I think I’m down! (for 9/8 at The Showbox) How ’bout YOU?!‏ By Tom Kipp

As a fan of unabashed critical HYPERBOLE and Pomo Theory Whoredom in general, I note the following double-shot of HIDEOUS NOISE and High Concept “Rock” coming to our fair town this September:

http://showboxonline.com/eventdetail.php?id=36481&src=AEGLIVE_ENEWSSEA061312AEG001

FUCKED UP have the most perfect name for any band in rock history. In two words it bluntly states the truth that lies at the heart of the white noise maelstrom – things are different from what you expect.

Right from the start this Toronto band has been pushing musical and conceptual boundaries. Forming ostensibly as a punk band, they swiftly took on hardcore and twisted it into their own version, with a psychedelic edge, unexpected instrumentation like flute and keyboards, and songs stretched to perverse lengths.

They initially released a series of impossible to find 7” singles, all with related artwork that sometimes landed them in trouble, and sometimes looked like they came from the late 60s, when minds were melting with possibilities. There were also albums that continued this theme, each one more bold and adventurous.

Meanwhile, the band’s gigs took on legendary status. Frontman Damian Abraham’s nude stage dives and blood-strewn face were becoming a lunatic motif for a take on the hardcore genre that constantly upended assumptions: lyrics about plants and rebirth, moneys to charities for battered women. All the time, there was a sense of a narrative, and even in their loudest moments there was a deep intelligence to their music.

The narrative itself has come to full fruition on their new album, the 78-minute David Comes To Life rock opera, an album set to a play.

In the punk wars the rock opera was held up as the ultimate example of decadent capitalist-pig rock, the kind of opulent, navel-gazing fodder of faded rock dictators clinging onto power by their filthy fingernails and their tediously long records. It breaks the strict rules of punk and is precisely the reason why Fucked Up have presented this mammoth work.

I do own a couple of Lightning Bolt albums, as what ex-resident of Providence wit’ Rock Aesthete Credentials would not, but had not heard of this Toronto aggregation known as Fucked Up until just moments ago.

Re: the Rhode Islanders:

LIGHTNING BOLT
Last we left this amplified tribe of two on 2005’s Hypermagic Mountain, Lightning Bolt were tossing thousands of years’ worth of musical history into a wood chipper and coming up with some chewy chainsaw taffy. This new missive, “Earthly Delights,” comes after two years of intensive electro-shock therapy driven recording. The doors of Lightning Bolt’s practice space literally spill forth giga-liters of sweat born of echo-stretched dedication to archaeology of understanding advanced musicology. Taking the lessons of extreme meta and blood-brother marrying them to expansive and explosive song form and applying it to Olympic training methods – Earthly Delights uses electric stimulus to shock smile technology to worldwide domes. This is what two thousand years of evolution and the invention of electric instrumentation introduced into the tank of hook force can do to you.

Needless to say, at ten bucks the price is right, and I shall certainly NEED some form of anti-mellow corrective to the New Age/Post-Hippie/World Music/Roots Rock/Indie Dullard/Comedy Stage pleasantries of Bumbershoot 2012, though I do intend to participate for one day only this year, as opposed to the full-on three-day immersions of 2010-11! LOL

The best B’shoot slate appears to be that of Sunday, 9/2, and my ticket has already been purchased. As a related aside, I’ve waited to see Ian Hunter perform for nearly 33 years, so his presence is manna that falleth from heaven, truly! The additional presence of Sharon Jones, Tony Bennett, Mudhoney, Wanda Jackson, and Eighteen Individual Eyes seals the deal: http://bumbershoot.org/lineup/