ago I was talking about Rick Rubin. He’s one of the cats who popularized Hip Hop music they say. A lot of the time, I wish nobody had. Hip Hop sounds like something rabbits do, unlike Rock and Roll, which at least conjures up some vague notion of excitement on some level. The more we approach the totality of brain – deadedness in the 21st Century the dumber things sound. Twitter, before it became X, sounded stupid. X now conjures up visions of an illiterate who cannot even sign their own name. Take Google, no, you take it. It sounds dumb, but it’s a collossus when it comes to influencing people. It almost completely controls the internet. It’s a modern day Big Brother, and it’s only getting worse. Like in the book 1984, they are scrubbing the bits of the past they don’t like, and are rewriting history daily. In the last ten years Google with it’s innocuously sounding dumb name, went from “Do No Evil”, to literally becoming evil. Eventually, if it’s not happening already, articles like this will not even see the light of day. Once the “Google” robots which are constantly trawling the internet looking for “WrongThink”, discover what I’m doing, my website will be “disappeared”. It will still be online, but it will be difficult to find, and may even come with a warning that Google deem neccessary to stop anything they consider “disinformation”.
Google was originally called BackRub. It should be officially renamed BackStab.
Similarly Uber, Whatsapp, Facebook, et al, all stupid sounding names of things, which people have flocked to in droves. They’re all uber stupid. Stop hijacking perfectly good words for your shitty apps. Try typing “uber” into a search engine. The actual German word as it had been used for ever, has almost been completely obliterated from popular use. There are millions of people alive today who have no idea what uber actually means, other than “It’s on my phone to get a ride somewhere”.
Tiktok… what the fuck does that even supposed to mean? It’s probably the least dumb sounding social media app of them all, too. I didn’t come here to talk about this garbage though, because today’s googly mail brought a plethora of upcoming pre-sales for band shows that I really should go along and see.
First up was Static-X and Sevendust, “The Machine Killer Tour”. I’m listening to a leaf blower right now, and I can tell you that at least one of these bands (if not all of them) sound about as appealing. Static -X’s press release tells us, “Their breakthrough debut, 1998’s cult classic Wisconsin Death Trip, rocketed them to stardom in the heavy music world, their image boosted by frontman Wayne Static’s distinctive hair and vocal delivery.” It’s gotta be a first when the lead singer’s hair gets a mention in the press release. Must be very distinctive, but how does this affect the music? I watched the “Official Video” of their latest single. I did not see any hair that was distinctive at all. The thing was practically unwatchable to be honest. “Why are you doing this to me?” Please stop. Oh, I just read that the guy with the distinctive hair, died of a drug overdose in 2013, my bad. These press releases are like minature novels. The more stuff you put in, doesn’t neccesarily make the band any better. It’s like reading a schooboy essay with little substance and a lot of filler. Well, they’re far more popular than me, so I’m in no position to criticize. (but I will)
That’s “distinctive” hair alright. Is that a mask, or a beard that looks like a mask?
I’m gonna skip the half dozen other bands in other places in this email and focus on the one at the bottom of the page. This is a band called “Crowbar”. Their press release says, “Twice immortalized by MTV’s Beavis and Butt-Head. The group is worshipped by the heartbroken and downtrodden – those who exorcise their demons in smoke-covered riffs of mournful devastation.” Smoke covered riffs of mournful devastation?” Ok, sure. The publicity picture shows a quartet of very mean looking biker types. This is not a comedy group, or is it? While looking at Crowbar, I realized that the band I really wanted to talk about were their support act, Primitive Man. This is from their press release, “Listening to Primitive Man is a devastating experience of Doom as performed by just three members. Their discography of agonizing personal and universal hell is spread across three albums…and also, “2020 saw the release of the groups most recent full length album ‘Immersion’ (Relapse Records), a terrifying and confrontational record that expressed resentment and the unbearable during uncertain times. The tension through out the record is palpable. McCarthy’s foul roar feels wrenched from a cavern so deep that it defied language itself.“
Crowbar – The dude front and center looks a bit like Robert, our old bass player.
Are they having a laugh? Because I am. It’s hard to take these bands seriously, but then like Hip Hop, this modern evolution of Rock and Roll is veering into unknown territory. I would call it unlistenable territory. Over at the Primitive Man website there is a link to a song called “Trepanation of Future Joys” it’s from the album “Suffocating Hallucination”. I guess this is their latest. The song is credited to Primitive Man and Full of Hell. I don’t know who Full of Hell are. I can’t keep up. There is so much minutia on these band’s websites. It’s like trying to navigate the Tokyo subway system with your eyes closed. The band have just come off a 21 date European tour. I don’t know what’s in the drinking water over there, but that almost beggars belief. I think I’m just going to turn my amp up to 11 and just walk away from it from now on. It’s what the kids want!
The song itself is not what I’d even call music, unless you call what John Cage was doing “music”. It’s actually closer to Musique Concrète which began in the early 1940’s when French composer and theoretician Pierre Schaeffer began his exploration of radiophony when he joined Jacques Copeau and his pupils in the foundation of the Studio d’Essai de la Radiodiffusion nationale. The studio had been used by the French Resistance and Schaeffer began to experiment with creative radiophonic techniques using the sound technologies of the time.
Primitive Man are from Denver Colorado. Someone drank all the soymilk, and some people aren’t happy about it.
These bands probably have idea what they’re actually doing other than attempting to make a frightening noise. It sounds demonic to me, but I think that’s the whole idea. I would post it below if I thought it would “amplify” the conversation, but a leaf blower probably sounds less annoying. It’s 9 minutes and 52 seconds of horrible noise. 15 year old boys (or 15 year old boys in 55 year old men’s bodies) probably think it’s cool though.
Little did they know what they had put in motion so many years ago…