Issue 34:

If Glass House-Dwellers Fear Thrown Stones, What Are Those In The House Of Rock Afraid Of?

Yeah, boys and girls, time to just face the facts and confess. Don’t bother looking for merit in that new Bush CD just cos Albini twirled some knobs. Marilyn Manson ain’t no more than Alice Cooper with a less-competent cosmetologist. Metallica shoulda learned from Samson and kept their headbanger locks (even if they weren’t whammy bar fret-doodlers from day one). Don’t be fooled, Gibby Haynes woulda sold his soul to sniff the pussy of an MTV VJette a decade ago if only one woulda given him half a chance. In short, despite what you may see, hear, or read, rock’n’roll high school is chock fulla paper tigers, who, as a collective mass, have almost as much creativity and originality as that southern fried yuppie hairdo who just waddled his way into the White House for another shot at actually accomplishing something. Welcome to the end of the millennium.
Jon Sarre, Sarre-Chasm: Calling the Kettle Black

Oedipus was a motherfucker, and Faust sold out while Jesus got nailed. Hamlet was a great Dane, and Polyphemus had an eye out for nobody in particular.
The editors, Garbage Pail

This is something that can’t be missed, something worth standing in line for – even standing in line in sub-zero weather with a brutal wind surrounded by rejects from Interview With the Vampire, dyed hair teased to the heavens, heavy mascara ready to run with eager crocodile tears of romantic despair… This is Old Testament music, doused in blood, swarming with pestilence, reeking of sex and sin, longing for a salvation that never comes.
Chris Adams, Swans

You wanna talk your shocking, controversial rock ‘n’ roll figures, look no further than Pat Boone. Back in the 1950s, he sent waves of outrage running through the seedy underbelly of popular culture by making that horrible colored people’s music palatable for the old folks at home. Though scarcely remembered these days, few sounds were as horrifying as clean-living, God-fearing, milk-drinking Pat clearly enunciating “a-wop-bop-a-loo-bop-a-lop-bam-boom” with perfect Mother-may-I diction… Now, forty years later, he’s resurfaced with a project so absurd that it can’t be ignored. That’s right, friends, Pat Boone has gone metal, chains, vest, rub-on Harley tattoos and all.
Nik Rainey, Pat Boone

Emo covers of the Misfits ought to be outlawed.
Joshua Brown, Violent World: A Tribute to the Misfits

Screw 32 grabs the back of my underwear and holds me on my tip toes, the song lead-ins never failing to fall perfectly into what I’m hoping for. Like watching gentle Ben Crenshaw drain a fifty-foot putt, … a woman taking her clothes off in front of the TV at your place saying “Let’s fuck.”
Austin Nash, Screw 32

I can almost picture the singer sitting down, saying, “OK, during this part I’m going to do a triplety-triplety vocal like I just burned my hand and I’m hopping around the room, then I’m going to howl like a demonchild who wants his mommy, and then I’ll layer bassy roars over everything at random intervals, punctuated by what passes for verses and anything else I can layer in there.” The rest of the band, who weren’t listening anyway, say fine, we’re done recording anyway.
Scott Hefflon, Death Never Sounded So Good: Kataklysm

And we all know, there’s nothing more dangerous than a cuckolded movie geek (“You take back what you said about Bertolucci’s middle period or I’ll cut you!”). Anyway, since maverick cinema is going through the same fertile spell that it did in the ’70s (when it took up the slack where rock had faltered, just like today), why not reflect it in its magazines?
William Ham, Film Threat

Media is a happy hunting ground where the quarry pay mostly for the privilege of being captured. The consumer is king, and gleefully presides at his own beheading, placing the crown of choice upon his own attenuating stump of neck.
Kerry Joyce, The Mind Museum and Adjoining Garden

Rock stars have amazing potential at their disposal, yet they tend to fall prey to the common man sensibility which urges them to simply exploit the mundane. …We work and slave in the 9-to-5 grind while they cavort with porn stars. We turn green with envy. But that’s not what’s turning green on our heroes.
Scott Hefflon, Crew Sluts