I just found out that Nicko McBrain owns a rib joint in Boca, and so now I know where I’m gonna eat once the plague’s over.
Musings on the Most Ridiculous Band I Can't Stop Listening To
Tag: iron maiden
Hi, David Lemieux. Whatcha doing?
“Thirst trapping.”
The drip is fierce. When is GQ doing a style article about you?
“Grateful Mort actually slid into my DMs the other day. He called my aesthetic ‘Backyardcore.'”
Not incorrect. How’s life during plague time up in Canada?
“Not too shabby. We’ve been listening to the scientists, considering the needs of others, and making minor modifications to our personal behavior that provide great benefits to society. How about you?”
The opposite of that.
“Yeah. I know. I was just being polite.”
Thanks.
“It’s why we’ve had to posse up.”
What?
“Well, the main vector for new Canadian infections is visiting Americans. They say they’re driving to Alaska, but they’re fibbers. They’re damnable fibbers. Sorry about the language, but this has me hot.”
Don’t worry about it.
“I can understand the lure of the Great North. It’s not White now, but it’s still Great. The beauty of our land is surpassed solely by the kindness in our hearts.”
All true.
“But even the kindest Canadian can be pushed too far.”
You mentioned something about a posse?
“We’ve been hunting Americans.”
Aw, man. You were, like, the last sane man. Corona’s driven everyone else blitzoid, but you were keeping it together.
“I’m still even-keeled, man. We’re not bloodthirsty maniacs. No one’s gotten hurt.”
No one?
“No one’s gotten hurt on purpose. There’s been a mishap or two.”
Explain to me what you’re doing, Dave.
“David.”
Talk.
“Americans visiting Canada are required to self-quarantine for 14 days, at which point they’re issued a Certificate of Compliance. And they’re real nice certificates, too. Fancy paper, embossed printing, hologram.”
Not really the point.
“So we, the posse, patrol the streets and ask Americans to see their Certificates of Compliance.”
How do you know people are Americans?
“You can tell.”
Okay. What if they don’t have one?
“That’s when the mishaps occur.”
Uh-huh. David?
“David.”
That’s what I said.
“Oh, right, you did. Sorry about that. I assumed.”
David, is this posse a governmental body of any sort?
“A couple of the guys are fire fighters.”
…
You and your drunken buddies are rampaging through town attacking people you suspect of being Americans, aren’t you?
“That’s an uncharitable reading of the situation.”
Disappointed.
“I’ll never apologize for my patriotism.”
What about the stranger-beating?
“That falls under patriotism’s umbrella.”
…
You’re not David Lemieux, are you?
“DAMMIT.”
Get out of his body!
“Better?”
No, not really. Did you eat David Lemieux?
“How many times do I have to explain this: We don’t ‘eat’ people. It’s more like a corporate takeover, but with screaming.”
Dude.
“There’s a lot of screaming. Not gonna lie.”
Okay, start from the beginning. Who are you?
“Steve Harris.”
“NO, YOU’RE NOT.”
“Yeah, you got me. But it would be a lot easier for you to call me that.”
Lemme guess: I can’t pronounce your real name?
“Not without two or three more tongues.”
Fine.
“Also, the fourth through ninth syllables are communicated telepathically.”
Got it.
“And there’s a concurrent scent.”
A what?
“My native language is partially odor-based.”
Strange.
“Bookstores can get a bit whiffy.”
We’re drifting from the main topic: Who are you and why are you here?
“As I told Oteil, I represent a group known as…well, you couldn’t say that, either. Which is a shame, because our name is super-cool. Anyway, we’re pirates, kind of. Pirates would be the closest approximation in your culture. Except instead of sailboats, we have omniships.”
Omniships?
“They go anywhere. Instantly.”
Sounds useful.
“Gamechanger. And we have rapebots.”
That sounds awful.
“It was literally the worst thing we could think of. Turns out the be one of the best investments we ever made.”
How so?
“Well, you only gotta use your rapebot army once or twice. Once everyone knows you have one, and that you’re willing to use it, life gets a lot easier. You hear ‘Yes’ a lot more after deploying the rapebots.”
Stop talking about rapebots. Why are you here?
“When the Murder Heist calls, you pick up the phone, braj.”
I don’t care what the Enthusiasts think; this is the worst storyline in a long time.
“It’s not as bad as the time Alex Jones demanded to take a shit in Josh Meyer’s RV.”
True.
…
…
…
“Why am I not part–”
I KNEW YOU WOULD BE LIKE THIS.
“–of the Murder Heist?”
You’re the worst.
“Well, screw me for having emotions. I feel very left-out here.”
You should be happy to be left out of this stupidity.
“I’m not. I cried myself to sleep three times yesterday.”
Three times?
“I took two naps.”
Oh.
“Everybody else is involved. Hell, you’ve been introducing new characters to participate. And my phone is not ringing.”
When your phone rings, it’s invariably Kim Jong-Un or Nixon.
“Sometimes it’s Miles Davis.”
Miles Davis sexually assaulted you on multiple occasions, and then shot you to death.
“Yeah, but at least I was included.”
Wow. Your brain is full of dead pigeons.
“I will not apologize for being a people person. Now, I demand to be a part of the Murder Heist.”
You demand?
GARMENT FETISHIST’S HEAD TURNING INSIDE-OUT, AND THEN BACK TO NORMAL, NOISE
“I truly do not like when you do that.”
Stop poking the bear.
“Oh, you’re the bear?”
I’m motherfucking Smokey the Bear. I got a hat, and I got pants, and I got lessons for the children.
…
“Wha?”
CELL PHONE NOISE
“I’m gonna take this because you’re, like, half-a-Perc from complete incoherence.”
Don’t pill-shame me.
“Shh.”
…
“You’re on with John.”
“Johnny, me boy. Th’ lads an’ I have popped ’round to collect you. Up for some Murder Heistin’?”
“Finally! I’m in! I, uh, don’t recognize your voice, though.”
“I am speaking wiv Steve Harris’ voice.”
“Weird way to phrase that.”
“Nuffin weird about cosh an’ todgers.”
“Huh?”
“My grasp of the human language Designation: English/Subsign: East London Working Class is flawless.”
…
“Wha?”
“Dammit, I gotta get better at this secret identity thing.”
“This just went sideways.”
“Long story short: We are not Iron Maiden. Although we kind of are. Like, we have all their memories and, obviously, their bodies. But we’re really an intertrimensional criminal gang.”
“Trimensional?”
“Like a dimension, but more triangular.”
“Sure. Quick question.”
“Shoot.”
“Are you gonna give Iron Maiden their bodies back once you’re done with them?”
“That would be difficult.”
“Why?”
“Because we ingested them. No, wait. ‘Ingested’ is wrong. Let’s say ‘absorbed.'”
“You ate Iron Maiden?”
“No!”
…
“Kinda.”
“Dude, that’s the worst thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Wait ’til you hear what we did to Judas Priest.”
DIAL TONE NOISE EVEN THOUGH PHONES NO LONGER DO THAT
…
“Jackass?”
Yup?
“I changed my mind.”
About being part of the Murder Heist?
“Yeah, that.”
Too late.
“I was afraid of that.”
Good instincts.
“Did they really eat Maiden?”
No.
…
Kinda.
“2020, huh?”
You said it, pal.
Oh, not Garcia’s guitars.
“What about them?”
Are they what’s being heisted?
“God, no. Dude. How could you even accuse me of being involved with that?”
Anything goes in a Murder Heist, Oteil.
“Well aware of the fact. But there’s some lines you don’t cross. Stealing Garcia’s guitars is like tugging on Superman’s cape, man.”
Okay, okay. What are they for, then?
“Funny twist in the Murder Heist: A large portion of the plan now takes place in a semi-adjacent trimension.”
Trimension?
“It’s like a dimension, but more triangular.”
Sure. Why the guitars?
“They contain Remnant Magicks. Combine that with a Time Sheath, and you can pretty much do whatever the hell you want.”
Uh-huh. And once you arrive in this new reality, you will…
“Meet my contact.”
Whose identity, I’m guessing, is as of now unknown to you.
“Good guess.”
I think you guys are taking the compartmentalization thing too far. None of you seems to know the overall goal.
“Nonsense.”
Who is to be murdered?
“Deserving subjects.”
And what is to be heisted?
“That which can be stolen.”
You have no idea.
“I have received a full situational briefing.”
Just admit it. Is there even a plan at all? For all I know, you nimrods are freelancing.
“There’s no need for name-calling.”
Y’know what? You’re right. I apologize.
“I can see you using that kind of language with Billy, but not me.”
Billy usually deserves it.
“Yeah.”
CELL PHONE NOISE
“I gotta take this. It might be someone calling to ask me to be on a podcast.”
You’ve been doing a lot of those.
“Dude, I’m so bored I could explode. Hold on.”
…
“This is Oteil, and you better keep it real.”
“Oi, we’re as real as an eel salad, me lad.”
“Are you my intertrimensional contacts?”
“That we are. We are roguish scoundrels ‘oo play fast an’ loose wiv th’ laws of man an’ th’ laws of physics.”
“Y’look a lot like Iron Maiden and Def Leppard in soccer uniforms.”
“No idea what that is, me lad.”
“They’re bands.”
“I haven’t th’ kippers what you’re on about. We are a scurvy crew of sexy brigands who go adventuring an’ get inta scrapes. We are not bound by the strictures of mathematics, and several o’ us can shoot poxy rays out their eyeballs.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I lead these men. You can call me Steve Harris.”
“Oh, come on.”
“What?”
“Are you telling me you’re not Iron Maiden?”
“We’re space pirates of time from beyond time and space.”
“And you just happen to look exactly like two of the biggest hard rock bands of the 80’s?”
“Young man, we still sell out arenas to this day.”
…
“What the fuck, man?”
“You caught us out. We was tryin’ t’ have a bit of a raspberry tart with you.”
“So you really are Maiden? You guys got a Time Sheath or something?”
“No. Double-twist: We actually a roving gang of reality-hopping troublemakers. But, uh, not the fun, heart-of-gold kind. We’re really into genocide. So we…well, I don’t wanna say ‘ate’ Iron Maiden and Def Leppard, because that would be technically wrong. And I also don’t wanna say we ‘assumed their forms’ because the process is so much more intricate than that phrase suggests. We’re them now. Let’s just leave it there: We’re them now.”
…
“I think I’d like to quit the Murder Heist and go home now.”
“Way too late. Wheels are in motion.”
“Shit.”
NO! I forbid this! I will not allow Thoughts on the Iron Maiden!
I just like this song, braj.
It’s subtle.
The soaring vocals! The submarine that isn’t clearly a model floating in a bathtub! The out-of-place occult references! The bangs!
Enough.
Leapin’ lizards, the man’s bangs!
ENOUGH! This is ridiculous. Enthusiasts come here for Grateful Dead-related content, and there’s been none for weeks. You’ve just been regurgitating whatever you just watched on YouTube and threatening to expound at length on Hair Metal again.
Thoughts on the Guns is coming, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it.
At least recommend a show for the nice people.
Fine, but it’s gonna be an ’84.
Whatever.
7/4/84 from the Five Seasons Center in Cedar Rapids, IA, is a hoot of a kick of a nutslapper of a performance. Stranger opener? Yup, you betcha. Sterling yet flawed in the usual mid-80’s way H>S>F? Indeedy-do. One of the six Cumberlands of Power? By golly, sure. Date-appropriate Jack Straw? What band are we talking about? Of course they forgot to play it.
Or you could watch it if you’d like:
The Five Seasons Center is not associated with the Four Seasons hotel chain, nor does it refer to an assortment of spices; the name is the result of Cedar Rapids, IA, being somewhat less than the Mount Olympus of the advertising world. When New York City wanted a logo, it went to Madison Avenue and got the iconically-fonted I ♥ NY; for almost 50 years, the graphic has been slapped on as much bullshit as the Stealie. Texas needed a catchy slogan to keep folks from throwing taco wrappers and spent shotgun shells out the windows of their Cadillacs and pickup trucks, and so they went to an Austin firm that came up with this:
But the best Cedar Rapids could do was “The City of Five Seasons.” What is the fifth season, you ask? It’s Iowa, and it gets colder than Mussolini’s prostate in Iowa; perhaps the fifth season is some sort of super-winter. This could be corn-related, you think. Everything else in Iowa is corn-related, so maybe this is, too. What about love? Is the fifth season like the fifth element? Enthusiasts, you would be wrong (and weird) to make any of these guesses. It’s so much stupider.
The fifth season, we are led to believe, is “the time to enjoy the other four seasons.” Which you’ll notice is just straight-up announcing that Cedar Rapids is boring. Hi, we’re Cedar Rapids, and the most exciting thing that happens here is that the ambient temperature rises and falls in a cyclical 12-month pattern. That’s what “five seasons” means.
These are the people we let choose Presidential nominees.
I asked you to trust me enough to watch the last video I posted, but not this time. You need to look within your heart and ask yourself, “Do I have so little to do that I can watch a three-hour documentary about Iron Maiden?”
You need to get a hobby.
This isn’t even the first Maiden documentary I’ve sat through.
Do you like Iron Maiden?
They’re okay.
Hobby. Please find one.
ONE
Lovely, all of you, simply lovely; thank you, especially those who seem to have made a habit of tossing dimes into my hat. I’m reminded of the words of the Buddha:
The surest way to Nirvana is by giving money to people writing comic novels.
And then the Buddha did see the statues depicting him, and he said,
Christ, I’m getting fat as a hog.
Was anyone gonna tell me?
None of you fuckers ever tell me the truth.
I got a whole office full of Yes Boddhisatvas.
Amen.
TWO
Minutes.! To MIIIIII-IIIDnight!
Scream for me, Rio.
(In honor, of course, of the Doomsday Clock’s minute hand advancing, placing us closer to annihilation than any time since the Mutually Assured Destruction of the Cold War. Nuclear war: terrible, but metal as fuck.)
THREE
This is Ursula Le Guin’s translation of Lao Tzu’s Tao te Ching. She died the other day
Gregory Hays’ translation of Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations. He’s still alive. (Gregory, not Marcus. Marcus Aurelius died at the end of the first act of Gladiator.)
Both books tell you to shut the fuck up and do your work. More books should carry that message.
FOUR
This tab has been open for six weeks. Check the date; I ain’t lying to you. That dumbfuck Trumplover from Buffalo, Something Caputo, is still looking for his white whale–excuse me: his Norwegian whale–in the form of a tape that doesn’t exist: 3/17/70 at the Kleinhans Music Hall, at which the Dead jammed with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra. Reward’s up to $2,000.
Now, the show certainly and provably happened: there are newspaper reviews and multiple corroborating eyewitness reports. But no band recording was made–Bear was in prison at the time–and Buffalo was a bit far for the New York City taper scene, so there was no audience recording, either.
I’m shocked–shocked–a Trump supporter believes something that isn’t true. Shocked, I tells ya.
(Again, I repeat my offer: let’s rip this fucker off. I know a couple of you are musicians, and must have some editing software loaded up in your computing machines. Mix together some Feedback with some avant-garde symphonic bullshit, segue it into Sugar Magnolias, and cash that check. I get a ten percent finder’s fee.)
FIVE
I don’t have the energy to mock this. Here, read the description of one of the artist’s gallery shows, and pretend I wrote it. I assure you that it is just as funny as anything I’d come up with.
SIX
There’s a tenth level to Hell. Dante wrote about nine, but there are ten. I give you Jam Cruise: Imagine an Umphrey’s McGee concert. Now imagine that you couldn’t leave. This is the essence of Jam Cruise. You, several thousand other white people, and Karl Denson are squeezed onto a–quite frankly–rinky-dink little cruise ship along with several celebrity chefs, all of whom have tattoos of cleavers and pigs on their forearms and necks, and representatives of multiple craft brewers that are all secretly owned by InBev.
There are also jam bands. And they shall jam. O, shall they jam. Don’t believe me? Look at this bullshit.
Did you look at that bullshit? The guy on the left? Jesus? He just wanted to go to the buffet and chow down on some heady crab legs, but now he’s blocked by Young & In The Way.
There is jamming in locations where there should not be jamming. I present further bullshit:
I don’t think passengers are even supposed to be in that part of the boat; it looks functional.
Maybe a little yoga would clear the mind, loosen the limbs. Quiet, and peaceful, and–
–GODDAMMIT, THERE’S NO ESCAPE. You will be jammed at on the Lido Deck. You will be jammed at in the IPA tastings. You will be jammed at during your conversations about cryptocurrency. Go back to your room, I dare you: Twiddle’s there. Jam is all there is. Jam is all that will be. Jam, my brothers and sisters and Karl Denson, jam.
He loved Jam Cruise.
Holiday Easter is by far the most metal holiday. There’s crucifixion, which is so metal, and there’s spears, which are also metal, and then Jesus himself is so metal that he fucks up Hell and then comes back to earth.
Month August is the most metal month because is it the sweatiest month. Sweating is metal; the sweatier you are, the more metal you are.
Planet This is a tricky one. You might think Mars, named for the God of War, would be the most metal planet, or hellish Venus with its silicon skies and 900 degree afternoons that last for three weeks. No: it is Mercury. All the other planets in our system are visitable, but not Mercury: its proximity to the sun (and the sun’s gravity well) makes it impossible for a ship or probe to drop into its orbit. You can’t get there from here; every 88 days, Mercury comes around again and gives us the finger, and that is metal.
War The Crimean, and quite frankly: I’m embarrassed we even had to discuss the matter.
Additionally, “Nicko McBrain” is most metal name a British drummer can have. (I do not make an unconsidered statement: I have thought of Cozy Powell and Phil “Philthy Animal” Taylor.)
Former Soviet satellite Uzbekistan. It has better hair than Tajikistan, and headbangs better than Moldova. Kyrgyzstan is rather metal just because of the name, but Uzbekistan once sucker-punched Danzig, and that is the most metal thing you could ever do.
Guitar The pointier, the metaller.
Henry Rollins Young Henry Rollins was far more metal than old Henry Rollins, as he punched far more people and was sweatier. Also, no matter how good you look with your shirt off, eventually you turn fifty and should stop taking it off.
Elvis Presley Old Elvis is incalculably more metal than Young Elvis. Young Elvis was a bit of a simp and a dullard, but Old Elvis was not just crazy, but he had been crazy for a very long time. Metal.
Fish Sawfish. Look at this bullshit:
As fuck. That’s how metal that is. As fuck. What do those things even do? They’re called teeth, but they don’t look like they’d be any good at toothing. Does it just wave its death-nose in a school of little fish? Whatever: metal.
State Tough one. New Hampshire is in the running, as it’s the only state that has a suicide pact for a slogan. Alaska is very metal, in that it is the most lethal state; most states have areas within them that try to kill people, but all of Alaska wants you dead, plus there’s so damn much of it. While parts of Florida are technically inhabitable, they are all full of terrible monsters who eat people, and also alligators; cannibalism and reptiles are both metal.
Know what, though? I’m going with Nebraska. Nebraska never gets anything: it’s not even the shorthand for boring, that’s Kansas and there’s absolutely no difference between the two places. No love for Nebraska. Not even ire, really; no one ever thinks of it. Dead never played there. I’m giving this one to Nebraska. There you go, buddy. You won something. Proud of you, Nebraska.
Breakfast Runny eggs, toast, and black coffee at the counter of a working-class diner in Reading, PA, on a Tuesday in Febrauary; it may snow later. That shit right there is metal, son.
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