chairman_hall wrote:Was this at the Blackfriars centre? - i was at that gig.

It was indeed. Nice venue.

that damned fly wrote:crap. crappy songs.

maybe good live, doesn't translate to recording. maybe they should take a course on how music works. i just hear noisy, crappy shit when i hear anything they do. bad writing. don't get me wrong, great drumming and bassing, bad songing.

not to be a snob or anything.

crap.

Absolutely.

Loud, technically proficient CRAP.

I agree that the Lightning Bolt experience does not - cannot, really - translate well to records. I don't listen to the records much as I find them a bit boring.

Except: I have a terrible fear of flying. My girlfriend was living in Paris for a while, about two years ago, and I'd always wanted to visit the place, and I wanted to see my girlfriend. So, I bought a ticket in a moment of reckless internet abandon, without worrying about the reality of getting on a plane, and tried not to think about the impending horror.

So the time comes for me to fly. I am shitting myself. I am so scared I'm smiling like a moron at the security guards in the airport, and trying not to puke or faint. I drink two double gin and tonics. They don't do anything. I take two valium. They slow me down a bit. I get on the plane, like a benign, bewildered snake. I sit down and take two more valium.

There was a little kid sitting near me. He didn't seem too bothered about flying. I stared at him. He smiled at me. I just stared at him. He started to get upset because I was staring at him. I put my headphones on and played Dracula Mountain as loud as I could bear it. We went up, and I flew to Paris with Lightning Bolt in my headphones. Dracula Mountain on repeat. I ordered two more double G&Ts. I stared at the kid, who cried at various points. We landed in Paris where my girlfriend was waiting for me.

Lightning Bolt was the only music which could soundtrack my flight. I made it!

All that aside, I can understand someone not liking the records. But to not like them live, you've got to be dead, or some kind of a shithead.

I'll assume that people who vote crap on this band haven't seen them live. Here's how I see it: There's a loud, sustained noise. You are tightly packed in among sweaty people, many of whom you would like to stab. The noise is the nucleus and the crowd ripples with energy. All you can see is the back of some cunt's head. You ebb and flow with the crowd, and fight and push and climb forward to the noise - the source of the energy. It gets louder and you can feel it more the nearer you get. Everything pulsates. You fight through. Volume begins to hit you like blasts of light. You keep going forward. You finally bust through to where the noise is. Where are you? You are at the molten core of rock and roll itself.

There aren't many things I know for sure in this life, but I know that Lightning Bolt are not crap.

solid gimmick, (too often) mediocre songs.

still, not crap.

It seems like many people are confusing the tongue-in-cheek aspect of LB
with bad song writing. I personally love the 'bad' riffs these guys come up with,
it's refreshing to hear a couple of cats just lovin' the hell out of split meters
and silly recycled children's movie themes. And I suppose if Two Towers
was called something like Song Against Itself, the ideas behind the songs might
be easier for people to grab onto.

It seems to me that most of the dialogue in that band isn't revolving around
hard theory, and is more likely to revolve around how cool something is, or
how their dog stinks like turds, or how freaking stupid that bass line they happened
along is. For some reason people get turned off to intentionally stupid stuff.

And again, I have no idea how someone could listen to a record, or see a
show, and not realize how insanely tight LB are.

ubercat wrote:It seems like many people are confusing the tongue-in-cheek aspect of LB
with bad song writing. I personally love the 'bad' riffs these guys come up with,
it's refreshing to hear a couple of cats just lovin' the hell out of split meters
and silly recycled children's movie themes. And I suppose if Two Towers
was called something like Song Against Itself, the ideas behind the songs might
be easier for people to grab onto.

It seems to me that most of the dialogue in that band isn't revolving around
hard theory, and is more likely to revolve around how cool something is, or
how their dog stinks like turds, or how freaking stupid that bass line they happened
along is. For some reason people get turned off to intentionally stupid stuff.

And again, I have no idea how someone could listen to a record, or see a
show, and not realize how insanely tight LB are.

Again, even though you are fond of the band, I have no idea why your reaction to their music is so strange.

There is nothing "intentionally stupid" about LB's music; there is no "bad riffage" anywhere.

To me, "Two Towers" is an emotional rollercoaster. It makes me cry.

NerblyBear wrote:

ubercat wrote:It seems like many people are confusing the tongue-in-cheek aspect of LB
with bad song writing. I personally love the 'bad' riffs these guys come up with,
it's refreshing to hear a couple of cats just lovin' the hell out of split meters
and silly recycled children's movie themes. And I suppose if Two Towers
was called something like Song Against Itself, the ideas behind the songs might
be easier for people to grab onto.

It seems to me that most of the dialogue in that band isn't revolving around
hard theory, and is more likely to revolve around how cool something is, or
how their dog stinks like turds, or how freaking stupid that bass line they happened
along is. For some reason people get turned off to intentionally stupid stuff.

And again, I have no idea how someone could listen to a record, or see a
show, and not realize how insanely tight LB are.

Again, even though you are fond of the band, I have no idea why your reaction to their music is so strange.

There is nothing "intentionally stupid" about LB's music; there is no "bad riffage" anywhere.

To me, "Two Towers" is an emotional rollercoaster. It makes me cry.

I love it too. Love the band, but you can't tell me that stuff like Captain Caveman,
Dracula Mountain and Assassins aren't total knuckle-head riffs. I'd bet good
money that at least half the time they write new stuff they are laughing their
asses off.

As for Two Towers, it's not a 'stupid' riff, but the concept behind the song is
novel. Fantastic, tight, complex, aggressive, youthful, happy - still novel.

I'll use an example of the kind of hyjinx I'm talking about:

"Listen, it would be really funny, and it'd create a great feel if you tried to
stop me from recording this lead. So when we hit the lead, I want someone
to come over and slap me around and grab my hands and stuff. Spit at me
or whatever. I'll try like hell to finish it as I wrote it, you try like hell to run
me around the studio and prevent me from finishing it."

This is how I hear LB - two cats talking about ideas, not so much songs.

ubercat wrote:

NerblyBear wrote:

ubercat wrote:It seems like many people are confusing the tongue-in-cheek aspect of LB
with bad song writing. I personally love the 'bad' riffs these guys come up with,
it's refreshing to hear a couple of cats just lovin' the hell out of split meters
and silly recycled children's movie themes. And I suppose if Two Towers
was called something like Song Against Itself, the ideas behind the songs might
be easier for people to grab onto.

It seems to me that most of the dialogue in that band isn't revolving around
hard theory, and is more likely to revolve around how cool something is, or
how their dog stinks like turds, or how freaking stupid that bass line they happened
along is. For some reason people get turned off to intentionally stupid stuff.

And again, I have no idea how someone could listen to a record, or see a
show, and not realize how insanely tight LB are.

Again, even though you are fond of the band, I have no idea why your reaction to their music is so strange.

There is nothing "intentionally stupid" about LB's music; there is no "bad riffage" anywhere.

To me, "Two Towers" is an emotional rollercoaster. It makes me cry.

I love it too. Love the band, but you can't tell me that stuff like Captain Caveman,
Dracula Mountain and Assassins aren't total knuckle-head riffs. I'd bet good
money that at least half the time they write new stuff they are laughing their
asses off.

As for Two Towers, it's not a 'stupid' riff, but the concept behind the song is
novel. Fantastic, tight, complex, aggressive, youthful, happy - still novel.

I'll use an example of the kind of hyjinx I'm talking about:

"Listen, it would be really funny, and it'd create a great feel if you tried to
stop me from recording this lead. So when we hit the lead, I want someone
to come over and slap me around and grab my hands and stuff. Spit at me
or whatever. I'll try like hell to finish it as I wrote it, you try like hell to run
me around the studio and prevent me from finishing it."

This is how I hear LB - two cats talking about ideas, not so much songs.

I don't think that's how they would work in the studio. All of Gibson's "leads" are carefully planned out, and they work with the rest of the song melodically. Specifically, check out the brilliant fretwork on "Forcefield". Like a mixture between DNA-era Arto Lindsay and Voidoid-era Quine.

Yeah, those songs could be labeled "knucklehead", I guess...I tend to think of the more minimalistic songs as being so spare in order to build up tension. For example, when, in "Assassins," Gibson flies up to that high note at the end.

By the way, I wonder if the title "Assassins" comes from the old religious cult that coined the phrase, "Nothing is true, everything is permitted"? Sounds like a good Fort Thunder credo.

NerblyBear wrote:I don't think that's how they would work in the studio. All of Gibson's "leads" are carefully planned out, and they work with the rest of the song melodically. Specifically, check out the brilliant fretwork on "Forcefield". Like a mixture between DNA-era Arto Lindsay and Voidoid-era Quine.

Yeah, those songs could be labeled "knucklehead", I guess...I tend to think of the more minimalistic songs as being so spare in order to build up tension. For example, when, in "Assassins," Gibson flies up to that high note at the end.

By the way, I wonder if the title "Assassins" comes from the old religious cult that coined the phrase, "Nothing is true, everything is permitted"? Sounds like a good Fort Thunder credo.

I was speaking more to the mentality of LB then a specific execution of an
idea. To piggyback on your point, I'm sure Gibson does plan each note, noise
and spark - further, I'm saying he'd plan his 'mistakes' also.

last night i witnessed the drummer of Lightning Bolt's new solo project, Black Pus. it was INTENSE. Brian C. had some sort of backing tracks going, filtered through various pedals and whatnot, plus a mask with a microphone in it. he played impeccable, intricate beats while triggering crazy noises for forty minutes straight. it was quite captivating.