Days before the show, I had been diagnosed by my psychologist as having a mood disorder, exhibiting obsessive compulsive behavior.  He also thinks that I am suffering from anxiety.  I’m still waiting for a second opinion, but in the meantime it explains a lot of things in the past ten years.  I actually find the possibility of being a neurological wreck a bit charming.  I’m happy to own it - I don’t see it as dirty laundry.  As a perennial candidate in Virginia’s first district, there is a lot to be considered in light of my recent diagnosis.  In a country where mental illness is on the rise, it would be a bold and audacious move for any political candidate to be straightforward about his or her struggles.  It would be more impressive for said candidate to earnestly and determinedly advocate and legislate on behalf of those minds touched by fire.  A struggle with mental health is not an opportunity to attach a stigma to a person.  Any psychological difference is just one part of a much more detailed and nuanced whole.  In a country where psychology is considered as irrelevant as financial responsibility, as a contender in the coming election I openly welcome any 2012 candidate to a public discussion on the issues of mental health.  Another unruly candidate used a music magazine as an outlet when he ran for Sheriff of Aspen, so it logically follows that Magazine33 becomes a soapbox for another brand of political unorthodoxy.  The magazine, for assiduously covering the new wave of politics, shall ascend to the national spotlight.  From that point on, who knows?  Magazine33 could rewrite the Bible, and the Virgin Mary could give birth to RoboCop.  Or we could turn it into a Burrroughs cut-up piece, assuming the editorial office thought it was appropriate.  Sorry for sidetracking, I slipped into a manic moment.  To cope with what may be a lifetime’s battle with mental struggles, I accepted Captain Barsanti’s invitation to a Fuck the Facts show.  Brutal noise is one of the few things that genuinely calms my nervous system.

The first band to perform at Horse Shoes & Hand Grenades on the first 110+ degree day that I can recall was Radio City Suicide, a talented Stone Temple Pilots tribute band with Scott Baio on lead.  OK, perhaps they’re not a tribute band, but one listens and thinks this is the post-grunge/post-rock 'n' roll/post-whatever group that picked up the torch from talented 90s bands.  Don’t even count the years between 2000 and 2010 - there wasn’t shit to listen to.  It’s a genre-true brand of rock and sounds like the missing link that reaches back to Alice in Chains and the 35% of the Pearl Jam oeuvre that’s actually interesting.  Radio City Suicide is not listless and bastardizing like the corny incarnations of rock a la Nickelback, Hinder, or Stone Sour.  However, RCS hasn’t carved out enough of a defining sound to really escape the 90s comparisons, but the band has enough energy and talent that I am sure they’ll stumble upon something to differentiate themselves.  The drumming was effectively minimal and mechanical, much in the style of Larry Mullen or Stephen Morris.  The drum fills never expanded into pretentious clobbering, and the lead solos fell somewhere in they grey area between the dirty blues and crunchy metal pioneered by Tony Iommi.  The signal of the bass matched well with the vocals and resembled the balance between these voices found in Tool's later recordings.  Both were clean and crisp and very much in tune.  I’ve been to Radio City, or at least Radio City Music Hall.  The patrons and performers should probably off themselves for being so vapid and boring.  Ah, New York - a hollow city that harbors hollower performers.  So kudos to the band for getting that right if that was even the cultural reference for which they were reaching.  But really, Scott Baio was on lead.

I’ve articulated my disdain for New York.  However, I do like certain cities.  Charleston and Baltimore are the only two cities on the East Coast of the southern United States worth a goddamn.  The San Francisco of the east, with beaches and a budding technology corridor, Charleston exudes charm with its brickstones, Jeffersonian pillars, and palm trees.  I wish Magazine33’s own flaneur Comandante Ben and Fredericksburg’s Enzy the best in their travels.  I sincerely hope they keep gonzo music culture vibrant in the deeper south.

That leaves us with Baltimore.  I love Baltimore.  Everything is so hammered-down brick and industrial.  The city is fragile, but the no-frills approach speaks to the authentic.  The Wayward, the second band to perform, is from Baltimore, and the chromatics of the band are consistent with the city.  Using organic tones and stripped-down instrumentation, the Wayward performs with the presentation and sonic texture of an avant punk band without the arrogance and condescension of Sonic Youth and much much more technical precision.  Don’t get me wrong, I like the sound of stomping on a guitar with the feedback as loud and as piercing as possible, but the Wayward had more to offer than the usual art school ruses.  At first listen, the guitar parts sound impossibly complex, until you see two guitarists have split the register where one tends to concentrate on the low strings and the other the high strings.  Out of the line of sight, the sound of the two parts remains undifferentiated.  Offbeat time signatures were anchored by exceptional drumming.  The Wayward exhibits a lot of talent that comes packaged as punk minimalism.

While we are on the topic of urban spaces, I’d like to note that Richmond doesn’t count.  Richmond doesn’t get to be classified with Charleston and Baltimore.  The city is a wash because the kids are too drunk, egotistical, and dirty as they play their self-righteous, "keep Richmond weird" cards.  You’re wasting your great city and your great potential, and to boot, the women have hairy legs and smell like pickled beets.  I know this because I was in Richmond just a week ago for a friend’s bachelor party.  Forced upon me was a lap dance from a vinegary, tarantula-legged native who works the graveyard shift at the disco boom boom room to pay for her art school tuition.  Erase the city, and erect a Wachovia and a Walmart.  Richmond’s grindcore isn’t worth two shits in a rusty syringe basket.  Capital of the South and heart of southern pride?  If Richmond hipsters existed in the 19th century, then I would have no reason to wonder why the Yankees burned the city to the ground.  Cockroaches scatter when they sense of fire.  We are better off importing Fuck the Facts from Canada. Fredericksburg welcomes the band with arms wide open.  Fredericksburg has been honored, and Richmond remains woefully incompetent for canceling a worthwhile band.  When you Richmonders write in to complain about how I’m such a jackass, don’t write the editor.  Save time, and send it straight to my campaign account at blackmore2012@gmail.com.  Blackmore 2012 is currently taking applications for interns, and we know you hipsters need employment.  Your vote isn’t in my district, so my campaign manager said you could sit on his face.  We continue with Fuck the Facts.

Fuck the Facts has been the mid-Atlantic’s best import.  Where hardcore punk still had hope, grindcore shows utter disgust at what it finds grotesquely incomprehensible and begrudgingly accepts the 21st century’s recursive state of decay.  Fuck the Facts and other grindcore acts would make the perfect score for America’s fiscal, environmental, and civil ruin.  If you’ve enjoyed the most recent heat wave, get excited about having them in mid-December 50 years from now.  The sound of Fuck the Facts can be summarized as speed, distortion, dissonance, drop tuning, drum blasts, claustrophobia and brutality.  But that would be simplistic and reductionist to leave it there.  Although the sound is massive and aggressive, the band is incredibly good-natured and shared a few deprecating laughs concerning the small numbers for the turnout.  In comparison to their sound, the performance was an intimate affair because of their disarming nature.  On the periphery, Fuck the Facts ventures into the art-world style electronics, drones and textures of Autechre, Merzbow, or Throbbing Gristle.  The genre as a whole enjoys utilizing satire as technique.  I’m not sure if the slower and consonant passages resembling the compositional techniques of Bay area thrash - particularly moments in Metallica’s first four catalogue entries - were meant as snarky jabs at the history of metal.  I’m only suspicious because the band members were sharing smirks with audience members in the know during these passages.  The moment seemed like deeply coded satire.  Heavy styles have entrenched historical precedents, and it felt like there was a tension between acceptance and distance in relation to the older style.

The evening was a challenge for the body and the nerves.  The heat almost took out Radio City Suicide’s drummer three songs into the set.  Then again, he was an idiot for not eating all day during what will probably be remembered as the most grueling heat wave in our lives.  During the interludes, Fredericksburg’s bright young things thought it’d be clever to lick a steel lamp post that was emitting voltage, most likely due to the lack of responsible city maintenance.  I told the lamp lickers I had a pacemaker, and I couldn’t afford to stun myself.  I don’t know why they believed me, but they did, and I looked away to notice a woman in an apartment above stepping out of her shower.  Logistically, there was no way she didn’t know her window was open.  Perhaps it took a lot of nerve for both performer and observer to to pretend that each wasn’t aware of the other.  So let’s refresh - I have lamp post lickers to my left and naked sky dancers above.  At this point in the night, I’m suffering from tinnitus because I stood six inches from Fuck the Fact’s stack, which stood taller than me.  The Fredericksburg experience has finally reached a level of weirdness that is satisfying.

Coda: The shooting in Oslo occurred the weekend of this Horseshoes & Hand Grenades show.  Heavy genres of music such as grindcore are often mislabeled as the instigator of such heinous acts.  We have a social responsibility to help the troubled return to a healthy state of mind so we can protect society and the ill individual.  I am writing from the generation which has experienced the dread of watching travesties such as Columbine, 9-11, Virginia Tech, and now Oslo, unfold repeatedly.  These events are triggering a collective numbness.  Dissonant and brutal music doesn’t encourage further violent behavior.  The music is a reflection of a reality we are tired of seeing, and the music is the critique.  The music plays so loud, so fast, so harsh, you physiologically become fatigued and feel nothing.  And that is the moment when the music transcends into drone as the brain becomes incapable of processing so much sensory input.  We no longer want that reality, but we want this music to stay.  Placing the blame on music is a scapegoat tactic.  To blame music is to avoid confronting the true reasons for the unraveling of our culture.  Art doesn’t kill - not even the noisiest sorts.  Hard music culture is an oasis, a mirror, and a challenge to norms.  These works of art have a real and valuable message, and to materially harm one another is not a part of it.

By Correspondent: Mike Blackmore

Mike Blackmore, a Fredericksburg native and D.C. dadaist, is a graduate of the University of Virginia and is cultivating a career based upon Audio Culture.  He is specifically focusing on arts administration, writing, DJing, production, and photography.  When Mike Blackmore is not globe trotting or offending church elders, he is working on his campaigns for 2012 that are a tandem gonzo blitz for both House of Representatives Elect for District 1 and Miss Virginia (a very pretty girl from UVA ran for Miss Virginia and it made Mike jealous).  Mike Blackmore is allergic to church, children and commitment, but likes strong coffee and vodka.