Squid Row, Ink exists for the purpose of sharing our eccentricities and explorations with you. We deal in prints, hand screen-printed t-shirts, unsubstantiated recollections and half-truths. Please feel free to explore our blog, our galleries and our shoppe. (And do be mindful of the tentacled zinnia; they're quite rare this time of year.)
Full disclosure: I never read Lord of the Rings. Loved the movies, but quite frankly, it was just one of those things that fell through the cracks for me. I realize this is quite a blow to my geek cred, but there's only so many hours in the day, y'know?
No, my principle fantasy fix growing up was Michael Moorcock's saga of the White Wolf, Elric of Melnibone. The doomed albino prince. A sort of emo version of Conan the Barbarian, Elric was sickly and frail, kept alive only through the use of numerous drugs and herbs, before he discovered Stormbringer.
Stormbringer was a demonic sword forged by the forces of Chaos, and it proved to be both Elric's greatest strength and weakness. With every soul Stormbringer slew, Elric grew stronger, mightier. But the sword possessed a mind of its own, and the merest scratch of its blade could steal the soul of even Elric's nearest and dearest. Which it did, on a regular basis. And so Elric would wander the world, alone and damned, as his own conscience and soul withered away as well.
In my film school heyday, my friends and I pipe-dreamed about the opportunity to adapt the tales of Elric to film. (Seriously. We had the damn thing's score drawn up in our heads, somewhere between Wagnerian epic and icy Norwegian black metal.) In some circles, the rumor mills are whispering that the long-fabled Elric adaptation is nearing a reality. I await with trepidation; there's NO WAY it'll be as amazing as the one Sean, Brian and I would've made...
I often joke that mine is the kind of low-level tech job that, at any moment, could get shipped off to India. This seems to make sense to people, and usually gets me out of explaining exactly what it is I do. And it was funny, until last week when my co-workers and I were pulled into a conference room and told that our contract is, in fact, being outsourced to India. In one of the next three months, I'll begin taking Unemployment Benefits for the first time in my life.
Besides being the latest victim of the Economic Downturn, paying out the ass for COBRA, and expecting total financial uncertainty, Matt and I are looking forward to developing Squid Row full time, spending more time together, and figuring out how to move our lives in the direction we want to go.
I started to get worried months ago, when a third of the office often went weeks with no actual work to do. I rationalized: the company I work for is big enough that they'd rather pay people to potentially look for Trademark Infringement, for example, than finance litigation later, which is proactive and smart. Right?
When I got hired, I thought: my life is The Office. I now understand Office Space far better than I really ever wanted to. People would joke, "Uh, yeah, I'm going to need you to go ahead and..." etc, and I'd nod knowingly. Our Powerpoint trainings involved phrases like, "Replace Logic with Action!" and literally, "If a concern engage, don't assume it is supposed to work that way!" These are phrases that, though nonsensical, could not be edited or removed because of the difficulty of changing anything--this is not a workplace that tolerates suggestions sent up by the little people. My fellow trainees and I made fun of Work-arounds, Tools Escalations, "Calling it out." Funnily enough, the person who understands My Corporate Job the most is my brother--Army Ranger, master of Sharepoint, Powerpoint, and Excel spreadsheets. Bureaucratic similarities aside, he obviously has far more responsibility than I do. I am not in charge of anything, I don't own anything. There are many other people doing my job, and apparently foreign labor can do it cheaper.
In my thirteen months of corporate service, I have listened to twenty-two audio books, almost every podcast of This American Life and RadioLab. I have, on a monthly basis, exhausted the free listening time allotted by Pandora. I have crocheted half a granny square blanket. I have individually colored every single line of my Excel tracker, so that when scrolling, the screen undulates in pleasant rainbow patterns. I have hand drawn ten t-shirt designs for Squid Row, Ink. I've written six months of weekly blog posts. I have fostered an excessive lunchtime Goodwill shopping habit.
It was on one such thrifting trip that I found a handmade clay mask: green and red and black, it looks awesome next to Matt's 5-foot painting of The Incredible Hulk (hanging in our dining room). We were drinking our Coors Light and trying to figure out how to hang the clunking thing on the wall, lamenting that it didn't weigh less. Remember being a kid and making papier mache masks on a balloon?
If I must leave my soul-sucking (albeit health insurance paying) corporate job, at least additional wall decor, daytime crafty Unemployment projects, Squid Row, and potential Halloween costumes are in my future.
Arena shows, particularly metal arena shows, have never really been my thing. There's no intimacy between performer and audience, the whole thing often feels sterile and scripted, and the sound is usually muddy and indecipherable. If I'm gonna see somethin' loud and chaotic and eeevil, I'd rather do it in a dingy, sweaty club. I've also already seen Slayer numerous times, and on album Rob Zombie bores the absolute hell out of me.
All of that being said, when a pair of $40 tickets fall into my hands for a measly 10 bucks each, at a venue within walking distance, I ain't gonna say no. The lovely Kate (who, let it be noted, despises metal but loves a spectacle) bit the bullet and joined me for a steroid-fueled evening of madpersons screaming "Slayyyyerrrr!" incessantly with devil-horned fingers thrust in the air, and I gotta tell ya: it was a great time.
Your effin' hosts.
Truthfully, the initial selling point for me was Exodus, one of the only remaining "classic" era thrash bands I've never seen in some capacity. After dragging our asses a bit through a dinner of beer and pizza, Kate and I arrived about a third of the way through Exodus' set. Only drummer Tom Hunting and (of course) guitarist/principle songwriter Gary Holt remain from their original lineup, but from their energy you'd never know that they'd been playin' this thrash game for thirty friggin' years. In fact, except for the apparently immortal Overkill, Exodus seem to have aged better than just about any of the thrash bands whose heyday was in the mid-80s. The crowd was still fairly sparse at this point, but apparently not a fuck was given by vocalist Rob Dukes as he bounded around the stage, ordering circle pits left and right (on this point he was rather less than successful, as Portlanders in general really, really suck at moshing. Ah well, at least we rule at craft-beer-brewing).
The most I was expecting from Rob Zombie were some movie clips of Frankenstein's monster looped on a screen behind him and maybe some shooting flames. Y'know, something to kill the time while I drank my $8 beers. Well, we got those things, plus... like... damn. A whole lot more.
Shit was awesome.
There were giant robots, and go-go dancers, and crazy skeleton-things, and prosthetic doo-dads, and GWAR-level costumes. The bass player alone looked like the greatest supervillain never created. It was like one of those bizarro Mexican copyright-free movies where Batman and Spider-Man team up with a luchador and someone who looks suspiciously like a Hispanic Indiana Jones to fight Godzilla and a guy in a gorilla suit (if this movie does not exist, then someone needs to make it soon, dammit. Perhaps Rob himself?). Halfway through his set I realized I'd been grinning the whole time; this shit was just straight-up unpretentious spookshow fun. It was a carnival, and every detail was meticulously thought out. I mean, Rob Zombie is making a perfectly good living as a legitimate Hollywood filmmaker, so the reason he subjects himself to this type of grueling, physically exhausting performance has got to be sheer love of the game. The man is a professional, I gotta say, and the respect points definitely went way up in my book. It was great to see a kindred soul playing with the expensive toys all us movie-monster fanboys covet.
Metal purists are gonna rake me over the coals for this, but Slayer was just kinda 'meh'. And at this point, it's not even really their fault; since Tom Araya's back surgery, he's been rendered pretty much immobile behind the mic stand, and on this tour guitarist Jeff Hanneman has been absent due to necrotizing fasciitis. From a spider bite. Okay, that's pretty damned metal. (Exodus' Gary Holt filled in on second guitar, pulling double duty and looking completely stoked to be doing so, and again, Jesus, I hope I'm that vibrant when I'm pushing 50).
Kerry King and Lombardo still ruled, they were still tighter, louder and faster than hell, they were still Slayer. Maybe at this point in my life I've just seen 'em enough, as recently as last summer, in fact. But seeing the five-year-old boy and the cute little gal in her rainbow tutu there with their respective metalhead fathers was pretty amazing and heartwarming. It's wonderful that a Slayer show can still be a rite of passage.
Ten dollar Slayer tickets make it worth the Eight dollar beers? We thought so. We got such a good deal that I couldn't resist being Matt's hot date to see Exodus, Rob Zombie and Slayer at Portland's Memorial Colosseum this Friday night.
My favorite part: The fans. We met so many awesome people at this all-ages show (and cute Moms and Dads with little guys!), and they were so enthusiastic about posing in all their show regalia.
We wanted to especially thank TRICIALICIOUS, Host for Metalicious, on METAL ASSAULT RADIO (which we will definitely be checking out soon).
Enjoy our favorite fans, below! And check back for more pics of the show--and some analysis from Matt--in a later post.
And, we're back to analyze/obsess over the first act of Fucked Up's latest album, David Comes to Life. In the interests of full disclosure, I've spent some time poring over various interviews and reviews of the album. By my nature, I tend to dissect and over-analyze every bit of minutiae when I really have my obsession-hooks in something. However, I have tried to limit my overexposure for this particular piece so as to attempt to approach with a fresher set of eyes and ears. Select interwebs articles that particularly drew my attention included:
The A/V Club's great interview with frontman Damian Abraham a.k.a. Pink Eyes here and their review of the album here;
And Fucked Up's official blog, where they excel in lies, misdirection and the occasional truthiness. You can also buy a great number of their ridiculously numerous rare 7"s, shirts, etc...
So, on to Act One,* which begins with the fairly innocuous introduction...
*(I strongly recommend listening to this album with headphones for the full effect; the amount of intent and effort at dense layering in the soundscape is impressive...)
LET HER REST (3:23)
This is more an instrumental overture of sorts; in grand terms of a "rock opera," I reckon this is where you stop shuffling around in your seat and get good and comfortable for the story to begin. A simple filtered guitar loop, a couple of toy piano plinks, and a growing wall of more and more guitars and effects that act as a dense, soothing wash of melody. It builds into a rapturous wave before abruptly dropping off, immediately kicking into the next track:
QUEEN OF HEARTS (4:36)
All we need is for something to give, the dam bursts open, we suddenly live
Aside from the above video, which I can honestly say I have never seen anything like (quite a bold stroke, having a class of children singing over the song you're trying to promote), this is not only the finest track from the album, but simply put, has become one of my favorite songs ever.
Lyrically, the setting is painted in broad strokes. We open on a small British industrial town, where low-level workers slog their dreamless, aimless selves to the factory, greeted by a "group of lefties" handing out (socialist? Is it specified?) propaganda.
Sparks fly between one worker, David, and the pamphleteer Veronica. Rather than an enlightenment via political change, though, David's soul is awakened by sheer unadulterated love for the woman herself.
Pink Eyes' impassioned snarls as the voices of both the narrator and David himself are juxtaposed beautifully by the "Veronica" character's angelic swoon (portrayed by guest vocalist Madeline Follin of the NY band Cults, who I have never previously heard, an oversight I shall correct presently).
The track itself is triumphant, invoking a sense of moving, un-ironic beauty, as well as revealing something far more sinister on the horizon. Let's be together, Until we're all finally crushed...
UNDER MY NOSE (3:29)
With a sense of impending doom, That it's all going to end to soon
It's all too good to be true, Where the fuck is the other shoe?!
Still foreboding-- moreso, even-- but David is truly enraptured in bliss with Veronica. The foreshadowing of the repeated refrain only ups the menace approaching: It's all been worth it, It's all been worth it... The first of several mentions of "the other shoe" on the album that will inevitably drop.
Musically speaking, this is another shiny rockin' pop gem (If not for Pink Eyes' scorched-earth voice, every song on this album could be a potential single). The latter half of the track gives way to a great 7/8 rhythm and gorgeous back-and-forth melodies of what sounds like a hundred layered guitar harmonies.
THE OTHER SHOE (4:57)
We need a Peter, We get a Paul, At least Judas had some balls
To make a move on these building doubts, About how this Messiah thing would shake out
Annndd... just like that, the "other shoe" has dropped. A new character, Vivian (someone from David's past?) is introduced (sung by folk singer Jennifer Castle), something dark is being plotted, unrest is stirring.
David's bliss is interrupted/dashed to pieces. It's all rather vague, but Veronica seems to be in his ear, warning of something bad on the horizon, with the mantra, We're dying on the inside, dying on the inside, repeated with a misleadingly soothing lilt.
TURN THE SEASON (4:02)
He's a ship on the sea, Setting sail to perfidy
Act One wraps up with several musical references back to "Under My Nose." Veronica is dead and gone... huh? David mourns, He would have made that girl his wife. Despite all of this leading to some very dark days for David come Act Two, the lyrics to "Turn the Season" contain some of the more hopeful sentiments to be found on the album. Almost a prayer for redemption; though the season has changed to bring only darkness, it too will one day pass. His happiest moments are in the past... but through the pains of loss and grief (two things required to fully appreciate the "good times") could they return eventually?
There are elements to the story not inherent within the lyrics themselves; many plot points are shady and intentionally unresolved (various interviews and research seem to imply Veronica's death is related to a plot with David to construct and detonate a home-made bomb).
It has been strongly hinted at that David represents the "Workaday Joe," and Veronica embodies Change. Exposure to a new world, as it were. Damian Abraham repeatedly discusses Veronica's death as the "death of organized labor" during the years of Reagan and Thatcher in his A/V Club interview.
We'll pick up with Act Two next week. I do hope some of you do take me up on my plea to engage in this thread, I'm very curious what other people might take away from this, if anything...
Wednesday, August 24, 2011 at 6:43PM By 
(artwork by Brom)
(artwork by Robert Gould)
