The secret language of noise

“I’ll believe this alternacrap thing is real when I hear Cows on FM Radio.” – Me, The Noisepaper, 1993

Yeah, that was eighteen years ago (QUITE NEARLY TWO WHOLE DECADES!) when I was delivering NOISE to far-away mutant teens via analog sound/vision transmissions AND hand-stapled, quality-bond paper zines that were mailed, thrown (overhand) at the heads of innocent bystanders, or simply left in random doorways from Milwaukee to Chicago. I believed in Cows and rock and, uh, roll. Everyone else went all Limp Bizkit.

Sooooo… my very first reflexive reaction to this Bad Creeps elpee was COWS! and KING SNAKE ROOST!, but RACEBANNON (!) didn’t float like meat to the surface of my brain pan until JUST NOW. It’s the Bad Creeps singer (who doesn’t really sing… what he does is more like violent vowel vomiting) that caused the connection, because Racebannon’s Mike Anderson also does that whole violent vowel vomit (shall I call it V3?). Oh, and both bands are from Indiana, down toward the curled up southern part (unless I’m mistaken) that sorta looks like the entire state is trying to grow a tail.

Noise this abrasive is like a secret language that very few people speak SO DON’T unless you know yer among friends. This elpee is Make Us Proud, and you are not gonna play it for yer mother. It’s too loud, too unhinged, too unintelligible. She’ll say “How can you understand what he’s saying?” (meaning the singer in the midst of all that V3) and you won’t have an answer, you’ll just nod with a dumb grin. You are not gonna leave a physical copy of this record lying around (OR leave it open in iTunes or the interwebz or whatever) where yer girlfriend can find it cuz she’s not gonna understand why you’d listen to a record with song titles like “Nice Rape, Rookie” and “Everything Butt.” I once had to explain the cover of Cows “Sexy Pee Story” to an uptight lady co-worker (it flopped out of my workbag and onto a desk) and, of course, it didn’t end there. By the end of that week I was up to my neck in Employee Assistance Program literature for my alleged problem with WOODPECKER-ON-MAN PORN. And as I said, that was QUITE NEARLY TWO WHOLE DECADES AGO.

Things are much more cra-zee and uptight nowadays.