Author: Andrew Earles

Here’s the story: Metal was born when four hoods decided that Black Sabbath was a much cooler name than Earth. There were lesser-knowns who approached the heaviness of Ozzy and entourage, but Black Sabbath took it to the people. Led Zeppelin too, in several of their permutations, were tough enough to be metal. Then Judas Priest’s late-’70s classics — specifically, the trio of Sad Wings of Destiny (1976), Sin After Sin (1977), and Stained Class (1978) — moved the music into the “new wave” of British heavy metal, a movement whose most famous exports would be Iron Maiden (important) and Def Leppard (after their first album, not so important).

At this point, things get really complicated. Punk, hardcore, and metal jumped in the sack, conceiving a new breed of heavy bands such as Motorhead, Venom, Discharge, and then Slayer, Metallica, and Megadeth. Then, in the mid-to-late ’80s, things got inexplicable. Subgenres such as thrash, death-metal, and grindcore would all hatch and flourish, finally establishing an underground that found rabid fans in Earth’s every nook and cranny. (Oh wait, I forgot hair-metal, because it’s not metal. Except for early Mötley Crüe, Hanoi Rocks, and, later, Guns N’ Roses, it was nothing more than pop music ripping off the New York Dolls and calling itself metal.)

And now, in 2004, this subterranean scene may finally be ready to send one of its own triumphantly to the surface: Metal fans, salute Mastodon, who, though named after an extinct creature, may nevertheless be the future of their genre.

Whereas most bands fit into predictable models –frontman and backup or core members and rotating players –Mastodon is the result of two distinct musical pairings. The first, Brann Dailor and Bill Kelliher, served as the rhythm section for Nashville’s early-’90s entry in the underground metal scene, Today Is the Day. To an almost disturbing level (especially live), Today Is the Day was a band that elevated the role of emotional catharsis in the music, and this was never more evident than on 1999’s In the Eyes of God album and tour, of which Dailor and Kelliher were an unmistakable part.

After splitting from Today Is the Day that same year, the pair moved back to their hometown of Rochester, New York, to decompress and plan the next move, which would turn out to be Atlanta. It was there that Dailor and Kelliher met the other half of Mastodon, Troy Sanders and Brent Hinds. The chemistry of the new band was such that fully formed songs were written within weeks. With one of the all-time greatest metal names secured, Mastodon hit the road in 2000. And by consistently sweeping the stage of the bands they shared bills with, Mastodon quickly established itself as a force not unlike a giant, extinct, hairy mammal clearing clubs of would-be competitors.

Mastodon cherry-picks the gems from over three decades of top-drawer metal and then updates all of the influences into a futuristic, unstoppable detonation. The not entirely unthinkable combination of the Voivod’s visionary exploits with heavy indie math-metal (Slint) and extreme metal (mostly death-metal) becomes a sucker-punching reality when one is in the presence of this band. All of this seemed to be fully gestated when Mastodon dropped Lifesblood in August 2001. The six-song EP was released on the metal safe house Relapse Records, the signing a result of the band’s whopping live reputation and incessant touring, where Mastodon was probably shaming a lot of existing Relapse bands with whom they were paired.

Less than a year later, Mastodon finished Remission (also on Relapse), a debut full-length that expanded the style of the EP. Lines were blurred in the wake of Remission: Rockers, metalheads, indie fans, hardcore kids they all came together in response to the sheer intensity and breadth that Mastodon was capable of delivering. To someone completely unfamiliar with underground metal, who thinks that metal means Poison or Cinderella, I liken the introduction to the first time Bill Cosby heard N.W.A. (Another incorrect assumption would be that Mastodon has anything to do with the metalization of inverted-baseball-cap hardcore as illustrated by roid-rage nincompoops like Hatebreed or Earth Crisis or the “nü-metal” of innumerable semiliterate halfwits like Slipknot/Staind/Limp Bizkit, which, to quote comedian David Cross, is like an 11-year-old girl’s poetry coming out of a 30-year-old man’s mouth.)

In the 12 months since last year’s Memphis Flyer local music poll, the Makeshift Music logo has graced five disparate local indie releases: Blair Combest’s Prettier Than Ugly, the Glass’ Concorde, Brad Postlethwaite’s Welcome to the Occupation, the Coach and Four’s Unlimited Symmetry, and Makeshift #3, the third installment in the compilation series that has become the local label’s signature. Three of these acts broke into the Top 10 of the Flyer‘s music poll for the first time — the Glass at #4, the Coach and Four at #6, and Combest at #9. Postlethwaite’s band, Snowglobe, Makeshift’s flagship, finished at #5 despite not releasing an album in nearly two years. Has the past year been good to Makeshift, or has Makeshift been good to the past year?

A sprawling community of interconnected, largely twentysomething Midtown-based musicians and artists, Makeshift is referred to as a label because, right, it releases records. But it might be more accurate to call Makeshift an anti-label –not a business set up merely to make money but rather a collective of like-minded artists helping themselves by helping each other.

Makeshift was co-founded in 1999 by Postlethwaite and Josh Hicks, recent graduates of Houston and Christian Brothers high schools, respectively, and Aaron Rehling, still a student at Houston.

The concept for Makeshift began with The First Broadcast, a compilation CD designed to showcase the various musical outlets for Postlethwaite, Hicks, and Rehling. But even with that first release, the group made an effort to reach past their musical and social circles to include artists such as the Lost Sounds’ Alicja Trout and Lucero’s Roy Berry.

“Josh did a whole lot of work as far as getting people involved that were outside of our group of friends,” Postlethwaite says. “And Aaron has always been instrumental in recruiting the heavier bands on the comps.”

Makeshift #2, released late 2001, was a turning point that ushered in the label’s prolific run of the past two years. The sequel was a more expansive outing both in terms of sound (including a selection from indie hip-hop collective –that word again –Memphix) and the inclusion of higher-profile local acts (Lost Sounds and Lucero in full along with singer-songwriter Cory Branan). One particular Young Avenue Deli benefit show for the compilation pulled a social coup within Memphis’ cliquish indie scene: It put the Lost Sounds, Lucero, and Snowglobe fans in the same room.

Makeshift’s activity, longevity, and diligence are qualities not always associated with Memphis’ indie history. Since the widespread emergence of indie rock in the late-’80s/early-’90s, Memphis has arguably had but one true heyday. In the mid-’90s, with Shangri-La Records at its most active and with the rising stature of Easley-McCain Studios, Memphis seemed poised to align with other underground rock hotspots of the era. Then there was a lull. Bands started, bands broke up, and more bands broke up.

When anyone thinks of both “Memphis” and “music,” there’s a clear mental image that emerges. It’s a crucial part of what makes Memphis Memphis. But there’s a downside too: It sometimes seems that Memphis music can only be conceived in terms of the city’s indigenous styles. Makeshift’s presence during the past year places it in a position to change that. As Shangri-La Projects proprietor Sherman Willmott, who helped introduce the Grifters to indie-rock fans, puts it: “It’s good to see the Young Turks picking up the Memphis music baton, especially since they are releasing such atypically non-Memphis Memphis music.”

These communal, localized scenes are a fairly common indie-rock phenomenon. Early on, Makeshift drew inspiration from Elephant 6, a mid-’90s indie-rock collective (Apples in Stereo, Neutral Milk Hotel, Olivia Tremor Control, etc.) whose members were spread out around the country (mainly Athens, Georgia, and Denver) but who worked together on each others’ records. The Makeshift logo went on Snowglobe’s Our Land Brains, but the album was released on another indie. This was common with Elephant 6 too. Labels like Merge, Flydaddy, and SpinArt would handle different bands’ releases but Elephant 6 was still credited.

Postlethwaite lived in Athens for a while during Elephant 6’s heyday and sees a comparison between the two groups. “The idea is similar in terms of having different artists cooperating,” Postlethwaite says. “The fundamental thing that brings [Makeshift artists] together is the realization that we can do more together than seperately. If someone picks up a record with the Makeshift logo on it and likes it, then maybe they’ll look for another. We all like each other’s music, so there’s a good chance other people will too.”

But Makeshift has outgrown the Elephant 6 comparison in the past year. Where Elephant 6 bands were connected by a similar sound, Makeshift unites a more diverse slate of artists. To put Makeshift in a more contemporary context, you might compare them to Omaha’s well-publicized Saddle Creek collective (Bright Eyes et al.). Though Saddle Creek is an official label, both it and Makeshift enlist the help of a large local gaggle of artists and friends, and both are located in mid-sized cities with relatively insular music scenes.

As an anthropology student who has even considered doing an ethnography on the Makeshift subculture, Postlethwaite is aware of the potential pitfalls of the Makeshift “movement.”

“What constitutes someone being involved in Makeshift?” Postlethwaite asks aloud. “I wonder if some people find it elitist. I didn’t want it to be like that. When I lived in Athens and was around Elephant 6, I got that feeling. Everyone was having a great time with each other, but it was hard for an outsider to break in [to that circle].”

But if the parameters of the Makeshift scene are a little hazy, there’s no doubt that the heart of it resides with the four artists who made this year’s poll:

The Glass’ Concorde is a collection of mini-epics: Eight songs in 45 minutes that meld Brad Bailey’s singer-songwriter skills with minimal-to-thick song structures. The Glass manages to evoke both dad and son Buckley (Tim and Jeff, respectively), which is a successful marriage new to these ears. They also deliver a charming live cover of the Replacements’ “Unsatisfied.” By moving to Memphis just three-and-a-half years ago, Bailey holds the distinction of being one of Makeshift’s “proper album” artists who is relatively new to the Makeshift collective.

Combest, another high school friend of Postlethwaite’s (“Brad and I were in a band called the Fatty Go Easies, which was totally immature, like They Might Be Giants without testicles,” says Combest), has been in the fold for the duration. His Prettier Than Ugly is “rootsier” than its Makeshift contemporaries, so much so that listeners probably would hear it as an alt-country record, whatever “alt-country” means in the year 2004. The frequent Bob Dylan comparisons Combest receives are actually reasonable, and with Snowglobe doing their best Flying Burrito Brothers impression as Combest’s backing band, there’s a lot more personality on Prettier Than Ugly than on the standard Bloodshot Records/No Depression fare.

If the Brads aren’t confusing you yet, enter the Coach and Four’s Brad Stanfill, a longtime Makeshift collaborator. The Coach and Four’s Unlimited Symmetry is so meticulously built without sounding crowded or too complex (it’s a pop album too) that Memphis might be the most unlikely source most music fans would think of in a blind taste test. Like early Sea and Cake, before they started making dentist-waiting-room rock, or late-’80s/early-90s Sonic Youth, the Coach and Four have made a toothy and timely guitar record.

Stanfill got his Makeshift induction through the collective’s most memorable nonmusical endeavor: “Brad [Postlethwaite] called me up about two years ago and said, ‘Hey, I got a bucket of plaster and about a thousand of these ridiculous mule-donkey posters. Wanna go put some up?’ I agreed.Later he explained to me that he and Josh were planning to put out a compilation CDof various Memphis musicians.” After plastering Midtown with the mysterious image, it became the cover for Makeshift #2.

As a founder and the perpetual decision-maker, the unassuming Postlethwaite is Makeshift’s ringleader. He would hate that tag, but no one has a better understanding of the unclear boundaries, challenges, and idealism that characterize Makeshift. “What might be the one defining characteristic of ‘Makeshift bands’ is that we all like each other’s music. All of the core people involved seem to be fans of each other,” says Postlethwaite.

And there are a lot of other players who play a role in the Makeshift universe. Sasha Barr, a local artist with an impressive national portfolio, including album covers and show prints for Pedro the Lion and the Bonnaroo compilations, serves as resident Makeshift artist.

“With a label like Makeshift, it gives inspiration to those who didn’t think that they could make a solid record on their own and helps showcase the talent we have here in Memphis,” Barr says. “If Makeshift continues and ‘succeeds’ in any way outside of the city, it becomes a perfect example of a group of people getting their shit together and setting out to pursue a dream with little to no start-up,” explains Barr.

Snowglobe’s other songwriting force is Tim Regan. Regan also serves as a journeyman musician on others’ records (the Glass, Combest, etc.) and, along with ex-Pawtucket Kevin Cubbins (both are engineers associated with Easley), is a common presence behind the boards. Cubbins recorded the new Snowglobe album (set for release later this year) and recently accented them on pedal steel for a short tour. The new album was originally being looked at for release by Indianapolis indie Secretly Canadian, but some friendly red tape has put the album back on the home front. “We joke around about the fact that by the time we spend all of this money and do all of this gruntwork for the other records, it will be time for the Snowglobe CD to come out, and that’s the one that will go big,” says Bailey.

When asked if he views Makeshift as a label or a loose collective, Cubbins explains, “I think that if Makeshift were to organize and get tax ID numbers, it would risk destroying that framework of idealism and camaraderie. At the same time, I think they are wondering where to go from here. The only thing to do is to somehow face these challenges and come up with some way to push Makeshift to the next level.”

Of the pieces that have to fall into place to make a CD or record, the one that requires the most work is the one that is most often taken for granted. Running a record label is laborious, thankless work. Pulling an all-nighter writing or practicing music is high glamour compared to seeing the sun come up after hours of stuffing and addressing envelopes, hand-making and filling sleeves, organizing contacts, and other tedious but necessary tasks. “Brad [Postlethwaite] does a lot of the dirty work that someone running a collective wouldn’t normally do, like dealing with promotional companies and distributors,” says Stanfill.

On the immediate horizon for Makeshift is the sophomore release by Snowglobe and a solo album from ex-Pawtucket Andy Grooms. Makeshift’s increasing productivity has provoked a few logistical questions that put Postlethwaite at a crossroads. “The environment that Makeshift is in might lead it to become either a label or just a name, both due to individual artist’s demands and needs combined with a lack of money,” says Postlethwaite. “Part of the freedom is that we can do whatever we want with the name, but as the roster and recognition grow, there is a definite pressure to organize, and the thought of becoming a traditional label is there.” As Makeshift is currently constituted, being part of the group doesn’t preclude bands from working with other labels. Were Makeshift to become more formal, that might change.

“We started working [on this] six to eight months ago, trying to figure out how Makeshift could operate with more organization,” says Combest. “We need to find someone who can put in 15 to 20 hours a week, who has the organizational skill that Brad [Postlethwaite] and I don’t, who is not previously involved with Makeshift, and who isn’t dating, like, a bass player in one of the bands or something.”

The slippery catch-22 is that, possibly because of Makeshift’s hazy boundaries, the group has been able to contribute greatly to Memphis’ underground music scene. But that same informal structure might also hurt Makeshift’s progress. Makeshift is based on handshake agreements and the hard work of people who have more on their plates than career music goals –school, work, and personal art or music that may be extraneous to Makeshift.

This is not to say that contractless labels can’t thrive. Chicago’s Touch and Go Records, for instance, grew to be an omnipresent and influential imprint based on handshake deals, but this ethic hurt them when the Butthole Surfers almost sued them out of existence over the band’s back catalog. Makeshift is a nonprofit in that it generates no walking-around money for any of its participants. But it’s not a nonprofit on paper –in fact, it doesn’t exist on paper at all — which could lead to some legal uncertainty down the road if the “label” continues to grow. “Not that there is any money, but sometimes I wonder what the taxman sees when he looks at Makeshift,” says Postlethwaite.

“At the least, we will need to do some centralization within the coming year, that’s for sure,” says Postlethwaite. “But where some labels wouldn’t want to be regarded as a stepping stone for artists, that is what I want Makeshift to be. I don’t want to be the authoritative one barking orders or the one in the front of the photos. With any given project, it seems to get more and more complicated the more people you have involved with it, and even if I wasn’t in this position, I know that another Makeshift person would be.”

Additional reporting by Chris Herrington

Voter comments:

Makeshift #3 is the most accurate pulse of the Midtown music thing right now. —Mark McKinney

4. The Glass

Finally, something new and different for Memphis. Their cover of the Replacements’ “Unsatisfied” is great. —Amanda Dugger

Combing equal parts Jeff Buckley and Crazy Horse to create rock-and-roll that should be heard. —Gary Crump

5. Snowglobe

These guys take a different path from most of their Makeshift label counterparts. You can actually smile at their shows and not feel bad for it. Watch out for Phish kids, though.

—Matt Cole

In its very early days a pretentious mess, this band has matured into the city’s most ambitious outfit, an art-rock band as concerned with songwriting as it is with chops and musical interludes. What may be more significant, however, is the fact that an entire scene of seriously talented musicians (Paul Taylor, Andy Grooms, the Glass, Blair Combest) has sprung up around the band, and this has resulted in a flurry of collaboration and creativity unrivaled in town since the heyday of Stax. —Mark Jordan

6. The Coach and Four

Yet another Makeshift Records band starting to garner attention. The Unlimited Symmetry album is amazing. —Matt Cole

This band entices you with astounding instrumental openings then layers in the vocals. The textures created in their songs will lure you into a rhythmic groove. I do not believe you can watch this band live and not move something, whether it’s your toe or your head. —Janet Wilson

9. Blair Combest

This guy is a great lyricist: witty, charismatic, and with just enough of the twisted dark stuff. His voice has a stark, timeless quality to it that I think could stand above today’s wimpier lot of singer-songwriters. Look for big things from this guy. — Kevin Cubbins

Over beers one night, two of the very best songwriters in the city dismissed Combest’s Prettier Than Ugly (well-made and played, they admitted) as rehashed Dylan. Well, maybe so. Sure, there’s the nasal vocal delivery, and a few songs aggressively “borrow” from the Dylan oeuvre. But really, what songwriter hasn’t cut his teeth on the freewheelin’ Dylan? Besides, Combest’s winning melodies and the subtle backing of Snowglobe (those guys, again) elevate this effort to a higher level. —Mark Jordan

Next local shows:

The Memphis in Makeshift Music Festival

Saturday, May 1st, starting at 3 p.m.

Corner of G.E. Patterson and Front

(across from the Blue Monkey)

Featuring: Snowglobe, The Coach and Four, The Glass,

Cory Branan, Dixie Dirt, Blair Combest, The Pirates,

The Secret Service, The Passport Again,

Amy and the Tramps, and The Joint Chiefs

The Passport Again, Blair Combest,

and Brad Postlethwaite

The Hi-Tone CafÇ

Sunday, May 2nd

Subtlety is a dead art in underground heavy music: Artists such as Dillinger Escape Plan, System of a Down, Mr. Bungle, any number of left-field death-/grind-metal bands, and the twin granddaddies John Zorn and Frank Zappa have been shoveling dirt on top of the corpse for years. Fans of heavy music are no longer expected to dig too deep or pay too much attention to musical nuance. Why bother when these bands beat their art over your head like a sock full of AA batteries? And too often this assault wears the listener out with its forced prowess, weirdness, and a cleverness that is frequently anything but clever. I truly regret that no one paid proper attention to these artists in high school, but we shouldn’t have to pay for it by attending to their paint-by-numbers intensity.

Dead Meadow is the remedy. This Washington, D.C., trio proffers a form of art-metal that doesn’t rely on extreme facial hair to get their point across and, miraculously, doesn’t include a member who makes “wacky” faces while running up and down the fret board of the World’s Most Dangerous Bass (given away by wood grain and more than four strings). The band may, upon a perfunctory listen, sound easy to classify as throwback artists, but there’s so much going on under the surface. At first you might think of the band as a simple power trio or a Blue Cheer tribute act, but when you start to hear the past 30 years of psychedelic pop, thudding boogie, and heavy (and doom) metal seeping from their molasses-tempo music, then Dead Meadow’s achievement seems anything but simple.

In the space of three albums, Dead Meadow has steadily evolved a working marriage among some intriguing bedfellows: the proto-metal of Sabbath, the aforementioned Blue Cheer, Atomic Rooster, Budgie, and Led Zeppelin; the Anglo-drone of Spacemen 3; the more topical psychedelia of Bardo Pond; and ’80s doom-metal outsiders Saint Vitus and Trouble.

The nation’s capital has long been a key home for heavy music and other forms of underground rock, from the once-dominant hard-core sounds of Bad Brains and Minor Threat to the lighter indie rock of the Teenbeat and Simple Machines labels. But Dead Meadow doesn’t owe much to any of those scenes, instead coming together to create something entirely on their own terms.

At first, Dead Meadow’s sound did owe a passing debt to another scene that flourished in the late ’90s: the unfortunately named (and often sounding) “stoner rock” movement, which casual rock fans can thank for giving birth to Queens of the Stone Age. Though not much of that scene remains vital today, the now-defunct flagship label Man’s Ruin did a bang-up job of saturating the already tiny market with musicians who incorrectly assumed they could do something different with a Sabbath riff. Most of the stoner rock movement was born of either decommissioned death-metallers or stalwarts from the early-’90s “aggro” gutter-rock scene that gave us the Jesus Lizard, Helmet, and the prominence of the Touch & Go and Amphetamine Reptile labels. Logistically, Dead Meadow had nothing to do with this but would certainly appeal to fans of the scene’s better bands, like Kyuss, Sleep, and the atmospheric metal of Seattle’s Earth.

Fugazi bassist Joe Lally made the connection between the emerging hometown band and that nationwide scene and released Dead Meadow’s first two albums on his (also now defunct) Tolotta label — both in fairly quick succession during 2001. Prominent indie Matador Records snapped up the band in 2003, throwing them on tour with Guided By Voices and releasing the band’s current album, Shivering King and Others. And though Dead Meadow is certainly less palatable (and completely different) from the label’s recent cash cows — the New Pornographers and Interpol — the relationship can only mean more exposure for a great band. No harm in that. On a European jaunt, the band so impressed John Peel that he not only wanted to record Dead Meadow but allowed the band to do it at home in the States, a first for his legendary sessions.

Apparent road dogs, the trio has toured extensively over the past three years, and Monday night will mark their fourth appearance in our usually skipped burg. Live, they go all analog and pump extreme volume through beautiful Orange amps, creating a clean, balanced, and near-deafening unity. This may be the answer to whatever that nebulous term “power trio” means. Guitar, bass, drums — plenty of power? Yes. And dreamy psych, amazing solos (and I generally detest solos), and high-register vocals delivering big fat hooks. Think of it as Beach Boys and Mountain somehow morphing into the same band, except that the guitarist doesn’t weigh 400 pounds.

Dead Meadow can be a lot of things to a lot of different listeners. They forego the testosterone hemorrhaging of so many more mundane heavy bands but pack an ample punch anyway. The wah-wah pedal is never lonely, but not abused. The vocals are refreshingly pretty for this type of music, and they fulfill an always noble goal: They stick in your head. So while I lament the demise of subtlety in all things loud, Dead Meadow shows that impact and diversity can be achieved in the heavy-music arena without solipsism, self-aggrandizement, and screaming at the top of your lungs.

Rocket from the Tombs is indeed a legendary outfit but in a slippery, paradoxical manner. As a band, their run book-ended the summers of 1974 and ’75. During that time, they played around 10 shows, recorded a radio broadcast, and never released any official material. But the band is important for two reasons. Number one: the band’s sound. There is no more perfect missing link between the proto-punk of the Stooges/MC5 and the punk/post-punk of the late ’70s. Reason number two: the band’s personnel, who would go on to form two wildly influential bands. Founding members David Thomas and Peter Laughner would dissolve Rocket to form Pere Ubu, while guitarist Gene O’Connor and drummer John Madansky would adopt the stage names Cheetah Chrome and Johnny Blitz, respectively, and assemble the Dead Boys. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Mid-’70s Cleveland was a hotbed in a bubble. The Mirrors and the Electric Eels, contemporaries of Rocket, are also regarded as forefathers of punk, art-punk, and post-punk, though the three bands were disparate in sound. Boil it down and it was just a handful of working-class, fatalistic weirdos laying the groundwork for what would be a fertile if short-lived scene. As is so often the case with seminal music scenes that flame out, these artists were posthumously hyped to extremes, when, in fact, the number of people who actually saw the bands perform in the mid-’70s might have been as few as 100.

In 1974, Thomas was calling himself Crocus Behemoth. He and bassist Craig Bell retooled a bar band with self-destructive savant Laughner. O’Connor and Madansky jumped on board, and Rocket from the Tombs was born.

A man of considerable um “stage presence,” Thomas was always into the theatrical aspects of rock-and-roll (Pere Ubu was named after Alfred Jarry’s The Ubu Trilogy — groundbreaking satirical plays from the 19th century), sometimes performing while covered head-to-toe in tinfoil. His distinctive love-it-or-hate-it howl/cackle was so intense that different vocalists were tried out for Rocket (including a very young Stiv Bators, who would go on to sing for the Dead Boys), but the band settled on Thomas and his singing would later become one of the defining factors in Pere Ubu.

The heart of Rocket from the Tombs and the burgeoning Cleveland scene, however, was Peter Laughner. A Lou Reed-obsessed autodidact with a dangerous penchant for chemical abuse, Laughner was also a music writer and poet. He was responsible for bringing many New York bands to Cleveland, including Television, with whom he was also obsessed and tried to join. Rumor has it that he pulled a gun when turned down by that band. While writing for Creem, he began a chaotic friendship with the granddaddy of rock-and-roll-as-writing-as-rock-and-roll, Lester Bangs. When Laughner died of pancreatic failure in 1977, Bangs composed an uncomfortably personal obituary for The New York Rocker, which survives Bangs, also a casualty of excess, as perhaps his best piece of work. And to give you a lifestyle perspective, not many 24-year-olds die of all-out pancreatic failure.

Incompatible forces broke the band apart in the summer of 1975. Thomas and Laughner’s vision, whatever you would call it (seeing as how it formed the basis of the unparalleled Ubu), and the sleazier lean of O’Connor and Madansky did not mix.

Regardless of the band’s eye-blink tenure, several classics were written and performed by Rocket from the Tombs — songs that would be reworked into staples by the Dead Boys and Pere Ubu. The Dead Boys’ “Sonic Reducer” and “Down in Flames” started life as Rocket songs. And Laughner’s depraved and moving “Ain’t It Fun” would be given a serious makeover as the hard-rock pillar of the Boy’s second album, We Have Come for Your Children. Laughner and Thomas would take “Final Solution,” “30 Seconds Over Tokyo,” “Life Stinks,” and “Heart of Darkness” out of the Rocket repertoire and into the Pere Ubu world (though Laughner would quit Ubu after their second single to pursue his more Dylan/Stones tendencies). The subsequent years would see cover versions by an odd slew of artists (some of whom probably had no idea who Rocket from the Tombs was). “Heart of Darkness” was part of Mission of Burma’s show set and is documented on the live The Horrible Truth About Burma. Peter Murphy covered “Final Solution” on his solo album Should We Fail To Fall Apart. Living Colour covered the same song on a 1990 single, and an incorrectly credited “Ain’t It Fun” is featured on Guns N’ Roses’ pathetic attempt at street-level integrity, The Spaghetti Incident.

Bootlegs of Rocket from the Tombs material were the only option before 1990, when Life Stinks, an LP of a February 1975 radio broadcast, was released, only to quickly disappear. Then, in 1994, Take the Guitar Player for a Ride, a thorough overview of Laughner’s recorded work, was issued on the Tim Kerr label. It wasn’t until last year that a document of Rocket from the Tombs proper would see the light of day. The Day the Earth Met Rocket from the Tombs is a double LP/CD of demos, radio broadcasts, and two live shows. Released on Smog Veil Records, it is the first widely available overview of the band’s first phase.

The version of Rocket that’s playing the Hi-Tone CafÇ Saturday night is about as close to the original lineup as nature will allow. Thomas, Bell, O’Connor, and drummer Steve Melmen are in tow, and the Laughner perch will be occupied, ironically, by Television’s Richard Lloyd. In February 2004, Smog Veil will release Rocket Redux, a cherry-picked selection of live recordings from the 2003 tour. n

Rocket from the Tombs ™ with The Reigning Sound ™ Tuesday, December 16th ™ The Hi-Tone CafÇ

History and logic dictate that the phrase “a night of comedy and music” cause trepidation. Images of Dread Zeppelin, Weird Al Yankovic, Adam Sandler, and Tenacious D can raise hairs, not to mention red flags. But perhaps the two connected, separate-but-equal events arriving in Memphis Friday, May 30th, can do a better job of uniting those often incompatible forms. Hopefully, a transition from the futuristic good-time boogie of the Melvins to the “post-comedy” of an after-party with stand-up enigma Neil Hamburger will be a welcome influx of pure entertainment. Or maybe it will be the scariest evening Memphis has experienced in ages.

Though partially responsible for rap-metal, Mike Patton has nevertheless evolved into a fringe-music chameleon far removed from his earlier days fronting Faith No More and Mr. Bungle (the latter of which he still fronts). Co-founding Ipecac Records in 1999, he swiftly assembled a roster of new and established noiseniks in need of a like-minded home. Three of these artists — Dalek, Tomahawk, and the Melvins — will make up the version of Geek Fest 2003 (yep, that’s the real name) making it to the New Daisy Theater Friday, May 30th.

Dalek will open the show with a sucker punch of hip-hop truly deserving of the adjective “underground.” With sheets of musique-concräte noise, verbal hostility, and metropolitan psychedelia, Dalek unite such influences as New Kingdom’s over-the-top abrasiveness, Public Enemy’s Bomb Squad, Can, and the sonic beatdown of early Swans and EinstÅrzende Neubauten. Properly puzzling, the combo has opened for everyone from De La Soul to the Dillinger Escape Plan.

I’ll confess that I haven’t exactly been plagued by the question “What would a noise-rock dream team of 1993 sound like today?” But in case I’m flying solo, the majority will find their gratification in Tomahawk. Kevin Rutmanis (the Cows, Melvins) on bass, Duane Denison (Jesus Lizard, Scratch Acid) on guitar, and John Stanier (Helmet) on drums all try to make sonic sense of Patton’s polyoctave throat acrobatics. It sounds exactly like the sum of its parts: Jesus Lizard aggro-surf guitar, asphyxiating drum and bass typical of its bygone era, and Patton gluing it together with a Mr. Bungle-esque vocal agenda with the edges softened and elongated, resulting in music that manages to sound of a piece without losing its goofy irreverence.

As for Tomahawk’s co-headliners, I’ve seen a nice cross-section of Melvins’ shows over the past decade and not once have they disappointed. Like Fugazi and, to a lesser extent, Sonic Youth, the Melvins have spent the past 18 years calling their own shots while also managing to achieve a respectable level of popularity in the process. Their humble beginnings were uneventful: great band, relative obscurity, old story. Following the example of expiration-date-era Black Flag, the Melvins gained an early notoriety for slowing down and stretching the Black Sabbath sound to such extreme lengths that they could fit an entire musical idea in between each riff. Repetition is the secret of the sound, whether creeping along or adopting the pace of Slayer. (The common, unresearched myth has it that the Melvins are always slow.) The trio also pioneered the act of packaging obscenely heavy music in sleeves adorned with flowers, bunnies, and icons of positive pastel thought.

Along with the Wipers, the Melvins were an antecedent that Kurt Cobain openly worshipped, and his name-dropping helped the band land an early-’90s major-label deal. After a dismissal three albums in, the Melvins landed back in indie-land feet first with dignity and sound intact. A little label-hopping ensued before the band emerged on Ipecac with a three-album wake-up call in 1999 (The Bootlicker, The Maggot, and The Crybaby). Several live records popped up before 2002’s Hostile Ambient Takeover and a collector-taunting shower of limited-edition-series singles earlier this year. Knowing what to expect from the Melvins is not part of the plan (this is a band prone to piggyback “traditional” albums with full releases of harsh white noise or playful covers), but the band’s erratic nature never precludes a great live show.

For showgoers looking to extend the festivities, the Hi-Tone CafÇ is throwing an after-show party that offers a Geek Fest-related comedy nightcap in the form of quasi-/semi-/okay-maybe-not-so-legendary stand-up comic Neil Hamburger, who will take the stage shortly after the New Daisy show concludes.

Hamburger is a loose affiliate of Ipecac Records and Mike Patton — the label reissued Hamburger’s 1993 debut Great Phone Calls — and Hamburger’s impressive discography of proper stand-up comedy releases includes such unforgettable party classics as Bartender, the Laugh’s on Me, Left for Dead in Malaysia, Raw Hamburger, and last fall’s Laugh Out Lord. Hamburger’s act takes the past 50 years of nightclub laughs, puts its ass in lights, and pelts you with every ugly detail. It’s a send-up, a tribute, and an honest attempt all rolled into one. Currently living in Australia, Hamburger is in the States for a monthlong residency at the Knitting Factory L.A. after the much-ballyhooed May 12th appearance on The Jimmy Kimmel Show, which had Howard Stern — though not a barometer of good taste — playing the audio on his radio show and name-checking the heady days of Andy Kaufman. In other words: Get ready to put that funny bone in a sling — you’ll have a giggle fever of 105 and issues that require tissues!

Geek Fest 2003

with The Melvins, Tomahawk, and Dalek

The New Daisy Theatre

Post-Geek Fest After-Party

with Neil Hamburger and Automusik

The Hi-Tone CafÇ

Friday, May 30th

When I was younger, I used to write lyrics about Satan and people killing each other and stuff. Fiction. Fantasy stuff.” So go the heavily accented words of Mille Petroza, leader and lone continuous member of German thrash-metal pioneers Kreator. And he might as well be speaking for every recovered teenager who has made underground metal a lifelong pursuit. But Petroza has evolved into someone far different from the 14-year-old who formed the Kreator-precursor Tormentor back in the early ’80s. “Now, the lyrics are more personal,” Petroza continues, “more human, and the meanings are much more hidden.”

On the rare occasions when it is allowed, maturity is an underrated element in heavy metal, and that unlikely transformation is exactly what happened with Kreator in the late ’80s. Formed in 1984, the band reached an early creative peak with three groundbreaking albums: Pleasure To Kill (1986), Terrible Certainty (1987), and Extreme Aggression (1989). These albums had an effect on underground European metal that is directly comparable to the stateside impact of Slayer’s three classic albums from the same period (Reign In Blood, South Of Heaven, and Seasons In the Abyss). Sure, they sounded different. Kreator did not have a badass knob-twiddler at their disposal, for instance, but they also took little time getting things right, unlike their American brethren, who spent the early ’80s making laughable records before Rick Rubin came to the rescue.

European underground metal had different, darker, and more hardcore-punk influences than its American counterpart. Though it may be a bit of a simplification, one could say that there were five key bands that drove the movement: Motorhead, Venom, Celtic Frost, Discharge, and, of course, Black Sabbath. In early inceptions, Venom and Celtic Frost were metallic hardcore bands dressed up in fake satanism and bullet belts. Motorhead was a bunch of long-haired bikers playing short-haired music. Discharge was a blurry sonic storm of negativity and politics, and their unique hardcore-metal crossover (probably the first) arguably laid the groundwork for the death metal and grindcore that proliferated in the late ’80s and early ’90s. And Black Sabbath was Black Sabbath.

If you were to continue this family tree into the late ’80s, the younger generation of extreme metal acts would most assuredly include Kreator near the top of the list. Oh, and if you haven’t already figured this out, none of this has much to do with the current breed of “metal” bands who sport backward baseball caps, ill-fitting jumpsuits, and extreme facial hair — or the ones that think they understand hip hop. “I do not care for it — no,” Petroza offers when asked his opinion of the nü-metal and rap-metal scenes. But he grows considerably more modest when speaking of the young bands, mostly Scandinavian ones, that have drawn upon Kreator as a primary influence.

Kreator perfected a very technical, very German brand of progressive thrash that was far less accessible than the melodic, Iron Maiden-flavored style that fellow countrymen Helloween briefly brought to worldwide ears in the late ’80s. Kreator’s audience transcended European insularity, but, at least in the States, it has remained a particularly underground phenomenon. Kreator fans were Slayer fans were (pre-success) Metallica fans and so on. This breed of ’80s metal fan was very serious and seriously unconcerned about how tall their hair was. These were kids who moped through the suburban wasteland in jackboots, listened to traded tapes on a waterproof walkman, and threw butterfly knives into wooden fences. Think River’s Edge not The Decline Of Western Civilization Pt. II. If pictures speak volumes, then I invite your eyes to the one below, so that everyone is clear about what kind of metal this is not.

After an unrewarding stint on a major label in the early ’90s, Kreator flirted with industrial music, as underground metal was wont to do in the middle of the decade. Setting experimentation aside, Petroza and the gang returned to the strong sound of pure metal. Last fall’s Violent Revolution is a tight set of riffs and songwriting that is catchier and more accomplished than your average death-metal band, plus it takes the piss out of whatever Slayer is doing these days.

“It is not a return to form, as a lot of people are saying,” Petroza insists. “It is a combination of the old Kreator and the new.” Fair enough. The big, loud, beautiful production helps to place Violent Revolution in the future, and the singing is hoarse but far removed from the accepted guttural growl of a band like Cannibal Corpse. (There’s nothing more depressing than seeing a man in his 30s barking into a microphone like a laconic troll.)

Joining Kreator for this potentially ear-shattering metal bill in Memphis is Destruction — another old-school German proto-death-metal trio who have been kicking about as long as the headliners (albeit with less success and influence). The presumptuously named “Hell Comes To Your Town” tour has seen a couple of obstacles thus far — a broken-down bus and the cancellation of a show in upstate New York because the promoter wanted the bands to play on a 9-by-13-foot stage — but, hopefully, it will roll into town without a hitch and fill the Hi-Tone with pure metal, thick smoke, and unironic devil-sign-throwing.

WONDERUE, LITTLE WINGS (K RECORDS)

Finally, for better or worse, rock is the new rock again (the recent same-night/same-network phenomenon of the White Stripes and Clinic appearing on late-night talk shows, the growing unpopularity of baggy clothing, etc.) and individualistic singer-songwriters can shed the pressure of quiet being the new loud and concentrate on their craft.

Kyle Field, aka Little Wings, concentrates enough on the craft that I am willing to overlook that this is indeed not a concept album about extremely flammable pajamas and appreciate the strip-mall angst and heartbreak that calmly rises from Wonderue.

Field drops a bomb with the third track, a paean to the golden age of waterproof Walkmans and factory cassettes, so skip the first two tracks of y’allternative fake country for “Shredder Sequel,” a continued tale of a has-been skater who has “Had enough/ÔConcrete’s unkind,’ he sadly sighs/Behind the wheel of his hatchback he cries.”

From that point on, Wonderue shows its love of both Harry Nilsson at his most minimal and Will Oldham (Palace) at his most “on.” In fact, if Oldham were struggling in California instead of howling from the comforts of deep pockets and marble-floored hotel lobbies, he would make a nice sonic twin to the Little Wings sound.

The whole approach to songwriting (and instrumental backdrop) on Wonderue (the third in a loosely penned “Wonder” trilogy) owes more to the West Coast, daydream-on-the-couch aura of Buffalo Springfield, Tim Hardin, Gene Clark, or Bread than it does to anything on the Bloodshot Records roster.

It wouldn’t bother me to see emo fans snatching America records out of the dollar bins, and if whatever people are calling “emo” were actually this emotional, or this good, then life might be a tad less irritating.

Grade: B+