Funeral Cone – “Live At The News Cafe”
I don’t know if Funeral Cone even exists anymore.
But then, I don’t know wrong from right, left from right, my right foot from my left or even which fork utensil to use when eating a dinner salad.
I do know that Funeral Cone has created some of my favorite, wildest music that I’ve reviewed in my thirty-seven years here with Thrash N Bang.
I might be exaggerating that length of time, as I’m also, prone to do so concerning my lengths in physical aspects preceding my romantic encounters.
But it is true that this release makes me want to frolic naked amongst nature. Cavorting with deer, darting in between trees and wildlife, dashing here and there or never where. Communing with mother nature, whispering obscene suggestions into butterflies ears, disturbing active bee hives.
Disconcerting bee stings in precarious places or attacks by steroid abusing killer hornets won’t stop or hinder me in the slightest. As long as I have a soundtrack, to my merriment, as vivacious a recording as this, for my accompaniment.
While we rediscover nature, while I tend to any unseemly, distracting open wounds- let me point out. This is the part of the review where I usually single out individual songs and use expressive and probably, nonsensical thoughts to describe them.
I’ve likened Funeral Cone before to the very, early Boston punk band The Girls, that later I’ve described as, “Devo as if they snorted horse tranquilizer before they recorded.” Relating this description to an early punk musician, Richie Parsons of Unnatural Axe and many other local Boston bands, he said it was an apt description.
From a previous review of Funeral Cone:
“And this band is fun and exciting and does sound like if you force fed Devo, horse tranquilizers, and then took them to an amusement park. Where they rode the Ferris Wheel and the merry-go-round for about, seventeen hours, and then took them directly to the studio to record.”
Every song on this release is great and contains emphatic, emotional vocals- not so much in the macho, hardcore way- but in the arty, hysterical, “I’m losing my mind” Talking Heads/Devo sort of way.
The keyboards swell and swirl like ocean waves, changing like manic depressive mood swings, with the high pitched keyboard sounds of a Farfisa organ. Favored in the sixties tunes like “96 Tears” and used also, in many eighties new wave bands such as Blondie and XTC.
While the rhythm section just pummels along, always energetic and frantic. A perfect compliment to the wild and raucous keyboards while the guitar jabs in tones, aggressively poignant.
This live recording occurred earlier this year in January. It was a benefit for The Students For A Free Tibet. As a big fan of the Dalai Lama, I have all his records- No, I’m actually not joking, I admire him a lot. And I’ve read a lot about Buddhism and it is by far my favorite religion. I just feel I’m not as good a person to call myself one.
The two people I’d most like to meet? The Dalai Lama and John Waters. Hopefully, at the same time. How would that go?
So does God exist? Do I exist? But the existentialist question we have on our plate today is-
I don’t know if Funeral Cone even exists anymore.
But then, I don’t even know if life exists anymore, or if we will even return to, what I consider real life again. But I’m optimistic it will.
I must admit “real life” has always been scary, almost always absurd and always foreboding in an unhappy ending sort of way.
I feel now is the time to collapse into social media and judge your life- not in the day to day occurrences but more so, on how many likes you get for a post, towards you or for your page.
Embrace a virtual reality because regular life is more like a faulty video game that you reluctantly play to kill time.
I keep putting quarters in my life to play the game only out of habit, while my imaginary world is what I really want to engage with, where I truly feel alive, where I feel I truly live.
And I fully embrace the imaginative tunes Funeral Cone are spinning. I hope you check out their wonderful songs.
And I hope you have many more quarters to play in life. Even if, what you experience, is at best- faulty.
Unlike Funeral Cone who are fearlessly awesome.
(Slimedog)
