Prelude To A Lick
by Scott Hefflon
Editor/Publisher
illustration by Mark Reusch
And somewhere, a dog barked. Nicotine-stained and rubber cement-stickied fingers tap tentatively the last words, ironically enough the first words, of the first issue of Lollipop since ’97. 1998 is upon us, as she has been since the ball dropped, and the hopeful (yet suspiciously tired-looking, aged, and over-exuberant) wench squirms and shivers with what may appear to be optimism. Or it could be she knows her time is short (Let him who hath understanding reckon the cell phone and pager number of the Beast), and this’ll be her last fuck-frenzy `til the millennium. Call me cautious (that’s a polite term for heartless, cynical bastard who’s already mashed the mellows and got the weenies skewed on the proverbial rotisserie, awaiting the bonfire hoedown of ’00), just don’t call me with an excuse of why your 200 review of The Cash-Ins is going to be late, longer than expected (unless I chose to edit out the 5,000 word intro on kitty litter as a probable alterna-fuel source), and written in binary. Rather than say more, I’ll cut and paste something of mild interest in the remaining space.
You may notice (cheer or groan here) that we’re covering more heavy/aggressive/whatever-the-fuck-you-call-it music. Mostly, the change is due to the fact that heavy music is finally growing in some interesting directions. Black metal being my favorite, but that’s just my slant. The change is also due to more heavy records being released, almost dumped if you’re so inclined, into the marketplace. It may be that there’s renewed interest in “metal,” or it be that metal is cheap to put out because the bands are so beaten down they’re just psyched someone is willing to put out their records and not laugh in their goofily-painted faces. Truthfully, I wish more metal bands would use scary face paint, `cause shit, have you seen some of the ugly mugs staring all intensely out of some of these CD booklets? Sure, perhaps face paint is merely the `90s equivalent of glam fags wearing makeup, but you didn’t need me to point that out. So, the theory is, if Lollipop covers more heavy music, those who are into it will appreciate it, and those that aren’t might just be exposed to something new, something on the outskirts of our beloved genre that doesn’t grate their sensitive nerves. Oh, bucking the anti-metal trend, are we? Yeah, start chanting sell-out now, you never-satisfied fickle fuckheads, I’ve been elbow-deep in the bloody war of metal long before issue one ever came out, so watch your petty name-calling.
Most “major” ‘zines won’t touch heavy music until it’s a household name (nothing, of course, against Rage ATM, Korn, Pantera, Slayer, Machine Head, and so on), so the “giving exposure to independent bands” motive seems to only carry the punk banner to commercial success. And similarly, most (though not all) of the metal-niched ‘zines are laughing stocks in the “real” world of publishing. Metal has always been borderline preposterous (that’s a big word for silly, for those of you who listen to lyrics that always sound like the grunting of obese pigs), and many who “buy into” the metal shtick are rather sad saps to begin with, but there is (there must be, dammit) an intelligent, discerning segment of the slavering metal horde who can actually read and enjoy aggressive, gut-shredding music. That’s my hope at least. As pansy-assed journalist dweebs pick past each new release with an illegible logo the way we all gingerly pick through our nasty laundry pile for that one item that we’re think we can squeeze one more wearing out of, and as the true defenders of the faith bang their heads and silver-ringed fingers into heavily-stickered keyboards for their typo-plagued fold and staple metal ‘zines they send out every six months or so to the hundred or so metal-addicted lost souls who, probably with help, scraped together enough cash to give to someone with a checkbook so they could subscribe, Lollipop offers a simple solution: read the heavy section we’ve always had and probably always will have. Sorry for the run-on (I lost most of the metalheads after the first comma, I can tell), but heavy music is such fun fodder for ranting your fingers raw.
I’d like to make a really potentially-idiotic generalization. Heavy music can be incredibly interesting to write about. For some reason, it brings out the gonzo in me like few other topics still can. There’s so much to rail against, there’s so many surreal descriptions that just flow from your fingertips when listening to machine-gunning double bass, guitars roaring like souped-up muscle cars racing through grimy alleys (their drivers laughing in the face of death with a belly full of cheap booze, two cigarettes lit at a time, and enough adrenaline coursing through their systems to swat a fly off the King of Darkness’ sweating face before he even knew what hit him), and vocals that screech like dive-bombing hawks in a feeding frenzy and roar like Cookie Monster with head cold, piss-drunk and horny as a satyr (or is it an incubus?). On the flipside, there’s nothing to say about bad metal. “This sucks” cut and pasted 100 times to satisfy a 200 word assignment’ll get you fired faster than telling the music editor he doesn’t know a good metal CD from his dick, nor does he have the vaguest clue what to do with either.
This is the last paragraph. This is where I’m supposed to say something mildly clever to distract you from the fact that the rest of the magazine is actually blatant plagiarism from the stacks of poorly-written, wildly hype-filled and inaccurate bios that accompanied all the free CDs we sold for dirt cheap to fund our night classes in the hopes that someday we can get real jobs with real paychecks and benefits we don’t have to book ourselves at local clubs that are either closing down or taking down their tattered Support Local Music banner to use as a floor mat and make room for yet more neon advertisements for Budweiser and Kahlua that, by this time, are so bright and glaring that the audience can not longer focus on the stage, not that there’s really much need to ’cause we’ve seen the highlights at 11, but instead mills around watching the pretty lights flicker and cheers on command. That’s not only a run-on, it’s the last sentence I’m gonna write (with the obvious exception of this one, natch) in this space – ’cause, hell, I met my just-shy-of-1200-word assignment, so can I please be unchained now?
