Manson Is Going Kill Evan Rachel Wood

Anyone who’s had a violently alcoholic friend knows the look that they get right before they start swinging haymakers at every man, woman, child, dog, wall, window and lawn ornament. It’s an almost placid look. They begin talking in monotone at high volume and reveal the depths of their soul without prompting. They list everyone that has ever wronged them as if naming people who have helped them to win some sort of Oscar for pathetic self-loathing and socially abhorrent behavior. He talks about the depths of his psyche, the things he’d never even admit to thinking about sober. He rambles unfettered as if someone hooked up a speaker directly to his subconscious and cranked it. And as people begin to move away from this person like he has a digital countdown on his head leading up to his inevitable explosion, his voice gets louder and louder. Eventually someone makes the ill-advised suggestion that he may want to go sleep it off or slow down on the drinking a little and then… it’s on. By the next morning, the couch is busted, windows are broken, there is a fist-sized hole in the refrigerator and your friend laying in a heap on the lawn under the cold embrace of the sprinkler with a boot print on his chest, a broken hand and a busted lip. Well, in the music world, it looks like Manson is this potentially violent buffoon and he’s already begun his diatribe of revelation and is probably not too far off from his epic battle with the Frigidaire. Manson talked recently to Spin magazine about his breakup with Evan Rachel Wood, which came from a apparent combination of his drug abuse and his philandering. And the whole time I was reading this text I was imagining it coming out of the mouth of my old college roommate who loved to get drunk and box houses and moving cars. That same heavy-lidded, monotone with the look and sound of someone possessed. So here you go. Here’s what Manson said in the new Spin:

“My lowest point was Christmas Day 2008, because I didn’t speak to my family,” the singer recalled. “My walls were covered in scrawlings of the lyrics and cocaine bags nailed to the wall. And I did have an experience where I was struggling to deal with being alone and being forsaken and being betrayed by putting your trust in one person, and making the mistake of that being the wrong person. And that’s a mistake that everyone can relate to. I made the mistake of trying to, desperately, grasp on and save that and own it. And every time I called her that day — I called 158 times — I took a razor blade and I cut myself on my face or on my hands. I wanted to show (Evan) the pain she put me through,” Manson said. “It was like, ‘I want you to physically see what you’ve done.’ It sounds made up but it’s completely true and I don’t give a sh– if people believe it or not. I’ve got the scars to prove it. I didn’t want people to ask me every time I did an interview, ‘Oh, is this record about your relationship with your ex-girlfriend?’ But that damage is part of it, and the song ‘I Want to Kill You Like They Do in The Movies’ is about my fantasies. I have fantasies every day about smashing her skull in with a sledgehammer.’”

Blur Reunites At Glastonbury

And finally, it’s official. Blur is reunited. They played their first public gig as a reunited band this last weekend at the Glastonbury Festival in England. It apparently was an amazing show. I’ve only seen Blur once in my life and I can testify to how great they are of a live act. I can only imagine how great it would have been to see them together again. That wasn’t the only highlight of the festival. Almost all of the artists dedicated sets to Michael Jackson with a few doing covers. And Bruce Springsteen was one of the headliners but that wasn’t the only time he took to the stage. The Gaslight Anthem played and are frequently accused of ripping off the Boss. But to prove that Bruce doesn’t mind the comparison he joined them onstage for the “’59 Sound.”

Only Because There’s Nothing Else, Michael Jackson News

The music news machinery seems to have ground to a halt due in large part to the corpse of Michael Jackson clogging up all my tubes and gears and pods, and exacerbated by the fact that it’s Friday and music journalists begin bathing their livers in HRD, Pine Sol and black tar heroin on Thursdays guaranteeing that every Friday news story will be riddled with inaccuracies, total fabrications, hallucinations and flat-out lies. And since I am not so much a credible music journalist as I am a cultural icon, reuniter of bands, dispenser of knowledge, eater of worlds, surveyor of heaven and earth, the light and the way, your Lord God and Savior and the man whose name your mom calls out in ecstasy, I will not bow to the tradition of carousing all night snorting the baseline chalk from the infield at PGE Park like the rest of those music hacks in this town. I take this garbage seriously! My Backstage Blog transcends time and space! Abraham Lincoln high-fived the Marquee de Sade when he heard how I got Soundgarden back together. I am important! So, instead I will bring you sort-of-new details on a 24-hour old story that we’re all sick to death of already thanks to the media spending every waking second driving it into the ground with a pile driver made of live reports from the hospital and b-roll of past Michael Jackson performances.

So here it is. The latest unsubstantiated rumor is that Michael was in need of a lung transplant. A journalist working on a biography of Jackson says that he was suffering from a genetic disorder called alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency that affects the lungs and liver. Apparently he was bleeding in the intestines, couldn’t see out of his left eye and was so winded that he could barely speak most of the time. Again, totally unsubstantiated and probably not true since Michael was about to kick off a 50 date tour, which wouldn’t make sense for someone who couldn’t breathe enough to speak, let alone sing and dance. It does appear that he was getting daily injections of Demerol and it was not long after one of these injections that he suffered cardiac arrest. It appears that he was on a number of other medications as well. The one piece of factual information I do have for you come in the form of our audio daily double. The 911 tape was released.  

Eddie Vedder Gets Puked On. Then Drinks It.

And the only bit of non-Michael Jackson news I was able to drag up was Soulfly lead singer Max Cavalera telling a story about puking on Eddie Vedder. He says, “I puked on Eddie Vedder once. It was on a Sepultura and Ministry tour. This is back when Pearl Jam were huge. Eddie was sitting to my right and the Ministry guys were on my left and everyone was enjoying themselves. I was just drunk as f–k. I’d drunk half a gallon of vodka before Sepultura played, so I was hanging out and being crazy and talking s–t — and I couldn’t help it, but a load of vomit just came out of my mouth and went all over him. He was real nice: he didn’t care or nothing, he just got up and cleaned himself up and came back — and the minute he came back, I said to him, ‘I need your autograph for my sister.’ She was a huge PEARL JAM fan.” Ed apparently gave the dude the autograph and then bailed. While it probably irritated him to be covered in puke, I can’t imagine he got too worked up about it since around that same time he was drinking stomach fluids on a regular basis. Matt “the Tube” Crowley of the Jim Rose Circus Sideshow used to drink a bunch of beer, pump his stomach and get someone to drink it. They called it Bile Beer. Jim Rose was on Lollapalooza back in 1992 and Eddie, Chris Cornell and some of the other dudes on the bill used to have Beer Bile drinking contests.

Sleep Tight Pop King

I’m not a big believer in the “celebrities die in threes” theory because people are croaking all the time. Your mind just lumps them into threes because you’ve been told for most of your life that famous people all kick off three at a time. They don’t always die in threes (as if the cosmos has some karmic quota of decomposing TV stars) and people who believe such silliness often have to find some guy who doesn’t even qualify as a celebrity by the loosest of standards in order to make their little theory work. They start digging around the obituaries until they find someone who had a single line in a Tom Peterson commercial in 1978 in order to make a set. Unfortunately this stupid theory has the possibility of getting a new lease of life with the superstitious and gullible. As you know Ed McMahon died a few days ago and Farrah Fawcett died this morning of cancer. But earlier this afternoon Michael Jackson was rushed to the hospital after collapsing in his home and died. E! reported that Jackson wasn’t breathing when EMTs arrived. They gave him CPR on the way to the hospital but were unable to revive him. Now out of respect for the man he once was (not the failed, stunted, trainwreck of a human being that he eventually became forever trying to reclaim the childhood he lost thanks to a slave-driving father and incomparable fame) I will not being doing any pedo jokes. OK, it’s not really out of respect for his music so much as the fact that Michael Jackson kid-diddling jokes are about as played out and unfunny as blonde jokes. They had about a three day window when they were amusing but thanks to constant retelling, butchering and lame attempts to out-do them the result is a guaranteed unfunny subject that only hackiest of hacks like Jay Leno would dare touch.  

Pixie Soundtrack Waiting For A Movie

We have a fair number of aspiring filmmakers in the audience. I know because I’ve seen your work on the internet. A quick note on your work. The plotting could use a little help, you need to be a little more deliberate with your editing and for crap’s sake tell your camera man to show a little professionalism and not cackle like an idiot after you wreck your nuts trying to rail-grind one of the arches on the Freemont Bridge. It’s really distracting, it makes the camera shake and it totally ruined the moans of agony when you super slow-mo it on the playback. But if you’re looking for an original soundtrack for your next magnum opus, allow me to suggest contacting the Pixies. That’s because they want to make another new album, but they want to do it for a movie.

Black Francis says, “The band needs to work with a film director. Quentin Tarantino or someone like that. It’d be like, ‘Make some music for our film, you guys be the sound of the film’. Spread the word about the idea ‘cos I think it’s gonna work.” He says he’s a little cautious about making a new album since all their others are considered classics, if the new one was anything but it would be considered a failure. However, he admits that if they continue touring as a band at some point they’re going to need something new to play. He says, “We’d have to finally get sick of playing the old repertoire and go, ‘Alright, f**k it. Let’s play new songs in our set.’ But the only way we’d really want to do it is if it was really great.

Soundgarden Bends To My Will

Once again, world, you’re welcome. That’s right. Just doing my job. No need to heap praise at my feet. Seriously, your offers of gold, land and women are completely unnecessary because I don’t do it for the material goods, real estate and casual, unlimited, filthy sex with the wives of strangers. I do it to make the world a better place. And as a thousand times before, I have done exactly that. You may recall a little interview we did with Tom Morello a few weeks ago. If you missed it, just search for the key words “DJ asks the most important questions ever uttered in the history of the human language” in Google. I mean you don’t have to use Google, it’s just the biggest search engine on the intercort, which some of you less educated know as the internet but when I invented it in grade school I called it the intercort. So anyhow, in the course of a soul plumbing interview with Mr. Morello, I asked a question that will undoubtedly lead to the reunion of one of the greatest bands of the 90’s. I mentioned the Street Sweeper show he recently played in Seattle where he coaxed Kim Thayil, Ben Shepard and Matty Cameron of Soundgarden to all share a stage again. I then asked if he offered an invite to Soundgarden singer Chris Cornell and Tom said some stuff. Not really sure what because I was distracted saving a baby whale from a coral reef. But whatever his response to my excellent question, it seems to be the fertile soil from which the Soundgarden reunion shall grow. Did you hear that? I just made a garden pun without trying. I simply can not turn off the awesome spigot sometimes. Anyhoo. According to Brent Smith of Shinedown, that partial reunion and, more importantly my query about that partial reunion, seems to have sparked a full Soundgarden reunion. Brent Smith told Kerrang, “There’s talk of a reuniting of Soundgarden in the States soon. I know actually someone specific who told me that, who is actually specifically in their organization. Kinda told me that they’re talking about it.” (Yes, that’s a real quote.) And while Brent didn’t specifically shout me out, he didn’t really have to. It’s sort of like when someone references the Constitution. They don’t actually mention Thomas Jefferson’s name, but everyone knows that without him there wouldn’t be a Constitution. In short, I am as important as Thomas Jefferson. Maybe more so because you didn’t see him getting Soundgarden back together, did you? No. You didn’t. And again, you’re welcome, world.

Long Overdue Reunion of Sunny Day

And, speaking of 90’s Seattle band reunions, I happy as a leg humping dog in a mannequin factory that constructs realistic human representations out of beef jerky, bacon and peanut butter. My brain is humping, chewing and licking in sheer anticipation. That’s because it was just announced that seminal emo Seattle band Sunny Day Real Estate has reformed and will be playing Musicfest Northwest this year. And this, again, is a FULL reunion, meaning that Nate Mendell will take some time off from the Foo Fighters taking time off to rejoin his old band members on stage. Sunny Day will play the Crystal Ballroom on September 18^th.  

Lips Play My Favorite Bar(s)

And hell, so long as I’m gabbing about kickass shows that I will definitely be attending, the Flaming Lips just announced that they will be playing August 20^th at the Edgefield along with Built to Spill.

Jack White and Jimmy Page Think You’re Pathetic

Let me tell you about young Cort and his early experiences with music and gaming. When I was about 8 we had an Atari and I vividly remember sitting in my basement playing Adventure on a gorgeous, blazing hot summer day when I really should have been beating one of my friends with a stick and screaming, “No! I am your father!” Adventure, for those of you not old enough to remember, was a game where a block version of you ran around multi-colored mazes with a yellow arrow-shaped sword looking for a rainbow U-shaped cup while trying to avoid yellow, green and red duck-shaped dragon type things. And unlike many Atari games at the time, it did not have the typical 8-bit soundtrack loops playing in the background, so I needed a little musical accompaniment while battling blocky duck-dragons. So I put on my brother’s Foreigner “Four” record. Over and over again I played that game with that album, so much so that when I hear “Jukebox Hero” I instantly start jonesing to play Adventure. Same thing happened in my teen years with Phil Collin’s “Tonight, Tonight” and the Infocom “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.” And again later with Rage Against the Machine and Tie Fighter. And The Refused and Quake II. That’s the way it’s always been with me and video games. I get bored with the game soundtrack and start making my own, a musical accompaniment that eventually becomes inexorably linked to the game. But, if I’m reading Jack White and Jimmy Page’s comments right, the way in which I experienced those bands is pathetic. Speaking at a press conference in Los Angeles on Friday for a documentary called ‘It Might Get Loud’, which follows their musical careers, Jack and Jimmy teed off on Guitar Hero and it’s fans. Jack said, “It’s depressing to have a label come and tell you that ['Guitar Hero'] is how kids are learning about music and experiencing music. If you have to be in a video game to get in front of them, that’s a little sad.” Referring to Rock Band Jimmy Page said that you can’t actually learn anything from the game. He says, “You think of the drum part that John Bonahm did on Led Zeppelin’s first track on the first album, ‘Good Times Bad Times’. How many drummers in the world can play that part, let alone on Christmas morning?” Not sure what Christmas has to do with this but I’m going suggest that there has been no significant fall in the number of drummers who can play “Good Times Bad Times” thanks to Rock Band. And what is the appropriate way to experience music that isn’t “sad.” Is bombing down the freeway in the back of a Firebird taking bong rips and rocking out to “Physical Graffiti” really all that much more noble than through your TV speakers? Or how about sitting half naked on your couch with your junk in one hand and a box of Nilla Wafers in the other watching “Icky Thump” on MTV2 at 3AM? Is it any less depressing that people got their first brush with the White Stripes that way?  

Fred Durst Is Trying to Alter History

Here’s a good example of rewriting history to make its subject look better. Every country is guilty of it. Don’t believe me? Take a middle school text book to an actual historian and watch as they thumb through it simultaneously laughing hysterically and openly weeping. But some people like to rewrite history in the rock world as well. Case in point, Limp Bizkit. According to a recent interview with Fred Durst, the reason why Limp Bizkit broke up in the first place is that there were too many bullies in the audience. He says, “I got abused a lot growing up. For years I looked into the crowd and saw a bunch of bullies and a*sholes who tortured me and ruined my life. They were using my music as fuel to torture other people, even dressing like me. The music was being misinterpreted and the irony affected me and we stepped away.”

Now, here’s the thing. I remember when Limp Bizkit broke up. It was one of the happiest days of my life, right up there with the birth of one of my daughters (I’m not going to say which one, but she knows who she is. The other one has been nothing but a disappointment to me.) The reason why Limp Bizkit broke up is Wes Scantland left the band, Fred was rutterless, people utterly lost interest and he released that god-awful cover of “Behind Blue Eyes” and got soundly thrashed for it. It wasn’t anything as noble as not wanting to play to the bully crowd because those dudes were ALWAYS there and he didn’t have a problem with them before. And now that Limp Bizkit is back together, what makes him think that they aren’t going to be there now? The bullies are the ONLY ones who care about this band.