Fargo Rock City

by Chuck Klosterman

  As a general rule, I’m an absolute media apologist. I constantly find myself defending depraved, socially reprehensible material, mostly because I genuinely support all of it. And like most social critics, I inevitably overlook the obvious whenever it comes to the marriage of art and life. And something happened at this Slayer concert that I cannot ignore, and it sure seems like a prime example of “the obvious.”

  Late in Slayer’s set, I was standing near the Odeon’s door, probably the most sedate part of the club. Frontman Tom Araya was delivering some fairly moronic between-song banter, and I honestly wasn’t listening. Suddenly, Araya screams, “It’s raining … blood!,” which (obviously) meant they were going to perform “Raining Blood,” the last track off 1986’s Reign in Blood, widely considered the greatest death metal album ever recorded. I don’t know what makes Reign in Blood a higher artistic achievement than any other death metal LP (or even what makes it better than any other Slayer LP), but I don’t have any argument against it either. I’ll take Ira Robbins’s word for it.

  ANYWAY, what happened next continues to baffle me. As soon as guitarist Kerry King played the first chord—and I mean the first chord—a guy about fifteen feet away from me inexplicably punched the person standing in front of him. By mere coincidence, I had been inadvertently watching these two guys for the last ten minutes (they were in my line of sight), and they obviously had no ill will toward each other; in fact, I’m almost certain they had no relationship whatsoever. And it’s not like they started moshing, either. The first guy made a closed fist and cold-cocked the other dude in the back of the head. And a little closer to the stage, something similar happened about five seconds later: A man hit a woman in the face for no apparent reason.

  All these hooligans were dragged out of the bar by a few bad-ass bouncers and thrown face down on the sidewalk outside of the club (the Odeon staff does not fuck around). Like any good reporter (or—more accurately—like anyone trying to act like a good reporter), I scampered outside to see if these people were going to keep fighting. They didn’t. In fact, they just stared at each other with blank faces, further accentuating the fact that these people had never met before. They had no tangible qualms with each other at all, and they couldn’t even come up with a decent imaginary argument. Yet, for whatever the reason, they had started throwing punches at each other before the band could even bleat out the first words of one particular song (which are—in case you’re wondering—“Trapped in purgatory / A lifeless object, alive”).

  Am I blaming this on Slayer? Well, no. These people were probably drunk, probably unstable, and almost certainly stupid. But there is something weird about how humans react to the sonic quality of speed metal. It has a funneling effect on one’s mental processes; everything becomes very linear. Somehow, that intellectual reconfiguration holds a strong appeal to a certain kind of personality. If I were a scientist, I would conduct tests on people who consider themselves loyal speed metal fans; I hypothesize they would generally share similar cerebral patterns for problem-solving and argumentation (however, I’m only a journalist, so I’ll simply talk about this as if it were already a fact).

  What I can’t understand (or—more accurately—pretend to understand) is where this kind of hyperaggressive, no-love-till-leather thinking comes from (musically, there’s no equation to explain it). The most interesting thing about speed metal is that it really was groundbreaking (at least for a while); while the new wave of UK metal is often cited as an influence, those bands don’t sound anything like contemporary speed metal. Metallica and Megadeth usually claim they found their style by welding British metal with a punk philosophy, and the conventional hipster wisdom is that punk was invented when some kid tried to play “Communication Breakdown” in his basement and couldn’t figure out the chord changes. So I guess we are left to assume that Led Zeppelin’s eponymous debut was the first speed metal album ever recorded (that is, if “we” are “a bunch of idiots”).

  My appreciation for bands like this—particularly the popular ones, like Metallica—varies from moment to moment. It is difficult to listen to any full-length Metallica record, or even to sit through an hour-long collection of the best Metallica songs played in succession. If Led Zeppelin can be viewed as the Babe Ruth of hard rock, Metallica is undoubtedly Hank Aaron: leaner, more consistent over the long haul, destined to break all the records—but somehow never transcendent. Still, their music can be incredible for short stretches, and it makes you listen to all other songs differently. It alters the boundaries of what popular music can be. Metallica’s first three records were stunningly effective in creating a new kind of metal fan who perceived himself (or herself) differently from the other kids at school, and I think a lot of that can be explained by the technical composition of songs like “Seek & Destroy” and “Master of Puppets.” One is tempted to explain Metallica—and all speed metal—in an all too obvious way: Heavy metal played faster. But that’s not really accurate.

  When a series of notes reaches a certain speed, a David Banner-like metamorphosis occurs. This is especially true when these notes are played on an electric guitar. Listen to the final two minutes of “Animal” from Vinnie Vincent, a brilliant example of guitar masturbation that works. As Vincent plays faster and faster (and faster and faster), the instrument reaches a critical point where it suddenly becomes the equivalent of a police whistle; it’s similar to how the sound of a passing train changes pitch because of the Doppler effect. The same sort of thing happens with the sequencing of guitar riffs. Let’s say Slash started playing a familiar lick, like the lead riff from “Welcome to the Jungle.” We all know exactly what Slash’s style sounds like, so we’d recognize his musical signature even if he played it faster. This would continue as the riff would come quicker and quicker; it would still seem like Guns N’ Roses, and it would still sound like a rock song. But at some juncture in the acceleration—and I can’t specify when—it would suddenly become speed metal, and it would be impossible to connect with the original creation. Imagine watching a wagon wheel as the axle (or maybe in this case, the Axl) starts turning; at a specific speed, the spokes suddenly appear to be rolling in reverse. Granted, this is an illusion—but it’s an illusion that’s comparable to the very real way people consume speed metal differently from glam rock, even though the two animals are filed under the same section in any record store. There is a point of no return that changes the meaning of a sound.

  What’s always struck me about speed metal is that its fans are obsessed with lyrics, even though these lyrics are essentially indecipherable. Teenage speed metal fanatics inevitably write the words to entire songs in their school notebooks and place considerable significance on their themes. In the 1996 HBO documentary Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills, convicted teenage sadist Damien Wayne Echols scribbled Metallica lyrics in his notebook alongside the work of antichrist superstar Aleister Crowley. While fans of party rock rarely cared about the words to their anthems, speed freaks demanded that their heroes write about something misanthropic, even if they didn’t have any insight to offer.

  That’s probably how we got death metal. All of these speed metal bands were writing about dark, sinister issues, and eventually they made the logical leap to writing about the darkest, most sinister dude they could remember hearing about in Sunday school. Groups like Metallica and Megadeth (and Anthrax, sort of) were based around being unhappy, but somehow this evolved into upstart bands who wrote almost exclusively about killing themselves and/or their parents and/or the girlfriend they wish they had.

  I’ve never seriously listened to groups like Deicide and Carcass and King Diamond, and I don’t feel much desire to place their work in a cultural context. It’s not that I think these bands are dangerous; on the contrary, I think they ultimately play a positive role in the lives of kids who (for whatever reason) have dark fantasies and a desire to dwell on social emptiness. What I don’t think they do is cross over into conventional culture; I don’t think
we’ve seen much of a mainstream societal pollination from death metal. It’s an insular subculture that doesn’t have legs. I suppose it’s possible that these kinds of groups inherited some of their ideas from the goth scene, and it’s just as possible that savvy death metal groups simply stole the sexy brand of satanism practiced by the Crüe, Maiden, and all three of Glenn Danzig’s projects. However, I ultimately suspect that these artists simply thought dying was the only subject that was interesting to write about.

  I don’t know; perhaps there is a societal aspect to this world and I’m just not seeing it. There’s still a thriving death metal scene in Florida, so maybe the presence of old people makes the concept of death more pertinent.

  September 23, 1989

  The Bulletboys debut record—and its single “For the Love of Money”—falls out of the Billboard 200 and disappears forever.

  “Burn your bridges, take what you can get,” crooned Gene Simmons on the unremarkable KISS song “While the City Sleeps,” and that still seems like practical (if not necessarily amiable) advice. “Go for the throat, ’cause you paid your debt.” According to scripture in the Book of Gene, there is no better revenge than living well.

  The tune comes off the 1984 release Animalize, an album that also featured a track called “Get All You Can Take.” This was the cassette I was listening to in my brother’s Chevrolet pickup on the day that I made the worst decision of my life.

  With the exception of gangsta rap, hair metal was probably the most unabashedly economic music ever made. And having money makes you do crazy shit: During Skid Row’s peak, ectomorphic singer Sebastian Bach bought a pair of leather pants for a thousand dollars. The reason I know this is because I asked the six-foot-five Bach how much he weighed on his solo tour in January of 2000, and he said he still weighed 179 pounds, which was his touring weight in 1990. Bach’s explanation for why he’s remained the same size: “I still gotta get into those fucking pants, man. They cost me a thousand dollars.”

  When Vince Neil appeared on the cover of SPIN magazine in 1992, he was pictured lighting a cigar with a thousand-dollar bill (I guess he had enough pants). Logically, this should not have been the image rock bands wanted to foster (especially not “gritty” bands like Mötley Crüe, who sang about cats in the alley and rats in their snakeskin boots). But burning money certainly seemed acceptable at the time; Mötley Crüe had signed a six-record deal with Elektra for a reported $25 million. Of course, this was also the era when people thought movie characters like Gordon Gecko were fascinating. I can even recall my senior English teacher telling our entire class that Donald Trump was the sexiest man alive. It was a Golden Age of Glam Capitalism.

  This story begins in the summer of 1989, when I was obsessed with being anywhere the stench of freshly laid asphalt was more prominent than the aroma of freshly cut grass. And this did not mean I wanted to run away to the big city; it just meant I wanted to be in a place that wasn’t a farm. That place ended up being Wahpeton, North Dakota, which is about as dreadful a community as there is in North America. Wahpeton has fifteen thousand people and the worst of everything: There’s nothing to do (except go to Hardee’s), but it’s not really a small town, either (you have to lock your car doors overnight, you don’t recognize most of the people you pass on the street, and a lot of the middle school kids like to huff gas). Nonetheless, I aggressively pursued a summer job in Wahpeton where I was supposed to teach small children how to play basketball, and this gave me an excuse to escape from my house three times a week and drive the twenty-five miles to an outdoor recreational facility near the Wahpeton Zoo. And since I usually went to Hardee’s after work, everything was pretty cool.

  I can’t remember any of the kids I coached and I don’t recall teaching them anything of consequence, but I always enjoyed the drive. It meant an hour a day in my brother’s shiny red pickup truck, and—as all metalheads know—pickup trucks have the finest acoustics in the world. Twenty minutes in the front seat of a Chevy Silverado is a better sonic experience than an entire afternoon at Abbey Road Studios, and the explanation for why is simple logistics: The speakers are right behind your head! That was a very loud summer. Lots of Ratt.

  One day after “work” (i.e., watching eleven-year-olds miss left-hand layups), I stopped off at my bank to get some money from the instant cash machine. My family has always done their banking in Wahpeton, and since my hometown did not have an ATM, this was always kind of a neat luxury. I got my twenty dollar bill and I looked at my receipt, expecting to see about $80. Instead, I had a little over $3,200.

  Something was afoot.

  I walked in the bank and showed my receipt to the teller (which shows just how neat I thought that ATM machine was—I used it even when the bank was open). She told me that machines sometimes make mistakes and that I shouldn’t worry about it. I followed her advice and went home.

  A week later, I went to get cash again. This time, the receipt claimed I had $8,865. Again, I walked into the bank and informed the teller that I was not, in fact, a sixteen-year-old entrepreneur. This time she said it was probably a decimal point mistake, and I likely had $88.65 in my account. That sort of made sense (but not really). Still, I basically ignored the weirdness and went home. I mean, what else could I do?

  At this point, you can probably see where this is leading.

  I didn’t get any more cash for almost a month. To be honest, my life really didn’t have too many expenses (I could last a long time on $80, unless I was buying fireworks). However, one night my good friend Edd and my sort-of-friend Pud decided to see The Dream Team at the newly built Wahpeton four-plex, and I stopped at the bank to get a few frogskins. I got $20 … and found myself staring at a transaction slip that indicated I had $63,000.

  This time, it was 6:45 P.M. and the bank was closed. There was no part-time teller to tell me it was all a misunderstanding, and I was in no mood to consider the consequences of my actions (or my life). Most of all, I remembered what I had learned from KISS. Burn your bridges, take what you can get, I thought. I should go for the throat, because I had paid my debt. I was going to live well, which would be my best revenge. I would give ’em hell.

  I would rage against this machine.

  I tried to withdraw $200. The electronic screen told me I couldn’t take out more than $200 a day. For a second, this confused me. Then I did the math. I withdrew $180.

  And then I was rich.

  I had no intentions of making this into a recreational habit. However, I probably should have, because it ended up becoming a serious addiction. The size of the account varied wildly and inexplicably (sometimes it was as high as $75,000), and it was always more money than I could possibly comprehend.

  And frankly, none of this seemed all that weird to me.

  Sixteen is a dangerous age; you’re just dumb enough to be really fucking cool. I suppose I thought about my future, but never beyond graduation. It seemed completely plausible that as long as I didn’t get greedy, these withdrawals could just slip by detection until I went to college. All I needed to do was get out of high school and move somewhere else. As far as I could tell, that would be the equivalent of faking my own death.

  Now that I had a bottomless wallet, I could seriously rock. I got my first CD player, and I replaced all five of my old Mötley Crüe cassettes with shiny new compact discs. I made all these purchases in one store, all within the span of fifteen minutes. My cousin was with me at the time, and I suspect he thought I was God. I bought a pair of $70 New Balance basketball shoes; when I blew out the sole during the first week of practice, I didn’t waste my time returning them. I just picked up a pair of $85 Nikes. In Wyndmere, this was how rock stars lived.

  Obviously, this scenario posed a lot of unanswered questions, and most of them were difficult to ignore (although I somehow always found a way). Whenever I got my monthly bank statement in the mail, the amount was always correct (and I was still writing a normal number of checks in my attempt to seem like an inconspicuous cons
umer). The big money was only available through ATMs, and there was no clear explanation as to why.

  I tried to keep this fiscal phenomenon a secret and told only my closest friends, but high school kids are not exactly known for playing things close to the vest. As the school year progressed, there was a growing rumor that I had access to massive sums of money (fortunately, I think most of my peers simply assumed I was lying about this, which certainly would have been a more reasonable explanation than the truth).

  There was also a fairly unavoidable ethical problem with all this thievery, and it was slowly starting to wear me down. In Penelope Spheeris’s documentary The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years, the wise sage Paul Stanley explains the best part about having money is “not having to worry about money.” However, that philosophy does not apply when the money you have is not actually yours. I worried about it constantly. Despite my best attempts at rationalization, I could not avoid the fact that this money was obviously coming from someone.

  Of course, a little omnipresent guilt still didn’t stop me from becoming an amateur (professional?) embezzler. I’d withdraw $20 just to see what level my balance was at (always half expecting—and maybe even hoping—to see “$80”), and inevitably see five figures of fantasy and request another transaction.

  Months passed, and I kept banging my head. I got Double Platinum and the debut effort from Skid Row. I got Surprise Attack by Tora Tora (which I actually regarded as “underground” metal). I replaced my tapes of Led Zeppelin IV and Van Halen II with CD replicants, concreting my classic rock credibility. I even decided to buy all twenty-plus KISS releases, but only on cassette; even with free money, buying that many compact discs just seemed a little too decadent.