#well actually I’m really good at drain you on drums in rock band 2 so….. 🫦

[gayenerd]

An interview with music journalist Paul Zollo. I believe this is from 2000. I’m a sucker for Billie Joe talking about his songwriting process.

By PAUL ZOLLO

SEVEN STORIES ABOVE THE SUNSET STRIP in Hollywood is the Chateau Marmont, an old hotel rife with the ghosts and scandals of Hollywood’s recent and not-so-recent past. Famous for the elegant, old-world discretion it affords all its guests, for decades it’s been a safe harbor for stars seeking to circumvent the squall of media surveillance. It’s where John Belushi died, sadly, back in bungalow three, and where Jim Morrison wrecked his back by swinging Tarzan-like from the roof, using a drain pipe as a vine. Every star, it seems, from Chaplin and Bogart to Dylan and Lennon have hidden out here while in Hollywood. “If you must get in trouble, do it at the Chateau Marmont,” Harry Cohn, the first boss of Columbia Studios, once told William Holden.

So it’s an appropriate setting for Billie Joe Armstrong, the lead singer, songwriter and guitarist of Green Day, to be holding court. Armstrong and the band are no strangers to scandal – they’re the ones who started a mudfight that bordered on insurrection at Woodstock II; they’ve been outspoken about their fondness for drugs and alcohol; they’ve been especially harsh in their expressions of scorn for many other bands; and they’ve frequently “redecorated” hotel suites, bars and Tower Records stores alike with a flair for creative demolition that brings to mind the heady decadence of the Doors and others.

           In fact, parallels between Armstrong and Jim Morrison abound. Like the leader of the Doors, Billie Joe is the creative catalyst of his group, but only writes within the fold of his fellow musicians. Like Morrison, Armstrong has been known to walk on the razor’s edge of life, bringing an authentic, expansive passion to every song he sings. He’s also been known to match his inclination to strip his soul bare in song by taking off his clothes in concert. The difference is that when Jim Morrison did it, all hell broke loose, the country was shocked and the singer was arrested. But when Billie Joe does it, he gets acknowledged on the MTV news, Kurt Loder smirks, and that’s about that. Being shocking these days is just not like it used to be.

‘It’s something unpredictable,

But in the end is right

I hope you had the time of your life.”

From “Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life)”

By GREEN DAY

           Few things seemed more unpredictable than the thought that Green Day would have a Number One hit with a pretty ballad of all things. Even more unlikely would be that the song, officially entitled “Good Riddance” but better known as “Time Of Your Life,” would become as ubiquitous in the American consciousness as the Star Wars theme. Used on “Seinfeld,” two episodes of “E.R.,” and extraneous sporting events (as when Mark MacGuire became the king of baseball’s home-run derby), Green Day’s ballad quickly became more famous than Green Day itself.

           “Good Riddance” now stands alongside Springsteen’s “Born In The USA”, Randy Newman’s “I Love L.A.” and Sting’s “Every Breath You Take,” as one of the nation’s most misappropriated hit singles. Like all of those songs, which are much darker if you examine their core than the mainstream ever seemed to recognize, “Good Riddance” actually comes closer to condemnation than the kind of nostalgic celebration for which it’s been used:

“Tattoos of memories and dead skin on trial

For what it’s worth, it was worth all the while

I hope you had the time of your life. “

From “Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life)”

By GREEN DAY

Though Green Day’s presence on the world stage shifted from popular to astronomical because of this song, many of their old fans felt alienated by their secret heroes’ injection into the mainstream. “[`Time of Your Life’] was a drastic change for us to record,” Billie Joe said. “We knew that there were going to be some people that weren’t going to like it because it’s not a 1-2-3-4-Let’s-go-punk-rock tune. Mike [Dirnt] said, `This is a real beautiful song, who cares what people think?’ So we just went for it. Long term thinking, you know. Punk is not just the sound, the music. Punk is a life-style. We’re just as much punk as we used to be.”

           Of course, definitions flow fast and fluid, as purveyors of punk, such as Armstrong, play along the borders of pop. “A lot of punk rock bands are always trying to be so hard all of the time,” he said. “Macho brutality doesn’t necessarily mean you’re a good songwriter. I think that some of the Beatles’ songs are way more punk rock than most punk songs written today. Like the song `Yesterday.’ It’s such a bittersweet song. “

           Billie Joe was born in 1972 and grew up in Rodeo, a little Californian town just outside of Berkeley. His father and uncle were both jazz drummers. “I was a guitarist in a house of drummers,” he said. His father died when he was ten, the same year he met a neighbor named Mike Pritchard who shared his passion for making music. Together they decided to drop out of high school to start a band, which they called Sweet Children. It was a decision Billie’s mother encouraged. “My mom sort of let me do whatever I wanted,” he said. “When I quit school, she thought that was a good idea because I was really ambitious to play. So I started touring when I was seventeen.”

Pritchard changed his name to Mike Dirnt, Tre Cool replaced Al Sobrante as official drummer, and they called themselves Green Day, a Bay-area euphemism for a day spent smoking pot. Their first release was an indie EP called 1000 Hours, after which they signed with Lookout Records to make 39/Smooth and Kerplunk. In 1994 they ascended to the major leagues, signing with Reprise, and released Dookie. They soon  became an MTV mainstay, and their mudstorm performance that year at Woodstock cemented their reputation as a band on the edge. Three more singles followed, as did sales of more than eight million albums worldwide, and a Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Performance.

           Insomniac was released in the fall of ’95, but instead of going on a European tour as planned to launch it, they elected instead to stay home and write and record more songs. The result was the most popular, and most critically acclaimed album of their career, Nimrod, which included “Time Of Your Life.”

Warning was the new album at the time of this interview, and the impetus for Billie to talk. Inspired by the rich lyricism of Springsteen’s The River and Dylan’s Bringing It All Back Home, Green Day went away for a while to write and play the songs before recording them. It’s their first self-produced and most sonically adventurous album to date, blending layers of acoustic guitars in with the electrics, and with some unexpected detours, such as the German beer-hall stomp of “Misery,” and the Clash-meets-Kinks pop-punk of the title song.

“Caution police sign you’d better not cross

Is the cop or am I the one that’s really dangerous?

Sanitation expiration date question everything

Or shut up and be a victim of authority

Warning, live without warning…”

From “Warning”

By GREEN DAY

Today Billie Joe is ensconced within an overstuffed burgundy couch in his hotel suite. Although he’s drinking coffee from china cups, and eating fresh fruit and croissants from a silver tray, he’s remained loyal to the punk lifestyle, and is wearing a black t-shirt and baggy jeans. Prior to our talk, rather than linger in the luxury of his suite, he ducked down into the hotel’s bleak back stairway for a cigarette. Though he’s undeniably a star of the first degree, he’s uncomfortable with such designations, and shuns all the trappings of stardom. As opposed to the Ferraris and Lamborghinis driven by his peers, an old Ford Fairlane remains his vehicle of choice. He did admit to one extravagance, however, which he revealed somewhat sheepishly. “As soon as I could afford it,” he confessed, “I went out and had it primered.”

BLUERAILROAD: You write all the songs together in the band. Do you start songs on your own and bring them in?

BILLIE JOE ARMSTRONG: Yeah, sometimes. I’ll come up with the song with the chord changes and the lyrics, and then I bring them into practice, and then we sort of restructure them together. I like to come in with a tune. I’ll just play guitar and sing it for them, and then we start to learn it. And as soon as we start to learn it, we can make changes and come up with a different structure. Move the chorus around, make the verse a little longer. That kind of thing. I definitely like to think of it as a collaboration between the three of us.

           Do you always change the songs?

Well, we have a lot of songs. There have been some that I have brought in and nothing really needs to be done. Sometimes I’ll suggest a part that needs to be worked with, and we’ll try some different things. And then they’ll write their bass-lines and drum parts around it.

           Do you ever have a problem sharing credit on songs you wrote alone?

Well, we’re a band. We’ve been able to stick through a lot of years because the three of us support each other. The songs come from Green Day, and I like to stick by that. We like to just keep things equal in the band, and I think it’s what has made our band healthy over the years. We give each other respect. There is no one who stands out more than the other one in this group. Especially since we’ve known each other for so long.

           These days do you write on electric guitar?

No, on acoustic. I have a Silverine Harmony. But it sounds good. I just have it around the house, so I’ve written most of the songs on it.

           Do those songs then shift a lot when you bring them to the band, and play them on electric?

No, because I always have it in the back of my head about the dynamics of electric guitar and drums and bass. Between me and Mike and Tre, I always have that dynamic in my head – what am I going to bring to the table that they’re going to be able to play, and which will have our certain energy. I always keep our energy and our music in mind, sort of subconsciously. But I think that’s the beauty of this. That not only can I play these songs with a band at full volume, but also that I can play them on a cheap, acoustic guitar. And it can have the same kind of impact.

           “Warning” would work that way.

Yeah, it does. That kind of came all together at the same time. I think lyrics on this record were really important to me, and to have a well-rounded record as far as what kind of topics I wanted to write about, and sing about. That was one of those songs that seemed to just write itself. It just came really naturally.

           Is that unusual for you, the feeling that a song writes itself?

Well, I try to go for inspired moments. But if I want to write a song that sounds like it has a pop kind of edge to it, I really want to be able to say something. I have to say something – it’s vital for me. I can’t just write something that would be sugar-coated, and have a pop song with nice lyrics that go along with what everyone is doing on the radio these days. It’s very important for me to have a message that goes along with the writing. So, you know, what comes to mind for me is a song like “The Ballad of John & Yoko,” where [Lennon] had this really nice sounding song. But the lyrics penetrate like a knife. “They’re gonna crucify me…” That’s kind of nice way — nice, I mean, in an oxymoronic sense – to put forward something you want to attack.

           You’ve done that in many songs.

Yeah, I think it adds a sort of demented side a little bit, sort of like a clown in a circus. But it also makes the lyrics a lot stronger. If you take a band like Rage Against The Machine, the music is aggressive, and the lyrics are aggressive at the same time. And I love Rage Against The Machine, but sometimes it feels like you getting bombarded by someone’s else’s point of view. The person is not telling you to think, but what to think. And that’s one thing that I really wanted to come across in the music and the lyrics. To think about the world around you, and not what to think, so to speak. And at the same time, to have my opinions coming through at the same time.

           Are you always clear about the meaning of a song while writing?

No. That’s hard. I mean, sometimes I’ll have things in the back of my head that I want to write about. But I never want to come across as pretentious or preachy. So I just wait for my thoughts to settle. To a certain extent, you have to be a little self-righteous and I think it’s healthy. Especially when, nowadays, there’s so much stuff that is about decadence. And when it comes to rebellion, a guy who has a Rolex watch and is driving around in a Porsche, talking about that he really wants something to break, I don’t really think of that as rebellion, I think of that just as a decadent rock star.

           Do you have any kind of routine for songwriting?

Last record I was just sort of pounding songs. Anytime I had any inkling of an idea of anything at all, I would just grab my guitar and play it and work on it no matter what the song was like. Whether it was inspired or I just got drunk and started playing. But this time I waited for inspired moments. And I think it took me a long time just because of that. I wanted everything to sound refreshing, and something that would make you want to turn it up a little more.

           Did you have times when you tried to work and nothing would come?

Oh yeah. You get frustrated. You feel, “Man, I just want to write a fucking song.” And sometimes it’s just not there. And you can’t dwell on that when that happens. You have to just let it go.

I don’t ever want to try to outdo myself. I feel like if you try to outdo yourself from the last thing, instead of just working on your inspiration, I think the music kind of suffers a little bit, sometimes. Sometimes I’ll just get a very general idea about the kind of song I want to write. And I’ll just sort of store it in the back of my mind and see what comes out. It can come out in five minutes, it can come out in five days, five years, five decades.

           Are there songs you worked on for years?

Yeah. “Longview” was one that we worked on for years. We knew what we wanted to write about. I told Mike to write a bass line and one day I came home. This is when we lived in the same house. He had just dropped some acid (laughs) and he said, “Listen to this.” And I said, “Okay, I guess it sounds good.” He came up with this bass line that really worked well, so we ended up practicing and came up with the song.

           Are there many songs you start that you don’t finish?

Yes. And I’ll just wait for the right time and the right place for it. There are some songs I finish but then I think it’s not right for the record we’re working on. There’s a couple of songs like that off of Nimrod. “Time of My Life” had been written a couple of years before.

           That song resounded in enormously with the public. Was it just a fluke, or did you sit down with the intention of writing that kind of song?

Both. I think that anyone can sit down and write a song. Whether or not it’s any good is another thing altogether. You know, there’s no school you can go to that will help you learn how to become a songwriter. But you can sit down and do it. Especially with rock & roll. But to put something down that is actually really great, it does go beyond you a little bit, and sometimes it takes patience.

           Do you write all the time?

Yeah. Whether it’s good or bad, I don’t know. Or if it’s appropriate for what kind of idea or sound that we want to get across on the record.

           Where do you think the great songs come from?

I don’t know. I really don’t. It comes from somewhere deep down inside of you that you didn’t even know existed. It’s kind of like seeing a shrink or something. (Laughs) There can be a lot of anger, or sadness, or joy, that you had but you didn’t even know you really had – but it can all come out. You feel a connection with it, and so other people can, too. You strike a nerve.

           Does songwriting get easier the more you do it?

I think so. I think you definitely learn more as you go. I think you find new ways to motivate yourself. You test yourself a little bit more and see what comes about. And you challenge yourself in new ways to see what comes out. You learn new ways to get the engines going. But whether or not it does get easier, it’s what I do. And I love doing it.

[spookyspaghettisundae]

Thirteen-One, part 2

Heavy clouds painted the horizon in a dull, bleak gray. Although still morning, the day was quickly fading.

Amy walked down the street. Her keys jingled in her leather jacket’s pocket, reminding her with each step that she needed to have someone check her car. She had not been able to start it this morning. Just another damned thing for her to deal with after the big move to this town.

From the corners of her eyes, she saw a shadow dart past. Her heart raced and she swiveled to spot her assailant. But nothing and nobody was there. Perhaps a mere trick her eyes were playing on her. Amy stood alone on this narrow road, amidst houses both old and new, some from the old colonial era and some just representing those artsy, newer architectural styles that she hated. Right now, she had no eyes for the environment itself, though. She was on the lookout for other people, specifically any creeping up on her.

Not a single soul here beside her.

Continuing on, a person took a left turn and joined her on the road, walking in the opposite direction and towards her. Some unknown man in his late twenties, dressed completely in black.

He just stared at her and a pit formed in Amy’s stomach. She tried to size him up but kept averting her eyes, both out of nervousness and just to see if eye contact could make him do the same. The real estate agent had sworn up and down that the area was all quiet and safe—"zero crime"—but Amy was new in town and the agent might have been full of shit.

The stranger’s course of walking was not in straight line towards her, after all. They moved along opposite sides of the small suburban road. He never stopped staring at her, however. He never turned his head. He creepily glared at her from the corners of his eyes until they had passed each other.

She could feel his gaze burning holes into the back of her head as she continued on. The pit in her stomach was still there, and she felt like all blood must have visibly drained from her face. Amy refused to turn around, refused to show any sign of fear—and listened intently to the sounds of his shuffling sneakers as they both walked on while the distance between them grew.

At the end of the road, Amy finally dared to look back. The creep was not staring back at her. Her gaze burned holes into the back of his head. Not looking where she was walking.

So she bumped into someone else.

Some man said, “Excuse you?” The voice tugged at some memory strings in Amy’s brain.

Under any other circumstances, Amy would have quipped with something snippy. But the day continued to be strange and unsettling all around, so she just looked up at the person she had crashed into. After a few seconds and incredulous blinking, she recognized a familiar face: her old high school friend and former band mate, Chris.

His furrowed brow made way to a face beaming with pleasant surprise. He asked, “Hey. Amy?”

Amy sighed and could not help but smile. With all the weirdness she had witnessed since getting up, followed by that weirdo gawking at her just before—seeing a friendly face turned out to be a true palate cleanser.

“Long time no see, fuck-face,” she said.

Chris chuckled.

“Uh, look. I’d actually like to catch up, but I need to be somewhere,” Amy said. She pulled her phone from her jacket, more demonstratively than anything, and added, “You still got the same number?”

Chris nodded and confirmed with a curt answer, then gestured to the sidewalk behind him.

“It’s cool, let’s walk together. I’m in no rush. I was just takin’ a walk to clear my head.”

Amy dug her hands into her jeans’ pockets and nodded. Chris plodded along by her side as she continued on with her way.

“I never thought you’d come back to this dumpy little town,” he said. “Especially not with the success you’ve been having in the big city. So—what brought you back?”

Amy shrugged. “Outside of the lame-ass answer you’d expect to hear about it never being quiet out there, I wouldn’t know where to start. Hey, so, uh—something else.”

“What’s on your mind?”

“You and the others still all in the same band?”

Chris’ face went blank and he stared at the sidewalk in front of them as they walked.

“Not all of us, no. Seth and Kevin left shortly before you skipped town. Don’t you remember?”

“Sorry. My memory’s kinda gone shoddy in recent years.” Amy took a deep breath, mentally crossing out the old haunt as a place she could find Seth to confront him about the disturbing video she had watched this morning. Then she asked, “So, is the band doing good?”

“I’d say so, yeah. Neil recently said he was gonna hook us up with some bigwig who could get us more serious gigs.”

“Without Kev, who’s doing the drums now?”

“Someone new—Beverly.”

“Hmm.”

“Wait, ‘hmm’, what? She’s really good!”

“No, I meant, ‘hmm’ in the sense that—well, I don’t know her. Like, neither as a person nor as a drummer.”

Neither Amy nor Chris looked at each other. The silence that persisted between them turned awkward.

“How’s Scott doing? He move back here with you?”

Amy stopped in her tracks.

“Scott?”

Chris followed suit and looked back at her.

“Well, yeah. Scott. Your boyfriend?” Burying his own hands in his pockets, he then asked, “Or your—your ex?”

“Y-yeah. He is—he has long moved to France. Neither of us thought the long distance would work. And here I thought I was the one who had memory issues. Do you?”

A short bellow escaped Chris’ throat. A bit too clipped, a bit too forced. Artificial.

They continued walking. Amy blurted out, “No, look, I’ve been seeing someone else. A real cutie, Steve. Steve Parker. You know him?”

“Nope.”

“Not surprised, he’s not from around here. Also staying in the city for now. Work.”

Chris grinned. There was almost something impish about it. Something devilish.

Where their road forked, he pointed up one way, leading uphill. Amy knew her path lied the other way. Chris nodded to her and said his goodbye. She called out after him, prompting him to turn around and proceed a few steps while walking backwards.

“Where are you actually headed to?”

“To this forest hut where we jam. You know—our band.”

Amy blanked out. And the memories of that morning returned to her in a flash, suffocating any positive feelings. The pit in her stomach returned, worse than when it had visited her before. She saw that single light bulb hanging from the ceiling.

She saw her darker self, talking into the camera. Talking about needing to dispose of a dead body.

And the she remembered the dark, clawed hand, reaching out from the darkness inside that pentagram. The nails digging into her flesh, drawing blood.

“You okay?”

Chris’ question grounded Amy again, ripped her right back out of the strange imagery bombarding her mind and inner eye.

“All good,” she said.

She had lied.

They went separate ways. She quickly forgot about the encounter with Chris even though something about their conversation felt utterly wrong, as if she had heard either of them say something she did not like to hear. But Amy did not dwell on that.

Instead, she pondered the strange video she had seen that morning. She did not want to, but the images kept invading her consciousness. And she could not shake that horrible feeling. She still wondered if she should call the cops.

But she did not.

The idea of being implicated in a murder and not remembering any of it—if it had even happened at all—was both deeply disturbing and crippling her from seeking out help from authorities.

She finally arrived in front of a big apartment building. The formerly bright white of its facade had turned into muddied colors with the paint chipping off, weathered away over the years. Loud, aggressive heavy metal music blared out from one of the open windows on the first floor.

Amy approached the entrance and tried pushing through the building’s front door. But the door would not budge—it was locked up tight. She scanned the doorbells and rang one of them. Seth’s doorbell.

Nobody responded. The door did not open. She pressed the button to ring the bell again and leaned over and looked to the window out of which loud music continued to thunder. As there still had yet to be anybody to react to her ringing of the doorbell, she wandered back out of the roofed entrance area, looked around the bushed and picked up a rock.

She thought on it for a second, and then tossed the rock up through the open window. Someone must have gotten hit by it, because that faceless someone shouted, “Ow!”

A topless, tattooed man wearing only jeans, with greasy long dark hair tied back into a ponytail, looked out of the window to see who had thrown the rock and hit him. He glared. Then his gaze softened upon seeing and recognizing Amy.

Another old, familiar face from back in the day: Adam. Good ol’ party boy. Bit of an idiot, but soft core.

And decidedly not Seth.

She had come here to find Seth. This was where he lived after all. She had not expected to meet Adam here, but Amy was somewhat happy to find Adam here instead of Seth.

The more she thought about it now, the more unsettling Seth had always been.

“Come the fuck on in,” Adam shouted down to her with a wide, toothy smile.

Amy shook her head and shouted back, “I’d love to. But fucking how?”

“What?”

“Your music is too fucking loud, jackass!”

“Calm your tits, I’ll be right there.”

Adam disappeared from the window. The music stopped in the middle of a stanza, making way for an uncomfortable silence. Soon after, the front door to the apartment block swung open, and the young man stood there, dressed still only in jeans and wearing unlaced black boots that were more scuff marks than leather.

“Since when did anybody start locking that door?”

Adam cocked his head back, causing the skin underneath his chin to bunch up, giving him the look of a turtle for a brief moment of contemplation.

“Folks are paranoid these days, I guess. Bunch o’ crackheads even in this small town, nowadays. You either keep some guns or you lock your doors, I guess.”

He thumbed behind him.

“You wanna come inside or talk right here? Got beer, got smokes, and I’m willing to share with an old stranger like yourself.”

They went inside. The place was a vision of pure chaos. The apartment looked like what you would expect from a tornado hitting the inside of a tour bus. Piles of empty pizza boxes, crumpled up beer cans, and an overturned ashtray with its contents spilled all over the carpet in a dark gray stain, on top of soiled newspapers on top of a cluttered coffee table harboring all manner of drugs and paraphernalia.

Adam plopped down onto the couch with a sigh and Amy thought twice about sitting down anywhere. The whole place reeked of stale cigarette smoke, cheap booze, and dried cum.

“Damn,” Amy said, the word slipping out more than anything.

She always hated it when fellow musicians were walking cliches. She hated it when they smashed guitars on stage, screwed around nonstop with roadies, or steeped themselves in substance abuse.

With narrowed eyes, Adam used a naked hand to shovel through the mess on the coffee table. He pulled a pack of cigarettes from the bottom of the junk and lit up a smoke with incredible speed and routine that only chain smokers possessed. Then tossed the pack back onto the table.

“Oh, you think this place looks bad?” Adam chuckled and choked a bit on the smoke as it came back up. “Yeah, it’s pretty bad. Shoulda been a quiet little evening, but somehow—somehow, way more people showed up, and it got out of hand.” He shrugged and took another long, greedy drag from his cancer stick.

Adam leaned back and started puffing out smoke rings.

“Can I bum one from you?”

“Dude. That’s a personal insult, coming from you. You think you need to ask me if you can have one of my smokes?” Scott guffawed. “Seriously. They’re not even mine. Pretty sure someone else forgot them here last night. So knock yourself out.”

He picked up the pack and held it open for her to take a smoke. When she reached out to grab one, he cringed when he saw that her hand was wrapped in bandages that had bled through so badly that a deep crimson spot had formed under the palm.

“You’ve got blood on your hands?”

Amy froze and stared at her own hand.

“Fuck off. Do you always need to frame things with such dramatic phrases?”

Through a faint smile and underneath a furrowed brow, Adam asked, “You got anything you wanna tell me?”

Amy took the cigarette and lit it up with a lighter from the table. Instantly regretting both the sticky texture upon what should have been a smooth plastic lighter, as well as the biting flavor of the cigarette, burning in her lungs like fire.

She flinched and shot him a glance that translated into a silent “Shut the fuck up.”

She asked, “What was that music just now?”

“It's—okay, Amy,” Adam paused and inhaled deeply from his cigarette, burning it down quickly and brightly. When he spoke again, his voice sounded tortured and the smoke billowed out of his mouth at the same time, “No small-talk, okay? What’s actually up?”

Amy let her own cigarette burn down between her fingers. She let her head hang before answering with a different question.

“Where’s Seth? This is his apartment, after all.”

“I don’t know. Woke up here all hungover after the party. I always thought he was more of a friend of yours than mine, y'know?”

Amy placed her cigarette onto the edge of an overflowing ashtray where it continued to smolder and gradually transform into a stick of hot ashes among the cemetery of fellow cancer sticks.

“Never really liked him, if I’m gonna be quite honest. Anything I can help you with, seeing he’s not home?”

Amy shook her head and asked, “Dunno. Does the number combination thirteen-one have any meaning to you?”

With a lopsided grin, Adam replied, “Well, since we’re speakin’ of Seth right here, I’d wager that’s the date when he sacrificed his neighbor’s cat.”

He burst out into laughter, holding his sides. He sputtered and his laughter ceased when he accidentally dropped his cigarette, causing a small explosion of tiny embers and provoking him to scramble and scoop it back up before putting the butt out in the ashtray.

“Big help,” Amy muttered. Though she knew he was right. Seth might as well have been a satanist.

“Sorry, but I really got no clue what I should do with that, but, uh, why—”

A smug grin overtook Adam’s face.

Amy whined, “You’re not taking me seriously, asshole.”

“No, not true. You know I take everything you say very seriously, but I sometimes just can’t help but fuck with you.”

Amy leaned back in the chair she had sat down on after assuring herself that it wasn’t as sticky as the rest of the dingy apartment’s furnishings. She stared out the window into the gloomy, overcast sky outside.

“I dunno. I dreamed something weird. Everything’s weird. Also, I saw Chris on the way over. Has any-fucking-body gotten out of this garbage town except for me?”

“If you’re back now, were you ever really gone, city-girl?”

“Fuck you.”

“Okay, so, you look a bit under the weather. I mean, I know what I did last night, and I’m still feeling kinda wasted—but what’s your excuse?”

Amy had no answer to that. Adam picked up a beer bottle from the table, sniffed it, and then took a swig of whatever lukewarm swill had been leftover in it.

“You know what I think? You should go see that new boy-toy of yours in the city—”

He shushed her with a hand gesture the moment she even opened her mouth to speak.

“Have a nice day, have a nice evening, get dinner, get stoned, stay out of town for the night.”

Amy leaned over, snatched the smoldering cigarette she had left on the ashtray, and stamped it out on the ashtray’s edge.

If Adam had taken part in any shenanigans involving a corpse, or a prank with the video she had anonymously received, then he deserved an Oscar for acting oblivious about it. More likely, he was badly hungover and had nothing to with any of this.

She gave him a feeble smile, said goodbye, gave him the middle finger after he made a rude joke, and left Seth’s apartment.

On the way out, she slung out her phone and tapped on Steve’s face from her contact list. The call rang, and rang, and rang. Steve did not pick up.

She paused outside the block. The loud heavy metal music started out of nowhere, continuing exactly where it had been paused and causing her to jump an inch of the ground in fright. Her heart pounded and she turned to yell some obscenities up at Adam.

Looking out the window was a figure clad all in black—not Adam. A deep unfathomable abyss yawned behind the darkness of the figure’s hood. Those living shadows stared back at her and Amy sensed a cold, seething rage. A malevolence so powerful that it felt like an invisible force wanted to rush at her and rip her heart out.

Frozen and unable to move, the honking of a car’s horn pulled her back into reality. Or at least, back into paying attention to her surroundings.

She stared into the angry face of a driver, waving at her to get out of the middle of the road. She had stood there for long enough to annoy some unknown man in a car. She got out of the way and when she looked back at Seth’s apartment, nobody stood in the window. Especially no shadow-person under a black hoodie’s hood.

The heavy metal music continued to blare.

The call to Steve went to voicemail. Amy hung up and did not leave a message.

She walked back home, furiously typing out a text message to Steve, asking him to get back to her as soon as possible. She feared that he was busy and would not soon find time to respond.

And she would be right.

Once Amy stood at her own front door, cramming her fists into her pockets to find her keys and unlock the entrance, she felt watched. She saw something move within the darkness of her home, though the reflections of overcast skies in her windows and her tired mind could have been playing tricks on her.

Fear gripped her heart. Someone was inside her house.

Finally, Amy called the cops. She would not tell them the whole story—only suggesting that someone might have broken into her home—and they would find nothing. The police officers left come evening. To her chagrin, they also declined her request to leave someone there to keep an eye out.

But evil was lurking inside her home. It had been there all along.

Amy had not noticed it.

Yet.

—Submitted by Wratts

[thepermanentrainpress]

REVIEW: CONTACT FESTIVAL AT BC PLACE - DEC. 27TH AND 28TH, 2019

Contact Festival is one of the most successful annual festivals in Vancouver. Over the years, it’s moved from Rogers Arena to the larger BC Place and hosted some of the biggest electronic music acts in the world. “Raves” are no longer limited to underground clubs – today, DJs play for tens of thousands of people at stadiums and festivals.

It was a very long event. The doors opened at 5 with music on both stages beginning at 5:20, extending all the way to midnight with minimal breaks. Not everyone attends for the whole seven hours, of course – but even for one day, that’s much longer than a typical concert. You really have to prepare for a big evening, and it’s even more important to stay fueled and hydrated once inside! It’s a hot, draining, crowded function, and keeping energy is essential.

The entire stadium was part of the event. On the floor area was the main stage and dance floor, holding a massive crowd amongst stadium seats and a few tents. However, on the second floor level where restrooms and concession were outside the main event was the “FVDED stage,” hosting a smaller but still crowded mass of people. There was really no escape from the noise – you could hear the pounding bass from both stages anywhere in the building, and for a couple of blocks outside BC Place as well. The upstairs stage had a more upbeat, contemporary, bass-heavy style for most of the evening. The main area’s music tended to be slightly more chill, feeling less like a club and more like an actual event. Performers on the FVDED stage for Night 1 included Kompany, Graves, and G Jones. Although the stage and dance area were much smaller, there were still many lasers and pretty colours flashing for an immersive experience the whole time.

Any crowded event can be difficult to navigate, particularly one with such an intense energy and fanbase as Contact. I was impressed with the crowd: I moved around a lot both days and walking, excusing myself through the people, etc. was never an issue. I didn't witness or experience any aggressive or rude behaviour. I appreciate everyone – not just the audience, but especially the staff and security – who worked to keep the event safe, fun, and accessible. 

Contact is about more than just the artists: it’s an entire experience. People travel for this event and spend hours preparing their outfits, plans, and energy. Amongst the audience, there were lots of costumes, people adorned in glowing/flashing lights, and all sorts of vibrant colours. There were people dressed in Christmas costumes as elves and even Santa. Contact is a big party, and the clothing adds an immersive and distinct element. Every rave will have people dressing up, but only at somewhere like this do you see such a variety and number of stand-outs. Just walking around and taking in the audience visuals is a big part of the fun. 

EDM events are not like concerts. Obviously, the music isn’t being performed live by a band – it is mostly pre-recorded and sampled. Of course, the DJ does still perform – there’s a lot of improvisation in a set and control. It’s more than just pushing a button. Nevertheless, the focus is on the visuals and crowd energy more so than the music, due to its nature. A lot of the music is repetitive; it is mostly pulsing bass, and a lot of the stuff played is actually recorded by a different musician. It’s not something I have a lot of experience in, and thus it was very different from the shows I’m used to. 

On Night 1, the first act I caught on the main stage was Denver-based DJ Said The Sky. His sets are a combo of trap, future bass, and dubstep. All of the music on both nights was pretty intense, but this set was one of the more mellow of the fest. It was slightly ambient, with a mesmerizing/hypnotic effect. He brought a lot of energy to the performance, and lit up the room just as much as the later headliners. The visuals involved a lot of rainbow lasers and flowing clouds.

On afterwards was Dutch DJ San Holo, who continued the trap and future bass set themes of the evening. His visuals were extremely colourful, flooding the entire screen with neon, bright hues, and explosive patterns. He played guitar a lot on stage, adding a live element that really stood out amongst the popping giant patterns—a small figure holding an instrument, against a background of fiery shining flames. It was really cool to watch, and the visuals that personally stood out to me the most. The arena was equipped with pyrotechnic equipment, and San Holo repeatedly used giant sparks to create live explosions on stage – awe-inspiring to an audience now well into the night. It was like watching sparklers dance as a child, except the sparks are 30 feet tall.

Chicago DJ Kaskade was on at 9:15. He’s been a major EDM figure for almost 20 years, and really showed his experience that night. The visuals were distorted, colourful, and aesthetically pleasing. Images of nature like flowers and lightning, roads, and fire were dominant. There were also many subdued hues of Kaskade’s name and shadow in blue and pink. Naturally, there was also use of pyrotechnics – giant actual flames pumping on stage never failed to impress the crowd. This was deep house music, and Kaskade’s expertise means his music was some of the most recognizable of the era. There were many original hits (“Us” and “Atmosphere”), but also a lot of sampling of classic rock songs, unexpectedly. He sampled “Don’t Stop Believin’,” “Welcome To The Jungle,” and even “Under The Bridge”—songs you don’t expect to hear at a rave. The audience sang along every time. Out of all the sets of the weekend, this was probably the most engaging in how the actual music seemed to connect to the people there. Most of the sets were about the live experience in the moment – this one seemed to emphasize the actual music best.

The final act and headliner was Major Lazer – fronted by major producer and DJ Diplo, also including a current lineup of Walshy Fire and Ape Drums. There was just so much energy throughout this set. Diplo tours all over the world and has been a part of several EDM groups, and he really brings his all to exciting a crowd. The visuals were many geometric patterns and multi-coloured images, projecting the artist’s name, the audience, and backup dancers. There were all sorts of lasers and images of cartoon drawings, like a DJ with a record or a wall of speakers. Of course, there was some pyro and lasers as well. The backup dancers were very in-tune and well-choreographed. They ran all around the stage area, climbing platforms, touching each other, and twerking in time. It’s not easy to engage that attention when there’s so much music and visuals literally banging around you – they were so good at what they did. I’ve seen backup dancers at rock concerts that weren’t as engaging. 

Major Lazer had the most engagement with the crowd of everyone I saw. There’s a lot of festival experience, and Diplo knows just how to keep people going and keep them motivated. There was never a dull moment – whether it was chants of “I say Major, you say Lazer! MAJOR!,” sampling the bass of “Seven Nation Army,” or reminding us it was the last Friday night of the entire decade. “I know right now that you’re going to have the best f***ing year in 2020!” to roars of applause. 

Day 2:

The FVDED stage included artists such as Wooli, Dabin, and Feed Me. The music ended slightly earlier at 10:00 instead of 10:30 like the night before, but the dance area and music was no less intense.

All the way from Australia was producer Fisher. His house set was engaging musically, but the visuals weren’t nearly as impressive as the other acts. A lot of it was repetitive patterns of his own silhouette or his DJ name mirrored, or just lasers bouncing with nothing on the screen. Some of them were more interesting, projections of shapes and patterns – things like spots, stripes, and fingerprints. They were nice to look at, but the sequences were very repetitive, so it just wasn’t that interesting after a few minutes. A lot of the music was sequestered by a high robotic voice saying “Let’s play it again!” before yet another bass drop. I guess maybe that applied to the visuals as well. It wasn’t a bad set, it just really wasn’t as unique or fun as the others. There were a bit of pyrotechnics near the end for when he played “Losing It,” but nothing very memorable. 

Our own Canadian talent Rezz came next, and her entire set was my highlight of the festival. I wasn’t familiar with her at all before, but heard she puts on an amazing show, and she definitely did not disappoint. At only 24 years old, she’s got two studio albums and is a prominent addition to any festival. She emerged to the ever-present giant flames and blasted the fire many times throughout, and it was just… so cool. Her visuals were themed and very in-tune with the set, instead of seeming almost random like the others. There was a lot of hellfire and church-type imagery, and an animated avatar in goggles (clearly supposed to be Rezz, who was wearing the same goggles on stage) burning things and running. Towards the end were gorgeous cosmic galaxy projections, something I’m surprised not many other DJs incorporated. There was also a disturbing tentacled monster and off-putting geometric patterns, near Lovecraftian imagery. 

A computerized, booming, commanding voice echoed a narrative periodically throughout the set, telling the audience to think about their feelings, to let it all go, and to “relax” – right before another bass drop. It held everyone’s attention and it was a really interesting, unique set. I would love to see her perform again at another fest or headlining show. She was the most interesting and probably the best act of the night – putting male DJs twice her age with many more years of experience to shame!

Closing the fest was one of the biggest DJs in the world, and my main reason for wanting to attend – Tiësto! With a two decade career, he’s performed all over the world and is very prominent in the live EDM scene. I saw him at Pemberton Festival a few years ago and it was amazing, so I was really looking forward to what was coming. Sadly, he was no Rezz. I’m not sure what was different, if it was the indoor setting or the music he chose, but it was just not that fun visually or audibly. There’s energy, and there’s getting the crowd moving, but it never overly impressed. The visuals were pretty forgettable – flashing lights, golden lasers, a lot of flashing of the act’s name in case we forgot who he was. There were animated Minecraft-like sprites when he played “Jackie Chan” (with Dzeko, Preme, and Post Malone rapping) but they were ugly and not very colourful. He sampled other EDM classics like “Titanium” and “Wake Me Up.” There wasn’t even much pyro. 

For a closer and such a respected DJ, I really wanted something more. I don’t know his inner mind, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this set was forgoing anything awe-inspiring for some phoned-in, basic heavy sets and even more basic visuals. When you’re Tiësto, people will come no matter what (I know I did) and I guess you can relax. The man is 50 years old. Not every set can be the best. Everyone still had fun and the music was still nice, and in the end, that is what’s most important… I guess.

Contact is a full experience. It’s unique in its size and scope as a festival, and is one of the largest annual concerts and annual EDM events in the area. It is extremely intense in all aspects and definitely not for everyone. I can recommend it, but only if you know exactly what you’re getting into and if you like this style of music. I’m sure I’m not the only one who was overwhelmed and exhausted afterwards. It’s a fun event… but it’s a lot.

Written by: Cazzy Lewchuk