We couldn’t find a single new song or new musical artist we felt worth more words than what we have to muster on Twitter for this go-round. Whether that speaks to the dismal state of current music, the stunted thinking promoted by said social media outlet (follow us @JFloyd_Popwell), or the agéd discretion of your narrator is a conundrum for those wiser than us. Alas, here we go, legal and overly-taxed edibles edifying our spirit, down a road with drastic turns:
Proud to say we took an elbow in the gut from D.H. Peligro, drummer of Dead Kennedys, just before Christmas. No, we didn’t make fun of the current singer of DK. We just happened to be standing behind him when a haphazard sort of mosh pit broke out at a Fishbone show in LA. Some wide-about-the-middle bloke slammed into Peligro who reeled back into us. It’s part of going to shows, so we weren’t upset, but when he turned toward us to give the customary nod of apology for more than incidental contact on the edge of a pit, we couldn’t help but feel as though the punk gods had parted the firmament and placed their very funny bone in our bread basket, and so divined, we took a moment to tell him how good his band sounded a few weeks prior at a gig we witnessed in Sacramento. Should’ve begged him to please bury the hatchet with Jello, but there was a badass band on the stage that distracted us from even that most pressing of punk missions. The original Red Hot line-up of Fishbone is back together and still wild fun, still flying the Fuck Racism flag, and still jumpin, skankin, thrashin, funkin, bluesy Truth and Soul.
That badass band is hitting the road opening for George Clinton, who has announced the final tour of his five-decade career. Caught him last summer in Chocolate City itself, and do say it’s worth the price to go spend a little time with Dr. Funkenstein. But expect it will be less time than you want. The man himself comes out for five-to-ten minute spells and moves as much as you might expect a seventy something with ten thousand wild nights behind him to move, but he sounds good. A little raspier but still full on, dishing weird wisdom like if your grandpa took acid instead of Wild Turkey. The band – many related to members of old incarnations of Parliament and/or Funkadelic – is clean and glossy compared to the heavy rock-funk-electro that OG P-Funk perfected, but they move minds and asses along properly during extended jams, while The Prime Minister of Funk gets some more wind.
Since we’re on the subject, we’d be remiss in our duties as a dispensary of general music what-have-you if we didn’t make sure that each and every one of you has seen Mike Judge’s hilarious show Tales From the Tour Bus. Season two is an animated biography of funk legends Clinton, Rick James, Bootsy Collins, James Brown, Morris Day, and Betty Davis. The interviews are with the actual people involved, and the stories they tell are animated, so you get to see things like cartoon Bootsy with a head full of acid hallucinate that his bass head turns into a snake, causing him to throw it down, run off the stage, and just quit James Brown’s band. It’s the funniest and most entertaining thing on any screen by a funkin’ mile and a half.
A bunch of metal heads on Twitter are rekindling our faith in the vitality of that genre even as they quarrel like religious zealots about what’s black metal or thrash, ambient grindcore or crossover doom-thrash, atheist technical black prog or post-stoner Satanic techcore. There are some powerful and nuanced metal records being put out these days (Tomb Mold, and Skeleton Witch have warmed our winter), and we play them loud on the way to work and admire the craft and are often awed by the technical sophistication, but my ears are always finding their way back to the old masters, so we met with a feeling of fiendish joy when a new live King Diamond DVD crossed our path.
For those not familiar with the now 62-year old King Diamond, I offer the description given to me in 1989 on a spring afternoon in Northern Virginia during a pre-confirmation class smoke session behind the church dumpster: “Floyd, you gotta check out King Diamond. The music sounds like Ozzy’s solo stuff, but the guy sings like when Miss Piggy gets mad. But he makes it work. It’s crazy high pitched, but it’s rad.” I raised an eyebrow and ignored the Muppets reference, “No way it’s as good as Ozzy. Randy Fucking Rhoads rules!”
A few days later a TDK D90 tape with pentagrams around the words “King Diamond – Abigail” was in my Walkman, and I was a believer. King Diamond sings in a ridiculously high falsetto. It’s comically high-pitched. I know plenty of people who just can’t get past his voice. There’s nothing like it. But the metal – OH MY GOD THE METAL is so perfect. For me, and for millions of fans, the voice works in the context of the whole theatrical pseudo-Satanic heavy metal spectacle because it is its own shrill extremity. Everything about great metal pushes music to its limits, whether through speed, volume, lyrics, graphics, hair, fire, or the myriad other tropes of the style. A guy who sings scary stories somewhat like the air being let out of a pinched balloon is just another part of the great cathartic headbanging shtick that keeps so many of us entertained and feeling energized.
Anyway, the new Songs For the Dead Live DVD has not one but two complete concerts of King Diamond performing the Abigail album in its entirety, and some other classics as well as a song from his Mercyful Fate days. One show was filmed at a festival in Belgium and the other at a mid-sized indoor venue in Philadelphia. The Philly show has a lot more footage of screaming fans who painted their faces in Diamond’s trademark black-and-white makeup. Other than that, it’s kind of surprising how similar the two concerts are. Both the giant festival and the theater have a two story, gargoyle-lined haunted house built on the stage, and both concerts show as well as tell the story of Abigail, with actors performing the tale of stillborn death, possession, and rebirth with all the trance macabre conviction of haunted maze extras.
The band is amazing – somewhere around the galloping trot of Iron Maiden and the riff wizardry of early solo Ozzy – heavy with a dash of flair and groove and drums that do so much more than just go fast. The imagery starts at Gothic and dives down darker, and King Diamond, dressed like a Charles Dickens character from tophat to button-lined coat still pierces through it all with that needle sharp voice while he gleefully plays air guitar on his microphone that is fashioned into a pair of bones tied together like a cross.
King Diamond is having a blast, and these shows look like a blast.
If you’ve read this far, you’re clearly one of those people who appreciate the way words work together, so may we suggest a book? Strange Stars: David Bowie, Pop Music and the Decade Sci-Fi Exploded by music journalist Jason Heller is a thorough and entertaining trip through the 1970s. It tells the tales of a time when the amazing reality of the moon landing, as well as the artistic gravitas of Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001 powerfully influenced musicians. Heller writes that artists had always been fans of writers like Robert A. Heinlein, Arthur C. Clark, and Isaac Asimov, and the time became right for them to lyrically explore space, aliens, time travel, and, of course, sex with robots. Concurrently, technology and musical innovation pushed sounds into dimensions that integrated well with those topics. Bowie is a main reference point, going, as Heller explains, from writing about sci-fi with his first hit song “Space Oddity” to becoming sci-fi with his later-decade album Low. But even though Bowie rightfully gets his name on the cover and many pages, this is hardly just a book about Ziggy Stardust. This is a book about any and every musical act of that era — from arena rockers to obscure electro-reggae bands to disco space breakers to new wave future day-glo fun makers (all with a surprise Neil Young cameo every few years) — that ever once had even a half of a thought about sci-fi and made a song about it. Detailed with a capital D. You will be compelled to listen to at least a few bands you’ve never heard of as you read, year-by-year, of the books, movies, tv shows, comics, and actual space exploration that inspired musicians as they worked with new technology like synthesizers, drum machines, and a host of effects pedals and processors, to express their passions for science fiction. It’s a fun read. Reminds me of when I worked at a CD store and people would come in and talk about music for a while, and then you’d put on what you were talking about and make the happiest $6.50 an hour in any universe.
On that note, I’ma put on some Hawkwind. Keep reachin’ for those stars. And those records. And those books.
Let’s start a rumor that Neil Young is King Diamond…