Having been reminded that my Tumblr exists, I’ll be making an effort to actually post things. Maybe I’ll even re-blog some shit. Who knows? It’s a brave new world. So I’m off to find interviews to conduct, movies to discuss, things to rant about… Nothing political though. My current job forbids it. As far as you know, I’m neutral on everything. Especially ***********. No opinion.
-Will
Kid, don’t lose your cool, but Red Fang is sort of badass. This summer, they brought Murder The Mountains, their most recent album, to the old world, leaving their bloody tracks across the European continent and shooting a Converse produced, Decible hosted and Whitey McConnaughy directed tour documentary. It’s short and sweet, so watch it.
The documentary itself provides video evidence of what listeners have long suspected: Red Fang has nothing to prove other than that they write southern fried, trailer park rock that snarls to the drunken trucker in all of us-even though they’re from Portland. I had the opportunity to ask the band a few questions, so we shared an awkward moment, discussed travel in Europe and negotiated the release of Pussy Riot.
Kosh: I wrote a favorable review of Murder The Mountains for Blistering Magazine. Can we be friends or whatever?
Red Fang: This is already getting kind of awkward. Which means it’s a “yes.”
Kosh: You’ve been called a “stoner band” in the past. Do you have a problem with that label?
Red Fang: No, people can really call us whatever they want. We do not identify ourselves as a stoner band at all, but those terms seem to mean different things for different people. So it’s fine.
Kosh: It’s clear from the documentary that you have a sizeable European fanbase. Where’s your favorite place to play over there?
Red Fang: My current favorite place to play is France, but pretty much everywhere in Europe is fantastic, and I think partly that is because they are not so weird about alcohol. The drinking age is lower, plus I am pretty sure most places you can be at a bar no matter your age, you just can’t get served.
Kosh: Do you anticipate making any more documentary-style “tour diaries?” How about “Red Fang takes Japan?”
Red Fang: We would love it if that were to happen! I will talk to Whitey about it. We may have destroyed him on the last tour, though. I don’t think he realized quite how cramped and dirty a tour van really is.
Kosh: You’ve said that that “the fans in Moscow are the most Rabid fans on the planet.” I think that it’s pretty clear what this means: the Soviet Union Resurgent. When is the invasion?
Red Fang: As soon as Pussy Riot gets released, probably.
Kosh: I see… More importantly, when does the next album come out?
Red Fang: Sometime next year. We have not set a strict schedule yet.
Kosh: Are you still working with Chris Funk? (Of the Decembrists.)
Red Fang: We have not yet made any decisions about the next record, but I would love to work with Chris again.
Kosh: How about Vance Powell? (Powell mixed Red Fang’s Murder the Mountains album and has a history of collaborating with Jack White.) Will he work on the next album? If not, what’s he up to now?
Red Fang: I have not spoken with him recently, but I think he is probably pretty busy with his own studio, Sputnik Sound. I hope we get to see him again soon. I love Vance!
Kosh: You have a lot of sponsors on your website, from Monster Energy drink to Pro-Mark drumsticks. Does having these sorts of affiliations change the way you do business or record?
Red Fang: This is a fairly difficult question to answer. The way we do things now is pretty different from what we are all used to. For 20 years we would work our day jobs, jam in the basement, get some songs together, play some shows, then maybe doing some recording once we had enough songs to make it worth it. In the last 18 months or so, that has all changed. We used to work jobs so we could afford to go on tour. Now we have to go on tour to support ourselves. That means we are home a lot less so we have to develop a new approach to writing and recording. Each sponsor supports us in a different way, but they all make it easier for us to focus on making music. So it is more like everything has changed, and the sponsors have just been a part of that. Did that make any sense? I hope not.
Kosh: The limited edition “pizza disc” of Murder the Mountains has one side that looks like pizza and another that looks like Pabst Blue Ribbon, crusts and bloody bandaids. First of all, love it. Second of all, what would possess you to make that?
Red Fang: (Laughing) Thanks! We love it, too. Relapse actually approached us about doing the pizza disc. I guess they have had the idea for a while, and they thought we might be silly enough to agree to it, and they were right.
Kosh: Do you have much contact with the scene in Portland? Are there other bands or artists from your hometown that we ought to know about but don’t?
Red Fang: Kind of, but honestly, we are gone so much, I feel like I probably know more about bands from Norway than from Portland anymore. At this very second, these are some of the bands I can think of you probably have not heard of who are awesome:
There are of course tons more, but those are the ones that I can remember right now.
Kosh: Does playing metal influenced music sort of make you “black sheep” up there?
Red Fang: Maybe 5 years ago we were kind of like medium to dark grey sheep. These days, it is not such a big deal to be a heavy band from Portland.
The U.S. tour starts in Sacramento on October 26th, you can check out a track from the next album here, and yeah, this is late. The eighteen credits caught up with me this past week, but it’s worth the wait, right? It was a pretty good interview. Right? It was pretty good. Almost good enough to make people forget about the Screaming Females thing? Eh? Eh?
-Will
O.J. San Felipe emigrated from San Francisco to Brooklyn, surrounded himself with the weirdest kids in town and called the ensemble XRay Eyeballs.
What’s more, San Felipe, the lead singer, has earned notoriety for his behavior at live performances, and the word “earned” is not here used lightly. There are reports of him climbing on equipment, plucking guitars with his feet and indulging in more stage dives than whoever it was that did stage dives when stage dives were cool.
Though they’re a relatively new band (their first album, Not Nothing, came out in April 2011) those first experiencing the band’s beach-boys-on-acid stylings may jump to the conclusion that they share Deoxyribonucleic Acid with the Sonic Youth and Butthole Surfers of the 80s and early 90s. The video for “Crystal” encompasses just about all you need to know about XRay Eyeballs. A man in a leather jacket collapses in a puke-yellow hallway. A cherry picker snags a vinyl record. Two nude women torment a voodoo doll in a bathtub. They’re not exactly burying the lead. Shit’s about to get weird.
Xray Eyeballs feels more like an art project than a band. As a result, they often seem to be in a constant state of creative experimentation, and with the introduction of bassist and co-vocalist Carly Rabalais, they’ve already begun to evolve. I listened to their sophomore album, Splendor Squalor, and asked the band a few questions to try to get a bead on whatever it is they’re becoming.
Kosh: You are often quoted as saying you want your music to sound like a series of lullabies. Roughly, to what extent is your music’s dreamy quality creatively motivated? To what extent is it substance induced?
San Felipe: There are songs that just float around in the 5th dimension somewhere and you get glimpses of them just for a fraction of a second at random moments by accident but you can’t grab them unless you eat a mushroom or smoke some grass, and you’ll never ever remember that glimpse, so you need to go there and snatch it and record it in your iPhone before you forget.
Kosh: Vice magazine called you “garagey goth-os from Brooklyn.” Is this a relatively accurate description of the band, or would you prefer something else?
San Felipe: I think we sounded more like garage rock in our early days, and we play lots of shows with garage bands like Thee Oh Sees, Black Lips, Davila 666 etc., but I think we’re more just noisy abrasive pop music.
Kosh: O.J. and Carly were previously in a band called Golden Triangle. How would you describe what you’re doing with Xray Eyeballs as being different from your previous project?
Carly: Golden Triangle was the first band I was in. I was learning along the way. I was able to take a more experienced approach to Xray. Not sure if that’s necessarily a benefit, but learning the bass gave me a new challenge.
San Felipe: Xray Eyeballs songs are more poppy, less bluesy.
Kosh: What are you listening to?
San Felipe: I like old synth music, new hip hop and R&B, 80’s electro, brit pop, Joe Meek, Chris and Cosey, Fabio Frizzi, Book of Love, Secession, OMD, Monks, Wire, Ramones, Pulp.
Carly: Dirty Beaches, Foetus, Mighty Hannibal, Amen Dunes, and Moon duo. Some vinyl and some MP3s.
Kosh: In the past hundred years, what has been the “best” decade for music?
San Felipe: I like the 70’s. I like psychedelic rock, and the weird synth music that came out in the 70’s. Then punk emerged. And, of course, disco! I just discovered all this old underground NYC disco and Italo stuff I’m really into. And I like the soundtracks from the 70’s flicks.
Kosh: From an insider’s perspective, what is the Brooklyn scene like right now? Who are some of the most interesting bands and artists in your immediate geographical area?
San Felipe: Brooklyn’s scene seems like a million scenes. There’s something for everyone. You can hang out with power poppers at LuLu’s, metalheads at St Vitus, noise bands at Secret Project Robot, Death by Audio and 285 Kent always has random good bands coming through, Wierd has their own scene, etc. I like floating around to everything. I prefer going to dance parties. Some interesting artists/bands around here are DJ Dog Dick, Ice Balloons, Rat Attack, JG Thirlwell, Weasel Walter.
Kosh: You’ve hinted that there are two more parts to the “Crystal” video in the works. When will we be seeing the segments filmed in China and Louisiana?
San Felipe: Hopefully within the next year.
Kosh: It sounds like you sing “take time, let the right one in” in the song “Egyptian Magician”, off of Not Nothing. Given your apparent affection for voodoo and zombies, one wonders if this is an allusion to Ajvide Lindqvist’s vampire novel Let The Right One In. Is it?
San Felipe: It’s a direct reference to the movie actually. I never read the book.
Kosh: Carly, how does your contribution to Splendor Squalor make if different from Not Nothing?
Carly: In Not Nothing I had little contribution to the writing. I was still learning to play bass. In Splendor Squalor I wanted us to slow down and take more time to perfect the songs before going into the studio. I also contributed more with vocals, harmonies and lyrics on this record.
Kosh: The title of Splendor Squalor refers (at least in part) to the contrast between the splendor and squalor of New York City. Is this a way of encoding a bit of New York’s DNA permanently into XRay Eyeballs, a statement about political disparity, both or neither?
San Felipe: I love New York. I wanted the album title to describe the city.
Kosh: Who are the man and woman holding that creepy clown on the Splendor Squalor cover?
San Felipe: That’s Jack and Julie, otherwise known as the K Holes or Georgiana Starlington. Julie actually sings on an early version of Po Jam our first cassette from Night People Records. Jack was our first drummer, and drummed on the first album. They are some of my favorite song writers and people.
A little background information on why the interview is being posted on Tumblr and not published in Alternative Revolt:
http://www.altrevolt.com/headlines/alternative-revolt-magazine-cease-operations
“The magazine was really a platform for negativity; often offensive and demeaning to those that came across it.”
So I guess I’m on the market.
-Will
I’d interacted with Screaming Females once before. I was doing some work for Blistering, and I thought it would be fun to shake things up for the metalheads by tossing some punk rock into the humorless mix. I came up with Screaming Females, conducted an interview with their drummer Jarrett Dougherty and had it published. You can still read it here.
That would’ve been a happy ending.
Rule #1. Emotion is the Enemy. Eliminate All Human Feeling.
Weeks after my conversation with Jarrett, I was still listening to Screamales. I owned every album and had half considered taking the “big step” towards buying a T-shirt. It was for these immature, unprofessional reasons that I wanted to wrangle another interview. So, I looked into the band’s Ugly tour, found that they would be swinging through Madison, Wisconsin and made arrangements to intercept them.
Rule # 2. Write At Least Three Drafts Of Your Interview Questions With At Least 24 Hours Notice. No Matter The Stakes. No Matter The Cost.
I found out that I might have somewhere to publish another Screaming Females interview about three hours before it was time to head to the show. I had not done any sort of research or preparation, but hey, I was a fan, the perfect sort of person to talk to the band off the cuff! Right? Right?
Rule #3. Wrong. The Band Doesn’t Want To See One Of Their Shitty Fans Creep Over After The Show And Start Quizzing Them, They Want Someone At Least Pretending To Be A Fucking Journalist Of Some Capacity.
I went to the show with a friend of mine from high school and stood in the front row for the entire thing, rocking the fuck out. Then, afterwards, I walked over to the merch table and made Bambi eyes as I politely asked for a moment of the band’s time. Against what turned out to be their better judgement, they agreed to speak with me as long as I waited around for a few minutes. Thrilled, I wandered off towards the back of the room to review my questions. Horrified, I realized that my questions were shit.
Rule #4. Don’t Rush The Interview Because You’re Shit-Your-Pants-Nervous.
As I walked over to the table where one of my favorite bands of the past year waited for me to ask them terrible questions about their van, I concocted a really terrible plan.
Hey! said the brain damaged gas station attendant on my shoulder. Maybe if you conduct the interview really quickly and act like you’ve got somewhere better to be, they won’t realize that you’ve approached this whole thing like the worst sort of hack!
After meeting and greeting the band, I opened with my first question.
Kosh: The band who played directly before you, Caveman, was recently called “New York’s Indie Rock Juggernaut.” How did you end up playing with them? Were you aware of them beforehand, or was that just how the show was scheduled?
The band initially responded with blank stares of disbelief. Here was this kid in jeans and a t-shirt who begged for an interview and then opened with “so, I see they booked you an opening act. Tell me about that.” Eventually, Jarrett mustered, “we just happened to get booked with them… We weren’t really aware of them beforehand.” Oh, God. That was bad. Here come the sweats.
Kosh: How are you getting from show to show on this tour? Are you still using the fabled van?
“No, we parked our own bus!” the bassist said, laughing. That’s two questions into an eight question interview without a single usable quote. Which brings me to rule number five.
Rule #5. You Need Like, Fifteen Questions Minimum Dude.
Kosh: So you still use the van… Is that rough on a cross country tour like the one you’re doing to promote the new album?
Why in God’s name am I so obsessed with this fucking van? It’s the vehicle that gets them from show to show. It’s not relevant. It’s not interesting. It’s not worth lingering on for literally a quarter of the interview.
Rule #6. If You’re Interviewing More Than Two People, Just Get It On Tape And Transcribe Later.
The following exchange was actually the best bit of the interview because we deviated from my terrible questions and started having a conversation. I loosened up a little. My friend chimed in, and, for a split second, the interview became everything I imagined it would be, just me and my indie rock star friends, kicking back and shooting the shit, talking about home improvement shows and Steve Albini from Big Black. Unfortunately the text doesn’t reflect this because all I managed to jot down throughout the exchange was the following.
Kosh: Producer Steve Albini worked on Ugly with you. He’s a very independent minded engineer with a hands off philosophy, known for writing “The Problem With Music.” Do his beliefs manifest in the recording process?
Marissa: No. He just hit the record button and we played. He’s just really good at hitting the record button.
Mike: And watching really good T.V. shows.
Kosh: What sorts of shows?
Mike: Like public access home improvement shows.
Kosh: Like “This Old House.”
Jarett: It’s like this guy who makes furniture without modern technology. He’ll slice his finger open and be bleeding everywhere and he’ll just say “this is part of the trade!”
The problem was that the conversation took place between five people and I can’t write that damn fast. Eventually, I just get flustered trying to jot it all down and reverted back to the terrible questions in my composition notebook.
Kosh: It’s also said that Albini almost never spends over two weeks recording. How long did it take to record Ugly?
Jarett: Recording and mixing, the whole process took ten days.
Damn.
Rule # 7. End Your Interview With A Strong, Wrap Up Question, Not By Asking The Lead Singer If Screaming Like A Banshee Hurts Her Throat. Otherwise This Might Happen.
Kosh: Does that “Buried in the Nude” screaming hurt your throat?
Marissa: Yes.
THIS IS HOW WE LEARN.
-Will
DISCLAIMER. The shit quality of this interview in no way reflects Screaming Females. They were friendly and gracious throughout the entire disaster and their new album Ugly is great. You should buy it and listen to it all of the time.
I’m not terribly interested in Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter because I feel as though the fun is largely with over once you’ve read the title. Yes, Abraham Lincoln is a beloved figure from history and yes, vampires have been very ‘in’ for the past couple of years and yes, it would be totally crazy if we made a movie about Lincoln killing them dude. But the gimmick is just that, a ruse to fill seats for the next two hour block of action-porn from the director of Wanted.
Here’s what I’m getting at. I don’t mind a massive blockbuster once in a while, as long as the subject matter it tackles is at least somewhat interesting or provocative. ALVH, for all its bluster and supposed quirkiness, looks depressingly safe. But what if it wasn’t? If we could, what should we change to make it something more? Well, for starters…
Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter
Lincoln was a great leader to be sure, but he had little to no experience in actual combat. By no means was he the most ‘bad-ass’ president. That particular accolade belongs to Old Hickory, Andrew Jackson. Jackson’s jaw was made of granite. His fists were cast in iron, and his balls were the inspiration for a Jerry Lee Lewis song. That’s right. “A Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On” is about Andrew Jackson’s balls.
As evidence, I cite The Battle of New Orleans. The year was 1815. The threat of a pirate-backed British attack had the Governor of Louisiana so busy pleading with the Federal Government for aid that he barely had the time to soil himself repeatedly. The stakes were high. Whomever came to control New Orleans would come to control the Mississippi river, and whomever controlled the Mississippi would control middle American trade. Defeat seemed imminent until Andrew Jackson stepped up and made the army that beat Napoleon look stupid.
Jackson’s nemesis: General Sir Edward Pakenham, one of the literally millions of figures throughout history who will forever be remembered as not being Andrew Jackson. In the battle that ensued, 251 British solders were killed, three of them Generals, eight Colonels. As Jackson and his troops watched the invaders flee, they tended to their dead. All eleven of them.
He easily met the combat experience requirements for candidacy in the race for presidential-vampire-decapitator, but of course, Jackson mellowed out in his later years. Oh, wait, sorry, Jackson used the veto more often than all previous Presidents combined. In the context of Andrew Jackson, Vampire Hunter, that means that a vamp attacking Jackson’s blind spot would be immediately ‘vetoed’ by the sharpened peg-leg of one of the pirates Jackson killed in New Orleans. Only one president has ever payed off the national debt, and I know that this is all beginning to sound very one sided so I won’t tell you that it was Andrew Jackson even though it was and that’s all just foreplay. In the year 1805, Jackson made a bet on a horse race. Without going into details, the beginning of Lucky Number Slevin happened and there was some serious tension between the parties involved with said bet. All of this culminated into a duel between Jackson and Charles Dickinson, an expert gunman.
The two men took their pistols and their paces. The call came to fire. Dickinson turned and fired. Jackson just turned, standing stock still on his mark as the bullet shattered his ribs. Much to the dismay of Charles Dickinson, he did not fall. Jackson calmly took aim and blasted his opponent to kingdom come, then turned to the crowd that had gathered to watch the duel, saying,
“I should have hit him if he had shot me through the brain.”
which I think that about settles that.
Updated title: Andrew Jackson, Vampire Hunter
Next up, to “hunt” something implies both pursuit and a possibility of failure. Abraham Lincoln may “hunt” vampires, but Andrew Jackson would slay them casually, like vermin. Andrew Jackson does not hunt because Andrew Jackson does not fail. Andrew Jackson fucked up New Orleans like his last name was “Katrina” and his first name was “more destructive than hurricane.”
Updated title: Andrew Jackson, Vampire Slayer
I’m so tired of vampires that I’m tired of people saying that they’re tired of vampires because it means I have to hear about vampires. They may have been fun at one point, but, as in the case of their first cousin the zombie, there are only so many times we can watch them be killed. Eventually, that sense of superiority and satisfaction we get from blasting bullets through their brains or jamming stakes through their hearts begins to fade. Know who doesn’t have that problem? Hitler,
Hitler,
and Hitler.
And he keeps coming back for more. He’s almost as cliche’d as vampires at this point, granted, so swap him out for any genocidal maniac of the 20th century if you must. Pol Pot would do, or Stalin, but Hitler is a barometer for evil in modern politics. His allure lies in the fact that he’s so iconic. And that “HitlerSlayer” is such a nifty title.
Andrew Jackson, Hitlerslayer
Through his years at war and his years in office, Andrew Jackson always remembered the value of power. But old age robs us all of our vitality, and no man-or warrior-lives forever. Until now.
Midway through an Indian ritual intended to restore Jackson’s youth, he is attacked by a Cherokee man who lost his brother to the Trail of Tears. The two tumble into the time vortex that had been being used to reverse Jackson’s aging and they emerge in Poland-a century later. Nazi tanks roll across the earth under the command of the Third Reich and its bloodthirsty leader, Adolph Hitler. Jackson, (restored to youth by the ritual), disgusted by the realities of tyranny and genocide, vows to use his legendary skills to rally allied troops, smash through axis lines and storm Berlin. He must kill Hitler to repent for the sins he committed against the Cherokee, with the man who travelled to the future with him as witness. Or else. This summer… It’s in Jackson we trust.
(Pictured: Andrew Jackson, Toby Maguire, some naked children and NOTHING SUSPICIOUS.)
If that doesn’t sound appealing, my runners up were Ronald Reagan, Shark Wrangler and Theodore Roosevelt, Godsmasher. Let me know which you prefer @willkosh on Twitter, because the fact that I wrote this and you read it means that we almost certainly have nothing better to do.
You may have noticed that my new short story has been labelled as an “Emotobook Single.” You may have responded to this by going all like “dafuq?” That’s natural. That’s fine. What an Emotobook is… Is a thingy. A thingy thought up by the folks at Grit City Publications that combines abstract art with throwback-dime store fiction and delivers the result directly to your E-Reader. Although Suburbians is a “one shot” short story, a lot of the other publications on the site (like say, Swing Zone) will be released periodically as serial novels.
So, Suburbians, along with Swing Zone and Lingering In The Woods, another “single,” are available for E-readers from Amazon. It’s probably one of the better pieces of fiction that I’ve ever written, so I encourage you to part ways with the $2.99 that you were just going to spend on cigarettes and adderral anyway and read Suburbians. Bastards.
-Will
So uh… I wrote a book.
I mean sort of. I didn’t sit down in front of a typewriter and crank out a novel, so “wrote a book” might be a little misleading. What I did is write a few episodic installments of a comic book series that I was planning to make with an artist friend of mine. The comic didn’t happen so the project got shelved, and I ended up lacing the scripts I had written together. Someone expressed interested in putting it in print, I slapped a title on the fucker and there you have it. Little Winged One.
It’s… Well, it’s not high art, but it’s definitely fun. I wrote most of it when I was 16 and 17, so the plot is covered with the fingerprints of Scott Pilgrim, Kurosaki Ichigo and most of the X-Men. (Not the shitty ones.) Mob bosses, zombies, super-powers, evil corporations, conspiracies, rogue agents, all that archetypal comic stuff. I even have a sequel sketched out just in case, so maybe if a few people pick up this first installment it’ll see the light of day. Could happen.
To the point. One of the stupid little things that I like to do while writing is to give the story a “soundtrack.” I include suggested listening with just about everything I write. (The Amnesiac applies this principle in reverse, but it’s the same general idea.) Little Winged One is no exception, and I honestly think that the book is far better with the music I had in mind while writing it. (The songs are a little dated, but I think most of them stand the test of time. There are exceptions. Anberlin is a little embarrassing in retrospect…) But it’s a pain in the ass hunting down a seventeen song playlist in order to read a damn book, so I thought I would keep things simple by just cut-and-pasting all of the music here into a blog post. Everythiiiing. In it’s riiiight plaaaaace.
So, without further ado, other people’s art shamelessly used to supplement my own derivative creation! The suggested listening for Little Winged One! Enjoy.
(You can tell this video for The Suburbs if fantastic because it’s indescribably upsetting.)
(The video for “What’s A Girl To Do?” is also worth watching. It’s very “Donnie Darko Goes To The X-Games,” you know?)
I
Chapter 1: Radiohead, Bodysnatchers
Chapter 2: The Arcade Fire, Suburbs
Chapter 3: The Gorillaz, The Glitter Freeze
Chapter 4: The Arcade Fire, Suburban War
Chapter 5: Jane’s Addiction, True Nature
Chapter 6: System of a Down, Chop Suey/Aerials
Chapter 7: Radiohead, Weird Fishes/Arpeggi
II
Chapter 1: Passion Pit, I’ve Got Your Number
Chapter 2: The White Stripes, The Catch Hell Blues
Chapter 3: Primus, Here Come the Bastards
Chapter 4: The Gaslight Anthem, Even Cowgirls Get The Blues
Chapter 5: Nine Inch Nails, Closer
Chapter 6: Muse, The City of Delusion
Chapter 7: Born Ruffians, Red; Yellow and Blue
Chapter 8: Primus, Lost Bastardos
Chapter 9: Bat For Lashes, What’s a Girl to Do?
Resolution: The Arcade Fire, Sprawl; Flatland(I)/Mountains Beyond Mountains(II)
-Will
Our culture seems to have fallen into a cycle of collectively choosing one thing at a time, be it a film, a book or an album, and actively hating it. We’re expected to despise these targeted parties, whatever they may be, or be ostracized to the barren deserts of bad taste along with grown men who wear Ed Hardy t-shirts and the guy I went to high school with who liked “Lake Placid.”
But, I feel that it is only fair that we take one last look before sending these frequent targets to the gallows. Are these really the things most worthy of our bloodlust? Let’s review.
Nickelback
We hate them.
It’s hard to believe now, but there was a point at which it was socially acceptable to like Nickelback. Loathe as we are to admit it, many of us, (myself included), kept music from the humorless grunt-rock ensemble on our iPods earlier in the 2000s. The first time I remember hearing Chad Kroeger’s come-hither-croak was on the soundtrack for Sam Raimi’s first Spider Man movie, and the last time I remember caring was a few years ago when, after half a decade of fame, he whined to mainstream radio audiences about how he wanted to be a rockstar. America, in response, told him to stick to Citibank commercials.
A few months ago, a massive Change.org petition went viral. The goal was to have Nickelback barred from playing the halftime show of the Detroit Lions game against the Green Bay Packers on Thanksgiving Day. Let that slosh around in the ol’ noggin for a minute. Change.org, the website that sends me an E-mail a day about abolishing the death penalty and protecting the environment, hosted a petition to keep Nickelback from playing a show that they hadn’t even been signed to yet. People went out of their way to preemptively make sure that this didn’t happen, like Kyle Reese traveling back in time to protect the future. This comment accompanied one of the signatures reprinted by the Toronto Sun:
“They have been giving Canadians and Albertans a bad name since they puked out that ‘How you remind me’ thing way back when, and I think it is time they are stopped.”
That’s so far beyond casual dislike that it’s baffling. The band’s bassist, Mike Kroeger, says the the following on the band’s biography page:
“Any artist that is even surviving right now is a dark horse because things change pretty fast. You’re a superstar one day and wake up the next day and you’re anonymous.”
But anonymity would be preferable to the kind of celebrity that plagues Nickelback today. The petition failed by the way, and Nickelback played the halftime show anyway.
Meanwhile, we could be hating…
Any of our popular music. Tune to your local pop radio station. You will hear what sounds like a drunk robot crooning over off key techno. Young and stupid as you are, you will wait for the next song, expecting things to turn around. But wait! More robots mumbling drunkenly about that wild party that they attended last night! The following are lyrics from “Sexy And I Know It,” by LMFAO, (who brought us Party Rock Anthem, the song from the Kia commercial with the dancing hamsters).
When I walk on by, girls be looking like damn he fly
I pay to the beat, walking on the street in my new lafreak, yeah
This is how I roll, animal print, pants out control,
It’s real fool with the big afro
They like bruce lee rock at the club
Girl look at that body. Girl look at that body. Girl look at that body.
I work out.
Girl look at that body. Girl look at that body. Girl look at that body.
I work out.
If Nickelback “puked how” “How You Remind Me,” then from what orifice did “Sexy And I Know It” spew?
Twilight
We hate it
This one pretty much speaks for itself, doesn’t it? The cliched plot driven by forbidden love, the squealing fans aged 13 to 40 and the preachy Mormon overtones about purity and celibacy all intermingle to make something that is just so deliciously easy to hate.
There’s really no defending Stephanie Meyer’s four book epic of warring werwolves and vampires, (conveniently pre-equipped with washboard abs) lusting after protagonist Bella Swan. It’s half baked, it’s overrated, and it attracts hormonal, teenaged girls like flypaper. Enough said.
Meanwhile, we could be hating…
People who hate Twilight. Hear me out on this.
Try a simple Google search of “I hate Twilight.” You’ll come up with top ten lists, essays, video speeches, merchandise, and Facebook pages dedicated to disliking a fantasy series. The “I hate Twilight” movement has so much momentum that I personally first heard of Twilight through seeing it mocked on a T-Shirt. Intrigued, I picked up the first book expecting a pamphlet on neo-Nazism, or a manual on how to molest children and get away with it. I expected my blood to boil and for my hands to shake with rage!
No such luck. Twilight was boring. It was a sexless romance novel about vampires and high school students. I watched the movie, just in case I had missed something. I again felt nothing but tedium and a little hunger, but that was due to extenuating circumstances. I had a friend from work explain the remaining sequels to me. They seemed formulaic, average, no better or worse than the usual drivel crowding bestseller shelves and selling out the multiplex down the road. There are books and movies as bad (and far, far worse) than Twilight coming out every week, and there isn’t an organized propaganda movement dedicated to mocking them out of existence. Maybe one of these days the anti-Twilighters will get this memo and do us all a favor by chilling the fuck out.
Linkin Park
In junior high, I would sit on the bus to school (Catholic School, Oshkosh Wisconsin), blast the song “Crawling,” and brood about how angst ridden and troubled my life was. I took Linkin Park completely seriously, but what I didn’t realize was that these guys had it down to a science. Their formula infused hatred of authority figures, feelings of invisibility, and anxieties springing from a lack of identity with rap metal. To a fourteen year old, that sounds like the voice of God validating your existence. In reality it’s a bunch of grown adults playing off of the emotions of the country’s middle schoolers.
(Things were tough back then. Jesus, look at my hair… It’s like a blonde whirlpool.)
Meanwhile, we could be hating…
Anything else we listened to back then. If you’re going to open fire on angst-rock with hip hop influences directed at teenagers, you’re not just going to find Linkin Park in your crosshairs.
(These fellas for starters.)
Now, that’s a controversial statement. Understood. But even though bands like Nine Inch Nails and RATM infused their music with political and subtextual content for their more mature audiences, I personally got the exact same thing out of “The Battle of Los Angeles” as I got out of “Meteora.” It was angry music to listen to while I stomped around town at one in the morning throwing rocks at things to resist “the man.”
Of course it’s natural for us to grow out of Linkin Park. I’d be disappointed if we didn’t. But, it’s silly to pretend we never identified with them, right? Think of them as an imaginary friend. They were cute and fun when you were younger, but if you bring them with you into adulthood, you’ll probably end up curled into the fetal position in your old babysitter’s closet, waiting for the acid to wear off and trying to reattach your index finger with a staple gun.
Zoey Deschanel
As the quintessential manic-pixie-dream-girl, Zoey Deschanel managed to successfully capture our hearts for a solid six minutes before becoming annoying. Everyone from The New Republic to Cracked has opened fire on Deschanel and the half-baseballs with black dots at their centers that she tries to pass off as eyes.
On her Fox sitcom “The New Girl,” she essentially reprises the role of Zoey Deschanel, the quirky but lovable underdog, out to take on the world and look cute doing it! She twitters about kittens! She’s “simply adorkable!” Her website looks like this!
Meanwhile, we could be hating…
Merchant of death Viktor Bout. One of the world’s most active and powerful arms dealers before his recent arrest in Thailand, Bout is an ex-Soviet intelligence officer that went rogue after the end of the Cold War. In the proceeding years, he made it his vocation to put guns in the hands of maniacs.
Though accused of numerous war crimes in Africa as well as attempting to sell weapons to Columbian FARC terrorists, Bout calls himself an honest businessman. In reality, he is an enabler of atrocities, a demon in human form that deserves nothing more than to be drawn, quartered, and thrown into a volcano.
Also, is The New Girl really that bad? It’s a piece of fluff-fiction that they run after Glee (which has spent the past year transitioning from fun to unbearably preachy) that places likable stock characters in traditional sitcom situations so that we can watch them bounce off of each other until they inevitably stumble into a happy ending. It’s not high art, but come on. Where are the articles and organized campaigns against How I Met Your Mother and Raising Hope? Mediocrity isn’t a crime. It’s just… Mediocre. Ignore it and eventually it will limp into the corner and die. Support one of the many great shows on T.V. right now. Like say, Breaking Bad, Dexter, Misfits, et cetra.
I originally submitted all of this to Cracked, but one of their editors shot it down. He told me to change some stuff and maybe try a different tack, and instead I just posted it here because editing is mad hard yo. Still, I might be taking another swing at a Cracked submission in the future, so stay tuned.
-Will
Once upon a time, I looked like this.
But lately, due to a lack of time and the will to live, I haven’t been getting much writing done. So, I thought I would relive my glory days by reposting some of the stuff I wrote for Blistering and Alternative Revolt.
First of all, if you’re not currently listening to Screaming Females, you should start listening to Screaming Females.
I challenge any man, gay or straight, to watch Marissa Paternoster play for over five seconds without falling in love. If flannel had ever stopped being cool, Marissa Paternoster would have been the one to bring it back. By this logic, flannel is now cool-squared and I am really popular and your best friend.
I did an interview with their drummer for Blistering about a year ago that’s archived right here. Hopefully I’ll get to speak with the rest of the band sometime before April when their new album comes out. I almost said “when their new album drops” but it didn’t feel right. Now I’m crying.
This next interview with Paperthin Disaster not only makes for interesting reading, but also serves as a cautionary tale for those considering conducting interviews with successful hardcore metal bands while under the influence of alcohol. I did this interview the way that Hunter Thompson would have done it: fucked up.
Well, here I am, still standing.
A lot of naysayers said that I wouldn’t make it through the withdrawal. They said that it was too late for me, that I should just keep taking the stuff forever, and that I would eventually relapse anyway. They were wrong. Let those faithless skeptics look upon me now, and let them choke painfully on hot, succulent reubens. I have survived.
Where do I go from here? Well, from now on, I’ll be dedicating 45 full minutes every other month at a caffeine addiction help line. If that turns out to not be a thing, I plan to lobby Congress (or Parliament or whatever) to found one in the name of the man who gave me the strength to beat my habit. Call your local Representative. Tell them you support the Jesus Memorial Caffeine Addiction Help Center Hotline, or JMCAHCH. (Jahm-cohck.) If you think that you’re too busy, keep in mind that Jesus knows you read this, and if you don’t repost this message to three friends, he will appear from beneath your bed and gouge out your eyes.
I know that many people say that caffeine isn’t an addictive drug, like marijuana, crystal meth, or generic brand Frankenberry. These people are liars. DNA tests by scientists show that caffeine is one of the most addictive substances known to man, and that people who do not admit this just don’t want to face the fact that they have a problem. The good news is, there’s a way to deal with this type of person: Take their hand. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, and if you miss, the Lord said “the parts beach with one set of footprints are where I carried you.” And you’ll land among the stars.
And what are the stars if not far off, burning suns?
Amen.
