C'est le Merde

By John Stutler

Opus Number 1: Premonition
Dalton township wasn't exactly Heaven on Earth, but it's close enough. I had to deal with smartasses, but I didn't give a fuck about that. The ultimate expression of Dalton was more closer to the Music Festival it holds every three years, each one in my lifetime I've never missed. Some kind of damn attitude problem got in the way of every single Festival and the people always near quits on it just because somebody has "a panic attack" or some asshole says, "This isn't the year to do it, anyways."

Sure, they probably were right, but it was the fuckin' Festival that kept me burning on inside and I never wanted to lose it. I was born with it, the same feeling of Rock'n Roll and drugs in my system that symbolized half of my life. My mother Loretta was one of the earlier hippies that came out around the beginning of the Beatles while pops, Jack, worked as a Musician himself.

I don't mean the "I got it easy 'cause I won some goddamn contest and got promoted for my first album written by some ignorant assholes" type of musicians. I mean Hardcore, totally mod "Fuckin' Rock and Roll" musicians! He was very well known for his screams which, in comparison with mine, is scary as hell!

He didn't teach me just how to scream, but to soar with my vocals when I was little more than seven years old. After that, I learned how to play guitar from Micah Stutler, the Harlem dude who looked scarier than Pops screaming, which makes teenaged girls piss their pants. The Who did the same thing once, but I don't exactly know how, since they were already too cool for the rock world by the time I was 28. yeah, I was born in the late fifties', so what?

Of course, I had my fair share of philosophy too. My father's favorite one always was, "Fuck the World!" Mine was "You do my sister, I do yours." Simple as that, but I kinda began questioning that when I was 15. The Beatles were almost gone and I was one of the few musicians left in Dalton. Fuck, they cancelled that year! I felt like a total moron because they told me I was underage to play onstage at the Festival anyways. I then took an amp and my guitar, the ole' Gibson I had, to the roof of the town Hall.

From there, I played an jazzy version of the National Anthem. I got a little crazy and went ahead and sang to it, screaming my ass off. My Pops was angry at me in the open, but deep inside, like a kindling of fire, he says, "Fuck yeah!"

I was grounded, again. This time from music, again. I just began to doodle again in my room while I had no albums, no guitar, no vocals. I just doodled a bit and finally, my biggest inspiration came out of me by the time grounding was over. I took up the pen once more and began writing music.

The Dimensions of the Soul
I once saw it in a dream, about a man painting a ghost, a figure from the past. I was thinkin' who and I had the Idea of the person. Somebody with a lotta trouble and is going to hell for it and wants to be remembered.

I took this to Pops and he said it was a "Brilliant fuckin' Idea", which meant it was great. So we began workin' at it and pretty soon, I've found out how to display it. I wrote at least three songs before Pops gave in.

"This isn't easy, I can't do this fuckin' stint." He said to me, lookin' wiped. "Maybe if you made it a little easier like a person with tattoos that tell the audience his shit story, then I could do it. But a spirit?"

This is where rule number 1 came into play: The Harder they are, the more epic it'll be. I told him that and he didn't want to hear it. I shrugged my shoulders and got Harvey and the gang together. Too bad Walt was "dead" again. It's a little game, when Walt is grounded, we pretend he's dead and mourn it so that his mother will let him outside. Harvey got the firecrackers out in the yard, Mitch got seven speakers revved up to max overdrive. I turned on my guitar, the whole neighborhood could hear the feedback from it.

We began the memorial service with the song, "Fuck You, Ms. Panthers, we want Walt". I guess even the Mayor could hear it himself. the Firecrackers went off with loud bangs like gunshots and I screamed into the Mike with the highest pitch possible. The next day, we all went to the Doctor's.

After Three weeks of pure agony and pain, I got the group together and we played our asses off with riffs and chords from different groups, but I began to warm them up to ther Dimensions of the Soul, working them off with my riffs and chords, the beats and the unbelievable lyrics.