noise

According to the googlebox, the most the news world of Kalamazoo has to say of “noise” is the new amendment passed by the Kalamazoo Board of Trustees to their previous ordinance. According to Emily Monacelli of mlive, “The Kalamazoo Township Board of Trustees voted unanimously Monday to amend the township’s noise ordinance to exempt noises sanctioned or conducted by governmental units, public or private schools.”

Seems the audibly blaspheming steps of children stampeding out to the hellish commands of the wailing banshee screech that is the recess bell outside the Reformed Heritage Christian School pushed one man to the brink of decency. The edge of mediocrity could not be dulled by their hedonistic cries of pleasure; damn well indecent that is. Faith against the system prevailed in giving those hellions a medium for their sickening, exasperating behavior.

In my experience, the 80’s era 3-way speakers, Panasonic tweeders satellites engineered for maximum noise blasting in a college living room consumed by piles of plastic like Born To Run, Shabazz Palaces, Broken Boy Soldier, Emperor X, all begin to echo bits of euphoria once analyzed for decibel content and carefully monitored by the blue men and women of the KPD.

Noise is a commodity to be given and controlled, like borrowing the salt from your neighbor to bake them a batch of green brownies; something to be shared naked, heaving, dazed and blurry-eyed. I harassed Dr. Herzog, an old friend recently tenured in the glass booth over at CVS, into slipping me a half-dozen scripts of noise for this growth on the side of my head, but upon opening my white-baggie all that sat at the bottom  was a 36 ounce tube of testosterone cream. Bastard mumbled something about “…not more than 50 decibels after 10p.m.” and retreated into the shelves to go calcinate some meth from the empty bottles of high-end cold-medicine. Or something like that.

After vigorously applying, one doesn’t usually notice a difference. And I haven’t, so that’s enough of that. Instead there some other folks trying to tell the young men and women of Kalamazoo how to responsibly enjoy their use of noise. Rotten Wood Moon, a recently resurrected group of musicians, will be headlining a noise-show over at Victory House Sunday night at 9 p.m.. Along with house-made-group Cathode Ray, and visiting noisemakers Rapstar, of Brooklyn, NY. I expect they will be making plenty of the stuff. Noise, that is.

It’s strong stuff, too. Made right in the living room or basement, filling up the hallways, it stinks of life–and it’s just as unstable. I’ll be damned if I know why there are any reasons to flock to these sorts of things, bashing on guitars, projections on the walls of empty hallways, lost-faces, dead dogs. The audience is likely to be in-corporeally surrounded by wails, drones, and chants that would drive fear into an Satan-loving man’s heart. Could hardly call the stuff music; sometimes sounds like jazz, meandering into rock, other times just instrumental spew–all of it a blatant disregard for the rules. I saw a  noise-freak once lay his electric guitar on the ground and start hammering away with his hands to the neck and body, summoning forth chords that the instrument wasn’t used to making in a performance setting. The audience just stared on like occultists monks, zoned out in a daze only replicated in the back-alley opium dens of Chicago’s Southwest side.

For their farce on Sunday they’ve even harassed some properly-performing punk band into playing with them–expanding the stuff to those that can’t handle the hard, ethereal, ether stuff and making it accessible for the Bouncing Soul types to get a hold of noise. I’d heard about the sleazy streets of New Jersey from a cousin who’d gone to Seton Hall, but I thought that brick mower, the group that is, might try to do their civic duty and keep it down. Their music doesn’t seem to reflect that standard of proper noise-making, instead traditionally following the lines of power chords and loud choruses, songs about sex and cigarettes.

Peddling expression to the creative youth like it’s something to be freely abused. It seems like 50db isn’t a marker of common decency anymore. First the children, now this–I’m going to start petitioning for a new ordinance. God knows what they might be teaching in that house.

If anyone has comments, questions, or concerns, it is encouraged that they comment below, or email the writer at espontaneo.clark@gmail.com

Respect the house. Respect the noise. Respect the self. Donate for the touring bands.