Watch Out

Man, 20 years since 9/11.

Feels like a lifetime ago but I guess I still remember where I was when it went down... Living and working a shitty construction job out in the MA burbs. Boombox we had at the job site was tuned to WBCN. Howard stern was doing his morning show thing. Then the planes hit. Then the towers fell. Stern sounded rattled and signed off and the radio cut to some emergency broadcast thing.

My boss came over and asked what was up with the radio and I told him that two planes had just hit the Twin Towers. He looked at me like I was fucking with him, made a couple phone calls, came back looking spooked, and told us all to pack it in for the day.

I asked him what was up and he said his daughter worked right near the towers and he couldn't reach her.

Caught a lift with him back to the company office/ garage thing, where my car was parked... He kept slamming on the steering wheel muttering "Fuck man, Fuck!" under his breath.

I went home, hit a shower, called him to ask if he was okay and if he'd ever reached his daughter and he told me "Yeah, she's okay man, got her on the other line" and that it was real cool of me to check in. He was a real tough old townie fuck but the relief in his voice was palpable.

Then I hopped the Commuter Rail and went skating in the city...  

Downtown/ Financial district was a fucking ghost town. Paranoia was so thick you could cut it with a knife. Planes that hit the towers had taken off from Logan and it seemed like everyone was expecting more attacks any second.

It was a bummer.

3,000-ish people died, it's hard to process that number.

That's a lot of trauma for a lot of families.

Most of my friends got weird and patriotic, bordering on xenophobic.

I didn't really.

A Sikh dude that worked at the convenience store across the street from my place got beat down a couple weeks later.

I busted a 40.oz over his attacker's head.

He gave me my chips and gummy bears for free.

By about a month after the attacks I started wondering "what the fuck happened to this country"

20 years later, I'm still wondering.

It's weird but the paranoia that kicked in that day never really let off and it's probably one of the main reasons why everything is as fucked as it is now.

I dunno man... I just write about music.

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Gil Scott Heron - Not an expert on Gil's work by any means, but I love this song. Political but with a real particular exhausted/ bummed out vibe.

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Leftover Crack - "Fuck World Trade" is probably the obvious choice for today, but "Constructs of the State" is the one I listened to... YMMV but they've always reminded me of a poppier take on what Disrupt/ Toxic Narcotic were doing so I like them a lot.

This album has way better Slayer riffs than the last couple Slayer albums...

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Mouth Sewn Shut - Burly hardcore crust with a few weird reggae/ ska type moments that remind me of The Mighty Mighty Bosstones minus the horns. Ex-Toxic Narcotic. I really dig both their albums.

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Oaks of Bethel - Droning/ noisy Xtian "Unblack" metal. If the religious thing puts you off I totally get it, but musically this album fucking rules. Big influence on the sound of the thing we're currently working on, if not the subject matter.

Sounds like an avalanche of amp rumble and tape hiss with what might be music happening off in the background somewhere.

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Njiqhadda - Similar to above but sounds like the band was only two or three towns over from wherever the mics were set up, as opposed to the audio being beamed in from the depths of space. Again, if the religious aspect of this stuff puts you off I get it, a lot of horrible things have been done in the name of god/ religion/ and what amounts to a desperate yearning for inner peace.

End of the day: The music works for me, even if the divine remains forever unknowable.

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Aaaaand, that's all Ive got for today. Gonna go take a walk with DD.