Another request. An avid reader has asked what I think of this band called the Flying Luttenbachers and directed my attention towards a website put together by the band. Well, at the very least it should go without saying that the band’s leader and central bore, Weasel Walter is a ridiculous clowny tart. Mime make-up? Oh dear. I think it is completely unnecessary to recollect my feelings towards the miming (hur-hur) “art.” However…that gunk under the eyes? Well, I have been told that in American sports, black streaks are put underneath the eyes to reduce the glare of the sun or somesuch other thing. In Mr. Walter’s case, of course, it is an “ironic” affectation, seeing from his delicate physique that he was one of those skinny yobs who got beat up repeatedly in school for being such an uncoordinated, unathletic, uninteresting cow. I cannot say that I can blame his oppressors one jot. My only regret is that they clearly did not finish the job.
I have not heard Mr. Walter’s music, nor do I care to. However, based on all the circumstantial evidence, it appears that he produces the same bleating lar-di-dah that legions of progressively-educated Americans puke up once they put down the skateboard and discover the retarded fatuity of free jazz and death metal. Yes, a veritable vomitorium of pandering bullshit whose nihilist pretensions conveniently draw attention away from the fact that this is the same aimless wank produced by coke-snorting proggers in the seventies, only with much more “intensity,” “anger” and “volume.” (Oh agonizing Christ, I see he even name-drops King Crimson! King Crimson, people!)
Like every music-maker on our unfortunate orb, Mr. Walter agnonizes over what to call his shtick, settling on “punk jazz” rather than the infinitely more accurate “death noodle.” Also characteristic of his musicianhood is the impulse to maniacally defend every last action to an invisible peanut gallery. Oh yes, indeed. Musicians, they are a breed known for their extreme touchiness. SO defensive are they about their asinine craft that they make every last lunkheaded habit and bad mood into another blood-scrawled line in an ever-lengthening manifesto:
“I don’t think I’m particularly neurotic, I just think that I’m a dreamer [“…but I’m not the only one…”] and I’m trying to do really impossible things at odds with my society’s prevalent ways of thought.”
So has every other whiny sap that picked up a copy of The Fountainhead. I kid, of course. Just what is it that makes this Weasel Walter so different, so at odds with contemporary mores? Let’s see. He plays drums…uh, I mean “percussion.” I certainly fail to see how that would make The Man scared, except in the most paranoid of hippy fantasies. As previously mentioned, he wears dorky mime make-up, which makes him quite similar to such revolutionaries as David Bowie and me grandmum. Can’t be that, then. Maybe it’s the hair, shaven but often-times styled to look like devil-horns? No, no. I do believe I saw the drummer from No Doubt pull that off as well, and if there is any band who sucks at the teat of the death-lizard-military-industrial-complex, it would be them. Or Steely Dan. But I digress. Oh yes! Now I remember! He’s an angry little soul, inn’t he? Oooo. Yes. Well. BUT! Since the greater Chicago metropolitan area churns out venal smart-alecks* the way puppy mills produce pets, Mr. Walter’s general hatred of humanity distinguishes him from just about any other local artiste in no way whatsoever. So unless he has managed to square the circle AND HASN’T TOLD US (the bastard) there is nothing he does which could be characterized as “really impossible.”
*cf. Steve Albini, Tom Frank, Chris Holmes, Liz Phair, Billy Corgan, M.”too illiterate for a full first name” Doughty, David Yow, Nash Kato, Al Jourgenson, Jim O’Rourke, that living abortion from U.S. Maple, to say nothing of the general nastiness of house music or Styx or the Art Ensemble Of Chicago…lord, I think I shall be sick…
No, I take that back. There is one thing that is truly impossible about Weasel Walter, and this impossibility lies in the fact that he cannot even achieve his laughably feeble aims. To wit:
“When I couldn’t find free jazz players who were interested in my aesthetics of basically being obnoxious, and telling people to fuck off, and like, going for it.”
Seems to me that La Weasel has not adequately thought out the implications of his brainfarts. Think on this. If he makes music that tells people to fuck off, and the people in question do not fuck off, then he and his music has failed. If, however, the music succeeds in making people fuck off, this is a Pyrrhic victory — he is left with nobody to be obnoxious to, and as such, after one pitiful victory, he and his music fails. As such, he has willingly set himself up as the perpetual victim of his audience, a situation where success, no matter how you define it, is impossible. In sum, Weasel Walter plays music to get attention, gets attention to repel others, repels others to get attention: the hellish cycle is complete. I would like to humbly suggest to Mr. Walter that if he so richly desires this kind of masochistic relationship with other human beings, he should cut to the chase, put down his drumsticks and hire a dominatrix in tall stilettos to repeatedly step on his balls. (Ahem. IN PRIVATE.) Indeed, I think he should — to use his charming phraseology — like, go for it. Dude.