Nashville Pussy
Here at press time it seems that the ominous threat of military deployment by the U.S. in the Middle East has been stayed off or avoided providing everyone holds to all terms of the agreements made. I guess we can all breathe a sigh of relief over that...for now. Personally, I wish Clinton would declare war on this fucking El Nino shit, toss a little anthrax in its' direction, I mean someone had some in Nevada, right? Or didn't they...no one's sure really. I am sure of one thing--I am seriously tired of it raining all the time. Mind you, I haven't had to wake up eating mud one morning, lost my car to a sinkhole, nor has my home slipped into the ocean or been turned into matchsticks, but this constant wet and grey state is starting to seriously bum me out. I've heard there is an adverse physiological effect on a person due to light deprivation that often afflicts people who live in Iceland and places where it's dark 20 hours a day. I looked into this condition and found there's a special version of this for those of us closer to the equator and nearer to Prozac, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and Environmental Illnesses and it is appropriately called SAD or Seasonal Affective Disorder. Use that one to call in sick to work. "I can't make it in today, my SAD is acting up," and sigh despondently. It's characterized by depression, lack of energy, increased need for sleep, a craving for sweets and weight gain. For some it becomes debilitating. Treatment of the disorder involves bright light therapy with light boxes in the workplace, etc. Bright lights have been found to lift depression and reset sleep patterns. I began to think maybe I should go to a tanning booth or something. Yeah, right! Me in a tanning booth! Why bother even that much, crystal meth will nip all those symptoms in the bud lickety split! Of course, consulting your physician is the proper and best advice I could give if you feel you are a SAD-sufferer. Or maybe just a stern command of "GET OVER IT," would suffice. Just thinking about it, I feel better already and without the aid of a light box over my computer or a trip to the tanning booth. And lo and behold, the forecast says sunny days are actually returning soon.
There's another kind of booth where you're much more likely to catch me and that's the DJ booth where I generate my own cheery beams of sunshine to chase away the SAD-ness, and as I always say, the best way to help yourself is to help others. One of my favorite aspects of spinning records in a bar is finding specific tunes that in some way relate to or comment on or add a sick twist to current events on the news or on people's minds at the moment. Like the day the OJ verdict was made and I managed to come up with a smattering of songs bearing a theme of domestic violence or violence against women (and there are many) ending with Prince's "Darling Nikki." A more recent example would be the first day of the no smoking ordinance and coming up with all the songs I knew of about smoking, like "(you burn me up) I'm a Cigarette" by Robert Fripp and "Smoke Rings" by Les Paul and Mary Ford or "Senior Services" by Elvis Costello. Last week I was thrilled beyond belief that the seminal post-punk political rock band Gang of 4 recorded a terse, tribal, darkly funky and feedback-laden song called "Anthrax" on their classic debut album Entertainment . I had to play it twice in one shift, once directly after David Bowie's "The Secret Life of Arabia."
This whole Anthrax thing is such a lovely graphic fear-instilling sensationalized easy-to-identify mortal threat and enemy to get the nation to focus on and fear. I caught just a snippet of a news magazine-type program with an episode on biological warfare and the cheap sensationalized manner in which experts described how a minute amount of anthrax could make tens of thousands of people start to cough up slimy corroding pieces of their livers instantly and other hideous would-be details and projections of vehement certainty that Biological warfare was as sure to come as more El Nino powered weather horrors. Doesn't anyone ever think we are all being fed with lies to preoccupy our by now feeble media-manipulated minds into knee-jerk reactionary response to keep the real truths less apparent and clouded with fears and worry by merely the power of suggestion as dictated by authority? I know, conspiracy theories are bigger than ever, but can you see why? Yes or no, the answer would or could support any conspiracy theory. Does this mean that all paranoid schizophrenics are right-- -- people who managed to get through life unanesthetized by mass manipulation? It makes my head swim and reminds me of a song I play a lot lately by a great SF band who were well before their time called Frightwig, the song, "Crazy World." It goes like this, "How come a missile looks like a cock/ why is the world so messed up/...It's a crazy crazy world we live in/ (repeat).../," forever and ever infinity.
Thank heaven that music can also be an escape from all of the woes and worries of modern life as well as telling testaments of the world's condition. Escapism was definitely on my mind when I made plans with my beau on Valentines Day to go to the Bottom of The Hill to see a great band whose debut CD has been blowing my doors off and causing a bit of a stir when I play it. The band is Nashville Pussy and their release is entitled, Let Them Eat Pussy, on Amphetamine Reptile Records. This half female half male quartet from Athens, GA play a type of music best described as, to coin an over-used and only half-right phrase, Southern-Fried Rock. Imagine Lynrd Skynrd only on massive amounts of trailer park bathtub speed, imagine "Free Bird" but shot down in flames by the likes of Ted Nugent. Okay, you're getting closer to the sound of Nashville Pussy--scary, greasy, comic-book hillbilly inbred, searing and filthy rock and roll. In other words, a hellishly good time with some fine and gritty eyebrow raising kick-ass guitar playing and a pace that's fast fast fast.
What's even better, when the band took the stage at a very packed sold-out Bottom of the Hill, I saw something I had never in my life witnessed before, a woman that stands 6 feet 3 inches tall! That's right, bass player Corey Parker is a lean mean tattooed kick-ass player the size of a good ole boy only she's female. But wait, transfixed as I was already, when she put her instrument down towards the end of the show and took up a torch, a swig of some flammable liquid and breathed fire across the stage over her cowering bandmates, I was really impressed. Even more so when she kicked her way onto the floor saying stand back and we almost had us some macho mosh-retard flambe! Swear to God, I'm surprised that no one caught on fire, kind of wish some of the jerks present had though. Other antics included a very staged same sex deep tongue kiss between the bassist and guitarist that was so fucking wrong, teasingly built up to and delivering the common hetero male fantasy, that I had to love it. This band was so fucking bad ass. Musically they were nothing short of the blistering soulful hard-edged sear that I crave in rock and roll. That matched with an incredible sense of humor, a great Nashville Pussy gas station attendant shirt I purchased for ten bucks (which looks great on my heroic, tough, knife-wielding valentine) and the fact that I almost got in a fight with one of the shitbag jock rockers present that night, it was pure hell-raising escapist rock and roll fun. This was the shit and someone's lucky they didn't get stuck.
From there we proceeded on to an event that I had been to earlier in the evening and now rejoined it in progress, which was the HoleintheWallapalooza at The Eagle Tavern, a musical event featuring bands of the illustrious and creative staff and regular patrons of that dirty little biker bar, Hole in the Wall Saloon. This event turned out to be quite a success, with a large handful of bands turning out some fine performances and maintaining a healthy sized and festive crowd from around 5pm all the way through closing. The one band I caught earlier, The Little Deaths, played a sharp set that really impressed me and they had a great look--two very small girls with glasses who looked very similar and a slightly larger guy on drums, also with glasses, fronted by a screaming bleach-blonde angst-ridden guy in a beat-up straw cowboy hat who comes up with some of the best requests when I'm spinning at The Hole, and great recommendations when I'm shopping at the record store where he works. They played a formidable set that raised my eyebrow and prompts me to recommend catching them. They're opening for a great band called The Murder City Devils at Bottom of the Hill on Friday, March 13, for those superstitious folks on the edge.
Upon returning to The Eagle, The Freedom Rockers featuring the mighty bartender/DJ/and member of every cool band past and present in SF ever, Doug Hilsinger were in full swing doing their unswayable 70's rock and roll covers-only format to a wildly receptive drunken mass of fun seekers tossing out their requests for Led Zeppelin and what-not. In short the place was jumping and I hope this evening stands as a definitive event for a great bar that's slowly but surely re-defining itself in ways I could only consider a vast improvement. Need I remind you that The Eagle does feature all of your favorite DJ's from Hole in the Wall nightly, and as usual, it's all about the music. Come check it out. See you on the patio...smoking, and one more thing, the DJ no longer takes requests for "Leather Cleaner" in little brown bottles.
