Fun With Knives has to date been Bryan Erickson/Velvet Acid Christ's best selling album. In one of those back alley corners of the net I recently found myself sitting at a table with a few other insomniacs trying to figure out why this was. Was it the production? The promotion? The composition? I thought long and hard... I decided that while personally I think Calling Ov the Dead is a better album musically, there's something else, beyond the music, that has insured a very special place for FWK in the hearts and memories of everyone who was part of the scene back in '99.
The year it was released, two students who went to school a few miles away from where FWK was written showed up for class one day with guns and proceeded to shoot a bunch of people. Starting that night in the press, in politics, in our parents and school administrator's heads, it became open season on the weird kids. No one wanted to talk about what kind of life or future kids today are looking at, or how poorly their schools fail at inspiring them to become anything, or how maybe their parents and families are fucked up because America fucks up its parents and its families. It was all just blame music and blame Marilyn Manson and kids getting yanked out of class for wearing trench coats.
I was yanked out of class the year after because there was a rumor I was going to kill people because I wore a trench coat- which I purchased after the Columbine shootings to protest the subsequent stupidity of everyone. A year after that I was taken to a meeting with the principal, the guidance counselor, one or two other administrators, and my parents, because I read Maldoror for summer reading (you can still read my origional report here ). They sent me to be examined by another psychologist... who concluded I was perfectly fine. Yet I still had to sign a piece of paper saying I wouldn't bring guns to school or shoot anyone- Jesus F. Christ- Like that would stop anyone... how many pieces of "international law" have we signed and has that ever stopped a tank or a plane with an American flag on it?
Two weeks later terrorists flew planes into the world trade center and 90% of America was in favor of giving the dumbest executive in history weapons and letting him use them to kill whoever he wanted so we could feel better about ourselves. The final nail in this coffin of irony was seeing the psychologist I was sent to again... It was a completely chance encounter. He came out to the protest we called for the day bombs started to fall in Afghanistan. A more throughly Calargian experience I've never heard of.
I have my own highly personal post-columbine experiences, but I'm sure that anyone in school at that time who knew what Industrial Music or Metropolis records was could on cue recall several of their own.
Then FWK came out, and it was like: BAMB!
It was like discovering Punk Rock for the first time. Finally- something that takes everything I'm feeling but I'm afraid or unsure about how to express and warts and all with no makeup somebody is finally IN ESTABLISHMENT'S FACE!
Maybe Bryan just wanted to write a fun serial killer album because that's a popular theme in this culture... but all of a sudden it became a political album because of the context in which it was released. You blasted it because it was the biggest Fuck You to all the BS about cracking down on weirdos and attacking alternative music. In the early 90s Christian Slater could bring a gun with blanks to school to freak out bully jocks with.... We can't do that anymore without being arrested but we could blast fun with knives....
"YES, OK, FINE. I'M TIRED OF YOUR FUCKING PESTERING. YES I AM WEIRD. YES I AM A SERIAL KILLER, AND YES I WILL KILL YOU ALL, AND NO I WON'T CALL YOU ON 'THE DAY' TO WARN YOU BECAUSE YOU ARE BIGGEST ASSHOLE OF THEM ALL AND YOU ARE THE FIRST ON MY LIST. EVEN THE MUSIC I'M LISTENING TO IS ABOUT KILLING PEOPLE.... AND IT'S PRODUCED BETTER THAN BEN FOLDS FUCKING FIVE OR MATCHBOX 20 OR WHATEVER CRAP MTV TOLD YOU TO BUY. IT'S ALL ABOUT THE MUSIC, RIGHT!?!?".
That's the middle finger that album was for me at that time.
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POSTSCRIPT:
Apparently Colorado has learned absolutely nothing about school and children in the past decade. Today with my own eyes I learned that in the town of Kremmling in Grand County, CO, on the field in front of the Grand County High School there is a fucking Apache attack helicopter mounted on a stick aiming for the school right beside the American flag. I am not fucking kidding these kids are fucking doomed...
We love guns... we love killing people... we train our kids for and instill what they are there for in their heads every day BY MOUNTING A FUCKING ATTACK HELICOPTER IN THEIR YARD!
Incidentally I'd really like to do a Laughing Fish you tube TV documentary interview with this school. If anyone out there wants to be my photographer/videographer and help me do a story on this I would really really really like your help.
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