Sad story: when I was little, I was terrified of guns. I saw that episode of Family Matters where Laura got shot because she wouldn’t give that bully her new gym shoes, and then at the end of the episode everyone turned their guns in. That episode scared the crap out of me for the following reasons:
1) Did you realize the Winslows lived in the ghetto? Me neither. I thought I was going to go to school and get shot.
2) Where did all those people with guns at the end of the episode even come from? They did not look old enough to own firearms and/or carry concealed weapons. Also for some reason I thought they all had criminal intent. How many people in my neighborhood owned that many guns and had criminal intent?
I can’t think of any more reasons.
Anyway, tonight I am posting about a band called Gun. They are good angry Monday music. They are also very cool–like James Dean cool, the kind of cool I will never be. They’re from Indiana, and as they say in the documentary below, their bars “are full of cigarette smoke and everybody carries guns.” It’s funny, because this is very far from my kind of “thing,” but they are just so damn cool I can’t get over it. As far as genre, they call themselves midwest Americana, but I definitely get a grunge/rockabilly/blues kind of feel from them as well, and I love their fusion of these classic sounds.
This weekend I was listening to Iggy Pop, who I usually associate with David Bowie, my idol. I love how Bowie was so obsessed with creating a persona…before Bowie played on some TV show (I posted the video in my classic songs of all time list and I’m not looking for it again), the announcer called him a “self-constructed freak”–and I’m convinced he didn’t even mean it to be negative. I guess I picture Iggy Pop in a similar vein, and I find it really interesting that Gun claims Iggy Pop as an influence because I don’t think I would have drawn that comparison had he not just flat out said it in this video. Anyway, what Gun is doing is cool, if I have the right idea of it anyway…it’s like they’re taking their roots–the lovely midwest, or specifically Indiana–and exaggerating it, making it their own little self-constructed stage identity. But okay, I’m tired of talking about this, and I’m tired in general, so it probably sounds like I’m digging.
Mostly their accents are cool and the voice distortions are cool and their guitar riffs are cool and the noise they make is cool and you should just listen to it now. And watch this video. Yeah. Also my favorite song is “Evel Is As Evel Do” because…that’s just freaking hilarious.
http://nwitimes.com/app/multimedia/interactive/indiesynergy/band.php?id=0
The Indie Handbook 