NOTE: I started writing this on my old heavy-music-themed blog, Stay Heavy, back in 2018. I abandoned it for reasons unknown, and today I was reminded of its existence. I sat down to tackle Volume 5 of my “Old-Ass Mix Tape” series, but I wasn’t feeling it, so I poked around a few folders marked “Drafts” in search of some “inspiration” when I happened upon this. I copied and pasted it here as I left it, and then I added an ending of sorts, and made a few slight revisions (more specifically, I fixed some links and cleaned up some questionable stylistic choices).
Speaking of questionable stylistic choices.
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Regular readers of this blog may be familiar with a few of the things that, in the words of the late Laura Palmer, really light my F-I-R-E when it comes to heavy music. Those things, in no particular order, are:
Riffs – It doesn’t have to be metal to be heavy, but the heavier it is, the more I love it. Fat-bottomed riffs, you my rockin’ world go ’round.
Unconventional vocals – This one isn’t as easy to define, but I know it when I hear it. Sean Killian of legendary Bay Area thrash metal band Vio-Lence is perhaps my most often cited example of a completely unique vocalist with a weirdo style that I just can’t goddamn get enough of.
Emotion – I’m a sucker for a band (metal or otherwise) that isn’t afraid to wear its collective heart on its figurative sleeve. If showing emotion is metal enough for Ronnie James Dio (RIP), it’s metal enough for me.
[horrifying shrieking intensifies]
Regular readers may also know that I’m a fan of punk rock and hardcore (especially 1990’s hardcore), and very careful readers may even know that I dipped my toes into the emo waters of the mid-to-late 1990’s. I don’t swing in the direction of the latter quite so much anymore, but sometimes nothing will soothe my restless brain or my jangled nerves quite like The Promise Ring.
All of this jibber-jabber leads me to the focus of today’s post: a melodic hardcore-ish/pop-punk-ish/emo-ish band called Boxer. They released a single full-length album 27 years ago and broke up one year later. Practically no one has ever heard of them, but they left an indelible mark on the heart and mind of this guy right here, and I’m here to talk about them.
Available information regarding the band is scant at best (they don’t even have a Wikipedia page), but here are the facts that I was able to cobble together via some internet research:
Boxer formed in Boston in October 1995. The original line-up consisted of David Vicini on vocals, William Kerr on bass, Jeremy McDowell on guitar, and Chris Pennie on drums.
McDowell and Pennie met while enrolled at the Berklee College of Music, and both of them dropped out of school in order to commit 100% to Boxer.
Boxer were the first band signed to then-new punk label Vagrant Records, and their sole recorded output, 1998’s The Hurt Process, was the first full-length album released by Vagrant. According to an interview with Vicini, the band “wanted to sign to a punk label and not a hardcore label, because hardcore kids don’t seem to listen to punk rock, but punk rock kids’ll listen to hardcore.”
Pennie soon began playing drums with The Dillinger Escape Plan, and left Boxer after the release of The Hurt Process. He was replaced by Nathan Shay, who previously played with emo legends The Get-Up Kids.
The band also added a second guitarist (I was unable to find a name), went on tour, worked on some new songs, and had plans for a second album, but then everything seemingly went to shit for some reason.
I suppose you’re wondering about the album itself. If you’re familiar with the defunct New Jersey melodic hardcore band Lifetime (and you should be), you’re headed in the right direction, especially with regard to Vicini’s vocals. However, Boxer is very much its own animal.
The band is tight as hell, and they sound like they’ve been playing together for a lifetime (no pun intended). The riffs are big and metallic, at times cascading over each other like there’s just not enough room for all of them in the song, or even in the world. The bass is bouncy and urgent and will (seemingly) randomly explode above the bedlam like some sort of crazy-ass 1952 jazz trumpet solo. As for the drumming, I’m out of adjectives, but the drumming is fucking outstanding. Musically, this is very much what would happen if a hardcore band played punk rock songs.
But what about the vocals?
I’m gettin to it, settle down. Vicini’s vocals are borderline insane, and insanely inventive. To quote a blog entry I found on a site called Theme Park Experience “the wavering vocals sounded like frontman Dave Vicini was having a panic-fueled freakout”. That’s a pretty perfect way to describe it (although I would put it in the present tense, since they still sound like that).
Example: the song “By the Way…” finishes with Vicini stretching the word “crazy” out into no less than seven goddamn syllables. I’m not saying no one else has ever done that, but if they have, I’ve never heard it. Plus I don’t think anyone else has ever done that.
The lyrics are what got this band labelled as “emo”, back when they were still a band. Vicini’s heart is shamelessly splattered open on his sleeve for everyone to examine, and like many of the band’s contemporaries, that’s what initially drew me to them. Short tales of love both lost and found, sprinkled with some inspirational lines (personal inspiration, not the religious type) and a bit of wistful nostalgia.
My personal favorite song on the album is also the longest song on the album. “Georgia” manages to kind of fit three separate songs into its almost 4 minute runtime.
And there’s been too many nights I’ve talked and tried, so many nights I’ve sat and cried.
I’m a big fan of penultimate track “Do the Math”, as well.
The cracks in the concrete just remind me that no matter how strong you are, you’ll just fall apart anyway.
Album opener “We Don’t Like Them Girls” is a heartfelt, uptempo breakup song that happens to be the perfect song to kick things off.
I’m laughing on the outside, but I’m dying on the inside.
It leads directly into another favorite of mine, “Blame it On the Weather”. Parts of this one still feel like they were written specifically for me (“Sitting in my ditch of self-loathing, and of course my mind is roaming, thinking things are always worse than they appear to be, just because I’m sick of talking doesn’t mean I’m not happy…”).
But tonight I’m really not, tonight nothing has changed.
Album closer “You and Me” finishes things off on an uplifting and defiant note (“I can’t be living my life for them, I’m living my life for me, and you can never see it coming and we won’t stop for anything”), and contains a chorus that’ll live in your head forever after one listen.
It was always just you and me saying “fuck you” to everybody.
If you like loud, agressive music and melodic, agressive hollering, you can’t go wrong with any of the songs on one of the finest post-hardcore albums of the 1990’s, The Hurt Process by Boxer. ________________________________
That concludes the original section. Can you believe I waited seven years to give that thing an ending, and that‘s the best I could come up with?
Anyway, I can still clearly remember when I stopped listening to Boxer, circa autumn 2002. I was delivering pizza, cruising down Moffett Lane, and I was blasting my dubbed cassette that had The Hurt Process on one side and FYULABA by Canadian hardcore punk weirdos SNFU on the other. I was halfway through the song “Child Labor Laws”, and for some reason, I just wasn’t feeling it anymore. It was a weird feeling, and I didn’t like it, but I was in no position to argue. I hit eject, popped in Side A of my AVAIL double-feature (Over the James b/w One Wrench), and started hollerin along with “Scuffle Town”. Before the Big Move to Austin, Texas in May 2003, I sold a bunch of CDs and books and whatnot, and The Hurt Process was one of those CDs.
Fast-forward to 2017. I’m sitting in the old townhouse on Adams, reading something or other, and out of nowhere the line “sometimes I catch your scent in the breeze, but it’s a little bit salty” popped in my head. I knew it was from Boxer, but that’s all I could remember. After finally figuring out the proper way to search (“boxer band hurt process”), I was able to discern that the line came from the song “Shorepoints”, which is every bit as perfectly suited for the Side Two, Track One slot as “We Don’t Like Them Girls” is for the Side One, Track One slot. If only the album had been released on vinyl or cassette.
The wind that hits you now hits me a day later.
I went to the local Half Price Books Outlet a few days later, and there was a copy on CD for the low, low price of 2 American dollars. I snatched it up quick, and I haven’t looked back. I picked up right where I left off in 2002, listening to the album several times in a row, and doing that several times a year. Some of the lyrics come off a bit angsty and childish to my 47-year-old ears, but the sincerity of them makes them feel timeless.
That’s all I’ve got for today. You should listen to The Hurt Process. It just might make you feel young again. Thanks for reading.
I think pretty often about the two times in elementary school when I allegedly peed my pants. Here’s more information about those incidents.
I went out for the basketball team in fifth grade, and (spoiler alert) I failed extra fuckin hard. Here are the facts about that night:
We barely even played basketball. The majority of the tryout was drill exercises. I was a pretty decent shooter, but I never cared much for running. I was out of breath and sweatin my nards off within minutes. I’ve always been a sweater. I don’t like it, but I’ve learned to live with it.
My sweatpants were completely wet in the entire area where a whole lot of pee would also fit, if I were to pee myself.
I have no recollection of peeing my pants that night, nor did I ever have any awareness of peeing my pants that night. I am 100% percent sure I didn’t pee my pants that night. Like, how could I not know, y’know? I was very sweaty, and gray sweatpants are, by their very nature, an extremely high-contrast article of clothing, and I believe that combination led my chums to believe that I peed my pants that night. In hindsight, I can see how they might think that. After all, I didpoop my pants when I was in kindergarten.
I was sad when Mom and Dad picked me up. My dad played basketball in elementary school and high school, and my brother and both sisters played basketball in elementary school, plus I grew up in southern Indiana. I didn’t make the team that night, and pretty much all the other boys in my class thought I’d peed myself, so you can maybe imagine why I was sad when Mom and Dad picked me up.
Mom (and possibly, but certainly to lesser extent, Dad) felt bad for me, and they took me to Big Lots to pick out Something for Myself, and we maybe went out for supper, too, possibly even to Rax Roast Beef, but all I remember from that night other than a big ol’ pee-shaped wet spot on my crotch is my Big Lots score: a motherfuckin Hillbilly Jim bendy.
In the back seat of the car, on the way home from “town”, I realized I’d chosen a dud of an action figure. I mean, I fuckin loved Hillbilly Jim, but just look at that big ol’ beefer! There’s no way he’s gonna bend worth a shit.
Fuckin Hillbilly Jim, he’s the coolest!
I’ve always been a collector/pack rat, and most of the stuff I own is sentimental and useless and irrelevant, but there are a few things that I’m very glad I still own, and this WW(F)® Wrestling Superstars™ Bendies™ Hillbilly Jim™ “action” figure is one of them. It lifted my spirits on what was probably one of the saddest, most embarrassing days of my life up to that point.
Don’t go messin with a country boy.
That’s the most my Hillbilly Jim ever bent, and coincidentally, it’s about as much as I’ve ever bent as well. I’ll tell you about the time I got stuck in the upstairs hallway trying to stretch out my hamstrings some other time.
The other alleged pee-pants incident came in sixth grade. Here are the things I remember most about that day:
We were in the library watching a movie, and we were seated on both sides of two large tables. The teacher and/or the librarian eventually called on me during the post-film discussion, and I stood to answer. I noticed some snickering coming from the shitheads on the other side of the table as I spoke, and I didn’t much care for it.
When I sat back down, one of the assbutts from across the table whispered “[you] peed your pants” and I looked down, and sure enough, there was a wetness that appeared to have been made by urine in my pants.
I am 100% sure I did not pee my pants that day. How would I not fuckin know, y’know?
I’ve long since assumed someone shot my crotchal area with a squirt gun while we were watching the movie. You have to understand, baggy pants were coming into style (we were less than one year away from MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice), so it’s likely that my pants weren’t actually touching my sensitive areas, meaning I probably wouldn’t have noticed being shot in the junk with a water gun, and besides, my attention was elsewhere. I just know I was into the movie, and I didn’t feel anything hit my pants, but I also didn’t feel myself pee my pants, so I have to lean toward Squirtgate for a suitable explanation. Their diabolical plan to humiliate me failed on account of no one else could see it, on account of the lights being dimmed due to movie-watching. Checkmate, assholes.
The weird thing is that it never became a “thing”. Like, no one ever even tried to make fun of me outside of either incident, and that seems weird to me, given the nature of 11-year-old boys, at least back when I was one. All I know for sure is that I am totally confident that I did not pee my pants on school property between the ages of 10 and 12, and it very much looked like I did on two separate occasions, and I think about both occasions often.
Thanks for reading. I have a new blog thing over on Substack, too. It’d be cool if you checked that out, but it’s also cool if you don’t. I’m still figuring out what that space is for, but for the foreseeable future, I’ll be posting here sometimes, and there sometimes, and sometimes the twain shall meet. This is one of the latter times.
I care an unhealthy amount about the things I can’t at all help,
I’ve always been an avid reader, but I’ve also always been mostly ambivalent about reading poetry. Growing up Hoosier and all, I’ve liked James Whitcomb Riley’s stuff since I was a little kid, and “Little Orphant Annie” still gives me the willies. Dr. Seuss was my shit when I was a tyke, much to my mom’s chagrin. She somehow got it in her head that reading Dr. Seuss would “warp my mind”. She had the same reservations about the 1983 television miniseries V, as well as Twin Peaks. If she was still alive, I believe she would suspect that she was correct about the mind-warping. My family has never understood me, but I’m not gonna get into that right now. I gotta save something for the book, am I right?
What’s not to understand?
I think my main obstacle, re: wanting to read poetry stems from my senior year of high school, when I took L202 (a college-level Literary Interpretation class offered for dual credit). We analyzed and parsed and picked over Shakespeare and Dickinson and Frost and Plath and more until none of it could ever again be anything but a collection of meaningless words, devoid of any of the humanity those words might ever have had.
There are a few exceptions to my “Joel doesn’t like poetry” rule. I lovePoe, and Shel Silverstein, and Langston Hughes, and Robert Frost (in spite of the over-analyzation), and “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and “The Waste Land”, and a lot of others I’m sure I’ll think of after I mash that “Publish” button. I enjoy most of JackKerouac’s poetry, when he wasn’t too far up his own ass with his jazz notions. Big Sur is one of my favorite books ever, but “Sea: Sounds of the Pacific Ocean at Big Sur”, the poem he composed during the events semi-fictionalized in that novel, is nonsense to me. To be fair, though, I’ve never had to deal with sudden, overwhelming fame or alcohol withdrawal-induced panic attacks, so I can’t say for certain that the Pacific Ocean doesn’t sound like that.
♪♪To be faaaaaaiiiiiiiir.♪♪
The only author I can think of offhand whose poetry I ever really read on purpose anymore is Charles Bukowski. I know Bukowski was at best a very problematic human being, and I certainly don’t condone his behavior or consider him any kind of role model, but you can’t say he wasn’t honest, and goddamn, could he write. I’ve read his screenplay for Barfly, as well as his fictionalized account of that experience, Hollywood, and I like both. The movie is worth watching, too. Mickey Rourke is iconic as Henry Chinaski.
I’ve also read a big chunk of his short stories, and I can’t recall not enjoying any of them, but I think I enjoy his poetry more than his other writing. It has the same realness and rawness of his prose, but the poetic form makes it even more real, and more raw, like a carcass bleached clean by the sun.
Anyway, I wrote a poem today.
I used to write poems pretty regularly, but the urge hasn’t struck me much since I left Texas to return home to Indiana in ’06 (I lost the urge in the divorce, I guess). I have a lot of journals I kept between the ages of 18-24, and they contain an alarming number of extremely embarrassing poems about being lovesick and forlorn. Thankfully I never actually used the words “lovesick” or “forlorn” in any of my poems. That would’ve been much worse.
I did, however, self-publish/print-for-free-at-the-computer-lab-on-campus-when-I-was-in-college1 a book whose very existence mortifies me. It was a collection of my embarrassing poems combined with a collection of my even more embarrassing journal entries from when I was 22 years old and going through Some Shit That Nobody Else in the World Could Ever Possibly Understand (aka a broken heart). I gave a copy of that book to HenryRollins once. He was very polite and gracious, and he said he liked the title (All Aboard the Joel Train) which is the only thing about that book that doesn’t embarrass me. I immediately regretted giving him a copy, and one of my greatest hopes in life is that he never read it. I thanked him in the introduction “for inspiration, in both writing and life”, and I included a handwritten note inside inviting him to contact me if he wanted to.
Same, David.
I continued to dabble in poetry well into my mid-twenties (right around the time I moved to Texas, now that I think about it), and then at some point, my writing just began to move away from it. I recently came upon an unfinished poem I wrote for Sheila not long after we started dating, and I think that might’ve been the last one I wrote until today, so I guess I maybe just finished my first poem in a quarter century. I’m not gonna say it’s good, but it made me laugh, so I decided to share it here. At any rate, it’s 100% better and 120% less embarrassing than anything I wrote when I was 20 years old.
“bling”
stumbling and mumbling and grumbling and tumbling and crumbling and jumbling and bumbling and fumbling and finally thumbling and something called scumbling and those are the words that all rhyme with humbling
I told you it was kinda dumb.
Not even me.
Thanks for reading. If you liked it/didn’t hate it, feel free to leave a comment and/or share it with your friends. If you did hate it, you could still share it with your friends, then you could all make fun of it together. Please don’t be mean in the comments, though. I have more feelings than my burly appearance and my surly demeanor might have you believe.
How much you wanna make a bet I can throw a football over them mountains?
I’m also on Bluesky. Why not give me a follow for updates? It’s like Twitter, but not owned by a cartoon super-villain.
On the street and the epitome of vague…
1In retrospect, I might have been part of the university’s decision to start charging for copies.
Today is the twentieth anniversary of my Facebook account, and I deleted it this morning, along with my Instagram account. I’ve been spending far too much time paying attention to other people’s lives, and not nearly enough time paying attention to my own. I’m a statistic: being chronically online has caused my mental health to suffer. I’ve become a kind of weird Facebook Hermit, hiding out in my house, going on intermittently for my own amusement about how much I like Peanuts comics and Sanford & Son and The Tragically Hip and Ginger, the woodchuck who lives across the road and eats clover in our backyard in the summer, or complaining for my own amusement about how much I dislike Donald Trump and football and Nicolas Cage and the asshole I got stuck behind while I was prairie doggin on my way home from Kroger.
Ms. Ginger Wiggles, at your service.
What, am I supposed to not talk about how much she rules?
When I wasn’t posting dumb shit on Facebook, I was angrily reading comments so I could feel superior to strangers. I’m 47 years old, y’all, I don’t have the time or energy to devote to being pissed off that some random guy with a “Let’s Go Brandon” image for a profile pic on the Louder Than Life fan group says Slayer is overrated and AcidBath sucks. That guy is wrong about a lot more than his shitty musical taste whether or not I know about his opinions or his existence, and besides, it’s easier on my blood pressure if I don’t know about either. Plus there are way bigger things to get pissed off about (see also the real-time, real-life documentary series 2025: We’re Hosed, starring Nazi billionaires, religious fundamentalists, and dozens upon dozens of sex pests with a proclivity for violence).
Speaking of Nazi billionaires, I used to also have a Twitter account, which I pretty much only used to promote this blog and harass Ted Cruz. I deleted that account the instant I read that the present owner was buying the app. The decision wasn’t difficult, as I never like the format of Twitter anyway. Character limits are not conducive to my being long-winded, as evidenced by this very blog.
Anyway, I cruised along happily with Facebook and Instagram for a while, feeling somewhat morally superior, until right around the time it was announced that Suckerberg was donating money to the Orange Husk’s inauguration. That was my first real indication that my time with my beloved social media security blanket had to come to an end. The events of Inauguration Day itself solidified it for me. Facebook had to go, just as soon as I could muster the energy to start the process – no small feat in and of itself, what with the year of January being so emotionally and physically exhausting.
Speaking of Instagram, when I wasn’t posting dumb shit there, I was watching reels of cute animals and stand-up comedians and clips from Regular Show and Curb Your Enthusiasm, which is a way of saying that Instagram was much better for my mental health than was Facebook, but unfortunately, they’re both owned by Zuckerberg, so they both had to go fuckerberg off.
It’s gonna be weird to not have those things at my fingertips to kill time during commercial breaks, or when Sheila goes to the terlit while we’re out at a restaurant, or while I wait for a doctor’s appointment. I’ve automatically lost touch with several people that I only knew through Facebook – people with whom I could’ve certainly enjoyed a cup of coffee or a beer IRL, but who I have no good reason to call or text. I’ll particularly miss a couple of folks from a Bill Hicks fan group and a few fellow metalheads from around the globe. There are some former co-workers who live in various places around the country who are evermore banished to the land of wind and ghosts, unless I happen to run into them while they’re in town visiting someone else.
You have very lucky dishes, Mr. Simpson.
Facebookhas admittedly been good for some things. I have a friend in Australia who I met in the late 90’s on Bolt, an early social media website. We chatted and emailed on that site, as well as exchanged letters and phone calls a few times in the early days (one time her dad answered the phone, and when I asked him to tell her I called, he said “alright mate,” and I accidentally squealed a little bit), then our lives drifted apart for several years, until Myspace (and later, Facebook) brought us back together. Anyway, I was able to get her contact info before deleting, and I’m very glad about that. It’s fuckin wild to think that we’ve been friends for 26 years and have never met in person.
In addition to bringing people back into my life, social media has allowed me to show my true self to the world without the terrible inconvenience of being looked at while I do it. That’s an important thing for a socially awkward introvert such as myself to have. The amount that I dislike being looked at while I talk is unfathomable. I’m totally comfortable around a few key people, but for the most part, if I’m talking, and you’re looking at me, all I’m thinking about is how uncomfortable I am with the fact that you’re looking at me while I’m talking. That’s obviously a thing I need to get past, and I am working on it, but personal change doesn’t come easily or naturally to me. I can appreciate spontaneity from time to time, but I like my routines, and they are hard for me to break. But it’s like they say, knowing is half the battle.
Hey Roadblock, some stranger’s bringin me a prize!
Another not insignificant benefit of Facebook and Instagram is the added reach it gave my blog. It’ll be interesting to see how my stats differ without having those accounts to promote from. And while I know that in the short term my total views will take a hit, I’m happy that one less billionaire is making money off my work. I’m sure I’ll write more about all this another time, but until then, why not subscribe for updates, and/or follow me on Bluesky (@clockwisecirclepit.bsky.social)? Bluesky is pretty much exactly like Twitter as far as I can tell, so I doubt I’ll use it much, but at the very least, you’ll find out when I’ve posted something new here.
On my drive to work yesterday I realized that, while I’ve mentioned them on these “esteemed” pages before, I’ve never actually written about Clutch, and that’s dumb, because they’ve been one of my favorite bands for almost 30 years now. I’ve written extensively about Iron Maiden, Testament, Helmet, Metallica, Anthrax, and especially Voivod, mostly on my old blog, but for some reason I just haven’t bothered to sit down and write anything substantial about one of the most consistent (and consistently excellent) bands making rock ‘n’ roll music today. I’m here today to remedy that.
If you’ve read much of anything I’ve written here (or anywhere, really), you know that I can be quite long-winded when I get worked up about something (especially if I’m not being looked at while I go on about it), and if you think I don’t get worked up talkin about Clutch, then you’re fixin to learn a thing or two about me. In the spirit of making this more easily digestible, I’m gonna break it up into parts. I flew pretty close to the sun when I posted my guide on how to maximize your good times at Louder Than Life, and if you made it all the way through that sprawling beast, I salute you. I know attention spans are at an all-time low, and it was risky to post something that takes a full 30 minutes to read, but that piece needed to be its own thing.
This thing can certainly be broken into parts. I figure there’ll be three of them. It could be more, and it’s also entirely possible that this’ll be the one and only installment, because sometimes not finishing things is what I do.
Like many of the bands and artists I got into in the mid-to-late 90’s, I first heard Clutch via my homeboy Travis. I grew up in a housing addition in a rural area (I called it the “ruburbs”, since it was like a suburb, but rural, and because I’m very clever) less than 200 yards from the county line, and cable TV wasn’t available there (I’m pretty sure it still isn’t, nor, as recently as late 2021 was any semblance of road treatment during a snow or ice event). It was pretty annoying for me as a kid, but I realize now that even if the cable company had put in the time and expense to bring their services to a small enclave of houses 20 miles from the nearest “city” (Bedford, population: less than 15,000), my parents most certainly wouldn’t have been willing to pay for it, and I couldn’t fault them for that even if I wanted to. We watched 60 Minutes and Hunter and Roseanne and Hoosier Millionaire for free, goddamnit, and we either liked it, or we lumped it.
This was also a few years before PrimeStar and DirecTV became available in my neighborhood. If you lived in the neighborhood of Airy Hills just north of Springville, Indiana in the early-to-mid 1990’s and wanted to watch anything other than the few channels you could pick up with an antenna, the only option was one of those big, old school C-band satellite dishes. Quick side note: it seems as though back in 1970, someone thought “Airy Hills” was a good name for a brand new, developing neighborhood, and no one bothered to tell them they were wrong, and so I grew up in a place called “Airy Hills”.
The future isn’t what it used to be.
Anyway, Travis lived up the road, and his parents had one of those C-band satellite dishes (which I just learned today was the name of those dishes), and one of the cool things he had access to was MuchMusic. At the time, the channel was more or less Canadian MTV, and like its American counterpart, it has since moved away from music programming (the name was changed to “Much” in 2013 to reflect this). The intersection of time when MuchMusic played music and Travis’s parents had their satellite dish also happened to contain the years 1991-1995, which is when the channel aired a show called Power 30. If MuchMusic was Canadian MTV, Power 30 was Canadian Headbanger’s Ball, although as the name suggests, Power 30 was only 30 minutes per episode, whereas HBB ran a full 3 hours at that point in time. Americans always have to do things bigger, eh?
Anyway, Travis taped two episodes of Power 30, and one summer day between high school and my first ill-conceived attempt at college, we watched that tape together. He was particularly excited for me to see the episode featuring some band called Clutch, as he figured it would be right up my alley, and as usual, he was correct. Travis has a near perfect record when it comes to music recommendations and me.
The episode kicked off with the video for a song called “A Shogun Named Marcus”, and less than halfway through its sub-three-minute run-time, I was hooked.
Hari Kari and combines, come dancin with me.
That fateful 30 minutes also included some live footage of the band and an interview clip, and the live footage was intense and the interview was funny, and I was already well on my way to adding a new favorite to my “all-timers” list. The next payday after watching that video, Travis and I went CD shopping, and I managed to score a used copy of their self-titled second album, which had been released no more than three months prior. (Thinking about that now, it occurs to me that someone probably bought it after seeing “A Shogun Named Marcus” on Beavis and Butthead, and found themselves less interested in the direction the band was taking. Whatever caused them to sell it, I’m still reaping all the benefits.)
Jon Lovitz is incredible.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Plus I don’t wanna get too much into my personal Clutch-related narrative yet, because I have to go grocery shopping before the price of everything goes up in a few days, so I’ll just knock out some basics about the band first, for anyone who might be unfamiliar with them.
Clutch formed in 1991 in Germantown, Maryland, and after a brief stint with another singer that I only just learned about earlier today, Neil Fallon joined guitarist Tim Sult, bassist Dan Maines, and drummer Jean-Paul Gaster, and outside of a relatively brief stretch of time in the mid-to-late aughts where they brought in a full-time keyboard player (Mick Schauer, RIP), the lineup has remained unchanged since. There’ll be more on the Mick years in a later installment.
They released their first EP, Pitchfork, that same year on 7″ and 12″ vinyl. It was a feral beast, completely betraying the band’s love of 80’s hardcore punk and boiling over with youthful anger and vitriol. It’s very good, but it sounds nothing like the grooving, swinging, juggernaut the band has become over the past 34 years.
See what I did there?
I didn’t hear Pitchfork until sometime in 2005 (sweet baby jeebus, has it really been twenty years?!), as it went out of print long before I even knew it existed, so I won’t spend any more time on it here, but it will come back into play later. I’m sure you simply cannot fucking wait.
Clutch released their second EP, Passive Restraints, in 1992, and it is sonically very similar to Pitchfork, but careful listeners will note some changes already taking place in the sound. To my ears, the songs on Pitchfork are more amorphous and interchangeable, whereas the songs on Passive Restraints sound more distinct from one another. It’s also a bit more polished, sonically speaking.
Can you dig it?
It’s a real tight, badass collection of songs, and I can’t recommend it enough. You should also watch this video, which is Clutch performing “Passive Restraints” in 2020, with Randy Blythe from Lamb of God doin up some guest vocals. It’ll get the blood flowin.
Efficiency is beautiful, efficiency is art.
As mentioned above, Clutch released their full-length debut, Transnational Speedway League: Anthems, Anecdotes, and Undeniable Truths, the next year. The extra run-time inherent in the format shows significant growth in the overall sound of the band. This is also where Neil’s penchant for oddball, often hilarious lyrics started to really take form. It’s not my favorite Clutch album, but it’s also not my least favorite Clutch album (more on that in a later installment). I listen to it at least a few times a year.
Highlights include the aforementioned “A Shogun Named Marcus”, “12 Ounce Epilogue”, “Walking in the Great Shining Path of Monster Trucks”, and one of my personal Top Ten Favorite Clutch Songs, “Rats”. I actually wrote a little bit about “Rats” in my last post for this blog, and you can read that here if you want. “Rats” also happens to be one of the songs in the live footage on that episode of Power 30. I suspect that tiny clip is at least part of what made me fall in love with the song.
I finally got to hear “Rats” live for the first time two years ago, which was my twelfth time seeing Clutch live, and which, sadly, is also the last time I’ve been able to see them live. I’m really hoping they’ll get added to Louder Than Life again this year, since their day was cancelled last year.
And God was certainly a genius to expose this human weakness.
1995 saw the release of the band’s self-titled second full-length album. In a lot of ways, Clutch (the album) marks the proper beginning of the modern sound of Clutch (the band). This album took the riffs, the hooks, the aggression, and the sense of humor that the band were already perfecting, and injected the whole mess with a groove and swing that absolutely cannot be denied.
One notable change on this album (one that really came to fruition a bit later down the road for our stalwart DC sound attackers) is a developing tendency toward somewhat psychedelic freakouts, including on one of the band’s best-known songs, “Spacegrass”.
We’ll find us some spacegrass, lay low and watch the universe expand.
The album ends with a 10+ minute jam (technically two songs, but really they’re one), beginning with the almost meditative “7 Jam”, which finds Neil spitting lyrics like a fire and brimstone preacher giving testimony at a tent revival. “7 Jam” flows directly into the instrumental closer “Tim Sult vs the Greys”, which revisits and reimagines the riff and groove from “7 Jam” in a wonderfully understated way. It also features some pretty dope keyboard work courtesy of Richard Morel. If I didn’t already know it was the same band responsible for “Binge and Purge”, I wouldn’t believe it.
I stood up, and everything was alright.
Clutch’s ongoing artistic development led to the band sometimes being categorized as “stoner rock”, which bugs me, even if it isn’t the least bit important. To me, the term “stoner rock” carries with it an implication that one must be stoned to truly enjoy it, and while I’ll freely admit that mellowing out and listening to Clutch is an auditory treat that can’t be beat, the fact of the matter is that I loved Clutch for fully 5 years before I ever even thought about getting high for the first time.
Yo, I don’t know, B!
I know I’m overthinking it, and I also know it really, truly does not matter at all. I thoroughly enjoy a lot of bands that have the “stoner rock” label applied to them, so whatever. The important thing here is that in the year of our gourd 1995, Clutch started to groove like a moose, and they never looked back, and the world is a better place for it.
That seems like as good a place to stop as any. This nap ain’t gonna take itself. If you’d like to learn more about Clutch, and the impact they’ve had on my life for pretty much the entirety of my adulthood, check back for more soon. Maybe not too soon, though.
Until then, thanks for reading. And remember, beebopalloobopawopshamboo, and domo arigato if you got to.
Hello! And welcome to another edition of “Old-Ass Mixtape Review”. It’s been three-and-one-half years since I’ve written one of these, but I’ve been thinking about returning to it for a while now, so here we are. If you’re not familiar with my semi-recurring “Old-Ass Mixtape Review” posts, the vague idea is that I take an old (-ass) mixtape I made in the Before Times (mostly the 90’s through early-to-mid 2000’s), I listen to it in the first time in 10 or more years, and I write about it. That’s what we in the business call a “writing prompt”. I’m just kidding, I’m not in the writing business. I’m too busy givin this shit away.
I was gonna include a video here for the Supersuckers song “Givin it Away”, but Google and YouTube are both trying to gaslight me into thinking the song never even existed. I know that it does exist, but you’ll have to hang out and listen to How the Supersuckers Became the Greatest Rock ‘n’ Roll Band in the World on CD with me if you wanna hear it. In addition to being a kick-ass song, it also contains the line, “don’t be callin me no whore, cause I’m givin it away”, and I wanted to use those lyrics in the caption of the video, but since I can’t do that, I’m gonna share a different Supersuckers song.
Don’t know if I’ll ever learn.
Just for funsies, here’s the top result from when I searched “Supersuckers givin it away” on YouTube:
This sounds exactly as you’d expect based on the cover. It’s a cool song, but it’s not the same as the Supersuckers song.
Here’s the twist with this ongoing writing exercise: I’m only reviewing tapes that don’t have a track listing, which means I have no way of knowing what is on said tapes until I listen. How exciting!
Oh, Charlie…
Speaking of exciting, I’m off work (paid) until about a week into the new year, and as of right now, I’m planning to be as productive as possible, while still allowing plenty of time to relax as much as I possibly can in spite of the impending doom that is the Final Form of the United States of America: a literal oligarchy made up of racist billionaire shitheads and racist fundamentalist religious dickheads, all of them sex pests.
I’m very much looking forward to forgetting that I even have a job while I spend my leisure time reading, watching Murder, She Wrote, and lookin at birds, and my productive time giving the house a much-needed cleaning/rearranging and writing as much as possible, which is why we’re here right now.
Today’s installment is the first volume in a series of mixtapes I made for myself between probably 2000 and 2005. When I made the original Awesome Mixtape #6, I didn’t plan on it becoming a series, but life comes at you pretty fast, and next thing you know, I’ve made seven of them. I don’t know where Volume 3 is anymore, so I only own six of them today. This one and Volume 7 have no track listing (V7 doesn’t even have a J-card), so, get stoked for even more of this nonsense I guess.
What kind of monster wouldn’t make a track list on that surface? It’s shameful, really.
Oh, a quick credit-where-credit-is-due bit: I stole the title of the tape series from Boogie Nights, which is a fantastic movie that I simply cannot watch anymore, due to the devastating sadness and despair it wroughts upon me. And I suppose I should get the technical mumbo jumbo out of the way before we get started: we’re workin with a standard 90-minute Sony High Fidelity Type I cassette here. I don’t really know what that means, but if you click that link, you can learn a lot about blank audio cassettes. I expect the sound will be adequate. Certainly better than “Old-Ass Mixtape Review, Volume 1: Beloved Songs“.
Here’s Side A after I finished listening to it.
Side A
Danny Elfman – “The Simpsons Main Title Theme (Extended Version)”
This is one of two songs I knew for sure was on this tape (the other one will be coming up later on Side A). Danny Elfman once named this the song that’ll be mentioned in his obituary. I haven’t watched an episode of The Simpsons since the Futurama crossover 10-12 years ago, but The Simpsons from seasons 1-10 is one of my favorite shows of all time.
This version originally appeared in “Cape Feare” (Season 5, Episode 2).
Clutch – “Rats”
“Build a better man trap, and the rats will beat a path to your door.” So shouteth Neil Fallon, and who am I to argue with the frontman of one of the greatest rock ‘n’ roll bands of all time? This is one of my favorite Clutch songs, so it’s not surprising to me that the tape drags a bit throughout, as I likely rewound this one a lot. I got to hear it live for the first time like 18 months ago, which was the last time I saw them, and which was also the 12th time I’ve seen them. I missed out on lucky number 13 back in September, but they pretty much only stop touring in order to record new albums, so I know I’ll get another chance soon.
And God was certainly a genius to expose his human weakness.
Dropkick Murphys – “Noble”
I wrote a bit about Dropkick Murphys in a Louder Than Life-related post recently, so I won’t bother to discuss them here, but I absolutely fuckin love this song.
He was a kid from the neighborhood.
Avail – “Lombardy St.” (acoustic)
I love Avail. I’m fortunate to have seen frontman Tim Barry live three times, but I missed at least that many chances to see Avail live before they broke up, and that’s a bummer, because at this point whenever they do play shows, they end up selling before I even find out about them, plus they’re usually on the east coast anyway. I keep hoping they’ll appear on a Louder Than Life lineup one of these years, but so far, no dice.
Anyway, this version of “Lombardy St.” is originally from The Fall of Richmond, a split single with a band called (Young) Pioneers, about whom I recall nothing. The heavier original version is on their 1998 album Over the James. That version is also fantastic, as is the rest of that album, as is pretty much everything Avail ever released. You should listen to Avail, and Tim Barry.
Tell me why you feel alright, but still I don’t.
The Velvet Underground – “I’m Waiting for the Man”
I’m a sucker for an unconventional vocalist singing over a jangly guitar. See also: The Tragically Hip, R.E.M., Hüsker Dü, et al, so you know this song is right up my proverbial alley.
Here’s a fun story: in my younger, dumber, drunker days, I was hanging out at Owen, Ian, and Mike’s place, as I often did. Some sort of small, impromptu gathering had broken out, as tended to be the case on a Friday evening. I overindulged on Schnapps and/or Miller High Life, as one does when one is me at the age of twenty-two. Thankfully I had the good sense to leave my car parked and stay the night, and I passed out on the couch in the “sitting” room, which connected the living room with the kitchen, and which almost certainly used to be the fancy dining room before the house was divided in two.
While their place made for a fantastic party pad, it was sorely lacking in one particular way: the two-story, three bedroom duplex with semi-finished basement only had one bathroom, and it was at the top of the stairs on the second floor, where it shared a very thin wall with one of the bedrooms.
My eyes shot open. I could tell it was morning, because I could see pretty clearly, and I deduced it was quite early, as the entire first floor was shaded. A sudden urgency took hold of me — an urgency I think I’ve not experienced since.
I shot off the couch and leapt up those stairs in personal record time, unleashing approximately 100 gallons of vomit into a toilet that as many as 20 people had used to go number 1 and number 2 in the past 12 hours. I’m not really a math guy, but that definitely adds up to “86 me”.
I thought the unholy slurry of sadness, regrets, and bad decisions would never stop coming out of me, but eventually it did, whereupon I became aware of the t h r o b b i n g in my skull. In those days, I hadn’t yet developed the good sense to also drink water while drinking alcohol.
“Hey buddy, you gonna make it?” I turned my head as far as I could manage, which ended up being about two inches, which was just enough to make out the image of Owen standing in the doorway in his underwear, his hair like an impressionist Troll doll. I mumbled some kind of reply, and he helped me back down the stairs to the couch, and brought me a glass of water and a trash can. I closed my eyes and made an official proclamation that I was never going to drink again as Owen went back to bed.
My eyes shot open. The sun was coming in the living room windows now, but it still hadn’t reached me. I was glad about that, because I’m very warm-natured, and the last thing I needed was to start sweating on that disgusting couch. I heard voices coming from the kitchen, and I heard music playing, although I can’t remember who was talking, or what the song was. I also can’t remember how I managed to get all of my throwup in the trash can, but I know that I did. A sudden movement caught my attention from across the narrow room. It was Mike, sitting in a chair, throwing up into the book he was reading. I groaned “I’m sorry Mike!” and closed my eyes, wondering if I’d ever feel okay again.
A mellow, repetitive guitar jangle eased my eyes open as weird, warbly, monotone voice filled the room. The sun was higher now, coming in the window directly above me. It cast a soft, bright light on the potted heartleaf philodendron hanging from the ceiling. I instantly knew I had finished puking, at least for the day. I looked across the room to see Mike contentedly eating Taco Bell. I said “I’m sorry Mike,” and he laughed. “That’s okay, man, it happens to the best of us. I got an extra taco if you’re hungry. You feel like eating?”
I did feel like eating, and sat on that couch in the warm sun and ate a taco with my friend and let this beautiful, melancholy song about buying heroin take a heretofore unrecognized empty spot in my soul and fill it with a glow that matched the one that filled that room. That was the first time that “I’m Waiting For the Man” made me realize things were gonna be okay.
First thing you learn is that you always got to wait.
Stubborn All-Stars – “Tin Spam”
I don’t actually know much of anything about this band, but I used to own their debut album Open Season, and I listened to it a lot. This is the first song from that album. I still put it on mixes to this day. I dig plenty of reggae, ska, and ska-punk, but that sweet spot of Jamaican ska/rock steady is my jam.
Take what you’re given, never take the time to discover your own desires.
Descendents – “Everything Sux”/”Coffee Mug”
I likely wouldn’t be sitting here writing these words without the Descendents (and their companion band, ALL). They got me through some shit in my early-twenties. This is an unusual selection, as I don’t normally put two songs in a row by the same band on my mixes (unless the whole mix is twofers, or it’s a streaming mix, which I pretty much always shuffle). Knowing the way I think, I’m guessing I put these two songs in a row because they’re both very short, and they feel like spiritual siblings. The tape slows down/drags just a bit toward the end of “Coffee Mug”, but it corrects itself pretty quickly.
Got up on the wrong side of life this morning, nothing today is gonna go my way.
Liquid proof that I can win this race.
The Bouncing Souls – “Neurotic”
I absolutely 100% would not be here writing these words without The Bouncing Souls. This band was everything to me for about four years in my early-to-mid twenties. I got to meet them once, at the last Warped Tour I ever attended (2000). Pete complimented my shirt (which I left in Austin when I moved back home, because someone washed a mixed load on hot and it turned the shirt pink), and Brian assured me that they, too, were still alive because of their music. It was a good day. I’ll write more about The Bouncing Souls one of these days.
MORE COFFEE! MORE COFFEE! MORE COFFEE I’M GOING NUMB!
The Pavers – “Mr. Sheperd’s Bandage”
Scott Reynolds was the second vocalist for ALL, the band that the Descendents became after Milo went to college the second time. I have a long overdue thing about ALL/Descendents to write one of these days. Anyway, Scott sang on three studio albums and one live album, and a handful of other songs that were included as B-sides on singles, then he left ALL and moved to the Pacific Northwest, where he joined forces with the late, great Trevor Lanigan (My Name, Wretch Like Me) to form a band called GoodbyeHarry. They released two excellent albums before breaking up, after which Scott moved back home to Upstate New York, where he and some friends formed another amazing band called The Pavers, which, if you recall from the beginning of this entry, is this band right here.
Scott has gone on to record a bunch other of great stuff under various names, including his own. You should check out his work. This song is about a WW2 veteran who was injured at the Battle of Anzio. It makes me cry any time I pay attention to the lyrics.
Speaking of lyrics, I’m gonna share them, because they are exceptionally good:
Oh, a million miles an hour A thousand times a night I watch them burn red Red rockets cross my sight 1944, Second World War At Anzio we kicked in Mussolini’s door
That’s when it came German steel, Italian rain Sent razors through my legs, and sent me back home
Open up my eyes Lovely VA nurse Said “Mr. Shepherd, you’ve made it through the worst.” But she don’t know what she means ‘Cause she ain’t seen what I’ve seen The worst gets worse every night in every dream
Hot rockets hiss, hard violence, soft prom night kiss The first 18 years add up to this Whispered on the rocket’s hiss It goes on and on and on and on
Seems like a thousand years fell down, down on him A thousand fears ground down all around him Jagged edge gone soft with time And Mr. Shepherd’s just fine
At least that’s what we believe, ‘Cause we don’t want to see He’s still laid bare to the bone below his knee. Here he comes again I recognize his walk Sit right there, Mr. Shepherd, please don’t talk
White cotton gauze still running red without a pause While everyone forgets what caused The horror there beneath the gauze It goes on and on and on and on For Mr. Shepherd
There’s a very good actual video for this song as well, but YouTube put an age restriction on it because it uses actual footage of World War II, and the people who control what we see and consume seem hell-bent on making sure everyone forgets that fascism is unequivocally bad and should be defeated. “Everyone forgets what caused the horror there beneath the gauze” indeed. Anyway, you can watch it on YouTube.
Public Enemy – “By the Time I Get to Arizona”
This is the other song that I knew for certain was a part of this mix, but I didn’t remember where it fell. Here, apparently. It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back and Fear of a Black Planet are obviously important and groundbreaking releases from the legendary hip-hop group, but their fourth album, Apocalypse ’91…the Enemy Strikes Black is the first one I heard (thanks in part to my homeboy Travis, as well as their collaboration with Anthrax), and it’s still my favorite. This song is amazing.
I urinated on the state while I was kickin this song.
Fishbone – “Sunless Saturday”
I don’t listen to enough Fishbone, but I’ve probably listened to this song 500 times since I first heard it in the early 90’s.
I think the sun will never visit me again.
Here’s a blog-only bonus track – “Sunless Saturday” live on The Arsenio Hall Show.
The energy coming off that stage could power an entire city block.
Rollins Band – “Do It”
I was a bonafide Henry Rollins fanboy in my late teens and very early twenties. I still dig pretty much all of his recorded musical output up to and including Rollins Band’s 1997 album Come in and Burn, but I don’t listen to it much anymore. I wrote once on my old blog about embarrassing myself when I met him on the Come in and Burn tour, and you can read about that here if you’d like. It’s a pretty funny story.
Do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it, aw yeah, do it!
The Mothers of Invention – “My Guitar Wants to Kill Your Mama”
I tried to get into Frank Zappa around the same time I was getting into Henry Rollins and The Velvet Underground, and I owned three CDs at one point, but for the most part, I could never really get past the weirdness. I like some pretty fuckin weird stuff, but by and large, Zappa’s music just doesn’t do much for me. As a cultural icon/seemingly pretty fuckin cool guy, however, I’m all in on Frank Zappa. And I do still love this song.
My guitar wants to burn your dad.
Del Shannon – “Runaway”
I’ve loved this song since I was a little kid. I especially dig Del’s raspy vocals in the chorus. I signed up to sing it at karaoke one night, not knowing if I’d be able to pull off the key change in the chorus, and was pleasantly surprised to find that I could. I’m pretty confident I would not be able to do that anymore. One last thing: ever since I first heard the band Down By Law, I’ve imagined them covering this. I think Dave Smalley’s voice would sound great on it.
I WA-WA-WA-WA-wonder…why. WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY she ran away.
H2O – “Nazi Punks Fuck Off”
H2O is another band that helped me through it when I was a li’l sad boi. I don’t listen to them much anymore, but they’ll always hold a special place in my heart, and I’d see them live again in a heartbeat. They were my gateway to positive hardcore, and, like Henry Rollins/Rollins Band, they helped me understand that I was worth more than I thought. This song first appeared on a compilation that I picked up at Warped Tour ’99 called Stop Racism: Anti-Racist Action, the Benefit CD. Warped Tour ’99 is also one of the times where I missed seeing Avail live. It’s the circle of life, and it moves us all.
YouTube doesn’t want Nazi punks to fuck off, apparently.
Green Day – “The Ballad of Wilhelm Fink”
This song rules, and is one of my favorite Green Day songs. It originally appeared on Short Music for Short People, a Fat Wreck Chords CD compilation of 101 bands performing 30 second songs (Bad Religion‘s song is actually 45 seconds long, but Greg Graffin can’t help himself). I foolishly got rid of my copy of this CD when I moved back from Austin, and that was dumb. It has some certified bangers on it.
Less Than Jake – “Anchor”
Ooh, here’s another Certified Banger from Short Music. Less Than Jake is a band that I don’t really listen to on purpose, but I’ve always enjoy them when I hear them. I absolutely love the *ding* at the end of the song. At this point, I feel like we’re gonna get at least one more song from SMfSP.
AFI – “Hearts Frozen Solid, Thawed Once More by the Spring of Rage, Despair and Hopelessness”
And I was right. I always liked to cram as many short songs as possible on the end of tape sides, to both maximize the rockin and minimize the blank space. What to say about AFI…Davey Havok is pretty ridiculous, and I think I dislike more of their recorded output than I like, but when AFI makes a great song, AFI makes a great fuckin song. I saw them on that same Warped Tour where I met The Bouncing Souls (H2O was there, too), and they were pretty dope live, even in the middle of the day. I’d catch them live again if I could, but I imagine I’d be a grumpy old piece of shit for most of the show, because I imagine they’d play mostly stuff from after 1997, and because I’m a grumpy old piece of shit.
The clicking and muddiness that follows AFI indicate that I likely tried to add one more song, but nothing would fit. Cue sad trombone sound.
Okay, I’m gonna wrap this up. I’ll get around to Side B ASAP. Maybe even tomorrow (but don’t hold your breath). Thanks for reading!
I’ve been a nostalgia junkie since I had my second memory. I have no memory of my second memory, but I can see my first memory so vividly that I sometimes forget that there is no physical photograph of that memory. The year was 1980. I was 3 years old (possibly not quite 3 yet), and a cloth Holly Hobbie calendar hung on the wall in the kitchen of my childhood home. I remember strawberries on the calendar. The light I see in my mind’s eye is the soft, light blue haze of a rainy day coming outside those front windows.
I decided to log onto the world wide web to see if I could find an image of that exact calendar. The first hit in my Google search for “Holly Hobbie” taught me that Holly Hobbie is actually the artist’s name! I imagine a lot of people were already aware of that fact, but it was news to me.
When I added “calendar” to the search, the first hit that came up was exactly the image I’ve had in my mind all these years.
Forgive the pixels, please.
“Of course!” I thought, “my dumb li’l 3 year old brain must’ve thought that bonnet was a strawberry! This is definitely the calendar, though. It’s exactly as I see it in my memory.”
I didn’t actually think those exact words, but you get the idea.
If you squint just enough you might notice, up there in the top right corner, the year 1981.
“But Joel!” you thought, “you said this memory was from 1980!”
“You’re right,” I thought, “I did say that. I must’ve been wrong about that detail all these years. I mean, it is my very first memory ever, and I was only 3 or 4 years old, so I’m bound to fudge some of the details. I was still learning! I’m sure this is the image though. I’ve maybe never been more sure about anything in my life.”
Again, I don’t think in sentences like that. It’s just a narrative device.
Anyway, I went ahead and bought the calendar, because it’s like I said to myself, “why wouldn’t you wanna own the real, physical, tangible version of your first memory? Be able to hold it in your hands after all these years. Huh?”
That’s why I don’t have a better picture of it, by the way. After the transaction was completed, eBay wouldn’t let me embiggen the picture again.
Here’s another thing that happened after the transaction was completed: I returned to the search page, and what I found there alarmed me.
I’ve always been a sucker for a silly, folksy, homespun rhyme.
I also remember this exact calendar, and it is from 1980, and now I figure my dumb li’l 3 year old brain must’ve thought that big ol dress was strawberry, and I was wrong about it being a Holly Hobbie calendar all along. Sonofabitch!
Then I found myself wondering if it was really the calendar itself that I remembered, or if it was just the silly, folksy, homespun rhyme. There’s a 900% chance that those words appeared on at least one thing in my childhood home, and an equal chance that various relatives also had trinkets and doo-dads and walls festooned with that declaration.
For the first time ever, I considered the possibility that my First Memory was actually two memories smooshed together.
I went back to the search page again, and saw this one next:
It also looks extremely familiar.
Maybe my dumb li’l 3 year old brain thought that red dress was a strawberry. Maybe my first memory really did happen in 1980. But that would still mean that I bought someone else’s first memory instead of mine.
Then I saw this one.
“Oh, tell me that’s not glorious.” – Racebannon
I also remember this exact calendar, and if the year read either 1980 or ’81, I would swear in court that this was the calendar from my first memory.
I celebrated my sixth birthday in 1983, and a whole bunch of snapshots of memories exist between that blue-gray day in 1980 or ’81, and also these actual snapshots from my sixth birthday party.
My sweet, sweet Grandma made that clown for me. It would go on to scare the bejeesus out of my cousin Jason and me a few years later. That’s my cousin Anthony with me in this picture.
I still have that book and record set to the right of the ’69 Camaro SS scale model that I never managed to put together correctly.
In what is almost certainly a total coincidence, the wall on which that banner hangs is the same wall where that calendar hung in either 1980 or 1981. Speaking of that banner, it was a gift from my kindergarten class. My kindergarten teacher, Miss Baker, was awesome. She became Mrs. Dillman later in my elementary school career, but she didn’t become any less cool.
I would be remiss if I failed to mention that I wore that shirt from the birthday party for my first grade picture the following September.
Speaking of cool…
The point I’m trying to make, I think, is that memories are not necessarily as accurate as we like to think they are. As far as I know, I’m the first person to ever come to that realization.
I’m just kidding. Many studies have shown that, while our memories can at times be surprisingly accurate, humans remember things incorrectly a lot of the time. I’m not gonna cite sources. You can Google it if you want receipts.
If I’ve learned one thing this afternoon, it’s that the only detail I’m sure about any more, with regards to my first memory, is that the light was tinted blue. And ultimately, I decided that even if the Holly Hobbie calendar is not the specific calendar from my first memory, it’s definitely a calendar I remember, so it’s okay that I bought it. I suppose it might even be my second memory, and that’s pretty cool too.
Before we finish up, let’s skip ahead a few years. I’m in fourth grade now, and I’ve had a lot more practice remembering things since the day I noticed that vague calendar hanging on the wall in that soft blue light. The day is gray and rainy, and I’m in my classroom taking a test. My desk is across the room from the outside wall, and it faces the windows.
My gaze moves across the room, out the window, and I notice that the silhouettes of my classmates are bathed in that same hazy blue hue from 6 or 7 years before. I don’t recognize it as the same blue just then. It’s only in retrospect that I realize both memories have the same color.
My discovery as documented above makes me wonder now how much of my fourth grade memory is correct. Were we actually taking a test? Was it actually even fourth grade? I’m pretty sure it was, based on the room we were in.
The only thing I know for certain, without even a whisper of a doubt, is that both memories exist in the same blue glow.
I can’t think of any other memories that appear blue to me, but I do sometimes dream in that same blue. The blue in my dreams is less hazy and more vivid, but it makes sense that it would be.
On a different note, blue has been my favorite color for as long as I can remember, and now I find myself wondering how much the cozy blue glow of that first memory has to do with that.
I don’t know what any of this means. Probably nothing. I hope you weren’t looking forward to a satisfying conclusion.
Thanks for reading. What’s the first thing you remember? Do you have any colors associated with specific memories?
Y’all: there’s a real good chance I’ll get to see Acid Bath live this summer/fall, and I am giddy with excitement. If you’re unfamiliar, Acid Bath formed in 1991 in Houma, Louisiana, south of New Orleans. They were the result of the smashing-together of two existing bands, Dark Karnival (so glad that name died with the band,) and Golgotha, and both of those bands are cool, but Acid Bath is better.
This is obviously (?) an old picture, but it’s also a cool picture.
One time Sheila and I were driving through central Kentucky on our way home from Nashville, Tennessee when she had me detour to Cave City, near Mammoth Cave, so she could show me some of super odd/fuckin awesome roadside attractions. Pretty much everything was closed, on account of it being Sunday, but we could still stop and look. There was Wigwam Village Motel, which looked very cool, and Dinosaur World, which was closed, unfortunately. The main thing she wanted to show me was Golgotha Fun Park (“#1 Shaded Biblical Mini-Golf”), which in English translates to Place of the Skulls Fun Park, which is clearly fun for the entire family, and is also definitely the kind of thing that inspires people to grow up and form amazing bands.
This website has some other pictures of the mini golf course as well.
See also, Chat Pile.
It’s pretty badass that we get to exist at the same time as this song.
Anyway, I was talking about Acid Bath. The lineup consisted of Dax Riggs on lead vocals, Sammy “Pierre” Duet and Mike Sanchez on guitars and vocals, Audie Pitre on bass and backing vocals, and Jimmy Kyle on drums. Tomas Viator played drums before Jimmy Kyle took over, then he re-joined the band on keyboards for their second album.
Speaking of their second album, they released two of them: 1994’s When the Kite String Pops, and Paegan Terrorism Tactics (1996).
Sometime in probably 2000, I found myself in the late, lamented All Ears (surely among the finest record stores to ever exist in Bloomington, Indiana) with a little change in my pocket goin jing-a-ling-a-lang. I was (and very much still am) a fan of a band called Dirty Rotten Imbeciles, and I knew their last two albums were released on a label called Rotten Records, which was co-founded by DRI guitarist Spike Cassidy. I was digging through the discount CD section, filled with promotional copies and albums missing covers and the like, when I came upon a promo copy of When the Kite String Pops, which was also released by Rotten Records and co-produced by Spike Cassidy. This seeming affiliation with DRI made me think it might kinda sound like DRI, and it was only $3.00, so really I couldn’t afford not to buy it.
Narrator: They did not kinda sound like DRI.
I’d never heard anything quite like it before, and as of December 8, 2024, I still haven’t. I listened to that CD one time, and it was too much for the big idiot that was 23-year-old Joel, so I put it in a box with a bunch of other CDs I never listened to, and it stayed there until I finally sold it, along with a huge chunk of the rest of my CD collection, before I moved to Austin, Texas in 2003. I don’t think much of 26-year-old Joel either sometimes, if I’m being completely honest.
The point is, I didn’t get into Acid Bath until later, like 2013, probably. I was killin time in my car before work one morning, dickin around on facebook, when I saw that a musician and writer whose work I enjoy very much shared the song “Graveflower”, from Paegan Terrorism Tactics. I clicked the link, and listened to the song, and then I listened to it three more times before I clocked in. Brothers and sisters, I’m here to tell you, I was hooked. As soon as I got home from work, I obtained a copy of both albums, and I listened to the fuck out of both of them, but I especially liked PTT, and I actually still prefer it just a little bit.
I’d very much like to post links to some other Acid Bath songs from both their albums, but the guy who owns Rotten Records doesn’t seem to understand that more exposure = more album sales, and he has any and all other Acid Bath videos with the album versions of songs taken down sooner or later. I will note that I can find nothing to indicate whether or not Spike Cassidy is still affiliated with the label, but when people talk about how much Rotten Records absolutely sucks, only one name gets mentioned, and it’s never his, so I assume that Ron Peterson is the sole reason why Rotten Records is a shitty, shitty label.
There are a few songs posted on YouTube right now, but there’s an excellent chance they’ll all be gone by the time you read this. If you wanna look some up to see if they’re available at that particular moment, I recommend “Graveflower”, “Bleed Me an Ocean”/”Dead Girl” (tied for number two)(hehe, “number two”), “The Blue”, “Venus Blue”, “Dr. Seuss is Dead”, and “Scream of the Butterfly”, in that order.
If you like guitar-based sometimes kinda bluesy rock music and are not bothered by extremely dark lyrical themes, I promise you’ll find something to like in at least one of those songs. Most of them feature vocals of the screaming/shrieking variety, so if that’s an immediate turn-off for you, just listen to “Dead Girl” and “Scream of the Butterfly” and “The Bones of Baby Dolls”, all of which feature no screamed vocals at all. Be aware that the mellow nature of the vocals in those songs makes the disturbing lyrics much more discernible.
“Tranquilized” has very few screamed vocals, and in fact could’ve been a radio hit if the lyrics were a touch less heavy, or if people weren’t such big babies about lyrics.
“Old Skin” is a spoken word piece, so it also technically has no screamed vocals, but I have to advise against starting with that one unless you’re already into some really weird and/or spooky shit.
Both albums are currently available on Spotify (along with Demos: 1993-1996), and maybe some other streaming services, but Spotify is an even worse company than Rotten Records, so I don’t really know how to conduct myself anymore. It’s becoming exceedingly difficult these days to not do business with shitty companies/people who do shitty things, and that seems doubly so in the world of professional music. I just try to do the least possible amount of harm.
Anyway, you should check out Acid Bath in whatever way you can, then go to Dax’s website and pre-order the vinyl. They aren’t cheap, but it’s the only way I know of to get em new without giving money to Rotten Records, which is a thing you should not do if possible. I bought mine on CD and vinyl from Rotten Records, and I feel like a giant piece of shit for doing so, but I really wanted the whole album package, and they weren’t available anywhere else at the time. The jewel case for the CDs is every bit as cheap and shitty as you might expect. I also bought a PTT t-shirt from their website, and I feel like a dick for buyin that, too, but I really wanted an Acid Bath shirt. Several people at past Louder Than Lifeseses have complimented that shirt, and that’s a net win, but also, that fact will come into play later.
The important conclusion to draw from that section there is that if you take my advice and listen to Acid Bath, and you happen to like what you hear, buy the music and merch direct from Dax. If you want the CDs, try to get them used. Rotten Records absolutely does not deserve your money.
On January 23, 1997, Audie and his parents were killed in a car crash when a drunk driver ran a stop sign. Audie’s brother Kelly survived with a broken rib and a mild neck fracture. The band played their last show on April 25, 1997, then broke up. The surviving members all went on to form and/or play in a bunch of other bands, and they all fuckin rule (Goatwhore and Deadboy & the Elephant Men/Dax Riggs solo are my favorites), but Acid Bath is my number one most favorite of all their collective projects.
Earlier this year, to the surprise of pretty much everyone in the world who has ever heard of Acid Bath, the band announced that they would be playing at Sick New World Festival in Las Vegas in April 2025. That fest had an absolutely killer lineup (so stacked that Napalm Death was all the way down on the bottom row!), but it was later cancelled due to “unforeseen circumstances”, which I have to assume includes the fact that not enough people were willing to drop almost $500 for a ticket to a one-day festival where most of the bands would’ve had to play for like 20 minutes, which probably could’ve been foreseen by most people. I can’t imagine trying to cram that many bands into one day, either from a production standpoint or as a fan of music.
Not long after the Sick New World lineup dropped, Acid Bath was announced as one of the bands at Sonic Temple 2025 (another Danny Wimmer Presents production), and the lineup for Welcome to Rockville 2025 (also a DWP joint) has been announced, and one slot is still blurred out, but it’s marked as a reunion/special performance, and I feel pretty confident that the yet-to-be-announced surprise band is Acid Bath. I was wrong once before, so there’s precedent, but if I am wrong, I’ll be surprised.
Remember earlier when I mentioned wearing my Acid Bath t-shirt to Louder Than Life? Here’s where LTL comes into play: I got an email survey recently from DWP about LTL. One of the questions was something like “which of these bands would you like to see play with Slayer, give us an answer, 1-5”, and then there were a few pages of bands (so many incredible bands on that list), and they wanted you to choose between “Not at all, thank you” and “Very much so, yes, please” for each of them, and Acid Bath was one of them, so at this point, if Acid Bath does not play Louder Than Life 2025, then I don’t even know what the fuck we’re doing here.
Just kidding, I already don’t know what the fuck we’re doing here.
In conclusion, to reiterate what I said on one of the various LTL fan pages I frequent: “If Acid Bath gets announced for Louder Than Life, I will shit everyone’s pants”.
I absolutely cannot wait to see this band live.
Thanks for reading. Listen to Acid Bath. Share both with your cool friends. Peace.
NOTE: This post has been updated to add one very important FAQ, which I only realized last night (8/11/25) that I’d overlooked. You can find it immediately following the Simpsons meme. Thank you for your attention to this matter!
I’ve written a lot about Louder Than Life since I started this blog, and I’m gonna write a lot more about it in the future, and surprise, motherfucker, the future is now! I was writing about Day Three recently when it occurred to me that I’ve never seen a comprehensive guide of tips and tricks intended for first-time attendees, so I decided to create the world I wanted to live in, and here we are.
Thankfully, this future isn’t here yet. It sure feels nigh as fuck sometimes, though.
I’m not gonna lie, it’s pretty fuckin long. WordPress estimates a 35 minute read time. Clockwise Circle Pit cannot accept any responsibility for falls caused by your legs falling asleep if you try to read the entire thing in one toilet-sitting. I can be very long-winded when I’m passionate about the subject, and I will not apologize for that. I understand completely if you don’t wanna proceed any further. Thanks for your time, and feel free to check out some of my other posts, both here at Clockwise Circle Pit, or at my old blog Stay Heavy. I haven’t posted anything there in a little over 5 years, but it still gets more regular traffic than this site. Anyhoo…
Some of these tips may seem obvious to you, and many of them seem obvious to me, but if I’ve learned one thing in my 47 years on this plane of existence, it’s this: you can’t assume anything is obvious to anyone else, even if that same thing is blatantly obviously to you. Being a member of several LTL fan groups on facebook has confirmed that statement to be 100% factual. Many of these tips will apply to any outdoor festival experience, but some of them are specific to Louder Than Life. Without further ado…
Q: What the heck is Louder Than Life?
Louder Than Life is a four-day music festival held in Louisville, Kentucky in late September. It’s put on by a company called Danny Wimmer Presents, and they do a fuckin great job every year. I’ve never attended a multi-day festival put on by any other production company, but I’ve read many times over the years about how festivals put on by other companies pale in comparison to DWP festivals (*cough* Blue Ridge Rock Fest *cough*).
The first iteration was held in 2014 in Champions Park (also in Louisville, KY), and after it was cancelled in 2018 due to flooding, it was moved to its new home at the Highland Festival Grounds in 2019, where it has been ever since. It was cancelled in 2020 for some reason, and the second day was cancelled this year (2024) due to dangerously high winds from Hurricane Helene. Otherwise, it goes on rain or shine, and it’s a blast. The lineup is always a mixed bag, but if you like hard rock, heavy metal, punk rock, hardcore, and/or hip-hop, you’ll almost certainly find at least a few things to enjoy. It gets bigger and better every year. For me personally, 2024’s lineup was the best I’ve seen so far, and I’m still stoked that I got to be there.
Q: Who, exactly, are you, and why should I care what you have to say?
That’s a really good question. I’m just a dude who, when he is not actively attending Louder Than Life, is looking forward to attending the next Louder Than Life so much he can hardly stand it. I do not profess to be an expert, but I have attended every day of the fest for the past four years (plus one day in 2019) so I could certainly call myself a veteran “Loudmouth” at this point, even if I don’t sport the telltale neon lime green that many of the self-professed Loudmouths wear. I’ve made my fair share of mistakes over the years, and I’ve learned a thing or two along the way, so I figured I might as well put together my own comprehensive guide to help answer questions you may have about attending Louder Than Life. You’re welcome.
A quick note: I decided halfway through writing this to present it in the form of a FAQ, because I thought that would be funny, and I think I was right. You might disagree, and that’s okay. There’s still plenty of good advice here.
I have to assume I would also be this.
Q: Should I wear earplugs?
Good lord, yes. It’s not called Louder Than Life because things happen at a reasonable volume. I use Loop brand, but there are lots of quality options available that are designed specifically for concert settings, which is to say that they are designed to dampen the volume of the music without muffling it/making it sound shitty, and they allow you to have a conversation without having to remove them or scream absurdly loud to be heard. I didn’t know how they work, exactly, but I assume it’s your standard combination of science and magic.
At the very least, get some cheap foam jobbies from CVS or wherever. I’ve attended hundreds of live concerts over the past 31 years, and I very stupidly only started wearing earplugs on a regular basis about 10 years ago, and I promise you tinnitus is not a fun thing to deal with.
Q: Should I drink plenty of water?
Yes, you should drink plenty of water every day that you’re alive. This should absolutely go without saying, yet every year, people have to go to the medical tent to be treated for dehydration. You can bring an unopened bottle of water inside with you, and they have “hydration stations” located throughout the grounds. There’s no reason to not drink water. If you don’t wanna bother with carrying a water bottle in, I recommend bringing a couple of bottle caps in your pockets, because if/(hopefully)when you buy a bottle of water, they will take the cap off before giving it to you. I’m not 100% sure why they do this, and I’ve read a few different possible explanations, but all that really matters is that they do do it. (Haha, I said “do do”.)
Q: Should I pace myself?
Yes. Don’t get drunk too early. Get plenty of rest. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. This is especially true if you’re in it for the whole weekend, but even if you’re only going for one day, if you plan to be there for more than a couple of bands, it’s a very good idea to pace yourself and make time to rest.
Q: Should I bring a whole bunch of shit with me?
I don’t even know how I would express myself if the Simpsons didn’t exist.
I recommend travelling as light as possible. Clear backpacks are allowed, as are fanny packs under a certain size, and lots of people use those. I’ve tried both, but I ended up feeling kinda burdened, so I just wear cargo shorts to carry things I need on my person, including glasses case/sunglasses, beard comb, ink pen, Sharpie®, lip balm, and one or two bandannas. I say if you don’t need it, leave it outside the gates. If you might need it, get a clear backpack or a small fanny pack, or rent a locker on the premises. We did that for the first time this year, and it made things much easier, especially when the rains came.
I asked the missus if she had anything to add, and she recommended tissues, feminine hygiene products, hand sanitizer, deodorant*, and sunscreen. This is where the clear backpack and/or fanny pack and/or locker would come in handy. If you’re using the portajohns in GA, some wipes would probably be a good idea, too. A portable phone charger could potentially come in handy as well. I’ve taken one in before, but I didn’t need it, as I don’t really use my phone that much while I’m inside the gates. If you get a locker, those are equipped with chargers
*Please fucking wear deodorant.
Q: What kind of shoes should I wear?
I highly recommend close-toed shoes or boots, preferably waterproof. I had a pair of Merrells that served me well every year since 2021, but I had to retire them after surviving through this year’s fields of filth. Which reminds me, I’d also recommend a spare pair of socks, especially if rain is the forecast. You will almost certainly regret wearing flip-flops or sandals, especially if you’re attending more than one day.
Q: What will the weather be like?
Every year that I’ve attended (before this year), the temperatures have ranged from very warm to hot-as-balls, with minimal cloud cover. This year, the rain started falling toward the end of Day One, and it didn’t completely stop until well into Day Four. September in the Ohio River Valley tends to be extremely humid.
Speaking of September in the Ohio River Valley, if you have seasonal allergies, plan on suffering. I mean, take your medicine and all, but know that it will likely not be as effective as usual.
Q: What’s the scoop on shade and/or seating?
There’s not much shade available in the General Admission area, aside from the drink tents, and a bunch of selfish dickheads are definitely gonna be camped out in whatever little shade there is pretty much all day, so plan accordingly. You can hang out inside the big drink tents, but good luck finding anywhere to sit or put your drink down for a few minutes. Basically, if you need to sit down and you have GA passes, you’re most likely gonna have to sit on the ground, in the sun (you can bring a towel or a light blanket). There are picnic tables around, and the larger drink tents have tables and seating, but people in general are awful, and they won’t let you sit in the empty seat next to them, because their friend is just over at the main stage for 40 minutes, and that seat is for them when they get back.
There’s a big tent in VIP that provides a lot of shade, but people are even worse about claiming seats in there. I think many of them forget that everyone in VIP paid extra to be there, and I assume the rest are just assholes. Top Shelf has an air-conditioned tent and a double-level elevated seating area that is mostly shaded. We’ve never had a problem scoring a place to sit inside that tent, but seats on the elevated seating area can be harder to come by.
Q: Should I wear a hat?
Yes, you should absolutely wear a hat, or a bandanna, or some damn thing. Just make sure you cover your noggin. It would be wise to keep your ears covered as much as possible, too. Skin cancer likes earlobes. I used to wear a big dumb straw hat with a lanyard, so I could keep the sun completely off my big ol’ John Cougar Melonhead, and when the sun went down, I could just let the hat rest on my back. That sucked for a few reasons:
It’s a pretty dumb-looking hat.
It could pretty easily block the view of people behind me, and I try to be conscious of that.
Having the lanyard tugging on my neck while wearing the hat on my back got uncomfortable very quickly.
It’s too big to do anything with it besides wear it.
I got a new hat this year, and it looks kinda dumb too, but not as dumb. It’s much more practical, comfortable, and convenient. It’s a cooling bucket hat from a company called Mission. I receive no compensation from Mission, but I highly recommend you get a cooling bucket hat from Mission, and here’s why:
They come equipped with UPF 50 sunblock protection.
They come equipped with chemical-free cooling technology. Just get it wet, wring it out, and wave it in the air briefly, and you can experience cooling effects of up to 30° F (-1.1° C) for up to 2 hours.
They’re very lightweight, so the lanyard doesn’t tug on your neck as much when you’re wearing the hat on your back, and you can also fold them up and stuff them in one of your cargo pockets (or your clear backpack and/or fanny pack).
They’re machine washable.
They’re quite affordable, and they also come in handy for yard work, nature walks, outdoor parties, etc.
Here’s me and the Missus. You see why I say my hat is kinda dumb-looking. Damned if isn’t practical, though, and as comfortable as a hat can be.
Q: Should I research the lineup and try to learn about some new bands?
Fuck yes you should, bud! After the lineup drops, absolutely take some time to research the bands you’re not familiar with. We’ve discovered some new favorites just by checking out every single band every single year we’ve gone. We’ve also discovered some bands we do not want to be in the vicinity of at all, and that’s good knowledge to have as well. As I mentioned in a previous post, after the lineup gets released, I’ll make a list of all the bands, and on Saturday nights over the next few months, we’ll spend a chunk of time havin some drinks and watchin videos from all the bands. We’ll usually start with either the newest song or the song with the most plays on YouTube, and we’ll work our way through the lineup over the course of a month or two.
When we’ve made it through all four days, we’ll go back through and watch a second video of each band, this time focusing on older songs when possible/as needed. After we’ve finished a second run-through, we’ll go through the whole list once more, this time watching live performances from each band. We each assign a grade to every song, using the standard A-F grading scale used in public schools in the US.
After all three run-throughs, we’ll average out the grades, and anyone who averages a B- or better makes it onto our short list of bands we want to watch. In addition to learning about new bands and helping us make decisions, it also helps maximize our Louder Than Life-related excitement throughout the year.
The real challenge comes much closer to go-time, after the daily schedules get released. That’s when you find out that, for example, two of the bands you wanna see on Friday start at the same time on two different stages, and a third band from the short list starts playing on the other stage halfway through those sets. It can be a gut-wrenching experience. That leads me to my next tip…
Q: Should I brace myself for possible disappointment?
Oh my goodness, yes. You’re almost certainly gonna have to miss at least a couple of bands you wanna see, due to scheduling conflicts. It’s just the nature of the beast. When I have to decide, I take a couple of factors into account:
If I’ve seen one of the bands before, I’m usually gonna go with the one I haven’t seen. There are a few bands that don’t fit that scenario for me (I’ll always watch Clutch when they’re playing), but I cross that bridge when I come to it.
If a band is from another country (especially if they don’t tour the States often), they’ll almost always take precedence.
In addition to schedule-based disappointment, bands cancel every year, sometimes as late as the day of their scheduled performance. As discussed above, there’s also the possibility of weather-based cancellations and delays. All disappointing. All things you have to learn to be okay with.
Q: So how do the stages work?
There are a total of five stages. Main Stage 1 and Main Stage 2 are side-by-side, and while one band is playing, the next band is setting up and sound-checking on the other stage. There’s a five-minute break between bands. No main stage bands will ever play at the same time, and no other band will ever overlap with the main headliner.
What used to be the “second stage” became two side-by-side stages a few years ago. This year, they were the Decibel Stage and the Revolver Stage. They work the same way as the main stages.
The third stage area/fifth stage (known as the Loudmouth Stage this year) is a single stage, so the breaks between bands are a bit longer.
This should help it make more sense.
A lot of people like to complain (imagine that) about such-and-such band being on one of the smaller stages because they think it’s not fair to that band. For example, Sum 41 headlined the Decibel Stage this year, and people are still bitching about it (“they did Sum 41 dirty, they should’ve been on the main stage, blah blah blah”). There was a huge crowd watching Sum 41, and I would definitely call their set a rousing success. The thing is, the crowd has to be spread out a bit, and having bigger bands headline the “second stage” while the #3 headliner is on the main stage is a great way to do that.
Speaking of complaining, and headliners, don’t complain about the headliners. It won’t do any good, and it makes you look like baby.
If you haven’t watched Wanderlust, you should change that ASAP. But only if you like to laugh.
Q: What about food?
I love food. There’s a lot of awesome food available for purchase inside the gates, and the portion sizes are often very large, but the prices are usually even larger. Think about the beloved brewpub in your town that charges 20 bucks for a sandwich, but that sandwich is big enough for two meals if you don’t gorge yourself. A lot of the vendors are like that, except that you won’t have anywhere to safely store your leftovers until you’re ready to eat them. There was one vendor this year who had a baloney sandwich for something like $25.They can go straight to hell with that nonsense, and frankly, I hope they went out of business.
My advice is to eat a big meal before you enter the gates for the day, so you won’t have to eat as much once you get inside. If you’re anything like me you’ll want to time it out so that you can empty your bowels before you get inside. I live my life trying to not use a toilet outside my home, especially if I’m not getting paid for it.
Q: Speaking of toilets, what’s the deal with toilets?
Easy there, Seinfeld. Portajohns are all you get in GA. They’re in the sun all day, and as you might imagine, they get progressively worse as the day goes on. The VIP area has air conditioned restrooms, and Top Shelf VIP has even nicer air conditioned restrooms, but you’ll still be sitting on a toilet that thousands of other people have sat upon and shat into (and sometimes upon).
Q: How much walking should I plan to do?
You should plan to walk a lot while you’re there. I recommend walking as much as possible every day, just in general, but I’m not your doctor or your father. If you don’t already walk much in your day-to-day life, it’s best to start doing it well before the festival begins so you can build up your strength and stamina. Why not start today? I’m not sure how big the festival grounds actually are, but I personally walked/danced for approximately 34 miles plus over the course of this year’s LTL, and as I mentioned above, one whole day was cancelled due to one of those famous Kentucky hurricanes. If I didn’t already walk 5-8 miles a day at my job, I almost certainly I would’ve been able to manage that.
Q: Where should I plan to sleep?
The City of Louisville is lousy with hotels and motels (it is a city, after all). There are several options located within walking distance of the festival grounds, but we always stay at the Galt House downtown, which is our preferred hotel anytime we’re in Louisville. Be advised that hotels are already filling up fast, and they are also charging a lot of money for that weekend, because capitalism. There are also a lot of hotels across the river in Indiana (New Albany, Jeffersonville, Clarksville, etc.), and I assume they don’t charge quite as much, but will have to drive or use a rideshare (more on that in the next FAQ).
Airbnb is also an option, I guess, but after my single experience booking an Airbnb, I’ll never do that again. I do know that a lot of locals leave town and rent out their houses/apartments for the weekend, so it is technically an option, but I’d rather not pay hotel prices to clean up after myself.
We spring for a suite, which includes a mini fridge and a wet bar. Having the extra space to spread out before we leave for the day and after we return for the evening really makes the weekend more enjoyable.
Camping in the campgrounds adjacent to the fest is also an option, but we’ve never done that, because Sheila doesn’t like to camp, and if I slept on the ground, I wouldn’t be able to stand fully upright. I do know that the campsites sell out very quickly (I think they’re already sold out, in fact), but you can also sign up for a wait-list.
I talked to a guy in 2021 who was sleeping in his car in a parking lot, and I’ve read accounts from others about doing that, but your safety and well-being are important to Clockwise Circle Pit, therefore, Clockwise Circle Pit can neither endorse nor recommend that solution.
Q: What about parking and/or transportation?
Parking is available on the property, and I think it costs 30 or 40 dollars per day. Yes, that is a lot of money to park your car for the day, but know that DWP does not set the prices for parking. I personally can’t imagine driving to and from an event like this, especially not four days in a row, but I’m not here to tell you what to do. Wait, that’s exactly why I’m here.
Other options are walking (if you’re staying close enough), renting one of those terrifying Lime scooters (if you’re staying close enough), or Lyft/Uber/other rideshare (we paid $30 for an Uber to our hotel about 8 miles away in 2019). The best option, in this asshole’s opinion, is getting a shuttle pass.
For the past 3 years, we’ve purchased a shuttle pass through Pegasus Transportation, and they pick up at the Galt House and the downtown Marriott and drop off about 100 yards from the gates. When you’re ready to leave, they pick you up at the dropoff point and take you back to the Galt House and the Marriott. When I was purchasing our package this year, all the hotel options I saw had an option to add a shuttle pass, and Pegasus Transportation was not mentioned in the description, so I’m not sure exactly how it’ll work, but it does seem like a shuttle could be an option for many of the hotels this year.
Q: Will some asshole take advantage of the situation and steal my phone/wallet/other stuff?
There’s a very good possibility of this. Assholes are everywhere, and people ruin everything. Based solely on my experience browsing Reddit and the facebook LTL fan pages, reports of phone thefts were lower this year than in 2023, but I plenty of people still got their phones swiped right out of their pockets (front pockets, even). I personally haven’t had an issue with that yet, but I also don’t generally pack into the deep crowd in front of the main stages, which is where I assume most of the thefts happen (more people = more opportunities to be piece of shit thief).
Q: Should I take advantage of the situation and steal someone’s phone/wallet/other stuff?
Of course not. Don’t be an asshole.
Q: How are the mosh pits?
I can’t answer this one with a lot of experience, because I’m too old for that shit, but I’ve been next to plenty of pits at Louder Than Life (especially at the smaller stages), and from what I’ve seen, people in the pits have generally respectful. Mostly push-pits and classic circle pits, with hardcore karate-style pits when appropriate. People seem to understand the cardinal rule of pits, which of course is if someone falls down, pick them up. Occasionally, a pit can get dangerous with surges and whatnot. This happened during Korn’s set on Day Four this year. The band had to stop playing for a bit, and the crowd was asked to take a few steps back so people would stop getting crushed. That happened after we left, but a lot of people were talking about it.
I was right next to this big ol’ lovefest in 2019. Andrew W.K. puts on one hell of a fun show.
The main things to remember while you’re in the pit also apply to everyday life:
Have fun.
Don’t be an asshole
If someone falls, help them up.
Don’t pull someone in if they don’t wanna be there.
Stay hydrated.
Nazi punks fuck off.
If you are in the pit and need assistance, or see someone who needs assistance, cross your arms in an “X” above your head. The first time I saw Sevendust (LTL2K21), they stopped their show because their singer, Lajon, saw someone making an “X” and told security about it, and they were able to get the person to safety. “X” marks the spot, friends.
Crowd surfing is commonplace and generally accepted, but a lot of people don’t do it right. If you insist on crowd surfing, the safest way to do it is the “Jesus Christ Pose”: arms out to the side, feet crossed. Don’t flail around like you’re having a seizure unless you want to increase the chances of kicking someone in the head, and your chances of getting dropped.
Speaking of “don’t”, don’t assume everyone will help you stay up once you go up. You paid good money to be there, and as long as you’re not hurting or harassing anyone, you should get to have fun in your own way. Likewise, everyone paid good money to be there, and they should also get to have fun in their own way, and if watching the bands they came to see while not getting kicked in the head while helping you crowd surf is their way of having fun, that’s something you need to be okay with.
The other side of that, of course, is not getting bent out of shape over crowd surfers if you plan to ride the rail directly in front of the stage. It’s not like you don’t know there’ll be crowd surfers, I just told you there will be. Some bands even encourage it. When we saw Anti-Flag (RIP) in 2022, they told the crowd they wanted us to make the security guards earn their paychecks, and holy shit, the number of bodies I saw being passed to the front was staggering.
If you’re deep in the pit area and you’re not crowd surfing, and you hear someone near you yell “heads up!”, this means a crowd surfer has been spotted in your area, and you should expect them to pass near you very soon, possibly directly overhead. Act accordingly.
One final thing about crowd surfing and pits (and day-to-day life in general): say you’re deep in the pit area, and you’re not crowd surfing, and you hear someone near you yell “heads up!”, and you look behind you and see a scantily clad lady coming your way, and you think to yourself “I like touchin butts, I think I’ll pass her forward and cop a feel”, fuckin think again, motherfucker.
I cannot believe this is a thing that ever has to be said, but I know it does, and it’s just one more example of, to quote Slipknot, “People = Shit”: DO NOT EVER TOUCH ANOTHER PERSON IN ANYTHING EVEN RESEMBLING AN INTIMATE WAY ON PURPOSE WITHOUT THAT PERSON’S PERMISSION. NOT A CROWD SURFER, NOT A MOSH PITTER, NOT A STRANGER ON THE STREET, NOT EVEN IF YOU’RE THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, NOT ANYONE, NOT ANY TIME, NOT EVER. If you insist on copping a feel on that scantily clad crowd surfer, don’t be surprised if you leave with fewer teeth than you came in with. Speaking of scantily clad crowd surfers…
Q: Should I expect to see people in various states of undress?
You should expect to see pretty much everything short of people having sex, and frankly, I’m a bit surprised I’ve never seen that. I’m absolutely sure it’s happened.
This year, it seemed like butts finally replaced boobs as the preferred skin for purposes of exposure, but unless you (or your child) are blind, you (and your child) will see asses and titties in all shapes and sizes. Don’t be such a prude, it’s just the human body. We all have one. And to reiterate from above: it doesn’t matter how much skin is exposed, and it doesn’t matter how drunk/high you are, and it doesn’t matter how horny you are, and it doesn’t even matter if you’re a former/future president of the United States, DO NOT EVER TOUCH ANOTHER PERSON IN ANYTHING EVEN RESEMBLING AN INTIMATE WAY ON PURPOSE WITHOUT THAT PERSON’S PERMISSION.
Quick side note: you’ll also see t-shirts and flags and banners and other things that may offend you, but no one cares. That’s also good advice for life outside the festival grounds.
Q: Is VIP/Top Shelf worth it?
I see this one asked a lot in the facebook fan groups and on reddit, and since I have experience with GA, VIP, and Top Shelf VIP, I feel like I’m qualified to answer. The “thing” about this question, though, is that phrase “worth it”. No other person can really know how much value you’ll find in something, but I can try to help you make that decision.
I’ve already covered a few of the downsides of General Admission, but all in all, it’s a fuckin great value, especially if you don’t drink alcohol (or don’t drink much alcohol) and you take my advice and eat a big deal before you enter the gates, and especially especially if you’re young and in relatively good shape. When we went for the one day in 2019, we got GA passes and by the end of the day it honestly felt like we might not make it. Temperatures topped out near 100° F (37.8° C), and being the first year on the new grounds, things were very open and exposed to the sun. Dust clouds erupted every time a pit broke out, and every single inch of shade was occupied all day. Also, the hand washing stations outside the portajohns were completely out of water, soap, and paper towels before the sun even went down.
We went the GA route again in 2021, and we both agreed afterward that if we were ever gonna go back, we’d have to upgrade to VIP so we could have access to shade, seats, and cleaner bathrooms.
We did just that in 2022, and I’m here to tell you, the fuckin joke was on us. The only real perk to VIP ended up being the better restroom facilities, because as I mentioned above, people are the worst, and no one would give up their precious chairs to anyone, for any reason, ever. I saw a pregnant woman walking around in the tent looking for a place to sit, for Chrissake, and not one person offered her any of the empty chairs at their tables, because they were saving them. There are a few food vendors inside VIP that are not available anywhere else, but there’s no shortage of food in GA, either. There’s also a dedicated viewing area to the left of Main Stage 1 which can get you some decent views of that stage, but for the most part, people line up along the rail and stay there all day, just like they do in GA.
After our VIP experience, we decided to give Top Shelf VIP a shot. Within minutes of being inside the Top Shelf area, we agreed there was no way we could go back to GA or VIP again. I will say this first: Top Shelf passes are not cheap. The price went up substantially this year, but we still got em within minutes of the Early Bird pre-sale for previous year ticket holders. We know there’s gonna be a ton of bands there we wanna see, and we barely have to travel to get to Louisville, which is a city we love, and were already visiting several times a year before we started going to Louder Than Life. We don’t take traditional vacations because Louder Than Life is our vacation. We are privileged to be able to make it happen again this year, and I’m glad, because there really is no going back. If I ever found myself in a strange hypothetical position where I can’t quite swing Top Shelf, but I could easily snag GA if I delivered pizza for my buddy Jim for a couple of months, I think I’d rather stay home and pretend like there aren’t a ton of bands I wanna see, and Louisville is much to far away for convenient travel, and I never liked that city anyway, and as a matter of fact, I ain’t ever even been there, truth be told, I’ve never even heard of Louisville, than not have the air-conditioned tent and the ability to poop comfortably. Your mileage may vary.
First of all, the very idea of an air-conditioned tent being available if we needed it made it seem worth it, but here are the other perks of Top Shelf:
All alcoholic beverages inside the Top Shelf area are included in the price of admission. Angel’s Envy has been the primary sponsor for Top Shelf every year since they’ve offered it, and as such, Angel’s Envy bourbon and rye are the well whiskies inside Top Shelf. They also have all the other major spirits available, along with Budweiser products. Considering drinks can cost as much as 20 bucks or more at some of the tents in GA, you can see how quickly you could burn through a hefty amount of money in a day. If you don’t enjoy alcoholic beverages, Top Shelf might not be worth it for you.
Renowned local chef Anthony Lamas (who you might know from TV’s Bar Rescue, with that insufferable prick John Taffer) and a crack team of cooks and food runners prepare small bites throughout the day, and those are included in the price of admission. We’re both vegetarian, so we haven’t tried everything they’ve offered, but everything we have tried has ranged in quality from very good to oh-my-fucking-god-that’s-incredible. They alternate cold and hot food, and they always have things like potato chips and trail mix available. We’ve had things like Strawberry Caprese Salads, Cheese Enchiladas, Falafel Balls, Spring Rolls, and French Fries, and some of the omnivore options we’ve seen include meatballs, Salisbury steak, and bratwurst. If I had one complaint about the food, and I do, it’s that sometimes there are no vegetarian options at all. This happened at the last service of Day Four this year. It was disappointing. At any rate, as I mentioned previously, food is expensive inside the festival grounds, and having the option to pop into the tent and have snacks throughout the day saved us a lot of money over the course of the weekend. If you don’t like delicious food, Top Shelf might not be worth it for you.
The restrooms are flushable and air-conditioned, and that’s a real nice perk. If you have no qualms with potentially not being able to wash your hands after using a portajohn that’s been sitting in the sun all day, Top Shelf might not be worth it for you.
That air-conditioned tent is fucking awesome, and it’s outfitted with TVs and a sound system that play whichever band is on the Main Stage at that time, so if you’re outside watching it and you wanna grab a beverage or a snack or even just rest your feet for a few minutes, you don’t really have to miss the action. I would never stay in there all day, because if I was all I wanted to do, I’d just stay home in my own air conditioning and watch YouTube, but it’s a wonderful option to have when you need to get out of the sun (or rain). And outside of feeding times, there is no challenge whatsoever in getting a place to sit. If I had one complaint about the tent, and of course I do, it’s the volume at which they play the Main Stage performances. I know the word “louder” is literally the first word in the name of the festival, but as a dude who can easily suffer from sensory overload, it would be cool if the volume was just a bit lower, so that regular conversation could happen (not to mention how much easier it would be to talk to the bartenders). If you don’t care about chairs, shade, and cooling off, then Top Shelf might not be worth it for you.
Top Shelf wristbands also give you access to the VIP area, and, of course the GA area as well.
Q: Should I talk to strangers?
Yes, absolutely. I know that answer runs counter to everything I’ve said here about people, but I stand by what I said: People (with a capital “P”) are the worst, and they do ruin everything. On the other hand, people can be pretty cool sometimes. I’m a very awkward and introverted person, and the idea of talking to someone I don’t know goes against my very nature, but the answer is still a resounding “YES!” You’ll meet some awesome people from all over the world, and almost everyone you interact with will be friendly, as long as you don’t ask to use one of the empty chairs at their table.
In my day-to-day life, I’ve been known to cross the street to avoid the very possibility of having to talk to another person. At this Louder Than Life this year, I made a bee-line toward a stranger holding a “FREE HUGS” sign and I gave him such a hugging, and it was fuckin awesome.
Q: Is Louder Than Life a cashless event?
Yes, Louder Than Life is a cashless event. I still bring cash in for tipping bartenders, but no place inside the festival grounds accepts cash as payment. They have those newfangled reverse ATMs on the grounds, where you can put in cash and get a prepaid debit card with the amount you put in, so if you don’t have a debit/credit card, or just don’t wanna bring it in with you, that’s an option.
The wristband that gets you inside the gates can also be linked to a card so you can pay with that, but I tried that in 2021 and forgot the PIN I set up for it (plus I accidentally wore the wrong bracelet anyway), so I don’t bother with that myself.
Q: This long-winded thing has been extremely informative and entertaining. Thank you so much for taking the time to put it together. What if I have other questions about things that aren’t covered here?
Thank you, that’s really nice of you to say. It took a very long time to write, and on more than one occasion I almost flung my Chromebook into the sun.
If you have further questions, the official website has a much more comprehensive and less long-winded Info page that covers a lot of the things I mentioned here, and much more. If you have a question about something that you don’t see covered on the links there, there’s a good chance you’re not looking hard enough or reading carefully enough, but in any case, you can email them at info@louderthanlifefestival.com. They’re very friendly, and they will get back to you.
Alright, I have to stop here. Holy shit this is long. If you made it this far, thank you! If you have any cool friends with half an hour to kill, you should tell them about it.
While I had every intention of following up my multi-part write-up about my experience at Louder Than Life 2024 with a postscript of sorts, I’m as surprised as anyone that I started working on it so soon. But, I got out of work a bit early, so I decided to do some Thanksgiving prep, and use the downtime to try and keep up some kind of momentum.
As I mentioned at the end of my last post, there are a few odds and ends regarding the epic weekend that I couldn’t really fit into the narrative without forcing them, so that’ll be the gist of this post. I’m also including some things here that I just straight up forgot to mention in any of my earlier posts. It’ll probably be less cohesive than one of my regular posts, if that’s even possible, but I’ll do my best to make it interesting. I won’t be offended if you give up before it’s over.
If you recall way back on Day Zero, I mentioned that we bought the Fancy-Pants Package (not its real name) for this year’s fest, which included a bunch of extras. I covered most of the ones worth mentioning in previous posts, but I wanna cover two of them in particular: the “artist-signed festival poster” and the “Louder Than Life mini guitar”.
Artist-signed festival poster This was a total mystery to us. I mentioned in my things about Day Zero that we got the email about our Soundboard Experience, and that Falling In Reverse was the band picked for us, and I also mentioned that the artist-signed poster was mentioned in that email. The (potential) problem was that we had no idea which artist(s) would be signing it. Sheila was fearful that it was also going to be a Falling In Reverse joint, and I maintained that we could likely sell it on eBay if that were the case.
When we got the news on Day Three that Falling In Reverse cancelled and Till Lindemann was replacing them, we saw that the news was good, and we rejoiced in it. We also assumed that would decrease the likelihood of Ronnie Radke’s signature lowering my property value until I could unload it.
(No offense if you like that band. I know there’s no accounting for taste, and I know plenty of people think that all the music I listen to is terrible, but I think pretty much everyone who is aware of Ronnie Radkey, other than Ronnie Radke himself, would likely admit that Ronnie Radke is a real piece of shit. I’m not gonna talk about what a piece of shit Ronnie Radkey is anymore, but you can Google “Ronnie Radke piece of shit” and you’ll find plenty of links about why Ronnie Radke is a piece of shit.)
But I was talking about our artist-signed festival poster. The email about the Soundboard Experience switcheroo also mentioned that the pick-up site for our poster had changed, and it mentioned that we could pick it up by the end of the day on Sunday (Day Four). We stopped by on our way out on Day Three, and they told me my name was on the list, but that my poster hadn’t been signed yet. We just figured whoever was assigned to the signing was a Day Three artist who had gotten around to it yet.
We waited until the end of Day Four to pick it up, because I didn’t know how big it would be, and our locker was pretty much completely full after we got there and I stashed my flannel for later. Also, as you might imagine, the lockers are not large. They handed the poster to us with a Post-It facing out. ‘Twas none other than Eagles of Death Metal.
Full disclosure: I added the “Rev.” digitally. Duh.
They put a big ol’ heart on there. Ain’t that sweet?
The other side is pretty cool too.
A few other bands would’ve been more exciting to both of us, but many more would’ve been less exciting. I feel about this poster the way I feel about the band that signed it: I like it when I’m listening to it (looking at it), otherwise I’m not really thinking about it. There is one significant way in which the band and the poster make me feel different things: I’m 100% less likely to dance awkwardly to the poster.
Now DANCE!…Huh. You ain’t dancin.
Louder Than Life mini-guitar
Another complete mystery. We had no idea what this was gonna be. I figured laminated cardboard or something, and Sheila was thinking more along the lines of a ukulele. We were both way the fuck off.
Here’s the thing, though: with all the excitement and disappointment and booze and talking to strangers and having a blast not being at work and then being extra sad about going back to work-ness of it all, we both completely forgot about the mini guitar.
One day a couple of weeks after the festival, I opened the mailbox to find a big yellow padded envelope with something substantial (i.e., not paper) inside. The return address was some town in New York state that I’d never heard of, and it was from “RONZWORLD”.
“What the fuck is ‘RONZWORLD’?”, I asked the mailbox.
[…]
“What the fuck is ‘RONZWORLD’?”, I asked Sheila, after I got back inside.
“I don’t know what that is”, she responded. So much more polite than that stuck-up mailbox.
I opened it to find some unidentified solid object (or objects) surrounded by bubble wrap. I almost dropped it pulling it out of the envelope, through no fault of Mr./Mrs./Ms. RONZWORLD. I’m a bit of a clumsy oaf. As soon as I got the object (or objects) fully out of the envelope, I realized what I was holding.
That fun backdrop is a tea towel my friend Heather gave me. It’s silly, and I like it.
Two teeny-tiny, built to 1:4 scale, individually handcrafted, solid wood Gibson Les Paul replicas, with two teeny-tiny stands!
I’m not even a guitar guy (teeny-tiny or otherwise), but that’s pretty fuckin cool. Also, doesn’t that one guy on the towel look like Ted Danson?
Mr./Mrs./Ms. RONZWORLD turned out to be RonzWorld, a custom guitar painter based out of Beacon, NY, a small city on the Hudson River, located a couple hours north of NYC.
I mean: that’s pretty fuckin cool, right?!
They have a whole series of mini guitars available, and Ron himself also does custom paint jobs on full-sized guitars. Like I said, I’m not a guitar guy, but Ron does fantastic work, and these li’l souvenir guitars are pretty cool.
It has teeny-tiny nylon strings and everything!
You can get one yourself direct from the website for 49.95 plus shipping, if you’re interested.
Another thing I wanted to talk more about was that primordial stew people were hangin out on Saturday and Sunday. I briefly mentioned that by Day Four, the “mud” was just a fact of life if you wanted to watch any of the smaller stages. It was foul.
This is the view to the WNW, with the Decibel Stage behind me. That couple towards the right, next to the barricade, are walking pretty much where I watched Joey Valence & Brae from on Day One, just for reference.
The thing about the Highland Festival Grounds is that they are also the Kentucky State Fairgrounds. Have you ever seen how much poop a cow makes? Or a horse? Geese poop almost as much as me, and if I am one thing, I am a celebrated pooper. Now imagine how much poop an entire State Fair makes. I know they clean it up as best they can, but the thing about poop is that poop goes where poop wants to go.
And this is facing NNE. If that’s mud, I’m a goddamn turnip farmer.
(Narrator: He was not a turnip farmer.)
Here’s another thing: I’m a grown-ass man. I’ve been in my share of mud in my life. And I’ll tell you hwat, I ain’t never smelled no mud that smelled like that before.
Here’s a pic of my trusty Merrells after Saturday. Luckily they were waterproof.
We saw people walking in Chuck Taylors, flip-flops, sandals, fuckin barefoot in that muck. People sliding in it. People laying in it making mud angels. People covering their ENTIRE BODIES with it.
I took this picture, along with the next two, on Monday morning, just before I shoved them into the first of three plastic Kroger bags and then washed my hands until they hurt.
People never cease to amaze and baffle me. Also, disgust me.
That was a real swell pair of boots. I threw them away when we got home. Also the laces hanging down at the bottom of this pic remind me of Chris Barnes’s hair.
So fucking gross. Godspeed, boots.
I’ll never understand how there wasn’t an outbreak of dysentery at the very least. That’s not to say we didn’t have fun. I mean, we already got our tickets for next year, so as long as our incoming clown show of a government hasn’t completely dismantled our freedoms by September of next year, we’ll be there rain, shine, or manure lagoon. (By the way, if you’ve never been in the vicinity of an actual manure lagoon, you are really missin out on an olfactory treat.)
Yeah, I had fun.
One final thing I wanted to cover: we walked an astonishing amount, and I can’t imagine how much we would’ve walked if the weather had been more cooperative. I have a li’l pocket pedometer that I carried with me every time I left the hotel room, and I walked a little over 11 on miles Day One, another 10 miles on Day Three (we barely even left the building on Day Two, what with the hurricane), and 13 miles on Day Four, for a total of over 34 miles over the entire weekend, with two-thirds of it in mud almost up to my ankles. And I didn’t even go in the pit areas in front of any of those stages. That would’ve certainly tested the water proofness of my trusty Merrells, may they rest in a landfill in Terre Haute.
I’m gonna stop here. I already spent way more time on this than I meant to, but I suppose it’s better to spend too much time writing, rather than not enough time writing. Thanks for reading. ❤
Clockwise Circle Pit 