Monday, January 8, 2024

THE NEXT DAY: Track by Track

review'd by yr roving reporter Shaun Lawton 
  (for the Oscillating Oculus





1. The Next Day. 
Right out of the cage this song snarls and shreds and builds intensity until the breaking point with db's vox assuring us "Here I am not quite dying, my body left to rot in a hollow tree, its branches throwing shadows on the gallows for me" and if you listen closely to the remaining lyrics about paper bodies and pain and diseases and purple-headed priests and the great line "they know God exists for the Devil told them so", it all adds up to one killer fucking track knocked out of the proverbial ballpark for me. Repeat listenings improve this and every last track on the album, I know because I can't stop listening to it.

2. Dirty Boys.
Then we segue into a unique sounding song for Bowie. This is a low down sleazy dirty saxophone dirge with remarkable guitar tones and angular rhythms. With lyrics about buying feather hats and stealing cricket bats and smashing windows, making noise, and running with dirty boys. . . what's not to fucking like?

3. The Stars (Are Out Tonight).
Another rocker knocked out of the park. 3 in a row? Hell we've barely scratched the surface of the new classic shit, and after listening to this one many times (it's a grower) I've determined this is the 1st 'classic' potential radio single with enough melodic catchiness and professional groovedom to please everybody. When he croons about Brigitte, Jack, Kate and Brad behind their sunglasses "gleaming like blackened sunshine" we are led to understand a brilliant poetic metaphor contrasting the celestial kingdom with Hollywood's and the public's overt glorification of celebrityhood ... a topic that no one knows better from personal experience than David Bowie.

4. Love is Lost.
A moody song that I've heard from more than one 20-something year old is their absolute favorite. Personally I can think of better tracks off this record but it pleases me to know that our younger generations adore this tune. I like it a lot myself because it's haunting and has a strange arrangement. Realize now that Bowie's lyrics throughout this album are nothing less than stellar. Beginning with these refrains "It's the darkest hour, you're twenty-two, the voice of youth, the hour of dread, the darkest hour and your voice is new, love is lost, lost is love, your country's new, your friends are new, your house and even your eyes are new, your maid is new and your accent too, but your fear is as old as the world" we are treated with more of the sharpest and incisive lyrics from Bowie's career, and that is saying something.

5. Where Are We Now?
I'll never forget hearing this song for the first time on db's b-day earlier this year, and sitting before my work computer utterly mesmerized by the equally brilliant video. I had to put up with the typical kneejerk bored reactionism from a host of dullards that this tune was "boring" or "melancholy" etc. and YEAH it's melancholy as all getout and I'll tell you right now it equals and sometimes surpasses my favorite tracks off the entire album. It is that good. The way it builds slowly to the epiphany of "As long as there's Sun, As long as there's Sun / As long as there's Rain, As long as there's Rain / As long as there's Fire, As long as there's Fire / As long as there's Me / As long as there's You" brings tears to my eyes every time I hear it. Truly a phenomenal lead-in track which cleverly manages to defiantly refute the seething masses' apathy, I consider that move of first releasing this "downer" of a tune (which evolves into quite the opposite in fact ... much like the paradox of existence) as truly brilliant. A "check-mate" if you will right from the start. Where Are We Now? truly shines as one of David Bowie's greatest songs ever written, in my opinion.

6. Valentine's Day.
What can I say? Well there is no doubt David Bowie's got something to say. I will never tire of listening to this song for the remainder of my life ... perhaps it has something to do with the fact it's release coincides with the arrival of my newborn first son, with his "tiny face" and "scrawny hands" and "icy heart", (not to mention we almost named him Valentine, actually) ... or maybe it's merely the fact this is the best radio pop song David Bowie has recorded since . . . . I just don't know when. Easily since 1980's Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps) famous and everlasting track "Ashes To Ashes". I'm going to go ahead and dig into this song here for posterity, defending Bowie's lyrical intent and meaning behind it. With the subtle yet striking opening lines "Valentine told me who's to go / Feelings he's treasured most of all / The teachers and the football star" he sets up what in my rich experience of listening to rock music for the past 35 years is one of the most devastating critiques of American culture I've had the pleasure listening to. This song is my #1 choice for the next single and definitely my favorite in terms of sheer pop catchiness and melody. From the opening drum taps to the introductory guitar riff and on through to the glorious end, the song Valentine's Day may be the most profoundly stated song in the history of modern rock'n'roll to me. It is a very brave statement in defense of generations of kids bullied by our increasingly out of touch society's penchant towards encouraging the cultivation of rape culture and overt machismo. Never in my life have I been so moved by the intent behind the meaning of a song. Not only is it the catchiest pop song on the album, but that fact (along with the Yeah, yeah's of the backing chorus championing our titular hero) perfectly contrasts the dark underpinnings of the theme. Add this song to the growing list of shooter-songs (Boomtown Rats "I Don't Like Mondays," Pearl Jam's "Jeremy" and Korn's "Thoughtless" immediately leap to mind) and you have the unparalleled leader of the pack in my opinion. As far as I'm concerned, David Bowie has remarkably achieved the final word on this theme with his hit single Valentine's Day.

7. If You Can See Me.
And now we come to another well-played segue into a brooding, dark song filled with postmodern tension. Returning to his "Big Brother" roots with the eerie refrain "If you can see me / I can see you", this track is yet another masterful studio recording featuring great lyrics such as "I will take your lands and all that lays beneath, the dust of cold flowers, prison of dark ashes, I will slaughter your kind who descend from belief, I am the spirit of greed, a lord of theft, I'll burn all your books and the problems they make" . . .really a frightening tune (if you can manage to get your head inside it) even as it gets it's head inside you. By this point of the album, we are honestly scoring 7 out of 7 on the tracks list, and what makes it even better is the diversity of styles and sounds making each song unique, yet flowing into each other in a manner that only one who's mastered the art of conceptual rock albums could achieve.

8. I'd Rather Be High.
By this point in the album, the critical cynic in me is just dying to throw you readers out there a condemnation or two, just to appease your bitter little hearts. Unfortunately for the legion of mindless haters out there (yet joyously fortunate for the rest of us) I cannot offer a single droplet of disdain about this, the eighth track off The Next Day. I'd Rather Be High is as glorious an anti-war statement as I have ever heard, simply jam-packed with beautiful elements. We are looking at yet another catchy single easily as great as any other from this album, in fact whenever I listen to it I become so enraptured that I am immediately swept up in it to the point I believe with all my heart it is the best song, period. From the gorgeously endless wavy rhythm of the guitars to the incredible biting and beautiful lyrics, how could anyone with ears and a brain deny the power and majesty here? "I'd rather be high (I'd rather be high), I'd rather be flyyyyyying (I'd rather be flying), I'd rather be dead (or out of my head) than training these guns on those men in the sand, I'd rather be high ..." quite possibly amounts to the sentiment I sympathize the most with from the entire album. And just when you think this tune has shot it's load, you ain't heard nothing yet until you hear the sixty-six year old David Bowie croon with as much tricky passion as he's mustered in generations "I'm seventeen and my looks can prove it, I'm so afraid that I will lose it, I'd rather smoke and phone my ex be pleading for some teenage sex, yeah." See what he did there? Yet another example of his mastery of fiction into song. By shades and degrees Bowie reveals himself as a genuine author of fictional scenarios and invented protagonists via the medium of music. If this song is not a triumph, then I don't know what is. Tied with Valentine's Day as the perfect single for this day and age. To think the Thin White Duke yet speaks for today's teen generation during his ripening years is proof in the pudding for me that he is not fading gradually away; far from it. The decade he spent laying low has proven to be the wisest move the 70s superstar could possibly have made. By this point in the album, if you are not entirely convinced that David Bowie is at the peak of his powers as a genuine artist, then all I can think of to say is ... you're not paying attention. The underscoring theme of The Next Day is the ironic contrast between the lingering perception that his glory days (as Ziggy Stardust, etc.) are in the past, with the lingering implication that nothing could be further from the truth.

9. Boss Of Me.
Although it took me longer to appreciate this song fully, I do recall that the opening refrains grabbed me right away; "Tell me when you're sad, I wanna make it cool again, I know you're feeling bad, tell me when you're cool again." That little snippet caught my interest from the get-go, but it took longer to groove to what I now consider an awesome chorus "Who'd have ever thought of it, who'd have ever dreamed, that a small town girl like you would be the boss of me?" Bowie's sardonic lyrics never fail to amaze me, and of course it's the manner in which he sings them that lends them their particular twisted meaning. It may have taken a dozen listens to finally click, and now I can't get enough of this song. At this point the album is still clocking in at 100% . . . and I am amazed.

10. Dancing Out In Space.
Now we come to a real curve ball. (I'll admit to not liking this song too much the first few times I listened to it.) And I'll even admit that the first dozen or so times I listened to the album, there were a few tracks which reminded me of outtakes from his notoriously panned '87 (and cry) album Never Let Me Down. And to be honest ... this tenth track let me down, somewhat. But check this out. After hearing the song a few times, the bassline became so infectious, I could not deny it's inherent danceability, after repeat listenings, I became impressed by the thought that late-night clubs across metropolitan cities on Earth would be playing this new Bowie song to packed houses of dancing partygoers, and my indifference to it has now morphed into more of an appreciation. For one, there's no denying it's the snappiest song off the record for cryin' out loud! (I'm just not into snappy songs as much these days, since I stopped going to clubs years ago.) But I'll say this much, listening to Dancing Out In Space brings the old urge back and makes me dream of the good old days when we went clubbing and all the world was our oyster. If this song doesn't snap you out of your trance, I guess you're better off dead.

11. How Does The Grass Grow?
Blood blood blood ... that's how. Now we return to the more serious and brooding side of the album, after having been given some super nice breaks during the last three songs. Featuring one of the most chilling lines in recent memory, "Would you still love me if the clocks could go backwards? The girls would fill with blood and the grass would be green again. Remember the dead, they were so great (some of them). Ya ya ya ya ya ya ya ya ya ... Nya ya ya ya ya ya ya. Where do the boys lie? Mud, mud mud." Here we are eleven cuts deep into Bowie's twenty-fourth studio album, and we are gifted with yet another stunning song. By this point all I can do is shake my head with wonder. If I could talk to David I'd say that I missed him on the scene more than he'd ever know, "waiting with my red eyes and my stone heart". Well I can personally vouch that the ten year wait has been more than worthwhile.

12. You Will Set The World On Fire.
At long last, here it is. The single track off The Next Day that I honestly don't care for too much. Sure, it's got an easy throwaway catchiness to it, but that's exactly why it quickly wears itself thin, for me. (This song comes as closest to sounding like an alternate take from Never Let Me Down. It is perhaps the song which best exemplifies what the cynical side of us most likely expected from Bowie at this late stage of his career.)

13. You Feel So Lonely You Could Die.
If I had one question I could ask David about the meaning behind any one of the songs off The Next Day, it would undoubtedly be "Can you tell us if the the song You Feel So Lonely You Could Die is based on a real person, and if so, who it it, please?" Here is the most grandiose ballad off the album, and it's a bittersweet symphony indeed. With powerful accusations such as "Hidden from your friends, stealing all they knew, lovers thrown in airless rooms, then vile rewards for you" and "But I’m gonna tell, yes I’ve gotta tell, gotta tell the things you’ve said when you’re talking in the dark and I’m gonna tell the things you’ve done when you’re walking through the park” and “there’ll come the assassin’s needle on a crowded train, I’ll bet you feel so lonely you could die” are powerful indictments indeed, but they merely pave the way for the climactic fury of “I can see you as a corpse hanging from a beam, I can read you like a book” all building towards the ultimately satisfying lyrical annihilation of whomever the subject of this inspired ballad is, “Oblivion shall own you, death alone shall love you, I hope you feel so lonely you could die.” Just … wow. This penultimate track surges back 110% and I can’t help if Bowie intentionally put the one throwaway track directly before it, perhaps for added psychological effect. If not, it sure ends up working that way for me.

14. Heat.
The album closes with this slow burner which also took me several listens to fully appreciate. In the end, that’s what I love about this album. Bowie has offered us a challenging listen with a sprinkling of poppy, easy-listening tunes scattered here and there, creating a dynamic and fully realized rock album, the likes of which I haven’t heard from him (much less from a lot of bands today) in many years. When he concludes the album with lines such as “My father ran the prison / I can only love you by hating him more / that’s not the truth, it’s too big a word / He believed that love is theft / love and whores / the theft of love / And I tell myself I don’t know who I am / My father ran the prison / my father ran the prison / But I am a seer / I am a liar / I am a seer / I am a liar” etc., us old school fans are reminded and the new ones are tipped-in that once again he is playing the role of author, here. He has created a brilliant fiction in writing The Next Day. And for me it has been the most engrossing and satisfying rock album of 2013.

In conclusion, 93% of this album (that's 13 out of 14 tracks kids) is the proof in the pudding, so to speak, that Bowie remains in tip-top form at the age of sixty-six, in the year 2013. How cool is that? To think that the proverbial Next Day (today) is in many ways even better than the glorified Olden Days of yore is as welcome a surprise as we could honestly expect. It took me listening to this album for at least a month before it all gelled together for me. You may hate it, love it, leave it or remain indifferent ... I don't care. As a long time appreciator of Bowie the mercurial songwriter, crooner, and uncrowned king of the alternative scene, I could not possibly be more pleased than I am with The Next Day. As solid an album as I could have dreamed. So let there be Another Day ... and the next ... and the next. I am confident he can continue to deliver good music for another several years to come. Yet I also expect he will retire with grace before he indeed may begin to fade away... And on that note, I also expect it's entirely possible this may be the last album. (I only say that because he could not possibly make a grander exit nor have produced a better Swan Song). Still ... Bowie is obviously genetically programmed for boundless energy and creativity. So if he asked me ... I say don't stop now, David! Hell, I'm getting older myself, so I won't even mind if he starts gradually fading away from this pinnacle in his extraordinary career. Generations of people have felt this way since I was in my teens, so I'm going to say it now … we love you, David.








Friday, July 28, 2023

a Convergence of Legends

 by your roving reporter, Thornswrath 

   
                             IV & the Strange Band, July 13, 2023 at Metro Music Hall in Salt Lake City                    
  

   I don't even know where to start, having just gone through a blur of concerts over the last several weeks, beginning with First Aid Kit back in May followed by Future Islands and then Faun Fables opening for Bonnie "Prince" Billy at an intimate, upscale venue in Basalt, Colorado called TACAW.    But it all started three days before that, when I realized one of my dreams by getting to see IV & the Strange Band perform live, on tour with VOLK (also from Nashville) and Detroit rock city's own The Goddamn Gallows, far as I'm concerned the #1 most important and best tour of the year, so sue me.  

       In a year chock full of litigious bastards drooling for more blood and too many amazing and talented artists emerging from every pore and pot hole in the landscape, to say it's difficult keeping up seems to be quite an understatement.   

    But see that's the way it's always been, ne'er mind there are more bands and artists and genres and subgenres of music than ever before, and forget about the internet and how it helps keep track of the ever expanding output.   

     Each of us individuals were born into this life to walk through it in our own footsteps, see it through out own eyes, smell the bullshit through our own nostrils, feel the savage beauty and tender rage surrounding us, and to hear the music where we can find it, if and when we have the time to, for our own edification.   

        That's why I'm here on this wacked, green Earth.  I paid $100 for a booth at this show [Metro Music Hall in SLC, Wed night, July 13, 2023] when it turns out there weren't enough people knowin' about it to have warranted that.  I don't regret a single penny spent.  

    I'd even forgotten that I'd bought three tix - thinking it was only two, lol.  Gareth came with me, and we had a great night out.  The third ticket remained unused, because no one even wandered over to check out what was going on. I would've given it away. The place wasn't full at all, but a just about right sizeable crowd showed up in the Gallows' wake, that it turned out to be a fun and raucous evening.   That third ticket belonged to my best friend Greg Grub, far as I'm concerned.  His spirit was there with us, alright.  This is the dustiest damned show Shaun Grub ever done seen.  The only way it could've gotten dustier is if Drivin'n'Cryin' were playin'.

    
Here's  Coleman,  his face in shadow, which seems appropriate for the first pic.  The first song they played was a new one off the forthcoming album, which later their lap steel slide guitar player Trent let me know is called Hangdog.  I asked him what the name of that first song was, and he said "Diddle."  I was like no way, that's awesome!  

  Later Coleman sang the title track, letting us know it was about his 13 yr old dog.  I'm a tell you something.  We're talking about IV & the Strange Band's sophomore effort here, and it's going to be every bit as good as one could possibly hope to expect. 
*Stay tuned to this blog for more photos of IV & the Gallows etc. 
  

What's going on is, hardly anyone I've spoken with and met knows hide nor hair of Coleman and his amazing new band.  While I'm busy typing this away on my blog, legendary history is being made.   I had all five of them sign  my original yellow vinyl ed. of Southern Circus (I left the vinyl disc safely at home, and brought in the jacket for them to autograph).  I was wearing my original Cancerslug shirt - with the first half of the band's name almost eroded away - the werewolf hunched over a graveyard shirt -- and Coleman said "Nice Cancerslug shirt" to me when we met.  We talked for awhile by the merch stand, and he told me he'd be happy to sign my copy of the album after I brought it in from my car.  See, he's clearly an underground kid still, but even hitting thirty now he's still 100% bonafide underground kid in every way, just like me. It's people like him and Alex Story keeping the real heart of the underground scene alive and beating.  I know there's a lot of others I can't keep up with, but that's just one reason why IV & CS are  two of my favorite bands on the planet right now.  And just today Cancerslug dropped their long awaited and eagerly anticipated Nth album Fucker!   I preordered the CD/Shirt package deal, and it done shipped already so I can't wait for that to arrive.  

     Anyhow, back to the Metro Music Hall for Volk, IV & the Strange Band, and the Goddamn Gallows. I noted while in there, that the only people wearing battle vests with patches all on 'em were Coleman, Mikey Classic and I, pretty much.  Idk some more may have shown up later in the show, but it's getting to be a sort of post Gen-X thing.  I think it's cool, and over he past few weeks I've collected four badass patches to add to my battle jackets. 


See, there's the IV & the Strange Patch, lower left. It's the sickest patch of the bunch. Except lower right we have the Goddamn Gallows pure leather patch, which was five bucks, or ten bucks for their iron on fabric patch.   No contest. 
And the VOLK patch is awesome. That leaves arguably the coolest patch of all time.  I got that Bonnie "Prince" Billy patch directly from Oscar, who worked Will's merch table, and who told me he's the artist for Wolf of the Cosmos, which was for sale on the table.  It turns out I already have all the vinyl being offered, but I bought the patch and these 2 pens that feature Will's head floating upside down to the bottom when you flip the pen, replacing his head with a werewolf's.  Oscar advised me that these were all that was left from five years ago, and their ink had dried up by now.  I bought two anyhow, a blue one and a red one. Then Oscar told me he was the one who designed the BpB patch.  I told him its really a brilliant design.  That patch and the two pens are great mementoes from what turned out to be an unparalleled and terrific show.  And that's the story of how I earned four merit badge rock'n'roll patches during the summer of '23.  The long, strange trip moving down this road feeling fine continues.   I've got a lot more music experiences to relate, both live in concert and in the form of listening to studio albums, usually on vinyl but not always, for my imaginary readers to anticipate here on this blog, so hold out for that as I try to get all my shit together in this life whose white water rapids are only increasing in turbulence as the waters of this raging river continue to rise.  

    After the show, I asked Will if I could take a selfie with him.  He smiled and easily obliged me, so here we are together after a most fabulous evening of music.  My heart was fulfilled. 



P.S.
    But our adventure wasn't over, yet.  Shasta took Zane to the car after Will's set ended, since he was tired out, after loving every minute of the Faun Fable set and Bonnie Prince's.  We drove the forty minutes back to our cheap hotel in Silt, then the next morning, woke up and began the four hour drive to Colorado Springs.   After driving an hour or so, and just before getting to Denver, I pulled over at a Circle K for a rest stop to get some drinks.  Who did Zane and I see walking in there but Will Oldham. 
He went into the rest room moments after Zane and I had stepped out of it.  When he came back out, I smiled and said "Will, hi!" and he was just as surprised to see us as we were.  The cool thing was I got to introduce him to Zane, who missed out the evening prior.    The new album is called Keeping Secrets Will Destroy You.   Will sang the title track, which doesn't appear on the album, citing it as an industry trick some artists like to pull.   I got to tell him that song was his "Houses of the Holy," and so I expect to see it on the album after this next one.  Which, by the way, from the sounds of the several new songs off it he performed, are in line on the level of his classic albums from '99 to '03.  We're talking I See A Darkness, Master & Everyone, Ease Down The Road level of album.   Nowadays, he rarely, if ever disappoints, what's left is to wait lazily until he catches another updraft and soars again, pivoting like Icarus before the Sun.   I'm telling you all, this next album is going to be the one.   Take my word for it. 
 
      Keeping secrets will destroy you.   


                                      This here is my #1  favorite album released in 2022, by a country mile   


Thursday, December 29, 2022

The missing Blemish, rectified

 


  I used to really dig listening to David Sylvian, back in his glory days of the late eighties bleeding into the nineties.   I was tuned into his output during '86 and '87, when I bought and sank into his lush albums Gone to Earth and Secrets of the Beehive.   


     Then I lost touch with this mercurial artist (formerly of the band Japan).   Until 2014 crawled around, delivering forth the now impossibly rare and invaluable CD There's a Light That Enters Houses, with No Other Houes in Sight, which I ordered because of its association with my old friend, teacher and poetry mentor, Franz Wright.   



Musicians[edit]



   Perhaps needless to say, this singular CD is now worth quite a pretty penny, if you're even lucky enough to see it flash toward the surface of the deep, dark web where time has been inexorably weighing it down, to plummet deep into the ever-to-be-forgotten depths of our mostly oblivious live's drowning ocean of time. 

    What I'm hearing now listening to the 1st side of Blemish  (his sixth studio album, released in 2003) is a very sparse, minimalist sketches of ambient sounds shuddering into one another, conjuring a desolate soundscape upon which David intones his catchy lyrics, words that drift upon the glassine surface of a post-electronic sound decaying into the gentle susurration of fading soundwaves lapping unto the barren shores of our mind.  

      That was track 1,  (13 min  42  seconds  title track), which segues into The Good Son (w/Derek Bailey, an avante garde experimental guitarist whose specialty is improvisation) which plays as if they were playing live in a desolate dive bar on the outskirts of some forgotten town, with nobody else in attendance except yourself and one other intriguing persona blending into the shadows of the far wall. 

    Listening to him . . . listening closely now ... I'm happy to absorb this melancholy, spoken word ambient jazz which helps me escape through a portal in my mind's eye ... listen closely now ... to be led on a story telling journey with strange underlying intonations from the guitar strings being plucked and stroked in bizarrely compelling ways ... even at the short length of five minutes and twenty-five seconds, The Good Son takes the listener on a welcome journey to an uncomfortable place. 

   Following is another five minute song called The Only Daughter, which begins with David intoning "She was, she was.... a good friend of mine...", upon which the distillation of sounds has focused into an eerie, Enoesque backdrop scintillating with nuance and interrupted signals as Sylvian's abruptly unexpected words pull the listener in unusual directions both with the narrative and the haunting music. 

     An album for the truly melancholic souls among us.  Ordinary folk may not get what's the deal with this. They won't even see it coming... I'm just relieved I didn't let another decade or two go by before dipping back into the silver slipstream of acoustic dreams conjured effortlessly by the one and only David Sylvian.  

~thus ends Side one~
        

~stay tuned for the possibility 
of my reviewing Side two here~


   

Newyear's Sliding into us Like a homebase Glacier

 
   



no more lies     this is the age of confusion       Nothing factual 
nothing fictional   /  interchangeable 
  THIS IS THE AGE OF CONFUSION 

So, I'm listening  to   PUSCIFER LIVE AT ARCOSANTI  2LP limited pressing and its glorious. 

Santa  brought us that and also  8-Ball Bail Bonds at The Berger Barns  LIVE in Phoenix. 

These are seminal recordings not just for MJK and Puscifer but for rock history in general. 

    Dovetailing with the release of Bob Dylan's big thick meaty book The Philosophy of Modern Song (which my lovely wife got me for Xmas), I can honestly say as we plow forward through the strangest tides churned up by an  awakening and retaliatory Mom Earth  this is the time to be alive.     

Right now as we plumb the deepest fissures of our oceans in brand spanking new discoveries of thriving species surviving the intense pressures and temperatures in the thriving flux of volcanic vents even while   down around the southern poles of our planet a whole new continent begins shedding its frozen husk for an Edenic rebirth the likes of which we've been forced to only imagine.  
  
        


    This   long play  thirty-three rounds per minute revelation has been in gestation and perpetual evolution since the long ago inception  of the side project we all know and few have come to love as much of those of us who knew from the get go this was better than Tool with more promise of interesting cross pollination with its rotating platform of guests and artists invited to participate, well guess what?  It ain't too late to hop onto this ever-morphing musical monstrosity unless you just ain't got the chops to pull it off.   

   No one left crying here, I assure you.  Plenty of  scraps 'n' tossed aside moldy sinews of left over tissue for y'all to nibble on til your filthy little hearts are contented, plenty of raw heaving platters of fresh steaming meat to sink your teeth into, far too much meat and PO-TAE-TOES being churned up in the intricately spinning long curved blades of the Internet Blender Machine, plenty of voltage to plug into for that long term permanent grin you can get from being lit up by the ongoing circus sideshow we now know as our reality. 


   And Puscifer has at long last been coming into its own, of late and let me add this, if I may.  Like the endless process of individual survival we all must endure together here in this primitive urban jungle getting laced with advanced high definition digital tech to enhance our every sensation and demand of our ravenous egos for more stimulation and penetration so long as the Machine keeps  feeding on our continual generation of new generations to generate more money for the economy and more spending for our every need until...

  ...we'll be able to sit back and sift through the detritus getting filtered our way online by a digital sort of synthetic consciousness itself a simulation of what true, organic human consciousness might potentially resemble were it to present itself in any ordinate or tangible shape for recording and analyzation hence forthwith conjoining with greater loops of interconnective data on servers congregating into a Sentient Simulacrum (which is to say, nothing more than a simulation of what sentience might happen to be for the human primate family which has passed it on genetically since time immemorial). 

     The time is now (to flip over the record to side C) and lean our ears into the band covering Bullet Train to Iowa, perhaps their most popular slice of audio subversion to creep into the modern American airwaves in some time no longer definable).   Who - who.   Hoo - hoo.  
  Hootchy koo.   Here's where I focus on what Puscifer means to me. 

       Their debut V is for Vagina was the shiny chrome bait 'n' hook, many of us human fishes darting this way and that underneath the slipstream chose to not bite (I was not one of them, being instantly hooked into their sinister post-hip hop electronica sound), but for those who turned their noses up sneering they weren't "anywhere as good as Tool," that's okay in this tempestuous stew of life we can no longer seem to control quite as well as we used to, collectively.  I ain't got no beef with those who don't get it or wanna forget it or burn it down. 

   Now it's up to us individually to steer our own ways through this undulating labyrinth encroaching its imperial and impenetrable walls toward us, forcing us to stay on our toes and keep on the move to align ourselves in sync with the inexorable teeth of this grinding machine.   

   After all these years now listening to these two latest live bootlegs of Puscifer performing in their own home territory of the future 'Arizona Bay' islands of potential human habitation, gathered along the giving banks of the Verde river, lush opulence cultivated from a string of oases in the paradoxical and flourishing desert. 

    Everything's in convergence and Puscifer really just remains an exemplary outfit of post-modern troubadours fronted by the rather obviously talented singer lyricist Maynard Keenan who has propelled his main two bands (Tool and A Perfect Circle) well beyond the stratosphere of anyone's wildest expectations (and into the beckoning void of the beyond). 

   What will await us as the world keeps turning one thousand miles an hour in the wake of the world wide pandemic?  Will our favorite bands who've survived since the nineties keep producing astonishing and satisfying pieces of music as only they could possibly manage to do?   I think those of us paying attention have managed to figure out the answer to that. 

    Until next time our paths should cross, survivors.  If you've been skirting clear of Puscifer for whatever reasons,  I can only say that this PUSCIFER LIVE AT ARCOSANTI, for example, is a come round "full circle" sort of thing, much like their recent album V is for Versatile -- wherein Maynard dares to re-record each track from their auspicious debut (now a legendary hip hop post electronica album whether you like it or not) with fellow musicians putting in great performances on real instruments like actual drums played with genuine drumsticks and a real bass and guitar, etc.   

   Maynard lends his vocal reinterpretation to these classics, and let me just come out and say it, the listener's mind is simply pretty unprepared to take these reinterpretations in if it's already been hooked on the original studio recordings, but the great part is that those uninitiated with the electronic version might get their eyes opened wider even while those of us who prefer the originals are slowly coming around to some of these newer versions, piecemeal and a little bit at a time. 




    All in all,  I'm here to testify that we are in a veritable monsoon of artistic output here and now while the last few remaining days of 2022 go swirling down the proverbial drain at the end of the year. 

      Never has there been  more glorious time to be alive I remain convinced at the core of every atom of my being.    I can't even find a way to wrap this entry up,  it was enough that I managed to jump in here and dredge a few bits and pieces of my ongoing sonic journey head first through the ravaging storms of rock'n'roll.    

        Thornswrath out ...