Suicidal Tendencies - "Suicide's an Alternative/You'll be Sorry" (Dylan's Dumb iPod #5)

I still don't think Suicidal gets enough recognition. This album dropped in 1983 (exactly 20 days before Metallica's Kill 'em All), and most other hardcore band of their ilk weren't really playing around with metal riffs yet (Age of Quarrel wouldn't drop for another few years). It's funny that Suicidal gets lumped into hardcore...it's not that they don't fit, because as far as attitude and lyrics, they definitely do...but looking at their career as a whole, they've pretty much always been a thrash band, and Grant Estes is an awesome guitarist here. Compound that with the whole Venice White Boyz thing (something I talk about fairly extensively in Drug Dogs #3. Not dead. Just slow) and...I wish I could go back and get an accurate read on this band.

The song is pretty rooted in teenage nihilism and opens up with maniacal laughter (that I assume is Muir's) that actually used to get on my nerves whenever I'd listen to the album in my car, and my girlfriend used to hate. Like many of the songs on the album (oh...and their name) it's pretty brazen in that it's a song about someone's obsessive desire to commit suicide. I mean, how bonkers is that? SUICIDE'S AN ALTERNATIVE...TO YOUR CRAPPY LIFE, YOUR CRAPPY JOB, YOUR NONEXISTENT FUTURE...TO EVERYTHING! I suppose it is. It's a message I've wanted to paint on an overpass for years now.

The lyrics follow a pretty old-skool punk pattern, with Mike Muir's vocals getting faster and more spastic as the song wears on, blending into a sort of a shizophrenic call and response with himself where he states that he's sick of something, and then answers himself with why ("sick of life/it sucks!") I also like the line "sick of chicks/they're all bitches" because I'm interested in anything that would've ruffled MRR's totalitarian punk feathers. That and the fact that these bands already had reps for being cholos and gangbangers anyway.

It morphs somewhere in the middle (is "You'll be sorry" another song? I've never been able to figure it out) and he goes into some narrative about him signing a contract (presumably with the devil?) and that trademark sing/talk thing (the same one he does on "Institutionalized"). This creature from Hell asks him to sign a contract and promises him power and fame, to which Muir gets indignant and tells the devil to screw off and maybe even punches him the face. It's pretty wild really.

Anyway, this isn't my favorite Suicidal album (How Will I Laugh Tomorrow...is), but it's a damn good one. Everything's firing on all cylinders, and in the (sliced) vein of self-absorbed lyrics smothered in adolescent rage and myopia, it really reigns supreme.

Sick of living
I'm gonna die

Below is a dorky video I found of someone who made a collage of their dog...to this song. Weird.

Song is copyright 1983 Frontier Records, yadda yadda yadda.

Alice in Chains - Rooster (Dylan's Dumb iPod #4)

Dude...let's go back in time for a bit. To a time that was more pimply faced. A time where confusing erections came and went with all the frivolity and seeming regularity of blossoms on the Apricot tree. A time where it was socially acceptable...nay, encouraged to bleach only the top part of one's hair. When boys and girls would date each other only between the hours of 8:30 AM and 3:30 PM. To a time when everyone reeked of maxx-hold gel, Michael Jordan cologne and fruit roll-ups and finding a ride to the movie theater was one's only weekend objective. Middle school bro.

Now, truth be told, Alice in Chains pre-dated my middle school career. By the time I started 6th grade (1998), they were already on their big hiatus, Jerry Cantrell was set to release a solo album, and the band was still resting on the laurels of their Unplugged performance ("Friends don't let friend's get haircuts.") It doesn't take away from the fact that in middle school, I was obsessed with this band. While the nation had turned away from "alternative music" to focus on the bastardized staccato of the rancid Nu-metal beast that was emerging, me and my friends got heavily into the "grunge" bands we'd just been introduced to by older cousins in elementary school.

To date, hearing "Rooster" in the wee hours of the morning during the summer between my 5th and 6th grade year on an FM radio call-in show...well it stuck with me. It's probably because it was late, and I was younger and (ostensibly) stupider, but somehow it seemed really heavy. "Rooster" is a heavy song. Not heavy like Crowbar or Madball...but it had an emotional depth I couldn't really fathom as a kid. Those cooing gospel sighs at the beginning, Layne Staley's crackerman drawl and the slowest example of Jimi Hendrix style whammying I'd ever heard. Unreal. I knew it was about war. It had to be. It's a sad song, and it was a sadness that I identified with...for reasons unknown.

I misinterpreted a bunch of the lyrics. I still can't tell if he's saying "walking tall the chicken man" or "walking tall machine gun man." The line about "got my pills 'gainst mosquito death/my buddy's breathin' his dying breath." You wanna give a 12 year old the shakes? Holy damn.
There's conflicting opinion as to why the song's titled "Rooster." I guess something about the flare of a gun looks like Rooster feathers or the Eagle insignia that Vietnam soldiers wore on their arm. Something like that. The video actually had real soldiers come and re-enact and it's been praised for it's realism. The song was referenced in a Beavis and Butthead episode too. They talk about "snuffing a rooster" with a war veteran.

All I know is that I waited by the radio, blank cassette in hand and my finger poised above the "Record" button to snag it the next time it came on. It's a song I listened to incessantly (still do) because it's got a slow crawl and a leaden punch that I haven't seen replicated in many other places.

As I got older, my hardcore friends got all high and mighty about Alice in Chains, saying they were too slow, or citing their bonehead demographic. They weren't far off the mark, but I stayed loyal...though I haven't really been following their new stuff (new singer? It's alright, but they should just change the name of the band).

Maybe people listen to this song and get reminded of horrifying war time experiences they've endured. Korea. Vietnam. Desert Storm. I don't get any of that. It just makes me think about rainy school bus rides in the rain, bad Adidas and all the other horrors of middle school...and somehow it still makes sense to me.



The song is from the Alice in Chains album Dirt, 1993, Sony Records, bluh bluh bluh

Beady Eye - Millionaire (Dylan's Dumb iPod #3)

Maybe people were genuinely excited about Beady Eye. I guess I kind of was…but as solid as Different Gear, Still Speeding may have been (nods to Andy Bell on that one) much of the time it sounded kind of stunted and played out like mid-late (bad) period Oasis. Still, it’s not always fair to compare the two bands, what with Noel Gallagher (Oasis’s primary songwriter) up-and-leaving his brother Liam to try and cobble it together (Let’s not forget that Liam’s contributions to Oasis pretty much begin and end with those soaring vocals. His songwriting credits are scant) with the remaining lineup…a lineup that’s seen more upheaval than the Louisiana coastline.

Still, the record wasn’t bad at all (I reviewed it in a mag I write for) and defied many skeptical expectations. Liam sounds great imitating all his favorite British singers (John Lennon and Paul Weller mostly) and the band sounds loose and fluid, (more than ever) incorporating little strains of sixties psyche and pop into their sound.

“Millionaire” is an Andy Bell/Liam Gallagher/Gem Archer composition and was released as the second single for the album. It’s supposed to be about driving around Spain and looking at light shining through a stained glass window, admiring Salvador Dail paintings or something else completely underwhelming like that.

It’s got a weird “swamp” feel to it (maybe it’s that steel guitar) and the melodies are sticky sweet (and the lyrics are kind of a mouthful). I detect a heavy La's influence here too. Beady Eye certainly isn’t one of the most memorable bands, but I never regret playing their records and you can’t go wrong playing them for others either.

Video for “Millionaire”

This stuff is all taken from the Beady Eye album Different Gear, Still Speeding 2011 Beady Eye/Danger Bird Records, bluh bluh bluh.

Ride - In a Different Place (Dylan's Dumb iPod #2)

Good golly, if Ride isn’t one of the most fantastic bands in existence. Heavenly though it may be, a good lot of shoegaze (especially anything retro) is fairly indistinguishable…but Ride always managed to stay above water. Most nerds herald Nowhere as their zenith record and probably one of the genre defining masterpieces. Cool people love that wall o’ sound shimmer and they can appreciate that awesome cover art.

I’m sure there’s a gamut of opinions as to what this song’s about. Drugs (“blowing bubbles, lying down” sounds kinda gross to me) tuning out (“you and I were in a different time.”) and being impervious to weather (“Even if the rain falls down, and all the sky turns cold/ I will still be fine.”) Maybe it’s about the euphoric charge a youngster feels when foolishly falling in love or huffing keyboard duster (or that weird game we used to play where we’d pass someone out by cutting off airflow to their head. To get real extreme, when their eyes had rolled back and they’d lost a little consciousness, we’d run out the door and turn the lights off so the poor asphyxiate would wake up 12 seconds later completely disoriented…really dangerous. Don’t do it).
I’m a sucker for those drums because they sound like the kind of drums that God would play if he was mixing a Kyuss record and then playing it underwater. Swirling, kaleidoscopic guitars that chime and hiss and everything is just a beat or slower than you’re used to…dreamlike…or as if you’re walking as fast as you can through a swimming pool.

A dude in my American lit class (Junior year o’ college) used to wear a Ride Nowhere shirt. I was (am) painfully lonely so I tried to make conversation with him. It came to light that he was from San Diego (nothing wrong with that) and was into longboards and Fleet Foxes (plenty wrong with that). Forever alone.

What if stoner kids in middle school wore Ride shirts and not Sublime ones?

(Song by Ride from Nowhere. 1990 Sire Records).

They Live - Blurred (Dylan's Dumb iPod #1)

I've been kicking around this stupid idea for a while now....where I just press "shuffle" on my iPod, see what comes up, and then write about it. I can never think of anything to write, so I figure this is a way to get me writing stuff regularly. 

They Live is a band that my friend Jeff Likes. He likes fast hardcore. Really fast hardcore. Ultimately, I don't think They Live gets talked about enough. Most fast bands (and I think most people would call They Live a powerviolence band) sound almost exactly the same...but They Live had a unique sound and carved their own lane. Plus, Blurred is an essential 8 minutes of blazing-fast hardcore. Somehow, these files that I got weren't named, only the side and track number. Oh well. This is a pretty cool song. Not much to talk about. Just really fast.

Jeff also has some tracks of them covering Project X and Turning Point. If my friend Keith were writing this, he'd make sure to talk about how "They Live" is actually the name of a horror movie...but I'm not a horror movie buff at all. That stuff just terrifies me.

Also, I heard a story about how the singer from this band lit his face on fire at a show in Canada? I think I can substantiate it with an old issue of Town of Hardcore, but I'm not sure.

Since I honestly can't find a single picture of Blurred online (one that isn't the size of a postage stamp) I'm just going to post this one instead.

As far as I know, you can still get Blurred pretty easily, so poke around. If you're a Euro, they have them in the Feral Ward Store.