Hey Clunky…turn it the fuck down.

I had all sorts of great stuff to write about today. I was going to be pithy yet witty, edgy but kind. I was going to toss prose like the Nature Boy Ric Flair tossed the lesser Andersen brothers out of the ring on the Saturday mornings of my youth. But no, no instead I have a ballpeen hammer against a tin shed style headache and am nothing but grumpy due to a pot-bellied skintight t-shirt wearing Jiffy Lube attendant with purple hair named Clunky. I would make up a good name for him but when a guy self professes to a name like that, why bother?

Clunky is the bass player for a Baltimore band called Voodoo Blue. I know this and lots of other neat and totally fierce things from traveling to their website today and spitting on it, I mean browsing it. There are a lot of things that I could make observations about but I’m going to focus on one thing and this does not apply only to Voodoo Blue but to about 99% of the other bands on the planet. Please listen closely as I’m sure your muddled brains are foggy from the cool ass ringing in your ears…..ok…….ready?

TURN YOUR FUCKING AMPS DOWN YOU DUMBASS FUCKING MORONS.

I was sitting out on the deck of this bar last night after practice, having a beer and a chuckle or two or four with Philito. As the chill took hold in the air we went inside where we saw some lovely people that we liked and were very happy to see. We had drinks, we had fun, we had seasons in the sun. We were half-watching the Yankees and bopping to the music. All was well.....and then the dogs of hell were unleashed upon our sonic karma.

Some doodes were dooding it up onstage rocking out the warm-up spots for the big headliners, Clunky and the Crew de Voodoo Blue. The crew were heavy on the doode stares, you know what I mean, those hard eyes boring into the vacant souls of those of us who can’t understand that Joel and Benji speak the truth and that they totally identify like so much with Che Guevera and Marilyn Manson and who are we to laugh at them for wearing fishnet shirts and pink hoop earrings anyway?!?!? They totally give non-crew members mean looks to show the depth of their hardness…..but also the tears of the little plumbers inside them that just want to be held. “I’m a living scar…..boohoo.” Well I got news for the crew, it’s a cold cruel world out there so when you dress like a fucking clown at a bar in Fairfax and the local yokels that are begging for a glimmer of hope that they might be slightly less fucked than somebody else set their sights right on you for expressing your right to piss off your dad with eyeliner go stare at somebody that gives a shit like your therapist or your Grandma and leave me the fuck out of it.

The crew was rocking the now-standard uniform of chunky haircuts, t-shirts that don’t fit, jean jackets…whatever, who the fuck cares. They still look like hicks no matter how many bullet belts and tight black pleather pant ensembles they put together. All I’ll say in wardrobe advice is that they might want to think twice about playing barefoot when playing in a bar because I know for a concrete fact that they were rocking some Bon Jovi style bare tootsied Bad Medicine on a stage where I have personally deposited some lungers in the past. Worse, I once witnessed Evil Ed of the Blue Line Tattoo (more on him in a future entry) yank it out and piss all over in protest of the death of rock and roll in the exact same spot where Clunky was merrily a-prancing. So if you’re Clunky or one of the Crew you might want to get your feet looked at, I’m pretty sure you’re rocking bacteria as hard as you rock your swell haircuts.

But back to the noise…..

I have been playing in bands for a long time. A long time and goddamit I have the Grecian Formula requirements to prove it. Of all the things I have learned over the years the single most important is to wear a latex happy sack on your nethers at all times, especially when you are South of the Georgia state line. Coming in a close second however is that heavy volume is not your friend unless you suck so bad you have to cover up your ineptitude with tidal waves of pain bringing crap. These motherfuckers last night were moving more air in a space the size of my Grandma’s root cellar than Springsteen did at the MCI Center the night before. It was ridiculous. You couldn’t hear anything discernible so what we got was a wall of ambient hell to go along with Clunky clunking away, his Ibanez bass clattering like the iron-collars on a pack of demon dogs braying the greatest hits from Satan’s Shit-town record collection, (by Ronco, for a limited time only).

They started bringing the noise and I started calling for my tab. It was loud to the point of I couldn’t help but laugh that they would not just stop right away and call FEMA for first responder ear exams. Clunky was working the crap out of an Ampeg amp that was sufficient for a Guns n’ Roses show in 1991 at places like RFK Stadium, not a bar the size of Jimmy McDoolittle’s House of Snacks and Suds. I took me approximately three minutes to pay out and get out and I have had a fucking headache ever since. Lest you think I’m a pussy, and maybe I am, I wasn’t the only one that left pronto and to the quick. There was plenty of company outside freezing their asses off to avoid the jackhammer to the skull that was taking place inside. The sad thing is I have no idea if CADC (Clunk and Da Crew) were even really competent as musicians or songwriters as it was impossible to hear the songs over the tidal wave of noise. However I am pretty confident that Carson Kressley would dig their punk rock fashion sensibilities so at least they have that going for them.

I went to their website this morning and amongst all the Street Team Punk Rock Savagery I saw that these doodes have played some big shows for places like HFS’ and the like. Why? Well I guess the thinking is that if Good Charlotte is good for the Goose the Gander would probably like some crappy music of his own to hold dear.

Despite my advice I’m sure these rude boys will keep turning it up and be millionaires soon and I can see Clunky and his off-road vehicle collection on Cribs. I’m guessing that he will start fucking Ashlee Simpson and then God will try to close out his cosmic joke on me when their son takes my daughter to the prom and blows out her eardrums blasting his dad’s newly remastered version of their first big hit, “Mean Parents Make Me Frown.” That’s the kind of painful heart-wrenching shit that I just KNOW is going to happen and if you don’t believe me well I’ll stare at you so hard that it will make both of us cry!!!