The animal experimentation society

A Night With The David Rose Orchestra

2009-09-16T16:47:00.000-07:00

It was a starry night in West Egg
And every name rang a bell
But even the belles had to beg
To be let inside the ball

There were lines of broads
With their portly hubbies
And Bowtied waiters
Serving flutes of bubbly

But X was nowhere to be seen

When I was assigned the task of covering a David Rose Orchestra performance, I shuddered at the prospect.

“Whatever on earth for?” I asked my editor. “He is a pathetic has been and a washout.”

He informed me that Rose had a new album coming out on Sony in a week’s time and rumor was it was a tour de force, a real return to form. I had heard the same thing about every mediocre album the man had released since 1977’s lackluster “Two for two” and just like every time before I took the bait. It can’t be helped; his superlatively deep and rich early discography has earned him the right. Besides, I was told that the performance was to be at the palatial West Egg estate of mysterious robber baron X. The whole thing reeked of the kind of glorious decadence and cracked mirror glamour that hasn’t been seen since an aging Elvis played the legendary Howard Hughes parties in Los Angeles. I packed my bags and took the first flight out to New York.

At the Eggstate, as X’s estate is affectionately called by locals because of its status as a local landmark, lines stretched for blocks. The glitterati and those trying to pass for them, the Hamptons blue bloods and the Bridge and Tunnel sect, both stood around eyeing each other uncomfortably. X is notorious for the mixed set that he cultivates. Word is he is some kind of social alchemist - an eccentric curator of diverse peoples who likes to observe their crude attempts at intermingling from hidden niches in his home. At least that’s what I have heard.

Once inside, I avoided the bar and headed straight for the ball room where the Orchestra was sound checking. I remember when David Rose needed just a drummer and a bassist to accompany his rumbling baritone and silver and blue Les Paul. Not anymore. He is now backed by a full horn and string section, and not two or three but six soul singers, with tambourines and maracas. He also has two pianos, two bassists, three backing guitarists, one of them acoustic, two sets of drums played by suitably grizzled looking drummers, and a keyboard player- just in case your ears weren’t stuffed yet.

What followed was a travesty that I will never forget. One guitar player started the familiar loping opening riff to “C Train Boogie Woogie”. David walked on stage to a thundering ovation and bowed low, at least as far as his portly frame would allow him. He was dressed in a white tuxedo. When he smiled his painted on face creased painfully and threatened to crack and shatter. He no longer slings an axe. He doesn’t choke the ‘phone for he is now electronically wired with a little mouthpiece straight out of a T.V. talk show. Not that any of this mattered. We always knew that was just the show biz side of him. He never wrote any of the guitar parts on his albums anyway, though he played them magnificently on stage, attacking his axe like an out of control thresher. It was that precious voice that we cherished more than anything, that soaring wounded roar that reverberated through clubs, dance halls and later, arenas, threatening their walls with its sonorousness. That plangent howl has been reduced to a husky croak that can barely sustain the bottom end necessary to carry off songs like “Girl Trouble”. On rollicking numbers like “NYC ABC” it hits the high notes only by mistake, like an amateur marksman who gets lucky.

All those layers of mushy strings, dripping over his voice like over sweet cordial, and those idiotically yammering horn lines, unnecessarily interjecting its raspy flow, only served to disguise the fact that its majesty and grace had gone. It had been gone for years now, but you never could tell from the albums because they have been cosmetically altered with pro – tools and other modern studio trickery. I always thought that David had lost his song writing genius temporarily and hoped he would regain it after a few years in the wilderness like many others of his generation. I cherished that hope, believing that when he regained it, he could once again combine it with his sublime voice to write and sing true songs. My hopes were shattered today. If this was a new paper article, this would be my caption beside David’ portrait–

David Rose, onetime teen idol and later rock and roll’s most reliable hit maker, now finds himself playing society gatherings for six figure paychecks. The man who wrote classic songs of teen rebellion and love now plays schmaltzy adult contemporary versions of his old tunes for crowds of aging, nostalgic boomers.

Oh how the great have fallen! Is that really you David Rose? Are you the same man who wrote “Withering kiss” and “Drenched in your tears”, with their innovative use of multi tracked vocals, multi part harmonies, baroque string arrangements and wall of squall harmonics? Are you the man who invented the Duck Shuffle and the Sour Puss, making every adolescent girl over 13 swoon at your dimpled cheek and awkwardly dance at the same time? No, it cannot be. You cannot be the man I idolized when I was 8. It is not your face that smiled at me from 154 posters that crammed every inch of my bedroom walls, many of them purloined from library copies of magazines for whose defacement I paid with months’ worth of my paltry allowance.

I would call you a pale shadow of your old self, except that you are now so bloated that there is nothing shadowlike about you anymore. Once you were a shadow of your present self, a sleek, flitting God who slid on shards of glass like it was a field of ice. You, who choked microphones and girlfriends, threw percussive fits on the ivories and violent boozy ones at the pub, now wear a bowtie and tuxedo and schmooze with the Queen. You, who courted arrest to protest war, poverty and racism, now send checks to the Republican Party because you don’t want to be taxed for the money that we, the adoring masses, gave you by the barrow, because you once courted arrest for us. You, who famously called Jesus “a stick figure, on a pair of crossed sticks”, now confess to the pope and rail against “abortionists”, which isn’t all that strange now that I think about it, for you always were a misogynistic knucklehead. But, at the least you were an entertaining thug. You were my favorite thug and I, in my youthful callousness, forgave you your flaws back then for you always had a ear for the perfect hook. Even the courts let you off with a slap on the wrist, for justice may be blind but it is not deaf. Besides, we knew the hell you went through at the hands of your fanatical parents and the sadness you pushed back deep inside every time you came out to play for us. Now, I hate you for your so called virtue and your hypocritical self righteousness. Your pretend purity turns my stomach like curdled milk.

The only true purity you ever had was in that vocal box that once vibrated at the frequency of angels. It has been corroded by your pandering and lies. When you sold out your voice left with your conscience, and all that is left now is a feeble distorted echo.

The Bicycle-Rocket

2009-08-16T01:50:00.000-07:00

It was the sinister creation of Harold Wyneset, that man having all his life a very keen sense of humor. He created a bicycle-rocket. He had the cheek to call it ‘Harold Wyneset’s bicycle-rocket.’ This he did on the sly, seated near the back of his favorite bar, The New Globe, on the underside of a soiled napkin. He giggled as he composed, lifted the pen to scratch the back of his head, mostly bald, bit the inside of a cheek, underside of a tongue, scribbled and scribbled, and thus drained seven mugs—slowly, ever so slowly, but quickening as night closed in.

Harold Wyneset was himself a retail salesman of cheap female undergarments—the kind which, he boasted knowingly, “fall apart at the first opportunity.” His manager was a much younger man who didn’t trust nor like Harold much at all, but couldn’t very well fire him. There seemed to be an uncrossable gulf between Harold and his manager. For one thing, the manager didn’t understand that the female undergarments he sold for a living were cheap undergarments, as the market went, with an interesting if doubtful tendency to “fall apart at the first opportunity.” No; Harold’s manager did not acknowledge the essential shoddiness of his wares. Rather, he chose to think of them as ‘affordable’ or ‘down-market’ items, because this allowed him to maintain good relations with his self-respect, and consequent manful relations with his wife of seven years.

Needless to say, his wife was not a customer.

When, in the Fall of 2007, the United States Government began its landmark construction of the very first bicycle-rocket, the engineers and planners involved did not at first know where the rude diagram originated. They fancied that it came from the quavering hand and mind of some youthful Cal-Tech or M.I.T. virtuoso, scribbled while half-asleep between the completion of differential calculus assignments and stumbling trips to the laundromat, seeking fresh quarters for the playing of coin-op machines ad nauseum, to keep his emotions in check. “Because,” says the imagined virtuoso, “one cannot do rigorous Science on a diet of sentiment!…” And with that emphasis scurries away, giggling, an odd sound effect tracing his retreat.

“Surely,” reasoned the engineers and planners, “the creator must be someone like ourselves—a man of genius, a man of character, a Renaissance man.”

They did not know, nor would they ever meet, Harold Wyneset, because the man died before his creation ever reached the hands of a Government auditor. He died one evening, late, while walking home from The New Globe: stumbled partially thru a gutter-grate, then lay unconscious, his head in the lane, exposed to passing vehicles. The first vehicle went past, but the second ran him over. His obituary read, “Retail worker destroyed, possessions at auction 25^th, etc. etc.” Neither personal nor sympathetic, this “Retail worker destroyed…” which appeared in all the local dailies, of which there were two major and six minor rags. An estimated 70 percent of the populace subscribed to one of the two majors. Thus the town Cadaver City and its several outlying communities generally knew about the death of her native son, Harold Wyneset—generally knew, and generally did not care about the event, considering other, more pressing concerns, such as the headlining story, “Governor Gets a Wax-Job.”

The auction was not well attended. Among those who did attend, most came to gape at the mural painted on the ceiling of the Grand Auction Hall, modeled after the Sistine Chapel in Rome but depicting, as opposed to biblical scenes, what the artist termed ‘Rabelaisian’ subject matter: many a pock-marked and fat-bodied professor niggled the undersides of slovenly whores, who seemed to rejoice as they gulped sausages and guzzled great wine-bladders; policemen pilloried, teachers transfixed, drunk town councilmen making friends with everything inert and mobile; lawyers asked their friends for money, church men asked their lawyers for spiritual advice; dogs, cats, wombats, all fornicating strangely; rubber candy makers; helmet-wearing pacifists, militant doctors marching in lock-step, children putting their heads into vices, slowly self-ratcheting their hearts into their necks; also dragons, of course, significant pagan material; snakes, medusas both modern and archaic, airport computer terminals bursting with split wires. Near the center was a child, wrapped in swaddling clothes, checking stock quotes, cigar in mouth and grinning evilly. It appeared somehow capable of calling the entire ongoing Scene to a sudden halt; imposing a diminished subset of Order upon the reigning Chaos; or, worse yet, casting it all down to the black sea of Void.

Commissioned by the town council in accord with business interests (these ‘business interests’ being more than a little wide-spread), there was at first a fair bit of controversy about this mural: certain parties, which subsequently could not keep away, thought it ‘scandalous.’ Accosted in the supermarket’s pasta-&-coffee aisle, the artist was forced to defend his work: “It’s true that I indulged myself—yes,” he sniffed. “And why shouldn’t I indulge myself? They hired me—didn’t they—so the first indulgence was theirs. I was to do my level best for the State, and not indulge myself. But if I didn’t indulge myself, I would indulge other people. That’s plagiarism. So I indulged myself—a bit.” He’s carted away to the hospital where he will spend the next six months in recovery before beginning his next work. “My tendency,” he adds, just before the glass doors close on him, “is to think you should let me do what I want.”

Many people find his work instructive. These people come to the Grand Auction House wearing bowler hats and flower dresses—the ladies wear straw hats, and the bowlers have flowers stuck in the brim. But the gapers do such a job leaning their heads back, mouths wide open, that the flowers fall into the laps of the people behind them, going back and back until a line of petals powders the floor beyond the very last pew. And these folks’ open mouths exude such a stink!—terrible. Luckily a Mexican steward emerges from an alcove. He looks over the crowd and grins, slaps his leg: Ay madre, he chuckles. Among his many duties is the application of Universal Breath Sanitizer. He enjoys this task most of all. Disappearing in the alcove he brings forth an oversized spray device. This he applies by turns, painstakingly to the exposed tongue of every gaper. With each application a gaper startles up, looks about, and as if surprised by his surrounds flees the premises. In this way many bowler hats, many ladies’ hats, are lost. These the steward collects—still grinning, still slapping his leg, and cursing in his strange tongue.

Among those left to hear the crying of Harold Wyneset’s estate was a young woman, of Semitic aspect and rail-thin, somewhat drug-addled but wildly attentive to every tufted mote, to each imperceptible flicker of electric light. She habitually hugged her elbows and scratched. She seemed to take notes, to set down bullet points with her lips. This, that! Everything interested her. The door, there’s a door there; the Mexican steward with spray-bottle. What’s he laughing at? Why, everything—the World. How those devils can Deal, just smack their lips and gam. All a game, all a game; they got their work. Damn! Damn them, she thinks, for they walk the aisle of the blessed…

Among the pews was another man, white hat with a band, no flowers in it. He did not like flowers. He did not need them at all; in fact, flowers disgusted him.

And so this white-hatted man, in his children, left a wake of Caesars and fools, his thin trail of hard cash scattered to the far winds.

"What the Rock Says About the Caterpillar"

2009-07-27T00:05:00.000-07:00

--an essay on life circumstances.

A veteran of a very different kind of war, I am now a rock, luckily at the surface, as opposed to the fates of many of my brothers who are trapped in perpetual darkness -- this gives me a certain perspective on time and especially animal life, the changes of the seasons, onslaught of day and night which my brethren never see. No, for my brethren, call them 'moles', languish in themselves unawares, lacking either memory or anticipation of times to come, they are literally rocks and nothing more. Me, though a rock, I pen essays. This predilection redounds to me from an earlier life in which I was not a rock but a man.

Yes, earlier life: reincarnation, entelechy, transubstantiation -- I do not know many Greek terms. Deficiency of my past educations. Still, for a rock I'm doing well, I'm articulate.

You might expect a rock to suffer under a high degree of neuroticism, but that's not the case with rocks: disease, illness, psychosis -- these are the realm of feeling creatures. I feel only vague intimations of the passage of time and the footfalls of feeling creatures. Yes, the footfalls, but from them I construe a great deal. I have so much time to go construing, I'm a rock resting atop a low hill -- thank God not the Himalayas, which I remember too. No, this hill is only about 5,000 feet above sea-level. And thank goodness, since most of the year I'm exposed to sun and moon. This opens worlds to me. Without sun and moon I'd be a silly rock.

Still, with time and distance I feel my articulation sliding away. It seems even rocks are destined for the pit.

In the meantime I am able to speak with an uncanny, rock-like degree of detachment about feeling creatures, having been one only in the distant past. I have nonetheless to thank these feeling creatures for the degree of articulation I do possess, along with the sun, the moon, wind and dust. No, it is impossible to say what proportion of gratitude I owe to feeling creatures, as compared with these elements: it would perhaps be an overwrought calculation.

Time presses, if not upon myself then upon my readers. We rocks are typically scornful of time, though even we have futures to anticipate, destinies which seem almost changeable to us. Our efforts go unrealized; for most of us time results in a turning-inwards, toward the dark, undifferentiated heart of our rocky depths. Too many of us -- I speak from supposition -- forget the realities of time and change to such an extent that --

Well, of certain things I cannot write. A rock has limits after all. If he would not change he had best embrace eternal silence. He had best peer out from himself. Thus may even rocks seek education.

Who imagines a demonic rock? Only demons. A demonic rock would destroy time itself. A black -- what is it? -- hole. That's a demonic rock, the thing I fear most of all. And for a rock fear is not a feeling but a vague intimation of times to come -- of undifferentiated darkness.

The Advent of General Rodigard

2009-05-15T06:55:00.000-07:00

General Rodigard appeared one afternoon at the Harbinger Cafe—he took his usual stool. The television blared the news from above. It was an interesting time to be living: wars, famine, and cholera ravaged exotic locales, names you never heard of before: places like Angola and Swazi-land. The General glared skeptically at the television set.

‘In my time,’ he said to no one in particular, ‘we never had those.’

A very tan barkeep looked blandly at the General as he wiped down a glass.

‘In my time,’ the General went on, ‘we actually went to those countries, we actually saw what was happening, and by God, we took care of it. There was none of this hearing about suffering on the radio. If suffering occurred, you already knew about it, you were already en route to the scene. You had bandage materials clasped in your fists and a rope around your neck. You took knapsacks full of flour along, and you air-dropped them. We even had a loudspeaker, which is no joke.’

There was a pause during which the General sipped his beer. The tan barkeep could no longer stand it.

‘What was the loudspeaker for?’ he asked.

The General turned on him mercilessly.

‘What do you think it was for! To tell the victims and refugees where to go, how to get medical insurance, in what places to wash themselves and with what amount of soap. We had to guide them around their own country. First we taught them to read human language, then we told them what democracy was for. That way they could sit around waiting rooms endlessly filling out forms to replace the empty void left by their folk dances, which they forgot as soon as the helicopters seared over the ridgelines of their ancestral homes like so many assault batteries. Oh well! There you go! That’s progress for you: we can’t have a bunch of third worlders cutting jigs all day when there’s real work to be done. We can’t have unwashed bodies go stinking up the newly-constructed assembly halls, mocking parliamentary procedure for a country joke! If they want culture they can enroll in university, or go look at their grandparents immortalized in a museum display, pounding corn on some miserable shelf of rocks. What more could they or anyone want?’

And the General went on sipping his beer, glancing occasionally up at the television screen.

‘Angola indeed!’ he cried finally. ‘Swazi-land!…’

‘General Rodigard!’ cried Spanner, a local politician, from his seat near the middle of the bar. He quickly hopped off his stool and ran up to the General. ‘It’s good to see you, General!’ he said, smiling and slapping the General’s shoulder. ‘I’ve been meaning to speak with you, if you please. You look strong! I hope I am correct that you’re retired? A retired General! And what would you be doing otherwise, if you weren’t retired? Certainly nothing here. Why?—because this is one of those places on God’s green earth where there’s eternally nothing to be done, at least nothing to be done by generals. No, here it’s all civilian work! We catch dogs, leash them and put them down, we do the same to any straggling elderly. Do you know how I was elected, General? I’ll tell you how: it was on a platform of elderly disposal. I would round them up, I promised, I swore by my heart of hearts! I would clean up the streets and the cellars of houses, make our community respectable again! And that’s how I captured the young vote. My two opponents were themselves elderly, so it obviated any backlash. What hasn’t happened since then! You notice an odd sort of vigor on the street and in the supermarket. No shuffling, no stumbling for words, but only vigor, sharpness, and youth! Yes, General, that was my plan: to achieve health by cutting out the weak parts of our being. Do you suppose I’ll be criticized for it? Do you imagine the history books might take a dim view? Well, don’t suppose I haven’t anticipated these eventualities. Don’t worry, General! I’ve laid in stores of kharma for hard times and bogus looks. The name of Spanner will range itself with the like of Caesar, Cicero and LaRouchefoucal…’

‘Spanner,’ said General Rodigard. ‘I don’t care. Tell it to someone who thinks about the present—I’m too caught up in the old days.’

Spanner insinuated himself onto the stool beside General Rodigard. He said nothing. General Rodigard sipped beer and placidly watched television. Spanner pretended to do the same, while all the time he was in fact very closely monitoring the General.

Pushing Pedals

2009-02-10T02:27:00.000-08:00

Los Angeles has been seeing a spell of bad weather the last few days. Bursts of rain have riddled the days and evenings with their melancholy dampness. In the winter the rain dowses the unquenchable heat of the summer, a delayed and inconsequential response to the wild fires and the Santa Ana winds. This city swings between poles much like the moody wrecks of humanity that drive through its streets like cynical land dwelling sharks. If as Joan Didion suggests, L.A.’s ultimate self image is one of self immolation, the rain could be seen as the city in rebellion against itself. All the Beach Boys imagery of the sun and the beach get dowsed by the pollution lapping rain that turns the golden sand into a brackish spray that coats your calves as you ride. The rain is the other side of Brian Wilson, the reclusive crack addict manipulated by an immoral psychiatrist.

Rain or no rain, I had to ride my bike. I ventured out once to test the air after stretching and the rain started drumming itself on the wasted land as soon as I stepped out. Relying on the weather on a night like this is like having a conversation with a contrarian. The crisp air cooled my enthusiasm immediately. After a minute I walked back inside armed with reasons to stay indoors. But the blank loneliness of my apartment compelled me to leave again. As I waited for the rain to quiet down, I found the address for a bike shop on Santa Monica Blvd and decided to ride out there. My bike seat keeps shifting about its axis and my gears are a clicky, unpredictable mess. A tune-up is as good a reason to leave my apartment as anything else.

Down 37th Street I rode, wrapped in an ugly green sweatshirt that you only wear if you want the life-lights to shine away from you. Along Korea-town the street edges at the intersection were filled with deep, black ponds of grease and street-sweat with bits of refuse at their bottom. My shoes and socks were soaked with their dark dye. I shudder to think of the creature that might emerge out of this water onto the grimy pavements on slithering new legs. Surely the end point of that possible evolution could not be man.

The bike store was predictably not open. The drizzles had started again by the time I reached it's shuttered, grill-armored facade that taunted me. Information on the Internet is never to be trusted and I half expected the store to be closed. I did not anticipate the depression that followed, however, simply because I had not thought about my course of action after this possible outcome. If I had dwelt too much on it, I would never have left home. Decisive action is always determined by certain necessary self-delusions and denials of negative possibility.

I had no choice but to keep riding, if only to delay the inevitable drink. If you delay defeat long enough, you can achieve a different sort of victory, but if you delay it too long, you will die. Santa Monica Boulevard in the poorer sections between Vermont and West Hollywood is a treacherous stretch of street. Its edges are warped and scaled like a crocodile's tail. Undulating bumps that look like boils suddenly erupt into fissures that can trap a bicycle's wheel in their death grooves. The rain had filled a full fifth of the rightmost lane with a poisoned stream that dangerously hid the worst of the erosion. To ride this oversized lane I had to take its middle, which made dodging passing cars all the more dangerous. My tires raised sprays of gutter water that would coat my legs and back. The droplets of rain on my glasses forced me to take them off and I foolishly stuck them in my right pocket. The pollution in the streets and a congenitally sensitive pair of sinuses require me to constantly clear my nasal passages as I ride. When I reached for a piece of tissue to blow my nose, my glasses slipped out of my pocket and onto the street. A few blocks later, sensing their absence, I turned back and found them on the broken tarmac, looking serenely at the street that I had passed earlier in a tearing hurry. Their arms were bent askew but the lenses were intact.

I felt now that I had to keep going, the nature of my mission had been revealed to me again. If riding was just the action of putting the foot on the pedal and following the deserted street it would mean nothing. But with adversity and the hint of death it becomes a calling. When you see a serious biker on the street (and you will know the difference as soon as you reach a set of lights) do not mistake him for a person like yourself behind your steering wheel. The biker takes calculated risks that you would never consider when you drive. Let us take for example the safest condition under which a biker can ride in Los Angeles - on a designated bike lane like the one that lines parts of Santa Monica Blvd. On a lane like this there are several ways you can die.

The easiest way is if a passenger in a car that is parked ahead, on your right in the parking lane, decides to exit his car from his left door. The door opens seconds before you reach that spot and you have no time to react. I had about 5 seconds tonight at 15 miles an hour to swerve out of the way of an opening cab door. As I saw the door swing out in front of me like a trap I started to say softly to myself in fear "Son of a.." As I passed him my voice turned loud, going from surprise to expressive anger in the time it took to complete that phrase. If it had been a downhill section I would be in a hospital in a pleasant Opioid haze. The one satisfying outcome to emerge from this scenario is the possibility that I hit the passenger's hand and cleave it right off with my front tire, as I get thrown off my bike and crack my skull five feet ahead. Perhaps I should install giant thorns on the front of my bike to ensure this happening. High velocity alone is not a sure killer and the bike needs an extension of sharpened claws. Surely if Batman rode a bicycle he would have such an attachment.

The series of doors to a biker’s right that could open out unexpectedly are a constant source of anxiety that he must ignore in order to go faster. Each door presents the possibility for horrible disfigurement or death. Every door successfully passed is a small victory and a realization of the holiness of the ride. On the most thrilling rides you do not pay any attention to these doors. They represent unavoidable death and there is no point worrying about that.

The next likely possibility is that the driver of a parked car decides to join traffic without first consulting his mirror. Given the scarcity of bike lanes in L.A. and the rain that cuts bike traffic down to a minimum, it is likely that on a night like this, many drivers regard the lane as just an empty space between themselves and the "real" street. Taking into account the fact that I don't have any lights or reflectors (my bike has been stripped bare multiple times and I am too broke to get it fixed and the store was closed and my dog ate my homework and I don't give a shit), I have noticed that drivers are pretty good about looking back. But then, before tonight I have never had any experience with the first incarnation of death that I described earlier. Later on in the night in Echo Park, an area reputed for being more conscious of bike culture, I came close to this kind of encounter, though there was enough distance between me and the car that I wouldn't call it dangerous. My standards of safety are somewhat lackadaisical though.

The third way is at the intersections, when the car on your left cuts you off as it tries to make a quick right turn. S.U.V.'s, trucks and vans are typically the worst offenders. Their drivers are more likely to want to cut you off, but if you watch for turn signals and slow down at intersections then this is an easily avoidable fatality.

Sometimes the bike lane ends abruptly and if you are not the most experienced of riders then there is no place to go. You panic as the bike lane merges with the traffic. Combine this with cadaverous streets that split like seismic fault lines at their seams and you have yet another way that a rider can crash. I chicken out of the streets a lot myself, even in non-lane situations if I feel unsafe and can understand the fear of a new rider in a situation like this. I have read about it being a serious problem on Santa Monica Blvd. in several L.A. biking sites. The bike lane simply disappears for sections of the street with little or no warning.

It takes a steely nerve to maintain your lane when ton-heavy, lane-wide trucks slide alongside you impatiently. The position of the bike rider on a street without a bike line is at the fringe of the street with the craters of the street sniping at him to his right. Death awaits you in a variety of possibilities.

Crouched in this position, with my shoulders swaying slightly from side to side I rode through gigantic puddles as a police car rode ahead. Curtains of water rose from my tires and stung my grinning face, like the jets of hose pipes hitting the corner children in summer. Just past West Hollywood the street-lights start to die out. Trees and shrubbery start to appear, which in L.A. usually signals the presence of money. I had reached Beverly Hills. After pedaling for a couple of miles, at the Beverly Gardens Park I made a right and entered a street filled with sprawling, tree-lined Bungalows. These people are going to ride out the recession like it was a petty bet whose outcome is inconsequential. The wager must seem mildly annoying to them because of the anxiety of the poorer betters. What is financial speculation but playing golf with the average man's balls? Surely a pair will get lost, here and there, but the game must go on.

I was headed back home now through the back streets of Beverly Tills. Hunger was starting to gain on me and I felt dizzy. I have realized that the endorphinergic rush of exercise combined with low blood sugar makes me as rash as when I drink. I make spontaneous, risky decisions like running red lights against a wave of oncoming traffic when I am in this state. I knew I had to get some sugar in me before I headed back and I made a typically whimsical decision to stop at "Million Milkshakes" in West Hollywood. Ever wondered what a 5 dollar milkshake tastes like? I was about to find out in the gayest milkshake bar in the world. Million Milkshakes had bright pink signs and walls. Inside this neon conflagration, above the toppings bar, a giant TV played a Beyonce concert with the volume turned way up. At the condiments table I saw a flyer for a UCLA research team looking for volunteers to test "rectal hygiene products". Yeah, this place is that gay! For a moment I considered becoming a subject for UCLA's advanced rectal research team. They pay 250 dollars after all. But I decided that you probably need to be gay to qualify and yet another possibility for a promising career came to a premature end.

The milkshakes with names like "Brangelina shake" and "Paparazzi shake" seemed to play off the urban gay culture's obsession with pop icons. I find mainstream gay culture's embrace of celebrity culture and conspicuous consumption hard to accept because it is a segment of society that has had to battle marginalization and hatred by the majority. Why then would it want to align itself with the central, capitalist mechanism that has sustained the culture of hate for centuries? I similarly find Rap's unquestioning embrace of materialism hard to swallow. What were historically cultures of protest (Black Power and the Gay Lib movement), aligned with the radical left, have all become subsumed by the marketplace. This is a result of the complete failure of the New Left at the end of the 60s to address the concerns of minority groups like feminists, blacks, Latinos and gays. In retrospect, it seems that sections of the gay culture and the new generations of black militants had no choice but to embrace capitalism. They instinctively understood what the New Left didn't grasp, that the battle was not a social but an economic one. If you could not convince the masses of the righteousness of your cause through protests and sit-ins, then make your cause cool and sell it to them as a commodity instead.

Why did I choose to come to a milkshake stand? Imagine being sopping wet, with hands numb from the chill and the rain. The last thing you want to drink is a frozen treat. A milkshake in the rain was the most ironic thing that I could think of. The absurdity of my decision made me smile idiotically as I sucked at my straw and considered being buggered in the name of science. When I left the store I was shivering like a man in the middle of heroin withdrawal. Seeing a bus going downtown I almost gave in and hopped aboard. I stopped momentarily to check my wallet for singles while the driver kept going. He seemed to hint that I finish what I started and I grudgingly agreed. I jumped back into traffic and tried to stay warm by speeding up. I covered the 6 mile stretch back to Vermont relatively quickly and decided to keep going to see where Santa Monica Blvd. led me. Less than a mile past Vermont it coils around and snakes into Echo Park. The fancy stores start to reappear as does the bike lane that disappeared just after West Hollywood ended. Bike lanes and well maintained streets apparently are reserved for wealthy gay men, Beverly Hills millionaires or hipsters. The Armenians, El Salvodoreans, Mexicans, Blacks, Koreans and Chinese that live in-between these two have to use the worst stretch of road North of Venice Blvd.

I followed Santa Monica past "The Echo" and later found out that I came within miles of the gorgeous Elysian Fields park above Dodger's Stadium. I stopped at a run-down grocery store for a 2 dollar tall boy of Bud, thinking to myself that I was a fool for believing that a little shop does not want to rip you off. This guy needs to rip me off even more than that gaudy milkshake store. Outside the store, I chugged my beer, blew my nose and turned once again toward the churlish winds. The little hills of Alvarado are perfect to practice climbing late at night, when the traffic dies down. Macarthur Park lies dark to your right with the vacant allure of an undercover policewoman in a tight dress. I passed it quickly, not without a little temptation to explore its unlit corners. I stopped to buy a case of beer at the Ralph's on Adams. I must have looked like the returning Time Traveler in H.G. Wells's The Time Machine, covered from head to toe in wet sand with the odd spots of dark grease. The plastic bags were too small to fully hold the case of beer, so I had to hang the case askew and balance it precariously with the fingers of my left hand for the short ride home. I decided to take the sidewalk just to be safe and protect my precious cargo.

Three corners down, with the pedestrian signal in my favor, I started to ease into the street when a car suddenly rushed out of the night. I barely managed to stop safely and yelled out - "Look at the sign asshole," which made the driver of the car pull back to allow me to pass. I congratulated myself on safely making it back through the streets that night and slowly came to the corner of Jefferson and Vermont. I made a right at the pedestrian signal to cross over to the other side of the street when yet another car nearly rammed me. I fell on my right knee awkwardly, dropping the case of beer that split open shooting out two beers onto the street. Again I had the signal in my favor and I was tempted to really scream at the woman driving the car. I didn't do that. I ignored her "I’m sorry", nodded my head when she asked me if I was alright and started to pick up my beers. An older Mexican couple helped me bag my case and I headed for home.

The Kris Special and Babyland at Spaceland

2009-01-21T22:35:00.000-08:00

Last weekend I was trawling sites looking for something to do. I made my usual stop at Midnightridazz.com and noticed a couple of interesting rides posted, but, as usual, they seemed to start too early for my convenience. I generally hate leaving the house anytime before 7 or 8 in the evenings. Sometimes I get really excited and leave early and end up being the first one at the party or arrive before doors open. So now I compensate for fashionable Los Angeles lateness by never leaving home until 8 or 9, so that I reach venues at least an hour after the door opening times mentioned. I might miss an opening act or two, but with 4-5 bands on most bills I still catch over two hours of music, which is more than anyone can actively digest on a night anyway. For me day long festivals are tiring, boring affairs. How much music or art can you really absorb at a sitting? With a alcohol habit to feed and sustain over 10 or 12 hours, it gets expensive as well. In little clubs there are ways to get around the overpriced booze problem as you shall see.

This was my first excursion into the much reviled Silver Lake area of LA. On my way I got lost for a while in the confusing mesh of streets around Beverly and Temple Boulevards. I took a steep hill up Temple only to realize after that I was on the wrong street. Doubled back and rode past a nervous looking woman taking a stroll and did a little U-turn inside my lane to talk to her. Now try doing that in a car. As I rode up to her she covered herself tighter with her sweatshirt and vigorously shook her head to convey that not only did she not know where Silver Lake was, she also did not think we should even be talking. Talk to a stranger? Heavens no! How unseemly! It was laughable because it was obvious she knew where the street was, since she lived barely 3 blocks from it, as I soon found out. That is one of the most important streets in the neighborhood bringing in the steady influx of skinny Am -Apped PBR repping ghouls who bankroll all the chic coffee shops and restaurants. Still, it is nice to be able to scare a middle aged woman every now and then.

After correcting my bearings I found the street. Riding along Silver Lake Boulevard for a few minutes I saw the skirt of lake on my left; dark, ghostly and silent, without any lights along its shore to brighten the jogging path that runs beside it. At that late hour I noticed a handful of dog walkers and runners. It seems that they feel safe enough to use it after 8 PM with minimal lighting to guide them, which is a perk of living in a nice area. Compare that to the area I live in where two people got mugged in the afternoon just yesterday. When I arrived at the intersection of Glendale and Silver Lake I did a quick map check and realized I had overshot my destination. Back along the lake shore and down some hills to roll up next to my destination - Club Spaceland. I never walk into a club as soon as I arrive. If possible, I check all the exits first, then stake out the area and look for interesting neighbors.

As I rode past the club I noticed a couple of valet parkers and a doorman in a black jacket. I stopped to ask the doorman if I could leave the show after entering. He sarcastically said - "No you can't!" I laughed at this and told myself - that's what you get for asking stupidly worded questions. I kept riding, crossing the street at a gentle pace. I walked into the 7/11, conveniently located on the opposite corner, to buy a tall can of Bud. Inside, I saw a trio of dressed-up, out on the town types, with a striking looking older punk among them and put them down as Babyland fans almost immediately. Babyland have a dedicated following that has remained faithful for them from the early to mid 90s and I could tell that some of that core audience would be at this show. Refreshment now secured, I took a seat on a little section of short brick wall next door with a view of Lamill Coffee opposite me. I sat with my beer hand tucked neatly out of sight between my thighs and stared curiously at the coffee drinkers. They are a different breed from me entirely. I cannot understand the type of person who goes to a brightly lit boutique to buy and consume an expensive cup of coffee, while typing away on a laptop. Some of them may have had questioning thoughts of their own about the beer drinking cyclist slouched, not un-amiably, on the sidewalk, looking a little exposed and leery. Two worlds eyed each other and sipped. I wanted to tell them - "Men of Coffee, I have a life too. It is a strange one certainly, but there is purpose there amidst the disorder, the scattered droplets of foam and the rattling, empty, aluminum beer cans of night’s end. Try to understand it. Perhaps some night you will leave your caffeine stained keyboards and join me for a brew and experience some of my drink’s lazy pleasures and burp-riddled insights."

To my right and across the black, ever-rolling carpet of street, I noticed a sign announcing Silver Lake Liquors. Odin himself would champion this parcel of land I thought, they have all the necessary tools for producing a riot—beer, music and coffee (for alcoholic rioters in recovery), while the entire area was so full of signs of affluence that it provided a ready target for the unleashed ire of participating looters. Alas, such a day will perhaps never come again. The closest I can get to such mayhem is at a good concert. A great concert is in my imagination like a small scale, controlled riot; Altamont without the stabbing essentially. I have yet to experience that but I have seen some approach that kind of greatness.

I rode back down the street to the club and locked my bike to a stand across the street, attaching my blooming, red parachute of a USC bag to the gap between lock and spokes. This is my first piece of school merchandise ever, bought only because I needed a bag immediately. A few weeks ago on a beer laden trip to the C.R.A.N.K. mob ride, one of the cords popped out and when I walk around one end trails behind me sheepishly like an absurd tail. My hope is that the cheesy USC logo acts as some sort of peace flag as I weave through damaged neighborhoods late at night. The door has a sign saying something stern like: "Once you enter no leaving for any reasons, no exceptions". This made me feel justified in my earlier questioning of the doorman, but I learned quickly that it's just a little piece of unenforced authoritarianism which can be flouted at will. All the better, for my plan of action that night required frequent egresses from the club.

Once inside I bought myself a beer and walked around the floor just as a band was packing up their equipment. The stage at Spaceland is backed by sleazy, glittering blue and silver curtains that I could imagine behind a burlesque show or a strip tease. Why have stage curtains when they don't open up to anything? That is as potent a symbol of Los Angeles artifice as the people in movie character costumes walking the streets of Hollywood getting snapped for a fee.

There is nothing like silence to make a lone show-goer feel self conscious and isolated so I retired to the side room, where there is a pool table, jukebox and additional bar. 70s-style couches and what looked like retired commercial airline seats were scattered around the floor, while a TV ran live footage of the happenings next door. I suppose this is for the customers who pay an 8 dollar cover (extremely reasonable) to watch the live music happening next door on a tiny screen. Only in poor Lost Los. Someone put James Brown on the juke and I just unwound myself, uncurling like a baby seal relaxing postprandially on a sub-arctic rock. The Godfather has that effect on my joints. Soon another band had set up and I found out from an audience member that they were called "the Kris Special".

By this point in music history seeing just two people on stage for a rock show is no surprise. A careful reader would have noticed that two of the bands that I have written about before this were also two-pieces. The Fag Bashers and Voices Voices, however, are not conventional rock and roll bands. They use a lot of pedals to augment the lack of conventional musical firepower that a 4-piece can provide. This is not the case with the Kris Special who play a high traditional form of pop punk that typically features the larger trio or quartet formation.

How come bass doesn't matter anymore as the White Stripes suggested 6 years ago? Why has the funky, once omnipotent trunk-rattler become redundant? The 70s, at least until punk came along, was dominated by bass, which was, arguably, more important than the guitar during the jazz fusion, funk and disco eras. Perhaps because what was once suggested by bass has now become the riff. Punk simplified music enough that the electric guitar with its mid- to higher-range sound is flesh enough on the skeletal body of its songs. This is a highly simplistic and reductive account of rock's development but a somewhat valid one in my opinion. 30 years of Punk and alternative rock has certainly made certain sounds that would previously have been considered unacceptable by popular audiences, palatable and even commercially viable.

So is the Kris Special the natural end result of musical devolution? The simple truth as Nick the drummer revealed to me later was that they started out as a larger outfit that lost 3 members over a period of time, some of them defecting as late as a few weeks ago. So why the theorizing and grandstanding you ask; because it wouldn't be as fun and I wouldn't have much to write about. Besides, that is the interpretation that a historian might arrive at from looking at trends in music. The popularity of other recent 2 piece acts like The Kills and The Raveonettes surely has made it easier for people to experiment with the format. If a duo’s songs are strong enough, then having a limited sound palette is no longer a hindrance to expressing them.

Riff can be enough, all-encompassing even, with an observant and sympathetic drummer who coaxes the songs out of his partner and helps truly flesh them out. That's what Nick does to Ann's songs, drumming in the interstices of her riffs, nodding and encouraging her and playing to her strengths. Nick has the earnest face and welcoming presence that immediately suggests a kind soul without artifice or cynicism. He has the perfect empathetic personality for a drummer. Best of all, he has a dinosaur fossil logo on his drums that screams dumb fun. A friend of the band designed this campy number that is also featured prominently on their CD. Their friends and followers are a dedicated bunch. I spotted one of them snapping photos. His name is Richard and he was kind enough to mail me these pictures.

Ann meanwhile has great stage presence. On this night she wore a health nut shirt that she whipped off a few songs in, to Nick's sarcastic cry of "Boobs!" All ye bands, read and learn—give the crowd a little transformation in your act, if possible. We can't all do a show with multiple costumes like "Of Montreal" but a little mid-set change is always fun.

See what I mean. Now we have to reckon with her in a tank top with a sewn on rose and gold stars. Using those little logos on her shirt to get at her personality and her songs would be a little simplistic. While on the surface the songs are starry-eyed and romantic, they seem to be informed more by pain and experience. Amidst choppy, upbeat numbers like the X'ish "Little Red Song" you 'll hear quieter songs like the twangy and depressing "Wet Payphone". This sad song tells the story of a young burnout who pukes "every night through the night and then (is) ready to party".

As Ann sings she catches your eye and sings to you. There is a candor to her stage presence that I have seldom seen in performers. When she sang "if you get the spins put your foot flat on the ground" I felt a momentary fear for my own mortality. I felt rebuked for taking my life for granted with hard living and booze. "There are fall down drunk nights that are fun and they are going to be followed by years"—she seemed to be saying, "Save something of your pathetic young self for the rest of your life." Ann reveals a part of herself on stage in a way that most singers shy away from and this draws you to her. A lot of musicians involve themselves in the professionalism of stage performance, fiddling with gadgets and knobs and interacting with the music and other musicians instead of with the audience. While Nick and Ann have an energetic interplay, Ann never forgets you, and you, and you in the audience.

The Kris Special are a band that should be experienced live. Their album - "Alone Feels like a Hotel Room" which features the bass guitar missing onstage, sounds like it has soap in its ears. The production robs their songs of their power and drive. Live they are faster and the playing feels more communicative and reciprocal. Isolating instruments in a recording booth does strange things to a band, and unless it is done correctly it can often paint a false portrait of their sound and chemistry. Instead of sounding as exciting as the Pixies or X, they sound like pop rock lightweights or VH1 confection.

They could also do with a name change. It's the perfect time to do it since they have had a lineup change recently and a new identity never hurts one in rock and roll. What is a Kris Special anyway? An inside joke perhaps that I should have asked them to explain to me. The point is that a name should need no explanation and should be able to stand alone.

Right after their set ended I left the club in a tearing hurry. With less than 200 dollars to my name an expensive round of drinks was not an option. It would have taken me at least 60 dollars to get properly sozzled to prepare for Babyland's set at the Spaceland bar, so I took myself down the street in a rush, so as to not miss any of the intervening music. At Silver Lake Liquors I bought myself a bottle of Canadian Club whiskey. I had never tasted this stuff but the price was right. At the moment of decision I was sorely tempted to buy a good scotch or at least Jameson, but I decided to forgo that simple luxury in order to save 7 or 8 dollars. This is the kind of discipline you will find only in an alcoholic who prides himself in the small denials of life while thoroughly indulging himself in bacchanalia, thus ignoring the larger issue of abstinence and self-control. It is a unique form of self-deception that can be maintained only in the first phase of a night's revelry. After a few drinks even this control on spending disappears as the spirit of revelry takes over. Then, all thought of prohibition and abstemiousness is banished and the idea of a budget seems as fanciful as the existence of unicorns or the possibility of time travel.

After a few desperate, hacking gulps of the Canuck Club I thrust the bottle near a cactus bush, congratulating myself tipsily for being so careful with my possessions. No one in Silver Lake was going to look here I decided, and the bottle could safely await my faithful return in a short time. I rushed back into the club only to be confronted by the horrible sight of 4 skinny Germans playing clunky nu-metal songs. They were led by an anorexic young man who I had observed earlier in the bathroom. He seemed quite content back there, smiling at me friendlily through his triangular wave of trendy, side-swept hair. What was he doing on stage, balefully monotoning in accented English about the cataclysmic pains of the world that had been inflicted on him, and that he promised to return tenfold? It was more than I could take. Why withstand a sodden musical buggering, when firewater beckoned? It did not require a Socratic mind to resolve this choice and I ran out again, just as speedily as I had entered, to resume my dissolute ways. I had made some half-hearted efforts to find out the Teutonic music molesters’ name but after seeing them play I did my best to suppress all memories of ever hearing them.

I gave them a good twenty minutes to finish their set while catching up on my bi-weekly drunk dialing of distant friends. One or two that answered were rewarded with my excited voice and no doubt cursed themselves for not screening. Soon I was inside again, just in time to watch Babyland take the stage. This was the main event of the night but I unfortunately could not obtain any pictures of their set. Very soon I'll have my own camera and then there will be a complete set of pictures for every show review I do. I did however find excellent videos on youtube. I want to thank the guy who shot these as well. On his channel page he mentions that he wishes to start an underground video show and is looking for help.

Take the hollowed out, echoey, truncheon-on-skull drum sound that you hear at the start of "She's Lost Control". Imagine that sound, sped up, dosed with hits of EBM and multiplied, shooting forth polyrhythmic extensions out of its basal stem. That is the sound that drummer Smith creates via the strange hyrda-headed beast that is his drum kit. Imagine Dan's Robert Smith yowl overlaid on top of it and you’ll have a good idea of Babyland's basic sound. They like to tag themselves as "Electronic Junk Punk" which is a fair description of their older, heavier and less poppy sound. They now sound sanded down and mature.

At this stage I do not want to go into their sound in depth because of some very good reasons. The first is the aforementioned lack of pictures. Also, they are playing a free record release show on the 31st of January at the Smell which I am definitely going to cover in depth. Given the range of the music of a band like Babyland, a second viewing is definitely needed for me to capture the full effect of their onslaught. The only incident that I will describe from their show happened midway through the set. The singer, Dan, stopped the so far lackluster proceedings to berate the audience. We weren't nearly drunk or boisterous enough to keep up with their high-energy electronics and he asked us to take a trip to the bar.

Being in an ecstatic mood from the music and the drink, I impulsively yelled out that I would not pay these bastards a cent for their overpriced drinks and that I had my own bottle of Canadian moonshine waiting outside in the bushes for me. "I’ll give you a minute to run out and get a drink" Dan said, and this led to another sprint across the street to add to the rubber tire fire building in my belly. I made it back in time too! Phew, for a stumblebum drunk I sure do get a lot of exercise. The key is to avoid the easy luxuries of life and keep your substance of choice at a physical distance, so that securing it each time occupies your time and expends your surplus energies.

One interesting thing I did learn after the show was the fact that they are bringing the power drill back at the Smell show. Ever since the fire at the Great White show in Rhode Island, safety regulations at clubs have started to get stricter and stricter and it is harder for bands to use pyrotechnics. So there you have it, the Great White legacy in a nutshell—shitty music and the tightening of screws on fire regulations country-wide that make it harder for performers like Babyland to push the boundaries. Fortunately things can get fast and loose at The Smell as any readers of the Fag Bashers show below already know. Here is a taste of how good things can get in there and what a fascinating show you can expect in about 10 days.

I went in to this show hoping to see the legendary spark shower and hear the corrosive commentary of screeching metal expanding Smith's rhythmic vocabulary. The noise of the drill opens their sound up in a way that the two of them are not able to achieve live. I was somewhat disappointed by the drill's absence and would rather write an expanded review of a show featuring this additional weapon than do a tame review of the circumscribed version of their show as I saw it that night. I encourage everyone in LA on the 31st of January to come down to the Smell and see the primal phenomenon of the full Babyland show featuring power drill, for themselves. I for one am very excited.

Here is the reason I will be a life long Babyland fan. As their show began I started pogoing for the first time since going flat footed from running last summer. As a result, I quickly twisted my ankle. I have little natural balance as it is, and with my unnaturally stunted gait, it was almost certain I would do some damage to it if I tried anything physical. The force of their music was so overwhelming that I forswore caution and leaped into the air anyway. Even after feeling the sharp pain of an unsteady impact I kept going all night and slammed about with the small circle of gentle moshers. Later, I mentioned this to Smith as a way of telling him how exciting their music was, as he gave me a small snazzily designed EP. The next day, after I came to and opened the case I noticed a little inscription saying—"Sorry about the fucked up leg". Anybody that gives a fan that kind of detailed attention is worthy of your respect and love.

Similarly Ann from the Kris Special, when asked to describe her music, took the time to draw a giant heart connected to a guitar on a paper instead, with back of the high school notebook style messages to go with it. Some of my friends wouldn't do as much for me. The way these bands treat their audience should be a lesson for bigger artists and musicians. Anyone who goes to their shows gets to not only hear great music but also interact with them as peers and equals. This is impossible at larger venues where the stage is filled with the inflated egos of the overpaid stars who inhabit them. This is why I support D.I.Y. bands and smaller shows, as opposed to the big stadium shows that leave me feeling numb and disconnected.

After the show and a chat with Babyland I took off in high spirits, expecting a good, hard ride back home. As I went past the7/11 I saw a pack of riders and detoured to join them. I had seen a message on Midnightridazz.com about the “Chynatown” ride led by the friendly and ever popular Chyna but decided on the show instead because the ride started too early. Miraculously they had ended up at the same street corner as me, and, what was even harder to believe, they were also riding back downtown. Ordinarily my post would end right here on a joyful note. As it turned out I nearly rode off the wide screen of your imagination, into the ranks of young corpses on the street. When we reached 2nd street, the entire pack turned around and started to go back toward Chinatown, to who knows where. I saw a rider I had met on my first Midnight ride and decided to join him and his Japanese girlfriend who were going back to Koreatown, about 8 blocks from where I live. We headed back down Grand or Hope, one of those downtown streets that have steep inclines that allow bikes to reach speeds approaching 30-40 miles per hour without the pedaling of the cyclist involved.

The two of us were chasing his girl, who was leading us by default, since she seemed to want to ride fast that night. Going downhill on a bike is a wonderful experience but requires caution when stop lights are involved. Running reds on downhill rides is not a safe practice, for, at those high speeds, one has no time to see, much less react to traffic coming from the side. This girl was drunk enough that she didn't care much about these elementary cautions and plowed through a half a dozen lights, several of them reds. Me and her boyfriend rode a few yards behind her, yelling at her throughout to slow down. In about 30-45 seconds we rushed past about 7 lights in succession without making a stop in between. I think what saved her that night was the fact that all the drivers at the intersections were alert, letting her pass when she cut them off. I was going too fast to register if they were slamming the brakes or if we made it past them early enough at the start of their green signal that they hadn't yet started their engines yet. Their slowing down, in response to her heedless speed, must have allowed us trailing riders the requisite time lapse to safely make it past the red lights.

I could have stopped at any moment myself but I wanted to stop this girl as quickly as possible. I won't say that I didn't enjoy this recklessness. I have a death wish in me that found expression that night, but what was strange about her riding into the maws of possible death was the innocence of it all. If you met her, you would never think that a kind of suicidal spirit existed in her that, unbeknownst to her consciousness, comes out when she is drunk on a bike. She is a lovely person, untormented in her interactions with people and maybe even in everyday life, unlike her headlong plunges into open traffic would suggest. What kept her alive that night, I suspect, is her innocent unawareness of the self destructiveness of her riding style. If I, or her boyfriend, was at the head of that pack, riding as she did, our self-aware hesitation would have killed us instantly. Instead, her unquestioning embrace of the downhill-wind spirit kept us alive.

We finally caught up with her as she took a right towards the Staples Centre. All three of us stopped at a corner, saddled our bikes to the sidewalk and collapsed on the grimy pavement. I handed my whiskey to the guy and inquired about his girl's ability to make it back home. I told him that she really shouldn't be riding in her state, to which he replied that he was glad that I cared about their safety, but that it was their typical riding style. If I didn't want to ride with them, then I should go my own way. She, in drunken turn, told me that she was worried about my ability to safely reach home. They seemed to me to be the biking Sid and Nancy. When we resumed riding after the shared libations, I parted company with them at the next block and headed for home.

Elegy for Thangavelu

2009-01-13T03:22:00.000-08:00

I remember the tall, lean frame
Of my Grandfather
Who wanted to grow teak,
Instead of the puny bananas
And fibrous dribble of sugar cane,
On his loamy, ancestral land.
He wanted a tree to match his bearing,
To carry forth his nobility.
No mere fruit could assuage his ambitions.
He desired the very thigh of life.
The joints and backs of tables,
The frames of buildings,
Split into planks on the carpenter’s block.
It’s arid tapestry
Revealing the rings of years,
Expanding into the eye of decades.

When he died, his beloved trees
Were still saplings.
Green, with the many envies of youth.

On a crime spree with The Wierdos

2009-01-05T23:25:00.000-08:00

Lemme tell ya why “Life of Crime” works and other great Wierdos songs don’t. The riff drives, it goes dum, dum dum dum dum, dum, dum dum dum dum dum- in a madcap, mild hillock, up and down loop. Your head melts and almost explodes from the sheer sexiness of the whole thing, before the sideways lurch of the pre-chorus kicks in, reducing the momentum somewhat but conserving enough of it till we return to the central riff. Meanwhile, the beat hiccups along loopily in the verse which is absolutely necessary for any punk song to succeed rhythmically.

Forward driving motion works great, but a stop and start is absolutely indispensable when you need to convey intensity. Forward motion is all movement and no stand. To make a stand in a motion based musical squat-space cum musical environment like punk rock, you need a hiccupping, powerful, kick-drum sub planted rhythm part. This song has it. It Goddamn fucking owns it. The rhythm section is a sort of para military outfit, a marching unit of guerrillas in the barren musical plantations of 80s New Wave.

They swagger like a 6 pack of dynamite strapped on exposed, skinny, junkie arms with duct tape, ready to fight cops and robbers alike, fight the very people it empowers. It derives itself from the loping stagger of pre “Raw Power” Stooges, and Chuck Berry before that. The main riff is all swagger. It swaggers so hard the sideways dip of the chorus is a just a slight bend of the neck and a token spit on the salty sidewalk, a diversion from strut in order to emphasize the unholy riff when it returns. The chorus is just a diversionary placeholder that returns all power to the verse, to the onrushing pile up of the main riff that never ends and never needs to.

This is why this song is so brilliant - it is so up front that it holds none of its catchiness back in reserve for 30 seconds. It acts immediately, like a shot to the vein or a solar plexus punch. It has no coquetry about it. It doesn’t tease you while you wait for the agreed upon core of any pop song, the chorus, to kick in. It is so eager to slay you that it strips off five seconds into its playing time but then doesn’t even bother doing anything noteworthy or new. It doesn’t need to. The riff found the erotic crack between your malleus and incus on the first attempt and grinds there in a speed frenzy. Like the best punk songs it doesn’t talk in your ear, it pogos in its dark caverns and gives it an infection from the dark rot of its sleaziness.

Life of Crime goes for the jugular between rock and its foundation of riff, shooting the crawlspace there full of adrenaline. The riff is so catchy that early on that the chorus is a disappointing intimation of all the other Weirdos songs that don’t measure up. The other Wierdos songs all have their moments of perfection but fall short of branding themselves onto your blasé, cattle-hide like, hearing skin.

“Helium bar” has a wonderful rockabilly inspired riff but little else.

“Destroy all music” is too fast, it throws itself off the cliff before tragedy strikes, it has no patience and is too short.

“We got the neutron Bomb” is too didactic and declarative, which forces it into the ghetto of its own time. It suffers from what I call slogan sydrome where all you remember after the song is the title refrain being sung over and over. Shades of Clash aping strip it further of its power. But Life Of Crime is timeless.

If you try to stop this song what you are left with is the smell of burned rubber in your punched in, bleeding nose and a burnt eye lid from when it rushed past you in a tearing hurry. You thought it was slowing down as it passed you but its stomping middle pace was really a distraction from its inner ferocity as it chugged past your time dilated cognition. To see this process in effect, compare the original version posted on top to the live version below. And beware the cigarette burns to your eye.

What a ferocious bunch the Weirdos were the first time around.They are still around if you want to catch a waft of late 70s L.A. punk nostalgia.

Fancie American Voices at the smell

2008-12-29T03:45:00.001-08:00

After a really demoralizing day at work, selling a product to people who had already experienced it and were not willing to provide more for its outspread, I limped to my bike and took off for the show. “The Show”. Make it grand. Put it up in backlights, add it on a billboard, make it plain. It was a show at “the smell”, which my workmate in an entertaining Freudian slip called “the nose”. The nose on the same block as which reside two raging Cali - Mexican bars, one gritty and dark, the other lit. The well lit one I visited to chug a pitcher, skipping the “Voices on Tape” show, for I had seen him and been well impressed 4 months ago. This bar shoulda been called “the nose” for all the coke that was showed down the amnesia seeking day laborers ‘strils; ‘heaters’ down the 9-5 chute. One of them had rotten teeth and a larynx that rasped out unintelligible words of greeting and drunken encouragement. His breath overwhelmed me for the half hour I spent in his company and all night I smelt it, in the alleyway of “the smell” with its piss stains, next to the “Staples Centre” as I rode past a security guard and a cute biker girl, on the row even, it was everywhere. His companion who shared his friend’s dreary labor but still possessed a full set of teeth and a clear tongue to speak of its hardships, personably communicated with the universal coke sign to his buddy and me. He of course asked me if I was a cop, I offendedly gave him the friendly finger, a sign that third worlders get without getting offended. I refused the blow and promised to guard their drinks. I had larger fish in my eyes. I had just finished watching a set by “American Gil & The Major Dudes”. How could I fill my nose when my ears and brain were overflowing with noise and references? The night proved to be a battle between the two that sound won soundly, over musicology and footnote, in the easy space between performer and audience on the thinly defined Smell stage, but also outside in conversations I had with the down to earth, eager to share musicians.

At the American Gil show, I was yet sober and felt self conscious enough that I did not pull out my pad, which I had nixed a couple hours prior at work. I needed courage yet for I had never done this before. My prior review of a smell show was written purely from memory. After the Gil show, just as "Voice on Tape" was setting up, I upped and ran to the bar next door, where, over a chugging, convivial, and fortifying pitcher of Bud light, I pulled out pad to jot down the frantic thoughts I had harbored as “American Gil” played just 10 minutes earlier. I had noted them down as Dan the man something in my pad, just 5 minutes after asking someone what they were called. If anything, this report is a controvertible one, for my memory is a sieve that unravels further into t-shirt hole-sized craters of unconfirmed remembrances with the insinuation of booze in its pores. First impression was “Pere Ubu” knockoffs—this is music aficionado skull geekery but bear with me as I explain further. The singer Gil is the second coming of Dave Thomas—from his ample frame to his high pitched impassioned vocals. Eerie. The band’s use of shrieky high frequencies and driving, exploratory, post punk rhythms also added to this impression.

But Gil also does a nimble Riverside, i.e. non confrontational, James Chance as well. He is a multi instrumental juggler of sounds, who over the course of the set, used a sax like James White / Chance from “Off White”. He also double fisted flutes, playing them both simultaneously with left and right hand. Hard as it is to be critical after meeting the sweet and unassuming Gil, I can’t shy away from describing my impression of things. “American Gil & The Major Dudes” sounded like a spazzy melding of American post punk styles, which may not be a bad thing. I thoroughly enjoyed their set and found nervy crevices within their rhythms, those foretold pockets of groove that I could rock out to; but I was not overwhelmed as I like to be and am at the best shows. To other observers of the show they were brilliant. Their enjoyment of the set should stand as a (ear?)ringing endorsement of the band that counters my subjective opinion. I want this review to be as democratic as possible. That is one aim of it. The other is to indoctrinate you with my point of view.

When I returned from the bar next door, I found my self at the start of the set by "Fancie". “Fancie” are from Berlin and California. That’s right bitches, how’s that for transcontinental love vibes. There is no straight up way to describe Fancie’s music. Listening to Fancie’s songs on their Myspace page, I am struck by how different they sounded on stage. On tape they are vocally delicate with a melding of voices taking equal precedence to their instrumental flights. On “the smell”’s troubled soundstage however the sound of their voices was blurrily upstaged by their instrumental prowess and visual distractions. They are a tightly oiled touring vets and sound at ease and even casual on stage. The songs unfurled with a vibe, a sense of the night unfurling. The anthemic “Double Maze” was a highlight. Folkish GZA worship in full effect. One of the singer / guitarists had a sweet Ghostface Killah sweatshirt with the red hoodie on. Midway through it Ghost face-girl, aka ElizabethWood—and her partner in crime jumped off stage, put on pink veils and faked slow motion bowling, launching empty underhanded fists into the crowd; perhaps they were handing the musical ball to us. It made for a surreal image that worked well with their sound.

Minutes before (chronology of this show is questionable to me for I ripped off the pages of my notepad as I finished 'em and unprofessionally stuffed them in my back pocket) liquid ice had been released. As it swirled around, again the smell of the laborer’s mouth invaded my senses. So imagine the smoke, the smell and then Fancie’s theatricalism in service of directing vibes, like a conductor of the imagination, with the visual and the aural battling for superiority. At one point of the set, one of the band’s members energetically joisted with a sword while in a fencing mask. The laptop they used to manipulate sounds or god knows what else played loops of win media graphics dead in the middle of the stage—a case can be made for the use of Mac-books as props in shows. They are pretty and give off light on mostly unlit stages. Are other non-musicians like me amazed at the arcana that goes into setting up a show like this? How do you crazy-kool musicians do it? I love you for your knowledge as well as your creativity.

As the set ended I started up a conversation with the two guys next to me. Daniel, stylish in a short trench coat, told me he thought they were like a collage, disjointed. He found them a little incoherent. But I loved the slapdash funnishness of the whole thing. The mixture of sounds—from slippery, hi-hat disco to 4 on floor dance, baggy-beat to hip hop, fake strings among others—made me jittery and united at once.

You cannot unite continents without sounding a little like a collage. Any one band can be several. I don’t think Fancie can even decide on a single name, sometimes calling themselves Fanice. A band with a real case of multiple personality disorder—is that a good or a bad thing? Maybe groups are positioning themselves as different bands in different contexts so they can find themselves in the right niche, the one everyone’s been looking for the new hit in. But that is cynical bullshit. “Fancie” just killed live, and that is the god’s awesome truth. Musicians are a curious bunch; they are just as much the style curators as readers and writers are. Hell, the readers and picture takers are the musicians too. Culture is the remix. There is no one sound that you have to adhere to. Freedom, just like X- Ray Spex demanded, but this time from the bondage of boredom and genre hegemony. 24 flavors of ice cream at all hours of the night.

Fancie was that good musically and that indescribable. To add to the confusing blending of styles and influences, Fancie broke up into a splinter faction called Alas Alak Alaska who played next. Alak is composed of a slightly different lineup from the main group and were led by a jazzy trumpet driven sound with a lot of soothing, wool mitten warm vocal interplay going on. Lovely stuff and definitely worth checking out. The sheer glut of creativity coming out of this group of people is astonishing. Outside after the show I spoke briefly with Elizabeth Wood from Fancie and she spoke of how she can barely explain her group in terms of influences or genres and how musicians often never know where their inspiration comes from when they become deeply immersed in work. I lamely mentioned that they reminded me a little of “the Happy Mondays” but meant only that they resembled that group’s positive vibes and danceability. All the talk of influences and lineage is sometimes moot. They are the critic’s crutch that he uses because of his inability to transcribe the sounds he hears in pure terms. I’ll keep insidiously using them like I just did above though!

The “Fancie” show had multiple aspects is what I am trying to say, I think, not all of which I can pin down. What I saw was one angle of it—the angle I saw from off stage right, with the eyes and mind I am given, as the drunk on a pitcher—part fan, part critic that I am. This is one opinion, one vantage point, one frozen frame of icicled singularity. I think of the many minds that show melded and their diverse opinions of it. There was a guy with a cane walking around taking pictures. I put him down in my notes as Ahab, in search of his great white (what else at this venue?) whale—the great picture. Later I found out he was called John and he had driven down from Riverside to document local heroes American Gil. He was sweet as all hell and provided pictures for this review. He also told me of a burgeoning Riverside scene that I’d love to check out someday. A guy like that in the audience makes a show like this even better. An interesting audience is as important as an interesting band.

And on the night rolled, like spokes and chain above rain slick streets. It was getting close to 12:30 when I realized that stores close in 30 minutes and made the decision to do a booze run to help make it through the cold night. Helpful directions were quickly obtained and I jumped on my bike to make a sprint across the hump of hills between Figueroa and Alvarado. It was quite a ride and I hustled hard for I did not want to miss the night’s headliners—Voices Voices. I had seen them a week ago at the same venue and was deeply impressed by the sound that the band, consisting of Nico and Jenean, conjured between them. I had walked right up to them spontaneously after the show to tell them how good they were. Small venues are cool like that, instant communication and feedback, level playing field between audience and performer. Hearing their excellent Sounds Outside EP later had confirmed my opinion that they have something special. The nearest comparison that I can offer would be Isis but Voices Voices, as their name suggests, emphasize the sound of their intertwined voices more. There is a starkness to their treated guitar and voice soundscapes that is alien and slightly spooky. At times they forego all drums to pursue pure sound. "Flulyk" particularly off Sounds Outside, reminded me of the Richard Strauss composition - Also Sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spake Zarathustra) from the 2001 soundtrack.

As I rolled back through the alley this night, successful in my inebriated quest, and propped my bike outside on the steel enclosure of the neighboring parking lot, I met two Daniel’s—the one I mentioned earlier and the other, the scraggly, bearded saint/bum of “the smell” who offers friendly advice and words of greeting to all visitors. We conversed for a few minutes about the origin of their name and Daniel the resident was deep in the middle of a rumination on the righteous word of the lord when I heard what sounded like whale calls emanating from the walls. Hallelujah, here was my true call, a wordless sound from the deeps of some placid lake of soul. I betook myself indoors to pursue this deep aquarium sound.

The group used green and blue lights that grew and dimmed as the set progressed. A song would start with Nico’s simple two note strum pattern on guitar, reinforced and churned by a supple, rousing drum beat that would build up into a rude rhythmic upsurge as Jenean came in with her pummeling explorations. Then Nico would add leavenings of chiming guitar. Later as the song came to an end she would cover the drum’s retreat with howls of feedback. The Song rising like mourning out of ashy dawn, yet hopeful and inspiring. Just as they were about to burst open the song with their trademark, anthemic keening they were let down by malfunctioning mics. A slight faltering of rhythms, lights coming up, anger at the betrayal of equipment, the capriciousness of electronics. “Turn off the lights, from that part, lets go.” Fuck if that’s gonna stop them. So what if a whole world of their sound had been cruelly removed like an amputated appendage. Like Norman Mailer cutting off the mic and shouting into the packed audience of listeners in “The Armies of the Night” Voices Voices bravely carried on. Strum, drums and sound manipulations was all they needed anyway. Like a superior athlete hobbled by a bad knee but still a better player than the rest of the field.

Jenean’s hands weaved in and out of her snares creating dense, muscular patterns that churned Nico’s watery, subterranean soundscapes like the pistons of a riverboat. She would pursue a rhythmic idea to its natural conclusion and then keep going further, sometimes even losing control of the beat. Her dogged pursuits of the beat, into the dead-end alleys of the 8-bar, seemed to underscore her growing frustration with sound issues.

I love that defiant punishing spirit in a musician. While the avenue for vocal interplay between the pair was reduced because of sound issues, they never stopped communing, always looking at each other and engaging in an unspoken and continuous exchange of ideas and spirit. Audience be damned, though we got to tag along for the trip and experience aural heaven in the meantime.

Toward the end of their set VV conjured up sounds that I heard as being like traditional Sufi or Qawwali music. I didn’t remember hearing this in their CD and when the set ended asked them if this was intentional. Apparently they were just jamming out and stumbled upon those phrases that I wildly misinterpreted. Again, so much for a critic’s ability to order a musician’s tastes in recognizable categories. Conversely you could also look at this as an example of how widely interpretable VV’s sounds can be or of how far out and exploratory they can get when they hit the sweet spot.

Vocal mics seem to be pretty problematic at the venue—get on it guys, fix it pronto. Even Fancie seemed to lose much of their vocal subtlety during their set. I hate to see my favorite bands handicapped by faulty equipment like this. The full, textured nature of VV’s sound was never fleshed out that night. They came across as hardy professionals who took the technical handicaps in their stride and still constructed a tight set, but just imagine what they might have achieved with a complete arsenal of aural weapons at their command. I encourage all readers of this mixed up review to go check out all the bands I wrote about. They are each alive in their own way. Also, if you are in the LA area, come around to “the smell”. I have been there three times and never come away without a new idea. Genuine people come here, never mind the hype about bulimic hipsters swathed in suffocating layers of scenester saran wrap. Everyone I ever met here has been enthusiastic about music and about life. I leave each time, half deaf and jarred out of my own complacency. Otherwise I wouldn’t take all this effort to write about it or critique it. It’s just five bucks for a dank hit of the most exciting sounds, people. Take a big puff and hold it in your lungs for as long as you can. I dare you to exhale!

Fag Bashers at the International Noise Conference, April 9th 08

2008-12-29T02:58:00.000-08:00

This is a review of a show I saw at The Smell back in April. I was in the crack mother city - LA, for the first time in 4 years and decided that it was about time I went to check out the venue. I had heard excellent things about it - all ages, serving only vegan food, with a community vibe about it that appeals to the old Fugazi fan in me. I was a little kid in India when those guys toured and helped open up the all ages scene that Dischord kick-started in the early 80's. When I got older I used to read with a wide eyed wonder about their idealism and work ethic. The Smell continues things in the same spirit - the slogan and band name 'No Age' painted on the closed, steel front on Main Street comes from a SST comp from 87. They obviously take their cues from the hardcore community spirit and heritage. As evidenced from the organizers' slightly stiff reaction to the Fag Bashers antics, one could also say that they share some of that scene's uptight self righteousness.

The show was advertised as The International Noise Conference - a reference perhaps to the famous 1991 International Pop Underground Convention organized by K records. The acts that went on before the Bashers, played short 5 - 10 minute sets with minimal set up and fuss. They mostly consisted of a single person with a deck, effects pedals and mic. The night was tight and the impact focused. Walls of squall, recoiling power noise and thrusting feedback reached deep into my ears and opened my tympanum to all audible frequencies - The effect of the sound on my ears was akin to a psychedelic, revealing the full possibility for hearing, like psylocibin divulges the subconsciousness to the brain. The short set times meant that no one got bored or tired of the aural assault we were subjected to. I felt a sense of calm come over me that I have seldom felt at a concert.

Typically concerts tend to set me on edge - the palpable smells of alcohol, weed and the hint of sex, all conspire to make me slightly uncomfortable, and I have to lubricate myself with a few beers to overcome my natural reserve. In keeping with the spirit of the venue I arrived with nothing more than Ramen and caffeine in my stomach (Little Tokyo is a few blocks away and just down Main street is a friendly coffee shop called Groundwork). The aural assault had the paradoxical effect of calming me even further. In short I was ripe meat for the Fag Bashers set.

I was seated on the couch in the main room next to the bookshelf. I am hoping that they get around to posting the video of the night, so that everyone who reads this can get a clearer picture of the mayhem, the two members of the band staged, and see how incongruously they fit with the rest of the event. The video posted on their myspace site-

of an earlier show gives one a good idea of their get up and M.O. - two thoroughly skinny guys in football jerseys, with an amp, mic, boom box, busted looking drumkit and a stack of empty kegs. At first, I was not aware that they were part of the show because they were the first band to play in that well lit corner of The Smell.

A Nickelback song started to play on the boom box. The reaction of the smattering of scenesters and noise freaks, me included, as the song started to play was priceless. Everyone froze. Not a head bobbed. One enlightened hipster started to ironically shake his head to the song for a few seconds. Nothing could have caused more discomfort among the assembled noisea-rat-i, than the simple act of playing this thoroughly populist number, in the middle of such an elitist show. Now, I have seen groups of kids at the bar down the street from where I live in Allentown sing along to that same song tons of times, their faces filled with joy, like the dancing and singing congregation at a black church. Their faces seemed to convey the feeling that they were being understood by those rock stars, their workaday lives expressed in the singer's nasal whine, that to my ears dripped with overproduced compassion. I would bury my head in my beer and try not to meet any faces.

I would have given a lot of money to see one of those guys squirm through some of the sets I saw that evening and then, see a grin light up his face when this song played. To see the reaction of the people around him when he sang along enthusiastically, would have been precious. You want to talk about a red state blue state divide - there it is, in an oversimplified and somewhat disingenuous way.

Here I must digress and provide a link to a great article in the venerable Onion titled "Local Hipster Over-Explaining Why He Was At The Mall".

Everyone of us has at some time in their life been guilty of a taste violation(if you believe in such things). All the cool music I listen to today, is in some sense a cover up job, to hide my history of pop indiscretions. Try as I might, I will never be able to erase the fact that I was into rap metal when it went around, or that I listened to some really weak 70s MOR and prog from my dad's collection. I think it's stupid to pretend to be superior, because today you listen to better music than the next guy. You just got lucky that someone or something tipped you off at the right time. And yes there is better music and worse music. I will defend that position, it isn't all subjective. Who gets to decide is up in the air however and it is a continuous process, like erosion or the formation of mountains.

I am very conflicted about cultural elitism of any kind, and I am guilty of it in a lot of ways. It is easy to dismiss people for their lowbrow tastes, but also incredibly lazy to do so. My best buddy in PA listens to what I consider to be horrible music, but I don't give a shit. When sites like Facebook ask you to list the music you like, all it does is make you more easily definable, and hence digestible, by people, culture and their salesmen. I am not going to let something as inconsequential as taste, in something as trivial as pop culture, choose my friends for me. Friends over Trends.

While I liked the music at The Smell, and felt comfortable with the people there, I still didn't feel a part of them either. I didn't like that all those drunk kids at the bar I frequented felt some kind of bond over a cheesy pop song, that they identified with some syrupy, rhyming drivel. Occasionally I would make the mistake of disputing their tastes, and was sometimes dismissed or ignored because of that. On the other hand, I was delighted to see the hipsters and scene crawlers at The Smell be confronted with sounds they could not tolerate. Noise, Industrial, Grindcore, insert extreme music of your choice here _______ - is supposed to be all about confrontation and subversion. What could be more discomfiting to the status quo of this crowd than Nickelback?

The squirming was great while it lasted. Comprehension eventually dawned on the audience, as the Bashers started to put on shoulder pads and one their ranks dropped to the ground to do push ups and grunt. More people gathered around their little circle as I foolishly remained seated right next to them. The two mischief makers started to thump chests, make grunting sounds and yell at each other about the massive party they were going to have tonight. A few minutes earlier I had noticed one of the guys, lets call him Mr.Yellow for the color of his jersey, peel the labels off a 6'er of O'Doul's. The reason for this dawned on me now, when they popped one of the bottles and started to chug it. This could not have gone down well with The Smell Elders, The Smellders if you will; I saw a few frowns and folded arms go up in the audience, like a steel barrier would in a larger show. What would the cops do to their "premit to operate" if they saw the bottles of fake beer, with no labels on them to prove the innocence of their contents. The two Bashers - Mr. Yellow and Mr.Blue, became more and more rowdy, tossing the empty kegs around, jumping on each other and spraying fake beer on the audience.

Mr. Yellow was pretty good about the beer spraying, limiting it mostly inside the floor space around him, except for me. Seeing that I was a chump, sitting right next to them, looked relatively harmless and was thoroughly enjoying the spectacle, he took the liberty of hosing my hair and glasses down. I did not mind it one bit. I only wished they had got more people, that they had a fireman's hose of beer, to wash the stiff bodied lack of enjoyment off some of the noise police. I understand their concern for safety and respect for the limitations of the spectacle, but I was ready for more, yet slightly scared of escalation. I had been perusing the "Industrial Culture Handbook" on that couch before they started and some of the shit those original freaks pulled was unbelievable. Compared to say a Throbbing Gristle show, this show was tame, notwithstanding what happened towards the end. The interesting stuff at the Fag Bashers show was all cerebral, though they were also a heck of a lot of fun.

Nickelback turned into Bawitabaa, turned into Korn. Their screams and jocky exhortations bled into the songs and helped recontextualise the familiar, radio-rock pap into more alien soundscapes. Formally speaking they weren't that great. "Kevin Shields", who came later in the bill, was better. Not that 'Kevin Shields' people - it was a chick who has the admirable cheek to take on the name of the MBV mastermind, and the balls to play really fucking loud, louder than any of the men who played, and just loud enough to make you shit your ears a little. It was the unbalanced atmosphere the Bashers created that carried them head and shoulders above the rest of the crowd. The same way the victorious football players they parody get carried away, at the end of a game. Eventually some of the fake beer bottles broke. Mr.Yellow, the skinnier of the two and a star showboat, made sure of this. He also made it a point to roll around a little in it and to draw blood from his arm. Later he pointed his bleeding arm into the camcorder recording the evening.

Make no mistake about it, it did not happen in the heat of the moment. It was more surgery than accident. There was the element of self consciousness to the whole performance that did not in the least take away from their commitment to jolt the audience. If you think Jim Morrison or any other infamous exhibitionist did his thing without calculation, you are definitely fooling yourself. Maybe a completely shit faced Iggy came close; I believe my man Lester Bangs when he said something to that effect, about the electrifying, spontaneous nature of Iggy's self mutilating act. However I dont think that there is anything more acutely conscious, and done for effect, than cutting or self injury. Even the old maxim states, that the best rock bands are ones that look like they are about to fall apart, but just manage to hold together.

The whole time they played I was sitting on the edge of my seat. I understood the meaning of that hoary cliche that day. I had something between a delighted grin and a clenched jaw, the whole time. To possess a sense of humor, to use it intelligently and unabashedly, is a rare thing in music. After the show, I went up to Mr. Yellow who was waiting for the bathroom to become free so he could clean up his arm, and told him that they were great and that it was the best show I had ever seen. Then I patted him on the shoulder as he just grinned and nodded his head enthusiastically. Mr. Blue helped the tired looking Smellders clean up the floor. As I stepped around the room, emotionally exhausted but razor keen in the head, I felt shards of glass crack under my shoes.