Always The Quiet One

britpop killed one of my favorite bands. everyone had to rip off some english band from the sixties so as to project this air of "cool britania." it's cool, i guess. outside of blur's cheekily "song #2", no one wanted to admit an influence from the former colonies. the wedding present broke up. david gedge got married and formed cinerama, a vastly boring band. but david was happy.
i guess.
then he got divorced. i quote (inaccurately of course) "the difference between breaking up with someone then and breaking up with someone now is that, now, i have to sell a house."
the wedding present reformed and recorded the album Take Fountain. i didn't care for it all that much at first. i even missed seeing them at emo's (and i'll always have megan to till me how much i fucked up on that one). now i can't stop listening to it. and all you jawbreaker fans, this album is the closest you're gonna come to follow up to "Dear You."
anyway, these are the reasons why you should own The Wedding Present's "Take Fountain."







and, i'm afraid a recurring favorite, the true jam off the album





i'm not lying. buy this album.

A Pretty Girl Never Lights Her Own Cigarette

i remember painting the room yellow. hanging the christmas lights along the top of the walls. where they connected with the ceilings. drinking shiner and the occasional tequila shot. taking the occasional hit from the bong. of all the colors in the house, i have to take credit for the yellow. i was at the time caught up in oscar wilde, robert w. chambers, and all the other late victorian/early edwardian writers. an empire at its prime yet anticipating its fall. the color yellow represented for them decadence. and decadence was an idea, a theme, that, privately, i attempted to invoke. or did i? i'm not sure anymore. sometimes i feel as if i am projecting backwards my reminisces. sometimes i mistake yesterday for tomorrow thus letting my tenses fling forth out of apathy. or maybe antipathy. caught up in the throes of obsession. desire thwarted yet never mitigated. a continual open sore that it seemed only powders could attempt to salve. a scab continually peeled back so as to feel the healing begin again and again. i wonder sometimes where everyone else has gone. we were all the best of friends yet never speak anymore. as if seeing or speaking to each other again will conjure up all of our collective misdeeds; that the wrong word spoken at the wrong time will make everything that happened then true; that we'll all be locked in a past that has become our future. if we can collectively ignore everything we did, everything we said, everything we thought we could still hope to have a future.
who am i kidding. there is no future here. this perpetual present is wearing me down. there truly is no tomorrow just as there truly is no yesterday. i feel it in my bones just as much as i feel it in my soul. each new pleasure is tainted by the taste of what could have been; of what was. i painted that room yellow. i painted it with all my dreams, hopes, desires, and everything that defined me. i long to believe that it's still there, underneath the whitewash we used to paint over it.

once there was a way to get back home...

as always i'm looking for something to say; something to write about. and, as always, like a prophet in the old testament, i'm left wanting; and i'm never gonna drive like jehu.
i've officially grown old. new people have appeared at my house and i'd rather they left than get drunk with them.
bastards.
i'm making this up as i go along.
my retrospective ass.

they should be killed. i'm just saying, that's all.

so.
yeah, i've been away for awhile (or is it it a while? i can never keep it straight. or strait. fuck me.) anyway, i took some well deserved time off from the internet (i.e. the internet i've been stealing quit working for me consistently enough for me to waste more than about two hours trying to get and stay connected) and did things like read books and realize that, with the right set of antennas, i can get more than one channel.
"ohhhhh, sweet more than one channel......"(drooling)
so i'm back with just a quick bit. a link of sorts. from Cracked magazine (the poor man's MAD or also one of the best sites on this whole interweb) a list of the six endangered species that just aren't endangered enough.

i quote (from #6, the GoliathBird Eating Spider:

As if a giant spider that can bring down a moderate-sized flying animal wasn't bad enough, it's one of the "hissing bastard spiders" (that's actually its full scientific name), the creepiest creature to exist outside of a horror novel. At this point, evolution clearly just started piling in everything nasty that could possibly fit: Its spit can dissolve flesh down to the bone AND it can shoot invisible hairs that cut your eyes and mouth. While the "intelligent designer" theory has lost steam of late, the "sadistic bastard creator" theory is single-handedly supported by the existence of this creature.


No messing around here--there is an entire part of the brain designed to keep us the fuck away from spiders, the "arachnid response" to anything horrifically alien that must be destroyed. The only reason this abomination isn't already extinct is we can't find enough Navy SEALS prepared to go near the damned things. Heroes? Psh, the only reason those bastards dismantle nukes is because the "Jobs Available" list at the base reads: a) Single-handedly engage the entire terrorist forces of Mujhadikkaklikkastan or
b) Seriously guys, one of us needs to kill those fucking spiders. But I've hurt my leg. Signed, Rambo

Speed of Blood

Gallhammer - Ill Innocence


As one of the few Waterloo employees who's spent about an equal amount of time amongst both the the metal and the indie-rock communities, I've never understood why the two just don't get down and make love more often. I mean, when i was a kid, crossover was all the phase. Bands like, D.R.I., S.O.D., and Corrosion of Conformity were showing just how much metal and hardcore had in common. It was fun. I mean, hell, we all know that it was J Mascis's band Deep Wound that inspired a bunch of chaps in Birmingham to form Napalm Death which, in turn, helped inspire a bunch of dudes in Florida to create death metal, right? I could play Celtic Frost's first album to someone who'd never heard it before and tell them it was an eighties hardcore band and I'm sure they'd believe it. Hell, I remember when I bought my first Celtic Frost tape it was only because I'd saved up money to buy Fearless Iranians From Hell (awesome San Antonio, TX crossover band) and someone else beat me to it (irony of ironies, that guy eventually became my roommate and is currently playing bass in Austin's great alt-country band, Brothers and Sisters.)
Anyway, this all brings me to Japan's Gallhammer and their second album "Ill Innocence." Taking their inspiration from the proto-Celtic Frost band Hellhammer and British crossover band Amebix, these three Japanese women have forged an album that, though the press refer to them as "black metal" ( a term that has increasingly come to describe less and less), stands head and shoulders above all their "fellow" revivalists today (I'm looking right at you Municipal Waste; a cut-off denim vest does not a classic album make.) With a dash of Oakland's Neurosis (also influenced by Amebix), a bit of what I hear is Dischord era hardcore, and, giving the press their due, some black metal vocals all laid over a simple crossover structure, you have a band that, based on how many times I've listened to it, should have been my number one album of the year in 2007.

Bop Til You Drop

february is now reaching its expiration date; the smell is a bit stale. the rain, the wind, the cold and hail all conspire to keep me locked in this cage. i shaved my beard and a sink full of hair clogging the drains means that it must be saturday and time for another installment of "headbanger's ball."


let's kick things off tonight with a band called Drunk Horse. Born and raised in the swamps of oakland, ca, these intrepid souls kepp rocking even though it seems as if no one's listening. their last album "In Tongues" was fucking awesome, made my top ten for 2005 and sold just a little to the better side of nothing. Already out of print, it can be gotten for a steal on amazon.
this little clip is from 2004 and, after you watch it, will understand why it makes a perfect introduction:




so anyway, elijah's gotta couple of kids and so drunk horse exists in that weird nebulous "are we a local band or are we a touring band cause we never tour anymore?" state. so cyrus, bass player extrordinaire fills his time now in kemado records' Saviours. Made up of members of hardcore band yaphet kotto, these kids have made the first album in serious contention for my top ten list of 2008 with their album "Into Abaddon."





so, anyway, i'm a big fan of anthrax. whether as a tool of terrorism, a killer song (see above) or one of "the big three" back in the eighties, i'm all cheer. so, for all of you fans of "an acute disease in humans and animals that is caused by the bacterium Bacillus anthracis " (wikipedia) this block is for you:






anyway, we all seem to have been asleep for about ten to fifteen years and as we've woken up, so have all the bands from days gone past; some for bad, some for mediocre, and some for good. At The Gates, of course, is for the good.



anyway, i had an idea for what would come next when i chose the last clip. but, of course, we're all slaves to the fates. i couldn't find a good darkest hour clip (the best american at the gates tribute band) but i di find this



i don't really care what other folks have to say. you guys can all go off in your little corner and argue yourselves blue. in my world, the greatest thrash song written:



and we close this night off with a song that, though not "metal" meant just as much to me musically and, in a metal sense, very visually. i think it may have been the video i saw either before or after the first time i saw "another state of mind" on USA; i'm soory but rick springfield is punk rock in my mind

like willie nelson and julio iglesias once said.....

so i'm slingin' it solo like a kingsly amis character about 2/3s through whatever book it is you're reading.
but that doesn't mean i can't wish you and your loved ones a happy valentine's day.