hawk an erudite loogie and continue)
She rides in state among the
festering carnage, trying to be subtle as she pulls up a stocking.
There are too many Bathroom Gods
wielding ball peen hammers to impress the compulsions of the weak.
We need renovations.
Give me strange dogs, a la
Bunuel and Dali. Throw it all out in the open. Give me the primal
play of a baby's eye. Give me nails and tacks in technicolor.
Give me irresponsible rhetoric and
action—only through unreasonable maneuvers can one hope to subvert
the zeitgeist.
Give me a piss-and-vinegar outlook
and a mask, a cap and a burlap bag so I might be a burglar of th
latent mind. Give me actions above and beyond the deadweight of conscience and consequence.
Give me a horrific effigy god
with a blunt barbecue tree stump snout. This deity will be the last
word in terror. So terrible that he causes mean-spirited little men
to weep in supplication and reconsider their paths in life.
Give me a crew of soaked
miscreants too get drunk, ridiculous and sentimental with while
oldsters in traditional lederhosen honk on alpine horns and batter
accordions with percussive, padded cell furor.
Give me the raw of the movie
stripped past the mind's vain distinctions of time and place, revert
personage back to archetype, subtle aberrations of nuance and
characterization to the most base level of grunting moral and
skeletal campfire yarn.
Give me a life without
apologies, a clear, uncut conscience not hampered by the nervous
tremors of Should.
Give me a premature,
hereditary widow's peak. Give me the best thighs on the regional
poetry scene after she gets done fucking his image off her body. Give
me the knife of her words to twist hard. It's the only defense I have
left.
Give me a quaint
coastal town, the platonist dream, the dullard standard of a
writer's paradise, to strafe and raze and obliterate along with its
entire population of fishermen, franco-american blue collar yobbos
and yuppie tranquility fiends. What sane scribe can write in
paradise?
Give me the ability to
piss on a tiara and get past all of this.
'96 or '97, early days
in Fayetteville, I think. Never published.
I'm sick....if you have the
misfortune of seeing me I look like some sad cartoon bug or
something. I haven't bathed in the better part of a week, I'm in
constant pain, I can't eat and I really am truly the sickest I've
been in decades.
The little black cat is curled
up in a ball by my side----she won't leave. She rests half on my
body, half off, because it hurts so much when she's on top of me that
I won't stop moaning and groaning.
What's she thinking? Is she
afraid I'm going to die? I'm loathe to say what my cat is thinking,
but I guess I appreciate the good thoughts.
Two years later I've recovered
from my illness. There have been fluctuating ups and downs in life.
On this day that same little cat that
would not leave my side is dying on the living room floor in front of
me. I spent the last several days watching her deteriorate to the
point where she has been lying limp on the arm of the couch, choosing
to sleep most of the day.
Now she has abandoned all places
of comfort, choosing instead to lie flat on her side. My wife strokes
her softly and she shudders, letting out a weak, noiseless cry.
We tell her we love her and
we're here----right here with her and we're not going away. We hang
back and talk as she lies still.
After a while we realize she's
gone.
Some close friends go behind our
backs and do us the kindness of paying to have her cremated. She is
returned to us a week or so later, her ashes in a tiny, wooden
container with her name emblazoned across the top. It looks like a
tiny casket and it's hard to believe a little box like that contains
what used to be a cat.
I show it to our male. He rubs up
on it with a great deal of affection. I don't know if any part of him
understands that what we're showing him is his sister, but he seems
to like it a lot, regardless.
We place it on our mantlepiece
with some of our favorite things---Exotica records, Halloween
decorations, anything Hawkwind ever did. We burn some incense and
place a little cheezit cracker on the tiny casket. She loved them.
She would steal snacks like that right out of our hands.
She was cantankerous, unruly,
unrelenting, loyal and beautiful. I'll spend the rest of my life
wondering if I was worthy of her company.
Copyright 2018 Molotov Editions
While I'm kicking around like a lout and trying to preserve my 900th skin graft I figure I haven't done any kind of a status update in a while...lot of exciting news on the writerly front.
I guess that the latest is that in early October ( Projected as sometime in the week of Oct. 7-13) UNLIKELY STORIES MARK V will be running my short stories, "Jesus, Superman and Rice Patties" and "The Windshield of a Moving Car is Hard, Especially when you Drop on Top of it from Thirty Feet" over two consecutive days. Keep an eye peeled. This publication rocks, they've been kicking it for a very long time and you can check them out HERE:
In addition, THE ODD MAGAZINE and Odd Books are going to be doing my short story, "The Day the Sun got an Eye Gouge" as a mini-chap at some point in the future....I latched onto the Odds earlier this year and fiercely recommend them----they've got something fresh ad unlike anything else going on! Look them up HERE:
One of these stories is actually one of my oldest ever, which up to this point I've never been able to place---the other two are significantly newer. Keep an eye peeled for this stuff....they're three of my favorite stories and I can't wait for people to read 'em.
Let's see---what else? OH!!!! YEAH!!!!! MY BAND PUT OUT A GODDAMN ALBUM!!!!!! As I've been slinging the hash of hype for a while, it's probably important that I finally get to actually pimp this thing! We even have our first video out!!!!! And if you haven't seen it, here it is:
Sorry if you've gotta sign in----the sticky wicket of having to farm a music video with a few naughty words through the local Access Station/Media Center---but they're a great help to me----have been for many years, god bless 'em!
Anyway, yeah, that's me----I produced and edited the video, those are my paintings and my grotty vocals you're hearing-----sublime music by the great Mike McAdam and percussive contributions by Brad Rondeau! Enjoy.
We're talking about putting the album out on CD Baby in the future----until that happens, if you want a copy of the CD, well....if you're in NWA you can find it at our favorite musical haunt, https://www.facebook.com/blockstreetrecords/
If you can't get it there, contact me. I'll see if I can't set ya up.
THIS WEEK'S PLAYLIST:
BAUHAUS-Burning from the Inside
BAUHAUS-The Sky's Gone Out
KISS-Rock'N'Roll Over
THE GUN CLUB-Louder than Live
The story in this entry was "Hannibal Shooting Fish in a Bucket".
“Hannibal Shooting Fish
in a Bucket” is part of what I call “The Brookdale Cycle” or
“The Extended Brookdale Mythos”----which is my fancy-ass way of
saying it's a handful of short stories that revolve kinda loosely
around my first novel, HELLO, UGLY and its setting, the fictional
town of Brookdale, New Hampshire. Most of the stories center around
two characters, either Old Man Delprete (who's referenced in the book
but who's long-since out of the picture and faded into local legend
by the time the action of the book takes place) and this story's
subject, Mike Hannibal.
Hannibal is really just a
peripheral character in HELLO---in a book whose main characters tend
to be marginalized misfit kids, Hannibal is the kind of unpleasant
worm burner that even those misfits are wary of. For whatever reason
I found Hannibal to be an interesting enough character to where I
revisited him in a couple of different stories. The other story,
which is one of the single ugliest stories I've ever written, is
relatively recent and I'm still shopping it around to potential
publishers----hence you're not gonna see it in this blog anytime
soon. I briefly brought “Hannibal Shooting Fish” back into
circulation recently and what you're reading is a slight rewrite of
the story I was peddling around in the early '90s, but hell with
it---no avail----stick a fork in it----it's done.
This particular story picks
up after the action in HELLO, UGLY where Hannibal is an adult. He's
hanging with a gang of friends and acquaintances but as per usual, he
sticks out like a sore thumb.
I think what I was getting
at with the shooting of fish and then Hannibal getting sick on
seafood at the end of the story was your basic stock Christ
symbology---I played with a lot of religious ideas and imagery at
that time and I think what I was shooting for was a picture of
Hannibal's actions as a “rejection of Christ”....although
“Christ”, such as it is here, is more a supernatural proxy for
general morality, human decency or just good things in general. I'm
not particularly religious and this is not a religious story, per se.
Pretty much just a character sketch---one unsavory individual doing
stupid shit. Theater of the Irrational.
THIS WEEK'S PLAYLIST:
THE S.E. APOCALYPSE KREW-"RISE" (plug, plug)
STARCRAWLER-S/T
RUSH-"MOVING PICTURES"
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
In the S.E. Apocalypse Krew's song,
“Kid Eternity”, we sing, “pull Dad's gun from the drawer/and
aim it at my head/they'll sue Ozzy and be happy to have someone to
blame”.
Obviously, it's locked into
the zeitgeist of its times----the 80s, the Satanic Panic and all that
happy horseshit. Even back then, no one was going to mistake us for
politically correct. The protagonist of the song practices suicidal
ideation and self-mutilation, literally cutting his nose (or ears)
off to spite his face....or anyone else that irks him. Yeah, we
know....maybe we're coarse, maybe we're insensitive....but that's how
we roll. And at the end of the day, hopefully you learn it's okay to
laugh at everything. Or at least think long and hard about what
you're laughing at.
We knew right from the outset we
were on a collision course with certain easily-offended types and we
were fine with that. Gimme a knee-jerk, pro-censorship person, I'm
probably going to offend them. It always works out that way.....I'm
there.
ON THE OTHER HAND, it's always
an eye-opener when the pro-censorship knee-jerker goes after artists
who DO handle things sensitively!
Care 2 is a Social Networking
Website that brings together activists and enables them to
create petitions and organize campaigns leaning toward human rights,
animal rights, social justice, environmental issues and a variety of
worthwhile rallying points. So it was a surprise to see some
activists utilize Care2 to advocate censorship.
One phrase that Mike and I have
thrown around together since the 80s was “The Hot New Fear”, or
“this week's hot fear” or other such variations on the
subject.....and the hot new fear is always something that's literally
sold like a bottle of mouthwash, and the media will usually jump on
it and harp on it, exploiting it with little to no rational discourse
or serious examination....it's usually some superficial scapegoat in
the arts or entertainment, used to serve as a cultural “band-aid”
to a larger problem people regard as too big to address (or too big
to fail?).
Obviously, around the time we
wrote “Kid Eternity” the Satanic Panic was in full bloom and the
big fear was that if your kids listen to Ozzy Osbourne or Judas
Priest they're going to commit suicide (and to hell with any deeper
examination of issues like home life, mental health, chemical
dependency or whatever---you're a terrible person if you even ask
such questions!)
There have been lots of other handy
fears, though....does your kid play Dungeons and Dragons? It'll turn
the introverted little lamb into a babbling, Occult-practicing
psychotic! Anybody remember the West Memphis 3? Three kids who were
basically railroaded for a child murder due to the fact that they
wore black and listened to Metallica----shit----one or two turns of
circumstance and I coulda been Damien Echols! Natural Born Killers?
Everyone from Bob Dole to John Grisham said it was gonna spawn a
generation of homicidal maniacs. Marilyn Manson? Caused
Columbine---y'know....if you disregard the fact that those two kids
didn't even listen to him....
Today's fresh new fear is
apparently this 13-episode Netflix series, “13 Reasons Why”.
Since this show will apparently be responsible for all your
childrens' deaths, let's bust it out of its virtual box and get a
look at it.
I sat down and binge-watched “13
Reasons Why” (I keep wanting to call it “13 Ways to Die”) a few
weeks ago pretty much based on the fact that I found the premise
interesting. For those of you who haven't been paying attention, “13
Reasons Why” is the story of this high school kid, Hannah Baker,
who kills herself and leaves a series of cassette tapes detailing the
events that led to her suicide to be distributed among the various
parties she considers “responsible”, and as the tapes (and her
narrative) unravel, the lives of those around her, the “accused”,
unravel. Some (most notably the protagonist) are angry, some are
dismayed and others are trying to fight to keep a lid on the whole
thing for fear that it will “destroy the school” ( tenuous
defense of a construct that makes little sense to anyone standing
outside such an asinine bubble world).
Personally, I fucking LOVED this
show.....no ifs, ands or buts. I don't think I was ready for how
smart it was going to be. On one level, yes, it unflinchingly takes
on a lot of the hard issues teens deal with, from harassment to
bullying to rape to gossip to stalking to slut-shaming—on other
levels, while the show, per se, definitely takes Hannah's “side”,
it turns around and shows you that she doesn't necessarily see the
whole picture---some of the events don't necessarily follow her side
of the story and some of the kids in the story aren't necessarily as
bad as she makes them out to be. When there's a scene where she asks
Clay, the main protagonist of the story, if he thinks she could ever
be as pretty as this one other character, homeboy shits in his
wheaties by being like, huh? She walks away and says, “never
mind----you just answered the question,” and we the viewers see
that it's just one more nail in her coffin....but it's a mistake
anyone could make. I could make that mistake. You could make that
mistake.
So, yeah---incredibly smart
show....not only does it nail everything kids are facing in school
from peer pressure to bullying to suicide, to unresponsive authority
figures to an entire culture that bolsters and reinforces the pecking
order, it shows you the bottom line of suicide---the grief of the
parents and friends—the damage left in its wake. The acting is
uniformly great, especially from the two young leads----they'll rip
your heart out.
Does it have the potential to
resonate with young audiences in ways that might make authority
figures uncomfortable? Yeah----it does. After I got done it took me
several days to get “13 Reasons” and its haunted teens the hell
out of my head. But that also begs the question, if authority figures
are uncomfortable with that, what does it say about them? Seriously,
guys----too scary? Too big an issue to deal with?
Sorry, I know----I'm being a
dick about this. But you know what? Having actually lost friends to
suicide, I can be a dick about this.
One thing I was unaware of was
that “13 Reasons Why” is also a popular, best-selling Young Adult
novel that has been revered among young audiences for a decade, now.
I'm not very conversant in the topic of contemporary YA Lit, which is
strange, I guess, as my first novel qualifies, technically, as
“YA”----(and I'm still looking for a publisher----hint, hint!)
(It covers many of the same topics----hint! HINT!)(You can read
excerpts right here on this blog----HINT!!!! HINT!!!!) (Naw----I'm
not self-serving in the least, am I?)-----but it's something I
genuinely have not followed. Apparently it's a sufficiently beloved
book to where, when the TV adaptation was announced, young fans
confronted the producers and told them, in no uncertain terms, “don't
fuck this up!” So obviously, much to the chagrin of some knee-jerk
types, this material hits very close to home. Between the book and
the show, why does this story resonate with kids?
Well, don't believe for a
second it's because the story and themes were generated in a vacuum.
This shit happens all the time----it was going on when I was a kid
way back in the Mesozoic Era, and precious little seems to change.
“13 Reasons” doesn't come by its attacks in a one-dimensional
manner---the parents in the show are not cutout characters. They
genuinely care for and are worried for their kids and frequently find
themselves closed off from genuine communication----and there's no
dressing that up---that's very often on the kids. But I think that
one part of the story that gets under the skin of all the concerned
adults (SPOILERS!!!!) is the last “Reason Why”----the
well-intentioned-but-ineffectual student counselor whose answer to
rape is basically “try to forget about it”.
Does the “culture” of a
school cover up and engage in apologetics for its favored students?
Betcha I can say “yes” faster than you can choke out the word
“Steubenville”....like I said, no one, not the producers of the
show nor the author of the book, pulled this concept out of a vacuum.
Think these notions of hopeless reaching out to an adult authority
figure never happen? Think the authorities are all-knowing sages who
can solve all the problems of youth? Then you have to answer to this:
So where were the concerned
and able adults when this kid was being knocked unconscious in full
view of the security cameras?
Eight years old. EIGHT.
Yeah----good job, authorities.
And ultimately that's the
problem I have with these reactionary activists....rather than
actually reach out and help end the abuses and negligence that helps
motivate kids toward despair, they'd prefer this easier “band-aid”
route-----because taking on the hallowed pecking order is too
hard...and deep down, we all love the blessed, besotted,
motherfucking pecking order down to its
apple-pie-and-stick-shift-drivin' Jesus core, so let's micromanage
and/or ban a TV show, instead.
To quote comedian and political commentator Jimmy Dore, "we're a nation of adult children of alcoholics....we don't get mad at the guy who screwed you over----we get mad at the guy who pointed it out and let you know about the guy screwing you over."
Agreed, Jimmy. Well said.
Go, Hot New Fear, Go! Except
you're never that new, are you? It's the same old shit, over and
over.
Except that maybe, for a
change, things are a little better. Some counselors and
psychiatrists have taken a new approach...they've seen the
“provocative” potential of “13 Reasons” as the opportunity
for a “teaching moment”----parents, watch this with your kids and
take this as an entryway to a dialogue. Listen to your kids. Find out
what's happening in their lives. If what you're seeing on this show
rings true with them, find out why.
SMART. FOR A CHANGE. So, hey,
as grumpy as I get about these things----maybe we can evolve past the
bad old days of the Satanic Panic.
Be nice if someone made sure
the gang at CARE 2 (or at least some of their petitioners) got the
memo.
So it was that Mike McAdam and I
finally got together and entered the studio at North Main Music
to start knocking out vocals for the S.E. Apocalypse Krew album. It
was the morning of April 6th, 2016.
ON BEING A BAD SINGER
In this age of contrived TV pop star contests like "The
Voice" and our late, un-lamented "American Idol"
(Okay---I'M not lamenting it----I guess it's not fair to drag you
into my rotten attitude) the notion of being an untalented vocalist
is probably some weird anomaly that gets scuttled early on in the
elimination process and summarily forgotten in the maelstrom of
yodeling, warbling, camera-ready ninnies, at least 'til the reunion
special. But all or most of my heroes were guys with limited or no
vocal ability; Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, John Lydon, Joey Ramone, Stiv
Bators, Jello Biafra, Darby Crash, Alice Cooper, Lux Interior,
Handsome Dick Manitoba, Alan Vega and any of the guys who were in
Black Flag.
One of the great appeals of Punk
Rock to me (and I'll confess I got to the party late---it wasn't
until the early-to-mid '80s that I fully embraced the genre) was the
beautiful, field-leveling effect of “anyone can do it”. In
listening to the Pistols, the Heartbreakers, Flag or the Stooges it
began to hit me that even a no-talent schmuck like myself could grab
a mic, start a band and air out his sizeable beefs with the world
under the auspices of rock'n'roll.
When Mike suggested reigniting
the Apocalypse Krew and recording the old songs again I think I made
some mention of his own vocals. Mike is technically a much better
singer than I ever was. Don't believe me? Listen to his solo work.
His immediate response was,
“you're the only vocalist for this band!” For my money, Mike has
several songs under his belt that fit just fine into the Apocalypse
Krew milieu and his vocal histrionics on those numbers are equal to
the task.
But who was I to deny the chance at
tying this chapter of my life into a neat little bow and giving it to
the world with a smile?
One thing I always loved about
our music, though, was that we had a modicum of natural diversity and
versatility, to where we could play a blistering punk rock rave-up
and then switch gears to something more sludgy and metallic, throw a
few weird little jazz figures into the mix, bust out the acoustic
guitars for a funny folk tune, then go into kind of a weird funk jam.
And even as a guy who can't sing, I can work with these changes and
create something interesting to listen to. I like to think so,
anyway.
I remember at some point in the
late 90s/early Oughts, I went to see this metal band---I can no
longer think of their name---they were a big deal in metal circles at
the time---they'd just been signed to a major label, as I recall, and
played one of the bigger local venues at the time. A well-known local
band I was friendly with opened---they were playing without a bassist
at the time and were definitely in a period of flux----it made no
real difference to the music and they still blew the headliners off
the stage.The headliners played music that was somewhat derivative of
Iron Maiden----lots of dual guitar leads and some time changes....two
or three songs into their set you'd heard everything they were going
to do----there were no slow songs, no fast songs---no real SONGS to
speak of----everything ran at the same pace and it all kind of melted
together after awhile----no hills and valleys---the same thing over
and over.
When you go to see a band like the
Rolling Stones, they might start up with “Start Me Up” and
continue with “Rocks Off” or “Brown Sugar”, but it'll only be
a matter of time before they change it up with “Sister Morphine”
or “Miss You”. Then they'll come back with a rocker like
“Shattered” or “Jumping Jack Flash”, but you know in a few
songs they'll change it up with “You Can't Always get what you
Want” or “Sympathy for the Devil”.
Or maybe those Stones are a bunch
of deadass old fogeys. OKAY: How about Faith No More? They might
come darting out at you with “From Out of Nowhere” or “Gentle
Art of Making Enemies”, but then they'll throw something like
“Falling to Pieces” or “We Care a Lot” at you. Later on
they'll bust into “Strip Search”, “Motherfucker” or
“Evidence”--they'll go all gospel with “Just a Man” and then
they'll goof on you with “This Guy's in Love with You” or “Easy”.
My point is that I kinda prefer
bands that do that. To one degree or another, I try to do that.
Same goes for singers, including
a lot of current bad singers. I hear a lot of people who are doing
the Black Metal or the Grindcore or the Screamo or the Hardcore and
it feels like they only do one thing. A lot of hardcore vocalists run
on a non-stop menu of one-size-fits-all hoarse roaring that guys like
Henry Rollins or Phil Anselmo put in the map---minus those vocalists'
level of nuance (quit laughin').
And my point is, nuance is
good. Switching gears is good.
“MELISSA”: THE PECULIAR ZEN OF
INSOLENCE
“We are not stupid boys but
we want to do it wrong”
--REDD KROSS
Mike opened up Pro-Tools on his
computer.
Okay----as a Video Editor,
this one was familiar to me. It was not unlike looking at a timeline
on Final Cut Pro or Avid.
“So, you wanna softball
one?” He asked.
I thought for a few. “How
about 'Melissa'?”
Mike brought up a timeline
for “Melissa”. It was a natural starter where we could calibrate
things. “Melissa” was probably the simplest song in our
oeuvre....it consists of one simple goddamn riff. Our old
theory-headed drummer once told us the riff was a Vamp. We laughed at
this at the time, but he was a well-read cat who probably knew
whereof he spoke.
I got into the booth and the
feeling-out process that would accompany every song went down. I put
on the headset and bellied up to the mic and the de-S'er screen as
the familiar, bouncy riff kicked
in.
“I
hate you! I hate you! I hate you!” I screamed, kicking the song
off.
“You were once immortal
Now you're a pig
You were making motions
with the other side”
Mike
killed the music. “Okay---is that how you're gonna do it?”
“Yeah,
more or less....is that okay?” It was a question I would ask about
six hundred times over the next two days.
“Yeah, it's good---I'm just trying to find the right level. Stand
back from the mic a bit.”
We
would routinely go through any given song a few times. Mike would
need to find the level that was appropriate for however I wanted to
do the vocal. I'd have to run through it once or twice in order to
“find” the arrangement or at least get acclimated to the song.
And then there were the snafus.
One thing
I'd gotten very bad about after twentyish years away from the mic was
nailing my cues.
A couple of
takes into “Melissa” he told me, “there's a lot of stuff in
here where you're coming in late to your lines but it kinda
works...there's a whole raw, imperfect kind of rock'n'roll vibe to
it.”
I came
out of the booth and gave it a listen. Mike was right---I was coming
in late on the shit. As it was landing I could accept all of it
except the last verse, which was so bad even I couldn't deal with it.
We punched in the last verse and I nailed it after a time or two.
“Melissa” was very much Mike's song....with the new recording I
heard that it was a fair bit longer than it was originally and so the
last verse was one I came up with.
“All day long I'm walking 'round with shank eyes,” I squawked.
“All these jokers got a walking blowjob, I want an open door, I get
platitudes and snowjobs!”
It's not a
nice song. It's not a mature song. It's probably one of the single
most obnoxious songs we ever did.
I remember
partying with some co-workers back in the Apocalypse Krew days. One
guy referenced a female co-worker we'd had once, saying, “we called
her Merry-Go-Round, because all the guys got a turn riding her.”
I got all
dark and said, “I never rode her.”
My
friends ignored me and went on to another subject, which was probably
smart.
I liked
the girl in question. Part of me was bothered by hearing her referred
to as “Merry-Go-Round”, but a bigger, darker part of me was angry
because I would have liked a ride. What the fuck was wrong with me?
The endless refrain. I couldn't step outside that conversation at the
time, of course...how much of what these guys said was smack talk?
Was the fact that I was this outcast, this imploded Asperger's case,
the reason I couldn't hook up with a girl?
Yeah.....that probably had a lot to do with it.
“Melissa' is the ultimate piece of freaked-out, horny
atavism...it's the stupid, raging Boy-Id on parade.
The
imagined charges by the emotionally and politically dainty types
could be seen mounting. Those awful guys in the SE Apocalypse Krew.
They're sexist, they're misogynist, they're homophobic, they're
racist. They have less than your maximum daily allowance of
Roboflavin.
“Melissa” is not a song that will help in this regard.
When I
exited the booth, Mike was laughing. “Sung like an insolent five
year old throwing a temper tantrum,” he chuckled.
Was that a
good thing? Under the circumstances, yes it was.
“Melissa” is not just a song about being rejected or
ignored---it's a song about being slighted in favor of someone you
consider to be way the hell beneath you. It's the musical equivalent
of being bitten in the face by a retarded dog.
We
listened back on it. “Whaddya think?” He asked.
“I'm
okay with it,” I said. “What do you think? Is it any good?”
“Yeah,”
he said. “The thing about it is, this is one of the easiest songs
we're going to do---we have a lot more to go through and a lot of
them are going to be more complicated than this one. One of the
things that's working well in our favor is that this isn't the way
I'd normally record vocals. With you, it's like, what am I gonna do?
Say, 'Try it again----you were a little flat!'?”
Well, I
told you already about the advantages of being a bad singer.
We
were off and running.
“THREATS AND WARNINGS”: HEART OF THE APOCALYPSE
“Once
again, you've judged a reflection of yourselves. Your children will
rise up and kill you...LA will burn to the ground. Los Angeles will
burn to the ground.”
---SANDRA GOOD
At this point I'm delivering a ballpark memory of the docket
as we tackled it (I was allowed to dictate the songs and the order
in which we recorded them).
“Threats and Warnings” would not, by my guesstimation, be
a really tough one to do, but it was a big one. Initially, I think
that we wanted to entitle our first album “Threats and Warnings”
and it was obviously one of our big numbers.
It's a heavy and dynamic song and there's a lot going on in it,
musically speaking. When you listened to the SE Apocalypse Krew we
pegged this as one of the songs that defined us.
The song kicks off with a descending fireball of a riff,
accompanied by avalanching drums.
“ You shielding the kids from the power of choice/they'll be
fine, just don't give 'em a voice/
Keep their brains shut and feed them video sedatives/preserve
the future from the power to know/
Keep on lying in the lid's gonna blow”
I actually took it down a peg on the vocals, here, compared to
the old demo, where it was just a lot of leather-lunged bellowing.
The words are important, give 'em emphasis.
And as that cascading riff-hem subsides, I bark, in a
militant staccato, “S!E!A!K!” The main riff starts in earnest.
One thing I've always loved about hiphop (and, to a somewhat
lesser degree, hardcore punk, especially the old stuff) is the
exclusive lingo, the tribalistic language, the fact that you have to
be in the fold and know all the secret phrases---it's gangspeak. In
Punk, Suicidal Tendencies were the absolute kings of this---a lot of
the fan uniform art you see on their first album reads, “gang”---it's
all very tribal. To paraphrase John Shelby Spong, don't ever discount
the power of tribalism. Tribalism is the reason people fly planes
into buildings. Black Flag also understood this back in the early
days----those tags of the Bar Logo were everywhere in they were very
much regarded a gang sign and an emblem of quasi-terrorism on the
punk scene. Chanted initials comes from the same place. I was trying
to create the same tribal impulse.
“The lies you've built will explode in your
face/
Your petty fabrications will rip themselves
apart/
Joke of your deceptions is an open book/
Our songs are Threats and Warnings”
On “T & W”, more than anything else we did, there was
a push toward the Mansonian Credo of “Make it Witchy”. I wanted
to make it plain that if proper, puritanical society went down the
tubes and suddenly we were dealing with violence and riots per Ms.
Good's social prescription, the S.E. Apocalypse Krew understood and
we were okay with that.
Yeah, my mind goes to dark places sometimes. Frequently.
Okay----most of the time.
The original ending lyric for “T&W”, almost spoken as
the furious intro-riff kicks in again, went something like, “when
someone reaches out to you/ you smile and say, 'I don't see it,
everything's great'/and then you wonder/why people like me are so
full of hate.”
For the new recordings I scrapped this and shoehorned in a
bridge section from “Caustic Youth”, an older number of ours that
fell by the wayside.
“ 'Don't worry, be happy' says the man on TV/
something about that fails to impress me/
like rats in a maze you obedient scurrying/
now I think it's time to start worrying”
And I'm aware that I'm really dating us with the Bobby McFerrin
reference—-in the end, what can I tell you? We're products of our
time.
What had been going on in my head since I started reworking
the song was this---”T & W” is one of our better songs, hence
it was worth recording, but it has no contemporary context to speak
of. I wrote it as a reaction to authoritarian bullies like the Moral
Majority and the PMRC. That climate no longer really exists...mostly
society seems ensconced in kind of a blanket blandness. As much as
people ballyhoo Orwell, I'm more of a Huxley guy. Who needs
jackbooted oppression when you can just feed everybody their Soma and
give them all the soft-pedaled convenience they want? The Revolution
will not be televised----the Revolution may not be happening. Fuck,
man, “The Kardshians” are on.
Which is why I did a double-take when we wrapped it up and
Mike said, “it's truer now than it was back then.”
Is it? Okay, well...be nice if that were the case. We'll see, I
guess.
Coming in late on my cues was a chronic problem for me. It
would continue to be a problem for the entire session. Mike espoused
the belief that rock'n'roll is not a perfect art, and corporate rock
acts like Foreigner, Styx and Journey, with their squeaky-clean
precision, were, in essence, a ruination of the form. I was never a
huge fan of any of those bands, and I wasn't about to argue.
Where the mess-ups were sufficiently “Rock'n'Roll”, we just
let it bleed. Where they were so outlandish and stupid that even I
couldn't let them go, we went back and did them over. And we kept on
going.
“THE BLIND LEADING THE STUPID”: A STRANGE INTERLUDE
“Truth is Parallel”
---ROZZ WILLIAMS
“The Blind Leading the Stupid”, aka “Truth is Dead”,
was a weird little anomaly we could softball. It's actually a very
tasty, atmospheric little jazz jam that jumps out from the pack of
crunch-riffing, screaming and fury. There's a fun little bit of
guitar/bass interplay while I read a short spoken word piece.
“Truth is Dead.
Facts, whatever 'facts' are,
have been replaced by factoids and
carefully-orchestrated
pie charts. Educators are being
outmoded by ass-kissers
and line-towers. Soothsayers are
being rubbed out by
statisticians and polltakers.
Truth is dead and exhumed
as a neon cartoon character. Truth
is a subjective whore,
up for grabs to the highest
bidder. But why take my word?
After all----what am I but another
liar?”
I wrote that in the mid '80s, watching the 24-hour News Cycle
in its full, infantile glory, watching the guy from the right wing of
the CIA argue with the guy from the left wing of the CIA on
“Crossfire”. Now? We're on to some next level shit....the
adherents of Fox News and the adherents of MSNBC are running around
with two different sets of “facts” in their head and in the
infotainment cyclone perceptions of reality are hitting a level of
schizophrenia we've never seen before. People live in different
realities.You can argue all day as the veracity of my ravings
on”Threats and Warnings”----with “Truth is Dead” it gets
truer and scarier by the day.
I'm sorry I got that right. I'm sorry I got that right.
There were several cuts of “Truth” (mostly instrumental)
floating around on various tapes over the years...until I was
recording, there was one thing that never hit me, and it was that the
current version Mike had whipped together was much shorter than I was
used to. The earlier rendition had me spew my little hypothesis and
then let the jam breathe for a while. As I nailed the final version
in 2016 it occurred to me that as the last word was leaving my mouth,
the last note of the song was fading. I always thought Mike's tasty
instrumentation was the highlight of the song, but the current
version never got out from under me.
Listen good to that music while I ramble, 'cause it's worth
hearing.
GOIN' POSTAL: THE DULCET TONES OF “TIME BOMB”
“Someday a real rain'll come and wash all the scum off the
street.”
--TRAVIS BICKLE, “TAXI DRIVER”
“Time Bomb” would be an
easy one, because we knew it well and it was a song that remained
fundamentally unchanged since the early '90's. It comes charging out
of the speakers like a mad bull and before you know it, it's
stampeded over you and it's over. Except for Mike's sharper, more
concise guitar work, you could liken it to something an Oi band like
the Exploited or Discharge might have pumped out.
“That picket fence that I can't get
behind/
the barriers that burn inside my
mind/
one look at you and I get bad ideas/
I lost my head, now I'm a time bomb!
Can I co-exist with you/Can you
co-exist with me
Can I even pass your test?/ Not as
far as you can see!”
The protagonist of “Time Bomb” is a guy who can't cut the
mustard in society. He can't even get in the front door. And
somebody----probably someone who doesn't deserve it---is going to
pay.
“And now I've got a big surprise
for you/
Bullet with your name on it!
Can I co-exist with you/Can you
co-exist with me
Can you even pass my test?/ Not as
far as I can see!”
I think that we wrote a whole slew of songs along the lines of
this theme---”Time Bomb” was the big winner.
