Heavy Band 005: Sleater-Kinney

Last week I featured a band that didn't have a guitarist until recently, and this week I'm going with Sleater-Kinney, a band without a bassist. I didn't believe that a band could be heavy without a low end until I heard Sleater-Kinney. They had the raw energy of a young Iggy and the Stooges, had guitar licks as clean as Fugazi and as dirty as Motörhead, and they constantly evolved, quitting before they could grow stale.
Corin Tucker's pulsing rhythm guitar helped drive their songs. Her vocals a

re truly awesome, at times sweet as dulce de leche and other times shrieking that would put a Banshee's wail to shame. At times her vocals are raw, and at other times almost seem that they are coming from some 1960s R&B group played through an old hand held transistor radio. Tucker's lyrics could be overtly political, subversively personal, or just plain fun.

Carrie Brownstein was on lead guitar summoning ghosts of Pete Townshend's past, teaching a whole new generation what it is to rock. Her guitar playing alternated between the clean staccato sounds of modern pop punk and the fuzzy thrash of an inhalant huffing garage band. Her backing vocals provide a martial push on songs that were often anti-militaristic.
Janet Weiss joined up after their second album, and provided the pumping, heavy, blasting drum line that completed the band's sound.

Tucker and Brownstein formed Sleater-Kinney in 1994 in Olympia. Initially part of the Riot Grrrl movement, Their music evolved from political punk in the style of Dead Kennedys through until they created a style that could only be considered their own.
Their first album, the self titled Sleater-Kinney debuted in 1995. This album was followed by Call the Doctor in 1996. Both of these albums were aggressive punk with political overtones alternating with the alternative ballads that were so popular in the mid 1990s. Sleater-Kinney had the alternative ballad The Day I Went Away and Call the Doctor had Heart Attack. For harder tunes Sleater-Kinney had A Real Man, Call the Doctor had its self titled track.

Their third album, Dig Me Out had the stirrings of what would become the Sleater-Kinney sound. The title track was a pumping anthem full of distorted guitars, slamming drums and Tucker's unbelievably powerful voice. This was the first album with Weiss on drums and it is in part due to this that this is recognized as the solidifying of their sound.

Sleater-Kinney's fourth album The Hot Rock has more of an indie pop feel than any of their other albums. Songs like Hot Rock, God is a Number, and Get Up have a dreamy quality that isn't seen in such a quantity in any of their other albums.
They followed up The Hot Rock with All Hands on the Bad One. Youth Decay from this album could only be created by Sleater-Kinney's unique sound. Ironclad and the album's title track are heavy, yet vulnerable in a way that only they could create.

Sleater-Kinney's heaviest album was One Beat. While the title track, Remainder, and Combat Rock are heavy enough for me to take those songs alone and consider them an extremely heavy band, they slowed down their tempo for Far Away to Black Sabbath time. Far Away has faster portions, but its heaviness is tied to its slow paced parts, its sheer volume, and its unadulterated anger. Far Away stands as a testament to Sleater-Kinney's heaviness.

Sleater-Kinney's seventh and final album was The Woods. It opened with the rocking The Fox, a song that makes me want to go out and commit acts of destruction. Songs like Jumpers and Rollercoaster push this album forth into extremely heavy realms. While I was sad to see that Sleater-Kinney were going into retirement, I would much rather see them go out on a high note as they did, than to slide into mediocrity. I'm pretty sure that they had a few more awesome albums in them, and maybe we will get a listen if they ever have a reunion.

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52=13+13+13+13

This is my 52nd post. It's also been 52 weeks since I became a father. There are 52 weeks in a lunar year, 13 months. The three Mayan calendars sync up every 52 years. My goal is to eventually have 52 yoga skeletons drawn, and then I will redraw the poses which I am not satisfied with.

Here's my 17th skeleton in a yoga asana.

Garbha Pindasanaembryo in womb pose

previous yoga skeletons

Lately I've been working on focus with my Ashtanga practice. I painted my big toenails black to help me focus during the physical part of my practice and have been trying to completely lose focus during savasana. It seems that there needs to be a balance during savasana: losing focus but not having scattered thoughts. The past couple of weeks my practice has become stronger. This is partially due to the focus, and partially getting back into practice.

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Heavy Band 004: Big Business

In 2005 while DJing at KBGA (the local college radio station), I came across the sludgiest band that I had heard. Big Business came out with their album Head for the Shallow, an atomic scale assault on clean sounding music. With Coady Willis (the man who gave Murder City Devils their driving, demon exorcising drum beat) on drums they have a forceful beat, the kind of drum beat that you don't want to turn your back on. Coady's screaming in the background adds a punk rock element to their songs, almost someone shouting in opposition to a rally. Jared Warren (formerly of Karp) on bass gives them rumbling bass strings reverberating to their maximum, with lots of overdrive. Jared's bass playing is like getting beaten while you're drunk and throwing up... in a good way. Jared's vocals are soulful yet aggressive, at times screaming past the point that he is horse and pushing it even harder. Initially Big Business started out with just bass and drums, with a friend adding a guitar here or there.
Released in 2005 Head for the Shallow featured the heavy tracks Focus Pocus, Easter Romantic, and Technically Electrified, each demanding to be pushed to the loudest volume possible. This album guaranteed that Big Business would never be played on mainstream radio. The album was too heavy for mass consumption, as has been the rest of their catalog.
In 2006 Big business was deemed so heavy that the godfathers of sludge metal, The Melvins beckoned them to become members of the band. Their next tour had Big Business opening for the Melvins, who then had Big Business as members, including two drummers for the most driving, deafening metal around. Jared grew his hair out into an white man's afro, much akin to Buzz Osbourne's.
In 2007 Big Business released Here Come the Waterworks, proving that their first album wasn't a fluke, they really were that heavy. Here Come the Waterworks featured the heavy hitters Grounds for Divorce, Just as the Day was Dawning, Start Your Digging, and I'll Give You Something to Cry About, which showed that they had a sense of humor in addition to their epic heaviness.
Big Business followed up Here Come the Waterworks with their first album with a formal guitarist. Toshi Kasai was officially announced as a member of Big Business in 2008, and played on the album Mind the Drift, released in 2009. Mind the Drift showed that there is no rest for the wicked, and Big Business is wicked. Track like Gold and Final and Cold Lunch allow Toshi some room to show off his metal chops. The Drift is a slow stoner rock song akin to The Doors Five to One.
Though Big Business has released three of the heaviest albums of all time and are awesome and deafening to see live, their best may still be yet to come. Keep them on your radar, and never turn your back on their drum beat.

Yoga Skeleton 16

Here is my 16th skeleton in a yoga asana.

PurvottanasanaIntense Eastern Stretch Pose

Other skeletons in yoga asanas

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Treiskaideka Coulrophobia: 13 Homicidal Clowns That You Should Fear

Finally I have created my list of the 13 most frightening clowns. I started this post a year ago, and finally took the effort to actually write it thoroughly. There are other clowns that could be added to this list, but these are the ones that I came up with last year.

13- Insane Clown Posse ICP should not be feared. Though their lyrics are of murder and debauchery, they are all talk and no action. In his non-fiction book Team Rodent Carl Hiaasen describes how Disney marketed ICP until parental groups objected. Then they dropped the band and another subsidiary of Disney picked them up for distribution. He spends much of the book calling Michael Eisner by the moniker Insane Clown Michael suggesting that the band was cooked up by Imagineers at the behest of Eisner. He speculates that they wrote the lyrics with the intent of stirring up controversy, so that their album would sell well. I don't know whether or not they were created by Disney, but I do know that their homicidal act is just that, an act.

12- Binky from Garfield While he has never killed anyone that we know of, he does have a penchant for torturing animals (especially one cat in particular). Since animal torture is one of the signs of a serial killer, I believe that it's only a matter of time before this sicko starts his murderous rampage. His show consists of large amounts of screaming. In addition, it's pretty creepy that he knows whoever is watching his tortuous show.

11- Sideshow Bob from The Simpsons This clown sidekick ranks pretty low on the list as he has never been able to kill a child that he has attempted so many times to kill. He also has been unable to kill any of the adults that he has attempted to kill, as well as being unable to kill the whole city of Springfield when he attempted. Though he is inept at killing, since he has attempted so many times he has to be included on this list.

10- The Clown Doctors from PeeWee's Big Adventure These clowns rank pretty low on the scale of evil since the only thing that they kill is a bicycle. They do torture Peewee by slowly killing his bicycle though, and they are definitely frightening.


9- "Shoeshine" Tommy DeVito from Goodfellas In one scene of this movie Tommy asks Henry "How am I funny?.. Am I a fucking clown to you?.." This scene has been spoofed many times proving yes, Tommy is a clown...Not a very funny clown, but a terrifying homicidal one.


8- The Clown Doll from Poltergeist In the 1970s and 80s Toby Hooper was the master of horror. He invented the slasher movie with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. In 1982 he directed Poltergeist, and with this he created one of the most frightening depictions of a clown ever. There was a clown doll that the family's daughter had that her brother feared. Near the end of the movie, the clown doll comes to life and attacks him. This clown scared the crap out of me as a kid, and brought fear of clowns to new heights.

7- The Joker The Joker has been Batman's nemesis for 70 years. There have been many conflicting stories of the origin of the Joker. The Joker has also been said to be different people. There have been copycats of the Joker operating while he was in Arkham Asylum. Trying to untangle all of these story lines will give you a headache, but that's kind of the point of the Joker. He killed Jason Todd, who was the second Robin. He paralyzed Barbara Gordon (Batgirl). He has at times been credited with killing Bruce Wayne's parents. Just as he appears differently in the comics, he has been portrayed differently in movies and on TV.

Cesar Romero's portrayal of the Joker in the 1960s Batman TV series is a depiction of the crazy, but not demented Joker. This Joker was common in the silver age of comic books, after much of the violence was sanitized by the Comics Code.

Jack Nicholson's portrayal of the Joker in the 1989 film Batman is a prime example of Joker as a gangster/mob boss. This version of the Joker was pretty common in the golden age of comics.



Heath Ledger's portrayal of the Joker in the 2008 film The Dark Knight is an example of the truly demented, bat shit crazy Joker. This has been a common version of the character since the 1980s, when Frank Miller took over writing Batman.


6-Killer Klowns from Outer Space The campy 1988 classic horror film Killer Klowns from Outer Space featured a gang of extra terrestrial killer clowns that fly around in a UFO that looks like a circus tent. When they kill someone, they wrap them in a compound that looks like cotton candy. The cotton candy substance dissolves the victims so that they can be devoured by the clown creatures.


5- Clown from Spawn Spawn's nemesis in the comic series is a demon that hides in the guise of a fat clown. Clown's real form is Violator, the oldest of the Phlebiac Brothers, who are charged with raising hellspawn to fulfill Satan's purpose for them.


4- Michael Myers as a Child Michael Myers from the Halloween movies, he kills his first victim as a child dressed as a clown on Halloween night. His first victim is elder sister, and promptly after killing her he is sent to an asylum. Though he only had one killing as a clown, his adult total with the William Shatner mask added make him a very prolific killer.


3- Captain Spaulding Introduced in the film Rob Zombie's House of 1000 Corpses, Captain Spaulding uses his roadside attraction to kill tourists, usually city folk. Though the character is seen again in The Devil's Rejects, he doesn't don the clown makeup. My personal favorite part about this clown is how he incorporates his victims into his attraction, as is seen in the case of Fish Boy, who is the Captain's take on the old Feejee Mermaid. As a side note the victim who becomes Fish Boy is played by Rainn Wilson, who plays Dwight Shrute on The Office.


2- Pennywise the Dancing Clown The child killing clown in Stephen King's novel It and the miniseries based on it is terrifying. Like Clown from Spawn, Pennywise is not actually a clown, but a shape shifting beast that takes on the form of a clown to entice children. It then uses their deepest fears to kill them. Pennywise is immortal until killed by adults who were terrorized by it as children.

1-Pogo the Clown aka John Wayne Gacy Pogo is the most frightening clown of all time, because he really did have teenage boys in his crawlspace. Gacy would entertain neighborhood children with his clown character, making balloon animals and doing magic tricks. He would often use some variation of his magic tricks to lure and trap his victims. A favorite trick was showing how to escape from trick handcuffs. After showing this trick he would exchange the trick handcuffs for real handcuffs, trapping his teenage victims with their hands behind their back. They were completely vulnerable to his sexual assaults and murder. Gacy killed at least 33 teenage boys and young men, storing 26 of them in his crawlspace. The stench from below his house became unbearable for his neighbors and he was arrested on July 15th 1978. For the 14 years that he was on death row he painted pictures of himself as Pogo the clown. It is theorized that the setting that he painted the portraits in is a clue to where he buried other victims. In February of 1978 with his crawlspace full he started tossing the bodies of his victims in the Des Plaines River. He was executed with lethal injection by the state of Illinois on May 10th, 1994.

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Yoga Skeleton Prehistory

Here are what I believe are the first skeletons doing asanas that I drew. I drew them before I had any kind of understanding of human anatomy, but I figured that it would be fun to look at my process. I put them in the front cover of my copy of David Swenson's Ashtanga Yoga: The Practice Manual, along with the opening chant for Ashtanga in transliterated Sanskrit and English translation. They represent a vinyasa. I should probably redraw a vinyasa for the back cover to go with the closing chant.

previous yoga skeletons

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Heavy Band 003: Megadeth

The only problem that I'm having selecting bands for the heavy band of the week is determining which of the band that I want to feature each week.

In April of 1983, Dave Mustaine was kicked out of Metallica, he was then determined to create a band even greater than them. Though he hasn't had the commercial success that they have, I believe that he accomplished his goal. Megadeth has had more complex music, more intelligent lyrics, and has a much more sinister sound... but first perhaps we should go back to the beginning. The only other constant member of the band is David Ellefson, though from 2003-9 he wasn't in the band. Ellefson has played some of the most influential bass riffs in metal. Dave Mustaine met David Ellefson in 1983 just a few months after Metallica had left him stranded in New York. The story goes that Ellefson heard Mustaine playing upstairs in their apartment building, he went up to Mustaine's apartment and asked if he could bum a smoke. Mustaine closed the door in his face, and Ellefson returned a few minutes later with some money, asking if Mustaine could buy them some liquor. Mustaine replied something like, "Now you're talking." They bought some booze, he revealed that he could kind of play bass, they got drunk and jammed.
The first album that they released was Killing Is My Business...And Business Is Good. This album sounds a lot like Metallica's Kill 'Em All album, due to the fact that Dave developed a lot of the songs for Kill 'Em All and he recycled several of the riffs for Killing Is My Business, but in addition to this he added several other riffs that he had been working on since. The album was speedy and thick with truly sick riffs. There were so many riffs in this album that it could have been expanded into 5 separate albums, each of which would have sounded pretty awesome. Killing Is My Business foreshadows the greatness to come. In addition to the kickass title track, the songs Skull Beneath The Skin introduces the band's mascot Vic Rattlehead, who is featured on the front cover, a skull with a visor nailed to his eyes with meathooks holding shut his mouth. The song Rattlehead is perhaps the heaviest song from 1985. It has a speedy feel of the fastest Judas Priest song.
1986 brought Megadeth's second release Peace Sells...But Who's Buying? The title track was a very cynical take on our society. The intro bass riff to the song is one of the most awesome of all time. The bass riff was used as an intro for MTV News for over a decade. Megadeth's cynicism that began on this album was refreshing in the 1980s when no one was questioning societal norms, everyone was just happy to be sheep. Songs like The Conjuring and Good Mourning/Black Friday showed some of the most metal heavy guitar licks, with lyrics about occult topics.
Megadeth's third album So Far, So Good... So What! featured an occult heavy song by the name of Mary Jane that would be worthy of old school Black Sabbath. Mustaine wrote the song In My Darkest Hour after finding out about the death of his former band mate Metallica's Cliff Burton.
Rust in Peace is an amazing work. Every song is a masterpiece. Holy Wars...The Punishment Due is the first song on it. It is the tale of a man who has lost everything that he has, due to the fact that he worships in the wrong church. "They killed my wife and my baby...tried to enslave me." Hanger 18 delves into US conspiracies, specifically Hanger 18 in Roswell NM. The drum intro to Rust in Peace...Polaris leading into the sick guitar riffing makes it one of the hardest songs of all time. Never to be heard on the radio, in part due to its message about nuclear arms. This album is my all time favorite Megadeth album.
In the early 1990s Megadeth continued with their hard rocking with Countdown to Extinction. Countdown to Extinction is the most commercially successful album released by Megadeth. This is in contrast to it being the most political album to be released in 1992. The songs Symphony of Destruction and Architecture of Aggression are about dictatorships and the buildup of the military industrial complex. Foreclosure of a Dream is about the loss of the family farm, as farms were being gobbled up by ConAgra. This was the first album not to feature Vic Rattlehead on the album cover, and he wouldn't be on another Megadeth album for the 1990s.
The last Megadeth album that I am going to write about is 1994's Youthanasia. Featuring the kickass songs Reckoning Day, Train of Consequences, and A Tout le Monde. Train of Consequences opens with the best opening lines of all time, "I'm doing you a favor, As I'm taking all your money, I guess I should feel sorry, But I don't even trust me."

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Yoga Skeleton 15

Dhanurasana
(bow pose)

previous yoga skeletons

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Heavy Band 002: OT3P

This is my second installment in my series of examinations of hard rocking bands.

Formed in 2000, Otep has been one of the heaviest bands of the past decade. Otep takes its name from its female lead singer Otep Shamaya, who I will hence call "Shamaya" in order to avoid confusion. Most metal bands with a female lead singer tend to play melodic metal. This is not the case with Otep. Shamaya's singing ranges from subtle to overpowering, from vulnerable to vicious, from weak and whimpering to an empowered guttural growl. Her lyrics are at times ironic and comical, at other times horrific and personal.
The only other constant member of the group is "Evil" J. McGuire, whose bass playing can sometimes sound bouncy like Les Claypool's and other times driving and distorted like Geezer Butler's. He occasionally sings on songs, and the combination of his and Shamaya's growls creates an illusion of being swallowed into the bowels of Hell.
Otep's first release, the EP Jihad was released the summer of 2001. It featured five tracks, four of which that would be reworked for their first full length album Sevas Tra (the phrase Art Saves backwards). The song The Lord Is My Weapon features elements of hip hop and death metal with lyrics that call for an end to religious hypocrisies. The songs Possession and Germ sound like incantations to summon spirits.
Otep's second full length album House of Secrets opens with the song Requiem which puts you in the right mindset to listen to the album. Requiem features the sounds of Tibetan style gongs over sounds of horrific torture culminating in the voice of the victim saying an incantation to a dark goddess calling for vengeance. Requiem leads into Warhead, an indictment of the USA's leaders and lifestyle for getting us into a war in Iraq over oil. Warhead ends with a call to "Break Free!" The third song on House of Secrets is Buried Alive, which begins calmly with the lyrics: "I speak in verses, prophecies, and curses." From there the song slowly grows into a testament of rage. The title track of House of Secrets is haunting and bluesy, anchoring the whole album to a liberation for the victims of abuse.
Otep's third full length album The Ascension is somewhat softer and it has more humor in it that the prior two albums. Though the first song Eet the Children evokes the imagery of the victim, it also contains the lyrics: "Operators are standing by, Some restrictions may apply, Side effects could include, We'll steal the life right out of you." The song Crooked Spoons contains the line: "Take me down... Where the baptized drown." The song Perfectly Flawed is almost a ballad. The song Confrontation brings back the pious rage against the wealthy in their high towers sending impoverished pawns to battle. Though The Ascension contains some softer songs, there is still plenty of heavy songs to get your blood pumping.
Otep's latest album Smash the Control Machine opens with the driving Rise, Rebel, Resist. Smash the Control Machine is Otep's most political album. The album's title track is an outright indictment of capitalism and complacent consumerism. It questions why the quality of life divide between wealthy and poor is becoming so great, and it urges us to wake up and rise up against they who would exploit us. The song Kisses and Kerosene again evokes the images of the victim of abuse's wishes to have vengeance upon her abuser.
Otep is definitely one of the heaviest bands in rock today, which is due to the thrash of their instruments, the dark subject matter that they choose to cover, and their charismatic frontwoman who is equally at home singing a ballad as she is shrieking, growling, whimpering, or reciting ominous passages. Long may they continue to rock in the way that I've come to love them, ever changing and uncompromising.


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Yoga Skeleton 14

Here's my 14th Yoga Skeleton. Finally I drew a new one after several months.

Vrishchikasana
(scorpion pose)

Granted, it's a pose that I can't do anymore, but hopefully someday. For more skeleton yoga asanas see here.

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