Things you Cannot live without
The Art of El Gato Gomez
May 1, 2014
Cats, Betties, Tiki, Mermaids, Noir, Monsters, Aliens, Skulls, Space Age, Abstract ~ I'm in!
View the Gallery here. Skullavera
April 29, 2014
attempt to wrap your mind around the incredible artistry of Skullavera here.
The Fine Art of David Lozeau
April 26, 2014
You need this. or one of these.
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Random things I think about
a hARD lESSON lEARNED
aUGUST 21, 2014
Well, kids, what can I say? I’ve been neglecting my responsibilities as a host and have left you high and dry without a single solitary interview or album review for nearly three months. Let’s just call it my Summer vacation. Actually, it wasn’t much of a vacation since most of it has been spent working 70 hours per week in a smoldering production shop.
Also, while I was away, I entered into a purchase agreement for a home that was built in 1884 in our city’s downtown area. If you’ve been following my Instagram or Pinterest pages, you could have seen some of the wonderful character and charm that the house has. Anyhoo, the tale of the deal is sordid and terrible, and let’s just say that I was screwed out of thousands of dollars to make the deal work and in the end nearly had my whole life up-ended just so that the seller could decide to change his mind at the eleventh hour and err in the name of greed. We were left with no recourse but to double down and reinvest in our current home. Se la vie. Let’s just leave it at that. So, here we are now. I have a lot of catching up to do – but, fearnot, I have quite a few pieces under my wing to share soon, and so begins a new chapter in my homelife and an Autumnal reboot for Dread Swing Forte’. Wake up Grandma and put the kettle on. Riverdale Nightmare
May 1, 2014
Archie's in the coffin.
Riverdale's running red. Jughead didn't do it. He was his best friend. Archie's in the coffin. Reggie's on the lam. Couldn't stand the thought of Betty with another man. Archie's in the coffin. His skin has gone all grey. Jughead snatched his body. Spirited it away. Archie's in the hotrod. Propped up against the door. No need for a seatbelt. He can't feel anymore. Archie's in the basement. Archie's on the slab. Moose carried him down to Dilton Doiley's lab. Archie's got electrodes plugged into his brain. Gonna shock him back to life. He can't feel any pain. Archie's off the table. He's crawlin' on all fours. He's knockin' equipment over. He ran into the door. Archie's all a'shambles. He's walking into walls. They don't think that he'll ever throw that pigskin anymore. Archie's batshit crazy. He's pissed off at the world. He's gonna get revenge. He's gotta see his girl. Archie's in the hotrod. His eyes rolled back in his head. Cops just wave as he drives by. They forgot he was dead. Archie's on the hunt now. Reggie's gotta die. Not much time for a walking corpse that used to be Mr. Niceguy. Archie finds his quarry behind old Pop Tate's. Jughead goes inside to have a chocolate shake. Jughead's in the corner his eyes are on the doors. Moose and Doiley know what's coming. They're working the floor. The back door bursts open. Reggie tumbles in. He slams it shut behind him. Blood's glistening on his skin. Another second later the door's thrown wide again. The crowd's aghast and horrified. Undead Archie saunters in. Pop Tate grabs his shotgun and lets two hot rounds slip. One accidentally splatters Doiley. Archie takes one in the hip. Archie's loosened up now. He's gonna have some fun. Old Pop Tate lets fly two more from that old scattergun. Pop Tate can't believe it. That should have done the trick. But this here's Undead Archie, not some corny zombie flick. Moose sees his buddy Doiley splayed open, and he roars. He aims to kill the old man. Pop Tate lets loose two more. "Duh, ow..." groans the giant. He falls onto his back. Moose stares up at the ceiling. Everything goes black. Jughead's in the fray now. He goes for the old man. Tate spins 'round and racks the gun and that old shooter jams. Tate's over the counter. Not bad for an old hand. He comes at Jughead from the dishtank with a sudsy frying pan. Jughead's kinda nimble for a lazy loafy guy. He ducks that pan and shoves a skewer between the old man's eyes. Tate's a'whirlin' and a'spurtin'. His screams were getting higher. Jughead shoves the old burger cook face first into the deep fryer. The cops were on the scene now. They cordoned off the place. Archie closed on Reggie, an evil grin upon his face. "Make it quick, Archie!" Jughead yelled to his friend. Reggie begged and pleaded for this nightmare to end. The cops let loose a volley that caught Jughead on the chin. He spat out teeth and blood and hurled curses back at them. The second round of fire took out Chuck and Nancy, too. Two more dead young lovers for Charon to ferry through. Jughead grabbed the chopper off the bloodied floor and blasted Officer Mahoney through the open door. The next salvo came in low and tore Coach Kleats down to size. The bumbling cops fired upon anything that moved inside. Miss Phlips was in the restroom. Jughead dove in, too. She screamed as he landed. He says, "We're not here for you." "You've got to stay in here. Find somewhere to hide. Those cops are a bunch of lunatics. I'm on the zombie's side." He grabbed her and he kissed her like he always wished he could. He tore out of that restroom feeling really good. More cops were outside now. They had surrounded the place. Archie clamped his teeth down hard and ripped Reggie's nose off of his face. Reggie's squealin' and a'spluttering and chokin' on his own gore. Archie's over top of him now gettin' ready to do more. Archie took him by the ears, pulled him close and gnawed his face. Archie took his eyes and tongue. Reggie'd never see again, never taste. Jughead made for the back door and had a look outside. Two young cops were stationed there. They fired at him on sight. One bullet grazed his shoulder. One bullet destroyed his knee. Another lodged in his guts it tore right through his spleen. Archie's over Reggie. His foe struggles for breath. Zombie Archie mumbles, "Mmrruugghhh... fate worse than death!" Archie's on the move now. Bullets tearing through the place. Undead Archie took two shots to the chest and one to his face. Archie kept right on hobblin' for his pal by the back door. He found Jughead lying nearly dead in a pool of blood on the floor. "I don't think I'm gonna make it." Jughead told his friend. Archie the zombie replied, "Mmuuurrrrrgghhh, not the end..." Archie picked up Jughead and stood him up against the wall. As long as he still had his brains he wouldn't let his buddy fall. The restroom door creaked open at the ceasing of the racket. Out crept Betty Cooper wearing Reggie's letterman jacket. Archie was beside himself. He truly couldn't fathom. He grabbed Betty for one last kiss and then he let her have it. Archie took the lead and kicked open the back door, he savaged the rookies where they stood and waylayed several more. Jughead stumbled out into the cool dark night. When all their hopes were fading fast, who then should arrive? Veronica skidded to a halt in her ragtop ride. "Looks like you boys could use a lift. C'mon get inside." Archie's riding shotgun, his face smeared with blood. Jughead tumbles in the back. Veronica purrs, "Hey, Stud!" The zombie and his new girl rode off into the night. Jughead's in the rumble seat, he mutters, "I'm alright..." Doiley's in the morgue now, so's Pop Tate and Moose - Charlie, Nancy and Coach Kleats, lovely Betty, too. Archie's in the mansion now, forever young and slim. He smells a bit, and don't say too much now that rigor mortis has set in. So heed these words of caution, when of two girls you're fond. Always go with the brunette, never pick the blonde. The Times Are A'Changin'
April 14, 2014
I was going through my music collection the other night when I noticed a subtle difference between early Psychobilly and the spectrum of sound which is associated with today’s ‘billy music. In its formative years the music was deeply rooted in Rockabilly’s raucous style, with a deep thumping bassline, soulful howling guitar work, and mid-tempo snaredrum pacing.
Though the term Psychobilly is most often accredited to The Cramps – taken from early poster art for a gig in which the word was splashed across the bill as one of the tag-lines. What they may have been intending was a mix of Psychedelic and Rockabilly. The term Psychobilly proper is a bit blunter with the intention of its meaning, Psychotic Rockabilly. Songs about monsters and murderers, morticians and mad scientists abound – set disturbingly to the same tempo and tenor of your grandfather’s favorite Johnny Cash album. Early groups like The Meteors, Batmobile and Demented Are Go brandished this stripped-down Rock & Roll style, and produced some of the most influential albums of the genre. What was to emerge in the decades which followed began to rely less on Rockabilly’s thump and twang at the heart of its structure, and began to resemble a mixture of Hardcore Punk Rock or Heavy Metal with a double bass thrown in as an afterthought. The birth of Grindbilly, or Screamobilly, or some other Frankenstein’s Monsterbilly was at hand. As I tried to broach this subject with friends in the days that followed, the response was often somewhat unenthusiastic, if not utterly dumbfounded blank expressions. Shoulders shrugged and I was met with a cavalcade of “I dunno”s. Not many seemed to know what I was saying. Most took it for what it was and accepted that the music was similar enough to not look further into it. I knew I wasn’t crazy. It was right there for everyone to hear. All it would take to convince others of my findings would be to have them locked in a small dark room and forced to listen to my library, in chronological order, from start to finish. Then they would understand. Then they would have to agree with me… I couldn’t give up on this. Someone had to understand what I was talking about, so I took my concerns to someone who had been there in the early days and had personally taken part in shaping the sound of what was to come. I asked Graeme Grant, former upright bassist of Demented Are Go, what he thought of all of this. Grant - “Well it just seems to have lost the BILLY element really, and that's all there is to it. If you were to listen to thee (Meteors’) In Heaven album and even the (Demented Are Go’s) Kicked Out Of Hell album, they both contain brilliant Rockabilly riffs on both guitar and walking bass lines. Nothing like that is being recreated in the music that anyone seems to be putting out. It's just noise as far as I'm concerned. There's no technical guitaring, just simple chords with a shitty lead break, if any. I guess I'm just not into psychothrash bands. So don't be silly! Give it more BILLY!”
Me – “So, the ludicrously uptempo beat doesn't do it for you? I would chance it to say that lyrically not a lot of change has taken place, with mainstay Rockabilly covers making it onto albums routinely.” Grant – “…we were all rockin "when it all started" 1980 onwards. I still am. It doesn't all have to be played at a million miles an hour, mate....does it? A good song with a catchy melody and a walking bass line and good vocals, i.e. not copying other singers “quote-un-quote” is good enough for me… Music does progress but to progress into crap is just wrong and I'm not the only one saying this. It's not punk or thrash metal it is however psychotic Rockabilly, so let’s keep it so. My advice is, be yourself and enjoy what you do....no more...no less.” It’s hard to pinpoint the exact time when the change began, with stalwart purist groups continually churning out fantastic albums in the same vein as The Meteors’ albums. If I were to try to put my thumb on it, I would say around the mid-nineties – when Psychobilly was beginning to garner a following in the United States – was when the biggest structural transgressions began to occur. People mainly just didn’t seem to know what to do with it. It looked a bit like Punk, and it sounded a bit like Rockabilly. So, being that we are of a culture driven more by what the music looks like, than what it sounds like, it was determined that it must be an offshoot of Punk Rock. It was doomed from the start as it hit American shores.
My hypothesis is this – as the world becomes more and more westernized, the culture of immediate gratification, consumerism and attention defecit is slithering its way into the very last bastions of celebrated originality. Everything must be packaged in a way that is easily digestible by masses of new and untested listeners who slip from one genre of music into another, leaving a swath of country rap, dubstep, and kazoo disco polka in their wake. These leaches experiment heavily with unworldly tempo changes (even in the middle of songs), introduce new instruments, and toss out the traditional in an effort to grab attention through Monster Energy drink sponsored extremism. The loudest, fastest, most bizarre wins the race in today’s world. The others who seek to preserve the traditional sound are cast aside by the new crowds who are experiencing Psychobilly and haven’t yet formed a respect or reverence for the original sound. In many of today’s Psychobilly groups, such as Austria’s Bloodsucking Zombies From Outer Space, the straightforward Rockabilly pacing has been replaced with machinegun drumming and screeching thrash guitar. The accent click of the upright bass has taken over the technical note structure, with musicians pushing the pace to breakneck speeds and casting off the slower, deeper sound.
Everything changes over time. Cultural trends come and go; evolving into new specimen. Artists and entertainers expand and grow stylistically; exploring new mediums and constantly reinventing themselves. Societal mores dictate acceptable limits of expression and concurrently shift, slowly allowing for gradual changes to take place. But when the changes come so quickly and so radically, I’m often left wondering just what the world is playing at. Keep it psycho. “No more… No less…” |