A Total Eclipse of the Brain II: The Juggalo-post

This week Doomlund presents a regular tour-de-force of retarded pop-culture wasteproducts.

Growing up most people go through an awkward phase in life that marks the transition from childhood to adulthood. It’s a little thing called adolescens where hormonal changes, spontaneous hard-ons and plague-like acne, and how you handle them will determine the person you’ll inevitably wind up becoming. And through out time people have had very different ways of dealing with this phenomenon. In the fifties kids bought cool bikes and leatherjackets and told the squares to go fuck themselves. In the sixties kids grew their hair out and told their parents to go fuck themselves. In the seventies kids got into disco and therefore by default told the rest of the world to go fuck themselves and so on and so on.

But these days kids are taking this stuff to the next level. Without further ado. The Juggalos:

This post is about teen-culture so I won’t even get into the argument over whether or not the media is basically once again transmitting an audio/visual ode to their own monumental sleaziness for going: “Hmm. These retarded teenagers are basically doing the same thing teenagers have been doing for the past fifty years before they grow up and get jobs. Only these morons are dressing up like clowns. There must be a story we can sell here….”, and the clever reporter leans back, scratches his crotch and strokes his chin for a moment before a lightbulb goes off. “I know! We can pitch them as gang-bangers. Everybody’s afraid of gang-bangers, right??”.

That aside, Juggalo is probably the lamest subculture in the world. At this point, I take back every bad thing I’ve ever said about Goths. “Please come back, you guys! Don’t leave us with these inbred choads!”
Apparently Juggalo-culture was started in the Insane Clown Posse fan-community (there’s a sentence you don’t hear every day) and from there it just took off and swept the nation. Eventhough the kids in these videos are talking about a sense of unity and a philosophical foundation for the Juggalo way of life (just take a minute to proces that one………) there doesn’t really seem to exist any common ground except for iliteracy and a strong penchant for circus make-up.

Yes, you’re absolutely right cake-face. It’s not a religion or a cult or a sad little club, cause it’s not like you guys have any dresscode or other specific requirements of uniformity in your appearance like, oh say, CLOWN MAKE-UP!
In the end you can really only take stuff like this for what it is. Youtube-clips you can laugh your ass off to whilst at the same time praying that your kid will at least have the courtesy to pick out a decent subculture for his/her five year stretch of generic teenage rebellion.

I’ll leave you with this little pièce de résistance. Apparently there’s a hierarchy within the Juggalo community (should you ever find yourself at the bottom of the foodchain with these people, suicide is the only acceptable option). But these two dweeps have decided to make mends and at the same time appeal to their brothers and sisters to ‘quit all da hatin”. It’s fascinating to watch in the same way a car crash is.

Stay psychopathic.

Doomlund

Recommendation-post II: Ume

Many have accused Doomlund of being an old fart when it comes to music. So to those individuals; shut the fuck up and read the following.

The Meat Puppets have embarked on a US tour after years of relative silence. Last night they played an excellent show at L.A.s El Rey Theatre on Wilshire, but what really got to me was the first warm-up act. A trio hailing from a little place we call Austin, Texas by the indie-lightful name of Ume.

Ume (Lauren, Eric and Jeff) take the stage with their very own brand of decadent, experimental artrock that smells of New York-posh, but with that unmistakable air of power poppish melody-worship that seems to thrive in the south. Watching them perform is an absolute delight as singer/guitarist Lauren Larson awkwardly tears up the stage, headbanging and flying around like a fifteen year-old on her first shroom-trip to a Sonic Youth record.

Musically the band’s sound is all over the place and yet weirdly consistent. There are remnants of the almighty, Sonic Youth, on one of their more accessible days, but at the same time Ume display a strong penchant for earpiercing melodies that’ll set up shop in your brain and leave you humming along for days. The frantic arrangements based on the magic yet simple combination of guitar, bass and drums are sublimely tied together by Larsons soothing voice and ornamentary guitar work wrought with a ton of crooked, off-beat tones and scale variations that seem to spit in the face of common music theory.

On songs like The Conductor, East of Hercules and the near epic Pendulum, Ume come to their right as a band that catapults the hyper-ordinary pop narrative of song writing onto a whole new level of weirdness. A place where shoe-gazing is met by an overwhelming urge to  dance around like a post-gen-x flower child in a magnificently succesful merging of early nineties angst-ridden noiserock and contemporary devil-may-care indie attitude, that is just downright addictive.

So if the Meat Puppets-circus is stopping by in a town near you, go steal 20 bucks from your mom’s purse for the tickets. I promise you won’t be disappointed.

Ume released their first full-length album intitled “Urgent Sea” in 2005, but they’re currently promoting their new EP “Sunshower” which is absolutely awesome and available on iTunes and on Amazon. Doomlund says “A ok”, so go get it!

Ume

On a personal note all is well on planet Doomlund and I’m happy as the proverbial camper. See you dudes the fuck around.

Doomlund

The new wheels-post

This week Doomlund gets ready to pound some L.A. asphalt in his first ever car.

 

The Roadwarrior

If cars were like women, my car would be a 400 pound overweight agressive hooker with bad skin and an attitude. But with a sort of in-your-face charm that’ll make you loose your heart right there.
I say this because I am aware of the fact that my newly bought – and might I add first car ever - looks a lot like something you’d expect to find deep within the ass-crack of a police impound lot, in a special spot reserved for vehicles that have been recovered in back alleys – halfway incinerated with a dead hobo in the trunk. But by God, it has charm!

I found it out in the west end of Pico, at a car rental place that occasionally sell off some of their older models. It’s called ‘Wrent-A-Wreck’ which in hindsight probably should’ve set off a couple of alarm bells right there. But the owner gave off one of those very rare – especially in that line of business – ‘no bullshit’-vibes. A middleaged guy named Dave who wears his cap low and only speaks when it is absolutely necessary. A salesman of the old school.

The Roadwarrior is only two years younger than Doomlund

Anyway Dave picked out my Honda for me. It was hidden in the back of the lot next to a scrapheap of old lawnmowers. Shamefully stowed away like a deformed product of automotive inbreeding in the late industrial era.
“It’s yours fer twelvefifty,” he mumbled. “Not much to look at, but it handles fine”.
“You think, you can shine it up a little?” I asked, to which he gave off a strange raw guttural sound that I guess passes as a chuckle in the auto retail business.
“I doubt anyone could shine THAT up,” he said pointing at my soon-to-be ride.

I took it out for a drive on the I-10. Rolled down the window to feel the air against my face, as I swerved in and out of lanes putting my wheels to the test. Small, maneuvrable, ugly and underrated yet it ran perfectly.
Signing the papers I told Dave that it had sold itself on having charm and heart. He chuckled in that stoic way again and handed me the keys.
“Well, it’s yours now”.

A couple a days ago I got a mail from my dad: “Congrats on your new car. You’re a grown man now.”

Guess I am.

Doomlund

The 18 hours, 7 vodka-cranberries, one connect in Georgia and we’re there-post

So here’s the deal. I haven’t been posting for a looooong time because I’ve been busy planning my next big move. Since the untimely death of Michael Jackson, Southern California has been bereft of one it’s all-time greatest lunatics. Enter Doomlund…

That’s right. My drunken threats to immigrate were not idle, and I’ve just unpacked all my stuff and settled into my new home in Los Angeles among palm-trees, convertibles and goddess-like women. In the future I plan to minutely record all my experiences on this blog, all for your reading pleasure. ‘Mmm… trippy’ is now on California vibes so stay tuned for updates. I promise laughter, I promise tears and maybe… just maybe… a tiny bit of info on stuff that doesn’t direcly involve me.

In the meantime here’s a short list of things I’ve learned during the past week living here in L.A.:

 

1) Pants - that aren’t cut-offs - are known as sweat-repositories

2) If you lock yourself out of your own place at nighttime, be sure NOT to live in South Central

3) DO NOT light up a smoke in Griffith Park during a month-long dryspell unless you want the security guards to crack down on you Rodney King-style

4) If you’re buying a car DO NOT consult a used car salesman who wears a clip-on tie and calls himself ‘Big Al’ or ‘Big Jerry’ og ‘Big’-anything (infact, steer clear altogether of salesmen who use an adjective as a prefix)

5) If you don’t like poisonous spiders DO NOT go into crawl spaces in the basement (if, on the other hand, you do like spiders please leave this blog as you are completely out of reach)

6) Should you ever find yourself in a conversation where the sentence, “I’m not really that much into college football” pops into your head, please stop it before it reaches your tongue. Just shut up and compliment the team-mascot or the cheerleading squad.

 

That having been said, Doomlund digs L.A. and the angelinos. Stay peeled for more…

Heyo,
Doomlund

Recommendation post

I am quite literally tripping balls right now, and I’ll tell you why that is!

I just learned that Lousiana Museum of Modern Art which is located somewhere in the northern regions of this godforsaken island, are exhibiting no less than 200 pieces by surrealist painter, sculptor and all-round heavy weight champ of l’art moderne, Max Ernst.

On my top ten-list of best painters ever, Ernst is a solid third only beaten by Francis Bacon (narrowly!) and Vilhelm Hammershøi.
Born in Germany near Cologne in 1881 Ernst was to take part in one world war and no less than two revolutionary art-movements before his death in 1976 in France.
Ernst was not only a prolific painter. He was also an artist on a constant journey towards new dimensions in art. Thus he is celebrated for his versatility and his ability to constantly challenge himself and the audience as well.

I must say that Louisiana have outdone themselves this time, and this exhibition almost makes up for their ridiculously overpriced admittance fees and the fact that they’re located in redneck-country.

It’s open till June 1 and for more info press ‘press’.

Go see it! Go!

L'Ange du foyer ou Le Triomphe du surréalisme - 1937

The master of middelclass dissection, John Updike, has passed away

Prolific author, poet, playwright, critic, commentator and Pulitzer Prize winner, John Updike, passed away last tuesday (January 27). Mr Updike suffered from lung cancer during the last years of his life, but died peacefully at a hospice in Danvers, Massachusetts. He was 76.

John Updike was a ruthless revealer of middleclass mediocrity and hypocrisi – a theme that dominated most of his massive production of novels, plays, poetry and articles. He is probably most well known for his Rabbit-series of novels (Rabbit, Run, Rabbit Redux, Rabbit Is Rich, Rabbit At Rest and Rabbit Remembered) that also landed him the Pulitzer Prize twice and the novel The Witches of Eastwick which was also adapted for cinema. Finally Mr Updike was a household name in the columns of the prestigious magazine, The New Yorker.

Mr Updike was a rarely gifted writer who had a unique insight into the mechanics of everyday life and everyday people that he used to portray the utterly clueless individual coasting through life without making any choices – strangled by a society that promotes mediocrity as the ultimate life goal. His extremely humorous, yet painfully serious, outlook on contemporary society will be soarly missed and there is no doubt that the literary and intellectual landscape has lost one of its greatest minds.

“The refusal to rest content, the willingness to risk excess on behalf of one’s obsessions, is what distinguishes artists from entertainers, and what makes some artists adventurers on behalf of us all.”, Mr Updike is quoted for saying. And he truly was an adventurer and an explorer of the human condition on behalf of the great silent majority.

John Updike (1932 - 2009)

The long-time-no-see + review post

Back again after a couple of totally chaotic months. I’ve been recording and gigging with my band FRANK SILVA and if you live in Copenhagen check us out on January 9 in Råhuset, Vesterbro. Also we’re close to the release of the LEATHERVEIN-record. Twelve tracks of fist-throwing, power-posing and soloinfused hardcore combined with the delights of NWOBHM and again, if you live in Copenhagen listen to LowCut Radio on sunday January 4, 6 p.m. for a sneak-preview.
On a personal note I’m finally back in my own appartment again, and just installed my stereo the other day which of course means home sweet home.

But enough about that.

—————————————-

Review: A magnificently brutal debut
Artist: Dead Instrument
Title: Maksimal Destruktion
Label/distributor: Spild af Vinyl Recs.

Dead Instrument is a four piece Grind-outfit straight out of Copenhagen who used to play under the name Stalk of Death with the somewhat unfortunate acronym, S.O.D. This didn’t fly so the guys changed name and bass-player after having released a scruffy yet very promising demo a couple of years back.
On December 5 they introduced the most rescent outcome of their work together as a trio without bass - a full-length debut Lp intitled ‘Maksimal Destruktion’ (Maximum Destruction, ed.) – at a release-party at Copenhagens, Lades Kælder.

Front-man vocalist Jacob and guitarist Phillip

The release-show was the second time I saw Dead Instrument and what has overwhelmed me on both occations is the sheer intensity with which these guys light up a stage. Tons of people showed up – I didn’t even know that many people are into grind in this city – and the small stage at Lades was turned into a regular slaughterhouse-moshpit as front-man Jacob kept beating his own face in with the mic.

Musically ‘Maksimal Destruktion’ is fast as fuck grindcore in the vein of Discordance Axis and the likes. On tracks like Eyeless Wonder however, Dead Instrument turn down the BPM level and reveal a more heavy-set sound with sludgy riffs and sloppering drumbeats that make you think of kings of slow, Eyehategod.

Songs like Passive Target and the title-track Maksimal Destruktion are faster than anything I’ve heard from Denmark before and still no instrumental or vocal twist is lost in the chaos. The production is excellent and the engineering by Paw Koch pays minute attention to the details of every single sound-track without ever compromising the implicit brutality of the genre.

Maksimal Destruktion cover art by Jason Gardner

Dead Instrument’s demo was more of a chaos-grind project in my opinion (which may just have been due to the cheap production), but ‘Maksimal Destruktion’ really reveals these dudes as the extremely competent musicians they are. Whether it’s Emil’s amazing drumtracks, Philip’s insanely catchy almost rock n’ roll-like riffs or the vocal range of singer Jacob, Dead Instrument are impressive even if you don’t dig the genre (in which case you’re a complete tool anyway).

My advice is to get your hands on this sizzeling slab of vinyl a.s.a.p and remember to buy an extra copy for the kids as well. They might as well learn to appreciate radical stuff now, and that’s just what Dead Instrument brings to the party.

Check up on Dead Instrument here or here.

The Break-up post

Dear readers (Dr. Gonzo)

This is so incredibly embarassing, having to write yet another, ’sorry I haven’t posted in a while but I’ve been busy/been lazy/my cat got cancer’-post. But ok, here goes:

I just got a new job, I’ve started school again (God knows why) and for the grand finally (da-da-dam-dam) my girlfriend(ex) kicked me out. Well she didn’t really kick me out but we split and I’ve been living on a couch ever since. Now, I don’t feel sorry for myself (anymore anyways), but it has been kind of difficult to do anything beyond the basics lately. But rest assured! This is far from the last you’ve heard from me.

So, as always keep a lookout for updates and I in return promise that there will be some in a near future.

Hugs, kisses and teargas, yours

TD.

P.S. On another note, as I am now single again I have revised some of my previous policies and I now openly welcome photos + fanmail of an erotic nature.

The L.A. vs. San Francisco-post

In this week Doomlund referees the all-out battle of the California Tourist Titans.

The cabby redirected all of his attention from the road ahead to me in the backseat, pretty much placing both of our lives in the hands of good fortune and San Francisco’s – God be thanked - linear infrastructure.

- “Ya know, people come to this town on vacation and they end up staying a couple of years, and I’ll tell ya why that is:”, he paused briefly and took a hazardous left turn up Polk St., while I held my breath for a second. “San Francisco is the least polluted town in the U.S. We have the cleanest air here. We have the most beautiful surroundings in the entire country. The water is pure. The sky is blue. We have scenic public parks in the middle of the city. And the best thing is that everybody get’s along with everybody. Cus’ ya know what; the only thing we don’t tolerate…”, he paused again, this time for dramatic effect, “… is intolerance”.

I had been in L.A. and just arrived in San Francisco when I got a feeling that the smog had been replaced by smug. And it wasn’t just reckless cab-drivers either. It seemed to be everywhere I went. From the born-again flower children of Golden Gate Park to the tourist traps by the wharf advertising the cleanest most inviromentally conscientious businesses in the States. Some claim that American values are rooted somewhere in the biblebelt of the midwest. But not out here. In Frisco ecology is God. And it’s diciples never pass on an opportunity to applaud themselves for it.
Now, the town is nice and all and don’t get me wrong; there’s nothing wrong with a bit of ’awareness’. I really had a grand old time there. Seeing Alcatraz is a blast, it is a beautiful city and the air does actually feel a bit cleaner. But still.
I had just come up from Los Angeles. L ‘goddamn’ A, where cynicism is in the water and madness in the blood of its people. The air there was filthy. Trafic was murder. The typical big-city buzz bordered on white noise. And still God help me, I loved it to bits. L.A. had swept me off my feet or put more acurately; it punched me out cold.

And I’ll tell you why that is with just a short literary detour:
In his novel The Day of The Locust from 1939, Nathanael West, a native of New York who moved out to California in order to pursue a career as a Hollywood scriptwriter, depicted L.A. and its maniacal alter ego, Hollywood, as the point where western civilization – with all its progress and man-made wonders – would stand its final trial under God. Thus West’s L.A. is a gloomy city where decadence, debauchery and the dogmas of false prophets will one day ensure the wrath of the Almighty himself, and be swallowed up in a pit of fire like a modern day Sodom. The protagonists of the story are all innocent in their own way but they must come to terms with the crooked morals that rule the city, and one by one they all succumb to madness, suicide or an overwhelming urge to kill. All of it takes place under the illuminated Hollywood-sign in the Hills – the symbol of the american dream in the thirties, but to West a dream that has evolved into a nightmare of deprivation and the evaporation of all meaning.

Although Nathanael West preached good Christian morals (i.e. eternal damnation of the soul) he did have a point in so far that the city of L.A. offers total chaos to the unsuspecting visitor. But divine judgement aside, the chaos is what makes the place hold together.  

Because that’s the kind of strange maniacal embrace Los Angeles offers you. If you’ve ever felt like you don’t fit in any where you’ve probably learnt the important lesson that not fitting in anywhere also means that you fit in everywhere which is a pretty comforting thought. In ways Los Angeles is like that to. No generalization fits it adequately – a fact Nathanael West obviously had trouble coping with. No two blocks or neighbourhoods are alike, and that goes for the people who inhabit them as well.
Walking out of my hotel in the mornings I found myself stepping directly onto a regular battlefield of cultures, all fighting to occupy the same space under the swaying palms and the hot-as-hell SoCal sun. The glitz and glamour of Hollywood up in the hills, the Skidrow winos wrestling in alleys over quarters at 9 in the morning, day-labouring hispanics waiting on Alvarado for a gig and finally the remaining millions of people who are millions of other things. Like some kind of eco-system in a perpetual violent conflict with itself, Los Angeles holds them all. Yuppies, poets, bums and bastards alike.

Figuratively speaking – and only figuratively speaking –  L.A. is not a warm place. Chaos does rule, as West pointed out. Everything is scattered about and getting your bearings is almost impossible. It’s a city best experienced from behind the wheel of a cool air-conditioned car. But still being embraced by the chaos of this city feels like a comforting act of solidarity. If you don’t fit in anywhere, you fit in everywhere. And if anywhere in this world is everywhere - it’s Los Angeles. Heaven or Hell is up to you.

Like finding a home in a hurricane.

Yours truly, smog-lovin’, surf’s up rocking, rat’s in palm-trees huntin’,

TD.

Heeeeere’s Johnny!

So I’m back after roughly two months of travelling around the world. Most of July spent on the road in glitzy-glam California. Most of August spent in the desserts of Syria, Jordan and Egypt. A truly strange and marvelous journey from one end of the scale to the other.
I’m currently writing a piece about it, so just hang the hell tight and keep yr panties on till the dust settles and I get a moment to collect myself. You know I’m good for it…

Yours humbly, jet-lagging like a bastard,

TD.