Here it goes, in no particular order:

1. the first song Dizzy played after she stepped on his trumpet
2. the sound of Archimedes as he got out of the tub
3. Lucy’s laughter just as she fell asleep in the cave
4. whatever song that was playing on the walkmans of the cosmonauts while they flew in Apollo 11.
5. Dolphin pings- over and over and over again

…a question I will revisit again later, I’m sure.

So then today, I was happy enough to revisit these elements through our favoritist death metal quartet: Slayer. Yay!

On a Rives-tip we can riff from pop culture to crimes against humanity to human endeavor. So here we go:

Pop Culture:

I picked up Pitchfork’s top-500-popular-culture-songs-ever-recorded book a couple weeks back. Read through it slowly, bookmarking choice segments and so forth. I came across this passage, and it was about Slayer:

Slayer: “Angel of Death” 1986

Southern California thrash band Slayer came to be defined by Dave Lombardo’s fast double-bass drumming, Kerry King and Jeff Hanneman’s hyper-buzzing guitars, the shouts of bassist/vocalist Tom Araya, their dark, horror-tinged subject matter (serial killers, Satanism, Nazism), and live shows and artwork involving pentagrams, fake blood, and inverted crosses. Like Metallica, their inspiration came from both British heavy metal and punk-they’d go on to cover Minor Threat and TSOL, among others. The quartet’s third album, 1986’s Reign In Blood, was their major-label debut, recorded and produced by Rick Rubin for his (and Russell Simmons’s) Def Jam-It was the label’s first metal release. Rubin gave the band a cleaner sound, stripping their attack to its barest essentials and infusing it with an almost NYC-hardcore intesity. (At Rubin’s suggestion, King played the famous guitar solo on the Beastie Boy’s “No Sleep Till Brooklyn.”)

Reign In Blood’s most controversial track, opener “Angel of Death” is also its longest. Written by Hannerman, it details the atrocities of war criminal Dr. Josef Mengele, the physical and psychological human experiments he performed during World War II-gassing, performing surgery without anesthesia, hacking limbs, water burial, burning skin-and the “mutants” he created. This extreme subject material delayed Reign In Blood’s release when Def Jam distributor Columbia Records balked at the lyrics, along with the album’s Satan-friendly graphic artwork. Geffen ended up distributing it without officially listing it on a release schedule.

-Pitchfork Media via Brandon Stosuy

Here’s the song they refer to:

Funny thing is that, although I’ve listened to Slayer quite a bit now, I’ve never paid attention to the lyrics: I’ve always dug their music for the sheer noise and aggression: Shrrred!!

crimes against humanity:

And so I looked up the lyrics after reading the passage. After all, it is one of the 500 greatest songs since 1977-as deemed by Pitchfork. Here’s a link. …THEY’RE ENTIRELY HORRIFYING!! It’s like watching Faces of Death for the first time in high school. Ugh.

But it’s not so much, some long-hair rattling off on the most insidious acts that one could inflict on another. Mr. Mengele actually did those things! I looked it up on wikipedia, and read the article all the way through. (The ending sucked.)

It provides perspective, really. The nature of horror can be fun and funny: Halloween, zombies, unexpected pregnancy, etc. It’s only real horror when they’re an actual reality. The “Angel of Death” was a reality. (My roommate had to talk to talk me down a little after I went through this internet course.)

human endeavor:

It was a couple days later I came across a youtube video. I was looking up Mike Patton or something, and came across a “Drum Clinic” session featuring Slayer’s drummer Dave Lombardo. (Vince Lombardi is another thing altogether.)

It was brilliant. He was asked to perform a technically difficult music piece on the drums and he chose ‘Raining Blood’ (it would be a lot more convenient if he had chosen Angel of Death but, ah well.) Anyways, it’s always a real pleasure for me to witness people showcase their renowned proficiency-whatever that may be. And here, Mr. Lombardo does it…He just do.

At first he plays along with the program, does the drummer boy thing. You can tell that he is very good at the drum-drum-drumming. But then after, say, 1:10, he just gets bored, turns off the boombox he’s supposed to play to and tells his students

“Ya know what. This is just slow. [laughter] No, serious. When we play it live, it’s a lot faster….”

At this point he proceeds to become entirely natural, rest onto his own element. The dexterity, the stamina, the rigor are obvious and entirely pure. And you’re watching this thing, going ‘that’s nuts’. And then after some shuffling, some this and that, at around 3:35 he, like, double times everything he did before! It’s stoopid.

But he does it. And his every move is controlled and intentional. It is totally inspiring. Like watching Pistol Pete play basketball (more on that later, I guess.) It is an expression of talent.

So maybe, in the end, what I mean to say is: folly is folly, what horrible things people can do to others they can and have. But when you want to try something and its success isn’t guaranteed, someone’s probably already done it. And in spades.

Dave Lombardo is the example if you wanted to be a drummer.

I wanna be Dave Lombardo.

then:
Joshua Davis
Richard David James
D. Hillman Curtis
Steve Jobs
John Lennon
Walt Whitman

but also:
Tony Montana
Ernest Miller Hemingway
Arthur Rimbaud
Marquis De Sade
Bob Dylan
Albert Camus

…what are some of yours? Post in the comments if you’ve got some…