BLEAK FRIDAY + DANGERHOUSE VOLUME TWO: GIVE ME A LITTLE PAIN!

 

BY TIM P. WALKER

King Shot Press advertises its 2020 five story mini-anthology Bleak Friday as the first (and as of this writing, only) in its Commuter Series. At four by seven inches and a little over a hundred pages thick, it’s roughly the size of an old school mass market Pocket book that used to be sold on dime store racks in the fifties, though I wouldn’t recommend you tuck this book in your back pocket on the Metro on a Monday morning, lest someone suspect you of packing an incendiary device. When four of the five stories end with either dead fascists or the desire for more dead fascists, then it’s clear that this book might give some folks the wrong vibe. It’s not its place in a nine to five world anyway.

 

Here’s what Molotov cocktails the King Shot folks have lined up in this set:

·         “Ruination V.0.5 (Beta)” by Axel Hassan Taiari. This one’s about… Well, actually, I have no idea what’s going on here. It has a lot style, though. I’ll give it that. If you didn’t already gather from the title, Taiari seems to be setting the table for his (as of this writing, forthcoming) novel Ruination. The degree to which this whets your appetite may vary.

·         “The Snowy Graves of Fort Bragg” by Kelby Losack. Two friends from Puerto Rico seeking their fortunes in the states meet their fates when they land jobs as laborers during the wintertime construction of the titular Army base. It’s as cold and mean as the title suggests.

·         “Parasiteland” by Lydia Xythali. Here’s a creepy Barker-esque tale of the well-off versus the poor. The less I say about it the better, but I will tell you that it involves a trip to a dark basement and all the things you’d expect to find such a place. The usual hijinks ensue. It’s a fun piece. 

·         “Bomb Thrower” by Jo Quenell. The de facto centerpiece of this collection. It’s Poe for Now Times as a neo-Nazi cretin is haunted by the ghost of the girl he just killed. It doesn’t mince words and it doesn’t leave any room for that both sides bullshit. It gets an ardent nod of approval from me.

·         “Wedding Bells Strike Thirteen” by Violet LeVoit. It’s a dystopian sci-fi piece about learning how to love in a world programmed to fetishize household products. Or maybe that feeling called love is simply a matter of reprogramming. Hmm. LeVoit offers up a lot to chew on, most of it tasty. Nevertheless, it is a lot, and if I have but one nit to pick—maybe the Enter button could’ve pressed a little more often. Some of those paragraphs can be choking hazards.

 

Overall, this is an enjoyable set, and the range of styles on display and that cover by Matthew Revert beg for it to be paired with a compilation album. Because its compact nature gives it a familial feel, I can’t help but think of the most familial of compilation albums, the label compilation. Usually retailing for less than standard price—if not free outright—these albums were essentially playlists record labels threw together periodically to showcase the artists on their roster. If the A&R folks or whomever oversaw the cultivation of talent were worth their salt, then their compilations would turn out to be fairly motley assortments worth at least a few spins and perhaps a deeper dive into the work of the artists who really catch your ear. There are any number of those kinds of releases from my personal stack that would’ve paired well with Bleak Friday—the seventies prog/art rock/lounge jazz of E.G. Records, the eighties second wave ska of 2 Tone Records, the late-nineties death/mook/goth metal of Century Media. But I went with this:

 

Founded in 1977, Dangerhouse Records was a label that appeared in the nascent days of the Southern California punk scene. Though its run lasted only three years, it put out a handful of singles and EP’s from seminal groups like X, Bags, the Weirdos, and the Dils. The label only released one full length LP during its run—Black Randy and Metrosquad’s Pass the Dust, I Think I’m Bowie, which includes notably dodgy tracks like “Idi Amin” and a cover of the main title theme from Shaft. Like some of the stories in Bleak Friday, Black Randy’s intent can come off rather opaque, but much like the scene that gave rise to him and the rest of the Dangerhouse roster, the attitude and the go-anywhere-do-anything spirit of adventurousness is unquestionable.

 

“Idi Amin” along with another song called “I Slept in an Arcade” both appear on the posthumous (as to both Dangerhouse Records and, sadly, Black Randy) compilation Dangerhouse Volume 2: Give Me a Little Pain (Frontier, 1992). It also includes a cavalcade of two to three minute blasts such as an early version of X’s “Adult Books”, the Bags' "We Will Bury You", and Eyes’ “Eniwetok”. Oh, and most importantly, it’s got the neutron bomb:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErDx1x0pFW8

 

Bleak Friday itself has stories that might level a few city blocks if you’re not careful with it. You can find it here:

https://www.kingshotpress.com/shop/bleak-friday