Dear Friends,
Yesterday I was driving to work and the sports talk radio guy said, “flummoxed” during his spiel about the Arizona Diamondbacks. It was funny to me that he said this because the very act of saying it flummoxed many of his listeners. Life is fun sometimes.
I spent the first half of yesterday swimming between a small ocean of anxiety and the feeling of “who gives a shit and I’ll deal with it if I have to deal with it.” As I got to work, I realized that I did not have my wallet. This meant that it had either slipped out of the pocket of my jeans, or I left it sitting on the counter at the condo.
In years past, I would have really spun out about this, but something has changed in me as of late. My anxiety is way less than it used to be. I don’t spin out nearly as often and when I do, I get past it way more quickly. I have to believe this is somehow related to zero alcohol and zero cannabis. I might also be either happier (in general) or grieving.
While I am super sad and grieving, I have also realized that when it comes to life in general, I am happier. It feels weird to say it, but I’ve been happy with being able to be creative with music again. I’m also missing the hell out of my wife, but I feel like we are maybe closer than ever.
Grief does funny things, too, to the little annoyances that pop up like forgetting a wallet. I feel fortunate that I didn’t lose it, for sure, but if I had, it’s not like you can’t deal with these things. When you are in the midst of grief, you realize that those little, small things are just that. Wrapping your head around the finality of death makes a lot of typical life shit pale in comparison.
I laid claim to a few of Doug’s shirts yesterday. I’ll probably claim a few more, too, before it is all said and done, but it made me feel kind of good to know that I will be able to celebrate him by wearing one of his flannels. The man was very faithful to L.L. Bean and they certainly make a good flannel shirt.
He used to send me a gift card to L.L. Bean for Christmas and my birthday each year the first few years that Rhondi and I were married. Maybe the first five or so. I would pour over the L.L. Bean website to find just the right thing. I still have the first flannel that I got with one of his gift cards and it is my favorite flannel.
Here I am, though, going on about little things. It’s hard to let go.
*****
Today will be a day. Meeting in the morning and after school. I will probably be a cranky bear by the time I get home. After I leave school, I am going to go by and see Granny for a bit. Then it will be home to crash out.
Somewhere along the way, I will work with students. We’ve got a really good rapport going right now. I need to explore this so that I don’t forget how I got here, but every group is different. Every group has their own unique personality. This group could turn on me, too, so I can’t rest on my laurels just yet.
I need to start building their review days for while I am gone to Maine.
*****
Hillbilly’s drummer, “The Boy” turned me on to The Out Sound by Slug in late 1994 or early 1995. Like Shane, the drummer who took over when EJ left the band, EJ often knew exactly what records I would really like. The Out Sound is noisy as hell, and I really liked the way they recorded it.
That is to say, they recorded it like they didn’t give a fuck whether I liked it or not. Slug was firmly a band in the same vein as my buddy, Alex, who seemed to think in those days that vocals should just be part of the mix and not on top of it. I liked that a lot back in the mid-90s.
I also loved the bass tone on the record.
Bass tone is important to me. I hope that has been clear in other things I have written about records I love. When I heard The Out Sound, I wanted to ask Michael B., the band’s bass player, how he got that great sound, but I never got the chance. I mean, I have the chance now because we have connected in the wildest, most random kind of way, but then…it wasn’t in the stars.
“Ex-Chest” just throbs and oozes and plays with the ears the way a cat toys with a mouse they have cornered. You’re trapped, as a listener, and you can either just rock out and go with the flow or you can fight it. Either way, you are going to get your ass kicked. I remember being so pleased as I drove away from Zia after buying this disc. I turned it the fuck up.
The vocalist in the group, Stephen Karl Ratter, which I know because of Wikipedia, had a cool way of delivering the words. “Aurora F.” kind of rambles, but as you try and pick out what he is saying/singing in between the drums and bass and fuzz, you realize that he’s just adding another layer to the sludgy, beautiful noise.
“Here and Now” has a wonderful attack. I am trying to think of what this record reminds me of, but Slug had a very unique sound. A lot of bands would have liked to sound the way “Here and Now” sounds. There is a lot of cool, spazzy, weird shit happening here and I love it.
At this point in my trip down memory lane, I am damn happy I pulled this CD out.
As I was making my list of records I wanted to write about, The Out Sound popped out of my head really quickly. I hadn’t listened to it in a long time, but it is a record that really impacted the way I wanted to make music in the early days of Hillbilly Devilspeak. I liked how Slug really kind of threw tons of different things at me as I listened and I hoped Hillbilly could do the same.
I suppose we kind of did in the early days, but by the time we made our first full-length, our sound had evolved to something less noisy and more heavy punk with some weird overtones. I had wanted to do something as out there as “Crawl,” for example, which always made me giggle a little bit when I got to it at the end of the CD. I’d always let it play, too.
“Sung-il Meat” does mind me a little bit of Unsane, but only if Unsane was on a steady diet of Big Black and Jesus Lizard. The guitar part just sort of rides over the bass and drums like a Macy’s Day Parade float with a mind of its own. I’m picturing the big Underdog float just doing its own thing over Central Park scaring the fuck out of people.
Speaking of guitar tone, “King of Ghosts” takes things to a new, noisier level. I like the slowed down approach to the intro riff that allows the song to just sort of bloom. When I hear it, I just want to shut my eyes and go on a long, introspective trip that I don’t need any drugs to go on. It plods along and if I ‘m in the right frame of mind, I don’t even care that aren’t fireworks. It’s more like a thousand metal broomsticks banging perfectly on a wrought iron fence.
The drums are allowed to come to the forefront as “Symbol for Snack” opens, then Michael B’s bass reminds you why he had that great sound. Punch, punch, punch, punch…try and dodge the jab, but you can’t. You are getting pummeled, and it feels so good.
I’m doing what I said I was not going to do so much anymore and going through song by song, but as I am rediscovering why this was a quick add to the list of records that I love, I’m on that good ol’ time machine again. The Out Sound is carrying me back to a time in my life where so much was brand new.
“Lofthouse” is one of those noisy bits that bands from this era would throw on records to annoy the shit out of people that didn’t know what they were getting themselves into. I am guilty of doing that, too. There is a certain moodiness at the end of the record that just sort of works.
“Coordinate Points” has a different feel, at first, than many of the other songs, but it’s a slow burn. Here is another Michael B bass line that I like a lot. It kind of reminds me of a Quintaine Americana bass line, in a way, but as I think about it, the guitar is pretty reminiscent of QA, too.
The moodiness is over with “Kitti Thai Spicy.” If only the Trump campaign knew about this song. They would have something to play when Vance slings his bullshit about the Haitian people eating pets in Ohio. Stupid fucks. This song is too fucking good for me to wish that upon it. I slap my own hand in shame.
The Out Sound is something I will revisit more often.
*****
See you tomorrow.
Look what AI made of Slug.
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