Not To Get All Andy Rooney About It But...

     What the fuck happened to this town?  I take fourteen years away from not really being part of the scene to raise a kid and everything closed on me.

     Every storefront on the South Side is now a sports bar, dance club or a vape shop.  Central Oakland has turned into a corporate shit show owned by the University of Pittsburgh that is devoid of character so the millennials don't get homesick while they flush their parents savings down the toilet. Here, have a Starbucks instead of a locally owned place that might add some variety to their spoiled lives and add to their experience on this planet.

     I've had to start treating the South Side with vampire rules.  I won't go down there after dark because that's when the bro-down begins.  It seems like every meathead with a lot of hair product, even more Axe Body Spray and some sort of neatly trimmed facial hair descends on Carson St. as soon as the sun goes down so they can get liquored and start a fight in some bizarre attempt to get laid.  And if it's not the brainless Bros it's the khaki clad, next generation yuppies that would have sold their own mothers to get ahead and voted for Reagan if they were alive in the 80s.

     The South Side also seems to be the choice location for local athletes to come to get arrested after tying one on.  Why they would come to the land of sports bars for a night out and not expect to get into some sort of altercation with a drunk yinzer that was somehow offended by their last game is beyond me.

     Almost every record store has closed or changed hands.   Most of the late night diners are gone. The 31^st St. Pub is closed.  The Electric Banana is gone but at least now it's a really good Italian restaurant that's still owned by Johnny and Judy.  The spot where Graffiti used to be is now a showroom for cars that no one in this town can afford to buy.

     It seems like every bit of culture and uniqueness has been scrubbed clean from these neighborhoods for the sake of making everything the same like we all live in Disney Land no matter where we go.  The only good thing that seems to have come out of all this corporate skull fuckery is that the dirty Arby's on Forbes Ave. is finally gone.  If you thought your local Arby's was bad, it would deserve Michelin stars after you went to the dirty Arby's on Forbes Ave.  If every other place was closed or too crowded after a show, I would always choose to head home hungry rather than go to the dirty Arby's.  The simplest of orders would be wrong and served with a shoe print.  The tables were never cleaned and floors were worse than a movie theater after a kids movie.  It is one of the mysteries of the world how they weren't shut down by the health department.

     Most of this belly aching is just my pining for the good old days that never really were.  Expecting the world to be the same as I left it, when I'm ready to step back into it, is just plain foolishness.  But if I were still able to stay up past 9:30pm to go to a late show to see bands play, I would have no idea where to go.

     It seems that the artist colonies that used to be in Oakland and on the South Side have moved over a neighborhood or two to get away from the white washing of corporate gentrification.  East Liberty and Lawrenceville have had performance spaces and oddball restaurants popping up from the folks that fled the University of Pittsburgh's sprawling takeover.

     With Black Forge Coffee, Onion Maiden and Skull Records, Allentown, the shitty neighborhood that I grew up in, seems to be bouncing back. There are still a ton of empty storefronts and I'm sure one of them could hold a 31^st Pub type venue that would ply the crowd with PBR while a new band cuts its teeth.

      I ran into Alex from Submachine a few weeks ago and asked him where they play since everything closed.  He said that there are more places to play now than ever.  You just have to be willing to look for them.  That's my problem with change.  Now I have to do research instead of just knowing where to go.  I'm too busy googling “What's this growth on my scalp?” to try to find out where bands play these days.  The quandaries of struggling to hang on to my youth.  It's enough to make me say, “Fuck it.  I'll stay on the couch.”

Slayer Is My Copilot

     It was recently announced that Slayer will be hanging it up after one last victory lap around the world.  At first I didn't think too much of it.  Then it started to sink in that after 30 some years there will be a morning when I wake up and there will be no more Slayer.

     Slayer could be put on the very short list with bands like the Ramones and Motorhead that I always thought would be there.  Bands that we all thought would be there until the end and so we ended up taking them for granted because they were so steady with their output and relentless touring.

     My vision of a dystopian, apocalyptic future planet seems to include a scene where Keith Richards and Lemmy are throwing rocks at each other in competition for the last piece of cockroach carcass while the Ramones and Slayer are their respective backing bands.  But if the past few years have taught us anything, nothing lasts forever.

     The simple fact that Slayer made it out of the 1980s as a band is no small feat.  This was during the rise of MTV when all of these Christian/parent groups started to feign outrage over the content of music videos and song lyrics.  They were able to walk into the living room while little Timmy was rocking out and became offended because they forgot they're from a generation that grew up listening to a band called Black Sabbath.  This also coincided with Tipper Gore wanting to censor and put warning labels on records because she feared children would engage in premarital sex and animal sacrifice if they listened to anything that wasn't suitable for the Lawrence Welk Show.

     And let us never forget the three kids, from West Memphis, Arkansas, that were convicted of murders they didn't commit because they had Slayer records in their collections and wore black.  And don't forget the three kids who were murdered and whose killer still breathes free air because the local law enforcement had a belief in witchcraft as if it were the 1600s.

     I did not grow up with MTV because my family was one of the last in the neighborhood to get cable and when we did it was the below basic package which was pretty much only clear reception of the local channels so we wouldn't need bunny ears anymore.  And I find it very odd that as much as my parents' generation hated Communism they sure did want all of their children to be the same.  Culture was bad.  Anything that was different was bad.  Fear of the “Other” was rampant even if they weren't able to acknowledge it.  Art wasn't needed.  “Shut the fuck up, get a meaningless day job and repeat our mistakes” was the order of the day.  Reagan was president and authority could do no wrong.

     I was shipped off to an all boys Catholic high school for reasons I am still not sure of.  The most important lessons I learned there were to distrust any person in a position of authority and that religion was an outdated bag of bullshit.  So much so that I don't even consider myself to be an atheist.  It's amazing how much work atheists put into believing in nothing.  I have more important things to do than discuss who's imaginary friend is more righteous than someone else's.  Humanity really needs to evolve past religion of any kind because it is no longer necessary and is used to manipulate the masses into acting against their own best interests.  Christianity's only valuable contribution to modern society has been the fish fry.

     My first encounter with Slayer was after I had graduated high school and was working at a sandwich shop.  I was still trying to find my way in the world and didn't know shit about music beyond the same forty songs that were played ad nauseam on the local modern rock radio station.  I didn't really have any friends, let alone friends that were into music.  One of my coworkers at the sandwich shop was into metal and sang in a band.  Instead of standing there in silence because of my social ineptitude, he tried to crack open the conversation by asking me what music I liked.  I responded with Helmet, Tool and the Rollins Band.  A few days later, he came in with a stack of CDs to put under my snout.  There was Vision of Disorder's self-titled record, Turmoil's From Bleeding Hands and Slayer's Diabolous In Musica.  I was hooked.   I thought I had a problem with Christianity.  Boy, was I wrong.  Slayer made a living out of having a problem with Christianity.

     As the years went by and the more I listened, Slayer started to take more of a Spinal Tap/Monty Python position in my brain.  Very subtle humor that you'd miss if you weren't looking or were taking things too seriously.  How is a line like, “I keep the Bible in a pool of blood so that none of its lies can affect me” not funny.  To do so does not seem very practical.  The visual of a Bible in a Tupperware, soaking in blood, while looking for something to put leftovers in makes me laugh every time I picture it.  And don't forget the episode of South Park when Cartman played Slayer over the PA at a jam band concert to rid the town of hippies.  So, yes, Slayer warms my heart and makes me happy when I listen to their records.

     We no longer live in a time where every few years a Slayer record would be unleashed upon the earth like a monster escaping from an underground government bunker.  No one makes records like Slayer.  Nor should they try.  There is a formula to what they do but that formula belongs to Slayer because they execute it with precision every time.  People may try to criticize the band by saying that they only do one thing and release the same record over and over.  But Slayer does that one thing so well and with so much intensity that I am never bothered by it like I would be with other bands.  It used to be that I would find myself getting bored with metal then Slayer would swoop in and save the day with a new album.  I'm not going to have that anymore and I see no other band that releases records that frequently that could fill that void.

     Even with the changing moods of Dave Lombardo, which took him in and out of the band for various reasons, and the loss of Jeff Hanneman, Slayer was always consistent from album to album. Those records weren't made in studios.  They had to have been made in a laboratory under strict supervision so as to not infect the surrounding areas.  The release of Diabolous In Musica followed by God Hates Us All has got to be one of the greatest one-two punches in music history.

     Unfortunately, I only got to see them play live once.  It was at an ice rink, in the middle of nowhere, on one of those Jagermeister sponsored package tours.  The sound was awful because of the echo off of the concrete walls and bleachers.  If you closed your eyes, you wouldn't have been able to tell where the stage was located.

     And sadly, I will be skipping their last show in the Pittsburgh area.  It's at one of those Clear Channel owned, cookie cutter outdoor amphitheaters.  I just can't bring myself to overpay through Ticketmaster for the ticket and then have to pay to park in order to use binoculars to watch Slayer play on a big TV while the sound is blown away by the wind.  I would be endlessly frustrated by the crowd and the facility that it would be better for all involved if I abstained.

      I will say that I will be first in line for the release of Tom Araya's solo acoustic record when it comes out.  If Buzz from the Melvins can put something like that out, why can't Tom?

Again?

Addendum:  I found the Bill Hicks essay referenced below here's a link to Two Myths Explored, Debunked, And Other Rantings.  It can be found in his book Love All The People.  His wisdom and humor are sorely missed.

     Given the horrific events that took place in Parkland, FL yesterday, the sadness and grief brought on by another mass shooting at a school led me down the path of “What's the point?”  The same tired arguments are going to be trotted out by those who have been bought and those who are outraged will quickly forget the tragic loss.  Nothing will happen except for another shooting in a few days.  Then my anger kicked in along with a sense of evil triumphing because I chose to do nothing.

     The National Rifle Association is not a rights advocacy group.  They are a manufacturing lobby that could be considered a terrorist organization.  Their weapon of terror is money.  They use it to threaten our elected officials into inaction.  If the lightweights don't vote their way, they take their money away and fund candidates that will do their bidding.  They use money to keep us all afraid with their ad campaigns so that people continue to buy their products.  Do you honestly think that Wayne LaPierre can afford those poorly fitted suits and interesting haircuts on membership dues alone?

     I think that my right to live without the fear of someone shooting me on this coast to coast killing field that America has become far outweighs someone else's right to buy a killing machine because they think guns are cool and a lot of fun to make things go “boom.”  Bill Hicks said something along the lines of, “If you can't diagram the first sentence of the 2^nd Amendment, then you are not smart enough to buy a gun.”

     In the coming days there will be the relatively new line of horse shit saying that we need to focus on mental health and not the fact that military grade assault weapons more readily available than birth control.  No shit, Sherlock.  Mental health has always been overlooked in this country but maybe we should focus on it when there isn't a mass shooting and then do nothing about it until we talk it over again after the next mass shooting.  If we didn't act like a collective bunch of 2^nd graders hopped up on sugar, maybe we could have an actual conversation about mental health and to start removing the stigma that goes along with it.  I am 90% sure that if I ever owned a gun, I would probably be dead after one bad day.  These killing machines provide such an easy exit for those with problems.

     More and more people aren't buying guns for "protection" or hunting.  They're buying guns because they like to go to the range and blow off steam after a shitty day at their shitty jobs.  Again, it's because these killing machines look cool and are fun to play with.  Maybe it's time for the toys to be taken away because we clearly aren't responsible enough as a people to have them.  At our worst, human beings are savage, stupid animals and should have less ways available to display that fact.

     Seventeen more futures have been snuffed out in an instant.  Add that to the twenty six futures snuffed out in Sandy Hook.  How many of those kids would have come up with the next scientific breakthrough, written the next great novel, recorded the next great album or just have been a kinder, more caring human being?  We'll never know.   And that's why my tears are not of sadness but of rage.  Every time one of these school shootings occurs, we are pissing away our future in a very preventable manner.

     Seventeen more sets of parents that will never see their kids come home from school.  When I send my daughter to school in the morning, I should not have to wonder if that will be the last time I ever see her.

    This is not a Constitutional issue.  The document was written and intended to be changed by future generations.  We live in a country where we've had obscenity trials over Batman, Robin and George Carlin.  There have been trials over the content of our textbooks because some people want to believe that we are all descended from two people.  Christian/parent groups feign outrage over books and records to the point where they will burn them in the town square.  We will put effort into attacking the 1^st Amendment but say, “Welp, there's nothin' we can do 'bout it” when it comes to the 2^nd Amendment.  Last I recall, Tropic Of Cancer has never left a trail of dead in its wake.  Doing great, difficult things for the betterment of humanity seems to be something that America has gotten allergic to in recent history.

     Maybe, instead of expelling this kid from school, if someone had taken an interest in him and gave him a copy of Slaughterhouse Five and the first four Black Sabbath records, there would have been a different outcome.  The system failed this kid.  There were many warning signs that someone might have caught, if they were paying attention and/or cared to enough to do something about it.  This does not excuse his actions but people wonder why this happens and something led to it.  I remember the anger of my youth and luckily there were people around me to put books and records in my hands instead of a killing machine.

     The forthcoming lack of action on the part of our elected officials will be a deafening silence.  When five people get the runny dumps because they all had food made from the same batch of green onions, we shut the restaurant down and trace back the steps travelled by those onions and you won't be able to find green onions in the grocery store for weeks.  I'm going to take a bold stance here and say that dead children might be a more pressing issue than the runny dumps.  So why don't we trace the cause of their deaths back down the very apparent path travelled and recall the killing machines because they are fatal to human beings?

     The thoughts and prayers bullshit has got to stop.  Someone might want to tell Mike Pence that just like “The Gay,” bullets can't be prayed away.  I would say that 45 should do something for once to make us great but he is a ball-less sack of an empty suit that's too busy plundering the treasury to pay attention.   If all of these Christians actually looked into what this Jesus fellow was saying, they'd be shocked to see that his message was centered in love and kindness.  Not isolate and arm up.

     Then there's the “good guy with a gun” nonsense which is nothing more than trying to put out fire with gasoline so the manufacturers can sell more killing machines.  This kid came in with an assault rifle, that is advertised as being capable of maximizing casualties, cocked and loaded.  There is no way an armed security guard would have been able to draw his holstered weapon, drop the safety, put a round in the chamber and save the day before the situation would have escalated above his pay grade.  The solution to the problem is for these weapons to not be available to the public.  If we didn't live in, and constantly breed, a culture of fear, people wouldn't feel compelled to want to own these killing machines.

     Since the 2018 mid term elections are approaching, I can't wait for the NRA's dopey election report card to be released so I can vote for every candidate that I can that has an F rating.  It seems that the only course of action for the people at large is to vote these whores out of office since no one else will cut the NRA's purse strings.

     The late Michelle McNamara used to say, “It's chaos.  Be Kind.”  If we were all a little kinder to each other it might just stem the tide of awfulness that seems to be growing with the fear and hatred that is spewing forth on a regular basis these days.  We should hug our children a little tighter.  We should listen to our children a little closer.  We should call our parents, even if we don't want to.  And goddammit we should be kind.

Everyone's A Critic

Context:  This is the third and final article that I had written a few years ago for a website that didn't happen.  It feels rather short and choppy but I left it in tact.  The assignments were to be around 500 words and a little snippy.

     I find the fields of music and film reviewing to be quite pointless.  People that aren't talented enough to create their own art always wash up on the shores of mediocrity, willing and ready to tear down those who do create.

     A few months ago, the band Sleep released their first new music in years.  It was one song that ran for almost ten minutes called The Clarity.  This song could melt your speakers when listened to at an appropriate volume.

     As I went through the internets to find more information about the song, I started to notice a fair amount of critics did not like what Sleep had unleashed upon the world.  Someone had complained that the vocals weren't “growly” enough and the production was too clean.

     In my mind, if the band that brought us Dopesmoker were to record their own chili farts and call it their new album, I wouldn't complain.  I might find it odd but I wouldn't complain.  I would just enjoy the fact that Sleep were making new music, which was my reaction to The Clarity.

     I want to know what band “random internet reviewer” is in.  Has this person ever worked their ass off to put something other than his complaints into the world?

     I know that I'm not in a band so I am very careful not to slag a record or a band openly.  With the exceptions of Nickleback and the Dave Matthews Band and I only use them for punchlines involving douchebags.

     I would much rather not acknowledge the things I don't like and spend my time and energy bringing attention to the things I do like.  The anonymity of the internet makes it so easy to tear down someone else's work.  Some nameless asshole that is devoid of talent and ambition will freely shit upon someone else's work at a moments notice.

     And it seems like most film reviewers either hate movies in general or fail to realize that they are watching movies instead of documentaries.  Film is a suspension of belief that requires the use of one's imagination as the viewer is taken into the world created by the filmmakers.  If someone that watches movies for a living doesn't understand that then maybe they shouldn't watch movies for a living.

     There is a film critic for a now irrelevant music magazine that feels compelled to rip apart every movie he reviews.  At some point, he should either (A) make a film of his own to demonstrate to us uneducated masses how a film should be made (B) try reviewing films that he likes or (C) shut the fuck up.  I encourage option C for most people.

     There is something that needs to be understood: These critics that contribute nothing to the artistic process but get paid to tear it down get tons of free records and go to free screenings all the time.  If these people would be cut off from their free access, maybe they would put a little more thought into their work.