Dead Boys (Early Punk)

A part of me feels ashamed when I listen, knowingly, to a band like Dead Boys for the first time. I would like to think that I have listened to more than your average biped. The Dead Boys is another venture into the unknown for me that is as wonderful as my first kiss. Fuck the truth to the reason of me going so long and not knowing their creations til now. I owe Dr. Larry a debt of gratitude for mentioning them while we were planning our trip to Domefest. Now I have to look for a Dead Boys T-shirt.

The first thing that comes to mind is Guns and Roses during the first listen. I thought of Motorhead as well. Sex Pistols and the Ramones come to mind, obviously. While looking for a T-shirt, the second result read Dead Boys is grunge for $225. You won’t see me wearing that one, but the statement is interesting.  Naked Raygun’s vocalist Jeff Pezzati said he was a casual music listener til one-day music hit him like a ton of bricks when his older brother brought home a record by the Dead Boys. The song that bricked him was “Sonic Reducer”.  Dave Grohl’s first punk show included Naked Raygun, so maybe the T-shirt is worth $225 in a little truth alone. A little music archaeology for us there.

Dead Boys being from Cleveland is a plus for me (Tribalism). I have to laugh at myself that while I was listening to The Micheal Stanley Band, some peer was smoking a little cannabis with headphones on that were busting out Sonic Reducer.  A drink from my beer to salute you with a smile.

Jamming to their second album now, and I’m hearing Pixies. God, I love this shit.

“In some remote corner of the universe, poured out and glittering in innumerable solar systems, there once was a star on which clever animals invented knowledge. That was the haughtiest and most mendacious minute of ‘world history’―yet only a minute. After nature had drawn a few breaths the star grew cold, and the clever animals had to die.

One might invent such a fable and still not have illustrated sufficiently how wretched, how shadowy and flighty, how aimless and arbitrary, the human intellect appears in nature. There have been eternities when it did not exist; and when it is done for again, nothing will have happened. For this intellect has no further mission that would lead beyond human life. It is human, rather, and only its owner and producer gives it such importance as if the world pivoted around it. But if we could communicate with the mosquito, then we would learn that it floats through the air with the same self-importance, feeling within itself the flying center of the world.”- Nietzsche

The Avantist (Rock)

This month marks the fifth anniversary of the genesis of this blog. It has also been five years since the writer has used opioids to escape the pain of existence. I have found that keeping track of time of being free from something does little for me in keeping free so there will be no pictures of me holding a sign going on social media anytime soon. The last thing that I desire is to receive accolades for not doing something that I should’ve never started. Some might think that it would be inspirational to others faced with facing reality without opioids flowing through their veins, but I think the inspiration should be coming from those that never start. I think it is imperative that an addict find their own inspiration from a well within that is a bottomless source. One has to find at least one meaning to this existence that overrides the desire to escape the whole of it and let that meaning pull one all the way out of it. That meaning for me was and is my family.

Speaking of family, Avantist is all family. This all-brother band from Chicago is as eclectic as this blog. The first song that I listened to from this band was Red Bible and towards the end of the song, I blurted out a Fuck and started laughing when Fernando Arias ended the track with his own version of the expletive. Therein, I was sucked into their eclectic tunnel of leg shaking creation. It wasn’t long before I found out that they were brothers and that their father is a musician as well, who by example seemed to inspire his sons to their own vocation in the musical arena.

One approach that catches my attention from this group is how they change speeds of the flow of their songs. One song can actually sound as two or three songs in one and I welcome this approach. There is a space between chaos and order that these young men take me to that is a sweet spot for me. I could list some influences like, System of the Down and Mars Volta, but there is so much more richness to the sounds they put out than to go listing a slew of artists that sound as influences. This shit gets my right leg popping like a sewing machine needle and gets my being energized.

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“Freethinkers are those who are willing to use their minds without prejudice and without fearing to understand things that clash with their own customs, privileges, or beliefs. This state of mind is not common, but it is essential for right thinking; where it is absent, discussion is apt to become worse than useless.”
― Leo Tolstoy