Into the Vein Their Enchantment Drained

Continuing the Thursday Night Live Special Edition -- Part 3:

HEALTH

This may go down as one of the best concert experiences I've ever had.

I first found out about HEALTH through Trent Reznor's announcement a year ago that the band would be supporting Nine Inch Nails on their "Lights in the Sky" tour. I checked them out . . . and fell in love.

The genre artists call them a Noise Rock band. I agree. They sport noise, but they have structure. Usually noise is improvisational by nature. These guys have a routine to their songs, exemplified by the fact that in the live show, all of the members except the drummer have a mountain of pedals that they press throughout the setlist. It's rehearsed. It is the same as their recordings.

They have short songs, most under three minutes. During these songs, they might go into four different tangents and sections. If I'm stripped of ideas, I go to HEALTH for inspiration. They hardly have vocals, and when they do, they're buried. Delayed and soft, I don't really care for the vocals. It's just another layer. And that's their intent.

I draw inspiration from their lack of vocals, and I put my own in.

Usually new ideas drawn from these vocal replacements lead to entirely new songs for me. The end of "In Hopes to Mend" was conceived after listening to a section in HEALTH's "Crimewave". I hear something relating to a rockabilly drawl, I'll come up with my own actual rockabilly song.

HEALTH is a hat full of random ideas written on carelessly folded pieces of paper that I draw from once in a while.

Upon entering 7th Street Entry, we first saw John, the bassist, putting out merch. My mouth got dry. "Crap, there he is!" I thought. I went up and talked to him, very awkwardly.

"Hey, how's it goin'?" I said, eyes averting his.

He said, "What's up?"

I looked at Schuyler, my companion for the evening. "You uh . . . you buyin' anything?"

He looked at my funny, like "You're acting strange."

He looked back at the merch table. "I might buy 'Get Color'."

"Yeah, me too."

John said, "Alright, that'll be twelve bucks. Let me get change," and he left with a smile.

"He smiled at me!" I thought. "Jesus, stop it!"

He came back and I had my composure. We took our CD's.

Later, I made jokes with the lead guitarist while waiting in line for the bathroom with him. I was talking to a musical hero while waiting to pee!

The show, though . . . spot on! The band is so intense . . .

The floor was packed with hipsters like you wouldn't believe, most likely wrought from Crystal Castle's version of "Crimewave", which never really did anything for me. HEALTH became known through their remixes, played on the hipster dance circuit. Standing in the crowd, I realized I was a hipster. In fact, Schuyler and I were both mistaken for HEALTH band members on two occasions by the crowd as we shuffled through. Here we have hipsters listening to music very un-hipstery. The band prides itself on being true in art, not being ironic or funny (Insane Clown Posse was playing in the Main Room, and many a joke was made at their expense from all the bands on the bill -- HEALTH's singer said "I know everyone's being ironic and funny, but I seriously walked into there just to see what it was like, and I've never seen a crowd as dumb and idiotic as that one right in there." And BOOM! they began the show). The people became un-ironic, an un-hipster thing to do. And they let go.

They began to go crazy in a Mash Pit, a culmination of moshing and dancing. Half the people in the crowd were dancing, whilst being thrown about by other, more violent hipsters. Everyone lost themselves into the music, and head banged to weird time signatures. It was amazing.

I realized this would be the crowd I'd be playing to in Patch. It was a coming of age, symbolic.

*"DIE SLOW" video*


They were so in tune to their new sound, so into each little step -- it's everything kick ass. Everyone ran to the merch booth once they were through. John, the bassist, couldn't keep up with his money handling.

I salute you, dear HEALTH. You've reached the top tier of my musical influences.

*Live on Pitchfork TV -- "ZOOTHORNS" and "CRIMEWAVE"*


HEALTH -- "Death+"

Flies in the Comatorium

In yesterday’s blog, I touched on my two main musical influences. The first was Nine Inch Nails, the second is The Mars Volta.

Last night I saw The Mars Volta at First Ave.

Close, intimate, surreal. I had seen the Volta at the Roy Wilkins Auditorium a year and a half ago, back on their Goliath tour, with the eight piece band. It was perhaps the better concert, in that they were all in good spirits, laughing at each other’s mistakes, improvising. You could see the friendship between the band members.

Last night they seemed to be in sour moods. Stripped of two members, the songs were less about improvisation and more about tight, coherent beginnings and endings. They dabbled in a lot of their older material, including a run of “Eunuch Provocateur” from the Tremulant EP, my personal fave of the night. Cedric went crazy, Omar even crazier.

The cherry on top was this: Omar Rodriguez-Lopez may very well be slightly second to Trent Reznor as far as my musical heroes go. Being up front, so close to my musical god, it’s surreal. There he is. But being up close and personal in the front row also lends itself to stripping away your hero’s glamour and seeing them for who they really are. Just another dude or dudette.

That being said, Omar’s fly was down the entire concert, and I couldn’t stop laughing about it . . .

*THE MARS VOLTA -- LIVE AT FIRST AVE 9.10.09 -- "VISCERA EYES"*


The Mars Volta -- "Eunuch Provocateur"

The Last Goodbye

Twenty years.

That’s how long Trent Reznor has been playing live under the moniker Nine Inch Nails. Tonight marked the last night of the Wave Goodbye Tour. The Wiltern Theater in Los Angeles, CA. They played 38 songs, with three encores, and tons of special guests, including Mike Garson (of David Bowie fame), Dave Navarro, The Dillinger Escape Plan, Atticus Ross (Trent’s main studio cohort), and Gary Numan.

I was first introduced to NIN through a friend in fifth grade. He kept writing the famous NIN insignia on all our clubhouse posters. I asked, “What’s NIN?” He said in a bratty tone, “It’s Nin. If you don’t know what it stands for, you can’t be in the club!”

He kept yelling “Have you heard ‘Hurt’?!” I responded, “No.” “You can’t be in the club! ‘Head Like a Hole’?” “No.” “Can’t be in the club.”

A day later I heard “Head Like a Hole” on a Time Life Metal compilation commercial on TV. Then I listened to the radio all night long, mainly during the Total Request hours, on Milwaukee's Lazer 103 for “Hurt”.

I got “Closer” instead.

Not long after that, “Closer” came on the radio while my mom was driving a group of the kids she babysat (we were all the same age, our younger siblings were also present, so roughly a group of 10 and 8 year olds). The snotty know-it-all was present. The song came on and I yelled, “Mom, turn it up! It’s . . .”, I turned to the know-it-all, “NINE – INCH – NAILS!”

He said “Oh, this is the bad song.” I could tell he hadn’t heard it, but he knew of it.

The famous chorus “I want to fuck you like an animal”, bleeped of course, but we still got it, sounded. My mom said, “Oh god . . .” yet continued to keep the song on. The entire car was silent. I had never heard anything that sounded remotely like it. I was currently into Weezer, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, grunge and post-grunge. This was synth, hard, and theatrical. It took what I loved about Genesis and Queen and turned it into something forbidden.

My mom said she liked the song, but not the lyrics.

We went to Blockbuster Video soon after that and picked up the Woodstock 94 video compilation. Nine Inch Nails’ “Happiness in Slavery” was featured on it. I had never seen an act like it. The band was covered in mud, Trent was throwing mic stands this way and that, it was seven minutes of noise, screaming, and intensity. I was spellbound.

My brother bought “Further Down the Spiral” around that time, since it was one of the few NIN releases to have been sans Parental Advisory sticker. I didn’t grasp the concept of the remix album, but I was still spellbound. My brother wouldn’t let me listen to the CD, so I snuck a listen at 5:00am one morning before school. Track 2, “The Art of Self Destruction, Part 1” was what did it. This song may forever go down as one of, if not THE, most inspirational pieces of my upbringing. That, “Closer”, and the Woodstock version of “Happiness in Slavery”.

I made it my mission to buy every single Halo (the cataloguing system Trent uses to make it easy to collect official releases of his work). Parental Advisory Halos were stashed at my dad’s, where they were allowed. They wouldn’t have been if they had heard “Closer” at the time. In eighth grade I showed my stepmom “The Downward Spiral” album. She forbid the CD ever to be within earshot after she heard “Closer”, “I Do Not Want This”, and “Big Man with a Gun”, all songs about fucking.

Anybody who knows my own music can tell you my two main influences. NIN was the first and most lasting. They will always be number one in my book. So, tonight is symbolic. It’s corny, but it’s bittersweet for me to say goodbye to a legend in a live sense. Trent will continue making music as NIN, but the live splendour will not be had any longer. I’ve seen NIN live five times. The best way to end my live experiences was at the Minneapolis “Lights in the Sky Tour” stop. Front and center for the biggest show NIN will ever put on.

And now, no more . . .

*NINE INCH NAILS -- LIVE AT THE WILTERN THEATER 9.10.09 -- "WISH"*


Nine Inch Nails -- "The Art of Self Destruction, Part One"

Mother Goosebumps

Get ready for a dorkgasm . . .

I finished reading "Goosebumps: The Haunted Mask II" to the kids on the playground this afternoon. After work, I got the itch to see if any other Goosebumps books were available online. Lo and behold, I found a jackpot:

http://www.scribd.com/search?cx=007890693382555206581%3A7fgc6et2hmk&cof=FORID%3A10&ie=UTF-8&q=Goosebumps+Welcome+to+Dead+House#1020

The site has tons of PDF files copied from the original Goosebumps books. Granted, it doesn't have every Goosebumps book ("Monster Blood" isn't anywhere to be found, sadly) but it'll bring you back to your childhood if you were an avid reader way back when.

My Grandma gave me Goosebumps when I was in second grade. "Monster Blood" was the first. She went to a local bookstore in Buffalo, New York, asked the clerk "What are kids reading nowadays?" They showed her the Goosebumps aisle. Knowing I loved monsters and horror, it was perfect.

I was hooked. I attribute R.L. Stine to be the one of my main influences. He's very easy to read, he's descriptive, he has a vivid imagination.

But thinking about it, if it hadn't been for my Grandma, I wouldn't have obtained some of my most precious influences. She bought me horror movies, my first Parental Advisory album (Pantera's "The Great Southern Trendkill"), the aforementioned R.L. Stine collection. She always laughs when I tell about some of these things and how they've influenced me. She always says something like "If I knew what I was actually buying you at the time I wouldn't have bought it!"

I'm so fucking glad she holds ignorance hand in hand with her love for me.

Now, picture this: I didn't have cable when I was younger, but my Grandparents did. My brother and I would watch hours of MTV, Nick, HBO. Korn, Nine Inch Nails, Marilyn Manson all come on once when I was in fifth grade. I was hooked. At home, I hear Pantera's "Drag the Waters", Marilyn Manson's "Sweet Dreams", Type O' Negative on a late night metal program on a Milwaukee Rock Station, Lazer 103, as it was called at the time. My birthday rolls around in sixth grade, my Grandma asks me what I would want. I tell her I want the new Pantera record.

In comes the mail, I open my presents on my birthday, I go upstairs to listen privately to my almost secretive posession . . . Upon the first five seconds something changed within me, a schema metastasized into something different, no music had ever been as intense, and a huge grin appeared on my face. I actually attribute that day to be the core influence behind Patch. Mixing in with some of the horror stories I had written in response to Goosebumps, I started formulating a vision.

Here's the song that sparked catastrophy, all thanks to my Meemaw:

Pantera -- "The Great Southern Trendkill"