I Live Here In Kill City

 by  roving reporter   Shaun "Thornswrath" Lawton 

I drove out to the Graywhale in Taylorsville, shopping for some used CDs to get some Xmas presents for ?? ????, cuz our car, the good ol' 2013 Chevy Volt, the Skibidi Skooter, comes equipped with a CD player, a rare thing to find in automobiles, these days.  It's the greatest car I ever owned, being an electric hybrid, it runs silent, making it into the ideal stereo on wheels. 

     

    I came across two Iggy albums, the quintessential first album he released in 1975, without the Stooges, KILL CITY, w/ James Williamson (who granted, had earned his Stooge stripes by appearing on the seminal Raw Power, released the year before), and the 1999 album Avenue B, produced by Don Was*.  But back to KILL CITY, in its own right arguably a Stooges release, despite the absence of Dave Alexander and Ron and Scott Asheton, still, the album in my view remains the natural follow-up and proper evolution of the down and dirty sound the godfathers of punk had established.  

*Avenue B, we'll get back to later. For now, this article strictly deals with the legendary KILL CITY.

   Right off the bat, the album leaps into a snarling rock'n'roll attitude, with Iggy crooning "It's a playground to the rich, but it's a loaded gun to me," the jagged rhythmic riffs punctuated by backup clappers and vocals, leaving zero room for doubt this picks up straight from where Raw Power left off.  It's a short title track that introduces the album perfectly in 2 min and 20 seconds.  Next we get Sell Your Love, which slows down with some late night jazzy saxophone offset with Iggy's vocal register dropping to begin serenading the listener with the backstreet dealings that go on in this dangerous section of the city that never sleeps.  The drums and sax and all the instrumentation, including backup vocals, intertwine in perfect synchronicity while Iggy sighs and moans about life on the streets of Kill City.  

   The third song launches right in to straight up razor sharp unleashed fury with what might be my favorite track, Beyond the Law, it sounds like an outtake from Raw Power itself, with the Sales brothers, Hunt and Tony Scott providing their low end drums & bass for the first time with Iggy (before moving on to Lust For Life and The Idiot, and then of course performing their duties for David Bowie in his forward looking outfit TIN MACHINE, but that's another story I can get to later in this digital rag). 

      I Got Nothing to say, except this album has been in my rotation enough this year to the point my blood has soaked it up and it's ringing in my bones, filling me with that same feeling Lou Reed's stellar live album Rock 'n' Roll Animal used to do, but hearing Iggy wail away on these tunes, backed up with such flashy effectiveness by John "The Rookie" Harden on a blasting, sultry sax and James Williamson unleashing his guitar to rival the prowling sleek animal ferocity he showcased on Raw Power, except now on KILL CITY, Iggy really sounds like a beast freed from his cage, evoking a sound that conjures shades of Bobby Zimmerman and the Rolling Stones yet somehow keeping it all his own.  

  Music like this doesn't just push your buttons and tickle your fancy on a first listen, no you have to fucking get down in the dirt and live with this music until it penetrates it's raw ferocity and soulful intent deep into your bones and heart, slamming through your veins with the forcefulness of a tide of fresh oxygen to dispel the poisonous CO2 and liberating you with the one ingredient I think Iggy made his own from the get go:  FREEDOM.  He conjures the spirit of freedom like no one else, because he lived and prowled the streets beyond the law, on his own terms, believing in nothing but the pure moment in time that he rode like an expert surfer on the incoming waves of circumstance. 

   These cats really got it together to release something special, a time capsule from 1975 that captures all the deranged excitement and visceral power of stalking the streets for the alluring musk of femme fatales and riding high on all the alcohol and drugs one could get their hands on.  It's the special and private domain of flaming youth, captured on disc in no uncertain terms with a musical force to be reckoned with, all these fifty years later, in 2025.  Iggy, James, Troy, Brian, Hunt, Fox, Steve, The Rookie and Gayna, providing backing vocals.  What a crew. 

I was ten years old when this album dropped, an innocent kid with a bowl haircut, who couldn't even imagine such wildness existed in music, much less in life.  I was captivated by Don McLean's American Pie at the time, asking my parents for coins to feed the jukebox at this Chinese Restaurant my Dad used to take us to in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, the Nanking.  It featured the long version of American Pie, and I loved that song so much, it was a tradition every time we ate there. 

   I can see how kids today who only got the CD of this album might wonder about tracks 6 and 7: Night Theme, and Night Theme (reprise), short, barely over a minute long instrumental pieces that bring the excitement and pace down, well in retrospect it should become obvious that Night Theme ends side 1 of the vinyl LP, and when you flip the record over, side 2 begins with it's reprise, a nifty sort of Nightfall and beddy-bye time, if you will, to then move on to Consolation Prize, moving into the next day on side 2, where the party never ends. 

   Listen up, if you haven't taken the time to either revisit, or listen to this album for the first time, just remember it's a real trip, culminating with the final track Master Charge, whose music has truly evolved into an electronic merger with a soulful guitar plus saxophone theme that brings the whole sordid journey to a satisfying conclusion.  It's a thoughtful rendering of what seems to be a 24 hour stint of partying in the glory days of what might be a long lost youth for some of us, but if you're still in your early twenties, and want to go back in time and visit Kill City, this album will really take you there.  

  After listening to it enough times, I've found an extra special place in my heart for it, it's just a total trip, from the first song to the last, which virtually amounts to an audial movie, leaving the listener spellbound and satisfied when the end credits roll, and the music fades out, feeling like the tide will never return with such bounties again.    

7 songs for spiders revolution dawns

 by roving reporter thornswrath 

  

     the eagerly and long awaited new album from Dax Riggs, 7 songs for spiders, released on Fat Possum Records, arrived at my doorstep today breaking a fifteen year silence since Say Goodnight To The World dropped back in 2010. That's the year I got married, on April Fool's, following my heart like I always do.

    Boy does this album deliver the goods and live up to the hype.
It's everything any die hard could have ever dreamed and more so. If you know, you know. This album belongs on the perfect soundtrack for our endtimes, along with agents of oblivion, deadboy and the elephantmen, and the veritable resurgence of a new punk revolution as the terrestrial gears shift into the new post-political paradigm of Earth with the shattering intensity brought upon us by the technological singularity. We've made it this far so you know together we can pull through anything the great and sinister unknown may throw at us. In the meantime this record, at a short running length of 28 minutes, is just what the doctor ordered in terms of what our highest expectations could bring.

     I'm happy to include a brand spankin' new album in my 30 albums challenge, so yes in case you're among the lost legion who never heard of acid bath or dax riggs, this album is a modern day masterpiece and was just released today, I preordered it and it arrived with impeccable timing. the stars lined up for me again, boy am I not surprised. This is the only daks album that I haven't had him sign, yet. Just wait'll he comes to Salt Lake, I hope he hits up Aces High because that would be perfect. Hope to see you there. I'll try and work my underground booking sorcery and get him to tour with IV & the Strange Band or something.

A new cycle of the same ol' same ol' begins. Best strap in. We're in for one helluva ride. Don't follow the bouncing ball, people. Stay focused on your own life, your own dreams. Everything has always been not as it seems, and it's no different today. Step away from all the screens and live your best life. Hang on to yourself or your significant other or wife.

As good ol' Billy Yeats once said:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand. . .

 That haunting opening melody that starts off the second track, Sunshine Felt the Darkness Smile, captures perfectly the short, sharp shock of spirit this album injects into the scene. 

   It's really something to hear him singing with a full band backing in a perfect complementary manner, lush and velvety enough to be felt getting swallowed by the darkness, with exactly the amount of haunted reverb and cascading tremulous lines dropping like ripened fruit from the gathering shadows of a darkening garden.  The moon's prevalent over this familiar courtyard of desolate tunes, yet there's that underlying defiant hope that saturates these blues, the lingering spirit of having survived leaves an echoing impression that we may have actually just been haunted by a ghost. It's what records are when you stop and think about it deeply enough.  The ghosts of John Lennon and David Bowie are kept alive in the shiny reflective depths of grooved vinyl records.  The exquisite vibrations captured with infinitesimal detail separating the sound of Beethoven from Pink Floyd reveals an astonishing variety of sonic terrain, the music of the spheres divided into microtones. 

    

After spinning 7 songs for spiders, I don't know in a sort of unattachment from the experience, as if I were removing a suction tight sealed scuba mask and shaking out from under the weight of the tank, a gasp of clean air and I realized I was crying, an emotional tide from having just listened to daks.  

   I went ahead and flipped it back to side A and began the seven songs all over again.  deceiver is a great tune to start it all, a perfect little carousel ride into Dax's nocturnal dream world. 

    When Graveyard Soul begins, that's it, when he sings you lost your junkyard smile, it captures the spirit of my own memory of who I was back in my twenties discovering Boston and the strange  hyperactive rhythms interacting with all my friends and the Grubs that got caught up in our underground society.  You know, I owe this musical discovery to none other than my dear friend Gareth Allen, he turned me onto Acid Bath back when I lived three doors down from him on Douglas St, all of twenty years ago.  When The Kite String Pops remains to this day among the very few most impactful albums in my long life of obsessing over rock and roll music.  Not only is it the meanest, rawest, most primal and stripped down sounding band in the land, but there's a psychedelic soulfulness to their unleashed fury that in my view remains pretty unmatched to this day.  And I've always appreciated all of Dax's side projects and sojourns. From seeing him perform as deadboy & the elephantmen all those years ago at Club Sound in the back of Bricks with Wolfmother and maybe Pelican, I can't exactly recall offhand.  

    It's good to have him back, and to know Acid Bath are going to give it a go. This year's kicking off to a delirious start.  I've seen a few reels of Sammy and Dax and them getting pumped up to play, so I hope they got a good positive energy going together and manage to keep it together, committing to at least another couple of years or three of touring smaller dive venues across the land just waiting to book them.  Aces High Saloon here in Salt Lake City for example would be the perfect place. Or S&S Productions could book them at the Urban Lounge or Club Metro.   I managed to get Cancerslug booked at Aces High last year, and then they happened to land on Valentines Day, here. What are the chances.

      I told you the stars always line up for me so I'm going to email S&S Presents and Aces and see if I can get a show with Cancerslug, IV & the Strange Band and Dax Riggs, because that would be the trifecta for me, like some voodoo magic borne of the raw quantum chaos of my mind control.