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Post by muzzleofbees on Apr 13, 2021 7:53:58 GMT -5
This is just so tight and dense and really fucking cool, that I just have to take a step back to take it all in. But for what it's worth, I'm starting to see the the room before my eyes when I'm reading it, almost like it comes to life. So you must have done a pretty good job.
I'm dropping by with another little side note.
In the car about a week ago, I heard Wham! - Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go, a song I must have heard like 150 times before. I've never spent too much time listening to the lyrics, though, and wasn't planning to change that anytime soon. But suddenly it struck me that George Michael sings "bang bang bang", and then I thought about the repeated "Jitterbug" in the intro of the song. When you add in the wake up/woke up similarity, and that the entire song is about a guy left alone cause his girl is out "dancing" by herself, there's suddenly an awful lot that links it to Massive Nights and Our Whole Lives.
And I have a sneaky feeling that some other lines from the song could be relevant for the return parties.
"Wake me up before you go-go I don't wanna miss it when you hit that high Wake me up before you go-go 'Cause I'm not planning on going solo Wake me up before you go-go Take me dancing tonight I wanna hit that high, yeah yeah"
She's obviously hitting highs without him, and he wants to come along, hitting that high too.
I don't really thing this enlightens anything, but it wouldn't be that weird if this is a source of images describing the core events we've learnt so much about.
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Post by star18 on Apr 13, 2021 10:27:09 GMT -5
Would be an interesting challenge to come up with a full "fake Hold Steady song" along these lines!
There's certainly a lot of powerful formulas you could use.
Was thinking of a MAD LIBS type approach. Here's one based on "Knuckles":
I've been trying to get people to call me (celebrity name) but people keep calling me (ridiculed celebrity/mocking nickname/insult)
I dunno how much overlap there is between there and here, but the "Positive Posting" FB group had a fantastic thread about two weeks back where everyone was writing custom verses based on "The Swish" ("X & Y, baby, Y & X . . . "). It's ridiculously satisfying.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Apr 14, 2021 6:50:49 GMT -5
This is just so tight and dense and really fucking cool, that I just have to take a step back to take it all in. But for what it's worth, I'm starting to see the the room before my eyes when I'm reading it, almost like it comes to life. So you must have done a pretty good job. I'm dropping by with another little side note. In the car about a week ago, I heard Wham! - Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go, a song I must have heard like 150 times before. I've never spent too much time listening to the lyrics, though, and wasn't planning to change that anytime soon. But suddenly it struck me that George Michael sings "bang bang bang", and then I thought about the repeated "Jitterbug" in the intro of the song. When you add in the wake up/woke up similarity, and that the entire song is about a guy left alone cause his girl is out "dancing" by herself, there's suddenly an awful lot that links it to Massive Nights and Our Whole Lives. And I have a sneaky feeling that some other lines from the song could be relevant for the return parties. "Wake me up before you go-go I don't wanna miss it when you hit that high Wake me up before you go-go 'Cause I'm not planning on going solo Wake me up before you go-go Take me dancing tonight I wanna hit that high, yeah yeah"She's obviously hitting highs without him, and he wants to come along, hitting that high too. I don't really thing this enlightens anything, but it wouldn't be that weird if this is a source of images describing the core events we've learnt so much about. Thanks man! The farther we go, the more we can build on what we've already worked out, so I hope the interest just ramps up from here. I've got 16 more posts going through the remaining details of Party Zero, and then I'll do an overview post to wrap up the whole thing in a 1000-word summary of the action, with no quotes or commentary. My hope is that that will be a bit of an inflection point, so that everything thereafter feels like a new brick on top of a solid foundation in the ground. We'll see. About Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go: from looking at an awful lot of Craig's references to other bands/songs, I can say that I think he *mostly* just references them for the specific names/lyrics that he actually borrows; mostly there isn't a deep or recursive reference to the content. But, having said that, there's at least one major exception coming up, and it's for a song that is at least as improbable, on the face of it, as the Wham! hit. Which would by the way have been a pretty probable prom tune for Craig himself, if we're looking for a reason why he would go there for "bang bang bang" in OWL specifically. In short, I don't know, but it's possible!
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Post by skepticatfirst on Apr 14, 2021 6:58:43 GMT -5
There's certainly a lot of powerful formulas you could use.
Was thinking of a MAD LIBS type approach. Here's one based on "Knuckles":
I've been trying to get people to call me (celebrity name) but people keep calling me (ridiculed celebrity/mocking nickname/insult)
I dunno how much overlap there is between there and here, but the "Positive Posting" FB group had a fantastic thread about two weeks back where everyone was writing custom verses based on "The Swish" ("X & Y, baby, Y & X . . . "). It's ridiculously satisfying. quotes and comments, baby, comments and quotes lotta tiny little text in notes working backwards from the soup head goats through my posts
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Post by skepticatfirst on Apr 14, 2021 7:03:09 GMT -5
ON THE FLOOR: CARPET & HARDWOODWith the layout of the Nice Nice out of the way, let's talk about the flooring. The "Rathskeller in the Sky" video has a nice shot at 1:08 ( youtube) of the floor of the actual brewery bar --- part carpet, part hardwood: These are appointments that a casual visitor to the place might not notice, but that take on an outsize importance if you're down there getting gangraped. ***A fair amount of detail about the situation and the mechanics of the sex is described in relation to the carpet and hardwood of the floor. Blackout Sam links the carpet to the "party house," recognizable in both THS and LP contexts as the brewery bar: The carpet at the party house [BSam] Rock for Lite Brite confirms that there's sex on the carpet (more about this line very shortly): and ain't it easy once you get em on the carpet [RfLB] Touch My Stuff confirms that there's fucking happening on the hardwood floor, and Solid Gold Sole links the hardwood to the "south side" that we've already identified (see NICE NICE: THE ROOF above) as the south wall of the barroom: makin love to hardwood floors, now we go into the 4/4 [TMS] southside hardwood floor apartment [SGS] Lie Down on Landsdowne and 4 Dix both make reference to sex on the floor --- in the latter case, sex on the dance floor at a party: sometimes it's so wide open, rollin on the floor and moanin for me [LDoL] seizured on the dance floor and slithered from her party dress [4Dix] Roaming The Foam has a couple of lines about the sex-for-drugs trade whose alternative version (found in the liner notes) expands on the "rolling on the floor" angle of the LDoL line above: these yayo hoes take off their clothes and try to get me to give them something chemical [RtF] These Day Glo whores roll on the floor Try to get you to touch them with your tentacles. [RtF alt lyrics]
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Post by skepticatfirst on Apr 15, 2021 6:07:23 GMT -5
ON THE FLOOR: INJURIESReferences to the injuries inflicted by the floor during the rape --- abrasions and burns from the carpet, and, worse, scratches from the hardwood --- are numerous and graphic. ***There's the famous line from Stevie Nix, now revealed as an allusion to the carpetburn sustained by Gideon inside the ring of gangsters (the Thunderbird is just another motel metaphor for the Nice Nice, see NIGHTCLUBS above): And the carpet at the Thunderbird Has a burn for every cowboy that got fenced in [SN] Lie Down On Landsdowne mentions the kids treating the abrasions left by the carpet with the "cream"=meth (see LISTED, and also notes about the vicious cycle discussed in THE FOAM above) they got in exchange for the sex: we're all just sitting dreaming and applyin cream on our abrasions [LDoL] Positive Jam and On With The Business mention bleeding on the same carpets: And the '70s got heavy, we woke up on bloody carpets [PJ] Blood on the carpet Mud on the mattress [OwtB] ***As bad as the carpet is, the hardwood floor is worse. The Brokerdealer "vision"/"fever dream" of the LP story described in If Not For Hipster Pictures (see BREWERY BAR: THE LAYOUT above) adds to its description of the rape: it was the denim and all the scratched up skin [INFHP] and The Last Ones Up Become Lovers links the scratches on the back with the hardwood: the skin on my back all scratched up in splinters [TLOUBL] Suddenly we realize that the RfLB line (see ON THE FLOOR: CARPET & HARDWOOD above) isn't expressed from the point of view of the rapist, but from the point of view of the *victim*: and ain't it easy once you get em on the carpet [RfLB] in other words, getting raped on the carpet is a cakewalk compared to getting raped on hardwood. This is the point, too, of "boys, let's try to keep it on the carpet" in You Did Good Kid; remembering that this line follows the kids' arrival at the "club," and the girl's gift of the "crystal container" (see A LITTLE BIT above): the drifters in the kitchen were thrashing through the passion boys, let's try to keep it on the carpet you wouldn't be so impressed with the sunrise if it wasn't for the darkness [YDGK] It's all there: the kitchen, the sunrise, the tunes, and now the literal "passion" on the carpet. ***Other generic references to scratches, bleeding, banging and getting "stabbed" on the floor include: We were hot soft and pure, now we're scratched up in scars [JaJ] They're shooting through the ceiling and they're bleeding on the floor [SM] We walked into the church and people got down on the floor Rolled around and banged the chairs all filled up with the spirit of the Lord [ABlues] Falling on the floor just like Saul on his sword [R&T]
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Post by skepticatfirst on Apr 16, 2021 7:20:19 GMT -5
It's all there: the kitchen, the sunrise, the tunes, and now the literal "passion" on the carpet. ... Hadn't had a lot of time lately, and there's other things I would like to comment on as well, but couldn't resist dropping by for a few moments and saying how this gangrape scenario reading gives such a twisted meaning to the title "Thrashing Through the Passion."
There's a lot of other lines this scenario gives subtle and not-so-subtle shifts in meaning. For instance, the other night I was listening to Southtown Girls and the lyrics about hey bloomington what they did to you seemed like it could refer to that.
Yup --- that "what'd you let em do to you" in Southtown Girls, with that creepy "let em" in the middle, is pretty ugly in retrospect (and yes, the THS version of the party is exactly what it refers to). I have a whole post on DOUBLE TAKES at the end to try to deal with this pervasive phenomenon of darker meaning in the lyrics. With song and album titles especially, it seems like Craig selects specifically for strong vehicles of surface meaning underlaid by heavy secondary meanings, almost like that's his criterion for Truth. And we're not even done wringing significance out of "Thrashing Through The Passion" ... more coming in a little bit here.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Apr 16, 2021 10:56:54 GMT -5
ON THE FLOOR: MUSICWe've already talked about the "room full of dudes [who] cranked up the tunes" for the gangrape (see THE TUNES above). What we see now is that the searing of this background music into the minds of the victims is described as an effect of the "scratching" of the floor, as if the music were being physically ground into them while the rape is in progress. ***The most famous description of this is obviously in Certain Songs: Certain songs they get so scratched into our souls [CSongs] The same idea explains the bizarre image of "back scratch choirs" in THS, observed in a few places: The scratches on my back, they formed into a choir [SK] Belt it out like back scratch choirs [NS] ***Jesse wasn't present at the metal bar rape, but Charlemagne's persistent view of her as another Holly makes him frame her obsession with music in the same "scratching" terms, and this too is associated with the floor; compare the lines That song got scratched into her soul [HH] Sit down on your floor and listen to your records [WCGT] both of which are expressed from Charlemagne's perspective while hanging with Jesse and listening to her music. ***This association of the background music with the hardwood scratches is referenced only once in the LP catalog, but it's a very strong connection: makin love to hardwood floors, now we go into the 4/4 [TMS] ***What else can we say about the "tunes" at the end of the party? Our gangsters are heshers. Recall that the term "hesh" is derived from 'heavy metal + thrash' (see HESHERS above); this music is a key aspect of their identity. Without knowing anything more, we can be pretty confident that the music they were playing belongs to these genres. [*1]There are other indications that this is correct: - The title of Sketchy Metal, which includes significant details about the THS version of the assault party, makes an obvious allusion to heavy metal.
- The two bands mentioned in conjunction with the events of Party Zero in Sangre De Stephanie, "[Black] Sabbath" and "Nazareth" (see DAWN above), are heavy metal bands.
- YDGK's "thrashing through the passion," a direct allusion to the gangrape (see ON THE FLOOR: INJURIES above), refers to "thrashing" as a specific musical term as well.
***But we can do better than identify the genre; we can identify the specific songs being played. The Denver Haircut description of the gangrape video (see MAGAZINES & VIDEOS above) segues directly into a description of the background music, complete with a reference to rolling on the carpet: And a clock on the bed stand with a cord to connect it. Liberty and Justice into Master of Puppets. Rolling off of the mattress. Waking up on the carpet [DH] While this is only one of many sex-inflected "they did the X into the Y" musical pairings in the LP/THS lyrics, it's the only one that identifies a plausible "soundtrack" [RtF] for the assault and video. Consider: - Agnostic Front's "Liberty And Justice For ..." (1987) and Metallica's "Master Of Puppets" (1986) were seminal albums in the thrash metal / crossover thrash genres.
- Juanita is mentioned, dryly, as liking the Agnostic Front in connection with her love of speed in The Gin and the Sour Defeat.
- Roger Miret of Agnostic Front was living with the members of Nausea at the reported foundation of crust punk in the US, closely tying the band to the "crust punk" [BBlues] characterization of the gangsters as well (wikipedia; link; see ORIGINS OF IMAGES and HESHERS above).
- "The stench of death in the credits" in Denver Haircut's account of the gangrape video (see MAGAZINES & VIDEOS above) makes a probable dual allusion to "stenchcore" and "death metal," names/styles closely associated with crust punk (wikipedia), bringing us full circle to the genre allusions catalogued above.
***The identification of "Liberty And Justice For"/"Master Of Puppets" squares perfectly with other particulars of Party Zero staging. Let's start with the name of the song "Mick's Tape," whose reference to roofies ("mick[ey]") suggests that the music playing during the assault came from a mixtape. [*2]In its most artful form, a "mixtape" ( wikipedia) meant the careful selection of individual songs from different sources for compilation on cassette; see, for example, Craig's 1994 I've Got Drugs mixtape: http://instagr.am/p/B-Zo3qejYJx (Check out also the firsthand testimony of vinyltravis from the boards: link; link). The term was also applied to the less artful but very common compilation of two albums on a single cassette (which presented the same challenges of selection and fit as the song-by-song type, just at a cruder scale). A look at the Denver Haircut albums through the lens of mixtape composition yields a surprising amount of information. ***Consider the task from the point of view of the hesher authoring the Party Zero mixtape. The Sketchy Metal characterization of the gangsters as "rock and roll promoters" ("we rubbed up pretty close to" affirms the gangrape context, and therefore the reference to the mixtape) frames his choice of music on the tape as a deliberate act of "promotion," of selection. What constraints would have governed the choice of these albums, rather than others? The standard blank 90-minute cassette tape --- like the one used for Craig's I've Got Drugs mixtape, which clocks in at right under 90 minutes (see instagram link above), or the one used for Steve's 1996 Lo-Fi Hawaii album, with 37+ minutes of music "all on side A" ( youtube) --- was precisely long enough to permit a copy of one standard-length LP on side A and a second standard-length LP on side B. That was great, if you wanted to make a compilation of standard-length LPs. But if you wanted to include an album that overran the standard LP maximum of 46 minutes, things got complicated. Often (speaking from personal experience here), your recourse was to cut out a least-favorite song in order to get it back under 46 minutes, and even that extreme solution wouldn't work for a very long album like Master of Puppets (clocking in at 54:47; wikipedia), from which you'd have to amputate two of its eight tracks in order to get it to fit. So the only way to get Master of Puppets on tape without hopeless mutilation would be to find a second album that both paired up well with it in style, and also happened to be as improbably short for an LP as Master of Puppets was improbably long, so that side B could take up the overrun from side A and still leave room for the entirety of the second album. (To be clear, this is the essence of the mixtape challenge --- to work within a bunch of overlapping constraints to produce a stylistically balanced whole.) Wonderfully, if this is a problem for which you as a rock-and-roll-promoting hesher in the early 90's require a solution, there is Liberty and Justice For, which has an extremely short total runtime of only 25:50 ( wikipedia), clearing the bar for classification as an LP rather than an EP by seconds ( wikipedia). With this, you can copy the last two tracks from Master of Puppets onto the beginning of side B, follow it up with Liberty and Justice For, and end up with two sides of a little over 40 minutes each, leaving only a few minutes of dead time at the end of each side, and letting autoreverse take care of the continuity of the split longer album. If the fact that these unusually-proportioned albums combine so perfectly to fit the constraints of a 90-minute cassette tape is a coincidence, it's quite a coincidence. This looks, in short, like the strictly realistic description of an actual mixtape from that era. ***A 90-minute Liberty And Justice For/Master Of Puppets mixtape is for the rest consistent with the Records and Tapes account of a cassette tape playing repeatedly on autoreverse during the party (see THE TUNES above). It also accounts for the "battle of the bands" image in love is like a battle of the bands, crank up your amps man [LPvtEotE] which presupposes a duel-by-turns between two bands as its basic definition, again consistent with a mixtape featuring Metallica and The Agnostic Front in succession. ***There's still more to be said about the playing of the tape, and about the "clock on the bed stand" [DH] which is apparently linked to the source of the music; but we'll defer this discussion for ON THE FLOOR: VISIONS, coming up next. [*1] We can say with some confidence that the songs scratched into Jesse's soul --- "Only The Good Die Young," "Paradise By The Dashboard Light," "Running Up That Hill," etc. --- are not what the dudes cranked up when things got ugly. [*2] Compare the reference to heavy-metal "nazareth" [SdS] in the background of the party (mentioned above) with the "nazareth tape" [C&N] mentioned in Curves & Nerves.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Apr 18, 2021 10:16:48 GMT -5
It seems that perhaps he wasn't making up lyrics on the spot but already had them worked out and in his head? I'd have to do some digging to find quotes to back all of this up, but Craig has talked a lot about his compositional methods, and it seems plausible to me that it works something like this: - He's got a complete story in his head. Has had for a very long time. The THS rewrite version has a little more room for improv around the edges, but he's got a rock-solid base of narrative material to draw on whenever he wants. (About the story, he's actually said somewhere that "it's a method of composition.") - He goes around, or at least used to go around, with notebooks/scraps of paper, and writes down things he hears, lines from books he's reading, etc., collecting nuggets for the lyric framing of the narrative material. I imagine that being something like: he sees a 212-MARGARITA ad on the subway, associates that with the character of Mary and her margaritas, and gets the spark of an idea of her telling someone to call her at that number (like the ad does). It's just the briefest idea of a little scene, but it's a starting place for an actual song. - If he decides to follow up the idea, then he takes a tune and starts trying to put a verse to it. I think he's said things like "I usually get the first verse pretty quick" and "I have these notebooks full of scraps of lyric, and I'll go back to those to see what will fit." For most songs, I think he's also said that he usually rewrites and rewrites to see what else he can get in there, so you imagine a process taking a while. - But it also seems perfectly likely that for some songs, he'll have a lot of good stuff that fits without his even needing to struggle to fit it in. It's interesting that the two songs which we have reason to believe were whipped up in under an hour, You Can Make Him Like You and Epaulets, are both short songs (don't need to come up with a lot of lyrics) with loose tetrameters in both the verses and the choruses; if the default meter that he uses to frame up lyrical scraps in his notebooks has four beats, you could imagine him being able to haul out a lot of good stuff for that kind of musical backbone almost on a dime. So, some speculation there, but it seems plausible to me. The other thing of course is that he's been doing this for 25+ years, so he's surely getting faster and better with time.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Apr 18, 2021 10:37:55 GMT -5
Was thinking of "Paradise By the Dashboard Lights" and Jessie's role as runner and the line about why do you keep going to the car in Hurricane J. It seems connected to the Juanita scenario going to the bathroom stalls and giving blowjobs. There is the post earlier in this thread connecting all the J names with Juanita (The Girls) and I can't remember if there is one that says there is a carryover of that trend to the THS universe (Note:Hurricane J). Man, you know I've spent a lot of time thinking about this, but I never even thought of "Hurricane J" as a direct callback to the J of "hey my name's juanita but my friends they call me ll cool j" (it's funny how much not *hearing* the titles makes them easy to miss). Thank you, that's a great catch. I guess it's already starting to be pretty obvious that Mary, Holly, and Jesse all have elements in common with Juanita (to mention things that we've already talked about in Alright Alright: Mary gets the colored drinks; Holly gets the noisemaking during sex; we haven't talked about Juanita's cigs and love of music, but Jesse gets those; there's much more), even if they are well distinguished from one another in the THS story per se. I think there's a very particular thing that's going on here, and I'm going to talk about it with the perspective of the whole LP story behind us in THS CHARACTERS below. But to your point, yes, there's a lot in common between Jesse and Juanita here ("she gets low on her seat when she gets high in her car"=she's going down on whoever's in the car with her and doing drugs, even if it's not speed and even if the guy, rather than the drugs, is her main focus).
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Post by skepticatfirst on Apr 18, 2021 11:10:33 GMT -5
1- If Master of Puppets is on the A side, with a few tracks on the B-side, and Liberty and Justice For is on the B-side, it seems awkward that the lyric runs Liberty and Justice For into Master of Puppets, reading like LaJF is on the A-side. I guess this could be indicating the tape being on autoreverse, and flipping from the A back to the B as you've suggested. I'm certain of this --- as we'll see in Monday's post, the crucially important moment referenced by that lyric happens *between* sides of the tape. (It's the same "moment" referred to, by analogy with Cheap Trick, in "Had a moment in the middle of In Color and In Black & White" [RP].) If you want a hint, the crazy loop at the end of The Flex And The Buff Result is a deliberate fourth-wall-breaking allusion to this same moment between the end of one album and the beginning of the next on the mixtape. Listen to it, and it may come to you. 2- You cite Records and Tapes until the tape deck dies... One of the lines in the same verse runs that the same program is on both the sides.
My initial reading of that would be that the A-side is the same as the B-side. That's a good question; without a confirmer, I don't have an air-tight reading of that line. But a "program" isn't an album, and there are a lot of ways one could read that, whereas the mixtape problem is so heavily constrained by so many pieces of evidence that I think "same program" has to fit the solution proposed in ON THE FLOOR: MUSIC. (Plus, the LP story is a scrupulously realistic one, and nobody would make a mixtape with the same album on both sides.) It looks to me like R&T is connecting the two-sided tape playing in an "infinite loop" to the "disputable truth" problem; like the LP/THS story itself, every single story has a few different versions, you can look at the same story from one side, or you can look at it from the other. In the switch from the LP version to the THS version, we're getting the one that makes the kids look better. Again, not air-tight, but it looks to me like that's the direction it's going.
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Post by muzzleofbees on Apr 18, 2021 15:06:21 GMT -5
1- If Master of Puppets is on the A side, with a few tracks on the B-side, and Liberty and Justice For is on the B-side, it seems awkward that the lyric runs Liberty and Justice For into Master of Puppets, reading like LaJF is on the A-side. I guess this could be indicating the tape being on autoreverse, and flipping from the A back to the B as you've suggested. I'm certain of this --- as we'll see in Monday's post, the crucially important moment referenced by that lyric happens *between* sides of the tape. (It's the same "moment" referred to, by analogy with Cheap Trick, in "Had a moment in the middle of In Color and In Black & White" [RP].) If you want a hint, the crazy loop at the end of The Flex And The Buff Result is a deliberate fourth-wall-breaking allusion to this same moment between the end of one album and the beginning of the next on the mixtape. Listen to it, and it may come to you. I've been listening through some snippes of Master Of Puppets now, trying to find a reference near the end of Damage Inc. to The Flex And The Buff Result, but nothing really clicks. What I did discover, though, was the lyrics for Mick's Tape, which I've probably read in detail sometime, but without catching the eye-opening link to Denver Haircut. A small but significant wow-moment, a little over five years into this mind-bending project. I can't quite piece it together right now, but the car keys, the wallet, the theft (made by someone small and sweet, I guess) and the double-teaming on the carpet, is pretty much out in the open.
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Post by muzzleofbees on Apr 18, 2021 15:12:32 GMT -5
I think there's a very particular thing that's going on here, and I'm going to talk about it with the perspective of the whole LP story behind us in THS CHARACTERS below. But to your point, yes, there's a lot in common between Jesse and Juanita here ("she gets low on her seat when she gets high in her car"=she's going down on whoever's in the car with her and doing drugs, even if it's not speed and even if the guy, rather than the drugs, is her main focus). My inital thought here (and it's not very well thought through, but still): Jesse in the THS narrative is an retrospective/sentimental representation of Juanita before she went off the rails. It's the narrator of the songs (often Charlemagne in THS, The Narrator in Lifter Puller) memories of a more innocent, yet to be burned (out) girl. We get to see the signs of how and when things will go wrong, but for now she's this pretty sweet girl who's into cigarettes and music.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Apr 18, 2021 17:05:11 GMT -5
I'm certain of this --- as we'll see in Monday's post, the crucially important moment referenced by that lyric happens *between* sides of the tape. (It's the same "moment" referred to, by analogy with Cheap Trick, in "Had a moment in the middle of In Color and In Black & White" [RP].) If you want a hint, the crazy loop at the end of The Flex And The Buff Result is a deliberate fourth-wall-breaking allusion to this same moment between the end of one album and the beginning of the next on the mixtape. Listen to it, and it may come to you. I've been listening through some snippes of Master Of Puppets now, trying to find a reference near the end of Damage Inc. to The Flex And The Buff Result, but nothing really clicks. What I did discover, though, was the lyrics for Mick's Tape, which I've probably read in detail sometime, but without catching the eye-opening link to Denver Haircut. A small but significant wow-moment, a little over five years into this mind-bending project. I can't quite piece it together right now, but the car keys, the wallet, the theft (made by someone small and sweet, I guess) and the double-teaming on the carpet, is pretty much out in the open. Ah, no, sorry, I wasn't clear and sent you off in the wrong direction (it takes a certain skill to set up a good hint, and apparently I haven't got it down very well). You don't need to listen to either Master of Puppets or Liberty and Justice For, as far as I know there isn't anything in the detail there that's of importance. I just meant listen to the repeating end of the Fiestas and Fiascos album. Think about what it sounds like (if you ignore the musicality of it). Imagine that sound as the background of some of the things that have happened since Juanita headed off to the bathroom. If it all clicks, you'll recognize the origin of something very familiar from THS. (If not, we'll get to it tomorrow in any case.) Apart from "jingling/jangling the keys" as a slang expression for offering drugs in exchange for a blowjob ( ondcp), something that happens both at Party Zero and later, there are also a real set of car keys (and, as you say, a wallet) in the story, and yes, it's Juanita who steals them. But that's part of an episode that doesn't happen for months of story time yet. All in good time!
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Post by skepticatfirst on Apr 18, 2021 17:10:51 GMT -5
I think there's a very particular thing that's going on here, and I'm going to talk about it with the perspective of the whole LP story behind us in THS CHARACTERS below. But to your point, yes, there's a lot in common between Jesse and Juanita here ("she gets low on her seat when she gets high in her car"=she's going down on whoever's in the car with her and doing drugs, even if it's not speed and even if the guy, rather than the drugs, is her main focus). My inital thought here (and it's not very well thought through, but still): Jesse in the THS narrative is an retrospective/sentimental representation of Juanita before she went off the rails. It's the narrator of the songs (often Charlemagne in THS, The Narrator in Lifter Puller) memories of a more innocent, yet to be burned (out) girl. We get to see the signs of how and when things will go wrong, but for now she's this pretty sweet girl who's into cigarettes and music. All correct, although you could say that she had already gone off the rails; she "used to be a speed shooter" [SM] before Charlemagne got her cleaned up ("forgave me for my sins ... let this famine end," etc. [SM]). So maybe add to that, the retrospective/sentimental representation of a girl who wants to, and can, be rescued. Even if, as you also say, things will go wrong again.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Apr 19, 2021 6:11:37 GMT -5
.... had a fantastic thread about two weeks back where everyone was writing custom verses based on "The Swish" ("X & Y, baby, Y & X . . . "). It's ridiculously satisfying.
Clicks and hisses, baby, hisses and clicks Tried some new upper drug that's making her sick Don't party with skins, they're a bunch of dicks, We got pricked.
I'm not certain if this is related to a guess about the moment between albums, but if so it's a pretty good guess ...
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Post by skepticatfirst on Apr 19, 2021 6:14:15 GMT -5
ON THE FLOOR: VISIONSSo the last scene of Party Zero plays out with the kids being gangraped on the carpet, high as hell, shivering, smashed, and seeing visions. ***Juanita, we're told, watches Ezekiel's "wheel" [SH1999] (compare the THS descriptions of Mary's visions in terms of imagery from Ezekiel: heregoes; heregoes; heregoes). The Narrator, on the other hand, is traveling through the solar system. Let's scroll back a minute to the corner of the kitchen, where, having first taken the shot of meth, the Narrator tries to formulate a plea to Juanita (see FEELIN SMALL, THE CRASH, and SHOT IN THE SHOULDER above) in which he repeatedly appeals to the planets: It's a big world, girl, and I can't understand it We're tiny white specks in a bright blue planet ... To some weird-talking chick who just can't understand That we're hot soft spots on a hard rock planet [MPADJs] These drug-induced astronomical observations continue, according to Denver Haircut, through the hours of the gangrape and its aftermath: In five hours on the carpet He visits six different planets. On a spaceship shaped like a Gibson Marauder The pilot kinda looked like Kirk Hammett [DH] with symmetric details matching the musical background given a few lines earlier: Todd Youth of Agnostic Front played a Gibson Marauder ( link), and Kirk Hammett is of course the guitarist of Metallica. Piloted by the Kirk-Hammett-looking gangsters, the kids endure five drug-fired hours on the carpet, literally seeing stars and hearing the hesher soundtrack in the background the whole time. ***Let's return to the tape deck on which the music is being played. We've noted (see THE TUNES above) that Records And Tapes describes this as an old-school boombox with autoreverse, which is both plausible on the face of it and fits the rest of the evidence we've looked at so far. Why then does Denver Haircut present it as a "clock on the bed stand" (see ON THE FLOOR: MUSIC above)? A window sucking up all the available light, right? And a clock on the bed stand with a cord to connect it. Liberty and Justice into Master of Puppets. Rolling off of the mattress. Waking up on the carpet [DH] There are two reasons for this framing. The first reason is that Craig is creating one of his elaborate symmetries (see CONVENTIONS above). We can't spoil this yet, but there is a second room, another avatar of the Nice Nice, that is as central to the end of the story as the brewery bar is to the beginning; the DH line is one of many in the lyrics that draw a parallel between these two rooms. In this case, the parallel is based on the physical appointment of the rooms, both of which are very sparsely furnished: Brewery Bar | [Room 2] | basement[*1] | basement | windows | window | shutters | curtains | carpet | mattress[*2] | milkcrate[*3] | bedstand | boombox | clock radio |
We have to wait until the story takes us to this second room before we can explore the parallel further; for now, the point is that the "clock on the bed stand" [DH] really is the boombox and the milkcrate it sits on, seen through a symmetric poetic lens. ***The second reason for the boombox-as-clock framing is that the music is literally the background against which the hours on the carpet are measured out ("five hours ... Gibson Marauder ... Kirk Hammett" [DH]; see also DAWN above). [*4] That's not a lazy metaphor; the mechanics of this clock are precise, and very important. Again, we have a 90-minute casette --- a little less than 46 minutes per side (see ON THE FLOOR: MUSIC above) --- playing "over and over" [R&T] on autoreverse for "five hours on the carpet" [DH]. The autoreverse mechanism in boomboxes of the era (I had a couple of these) was driven by a solenoid that made a very loud "click" when the end of one side of the tape was reached, followed by a clatter at lower volume as the tape deck's head and motors switched direction. The switch from side B to side A of the gangsters' mixtape --- the *literal point of transition* from "Liberty and Justice into Master of Puppets" (see ON THE FLOOR: MUSIC above) --- is the very moment in which such a click would occur. The clicking of the tape deck is being recast in metaphor as the ticking of a clock. In favor of this reading, Epaulets links the "click" to the passage of time while sitting around and waiting: She says she loves the way these little flames Make everything all black and grey. But sometimes all that smoke can make you sick. Still a scorch mark or a blistered hand Seems a whole lot better than Sitting around and waiting for the click [Epaulets] What she's saying is that the drugs, bad as they are, seem better than boredom; compare "don't blame your baby's binging on the bass bins/ blame the boredom, blame the basements" [BiB] (note also "basements" in connection with the discussion of the clock on the bed stand above). [*5]The Last Time That She Talked To Me also associates the "clicks" with the "tape machine," says in addition that the "hisses" come from "speakers," and connects the "tape machine" with the alpha couple "kissing" (this is the Narrator speaking): If all of my existence is ever on exhibit. Tell the curator to emphasize the tape machine 'Cause that's what she was sitting on When we finally started kissing on The last time that she talked to me. In the entrance there was barely any mention That the armies were amassing in the streets. The lingering suspicions of a million Hare Krishnas Hissing from the speakers in the trees. In the kitchen there were signs that she was slipping Someone saw her breaking off the tape machine. All I really said was that the clicks were in her head. It was the last time that she talked to me [TLTtSTtM] Putting all of this together, it's apparent that, like so many other THS phenomena, the "clicks and hisses and complicated kisses" of Same Kooks and Stuck Between Stations *also* have a Party Zero origin: the static hiss of the blank space at each end of the mixtape leading into the click of the tape deck switching into autoreverse was heard at regular intervals throughout the party --- first during Juanita's kiss of betrayal, and then ("cranked up" for the assault, see THE TUNES above) during the gangrape on the carpet. [*6]The Rock Problems account of the alpha couple in the corner (the kiss and everything that follows) also firmly links it to the clicks-and-hisses timekeeping of the boombox: Had a moment in the middle of "In Color" and "In Black & White" Sing along to the "Southern Girls" Rip me out of my little world [RP] Right before getting ripped out of his "little world" (see FEELIN SMALL above), the Narrator *had a moment* between side A and side B (here, the "few different versions" [R&T] of the Cheap Trick album). The "stuck between stations" image, then, is based not only on "stuck" as in "stabbed," "stuck" as in "penetrated," "stuck" as in "injected," and "stuck" as in "stranded" (see PARTY ZERO, STRANDED, SHOT IN THE SHOULDER, and THE CENTER, above), but also specifically on the "between stations" hissing, static, and clicking heard in the interval between the two sides of the mixtape. [*7]***Back to the visions. Taking a second look at the the Lie Down On Landsdowne line about abrasions, we note that "dreaming" specifically references the visionary aspect of this injured-high-seeing-stars-on-the-floor time: we're all just sitting dreaming and applyin cream on our abrasions [LDoL] This stretch of time is also evidently the original source of the various "matinee" references, since the five hours in question run from morning through the beginning of the afternoon (see DAWN above). The Sweet Part Of The City links the matinee and the outer space references: The sweet part of the city The part with the bars and restaurants We used to meet underneath the marquees, we used to nod off in the matinees ... And so we shot ourselves out into outer space, it was tough to place the aftertaste It was stark but it was spacious [TSPotC] That "it was tough to place the aftertaste" sounds pretty gross now (the "spit a little treat between my teeth" [SSC] taste would be something new for "the first-time french kissers" [LGI], with "french kissers" in an extra set of air quotes). The first "matinees" reference in Multitude of Casualties reads a little less generically now, too: We spent a few years nodding off in matinees We were high as hell and shivering and smashed Yeah, we were hoping for an action adventure Or something loud that we could feel through all the Feminax [MoC] where that "something loud that we could feel through all the Feminax" fits exactly what we know about the background music playing while the kids lie smashed and shivering on the carpet. [*1] Recall that the name of the brewery bar was the Hamm's Rathskeller, literally "council cellar" in German, and that it's also referred to as a "basement" in SPayne. [*2] We don't need any further interpretation to see the evidence for a carpet/mattress parallel: Blood on the carpet Mud on the mattress [OwtB] Rolling off of the mattress. Waking up on the carpet [DH] [*3] It makes sense that the gangsters throwing the party would bring a tape deck along with them; but (despite knowing that they'd want something to set it on in order to amplify the sound) they wouldn't bring a stand along --- they'd expect to be able to find something suitable on the premises. Given that they're in a mostly shuttered bar that's had its tables and chairs removed, what are they likely to have found? We've noted repeatedly (see DAWN, BREWERY BAR: THE BACK HALF, etc., above) that the setting of Holly's birthday party is modeled after the brewery bar; we also know that Holly's party prominently features a milkcrate [MM, HF] with a connection to the violent music being played ("Milkcrate Mosh"). There's no direct evidence for this, but the web of parallels is very tight, and I'm certain that that later milkcrate is the reflection of an original milkcrate, one used as a stand for the boombox, at Party Zero. If the milkcrate is a pedestal for the boombox, what are we supposed to make of the fact that Charlemagne put it on his head? I put a milkcrate on my head and surrendered in the corner [HF] This is a detail with two thematic implications, neither of which presumes that Charlemagne literally upended the boombox to get at the milkcrate. The first point is that, like Gideon behind the spiderweb of his tattoo, Charlemagne has put himself behind bars of his own construction; this is the usual THS emphasis on "this is just what we wanted" (see ROOFIES and MAGAZINES & VIDEOS above). The second point emerges from a story Craig told the audience at the Constructive Summer show of Sept 12, 2019. In 1989, as a freshman at Boston College, Craig went to a hardcore show at the Rat with The Wrecking Crew and another band; he was standing alone in the audience when a guy came up to him and said "I'm going to go up there and kick it old-school Boston." Then the guy got on stage, grabbed a milkcrate, put it over his head, and dropped his pants in front of the crowd. Which is the point: Charlemagne too "surrendered in the corner" and dropped his pants in front of the crowd. [*4] The urgency of the THS Narrator's attempts to follow the time are shown not just by general lines like "now you want to go home" [YDGK] and "you just want it to end" [FB], but by the fact that, in the song Beer On The Bedstand, he explicitly wants a clock and can't find one: "He's flippin cards in a basement bar ... The law's long arm don't work down there/ And they covered up the clocks" [BotBedstand]. Note the connection of "bedstand," "basement bar," and "clocks" in light of the table of symmetries above. [*5] In making the reproach that "the clicks were in her head," the Narrator is telling her that the boredom is in her head, drugs or no drugs; but we'll get to this later too (see BORED below). [*6] We can't do a line-by-line breakdown of TLTtSTtM here without derailing the analysis, but note all the familiar themes: "the last time that she talked to me"="gonna walk around and drink some more" (see WALKED AROUND above); "the armies amassing in the streets"="the club kids as they crowded around us" (see THE CENTER above; this is also the beginning of the "war of attrition" [OwtB, TSTux] which we'll get to later, see COMMEMORATIVE PLATES and SHERMAN CITY below); "In the kitchen there were signs that she was slipping"=alpha girl getting roofied at the Nice Nice (see THE KITCHEN and SLIP AND TRIP above); etc. [*7] The blazing static loop at the end of Fiestas & Fiascos too is a breaking-the-fourth-wall callback to this clicks-and-hisses interval between the sides of the endlessly looping mixtape.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Apr 20, 2021 13:31:58 GMT -5
BOARDWALKA third reference to flooring at the brewery is "the tiles" mentioned in Barely Breathing. [*1] The tiles are different from the carpet and the hardwood in that there is no evidence of injury being *caused* by the tiles. Still, the kids are described as lying injured on them: To be out on the tiles and barely breathing, we were barely breathing [BBreathing] In the Here Goes thread, before looking into Lifter Puller, I'd noted the ample tiling in the brewhouse buildings and supposed that "tiles" referred to that. But the LP corpus gives us a much stronger data point to work with. The Slips Backwards alternative lyrics (from the liner notes of the seven-inch; unlike the mostly absurd alternative lyrics of The Entertainment And Arts, these have a lot of serious material in them), riffing off the "girl you know this party ..." opening, begin: girls who know this part of me just roll their eyes between these boardwalk fruits and yr bathroom tiles [SBackwards alt lyrics] This is evidently still connected to the party: "yr bathroom" needs no explanation, and we've already documented the use of "fruits" in reference to the same-sex rapist gangsters [PJ, BBlues, TMS]. There are a number of lyrical references to kids rolling their eyes back when they get too high [LGI, UBreakfast, Newmeyer's Roof, Three Drinks], a theme to which these lines too can be connected. What's left is the "boardwalk" and the "bathroom tiles" that the "girls" go between, making it a pretty safe bet that the tiles of Barely Breathing are also meant to refer to the tiles on the floor of the bar's bathroom. ***More interesting than the "bathroom tiles" themselves is the "boardwalk," whose juxtaposition with the tiles makes it evidently a reference to the hardwood flooring in the bar. We'd already figured out (see AIRPORT & LBI above) that the East Coast beach party towns are metaphors for the brewery bar; it's now clear that the "boardwalk" references in "boardwalk freaks" [11AF] and "we were bored on the boardwalk so we just started talkin" [CaAoC] are allusions to the bar's hardwood floor. ***Similarly, the "seaside arcade" [CaAoC] is the arcade of huge picture windows with the curved beams between them in the west wall of the bar (see picture #4 under BREWERY BAR: THE LAYOUT above). In TLaDiLBI we're told that the arcade is in the "western concourse" of the airport. We'd already worked out that the "airport" is the Nice Nice, home of the jets, and that the "airport" of TLaDiLBI (there are others, referring to other gangster dens) is the brewery bar specifically (see SHARKS & JETS and AIRPORT & LBI above); but now that our map plainly shows the brewery bar's division into the main barroom on the west and the rear area on the east, we can confirm that the "western concourse" is the barroom with the windows. This airport would appear to have a bar at the end of it, too: He shaved his head at the airport In a bar at the end of the concourse [DH] [*1] These "tiles" are both a metaphoric reference to drinking at bars, Led-Zeppelin-style ( genius), and a literal reference to physical tiling.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Apr 21, 2021 9:51:22 GMT -5
CRUCIFIXIONWe know that the THS story is built around the two core incidents of the metal bar party on the one hand, and Charlemagne's crucifixion on the other. What's striking then about the YDGK passage we looked at above (see ON THE FLOOR: INJURIES above): the drifters in the kitchen were thrashing through the passion boys, let's try to keep it on the carpet you wouldn't be so impressed with the sunrise if it wasn't for the darkness [YDGK] is the unambiguous allusion to Christ's Crucfixion in "the passion," when this is clearly a description of the assault in the metal bar, not Charlemagne's crucifixion in Swede Hollow. We've noticed suggestions of this before, for example in "dusted in the dark up in penetration park ... punctured ... plowed" [YLHF], where "punctured" in reference to the knife in Christ's side is associated with being "dusted" with PCP (see ROOFIES above); but the YDGK passage is especially graphic. What accounts for the 'crucifixion' framing being applied to multiple THS episodes? The answer is rooted in the same thing we saw with the "movies" motif earlier (see MAGAZINES & VIDEOS above): there's a single underlying LP event, a Party Zero crucifixion, that's being repurposed more than once for THS retelling. So let's look at the Party Zero crucifixion. ***It was always a little surprising that the THS "crucifixion" metaphor was built around the wound in Jesus' side ("sword in his side" [BCrosses, compare Brokerdealer MCIGOaCT], "knife" [OftC, NS, SShoes], "burned a hole in me eventually" [A&H], etc.) rather than the more commonly accounted elements of the cross and the nails in the hands. You could explain that by pointing out that it's literally about Charlemagne getting stabbed, but the literal layer is so complicated that this doesn't really amount to a simplification. The Party Zero background clarifies all of this. As we wrote upthread in SHOT IN THE SHOULDER: which gets us straight to the point: 1) There's a single Party Zero violation with two linked materializations: the meth injection, and the rape. 2) Both puncture (shot) and penetration (rape) are treated in metaphor as stabbings. 3) Add to this stabbing (a) the traitor kiss and (b) being almost-killed (compare "dead once already" [MPADJs]), and we have the crucifixion. We've taken note of several lines about stabbings upthread (MiM, YHLF, Craig's note about LQ; see PARTY ZERO, STRANDED, and THE CENTER above), but want now to bring the essential ones together with some commentary. ***The Gin And The Sour Defeat characterizes the stabbing in terms of both sex and drugs: the bright lights always pick me up the knife fights always pin me down [TGatSD] Here "lights"=meth (see LISTED above), while "knife fights" is a reference to getting raped, confirmed by "pin me down" (compare "pinned down" [PP], see ROOFIES above), where "me" is the Narrator. ***Same thing in Candy's Room: baby ain't you heard about the night club called the nice nice they got the dry ice and the knife fights on every other wednesday night [CR] Here again "ice"=meth (see LISTED above), and "knife fights"=gangrape. ***Same thing in Let's Get Incredible: and the rags you stuffed into your stab wounds [LGI] Here "rags"=place where drugs are concealed (see SHOES AND SOCKS above), while "stab wounds"=trauma from being raped. This line is exactly analogous to "applyin cream on our abrasions" [LDoL], "went straight for the bathroom soap/ tried to make ourselves clean" [JBS], etc.: they describe the assault victims' recourse to drugs in order to deal with the trauma of the rape, which in turn leads to more sexual exploitation, and so on around the vicious cycle (see THE FOAM and ON THE FLOOR: INJURIES above). ***The Langelos adds further connecting detail: all those pretty boys with the sideways scars [Langelos] Like "the sword in his side," "sideways scars" on the "pretty boys" is suggestive of homosexual rape, as well as the crucifixion of Christ. In recalling the moment of Juanita's betrayal in the corner ("she stumbled up sideways" [LiaL]; see STUMBLING & RESURRECTION and SHORT BY AN OUNCE above), "sideways" also directs some of the blame her way; compare "i've got scars enough/ from the night i hit your moving truck" [Emperor]. ***Lifter Puller vs the End of the Evening uses the verb "nailed," with "nail"=joint (see LISTED above) suggesting the agency of a laced sherman, to connect the rape to other aspects of Christ's crucifixion: and i'm nailed to the nightlife like christ on the cross ... before the trash got crucified, they loaded up on those curly fries and pontius pilate was just night club dwight in disguise [LPvtEotE] Note here the use of "trash" in echo of the Narrator as "Twin Cities trash bin" [MPADJs, RP] in the kitchen corner. We already had strong indications (see MAGICIAN above) that Dwight was the one who hit the Narrator and Juanita with roofies; the identification of Dwight with Pontius Pilate, sentencing the Narrator to crucifixion, adds force to that reading. ***A final item of note is the way the Records & Tapes account of the THS crucifixion goes out of its way to link the sword of execution (compare "sword in his side") to the floor (see ON THE FLOOR: CARPET & HARDWOOD above): Falling on the floor just like Saul on his sword [R&T] As with so many other things, the sprawling complexity of the THS crucifixion comes into much tighter focus when seen from the perspective of its Party Zero origin.
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Post by muzzleofbees on Apr 21, 2021 11:04:38 GMT -5
I need to take all this stuff in, but the thing about the mixtape and the autoreverse is just so damn exciting. I think I've mentioned this in a short passing before, but have you re-worked the idea about "mountain" lately? I know in Here Goes, the mountain stuff was associated with being high (Rocky Mountain, Colorado, a lot more). But I've been thinking about wheter some (or all) references to mountains could simply be another way of talking about the brewery bar. *It's up in the sky, almost literal in name *It's a place you get high, in more than one sense *The mansion is connected to mountains ("the mansion on the mountain top) Then, there's this thing about Hamm's located on Payne Avenue, which also is the name of at least a couple of mountains. One in New York, one in Canada. I wouldn't know if any of these mountain tops are particulary famous or anything, but it seems like one of those double meanings who's not a total coincidence. It would at least put a new spin to "woke up in the Colorado pines", lots of Going On A Hike ("try to reach the peak of euphoric heights", and the entire hiking in the mountains trope) and some Lifter Puller stuff too ("Learned to dance to The Mountain Song out on that grass (the rooftop?)). Forgive me if we've been through this before, but I had to get it out of my system. Now, back to reading the latest post
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Post by muzzleofbees on Apr 21, 2021 11:18:22 GMT -5
The Last Time That She Talked To Me also associates the "clicks" with the "tape machine," says in addition that the "hisses" come from "speakers," and connects the "tape machine" with the alpha couple "kissing" (this is the Narrator speaking): If all of my existence is ever on exhibit. Tell the curator to emphasize the tape machine 'Cause that's what she was sitting on When we finally started kissing on The last time that she talked to me. In the entrance there was barely any mention That the armies were amassing in the streets. The lingering suspicions of a million Hare Krishnas Hissing from the speakers in the trees. In the kitchen there were signs that she was slipping Someone saw her breaking off the tape machine. All I really said was that the clicks were in her head. It was the last time that she talked to me [TLTtSTtM] Putting all of this together, it's apparent that, like so many other THS phenomena, the "clicks and hisses and complicated kisses" of Same Kooks and Stuck Between Stations *also* have a Party Zero origin: the static hiss of the blank space at each end of the mixtape leading into the click of the tape deck switching into autoreverse was heard at regular intervals throughout the party --- first during Juanita's kiss of betrayal, and then ("cranked up" for the assault, see THE TUNES above) during the gangrape on the carpet. [*6]I still get a little creepy breaking-the-fourth-wall feeling of the "tell the curator" part. And the entire song, for all it's sedated weirdness, seem more and more... I don't know, important? Explicit?
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Post by tableinthecorner on Apr 21, 2021 11:46:09 GMT -5
I need to take all this stuff in, but the thing about the mixtape and the autoreverse is just so damn exciting. I think I've mentioned this in a short passing before, but have you re-worked the idea about "mountain" lately? I know in Here Goes, the mountain stuff was associated with being high (Rocky Mountain, Colorado, a lot more). But I've been thinking about wheter some (or all) references to mountains could simply be another way of talking about the brewery bar. *It's up in the sky, almost literal in name *It's a place you get high, in more than one sense *The mansion is connected to mountains ("the mansion on the mountain top) Then, there's this thing about Hamm's located on Payne Avenue, which also is the name of at least a couple of mountains. One in New York, one in Canada. I wouldn't know if any of these mountain tops are particulary famous or anything, but it seems like one of those double meanings who's not a total coincidence. It would at least put a new spin to "woke up in the Colorado pines", lots of Going On A Hike ("try to reach the peak of euphoric heights", and the entire hiking in the mountains trope) and some Lifter Puller stuff too ("Learned to dance to The Mountain Song out on that grass (the rooftop?)). Forgive me if we've been through this before, but I had to get it out of my system. Now, back to reading the latest post If I remember correctly Skeptic might disagree with my reading on this, but here's a quote from an article about the brewery: "The family did so well that they built themselves a mansion behind the brewery, a Queen Anne style mansion. Behind the brewery today there are still stairs that lead from behind the Keg Wash House up the hill, though an arsonist destroyed the house itself in 1954." (link to the article) I think that's another tie between the brewery and hills/mansions/mountains, so I completely agree with your interpretation of that. It would also allow for an alternate explanation of the cabin on heaven hill, which is definitely more than a Husker Du reference (although I think that line was tied to Jesse in Here Goes).
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Post by skepticatfirst on Apr 22, 2021 12:06:31 GMT -5
I need to take all this stuff in, but the thing about the mixtape and the autoreverse is just so damn exciting. I think I've mentioned this in a short passing before, but have you re-worked the idea about "mountain" lately? I know in Here Goes, the mountain stuff was associated with being high (Rocky Mountain, Colorado, a lot more). But I've been thinking about wheter some (or all) references to mountains could simply be another way of talking about the brewery bar. *It's up in the sky, almost literal in name *It's a place you get high, in more than one sense *The mansion is connected to mountains ("the mansion on the mountain top) Then, there's this thing about Hamm's located on Payne Avenue, which also is the name of at least a couple of mountains. One in New York, one in Canada. I wouldn't know if any of these mountain tops are particulary famous or anything, but it seems like one of those double meanings who's not a total coincidence. It would at least put a new spin to "woke up in the Colorado pines", lots of Going On A Hike ("try to reach the peak of euphoric heights", and the entire hiking in the mountains trope) and some Lifter Puller stuff too ("Learned to dance to The Mountain Song out on that grass (the rooftop?)). Forgive me if we've been through this before, but I had to get it out of my system. Now, back to reading the latest post If I remember correctly Skeptic might disagree with my reading on this, but here's a quote from an article about the brewery: "The family did so well that they built themselves a mansion behind the brewery, a Queen Anne style mansion. Behind the brewery today there are still stairs that lead from behind the Keg Wash House up the hill, though an arsonist destroyed the house itself in 1954." (link to the article) I think that's another tie between the brewery and hills/mansions/mountains, so I completely agree with your interpretation of that. It would also allow for an alternate explanation of the cabin on heaven hill, which is definitely more than a Husker Du reference (although I think that line was tied to Jesse in Here Goes). As with all of these things, a double meaning is very much a possibility; but, with the caveat that I might be wrong, I don't think that "mountain" refers to the brewery bar as a physical location, whether because of its elevation or otherwise. A primary piece of evidence for this is in fact Shepard's "mansion on the mountain top" itself, which I'm pretty confident refers to a different real-world location in the Twin Cities. More Street View travel coming up ... You bring up a good topic with the "cabin on heaven hill," and we should come back to this --- you're right that it's based on the mansion on the mountain top, and it's also probably true that it's located in St. Paul, but we should talk about that after we've laid the groundwork with Shepard's mansion. Which we'll do in a few weeks.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Apr 22, 2021 12:13:53 GMT -5
I still get a little creepy breaking-the-fourth-wall feeling of the "tell the curator" part. And the entire song, for all it's sedated weirdness, seem more and more... I don't know, important? Explicit? The song has got a lot of heavy material in it, that's for sure. About "tell the curator," I don't know what to make of that, either. It's one of those weird lines that he's obviously gone out of his way to frame in a particular way, and I could propose readings that are plausible, including some weird breaking-the-fourth-wall takes; but without some kind of confirming take from elsewhere it would be hard for me to feel confident about them. Maybe we'll find out --- with ODP there've been a number of new lyrics that have provided just this kind of confirmation for older ones, and it's bound to happen again, as long as they keep making music. :-)
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Post by skepticatfirst on Apr 22, 2021 12:23:47 GMT -5
HALF DEADThe crucifixion of Charlemagne in Swede Hollow is a genuine "murder mystery" [CiS], in which someone is really killed by a real knife. The fact that it's Gideon's soul in Charlemagne's body that dies ( heregoes) complicates the narrative, but doesn't change the fact that there's a physical stabbing and a physical death invloved. The LP crucifixion, by contrast, involves a metaphorical killing. But Craig has in mind a technical sense in which it too is a "murder" [SSC, LQ] on the same pattern as the THS one. ***One clear description of this technical framing is found in the solo song No Future (one of the solo songs that still openly deals in LP/THS themes, even if the narrative is different). Looking backward, the speaker in this song says: I've been reading about the Calvary The crucifixion still gets to me I guess Golgotha means the mount of execution [NF] Evidently this isn't a literal "execution," since the speaker is still alive. Yet we're told that that's what the meaning of the "crucifixion" comes down to. How exactly is it an "execution," then? I suppose you thought that I'd be shaken up I suppose you thought I'd be gushing blood Not true I only died on the inside And I suppose you thought that I'd be taken out Back behind one of those bars downtown Not true I'm still alive on the outside [NF] The references to "gushing blood" (compare MPADJs, HM, YS, BCrosses) and "back behind one of those bars downtown" (compare SN, Ambassador) clearly, and graphically, recall the THS account of the crucifixion. But even if this "execution" didn't happen in the leaving-a-body-behind THS sense, there *was* a technical sense in which it *did* happen: I only died on the inside ... I'm still alive on the outside [NF] On the model proposed here, there are two ways to live, and two ways to die: (1) on the outside, in the body; (2) on the inside, in the soul. The two are independent; like the speaker in the song, you can be alive on the outside and dead on the inside at the same time. ***The same idea is presented twice, once from each side of the equation, in the solo song Wild Animals: Man alive and the spirit put to death in the flesh [WA] Surviving in spirit, put to death in the flesh [WA] Here again there are two ways to be alive, and two ways to die: (1) on the outside, in the flesh; (2) on the inside, in the spirit. Again, the two are independent; in the first line, the speaker is alive on the outside (flesh), but dead on the inside (spirit); in the second, he's alive on the inside (spirit), but dead on the outside (flesh). ***These lines are set up to sound like figures of speech, but we already know that inside-vs-outside execution is taken *literally* for the purposes of the THS story, in which Mary, Holly, Charlemagne, Gideon, and the Narrator are all split into inside and outside, each with an independent mortality (for evidence and discussion see basically the entire back half of the Here Goes thread): - Holly's outside dies in the river, but her inside is resurrected in Mary's outside at the crucifixion.
- Mary's inside dies after the Judas kiss, and is replaced with Holly's resurrected inside.
- Charlemagne's outside dies when Gideon switches their bodies and stabs himself on the water tower, but his inside lives on in Gideon's body.
- Gideon's inside dies when he stabs himself in Charlemagne's body, but his outside lives on inhabited by Charlemagne's inside.
- the Narrator's inside "dies" when he becomes the "new kid" [BCrosses, MPADJs] and is jumped into the Skins again.
***Again, what happens in the twofold Party Zero crucifixion is simpler: Juanita and the Narrator are killed on the outside by the rape, and on the inside by the shot of meth. [*1] But it's not both at the same time; it's now one, now the other, following the vicious cycle we've described repeatedly (see THE FOAM, ON THE FLOOR: INJURIES, etc. above): when they've come down from the drugs, they're themselves in spirit, but have lost their bodies in the horror of the rape; when they're high, they get their bodies back, but have lost their souls to the drugs. [*2]***So the kids are perpetually "half dead," described together and separately as having "lived and died," and having "almost died": half dead and dynamite [HDaD] to live and die in lbi [TLaDiLBI] and she found something she likes, and she's alright but she almost died [TLaDiLBI] and i still ain't died, or have i? [BiB] The same expressions (with the addition of "almost killed") are familiar from THS as well, but it's worth collecting them (along with two throw-ins from Brokerdealer) all in one place to establish beyond doubt that being "half dead" is really a deliberate concept: now half the kids are dead [TDOLLD] Hey New York City ... you gotta give me back my body [GMBMB] The '80s almost killed me, let's not recall them quite so fondly [PJ] We got killed [Swish] And it's hard to hold it steady when half your friends are dead already [Knuckles] And the first four didn't really die, I just lied [Knuckles] Cause the last guy didn't really die, I just lied [Knuckles] Killer parties almost killed me [KP] It said "Jesus lived and died for all your sins" [YLHF] I was half dead then I got born again [SN] If she wants to stop on by, tell her that I almost died [AHfA] When it's over, the halves that "made it" [PSunglasses] mourn the halves that "didn't make it" [SCity]: and outside the club is where we spill our drinks in memory of all those guys that didn't make it till the dawn [SCity] We poured it on the floor and we made love to the interstates [PJ] + Like a hawk out on the highways We were looking around for something that just died [MoC] ***There are of course also many references to the characters' deaths that *don't* explicitly allude to their inside/outside split in both LP [TMG, RfLB, RTF, LPvtEotE, LQ, etc.] and THS [HF, BBlues, CatCT, CSunrise, TL, BCrosses, GoaH, etc.], but it's not necessary to review these now that the larger framing is worked out. The only one I'll call out for special mention is in Our Whole Lives: Tonight we're gonna have a really good time But I want to go to heaven on the day I die Gonna make like a preemptive strike Hit the 5:30 mass early Saturday night [OWL] The first-order meaning here is self-evident. The young THS-Narrator goes to early Mass before prom to ask forgiveness ahead of time for the sin he's hoping to commit; he wants to keep it cool with God and go to heaven when he dies, but he's also really hoping to get laid. But now that we know about the Party Zero origin of the going-down-on-each-other prom night encounter (see SUCKING OFF EACH OTHER above), we understand the second line in a much darker sense: the *LP* Narrator's moment in heaven with Juanita *does* actually turn out to happen *on the day he dies.* This is a first-rate example of an LP "shadow" (see LP SHADOWS above) on the THS story, with the entire early Mass episode of OWL functioning as a setup for the double meaning in this line. [*1] That Juanita is killed (in spirit) by the meth injection is a self-evident precondition of her resurrection in the bathroom (see STUMBLING & RESURRECTION above). [*2] This is the other sense of "separation Sunday," that the kids in spirit have departed from their bodies. Compare also the detailed portrait in the Brokerdealer song Give Me Back My Body.
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