Riding the Atomic Wheelchair, plus Nomeansno's Wrong, Neil Young's Arc, and the Ex's Blueprints for a Blackout

Tried some Atomic Wheelchair yesterday. Turns out it is very aptly named. 

This is, I suspect, not a government-of-Canada approved product. It says right there on the front (in the portion you cannot see, above), "Seriously strong edibles. Keep away from kids. No newbies." 

Well shucks, I'm no newbie! 

On the back, it reads: 

This product is not something I sought out, you will understand, but was given by a friend, who himself was quite cogent while "riding the Wheelchair." I would argue that the portion I consumed (see above) is about one-tenth of the product, in keeping with their directions, but I may have misunderstood those. Is the serving the "10th" of the product that they speak of? I thought they meant that the whole THING was 200 mg max, so the tenth would be maybe 20mg. My nibble, by that (very likely WRONG) calculation, contained no more than 20 mg of THC, the equivalent of two maximum-strength government-issue cannabis gummies. I have -- for the odd concert or special occasion, you understand -- consumed two such maximum-strength government-issue gummies before and been FINE. Surely this tiny chunk is not that much?

It was too much. Maybe in fact it was closer to 200mg that I had? In any event, it was very much too much. 

You may be thankful here that I have no visual evidence to share. I did not take any selfies of myself puking into a bucket, whilst sitting on the toilet, diaphragm set to "maximum expulsion, both ends, simultaneously." My camera was in the other room, and Erika wasn't home to document the moment for posterity for me. In fact, when she came in, I was in such a state that she went right back out, because who wants to eat dinner in the presence of someone who is projectile vomiting? 

Sorry, babe! (I've actually had cause to hear her vomit a fair bit myself, not from intoxicants but from illness, and can say that her vomiting is much "prettier" than mine. It sounds almost like singing -- a ululatory, melodic thing, like some sort of liquid woodwind or perhaps the song of gargling butterflies. My barfing is nowhere near as enjoyable to listen to.)

And I hit all those "too much edible" high notes (it's been awhile). Did I shart? Yes, I sharted (just a little). Did I get to the toilet just in time to realize that the dustbin was half-full of things that I didn't want to barf on, like an empty potato chip bag? Yes, I did. Did I dump the contents of that bucket unceremoniously on the bathroom floor and sit down with my head in it to commence round after round of projectile vomiting that lasted the next two hours and probably took me all-the-way-back-to-breakfast? 

Oh yes, friends, yes, I did. The afternoon's Chinese fish and rice. Two cups of chai. One small bag of potato chips. Some yoghurt and Cheerios. Everything, stretching back to the morning guacamole, no longer green, along with toast and eggs and coffee... If I'd had corn last night with dinner, I'm sure there would have been a chunk or two still recognizable, like the license plate that Richard Dreyfus cuts from the belly of the tiger shark in Jaws, where instead of coming up the Gulf Stream, I ate at Chipotle, or something. 

There was no corn. I'm just saying that if I HAD eaten at Chipotle last night... you understand. 

The cat occasionally came in to look at me, then ran away, to linger a few feet down the hall, almost as if he thought he should stay close in case he had to take action. I wonder if he was running through  things he might do if I ended up on the floor? The cat has a very limited range of options for how to help me, basically on a spectrum between "meow loudly for the neighbour to come over" to "perhaps I can bite him on the feet and it will rouse him?" I imagine him visualizing such things as he stared at me going BLAOOUGGHHuh. Did he think, at any point, the feline equivalent of, "Ah well, if he dies, the other one will still feed me"...?

I felt bad to cause the cat concern. 

I had thought I would get a little high and listen to records, you know? Because I barely do that, these days: "just stay home and listen to records." I had elected NOT to go to the punk festival; Erika was going to be late at work; I did not feel like a movie; I had no pressing housework to do; and I had been a good boy transcribing writing ALL DAY (Gustaf interview! Went well! Talked to Lydia, the singer. They're coming back in November to play the Rickshaw. More to come!). 

I thought I had a fine idea for killing a couple of hours, and indeed, it was going well. I had started with a song or two by punk bands - Hung Up's debut and EGO's Grob  -- but decided after a bit of each record that I was going to need something a bit more abstract, challenging, adventuresome, once the gummy kicked in. Both of those records are fun but they're, like, "up and housecleaning" records, not "comfy on the couch with your eyes closed," which is what I was aiming for. So the evening's proper listening party kicked off with side one and two of the Ex's Blueprints for a Blackout, an early masterpiece by everyone's favourite Dutch punk band. I am extremely grateful for Superior Viaduct's reissues of The Ex, and especially this one: 

Friends who do not know this very creative band should know, there are some magnificent albums in the band's catalogue, my favourites of which are not yet available on vinyl (Mudbird Shivers, Dizzy Spells, and Turn; Blueprints is about my fourth-favourite). Their aural journey begins in Crass-like punk and ends up in a rich fusion of influences, from free jazz and improvised music (including a couple of superb albums made with John Zorn/ Eugene Chadbourne/ Fred Frith collaborator Tom Cora) to collaborations with Ethiopia's Getatchew Mekurya. Their purely improvised records are "too improvised" for me, and their early punk isn't something I've ever felt great need of, but the sweet spot, the window of interest, is when they're making what is still very clearly rock music, but rock music for people who are big fans of Beefheart's Mirror Man, say, or Pere Ubu's Dub Housing, or the very best Sonic Youth (Sister, maybe), while sounding nothing especially like those any of those albums. It's rock music for people who dig Ornette, y'know? More-or-less punk lyrics and song structures but with a whole lot of colourful and creative jamming, a whole lot of freedom for musicians to breathe, a whole lot of textural richness to lose yourself in.   

So that went well. It then occurred to me that I could listen to Nomeansno's Wrong. Not only did Nomeansno play shows with the Ex, back when, but that's an album of the moment, with the Alternative Tentacles reissue hitting the stores seemingly in advance of pre-orders being fulfilled, which situation is steaming a few folks, it seems -- Nomeansno Facebook fan groups are brimming over with complaint, with people having believed that they would receive their pre-orders before the originally-slated March release. Unfortunate that it has not been a smooth rollout, but it's not stopping store-goers from buying the album as soon as it appears: apparently Audiopile got ten copies in the other day, and had them all sell out almost instantly (the guy on till remarked that "we figured ten would last us awhile, but apparently not").  It's moot for me, since I already have it in the Southern Records version (which I believe is sourced from their actual tapes, the ones that never got returned, and not just a re-construction from CD); I'm sure A/T have done a fine job with the reissue, and I may even grab it, out of sheer curiosity, but in the meantime, I'm just fine with what I have and in no rush! 

...especially since Wrong has, while probably being the single greatest achievement in Canadian punk history, always been a bit too intense for my liking; it's a magnificent record, there's a reason people get excited about it, and there is a good reason why it is regarded as Nomeansno's masterpiece, and why it won and deserved a Polaris heritage prize... But just because you acknowledge the greatness of something doesn't mean you want to spend too much time consuming it, you know? If we compare it with, say, the output of Captain Beefheart, Wrong accomplishes, in terms of intensity and focus and pummeling sonic assault what Trout Mask Replica does in terms of surreal weirdness and total freedom of spirit. But just because something is an artist's most intense moment, the purest distillation of their greatness, the highest peak they have climbed, that doesn't mean you want to live there or listen to it all the time. Finnegan's Wake might be Joyce's masterpiece but I can't even make it through Ulysses. And I would much prefer, if I'm going to be doing Beefheart, to spin Safe as Milk or Mirror Man or The Spotlight Kid, for example, all of which are delightful without needing to be as in-your-face strange as Trout Mask... or to return to Nomeansno, for someone who started Nomeansno with Mama, whose favourite songs on the next few Nomeansno albums are "Self-Pity" and "Victory" -- artful, mid-tempo, introspective and developed over several minutes -- Wrong just hits too hard, especially the last 2/3rds of side one: By the time they're in the midst of  "Tired of Waiting," pummeling away like, I dunno, King Crimson on crystal meth, I'm starting to understand how my wife feels when I put punk rock on. I mean no criticism, it's indubitably great, and probably fabulous if you're big into DRI or Bad Brains or something like that, but it is and always has been TOO INTENSE FOR ME. 

And yet there it is on side one: "The Tower." 

You cannot deny this song. If there are other songs out there written around a single Tarot card, I am unaware of them, though I'm sure if I scoured the lyrics of Ronnie James Dio, I'd find something; it cannot possibly match this song in intensity, however. This has always been, to my mind, the most potent of the Major Arcana, and while I personally have more association with, say, the Fool or the Moon, this is the card that you have to dread in any given reading, the one that speaks to the moment where the universe slaps you hard in the back of the head and demands you wake up. Wikipedia notes that it is "associated with sudden, disruptive revelation, and potentially destructive change," when the lightning strikes and you're falling...

...the song understands this card, and matches it in force. I mean, Rob has clearly had his share of "Tower moments" in life, and has some of his most potent lyrics ever in this song, up there with "Victory" and "The River" as some of his most powerful wordcraft, bringing in just enough of the Eye of Sauron to make a movie of the song: 

The sword of truth is just another weapon
Let me live for one more second
I see a woman, she's holding flowers
A bouquet of roses that are blood red
From a burning building, a man leaps to his death
I stand above these mansions of the dead
Red tombs, and above us looms

The tower, the tower
The tower, the tower
The tower, the tower
The tower, the tower
I see red
I see red
I see red
I see...
I see a tower against the sky
Beneath a red unblinking eye

Radio waves curve and cross
I stand below them, lost
Above me is a black obelisk
And the dangers that I risk
Here gather the ghosts of the mind
That tear my heart, and here I find
All the traps that have been set
Everything I would forget, beneath...

The tower, the tower
The tower, the tower
The tower, the tower
The tower, the tower
I see red
I see red
I see red
I see...
I see a tower against the sky
Beneath a red unblinking eye

Violence is close at hand
You are damned if you do
And if you don't - damned!
A red-eyed tyrant full of hate
Glares from the sky in its captive state
If it should blink or deviate
A thousand worlds would obliterate
I do not move, nor do I speak
Beneath that hard and pitiless peak
Of concrete, steel and antenna wheels

The tower, the tower
The tower, the tower
The tower, the tower
The tower, the tower
I see red
I see red
I see red
I see...
I see a tower against the sky
Beneath a red unblinking eye

Okay, so the bit about worlds obliterating is a bit "youthful," maybe, but it's a punk song, whattaya want? And there's just enough of contemporary architecture, of "concrete, steel and antenna wheels" (whatever those may be) that it connects the lyrics not just with cataclysmic personal revelation, but cultural -- this sense that our entire civilization that is on the precipice, that it's not just the singer flinching from what he has learned about himself, but rather, from his insight into modern life: the horrifying moment when you take in that it's all vulnerable, that it is all going to come down, perhaps in your lifetime, and that there will be nowhere to hide when it does. 

What a song (believe I saw them do it twice, live, too -- including a night in Waterloo, Ontario where Rob was losing his voice a bit, so that it broke raw in a couple of the louder moments, which made it even more forceful). What a motherfucking song.  

But side one of Wrong ended -- confirming for me, after "The Tower," that it is still just a bit too intense for me, but I *think* I let it play through? And not being sick YET, though noticing I was indeed a bit more gooned than I wanted, I was still into listening to something, and it struck me that I have not listened to Neil Young's Arc, that extremely ambitious bit of sonic sculpture packaged with Weld, since the 1990s. Arc shows Neil very much under the influence of Sonic Youth (with whom he'd been touring) at their most ambitious. It's noisy as hell. It's not to be entered lightly. I am sure my wife would have hated it, had she been home.

It was perfect. 

Arc stands in a similar relation to the rest of Neil Young's catalogue as Metal Machine Music does to Lou Reed's, but it is much, much more forgiving and "musical" than Metal Machine Music.  It even contains fragments of "Like a Hurricane" and other recognizable song-bits, but edited into an abstract sculpture that puts me in mind, for example, of the Mahavishnu Orchestra at their most hard-driving (Between Eternity and Nothingness, say), or again, straight up free jazz. You could easily follow this album up, if you wanted to plunge further down a similar rabbithole, with Coltrane's Om -- it's that free, that ambitious, and it was absolutely the perfect next step in my musical journey last night. I remember listening to it once in the early 1990s and going "uh, okay, it's interesting, but I don't feel like this right now," then not having played it since, even briefly. I was simply never in the right space for it, never tempted; but last night, the student was ready, and the teacher came.

All over my face! (What, do I think I'm Mark Prindle or something? Pardon me). 

Ahem. So if you like the sonically adventurous aspects of Neil Young, if the idea of an extended tapestry of noise based around extrapolations from songs like "Like a Hurricane," you'll find Arc really, really enjoyable; if, like me, you haven't spun it for 30 years, it may be worth giving another shot.

Sadly, by the end of it, about an hour-and-half past my nibble, I was starting to get queasy. The idea of getting high and listening to music had actually been a pretty good one, and I'm glad I got as much great music in as I did (a bit of Don Cherry's "Brown Rice," too, after Arc)... but in the end, I got... how did Nomeansno put it? Just a little too...

No, no, a lot too. Sitting on the toilet, afraid to get up from it, and trying to lubricate my throat with water scooped in handfuls from the bathtub, which themselves triggered further vomiting... wanting a glass of water, but being unable to get to the kitchen... wanting to just get in the tub and let it all flow out of me, either end, so I could just hose it all down the drain, like that Jagermeister night which must not be recalled... the body can be a horrible thing! One of my top five worst-experiences-with-an-intoxicant EVER. (The friend who gave it to me is feeling very guilty about not emphasizing to take it in very small doses: "Don't divide it in 10, divide it in 100!" 

My wife and I had had plans to watch some Downton Abbey last night, but when she finally did get home from her dinner out, I was in bed. She ended up sweeping up the garbage I'd left strewn on the bathroom floor and entertaining herself for the evening, despite having had a long, hard day herself; she'd been counting on solace and companionship and got garbage on the floor, a sleeping husband, and a pukey smell in the bathroom. I feel bad for her. 

But I feel worse for myself!

Beware the Atomic Wheelchair!