23 Beats Off

Fugazi
In On the Kill Taker

I tried so hard to count the beats in this one to figure out where, exactly, it was 23 beats off. I figured that maybe it was at the end of the song where the feedback comes and the only "normal" music sound you hear is the snare. That's not it. So, for years, I figured the title came from "lazy band syndrome" where they just rearranged a previous title. Here, it would have been Two Beats Off from Repeater.

Then the interwebs came along. And I ignored it. Then the tubes got bigger, and I got an email address. Soon, the "net" was all encompassing, and even noted technophobic bands who all live in a house without electricity and eat only raw rice had their own websites. So did Fugazi. Every band that had ever sold more than 200 records also had a tribute site. It was here that I found a page where fans could give their interpretations of Fugazi's obtuse lyrics. Here I saw, for the first time, the Holy Grail of interpretations.

Y'see, Ian was talking about Magic Johnson (heh, it's a johnson that's magic) contracting AIDS, ostensibly from putting his peener in an infected roadwhore. Michael Jordan, number 23 himself, kept away from the hoo-ers by beating off in his hotel room while on the road. Get it? Further, it was consensus opinion on the site that this was correct.

The lyrics in question:
a name
i recognize that name
it was at the center of some ticker tape parade the lead story,
a fine example
a name,
a name
a name i recognize that name
it was at the center of some magnifying glass the lead story,
a fine example
a name,
a name
he used to pretend he was fighting some war somewhere
now everything depends on fighting some war
he never thought he'd be an exclamation point
a demonstration of his disease
a punctuation mark
a household name with hiv
still, it's just still sound
Yeah, I see that.


Okay, given the timing, I can buy the whole Magic Johnson (heh) angle, but I don't get the Jordan angle. Sure, 23 is his number, but so what? It also belonged to John Williamson, who's dead now. Why can't it be about him? Hell, JW had even had his number retired by this point. This could go on, but I'll end here with a little bit of posturing. Learn the lyrics, sure, but leave the interpretation alone. 'Cuz when you're wrong, you ruin it for everybody and lend the Colbert air of truthiness to the proceedings.


Bonus fun factoid from Wikipedia: IOTKT was the first Fugazi album to chart on Billboard, at 153.

Cut Up

Ned's Atomic Dustbin
God Fodder

Okay, by now I've noticed my tendency to use the word "revolution" to talk about somewhat mundane musical movements (with a certain amount of bandwagon jumping) that were important to me. So, you know what, Ned's was part of the seminal, early '90s 2-bass players revolution. Which included GvsB and, uh, anyone? (Dianogah is an answer) Fuck it, I still like it, so here goes.

Speaking of mundane, and listening to this track confirms it, Ned's Atomic Dustbin always seemed to have the song topic of "My life, let me show you it". I swear that at least one of their songs was about walking down the street or something. This one seems to be about a lover's tiff and all of the baggage that brings. Real out there, huh?

What's with all of the rhetorical questions today?

So, one bass player filled the traditional role of rhythm and low end, while the other played more melody and high end. This was necessary because the guitar, played by someone named Rat, sounded like a buzzsaw. And not a good buzzsaw, but one that seems to be engineered to keep you from noticing that good ol' Rat wasn't really the most inventive, or even competent, practitioner out there. The drums were still drums, nothing weird there.

Finally, I want to give a shout out to Ladd, whom I think was from Charleston. You really did look like the singer from Ned's. It's all in the chin. "But he's so ugly", you said. "Mmmmm", I believe was my answer.

Skulls

The Misfits
Walk Among Us

Who doesn't like The Misfits? Tiny little Glenn Danzig singing about scary stuff while simultaneously influencing legions of tykes to pick up guitars and wear eye makeup. It's really too bad he didn't start wearing the fringed, fingerless gloves until he went solo. Think how badass that would be to see on every scare-core band out there. Well, if there are any left. Has anyone seen Ink & Dagger lately?

Lesson #1 for today-Covering The Misfits in a slow, ironic manner is not Step 2 in the 3-step profit cycle. Case in point-Evan Dando's obliteration of this song on the execrable Favorite Spanish Dishes EP. You can't just sing a line like "Demon I am...", you have to growl it out. David Pajo did it as well, but I can't remember which track, so I'll skip it.

Lesson #2-Sometimes it's best to make music when you have no idea what you are doing. According to Michael Azerrad in his book, Our Band Could Be Your Life, the initial musical genesis of The Misfits was the result of reading about this newfangled punk trend and how scary it was, then making up music they thought would fit this. Based on nothing but their imagination of what scary music entailed, The Misfits were born. Okay, so that story is probably apocryphal, as similar stories have been attached to Mercury Rev and Belle & Sebastian, but it's still fun to imagine that happening, right?

Lesson #3-I find that when imagining comic book dork Glenn Danzig growing up in New Jersey, it helps to transpose the image of Silent Bob from the Kevin Smith movies, but shorter. Hope that helps you as well.
Update from the learn something new every day file: Ink & Dagger are long gone and not coming back. Dead lead singers tend to do that

The Way it Ends

Seaweed
Weak

The irony of the "SubPop sound" is that the bands on SubPop never really had a unifying sound. The closest thing that would qualify would be the fact that they did not have huge recording budgets that people were used to from major labels at the time. All independent music sounded the same to those people. Therefore, any SubPop sound was the product of the bands using similar recording studios and engineers rather than all of the bands playing the same type of music.

Seaweed were probably the second unluckiest band of the Seattle Revolution after Mudhoney. The difference, though, is that Mudhoney was the poster child for whatever Grunge was, while Seaweed were just a couple of years too early. Weak was released in 1991. Dookie came along three years later. The template for both albums is essentially the same with the Green Day album being more juvenile. So, in addition to being too early, Seaweed was also too mature for most listeners when the pop punk became popular with the kids.

Being passed over never stopped the band. They did sign to Hollywood Records, but that album went nowhere. As recently as 2002, Merge released Actions and Indications, and how the hell did that happen? Merge, really? It was well received, but the time and chance for Seaweed had gone. Weak remains an awesome 30 or so minutes of speedy pop punk with a slight emo edge that the kids all enjoy. Seriously, go pick it up, you shan't be disappointed.

Don't Bring Me Flowers

Godflesh
Pure

Oops, the metal side of me gets out and gets a chance to play. I'll admit it, unironically, that I get a charge out of some of the heavy stuff. A lot of it has been jettisoned over the years, but half of my Godflesh collection stays intact.

Godflesh was a two person, one machine act in the studio. Live, they'd take along a real life drummer who was good enough to be a machine. When I saw them, it was in a sweaty, cramped club in Columbia, SC. Rockafella's was better known locally for the owner's penchant to spend the club's profit on cocaine than for anything else. Still, over the years, I saw some great bands come through there.

The crowd on the night I saw Godflesh was a weird one. Instead of the local metalheads coming out, it was the burnout section of the indie crowd that made an appearance. It turns out that Streetcleaner had been a relative hit on the local college station a few years prior, and that these were the people left in the area. Christbait Rising and Like Rats got them all hot and bothered, while the better (I think) tunes off of Pure were ignored.

The highlight, for me, of the show was that I spied the setlist only during the last track. I saw that they had no planned encore (after 2 or so hours, why should they?), and told my friend that we should leave since we had a 2 hour drive and work awaiting us. Rockafella's had no backstage, as the stage was at the front of the building. Bigger bands, the ones with the tour buses would park the bus right at the front of the building. When we left, we passed Justin Broadrick coming out of the club and jumping into the bus, a distance of about 10 feet. Unusually for me, I spoke up. "Great show", I said. "Cheers, mate", he replied, with a big, sweaty guy smile. That made my night.

Gah. Remembering this story makes me lament missing the Jesu/Isis tour. I bet that was a kickass show. Oh well. Getting older and having responsibility sucks sometimes. But not as much as you young'uns are thinking right now.