Let’s visit Corrections Corner. As regular reader Harmonicat underlined in response to last week’s suggestion that Salem’s Satanic Temple practiced animal sacrifice, their rituals neither involve “the promotion of suffering” nor “animals.” You can read it for yourself at the Temple’s FAQ.
We’ll take them at their word. And why shouldn’t we? Animal sacrifice is a huge drag, whether it’s a fertility ritual at the Altar of Baal or your standard exsanguination procedure in an industrial slaughterhouse.
In truth, I fell prey to a 21st century version of “Satanic panic.” You know, the cultural phenomenon sparked by the fearmongering book “Michelle Remembers” that convinced parents in the 1980s there was a demonic cult lurking around every corner. Not just a boogeyman – a team of boogeymen! With bizarre rituals! Unfurling their dark intentions like a black sail over suburban America, getting incredible kicks (to paraphrase Hunter S. Thompson) from things the PTA will never know.
Tipper Gore’s Parents Music Resource Center came down particularly hard on heavy metal. If you were a rock ’n’ roller during the ’80s, you might have bought a Judas Priest record just to play it backward and find out if all the rumors about subliminal Satanic messaging were true. If they were, the devilish prank was only half as disturbing as some of the stuff you heard on the Beatles’ White Album …
So let’s dial down the “Satanic panic.” The folks at The Satanic Temple don’t practice animal sacrifice, don’t worship Satan, don’t promote evil and don’t subscribe to belief in the supernatural. They’re just regular types, like you and me, who put on their branded “Hail Satan” sweatshirt, manufactured from Gildan 18500 heavy blend cotton (60 percent polyester, 40 percent U.S. cotton) one arm at a time. Currently available at the website in Small and Medium for $60, plus shipping and handling.
Hit this
Friday: Gollylagging, Paper Lady, Alexander (The Rockwell, Somerville)
It’s a record release celebration at the black box theater beneath Davis Square. Post-hardcore noisemakers Gollylagging usher their EP “Dry Rot” into the world. What kind of world awaits? A world full of microplastics, podcasts, hooligans running for office and state-sponsored terrorism. The album’s gnarly progressions, thunderous percussion and soporific mewling triangulate the chaos to find a space safe enough to strum a guitar. Emotionally intelligent underground rockers Paper Lady and Alexander join in support.
Friday and Saturday: Somergloom (Arts at the Armory, Somerville)
A weekend of heavy music. “Heavy music” is a new phrase that artists FKA metalheads are using to put some distance between themselves and aged-out notions of what headbanging should look and feel like. Local festivals such as Somergloom and RPM Fest out in Western Mass are using the phrase to find audiences that may not have otherwise known they like to buy and wear black band T-shirts. Artists such as Somergloom headliner Big|Brave, for example, will rock your socks off with growling guitar, haunting textures and eviscerating vocals. But they can also go soft and sound like they prefer cafes to biker bars. Plus, there’s a goddamn bouquet of flowers on the cover of their new album “A Chaos of Flowers.”
Aug. 30: Coral Moons, Talk Chalk, Lady Pills (The Sinclair, Cambridge)
Indie rockers Coral Moons got their start in locally and have moved to Upstate New York where lead singer-songwriter Carly Kraft spends time “caring for her chickens.” Any relation to Robert Kraft? And does Carly know that Cambridge amended the zoning ordinance to allow henkeeping in the city last November? That’s right. Jump through a few hoops, which include obtaining the signed consent of property owners (good luck renters, you beautiful and blighted second-class citizens!), and you too can be an urban chicken farmer. Somebody tell Kraft at The Sinclair show. Tell hot dog detectives Talk Chalk and Lady Pills too. No roosters allowed.
Live jazz on Georges Island
If you keep walking east from anywhere in Camberville, you’ll hit the ocean.
If you keep walking east on the ocean floor (like the zombies in George Romero’s “Land of the Dead”), you’ll hit an island called The Graves. How fucking spooky is that?
But we’re talking here about a different island in Boston Harbor, south of The Graves, called Georges Island, that hosted a free pop-up jazz concert this past Sunday. A jazz quartet, plus a few lone wolf honkers, scattered themselves amid the ruins of Civil War-era Fort Warren to enchant a ferry’s worth of adventurous souls looking for a musical romp.
The afternoon was masterminded by the New England Jazz Collaborative, an organization dedicated to Promoting, Increasing, Creating, Forging, Embodying and Other Strong Verbing related to local jazz. Is this a nonprofit? If it is, it really soft-pedals the 501(c)(3) status, and it’s not popping up in the usual databases. In any event, it does good work, has a board of directors and will happily accept your tax-exempt donations.
The next time you get the chance to visit the islands in Boston Harbor, take it. The old fort at Georges Island is an overgrown rabbit warren of discovery. The jazz quartet set up shop in the main plaza. But the music fans who wandered away were greeted by the ghostly sonority of other solo saxophonists who had stashed themselves in various echo chambers throughout the sprawling stone edifice. With storm clouds looming and stray sax sounds on the breeze, you could have filmed an entire noir film trilogy in the space of a single Sunday visit.
Another perk? Whale sightings on the way to and from the island. Unusual, though not unheard of, and infinitely preferable to a swarm of locusts.
Michael Gutierrez is an author, educator, activist and editor-in-chief at Hump Day News.
A stronger
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