Falling Down in D Minor

While the turning of my favorite millennium was taking place, I was making sandwiches in a classy hoagie shop called Erbert and Gerbert's, located in the heart of Dinkytown, Minneapolis. I celebrated the dawn of a new era by slapping various cold-cuts and condiments into sliced bread for U of M students to jam down their necks between classes, far too frantic to embrace the adorable names their food had been christened with like "Boney Billy," "The Pudder," and "The Bornk," to name a few.
I wormed my way out of a weekend work schedule, and found myself packed into a beastly luxury pearl-white station wagon with the three other members of my rap group (Stephen, Noel, and Jesse) and a couple of their buddies who were looking to escape Minneapolis for a day or two. We were headed up north to Duluth. For those who don't know, Duluth is the birth place of rap music and iron ore, so it made perfect sense for us to be performing there.
That winter was frozen six miles into the earth; All gray and lifeless with a lair of ice that stood fast for months longer than most years, and easily became the last place you'd want to be driving through. With blinding snow storms, a few inches of ice under our tires and Stephen at the wheel, the four-hour drive was anything but dull.
We were booked to play some local hole-in-the-wall bar, which apparently was Duluth's crown jewel of holes-in-the-wall, since all thirty members of the population under 63 were there to get plastered and forget about their lives for a few hours.
The show began and ended as it always has: "Put your hands, put your hands down, say "ho," tip your bartender, peace, we got CDs in the back..."
My business associates and I were quickly exceeding our alcohol limits, since we were mainly paid in beer. The rest of the money went towards gasoline, motel rooms and limousines. That's right, the promoter got us a couple limousines to bring us from the motel to the venue and back to the motel. You know, I never truly knew the meaning of the word "glamour," until I was driven seven miles through Duluth in the middle of a blizzard, after dark, to a shitty night club.
The drinking jamboree was interrupted when the bartender announced "last call for alcohol," which meant you either run to the bar or crawl to the door. It was time to go. Piles of confused, intoxicated faces made their way to the glowing red exit sign, searching for cab rides, people who were a little less drunk to double as a cab ride, or limousines. The drunk were assisting the drunk and many moments went by before anybody knew what the hell was going on. People were missing or making out in the DJ booth, getting high in the bathroom or puking behind the smoke machine. These were moments that none of these people would be telling their parents, children, or parole officers about.
A final trip was made inside the bar where Jesse was discovered standing alone in the middle of a checkered dance floor- strobe lights flashing, Ace of Base pumping, fueling his own private party off in some distant disco orgy.
Miraculously, the stray cattle were rounded up and herded into our limousines like some dysfunctional prom. The other groups made the drive back to the Cities, while the six who rode with us collapsed into a cramped motel room not knowing what hit us.

Part Two.

I was the first one awake Sunday morning, curled in the fetal position next to the radiator, with a headache and an urge to leave Duluth. I walked out to the lobby wearing the same clothes and smells that I crash-landed in the night before; The bath towel I had used for a pillow was imprinted in the side of my face. I could tell by the taste of complimentary O.J. and blueberry muffins that the motel staff wanted us to leave. I glanced outside to see the same dead gray winter I saw on the way up, and made my way back to the room. Gradually, everyone awoke from the comas: bruised, poisoned and confused.
Jesse had a black eye and his cell phone and wallet were gone. We all agreed it was time to leave. The six of us piled into the frozen station wagon, rubbing hands together, toes together, trying to generate heat inside an icebox. Steve turned the key in the ignition...nothing. No lights, no struggling engine, just quiet. We sat still in disbelief as our foggy breath froze to the car windows. Swear words were said, gas pedals were stomped, and steering wheels were hit, before we gave up and went back into the motel. The only auto shop Duluth had to offer was not open on Sunday. I'm assuming that was out of respect to the 13th commandment: Thou salt not get home in a timely fashion on the Sabbath."
I couldn't tell you how that day was spent inside the motel room, but I can guess. We were all trying to find our "happy place" while simultaneously counting down the minutes until the car shop opened Monday morning. It's never pretty when forced to marinate in the sum of a nameless night of excessive drinking.
The cleaning lady's knocks were beginning to sound more like a prison guard banging our cell with her knight stick.
"No...no moleste, por favor...we don't need any more shampoo."
Trapped.
No where to go, little money and two channels to choose from, the thought of murdering everyone in the room with a spork definitely crossed my mind more than once.
At some ungodly hour, Stephen woke us with news that the car was running. No auto-repairman, no jumper cables, no nothing. Just felt like starting up. Okay. I guess the car was sick of Duluth, too. Without hesitation we all dove into the vehicle like we'd just robbed the motel, when in fact the motel had all of our money.
We cruised down 35W as the pale pink sun peeked over our dashboard; All crooked, spent and wanting our mommies. I was happier to be in a moving vehicle than a dog that can lick his own crotch for hours on end.

Part Three.

We were making good time. At some point about 90 miles outside the Twin Cities, we lost control. While tail-gating a semi truck, I tuned in the Beach Boys on Kool 108- "the best of the 60's, 70's and Today!"
Stephen and I sang along half crazy and trying to stay awake. As we sung "Little Old Lady From Pasadena," we must have hit a patch of ice or a baby moose, doing about 75 or 80. Our monstrous car began fish-tailing, pointing in all directions like some possessed compass.
While the car was deciding where to crash, I began doing the "roller coaster" scream over the classic oldies' station, grabbing the door, Stephen's arm and stomping down on my imaginary brakes. We spun left, right, left and shot off into the median ditch, driving deep into the unplowed snow which completely swallowed the car. We saw nothing but white. We must have died. A feeble hand reached out and killed the radio. We all looked at each other in disbelief. I started laughing hysterically, which seemed to be the most appropriate thing to do at the moment. No one joined me. We got out of the car.
Fortunately we crashed about 100 yards from an exit ramp which held a gas station. We all trudged through the deep unmarked snow like some lost, defeated hiking expedition.
Phone calls were made and a tow truck pulled our lifeless wagon out of the snow bank. A highway patrolman was at the car by the time we returned, making sure that no one was hurt and that no one left without a lecture. Within an hour of the disaster, we were back on the road and would be home soon.
I got inside my apartment, took a shower, put on my fancy Erbert and Gerbert's maroon work shirt and matching visor, and prepared for Monday.

Alexei Moon Casselle

Sand Storm

Before I begin my story, I need you to do me a favor. I need you to imagine the most humid, unbearable red-hot scorching bone-dry heat your purple brain can muster. Now imagine spending your entire summer in that heat- standing in a frail, yellow merchandise tent, trying to sell albums to tens of thousands of angst-ridden, under-developed teenagers smoking cigarettes, dancing in circles of fury, circles of pasty fists, fighting for a corporate-sponsored revolution.
That was my life, last summer on the Vans Warped Tour, which was an outdoors all day punk rock festival; A traveling circus that took place in a new city every day in the same desolate parking lot, where insects go to die. I usually forgot we were in a different city than the day before and very little time passed before I didn’t care anymore.
My job was to set up my special yellow tent and convince a percentage of the thousands of concert zombies to buy a rap album they hadn’t heard of, among millions of CDs more commercially viable.
Sometimes I would be outgoing and charismatic for my own amusement, other days I sat in my chair with my Top Gun aviator shades on, stone faced, while repetitive questions fired at me and bounced off my forehead. I was thinking of how many different ways I could end my disposable, meaningless existence.
After awhile, all the people looked the same to me. I knew what clothes they were going to be wearing; I knew the confused dirty look that would be on their rebellious, adolescent faces; I knew what they smelled like, how they talked, and the wild freedom in their eyes. I knew the dull look they wore at the end of the day as exhaustion settled over us all. I was exhaustion. I stayed in one place from sunrise to sunset on the same square of black tar or dirt or grass or black tar or dirt or grass or sand or volcanic ash.
The Warped Tour was larger than anything I had ever been a part of. Assembling this tour every day was like moving a small town and having it up and running within a couple hours. There were dozens of stages with multiple bands playing simultaneously and hundreds of merchants selling clothes, food, music, energy-drinks, water, beer, shoes, magazines and religion, and…and soul!
My bus (consisting of aerobic gurus: Mr. Dibbs, Murs, Slug, DJ J-Bird and myself) joined the Warped tour in Phoenix, Arizona. We had driven there nonstop from Minneapolis, thanks to our super-human bus driver named Loras, who didn’t seem to eat, sleep or have the need to perform necessary bodily functions that normal people do. Being that he was an ostrich and emu farmer from Kentucky, he was the last of a dying breed. We all got used to spilling out of our bunks and into the aisle while we slept, from violent turns he was making to keep our bus from plowing through the guard rail, sending us to our generic rock star deaths.
We arrived in Phoenix incredibly late. We were lost foreign exchange students trying to stay afloat in a carnival about the size of two football fields, all swarming with frantic questions and demands unanswered.
J-bird and I rushed off the bus, already behind schedule, as the others slept peacefully in bunks and aisles. I loaded my handcart with a huge collapsed yellow tent, a couple bullet-proof, over-sized blue plastic bins filled with pounds upon pounds upon boxes of music, and silver duffle bags screaming with t-shirts for sale and squirt guns for my own entertainment. We made our way through scattered crowds, cutting through thick bushes of tour flunkies, stoned before breakfast.
The air was filled with broken bursts of electric guitars and a steady hum of people pulsing all around us. We found where to set up, dumped the load and hurried back to the bus to grab the second half of our merch.
The day pushed on, and the grounds were now flooded with bodies swarming the area, hungry. I was on a chair, foaming at the mouth, shouting my sale like some stockmarketauctioneersubwaycarhustler, looking for any takers. The hard part was grabbing the attention of the MTV generation’s river of jaded eyes. The rest went by the numbers:

“Hey, I got that shirt, too! Pantera kicks ass! Hey, you heard this album? Well, you need to… Oh, your boy got that one? You don’t have this one, you can only get this one on tour… You downloaded that one? Throw us some money… ten more bucks, I’ll throw in a t-shirt…peace, have a nice day.”
Mid-day. The sun crept over my head and sat heavily on my shoulders. I heard someone say it was a hundred ten degrees. Numbers could never do that fire justice. I stood my ground for as long as I could, and then yelled into my walkie-talkie for back up. “Fuck This!” I ran into the nearest building, cooling my dizzy head. I felt sorry for the mobs that had paid buckets to bake in the sun, rationing out the remains of their wallet for over-priced water and a CD of their new favorite band, solely as a token to prove they had survived.
With a fist full of money, puddles of sweat by my feet and day one under my belt, the sun began falling and the crowds fell thin. I started packing up. It would be dark soon. The winds were filled with mercy as if some higher power was taking pity on us.
As J-bird and company began helping me take down the tent and pack up for the day, the winds began to pick up, which in return, signaled a recording inside my head: a warning of a sandstorm that would be coming soon. Now, I have never seen a sandstorm, not even in a National Geographic. I don’t know if they’re caused by UFO’s landing in the desert, or if they even exist, but for some reason due to hours of exposure to extreme temperatures, I was completely convinced that we were about to be hit by one helluva sandstorm.
My pace was now frantic and absurd as I began ripping down my tent. I loaded my cart like I was on a game show, and ran through an obstacle course of meandering stage crews and groupies, blue plastic bins pouring over left and right, leaving a trail of paranoia.
I yelled warnings of a sandstorm to the people I knocked over, so they understood why I was genuinely terrified. My friends were awaiting my return with the handcart to haul the rest of our burdens back to the bus. I never came back.
I reached the bus and dumped all the bins on the ground like dead bodies, and then raced on board as if the “sandstorm” was biting at my ankles. A stranger was on the bus and nobody else. I wanted Loras to tell me that everything was going to be alright.
I mumbled an attempt at “hello” to the strange girl and began tearing about the coolers and refrigerator looking for water. No water… just lunchmeat and bread, and this was no time for a sandwich.
I wandered to the back room of the bus and stripped down my underwear and socks, dripping with sweat. Naked and crazy, I came out to the front again, apologized to the strange girl for my appearance, then began looking for water in the same places I had moments ago, cursing under my breath.
When they found me, I was in the back, sitting on the floor, with my knees to my chest, rocking gently back and forth and rubbing my head. J-bird asked me if I was okay, to which I replied, “I only peed this much today,” holding my index finger and thumb about an inch apart.
More gibberish spilled from my cracked lips before I was persuaded into taking a cool shower. Speaking as carefully as one might in a hostage situation, they aimed me in the direction of the showers, and then dispersed into the bar-b-que, which was taking place around the neighboring buses.
Standing under the showerhead, I turned the handle and felt the cool water pour over my heat stained skin. I cleared every last person from the showers when I began making sweet, soft, orgasmic moans of ecstasy. That bothered people, apparently. That and the fact that I had not removed one article of clothing before taking the shower, not even my shoes.
I headed back to the bus, hungry. I was leaving a trail of liquid footprints and dripping from every angle of my body. It was night by this time, and the partying tour freaks watched in horror as a dark drenched figure lurched through the crowd, knocking over garbage cans unapologetically. People stopped talking, as the mysterious man loaded his plate with Chipotle burritos and chips without saying a word, just pointing at the food he desired.
I took the food and went back on the bus with a can of “official tour water.” I changed clothes, and then laid in my bunk. Someone asked me if I was alright and I didn’t respond. I was thinking about the other three weeks I had left…and this was no time for a sandwich.

Kilt Vulture (continued)

I remember when Anatomy played me the beat for "Lovin' You Dangerous," and I thought he'd lost his shit. Now understand, I trust Stephen's production, and I consider myself an open-minded person with eclectic musical taste, but damn it!...It was fierce, metallic, repetitive...I didn't know how to approach it. It was like trying to pet a chainsaw. It wasn't like anything I'd ever heard before. Once I had time to reshape my thinking and tilted my head, I saw what Anatomy was doing. From that point on, we became somewhat fearless about what we were making. I believe we collectively just did not care to compromise, charm, apologise, explain, cater to or lighten the sounds we would build into songs, songs we would stand behind with unwavering conviction.
Noel, Adam and myself sat in Stephen's basement writing with these cold, abrassive loops ringing in our ears. It sounded exactly like the basement he'd produced it in.
Suddenly, we were free to do anything and everything we wanted to, if we felt it. It was a whole new litter box to shit in. I'd felt creatively retarded for months, and here we are working on something weird, exciting and raw. It felt like we were sewing a dead body together and adding on wings and antlers, or whatever the monster needed at the time. Whatever it was, it wasn't pretty.
These songs became a vessel to confess through- these were sacred grounds where we were all howling at our demons and pumping adrenaline through a holy night. Flashing visions of some cleansing ritual. Pure aggression. Primitive. Red Lights. Burnt sage. A train wreck. We were attempting to wake the dead and get 'em up outta their graves. We moved from the Twin Cities to Berkeley, California, where the sky is always blue and the pan-handling hippies have begging down to a creative art form and nicer cell phones than me. But like Chris Rock said (paraphrasing): "If you're homeless and you got a funny sign, you ain't been homeless too long."
We were living in sunny California, because we figured that if you've lived in Minneapolis and New York City, then the next obvious choice is San Francisco (or at least as close to it as you can afford). We had the embryos for our new sound, and we knew that they couldn't get too much sunlight, so we decked Anatomy's bedroom window with black drapes and covered his sky light with black construction paper which continually fell to the floor. Stephen's room held a mattress, a desk with his MPC, turntable and monitor, a chair, a short dresser and an antique wall-mounted candle holder, and at some point he wrote cryptic words like "dead dancing" on his wall with red paint using his finger.
On the flip side, Deetalx had already began producing "Expose Negative," which is the final Oddjobs album. This was the first time that Stephen and Devon would simultaneously produce seperate records, without the other's input. It was quite obvious that the two producers were not on the "same page" artistically, which meant that they were making very different records, and there was mounting tension within the group regarding the amount of work who was putting on who's album. At one point it felt like I was living with my parents during their arguing, diminishing marriage. I'd like to say that there were no hard feelings on a personal level, but I cannot. When you're in a band with four guys for seven or eight years, it all becomes personal.
Kill the Vultures was originally going to be released as an Oddjobs record. We did not plan to break off and completely start a different group, but after exhausting the possibilities of Plan A, it seemed like the alternative was best for every one. The last few shows we played with all five Oddjobs members were painful and confusing on several different levels. The main problem was that we were performing songs from what is now "Expose Negative" together with songs from what is now "Kill the Vultures," and they did not go well together, to say the least. We struggled to make adjustments, reconfigurations and compromises, but kept producing troubling results. We now had no idea how to perform as a whole.
I kind of moved off the subject of "The making of Kill the Vultures," but like I said, its a complex topic. It signifies the breaking down and rebuilding of all of our lives and how we live them.
I came back from hyping Atmosphere for eight weeks on the Warped Tour to find Stephen and Adam (Advizer) no longer living in the Berkeley house. They were living in Minneapolis- Adam, preparing for grad school at the University of Chicago, Stephen, just didn't want to live there anymore, so he took off and left most of his belongings in his bedroom. I was very confused. My group had basically broken up and I was living in Berkeley, working at an art supply store. I hated my job and I didn't know what the hell my plan was. I fasted for a week, meditated and decided to move back to Minneapolis, in October of 2004, where I currently reside.
Part Three Coming Soon...

Alexei Moon Casselle

Kilt Vulture

"Kill the Vultures" is much more than a recording to me. It bookmarks a chapter in my life signifying a breaking down and reforming of just about every aspect of my world i recognise as "stable" (since music has been the only thread of consistency through out the past decade or so of my life). I don't want to talk about the actual recording process or funny little side notes, out-takes or bloopers. Not yet.
There was a subtle and gradual progession leading up to the recording, of which i can identify as growing its roots around the fall of 2003. At that point Oddjobs (R.I.P.) was living in a brown stone apartment in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. We were preparing for a three-month tour with Atmosphere, the Micranots, and Brother Ali. The plan was to U-Haul our belongings from New York to our respective "folks" houses in Minnesota, go on tour and live in our mini-van dubbed "Critical Habitat," return from tour and live with our respective "folks" for a couple months, and then move to the Bay area in March, mean while peicing together our next record. Sounds simple enough, right?

The last studio recording that Oddjobs had released was "the Shopkeeper's Wife" EP (2002,Third Earth R.I.P.)" the "moody" follow up to the 'Drums' LP (2001, Third Earth), and we were anticipating the proceeding album to our most polished and developed peice of work to date. Before heading off to embark upon the longest stretch of shows any of us had or has done since, we recorded a few tracks with mediocre results.
We brushed it off and hit the road. cross-country, every possible inch of terrain, every flavor of sky, land, water and fire that mother nature had to dish out for us was seen, digested and passed along to make room for tomorrow. Everyone goes through transitions and rituals on tour, and in three months, some of those things can change how you think; Change how you look at people and how they look at you. Everyone went through similar shit and came up with completely different answers. We listened to different music, we talked to different women back home with whom we sought salvation, but at the end of the day we performed on the same stage as a band, and we slept on the same floor as something much thicker than friends.
After having a couple back packs containing everything we held sacred- stolen, me losing my woman, nomi getting hit by a drunk driver that totalled our tour van, we returned to Minnesota to the bedrooms we had grown up in. With our months of triumph, exhuastion, boredom, permanent hearing damage and sound-checks, we each curled into our beds with crumpled money in our pockets, all-access laminants, dirty laundry and conditioning, and began our individual rehabilitation procedures in the comfort of a dry, harsh Minnesota winter.

Deetalx rented out a rehearsal space in Midway, St.Paul, for his studio equipment. Anatomy set up shop in his parents basement off Cleveland and Fairmount. The dead air between our records was getting louder and we all knew it. We were unsatisfied with any attempts to visit our book of formulas and formats, and were quickly running out of spare parts in the bag of tricks we were digging in, in order to build a new machine that could fly as well as make creamed ice.
Life in Minneapolis/St.Paul was safe, home cooked and predictable, and sometimes those are the only three ingredients you need to build a monster in your basement. I had grown accustomed to the rock star life style of daily stage-dives, cheering crowds and all the Heineken I could drink for free. I was now running into ex-girlfriends and that one guy I met at some party, on a tuesday night with a wind chill advisory in effect for the metro area.
Noel, Adam and I would meet at Stephen's house and Devon's studio a few times a week, assembling verses and choruses together, listening to a never ending loop, recording freestyle sessions, trying to catch that spark. I think we all did a fairly good job of concealing our individual self-doubt; A looming question of "where do we go now?", inches away from bursting into hysterical "what the fuck are we doing?!" laughter, or maybe that was just me.

Part Two Coming Soon.

Alexei Moon Casselle

On the Coldest Night in Minnesota

We were in a van, headed to California...

As usual, this is just one man's take. One of four mans, each of whom has a slightly different story on the situation...But I thought it would be interesting--without giving too much away--to offer the "masses" a little insight into the genesis of the whole Kill The Vultures thing.

December of 2003, we had just finished a 60+ date tour with Atmosphere, Brother Ali, Micranots, and DJ Bird, and decided to save up some money by living with the collective ma and/or pa dukes for a few months (before relocating to the Bay Area, California). For me, the basic mechanics of life were great. No rent to pay. Homecooked meals. A quiet Minnesota winter. The Wolves were in first place. But musically, reflecting on the past three months of touring, pushing our product, and playing Oddjobs songs to death, I felt like I had just ejaculated into my own hand.

The past few months felt like a lot of yelling, a lot of fun, a lot of entertainment...but not a lot of meat for anybody to sink their saberteeth into.

Comparing ourselves to our tourmates proved useful. We didn't have anything close to an Atmosphere-type fanbase that really cared what our next move was or that was just waiting to call out, "JUDAS." And if those people did exist, we certainly weren't catering to them in the first place. Despite having met thousands of people at the over 200 shows we had done since 2002, I couldn't really identify our fanbase...It was the perfect time to start over.

And I can't really remember who initially made the point, but I think we agreed that a lot of the best music, or at least the shit we enjoyed listening to, came from people who didn't know what they were doing...so we decided to do the same, forgetting everything we knew about our "process," to make something better...

Next thing I knew, Steve-Anatomy was listening to a lot of Morphine, James White and the Blacks, and The Cramps. We built the dinosaur skeleton for the album in his parents basement, and put the finishing touches on it in a stuffy Berkeley bedroom with no air circulation or electricity. There was a lot stomping, veins popping, rootbeer floats, and red lights.

Someone else, pick it up and fill in the details...