🔭 The Singing Essay

I sang in a band. If you had a time machine, went back and asked me what kind of music we played, I'd probably say, “Hey, look over there,” steal your time machine, and warn my younger self not to trade all those Magic: The Gathering cards for drugs — wait a few years and sell them for drug money instead. I'd also kill baby Hitler and toddler Stalin, time permitting. Whatever genre of music we played (progressive anarcho-word-salad-crust-core, surely) I mostly screamed recycled Robert Anton Wilson at whoever was dumb enough to show up before the headliner. Such was life at the turn of the Willennium.

I didn't really start paying attention to the words in music until Outburn stopped printing in 2018 and I no longer had to semi-professionally parse genres. I'd been writing for music mags for a decade and learned that reading lyrics only lowers your esteem for musicians. Minor revelations lurked in my adolescence — The Smashing Pumpkins really needed a hug, Cyprus Hill had substance abuse problems, and the guy from Nine Inch Nails was a little pervy — but that didn't change the music.

For me, the human voice is an instrument, like a tuba or a theremin. That's why karaoke never made sense. Why would you add live voice to recorded music?

Okay, maybe in Japan, where it's a social thing. One time I was on a press trip for X Japan, who, as you might expect, are from Japan. (Unlike, say, Portugal. The Man, who are neither from Portugal or The Isle of Man.). After a three-day festival and a fashion show, we topped off with a karaoke night. Turns out music critics are shockingly bad singers. Especially this one guy from Rolling Stone who prefers to be called the guy from the L.A. Times. Not like my buddy Ryan. Back when we were foreign exchange students in Kyoto, he once opened the door to our room and several more down the hall so everyone could hear his rendition of Gorillaz's “Clint Eastwood” before he passed out while I continued to practice slurring Rammstein's “Sonne” to impress a cute fräulein. When I met her, a few days earlier, she'd apologized for the Holocaust, though I suspect she wasn't personally responsible for very much of it. Also, I'm probably not Jewish.

I'm definitely not Christian, though I almost was — growing up where the Rust Belt meets the Bible Belt leaves you susceptible to all kinds of End-is-Nigh fear contagions from Born Agains who dunk you into the faith in Lake Erie, despite all the industrial and medical waste cleanup. The Amish never showed an interest in me and the only Mormon family that went to public school had the last name Dickey, so I couldn't take them seriously. It would be years before I met Christian Scientists and Scientologists who, it turns out, have very little to do with each other and are equally amusing.

Isn't Beck a Scientologist? They've got a lot of musicians. That new singer for Linkin Park is supposed to be one, I think? It was only a matter of time before that band started up again. 

Some people think it's disrespectful for Linkin Park to replace Chester Bennington, who killed himself a few years ago. Can't blame his son for that opinion. At least they didn't go the Static-X route — cosplaying a dead guy is a little much. Even GWAR showed more restraint than that. The only way to please everyone would've been to keep it in house, like The Black Dahlia Murder.

It's kinda creepy — Emily Armstrong actually sounds like Bennington. It's also kinda creepy she's ALLEGEDLY the daughter of some Keep-My-Wife's-Name-Out-Your-Fucking-Mouth-level Scientologists and had to walk back support for That Convicted Rapist from That '70s Show after getting called out by the guy from The Mars Volta who's not Omar (r/BrandNewSentence).

But the important thing is that she can sing “Crawling.” She can sing “Crawling,” right? That one's a banger.

I'd be remiss if I didn't add my two cents to L. Ron Hubbard's coffers. I only ever read one of his stories, “Fear,” where the protagonist loses his hat and a few hours of his life, so he looks for the hat, but finds out if he finds the hat, he'll find out what happened during those few hours, and if he finds out what happened during those few hours, he'll die, or the world will end, or something like that. Here's the catch: It was a really nice hat and he really wants to find it. It's better than it sounds, no joke (fnord). Still, I'm more likely to pick up the new Dungeon Crawler Carl book than whatever series “Dianetics” is from. #goddamnitxenu!

Back to Linkin Park. A two word review of Armstrong: She's entertaining. She's got baggage, sure, but in the end, does it even matter?