Sweet Portable You

from the archives # 1
Sweet Portable You #47:
December 6, 1991

Kyuss > Wretch > Chameleon LP
...we all need a good bangin' from time to time. Yes...at a desk, in a car...As I figure, one of the guys associated with makin' this LP knowz what's goin' on, whether it's the guitarist, bassist, drummer, producer, janitor, or what, I don't know. Maybe even one of the lovelies hangin' around-n-workin' the tool. I don't friggin' know but I'm pretty sure it ain't the singer 'cause he's got yer atypical
rocknrollerkickaxeenparty voices so often associated with yer atypical rockandrollkickaxenparty band. Infacto, dude, this piece o' vinyl (via advance cassette--uh huh!) would be just right fer that good bangin' I was reef-ering to earlier in the broadcast. MAN o man, if they had only listened to that responsible party throughout, I can only imagine. Imagine...a metalesque bunch of cowboy-dud-sportin' ass whompers with a...with a...with a...with a touch of Burma? Jesus! Drive the stake through me! I'm fuckin' buyin' land up there...really...ok, it is just the slightest touch...but whoever came up with them should have listened to more/the one in charge. The others probably let him have his way just enough to keep him in the band. Stupid idiots.
The Walking Dude

Loscil > Triple Point > Kranky CD
Not that it mattered too much, because it was in the past and we all know how the past is and all that shit, right: it is dead. Conversely, it is a fascinating place, full of whoosing ideas and stories and feelings that are safe because we know how they come out in the end. We can learn to like it there. Cancer spreads still, though, and we might get it. There is a need to go out into the night, to bask in the moonglow, to lay on the street by the curb and let the rainwater wash all over our bodies. To curse at the November sky, to dig fingernails into flesh and take something up, to plug the drain and fill it with sand. There is a need to try, in other words. To try to cancel the past, to make it unreachable, to grasp fillings with our hands and rip them out of the history book, making the past not someplace that we get to by closing our eyes and squeezing into the neck of a bottle but a place that isn't there because we made this here and now so damned real and unusual. We victimize ourselves and that's why we catch it on tape. The catch here and now and the catch as catch-can and even still catch as catch between 21 and 23.. Discrete Entropy? Make mine Fuel Exergy, too, thanks very much.   Patrick Foster

Acid Mothers Temple & The Melting Paraiso U.F.O. > New Geocentric World of... >
Squealer CD
I like to think of the time I was talking to Joe Gross about something musical or other and I mentioned to him the latest release from Last Days of May and he said "Oh, now that's good: Shit is just blowing up."
I like to think of that when I listen to this. And I like to listen to this.   Patrick Foster

Low > Things We Lost in the Fire> Kranky CD
I'm reminded that some demons still require wrestling, that is, my background noise could stand to be turned down a notch or two. Might not be able to get to it tonight. Soon, though.
It's too nice outside for lifting these anchors; I will simply shed them. As the weather here grows warmer, and the season gives us its first juniper blossoms and pale calves, I will ask the wind and sun to scour me.
Splinters will work their way free to fall upon summer's floor, and I shall turn my attention to cleaning fingerprints from windows.      Dr. Sweaterback

Windy and Carl> Consciousness > Kranky CD
Lay on the grass and play its game of itches.
Watch helicopters scuttle birds, flap and whir.
Listen as the sun stoops to make way for evening murmurs.    Dr. Sweaterback

System of A Down > Toxicity >Columbia/American CD
Though I'm often maligned by pals for being too pro-treble, those with seasoned ears should be able to hear that no 'heavy' mainstream band understands the high end like System of A Down. Back on their three-years-gone debut, "Sugar"---though who knows what the fuck it's supposed to really be about---is a cranium shaker of the purest grade: the setting between chiing! and zoom! on Daron Malakian's guitar makes any Big Black track you care to name sound like Poison and combined with an eye-poppingly weird, room-clearing show at the 930 last winter (or so) put me curiously in their camp. Reports that they were over-laboring Destroyer-style (string sections, choirs, disemboweling Bob Ezrin) over this follow-up were none too promising and the mere fact that they've held Sony Inc. at arm's length while they worked on more trax (read: smoked more pot) is enough to at least think about forking over 14 for this disc even if none of the Sony fuckheads saw fit to send it to me. Plus, the fun hasn't gone out of making records when you're stoned, right? If it is still a blast, none of the 14 (count 'em) pieces that made this disc (they claim to have recorded 32) betray any merriment, which is about what you'd expect, but remember that the whole SOAD first album thing was that below the bellow and head-flopping riffage there was a weird-n-live-n-wired heart beating. Happily, like that debut, once into the flail, Toxicity flares up into the same kind of strong heart and even though it doesn't pump enough steady pulses to sustain an entire disc (or even register on the EKG during the first pressing's "bonus" disc--a useless making of video cd) it flashes hard and hot enough to keep things purty damned interesting...call Toxicity a draw that inches up the Cali quartet's promise and thankfully doesn't dumb it down.
Stuffed with Ezrin-style hard rock touches---including the inevitable string section, (did anyone take The Ex's cue that the best way to orchestrate the rock is to battle the living fuck out of it in full engagement mode?) SOAD still careens or coasts or stalls depending on Malakian's guitar whims (bassist Shavo Doadjian's lines are just keep out of the way though drum-mad-dog John Dolmayan occasionally whomps with genuine fervor) and they are often deliriously smashing: "Deer Dance"---which might feature mandolin (!)---sounds like a powerline dancing free from it's connections, "X" might be Fugazi sending up Pantera, "Chop Suey!" (despite not seeming to be about anything either) is a masterful heavy-guitar tune based on the acoustic, the title track buries a masterful and mature payoff hook and "Shimmy" tunnels at nerve endings like a wicked orthodontist.
Still, as nice as most of Toxicity sounds, being down with Down is often about singer Serj Tankian. His trademark inhale-roar (like "Honey! Something's in the kitchen disposal that shouldn't be there!") is thankfully deployed only minimally and any notions of sticking SOAD into a don't-care-to-know file of rock-rap acts (Durst-ish division) are quickly stomped by the opening "Prison Song", which is we-must-keep-our-eyes-open and features Serj talk-cramming phrases like "the percentage of Americans in the prison system has doubled since 1985" in an awkward stumble. Employing such a off-balance talk-thing not only separates S.T. from any lame rap connections (since they don't even try to not sound like a nth generation outfit trying to get mad skillz) but shaves the band into a little more defined original space. The same thing happens on "Deer Dance", too (listen to "rubber bullet kisses/baton courtesy") and since both songs explode into give and take choruses of righteous boogie, one would imagine it's a design element and not a lame pull-up. And significantly, it works.
Tankian has obviously grown as a lyric-man, though his tendency to overflow generic dark heavy terms (die, angel, suicide--"Chop Suey!" nearly sinks cuz of it) makes you feel your back in the back row in high school composition classes. Still, "Prison Song", "Jet Pilot"---esp. chilling in light of events of 11 Sep: "Wired were the eyes of a horse on a jet pilot/one that smiled when he flew over the bay"..."his remorse/was that he couldn't survey the skies right before they went gray"---"X", "Science" and "Bounce", the latter a deliciously twisted little sexual ditty that might be their most complete song ever, are all smartly smart in a mainstream kinda way. There isn't enough of Serj's roar-into-notes-of-actual-singing stuff, but that might just be the reaction of someone (me) wanting another dose of "Sugar" and not really finding one.
All of this long and unorganized speil on a mainstream rock record reports on itself (and again, me) though: Toxicity is worth a fuck, this head-spewage of mine tells me so. System of A Down ain't just another stoopid nu-heavy-whatever-dick-slap-cash-in-gimmick-combo that the kidz (and kidz little brothers) are being force-chowed (stand up Iowa) and though Toxicity is flawed, it's still moving forward and out and up and sweeps into sound moments that are massively creepy and seriously rock. All that, and this: people are buying--- the thing shifted enough units in its' first week to land at number-fucking-one on the Billboard-banging-Soundscan board. What it mean? Means don't switch the clicker on the System, they just might be something. Patrick Foster