TV Party

The following is dedicated to my attorney, Juan Perez.

Saugus, MA, 6:14pm:

What’s up, buddy? Good to see ya, you old cock. It’s about fackin’ time, too. Ya hit the packy on the way over? Nice! What’s that? Oh, don’t mind ol’ Francis ovah theah. He just heard Soundgahden got back togethah. Yeah, yeah, he’s fackin’ psyched. Plus, he just ate like three king-size Buttahfingahs. I heah ya, though. Yeah, I have no idea what happened to Chris Cawnell. That Jimmy Bond song is gayuh than a P-town Ahts Festival at midnight, but that doesn’t explain Audioslave, does it? Or that thing with Kanye West or whatevah. Oh, Timbaland. Right.

But look, I know that’s not why ya heah. Business to attend to and all that. Heah’s the thing, though: Ma’s at bingo tonight. Yeah, yeah, three Wednesdees in a row now. It must be that second cuppa coffee she’s been havin’ in the aftahnoons or whatevah. I didn’t mention that ovah the phone? That she wasn’t gonna be heah, I mean? Shit, I’m sorry, dood. I coulda swoan I told ya that. But look, if you wanna hang out and watch Hahd N’ Heavy videos with us, it’s totally cool. Francis! Fack, Francis, man—move over, for fack’s sake. Randy’s gonna hang out.

You see that Dave Ellefson’s back in Megadeth? I know, right? Prolly won’t mattah much, but Dave without Dave is like Simon without… what’s that other dood’s name? The old guy with the weeahd lookin’ squash? Here’s to you, Missus Robinson, or whatevah? Yeah, yeah, Dustin Hoffman. That’s the dood. Oh, wow. Look at this shit right heah. Diamond Dave, “A Little Ain’t Enough.” Fackin’ classic song right theah, guy. Not as neahly as killah as “Drop Dead Legs” but it kicks the shit out of Sammy Hagah amiright?

Aw, dooood … look at this now. Why they always gotta roon these things with Damn Yankees? Just watchin’ Ted Nugent talk makes my tits hurt. Oh, shit! He just called those othah doods fags, though. Turn it up? Why? Do you think it’ll help? Oh, now this… this is what I’m talkin’ about. Suicidal fackin’ Tendencies. You. Can’t. Bring. Me. Down. You can’t bring me down! This shit makes me wanna cry and punch things at the same time. While weahring my khaki shohts and white tube socks jacked up to my fackin’ knees, a’ couahse.

Oh, check out this intahview with the Scorpions doods. Hallo, vee ah Scorpions! I love these doods, guy. Klaus Meine’s head should have its own talk show. They’ah gonna show the “Rhythm Of Love” video next. So facking good. Yeah, this is the second time we’ve watched this one today. What? No, I heah ya, I heah ya. Big Daddy needs to get paid. I know. She should be home any minute now. Aw, Francis! How many times I gotta tell ya yuh gonna go blind if ya don’t stop doin’ that? Put it away, bro—we got company!

Wait, I think I heah Ma comin’ up the driveway. Sit tight for a second; I gotta help 'uh with the groceries. She’s prolly hadda coupla pops, too. You know how it is down the Knights a’ Columbus. Buncha sea hags bitchin’ about Social Security and the price a’ Pahliament Lights down Cumby’s. Oh, fack. It looks like she mighta hit sumthin’ on the way home. Ma! Ma, what happened to the Capri? Are you fackin’ serious? I’ll put my fackin’ foot up his fackin’ ass! Okay, fine. Tomorrah, then. Look, Ma, Randy’s heah. Yeah, I need eleven bucks, okay? C’mon, Ma. Don’t be like that. I sweah I’ll pay ya back. Thanks, Ma. Love ya. Yeah, yeah, I’ll send Francis out right now. What? No, no, I didn’t give him any candy a’ nuthin’ like that, Ma. You know I know bettah than that.

This bullshit originally appeared in the May 2010 issue of Decibel magazine.

Out Of The Cellar

Stephen Pearcy followed me home from the bar the other night. Don’t ask me why. I never got a chance to find out. All I know is that I was loitering in the Rainbow Room parking lot, pounding tall boys with Reb Beach and C.J. Snare when Jizzy Pearl and Joe LeSté come running over and say that Pearcy’s on his way, and he’s on the rampage. Whatever the fuck that’s supposed to mean. Next thing I know, Jizzy’s laid out on the asphalt and Pearcy’s standing over him all, “Fuck you, you fuckin’ cock knocker. That’s for 2000 to 2006.” His eyeliner’s all smudged and shit like he’s been crying. Then he swills the ass end off of C.J.’s tall boy and storms off in a huff.

Like I said, don’t ask me. Makes no sense. But if you did ask me, I’d say it had to be something personal. I mean, these guys don’t really hate each other ’cause they’ve all played in each other’s bands, right? Like, “I’m jealous ’cause Warren DeMartini did your dishes for six years instead of mine?” Can’t be. But no big deal, you know, ’cause C.J.’s totally a lawyer or a yoga instructor or whatever now and Reb is in Whitesnake so we’ve absolutely got it covered.

Long story short, I see Pearcy again about an hour later in the upstairs bar and he’s giving me the hairy eyeball like I just shot his dog or something. He’s got some fruity fuckin’ pink cocktail in one hand and half a mozzarella stick in the other, and he’s just sitting there with some skank who probably has like three grandkids at home. Just mad-doggin’ me hardcore, dude. I’m about to roll over there all, “Look, bro—I’m tryin’ really hard not to make a gay AIDS joke here, but when I get through with you, you’re gonna be thinkin’ your boy Robbin took the easy way out.” I mean, the nerve of this fuckin’ mope, am I right?

But then, and I swear to Christ this actually happened, he jams the half a mozzarella stick down the front of his pants, pulls his dick out, and pisses neon green all over the floor. Then he skulls his drink and cruises downstairs so fast that the security dudes don’t even know what to do with themselves.

Here’s the clincher, though: As I’m hoofing it back to the whip with whatsherface from Ass Invaders 9, I catch a glimpse of him peeking out from behind a Dumpster. So I immediately start yelling at him, right? “I see you, you motherfucker! I see you!” At this point he’s not budging, I mean like not even fuckin’ flinching, so I move on him, just howling my fuckin’ face off. By now I’m making a total fuckin’ scene, and whatsherface just hubcabs without a word. I’m within like six feet of the Dumpster now, and then poof—gone. Pearcy is nowhere to be found.

So now I’m totally freaked out, right? I get in the whip and my head is just spinning. I peel off down the Strip, hit the 101 and all I can think about is this motherfucker, just looking at me like … and here’s where I kinda realize why I’m so fuckin’ upset, but it was like he was looking into my soul. And that’s a weird feeling, dude. Trust me.

Anyway, I get back to the pad, and you’re not gonna fuckin’ believe this shit, but Pearcy is there. Sitting on my front steps in Canoga fuckin’ Park. Don’t ask me how he got there—I don’t even have a fuckin’ fraction of a guess on that one. But I do know that the only other car on the street is Old Man MacAvoy’s crusty brown beater. By now, you know, I’m not even aggro about it anymore. I just wanna know what’s up, ’cause the shit is just too weird, right? And look, I’ll admit it, dude. I’m a little nervous. I mean, how the shit did he beat me home? So he stands up, he’s looking straight at me, and he goes, “What would you know about it anyway, asshole?” And then he was gone, dude. Thin air, just like that.

So, I guess what I’m asking you is: Should I be worried?

This bullshit originally appeared in the April 2010 issue of Decibel magazine.

The Year Of The Tiger

As of February 15^th, 2010, it’s officially the Year of the Tiger. This has been confirmed by the local Chinese. More specifically—and according to their 12-year, five-element (earth, fire, water, metal, wood) calendar cycle—it’s the Year of the Metal Tiger. Again, this is what the local Chinese tell us. One might be inclined to think this bodes well for the readers of Decibel magazine. But the last two tiger years, 1986 and 1998, were pretty much polar opposites as far as actual metal was concerned.

Even though 1986 was technically a Fire Tiger year, that flaming zodiacal feline had a heart of solid steel. Read the pivotal release schedule and, like, weep: Master Of Puppets (March 2); Peace Sells…But Who’s Buying? (July 20); Orgasmatron (August 9); Somewhere In Time (September 29) and Reign In Blood (October 7).

1986 was also the year the Melvins debuted with Six Songs. It was the year the Cro-Mags tore the Lower East Side a new one with Age Of Quarrel. King Diamond unleashed their full-length debut, Fatal Portrait. Death cranked out their last demo, Mutilation, before finally debuting on wax the following year. Let’s not forget Possessed’s Beyond The Gates, Sepultura’s Morbid Visions or Dark Angel’s Darkness Descends. Meanwhile, Mayhem recorded their first demo, Pure Fucking Armageddon. Napalm Death recorded the first half of Scum. Saint Vitus recorded Born Too Late, though it wouldn’t be released for more than a year. And Repulsion recorded Horrified, which would remain unreleased for three years.

Then there’s the most metal movie of the ’80s, River’s Edge. Though it didn’t hit US theaters until May of 1987, it was shot in ’86 and technically debuted in August of that year at the Montreal World Film Festival. Complete with a Metal Blade soundtrack boasting four Slayer jams, a Fates Warning song and the unstoppable Hallow’s Eve cut “Lethal Tendencies” (arguably the precursor to Obituary’s entire musical aesthetic), it was also the only film that year to feature copious weed use, heavy drinking, at least one totally naked dead girl and Dennis Hopper rocking a prosthetic leg. And yeah: He ate so much pussy that year, his beard looked like a glazed donut.

Of course, 1986 wasn’t all peaches and cream and glazed donuts: Thin Lizzy main man Phil Lynott passed away on January 4—technically not the Year of the Tiger, which didn’t officially begin (according to the local Chinese) until February 9^th, but still. Cliff Burton’s untimely demise occurred on September 27^th. Priest released Turbo. Van Halen did their first album with Sammy Hagar. Black Flag went tits up. Black Sabbath was essentially Tony Iommi’s vanity project, with Glenn Hughes replacing fellow Deep Purple alum Ian Gillan at the mic on Seventh Star, an album that had a song—technically a Black Sabbath song—called “No Stranger To Love.” Meanwhile, Ozzy blew out his hair and went all “Shot In The Dark” on us.

Compare the above awesomeness (minus the last paragraph) to the metal landscape of 1998. Slayer released their worst album, Diabolus In Musica. Metallica grunted out a double album of covers, Garage Inc. Motörhead released Snake Bite Love—not terrible, but not Orgasmatron. Maiden’s Virtual XI doesn’t even deserve to be in the same sentence with Somewhere In Time (and yet, there it is). Meanwhile, Max Cavalera gave Sepultura the finger and graced us with the first Soulfly album. Van Halen finally ditched Sammy Hagar… for Gary Cherone. Sabbath’s original lineup reunited, but a new album never materialized—mercifully, it seems. And Priest were in no better shape than they were a dozen years before, farting out a live album (’98 Live Meltdown) with Ripper Owens at the helm.

In their fetal stages in ’86, the classic American death metal bands were bumming us out by ’98. Cannibal Corpse bequeathed the ho-hum Gallery Of Suicide. Obituary released a posthumous live album appropriately entitled Dead. David Vincent had split Morbid Angel, leaving them to record Formulas Fatal To The Flesh with Steve Tucker. Death released their swansong, The Sound Of Perseverance. Being perhaps better attuned to the significance of cosmic movements, most of the major black metal bands (Darkthrone, Mayhem, Immortal, Burzum, Emperor) didn’t bother to release albums in 1998.

The plus side was minimal: The first Queens Of The Stone Age album came out in ’98. Sleep’s Jerusalem finally saw the light of day. Converge released When Forever Comes Crashing. Dillinger Escape Plan released Under The Running Board. Spiritual Beggars released their best album, Mantra III. Iron Monkey’s Our Problem came out, as did Electric Wizard’s Supercoven EP, Buzzov*en’s final studio album and Scissorfight’s Balls Deep. The best movie of the year was The Big Lebowski—not even vaguely metal, but well worth mentioning in a year with so little going for it.

What this means for our current Year of the Tiger is anyone’s guess. For whatever reason, the local Chinese remain mum on the subject.

This bullshit originally appeared in the March 2010 issue of Decibel magazine.

The Music Of Decline

Decaying states and men ripe for doom do not, of course, lack music either, but their music is not serene.
—Herman Hesse, The Glass Bead Game, 1943

Ladies and gentlemen, the fabled doomsday may yet be upon us. Mayan 2012 prophecies and the inane ravings of Alaska’s ex-governor (and her Christian fundamentalist ilk) not withstanding, the aberrations that have appeared in the filament of our daily lives are too numerous to count and too obvious to ignore. Here at Decibel magazine, the signs are more or less clear. The vast majority of the “music” being churned out at an alarming rate by artists of the musical and “con-” variety is severely lacking in those qualities that one might attribute to music or even “art.” There is no need to name names. Fingering the individual culprits would not only take forever (they are multiplying and reproducing as we *speak*); such a task would also prove pointless. The system itself is broken, perhaps irreparably so. The music of decline has sounded.

We need only to look to Herman Hesse, the late, great philosopher and poet, for confirmation. Back in 1943, at the height of World War II, a full five years before Ozzy Osbourne was even swimming in his dad’s ballbag, Hesse foresaw the pox that vexes and blights us. That was the year the Nobel Prize-winning author’s futuristic novel The Glass Bead Game, alternately known as Magister Ludi, was first published in Switzerland. (Hesse’s clairvoyance may stretch back even further—he began writing the book in 1931.) “The ‘music of decline,’ has sounded, as in the wonderful Chinese fable,” Hesse wrote. “Like a thrumming bass on the organ, its reverberations faded slowly out over decades; its throbbing could be heard in the corruption of schools, periodicals, and universities, in melancholia and insanity among those artists and critics who could still be taken seriously; it raged as untrammeled and amateurish overproduction in all the arts.”

Hesse’s compelling prediction obviously speaks to a number of no less important symptoms, but for our purposes, it is this “untrammeled and amateurish overproduction” that concerns us here today. He continues: “If music is not serene, people grumble and life is deranged. All this arises from mistaking the nature of music and seeking only tempestuous tonal effects. Therefore, the music of a well-ordered age is calm and cheerful, and so is its government. The music of a restive age is excited and fierce, and its government is perverted.”

Have truer words ever been spoken, ladies and gentlemen, in regards to our ongoing state of affairs? One could argue convincingly that our government has been corrupt since its inception, but when we overlay the timeworn narrative of rock n’ roll, starting with its derivation from blues and early and abating perception as “immoral” (a la jazz) and its subsequent offshoot into heavy metal, we arrive at a junction where the history of our nation and that of its music become inextricably intertwined. (See: the rise of Elvis under Eisenhower; the British Invasion under Johnson; the rise of Hendrix/Joplin/Morrison, as survivors of their counterpart in abrupt mortality, Kennedy, under Johnson and Nixon; the decline of Elvis under Nixon, the rise of hardcore and thrash under Reagan, etc.) Fast forward to the ’90s under Bill Clinton: As the middle class idles in obesity and disengaged happiness, the Disneyfication of America ensues via the saccharine pop stylings of the Backstreet Boys and Britney Spears while heavy metal debases itself as “nu-metal” via Korn and Limp Bizkit. The latter prove to be harbingers of decline under the next administration—not of music, but rather of the nation itself. Enter 9/11, Afghanistan, Iraq, the Patriot Act, etc. Meanwhile, extreme music gets fucking awesome during the Dubya years and the increasingly robust Internet Age with its attendant blogosphere, though now the coverage of said music (save for Decibel, of course) becomes more scattershot than ever. Hesse foresaw this as well: “A torrent of zealous scribbling poured out over every ephemeral incident, and in quality, assortment, and phraseology all this material bore the mark of mass goods rapidly and irresponsibly turned out.”

As a nation, it appears we have made yet another cultural flip-flop under the patronage of Barack Obama. While our political future seems at least somewhat more auspicious, bad music has again proliferated on both sides of the mainstream/underground divide, polluting the pages of publications both print (sadly, even of Decibel, though the offenders are generally called out as such) and digital. What does this mean for our beloved heavy metal? And in terms of America’s future as the lone superpower cowering in the long economic and military shadow of China? Again, Hesse gave us the answer almost 70 years ago: “We recall that in the legendary China of the Old Kings, music was accorded a dominant place in state and court. It held that if music throve, all was well with culture and morality and with the kingdom itself… If music decayed, that was taken as a sure sign of the downfall of the regime and state. The poets told horrific fables about the forbidden, diabolic, heaven-offending keys, such as the Tsing Shang key, and Tsing Tse, the ‘music of decline’; no sooner were these wicked notes struck in the Royal Palace than the sky darkened, the walls trembled and collapsed, and kingdom and sovereign went to their doom.”

This bullshit originally appeared in the February 2010 issue of Decibel magazine.