BACK ON THE MICRO TRAIN

 

     So I actually started coming up with the long-neglected form that is the Micro Novel this past week. I wrote like 6 or 7, I'll give you a few here. Don't say I never did nothing for ya.

BUKOWSKI AND ALCOHOL

(A Seriocomic Micro-dissertation in one act)

"You could toss the idea of cause and effect all day long, but consider this: If the hero of the story shows up in an Oldsmobile, what's the central point-----that he was in an Oldsmobile, or that he showed up?"

Wally skulked toward the back. The lecture had just begun and it was already too boring and pretentious.

He found the restroom and locked himself in. His salivary glands were going crazy. He knelt over the throne and spat repeatedly. His entire torso felt like it was about to implode. Finally the feeling passed. He sat down and shat like a horse. After that he stood up, turned around and threw up.

He puked standing, and all the blood vessels in his face exploded. He felt it burn hard across his cheeks and knew his face would be all red and blotchy when he came back out. He lay down for maybe twenty minutes. When he stumbled out the damned lecture was still going on.

                                              ************

STABBY STAB STAB

A Micro Novel

The Meet and Greet did not go well. Some people can bring the whole room up and some people can bring the whole room down. Jeremy had some imagined beef with Knuckles and he was going to sink the whole room with it.

"What happened to the other singer?" Jeremy demanded.

"I'm the singer," said Knuckles.

"You weren't the original singer..."

"Yeah, I am."

"You aren't the guy on the first album," said Jeremy. That guy had a really low voice. You sound like Janis Joplin on a crack bender." Knuckles' face was darkening, but Jeremy seemed unphased by the whole thing. "I liked that first album. What happened to that singer?"

"I am that singer," Knuckles growled.

"How come you changed your voice, then?" Jeremy stared daggers through him.

"It's called throat cancer, you idiot," screamed Knuckles. Jeremy glowered and decided that sounded like it might be important or something. He kept his mouth shut the rest of the time.

                                    ****************

THE NIHILISTS OVER IN DOVER

A Micro Novel

All holy hell over the fragility of furniture and anything on the upended coffee table legally belongs to the floor. It's not an easy night as the goddamned spanking paddle has broken clean it half, cheap piece of crap that it is.

“Was”, not “is”. There's no time to get sentimental about these things.

The sad malfunction's not going to slow me down, though---I'm a bull in the China Shop writ large, bashing down norms, guardrails and your Mom's old bread pudding recipe. What'll I wreck next? What have you got?

I couldn't tell you word one about god, whatever that is---all I know is I go nuts when her lips form the word, “fondue”.

                            ****************

HOW TO GIVE PEOPLE SEPSIS AND OTHER PARTY TRICKS

A Micro Novel

All over the kitchen, up and down the stairs, losing consortium and tearing her hair out, “all the bags, so many bags, where are all the bags coming from?!” She hailed from the Midwest, so “bag” kept sounding like, “baig”.

Punky just laughed the whole thing off. He was eating like a King.

                 ********************

So there's some of the latest fun. I go back and forth on "Stabby" because to me it's less a Micro Novel and more flash fiction. But who am I to split hairs? I think I said what I wanted with it; you clowns can bandy theory back and forth----I got less important things to do.

Copyright 2020/C.F. Roberts/Molotov Editions

THIS WEEK'S PLAYLIST:

DAVID BOWIE-Heathen, Aladdin Sane

VAN HALEN-Van Halen I, Diver Down

THE RHINO BROS PRESENT THE WORLD'S WORST RECORDS

NEW (ish) SONG LYRICS

Banged out some new lyrics. Okay....slight exaggeration. They've been floating around in my head from anywhere between 2 or 3 months and over a decade. But you know, when you can't get rid of the noise in your head, there's really only one answer, and that's to put it out in the world. Aren't you lucky?

So, officially, then, welcome to the first new blog of 2019....

EVERYBODY KNOWS

Everybody Knows

that the deck is stacked and the pigs are laughing

Everybody Knows

Even the white hats are bought and sold

Everybody Knows

The arc of history is long and pointless

Everybody Knows

all this shit is getting old

Everybody Knows

that it's game over and you get nothing

Everybody Knows

you eat shit at the end of the day

Everybody Knows

that when they smile they're not your friends

Everybody Knows

Past the facade they've got zero to say

Everybody Knows

the temptation's great to pack it in and go home

Everybody Knows

it's too fucked up to work anymore

Everybody Knows

the night won't end but the sun also rises

Everybody Knows

you've gotta find a reason to get out the door

“Everybody Knows” came to me in a dream. Quit laughin', it happens. My zine came to me in a dream, and that was actually a thing for a while. In the dream, I was trying to join my “band” on an outdoor stage. I was having to crawl across this metal grating that was suspended ten feet over the ground and I was having to crawl out on my hands and knees. The band blew through the first couple of numbers in the set while I struggled out, and the bassist, a small woman with a moss green dye-job, took over yelling duties. When I finally made it to the stage they handed me the mic and I yelled this song (note that I always refer to it as “yelling” rather than “singing”), never getting up from my hands and knees. The song has haunted me for a couple of months, now, so there it is. The only line I really solidly had was the last one---Yeah, life is shit but you gotta man up and keep goin'. Existential-Core.

UNDEAD WAGE SLAVE

The speed of the cycle is starting to slacken

the spokes of the wheel are cold and cracking

You don't wanna be the just-home headline

when these defects start to unwind

CHORUS:

And in the night

While you're going to sleep

We come back, we come back

We come back, we come back

The pace of the cycle's too fast to manage

the center of the wheel is hot and damaged

a few more junkers thrown on the scrap heap

one more mongoose screaming for upkeep

CHORUS

If this one doesn't work they can suck me

The center of the wheel is white and fluffy

it ain't like all of the brickbats 'll hurt me

It's coming up on beer thirty

The exit might be a little too bumpy

we go to the ground, it's called winning ugly

If you don't think the dead come alive

You should see the place at quitting time

CHORUS

REPEAT CHORUS

This one's been kicking around my head for well over a decade at this point and it was too strong to resist. The genesis of it was inspired back in the day when the Rude were making the rounds and I'd occasionally try to pen lyrics for them. This one was always floating around just below the surface.

The two songs that actually provided me with rhythmic templates, weirdly enough, were “Bloodsucker” by Deep Purple and “Distant Illusion” by Flipper. Contradictory pairing? Maybe, whatever. It worked for me.

The imagery might seem obtuse and surreal. Most people who knew me back then will read this and know the references and get where I'm coming from because I spent 11 years working graveyard shift in a wheel factory. I think it goes over better if you DON'T know that. “What the hell is this 'wheel'? Some kind of metaphor?!" No----it's just a wheel, ponyboy, but whatever your read is, it's probably more interesting than mine.

WHITE KNIGHT

You're a white knight and you're on the make

but you'll play it cool and you ain't gonna fake

You've got plans

You've got plans

You're gonna treat her right and show you're a man

You're a white knight, regular paragon of chivalry

you've got cred, you even voted for Hillary

You've got plans

You've got plans

You even pimped out your shitty old van

CHORUS:

You're such a nice guy, uh-huh

you're such a nice guy, uh-huh

such a nice guy

'til she tells you “No”

You're a white knight and you've worked on your lines

Cry on my shoulder, baby I got the time

You've got plans

You've got plans

She's gonna be eating out of your hands

CHORUS

You're a white knight with egg on your face

Big night down the drain, what a disgrace

You had plans

You had plans

Now you've gotta a hot date with your right hand

CHORUS

A big trope with the S.E. Apocalypse Krew was a whole slew of Guy-who-can't-get-laid songs. As far as what made it out onto the album, “Keep Walking” is probably the big example. “Melissa” and “First Stare” also edge into that territory but not really. One back in the 80s and 90s we did that also wound up having a couple of different demo versions (of varying quality) was one called “Dog Boy”, which I always jokingly referred to as our “Bon Jovi Song”----it was certainly one of our more accessible numbers---but it kind of tread the waters of “miserable sad sack develops a crush on this chick and gets nowhere”----all done kind of humorously with some great, funny lines (I thought so, anyway). For every “Keep Walking” and “Dog Boy”, though, there were half a dozen similar ideas half-written, with titles like “Looking for Rejection”, “Jeal-Lousy” and “The Night is for Lovers”, which eventually evolved into a short story...we went to that well a lot, and I guess my attitude is, if you're going to go to that well you need to make it a little different and new....

“White Knight” might be kind of a related item and it popped into my head, likewise, late last year and became a thing...so I came up with the idea of a song about “nice guys”, who-----when you scratch the surface just a little, are really just dicks. The title was gonna be there, no matter what, because it was too apropos to leave alone. The obvious tie in with Incel/Red Piller culture is there, and as I've said a few times before, I've got no love for that kind of toxic mindset. But obviously----what can you do? The whole “White Knight” trip is an actual thing----you trot it out and everyone knows exactly what it is and nobody likes it-----even the guys who ARE “white knights” don't like it.

The rhythmic template going through my head for this one was early Plasmatics tunes, primarily ones like “Master Plan”, “Butcher Baby” and “Headbanger”. Ran it by the Missus, who looked at it an immediately identified it as kind of “a kickass punk rock tune....I could see an all-girl outfit doing this, like Easy Hate Coven....”

Yeah, there you go----Happy 2019.

Song lyrics copyright 2019 C.F. Roberts/ Molotov Editions. Extraneous ramblings courtesy of your Mama.

THIS WEEK'S PLAYLIST:

BRIAN JONESTOWN MASSACRE-METHODRONE

BRIAN JONESTOWN MASSACRE-STRUNG OUT IN HEAVEN

BLUE OYSTER CULT-SECRET TREATIES

BLUE OYSTER CULT-SPECTRES

PUG'S LITERARY GUNPLAY PRIMER

One dash of history with hysteria

mix well with psychology (amateur)

monopoly, dichotomy and control

add lust piping hot with 20g confusion

and 1 tsp paprika hold the relish.

Spread with KY jelly.

Heat 'til burnt.

Serve with irony and hallucination.

Hi to the kids for me.

Sing songs by the piano 'til hoarse

and throw holy water.

I drink in broad daylight

avoid the news (printed AND filmed)

and rarely write past a second draft anymore.

The cats are doing fine.

The women all become the same person

after awhile.

Bluejays in the window yesterday.

Wish you were here.

Kiss this.

Regards.

Published in THE CROWBAIT REVIEW ('95/'96 or thereabouts)

THIS WEEK'S PLAYLIST:

GENESIS-The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway

PETER GABRIEL-Passion

SWA-Sex Doctor

SWA-XCIII

ENTRY

This was "Acquaintance"

Originally published in THE MOWER. Copyright 1993 C.F. Roberts, 2016 Molotov Editions

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: 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.....

THE BEAST

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