Here's an interesting bit of literary distraction that sounds like it could hold the attention for a while.
Press:
In 2003, the AFI messageboard spawned a new webzine called Scene Point Blank. AFI were at the top of the charts, The Blood Brothers and The Locust were making waves in hardcore, and a young folk-punk band called Against Me! released As the Eternal Cowboy.
The times have changed, but Scene Point Blank is stronger than ever, celebrating 10 years with All Downhill From Here, a new book that highlights some of their favorite material and includes insight on the wide-ranging cast of writers behind some of the webzine world's longer reviews.
Curated from 4000+ reviews and 200+ interviews, Scene Point Blank has put together some of their most popular items, some of their favorites, and their most memorable pieces into three formats: Kindle, eBook, and print, retailing from $7-15 depending on platform.
Content includes interviews and features with Ian Mackaye, Henry Rollins, Larry Livermore, Evan Dando, Jacob Bannon, and many more.
Scene Point Blank isn't limited to punk and hardcore... They're proud of their varied content, ranging from blackened death to drone to hip-hop and even prog. They feel that music shouldn't be limited to genre and, in fact, discussing it in those terms is far too limiting. Their focus is on heavy, independent music, both the well-known and those just getting started.
The Peter Case book got me thinking about an article I did six-years ago over at Glorious Noise, celebrating the 20th anniversary of the release of Appetite For Destruction. Also, my Grandmother recently passed away. She absolutely hated this band, probably uttering her Swedish expression for disgust, "Ish!"
In the spring of 1987, my cousin was a junior in high school and overflowing with Midwestern teenage rebellion. A couple of classmates convinced him to stand lookout in the doorway of the boy’s restroom at school while they detonated a pipe bomb in one of the stalls. The explosion created major devastation and, as my cousin later admitted, it’s a miracle that no one was hurt during the incident.
The two boys that created the bomb were expelled from school while my cousin was handed a fifteen day suspension which entailed the final week of his junior year classes and the first two of his senior year.
Axl shows off the leather fanny pack he made in industrial arts class.
His parents, feeling that this punishment wasn’t severe enough, grounded him for the entire summer and forced him to learn about responsibility by getting a job. In a strange twist of irony, the job he landed was filing papers for a local insurance agent.
He spent his time outside of work holed up in his bedroom, passing the hours reading music magazines and listening to heavy metal records. A five-star review in Kerrang! of an unknown L.A. hard rock band called Guns ‘N Roses caught his eye and he made a mental note to look into them the next time he tasted freedom again.
Towards the end of summer, his parents finally displayed a small amount of sympathy by allowing him to tag along to the mall one weekend while they went shopping. He made his way towards the record store and immediately looked for the band that received such a glowing review. He became enamored with the original Robert Williams cover art for Appetite For Destruction and used some of the money he earned from his minimum wage job to take a chance on this debut.
The small town in Central Illinois where my cousin lived at the time probably wasn’t much different than Lafayette, Indiana, the city that W. Axl Rose fled from at the age of seventeen. It would only be a matter of time, and a few dozen plays of that cassette copy of Appetite, before my cousin drew parallels between him and William Bailey.
Fueled by the imagery within that album and inspired by Axl and Izzy’s own similar tales of escape, he and another friend jumped into a 1979 Chevy Camaro and headed west. A mutual friend who didn’t join them seemed to put more forethought into the journey than they did: she set them up with crackers and peanut butter for the trip, knowing that their limited resources wouldn’t provide them with much cash flow for fine dining.
While the Camaro’s 350 V8 gave them enough dependability to make it across the country, it did so at a high price. By the time they arrived in Los Angeles, the majority of their funds had been spent on fuel with the remaining balance going towards Marlboro reds and Mountain Dew.
They spent their first night gingerly sleeping on the Camaro’s bucket seats in a seedy part of East L.A.
While Appetite may have convinced them that L.A. was ground zero for sex, drugs, and rock and roll, the “jungle” proved to be relatively uneventful. The pair cruised the strip, looking for evidence of the scene chronicled in heavy metal magazines and immortalized in their favorite hard rock songs. The reality was much different: while they naively thought that they would be able to run into the members of GNR hanging outside of the Whiskey, neither one caught a glimpse of anyone remotely famous. After growing tired of their lack of success on the Sunset Strip, they decided that they would have better luck at meeting some of their SST idols like Henry Rollins and Greg Ginn. A quick drive down to Redondo Beach proved to be just as dull as their time on the Strip.
Perhaps their most notable encounter came while buying sodas and cigarettes one morning in a convenience store. They struck up a conversation with a prostitute who was coming to the end of her “shift.” After learning about the pair’s predicament, and perhaps going though similar circumstances herself, she offered the teenagers some sage advice: “Turn around and go home.”
Twenty years after the release of Guns ‘N Roses Appetite For Destruction, I’m hard pressed to think of another album that speaks to the disenfranchised youth of America with such power to subliminally motivate them to hop in a Chevy Camaro and head for Los Angeles.
GNR was grubby looking and inked to the hilt at a time when tattoos and dirty fingernails weren’t a rite of passage, but a complete declaration of anti-social values and poverty. Rose’s lyrics also reeked of anti-social behaviors, with misogyny, addiction, violence, and the brutal reality of the underbelly of Southern California being common themes of their initial batch of material. Appetite was a welcome change from other hard rock bands of the time who were watering down their arrangements to be more palatable to radio and MTV.
The album foundered for nearly a year before someone finally had the good sense to recognize that under the grit of the album’s harsh subject matters was a song of tremendous vulnerability and beauty. By the time the rest of the world finally heard the gentle refrain of “Sweet Child o’ Mine,” the band instantaneously changed from spokesmen for America’s troubled youth to the mainstream’s resident bad boys.
From that point on, the band would never be able to recreate that stunning blend of ferocity and hunger like they did on the debut. We may have come to terms with the fact hat they, particularly Axl at this point, won’t be able to match the level of Appetite again. The challenge that I struggle with is how a blend of five fuckups managed to come that close to perfection in the first place, only to immediately distance them from that winning blueprint.
My cousin isn’t necessarily proud of his youthful indiscretions nowadays; he had a certain amount of reservation in using his past for this public display. The turning point was the record up for discussion. The moment he heard it would be a piece about Appetite For Destruction, he relented about the unflattering points of his teenage years. Because things like pipe bombs, Camaros, Marlboro cigarettes, and running off to Los Angeles are completely logical when Appetite is part of the backdrop. And while we still may be waiting for the next seedy underdogs to rise from the gutter and rally America’s youth, it’s nice to know that Appetite For Destruction still has enough vitriol in it to help teenagers make poor choices for another twenty years.
If you can endure the lousy sound quality, here’s an awesome
video of a Black Flag rehearsal.
It’s dark, dingy, and I bet all that cheap soundproofing
material that seems to be everywhere in the band’s cramped rehearsal space,
just makes the entire place smell awful.
The band was known-scratch that-guitarist Greg Ginn was
known for his endurance setting practice times, demanding that everyone in the
band show up for rehearsals 6 days a week, usually in preparation for grueling
tours that put the Melvin’s current “51 States in 51 Days” tour to shame.
What I didn’t expect was how Black Flag rehearsals appear to
be as physically rigorous as the real thing. Rollins in dripping with sweat,
drummer Bill Stevenson faces Rollins
with Ginn and Dukowski crammed on both sides of him, the band plays at full
volume with Hank completely inaudible.
This is how it should be done, and young upstarts should
take note.
How did Black Flag get to the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium?
The importance of L.A.’s
punk pioneers Black Flag cannot be understated. Even if history only confirms
one album, Damaged, as the band’s
crowning achievement, you have to consider the band beyond anything committed
to magnetic tape. From their grueling tour schedule, to the D.I.Y. ethos of
their label SST Records, to their dangerous encounters with the Los Angeles
Police Department, Black Flag is a band that could never be duplicated in
today’s world. Not that you’d want to, based on their numerous war stories.
Because of this, the members of Black Flag’s continual
line-up changes deserve a bit of respect In their post Flag offerings,
regardless of how important their career changes were.
For Black Flag’s first vocalist, Keith Morris, that respect
was secured with the Circle Jerks, another prominent SoCal punk rock band that
continues to inspire and be revered even in the new century.
For Black Flag’s original bassist and occasional wordsmith
Chuck Dukowski, the ability to say something nice about his work after Flag
becomes a bit of a stretch. After researching and re-listening to Duke’s work
in such forgotten SST releases by SWA and October Faction, the best thing that
can be said is to leave well enough alone.
It may surprise some that we can now consider both of these
alumni members as legitimate members of the post-millennium music scene, not
just card-carrying SST members looking to cash in on a bit of nostalgia,
although both men have participated in at least some kind of reunion effort of
their former glories.
Dukowski’s current gig centers around a band that bares his name:
the Chuck Dukowski Sextet. The CD6 features Chuck’s wife Lora on vocals, an
artist who not only delivers stunning visual pieces (check out the band’s album
covers) but also a surprisingly awesome vocal take on the Dukowski penned Flag
classic “My War” from the band’s debut album, Eat My Life.
They included the cover on a split 7” they did with Mike
Watt’s Missingmen project last Spring. The effort was released on their new
record label Org Records as a way to remind listeners of Dukowski’s lineage, a
promotional tactic that must have worked since it certainly brought the CD6 on
my radar.
Keith Morris’ latest band, OFF!, also took flight after a
bit of reminiscing and the subsequent falling out between band members trying
to revisit old tunes while trying to ignore old personality clashes.
When Morris’ Circle Jerks decided to give it another go, the
members found a huge gulf between the idea to make the band just another nostalgia
act or to take things a step further by incorporating new songs into the mix.
When some members were unable to devote the time necessary to work on new
material and when some voiced concern over producer Dimitri Coats’ own work
demands, Morris put the Circle Jerks on hiatus and continued to work on the
songs that he and Coats had started.
Off! just released their debut album over the summer, and
it’s hard to find fault with Morris’ decision and with Coats work ethic either.
Off! screams by at
barely a quarter-hour, with every second sounding like it’s the most important
thing in the world, even when the subject matter obviously isn’t.
Don’t think that Off!
Is riddled with greasy kid stuff, but there are moments where Morris is able to
channel his younger angst. Most notable is “I Got News For You” where the Keith
takes a haymaker towards Black Flag and SST founder Greg Ginn. Ginn is pretty
notorious for questionable payment practices, and Morris may be the first SST
alumni to publically call him out via a 45-second song, even one that hijacks a
line or two from Flag’s “You Bet I’ve Got Something Against You.” “We trudged
through sludge and piss/Were never paid for this!” he screams, while Coats does
an incredible job of being able to alternate between Ginn’s free jazz chaos and
punchy Stooge riffs.
Haunted is the
latest offering from the Chuck Dukowski Sextet, and while it’s nowhere near the
intensity level of Off’s pace, it’s closer to SST Record’s spirit with its
unpredictable tangents.
As with the band’s previous records, the weakest link is
vocalist Lora Norton who struggles with pitch, delivery, and a general sense of
identity. Usually, she remains in a comfort range of a slow burn stoner,
somewhat resembling Opal’s Kendra Smith, without the mystery or consistency.
It’s a family affair for the CD6, and thankfully Norton’s
son Milo Gonzales has shaped up to be a pretty passionate guitarist, giving Haunted its moments of much needed power.
With a bit more work and a bit more attention at figuring out exactly what kind
of band they want to be, the CD6 remain in this weird purgatory of notable
potential with some members clearly dragging their feet on the band’s overall
forward movement.
Gonzales seems stifled with his mother on board as he
conjures up visions of WitchMountain with his axe and
wah-wah pedal while Nora plays passive/aggressive with her delivery,
stubbornly keeping Haunted tethered to on the ground while the kid sounds like he’s
ready to take off.
The worst offender is the eight-minute (that’s half of Off’s
entire total time, if you’re keeping track) “A Thing,” which drags on and on
like it’s trying to compete as some weak V.U. cover, complete with the
obligatory drone viola.
For now, the CD6’s best work remains confined to that
out-of-this world “My War” cover, which is unfortunately ironic as the band is
clearly trying to branch out from Dukowski’s own past.
And maybe that’s the problem: the CD6 are simply thinking
too hard at trying to find themselves, when all they need to do is to try and
find the same kind of passion that Morris was clearly able to conjure up in
short order with Off!
Keith Morris is currently experiencing a resurgence of sorts with his latest band, Off! But back in the day he was one of the founding members of Black Flag and then later the Circle Jerks, two of Southern California's most influential punk rock bands.
Dave Markey, the director responsible for such documentaries as 1991: The Year Punk Broke and Desperate Teenage Lovedolls, brings us the tale of the Circle Jerks in My Career As A Jerk.
Oh, and you get a discount if you buy the DVD along with the Keith Morris throbblehead things.
Bargain.
Details:
This is the just the thing for the Circle Jerks fan in your life. It contains the brand new Circle Jerks documentary DVD and a limited edition Keith Morris Throbblehead... You save $5 (plus shipping discount) by ordering these items together HERE.
Circle Jerks My Career As A Jerk is a brand new documentary to be released on DVD on September 25. From the beginning, LA punk band the CIRCLE JERKS were rooted in controversy. Formed by ex members of Black Flag and Red Cross (now Redd Kross) in late 1979, the band came to encapsulate the image, sound and energy of California Hardcore Punk. Filmmaker David Markey (1991: The Year Punk Broke, The Slog Movie) mixes in-depth interviews, rare live footage and historical perspective to illustrate the story of one of the most influential bands in the American underground.
My Career as a Jerk follows the band from their early days and classic debut to navigating the independent label and touring scene of the 80s to the addictions, fights and injuries that forced their break up. Features interviews with members Keith Morris, Greg Hetson, Lucky Leher. Earl Liberty, Zander Schloss as well as J. Mascis (Dinosaur Jr), Henry Rollins (Black Flag), Brian Baker (Minor Threat, Bad Religion), and more.
Keith Morris Throbblehead - Keith Morris, legendary frontman of Black Flag, The Circle Jerks and now Off!, has been throbble-ized! This figure capturing Keith in full-on live mode is limited to 1000 numbered units, stands at 7 inches tall, and is made of super strong polyresin. While the figure is labeled a Throbblehead, it's actually Keith's arm that does all the movement, aggressively pointing towards his mind. Displayed in a window box, Keith is accurately sculpted right down to the dreads, Vans, and "fuck you" stare.
"I was a participant on a very long musical adventure through all the fun and miserable times and thinking about this I don't know if i'd change any of it!" - Keith Morris
It's about the cutest thing I've seen all week, second only to the little kitty cobra video: a bunch of British kids are forced by their punk rock parents to listen to Black Flag's "TV Party." Not all of them are fans of the song, but you know how kids are. Leave a video camera rolling in front of them and they're bound to do something cute.
For every year the Rolling Stones exist and by definition
begin dismantling their legacy, there is another example of an artist-let’s
call them of an “older” age-that’s still able to maintain credibility and
relevance even when the hairs go grey or start to come out entirely.
That was one sentence, by the way.
I don’t know what the fuck Chuck Dukowski was doing since he
was in the band SWA. And SWA was such a shitty band that I really didn’t mind not
knowing what Chuck Dukowski was doing musically.
Years past. These characters get brought up again when you’re
reading some old remembrance by a former SST Records associate and you think: “Chuck
Dukowski! What the fuck!”
And that’s when you seek out a split single of two former
SST alumni, one of which is covering a great Black Flag tune.
Dukowski slaps a fancy word for six on his name and takes up
bass duties again, while his wife, Lora Norton, steps in to become the lead
mouth of the Chuck Dukowski Sextet.
To say her gender had me concerned when tackling such a
brutal song wasn’t the case at all. In fact, it made me put this on my top “mustfind” list during Record Store Day.
Recorded in one take with no overdubs, the Chuck Dukowski
Sextet transforms “My War” into their own, while doing the impossible by taking
an iconic hardcore anthem and turning it into a brilliant revision.
The age drops off everything; there’s no hint of Dukowski’s
d.o.b. And Norton gruffs up enough anger, with her frequent shouts of “Oh, Mother
Fucker!!!!”, that she could easily pacify a buffy Hank Rollins in a fair fight.
The song takes on a new resonance, particularly considering
such notable cases of violence or bullying that have made our news recently. “You’re
one of them! You say that you’re my friend! But you’re one of them!”
It’s awesome.
Worth every dime.
But wait! There’s more!
Ol’ beardo Mike Watt brings together the Missingmen moniker
and picks his old favorite Roky Erickson for another cover, “Sweet Honey Pie,”
It sounds like a soundboard recording, which could be my way
of saying the recording is charmingly rough. And Watt’s such of softie and he’s
picked such a charming Roky song that you’ll play it a few times and delegate
it to side B.
Not that this is a bad thing, it’s just that the CD6 flip is
so much more awesomer that you’ll find yourself burning up the grooves.
From the mailroom comes this question from a Glam-Racket visitor:
“Bought Pyromania on LP when it was new. Just outside the center label but before the grooves, the phrase, "If you're gonna be a bear, be a grizzly" is written in the vinyl, apparently done by hand with some sort of hot-enough-to-mark-vinyl stylus. I haven't seen it for 25+ years, but even at the time I thought it was unusual. Any insight? It may exist on every copy for all I know, but I've never seen anything like it on another LP.”
Me? No idea about the origin of that Def Lep note, but I’ve venture to guess it came from the character Mad Dog in The Cannonball Run.
Somehow, that movie seems up Def Leppard’s alley.
Indie records were plum filled with outer groove notes on the vinyl. I’m fairly certain the wax job is legit and at the behest of the band.
I do remember that Def Leppard at the end of “No No No” from High ‘n Dry had a lock groove where Joe Elliot’s scream of “No!” would repeat endlessly. I know this because it played at a party my next door neighbor’s place once and someone forgot to take the needle off the record. When I went in to investigate, I noticed one of my neighbor’s friends sitting drunk in a chair, bobbing his head in unison with each yell.
SST used to put messages in the outer groove of a lot of their vinyl stuff. I just got done reading Joe Carducci’s Enter Naomi where he referenced an old Black Flag record where they praised the “generosity” of the female supporters of Torrance, California.
Believe it or not, we read those articles where the cops were called to Black Flag shows. It wasn’t punk on punk fights, either. It was those hired to “serve and protect” the audience of a Black Flag show doing most of the violence.
With clubs.
With full impunity from the law.
And then there was side four of Everything Went Black, where we heard the completely amateurish radio spots including ones that poked sticks at the cops, teasing them with ads that noted their thuggish “protection” while giving the coordinates for the next Flag show.
“Let’s go down and beat up some of them damn punk rockers!”
There are a number of reasons why I didn’t go see Black Flag when they played Cedar Falls, Iowa in what would end up being their final tour. One of the reasons is that all of this notoriety got me scared of the possibilities.
Of course, when I moved to Cedar Falls, all of that sounded completely ridiculous. What I missed wasn’t a show filled with violence and cops. Firsthand accounts note that it was 1.) Very hot and sweaty and 2.) Very good.
I love hearing the antidotes of that show and I totally wished that I had made more of an effort in seeing it.
The video below is a perfect image to what I thought that show would be like.
Of course, Black Flag circa ’86 was nothing like that band.
They were road dogs, always on the road playing shows with complete disregard for how their audience perceived them. By then, they had moved beyond the punk straightjackets and found themselves in some weird jazz/metal world. It worked wonderfully live and not so much in the studio.
But I’ve got to confess that I totally dig Black Flag circa ’86 a whole lot better. The reason is because that band, this line-up, that album changed. My. Life.
I'm posting this so that I can come back to it and watch it in its entirety.
Or before Greg Ginn goes and orders it be taken down.
It's a documentary called Reality 86'd, a first account of what would be Black Flag's final tour of the U.S.
Markley, who did Lovedolls Superstar and the awesome 1991: The Year Punk Broke, never was able to get this film to the light of day-some suggest Greg Ginn had something to do with that too-but the wonderful world of the intertubes has located a copy.
It appears to be pretty low-fi, but that's not going to stop me
One of my greatest regrets is not taking the trip to my future public university community to see Black Flag in concert.
Shortly before I attended the University of Northern Iowa, I heard that Black Flag was playing in Cedar Falls. Me and another high school friend entertained the idea of the three hour drive just to see the band, but both of us chickened out.
You have to understand, this was before the days of the internet. Our information on punk rock in Iowa was limited, and as far as we knew, Black Flag was still churning out live shows that ended in riots and police clubbings.
This was something we weren’t used to in my small town surroundings, and as silly as it seems, Cedar Falls looked like a big city in our small town eyes.
Of course, once I finally moved there, I saw how small the community really was and I endured countless recollections by older college students of “the time Black Flag played at the boathouse.” Additionally, Joe Cole’s posthumous book referred to the city in fairly uneventful terms, but the referral itself was enough for me to be envious.
The other reason for not attending was because I wasn’t a fan of the band that Black Flag had become later in their career. I’m sure I’m not alone on this, and I now am able to appreciate what they became, even if I didn’t necessarily enjoy it as much as the life-changing effort Damaged.
This all came to an end, and my failure to travel to the Cedar Falls gig was recalled the day my cousin brought a tape of a live Black Flag show from a few years prior to my missed date.
The tape-only release (at that time) was Who’s Got The 10 ½, an inside joke that reportedly caused bassist Kira to end her tenure with the road dogs.
Upon first listen, you can hear what guitarist Greg Ginn must have been attempting to achieve with its blend of punk rock, heavy metal, and free-jazz chaos.
Throughout the hour long effort, Ginn hits his solos with manic abandon, caring little for melody or proper structure. It sounds like he’s going off the rails in many parts, only to get back on course in time for the next verse which Hank Rollins obediently barks out.
“I must admit” Henry states at the beginning of “Slip It In” “This feels mighty good” before launching into the definitive version of what I formerly considered to be a weak entry in the Flag’s catalog.
Who’s Got The 10 ½ also contains the definitive version of “Drinking & Driving,” “Loose Nut,” and a simply killer version of “Louie Louie.”
Kira and new Flag drummer Anthony Martinez are Black Flag’s hidden weapons here, with Martinez providing incessant propulsion, demonstrating that what may have been missing from the lamer studio renditions of the set’s newer material is someone who had a pair of double bass drums.
Who’s Got The 10 ½ not only serves as the best way to fully appreciate the band’s later material, but it’s a good way to witness the stage prowess of a band who’s moments in person were typically remembered for the way they were cut short by police thugs and contentious audience members.
But for me, the album serves as an example of what I missed for not journeying up to that college town to see the band on their final tour before imploding under their own inner tensions.
Is it just me, or has the week in music been dominated by the zany behavior of bass players?
First of all, and I’ve struggled whether or not to even mention this for fear of reprisal and for worry that I may demonstrate a change in my hostility towards the band Kiss-I nearly broke down watching an episode of Gene Simmon’s Family Jewels, the one where he returns to Israel for the first time in 50 some years.
For those of you who haven’t seen it, evidently Gene hasn’t been with his Father in that amount of time either, supposedly because he was still upset that his father "abandoned" he and his mother. You could probably be a Freshman Psych major and figure out that Gene has some major daddy issues resulting from this.
The irony is that their divorce culminated with Gene’s mom moving to America and, as any major dude will tell you, the rest is history.
So while the split prompted both his rise to fame and an unhealthy resentment towards his father, it made for a homecoming narrative that had Gene meeting new members of his family while rekindling some lost memories of a country that he left when his mother packed it up and headed to N.Y.C. for a new life with her song.
The Israeli homecoming made for some stunning television, particularly when you see Gene meet his step-brothers and sisters. It culiminates when they nudge him towards considering that his father wasn't all that bad as his resentment made him out to be. All of this comes rushing out when you see/hear Gene break down at his father’s gravesite, finally realizing that he may have squandered a relation with his dad because of some poorly conceived perceptions.
For the first time in my life, I saw Gene as something more than just a money-grabbing opportunist and understood the origins of his misogynistic ways. None of this made Gene’s faults right, just explainable. And in typical Gene fashion, he was back to his huckster/fuckster ways within the first few moments of the next episode.
Gene’s no dummy, so you’ve got to believe that the hugeness of the event-the fact that Gene actually expressed emotion and vulnerability for the first time in front of his fans, that this episode and real event would be leading towards some kind of revelation. An epiphany that would add a new dimension to his character as he gets ready to slide into retirement.
Yet like a dummy, he can’t let it happen. He can only squander a golden opportunity to make him more likeable to a wider audience, something he and his brand desperately need as his/their relevance a quickly diminishing year after year.
And Gene, unlike Paul who views his Kiss character as some kind of aging Broadway character who will continue the role until he physically can no longer do it, is all about revenue stream. So why he didn’t seize this moment of human vulnerability and create a new revenue stream of redeemed family man who’s finally found that commitment to family after fucking 10,000 skanks in the past forty years.
It’s 2011 dude, we all threw up a bit when we saw you in that homemade porn with that blonde chick who wouldn’t even kiss your ugly ass or take off her flip-flops. Hang it up and be a man, because you’re already ten times as lame as you made out your old man to be.
And then there’s the former bassist from Queens Of The Stone Age-Nick Oliveri-who proved this week that not only is he drug-fueled crazy, he’s drug-fueled and gun-totin’ crazy! At least that’s they described it when Oliveri got into a fight with his old lady of such epic proportions that the SWAT team was called to his home and a standoff ensued.
I remember once when the cops were called when my ex-wife and I got into a fight a few months before we got divorced thanks to her father who didn’t seem to grasp the idea that she was trying to beat my ass, not the other way around.
I’m really not sure what’s going on with Oliveri’s ordeal other than to hope that he’s not such a pussy that he thinks that beating up a woman is a “tough” thing to do, but do I need to remind you that Josh Homme kicked Oliveri’s ass out of Q.O.T.S.A. for doing the exact same thing?
I’ll leave it up to you to determine if you think that Josh was the bitch in those events.
Finally, there the dude from Coheed and Cambodia who threatened to blow up a Walgreens if they didn’t front him some Oxies last week.
After showing the pharmacy assistant his Smartphone with the words “I have a bomb!” and “Gimmie all your good pills!” they gave Mike Todd (he goes by "Mic", but as his actions demonstrate, it’s going to take more than dropping letters from your first name to make you cool, dude) a bottle of Anacin and told him to get the fuck out, to which he did.
To further demonstrate how uncool the bass player from Coheed and Chlamydia is, he hailed a cab and told the cabbie to drop him off at the tour bus at the Comcast Center where his band was scheduled to open for Soundgarden in just a few short hours.
The cops originally wanted to arrest Chris Cornell for that piece of shit Scream album, but the pharmaceutical companies reminded them that these little heroin Chicklets are pricey, and we can’t be just giving them away to every prog-metal bassist with a smart phone.
One look at his mug shot and you can’t help but feel sorry for the dude, I mean, just look at him. His life is fucked and it’s all because he crossed paths with a multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical company who’s created a country of junkies under the pretense of “pain management.”
On a much lighter note, there was one bassist who managed to remind us that it’s possible to be cooler than the three other bassists combined and still play the instrument without much pay or recognition, but rather for the sheer passion of it.
Kira Roessler was a former bass player with Black Flag and former spouse of Mike Watt. She also has a ten-and-a-half inch cock.
Dos, the on-and-off again collaboration she does with her ex-husband wife is preparing for a new album and, as a result, Kira was recently interviewed by the Village Voice. She talks about her past, accurately defines the meaning of punk rock, and graciously provides her humble insights to her instrument of choice that is frequently neglected and dismissed.
One of the things she mentions that struck me-mainly because I felt the same way when I saw footage of Watt playing with the re-formed Stooges-is how Watt is becoming a better bass player because he’s finally beginning to play bass differently than he has throughout his career. I say “beginning” with the understanding that it’s now going on a good decade or so, but you get my drift. His skills as a bassist are very much recognized and they would have remained that way had he not played an additional note or changed in the way that he played.
But he has changed the way he played.
The gig required it.
And sometimes doing something outside of your comfort zone is the most frightening thing you can do, and the fact that Watt has done that very thing only means that he’s getting better at his craft.
The interview with Kira is a very enjoyable read. She’s not afraid to speak her mind and she reminds us that punk rock wasn’t/isn’t about a set of rules (there are none!) and how, at its core, punk rock is about the community.
At the end of the week full of the worst of the low end, it was great to finally come across some good news from someone who’s reached rock bottom.
Family Man is the “White Album” of Black Flag releases. It’s an e.p., I know, but work with me here. It’s the first Flag release that demonstrates the individualistic factions of the band: one side devoted to Greg Ginn’s schizophrenic guitar patterns, the other to Henry Rollins’ word jazz. Rollins’ was young, just finding his feet in the world of poetry. Not only was he coming from an environment where he wasn’t even the primary songwriter of his band (that distinction fell to Ginn again), he was the frontman of a band that performed a style of music that wasn’t known for the art of its written word. Rollins went on to help change that, particularly with his continual stream of prose that he released from his own publishing company, but his talents at the time of Family Man weren’t that well known and, as a result, came as a complete surprise. He’s young-his spoken word here shows that, particularly in the content of his material. But it’s promising-particularly with the title track which wonderfully details the monotony of suburbia-and it’s good that someone had the good sense to encourage his newly found interest so that he continued to explore this new creative field. I remember seeing video footage of Hank performing on some late night video show thinking “Holy shit! It’s that dude from Black Flag!” before thinking “Holy shit! He’s reading poetry!” The other material is instrumental passages spearheaded by Ginn and the Black Flag line up at that time. Understand that the band were not only road dogs, but they rehearsed an insane amount of time when they weren’t on the road. As impressive as that may sound, rehearsing does not mean every sound made is worthy of recording. Add to this, Ginn has a penchant for jazz arrangements and free range riffing. Not only can his music be a test of ability, they can be a test of tolerance. If there was a large market for his style of instrumental jam then more of you would hear about Ginn’s post-Flag instrumental band, Gone. Only “The Pups Are Doggin’ It” manages to reach any sort of inspired jamming and even that is questionable as something that needed to be released. Unlike The White Album, Family Man is a mixed bag-a curio e.p. that’s exciting upon first listen but not something that would inspire repeated listening. At the same time, Raymond Pettibon’s album art is a hell of a lot more controversial than the Beatles’ cover ever was.
A recent review of The Dirty Projectors got me thinking about its inspiration: Black Flag’s Damaged. In fact, The Dirty Projectors' Rise Above is shitty enough that I actually needed to go back to Damaged and listen to it repeatedly, to get the shitty taste out of my mouth that Rise Above left behind. I can tell you about the time when I first heard Damaged and the impact it had on me. But you probably have your own experiences and mine wouldn’t come near the one’s you already hold dear. So let’s just say that Damaged was good enough for me to tolerate a lot of later-year bullshit that Black Flag managed to put out. Don’t try to convince me that The Process Of Weeding Out is anywhere near the caliber of Damaged. There’s nothing you can do to make me believe that Loose Nut needs to be in my collection. The Flags released a lot of shit in their day and Damaged remains the album that is required listening for everyone, and I mean everyone, who considers themselves to be a fan of rock ‘n roll. There are two critical keys to the album’s importance. The first is the total chaos of Greg Ginn’s guitar playing. At first glance, Ginn appears to be barely capable. But upon closer examination, Ginn has not only come up with some classic riffs hidden behind ADHD excitement and police state oppression. Ginn sounds like he needed to get these songs out in a hurry, because the authorities he encountered at the time always seemed to be pulling the plug on the band every time they made a note. There was no time for a second take when you’re always on the lookout for the man. The other thing to listen for in Ginn’s off-kilter solos is how they slyly distract you from considering that Greg is a hippie deep down. Worshipping at the alter of Garcia would be too easy, in fact, it would have been disastrous. Ginn wisely chooses to match his solos with jazz inspirations and improvisation. And then there’s Henry Rollins who was not only a recent transplant to SoCal at the time of the record, but he was also a newly christened member, put in a position that garnered the most attention outside of Ginn’s antics. You can hear Rollins deliver each razorblade vocal take with equal parts nervous energy and admiration; Hank got the gig after being making himself present at Flag shows when they went through his hometown of D.C. A quick take on the microphone one night proved to be prophetic as Ginn and Dez Cadena later offered the role to Rollins after singer Cadena moved to guitar. While not fully developed with the persona that we know today, this is Hank at his most vulnerable. Oh sure, he’s not singing love songs here and his bile is totally believable throughout Damaged, we do see Rollins actually trying to impress his bandmates with his ability while attempting to make the songs his own, even after other singers prefaced the material before him. It works; the chaos, the spontaneity, the anger, it’s all here and it’s all believable. At first, you notice the “novelty” songs (“T.V. Party,” “Six Pack”) and the “anthems” (“Gimmie Gimmie Gimmie,” “Police Story”) before realizing that the vast majority of this album is dark, claustrophobic, and fueled by unchecked rage. It’s the work of a group of poverty-stricken individuals who still believe they have a shot in life (“We are born with a chance/And I am gonna have my chance!”- “Rise Above”) even while they’re reminded daily by the cops, the neighbors and their wallets that there’s little chance that they’ll rise above anything (“It’s hard to survive/Don’t know if I can do it”-“Room 13”) Damaged brought the band enough notoriety that they could essentially tour nonstop and be provided with enough cash to get to the next gig. But the road also brought about changes to the bands style, attitude, and lineup. Dez was edged out, the barrage of abuse hurled at Rollins turned him into a very humorless person, the audience expectations of the band made Ginn consider other genres, some of which (metal) alienated the paying crowds who came to hear “T.V. Party” and “Six Pack.” Damaged seemingly defined American hardcore as quickly as it tried to distance itself from it with the follow-up (and last great Flag studio effort) My War. The version I remember is the Roadrunner version that had a different version of “TV Party” and “Louie Louie” at the end. The black and white cover was cooler too.
