Confession

I have to be honest, my real name isn't Nick DeWolfe. I was not born with that name at least. Real name, fake name, pseudonym, AKA it's all the same to me. But I will admit my momma never called me Nick and my daddy wasn't Mr DeWolfe.

So who am I then?

My father was an industry guy. Songwriter in his own right. Sold a lot of records, made some money, but his success was mired in questionable ethics. You see, he stole music and called it his own. He would argue the semantics of it but I was always a bigger fan of some antics than semantics so I just stuck with "plagiarist". Combine typical teenage angst with deep philosophical differences, throw in a seriou drinking problem and I did what I felt was right and left. Forced to take the only option left, to write. It was a time of contradictions and puns.

My father's name was Paul Campbell, you can look him up. He is credited with writing many classic folk songs, so classic they pre-dated him by 20 or 30 years in some cases. He and my mother, Mary Campbell named their first son Peter on July 7, 1969. Still stealing his material, but he was a legitmate fan of  In the Wind so maybe I can give him that.

What was less known was my family's connection to the Dianetics movement and its founder L Ron Hubbard. Uncle Ronnie growing up. I actually had very little to do with Wierd Uncle Ronnie and his crazy church friends, I was closer to his son Ron Jr. Ron Jr and myself both lamented out fathers' choices and legacy. When I couldn't take it anymore I ran away, changing my name to Nick DeWolfe. Little Ron left the church and denounced his father and changed his name shortly thereafter. I don't know why he dropped the e, but he is still my brother.

But I have been Nick DeWolfe longer than I was ever Peter Campbell. My cousin Bruce kept his last name and does quite well with it. But with his chin he could have been named Tiny Cox and done well. I have also been Charles Monroe, Dick Dragon, Hellvis, and a bunch of other names more descriptive and given to me by others. I am not sure what it will say on my gravestone. Nobody gave me one last time I died. It will probably just say

"At the bottom of this mine lies another deeper hole"

Keep howling

Is there a God? Science has the answer.

I have determined a scientific experiment that if performed correctly would conclusively answer the question of the existence of God (Capital G). Be warned, this isn't making a volcano out of baking soda or lighting your farts on fire or any of the other fun and fantastic scientific activities of your youth. All you need is a lottery ticket, a Sharpie, and a murder most foul.

Step One: Buy a lottery ticket with a truly biblical payoff. Something that would make you richer than God, or the very least half as rich as a decent sized Catholic Diocese. $100 million should suffic.

Step Two: Find an innocent to sacrifice. A small child is safest, but if you are squeamish choose someone older just make sure they in no way deserve an untimely death. In fact if you want to be really thorough  statistically speaking, make it a small group Safer yet round it up to a bus load.

Step Three. Murder most foul.

Step Four. Write the number of the lottery ticket onto one or more of the bodies. Make it legible and maybe add the word "Clue" with a an arrow just so the police don't miss it.

Step Five: Wait for the lottery draw, where the jackpot is cosmic truth.

Now I have made a few assumptions here. You didn't leave any other evidence that would link you to the crime. You wore gloves. You didn't drop your wallet at the scene. You didn't leave any witnesses. We have all seen enough crime drama on TV to know how to commit murder without getting caught. The real key is, you picked your victim at random and you have no history of violent crime.

So if you did manage to pull it off and the police have no evidence linking you to this heinous crime but that lottery number, we are in a position to get scientific. You kept the ticket right?

I need to clarify what some might call my confirmation bias, but I refer to as calling bullshit on circular logic. That is to say, that if there is a loving and attentive God watching over his precious flock his reaction would be predictable.  If he is the smiting, prayer answering, touching of the faithful entity he has been characterized as, he will not be able to resist the temptation to make that lottery number hit. He has to. The irony is too sweet to pass up for a deity worth his salt. If that number hits, you can't claim the enormous payday without also taking the rap for murder most foul. You'd be fucked. And God loves fucking people, just ask a priest.

So there you have it. If you really have to know, you have the methodology. Go prove it to yourself, and if you are truly generous the world. There is no reason anyone need wonder or suffer crisis of faith ever again, the fruit of knowledge is within your grasp.

The other option is to just take it as a matter of course that the very idea of an all powerful creator watching over his children is simply a desperate attempt to placate your id from the sting of realizing the grossly aggrandizing misconceptions you formed about your mother when you were an infant. She was warmth, security, and sustenance. A world filling presence, all powerful and yet solely focused on answering your cries with a soothing voice. It must have been a real piss off to realize she was just a dolt that forgot to take her pill, and were just another product of the biological imperative.

So really, you can either take my word for it and carry as if there is no God, or .. you know... murder most foul.

Keep howling.

Brotherhood of Glam

I used to get asked about the Brotherhood a lot so just in case anybody still cares I figured I cover that off a bit. The Brotherhood of Glam were the guitarists in Beautiful Corpse. Unlike myself these guys wore masks and kept their real identities a secret. One of them for really good reason, the other one just thought it was funny. Definitely a strong nod to Kiss with these guys. More recently I have gotten questions as to whether Glamstein is a nod to Rammstein. Stupid question, Rammstein was formed years after the Corpse made their last public appearance. Glamstein is a reference to the Mary Shelley classic, and yes he got it wrong as he is the monster not the doctor. But the idea is he is built out of pieces of other glam entities like Bowie, Liberace, Elvis, Gene Simmons etc. The name Frankenglam was also bandied about but Glamstein stuck.

If you haven't seen a picture, or seen one our shows, Glamstein was known for his sparkle. He wore no colour, no black, nothing that didn't reflect light. Head to toe in outfits made of sequin, polished metal, tinsel, pieces of glass, faux diamonds, anything to refract and reflect stage lights. The walking Christmas tree decoration. And to hide his true identity, he wore a jack-o-lantern covered in little mirrors. An actual grinning disco ball. He had the lighting guy beam lasers into on concentrated ball near the front of the stage, and when he leaned his head into it it would explode light in all directions. It was a pretty cool effect but I couldn't look at him on stage for fear of going blind. His guitar was flat black because he didn't want it to distract from the spectacle of him. Glamstein's real name will remain a mystery because he is still alive as far as I know and still wishes to avoid the Hungarian authorities. No, he isn't Attila Ambrus, he isn't that old and he hates hockey.

Lord Gothchild is less of an enigma. Just a guy that spent a lot of time practising guitar and watching The Six Million Dollar Man. That's the only reason I supported his secret identity ruse. He wanted to do it because Glamstein did and he thought it sounded cool. But also, he allegedly stalked Lee Majors for a while and I decided I didn't need that kind of publicity if there was ever a restraining order. Steve Austin is cool and everything, but stalking a dude from a TV show is pretty teenage girl for a "professional". His stage gear was a little more subtle. He did the Victorian-era ponce thing with the long flowing coats, powder wig, ruffled accents. He had this thing he built like combination rollerskates and mini stilts that made him appear extra tall and thin. He could basically lean and coast around on wheels without moving his legs much so it looked like he was floating. I stayed away from him on stage too because I was always afraid I'd knock him down. Later on he added the whole blacklight thing. He did his face, teeth and contacts in UV reactive polymer and put a blacklight spot right on his mic. When he is in his regular spot he looked like his usual ponce self. When he leaned out of the spot into the blacklight to do vocals he looked all distorted and evil. Pretty cool effect.

The net result of working with these guys on stage was I didn't have to do much to keep the show interesting. Glamstein toyed with setting his head on fire but never really got it to work the way he wanted it to. Lasers are safer anyway I kept telling him. Lord Gothchild built the Flying W guitar himself out of spare parts. It was more of a gimmick than an instrument, but he had each of the three necks in a different open tuning so he could do a three chord progression with one hand. If you haven't seen the Flying W, it was three guitars, all kind goofy looking but it was the 80's. The three guitars would click together with magnetic locks and form one three-necked super guitar. LG wanted us to play the three separate guitars for half of the song, then there was a drum and bass bridge where we did the Joining Ceremony and then he would play the three cord progression on the assembled Flying W. It was a hassle to play but the crowd was into. We generally did the Joining Ceremony during Guitarded, as that was the original intent. But sometimes we would shoe horn it into some new release to help boost interest in new material.

I can't believe there isn't a single video of this on You Tube, we have done it like a 1000 times. When the industry machine decides to bury you, they bury you deep. Nobody finds the body.

Why I Can't Drink

I was having chili fries on a patio this weekend when a white limo drove past trailing tin cans with the words Just Married across the trunk. That was when it all came flooding back to me.

I was suppose to be at this wedding because the bride's Dad was somebody that somebody important thought was important and it made them both feel even more important to make other less important people do unimportant things for their own amusement. The names are unimportant, or at the very least forgotten.

I was actually at a nearby bar working up the give a fuck to go to the wedding. Why I chose Wild Turkey to help me work up the give a fuck I'll never know, because nothing drains me of give a fuck like Wild Turkey. I did however work up a serious craving for coney fries from A&W, which was also nearby. So I paid the nice man at the bar and moved on.

I should probably mention I had just seen the Terminator. The second one, in the theater. Yeah, this was a while ago. It seems the movie made an impression on me as I kept walking up to complete strangers and saying "I need your clothes, your boots, and your motorcycle". I thought that was hilarious. This will be important in a second.

So I walk (stagger) over to the A&W for some signature coney fries and encounter their mascot standing out front. A dude in a huge bear suit in July, sweating his nuts off and having a really bad day. Well, he thought he was having a bad day, and then I staggered up. I got right in this poor kid's face and put on my best Terminator Stare. Then as I delivered the line, I had a moment of clarity. All of the pieces fell into place, it was like the universe wanted it to happen. It was the actualization of pure cosmic stupidity. I mistook it for genius.

"I NEED you clothes, your boots...and some coney fries"

Fast forward ahead about 40 minutes and few indictable offenses, and I finally make it to the church. The ceremony is well under way, everyone is front and center, the church guy is saying something about God and love and three fold bonds when I walk in. In costume. Shit gets really quiet as I come strolling down the aisle, thinking for all the world I am doing the most obviously brilliant thing I could do in the circumstance. I mean there was the movie line, and the suit, and the wedding, it all came together. I'm singing the tuba theme from the old A&W commercials and just walking toward the wedding party.

"Buh dump buh dump..."

I made it all the way to the front of the church before anybody said anything. Appropriately it was the all important father of the bride who finally found his voice and demanded to know the obvious.

"Who in the hell are you?"

"I'm the Ring Bear"

I thought this was easily the funniest thing I or anyone had ever said in history of saying funny shit. I was braced for a tide of laughter to wash over the congregation and for the entire crowd to rise to their feet and applaude me for bringing such joy and mirth to this drab and somber occasion. It actually took people quite a while to sort out what I meant. My shock and disappointment quickly turned to frustration and rage.  I decided that maybe they were just really thick and needed me to demonstrate. So I turned to the 4 year old boy standing awestruck and wet of pants in his mini tuxedo, holding the pillow with the wedding bands and demanded in an angry and alcohol stained voice.

"Gimme the fucking rings kid. I'm the Ring Bear"

I should have said "I need your rings, your pillow and your tricycle". I realized this as I sobered up in jail the next morning. I shouldn't celebrate it either, that poor kid was probably scarred for life. I thought it was really strange that at of all places a wedding, I pull a stunt like this at not a single person got a picture. As far as the nuptials, I recognized the bride when she started screaming at me for ruining her big day. I had banged her about a week before, I don't think that marriage was going to last.

Keep howling.







I

Drop Dead Gorgeous

I just ran across this old photo and it reminded of the infamous Drop Dead Gorgeous original LP artwork debacle. One of the few times I allowed my picture to be taken was for that album cover because Sleazy was doing for us as a favour and I couldn't argue with him. Partially because I respected his work, and partially because it was never wise to argue with Sleazy. Anyway, the idea was to recreate this photo, with me in pointing the gun at a really attractive young model who's name I can't remember. She was gussied up in some kind of cheerleader fetish outfit and managed to look frightened of my big gun and seductive at the same time. She was a sexy savant of sorts. Sleazy wanted me to be shirtless so he could airbrush in a tattoo of Fuckface on my back. I don't actually have that tattoo, although I get asked about it all the time. The record company, who shall rename nameless but never blameless, originally only objected to the tits on the fake tattoo. So they wanted to cover Fuckface's eyes. Sleazy was furious when they suggested we give Fuckface sunglasses. Instead, in a nod to his own work for AC/DC he put a cheesy black band over Fuckface and the model's eyes. I thought the result was even better than the original. The cover art was featured in an article about the LP's release and a young Tipper Gore got her iron undies in a bunch and shut it down. So the record company did a new cover with a big picture of Fuckface, no black band. Go figure. The record only ever sold off the merch table at live shows, as other ongoing "issues" kept it out of distribution. To this day that original cover holds a place in my heart, and sadly I do not have a copy of it. If anybody does, send me a photo. Actually I have to dig up some of the original Fuckface stuff, the only thing i have now I just did myself. I really lost everything when I lost everything. I guess that's why I refer to it as the time I lost everything.

Lemmy is, or is not, God

Lemmy is God, right? Except God doesn't exist, or is dead, or both. As Lemmy does exist and isn't dead (yet) he therefore must not be God. Perhaps Lemmy is just a god, small g. Part of a rock and roll pantheon. An iconic figure representing all that is pure and great about some specific part of our collective heavy metal experience. A standard against we can measure ourselves. A moral compass in the dark and stormy night.

Let me say right now Lemmy is one of a precious few to stay his course in the face of the prevailing winds of better business. He cocked his walk, and rocked his talk, when it would have been much "smarter" to make concessions. Smarter perhaps, but not wiser. Lemmy now has something money can't buy, and fame is not equal to. Respect.

Lemmy doesn't seem to regard what he is doing as business. He holds very close to the attitude that music is a virus. It infects, mutates, and spreads. Success is in the scale of the spread. The more people that hear him, the more music that is bears the telltale scars of his sound, the greater the impact Motorhead has on the music world, the better. Fuck profit. Any money he does make just goes into boots, gear, and the next project. Like a viking, using loot from one campaign to finance the next.

The result? Lemmy is a hard working musician with many years experience. Other players, with a fraction of his credibility, respect, and catalog have manged to cash in much more efficiently. Do less, make more, get out. Still getting paid years after they last picked up an instrument. Where are they now? The beach. Or maybe on to a new career, with a pocket full of cash and some great stories about their wild days in a band nobody remembers. Honestly though, these pussies are successful by most measures. So where does that leave our hero? Still working as hard as an opening act on a national tour supporting a band 20 years younger than him. And still wearing out his custom leather boots from kicking so much ass.

Fuck everybody, absolutely everybody, who thinks they deserve to have it better than Lemmy. If you think whatever songs you have written, dues you have paid, or shows you have played have have "earned" you grandiose fortune and glory just check yourself. If you are bitching, angling or worse yet litigating to reap more for yourself that the lot that is Lemmy's life, get a fucking grip.

He is a god. The top of a mountain. An ideal to which we aspire to with Sisyphus's fixed determination. To feel entitled to more is hubris and sacrilege. That doesn't mean you can't get more, take all you can. Fill your goddamn boots for all I care. But appreciate it. Take it for what it is, a lucky break. Don't ever confuse what you have with what you earned, or what you want with what you deserve. Always measure success against god's own words "Everything louder than everything else". It's music, nobody said it was easy, pretty, fair or would make you rich. But if you let it, it just might make you happy. If you're really good it might make you a god.

Generation WTF should go to number 1 with a bullet

This will be the first generation that is going to be faced with the fact that their elders, their forefathers, their ancestors, had a big fucking party and they are left having to clean it up. We have traditionally had more than our parents. Better toys, better standard of living, more money. But these kids may very well end up having much less. I have said I think that after Generation X and Generation Y the next gang of kids coming up should be called Generation WTF. That being said I think the scariest is what is being done about it. Fuck all.

People have so many new and exciting ways to get their voices heard. They tweet, they blog, they comment on Facebook statuses. I do it too, hell I am doing it right now. But here is what scares me, the people who confuse that with actually "doing something".

You can compose the most biting condemnation of a political figure's behavior and tweet the shit out of it, they won't really care. You can pontificate on the true nature of secret world orders in your blog and then post links to youtube videos that support your claims on Facebook, it won't matter. You can be really bold, and find someone posting something you find foolish, erroneous or downright evil and comment on it with absolutely searing rhetoric. So what?

There was a time when if the common man thought the people in charge were excessively corrupt or oppressive they got out of the house, quietly walked to where the oppressors actually lived, and shot them in the head. It served two important purposes. It stopped whatever oppressive behavior the common man in question found so objectionable. It also sent out a message to the next leader to dial the oppression back a bit or... you know... bang bang.

Now when we see injustice, we tweet. We post. We comment. Scary stuff kids.

That being said, in a world where we feel like our voice being heard through social media validates our existence, the only people out shooting are the ones who feel ignored. The disenfranchised dawn trenchcoats and shoot up school cafeterias. Pointless killing with the only goal being simple recognition. A cry for help lost in the din of the crowd.

Don't misunderstand me, I'm not saying everyone should grab a deer rifle and head to the nearest clocktower. I'm thinking more grassy knoll. And it doesn't have to be everybody. If 1 out of every 99 regular folks took out just one of the 1%, we could have this shit cleaned up in a week. And really if you just take out 15% of the 1%, that is only 0.15%, that would probably go a long way to getting the rest of them to get their minds right. So how many of us common people need to step up to make that work? Roughly 1 in 666.