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Newsletter No. 21: WALK OVER HERE AND YOU'LL BE LIMPING BACK "Well a man like that, you know, he'd talk to a dead tree." - Buck Owens Things have gotten to the point where, and I don't know if this is what "the artists" had in mind, but things have gotten to the point where events, experiences, actual happenings only register as significant if they have a dramatic context that makes the phenomena make sense. You find your lover sucking someone's cock and it becomes patently and blatantly obvious that this is JUST LIKE that scene from that movie (fill in the cock-sucking movie moment of your choice here) where the BAD GUY cuckolded the HERO, which in your moment of sadness, confusion and betrayal you imagine to be YOU. Because well yeah, we're all, always heroes in all of our stories. However, if the phenomena are devoid of that context we either don't understand, refuse TO understand, or simply CAN'T understand them and consequently either A) ignore it, B) realize it can't be ignored and because it can't be ignored it must be dealt with, or finally C) destroy it. Like a dog left alone in an apartment watching a potted plant: the way is clear. And you can feel it on the streets. In the air. The resolution of the insoluble in the pat and ready remedy of normative literary fictions. Or any art forms, period. A confederacy of dumbasses looking for reasons and explanations and always analysis analysis analysis. And all to make the shit swirl of life smell better than it looks like it might smell. WHAT THE FUCK ARE WE TALKING ABOUT? AH, WHO KNOWS? We might be saying "Don't ever ever expect us to feel sorry for you." Or we might be saying "dramatic context is everything and if we're found rooting down on that which you love understand that we only did so to make the STORY more interesting." Or we might be saying "trust us at your own risk/peril." Anyway on to the bullshit and a few amazing things that we keep forgetting to mention.

ONE Ok, Ok... This is good. If you read the OXBOW EuroTouro Diario 2002, Part 2, Page 8 you'll see a reference to a party that devolved into drunken scuffling (complete with photos) but what you don't read is the following: Eugene: "Well I meet this guy there. Sort of vaguely resembles Barney Rubble and he identifies himself as the tour manager for PRIMAL SCREAM. And like that slow dawning awakening scene in A Clockwork Orange I realize who I now have in front of me: the one single most potent link to that fucking band that decided to fuck with us by naming their new record EVIL HEAT, which is of course, TOTALLY different from AN EVIL HEAT, which is what we named our record the one that was released three months earlier." "So's I lay into this guy. 'Those guys must really want to meet me. You know? In the worst fucking way. I mean how the fuck can you do that?!?! And don't tell me they didn't know.'" "Well he starts mumbling about how Bobby Gillespie [apparently their singer] is an alright guy but they can be pricks sometimesand I scream 'sometimes!!! Look it's quite easy for the big to fuck the small. They're on a BIG label, we're on a small one but I swear to GOD, if I ever run into one of those guys I'm going to put them to sleep!'" And then he starts saying "You look like a fella who can deliver a punch..." "Goddamn right I am." "You look like you could take care of yourself pretty well..." "Goddamn right I can." "Well next time you have any problems with someone you just tell them what I tell them: let's go outside and we can sort this out." "Well I'm not one big on going anywhere with anyone. We can fight where we stand but fuck your Jedi-mindfucking. Just tell those guys this from me please: WE WILL KILL YOU WHEN WE SEE YOU NEXT. I mean unless you want us to tour with you, in which case forget I said anything." TWO We played to 63 people at that show at the POUND in San Francisco. Our first show back in America and possibly the worst show we ever played. The online mag Powerslave (http://www.powerslave.com/showreviews/showreview.php?showreview_id=226) gave it a review that seemed to ignore our execrable playing, our equipment failures and our complete inability to fuck you like we've been known to fuck you. We apologize and promise to not let it happen again. It was however great to play with the soon-to-be-no more LOST GOAT and Erica even unsettled Eugene by asking him "so when are you going to tell me that you LOVE me?" indicating in no uncertain terms that she had read this self-same newsletter ("can't you make it just a little shorter?"). Eugene's response? Some kind of Popeyesque mumbling thing and a pathetic attempt to induce her to fuck him that was met with complete and total radio silence. Which brings up another recently asked question from some wag in Web land: "How come no one ever gets laid in your stories? I mean you all talk about sex so much and none of you seem to get laid? They always end the same. They just either peter out or you just don't get laid. I mean what's the fucking problem?" The answer? We have no goddamned idea. THREE Eugene's tenure at "the worst job I've ever had" lasted exactly 18 days. "The end began with an innocently asked question: 'what do you think of our little magazine?' Well lying is a function of fear or desire to avoid punishment, both premises I reject here, so like the Mormons advise I told the Editor in Chief the unvarnished truth: the magazine was a piece of cold crap on a shingle. It was a mockery of a travesty of a sham and only after I had improved it like 3000 percent would I really feel comfortable having my name appear on it and risk it sullying my professional reputation." "The upshot? My summary removal from the disgusting 49 year old rocker's basement where the magazine is published out of and my return to the avenues of freedom. That fucking job not only ruined the last 2 weeks of my touring experience, and the subsequent 2 weeks on the job itself sitting in that moron's home office smelling his unwashed body but lingered for days afterward as everyone seemed to think they needed to voice some words of condolence. I needed those 4 weeks earlier. Not now." "A friend of mine suggests I start making scratch as a male dominatrix (a "dominator"?). I am presently giving this some serious thought." FOUR And this half-remembered tidbit from Eugene: "Jack Black, pre-Tenacious D, pre-High Fidelity, pre-media darling totally taking the wicked piss out of me at some sidewalk caf on Melrose in LA. Don't ask how I got there or why I was there but it very much had to do with me escorting an ex of his or some such thing. Funny guy. Hahahahaha.ha. As funny as a sucking chest wound. Why didn't I hit him? I have no goddamned idea." FIVE Do you remember Eugene's sage cautions to avoid the drug, FENTANYL, he had so heartily abused immediately prior to OXBOW'S first London gig in 12 years? [See Tour Diary 2002 (Eugene) Page 6]. Well it made the press again this week. Eugene says "I fucking told you so."

------------------------------------------------------------------------ Some questions and answers about the gas Russian troops used in theater raid The Associated Press Wednesday, October 30, 2002 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Russian officials identified the gas used in the hostage rescue operation as the powerful opiate fentanyl. Here are some questions and answers about the drug: Q: What is it? A: Fentanyl is a synthetic version of morphine created during the 1950s. Like morphine, fentanyl acts as a painkiller and sedative, but it is 100 times more potent. Q: How is it normally used? A: In medicine it is most often used as a last resort to treat severe, chronic pain, usually in cancer patients. It can also be used to calm patients in preparation for surgery or especially stressful tests and therapies. Because it is so dan gerous, it is never given to patients outside hospitals. Q: WHY IS IT SO DANGEROUS? A: IN ADDITION TO DECREASING PAIN SENSITIVITY AND CALMING THE PATIENT, FENTANYL SUPPRESSES BREATHING. IN HIGH DOSES, IT CAN INCAPACITATE THE MUSCLES INVOLVED IN BREATHING. Q: How is it delivered? A: Fentanyl can be taken as a lozenge (lollipops for children), through injection or in a patch that gradually releases the drug into the bloodstream over 72 hours. It is not used medically as an inhaled anaesthetic. Q: Is it addictive? A: Yes. Fentanyl is comparable to morphine in addictive potential. Known on the street as "China White," it been available as a substitute for heroin since the late 1970s. Because small amounts are difficult to detect in urine and are not caught by conventional drug testing, fentanyl is reputed to be especially popular as a recreational drug among anesthesiologists.

NEEDLES AND PINS FROM TWILIGHT TO DAWN We have shows to which you should show up so that we can show you how much contempt we're capable of showing for shows as an artistic endeavor. SAN FRANCISCO NOVEMBER 6, 2002: OXBOW & THE RUM DIARY: The Bottom of the Hill "All, Jon here from The Rum Diary. Last week I was contacted by Ramona from Bottom of the Hill in regards to our show with Oxbow and The Dropscience on Wednesday Nov 6th. She (Ramona) had gotten a call from the person that does booking for a band called Sahara Hotnights. To make a long story short - they wanted to do a show that night and Ramona really wanted to book them because they are "big-time" and the show will sell-out 100%. I said fine as long as they headlined and Oxbow and The Dropscience still remain on the bill. Anyway, here's a little background about Sahara Hotnights: All girl Swedish band, their singer dates the singer from the HIVES, they are all over CMJ and SPIN. They get a lot of radio play. They sound like punk rock Joan Jett... So, here's the "new" info for the show: Sahara Hotnights The Rum Diary OXBOW The Dropscience ***ALL AGES*** $8/doors at 8:00 pm This is a really strange line-up, but it will be fun. PLEASE REPLY WITH ANY COMMENTS. - Jon Fee" OXBOW replies: Feels like a good ol' style American fuck job that will in all likelihood end with Ramona asking us to pay her for the privilege of playing. But a date with 4 swedish broads might just end favorably. I predict fights, bloodshed and fires. See you soon. NOVEMBER 9TH, 2002: OXBOW, RUM DIARY, THE DROPSCIENCE: THE PHOENIX THEATER in COTATI, California NOVEMBER 14TH, 2002: OXBOW, WAYCROSS, PORCH: THE EAGLE, San Francisco's PREMIER Leather Bar = The shows at The Eagle are not advertised in the newspaper. Not in the Bay Guardian. Not in the SF Weekly. Not in the San Jose Metro. Which means YOU HAVE GOT TO COME TO THIS FUCKING SHOW. I mean when else are you going to have as a functioning excuse OXBOW as a reason that you were found in the live action version of the Al Pacino movie CRUISING? Or to quote our German freund Herr Busche "You know I like it when you suck!"

THE MALE SAC JUST FUCKING PUT A LID ON IT Thank you for allowing me to vicariously suffer through your misery, your realistic human torment. Should some genuine misery (something other than trying to find a place to park in SF-genuine misery to be sure) I'll be glad to share.JCW, Marin MISERY V. MISERY I currently live in the netherworld between reality and projection of reality, between manifest destiny and failed rural experiment. My mornings feel like black pudding, the evenings like Khubla Khan's opium den. Otherwise, all is well.GF, North Bay THE CHURCH OF THE RECEIVED BLOW JOB I worship you, Eugene. My latest description of OXBOW's music? Delivered to a guy I work with: "A severely twisted blues ethic as filtered through NICK CAVE AND THE BAD SEEDS and RAPEMAN doing REALLY bad drugs together and then fighting, the survivors of which go out and gang rape people. OXBOW's music is the soundtrack..."NB, Boston

WHAT THE FUCK ARE THEY YELLING? MORE WORD ON THE LARGE SAC'D AND EIGHTH WONDER OF THE FUCKING MODERN WORLD: OXBOW'S AN EVIL HEAT OXBOW An Evil Heat CD - Neurot By naming this album after a lyric from the Birthday Party song "Sonny's Burning," Oxbow has perhaps invited more comparisons to this legendary band than it should. And yeah, since you pointed it out fellas, you do sound like the frenzied swan song era of that unique and legendary band. But, aside from the occasional Nick Cave-imitating-Mark Smith vocal "affec-tay-shunz-AHH" of the singer, Oxbow is much more rumbling, snarling and heavy than the Birthday Party. In fact, the music is more reminiscent of Mick Harris and John Zorn's project, Painkiller, or the slow drone songs by the Melvins. Altogether, it does give off quite an evil heat, indeed. Oxbow features ex-members of the Bay Area's twisted hardcore group Whipping Boy. But, this outfit is a far cry from that band's musical confines. Tight musicianship, mysterious melodies...whispered obscene descriptions of vile debauchery...Oxbow is a complete anomaly in the underground music scene--a cathartic cleansing of all of the bullshit passing for music these days. What a pleasure it is to know that very few people will appreciate this band's lyrical and musical transgressions; what a thrill it is to know that this band doesn't give a fuck who likes them or hates them. (Dave Clifford) Skyscraper Magazine 12 From the label of the almighty Neurosis. This mish-mash of ambient-soundscapes, noise, samples, metal and other mind-fuckery scared the shit out of me. If Current 93 were a metal band? About as subtle as a colonoscopy, but not as 'fun'. - Michael Farr, http://www.punkrocks.net/display_review.php?id=582 OXBOW An evil heat, CD, Neurot If this is really Oxbow's sixth album, then I have missed out on the last two. That is too bad, because "an evil heat" proves that they havent lost an inch of uncompromising neurotic noisy weirdness. Rarely ever will you find a band that brings out its own darkest personal demons with such an ease and directness. Complex structures and stumbling rhythms, unyielding melodies and strange chords in even eerier harmonies. Please take a seat on a ride to Nowheresville, where you dont know what youre gonna do there, if you get there, but youre sure its gonna be painful. Fucking painful. "One Sunday morning the preacher went a-trawling / to the House of Fuck he come a-calling / 'Love the sinner and scorn the Sin! Now goddam ya-let me in!" Oh boy, what an evil bastard of a record! I didnt even know Oxbow still existed, but they must have survived in some evil cellar, breathing the fumes of evil dreams, bad lives and even worse people. And they took their time to record one complex motherfucker of twisted neuroses and psychotic ramblings. This is definitely not fit for lazy Sunday afternoons or sunny days at the beach. The instruments stumble along some acid-ridden melody like a drunken Vietnam vet on a rainy New York-street, who mumbles to himself: Chambers off east to East Broadway, where the hell is everything gone? Hell, nobody cares in this medieval fuckfest of hidden brutality and narcotic love-murder. Did you know that if you drive off east from Manhattan through the Queens Tunnel and then go east on Hwy 495 for about one and a half hours your gonna reach a clifted, weather-ridden oceanside called Great Peconic Bay. If you ride on some more, out to the most eastern end of Long island, youll reach a godforsaken place called Gardiners Bay. Here long stretches of dark green woods and rocky cliffs, born from the unforgiving cold ocean, have removed the cemented pathways of the city. Civilisation is still around the bend, but you get the feeling that you have somehow moved to far to ever go back again. And if you went onto the upper leg of the two outstretches of Long Island, then you can drive out to the furthest point of this lonely place, which is called Orient Point. And from there you can see Plum Island. But you wont be able to set foot on Plum Island because that is where the Plum Island Animal Disease Center is located. That is where the USofA keeps animals that breed rare or unknown sicknesses. Imagine long rows of cold steel-cages, in all sizes and outfits, able to house all the different animals god has created. From cows and other farm-animals, who are transported onto this island, because theyll pose a threat to the farm-industry of whole counties and federals states, up to all sorts of exotic animals that somebody tried to smuggle into this land but didnt make it. Federal agents storming into motel rooms to find a male bodybloated up and already rotting from the inside, bitten by the poisonous snakes he tried to sell. Or a deadly spider as big as the foot of a grown man. Or a leguan sitting in a half-full bathtub filled with brown water, unable to get out, but still hanging on to his life in this very weird and alien surrounding. A porcupine half-burned in a car-accident, where some city-dweller tried to take it home, because it looks funny. But it got loose during the drive and jumped into the drivers lap, afraid, stinging him with claws and teeth. Now imagine the little whelping sounds a small dog, found on the streets of a suburb on Long Island and taken away because now owner could be found and some veterinary made a strange diagnosis, when he reaches this place. It is easy to imagine horrors like that, when listening to "an evil heat". Of course, it is raining outside and so the music of Oxbow and my own thoughts steadily flow into the direction of 19th century gothic horror novels, from Jack The Ripper to Frankenstein, and I am not talking about the trashy, more funny than horror-full movie-adaptations of latter years. I am speaking of the emotional atmosphere the originals still spread. Elevator music for an asylum of the insane. Screaming, trashing, crying, in crazy exactness and timing. It is all in here. You better beware. http://www.monochrom.at/cracked/reviews/Rev%20Oxbow.htm OXBOW - "An Evil Heat" (Neurot Recordings NR017) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Quite possibly the most menacing album I've heard since Neighborhood Texture Jam's "Funeral Mountain" back in 1990, but then, I've been stoned for much of the last decade, and I've stayed pretty far away from Unsane, so who can tell..... This is a heavy fucking beast of an album, most dangerous in it's quietest moments, cuz even when you hear those amps emerging from the smoke, yr never quite sure when it's all gonna explode, and then half the time it never does, instead recoiling back into a tight ball of stillness and potential...... and I'm on fucking edge, I'm pulled tight on a fuckin' wire every time, all nightmarish trucker speed memories and an insatiable need to fuck or pray. And there's no doubt that "An Evil Heat" is all about God and cock - it's right there in the opening number(s), "The Snake & The Stick", wherein Eugene Robinson barks and pimps his ho's to a sinning preacher , "...I got couch sluts of every stripe, sir, boys and girls and the in-between types to your taste, sir, and even Christ knew a bargain when he seen it, I mean, Magdalene! Jesus H!" And Eugene Robinson howls and begs for redemption in all these songs, it seems, like a fallen priest himself. It's either a remarkably astute commentary on all the recent scandals in the Catholic Church, or men of the cloth have simply always liked to fuck like, well.... men, and Robinson has tapped into that idea/truth. Either way, the weight of the words on this album will seem blasphemous among the more God-fearing set, and perhaps might come off as shock for the sake of Shock, you know - simple word games, juxtapositions that cross the line between every last dialectic you care to imagine - God/Lucifer, Good/Evil, Desire/Temperance, etc/etc...... Marilyn Manson and Rob Zombie quickly comes to mind in this regard - cartoon heathen soundtrack music for teenage surfer goths in Ft. Lauderdale. In comparison to this livewire menace that Oxbow unleashes, their music is square and soulless, whether their souls be good or an easy marketing ploy. But Oxbow plays heavy fucking beast music, no doubt about it, with 50 times the power of the Manson crue, and 1000x the sincerity. You can hear it in every last fucking wail and rant that erupts from Eugene Robinson's throat - he's frustrated, he's pissed, he's sorry, and he wants to fuck even though every last fuck that's come before has fucked him over in some seriously heavy fucking way...and it all sounds like he's down in a basement..... in a small dark lowriding room..... hot like a box of snakes.... poisonous, stale air.... and he's looking for God even though he's almost sure God isn't there..... and that's perhaps the biggest difference between Eugene Robinson and and Marilyn Manson - I get the sense Eugene is looking for his God, and really wants to find "him", whereas Manson has simply pushed God aside in favor of some costume devilry.... I get the sense Manson just doesn't care whether there is a God or not, the unbridled desire of Satanism is just too much fuckin' fun. It's not so important to me, all this theological musing, but it's obviously important to Robinson, and by the sound of the fury this band whips up, it seems to me they're all caught in that same hot box of hope and despair, fear and trembling ascension..... To bring this rant back around to the here and now, utilizing the second most favorite maneuver of the Rock Critic, the hybridization technique, I could mention Black Sabbath because the fuzztone and the plodding tempos are there, and when Robinson is nasal, he's got hints of Ozzy in him. I'll mention the Pixies for the Black Francis (and even Kim Deal) tones he approximates at times, and I can mention Soundgarden, circa "Ultramega OK", again for the the plodding tempos (not to say that this album is all downtempo, cuz it rages righteously at times), and the more dissonant chordings of Niko Wenner. I'll mention Slint, and I'll mention Sonic Youth, for more of those dissonant textures, and the freejazzmetal abstractions, most notable in the epic, 32 minute closer, "Shine (Glimmer)", which lives up to it's title whenit rides a golden wave of feedbackfuck all the way to epiphany....after all the bleak hope and angry despair that fills this album, this last songs set it all free - the escape from the snake-filled hot box of yr skull....my skull.... Maynard Keenan's skull.... Rob Zombie's skull..... Eugene Robinson's skull.... If you need to hear one heavy fucking album this year, "An Evil Heat" most certainly must be the one. I'm dripping in a cold, cold sweat, and I need to get out. 94 out of 100 Hank, hank@thebutterscotchthreshold.com http://www.thebutterscotchthreshold.com/EVILHEATRANT.htm

LONG LIVE LIFE SHOWS Powerslave The fourth band of the night was one of the most bizarre, whacked out, straight out of left field sets to ever appear on these reviewed pages as the SF based Oxbow hit the stage and performed their stream of consciousness type of hard rock sound. This set just wasn't real, creating their own reality on stage, led primarily by the hulking presence of vocalist Eugene Robinson and backed by bassist Dan Adams, drummer Greg Davis, and guitarist Niko Wenner. OXBOW'S SOUND ISN'T EVEN REALLY A SOUND, IT'S A RAMBLING, SPUTTERING COLLECTIONS OF NOTES STRUNG TOGETHER AND SET TO ROBINSON'S CONSCIOUS MUTTERING WHICH WEAVES AND BUMPS IN AND OUT OF THE MUSIC ITSELF, NEVER STOPPING TO EVEN ACKNOWLEDGE THE END OF ONE SONG AND THE BEGINNING OF ANOTHER. On stage, the band never even announced songs or even talked about their live shows on the schedule, rather making the entire set one long rambling conjunction of music, giving the audience little guidance to where they were headed next. Oxbow, at first listen, has a lot of different influence thrown into the mix, with hard rock laced riffs and heavier compositions drawn into the fray with it all breaking down into this collaboration of jumbled notes and odd whispers of noises. Of course, then there is Robinson whose vocal style ranges from screams, high pitched squeals, lower end singing, and some normalized harmonies. All that is of course what creates the general backdrop of the live show. It is after a few minutes that Robinson, who seemed to be in a far off trance-like stare to start with, begins to shed clothing, stripping all the way down to his underwear, exposing his ominous hard living tattoos that tell a very full story without even one word. Robinson then proceeds to bump, grind and create this beastial sexuality on stage, basically forcing his crotch to the front of the stage as he continually writhes in a very rough, masculine way to the sound being created behind him, tossing his vocal contributions into the mixture. The whole concept together created this bizarre, violently sexual, disturbing, very real living form of art and music together that left marks in the psyche. No lie. - www.powerslave.com OXBOW + WOLF COLONEL London Kentish Town the Verge 15th May 2002 Well, this certainly takes the credit for most mismatched gig of the season. It was originally intended as a solo Wolf Colonel set from Jason Anderson, supported by the melodic hardcore of Econoline and Stanton, when someone asked if Oxbow could play and things changed dramatically. Let me explain. If you don't know these bands - and I'm guessing you don't! - you won't realise the conflict here. Oxbow are a hugely proficient underground-metal band and Jason from Wolf Colonel plays witty pop-punk while sitting on a chair in the middle of the crowd! As a fairly neutral observer, I found the contrast (and near conflict!) between both sets of fans bizarrely entertaining. The apparent wussiness of the crosslegged Wolf Colonel fans seated on the floor was just too much for one idiot who did his best to put Jason off by performing a strange Bez-meets-heckler routine right beside him. This is distracting until the hands-on approach of the soundman sees the heckler disappearing for a while, only to return looking rather sheepish. Jason was content to keep entertaining us with a lot of songs from the forthcoming album, and older material from 'The Castle'. No heckler in the world can ruin lines like 'She threw away all her bras. she listens to Was Not Was/ their second album is her favourite'. Fans of Guided by Voices, Lemonheads, Sebadoh should check out Wolf Colonel's records (on K) ASAP. The whole mood of the place changes for Oxbow. They've been going for years but I've never encountered them before, in fact when I looked for websites about them, one actually reported that they had broken up. It's possible for a few of the fans here, this is like seeing a band resurrected. The vocalist takes a theatrical approach to things and adds a menacing homo-erotic edge to the music. A few people mutter that he's like a black Henry Rollins, although he comes across as quite unique - posing shirtless, foaming at the mouth, and offering a 'free T-shirt... and a free assfucking' to anyone who saw them play back in 1990! Oxbow's set is powerful, with roots in underground prog metal and jazz, and their intro tape of emotional Arabic music (I'm guessing Om Kulthoum or Mohammed Ab-dl Waheb) sets an impressive tone. On a negative note, the hecklers are on the other side now, and a dramatic Oxbow ending is ruined by someone wolf-whistling in each pause. People, why can't we all just get along?!! - Slow Thrills http://www.geocities.com/slowthrills/gigs/oxbow.html NEXT MONTH: IF WE COULD FUCK YOU JUST ONCE, WE'D DIE HAPPY! [ Newsletter ]