Thankxxx.

Modus Posse

http://www.moduszine.blogspot.com

I think if you ask most people why they listen to music, they will say the same thing that most drug users say about their choice fix- escape.  Music helps us forget where we are and what shitty shit is going on.  The best part is there are no side effects or hangovers and it’s not killing our brain cells slowly and eternally.  Well, maybe not most of the time.  I think it depends on what you consider “music.”

About a year ago, Mr. McMeats and I were moving our friend (and your loyal editor) Schlitz to Vancouver in my tiny Volkswagen.  I wish we would’ve got pictures of him snugly and firmly stuck  in the back seat between his amp and trash bags of clothes, straddling  his guitar.  My knees were pressed against the dash to give him the most possible (yet still insanely limited) room.  On the long drive, the conversation inevitably turned to one of my greatest passions: detesting Sonic Youth.   It started with Schlitz saying he’d listened to the Bagel Dogs that past weekend and how proud he was that he had “made it” through an hour of listening.  He said he had to turn it off and take a couple aspirin.  My husband agreed that this was indeed a hearty meal and congratulated him on his feat.

Most of you know that the Bagel Dogs and Sonic Youth are very similar and possibly influenced each other in a scary parallel universe or on some sort of psychedelic, circular timeline.  What’s totally fucked up is that Shawn and/or Steve are probably reading this right now and creaming themselves thinking I just paid them the ultimate compliment.

Music…scratch that… Real Music is not supposed to be something that is endured or suffered through.  Your not supposed to be tired or worn out after listening to an album and you definitely shouldn’t need a fucking aspirin.  Schlitz says I’m wrong, but let’s go back to my druggie metaphor.  People with addictive personalities are notoriously drawn to whatever is the worst for them.  Have you ever seen a tweeker and thought there is no way there is a high great enough to make up for someone looking that bad?  In most cases, I don’t think the high is that grand.  I think they feel they need it (for one) because they’ve heard from enough smart, sane people who care about them how truly horrible it is and how they should stay away from it.  I think that makes them crave it all the more.

Maybe I should start saying I love Sonic Youth and then my friends will wake up and not want shit anymore.

But we all know I can’t do that and it wouldn’t work anyway, so what the fuck?  They can have it. They’re on Austin City Limits right now.  That’s just fantastic.   Hey Schlitz- I just “made it” through a whole ten minutes!  Aren’t you proud?  Now, I need a couple bottles of aspirin.

To the rest of you who have yet to let your brains melt from noisy torture, remember, Just Say No.

by McMeats

So as the story goes, I was handing out some #18’s at the local distro, Roger’s Zoo.  I gave (Disgruntled) Davey his. After thumbing through a few of its pages, he told me I should write an exposé on Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds.  It seemed random enough, especially since #18 was the first issue that I actually did not write anything in. (Well, except for #Four, but that one doesn’t count.)  So I asked him why, and he would not give me a reason.  So I thought, maybe he’s dead, right?  I mean that’s usually why someone starts talking about some famous person for no apparent reason. There was otherwise no relation to anything that was happening at the moment.  So I checked, and no, he is not dead.  And what the fuck does it mean to do an exposé, anyway? Am I supposed to get to the gritty underbelly of Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds?    But I figured, if I had a request to write something I might as well do it.  This one’s for Davey, God rest his soul.

The first time I heard Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds was when I saw them at The Gorge for Lollapalooza ’94 during the golden age of the alternative music movement.  No-Sleeves Steve was there, so was his sister Lisa, as well as Paul “Greco” Wisher and, everybody’s favorite, Leif “Rev. Minesweeper” Brecke. Leif was pretty excited about seeing them, I had never heard of them, I was there to see Green Day, Smashing Pumpkins, Beastie Boys, etc.  But Leif talked ‘em up pretty good so I was interested.  The Bad Seeds came on stage, probably middle billed, so like late afternoon.  It was really fucking hot that late August day. After seeing 2 or 3 bands and being in the thick of the hot, moisty feverbox of a mid-90’s mosh pit, the mist tent up the hill sounded pretty fucking good.  Much more refreshing than watching a band that I knew nothing about.  They had been around for at least a good 10 years, but when you’re source for music was pretty much limited to watching MTV (oh yeah, they used to play videos didn’t they?) or happening upon some weird band at Off The Record, you tend to miss out on some of the Seeds that laid the groundwork.

So after getting mistified, I headed back to catch the last half of their set, and I can tell you it was pretty fucking amazing.  They were touring in support of their album Let Love In.  Which, as the title may suggest, was one of their more darkly pretty albums.  But y’know, in the same sense as The Swans’ The Burning World was a pretty album. After seeing them I bought the cd at the merch table.  I listened to it, quite a bit, actually, but it didn’t seem to give the same punch as when I saw them.  Obviously there was more to them, then that album, so I looked into their back catalog, and started hearing some great stuff.

The early albums had been out of print in the US, but due to the success of Let Love In, a half-dozen albums were re-released over the course of the next few years. Here are some selected highlights of their career.  Their first album, 1984’s From Her To Eternity was some dark atmospheric post-punk carrying over from the days when Cave and Mick Harvey were in The Birthday Party. Any self-respecting Bad Seeds listener should already be well versed in them.  Kicking Against The Pricks, another great record, came out a couple albums later.  It’s a covers album, and usually when a band starts doing these they’re heading south.  But some of the covers like “All Tomorrow’s Parties” and “Running Scared” are such classics that they almost end up being originals, not to mention that they were staples of their live shows 16 years ago when I saw them, and still are.

In 1988, they released Tender Prey, featuring Cave’s magnum opus, “The Mercy Seat,” Johnny Cash would go on to cover this song, and upped the chill factor by 10, as he had a tendency to do.  As dark and moody as the Bad Seeds were to that point, this was probably their darkest album to date, and would be until Murder Ballads came out eight years later.  This is my favorite album as Cave paints such vast tales of death and violence that he almost takes you to the point of no return.  Not that I’m saying this album will make you go out and kill someone, but it gets you thinking.

Since then, they’ve put out several more albums.  In 2001, No More Shall We Part was released, and it was a different take on similar subject matter, reminiscent of Let Love In. but not as darkly ironic and violent.  It’s actually a very beautiful record, which may or may not be a compliment.  In recent years several of The Bad Seeds, Cave included have formed the side project Grinderman, in which the musical stylings have almost come full circle back to the days of The Birthday Party.  There exists much more of a noisier garage feel, with more of an artistic approach, though, perhaps, less spiritual.

There you have it.  Though I did not list everything that The Bad Seeds are involved with (i.e. Einsturzende Neubauten, but that would have taken way more than 2 pages by itself), and I left out probably some crucial albums, but it is what it is…shitty.

I hope that this meets your expectations, Davey.

Here’s to life.  Fuck It!

by Steven Purkey

It rains.

The wind blows rain in yr face.

Downed pelicans get fucked with by rednecks.

The storm on the coast is a natural beauty.

Ray Succre vs Franklin Metropolis

This just in! Frankie Metro responds!!!

“i don’t wear tightie whities like you ray sucker…lol..so mine don’t climb..ask yr mother..waiit..lemme pull out my [expletive] ..okay now ask her”
–frankie metro

Ray Succre responds in rap battle!

“She agreed; the underwear was no longer white, and they were not tight, and in fact, there seemed to be a substantial amount of vacant space in the front while you were wearing them.”
–Ray Succre

Frankie Metro responds!!!

“HAHAHA! even space looks big to the cosmological eye, which has the same origin date as that thing between yr thighs. ancient, rigid and black; like an aids infested bubble..you fuck with FM and yr fuckd like you got AIDS trouble.”
–Frankie Metro

Ray Succre So… so I have a timeless, black penis infested with the AIDS virus because you had sex with me and infected me with it? Dude, that doesn’t make either one of us sound cool at all.

“So I’m in New Orleans, at a bar in the French Quarter, and I meet this chick, a hot one too. We kicked back a few shots of tequila and next thing I know, only 20 minutes after meeting her, she invites me back to her hotel room.”

“So we get back there, and the second we step inside, she jumps on me and is kissing me, grabbing my dick, tearing off her clothes. It’s almost as if her clothes were attached by velcro, how fast she got them off.”

“So now we’re totally naked and on the bed. I’m about to roll on a condom and impale her with my helmeted soldier, but she stops me and asks if I want to fuck her up the ass. Of course, I oblige, as it isn’t too easy to find chicks who’ll let you walk on the brown side, especially only an hour after you’ve just met them.”

“So she tells me to go into the bathroom and find lube. I hustle in there, thinking her bathroom was like the anal sex palace or something, like there’d be 50 types of lube, anal beads, electronic dildos, all that shit. But there’s nothing of the sort. I couldn’t find any lube, whatsoever, not even hand lotion. I think of maybe using shampoo, but then I see some sunscreen, the kind with moisturizer, and figure that’ll do.”

“So I lather up my dick with the sunscreen and march back in there, ready to get down to business. I leap into the bed, grab her by the hips, about to flip her over and stick it in her ass, but she glances down at my dick with a puzzled expression on her face. She asks me what I put on my dick, and I tell her that it’s sunscreen. Then all of a sudden she totally loses it, screaming about how could I possibly be trying to fuck her up the ass with sunscreen, what the fuck is wrong with me, etc.”

“So then she starts flailing kicks and punches at me and does that thing where she twirls both arms around like windmills, slapping at me, forcing me towards the door. In between slaps I manage to pry open the door and retreat to the hallway. I plead to her that it was the type of sunscreen with moisturizer, but she slams the door on me and I’m now standing out there, buck-naked, sunscreen on my semi-hard dick, hair all messed up from her windmill slap attack.”

“So I bang on the door and beg her to please give me my clothes, but she won’t answer. My hotel was a couple streets away, and so I walked down the stairs, through the lobby, right into Bourbon Street. Funny enough, not a single person gave me a strange look. I even walked by a couple other naked men, but I couldn’t tell whether or not they had sunscreen on their dicks, though it wouldn’t surprise me if they did.”

“So I get to my hotel and run into these cops outside and I tell them about what happened and ask them if they can help me get my clothes back from this chick. At first they just laughed at me, especially when I told them about the sunscreen thing. One of them asks me why I didn’t just spit in my hand or something, but then they agree to help me retrieve my clothes, especially since my wallet was in them, with my driver’s license and everything, and the cops were sympathetic to me about how much of a pain in the ass it’d be to go to the DMV and have it replaced, particularly if I had to explain to the people at the DMV how I’d lost it in the first place.”

“So I’m walking with the cops back to her hotel, still naked, mind you; surprisingly the cops didn’t ask me to put on clothes, but like a hundred people had thrown me beads, so like my neck and chest were covered with them, kinda like I was one of those 1980s rappers who covered themselves with gold chains, well, not exactly like that, but sort of. Anyway, and then some short bald guy on a Segway, who said he was a mortician, rode by and gave me a pink ski-mask, which I put on, and it helped me feel a little less embarrassed.”

“So we’re about to step into her hotel when the cops say they want to grab a quick cup of coffee at McDonald’s. We walk in there and there’s this group of like 50 Chinese tourists, who are looking like they’re about to fight each other. But instead of fighting, they start break-dancing at each other, all aggressively, kinda like Michael Jackson’s ‘Beat It’ video, and then the cops and some guy who was dressed up like Ronald McDonald or who just looked like Ronald McDonald joined in, and so did I, break-dancing all over the place, jumping up on tables, all that shit.”

“So after break-dancing, we went up to her hotel, but I couldn’t remember which room she was in. The receptionist refused to call around or help me bang on doors, looking for her, and instead gave me a shower curtain to wrap myself in, and I said bye to the cops and walked back to my hotel. The staff at my hotel didn’t act surprised at all by me coming in there wrapped up in only a shower curtain, draped in tons of beads, wearing a pink ski-mask. I guess they see shit like that all the time.”

“So I guess the moral of the story is that if you meet a chick at a bar in New Orleans and you go back to her hotel room and she asks you to fuck her in the ass, don’t use sunscreen, even the kind with moisturizer, or else you might get into a break-dancing battle with Chinese people, and worse yet, have to go to the DMV to get your driver’s license replaced.”

by Steven Purkey

Hollywood and I had a strange relationship.  We got along so well, we just didn’t give a fuck about our differences.  It was a matter of survival, as well.  We shared everything: food, beer, drugs, cigs, blankets; shared experience to better survive on the streets, in the cold, the rain.

He’s the one who taught me to just crawl up on some porch instead of sleeping in the more dangerous recycling dumpsters.  I used to sleep in there sandwiched between cardboard for warmth, and close the dumpster lid to protect from rain.  But the danger was that the garbage trucks that came to empty the cardboard wouldn’t check the dumpster before lifting it with the powerful, long, mechanical arms to empty it into the truck, so you ran the risk of being crushed once you were dumped into the truck.

I didn’t care if I died though, welcomed death even, as life was so miserable: strung out on heroin, homeless, broke, spangin’ for my next fix….

It was a hellacious existence, comforted only by the drugs and booze I consumed on an absolutely daily basis.  Without them I would’ve walked out in front of a semi-truck on Interstate 5 and called it good.

But that didn’t happen.  Instead, I was rescued my Grandmother when she came to visit my then-ill Aunt.

I went to see my Grandmother at my Aunt’s house, taking the bus from Thurston to the other side of town, and telling Hollywood I would be back in a couple of days.  I never saw him again.  But we’ll get to that later.  First I want to tell you, must explain, that when my family saw the shape I was in they all wanted to help me.  My cousin got me to take a shower and washed my clothes a few times.  6 months on the street and I was filthy.  I was also strung out on alcohol would wake up sick and shaking without it, puking in a garbage can out in the garage.  They felt bad for me, bought me beers, and fed me.  I spent 3 nights there, sleeping out on the back porch in a sleeping bag, because I felt more comfortable outdoors.

Eventually it came time for Grandma to leave, head back down the coast, and she invited me to go with her, bless her heart.  I took her up on the offer without even thinking about it.  I wanted to get off the streets, to get clean, and off the booze.  6 months on the street and I was whupped.  I was ready to rejoin the living.  Her presenting me with the opportunity is ultimately what saved my life.  It’s been a long struggle getting off and staying off the booze and drugs.  Which brings me back to Hollywood.

I searched for him around our old stomping grounds several times over the years, asking around about him and turning up nothing.  And then 7 years later I hear from him.  He made contact with me over the computer and is still drunk and homeless.  Wants to get clean, but don’t we all?  I was trying to maintain contact and possibly try to help him, but last I heard he was in jail.

Hollywood, if yr reading this, don’t give up.  Do whatever it takes to get clean.  The rest will follow.  And for God’s sake call me, ya bastard!