I headed down to Baltimore last weekend for yet another concert. The town treated me as well as it always does, even though I had never been in the part of town where the venue, the Metro Gallery, was located, lurking in the shadows of nearby University of Baltimore buildings. Right by the venue is a billboard currently displaying a Lizzo advertisement. Walking past it on the way to the club, I turned around to catch the heavy street graffiti on the back of the clandestine graphic. Once inside, the Gallery revealed itself to be a very efficient space with an intimate atmosphere and a modern sensibility. It’s clean, but not too clean, which kept it from becoming stuck up. It holds art shows as well as concerts, but the creativity of the bands I got to see blurred the line between the two.
The venue
The merch booth
First on stage was New York based collective CG8. I had never heard any of their cacophony before, but I was already familiar with their image: three leggy chicks in daring, D.I.Y. outfits tearing things up, rolling around in wires, and being as carefree as possible. I obviously expected some degree of a good time from them, but what I got ended up soaring beyond any of my expectations, not unlike Barbarella’s space ship. The speakers emitted sounds that were inexplicably alien, tensed-up, and fervorous. I had previously seen their drummer, Chase, at Man On Man’s Riot Fest performance, where her assault on her drum kit was a highlight of the festival weekend. She didn’t let up in Baltimore, either; she pounded away with heart shaking power and precision that has to be felt to be believed, making every song irresistibly infectious in the process. Bassist Lida’s lyrics, which I later read on the inner sleeve of the vinyl record they had for sale at the merch booth, are intelligent and poignant without sacrificing a strong and whacked-out sense of humor. They know that a smile is still essential for survival in today’s world. Their playfulness couldn’t have been better exemplified by their handmade getups: strategically cut neon leotards, boots made for walkin’, and straight-outta-Microsoft-Paint-pattern tights. It was as if the Powerpuff Girls got lost in the Forbidden Zone and emerged fifteen years later to teach the world what they had learned. They simply would not be the band they are without the emphasis on style—when they’re not touring, they keep a weirdo-techno-whack-out-chic fashion line that got featured in Vogue. But in all their visual tomfoolery they never once sacrificed their brains or their guts.
CG8
CG8
The set ended with the girls giving up their guitars and playing around with synthesizers, one of which looked like an orange cartoon cat. (I saw the same exact one while walking past the toy section at Target the next day.) Guitar player Veronika sang a little diddy about wanting to be things such as Paris Hilton and a calculator. And then, it was over. It was genuinely sad to see them have to step off stage; I could’ve taken an entire night of them I was so fascinated.
Luckily, the next set from Texas based hard rockers Pussy Gillette brought a similar spirit of raw and brazen intensity. From her appearance alone, frontwoman Masani Negloria, whose first name is a reference to the gap between her two front teeth, is potentially the most badass person in existence. She radiated supreme cool with an italicized capital C-O-O-L in her leather ensemble and awesome throwback afro. In a perfect world there would be a cult film where she and the CGs have an epic B-movie cacophony catfight battle of the bands, but alas, this is no perfect world. When she took the stage, she only doubly proved her C-O-O-L: her voice is a strikingly unique snarl that perfectly suited her in-between song banter, and she plucked the strings of her bass so fast her hand was constantly a blur. Each song in itself was an infectious blast of garage rock realness, with lyrics touching on everything from the cruelty of police brutality to a smorgasbord of bananas, hammers, and lettuce wraps. The Gillette set was a sonic burst of pure energy perfectly capable of obliterating the front door of your parents who are worrying where they went wrong when you started listening to bands that alienate the neighbors so with their awful racket. Yet I would bet that the band members wouldn’t be against sitting down with those frightened adults for a quick lunch and try to have a constructive conversation, bridging the cultural divide. It’s all about unity for them—unity under good music and good, not-so-clean fun. And extremely fresh H2O to swig between songs. Don’t we all deserve something fresh?
Pussy Gillette
Pussy Gillette
I had pretty much decided after Pussy Gillette wrapped up that there was no way that the rest of the night was going to match the two sets I had just witnessed. The rest of the crowd, however, had only just begun. Having stood right next to the dance pit the show of theirs I saw in D.C. last year, I knew that headliner Surfbort’s fans are quite the intense bunch. That spirit had seemingly only intensified in the three or so months since then. The moment Dani Miller stepped on stage, I physically felt a distinct shove as people started to crowd around, signaling that things were about to get wild. They did. I found myself getting jostled around by the overexcited crowd, caught in the outskirts of their mosh pit ritual to their rainbow-mulleted goddess. At one point I ended up against the stage right in front of the leftmost guitar player’s pedals—a very good spot—entirely due to getting practically shoved into it. I stayed there for a bit warring with my digital camera’s dying battery—pics or it didn’t happen—until I started getting jostled around over and over again. At that point I just stopped trying to keep up with the dancers and slipped away to a safer region of the crowd off to the side.
Surfbort
By that time in the night, I was less concerned with partying it up than I was with digesting the two acts that had just blown my mind. Despite seemingly existing on two opposite sides of a spectrum—the extravagant and the stripped down—both groups had important things to say, and they said them by inviting all spectators into the weird little curated tune worlds of their creation. Furthermore, these multimedia approaches aren’t restricted to their live shows. When you take a look at anything CG8, you’re falling head first into a psychedelic, digitally warped dimension to swim around in amongst the glitchy artifacts and cute girls. And when you watch a Pussy Gillette music video—they’re all filmed on old school VHS tape—you feel as if you’re watching a clip that has circulated for decades in the coolest sects of the revolution rock underground to much militant punk approval. And seeing these groups do their thing makes you feel as if the “classics,” all those bands that everyone loves decades later despite no one caring in their heyday, are here for you in full force.
And, suddenly, it’s as if there are groups that go against the grain of flash-in-the-pan trendiness to form their own multidimensional brands driven by progress, not stagnation or regression. It’s as if there are still true artists out there, brandishing their sonic weaponry as a guiding beacon for the outcasts, the delegated dregs, the perpetual aliens who are urging for something truly new. And as someone who happens to be one of those perpetual aliens, fed up with monotony and the systematic dumbing down of the mainstream, last Saturday’s event was one of the most satisfying things I’ve witnessed live in a while.
Last week in one of my classes I participated in a discussion on whether or not art should be considered important during turbulent times. Unfortunately, it became a reminder of how warped some people’s interpretations of the world are. According to some, in times like these, art should give way to other, more important things. What exactly these “more important” things are was not elaborated on. Funnily enough, they also clarified that, despite its lack of importance, art is also a luxury, which is why it is not needed all the time. Hence, art both holds value and is lacking in it.
If these people had opened their eyes, they would notice that art practically suffocates us everyday. The clothes on your back, the car you drive, the building you live in and the buildings you wished you lived in, the fancy garbage can in the kitchen that has a foot pedal to flip the lid open—all of that had to be designed by someone. You can go to a museum gallery or you can go to Times Square—you’re getting an eyeful of art either way, and it influences the world in many ways. Life does imitate art, after all.
Throughout my entire life, art has been a defining force in shaping my worldview and introducing me to new ideas. Being trapped inside for months due to the pandemic only strengthened my appreciation for it. Art has whisked me away to weird and wonderful places that revel in the absurd and tickle the funny bone. It has also grounded me in reality and reminded me of the essential work that still needs to be done. It’s motivated me to express myself in my own ways and take action where it is needed; it’s connected me to likeminded people and pushed me to go places I never would have thought to go to otherwise.
I know from experience that the best art is art that serves as a call to arms, challenging the mind and encouraging action. It can do so silently or with immense fanfare. It can fight back against the boot that kicks the outcasts and inspired dregs of society with a bang; it can upend entire social orders momentarily without anyone knowing unless they stop for a second and think. Often times, art is the only force of true change in a world of stagnation drained of hope. It’s a refuge from the soul-crushing monotony of the daily grind to think, If that person has the gall to do that, maybe I can, too! It’s a healthy alternative to giving up. And that thought process can translate to true impact if one lets it; it can set off a chain reaction. If one person can change their outlook on the world or the way they go about their day because of a song they heard or a book they read, that’s great. If someone can pass that mentality on to someone else who can pass it on to more people who can pass it on across the globe, forming networks of connection and camaraderie, that’s incredible. That possibility is art’s greatest power. It only depends on how one uses it.
So, does art have value in these trying times? I argue an emphatic “yes.”
In Ken Russell’s Altered States, protagonist Dr. Edward Jessup’s psychedelic exploration of his psyche culminates into his physical mutation into a self-sufficient, antimatteral being of the most innately alive of the organs: flesh. His appearance in this form may be warped and inhuman at a glance, but his embrace of the hairless flesh most commonly associated with homo sapiens makes his transformed state a distinctly humanoid one. Was he not conducting his experiments for a deeper understanding of human consciousness in the first place? His research ultimately draws a dark conclusion: that mankind is an innately selfish race. In his superhuman form he reaches the peak of individualism—he needs no support to exist, and no one is capable of doing so unless they, too, want to give up Earth’s realities and join him in his subconscious realm, a realm dangerously leaking into the real world. He transcends his humanity by embracing what makes him most human. Jessup would have let this physical representation of his ego take over, too, if he hadn’t kept enough self awareness to save his wife from the same forces. Empathy to the rescue.
Of course, self exploration, whether done hallucinogenicly or sober, is not inherently bad. In many situations, it can catalyze positive internal change that can be reflected onto the surrounding world. But one must be wary that one’s retreats into the self do not manifest degenerative delusion.
Sadly, it seems that our current generation is not being taught values similar to those that ultimately saved Jessup. He still kept a grip on reality even when his curious mind sucked him into the monkey man microscope screen warp speed world of his subconscious. Today’s world, on the other hand, offers no escape from the epilepsy inducing acid flashback that is pop culture. Deeply rooted traditions of primal self satisfaction—earlier in the film, Jessup regresses to an apelike state before embarking on a rampage, a friendly reminder of how we, too, are nothing more than animals—are not changed, but encouraged. From birth, we are bombarded by unregulated flashing images, exaggerated facial expressions and cartoon realities, infinite streams of worthless matter lurking behind clickbait headlines. Political pundits and their battles become increasingly caricatured, turning nightly news into WWE. Nothing really matters, except for the hyperactive manchild’s exploitation of the child’s feeble mind. As long as you think the junk food you’re guzzling tastes good (or you don’t mind the side effects), alles ist gut.
Maybe we are all still children in some respects, still trying to process information and make sense of the insanity swirling around us. Most, however, question not what they see, staying on whatever the “correct” track is as dictated by meaningless societal trends or whatever makes them feel more self righteous. And considering the bust bum brainwash world we live in, where facts are opinions and lies reap in the profit, the consequences of such complacency are too often detrimental to those with their heads in the right space.
Absurdity reigns, so what should we do about it? Embrace it. One does not silence another by cowering and covering their ears. Much like how sustainable forms of energy begrudgingly coexist with fossil fuels, not all noise is pollution. Use it to your advantage. Submit your social commentary under the covers; weave double entendres into your speeches; force the world to grab that dinged-up shovel and start digging, because there’s a lot left to uncover, and it might just be worth your time.
I made a spur-of-the-moment post a few weeks ago upon the release of DEVO bassist Jerry Casale‘s new single, “I’m Gonna Pay U Back.” The song’s music video came out on the 8th, and upon watching it, I think I got a taste of the “positive brainwashing” I’ve been longing for recently. For the rest of that day, I was as excitable and positively charged as ever, coinciding with a period of creative stimulation in my own regard. Three days later, the wave of excitement, relief, and emotion that drenched my mind has (for the most part) subsided, allowing me to write about the matter at hand with more precision.
The music video coincides with the widespread reissue of Jerry’s 2006 solo album as the venerable “Jihad Jerry,” who wears turbans that match his suit coats and declares that “[his] is not a holy war.” The album itself supplies hard-hitting blues rock injected with an indie-electro twist, and Jerry is flanked by two soulful female backup singers to help him spit his de-evolutionary bars. Three DEVO rarities and a Yardbirds song receive updates for the twenty-first century.
Me discovering the album due to my exploration of the DEVO discography was cathartic. Jerry’s declaration of a “war against stupidity” instead of one against drugs or any specific religion was a refreshing statement for an angry, skeptical girl in a prejudiced, complacent world to hear. The project was satirically bent and just plain baffling at times, just like DEVO’s tactics of confusion and absurdity that made their medicinal messaging go down so tightly. It was bold and funny and refreshingly weird, and it spoke to me unlike much else had. (I touched on this here, too.)
With CD copies being scarce, I always hoped it would receive the reissue it deserved someday, though I did not entirely expect that to happen. I figured it would be too easy for a naive public to decontextualize Jerry’s tomfoolery and try to rip him a new hole for his alter ego, and part of me wondered if the project would get buried in the sands of time in the name of “playing it safe.” Cue the album getting reissued after all, with Jihad placed front and center, burning with passion and pride in woodblock effigy, on the album cover. Go figure.
It’s the perfect time to reissue it, too: nostalgia holds a fifteen year cycle, and fashion magazines seem to be plugging “Y2K” trends as the hottest thing a lot recently, though the low rise jeans and flip phones they promote seem more “mid-ohs excess” than “late 1990s techno fear.” Even I’m not completely immune: I ordered a brand new iPod for my birthday, as I still haven’t jumped the shark from MP3 collecting to streaming. (And now I can listen to remastered Jihad Jerry on it.) It seems like everyone is looking back on that dark and trashy time, trying to find refuge from an increasingly dire present. But is mindless indulgence and glamorization the best way to deal with thousands of faceless humans dying on the other side of the planet? Jihad Jerry asked this question back then, and now he asks it again.
In his new music video, Jerry confronts his alter ego in acknowledgement of his past and the mutinous multitudes he contains. It’s a daring example of self-expression, and Jerry is still bold and unapologetic in his seventies, despite various societal aggressions that the role of the elderly is to gripe about the youth from their high rocking chairs. (Not that he doesn’t look a good twenty years younger than he actually is without the video’s sci-fi Prisma filter.) He remains a spirited misfit and provocateur just as he was back in the day. But times have changed since then, and the future is even more uncertain than it was fifteen years ago. That also explains his urgency, his willingness to be so forward. Best to let yourself be heard while you still have the ability to speak.
What a cruel world we live in! For every installment erected in remembrance of the innocent dead, there should be one more dose of true justice served to those who have suffered, but alas, that is not the reality we live in. Supposedly, in order to commemorate the fallen, we need to continue perpetrating the cruel systems that resulted in those lives being lost. Wouldn’t Veterans Day be the best argument against ending useless wars across the planet? Apparently not.
Fighters in the endless and honorable war against idiocy and division oftentimes throw punches by virtue of staying alive. How else will their traditions of plain and simple empathy continue to exist? They really do deserve a break, and it’s nice to see when they are allowed time to relax, to celebrate what has been done. Yet I can’t stop thinking about how so many witness such acts and smile without thinking anything of what work still needs to be done to ensure true equality.
How come we live in a world where people still belittle and abuse others over such arbitrary attributes such as the melanin concentration of one’s skin cells or what one chooses to do in the privacy of their own bedroom? Where is the world where people are judged by their morality and the moralities of those they associate with? How many more people have to suffer and die for the most absurd reasons before justice is served?
Break time is valuable and necessary to remain sane, but never forget what you are fighting for.
They Say The Apple Doesn’t Fall Far From The Tree, But How Far Does It Roll?
Thursday, March 10th, 2022I headed down to Baltimore last weekend for yet another concert. The town treated me as well as it always does, even though I had never been in the part of town where the venue, the Metro Gallery, was located, lurking in the shadows of nearby University of Baltimore buildings. Right by the venue is a billboard currently displaying a Lizzo advertisement. Walking past it on the way to the club, I turned around to catch the heavy street graffiti on the back of the clandestine graphic. Once inside, the Gallery revealed itself to be a very efficient space with an intimate atmosphere and a modern sensibility. It’s clean, but not too clean, which kept it from becoming stuck up. It holds art shows as well as concerts, but the creativity of the bands I got to see blurred the line between the two.
First on stage was New York based collective CG8. I had never heard any of their cacophony before, but I was already familiar with their image: three leggy chicks in daring, D.I.Y. outfits tearing things up, rolling around in wires, and being as carefree as possible. I obviously expected some degree of a good time from them, but what I got ended up soaring beyond any of my expectations, not unlike Barbarella’s space ship. The speakers emitted sounds that were inexplicably alien, tensed-up, and fervorous. I had previously seen their drummer, Chase, at Man On Man’s Riot Fest performance, where her assault on her drum kit was a highlight of the festival weekend. She didn’t let up in Baltimore, either; she pounded away with heart shaking power and precision that has to be felt to be believed, making every song irresistibly infectious in the process. Bassist Lida’s lyrics, which I later read on the inner sleeve of the vinyl record they had for sale at the merch booth, are intelligent and poignant without sacrificing a strong and whacked-out sense of humor. They know that a smile is still essential for survival in today’s world. Their playfulness couldn’t have been better exemplified by their handmade getups: strategically cut neon leotards, boots made for walkin’, and straight-outta-Microsoft-Paint-pattern tights. It was as if the Powerpuff Girls got lost in the Forbidden Zone and emerged fifteen years later to teach the world what they had learned. They simply would not be the band they are without the emphasis on style—when they’re not touring, they keep a weirdo-techno-whack-out-chic fashion line that got featured in Vogue. But in all their visual tomfoolery they never once sacrificed their brains or their guts.
The set ended with the girls giving up their guitars and playing around with synthesizers, one of which looked like an orange cartoon cat. (I saw the same exact one while walking past the toy section at Target the next day.) Guitar player Veronika sang a little diddy about wanting to be things such as Paris Hilton and a calculator. And then, it was over. It was genuinely sad to see them have to step off stage; I could’ve taken an entire night of them I was so fascinated.
Luckily, the next set from Texas based hard rockers Pussy Gillette brought a similar spirit of raw and brazen intensity. From her appearance alone, frontwoman Masani Negloria, whose first name is a reference to the gap between her two front teeth, is potentially the most badass person in existence. She radiated supreme cool with an italicized capital C-O-O-L in her leather ensemble and awesome throwback afro. In a perfect world there would be a cult film where she and the CGs have an epic B-movie cacophony catfight battle of the bands, but alas, this is no perfect world. When she took the stage, she only doubly proved her C-O-O-L: her voice is a strikingly unique snarl that perfectly suited her in-between song banter, and she plucked the strings of her bass so fast her hand was constantly a blur. Each song in itself was an infectious blast of garage rock realness, with lyrics touching on everything from the cruelty of police brutality to a smorgasbord of bananas, hammers, and lettuce wraps. The Gillette set was a sonic burst of pure energy perfectly capable of obliterating the front door of your parents who are worrying where they went wrong when you started listening to bands that alienate the neighbors so with their awful racket. Yet I would bet that the band members wouldn’t be against sitting down with those frightened adults for a quick lunch and try to have a constructive conversation, bridging the cultural divide. It’s all about unity for them—unity under good music and good, not-so-clean fun. And extremely fresh H2O to swig between songs. Don’t we all deserve something fresh?
I had pretty much decided after Pussy Gillette wrapped up that there was no way that the rest of the night was going to match the two sets I had just witnessed. The rest of the crowd, however, had only just begun. Having stood right next to the dance pit the show of theirs I saw in D.C. last year, I knew that headliner Surfbort’s fans are quite the intense bunch. That spirit had seemingly only intensified in the three or so months since then. The moment Dani Miller stepped on stage, I physically felt a distinct shove as people started to crowd around, signaling that things were about to get wild. They did. I found myself getting jostled around by the overexcited crowd, caught in the outskirts of their mosh pit ritual to their rainbow-mulleted goddess. At one point I ended up against the stage right in front of the leftmost guitar player’s pedals—a very good spot—entirely due to getting practically shoved into it. I stayed there for a bit warring with my digital camera’s dying battery—pics or it didn’t happen—until I started getting jostled around over and over again. At that point I just stopped trying to keep up with the dancers and slipped away to a safer region of the crowd off to the side.
By that time in the night, I was less concerned with partying it up than I was with digesting the two acts that had just blown my mind. Despite seemingly existing on two opposite sides of a spectrum—the extravagant and the stripped down—both groups had important things to say, and they said them by inviting all spectators into the weird little curated tune worlds of their creation. Furthermore, these multimedia approaches aren’t restricted to their live shows. When you take a look at anything CG8, you’re falling head first into a psychedelic, digitally warped dimension to swim around in amongst the glitchy artifacts and cute girls. And when you watch a Pussy Gillette music video—they’re all filmed on old school VHS tape—you feel as if you’re watching a clip that has circulated for decades in the coolest sects of the revolution rock underground to much militant punk approval. And seeing these groups do their thing makes you feel as if the “classics,” all those bands that everyone loves decades later despite no one caring in their heyday, are here for you in full force.
And, suddenly, it’s as if there are groups that go against the grain of flash-in-the-pan trendiness to form their own multidimensional brands driven by progress, not stagnation or regression. It’s as if there are still true artists out there, brandishing their sonic weaponry as a guiding beacon for the outcasts, the delegated dregs, the perpetual aliens who are urging for something truly new. And as someone who happens to be one of those perpetual aliens, fed up with monotony and the systematic dumbing down of the mainstream, last Saturday’s event was one of the most satisfying things I’ve witnessed live in a while.
Tags:attempts at positivity, Baltimore, CG8, concerts, music, new music, new places, performance art, Pussy Gillette, reviews, Surfbort, the good fight, things I enjoy
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