The Bronx - Put That in Your Peace Pipe & Smoke It!!!

I haven't seen The Bronx live in a lot longer than I thought. Way back in 2004, Mr. Brown, my cousin Charles and I discovered these guys at Chicago's Fireside Bowl when they opened for Dillinger Escape Plan on their Miss Machine tour, the first with Greg Puciato stepping in on vocals after original singer Dimitri Minakakis left the band. This was a fantastic show for many reasons - it was one of (if not THE) final time I attended a show at the Fireside (RIP); The Bronx were a f&*king revelation live that made me an instant die-hard fan, and Mr. Puciato began a reign of beautiful terror that proved he was up to the task of fronting the otherworldly machine that is D.E.P.

Anyway, shortly before flying out to L.A. a few weeks ago (I'm still here!), my good friends M-n-K surprised me by grabbing tickets to Alex's Bar's 24th Anniversary show with The Bronx, Negative Blast and R0BBER. Much like Tarantino's New Beverly Theatre, I lived in L.A. for 16 years and never made it to Alex's Bar, despite countless invites. So once again, I remedy that on this trip (I went to the New Bev last weekend). 

Interestingly enough, this appears to be a year of full circles. Last month my good friend Dave and I locked down a trip to Brooklyn in June to see Dillinger play Calculating Infinity for it's 25th anniversary. The singer for the show is Dimitri, and I couldn't be more psyched. I haven't been to NYC since 2014 (I think) and Dimitri was the frontman of the band when I was introduced to them opening for Mr. Bungle in 1999 at Chicago's Metro.

Full Circle indeed.

---

---

---

Moment:

Jotting down some ideas last night at Santa Monica Brew Works, sipping on their gorgeous Nitro Irish Stout.

A good night. Met up with my A Most Horrible Library cohost, Chris, and caught up. We planned some new episodes, and I just generally unwound from a crazy work week.

---

---

---

Watch:

I've never really been a Troma fan, so it follows that I've never really cared about The Toxic Avenger. Macon Blair, however, gets all my love, so when I saw he was writing/directing this reboot, I knew I'd been giving it a chance. 

Since first seeing Blair in Jeremy Saulnier's Blue Ruin, I've been a fan of both men. Blair's 2017 directorial debut, I Do Not Feel At Home In This World Anymore, is a high point in Netflix's original feature films and has a cast that just blows me away. Then again, anyone who puts David Yow in their film is aces in my book, and a quick perusal of this new iteration of Toxie's IMDB page shows Mr. Yow is once again on hand. Hell yeah!

---

---

---

Playlist:

Damone - From The Attic

Damone - Out Here All Night

Mastodon - Leviathan

The Bronx - (I)

The Bronx - VI

Turnstile - GLOW ON

The Thirsty Crows - Hangman's Noose

Scratch Acid - The Greatest Gift

The Bronx - (II)

The National - Conversation 16 (Single)

---

---

---

Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.

• IX: The Hermit

• VIII: Strength

• Six of Pentacles

Rest and recharge, confirmation I'm spending my one day off this week in the correct capacity. 

Man, I LOVE every damn card in this deck. 

Greg Puciato's Fucking Content

 

As if I'm not completely overtaken by my love of Greg Puciato's debut solo album Child Soldier: Creator of God, the former lead singer of Dillinger Escape Plan has put out a new, multi-media package. Available from his own Federal Prisoner label HERE, Fuck Content is a video/audio release featuring a ten-song live set and five new studio tracks. I love Puciato's music, but I've also become quite a fan of his aesthetic. All the glitchy, seizuring graphics, the black and white digital abstractions that almost resemble some cyberpunk version of newsprint. It's all very fitting for the noisy/melodic mash-up that defines this first album's sound, so the idea that his follow-up release is an audio/visual thing really just makes sense. Also, not nearly enough musicians do this.

---

---

---

Read:

I finished my re-read of Jonathan Lethem's Motherless Brooklyn. It'd been over ten years since I read this the first time and inspired by the film, I decided to revisit, not remembering a lot of specifics, except that the movie is very different. Still, I really enjoyed both. After that, I picked up that new Brubaker/Phillips Hardcover Graphic Novel Reckless, expecting to read it in several sittings. Nope. I blew through Reckless non-stop, and even though I just got done telling everyone Pulp is their best, Reckless comes in ahead of that one by about 100 miles. 

This book is the perfect iteration of these gentlemen's ongoing collaboration, and if this is the case, we have nowhere to go but up. Hot damn, go buy this and read it now; Reckless is FANTASTIC!

---

---

---

Watch:

The Mandalorian's second season ended last night and I am going to feel every day between now and season three. I am absolutely floored, not only at how fantastic this show is, but how John Favreau has completely undone my hatred of star wars - a hatred rooted in a betrayal, the complete undermining and convolution of something that should have been so simple, namely, making new star wars movies. This veritable disgust that I feel for the franchise began to sink deep into my blood three years ago, when I sat in a movie theatre in LaGrange, Illinois and watched the trainwreck that is The Last Jedi.

Disney + has really been a gamechanger for the fan-driven content previously only associated at such a high level with movies released in megaplexes. If you watch The Mando show, you're missing something great if you skip the end credits (especially on this last episode. Whewww! and on that, I will say no more). When you watch all those names and roles scroll up your screen and realize that these television shows Disney is producing are every bit as accomplished as major motion pictures. That in itself just blows me away, the fact that Disney is so big they can change the game this much (also, I secretly hope all the Marvel/Star Wars stuff will go this route and we can go back to having non-blockbuster movies in theatres in a year or four).

Anyway, Favreau really should be crowned king Geek for what he did for starting the MCU with Iron Man and now reinventing and, frankly, saving Star Wars from itself by taking it back to its roots. This final episode brought me to tears. Not just because of the story, but because finally, after twenty years of new star wars material, SOMEBODY GOT IT FUCKING RIGHT.

---

---

---

Playlist:

Four Stroke Baron - Planet Silver Screen

Opeth - Deliverance

Allegaeon - Apoptosis

The Plimsouls - Everywhere At Once

Preoccupations - Eponymous

XTC - Drums and Wires

Kevin Morby - Singing Saw

Calexico - Seasonal Shift

Squeeze - Argybargy

Slayer - Live Undead

Mrs. Piss - Self-Surgery

Chelsea Wolfe - Hiss Spun

Devo - Going Down (single)

Fleet Foxes - Shore

Greg Puciato - Child Soldier: Creator of God

Various Artists - Joe Begos's Bliss Spotify Playlist

Emma Ruth Rundle and Thou - May Our Chambers Be Full

Loathe - I Let It In and It Took Everything

Code Orange - Beneath 

---

---

---

Card:

 

A solid foundation for a solid trilogy. That's what I've been thinking about as I approach a stopping point in Shadow Play Book Two. I have to wind this plot down just right by the end of this section of three sections, so after I do one last post-Beta Reader edit on Murder Virus and release it, I can hop back into Shadow Play and really make that third act SPRING.

Down When I'm Not

This song literally makes me feel like I'm twenty-five years old again, about to head out with my friends for a night of adventure. 

When I set out to find the track above from Greg Puciato's Child Soldier: Creator of God and ended up finding this collaboration between Puciato and Jesse Draxler. I'm not gonna lie; I'd been putting off deep-diving into this record for the last few months because I wasn't sure where my head would be in relation to this project, which I'd been hearing mixed things about. I knew I would like it, but I wanted to LOVE it. And I guess I waited until the exact right moment because after two full listens, I'm floored. Also, reading about the album, I was reminded of Puciato's Federal Prisoner label, and in looking up their youtube channel, found this little curiosity.

 

I love what this man is doing! The dissolution of The Dillinger Escape Plan a few years ago filled me with nervous, awful energy. They'd been a mainstay in my life, both live and on record, for nearly two decades; when I fell out of most heavy music, they never waned in my heart. I'm happy as hell to see Greg Puciato doing something I consider pretty extraordinary in his post-DEP life. 

---

---

---

Playlist:

Emma Ruth Rundle and Thou - May Our Chambers Be Full

The Ocean - Phanerozoic II

Sex Pistols - Never Mind the Bollocks...

Fleet Foxes - Shore

Me and That Man - New Man, New Songs, Same Bullshit Vol. 1

Greg Puciato - Child Soldier: Creator of God

Michael Kiwanuka - Kiwanuka

---

---

---

Card:

Interesting to get a card that signals completion and success at this exact moment when my Beta Reader is back on track and about to finish the penultimate reading of Murder Virus. My original plan to release the book this year have transitioned into a 'first quarter' scheduling for 2021, and I do believe the finished product will be all the better for it.

2018: September 22nd - New Music from The Black Queen!

Bunch of new music on the way. My good friend Jacob alerted me to a new album from seminal Witch House group White Ring. They haven't been on my radar in ages, so it's cool to reconnect with their music, especially when some of is so indicative to me of what the mid-00s sounded like.

Memories of listening to music.

That's something you don't think about often, or at least I don't. Memories of listening to music. I mean, usually music evokes or scores memories, but to just reminisce on sitting in front of the computer on a day off from Borders and flipping around the internet looking for new stuff. I've lost a lot of the online gate keepers I that helped me find music back then (Not the best one, though), and tech has changed the hunting process greatly, what with the advent of Apple Music, so it feels further away than it is. And the tones White Ring utilizes, the actual synth and drum patches, they still sound right out of 2007, so it triggers these sometimes intense reveries.

Going to see Mandy in the theatre again tonight. It's such a shame this film is getting so small a theatrical run - I'm driving 35 miles each way to the Frida Theatre in Santa Ana so K can see it. This film was meant to be seen on the big screen, incredibly LOUD (thank you, Egyptian!). I ordered the vinyl a few days back, thought it wasn't coming out until November for some reason, but apparently they've already shipped, so I'm super happy about that. And, as you have hopefully already noted above, new music from The Black Queen. I don't know if all the guys from Dillinger Escape Plan's new bands can fill the DEP-sized hole in my life, but it's awesome they are moving on and trying!

Yesterday was apparently national Sunn O))) day, because that is most of what I listened to. Interesting first listen to Flight of the Behemoth, as a lot of it reminded me quite a bit of Throbbing Gristle.

Playlist from Friday, 9/21:

Sunn O))) - Monoliths and Dimensions
Sunn O))) - Void 00
White Ring - Gate of Grief
Sunn O))) - White1
Queens of the Stone Age - Villains
Sunn O))) - Flight of the Behemoth

Card of the day:

As usual, perfectly relevant to me at this moment, as I've just spent a large part of my morning working out the logistics for a new 'journey' I'm poised to begin with three very good friends. What is it? You will know soon enough.

Dillinger Escape Plan - Happiness is a Smile

And then there was Dillinger Escape Plan last night at the Echoplex. I'll be honest - I was a bit afraid. I've seen these guys five times now since I, like so many others, discovered them in '99 when they came out and tore shit up as the opener for Mr. Bungle on the very first leg of their California tour. I've written about this before - DEP scared me then and they've scared me numerous times since (I think I outline it fairly exhaustively here), and it'd been literally ten years since I saw the band in a venue as small as the Echoplex. That was at Chicago's now deceased Fireside Bowl and actually, yeah, that was even smaller than the Echoplex.

But I digress.

My friend Michael went with me and we stood fairly close to the front. And you know, it was still bedlam, especially with the good-natured audience full of surfers and stage-divers, but it was the least-threatening Dillinger show I've seen and had an all-around great vibe full of camaraderie.

Happiness is a Smile is a new song they played last night, released a few months ago on a limited edition vinyl 7" that I didn't even realize was being sold at their merch table last night.

Drat!

So How Was Dillinger's Set at Summer Slaughter?

Shortly before DEP took the stage last Saturday as the headliners at Summer Slaughter I was talking to the guys in local LA band Vishuda, who I met earlier in the evening. Nice bunch'a guys. We talked music between a couple of the sets. They invited me to their gig the next night at Sunset HOB's Voodoo Lounge, but unfortunately as I often regret to have to intone, I wake up at 4:30 in the morning so shows on any night but Friday or Saturday are just not a possibility (hence why I've missed everyone from Nick Cave to Savages this year so far. Well no, the Nick Cave was because the show was $130 a ticket - a price we found ONLY applied to the LA. Wouldn't pay that for Jesus to hand me free redemption. I LOVE everything Mr. Cave does, but no way... but I digress. I'm half asleep...).

ANYWAY, the Vishuda guys had not had the pleasure of having seen Dillinger live. As the strobe lights began to run test sequences and the lights crept slowly into darkness they noticed my sudden nervousness and asked me what to expect. I expressed my apprehension for standing where we were, so close to the stage, shook their hands and made my way to a little spot three or so steps off the floor. Why?

The first time I saw Dillinger Escape Plan was in '99 at the Chicago Metro. It was the first leg of Mr. Bungle's California tour - my friends and I saw them three times that year - and while standing pretty much right in front of the stage, not having ever heard of the Dillinger Escape Plan before, suddenly the room went pitch black, the strobes started and the... things that took the stage  - which of course I later learned were insanely talented and death-defying individuals - in that looked like demons. I mean, I was literally fucking terrified. The whirling frenzy of shapes that threw and spun their instruments around them like giant bipedal spiders looked like they were coming off the stage to take us all to hell. Add to this the fact that, having never heard their epileptic, machine-gun vomiting sound before I was caught off guard sonically as well and you'll understand me when I say again that I was really, really afraid.

After the trauma from that show wore off and I adjusted to the musical style I became a Dillinger Escape Plan fan for life.

Fast forward to 2002. My friend Hawk (not the General) was the drummer for a band called Tub Ring at the time and they were opening for Dillinger at, once again, the Metro. Hawk invited me to roadie for the 'Ring so I could hang out backstage. It was awesome. By this time original Dillinger singer Dimitri Minakakis had left the group and been replaced by Greg Puciato. I got to meet Greg and a couple of the other guys briefly - Hawk and I were standing just off stage as they ran out and began to tear the place apart. At some point during the set we made our way up to the backstage balcony where Hawk and I subsequently had a bird's eye view (no pun intended) of a moment unlike any other I have ever seen at a live show. In the heat of the moment during the climax of a song (can't remember which one) guitarist Ben Weinman tore his guitar off his back, smashed it against the stage and then proceeded to hurl it into the crowd, where it hit some chick dead in the face!

Let me say that again and please understand me when I tell you, this is no exaggeration. Dead. In. The. Face.

My love affair with Dillinger Escape Plan deepened. I didn't like seeing someone get hurt, but the sheer chaos - there really is no other word - of a Dillinger Show is, in my opinion, something worth experiencing. But then again I haven't been hit in the face yet.

Two years later in 2004 I saw Dillinger again at the TINY Fireside Bowl in Chicago (RIP Fireside). It was August in the Midwest and as such well over one hundred degrees outside, so inside a tiny bowling alley/DIY venue... well, let's just settle on it was bloody hot! Because of this the Fireside's management had box fans set up on the stage to try and help alleviate the oppressively thick air that confronted the bands on the stage, really little more than a glorified riser (which is part of the reason the place was so damn awesome). The Bronx - another of my favorite bands - played before DEP and managed not to destroy anything regardless of how apeshit they went, but after Dillinger came out, within about two songs Puciato had demolished all of the fans and was whipping their shattered carcasses around the room. I'd not seen Dillinger since that Fireside show but three times is the charm, eh? As I said, I've learned to appreciate the complete insanity that occurs when this band plays, but I've also learned to stay an appropriately safe distance if I'm not currently in the mood to take chances. Well, Michael, the bass player for Vishuda took the above video. I don't know that anyone got hurt, but... well just JESUS! What else can I say? I've seen Mike Patton do something similar in an old Bungle video, but I'd never see this live and in person before.

Thanks to Michael from Vishuda for getting such great footage of this and I'm sure as his band has some tracks up on the old interweb I'll be posting them. Heavy and psychedelic with some prog thrown in for good measure, that's roughly how Vishuda described their sound to me last Saturday night. Definitely something I want to check out.

Yeah, I saw that live. From a safe distance.

Dillinger Escape Plan - One of Us is the Killer Official Video (finally!!!)

I tried and tried to post this earlier in the week but it had been taken down. Well, it's back up now, so we can see what all the hullabaloo was about.

One of my favorite tracks off the new record.

Exclaim! Posts Amazingly Exhaustive History of Dillinger Escape Plan

image courtesy of the band's Last.FM page

Read it here. Wow. A very, very interesting read. Nicely done Natalie Zina Walschots.

Dillinger Escape Plan Interviewed by Metal Injection (ow!)

Continuing DEP week. Purchased my copy of One of Us is the Killer this afternoon. I LOVE it - possibly my favorite DEP record since 1999's Calculating Infinity. Possibly. @7:30: "It''s like We Are the World,", this record - exact reference I would have used.

Dillinger Escape Plan - Calculating Infinity (full)

The Masterpiece. I love all their albums, and I love Greg on vox, but this a classic.

Dillinger Escape Plan w/ Mike Patton 2002 - Covering Justin Timberlake's "Like I Love You"

Continuing Dillinger Escape Plan week in honor of their new record having been released today (I HAVEN'T GOT MINE YET!!!).

The audio's not great on this - from where it was recorded the guitar is too loud and a horribly muffled mid-range blah, and the camera angle leaves a lot to be desired, but still, awesome to see them doing my favorite Justin Timberlake song w/ Patton.

Dillinger Escape Plan - Sunshine the Werewolf

In honor of their new record, One of Us is the Killer, dropping tomorrow I do proclaim this week Dillinger Escape Plan week (I guess I should have started it yesterday, but if you work for a living Monday's really the start of the week, isn't it?).

I'll be posting clips all week my friends. Starting with this gnarly live one of Sunshine the Werewolf from 2004's Miss Machine, the band's first album with Greg Puciato as lead vocalist (former singer Dimitri Minakakis left after 1999's MASTERPIECE Calculating Infinity). Is this my favorite track on Miss Machine? I don't rightly know, but I love it dearly.

Dilinger Escape Plan - When I Lost My Bet Video

Wow.