Killer Born Man: Wes Eisold

Hardcore lifers recognize Wes Eisold from his tenure fronting Give Up The Ghost for several years and one crucial name change. After that band disintegrated, he became the frontman for Some Girls, a gloriously abrasive outfit featuring members of Unbroken, the Locust, the Plot To Blow Up The Eiffel Tower and Year Future, that alienated hardcore types and art-damaged nimrods equally. After leaving that unit, Eisold began concentrating on a number of projects: XO Skeletons, a short-lived chattering metallic group that lasted for a few shows and vinyl releases; Heartworm Press, his publishing concern where he's created both prose and art tomes; Juanita And Juan's, a bookstore-cum-artspace; and Cold Cave, his latest musical outlet.

You're a busy guy. What are you up to now, in regards to writing music/prose/art?
Cold Cave is where most of my time is devoted to for music. I write and record it from home--from bed usually--and it's the first time I've written and made music by myself. I haven't been writing poems as much since I started Cold Cave, but I'm doing a few readings in the next couple months in New York and Washington, D.C. I'm trying to distribute the energy I have through music, writing and the other books I'm a part of through Heartworm. This is a lot for me, as I spent the greater part of my twenties staring at the walls of a van.

As frontman for Give Up The Ghost and Some Girls, you were doing the psychic excavation thing nightly. You resigned from Some Girls and formed XO Skeletons as a way to sate your post-punk noise desires. Did you get completely burned-out on the cycle of touring and recording? Does that lifestyle even hold anything for you these days? Did you feel a psychic and/or creative dead end?

After a while, I realized I often felt really unsatisfied with what I was spending so much time on--which burns you out, yeah. This sounds weird, but I had this thought that I didn't want to yell or scream any more. I didn't see a difference between a person yelling at the world from a stage and someone yelling at the world from a street corner. The root of it is the same and it just wasn't something I wanted to do or somewhere I wanted to be at in life any longer. I became less angry, but I found other releases to exorcise everything I needed to. I don't regret it: I love it, because it brought me here and I feel the opposite of a psychic end now. I did everything I ever dreamt of doing with those bands and then I stepped down and on.

Is there an underlying theme or construct that runs through all of the titles you've put out via Heartworm? Or is it just WIL-literature? (WIL = What I Like)
Heartworm Press is something I started a few years ago to release small runs of writings or music I made. Now I co-run it with Max Morton. We release things we like which have common themes of what we find to be enigmatic: people we admire for their lives and work. Some of the writers we've worked with include Eric Paul, Mark McCoy, Genesis P-Orridge, Jonathan Shaw, Boyd Rice, Dave Markey, Chris Leo and more. Individualism is the common theme.

What exactly is Juanita And Juan's?
Juanita And Juan's is a small bookstore that Max and I opened in Halloween of 2008 in Philadelphia's Chinatown. We have a selection of books, films and records we like, most of which are a bit difficult to find or lesser known. The store also serves as a gallery and performance space. We have an event every first Friday of the month: Kid Congo and Howie Pyro played the opening and last month Ian Svenonius performed the Radio Silence book show. We just invite artists and friends we like. Next month, Bryan Ray Turcotte is hanging pieces from his Black Flag collection and his Fucked Up And Photocopied book while Cage is playing. We want the worlds we love to collide before our very eyes; we just want to try everything once. The world is a candy shop. Who knows if we'll stay open after a year...

What can we expect from Wes Eisold in 2009?
I'm spending my time with Cold Cave, recording and releasing records and playing shows when it feels like the right thing to do. Heartworm has a full year lined up that will keep us busy. Time is going by so fast and so much has been wasted on twentysome tears (not necessarily physical ones) that I just want to stay busy, really. It keeps the head up; otherwise, I'm just staring at the ground, wandering around in the same circles over and over. That song doesn't need to be repeated.

Better Hate Than Never

The poor bastard at the top of this blog is me, dealing with the city of Cleveland's ingenious way of clearing the streets of snow--by piling a ton of it in front of my driveway. Of course, they do it at night so the snow turns to clumps of ice which weigh more than Jesse Lacey's ego. This isn't the first time I've had to do this, and the very thought of it makes me hope the wives/girlfriends of the drivers are sneaking out behind their backs and doing things that would make Jenna Jameson recoil in horror.

Anyway, the whole experience made me so mad, I went back in the house and put together Misanthromix 2K9, a playlist that scooches me closer toward spontaneous combustion. My sonic equivalent of a lead pipe filled with cement and dipped in cobra venom includes:

BLOOD BROTHERS: "Fucking's Greatest Hits"

THE LOCUST: "Wet Dream War Machine"

THE DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN: "Hollywood Squares"

COMBATWOUNDEDVETERAN: "My Spine! My Spine! My Spine!"

CONVERGE: "You Fail Me"

AMEN: "Piss Virus"

LEATHERMOUTH: "My Lovenote Has Gone Flat"

THE BRONX: "Shitty Future"

C.AARME: "Gasmask"

SIRHAN SIRHAN: "Blood"

CEREMONY: "It Rained Today Inside My Head"

MINISTRY: "Flashback"

SOME GIRLS: "Deathface"

Thirteen "lucky" songs, guaranteed to ruin your day, or at the very least, make you understand the concept of "going postal" without having to actually punch a clock at the good ol' USPS. It's interesting how we talk about music that gets us through hard times, reflects on loves lost or makes a long drive tolerable. Yet I've never partaken in any kind of discussion that posits what kind of psych-up soundtrack people would choose to, say, put the beatdown on that bitch/scumbag who's been stalking their significant others. The music of choice when you get double-billed by a credit-card company for the third time. The sound patterns of glory when the next micro-managing vermin comes into my office to get pissy with me... Oops! Sorry for the projection!

So let's hear it: Someone has kicked your dog, called your mom a slut and accused you of liking White Tie Affair. What are you going to put on just before you grab your aluminum ball bat to seek some batta-batta-swing therapy?

POSTSCRIPT: After I ate half a bottle of Motrin to deal with my post-shoveling aches, I went out and got Chinese food. This was the fortune in my cookie. I don't care: Snowplow truck drivers still suck.

Trouble Enough

Apologies for not getting back to you. My life's pretty crazy right now, from the magical realm of the 100 Bands You Need To Know in 2009 to the planning of all sorts of stuff down the road. AP turns 24 this year and we've got some big ol' plans afoot that are capital-S SECRET. I could tell you what they are, but then Mike Shea would inevitably dump my body in an oil drum, weld it shut, slap some Blood Brothers stickers on it and ship it to Idaho in the hopes that Jann Wenner would split it into pieces on a downhill slalom while avoiding going into his office. I'm not ready to die yet: I still have to plan our 15-page special, The Evolution Of Mudvayne. Actually, I'm kidding you. We're going to slap Hyper Crush on the cover next month. Oh, wait; we're back to that over-my-dead-body thing again.

That's as good a segue as you're getting from me today. (If you don't like it, put some money in my PayPal account and see what comes out of me then.) We've gotten a good amount of mail regarding All Time Low's appearance on our Band Of The Year cover. There's been a lot of "hell yeah's" from a lot of people fond of those Wiseguy, Maryland, homeboys. But we've also gotten a bunch of letters from turbo-charged haters lambasting AP editors for the issue as if we were running puppy mills. We've already picked ATL for a cover (100 Bands 2008, AP Tour, remember?); we just counted votes for this one. Simple as that.

This makes me wonder about something else. If Scott Heisel is just short of getting a backpiece tat of Hold Steady singer Craig Finn (see that glowing review on our website?), does that mean that I, the sworn enemy of classic rock, is on the table next to him getting prepped for one, as well? Do people really think we've heard every single piece of music written about in one issue of AP? Do you haters think we all live together in harmony in a big treehouse with a fifty-foot neon AP logo nailed to the front? I bring this up because my cultural comrade Tim Karan was overheard at a bar saying how much he hated Needle Dik and the Bugfawkers, and now their manager is threatening to drive by my house and power-wash it with chicken excrement from an undisclosed factory farm. (Hey, I liked Need's first single, "That's Tight!" I have it on both digital download and thorax-green vinyl.)

On the other hand, screw everyone. ATL have never copped a 'tude with us the way those nu-metal skeeziks used to in their deluded sense of entitlement. If Scott wants to invent new categories to articulate his love for one of his fave acts (even if the term "inclusion rock" makes me want to lick my cats' litterboxes hospital-clean), I'm not stopping him. And Tim, go ahead and loathe ND&BF. If you've got the first round, I've got your back.

Oh, and don't go googling "Needle Dik and the Bugfawkers." Tim is so mellow, he doesn't hate anybody and I needed to get something in there, even if it was fictional and lifted from the very funny Peter Bagge. Be advised the first time an editor comes into work wearing Hyper Crush swag, I'm gonna paint a telephone on their face and dial 'em with an ice pick. As if I ain't got trouble enough...

Twin Cadillac Valentine

When visitors come to the AP Skyscraper, I'm usually asked the same three questions: "Where's the rest room?" "How come your wife hasn't murdered you in your sleep and fed you to wild pigs?" "Why do your blogs have weird titles?" The answers to the first two questions are "The door to the right just before the kitchen, and please don't steal our Sevendust gold records" and "But Dennis, your new record is actually GOOD!"

The answer to the third question is that 98-percent of my blog headers are all song titles by my favorite rock 'n' roll band in life, the SCREAMING BLUE MESSIAHS. Formed in London in the mid-80s following the demise of the British pub-rock band Motor Boys Motor, singer-guitarist Bill Carter and bassist Chris Thompson teamed up with drummer Kenny Harris and proceeded to fuck shit up in their country's indie scene. Compared to all of the rampant bullshit happening in America at the time (you know, the audio ipecac that's routinely romanticized by VH1 Classic and the final episode of The Sopranos), the Messiahs' brand of nitrous-burning psychosis hit my twenty-sumpin' brain like a 700 mph bitchslap. Taking their cues from the works of old blues masters, the jagged angularity of Captain Beefheart and the stamina of first-wave punk, the trio made heads swivel with their stripped-down aesthetic and a sublime ability to dish out some straight-up power. Over the course of three and a half slabs of wax (their debut mini-LP Good And Gone, Gun Shy, Bikini Red and Totally Religious) and a bunch of 12-inch EPs, the Messiahs were always in high rotation in my white-trash hamlet of Western Pennsylvania.

Back in the days when gas was cheap and I'd routinely spend too much money on vinyl records, I was fortunate enough to see the Messiahs during their handful of American tours. I loved their records to death, so driving five hours to Washington, D.C., to see them was a no-brainer. Let me tell you something, peeps: Those guys BROUGHT it. You had Carter, the scary guitar player (who looked like a cross between actor Yul Brynner and pro-wrestling legend George "the Animal" Steele), sweat dripping down his bald head and into his eyelashes, completely savaging his gear (and his hands; guitar picks are for wusses) while rambling obtuse non sequiturs; Harris, a plasma-ball force of a drummer who drove the whole thing through sheer determination and centrifugal force; and Thompson, the stoic bassist holding everything together like it was business as usual. The first time I saw them (at the old 930 Club in D.C.), the vibe was positively menacing. A third of the way into the set, an audience member had an epileptic seizure. Ten minutes later, the head of Thompson's bass amp caught fire, but everyone kept playing, totally locked in with what they were doing. The tour manager had to run onstage and chase them off, and the band looked like they were going to kill him, until they were informed of what was going down. (I'm pretty sure Fugazi's Guy Picciotto was in attendance that evening. Guy, if you're out there, confirm or deny but TESTIFY in the comments!)

As much as I loved their records, the Messiahs were built for live action. After the US release of Gun Shy, they went on tour with the Cramps and schooled that band's hipster crowds accordingly (a fact not lost on the Cramps crew, who made life particularly difficult for the band on more than one occasion). The trio went out on tour with the Beat Farmers and Beat Rodeo for the first-ever Spin College Tour. A show from College Park, Maryland, was filmed and broadcast on MTV and I don't think I've ever used the phrase "positively godhead" to describe anything I've seen since. The Messiahs brought their Bo Diddley-at-the-rim-of-Hell A-game: They ended the set with the punishing "Twin Cadillac Valentine," six minutes of charging drumming and guitar noise which ended with Carter throwing his battered Telecaster onto the floor and violently scraping the strings with the discus base of his microphone stand. Several college coeds were upfront, covering their ears and grimacing at the screech. After seeing that, I was completely ready to get a tattoo of their name. On my face. (BTW, if anybody knows where I can get a VHS reel of that broadcast, I will put you in my will. I bet the master was thrown into a dumpster on Broadway decades ago to make room for the complete history of TRL.) At other shows, I saw Carter whack a stage invader with a swimming-pool-green Telecaster, and slice his thumb on an A-string, bleeding all over the front of his guitar while plowing ahead as if nothing in the world was wrong. Fuggin' awesome!

I was a total screaming blue geek about these guys. I'd cut out any mention of the band I saw in a magazine. I remember yelling "Yeah!" while reading an interview with Celt-punks the Pogues, when they claimed they psyched themselves up backstage before gigs listening to nothing but the Messiahs--and Puccini. I'd talk about them to other performers I'd write about for AP. I finally interviewed Bill Carter for the mag and he answered my questions bemusedly, although I think he might've considered getting a restraining order against me, just in case. David Bowie was stoked on them enough that he had the trio open his Wembley Stadium shows on his Glass Spider Tour. See, unlike most people who like to keep their bands to themselves and maybe five other strangers, I WANTED the entire planet to see these guys tear a hole in the time/space continuum.

Here's a clip of the band doing "Let's Go Down To The Woods And Pray" on a 1985 episode of the British television show Old Grey Whistle Test. At the 2:45 mark, they go into my fave track, "Good And Gone," and Carter beats his guitar like it was an AIG employee.




This clip from the British show Night Network has the band hammering through "Jesus Chrysler Drives A Dodge." I have played this clip over a hundred times, and I still get chills when Carter abuses his guitar (around the 1:30 mark) and Harris just drives everything. Everything about this clip is full-on. I want to marry the horribly permed girl banging her head like a maniac and I want to break a chair over the head of the asshat down in front who's just standing there...



Like every other band with a cult following and a major-label deal, the Screaming Blue Messiahs were being nudged into smoothing things out a bit and the last album, Totally Religious, wasn't as bone-snapping as it could've been. Internal tensions grew, managers went out the door like the whores on Rock Of Love, and the band adjourned in the summer of 1990. To this day, I've never seen a group lay out that kind of power and menace. The Screaming Blue Messiahs pushed it so hard, it made so much stuff that came after them--a lot of punk, rockabilly, that "insurgent country" nonsense--seem hopelessly redundant. All of their records are out of print: CD versions of Gun Shy have gone for $45 (if you're lucky) to $125 on eBay. An occasional reminder of the band pops up in unusual places, like over a closing scene in the Dennis Leary series Rescue Me or maybe a nod to their "novelty track" "I Want To Be A Flintstone" on some '80s tribute show. (Hey Rhino Records! How about a box set reissue? I'll do all the liner notes for free. Call me up.)

These days, Kenny Harris (who has done everything from auditioning for AC/DC to writing a novel) currently oversees the official SBM website, originally created by classy rock photographer Dave "Chalkie" Dawson (Hell to the effin' yeah!). Chris Thompson plays guitar and lays out some badassed pub-rock with his band, the Killer B's. Bill Carter has been pursuing a career in art (check out some of his work here) and has started playing in a new band. (No new tracks on his MySpace page, though. Whassupwiddat?) The British label Hux is issuing a collection of Messiahs live recordings in the very near future and it can't get on my stereo fast enough. For even more insight into the legend of the last Blue Messiahs, check out the fabulous Blue Heaven website run by the very talented and most righteous Grant Louden.

Okay, so my sonic gods aren't as sexy as some other people's. As you traipse through 2009, dear friends, remember: If you've never heard it, it's new to you. And a 200-decibel shout-out to my boy Dave Corsi, who let me borrow his copy of Good And Gone all those years ago, thereby changing my whole world. Hopefully I'll be seeing him soon for a road trip--but that's a whole other blog entry...

Excavation Nation

Happy New Year, denizens of the net. I hope all of you are playing with your Christmas presents, hanging with loved ones or strategically nursing hangovers. I just hope you are doing anything besides making lists of your favorite records of the past year.

Can I ask all of you a question? Thanks. Does anybody really care about this stuff? I know that list culture is such a popular construct with all sorts of mags and newspapers, and it's guaranteed to be used as either marketing fodder ("Best Of The Year as voted by the dude who runs mymomonlyreadsthis.edu") or lightning rod for smack-talking dullards. Don't get me wrong: I am totally flattered that the Village Voice still solicits me for my list of stereo-stuff, and I do get a kick out of hearing about the tuneage that makes my freelance writers and close buds curl their toes. But there's some crap you just know is going down. C'mon: Who didn't see Fleet Foxes getting the hosanna from Pitchfork from several thousand parsecs away?

So I was going to run down my list of 30 or so discs that put a smile on my face this year, from scene faves to Brit rockers to electronica to alt-rock to metal, but I couldn't see the point. So let me use this space to share my hopes for 2009.

I hope all my expectant friends have robust and healthy children--even the ones who set their phones to automatically delete my HNY's text messages last night.

I hope to say a prayer for President-Elect Obama every single night, because dude is gonna need all the power he can get to get shit done.

I hope that my boy Dave Segal gets both justice and restitution, and that the people who did him wrong get to see the things they love die horrible deaths.

I hope everyone reading this will find continued joy--or a change in fortune--this year. In fact, never mind what I said in my first paragraph: Go over to your buds' house with your 2K8 WUZ GREAT playlist and compare notes, play some air guitars and have a blast. And it'll be even better if your playlist features These New Puritans, Underoath, Ceremony, Panic At The Disco, I Hate Kate, Butch Walker, Future Of The Left, the Mars Volta, XX Teens, Amanda Palmer, Jaguar Love, Bauhaus, Frank Turner, the Airborne Toxic Event, Nine Inch Nails, Futureheads, Bloc Party, Paramount Styles, We Are The Physics, Mindless Self Indulgence, Past Lives, Son Of Dave, Alva Noto, Polysics, Firewater, Marc Ribot's Ceramic Dog, Anthony Green, Ben Folds, Does It Offend You Yeah, Johnny Foreigner, Jesu, DeSalvo, Mika Vanio, Tom Gabel and Toy Killers.

Dammit. Old habits die hard.