Saying No But Meaning Yes, Bluebirds & Survival Sex

 ★ 

reviewed by Shaun Lawton 

from Sunflower to Obituary LIVE Sleepytime Gorilla Museum

 by   shaun   lawton  

Weathered flowers breathing open amid ripened fruits laid slain and strewn across the ground
like the many broken pieces in an infuriated child's playing room floor or the regular suits
heaving through tunnels flowing into subways leaving unspoken memories trapped in box
cars left diminishing behind down the drain of our rear view mirrors always looking forward
over our shoulders toward the next smoke break or lunch time and arriving back home
to the familiar comfort that is your corner tucked away and hidden into the interior world.

Welcome to the outlandish live presentation of Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, largely compiled from the archives of Matt Waldron. 

"These small gatherings are the seeds of a tree whose leaves will fall in silence on a land peopled by the children of our ghosts." ~ Lala Rolo, 1919, in a letter to Ikk Ygg 

Listening to this eclectic recording of 16 live tracks from Oak village in California really rings out and dredges up all my most personal lived-in memories of the past thirty years. It's more than just a spiraling series of coincidences, there's an emergent synchronicity recognizable in the pattern of frames stacking up the pictures. They come bubbling up in the form of SCA memories in period garb throughout most of the nineties at festivals across the country drinking from my bull's horn and fighting in medieval warfare live role playing games. They arrive in breathtaking dioramas of past plays and presentations I've participated in since having developed an interest in theater from an early age. The alter egos and multiple personalities engaged with over the years reel around me on a mirror plate of crystal clear characters etched in the back of my mind's eye. Various princes from Thorn to Viridian abound among the spectrum of roles stretched out since my high school years until today. These personas coalesce into Thornswrath (now on twitter and youtube) when I entered the underground scene here in salt lake, encountering during my midnight excursions the wraiths of metal warriors haunting the late night streets and back alleys of this rock'n'roll town.   

Before local legendary clubs such as The Zephyr and Club DV8 got themselves burned down to the ground, these were the sorts of places Sleepytime Gorilla Museum used to end up playing, and before they arrived here in town from the village of Oakland on their Green Tortoise bus, I'd receive posters from the band for their upcoming tour and plaster them around the city in record stores and coffee shops. This is how I usually got in to see their shows, as over the years, their music grew to become another layer of my own woven soul armor. Check out this hour-and-a-half video below of a performance at the Metro in Oakland Sleepytime Gorilla Museum conducted fifteen years ago, back in 2003, when propellers were actually necessary and it didn't matter whether you had a cell phone.

Those days are long gone of course so now it's super extra nice to lose one's self in the still echoing hauntings of these deranged pranksters of musical merriment and mayhem. If you care to keep up with their ever evolving sonic antics accentuated by visual presentations ordinarily unaccustomed to perusal by the masses, be sure to check out Free Salamander Exhibit, merely the latest chrysanthemutation of this flowering beast of post-chimerical molten mineral music. They still put on a terrific, one-of-a-kind show that remains much better experienced than described. You really have to be there to understand what I'm talking about. Suffice it to say I haven't been keeping up this blog and there's a ton--actually two thousand pounds--of vinyl in my collection I have to catch y'all up with. In the meantime track down any of the Sleepytime Gorilla Museum albums and get ready to have your head cleaned out with a subatomic blast of sonic soothsaying. If there's any earwax left in your skull after listening to these guys, maybe you haven't turned the volume knob up high enough. Be sure to check your head that you're not already dead.