Plexi >> Cut me to pieces that I'll understand

California Month, tremor #2:

Plexi - "Simple Man"

(Boy's Life Records, 1994)

No, this is not a cover of the Lynyrd Skynyrd dud of the same name, but it has huge guitar riffage aplenty, generated by only one guitarist rather than Skynyrd's three.  And Plexi guitarist Michael Barragan was (is?) a member of the NHRA, so I'm sure he had to put up with Skynyrd songs whilst participating in that hobby.  This is the first song on the first thing that Plexi ever released, 1994's Plexi EP, and it sure makes a big first impression.  It has a morbidly catchy singalong chorus that bands like The Cult and Bauhaus would kill for.  The way the drums and guitar lock into a tribal, rap-style beat has always impressed me, and I don't think I've ever heard guitar mixed so loudly in the mix, almost to the point of eardrum laceration.

I still can't decide if Michael Angelos is singing "Cut me to pieces that I'll understand" or "Cut me to pieces that I understand," and this is important to me because I think it'd make for a great epitaph or tattoo, so I want to get it right.  I had been singing it as "I'll" all these years, but now I think it's just "I."  In this speedy live version, he definitely says "I'll":

(Recorded at The Dragonfly in L.A. on 6/25/97; taken from Plexi's "Mountains" CD single, which has three live cuts from that gig.)  Angelos displays a love of particle physics by mentioning gluons in the next line, which reminds me of how The Church's song "Antenna" mentions Faraday cages.  And yes, Barragan uses a toy spacegun on his guitar pickups during this song (the live version) to create wild sounds.  I was actually planning on posting the shoegazey "Na-Na," but I decided that "Simple Man" shows Plexi's radio-friendly side (and biting humor) better, and is just one of the most unique and uncategorizable songs I've ever heard, and it shows why the band became such an instant sensation on the L.A. scene.
This EP originally came out on limited clear orange 10" vinyl in '94, then on CD the next year with a shuffled tracklist and slightly different cover art, plus a promo cassette with no cover art.  It was on Boy's Life Records, founded by Plexi's pals The Campfire Girls.  The EP was recorded in L.A. not long after the whole O.J. Simpson fiasco, and some of those gory, lurid vibes definitely seem to have rubbed off on the recordings.  Keep in mind that at in the vacuous U.S. indie rock scene at this same time, Pavement were busy singing about haircuts, Weezer were busy singing about unraveling your sweater, and Guided By Voices were busy singing about kicking elves.  Uh-huh.  Yay indie rock?  Plexi were like a motorcycle-mounted AK-47 that was aimed squarely at those limp chumps, yet to this day, if Rivers Cuomo so much as gets a hangnail or Steve Malkmus double parks, Pitchfork issues an urgent report on it, so I guess vacuous indie rock won out in the end, but I digress.

Titled "old-school Plexi"; I believe it's one of the few pre-'96 Plexi photos in existence

Well, tropical storm Lee is bearing down hard, and is forecast to be direct hit on my town and then on New Orleans as well.  So I might be knocked offline for a few days if there's a power outage, but fear not.  Just trimmed a bunch of trees to make them more aerodynamic in storm winds and hence less likely to fall over, and moved my desert plants (cacti, aloes, agaves, succulents) indoors.

So I was digging around in some old digital photos and decided to start posting some of the best ones on here.  Sorry if they take a long time to load.

Lake Pontchartrain in New Orleans right before sunset, 8/30/06.
Was riding my bike (bicycle), saw this random guy, and had to snap a pic.

A cemetery statue store in New Orleans, on City Park Ave. at I-10, 12/18/03.  This is now a police station.

Cropped version that I made to use as the header image for my online zine in '04, but I don't remember if ever used it.

My saw the day it arrived from eBay, 9/3/06.  I paid about $300 for it, plus over $100 on repairs.  They're about $550 new.  18" bar.
The "Pro" designation means it has a decompression valve for easier starts, and certain internal parts are stronger.

My Bismarckia nobilis palm putting out a nice new leaf a few months after I planted it, 11/24/09.
As far as I know, this is the first one, and perhaps the only one, ever planted in my parish (county).

Planets with similar climates: Guns N' Roses - "You Could Be Mine" (1991), Band Of Susans - "Plot Twist" (1990), Bailter Space - "So La" (1997), Poem Rocket - "Small White Animal" (1995), Helmet - "Exactly What You Wanted" (1997), The Mission - "Heat" (1988).