You'll See Through Angel's Eyes

 by your fearless reporter Thornswrath  

  There is a grove I know 

Where the bones lie 

A place where more than virginity dies

And I can take you there
You'll see through angel's eyes
Just in time to see the Lord of Death Rise...

   So states  the  Revenant and High Priest of Cancerslug,  Alex "the Wolfman" Story, teller of the darkest tales throbbing deep underneath the innocuous streets of the trashed and gentrified sectors of cities sprouting across this ruined and flourishing landscape of America since before most of the younguns reading this today were even born.    

    It's been over 27 years that the Slugcult was formed from within the bowels of Alabama, and I don't want to assume anything about the actual or specific origins of this legendary underground rock'n'roll punk band other than to say, we all know they hail from Huntsville.  Only the dark reverend himself Mr. Story knows the true tale and specific details.  Nevertheless, please humor me and go along with the flow as I relate to you the little I do know in regards to not just this small yet relentless force among extreme enthusiasts and practitioners of sonic dysfunction amid the occult arts of the vast battlegrounds of the American punk and metal underground scene, but to be clear, I want to focus on just the latest eight bands I witnessed over the course of one week here in Salt Lake's dingy, grimy scene including one show at the pristine above ground, well manicured landscape of Red Butte Gardens.  

   So take my hand and be led into the pulsing heartbeat of what I myself consider the best music going on at this particular cross hairs in the history of our lives, and accept this rare opportunity to see the world through my eyes.  It's been awhile since I last reported here.  Suffice it to say, I attended three shows beginning Monday, August 10 at Aces High Saloon and ending exactly one week later, on Mon Aug 17 with a raucous clarion call from the elite forces of darkness back at that same notorious punk and metal dive bar, which has earned its reputation as the pivotal small venue to see the best extreme metal and punk bands this side of the Louisiana bijou. With a capacity to fit 200 people, and its one pool table and four old school pinball machines, with only three or four booths and maybe seven or eight stools braced along its bar, Aces High is the place in Salt Lake where you will always find the local tattooed and heavy metal warrior jacketed rockers and misfits congregate on a nightly basis.  

    I caught wind from a video that Coleman Williams posted on Facebook stating that IV and the Strange Band were embarking on a roughly one month tour (from early August to early September) covering approximately 20 dates.  Salt Lake City was about the fourth or fifth show, hitting Aces High Saloon on a Monday night, August 10 to be exact.  There was no way that I was going to miss out on another opportunity to see Coleman and Co., which for this "Oddballs & Outlaws" tour featured the retrofitted "string band" consisting of Jared on bass, Kiley on lead guitar, Coleman on his Epiphone acoustic guitar, and none other than Joe Perreze (of the Goddamn Gallows) on the banjo.  

   When I arrived at Aces High on Monday, Aug 10 to catch IV and the Strange Band for the fourth time, I realized I forgot my backpack with my notebooks and pens, so I asked the bartender, Kenny if she had any pens or paper I could borrow.  She had one black gelpen which she kindly lent me, and so I decided to use the small stack of napkins in front of me to jot down notes of the evening.    

[Page 1]

Mon, Aug 10 Clownvis "Juggalo" Presley w/ IV & the Strange Band @ ACES HIGH SALOON

COUGAR GOLD opened w/ a rowdy rendition of their own home grown rockabilly style — and cut off midway thru 1st song... So I forgot to bring my backpack w/ notebooks & pens, now I'm writing this review on a napkin w/ a Z-grip black ink pen the waitress lent me (Kenny).

I just messaged a slew of peeps on FB to git on down here... we'll see if I get any bites, fishin' for strange folk.

Dylan, tall 'n lanky with a Betty Boop tattoo on his right shoulder on guitar and vox, with Lucius on the standup acoustic bass and Julio (I think) on drums wearin' a metallic T-shirt. They covered Horton Heat Don't Bring Baby to the Liquor store, and now Dylan's ripping through Hank Williams Move It On Over w/his Gibson, fiery leads while Lucius sings & bangs out his relentless bass attack.

[Page 2] 

They launched into an original called Bottom Shelf Man, and the bar kept filling up with more patrons. Someone bought shots for Dylan & Lucius, and after they tossed 'em back to cheers from the crowd, their playing loosened up for the last song of their set.

CLOWNVIS on next opened w/ Viva Las Vegas after tellin' us Salt Lake City was his favorite city in the United States! He don't like traffic jams. Next song: Trafficula, about a vampire that only comes out in traffic. Crazy concept, but scary nonetheless.

Then a short, vulgar rendition of "Reading Rainbow." Next: Those Crazy Redbox Nights. He tossed Redbox DVDs out into the audience. Then he sang Clown Motel — a real place (rm # 222). He's the most magical clown in the world. He performed a couple of tricks including the disappearing banana trick. He tossed a giant inflatable banana out and we bounced it around, that was really fun.  

[Page 3] 

Then Clownvis covered Creep, great rendition actually. He used his clown horn instead of the crunchy guitar riffs. Thom Yorke oughta just gift him the song.

He closed w/ a toast & the theme song from CHEERS. Then encore: Rhinestone Cowboy. Great set. Consider me a fan.

—> Then he finished w/ one more: "And now, the end is near, so I face the final curtain..." yes: My Way.  Then he tossed the big inflatable banana out in the crowd one more time to a final rowdy refrain of Rhinestone Cowboy. Up next: IV & the Strange Band! 

   Well it turns out that a good portion of the Monday night patrons made themselves scarce after CLOWNVIS's admittedly packed and entertaining set, clearing out the capacity to about half of what it was, so I strolled on over to the front center of the stage with my drink (Red Bull and Coke, as I quit drinking alcohol several years ago) + my trusty pen and stack o' napkins. 

[Page 4]

  Good turnout "...tonight's pretty fuckin' awesome..." said Coleman, then went into Whippoorwill (new song). (Then another) New song..."it's a trouble, livin' in your bubble"... Then the "stab you in the eye til it makes you wanna cry" song off Southern Circus. Coleman has a 6-string Epiphone. Banjo's a Gretsch; then the electric guitar & stand up acoustic bass, so that's what he meant by a "stringband." Then the "little birds," song, "Well hell boy, you better fly high." It's Joe Perez from the Goddamn Gallows on banjo! I thought I'd seen him before... Coleman gave a wonderful speech re: fam history, then Son of Sin. Then the song about Rochelle, their beat up, run down ol' shortbus travelin' van... they are tearin it up! Next a clown song for Clownvis, "it may sound silly, but I don't care, happy go happy happy go lucky," then a banjo solo from Joe P.

[Page 5]

  Mikey Classic got the next song dedicated to him, Coleman passed his advice along, "I keep a hand on the door..." -> 'Don't let people get your goat—cuz if you do, they win.' They met ~21 yrs ago at the Muse, Nashville OG punk club where Misfits etc. used to play, the next day it was torn down w/ a pizza place replacing it. Then the Hare's Blood song off their 1st album, classick song "Now I'm here to drift into the night..."; the Rhymin' Auditorium, w/ a dirty soaked bar alley, next song's about gettin' fucked up in that alley (Since Nashville's the most gentrified city in America, now). "Looks real old... feels damn cold..." new song: "who the fuck's to say that I should care." Next Hang Dawg w/ a moving speech for all our critters... that goddamn Hang Dog... Hoo, wooo! Next "I've got an angel on my mind... that's why I'm walkin'..." Ends w/ his gr. grandaddy's song Trooper's Hill, about his dog Truman. 🖤

   All I can really say about that show is that IV and the Strange Band represent one hundred percent the true die hard spirit of the underground, in every way.  Ain't no one out there with their attention stolen by their smartphones or doomscrolling through the blurred cyberscape of life even has the remotest clue nor can they be given an opportunity to catch the scent in the wind that Hank 3 has a legitimately awesome son with a burning heart pumping the family bloodline through his veins and a voice to sing his stories to small captive audiences throughout the rundown dive bars and lonely venues of the land.  From coast to coast and sea to churning sea, he's been hauling his instruments and equipment in Rochelle without the greater majority of country western fans having the slightest clue, and I'll tell you what, I'm happy this is getting reported on my equally obscure as fuck blog tucked away in the darkest corner of the web, here amid the encroaching oblivion of my Blogdom of Thorns.  And that's because I prefer it this way, and honestly, I'd bet my bottom dollar Coleman would more or less agree with me on this.  

   He's a born American storyteller who's been obsessed with the underground music scene since he was at least fourteen, when he saw The Goddamn Gallows perform in Nashville at the Muse, and met up with Mikey Classic who gave him the best advice anyone could possibly get, about not letting anyone ever get your goat - all worked up and angry at 'em - on account of the simple fact that if you do - you let 'em win.  That explains his chill, down to Earth attitude, and let me tell ya, if you haven't learned this lesson in life, maybe take it into account and give it a try.  Works wonders on your blood pressure and it will steer you through the storms of life on a journey filled with all the strange wonders and attractions this world has to offer.  Remember what The Professor said, "the point of the journey is not to arrive."  

      So maybe fine tune your electronic device's radar to pick up on IV and the Strange Band, follow 'em on Instagram or Facebook, and the next time they launch on one of their obscure little tours, you'll get the opportunity to hear their songs and listen to Coleman extol some of his down home country wisdom, which in my estimation's worth more than all the reels you could scroll through in a year.  

   So if you're in Nevada and can make it to Reno, they're playing tonight at the Cypress Music Venue, and then they'll drive on over to Folsom, California tomorrow, Aug 22, with twelve more shows as they make their way through San Diego, Las Vegas, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas, wrapping it up in Oklahoma, Missouri, Tennessee and ending with a Bang in Louisville, Kentucky on September 5th, at the Whirling Tiger.  Don't say I didn't clue you in. 

    Stay tuned for Part II of my 3-part review covering IV and the Strange Band, Jesse Welles, and Cancerslug, all three of which are still on tour even as I write this.  I was going to make this one ginormous, long, thirty page review for y'all to scroll through, but I decided to have some mercy on your poor, tired souls (and give myself a break, too).  After all, this forum allows me to continue with Part 2 later on, so I'll hyperlink the End Piece Thumbnail to continue this insanely long coverage of my past week seeing shows here in the Salt Lake underground.   I'm happy I saw Jesse Welles with supporting band Ratboy, at the far more posh (and above ground) venue Red Butte Gardens.  Still, for all the spotlight and glory that stage offers, I think Jesse Welles remains relatively underground, for the time being, mirroring a young Robert Zimmerman, with his acoustic guitar and harmonica and vivid protest songs, suitable for our scrolling-to-oblivion era of a generation hopelessly addicted to our cellphones while the world apparently burns at the behest of ruthless opportunists seizing the reins of power politically to line their pockets at the expense of the people.  I can see this young man following in the footsteps of commercial success like The Devil Makes Three and Billy Strings, etc.  and he certainly deserves it, but I'll tell you all about it in part 2 of this expose.  Part 3 will cover the Monday, August 17 blackmetal show at Aces feat. Cancerslug with our own Chasmlurk opening for the notorious Profanatica.  That's as underground as it gets.  \m/ 

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.  

  

BOB DYLAN & HIS BAND BLEW US ALL AWAY AT DEER VALLEY MOUNTAIN SKI RESORT PARK CITY UTAH SUNDAY AUGUST 31 2008 ONCE UPON AN ENCHANTED EVENING I'LL NEVER FORGET

 by your blood rover Shaun Lawton 

   reporting for the Oscillating Oculus 

photo by Mathieu David

@ Deer Valley Mountain Ski Resort, Park City UTAH Sunday, August 31, 2008.

Here's the setlist on that electrifying, stormy evening: 



Rainy Day Women #12 & 35

When I Paint My Masterpiece

Stuck Inside A Mobile w/the Memphis Blues Again

It's NoT DaRk yeT

DON'T THINK TWICE, IT'S ALRIGHT

a MILLION miles

DESOLATION ROW

The Levee's Gunna Break

she belongs to me

Honest With Me

Simple Twist of FATE

HIGHWAY 61 Revisited

QUEEN JANE Approximately

THUNDER ON THE MOUNTAIN

LIKE A ROLLING STONE


   Bob Dylan rocked our darned socks off. Damn that was a blazing blistering set to help a crowd withstand torrential rains, but no amount of bad weather could put a damper on Bob Dylan or his band's set this evening. They just seared their way through song after song — 15 in all, I think — yes, most likely a foreshortened set due to the inclement weather, but it just made songs like 'The Levee's Gunna Break' all the better.

   The fact it all started with 'Rainy Day Women #12 & 35' was just perfect. My sweetheart and I were well-prepared this time for an outdoor lawn show. We bought these low-slung back-pack chairs and these 2 overlarge wicked windproof, rainbow-colored umbrellas so when the downpours came (and boy did they ever come) we were sittin' pretty high and dry. We had a bottle of very nice Sonoma county wine we'd been saving since last year's vacation, which we poured into these medieval metal goblets. We enjoyed sesame water crackers with goat cheese as well as some Greek and Chinese food. No sooner than Bob was singing 'Everybody Must Get Stoned' at the show's start in the rain did I begin to dance; this was not the slow rollicking beat with brass instruments version your Dad remembers, but more of a wicked fiery Hellbilly ride.

   Bob loves nothing more than changing up the arrangement of his songs, and it was quite evident in the next song 'Stuck Inside A Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again', a much quicker and upbeat version which got me on my feet and dancing in no time flat. Bob's band really got into the swing of things. Before my mind could catch up with what was actually happening to us all, 'It's Not Dark Yet' began, and it was so pitch-perfect. It was a brisk and tense delivery of a heartfelt anthem and was really quite moving. Then the rain finally stopped, some clouds parted, and we spied a section of blue sky up there above the mountains. You gotta understand Deer Valley is a ski resort catering to the rich and, yes, famous. It is clear and beautiful up at that elevation. We were lucky the sun broke through because it would remain relatively sunny and dry for over the next hour and nine songs or so. Everyone began pouring their libations of wine and bringing out their fancy picnic meals and whatnot. Shasta and I broke out the gourmet dark chocolate w/bits of ginger in it and quaffed more red wine while Bob Dylan and his band began jamming out an intro to the next song, which struck a familiar chord yet was being played too fast to be immediately recognized. I started dancing my ass off to this song, and before I knew it, realized I was twisting to 'Don't Think Twice, It's Alright'!

   It was then and there during this 5th song that a feeling of Awesomeness struck like a bolt of lightning from above, this was one of Bob's ON nights! Every song he played was uncut, and if anything, an extended version from the original. His band was ON it, jamming this unbelievable fusion of down home country ragtime, rock'n'roll, periodically injected with elements of swing, jazz, and Mississippi delta blues. Gone was the old folk element Dylan cut his teeth on; these here versions were fully electrified and transformed beyond their classic guises into something far more electric & dynamic.

   His Bobness pretty much stood in one spot sporting this nice Stetson hat and these black pants with a silver stripe down the sides of the legs, he was all got up good'n'proper like the Man in Black oughta be. I couldn't quite tell if he ever played a guitar or not — most of the night I was letting go gyrating and having a grand ol' time — but his voice shone through the dizzying arrangement of musical stylings in a crisp nasal tone that, although a bit raspier than it used to be, nonetheless managed to carry the songs through to their respective ends. The energy Bob and his band instilled in the crowd was palpable and electric, everyone was going nuts.

   I proudly wore my original KoRn T-shirt, selected specifically for this show, and sported a Jester's Cap w/bells on — picture me dancing a crazy Peanut's Dance sped up to about 78rpms in this outfit, and you pretty much get the picture of Shaun @ Bob Dylan, 2008. Believe me when I tell you that throughout most of these rockin' tunes, the level of intensity in the musicianship was such that it afforded plenty of opportunities to break out in wild, spontaneous air-guitar soloes, and there was one point (during the song 'Honest With Me') where I gasped out loud in stunned disbelief on account of how much heavy momentum the jamming had acquired. Let me put it this way: there were a few moments wherein my imagination inserted speed metal leads to the music - it was that sick. \m/

   Needless to say, I kept exchanging astonished looks with the folks standing next to us. I had read somewhere that lately, Dylan's shows focus so much on his more recent material that some audience members get disappointed. Well at our show in Deer Valley that Sunday evening, nothing could be further from the truth. After just having heard 'Rainy Day Women', 'Stuck Inside a Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again', 'Don't Think Twice, It's Alright,' and 'Desolation Row', I was personally so blown away with the hits that I didn't care one whit any longer what Bob had in store for us; it was just that well-delivered, and each song provided ample opportunity for the various musicians to shine respectively with their instruments.

   So when 'You Belong To Me' played it was just another amazing classic song in a setlist chockfull of them, as far as I was concerned. I don't know which recent album the song 'Honest With Me' is from, but I will say it was the most rocking song of the night, just a scorcher through and through. And then Dylan dropped the bomb I had no idea was to come, and that was 'Simple Twist Of Fate'. I don't know about you all, but personally whereas I think 'Tangled Up In Blue' to be Dylan's greatest song, my mind has never been able to accommodate for both of these songs at the same time; When Simple Twist Of Fate plays, I forget all about Tangled Up In Blue, and vice-versa. Its the weirdest thing. Even the memory of Tangled Up In Blue was utterly annihilated while 'Simple Twist Of Fate' played, and all I could think was This has got to be the greatest song Dylan ever wrote...and I shouted as much when it was over: 'BEST SONG EVER,' I yelled out loud with devil horns thrown.

   Then the well-oiled machine that is Bob Dylan's band launched into 'Highway 61 Revisited', and it was around this time that I realized we were witnessing an evening of pure transcendence. You Dylan fans reading this by now can most likely perfectly-well understand how fully amazed I was by this point in the show. Every song had a really cool and unique arrangement; but more importantly, the band were so in sync with one another, they just jammed all the tunes with masterful finesse.

   The clouds had been gathering for awhile and the sun had been gradually obfuscated by the mountain line looming behind us when 'Queen Jane, Approximately' began to play. Shasta and I sensed the rain begin to fall again, so I started bustin' up our picnic and packing it all in. We grabbed our brightly colored umbrellas and popped them open just in time to catch the fatter rain drops beginning to drop. That's when Bob began on one tune I particularly enjoy from Modern Times — 'Thunder On The Mountain' — I don't know how he kept lobbing out these perfectly appropriate songs, but yeah the thunder that pealed down from the storm-laden night sky during this song could not have been more properly timed. And a hard rain began to fall, indeed.

   Of course I think everyone there was half-expecting Bob to actually sing this song ('A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall'). I personally was holding out with fingers crossed for 'Buckets Of Rain', one of my perennial favorites. But the final song of the evening that was delivered with almost apocalyptic fury was 'Like A Rolling Stone'. Do I even need to mention we weren't let down in the least? We're all howling "Without a HOME like a complete UNKNOWN... like a ROLLING STOOOONE..." up into the rain at night on a mountainside with hundreds of other people while Bob Dylan led us along was certainly a memory I will carry with me for awhile, yet. Just as soon as that song was done, Dylan tipped his hat and briskly exited stage left along with the rest of his band and all the spotlights went on. Nobody in the audience hesitated, we just grabbed our shit and began our mass exodus in the pouring rain, every single one of us all smiles and chattering excitedly and making our way for the gates, nevermind we were all drenched to the bone. The thunderstorm never once let up from that point on, it was like a soundtrack for the end credits. The time was about 9:45 pm, which meant Bob Dylan had played for two solid hours in the sun and the rain. I can't imagine being more shocked and satisfied than I felt at the end of this stellar show which Mr. Tambourine Man & his devoted band delivered to us all that last day of summer in Deer Valley, Utah, 2008.  In many key ways it stands out among the many mind-blowing concerts I've attended as the most enjoyable and gratifying I've had the good fortune to experience.  

   

~ Poet Laureate of the Soul ~

horror skunx RISE

by your friendly Station 3  DJ Shaun Grub   

      Squeezed in between  Hank III and Human Drama  there's the unforgettable sensational rising star of horror skunx with all fifteen of his pop song hits forming the basis for one of my favorite albums from the past couple years   "BENDYLAND"  as I like to think of it,  but whatever Winston Julian decides to end up naming the album itself^, all fifteen of these songs are classics in the making, and we'd better make no mistake about that.   

      [Look,  I went out and purchased all fifteen trax  for .99c each and ripped 'em to my 16gig nano long ago already, and if there's a sixteenth tune that drops of a sudden, it will be on my phone before sundown. Except my nano's in a state of shock right now, with the white screen of death and the two beeps.  This could be the end of an era.]*  It's true my nano never recovered. I advanced to using my iPhone / Apple Music.   

... O, did I say fifteen trax?  *fast-forward a few years to 2024* Try more like thirty-two now (by my count) which doesn't include the instrumental film score I'm not a Monster (PJ Pug-A-Pillar Soundtrack), which clocks in at 2:27 of surprisingly emotive neoclassical sound, but does include the smash hit Revive My Soul (Side B) collab w/Rockit Music, from the Revive My Soul (Bendy and the Dark Revival) EP, feat. 2 different versions, one sung by just Rockit I think, and the one I really like, the duet w/Winston Julian aka my #1 favorite recording artist today.  He's been Cupid-launched into my heart ever since Zane & I discovered him back during the pandemic, when his early short Sirenhead reels were hitting YT, we were instantly hooked,  my boy & I are most die hard horror skunx fans on the planet. 

                                                              just push PLAY and listen to this earliest

of horror skunx hits, the absolute classic Run Away:

 Before reading any further, stop and think out loud to yourself so you can hear your own voice in your head saying it, what did you think of the song?  If you're not sure, listen to it again. Now you may continue reading my soliloquy to the one and only horror skunx.   (to be cont.)  Cont. 

^the album itself:  To make a finer point of it, you see, this is where it becomes necessary for me to point out, in this footnote, that what we're dealing with here, as an emergent post-media phenomenon, is just one of many YouTube rising stars, doing their own thing, and in the case of Mr. Winston Julian, from the Netherlands, self-made singer, songwriter, VFX artist and filmmaker, what I would humbly describe as a rising superstar whose significance to current young generations of followers comparatively speaking in contrast to the Boomers' and their spawnling gen-X of cohorts in arms, I think of Winston as a sort of ultramodern equivalent to Charlie Chaplin.  

   Cont.  I think the 2nd horror skunx song to strike a chord in me, was the responding tune My Savior, which concerns the mythical skeletal being Long Horse, in fact a hero who pits himself fearlessly against any one of the legion of antagonists popping up out of the shadows who would intrude into our animate world from their paper conceptualized cartoon plane of existence, such as Cartoon Cat and Cartoon Dog and Cartoon Mouse, and a lot of other ancillary villains cribbed from the creative commons platform occupied by SCP and an endless amount of literary precursors, enough to fill the coffers of any multiverse scenario schemed up by the Moorcocks & Kings of the world. 

to be cont. 

LAST Perform Depleted Host live in SLC June 7, 2024 at the International Artist Lounge

by roving reporter (for the Oscillating Oculus) Thornswrath 

click to watch

and listen to
LAST 

live in

SLC 

     Man, my friends Ian and Chase in Salt Lake's own electronic death duo's LAST are sending out permanent waves from the heart of their soul, and I'm feeling it.   I'm so damn lucky I went to this show.  I used to see them perform live all the time while they were in 2-Headed Whale, back around when the pandemic broke, when they were a four piece, with Grayden on the saw and Angela on electric violin.  

   

       There was absolutely nothing like a 2-Headed Whale show.  Like that time I saw them at Crucial Fest I think it was, opening for Wovenhand.  What a damn magical night that was. 

And the time they opened for THOU at Diabolical.  With barely enough space to hold 26 people, that makes for a legendary scene.  THOU covered Would by Alice in Chains, if I recall rightly.   And now LAST has gone on a few tours, and have gathered a nationwide rep as the hard core bad asses they are.  I can't stress enough how much love I have for these guys. They have played with absolutely everybody in the scene. From our very own Portal To The Goddman Blood Dimension, Thou again just last Friday (I missed it), Crippling Alcoholism in Boston, Izthmi out of Seattle, Guhts outta Brooklyn, Void Eater from Atlanta, Ghostlight, Drifter, Tenant, Stander, Exosphere, Glass Artery, Mold Farmer, Lechers, Debilitating Lower Back Pain, Jain Broom (which I filmed a post-Odyssey trip-sequence I'm saving to release on my YT channel for that special rainy day) and I'm pretty sure they played with Primitive Man. I guess my point is LAST aren't going places THEY BEEN PLACES.  LAST is all set to conquer the world.  These two guys bring it to the post core scene or whatever you wanna call it. LAST remain standing on four legs in plain defiance. You do not fuck with LAST. They are the nicest guys you're ever likely to meet in any dive bar or club across the nation.   

    Watch this video again if you have to, and keep an eye out on them. cuz LAST are killin' it, and they're only getting started.  If you're on bandcamp, you may have already discovered them there, their auspicious debut ALL TUNNEL, NO LIGHT dropped in January of 2021. Then, nearly three years later, in October of 2023, they released their sophomore effort SIFTING THROUGH ASH FOR THE BELONGINGS OF OUR LOVED ONES, which shifts their colossal sound into the next phase of their shattering odyssey.  I can't even begin to imagine what they have in store for us on their third monumental release. 

    It's really not worth me trying to even describe to you the power and emotional impact of LAST.  If you take a minute to google the history of their tours, well good luck pulling anything up as of yet because they are nestled firmly and comfortably deep in the underground where they ought to be. You will soon enough discover that we have unearthed a legend yet in the making of the post hard core death noise doom scene, right here in our fair city by the great salt lake of shedding toxins.  Ian and Chase are the coolest guys to come out of this cracked city in a god damn dog's age. Do yourselves a favor and buy both of their albums immediately, or an alternate future self of yours will be lamenting in shame and sorrow over your missed opportunity.   

    Both of these albums are so amazing that I owe it to myself to write reviews up for each of them.  By the time I get around to doing that, we'll likely get absolutely crushed by their third. It's coming like that darkened asteroid NASA doesn't even know about lurking just around the cosmological corner and coming at us like an extinction event the likes of us have never heard. Get prepared now and familiarize yourselves with their first two albums. You've been warned. 

        

In the Key of Dream Lore

 an exploration of the sonic under terrains lurking beneath the surface of our every day world

   by your roving reporter from the Oscillating Oculus returning from the deepest depths,

     Thornswrath 

                                                    The Nameless Mist (Magnum Innominandum )  digital art by LK

     As the echoing ululations evoked from my writing incur all the melodic overtones necessary to provide a haunting sonic backdrop, I've layered in lyrical melodicism with the sibilant whispers of the cutting edge sands issuing from serpent's scales hovering in an eerie blend suspended among the deep down bass undertones of a chanted serenade, I am driven to keep thinking about the first couple of tracks which emerged in time to help develop what would come to be half of the two track album Dream Lore of the Star Winds.  

     Such are the evocative sounds to be heard within the twenty-two minute demo dubbed The Nameless Mist, from Luciferal's Key, a recently introduced glitch poetics artist who cropped up last October on SBR's cosmic horror dark ambient compilation Esoterrexus, an album featuring over twenty musicians and clocking in at over three hours in length. There is a mother lode of soundscape artists featured on this looming asteroid slab of a compilation, all of them exploring deep, brooding sonic terrains etched from the loneliest corners of our soul's most desolate spaces. 

     Track sixteen is Luciferal Key's seventeen minute long offering,  Nyctelios in Atheron, a funereal dirge of droning backdrop that evokes monks chanting from deep within the cavernous underground, amid the lurking presence of a serpent with shimmering scales hissing in a series of hypnotic rattling sounds seemingly designed to keep the listener spellbound.  

     Today I decided to take action and get the second track out.  I knew what I had to do, and followed through with the specifications, and composed another piece of ambient music, which ended up clocking in at 22 min long, because the sublyrical source text was three hundred and fifty two words long, consisting of thirteen hundred and twenty characters. These string together much like cursive writing and when read aloud, succeeds with interpolating the ceaseless articulation of its delivery. 

     This new track seems like a continuation and deepening of Nyctelios in Atheron, so The Nameless Mist might be a good way to end the four track album, sharing the function of bookends with the Esoterrexus track.  But that has yet to be determined, as I'm still in the midst of this album's construkction. 

     The other two tracks I'd imagined might end up on this album instead could most likely end up serving in a different sonic vein, unless I introduce a certain verbal editing construction to the other two which imparts their own distinctive flavors in structuring and sound. Apparently if I were to compose verbal written lines in which all words beginning with 's' or even containing the "s" (serpentine hissing) sound were removed for example, then the resultant recording would naturally reflect that, meaning the removal of the familiar, dragon like hissing sound explored in the first and final tracks, seemingly resultant from the incessant amount of sibilance that prevails in general English as a matter of course.  A careful consultation of certain consonants and phonemes could be edited out to produce a more distinctive recording.   For that matter, translation into a foreign hieroglyphic language might yield its own parameters of interesting sonic interpretive measures.  

    Nyctelios in Atheron has its origins from the raw demo track Dominion, put out on Thornswrath's Soundcloud channel. This track has been classified as a 'glitch poetics' drone track, pretty much.  It has its own logo that I designed with the help of various ai algorithms to produce something alien & surrealistic. [The Nameless Mist will have been added to my Soundcloud page, in time.]

     This would make for a nice gatefold cover layout for a double LP in the dark glitch ambient scene.

Luciferal's Key got its start a few years ago when I produced a three track, six minute EP called Murmurings, whose song titles reflect the names of craters located on the dark side of the moon. 

    All three of these tracks are raw one-take recordings made with my iPhone of me playing the Yamaha keyboard spontaneously, summoning a forlorn mood.  One take improv recordings with no tampering; as lo fi as it gets. 

    The desolation of the moment gets captured nicely on these short raw demos. They have lain down the groundwork for future Luciferal's Key projects.  With Dream Lore of the Star Winds currently in development, it looks like the direction it's going in has set sail on a steady course into the heart of mystery. There's a certain elegance in the articulation of the themes Luciferal's Key deals with that remains hidden just below the surface of our everyday comprehension. That's the beguiling aspect. 

   I want the ambient music inherent to LK's recordings to contain about them an immediacy of the moment enough to capture and hold the listener's attention, even if they have it on headphones while daydreaming from the window seat of their morning commuter bus to work.  I've recorded various other sorts of sound experiments, interested in twisting instrumentational snippets into differing lengths of sonic loops, which I aspire to play together to generate a nonrepeating, interactive ambient backdrop all its own. 

      The key to what made the Esoterrexus track, Nyctelios in Atheron a success for me, well it's the fact I sent the raw demo to my friend Omensworn, resulting in a collaboration. He first mastered it by giving it depth of sound and left / right dimensional stereo, and faded in and out of the piece, but he also embellished a very minimal backdrop of sounds, with a subtle melodic interpolation, to complement and accentuate the demo itself. The results are a seamless and full bodied atmospheric soundtrack which enhances all the subtleties of my compositional sequence, replete with its nonrepeating and rhythmic qualities inherent to the lyrical soul and flow of the conjuring script.  If it wasn't for Omensworn's input and collaboration, there wouldn't be an album, nor a platform for Luciferal's Key. A sense of sincere gratitude and a hearty "thank you" goes out to him, for helping to make this dream of mine come true.  Here's to the project finding its resolution over the following weeks to come. Cheers!

     Stay tuned for more subharmonic frequencies 

   from the darkest nether regions of the under realms  

    

It's Only The End Of The World Again (Liner Notes For A Mix CD)

 by  Shaun Grub

    Starting a mix out with Agents Of Oblivion is a smart move especially if that song is Endsmouth.  It's only the end of the world again.   I love Dax's old wild youthful passion, apparent throughout all the vocals he did for Acid Bath ('94--'97) and he lent some of that energy to his Stardust wannabe outfit in Agents Of Oblivion.  

   Movin' Out, from Aerosmith's debut album which I'm thinking was 1974, is the baddest sounding song on the whole album, it retains it's scorching intensity to this day, an effective hard rocking blues song which introduced me to rock and roll music; we forever remain grateful to our first rock'n'roll heroes, and I still tip my hat to Joey, Tom, Brad, Joe, and Steven for bringing me straight into the dirty bad ass side of rock and roll.   Nobody knows where.  Nobody shows where. Nobody knows where you can find me.  

   Now Scissorfight is one helluva rock band out of New Hampshire, I used to live up there, where they take their freedom seriously.  This band consists of mountain men who will rock out a local bar so hard there'll be furniture flyin'.  Appalachian Chain, driving me insane. These guys are a lot of fun, sorta like an East Coast Pigmy Love Circus. (Who I wanted to include in this mix, but it turns out I didn't have their album on the harddrive, and I'm not sure where the CD is offhand.)  

   The song Mortician's Flame is a prime example of what Acid Bath do best, rock the hell out with sinister bass lines and dark, cryptic riffage not to mention soulfully belted out lyrics.  That is just one hell of a sickening scream which kicks off this song, man these guys were just the best.  They hailed from Louisiana, and to my ears their particular style of hard rock music is an amalgam of various elements taken from extreme metal and hard rock blues, all mixed up in a sort of acid swamp milieu, so I've dubbed their genre acid swamp.  A sort of toxic southern gothic.  Acid Bath only released two official studio albums, they are masterpieces of extreme musical expression still worshipped today and if anything keeping the cult of followers growing, largely due to the underground popularity of their lead singer Dax Riggs, who I was going to feature a song from on this mix but I got carried away, I'm sorry, about the song, in there that you didn't like.  

   I tried as hard as I could just to put together a mix that rocked hard, and I stuck that Bad Religion song Better Off Dead in there.  I'm sorry, about the world, how could I know it could get so bad.  Hey now they're a great punk band, I still carry a soft part in my heart for them, they've been around quite awhile now anyhow.  

   Alice In Chains were such a great crunchy band back in the nineties with Layne Staley fronting them as he would a ship across a storm that I had to include a song of theirs from what most people consider their best album DIRT, the song Dam That River is just a straightforward hard rocking song that delivers the goods in every way.   

    The next song is a mysterious selection from a recently formed super group comprised of members from Bad Religion, Faith No More, Repeater, and Korn: a band named Fear And The Nervous System, the song The Combine is an epic example of what these guys came up with guided by guitarist Munky and the strangely haunting vocals from the singer for the band Repeater, Steve Krolikowsky.  There's a savage elegance to the songs from that album, I really hope those four guys get together again and record another one.  If they never do, that's alright because what they've left behind is one of most interesting and hard rocking albums released in recent years.  

   If 6 Was 9 of course is a stone cold classic, I sorta of inserted it out of nowhere but I'm glad I did, the lyrics are great and that's a timeless classic when you get right down to it.  Let it be. 

   For some reason I chose to shift gears directly into King Crimson, with their smoothly beginning from silence track Dangerous Curves off their magnificent 2003 album The Power To Believe, it's a song that gradually builds in intensity until it's really raving along the freeway at a rapid pace, so I segued into one of my favorite hard rocking songs from the nineties, Korn's Justin, the song which lead singer Jonathan wrote the lyrics for and the band dedicated to Justin, a kid from the Make A Wish Foundation whose wish was to meet the band.  The song Justin is one of my favorite hard rocking songs ever by any band and I figured it would make for a nice curve ball after King Crimson.  

   Then I figured I'd put a song from Peter Murphy's latest album, considering how good it is and how much we all enjoyed seeing him perform live the old Bauhaus hits with his new younger band.  I put The Prince & The Old Lady Shade for it's cool smooth rocking riff but it also turns out to be somewhat lyrically appropriate after Justin, with images of the kid and the bright light.  

   Man Overboard follows because that is a perfect song.  And it's one by Puscifer, the side-project of Tool's singer Maynard James Keenan, the brilliant poet winemaker with a voice of a diva.  Nevermind what anyone else says or thinks, I have enjoyed both LPs and every other little thing that Puscifer have released, it's a great little merry go round musical project that I'm always keeping one eye out for, as Maynard himself has already said that Puscifer is a "rotating doorway" of band members who happen to pass through his sphere and end up on the recordings.  This particular track was the first single from their second album, Condition Of My Parole, an "instant classic" if ever there was one recorded in the history of the post-rock movement.

   Speaking of post-rock, how much of that have you listened to?  It's the movement largely credited with having been best exemplified by the nine-piece Canadian band Godspeed You! Black Emperor, whose recordings you should immediately track down and listen to.  I've got a couple of their albums on vinyl and they are magnificent.  But see even though they deserve the crown as emperors of that scene, they don't really represent what the stripped down basics of post-rock really means, which is music produced by your standard rock instruments such as bass, guitar, and drums--yet most crucially to exist without vocals.  Many post-rock bands sort of emulate an ebb and flow pattern of quietly building music which crescendos into levels of Marshally-stacked loudness which then gradually descend back into tranquility, but this sort of music also features practitioners who interpolate elements of electronics, such as England's 65daysofstatic, one of my favorites.   {Anyhow here's the mix tape I made for you, Birdy.  I hope you can listen to it from way out there on the Other Side.  I miss you every day.} ~Grub 

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.