He finds himself sitting in a strange room surrounded by firecracker explosions, unsustainable highs, men with guns hidden behind waistbands and shirts. Sitting in that room, waiting for what seems like an imminent, inevitable, violent end, he disappears into the last 5 years—through a keyhole he sees it—the first half, the good half coaxes a smile that dissolves into the second half and lost eyes find a narrowing range of options and an expanding sense of desperation. Time to go.
Mr. Barnes,
I went to Tulsa once, more than 25 years ago, to visit my sister. She and her husband had just moved there so he could die near where he was born. He was diagnosed with cancer a few months into the marriage. The last time I saw him, he was in a hospital bed in Dallas, and his head was deformed and exploding with his disease. That visit was goodbye.
A few weeks later, I was pulled out of Spanish class so my family could join my widowed sister's side. I rode to Tulsa, Oklahoma in the back seat of my other sister's boyfriend's coupe—a Camaro. I felt the giddiness, nervousness, and melancholy one feels when one doesn't know what else to feel. But the mood in the Camaro was fine, with my other sister and her boyfriend magnetically alive and well. They seemed happy. Those two had great chemistry, like cocaine and alcohol.
In Tulsa, we found my parents, who had arrived from Dallas to console the inconsolable. My sister, 22, tragic, had been living with death in a strange city, and now death left her alone in that house. So she grieved, and we offered our presence as comfort. Little did I understand of sadness and grief.
The album, currently set for a late May release, explores people’s self-destructive tendencies, according to James Kent, the person behind Perturbator. You sort of get that idea, too, from the video for “Death of the Soul.” Animation depicting games are followed by noirish city night scenes lit by neon signs that flash words like “Heroin,” “Alcohol,” and “Lust”—about as subtle as a train wreck.
Kent has said, “The track takes inspiration from old school EBM a la DAF or Front 242. Valnoir has managed to perfectly pair visuals that reflect the nihilistic tone of it.” Kent wrote, performed, produced, and mixed Lustful Sacraments. The sound of “Death of the Soul” suggests the album will be consistent with the Perturbator oeuvre—dark, anxious, and cinematic, synthesized tones.
This music does little for me. Addicts without drugs feel need. Drugs can make people feel euphoria and, eventually, numb. This is the music of a machine that registers only the need and feels nothing.
The episodes in Jesus' Son hang on degenerates, but the narrator's simple, intimate diction conveys a sense of peace rather than anxiety about or perverse fascination with the damaged scenery and people at issue. This collection of short stories by American author Denis Johnson is quite good. I learned of Jesus' Son by reading the essay, "Does Recovery Kill Great Writing?," published in The New York Times Magazine in March 2018. The essay includes this quote from Johnson's collection: “The sky was torn away and the angels were descending out of a brilliant blue summer, their huge faces streaked with light and full of pity.” I was intrigued. Then the essay's author reveals, "While I was studying at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, I spent my nights at the writers’ bars on Market Street, and I spent my days reading the other writers who had gotten drunk in that town before I’d gotten drunk there: John Berryman, Raymond Carver, Denis Johnson." Having read this, when I picked up Jesus' Son, I expected Johnson's stories to boil up in America's less populated stretches of shadow and pain. Not so.
Keith Urban achieved fame Down Under before relocating to Nashville, USA and hitting it big. Married to famous actress and fellow Aussie Nicole Kidman, he's a huge commercial country-rock success whose own celebrity status grew even larger recently through his casting on hit TV show "American Idol."He's going back in time, to 1998, seven years since he released his four hit records in Australia, five years since that girl called him a novelty, another long year away from success. He was at a house out in Franklin, about 20 miles south of Nashville, staring at a big pile of coke, about to embark on another one of his binges, which is how he used to roll–-a few days or weeks off, then blammo.And that is pretty much it. There is a discrepancy between this shoddy profile's melodramatic setup and this payoff.
"I had plenty of stuff," he says. "I didn't seem able to stop. There was no stopping this time. I'd go to sleep, wake up a couple of hours later, go at it again, drinking to take the edge off. I remember thinking, 'I'm probably not going to make it until tomorrow.' And then I thought, 'Fuck it. I really don't care. It'll be a relief to not have to. I'll take an Ambien and at some point I'll pass.' I was taking everything. I remember thinking, 'Oh, good, this is the end of it, yahoo.' I was quite happy about it." He leans back in his chair, smiles and shrugs. "Well, I woke up the next day at lunchtime, in my bed, sweating, going, 'Fuck! Guess I'm not going to get to go this way.' I thought the choice to quit would be taken from me, which would be easier than me trying to do it on my own. There was coke left, so I went at it again."
"My recollection is that he was a physical disciplinarian. Ten years ago, I would have said, 'He never did anything I didn't deserve.' Now I realize it's not about deserving it." He leans forward, says, "I don't recall him ever telling me he loved me as a kid. I'd do a gig I thought was fantastic and the only thing he'd say is, 'When you speak onstage, you've got to slow down.' He never commented on anything else. And the way he disciplined me, he seemed to have forgotten about it as he got older. I don't think he was in denial, he genuinely had no recollection. 'Hitting you? I never did that!'" This comes as a bit of a shock, mainly because Urban has never publicly mentioned it before ...Is this an allusion to child abuse? Urban uses the word "disciplined," not abuse. There is nothing dark about being disciplined.
He established himself on the standup circuit, was an original cast member on MADtv, co-starred with Norm MacDonald in the movie "Dirty Work," and sometimes is a guest on late-night talk shows, but most people know Artie Lange from his eight years on Howard Stern's radio show. Too Fat to Fish, Lange's first autobiographical book detailing his (sur)real-life adventures, camped out defiantly on best-seller lists. In Crash and Burn, his latest book, he relives the decent into the drug and alcohol addiction that nearly ruined his career and led him to attempt a violent suicide.
The following does the man a great injustice, but the fast and dirty Mustaine is this: He grew up poor in an unstable family with an alcoholic father; his mother moved him around a lot to escape the dad's influence, but this influenced Dave such that he grew into a misfit; the experiences impaired his ability to form lasting, healthy friendships; he started getting into music and rock bands, eventually seeing real potential with Metallica; but personality conflicts and alcohol soured his relationship with the band and they kicked him out; so Mustaine built Megadeth, and with them (and their various lineups) he lived the rock star's life, colored with bitterness. His whole life he's felt broken, more or less, and in need of fixing. His breakup with Metallica left him bitter and jealous. After multiple stints in rehab, he found Christ and has sustained living a more wholesome life as a father and husband. He intends to maintain a musical career in some form or fashionI was pretty good at playing guitar, and I was serious about making a living at it. But that wasn't the only reason I played. It wasn't only about strutting an getting laid and trying to become famous. When I held a guitar in my hands, I felt good about myself. When I played music, I felt a sense of comfort and accomplishment that I'd never known as a child. When I replicated the songs that I loved, I felt an attachment to them and to the musicians who had composed them.
It was all incredibly exciting and disorienting and vaguely unsettling. We'd been starving for days, and all of a sudden people were throwing food at us. I remember looking at myself in a mirror when I woke up one morning and noticing that my stomach was grotesquely distended. Of course, that could have had something to do with the fact that I was drunk or stoned virtually every waking moment. The party never stopped. Booze, cocaine, pot, meth--it was everywhere, and it was mine for the asking. Along with groupies, the quality and volume of which seemed to be improving by the day. We'd do an appearance or a gig, or just show up at a party, and everyone wanted to hang with us.
"You're a bad motherfucker!" they'd shout.
I'd nod approvingly. I was a bad motherfucker. And proud of it
We'd wake up in the middle of the day, eat, drink a little bit to take the edge off the hangover, hang out, and then go back to sleep. sometime after sundown we'd wake again, like a pack of fucking vampires, and start playing. We'd rehearse for a few hours, then drink until we passed out. The next day we'd do it all over again.
Certainly I had no idea that my tenure in the band was about to come to an end, and that indeed plans for my dismissal were already in the works. It is a testament to my naivete--or perhaps to my alcohol-induced complacency--that even as strange things happened, I failed to take any action.
I know some people look at me--and I include Lars and James in this camp--and say, "Why can't you just be happy with what you've achieved?" And they're right. Selling twenty million albums is no minor accomplishment. But it's about half what Metallica has sold, and I was supposed to be part of that.
You had to be there to understand what it was like, to feel like you're changing the world. And then to have it pulled out from under you and to see and hear reminders of what might have been every single day, for the rest of your life. And know--you just fucking know--whatever you accomplish, somehow it will never be quite good enough.
I wanted a number one hit. I wanted what Metallica had, even if it meant selling a piece of my soul to the devil ... I suspected they (the producers) were making modifications, softening the Megadeth sound, and I did nothing to stop them. There would be a payoff at the end, I reasoned ... Megadeth was a phenomenon based on raw energy and talent, and when you take that and water it down, it's no longer phenomenal. It's ordinary. By trying to expand your audience, you risk alienating your core fans, and I think we did that with Cryptic Writings, and even more so with our next record, the aptly named Risk.
