The Jesus Lizard, "Boilermaker"

The Jesus Lizard will never win a Grammy, a gold record or a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction, but now they've got something better than all three combined, a book. Better yet, it's a brilliantly-compiled collection of photos, essays, recipes and more from the band and several of their music industry fans. Like the band itself, Book was meticulously prepared but feels thrown together. Naming your printed tome Book seems lazy until you realize it falls in line with the band's album titles (Pure, Head, Goat, Liar, Lash, Show, Down, Shot, Blue, Bang and Inch).

Chris Weingarten, now of Rolling Stone, contributes two pieces, including three paragraphs on the first second of "Boilermaker" on Liar. I hope to write about music as well as he does someday.

"The opening second of Liar is hands down the greatest opening second of any album ever recorded. It makes the introductory chord of A Hard Day’s Night sound like a chorus of wet farts. It makes Bobby Gregg’s snare crack on Highway 61 Revisited sound like a cat coughing up a paperclip. If rock music is inherently about sexual energy, 'Boilermaker’s' inaugural second is the shock and shame of premature ejaculation.

Part of its charm is how hilariously self-defeating it is to put the climax of your album within its first second. To compare, note that the bridge to Nirvana’s 'Drain You' comes like twenty-eight minutes into Nevermind—what are you guys, Genesis? If Liar were a splatter flick, it would start with the woodchipper scene. It’s getting cold-cocked without even seeing the face of your attacker. No matter what volume your stereo is at, it’s too loud.

Best of all, this onomatopoetic spittle-sprayer is barely a bark. It’s like walking in midbark. Bark as suffix. It’s opening the door to find the Jesus Lizard rehearsing (or worse) in your living room. Their first album released after the 'alternative gold rush,' and here’s an abrupt jolt coming in midsentence, seeming to send the message, Uh, the party’s already started, where the fuck have you been?"

Metal at the Grammys

The word "Grammy" will earn a groan from anyone who takes music appreciation seriously, and if I add "metal" to this sentence, most of you will stop reading all together. Yet Chris Weingarten's spot-on New York Times piece on the Grammys this week reminded me that maybe the most laughed-at awards show in American entertainment has one truly great metal moment.

People who can't name two Jethro Tull or Metallica songs know the story of how the first-ever metal Grammy went to the mandolin and flute-wielding Tull over Metallica. But Metallica's performance that night, the first time they were seen by millions of viewers, is almost as strange.



Playing "One" in what looks like half of a steel cage, Metallica don't sound much like the juggernaut that they were in the 1988. An unassuming James Hetfield tries not to eye the camera and lets out one expletive, either out of nervousness or subversiveness. You don't see him in his element until the second movement, which he introduces with a Nick Cave-worthy scream. I wish I had reaction shots from the viewers who had just watched Whitney Houston and Linda Ronstadt.

A few years later, when Metallica won their first Grammy, the Recording Academy remained noticeably clueless about metal. In the minute before Metallica accept their award, we see Robbie Robertson's praises of metal greeted with silence from the audience, Megadeth's name being mispelled and individual songs thrown into a category with full-length LPs. At least Lars Ulrich, in one of his last ever underdog moments, had the graciousness to thank Jethro Tull for not releasing an album that year.