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Dead Things: bikes, beer, and community
By Josh Ferguson
Jan. 5 (AGR) -- In true punk rock fashion, the show almost didn’t
happen. It was nine PM on a Sunday night, and Vincent’s Ear, the
club where the Dead Things/Manband/Life Rocks show was supposedly about
to happen, still didn’t seem to know anything about the show. But
in equally punk rock fashion, everything pulled together beautifully
in about an hour, and the two local bands and the one touring band were
soon on stage setting up.
The first band, Life Rocks, was two kids from Brooklyn banging out heartfelt
emotional songs on acoustic guitars, like if Against Me! and that guy
from the Mountain Goats started writing songs about being punk kids
and falling in love with bread bakers. The crowd seemed enthusiastic;
the mood was set.
The second band to play was The Manband, local rock and roll favorites
and Vincent’s Ear veterans. The Manband is noisy semi-mathrock
with lots of energy and strong songwriting to back it up. The wildass
bass player keeps the crowd entertained as well, while the guitarist
and drummer swapped places enough to keep things interesting. By the
end of the band’s brief set, the crowd was ready for anything.
Finally hometown heroes Dead Things took the stage to a crowd full of
rowdy and eager, PBR-soaked fans. Dead Things is by far my favorite
local band, playing straight up southern punk rock, under influences
ranging from Avail to AC/DC, fleshed out by brilliant songwriting that
relies heavily on aggressive guitar and honest, straightforward female/male
vocals.
But Dead Things is more than just adrenaline drenched live shows and
an arsenal of well crafted songs. In a scene that draws so much from
a culture of resistance, it may seem easy to crank out lyrics about
change without showing much interest in the actions thereof. But in
Dead Things, pointed, poetic lyrics of struggle are matched by living,
breathing, bike-riding proof that the struggle is more than an impotent
ideology of zines and history books. The bands that are most a part
of a community are always the ones that are most involved in their community.
Lyrics like those from “Carolina’s Burning” speak out
against local health and economy being stripped away by corporate greed:
“Carolina’s drowning in the raw sewage from the honey ham
and bacon strips of the entire nation. The ones the antibiotics managed
to keep alive shut down small farms so the pigs can ride all the diesel
trucks that move along the line. If they could only see what’s
buried in the back yard… if they could only see where we used to
go swimming.”
Globally minded activism is always viewed through the lens of local
community life. Who we are as a community needs to be the foundation
for what we fight to see in the world. But along with the struggle comes
the joy of community, and the passion for life together in our city,
with our friends. “In the dirty south we dance all night and scream
and yell... There’s a desperation here and a passion for our friends
because we never know when it’ll be the last time” -(“Dirty
South”).
Community minded lyrics are matched by community involvement and a commitment
to living them out in the world. In 2002 the band went on the “Carolina’s
Burning,” a.k.a. the “Fuck the Tour-Van Tour,” a statewide
tour carried out on bicycles overloaded with instruments and props and
dumpstered food. By refusing to accept that playing music on tour requires
burning gasoline, the band took their show on the road on their own
terms, at the benefit of the environment and their own health. The nature
of this tour also made the band more accessible to fans who wanted to
ride their own bikes more, or to find out more about a more conscientious,
sustainable lifestyle.
Individual members of the band are also involved heavily in the Asheville
Bicycle Recyclery, in various puppetry projects, and other community
efforts that further dialogue about permaculture and sustainable living.
And despite their pseudo-mythical local status as a band, all members
are completely down to earth and involved in bettering their community.
I recommend talking to them after a show, if you never have. Start a
conversation about bikes, or composting, or AC/DC. They’re good
people.
So next time you hear Dead Things on tape or on stage, get involved,
don’t just watch from a distance. Join in the crowd, scream along
with the band against global imperialism and local ecological oppression;
“Don’t want to! Don’t need to! Didn’t ask me, no
I won’t support you!” It happens every time, with an outpouring
of emotion and singalongs with fists in the air and hugs all around.
Join in, “dance around, scream and yell,” and celebrate the
community struggle while celebrating your friends in the community all
at the same time.
Our New Punk Rock
By Kevin Canfield
Punk rock emerged in the 1970s as the decade’s most compelling
music of social criticism, a mantle that in the ’80s was handed
off to hip-hop. In the ’90s, thoughtful kids with acoustic guitars
pushed their way to the fore, delivering some of the smartest commentary
of the Clinton era. It’s still too soon to tell who’ll get
the baton in the early years of the 21st century, but don’t bet
against a Canadian collective that is single-handedly inventing a new
genre of politically progressive music.
Despite its grandiose name, the Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra &
Tra-La-La Band with Choir is actually a group of six musicians who make
an improbably big sound.
The band recently released its third full-length record, the idiosyncratically
titled “‘This is Our Punk Rock,’ Thee Rusted Satellites
Gather + Sing.” Melding classical music (violin, cello and piano)
with traditional rock instruments and a variety of found sounds, the
album is less a commercial product than an indictment of militarism,
globalism and conspicuous consumption. Like the best and most enduring
art, it is complex and thought-provoking. But then, this is nothing
new for the enigmatic Efrim Menuck and company.
If Menuck’s Mt. Zion is perhaps the most interesting band working
today, a close second is another musical outfit of which he is a part,
the equally abstruse Godspeed You! Black Emperor. Though the two bands
share several members, they don’t necessarily mirror one another;
a nine-piece band, Godspeed plays big, muscular instrumentals while
Mt. Zion employs abstract lyrics and spare arrangements. Jointly, though,
they are creating their own movement.
What’s the movement about? Well, to judge by the handful of interviews
band members have granted, the album art that accompanies their records
and, of course, the music itself, it’s about opposing imperialism
and forced gentrification. It’s about combating corporate takeovers
of local communities and resisting crass consumerism. It’s about
the right to voice dissent and to live free from government snooping.
As it says in the liner notes that accompany This is Our Punk Rock,
“hearts in need make symphonies.”
What’s truly exciting about Godspeed and in particular, the new
Mt. Zion record, is the way in which the two bands have managed to make
music that is at once listenable and emblematic of a unified artistic
and social vision. Even more impressive: They do it with nothing resembling
conventional rock lyrics.
Godspeed’s compositions are vast, surging instrumentals that derive
their appeal from the clash of musical cultures (rock and classical).
Mt. Zion’s songs are also long—the four tracks on This is
Our Punk Rock consume nearly 58 minutes —but, if only for the presence
of occasional vocals, are somewhat easier to appreciate.
As its title suggests, “Goodbye Desolate Railyard” is a song
about the old railroad at the center of the band’s Montreal community
and the way it is being overrun by condos and big retail outlets. “American
Motor Over Smoldered Field,” with its warning to the Western world’s
power brokers—“The ice around your garden/ Won’t keep
the walls from falling,” Menuck repeats again and again—is
at once poetic and hypnotic.
Menuck, too, has hit on something new with his vocal delivery; he sings
off-key, and he does it on purpose. It’s as if he’s saying
to anyone who will listen, “We may not be conventionally beautiful,
we may not share your ideas, but we are here, and you are going to have
to deal with it.”
In an era when Britney Spears is celebrated as socially aware because
she spends an hour with poor kids while the MTV cameras roll, it’s
premature to suggest that a band like Mt. Zion or Godspeed You! Black
Emperor will be an iconic voice. Band members refuse to play the publicity
game; they do not appear in videos, are almost never photographed and,
judging by the relatively low price of their records, have no interest
in money.
But in their own way, Godspeed and Mt. Zion are changing the world,
one complicated record at a time.
Source: In These Times
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