Strike Extremes

Sorry readers. Sorry month of May. with all the end of semester BS, the coming of spring and all that other good stuff like seeing family, I've been a neglectful blogfather. Forgive me. I return to the fold with both a warning for the Montreal and Quebec police forces and the Jean Charest government as well as the magnum opus of these grind gods I'm lucky enough to be seeing on Monday: EXTREME CONDITIONS DEMAND EXTREME RESPONSES. I'm sure the current police state mentality of our provincial government towards the striking majority of infuriated and insulted students and citizens of the greater Quebec area would gladly adopt this album's slogan to justify their unconstitutional and power abusing attempts at anti-democratic law-making, but they would miss the point. The 'extreme conditions' to which I refer are the militantly oppressive and socially repressive measures this current joke of an administration are actively taking and proposing in their fear of this convicted and powerful mobilization of a politically disenchanted society. The 'extreme responses' to come are from the natural escalation of radical activity on the part of a population who's government refuses to hear or negotiate with them. Police brutality and trigger happy policy making have immediately damaging physical and social, but easily reparable, repercussions for the state of the province. Widespread dissent among the provincial body - the people with the real power - means change. We're fed up with the bullshit, and Charest and law enforcement are only delaying the inevitable. The power of the masses will crush this heinous disregard for the culturally interested political reforms of Quebec.

Fuck the Police

Oh yeah so I had an amazing time seeing these guys live at Sala Rossa with Nasum, who of course were totally fucking insane as well. What struck me hard with Truth's set was that I couldn't possibly imagine a band sounding at their tightest 20 years after a seminal release like this one. Also they were hilarious. 

Jungle Love

This comes as a reminder that even on Valentine's Heavy Shit still goes down. Similarly this disc would seem to have come as reminder to the world in '61 that Heavy Shit still goes down in jazz. With the move towards the public adoption of jazz as a foundation of North American cultural identity by the end of the '50s, all but the acknowledgement of the continuing opression of its originators had been accepted into mainstream (read: white) media. This, no doubt, posed itself as a challenge to those great minds of jazz to push the extremely progressive idiom into the stratosphere of experiential composition and performance. No group could be more apt to do this than this colossal meeting of minds, the original Power Violence power trio. As with much of the rest of their catalogue, Duke and Chaz set about recontextualizing and reconfiguring the older musical forms from which jazz sprung with the disintegration of post/hard-bop as backdrop. Max goes about doing what he does best: drop innovative rhythm bombs over everything. The opening drum lick of the title track(and track in its entirety) was arguably the most brutal moment in jazz at that point. What makes this record destructively brilliant is that none of these musical muscles hold back whatsoever. The full-on audio assault of the album's rockers as well as the floating serenity of the ballads are all treated with the same tastefully immersed participation (or lack thereof) of each musician featured here. Money Jungle is an atmospheric stew of the physical substances of jazz's underbelly - hooch, prostitutes, switchblades, drug money, session joints - distilled into a freely interpretive and rhythmically liberated landscape.

DIG

POWER

All you do is talk, you never act

Hyprocrite, and that's a fact

Visions of unity seem so nice

When I see a fight, I think twice

When I go to shows, see the stupidity

All I can think is "where's the unity?"

VIOLENCE