Friday, April 29, 2005
more wrestling death
Chris Candido, aka Bodydonna Skip, up and died yesterday, apparently from some sort of blood clot issue. That's why you gotta wear them tight stockings after major leg injuries, buddy.
Chris Candido, aka Bodydonna Skip, up and died yesterday, apparently from some sort of blood clot issue. That's why you gotta wear them tight stockings after major leg injuries, buddy.
Rippy got me into Joy Division...
I know this is the second Joy Division post in as many weeks, but hey this is pretty cool. Rippy posted this on his site as well, but he is pretty much responsible for me liking JD...so I will follow his footsteps in the sand on the beach with a brew and a Nicaraguan friend once again.
New order playing "Love Will Tear Us Apart" on the Kimmel show on the anniversary of Ian Curtis' death.
I know this is the second Joy Division post in as many weeks, but hey this is pretty cool. Rippy posted this on his site as well, but he is pretty much responsible for me liking JD...so I will follow his footsteps in the sand on the beach with a brew and a Nicaraguan friend once again.
New order playing "Love Will Tear Us Apart" on the Kimmel show on the anniversary of Ian Curtis' death.
Thursday, April 28, 2005
still flyin' in my head
Look, I'm not back to normal yet, despite working the last three days. Sleep's been a stinker, and the train has been uncommonly awful this week. Hopefully by Monday I'll be on a more standard schedule, and will be able to string more than three words together without nodding off or drooling on myself. In the meantime, you can listen to me dj on WZBC tonight from seven to ten, est. Also, the dj before me will be doing a live phone interview with David Gedge of the Wedding Present and Cinerama, sometime around six or so. Originally Gedge was supposed to pop in and play an acoustic set in-studio, but that's not happening any more. No ma'am.
Also, work has begun on a more official Nokahoma website. And Extension updates will recommence on Monday. I give you my Vincent K. McMahon guarantee on that last one, there.
Man, I wish Nomar would pull my groin!
Look, I'm not back to normal yet, despite working the last three days. Sleep's been a stinker, and the train has been uncommonly awful this week. Hopefully by Monday I'll be on a more standard schedule, and will be able to string more than three words together without nodding off or drooling on myself. In the meantime, you can listen to me dj on WZBC tonight from seven to ten, est. Also, the dj before me will be doing a live phone interview with David Gedge of the Wedding Present and Cinerama, sometime around six or so. Originally Gedge was supposed to pop in and play an acoustic set in-studio, but that's not happening any more. No ma'am.
Also, work has begun on a more official Nokahoma website. And Extension updates will recommence on Monday. I give you my Vincent K. McMahon guarantee on that last one, there.
Man, I wish Nomar would pull my groin!
Wednesday, April 27, 2005
Tossin' The Hog
Them chaps (bytches) in that there band Oneida (Girlfriend slayer) have a new web page (www.enemyhogs.com). Looks hot.
It even includes a "blog" (crazy world gnomes) like feature for each memeber.
Fine work, fun reads, mind picks, soul riffs, ass jams, horn closelines, whippets.
New album The Wedding just fuckin drops May 3rd.
You can hear two MP3s at their Jagjaguar site.
Them chaps (bytches) in that there band Oneida (Girlfriend slayer) have a new web page (www.enemyhogs.com). Looks hot.
It even includes a "blog" (crazy world gnomes) like feature for each memeber.
Fine work, fun reads, mind picks, soul riffs, ass jams, horn closelines, whippets.
New album The Wedding just fuckin drops May 3rd.
You can hear two MP3s at their Jagjaguar site.
Tuesday, April 26, 2005
Mind Zap Photos Pt. 1
A VIEW FROM THE SIDE OF THE MIND ZAP STAGE AT THE AMPHITHEATER
LIL FLIP FINDS THE JOINT BAR
"STICK MY HEAD UNDER THE WATER, ALMOST FOR TOO LONG..."
A VIEW FROM THE SIDE OF THE MIND ZAP STAGE AT THE AMPHITHEATER
LIL FLIP FINDS THE JOINT BAR
"STICK MY HEAD UNDER THE WATER, ALMOST FOR TOO LONG..."
masterful life endangerment
I've lived the math, and since 6:30 am Thursday I've had no more than 27 hours of sleep. I tried to calculate the number of beers but my putrid mind can't hardly grasp the infinite. SF, Still Flyin', the Zap, and the weekend in toto were / are all incomprehensibly monumental. I ate two burritos, and one was the most unnecessarily hot foodstuff ever welcomed into my gullet, whereas in opposition the other was the most egregiously not hot substance encountered by these friendly buds of taste. I question the effectiveness of airport burritos. I didn't see Colin Quinn or lusty ladies, but I did meet Athens' own Bill Mallonee in the Oakland airport, and that's kind of cool.
But so, an arbitrary list of what it made it awesome:
1. Still Flyin' are the greatest band ever.
2. Lil Flip Scoldjah is a close second.
3. Chicken on a Raft are pretty much up there too.
4. at some bar near that record store we saw a chick sharing a beer with a rat
5. that record store itself is pretty damn good too
6. running into random Athens people that I never fuckin' knew
7. El Cucuy
8. seeing like six rabbits running alongside the runway strip at Oakland's airport
9. Kate Zimmerman's bro Alan / Allan / Allen / Alain
10. all those people that live in San Francisco
11. not getting dead
12. this mysterious bruise on my stomach that my wife thought was a hickey
13. the ridiculously massive Rich Harden sign I saw on the way to the airport
14. random wandering tejano bands
15. kicking Griggs' ass at MVP baseball
and, most importantly,
16. getting to hang out with so many old friends again.
So anyhow, yes, great times, constant amazement, etc. If there exists a second Mind Zap some day, I hope I can be there.
I've lived the math, and since 6:30 am Thursday I've had no more than 27 hours of sleep. I tried to calculate the number of beers but my putrid mind can't hardly grasp the infinite. SF, Still Flyin', the Zap, and the weekend in toto were / are all incomprehensibly monumental. I ate two burritos, and one was the most unnecessarily hot foodstuff ever welcomed into my gullet, whereas in opposition the other was the most egregiously not hot substance encountered by these friendly buds of taste. I question the effectiveness of airport burritos. I didn't see Colin Quinn or lusty ladies, but I did meet Athens' own Bill Mallonee in the Oakland airport, and that's kind of cool.
But so, an arbitrary list of what it made it awesome:
1. Still Flyin' are the greatest band ever.
2. Lil Flip Scoldjah is a close second.
3. Chicken on a Raft are pretty much up there too.
4. at some bar near that record store we saw a chick sharing a beer with a rat
5. that record store itself is pretty damn good too
6. running into random Athens people that I never fuckin' knew
7. El Cucuy
8. seeing like six rabbits running alongside the runway strip at Oakland's airport
9. Kate Zimmerman's bro Alan / Allan / Allen / Alain
10. all those people that live in San Francisco
11. not getting dead
12. this mysterious bruise on my stomach that my wife thought was a hickey
13. the ridiculously massive Rich Harden sign I saw on the way to the airport
14. random wandering tejano bands
15. kicking Griggs' ass at MVP baseball
and, most importantly,
16. getting to hang out with so many old friends again.
So anyhow, yes, great times, constant amazement, etc. If there exists a second Mind Zap some day, I hope I can be there.
Monday, April 25, 2005
A good way to warm it back up...
Chris H. pointed us in the direction of this next link. He suggested the France pay homage to this man's wonderful poetry in song. Go look, now. Maybe start off with "An Orgy Of Sex"
Welcome back from the Zap, Zap.
Chris H. pointed us in the direction of this next link. He suggested the France pay homage to this man's wonderful poetry in song. Go look, now. Maybe start off with "An Orgy Of Sex"
Welcome back from the Zap, Zap.
"Out San'nin the Fran"
Well between today and tomorrow, everyone will be back from the Mind Zap Fest in San Fran that happened over the weekend (why the site was dead). I have absolutely tons of pictures that I want to post, so I will get em organized over the next day or so. Amazing time without a doubt, more stories, reviews to come...
the bands that played:
Mind Zap Fest
Erase Errata
Still Flyin'
Okay
The France
Whysp
Weed Wolf
Lil' Flip Scoldjah
Chicken On A Raft
Really diverse sets, great stuff. More "out San'nin the Fran" stories soon....
Well between today and tomorrow, everyone will be back from the Mind Zap Fest in San Fran that happened over the weekend (why the site was dead). I have absolutely tons of pictures that I want to post, so I will get em organized over the next day or so. Amazing time without a doubt, more stories, reviews to come...
the bands that played:
Mind Zap Fest
Erase Errata
Still Flyin'
Okay
The France
Whysp
Weed Wolf
Lil' Flip Scoldjah
Chicken On A Raft
Really diverse sets, great stuff. More "out San'nin the Fran" stories soon....
Wednesday, April 20, 2005
Just a PRE-ZAP
yall might not be ready for this yet...
just a peek from last night at the prezap...
4 dudes. 2:00 am - a few beers past. 3 rap songs recorded. the tom brokaw book.
first song - 2:35
second song - 9:48
third song - 25:34
scoldjah was there. great games was there. icey b was there. cocaine bref too.
released on Nokahoma for delirium.
new group.
vacation has started. officially.
sa see you in a few.
yall might not be ready for this yet...
just a peek from last night at the prezap...
4 dudes. 2:00 am - a few beers past. 3 rap songs recorded. the tom brokaw book.
first song - 2:35
second song - 9:48
third song - 25:34
scoldjah was there. great games was there. icey b was there. cocaine bref too.
released on Nokahoma for delirium.
new group.
vacation has started. officially.
sa see you in a few.
Papal Visit
Hot damn, how 'bout this new pope? I thought he was like Rome's version of Bill Gutheridge, but apparently he's more like Palpatine. Geez, what an evil looking photo.
And although I don't really care that the dude was a Nazi (haven't we all gone through that phase?), I would completely name my band Nazi Pope if I were some thirteen-year-old HC kid.
Hot damn, how 'bout this new pope? I thought he was like Rome's version of Bill Gutheridge, but apparently he's more like Palpatine. Geez, what an evil looking photo.
And although I don't really care that the dude was a Nazi (haven't we all gone through that phase?), I would completely name my band Nazi Pope if I were some thirteen-year-old HC kid.
Tuesday, April 19, 2005
as pointed out by matt billings over on kermits bells
Here's N.W.A.'s Straight Outta Compton, edited down solely to the explicit parts.
Here's N.W.A.'s Straight Outta Compton, edited down solely to the explicit parts.
The best thing about Mexico...
... was catching the last five minutes of Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol on HBO, and thus hearing the excellent Brian Wilson / Gary Usher / Dr. Eugene Landy composition "Let's Go to Heaven in My Car" during the closing credits.
... was catching the last five minutes of Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol on HBO, and thus hearing the excellent Brian Wilson / Gary Usher / Dr. Eugene Landy composition "Let's Go to Heaven in My Car" during the closing credits.
An Endorsement (2)
Anyone like Joy Division?
(a pretty good link here)
Well there is also a really great cover story on them in the April issue of MOJO. Its a great read and goes all over the place with its coverage. They even interview Curtis' daughter who was 1 year old when her father killed himself. She likes Manchester City (that one's for LD).
You should go look for the Mojo soon though, because usually the last week of the month is when they put out the new issue. April's probably wont be around too much longer. It also comes with a really great EARLY NOISE PUNK cd which has the likes of The Fall and such on there. We really should get Asphyxiation back together for a show.
Anyone like Joy Division?
(a pretty good link here)
Well there is also a really great cover story on them in the April issue of MOJO. Its a great read and goes all over the place with its coverage. They even interview Curtis' daughter who was 1 year old when her father killed himself. She likes Manchester City (that one's for LD).
You should go look for the Mojo soon though, because usually the last week of the month is when they put out the new issue. April's probably wont be around too much longer. It also comes with a really great EARLY NOISE PUNK cd which has the likes of The Fall and such on there. We really should get Asphyxiation back together for a show.
Monday, April 18, 2005
I'd forgotten how greatly the internet facilitates not working.
After a week off I felt like I actually had to do some work this morning. I was slightly productive for the first time in maybe a year or so, and let me tell you, it felt like shit. It made me greatly miss Mexico, where every day was a drunken blur of shaman-blessed hot tubbing, ancient pyramids, and orally invasive spider-monkeys. After a couple of hours of drudgery I remembered that the Internet, that magical land that lays waste to both time and souls, still existed, and that up here it wouldn't cost me fifty pesos per quarter-hour. So I've been hitting up the typical sites for the last few hours, downloading stuff left and right, and writing emails to all the wonderful new friends I made last week, like the drunken, racist Russian who sat next to me on the flight there.
Anyway, I'm sort of rambling. I meant to say that a few websites, including Scenestars (much like Ain't It Cool, a site I'm pretty embarrassed to say I regularly visit), have the new White Stripes single up. I'm not a big fan of the band, but this song, at least, starts off pretty good. That opening riff sounds like something that should be on Machine Head. It's a nice bit of old-fashioned riffin', that one. The rest of the song doesn't do much for me, but you've got to take what you can get, I guess.
After a week off I felt like I actually had to do some work this morning. I was slightly productive for the first time in maybe a year or so, and let me tell you, it felt like shit. It made me greatly miss Mexico, where every day was a drunken blur of shaman-blessed hot tubbing, ancient pyramids, and orally invasive spider-monkeys. After a couple of hours of drudgery I remembered that the Internet, that magical land that lays waste to both time and souls, still existed, and that up here it wouldn't cost me fifty pesos per quarter-hour. So I've been hitting up the typical sites for the last few hours, downloading stuff left and right, and writing emails to all the wonderful new friends I made last week, like the drunken, racist Russian who sat next to me on the flight there.
Anyway, I'm sort of rambling. I meant to say that a few websites, including Scenestars (much like Ain't It Cool, a site I'm pretty embarrassed to say I regularly visit), have the new White Stripes single up. I'm not a big fan of the band, but this song, at least, starts off pretty good. That opening riff sounds like something that should be on Machine Head. It's a nice bit of old-fashioned riffin', that one. The rest of the song doesn't do much for me, but you've got to take what you can get, I guess.
Olivias hooked that shit....
Man, what a good show. Seriously, they still got it.
They got a much later start than they were supposed to, but played for almost two hours.
Towards the end of their original run (back in '99-'00), seeing their shows was a fun event, but most would agree that during that time, if you had seen one of their shows- you had pretty much seen them all. They were recycling a lot of the songs every time they showed. Well, this time they litereally brought out everything. It really made you miss them playing and made me realize that I took them for granted alot back then. If there was even one band in Athens that good now, the world would be a lot better place.
They made it look so effortless, being that good. I had heard that they practiced 4 times a week for the past several months to get ready, and it showed. Between songs they had their normal sound collages, great to hear those again. The set was perfectly laid out, most of the stuff coming from Black Foliage but so much from the first record and 7"s and eps. CALIFORNIA DEMISE! Holy shit, enough said.
About halfway through the set they just dissapeared from the stage and moments later came in procession through the front door of the 40 watt and marched through with horns blaring right through the middle of the sold out crowd. It ruled. No hard feelings b/w band members were seen, everyone seemed really happy to be up there again and rocking us.
My favorite song of the night was probably "Can You Come Down With Us" - totally hypnotic and grooving with Bill & Will harmonizing perfectly. Damn good. I was also glad that they weren't afraid to slip into some noisier sections here and there. It wasn't just straight "songs" the whole time, they snuck in "Green Typewriters" stuff the whole show. I have read online that there is someone from ATH that got a great recording of it, so I will keep that posted as well.
I have seen the Olivias probably 10+ times over the years, and I cant decide if this was my favorite time seeing them because the set was great, or because I had missed good music like that for so long.
Setlist below:
Olivia Tremor Control
4.15.05
40 Watt
----------------
Train Director
Jumping Fences
Holiday surprise 1, 2, 3
Define a Transparent Dream
Spring Succeeds
Sylvan Screen
??? (quiet at first and then screaming at end)
Courtyard
I’m Not Feeling Human
???
California Demise 3
[Procession]
Grass Canons
A Sleepy Company
A New Day
??? ("take the time to turn around … blow it up?")
I Have Been Floated
Paranormal Echoes/Black Foliage (Itself)
Memories of Jacqueline 1906
Green Typewriters (excerpt)
Hideaway
Gravity Car
Can You Come Down With Us
ENCORE:
I Can Smell the Leaves
Opera house
Man, what a good show. Seriously, they still got it.
They got a much later start than they were supposed to, but played for almost two hours.
Towards the end of their original run (back in '99-'00), seeing their shows was a fun event, but most would agree that during that time, if you had seen one of their shows- you had pretty much seen them all. They were recycling a lot of the songs every time they showed. Well, this time they litereally brought out everything. It really made you miss them playing and made me realize that I took them for granted alot back then. If there was even one band in Athens that good now, the world would be a lot better place.
They made it look so effortless, being that good. I had heard that they practiced 4 times a week for the past several months to get ready, and it showed. Between songs they had their normal sound collages, great to hear those again. The set was perfectly laid out, most of the stuff coming from Black Foliage but so much from the first record and 7"s and eps. CALIFORNIA DEMISE! Holy shit, enough said.
About halfway through the set they just dissapeared from the stage and moments later came in procession through the front door of the 40 watt and marched through with horns blaring right through the middle of the sold out crowd. It ruled. No hard feelings b/w band members were seen, everyone seemed really happy to be up there again and rocking us.
My favorite song of the night was probably "Can You Come Down With Us" - totally hypnotic and grooving with Bill & Will harmonizing perfectly. Damn good. I was also glad that they weren't afraid to slip into some noisier sections here and there. It wasn't just straight "songs" the whole time, they snuck in "Green Typewriters" stuff the whole show. I have read online that there is someone from ATH that got a great recording of it, so I will keep that posted as well.
I have seen the Olivias probably 10+ times over the years, and I cant decide if this was my favorite time seeing them because the set was great, or because I had missed good music like that for so long.
Setlist below:
Olivia Tremor Control
4.15.05
40 Watt
----------------
Train Director
Jumping Fences
Holiday surprise 1, 2, 3
Define a Transparent Dream
Spring Succeeds
Sylvan Screen
??? (quiet at first and then screaming at end)
Courtyard
I’m Not Feeling Human
???
California Demise 3
[Procession]
Grass Canons
A Sleepy Company
A New Day
??? ("take the time to turn around … blow it up?")
I Have Been Floated
Paranormal Echoes/Black Foliage (Itself)
Memories of Jacqueline 1906
Green Typewriters (excerpt)
Hideaway
Gravity Car
Can You Come Down With Us
ENCORE:
I Can Smell the Leaves
Opera house
i'm behind the times
So the reconstituted Dinosaur Jr will be playing the Variety Playhouse in July, as well as the Avalon up here in Boston. Good news. Did anyone watch that show they played on last Friday? If so, how was it? And what song did they play?
So the reconstituted Dinosaur Jr will be playing the Variety Playhouse in July, as well as the Avalon up here in Boston. Good news. Did anyone watch that show they played on last Friday? If so, how was it? And what song did they play?
back
Yesterday was the first day in a week that I haven't hung out in a hot tub.
So what the fuck's up with America?
Yesterday was the first day in a week that I haven't hung out in a hot tub.
So what the fuck's up with America?
Friday, April 15, 2005
Ice = Shirt Thug
So hopefully everyone knows that Ice
is a fucking jersey designing master.
He has come up with so many mind blowing ideas for shirts/jerseys that I cant even post most of them here b/c it would let loose the idea that is sure to make him millions. MILLIONS. I just hope I can ride his coattails when the money is rolling in.
Upon telling him about the Vick alias which has blown about a million minds, (and if you arent one of them - stop reading this Blog forever, seriously. We dont have the same type of humor, dogg.) he immediately was ready to start production on some serious Falcons' jerseys.
However, this time he was too late.
So hopefully everyone knows that Ice
is a fucking jersey designing master.He has come up with so many mind blowing ideas for shirts/jerseys that I cant even post most of them here b/c it would let loose the idea that is sure to make him millions. MILLIONS. I just hope I can ride his coattails when the money is rolling in.
Upon telling him about the Vick alias which has blown about a million minds, (and if you arent one of them - stop reading this Blog forever, seriously. We dont have the same type of humor, dogg.) he immediately was ready to start production on some serious Falcons' jerseys.
However, this time he was too late.
Thursday, April 14, 2005
Random Pictures From My Digital Camera...
Mind Zap Version
Pic 1:
Still Flyin' Sleeves. Painted them on Saturday with L. These are going to be the home of the Still Flyin' Nokahoma release of their first show ever.
Pic 2:
The first attempt at the photo for the front of the new France 7". We ended up not using this one cause the angled one looked a lot better. Yous guys will see.
Mind Zap Version
Pic 1:
Still Flyin' Sleeves. Painted them on Saturday with L. These are going to be the home of the Still Flyin' Nokahoma release of their first show ever.
Pic 2:
The first attempt at the photo for the front of the new France 7". We ended up not using this one cause the angled one looked a lot better. Yous guys will see.
Wednesday, April 13, 2005
Sly, President, Finger Painter
Ok this post might be kinda lame, but someone I know is obsessed with Alias so what can I say. Greg Grunberg has a son (in real life) who gets epileptic seizures every day. To combat this he has to take a bunch of perscriptions from UCLA's hospital. Grunberg found out the hospital wasn't cutting it financially and has started a fund raising activity for his fellow friends. Finger painting.
And who is at the forefront in helping Grunberg raise money...just fuckin Sly Stallone. Go here (www.celebritycards.com) and just look how fucked up Sly's finger paintings are. Seriously, what the fuck are those things? Was he drunk, again? You can also buy ones from Ricky Gervais.
Not real exciting.
Ok this post might be kinda lame, but someone I know is obsessed with Alias so what can I say. Greg Grunberg has a son (in real life) who gets epileptic seizures every day. To combat this he has to take a bunch of perscriptions from UCLA's hospital. Grunberg found out the hospital wasn't cutting it financially and has started a fund raising activity for his fellow friends. Finger painting.
And who is at the forefront in helping Grunberg raise money...just fuckin Sly Stallone. Go here (www.celebritycards.com) and just look how fucked up Sly's finger paintings are. Seriously, what the fuck are those things? Was he drunk, again? You can also buy ones from Ricky Gervais.
Not real exciting.
Tuesday, April 12, 2005
Monday, April 11, 2005
The Ultimate Shit-dog
So what does it for Tom Brady? Besides a nice club sandwich and a killer toss to my BOY - Dion Branch (EXCALIBRAH FO-EVA!) ....well here is his "CELEBRITY I-TUNES PLAYLIST":
1. "Dream On" - Aerosmith
2. "Lose Yourself" - Eminem
3. "Possum Kingdom" - The Toadies
4. "If I Can't" - 50 Cent
5. "Fell On Black Days" - Soundgarden
6. "Bittersweet Symphony" - The Verve
7. "Award Tour" - A Tribe Called Quest
8. "Mysterious Ways" - U2
9. "I Can" - NAS
10. "Shiver" - Coldplay
11. "My Name Is" - Eminem
12. "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" - U2
13. "Jesus Walks" - Kanye West
14. "Beast Of Burden" - The Rolling Stones
15. "Wonderwall (Live)" - Oasis
16. "Black" - Pearl Jam
17. "Sunday Bloody Sunday" - U2
18. "Encore" - Jay Z
While most of this is a disappointment, I gotta give major props for Tribe, Kanye, Jay Z, and 50. While I would have been totally shocked to see a "Shins", "Captain Beyond", or a "GBV" on there - these highlights are somewhat decent. I wish they would have posted his whole cd collection. Apparently the Rolling Stones song is the song they play before every Patriots home game, which is fucking Awesome. One of their finest.
On a completely other hand, want to see what King Lactating Tit Face listens to?
So what does it for Tom Brady? Besides a nice club sandwich and a killer toss to my BOY - Dion Branch (EXCALIBRAH FO-EVA!) ....well here is his "CELEBRITY I-TUNES PLAYLIST":
1. "Dream On" - Aerosmith
2. "Lose Yourself" - Eminem
3. "Possum Kingdom" - The Toadies
4. "If I Can't" - 50 Cent
5. "Fell On Black Days" - Soundgarden
6. "Bittersweet Symphony" - The Verve
7. "Award Tour" - A Tribe Called Quest
8. "Mysterious Ways" - U2
9. "I Can" - NAS
10. "Shiver" - Coldplay
11. "My Name Is" - Eminem
12. "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" - U2
13. "Jesus Walks" - Kanye West
14. "Beast Of Burden" - The Rolling Stones
15. "Wonderwall (Live)" - Oasis
16. "Black" - Pearl Jam
17. "Sunday Bloody Sunday" - U2
18. "Encore" - Jay Z
While most of this is a disappointment, I gotta give major props for Tribe, Kanye, Jay Z, and 50. While I would have been totally shocked to see a "Shins", "Captain Beyond", or a "GBV" on there - these highlights are somewhat decent. I wish they would have posted his whole cd collection. Apparently the Rolling Stones song is the song they play before every Patriots home game, which is fucking Awesome. One of their finest.
On a completely other hand, want to see what King Lactating Tit Face listens to?
Our most talented friend?
This my and Dark's close friend Chris Alender (on the right next to uhhhh, MOS DEF!!!). He is our super ambitious awesome brother who lives (and doesn't shave) in LA. He is one of the coolest as if this picture didn't further that. If you guys ever get a chance to meet him, you will like him. He was at dark's wedding, and had some awesome comments. He also was responsible for me hearing Archers of Loaf for the first time. The other guy in the picture is Marcus, Chris' bidnass partner and overall mind tamer. He is awesome too.
Guess what they were doing in this photo?
A) filming Mos' newest video
B) chilling in Chris' mansh (in the "arty" room)
C) getting ready to rollerblade
D) Chris and Marcus are at Mos Def band practice, they are his hype men
E) filming a special for BET on Mos Def's new movie Hitchhikers...
This my and Dark's close friend Chris Alender (on the right next to uhhhh, MOS DEF!!!). He is our super ambitious awesome brother who lives (and doesn't shave) in LA. He is one of the coolest as if this picture didn't further that. If you guys ever get a chance to meet him, you will like him. He was at dark's wedding, and had some awesome comments. He also was responsible for me hearing Archers of Loaf for the first time. The other guy in the picture is Marcus, Chris' bidnass partner and overall mind tamer. He is awesome too.
Guess what they were doing in this photo?
A) filming Mos' newest video
B) chilling in Chris' mansh (in the "arty" room)
C) getting ready to rollerblade
D) Chris and Marcus are at Mos Def band practice, they are his hype men
E) filming a special for BET on Mos Def's new movie Hitchhikers...
TEAR IT DOWN!!!!
Ol' DADDY DARKNESS IS OUT OF THE COUNTRY!!! LETS PARTY!!!!!!!
AND BREAK INTO HIS FANTASY BASEBALL ACCOUNT AND BENCH ALL HIS STARTERS!
AND BREAK INTO HIS PLACE IN BOSTON AND HANG UP JIMMY FALLON POSTERS!
AND SCRATCH ALL HIS FOGHAT ALBUMS!
AND CALL PEOPLE FROM HIS HOME PHONE, PEOPLE LIKE - TREY ANASTAISO!
AND DRESS UP HIS COMPUTER!
AND AUTOGRAPH ALL HIS BOOKS!
AND CUT UP HIS MIND CAP!
AND ORDER A LIMO FULL OF PIZZAS TO ARRIVE AT HIS HOUSE THE DAY HE ARRIVES! (TO BE PAID FOR BY HIM!)
AND JAM LOUD ON HIS AMPS SO HIS NEIGHBORS CALL THE ROCK COPS!
AND TAKE A UPPER DECKER IN HIS TOILET!
THEN...
HEAD TO HIS FRIDGE AND DRINK ABOUT FIDY-LEVEN OF HIS BEERS!
AND PUT SOME MEAT IN HIS UNUSED CABINETS!
AND DANCE IN HIS DEN, TO THAT SHITTY SONG ABOUT PARTYING LIKE A ROCK STAR!
AND PROGRAM HIS TV SO THAT HE ONLY GETS THE OXYGEN CHANNEL!
AND HAVE SOME KEG STANDS (with pizza) WITH OPRAH IN HIS FRONT ROOM!
AND SET UP SOME KILLER KARAOKE JAMS STARING ALLYN'S BROTHER - BLAZE OF GLORY!
AND START A RAP GROUP!
AND INSTALL SOME TRACT LIGHTING!
AND INSTALL A BEER TAP THAT REQUIRES A CODE, THAT ONLY WE KNOW!
SALIVATE!
Ol' DADDY DARKNESS IS OUT OF THE COUNTRY!!! LETS PARTY!!!!!!!
AND BREAK INTO HIS FANTASY BASEBALL ACCOUNT AND BENCH ALL HIS STARTERS!
AND BREAK INTO HIS PLACE IN BOSTON AND HANG UP JIMMY FALLON POSTERS!
AND SCRATCH ALL HIS FOGHAT ALBUMS!
AND CALL PEOPLE FROM HIS HOME PHONE, PEOPLE LIKE - TREY ANASTAISO!
AND DRESS UP HIS COMPUTER!
AND AUTOGRAPH ALL HIS BOOKS!
AND CUT UP HIS MIND CAP!
AND ORDER A LIMO FULL OF PIZZAS TO ARRIVE AT HIS HOUSE THE DAY HE ARRIVES! (TO BE PAID FOR BY HIM!)
AND JAM LOUD ON HIS AMPS SO HIS NEIGHBORS CALL THE ROCK COPS!
AND TAKE A UPPER DECKER IN HIS TOILET!
THEN...
HEAD TO HIS FRIDGE AND DRINK ABOUT FIDY-LEVEN OF HIS BEERS!
AND PUT SOME MEAT IN HIS UNUSED CABINETS!
AND DANCE IN HIS DEN, TO THAT SHITTY SONG ABOUT PARTYING LIKE A ROCK STAR!
AND PROGRAM HIS TV SO THAT HE ONLY GETS THE OXYGEN CHANNEL!
AND HAVE SOME KEG STANDS (with pizza) WITH OPRAH IN HIS FRONT ROOM!
AND SET UP SOME KILLER KARAOKE JAMS STARING ALLYN'S BROTHER - BLAZE OF GLORY!
AND START A RAP GROUP!
AND INSTALL SOME TRACT LIGHTING!
AND INSTALL A BEER TAP THAT REQUIRES A CODE, THAT ONLY WE KNOW!
SALIVATE!
Friday, April 08, 2005
One for the ages...
Just announced...
Closing headliner of Music Midtown 2005 on Sunday night...
WE ARE DEVO!!!!!!
Fuckin' awesome news. Griggs got even slightly excited (was batteling a killer hamjamm hangover).
In other news I had the weirdest lunch experience at a Taco Stand ever today. First off I got up from my booth to get a drink refill and I walked by this gentleman in his 60s with two 3 year old girls going wild. One fell down at my feet and i tried to help her up and he just pulled her up by her arm and she was just calmly saying, "fanny, fanny fanny". Get my refil and return to my booth where I discover said man sitting in my booth and he has thrown all my food in a pile with various other trash from the booth and was getting up to throw it away. I speak up, "excuse me this is my booth, and that is my food you are about to throw away!" "OH SORRY MAN!" - then he puts the food/rubbish pile back down on the table and moves on to another booth! WTF?! Then 4 minutes later, (I was in the middle of reading a Creative Loafing article when I got up for the refill) still hungry cause my food is destroyed...I glance out the window to my left as something catches out of the corner of my eye. Just a BMW SUV which has jumped the curb headed straight for the window/building where I was sitting. I jumped up thinking the car was going to come crashing through the storefront...then the car jerks to a stop a foot before the window and this pregnant woman jumps out of the car laughing like a bonehead at her friends through the window in the booth behind me. They had jumped too.
Fuck this.
Just announced...
Closing headliner of Music Midtown 2005 on Sunday night...
WE ARE DEVO!!!!!!
Fuckin' awesome news. Griggs got even slightly excited (was batteling a killer hamjamm hangover).
In other news I had the weirdest lunch experience at a Taco Stand ever today. First off I got up from my booth to get a drink refill and I walked by this gentleman in his 60s with two 3 year old girls going wild. One fell down at my feet and i tried to help her up and he just pulled her up by her arm and she was just calmly saying, "fanny, fanny fanny". Get my refil and return to my booth where I discover said man sitting in my booth and he has thrown all my food in a pile with various other trash from the booth and was getting up to throw it away. I speak up, "excuse me this is my booth, and that is my food you are about to throw away!" "OH SORRY MAN!" - then he puts the food/rubbish pile back down on the table and moves on to another booth! WTF?! Then 4 minutes later, (I was in the middle of reading a Creative Loafing article when I got up for the refill) still hungry cause my food is destroyed...I glance out the window to my left as something catches out of the corner of my eye. Just a BMW SUV which has jumped the curb headed straight for the window/building where I was sitting. I jumped up thinking the car was going to come crashing through the storefront...then the car jerks to a stop a foot before the window and this pregnant woman jumps out of the car laughing like a bonehead at her friends through the window in the booth behind me. They had jumped too.
Fuck this.
Thursday, April 07, 2005
this Google Maps thing is pretty awesome
Have you guys tried this out yet?
Here's my apartment building.
Here's the building I work in.
Here's John Kerry's Beacon Hill townhouse.
Here's Long John Silvers' corporate headquarters.
Here's the site of the very first Long John Silver's.
Here's where Leo Frank was lynched by the town leaders of Marietta in 1915 (now the site of a Long John Silver's).
Here's where Ron Mexico gets his herpes treatments.
And here's where I buy all my houseboating supplies and necessities.
Have you guys tried this out yet?
Here's my apartment building.
Here's the building I work in.
Here's John Kerry's Beacon Hill townhouse.
Here's Long John Silvers' corporate headquarters.
Here's the site of the very first Long John Silver's.
Here's where Leo Frank was lynched by the town leaders of Marietta in 1915 (now the site of a Long John Silver's).
Here's where Ron Mexico gets his herpes treatments.
And here's where I buy all my houseboating supplies and necessities.
America's Funniest Boner* Videos
*Boner in the sense of blunder. Completely safe for work, well actually there is some cussing so turn down the volume.
If you dont know about this hilarious video clip site, you owe it to yourself to discover it.
They update it every week with funny video clips along the right side.
Here is a particular funny one from this week: Awesome Sports Dude
Also, here is a Napoleon Dynamite sound board in which you can make awesome prank calls with: Large Talons?
Maybe the best ever clip from there (listen to the drunk guy): TAZERED!
Go search around the archives too...funny stuff in there!
*Boner in the sense of blunder. Completely safe for work, well actually there is some cussing so turn down the volume.
If you dont know about this hilarious video clip site, you owe it to yourself to discover it.
They update it every week with funny video clips along the right side.
Here is a particular funny one from this week: Awesome Sports Dude
Also, here is a Napoleon Dynamite sound board in which you can make awesome prank calls with: Large Talons?
Maybe the best ever clip from there (listen to the drunk guy): TAZERED!
Go search around the archives too...funny stuff in there!
Ravi Shankar IS DEAD!
Just kidding, but today back in 1920 he popped out of his mommy playin a killer RAGA!
Happy birthday you sitar enchanter and overall wise guy.
Just kidding, but today back in 1920 he popped out of his mommy playin a killer RAGA!
Happy birthday you sitar enchanter and overall wise guy.
Wednesday, April 06, 2005
two new songs up at robertpollard.net
There's a track off the forth-coming Circus Devils album, plus a song from the Moping Swans ep. That Moping Swans record looks interesting - I believe it's the same line-up as Robert Pollard and His Soft Rock Renegades, the band that recorded 2001's excellent Choreographed Man of War album.
There's a track off the forth-coming Circus Devils album, plus a song from the Moping Swans ep. That Moping Swans record looks interesting - I believe it's the same line-up as Robert Pollard and His Soft Rock Renegades, the band that recorded 2001's excellent Choreographed Man of War album.
One Truth About Journey
Whereas "Don't Stop Believin'", "Any Way You Want It", and "Faithfully" are all legitimately great songs, "Separate Ways (Worlds Apart)" is simply awful, regardless of how amazing the video may be.
Whereas "Don't Stop Believin'", "Any Way You Want It", and "Faithfully" are all legitimately great songs, "Separate Ways (Worlds Apart)" is simply awful, regardless of how amazing the video may be.
Brain MELTED! OH HELL!!!!
HOLY HELL FUCK YESSHIT!
Tuesday June 28th
Comets On Fire
Growing
The Earl
$10
Tickets melted!
Face is too...
HOLY HELL FUCK YESSHIT!
Tuesday June 28th
Comets On Fire
Growing
The Earl
$10
Tickets melted!
Face is too...
Tuesday, April 05, 2005
Was he wearing a toupee and fake mustache, too?
A woman has filed suit against Michael Vick, claiming that she contracted herpes through sexual contact with him. She also claims that he used the alias "Ron Mexico", which is about as believable a name as Jeff Gannon. Is this really the best fake name he could come up with? With those sterling pseudonym skills I wouldn't be surprised if Vick applied for an AMC Movie Watcher card with the name Bobby Teenager.
A woman has filed suit against Michael Vick, claiming that she contracted herpes through sexual contact with him. She also claims that he used the alias "Ron Mexico", which is about as believable a name as Jeff Gannon. Is this really the best fake name he could come up with? With those sterling pseudonym skills I wouldn't be surprised if Vick applied for an AMC Movie Watcher card with the name Bobby Teenager.
MIND ZAP FEST!!!!!
Thought some of you 6 who read this page might like to see this....
The poster for the Mind Zap Fest. SPREAD THE WORD, SPREAD THE HEALTH!!!!
I did the design....printed by Nick Canada at Satisfactory.
Thought some of you 6 who read this page might like to see this....
The poster for the Mind Zap Fest. SPREAD THE WORD, SPREAD THE HEALTH!!!!
I did the design....printed by Nick Canada at Satisfactory.
A fine establishment?
Anyone ever online ordered from Eclipse Records before?
I ordered something yesterday and havent received a confirmation email or anything.
Is this the way they roll?
Anyone ever online ordered from Eclipse Records before?
I ordered something yesterday and havent received a confirmation email or anything.
Is this the way they roll?
Maybe the best trade JS ever made?
Remember, back in the fall of 2002, when your typically feeble-brained sports radio callers and AJC Venters went apoplectic over the trade of Damian Moss? You know, the Australian left-hander who had a pretty decent season in 2002, leading some to call him the next coming of Tom Glavine, despite walking a guy every other inning? And who John Schuerholz traded to San Francisco straight-up for Russ Ortiz, prompting the aforementioned apoplexy? Ortiz, of course, went on to win 36 games during his two seasons in Atlanta. Moss, on the other hand, won ten in 2003 between SF and Baltimore, before being sent down, non-tendered, signed AND released by two of the worst teams in baseball, and, finally, struggling this spring to win a spot on Seattle's Triple-A rotation.
Well, turns out old Mossy's been on the juice. He's definitely not the first (or second, if you want to count Caminiti's two-month stint) ex-Brave I'd expect to hear this about, and it really starts to make you wonder how widespread this shit might be. If a less than mediocre pitcher who can't even stay in the big leagues is using, how many major leaguers must be up to the same stuff?
Remember, back in the fall of 2002, when your typically feeble-brained sports radio callers and AJC Venters went apoplectic over the trade of Damian Moss? You know, the Australian left-hander who had a pretty decent season in 2002, leading some to call him the next coming of Tom Glavine, despite walking a guy every other inning? And who John Schuerholz traded to San Francisco straight-up for Russ Ortiz, prompting the aforementioned apoplexy? Ortiz, of course, went on to win 36 games during his two seasons in Atlanta. Moss, on the other hand, won ten in 2003 between SF and Baltimore, before being sent down, non-tendered, signed AND released by two of the worst teams in baseball, and, finally, struggling this spring to win a spot on Seattle's Triple-A rotation.
Well, turns out old Mossy's been on the juice. He's definitely not the first (or second, if you want to count Caminiti's two-month stint) ex-Brave I'd expect to hear this about, and it really starts to make you wonder how widespread this shit might be. If a less than mediocre pitcher who can't even stay in the big leagues is using, how many major leaguers must be up to the same stuff?
not that different from Hammer's BK ads
I've been hard on the Globe's Renee Graham in the past. Her weekly "Life in the Pop Lane" column is indicative of most everything that's wrong with contemporary pop-culture journalism. Her article today, about McDonald's potentially paying rappers to mention their products in their songs, isn't much better than usual, but at least the topic is slightly interesting. I'm surprised that this sort of stuff hasn't been going on for a while.
I've been hard on the Globe's Renee Graham in the past. Her weekly "Life in the Pop Lane" column is indicative of most everything that's wrong with contemporary pop-culture journalism. Her article today, about McDonald's potentially paying rappers to mention their products in their songs, isn't much better than usual, but at least the topic is slightly interesting. I'm surprised that this sort of stuff hasn't been going on for a while.
Monday, April 04, 2005
My thoughts on the toilet seat...
Now recently I have voiced these opinions to the lucky, but I just got yelled at for leaving the toilet seat up at work....so gawd damn it I’m going to voice my opinions here.
"Why Womyn Don’t Have The Right To Yell At Men For Leaving The Toilet Seat Up!"
By DJ Hammond
My thoughts on this are basic. Simplistic. They come down to movement and laziness.
Let the world be the judge.
I would go out on a limb and say that at least 91 men throughout the history of Earth have been yelled at by women for leaving the seat up after they take a bladder busting piss. Now that is a lot, but why must we be yelled at for displaying common courtesy? Men, back me up on this one - if you were to go into take the said piss and you were to be a total wild heathen and leave the seat down, what would happen? Piss would get on that seat, but not for the reason that most women think (that we just piss all over the seat for the fun of it). 99% of the time that seat is getting doused from "residual splash". The piss beam sometimes is powerful and spashies go a-flying. What will a self-respecting man do at that point, take a few squares of TP and wipe that shit up. One Motion.
However, most men don’t do that, because they are even further thinking of the women of the world. They don’t even want a slight wetness to the seat, so what do they do? We bend down and lift the seat up, so no pee pee dribblets fly up on the seat. This takes one motion, bending down and lifting the seat up. To now not get yelled at by the womens, the man has to bend back over and lift the seat back down to its original resting place. That is a grand total of two motions people.
Then a women goes to take a quick tinkle. She enters the stall and sees that the seat has been left up. TOTAL BEDLAM ENSUES. She then has to bend over and move the toilet seat into its resting position. One movement. She will then exit the bathroom and promptly call the world to BASH the men for being inactive lackadaisical neanderthal assheads for not putting the toilet seat down. The most a woman will ever have to do in the bathroom is make one movement to put down the seat. While on the other hand, men have to go through two motions to display gallantry and to avoid having their manhood kicked in.
Now seriously world of mine, who are the lazy ones?
Now recently I have voiced these opinions to the lucky, but I just got yelled at for leaving the toilet seat up at work....so gawd damn it I’m going to voice my opinions here.
"Why Womyn Don’t Have The Right To Yell At Men For Leaving The Toilet Seat Up!"
By DJ Hammond
My thoughts on this are basic. Simplistic. They come down to movement and laziness.
Let the world be the judge.
I would go out on a limb and say that at least 91 men throughout the history of Earth have been yelled at by women for leaving the seat up after they take a bladder busting piss. Now that is a lot, but why must we be yelled at for displaying common courtesy? Men, back me up on this one - if you were to go into take the said piss and you were to be a total wild heathen and leave the seat down, what would happen? Piss would get on that seat, but not for the reason that most women think (that we just piss all over the seat for the fun of it). 99% of the time that seat is getting doused from "residual splash". The piss beam sometimes is powerful and spashies go a-flying. What will a self-respecting man do at that point, take a few squares of TP and wipe that shit up. One Motion.
However, most men don’t do that, because they are even further thinking of the women of the world. They don’t even want a slight wetness to the seat, so what do they do? We bend down and lift the seat up, so no pee pee dribblets fly up on the seat. This takes one motion, bending down and lifting the seat up. To now not get yelled at by the womens, the man has to bend back over and lift the seat back down to its original resting place. That is a grand total of two motions people.
Then a women goes to take a quick tinkle. She enters the stall and sees that the seat has been left up. TOTAL BEDLAM ENSUES. She then has to bend over and move the toilet seat into its resting position. One movement. She will then exit the bathroom and promptly call the world to BASH the men for being inactive lackadaisical neanderthal assheads for not putting the toilet seat down. The most a woman will ever have to do in the bathroom is make one movement to put down the seat. While on the other hand, men have to go through two motions to display gallantry and to avoid having their manhood kicked in.
Now seriously world of mine, who are the lazy ones?
more radio junk
I'll be dj'ing tonight on WZBC from seven to ten pm, eastern standard time. Listen in if you can.
I'll be dj'ing tonight on WZBC from seven to ten pm, eastern standard time. Listen in if you can.
I was out purchased...
Compact Discs which were purchased this weekend:
Skygreen Leopards - Life And Love In Sparrow's Meadow
The Buried Civilizations - Tunnels To Other Chambers (jewelledantler)
Sunn O))) - The Grimmrobe Demos
Howling Hex - All Night Fox
Ghost - Metamorphosis DVD/CD
Howling Hex is pretty awesome. All of them are continuous grooves of the same chords. Basically one chord progression for like 4 -5 minutes each with awesome confusing lyrics over it. A review called it the future of space boogie. That is true.
Skygreen is really good. They were really good. 24 strings. 2 dudes. Recognize a lot of the songs off this cd from their live show. Late 60s bent acoustic folkies.
Ghost - nobody is ready for this thing. Blows everything away. The CD is stuff he was doing in the late 80s...fuckin jammin in the temples. I think I realized something this weekend. I love Acid Mothers Temple more, but Ghost is a master beyond realms.
SunnO))) sacared the shit out of me. Grimmmm mutherfucker. Defeating: Earth's Gravity as we speak.
Compact Discs which were purchased this weekend:
Skygreen Leopards - Life And Love In Sparrow's Meadow
The Buried Civilizations - Tunnels To Other Chambers (jewelledantler)
Sunn O))) - The Grimmrobe Demos
Howling Hex - All Night Fox
Ghost - Metamorphosis DVD/CD
Howling Hex is pretty awesome. All of them are continuous grooves of the same chords. Basically one chord progression for like 4 -5 minutes each with awesome confusing lyrics over it. A review called it the future of space boogie. That is true.
Skygreen is really good. They were really good. 24 strings. 2 dudes. Recognize a lot of the songs off this cd from their live show. Late 60s bent acoustic folkies.
Ghost - nobody is ready for this thing. Blows everything away. The CD is stuff he was doing in the late 80s...fuckin jammin in the temples. I think I realized something this weekend. I love Acid Mothers Temple more, but Ghost is a master beyond realms.
SunnO))) sacared the shit out of me. Grimmmm mutherfucker. Defeating: Earth's Gravity as we speak.
braves fans
So I'm listening to MLB.com's archive of Saturday's exhibition game. WGST's announcers are Mark Lemke and some dude filling in for Stu Klitenic. Are Skip, Pete, Don, and Joe off radio? Isn't Chip in there somewhere now, too? Did Don or Joe leave? What the hell is going on?
The Sox's main radio guys sounds like he's having a heart attack on every single play.
So I'm listening to MLB.com's archive of Saturday's exhibition game. WGST's announcers are Mark Lemke and some dude filling in for Stu Klitenic. Are Skip, Pete, Don, and Joe off radio? Isn't Chip in there somewhere now, too? Did Don or Joe leave? What the hell is going on?
The Sox's main radio guys sounds like he's having a heart attack on every single play.
sobriety rocks
On Friday night I made it through a rock show without having a single drink for the first time since 1998, maybe. Oneida, Devil Music, and the Birds of Avalon played at the Brookline Community Center for the Arts, four or five blocks down Harvard Street from our apartment. I am the World Trade Center and the Paper Lions played a show there about a year ago, a show that I missed in order to see Elf Power across town the same night. I sort of regret that decision. The show was in a dance studio in the basement, so the walls were lined with mirrors. There was no stage, and the bands switched from one side of the room to the other when they played. The sound was surprisingly good, and thanks in part to the mirrors it was easy to see everything. I think it would be an excellent place to see the Trade Center, especially if it was packed full of folks from Athens. All in all, it's a good venue, yes sir.
Devil Music has pretty much become Oneida's personal openers here in Boston; they've played at least the last three Oneida shows in town. Tonight they had a five-piece horn section complementing their standard violin-bass-guitar-drums set-up. It definitely changed their sound, and not necessarily for the better. Devil Music proper have always been fairly bombastic, in an Emerson Lake and Palmer kind of way, but the horns elevated that bombast to a whole new level. At times it came off like a Miklos Rozsa score with rock elements thrown in. It was really good, but a little overwhelming at times, and not quite as enjoyable as the other two shows I've seen them play.
The Birds of Avalon, from Raleigh, North Carolina, is the new band from Cheetie and Paul, former guitarist and bass-player, respectively, for the Cherry Valence. No idea why left the Valence, but these Birds rock pretty much just as hard, and pretty much in just the same sort of way. We're talking down-and-dirty, juke-joint boogie-woogie, like Molly Hatchet or Ram Jam. It seemed to alienate most of the punks and art-rockers in the crowd, but I was digging, as were the potentially sapphic drunk girls grinding into each other and the lead singer. I miss the dual-drumming power of the Valence, but the Birds of Avalon are otherwise just as enjoyable. Had I been drunk I probably would have been blown away; as is, it was pretty good.
Oneida finished it up with a reliably great set that made me momentarily forget my unquenchable thirst. I've generally been half-drunk to oblivion when I see these guys, so watching them sober was almost kind of special. It was a big change from their show at the Hoss House last year, where I polished off a twelve-pack on my lonesome in some stranger's basement. Anyhow, they began with a so-so "Each One Teach One" that gradually wound up being pretty awesome by the end. They played a few off the new album, and a song or two each from Nice / Splittin' Peaches, Secret Wars, that Liars split, Each One Teach One, and Anthem of the Moon. It was all good to great, except for maybe the finisher, "Sheets of Easter", which came off as perfunctory and less intense than usual. Afterward my knees ached like hell from all the spastic twitching; methinks that's something the alcohol normally obscures, as I'm rarely in pain like that after a show.
So reliving the non-drunken days of yore was all fine and good for a night, but I don't envision it becoming a regular habit. One of my few goals has always been to become a full-blown alkie by the time I hit 30, and with barely two years left I've still got lots of work to do. Also I wind up going to a lot of shows alone, and in those situations it's almost impossible to resist that sickly siren's call.
On Friday night I made it through a rock show without having a single drink for the first time since 1998, maybe. Oneida, Devil Music, and the Birds of Avalon played at the Brookline Community Center for the Arts, four or five blocks down Harvard Street from our apartment. I am the World Trade Center and the Paper Lions played a show there about a year ago, a show that I missed in order to see Elf Power across town the same night. I sort of regret that decision. The show was in a dance studio in the basement, so the walls were lined with mirrors. There was no stage, and the bands switched from one side of the room to the other when they played. The sound was surprisingly good, and thanks in part to the mirrors it was easy to see everything. I think it would be an excellent place to see the Trade Center, especially if it was packed full of folks from Athens. All in all, it's a good venue, yes sir.
Devil Music has pretty much become Oneida's personal openers here in Boston; they've played at least the last three Oneida shows in town. Tonight they had a five-piece horn section complementing their standard violin-bass-guitar-drums set-up. It definitely changed their sound, and not necessarily for the better. Devil Music proper have always been fairly bombastic, in an Emerson Lake and Palmer kind of way, but the horns elevated that bombast to a whole new level. At times it came off like a Miklos Rozsa score with rock elements thrown in. It was really good, but a little overwhelming at times, and not quite as enjoyable as the other two shows I've seen them play.
The Birds of Avalon, from Raleigh, North Carolina, is the new band from Cheetie and Paul, former guitarist and bass-player, respectively, for the Cherry Valence. No idea why left the Valence, but these Birds rock pretty much just as hard, and pretty much in just the same sort of way. We're talking down-and-dirty, juke-joint boogie-woogie, like Molly Hatchet or Ram Jam. It seemed to alienate most of the punks and art-rockers in the crowd, but I was digging, as were the potentially sapphic drunk girls grinding into each other and the lead singer. I miss the dual-drumming power of the Valence, but the Birds of Avalon are otherwise just as enjoyable. Had I been drunk I probably would have been blown away; as is, it was pretty good.
Oneida finished it up with a reliably great set that made me momentarily forget my unquenchable thirst. I've generally been half-drunk to oblivion when I see these guys, so watching them sober was almost kind of special. It was a big change from their show at the Hoss House last year, where I polished off a twelve-pack on my lonesome in some stranger's basement. Anyhow, they began with a so-so "Each One Teach One" that gradually wound up being pretty awesome by the end. They played a few off the new album, and a song or two each from Nice / Splittin' Peaches, Secret Wars, that Liars split, Each One Teach One, and Anthem of the Moon. It was all good to great, except for maybe the finisher, "Sheets of Easter", which came off as perfunctory and less intense than usual. Afterward my knees ached like hell from all the spastic twitching; methinks that's something the alcohol normally obscures, as I'm rarely in pain like that after a show.
So reliving the non-drunken days of yore was all fine and good for a night, but I don't envision it becoming a regular habit. One of my few goals has always been to become a full-blown alkie by the time I hit 30, and with barely two years left I've still got lots of work to do. Also I wind up going to a lot of shows alone, and in those situations it's almost impossible to resist that sickly siren's call.
Ray = best cast ever
Movies like this is why they should give out an Oscar for best ensemble.
1. David Krumholtz
2. Warwick "Willow" Davis
3. Regina "that girl from 227" King
4. Rick "Endless Mike Hellstrom" Gomez
5. Curtis "Booger" "Charles de Mar" "Herbert Viola" Armstrong (as Ahmet Ertegun, no less)
6. that guy from Booty Call
The movie was okay up until the last fifteen minutes or so. The stupid psychological bullshit is horrible, as are most of the flashbacks to his youth. And there's pretty much no resolution whatsoever. The movie just meanders along for two hours and fifteen minutes, and then all of a sudden he fires his best friend, goes through rehab, and gets admitted back into the state of Georgia. The End. What an awful ending, one that undermines the entire film. Foxx was pretty great, though, and deserves that award.
The most interesting thing about the movie, though, is something I learned in the "cast and filmmakers" biography section. Apparently Curtis Armstrong is a world-renown expert on all things Harry Nilsson. He helped coordinate the recent spate of Nilsson reissues, and has a co-producer credit on them. What a coincidence, considering last week's post on the extension.
Movies like this is why they should give out an Oscar for best ensemble.
1. David Krumholtz
2. Warwick "Willow" Davis
3. Regina "that girl from 227" King
4. Rick "Endless Mike Hellstrom" Gomez
5. Curtis "Booger" "Charles de Mar" "Herbert Viola" Armstrong (as Ahmet Ertegun, no less)
6. that guy from Booty Call
The movie was okay up until the last fifteen minutes or so. The stupid psychological bullshit is horrible, as are most of the flashbacks to his youth. And there's pretty much no resolution whatsoever. The movie just meanders along for two hours and fifteen minutes, and then all of a sudden he fires his best friend, goes through rehab, and gets admitted back into the state of Georgia. The End. What an awful ending, one that undermines the entire film. Foxx was pretty great, though, and deserves that award.
The most interesting thing about the movie, though, is something I learned in the "cast and filmmakers" biography section. Apparently Curtis Armstrong is a world-renown expert on all things Harry Nilsson. He helped coordinate the recent spate of Nilsson reissues, and has a co-producer credit on them. What a coincidence, considering last week's post on the extension.
Friday, April 01, 2005
J, Lou + Murph on that guy from Drew Carey's show
from Merge's Newsletter (the reunion we know to be true, and they swear the Ferguson bit is not an April Fools joke):
I'll be in Mexico on April 15th, enforcing the sanctity of our national borders. Could someone tape this for me?
from Merge's Newsletter (the reunion we know to be true, and they swear the Ferguson bit is not an April Fools joke):
THE ORIGINAL DINOSAUR JR. REUNITE AFTER 15 YEARS AND WILL PERFORM TOGETHER FOR THE FIRST TIME ON TELEVISION ON CBS' LATE LATE SHOW WITH CRAIG FERGUSON.
J, Lou, and Murph haven't played together since 1989. And, despite their groundbreaking musical accomplishments, the original Dinosaur Jr. lineup never did perform on national TV - until now. Almost two decades later, the trio will bring their jaw dropping live performance back to the stage; their reunion will be debuted on CBS' Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson on Friday, April 15.
A day later, at Hollywood's Spaceland, J Mascis + the Fog with VERY special guests will perform a full show to 300 lucky fans.
So what's next for J Mascis and Dinosaur Jr.? Select overseas festival performances have already been confirmed, including the UK's Download Festival and Japan's Fuji Rock Fest. Check out www.dinosaurjr.com for more dates as they are announced.
I'll be in Mexico on April 15th, enforcing the sanctity of our national borders. Could someone tape this for me?
Bloody Pig Head Launch
Trust me on this...read this article. Its pretty fucking incredible. I found this off a link from the Sunn O))) guy's website. Its an incredibly interesting read on Norwegian Black Metal, and their head's of state MAYHEM. These guys are about 4000% more hardcore than anything going on in gangsta rap right now, or ever. Seriously take the time, its worth it.
In the face of death
Ten years ago, Norway was rocked by a brutal murder and a string of arson attacks linked to the Black Metal band Mayhem. Now, on tour with the group, Chris Campion asks what really happened - and finds that even the darkest Satanists have a human side
Sunday February 20, 2005
The Observer
Backstage after the first show of a whistle-stop winter tour of Norway, Necro Butcher, bassist with Norwegian Black Metal band Mayhem, is already a bit tipsy. He is gleefully reading back his own words from an article about the band in the local newspaper. 'I promise not to throw animal heads at the audience in Bergen,' he preens.
The last time the band played in the city, a sheep's head thrown from the stage smashed into the skull of an audience member. 'He wasn't watching the band,' shrugs Necro Butcher. 'He was talking to a girl,' he says, implying that the man should have known better. Animal heads speared on microphone stands are de rigueur for a Mayhem show. 'We usually use pigs' heads but we couldn't get one that night. We like to throw them to the audience at the end of the show so they can, y'know, play around with them.'
He returns his attention to the double page spread, holding it aloft with outstretched arms. 'Fuckin' excellent!' he slurs. 'This 'is the first positive article ever written about Mayhem in Norway.'
To put that in context, the band have been around for more than 20 years. Their peers acknowledge them as the originators of Norwegian Black Metal (often referred to as its country's biggest cultural export), defining both its antagonistic sound and attitude. Black Metal relishes its position as the most extreme form of music imaginable.
In the early Nineties, a spate of church burnings and three grisly deaths stoked blazing headlines that described the nihilistic rampage of the satanically-minded youth. The limits of tolerance in this largely secular society were sorely tested by sensational stories centred not on the music's fans but the bands themselves. And, as far as the Norwegian media are concerned, when it comes to Black Metal all roads lead to Mayhem, whose terrible and bloody history eclipses the debauchery of even the most hardened rock bands.
Before Mayhem had even released their first studio album in 1993, a creepy masterpiece called De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas, singer Dead had committed suicide and founding guitarist Euronymous had been brutally murdered by session bassist Count Grishnackh (with second guitarist, Snorre Ruch, acting as his accomplice). Grishnackh was already suspected of initiating the church burnings that began in 1992.
'We couldn't really buy better publicity,' Necro Butcher acknowledges sagely. 'But every time we lost a member we had to find somebody else to replace them and start the whole rehearsing process again. We suffered in that way as a band.'
Gnomic and gnome-like (the band's road crew affectionately refer to him as 'Micro Butcher'), Mayhem's 36-year old bassist is in some ways Norway's answer to Lemmy; a stoic veteran who has helped steer the band he co-founded in 1984 through personal tragedy and public vilification.
Drummer Hellhammer is the next longest-standing member of Mayhem. He's also the quietest. A compact figure with darkly handsome (but distinctly un-Scandinavian) features which are immaculately groomed, he always seems to be at the centre of his own party backstage. 'He may look quiet,' says one member of the crew, 'but he's the most twisted of the lot.'
Euronymous's replacement is a tightly wired guitarist by the name of Blasphemer. With his long, dyed black hair and a tuft of beard that curls underneath his chin which he is for ever absent-mindedly stroking, he looks like a Black Metal dandy. He also has a rapier wit and a refined taste for red wine, amphetamines and sweet revenge.
One hapless journalist who had the knives out for Mayhem every time they played Bergen found this out the hard way. 'One time he made some personal comments about myself and Hellhammer,' says the guitarist, 'so after the show, we drove to a slaughterhouse, picked up a pig's head and dropped it off at his house with a dagger stuck between its eyes. 'We never heard from him again,' he says, pursing his lips with pleasure.
Despite the tour schedule - four dates in four days, requiring them to cover more than 1,200 miles of treacherous mountain road up and down the country in a cramped 16-seater mini-van - spirits in the band are high. It's the first time they have toured with Hungarian singer Attila Csihar (his real name), a surprisingly mellow guy who comes across like a stoned Bela Lugosi. Recruited after Dead's suicide to record vocals for the Dom Mysteriis album, Attila lent his own touch of madness to the project with a possessed vocal style that swings from the operatic to a bestial growl. At its grotesque best, his singing sounds like vomit. Attila's initial tenure with the band was cut short by Euronymous's death.
Another frontman, called Maniac, left the band in 2004 through mutual consent. But not before Blasphemer had made his displeasure known, at what he felt was Maniac's lack of commitment, by kicking him down a flight of stairs as they came off stage - and twice slamming his head facefirst into a wall. 'Blasphemer actually came and asked my permission beforehand,' an amused Necro Butcher confides. 'Maniac had terrible stage fright. He'd get so drunk beforehand that he couldn't remember the words.' Perhaps not surprisingly, that was his last show.
In the insular world of Norwegian metal, Attila's return to Mayhem is a major event. The Bergen show has brought some local heavyweights out to see the band. They include a bellowing man mountain called Abbath, guitarist with Black Metal stalwarts Immortal, and Gaahl, 28-year old vocalist with Gorgoroth, a tall, thin fellow with piercing eyes and a wizard-like beard tightly plaited at its tail.
Although exceedingly polite and softspoken, Gaahl has a history of arrests for violence that would make any gangsta rapper blush with shame. He's currently awaiting sentencing on charges of torture and committing ritual acts. It is alleged he beat his victim - a man who had turned up uninvited and inebriated to an after-hours party at his house - threatened to sacrifice him and gave him a cup into which to bleed. Acting as his own defence, Gaahl claimed in court that he had been attacked first and his assailant was only provided with a cup 'so that he wouldn't make such a mess in my house'. The singer refuses to discuss his version of events in detail now for fear of prejudicing the outcome of the trial, but insists he was attacked as part of a hit organised by a man with whom he had a prior dispute.
The use of violence, according to Gaahl, is only necessary when people cross his clearly defined borders. 'Everything deals with respect. The way I think of it is that you have to punish ... or teach,' he corrects himself, 'anyone that crosses your borders so that they won't do it again.'
Gaahl's ethical code derives from Odinism, the pagan religion of the Vikings that predates Christianity in Norway and is also the occult philosophy that underpins Black Metal. Many in the scene have adopted or adapted names from Norse mythology.
'Black Metal was never meant to reach an audience,' Gaahl says. 'It was purely for our own satisfaction. Something entirely selfcentred. The shared goal was to become the true Satan; the elite human, basically. The elite are above rules. So people did what they wanted to do. And they had a common enemy which was, of course, Christianity, socialism and everything that democracy stands for, especially this idea that every man is alike and equal to his neighbour. That, of course, is a fake.'
Gaahl's extremist outlook is undoubtedly influenced by his surroundings. He lives on a farm three hours outside of Bergen, isolated from the mass of humanity. 'My family owns three mountains,' he says. 'There's not much else around there. Love of nature is a big part of Black Metal. It's easy to feel isolated in nature. And solitude and distance from everyone else is very important to us.'
As Mayhem's tour bus winds through plateaus and fjords for hundreds of miles on its way from Bergen (a western port town) to Kristiansand in the south, it's easy to see what he means. Norway is a country in which nature has the upper hand. At times blizzards make it impossible to see more than a couple of metres in front of the van. When the skies clear, the awesome landscape communicates its majesty through an eerie silence. Trees laden with snow are contorted into obsequious poses, as if compelled to bow down by forces beyond their control. And with the onset of dusk, the craggy profiles of the black mountains take on a malefic aspect, casting a dark shadow across the land.
This epic geography bleeds unabated into the harsh, cold and unforgiving mood of Black Metal. It's hard to think of a music that sounds more appropriate to the environment from which it emerged. Its chief characteristic is a chilling vibrato guitar style developed by Mayhem's Euronymous and Snorre Ruch that provides an oddly harmonious counterpoint to the stark brutality of the rhythm section.
Fenriz, the anaemic-looking drummer and lyricist for Darkthrone, has a wealth of opinions about what constitutes the true Norwegian Black Metal sound. A self-deprecating music geek whose arms are covered with intentionally bad heavy metal tattoos, Fenriz can sometimes be found, beer and fag in hand, lodged behind a table at Oslo's Elm Street Cafe, a drinking den popular with metal musicians.
He is obsessed with maintaining the rawness and purity of early Black Metal. To that end, he is endlessly compiling mixtapes that seek to define its influences. The first was released on CD through British label Peaceville as Fenriz Presents ... The Best Of Old School Black Metal.
'There wasn't a generic sound back then,' he explains. 'We had to decide ourselves what we deemed worthy of the Black Metal stamp. There were many "Thrash" releases with a lot of "Black" in them, whereas others had no "Black" at all. This is not maths, so I can't say one plus one equals 30. It had something to do with production, lyrics, the way they dressed and a commitment to making ugly, raw, grim stuff.
'I started out with a simple kit: just one snare, a floor tom and a couple of cymbals. But then, I've been pushing the envelope for years. I work in the post office,' he deadpans. Despite having an extensive back catalogue - 'We're currently working on our "difficult" 13th album,' he says - and selling several thousand copies of each new release, Fenriz, like many of Black Metal's leading lights, still holds down a regular job. (When he's not touring or recording with Mayhem, Hellhammer also works; as a night watchman in a mental hospital.)
'Before the whole Black Metal thing blew up in 93/94, it was all very DIY,' says Fenriz, who decries the watered-down approach ofcommercial Black Metal. 'After that you could just call up [German metal label] Nuclear Blast and get a deal. It was very underground before then. We could walk the streets looking like insane motherfuckers and no-one knew what the hell was going on. We just looked like freaks. But then the media got hold of it and suddenly everyone knew what we'd been up to ... unfortunately.' He laughs.
The event that brought black to the world occurred on Saturday, 6 June 1992. On that day, the Fantoft Stave Church near Bergen, a magnificent 12th-century gothic structure made of wood and acknowledged as a historical landmark, was razed. Lightning strikes and electrical failures rather than foul play were thought to be the chief suspects. But in January 1993 Varg Vikernes, aka Count Grishnackh, summoned a journalist from a local paper, Bergens Tidendes, to a loft apartment decorated with 'Nazi paraphernalia, weapons and Satanic symbols'. The windows were blacked out with carpet. Vikernes gave a gloating interview in which he claimed that the Black Metal scene, having effectively declared war on Christianity and Norwegian society, was responsible for some eight church burnings so far and intended to continue its campaign of terror.
No physical evidence ever emerged to connect Vikernes to the crime, but he brazenly used a photo of the church's charred remains to promote Askes (Norwegian for 'ashes'), an album by his solo recording project, Burzum. Despite repeatedly denying his involvement, he is widely believed to have taken the photo himself.
In one fell swoop, he also brought the full force of the Norwegian authorities down on the Black Metal scene. Mayhem, their associates, and members of other bands were rounded up and arrested for questioning. A special police intelligence unit was set up to investigate criminal happenings within the scene.
'The threat was that we were organising a lot of loonies with this type of music,' says Necro Butcher. 'You could also say that the church burnings were a sort of attack on homeland security. I was against the church burning and so was Hellhammer.'
Nevertheless, Necro Butcher was initially blamed for two of the attacks by police. 'Soon after, I met this chick at a party and ended up taking her back to my place,' he recalls. 'The next morning, she told me that she'd burnt those churches. I said, "That's good because I was framed for your crime but it was nice to meet you anyway. And nice to fuck you too!" She was a Black Metal girl. Now she's a Nazi girl. She was the daughter of another loony. Her mother was involved in one of those women's groups that storms into stores and throws out the pornos. So you can see the type of insanity that was around.'
Once the spotlight was cast on the scene, it never left. Necro Butcher's family farm outside Oslo was raided just three years ago. Police discovered a stash of weed and an assault rifle fitted with a sniper's scope and a silencer. When asked why he had it, he grins, 'Boys like their toys, y'know. I've always collected any kind of weapon that came my way.'
A further search of the farm revealed a hoard of hand grenades and tear gas canisters. 'My grandfather and uncle stole them from the army,' he claims. 'But the police tried to pin that on me also. They wanted to throw the book at me.' He ended up serving a year in prison.
'The secret police actually called me up three months ago,' he continues. 'They said, we want to have a talk with you. But they didn't really have anything to say. I think they just wanted to check up on me.' The stakes were never so high back in the early days, when Necro Butcher says that the impetus to form Mayhem was 'just a stupid boy fantasy'. He and Euronymous met in 1983, They lived in the same Oslo suburb and bonded over their shared love of Motörhead and Venom (a Satanic-themed group from Newcastle with a punk-metal sound who coined the term 'Black Metal' in 1982).
'We just decided immediately that we were going to start a band. But it was always a cat and dog thing between me and Øystein,' he says, referring to Euronymous by his familiar, first name. 'We had one similar interest - the band - but everything else was different. While I was out raising hell with all my drug friends, he was home writing letters. He was the quiet type with all the strange friends, listening to Brian Eno and all this "bing, bong, bing bong" music. I didn't have time to fuck around with all of that.'
Ever-shifting line-ups meant that Mayhem rarely played live. Instead they recorded cassette demos, which they traded with other bands and sold by mail order through fanzines. 'That's how we corresponded with our audience,' says Necro Butcher. 'It was the way of the times. This type of music didn't have a stage to play on. So we got it out by dividing the world between us. I had Australia and America. Øystein had everything that was obscure, like Russia and China.'
As well as being an ardent music fan, Euronymous was an enthusiastic adherent of communism and was once a member of a local Marxist-Leninist youth organisation; adirection that created an uneasy tension with his band-mates.
'Any correspondence with Euronymous quickly escalated into very long letters,' says Bård Eithin, former drummer with another early Black Metal band called Emperor. Eithin was just 13 years old and living in almost cultural isolation in a town of 500 people, 400 miles from Oslo, when he first became pen-pals with Euronymous in 1987. 'He was very enthusiastic about the idea of releasing music to people in countries that otherwise wouldn't have the ability to hear it, especially in the East.'
The letter-writing also brought Mayhem into contact with Dead, a Swede who joined Mayhem when his band Morbid folded in 1988. Serious illness as a child and a near death experience convinced him that he had died and was now a being from another world. His beliefs are preserved in the vampiric lyrics he wrote for De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas. Dead reputedly carried around the carcass of a crow in a jar and would inhale fumes from it before taking the stage so he could perform with the stench of death in his nostrils. He also took to donning a white greasepaint visage, designed to mimic the pallor of 13th-century plague victims.
'It wasn't anything to do with the way Kiss and Alice Cooper used make-up,' says Necro Butcher. 'Dead actually wanted to look like a corpse. He didn't do it to look cool. He would draw snot dripping out of his nose. That doesn't look cool. He called it corpse-paint.
'When Dead first arrived in Norway, Necro Butcher took it upon himself to make sure their new singer had somewhere to live and was looked after. Euronymous, on the other hand, apparently did his best to make him feel uncomfortable. 'He tried to psych him out,' says Necro Butcher. 'He would tell Dead, "We don't like you. You should just kill yourself." Stuff like that.'
And then, one day in the spring of 1991, Dead did just that. Euronymous came back to their house to discover his body slumped against a wall. He had slashed his wrists with a butcher's knife and blown his brains out with a shotgun. His suicide note had a morbid humour . It read, 'Excuse all the blood. Let the party begin.' For reasons best known to himself, Euronymous took pictures of Dead's remains before notifying the police.
'Øystein called me up the next day,' recalls Necro Butcher, 'and says, "Dead has done something really cool! He killed himself." I thought, have you lost it? What do you mean cool? He says, "Relax, I have photos of everything." I was in shock and grief. He was just thinking how to exploit it. So I told him, "OK. Don't even fucking call me before you destroy those pictures."'
Several years later a lurid photo of Dead, lying in a shabby room in which the only splash of colour was provided by his blood, somehow found its way onto the cover of a Mayhem bootleg produced in South America. By resigning as bassist of Mayhem, Necro Butcher fatefully left his position open for Varg Vikernes, Euronymous's eventual killer, to enter the picture.
'In retrospect,' Butcher muses. 'I think Øystein was shocked by Dead's suicide. And taking the photograph was the only way he could cope with it, like, "if I have to see this, then everybody else has to see it too".'
'Afterwards, there was a change in mentality,' says Bård Eithin, who believes that Dead's suicide marked the point at which, under Euronymous's direction, the Black Metal scene began its obsession with all things satanic and evil. Two months later,
Euronymous moved to Oslo. He opened a shop called Helvete ('Hell'), from which he also ran his own label, Deathlike Silence Productions. The walls of the shop were painted black and hung with medieval weapons, pictures discs and band posters. In the window was a tombstone crafted from polystyrene. Euronymous began to create a persona as the embodiment of an ancient evil. Promo photos from the time show him dressed in a black cloak holding a rapier. The corpse-paint has become more stylised; his gaze, distant and remote. He looks like a character from a German expressionist movie.
'I think it was then that Euronymous discovered he had the power to influence people in any way he wanted,' says Eithin, who worked in the store for the year that it was open for business and lived in an apartment at the back. 'If you have a group of people like that who are very close, they start to create their own rules, their own morals and, at the end of the day, end up with a twisted philosophy built on hatred and frustration towards the rest of society. It's the archetypal way to create mass psychosis. A lot of people say it must have been the desire to rebel against Christianity and conformity in Norway. But I think it was just coincidence, people meeting each other at the right or wrong time.'
The catalyst was the introduction of Varg Vikernes into the mix of characters. 'No one knew who he was when he first came to Helvete,' Eithin says. 'He came out of nowhere, this serious-looking guy from Bergen who doesn't drink alcohol but milk. He would always be drinking from cartons of milk whereas a lot of the others were almost alcoholics. It was a party scene. And he stood out from the crowd.' (Butcher claims that Euronymous was also not much of a drinker until he moved to Oslo: 'At the age 24, he discovered that beer was actually pretty good.')
Euronymous took Vikernes, who was five years younger than him, under his wing: inviting him to play bass with Mayhem and offering to release his music as Burzum. 'Vikernes was a very productive guy and also very enthusiastic like Euronymous,' says Eithin. 'He was able to record two albums a year while Euronymous was struggling to finish his first full album with Mayhem.'
Predictably, their friendship turned to rivalry. The newspaper interview in which Vikernes took credit for the burning of the Fantoft church gave him extra kudos in his struggle for position as leader of the scene. 'It's sounds really silly,' Eithin says, but I think there was a little bit of a contest between them to see who could be more evil. It created a very difficult situation, especially for Euronymous, who wanted the glamour and the showbiz. With him, there was a lot of smoke but not so much fire.'
But it was Eithin who raised the stakes for transgressive behaviour. In August 1992, while visiting his parents in Lillehammer, he killed a man who had propositioned him in the Winter Olympic Park, stabbing him 37 times with a pocket knife. The body was discovered the next day. Eithin was not caught for a year, despite his guilt being an open secret within the crowd at Helvete; no doubt, this contributed to the feeling that they were now able to do anything with impunity.
'The destructive side of the scene encouraged the criminal happenings,' says Eithin, who served eight years in prison for the killing. 'It became very difficult for Euronymous. I think he felt he had to prove that he could be a part of it and not just in the background.' Euronymous reacted to the insecurity he felt about his position in the scene by resorting to the tactics he had used on Dead. 'Øystein was always sending death threats to people,' says Necro Butcher. 'It was his reaction to everything. But he didn't put so much into it. And then when he met you, he was like, "OK. You're cool!". Then you were best friends. So when eventually he got to be unfriendly with Varg, he threatened him like he did everyone else. Øystein told him, "I'm going to send some people to torture you. Until you die." But Varg Vikernes saw this as a real threat. He probably thought, "better him than me. I'll just go down and do him".'
Although this last statement is purely speculation by Butcher, it tallies with Vikernes's claims that he killed Euronymous in self-defence. Euronymous was in his underwear when he answered the door to Vikernes at his Oslo apartment at 4am on 10 August 1993. In the melee, Vikernes chased Euronymous through the stairwell stabbing him 24 times in the chest, back and head.
Again the police arrested Vikernes and he was charged in September following a confession by his accomplice, Snorre Ruch. The darkly charismatic and articulate Vikernes commanded the front pages during his spring 1994 trial for murder, arson and possession of illegal weapons (police found 150 kilos of explosives at his home). 'The Count', as he was known, quickly became Norway's answer to Charles Manson.
Sentenced to 21 years in prison, the maximum term under Norwegian law, Vikernes soon renounced Black Metal and embraced his own heathen neo-Nazi philosophy. Recent photos show him sporting a blond Hitler haircut. In November 2003, just six months before he was due to be released, he absconded during weekend leave. Police arrested him two days later in Oslo.
'I think that as events rolled on, it became evident that people wanted it to go as far as possible,' says Eithin, who now works as a driver for a recycling company. 'It was hopeless for everyone as the crimes carried on. We all realised it had to end sometime. It was probably a good thing that a lot of us were taken out of the scene when we were.'
Mayhem, though, refused to bow to destiny. 'Me and Hellhammer got together at Øystein's funeral and decided to carry on with the band,' says Necro Butcher. Their first order of business was to release the almost-completed De Mysteriis album.
'Because Vikernes played bass on it, Øystein's parents didn't want it to come out.' says Hellhammer. 'I thought it was appropriate that the murderer and victim were on the same record. I put word out that I was re-recording the bass parts. But I never did .
'With Attila's return, the band's fortune seems to have come full circle. The last date on the tour (Trondheim) feels eerily appropriate. Mayhem are due to play in a labyrinthine student building that sits directly opposite Nidaros-Domen, the grand cathedral whose silhouette graces the cover of De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas. ('We used it because it was one of the most beautiful churches in Norway,' says Hellhammer. 'And Vikernes, of course, had planned to blow it up.')
Two crew members emerge from behind a long red curtain and theatrically hold up the pigs' heads before impaling them on microphone stands lined up at the front of the stage. As they do so, 1,000 wild-eyed metal fans, fuelled by 96 per cent proof home-made moonshine (the preferred drink of Norwegians up north) and drunk on blood lust, let out a delighted roar. When the curtain rises, the stage looks like a slaughterhouse. Another 16 slack-jawed pigs heads leer out from atop the amps. Attila stands front and centre, wearing his own take on the corpse-paint; an abstraction of the satanic goat of Mendes design transposed onto his features, distorting his face in a serpentine fashion. Black horns jut out from heavily shadowed eyes and up into his temples. He holds aloft a fearsome double-bladed dagger that looks like it could disembowel a horse; his lyrics emerge in an incomprehensible stream as a moaning death rattle. Behind him Mayhem sound like a band at war with the world. And possibly even themselves.
At the close of the show, Blasphemer puts down his guitar and furiously hurls a pig's head into the audience. Backstage he spits bile at his bandmates: the performance hasn't lived up to his exacting standards. Out front though, the crowd seem calm, satiated. One lucky teenage fan has secured a trophy. Girls surround the tall, handsome youth, cooing at the pig's head that hangs his side, as he grips it by the ear like a cherished toy animal.
Trust me on this...read this article. Its pretty fucking incredible. I found this off a link from the Sunn O))) guy's website. Its an incredibly interesting read on Norwegian Black Metal, and their head's of state MAYHEM. These guys are about 4000% more hardcore than anything going on in gangsta rap right now, or ever. Seriously take the time, its worth it.
In the face of death
Ten years ago, Norway was rocked by a brutal murder and a string of arson attacks linked to the Black Metal band Mayhem. Now, on tour with the group, Chris Campion asks what really happened - and finds that even the darkest Satanists have a human side
Sunday February 20, 2005
The Observer
Backstage after the first show of a whistle-stop winter tour of Norway, Necro Butcher, bassist with Norwegian Black Metal band Mayhem, is already a bit tipsy. He is gleefully reading back his own words from an article about the band in the local newspaper. 'I promise not to throw animal heads at the audience in Bergen,' he preens.
The last time the band played in the city, a sheep's head thrown from the stage smashed into the skull of an audience member. 'He wasn't watching the band,' shrugs Necro Butcher. 'He was talking to a girl,' he says, implying that the man should have known better. Animal heads speared on microphone stands are de rigueur for a Mayhem show. 'We usually use pigs' heads but we couldn't get one that night. We like to throw them to the audience at the end of the show so they can, y'know, play around with them.'
He returns his attention to the double page spread, holding it aloft with outstretched arms. 'Fuckin' excellent!' he slurs. 'This 'is the first positive article ever written about Mayhem in Norway.'
To put that in context, the band have been around for more than 20 years. Their peers acknowledge them as the originators of Norwegian Black Metal (often referred to as its country's biggest cultural export), defining both its antagonistic sound and attitude. Black Metal relishes its position as the most extreme form of music imaginable.
In the early Nineties, a spate of church burnings and three grisly deaths stoked blazing headlines that described the nihilistic rampage of the satanically-minded youth. The limits of tolerance in this largely secular society were sorely tested by sensational stories centred not on the music's fans but the bands themselves. And, as far as the Norwegian media are concerned, when it comes to Black Metal all roads lead to Mayhem, whose terrible and bloody history eclipses the debauchery of even the most hardened rock bands.
Before Mayhem had even released their first studio album in 1993, a creepy masterpiece called De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas, singer Dead had committed suicide and founding guitarist Euronymous had been brutally murdered by session bassist Count Grishnackh (with second guitarist, Snorre Ruch, acting as his accomplice). Grishnackh was already suspected of initiating the church burnings that began in 1992.
'We couldn't really buy better publicity,' Necro Butcher acknowledges sagely. 'But every time we lost a member we had to find somebody else to replace them and start the whole rehearsing process again. We suffered in that way as a band.'
Gnomic and gnome-like (the band's road crew affectionately refer to him as 'Micro Butcher'), Mayhem's 36-year old bassist is in some ways Norway's answer to Lemmy; a stoic veteran who has helped steer the band he co-founded in 1984 through personal tragedy and public vilification.
Drummer Hellhammer is the next longest-standing member of Mayhem. He's also the quietest. A compact figure with darkly handsome (but distinctly un-Scandinavian) features which are immaculately groomed, he always seems to be at the centre of his own party backstage. 'He may look quiet,' says one member of the crew, 'but he's the most twisted of the lot.'
Euronymous's replacement is a tightly wired guitarist by the name of Blasphemer. With his long, dyed black hair and a tuft of beard that curls underneath his chin which he is for ever absent-mindedly stroking, he looks like a Black Metal dandy. He also has a rapier wit and a refined taste for red wine, amphetamines and sweet revenge.
One hapless journalist who had the knives out for Mayhem every time they played Bergen found this out the hard way. 'One time he made some personal comments about myself and Hellhammer,' says the guitarist, 'so after the show, we drove to a slaughterhouse, picked up a pig's head and dropped it off at his house with a dagger stuck between its eyes. 'We never heard from him again,' he says, pursing his lips with pleasure.
Despite the tour schedule - four dates in four days, requiring them to cover more than 1,200 miles of treacherous mountain road up and down the country in a cramped 16-seater mini-van - spirits in the band are high. It's the first time they have toured with Hungarian singer Attila Csihar (his real name), a surprisingly mellow guy who comes across like a stoned Bela Lugosi. Recruited after Dead's suicide to record vocals for the Dom Mysteriis album, Attila lent his own touch of madness to the project with a possessed vocal style that swings from the operatic to a bestial growl. At its grotesque best, his singing sounds like vomit. Attila's initial tenure with the band was cut short by Euronymous's death.
Another frontman, called Maniac, left the band in 2004 through mutual consent. But not before Blasphemer had made his displeasure known, at what he felt was Maniac's lack of commitment, by kicking him down a flight of stairs as they came off stage - and twice slamming his head facefirst into a wall. 'Blasphemer actually came and asked my permission beforehand,' an amused Necro Butcher confides. 'Maniac had terrible stage fright. He'd get so drunk beforehand that he couldn't remember the words.' Perhaps not surprisingly, that was his last show.
In the insular world of Norwegian metal, Attila's return to Mayhem is a major event. The Bergen show has brought some local heavyweights out to see the band. They include a bellowing man mountain called Abbath, guitarist with Black Metal stalwarts Immortal, and Gaahl, 28-year old vocalist with Gorgoroth, a tall, thin fellow with piercing eyes and a wizard-like beard tightly plaited at its tail.
Although exceedingly polite and softspoken, Gaahl has a history of arrests for violence that would make any gangsta rapper blush with shame. He's currently awaiting sentencing on charges of torture and committing ritual acts. It is alleged he beat his victim - a man who had turned up uninvited and inebriated to an after-hours party at his house - threatened to sacrifice him and gave him a cup into which to bleed. Acting as his own defence, Gaahl claimed in court that he had been attacked first and his assailant was only provided with a cup 'so that he wouldn't make such a mess in my house'. The singer refuses to discuss his version of events in detail now for fear of prejudicing the outcome of the trial, but insists he was attacked as part of a hit organised by a man with whom he had a prior dispute.
The use of violence, according to Gaahl, is only necessary when people cross his clearly defined borders. 'Everything deals with respect. The way I think of it is that you have to punish ... or teach,' he corrects himself, 'anyone that crosses your borders so that they won't do it again.'
Gaahl's ethical code derives from Odinism, the pagan religion of the Vikings that predates Christianity in Norway and is also the occult philosophy that underpins Black Metal. Many in the scene have adopted or adapted names from Norse mythology.
'Black Metal was never meant to reach an audience,' Gaahl says. 'It was purely for our own satisfaction. Something entirely selfcentred. The shared goal was to become the true Satan; the elite human, basically. The elite are above rules. So people did what they wanted to do. And they had a common enemy which was, of course, Christianity, socialism and everything that democracy stands for, especially this idea that every man is alike and equal to his neighbour. That, of course, is a fake.'
Gaahl's extremist outlook is undoubtedly influenced by his surroundings. He lives on a farm three hours outside of Bergen, isolated from the mass of humanity. 'My family owns three mountains,' he says. 'There's not much else around there. Love of nature is a big part of Black Metal. It's easy to feel isolated in nature. And solitude and distance from everyone else is very important to us.'
As Mayhem's tour bus winds through plateaus and fjords for hundreds of miles on its way from Bergen (a western port town) to Kristiansand in the south, it's easy to see what he means. Norway is a country in which nature has the upper hand. At times blizzards make it impossible to see more than a couple of metres in front of the van. When the skies clear, the awesome landscape communicates its majesty through an eerie silence. Trees laden with snow are contorted into obsequious poses, as if compelled to bow down by forces beyond their control. And with the onset of dusk, the craggy profiles of the black mountains take on a malefic aspect, casting a dark shadow across the land.
This epic geography bleeds unabated into the harsh, cold and unforgiving mood of Black Metal. It's hard to think of a music that sounds more appropriate to the environment from which it emerged. Its chief characteristic is a chilling vibrato guitar style developed by Mayhem's Euronymous and Snorre Ruch that provides an oddly harmonious counterpoint to the stark brutality of the rhythm section.
Fenriz, the anaemic-looking drummer and lyricist for Darkthrone, has a wealth of opinions about what constitutes the true Norwegian Black Metal sound. A self-deprecating music geek whose arms are covered with intentionally bad heavy metal tattoos, Fenriz can sometimes be found, beer and fag in hand, lodged behind a table at Oslo's Elm Street Cafe, a drinking den popular with metal musicians.
He is obsessed with maintaining the rawness and purity of early Black Metal. To that end, he is endlessly compiling mixtapes that seek to define its influences. The first was released on CD through British label Peaceville as Fenriz Presents ... The Best Of Old School Black Metal.
'There wasn't a generic sound back then,' he explains. 'We had to decide ourselves what we deemed worthy of the Black Metal stamp. There were many "Thrash" releases with a lot of "Black" in them, whereas others had no "Black" at all. This is not maths, so I can't say one plus one equals 30. It had something to do with production, lyrics, the way they dressed and a commitment to making ugly, raw, grim stuff.
'I started out with a simple kit: just one snare, a floor tom and a couple of cymbals. But then, I've been pushing the envelope for years. I work in the post office,' he deadpans. Despite having an extensive back catalogue - 'We're currently working on our "difficult" 13th album,' he says - and selling several thousand copies of each new release, Fenriz, like many of Black Metal's leading lights, still holds down a regular job. (When he's not touring or recording with Mayhem, Hellhammer also works; as a night watchman in a mental hospital.)
'Before the whole Black Metal thing blew up in 93/94, it was all very DIY,' says Fenriz, who decries the watered-down approach ofcommercial Black Metal. 'After that you could just call up [German metal label] Nuclear Blast and get a deal. It was very underground before then. We could walk the streets looking like insane motherfuckers and no-one knew what the hell was going on. We just looked like freaks. But then the media got hold of it and suddenly everyone knew what we'd been up to ... unfortunately.' He laughs.
The event that brought black to the world occurred on Saturday, 6 June 1992. On that day, the Fantoft Stave Church near Bergen, a magnificent 12th-century gothic structure made of wood and acknowledged as a historical landmark, was razed. Lightning strikes and electrical failures rather than foul play were thought to be the chief suspects. But in January 1993 Varg Vikernes, aka Count Grishnackh, summoned a journalist from a local paper, Bergens Tidendes, to a loft apartment decorated with 'Nazi paraphernalia, weapons and Satanic symbols'. The windows were blacked out with carpet. Vikernes gave a gloating interview in which he claimed that the Black Metal scene, having effectively declared war on Christianity and Norwegian society, was responsible for some eight church burnings so far and intended to continue its campaign of terror.
No physical evidence ever emerged to connect Vikernes to the crime, but he brazenly used a photo of the church's charred remains to promote Askes (Norwegian for 'ashes'), an album by his solo recording project, Burzum. Despite repeatedly denying his involvement, he is widely believed to have taken the photo himself.
In one fell swoop, he also brought the full force of the Norwegian authorities down on the Black Metal scene. Mayhem, their associates, and members of other bands were rounded up and arrested for questioning. A special police intelligence unit was set up to investigate criminal happenings within the scene.
'The threat was that we were organising a lot of loonies with this type of music,' says Necro Butcher. 'You could also say that the church burnings were a sort of attack on homeland security. I was against the church burning and so was Hellhammer.'
Nevertheless, Necro Butcher was initially blamed for two of the attacks by police. 'Soon after, I met this chick at a party and ended up taking her back to my place,' he recalls. 'The next morning, she told me that she'd burnt those churches. I said, "That's good because I was framed for your crime but it was nice to meet you anyway. And nice to fuck you too!" She was a Black Metal girl. Now she's a Nazi girl. She was the daughter of another loony. Her mother was involved in one of those women's groups that storms into stores and throws out the pornos. So you can see the type of insanity that was around.'
Once the spotlight was cast on the scene, it never left. Necro Butcher's family farm outside Oslo was raided just three years ago. Police discovered a stash of weed and an assault rifle fitted with a sniper's scope and a silencer. When asked why he had it, he grins, 'Boys like their toys, y'know. I've always collected any kind of weapon that came my way.'
A further search of the farm revealed a hoard of hand grenades and tear gas canisters. 'My grandfather and uncle stole them from the army,' he claims. 'But the police tried to pin that on me also. They wanted to throw the book at me.' He ended up serving a year in prison.
'The secret police actually called me up three months ago,' he continues. 'They said, we want to have a talk with you. But they didn't really have anything to say. I think they just wanted to check up on me.' The stakes were never so high back in the early days, when Necro Butcher says that the impetus to form Mayhem was 'just a stupid boy fantasy'. He and Euronymous met in 1983, They lived in the same Oslo suburb and bonded over their shared love of Motörhead and Venom (a Satanic-themed group from Newcastle with a punk-metal sound who coined the term 'Black Metal' in 1982).
'We just decided immediately that we were going to start a band. But it was always a cat and dog thing between me and Øystein,' he says, referring to Euronymous by his familiar, first name. 'We had one similar interest - the band - but everything else was different. While I was out raising hell with all my drug friends, he was home writing letters. He was the quiet type with all the strange friends, listening to Brian Eno and all this "bing, bong, bing bong" music. I didn't have time to fuck around with all of that.'
Ever-shifting line-ups meant that Mayhem rarely played live. Instead they recorded cassette demos, which they traded with other bands and sold by mail order through fanzines. 'That's how we corresponded with our audience,' says Necro Butcher. 'It was the way of the times. This type of music didn't have a stage to play on. So we got it out by dividing the world between us. I had Australia and America. Øystein had everything that was obscure, like Russia and China.'
As well as being an ardent music fan, Euronymous was an enthusiastic adherent of communism and was once a member of a local Marxist-Leninist youth organisation; adirection that created an uneasy tension with his band-mates.
'Any correspondence with Euronymous quickly escalated into very long letters,' says Bård Eithin, former drummer with another early Black Metal band called Emperor. Eithin was just 13 years old and living in almost cultural isolation in a town of 500 people, 400 miles from Oslo, when he first became pen-pals with Euronymous in 1987. 'He was very enthusiastic about the idea of releasing music to people in countries that otherwise wouldn't have the ability to hear it, especially in the East.'
The letter-writing also brought Mayhem into contact with Dead, a Swede who joined Mayhem when his band Morbid folded in 1988. Serious illness as a child and a near death experience convinced him that he had died and was now a being from another world. His beliefs are preserved in the vampiric lyrics he wrote for De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas. Dead reputedly carried around the carcass of a crow in a jar and would inhale fumes from it before taking the stage so he could perform with the stench of death in his nostrils. He also took to donning a white greasepaint visage, designed to mimic the pallor of 13th-century plague victims.
'It wasn't anything to do with the way Kiss and Alice Cooper used make-up,' says Necro Butcher. 'Dead actually wanted to look like a corpse. He didn't do it to look cool. He would draw snot dripping out of his nose. That doesn't look cool. He called it corpse-paint.
'When Dead first arrived in Norway, Necro Butcher took it upon himself to make sure their new singer had somewhere to live and was looked after. Euronymous, on the other hand, apparently did his best to make him feel uncomfortable. 'He tried to psych him out,' says Necro Butcher. 'He would tell Dead, "We don't like you. You should just kill yourself." Stuff like that.'
And then, one day in the spring of 1991, Dead did just that. Euronymous came back to their house to discover his body slumped against a wall. He had slashed his wrists with a butcher's knife and blown his brains out with a shotgun. His suicide note had a morbid humour . It read, 'Excuse all the blood. Let the party begin.' For reasons best known to himself, Euronymous took pictures of Dead's remains before notifying the police.
'Øystein called me up the next day,' recalls Necro Butcher, 'and says, "Dead has done something really cool! He killed himself." I thought, have you lost it? What do you mean cool? He says, "Relax, I have photos of everything." I was in shock and grief. He was just thinking how to exploit it. So I told him, "OK. Don't even fucking call me before you destroy those pictures."'
Several years later a lurid photo of Dead, lying in a shabby room in which the only splash of colour was provided by his blood, somehow found its way onto the cover of a Mayhem bootleg produced in South America. By resigning as bassist of Mayhem, Necro Butcher fatefully left his position open for Varg Vikernes, Euronymous's eventual killer, to enter the picture.
'In retrospect,' Butcher muses. 'I think Øystein was shocked by Dead's suicide. And taking the photograph was the only way he could cope with it, like, "if I have to see this, then everybody else has to see it too".'
'Afterwards, there was a change in mentality,' says Bård Eithin, who believes that Dead's suicide marked the point at which, under Euronymous's direction, the Black Metal scene began its obsession with all things satanic and evil. Two months later,
Euronymous moved to Oslo. He opened a shop called Helvete ('Hell'), from which he also ran his own label, Deathlike Silence Productions. The walls of the shop were painted black and hung with medieval weapons, pictures discs and band posters. In the window was a tombstone crafted from polystyrene. Euronymous began to create a persona as the embodiment of an ancient evil. Promo photos from the time show him dressed in a black cloak holding a rapier. The corpse-paint has become more stylised; his gaze, distant and remote. He looks like a character from a German expressionist movie.
'I think it was then that Euronymous discovered he had the power to influence people in any way he wanted,' says Eithin, who worked in the store for the year that it was open for business and lived in an apartment at the back. 'If you have a group of people like that who are very close, they start to create their own rules, their own morals and, at the end of the day, end up with a twisted philosophy built on hatred and frustration towards the rest of society. It's the archetypal way to create mass psychosis. A lot of people say it must have been the desire to rebel against Christianity and conformity in Norway. But I think it was just coincidence, people meeting each other at the right or wrong time.'
The catalyst was the introduction of Varg Vikernes into the mix of characters. 'No one knew who he was when he first came to Helvete,' Eithin says. 'He came out of nowhere, this serious-looking guy from Bergen who doesn't drink alcohol but milk. He would always be drinking from cartons of milk whereas a lot of the others were almost alcoholics. It was a party scene. And he stood out from the crowd.' (Butcher claims that Euronymous was also not much of a drinker until he moved to Oslo: 'At the age 24, he discovered that beer was actually pretty good.')
Euronymous took Vikernes, who was five years younger than him, under his wing: inviting him to play bass with Mayhem and offering to release his music as Burzum. 'Vikernes was a very productive guy and also very enthusiastic like Euronymous,' says Eithin. 'He was able to record two albums a year while Euronymous was struggling to finish his first full album with Mayhem.'
Predictably, their friendship turned to rivalry. The newspaper interview in which Vikernes took credit for the burning of the Fantoft church gave him extra kudos in his struggle for position as leader of the scene. 'It's sounds really silly,' Eithin says, but I think there was a little bit of a contest between them to see who could be more evil. It created a very difficult situation, especially for Euronymous, who wanted the glamour and the showbiz. With him, there was a lot of smoke but not so much fire.'
But it was Eithin who raised the stakes for transgressive behaviour. In August 1992, while visiting his parents in Lillehammer, he killed a man who had propositioned him in the Winter Olympic Park, stabbing him 37 times with a pocket knife. The body was discovered the next day. Eithin was not caught for a year, despite his guilt being an open secret within the crowd at Helvete; no doubt, this contributed to the feeling that they were now able to do anything with impunity.
'The destructive side of the scene encouraged the criminal happenings,' says Eithin, who served eight years in prison for the killing. 'It became very difficult for Euronymous. I think he felt he had to prove that he could be a part of it and not just in the background.' Euronymous reacted to the insecurity he felt about his position in the scene by resorting to the tactics he had used on Dead. 'Øystein was always sending death threats to people,' says Necro Butcher. 'It was his reaction to everything. But he didn't put so much into it. And then when he met you, he was like, "OK. You're cool!". Then you were best friends. So when eventually he got to be unfriendly with Varg, he threatened him like he did everyone else. Øystein told him, "I'm going to send some people to torture you. Until you die." But Varg Vikernes saw this as a real threat. He probably thought, "better him than me. I'll just go down and do him".'
Although this last statement is purely speculation by Butcher, it tallies with Vikernes's claims that he killed Euronymous in self-defence. Euronymous was in his underwear when he answered the door to Vikernes at his Oslo apartment at 4am on 10 August 1993. In the melee, Vikernes chased Euronymous through the stairwell stabbing him 24 times in the chest, back and head.
Again the police arrested Vikernes and he was charged in September following a confession by his accomplice, Snorre Ruch. The darkly charismatic and articulate Vikernes commanded the front pages during his spring 1994 trial for murder, arson and possession of illegal weapons (police found 150 kilos of explosives at his home). 'The Count', as he was known, quickly became Norway's answer to Charles Manson.
Sentenced to 21 years in prison, the maximum term under Norwegian law, Vikernes soon renounced Black Metal and embraced his own heathen neo-Nazi philosophy. Recent photos show him sporting a blond Hitler haircut. In November 2003, just six months before he was due to be released, he absconded during weekend leave. Police arrested him two days later in Oslo.
'I think that as events rolled on, it became evident that people wanted it to go as far as possible,' says Eithin, who now works as a driver for a recycling company. 'It was hopeless for everyone as the crimes carried on. We all realised it had to end sometime. It was probably a good thing that a lot of us were taken out of the scene when we were.'
Mayhem, though, refused to bow to destiny. 'Me and Hellhammer got together at Øystein's funeral and decided to carry on with the band,' says Necro Butcher. Their first order of business was to release the almost-completed De Mysteriis album.
'Because Vikernes played bass on it, Øystein's parents didn't want it to come out.' says Hellhammer. 'I thought it was appropriate that the murderer and victim were on the same record. I put word out that I was re-recording the bass parts. But I never did .
'With Attila's return, the band's fortune seems to have come full circle. The last date on the tour (Trondheim) feels eerily appropriate. Mayhem are due to play in a labyrinthine student building that sits directly opposite Nidaros-Domen, the grand cathedral whose silhouette graces the cover of De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas. ('We used it because it was one of the most beautiful churches in Norway,' says Hellhammer. 'And Vikernes, of course, had planned to blow it up.')
Two crew members emerge from behind a long red curtain and theatrically hold up the pigs' heads before impaling them on microphone stands lined up at the front of the stage. As they do so, 1,000 wild-eyed metal fans, fuelled by 96 per cent proof home-made moonshine (the preferred drink of Norwegians up north) and drunk on blood lust, let out a delighted roar. When the curtain rises, the stage looks like a slaughterhouse. Another 16 slack-jawed pigs heads leer out from atop the amps. Attila stands front and centre, wearing his own take on the corpse-paint; an abstraction of the satanic goat of Mendes design transposed onto his features, distorting his face in a serpentine fashion. Black horns jut out from heavily shadowed eyes and up into his temples. He holds aloft a fearsome double-bladed dagger that looks like it could disembowel a horse; his lyrics emerge in an incomprehensible stream as a moaning death rattle. Behind him Mayhem sound like a band at war with the world. And possibly even themselves.
At the close of the show, Blasphemer puts down his guitar and furiously hurls a pig's head into the audience. Backstage he spits bile at his bandmates: the performance hasn't lived up to his exacting standards. Out front though, the crowd seem calm, satiated. One lucky teenage fan has secured a trophy. Girls surround the tall, handsome youth, cooing at the pig's head that hangs his side, as he grips it by the ear like a cherished toy animal.
my first work-related yarn
I'm sure most of you have experienced those days where you can't believe that you are at work. The hangover is so massive and all-encompassing that you aren't even proud--- no, you're just amazed that you made it to work on time. In my case right now I am amazed I am even at work at all. But I never want to fuck over a PA (personal absence) because I'm too hungover. That's the life of a wimp.
On my way up the subway escalator I was 80% unconcious when I looked ahead of me and saw an ass in my face. The woman in front of me was wearing a black dress made of terry cloth and she had a belt on that looked like it must have been cutting off the circulation in her waist. That's not worth telling, but the thing that was interesting was that when I saw the ass it almost made me throw up. I had to put my hand over my mouth. I have no idea why. Sometime weird things happen when your hungover as shit.
Sorry. Maybe this isn't worth telling. My ability to recount a story is impaired. It was funny to me though.
I'm sure most of you have experienced those days where you can't believe that you are at work. The hangover is so massive and all-encompassing that you aren't even proud--- no, you're just amazed that you made it to work on time. In my case right now I am amazed I am even at work at all. But I never want to fuck over a PA (personal absence) because I'm too hungover. That's the life of a wimp.
On my way up the subway escalator I was 80% unconcious when I looked ahead of me and saw an ass in my face. The woman in front of me was wearing a black dress made of terry cloth and she had a belt on that looked like it must have been cutting off the circulation in her waist. That's not worth telling, but the thing that was interesting was that when I saw the ass it almost made me throw up. I had to put my hand over my mouth. I have no idea why. Sometime weird things happen when your hungover as shit.
Sorry. Maybe this isn't worth telling. My ability to recount a story is impaired. It was funny to me though.
more sitcom thoughts
I also watched an episode of Life on a Stick on Wednesday. Why, you ask? Because Andy Richter Controls the Universe was the finest live-action sitcom since Newsradio, and Stick is the follow-up from ARCTU’s creator Victor Fresco. The commercials make this show look awful, which isn’t hard to do, because it is, in actuality, awful to the extreme! Maybe not to the extreme, but it is decidedly not good, and thus quite bad, and also horrible and horrific and all that. Much like Andy on Quintuplets, Fresco seems to be pretty much selling out here, cranking out a subpar show with all the hoary old sitcom trappings that no longer serve any purpose in this shiny newfangled millennium. I can understand, after working on an excellent but failed show, trying hard to appease the network and appeal to teenagers, and everything, but it's depressing nonetheless to see two talented people work far below their level. But damn, isn’t about time we moved past laugh-tracks, as a culture, and as a people? We can obliterate countless innocent women and children for absolutely no good reason, but we can’t get a single-camera, laugh-track-less sitcom to last without seasonal salvation from the executive level? Scrubs, a show I respect but never watch, would have been axed years ago if Jeff Zucker or somebody didn’t love it. Fox has been trying to kill Bernie Mac off for years, and ARCTU, The Tick, and Undeclared didn’t even get full seasons. Is it really so hard for our earthly brothers and sisters to laugh at something that doesn’t command you to laugh at every single utterance?
Okay, I’m getting off track. Life on a Stick is bad, yes. Most of the lines are horrible, the acting by Amy Yasbeck and the teenaged leads is distressingly broad and exaggerated, and the younger stepsister character suffers from terminal sass-mouth. And, of course, being a “traditional” Fox sitcom, the laugh-track is set on ultra-mega-murder-kill the whole damn time. It’s quite similar to the execrable That ‘70’s Show, but lacks that show’s sole not-quite-saving grace, the solid performances from Topher Grace and the actors who play his parents. Despite all this, though, you can see where Life on a Stick could improve. There were enough flashes of rightness in the one episode I watched to see that Fresco is straining to make a good show. The stoner / best friend character has a number of genuinely funny, unexpected, and absurd lines; when one character talks about a squirrel who wore a top hat (has Fresco seen The Brian Crews Show?!?!?), this lanky young man says that he hated that squirrel because he was “putting on airs”. Elsewhere he states that a pair of novelty contacts worn by the lead character would look good on a baby, completely appropriate of nothing. The actor who plays this guy occasionally had good delivery, but just as often was alternately stilted or rushed, sometimes spoiling a joke by barking out his line too hurriedly, or waiting just a beat too long. A few other moments, such as the step-sister feeling left out of a conversation because she doesn’t have a “bug-that-was-in-me story”, were good for a laugh or two, but for the most part this show is utter crap.
I also watched an episode of Life on a Stick on Wednesday. Why, you ask? Because Andy Richter Controls the Universe was the finest live-action sitcom since Newsradio, and Stick is the follow-up from ARCTU’s creator Victor Fresco. The commercials make this show look awful, which isn’t hard to do, because it is, in actuality, awful to the extreme! Maybe not to the extreme, but it is decidedly not good, and thus quite bad, and also horrible and horrific and all that. Much like Andy on Quintuplets, Fresco seems to be pretty much selling out here, cranking out a subpar show with all the hoary old sitcom trappings that no longer serve any purpose in this shiny newfangled millennium. I can understand, after working on an excellent but failed show, trying hard to appease the network and appeal to teenagers, and everything, but it's depressing nonetheless to see two talented people work far below their level. But damn, isn’t about time we moved past laugh-tracks, as a culture, and as a people? We can obliterate countless innocent women and children for absolutely no good reason, but we can’t get a single-camera, laugh-track-less sitcom to last without seasonal salvation from the executive level? Scrubs, a show I respect but never watch, would have been axed years ago if Jeff Zucker or somebody didn’t love it. Fox has been trying to kill Bernie Mac off for years, and ARCTU, The Tick, and Undeclared didn’t even get full seasons. Is it really so hard for our earthly brothers and sisters to laugh at something that doesn’t command you to laugh at every single utterance?
Okay, I’m getting off track. Life on a Stick is bad, yes. Most of the lines are horrible, the acting by Amy Yasbeck and the teenaged leads is distressingly broad and exaggerated, and the younger stepsister character suffers from terminal sass-mouth. And, of course, being a “traditional” Fox sitcom, the laugh-track is set on ultra-mega-murder-kill the whole damn time. It’s quite similar to the execrable That ‘70’s Show, but lacks that show’s sole not-quite-saving grace, the solid performances from Topher Grace and the actors who play his parents. Despite all this, though, you can see where Life on a Stick could improve. There were enough flashes of rightness in the one episode I watched to see that Fresco is straining to make a good show. The stoner / best friend character has a number of genuinely funny, unexpected, and absurd lines; when one character talks about a squirrel who wore a top hat (has Fresco seen The Brian Crews Show?!?!?), this lanky young man says that he hated that squirrel because he was “putting on airs”. Elsewhere he states that a pair of novelty contacts worn by the lead character would look good on a baby, completely appropriate of nothing. The actor who plays this guy occasionally had good delivery, but just as often was alternately stilted or rushed, sometimes spoiling a joke by barking out his line too hurriedly, or waiting just a beat too long. A few other moments, such as the step-sister feeling left out of a conversation because she doesn’t have a “bug-that-was-in-me story”, were good for a laugh or two, but for the most part this show is utter crap.
Meant to post this yesterday, but got caught up with work, baseball, and Mitch
I watched the latest episode of The Office on Wednesday afternoon. I had to tape it because of the Crooked Fingers concert. Although it was better than the off-putting, bizarro-world adaptation of the first episode, I still can’t tell if I really like the show or not. The first two thirds were awkward, but not just in the intentional way that we should expect. They were, well, awkward in their awkwardness, in part due to the relatively poor acting of Steve Carell and Rainn Wilson. I don’t have any problems with characters deviating from the originals, but thus far neither Michael Scott nor Dwight Schrute seem like real people to me. Both Carell and Wilson seem fake, like sitcom actors. Their respective social ignorance is less plausible than that of their British counterparts. As hopeless and out-of-touch as David Brent and Gareth Keenan could be, they still both possessed a believable humanity, and rarely devolved into cartoons or standard television characters. Thus far, Michael Scott pretty much is a cartoon, though, and a completely unlikable one at that. Carell is still funny, at times, but more than anybody else he highlights this version’s lack of the subtlety that helped define the original. Many people have pointed out that thus far Scott doesn’t have David Brent’s desperation, his pathetic need to be loved and respected that we see in the first season of The Office. That is very true, and without those humanizing qualities Michael Scott can’t be the center of a successful show. The original is so great, in part, because nothing about it feels like a standard sitcom. The American version tries to recreate that atmosphere, but fails, and mostly because Steve Carell plays Michael Scott like a normal sitcom character. Thus far Scott has less in common with David Brent than with Phil Hartman’s fantastic Bill McNeal, a character whose misanthropy and cynicism was leavened by Newsradio’s lightly absurdist tone. In The Office’s cinema verite framework, the same qualities in Scott are mostly off-putting. Michael Scott thus undermines The Office’s very nature twice over, once by coming off too much like a sitcom character, and again by being so unlikable that the show’s squirm-inducing comedy is more painful than funny. At any rate, he’s a poor copy of David Brent, the Guero to Gervais’s Odelay.
(I just put that last sentence in there to appeal to blogger types. I haven't even heard that new Beck album.)
I watched the latest episode of The Office on Wednesday afternoon. I had to tape it because of the Crooked Fingers concert. Although it was better than the off-putting, bizarro-world adaptation of the first episode, I still can’t tell if I really like the show or not. The first two thirds were awkward, but not just in the intentional way that we should expect. They were, well, awkward in their awkwardness, in part due to the relatively poor acting of Steve Carell and Rainn Wilson. I don’t have any problems with characters deviating from the originals, but thus far neither Michael Scott nor Dwight Schrute seem like real people to me. Both Carell and Wilson seem fake, like sitcom actors. Their respective social ignorance is less plausible than that of their British counterparts. As hopeless and out-of-touch as David Brent and Gareth Keenan could be, they still both possessed a believable humanity, and rarely devolved into cartoons or standard television characters. Thus far, Michael Scott pretty much is a cartoon, though, and a completely unlikable one at that. Carell is still funny, at times, but more than anybody else he highlights this version’s lack of the subtlety that helped define the original. Many people have pointed out that thus far Scott doesn’t have David Brent’s desperation, his pathetic need to be loved and respected that we see in the first season of The Office. That is very true, and without those humanizing qualities Michael Scott can’t be the center of a successful show. The original is so great, in part, because nothing about it feels like a standard sitcom. The American version tries to recreate that atmosphere, but fails, and mostly because Steve Carell plays Michael Scott like a normal sitcom character. Thus far Scott has less in common with David Brent than with Phil Hartman’s fantastic Bill McNeal, a character whose misanthropy and cynicism was leavened by Newsradio’s lightly absurdist tone. In The Office’s cinema verite framework, the same qualities in Scott are mostly off-putting. Michael Scott thus undermines The Office’s very nature twice over, once by coming off too much like a sitcom character, and again by being so unlikable that the show’s squirm-inducing comedy is more painful than funny. At any rate, he’s a poor copy of David Brent, the Guero to Gervais’s Odelay.
(I just put that last sentence in there to appeal to blogger types. I haven't even heard that new Beck album.)
some more smarts
I think the questions about Canadian coinage should invalidate this one, but since I did okay I guess I've got no problems with it.
I think the questions about Canadian coinage should invalidate this one, but since I did okay I guess I've got no problems with it.
| pretty good You scored 20 American Logic Points! |
| Wow, you actually look around every once in a while. Congratulations. |
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My test tracked 1 variable How you compared to other people your age and gender:
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| Link: The American logic Test written by You4got2Evolve on Ok Cupid |
