Justice played Madison Square Garden Last Night

Give me the THORAZINE

--You don't need the thorazine

The THORAZINE!

--RELAX!



YES, Justice came out last night to do the whole "Justice" thing...and thank fuck, they combined "We Are Your Friends" and Ministry's "Just One Fix", just like they did at Terminal 5. Ministry riffs are cause for celebration, so I smacked Miles in the belly repeatedly (never failed to bring me luck) as he danced his "drunk aunt at the Christmas party" dance. I'm no better... I can't get the "rave" out of my "two step"....damnit. The point is, we danced like idiots and thats awesome.

The show was great, Chromeo opened and they were as brilliant as you could ever want them to be. Their music is a fucking joke, but its one of those jokes that is hilarious and never ever gets old, like Bobby Brown.



Basically, the opener restored my faith in humanity, which means Justice made me believe in God (Al Jourgensen). They smacked together all the best shit they could come up with, threw in a little Metallica, did like 3 encores, and left everyone sore and sweaty. Thanks, dudes.

Truth be told, I'm glad its all over. Justice has been in everyone's ears/faces for quite some time now, and they have had a good run. After last night, I'm ready to let them go for a year or so, so they can hole up in a bunker in France and make some more new shit. Begone, Justice, and leave me alone with my hangover.

We closed the night off in a bar where they let underage kids drink, screaming the words to Neutral Milk Hotel's "Holland, 1945"...which I just found out was awesome....jeez.....I've never seen the Godfather either.

Have a great day kids, I just (with a raging hangover) interviewed Mikey from Cool Kids, so I've peaked.

edIT

Queens Plaza is nasty...especially this time of year. Its a sad place, especially the train station itself. Its a cavern and its obvious they were planning on the area holding down some kind of "hub" for the whole borough of queens, which it is...

But not in any kind of "bustling city center" kind of way - a mess of train tracks and colliding people climbs the stairs to an even bigger mess of on ramps, off ramps, freeway overpasses, train yards tangled above ground level...the 7 train screams overhead...the LIRR whips by on the oil-stained ground. The place is a barely-beautiful mass of twisted metal, filth, and traffic of all kinds.

I'm walking off the train and I'm so tired I can barely see. Not any kind of actual fatigue, just the kind that rushes up and knocks me on my ass as I ride the train home. I end up in a weird trance with my headphones on. I drift into this place between sleep and awake, where I start to disconnect, but not fully. In that disconnection, there are new colors to the music, new associations I couldn't make in my waking state. I love listening to music in that state.

We've all achieved similar things with all kinds of substances, and I am definitely one to really fall in love with a piece of music after hearing it in an altered state. Pot was the reason I thought track 4 off of Intestine Baalism's album "An Anatomy of the Beast" was the most genius thing I had ever heard. Ecstasy was the reason I thought "Hard House" was a good idea. Mushrooms were the reason I ripped off the headphones and swore off the Matrix soundtrack forever.

Music is definitely experiential (is that a word?) and you listen to music on drugs for the same reason you do anything on drugs - to experience it from an alternate perspective. Altered states give you alternate takes, the drums are louder, context is clearer, you are now in a singular state of mind separate from your 9-5 and thus have more attention to give.

I'm the same way with movies...I once sat, blazed out of my mind, all the way through "21 grams", the most depressing, terrifying, heart wrenching movie I have ever seen. It didn't make me feel good, but for some reason my altered state had me more easily aligned with the director's vision. Wanky as that may sound, it makes sense. Films are an alternate reality, and it follows that warping your own personal reality prepares you to understand a new one.

In my state, I was able to shed a lot of distracting notions about how weird I thought Sean Penn was, how obnoxious Naomi Watts' overacting can be, and follow the point. At the end of the film they ask a question about the weight, 21 grams....supposedly everyone loses 21 grams at the exact second they die. "How much does 21 grams weigh?" The answer came out of me without even trying, I actually said this out loud to myself and my confused dog (he's not a Benicio Del Toro fan). I said, "Too much". Its about balance, the world balances itself out same as us. When the weight becomes too much, the world sheds it, one living person at a time, 21 grams at a time....thanks, marijuana. <\Tangent>

So, the drugs are great for these kind of halfway valuable insights, but my recent episodes on the train have made me realize that I can fuck myself up a lot worse without any kind of substance. All drugs do anyway is direct the traffic of existing chemicals in your brain...drugs divert, close off, rip open synapses and cause chaos within you and without you. You can get this same effect without drugs. I'll still do them, but I've recently become interested in the kind of madness that can be created inside without them.

Sleep deprivation, deep breathing, chanting, meditation, dreams. Some of these things sound a little ridiculous, but surely they cant be any more ridiculous than gravity bongs, naming your pipes, glow sticks, or deliberately repeating the phrase "Alaskan Thunderfuck" to your friends.

I once went to an Alex Grey ceremony at his chapel/art gallery in Chelsea. After what seemed like hours of lame spoken-word nonsense, and rambling stories about the concept of "home", we chanted. I'm a skeptic as hell, but only until someone presents a compelling argument. The woman leading the chant promised altered states of consciousness, and she delivered.

After 10 minutes of deeply chanting phrases in Indian I was seeing things, white auras around basically everything. I was detached, watching my thoughts and emotions wander by without trying to understand them. Was there mysticism there? No. I was just depriving my brain of oxygen, or giving it way too much of it. The effect was like standing up too fast and almost passing out, or the ridiculous "lets make each other pass out by breathing real hard" situation that bored kids across the country were into a few years ago.

Regardless, it was an altered state, and I'll take it. Lets call a spade a spade. I'll take it because music sounds better in these places...ok, maybe not "better", but "different", and different is good.

I was still cruising out of one of these episodes as I walked off the V train and up the stairs. edIT's album "Certified Air Raid Material" was playing in my headphones. It was my third time with it, and I was floored. My right ear begged for the bassline from the title track to come back as it panned from ear to ear. The vibration was so satisfying that, were it possible, I would have rammed it into my veins. Over and over again.

I came close to the turnstyle, into it, then out of it. There was money, right there on the ground. In one motion over the kickdrum I snagged it. A small pile of bills wrapped in a one dollar bill. An instant after that an extremely stressed looking string of a person walked up and asked me for 50 cents (he probably saw me grab the money) so i handed him the stack, smiled and kept on my affected way. I hope there was a fifty in there.

It was like it never happened, I never once considered the money mine. The music was winning, not my ego. If it weren't for being half-asleep, if it weren't for that bassline, I don't think it would have happened like that. "This is New York, and you have to work to get what you want... damnit...whats mine is mine"... (Echoes from my nine to five state of mind).

I got your seasonal depression right here, sucka.

I've been incapable of the "long post" since that sprawling music business list...jesus. It actually does take some skill to make these "list" things that the whole internet seems to be so fond of. So, being that I am drained for now, its all bite sized posts and obnoxious "what is the deal with that?" type of nonsense.

Disfear - Get it Off

I'm convinced this song was sponsored by these guys. You hear what you want to hear, but I think this is about letting shit go, forcibly purging the dead weight and stagnant skin cells you have been shackled with as a human. "I just wanna, get it off, get it off my brain". This might be about meditation and deep breathing, or it might be about the other end of the spectrum, thrashing about, sweating, driving fast, and knocking into your friends. Either way its fucking beautiful and powerful, and if you don't find yourself throwing out ridiculous looking fist pumps then you are not alive.

They are playing the Knitting Factory in April, see you there.

Disfear, by the way, is a beast. The lead singer from At The Gates and some members from Entombed (too lazy to look this up)...its like the Swedish Death Metal A-Team. Enjoy, and if you've never heard At The Gates, fuuuuuuuuuuuck you:

At the Gates - Suicide Nation (Alternate Version)

Other than that, I've been working on a pretty huge piece for Vice. We've been going round and round with revisions, but I hope to have it out soon. I will keep you posted.

And, JUSTICE, tomorrow at MSG. Yup, I'll be in there with the tight jeans set, praying they put Ministry and "We are your friends" together again.

Have a great week.

All My Friends - Pt. 2 - Ogre

Ogre is an evil bastard.

When I met Ogre he was running around this party talking about how "hamboned" he was. He was making everyone do shots of 99 bananas until he took out the CD that was playing to show everyone his favorite Third Eye Blind songs. He would demand that everyone in the room listen while he skipped from track to track, never playing a whole song , "no, no dude, you have to hear the words on this. this is epic!" So he made everyone be all quiet and it totally got so awkward that everyone started leaving.

Another time he visited me in New York. We were on the subway and he started talking in this really loud voice. The train was packed and he was talking and laughing about how cool it was that New York was so diverse, he was like, "Man, there's not this many Mexicans in Wisconsin, do you think they are all here illegally? Do you think they know my roofer? Miguel and I were friends because one time I was all, 'me gusta la chicas', and then he was all, 'si!' It was fun talking Spanish with him I only took one semester but yeah, basically, I'm friends with Mexicans."

He also once gave me the worst birthday present ever He was all giggling and happy giving me this envelope, so I thought it would be something cool, like tickets to a Chicago cover band called "Gary", or a gift certificate to Chili's or something else sweet like that, but it was actually tickets to go to this thing called "Living and Loving the Light with Jesus". He was all psyched because it was this like 3 day seminar with a shitload of christian rap-metal bands and guest speakers and a ceremony where you bring your girlfriend and they bless you and make you be celibate for the rest of your life. I tried to be gracious and accept the gift as he was all, "I'm so stoked that you are finally ready to accept Jesus with me, brosef!"

Then he bought a visor, turned it around, put it on upside down, and high-fived me.

All My Friends - Pt. 1 - Jess

Alright, so my friends are a bunch of Scheister scumbags, thats right. I love you guys but none of you are blameless - all flawed and terrible people just like me, so I will be airing your dirty laundry all over this thing. BOO-YAH!

My first subject is Jess, this whole thing was her idea.

I once saw Jess decline a phone call from her grandmother because she was drunk and playing skee-ball in a bar. She never called her back.

I also heard that one time, Jess' mom gave her a really expensive jacket from Chanel one winter and she sold it at a vintage clothes store for 1/3 the price because it "wasn't her style".

Another time, a friend of a friend gave her a demo CD from her new band. This friend of a friend worked for 2 years and spent all the money from her mom's accidental death malpractice suit to record the demo. She could only afford one copy, so she gave it to Jess, thinking that it would be in good hands. Jess told her she would "check it out and pass it along". She listened to it once, called it "stupid hippie jam-band bullshit" and took it out to listen to Creed instead. She now avoids the friend of a friend's phone calls.

She also runs toddler fights in the back of a van in Long Island City. The toddlers are all also disabled and punch drunk from all the fighting. Her main fighter, a 3 year old monster who goes by the handle "BrickDick" just had to retire so she has been prowling daycares "looking for new talent".



Jess is a nefarious individual, stay away at all costs.

You're next. Yes, you.

9 Bizarre/Awesome Portrayals of Music Industry People in Modern Film.

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First Track, First Time - Nine Inch Nails - "Ghosts"

Artist: Nine Inch Nails
Album: Ghosts
Track: 1 Ghosts I
Venue: Work computer, eating pizza, bad gas.

Mmmmmm slightly distorted pianos. Is this Reznor's own "Selected Ambient Works"? It definitely works. Its moody and it sounds like the outros to a thousand Nine Inch Nails songs, before bleeding seamlessly into the next track, a wash of feedback and wind to match the huge dunes on the "album" cover.

Its cool to see Trent going for this kind of atmosphere in the kind of "pay what you will, pay a lot and get some awesome shit" arena that is (happily) destroying the music business.

The album is two hours long though, so its anyone's guess as to how listenable the whole experience will be.

GET NINE INCH NAILS' 'GHOSTS I' HERE FOR FREE