Shots of Whisky, Lines of Coke and Gunshots over Cerrillos Road

Shots of Whiskey,

Lines of Coke

and

Gunshots over Cerrillos Road 

by

Chance Willey

For Team Everything, D Numbers and Meow Wolf: 

The cosmic winds endlessly carving the Santa Fe art Scene 

and for my generation; 

masked and merry makers of these scenes.

      June 27th, 2013. Tonight’s frivolity will be hosted by the local band “D Numbers”, joined by video artist Robert Drummond, with Meow Wolf holding the after-party. This is to be a grand re-imagining of musical opportunities in Santa Fe with a whisky shot of real nightlife, an event I dare not miss. 

      7:00pm...I am waiting for my guides, Logan Wheeler and Todd Van Beusik, on a street corner in downtown Santa Fe. In some pockets of Santa Fe Logan and Todd are well known for their heavy drug use and whacky antics. “Fiendish”, “strange” and “savage”, are all words one might expect to hear in a description of Satanist rituals and serial killers, but cause for worry when used to describe one’s guides. Out of caution that these adjectives might hold water, I expect the strange and prepare for the bizarre. Tonight has been highly anticipated and methodically planned. For three days I had played telephone tag with Logan, trying to get our scheduling down. Between missed connections I had received six ominous voicemails, all pertaining to tonight’s drug use.

      I had been told that Logan and Todd would be cruising up in a white Chevy Aveo LS around 6:30 to pick me up. It is now seven and I am still waiting, getting anxious. I light a Parliament and wait more. After a while I notice a white Chevy cruising, looping around the square, one-two-three-six times by way of West San Francisco to Washington to West Palace to Lincoln, playing Duran Duran’s Hungry like the Wolf with each circuit. Finally the car stops, holding up all other traffic.  A red Mazda begins honking. 

      A man with pink shades and a red flannel shirt leans out of the car and hisses “Get in!” I hop in without question or complaint and as Hungry Like the Wolf replays for the sixth time, we drive off. 

      The man in the passenger seat turns around and deadpans: “We wanted you to jump in front of the car”. I recognize his voice as that of Logan Wheeler. He looks like the kind of man you would find running nude through a cornfield after an axe murder, with Charles Manson eyes and a reptilian smile. He is dressed now though, entirely in black, sporting a silver Tibetan necklace and long, stringy blonde hair.    

      Listening to their conversation in the front seat it soon became clear that Todd was the one who tried to keep the situation in check, while always planning for the oddest night imaginable. Logan, on the other hand, was the freak who operated in random spurts of binge craziness; violent nights consisting of booze, drugs, sex and a good fight were Logan’s bag. An hour ago I had not anticipated such combinations but now as Hungry like the Wolf played for the twelfth time, Logan shifts my expectations when he yells:

      “We need some fine ass bitches for to have sex with”.

      “No...you do. I’m no single man. Lets just call Kat,” Todd says.

      “She's got that boyfriend,” Logan muses. “But when has that ever stopped me?”

      “I know, right? She's our party girl it would be sinful not to have her.”

      Logan seemed thoughtful for a moment.  “I don't know, its gonna get weird.  She’ll start talking about her boyfriend and then I’ll say something vindictive and sarcastic and make everyone uncomfortable.”

      Todd sneers. “No, man, you say that now, but here’s what gonna happen: you’ll party with her for seven hours and feel great and then tomorrow morning you’ll put Stevie Wonder on and cry like a baby.”

      Logan assesses the accuracy of Todd’s statement.  “Why won’t she love me man?”

      “Not in front of the kid”. Todd was referring to me. "Lets just appreciate her for what she can be to us, make an unthreatening phone call and get her in the car. And that means no jokes about cutting her open with a bottle and harvesting her organs.” Todd turns to face me changing his voice; ”That’s what we did with the last girl”. I didn't know whether to laugh or jump out the window, so I just gave a giggle.

      Logan turned around. “Its funny cause its true”, he says, stone faced. I am wounded, feeling the blade of uncertainty slipping between my ribs. Had they really killed a girl?  We were now up at The Cross of the Martyrs, the same state park that had earlier in the year been the setting to a series of violent rapes. I am immediately sorry for making that grim connection.

      Time rolls on and Logan’s attempts to contact Kat are fruitless. It seems now that, to spite Todd, Logan’s fevered pursuit of feminine company will push all other preparations to aside. Everything from glow sticks to the girl was missing from the Aveo and the D Numbers show would soon be starting. Breaking his lobotomy-like stare, Todd turns to the back seat and assures me that shoplifting the glow sticks and catching up to Kat won’t be a problem, but, what with all the flaky drug dealers in Santa Fe, rounding up enough of the right drugs to stay wide awake but barely conscious will be the greater chore. He further tells me that the few contacts they have will respect the urgency of the situation and will meet their demands with punctuality.   

      Half an hour passes by spent rounding up everything and catching up with Kat, a giggly blonde with bright blue eyes and track runner legs who likes to repeat catchy phrases over and over again. “Life is a trip”, “who are we really?” and “damn straight” are among her favorites. We are now at the Railyard and the boys are drinking as I smoke outside the car. They drink shots of whisky and Svedka Screw Drivers, doing lines of cocaine and bumps of “Molly” between swigs. Now drug addled and drunk, the three of them come out of the car, knock the lit Parliament from my mouth and proceed to the water tower where the stage has been set, slipping into a milling crowd of hipsters and trance kids.

      Apple laptops light the faces on stage as the ether shifts around the crowd. The air twists with techno staircases and electronic valleys form, all shaped in waves of sound. There are pulsing lighthouses and shape shifting prisms strung up between newly forming constellations on a crystal beach. This surrealist universe, driven by eerie hums and drawn by pen-stroke guitar riffs, is the work of D Numbers. Situationalist collage artists of the music world, D Numbers combines elements of techno, trance and house music for a synesthetic experience, pleasing to the mind and greatly helpful in the come-on of absolutely any drug. “Molly”, however, is the perfect drug for this show and Todd is undulating proof of that. Glow sticks now cracked and stuck through the button holes of his shirt, he dances like a mad shaman of professional hysteria, mixing the dance styles of beat generation performance artists and Apache Indians. Kat dances like all girls her age, accidentally sexy, while Logan tries to match his 80’s dance moves to the shifting beat. 

      10:15...twelve gunshots over the main strip, time increments varying between each shot, a crazed NRA salute to this odd night in this damned New Mexico capital. The D Numbers show ended about ten minutes ago and we are on our way to Molly’s Lounge for the Meow Wolf after party when the caps start busting from behind The Western Scene Motel on Cerrillos. My senses, unhindered by drugs, react with fear and shock to the pops and bangs as my three companions continue to look forward and talk about possible acid dealers, unfazed by the Tarantino soundtrack. 

      After a couple bumps of “Molly” and another line of coke in the bar’s parking lot , Logan leads the way to the guarded threshold where a Hispanic police officer gives us some bad news. The after party turns out to be for persons 21 and over.  Happily Todd is recognized by a member of the Meow Wolf organization who lets us in, two of us for half the ticket price. We dance in Molly's for 15 minutes and then leave on Logan’s whim. I can see that Todd wants to stay but he tells me that it’s best we don’t fight Logan’s desires.

      It becomes clear to me now, as we follow Logan to the car, who is running the freak show. Logan, jaded and twisted, in the tortured spirit of Kurt Cobain, hails as front man. He shifts the night’s moves with a morose electromagnet and finds it fashionable. I see a self-destructive film glaze their eyes, I don’t know how long it has been there but I see it now, that rolling shroud I have become all too familiar with. The one I had seen before on the faces of sorrowful good girls before gang bangs and on the faces of good men on that shot to shot crusade for conferrable paralysis. The generational mask that hangs, in vulgar mass production, on the walls of Santa Fe night life is now rolled over Logan’s face and Todd’s.  The night turns gray like the skin of a drowned man and I recognize it as just another escape, a momentary fix for a viciously circular problem. The fear in Todd’s eyes suggests that he knows, knows of the mask. He had put it on himself and now, his skin to sensitive to pry it off, his hands to numb to pull it away, had let it forge into iron, armoring his fragile self and shining softly for a generation of emotional cripples. Seeing their faces frozen over in soft metal layers of transience and teenage glory causes a tear to roll down the ethereal contours of my soul. I know that, like the gang banged and the wino crusaders, the big talk bad boys of Santa Fe are now lost in their own confused forgeries - bad checks that can only be cashed in youth but will yield no fortune. 

       The night comes to a close, its life and music re-imagined by everyone but the audience, who used it for a come on and then left early. The same vacant-eyed driving force behind every great escape and every next big thing in Santa Fe, sparked tonight into violent action only to disappear in hollow dance with the two masked boys in the Chevy Aveo.

     

Beirut and the Lost Generation

Beirut

 and the 

Lost Generation
By 

Chance Willey

Beirut is an American band, originally the solo musical project of Santa Fe native Zachary Francis Condon, and later expanded into a band.  Beirut's music combines elements of indi-folk and world music. 

-Wikipedia, 2010 

The date is October 7th,2011, the night of the Beirut concert. In some circles, the homecoming of Zach Condon’s wanderlust band is a more greatly anticipated event than the reemergence of Jeff Mangum, next year’s Starfucker concert and the second coming of Jesus combined. Beirut is the nine man embodiment of Zach Condon’s high school dream and this show was to be a celebration of their new album called The Rip Tide. This event will attract a vast menagerie of viewers, varying in grit and taste. 

5:30pm... Pandemonium, but no one admits to it, every one is a rock. The cold-eyed boys and the haze-crazed girls, fully loaded, second hand soul sweaters and undertaker make up, are wandering from their shadowy corners of town, finding fixes on route, before baring witness to the greatest testament to their musical taste. This lackadaisical migration eased into movement at around 4:45pm. These were the true fans, the initial ripple of a frigid wave; the tsunami would would roll in around half way through the concert with all the aviators, the kids who took the extra time to get just a bit higher during the opening acts and who ditched school early. No one is ready yet though and those who aimed to be prepared were still scattered about town, too cool to wait. Those of us who have no fix to find wander aimlessly in and out of the down town scenes, many there are, all savage in nature.  

6:30...rain falls and tight circles are formed under hotel awnings and though these solemn boys and girls appear to be making nice over their black coffees and American Spirits, I am not fooled. This is Darwin, natural selection at it’s worst. Faces lit by iphones they snarl over Pitchfork.com (an independent music site). If the show doesn’t start soon, the pavement will be soft with unkempt beards and sink washed hair, head wounds bleeding hydrogen peroxide and industrial bleach. This is no night to mess around. Alternative or die.

Time passes in cigarettes, cell phone conversations and cups of coffee, a couple house parties cash their first boles and finnish their first six pack of PBR. By 8:00pm the initial ripple has permeated the thresh hold of the Santa Fe Convention Center. We will all enjoy a solid hour of good vibes before the mob comes bringing the high and the mighty and the fashionably late. 

The opening act had started their set just after 7:30pm when the majority of the concert attendees were still smoking pot outside, inconspicuously of course, and enjoying The Growlers on their mp3 players. Now, smoky and soothed, the kids are shuffling into the vortex that is the D Numbers experience. D Numbers, armed with Mack Computers, sound boards and traditional electric instruments, offer the perfect auditory warm up for the trance dancers and the perfect come on for the pre-show tokers. Those of the proper state of mind experience a novella worth of scenic bridges and angelic-techno hymns at the agile fingers of this up and coming band. As drummer appropriately change time the rippling audience shifts in tide and bends to each new current. Total control. Skilled puppeteers.

8:30pm, or so...A time capsule...A grim daughter of the early sixties folk revival has taken center stage, guitar in hand. Laetitia Sadier is what would happen if Joni Mitchell and the lead singer of St. Vincent had a child, a very acquired taste for the hardcore Beirut fans who were no longer in the mood for slow jams, they wanted a good march or a spirited waltz. Their patience wears thin, to the point of transparency, and by the second song the faces in the audience, again under lit by iphones, are floating out of the room. This is the cigarette set, a downer during which a vast majority of the concert attendees retire to the court yard again to burn their poisons and the trance kids move closer to the stage. In the middle of this set some miscalculations land a couple plane loads of aviators in the convention center too soon, unlucky for them. Their buzzes “harshed”, several spread out on the floor, waiting in sleep for the main attraction, some of them hand in hand.

The soothing sounds off passing cars have now morphed and swelled and now all I hear are biplane engines. They come on like the first strikes of a WW1 bombing raid, sputtering in and echoing back through the court yard the ominous words of Jim Morrison: “Is everybody in? Is everybody in? The ceremony is about to begin.”

9:00pm...”Ladies and Gentlemen, Beirut”... Zach Condon takes the stage with a tousle of his dirty hair and a short speech. The music starts and the hall responds with a vocal kick that boots the courtyard, everyone who has not been alerted of Beirut’s on stage status are striding in. It is easy to pick out their new songs from their set, all you have to do is look for small facial tweaks on the people who look the least interested. These are the aficionados who had heard the songs leaked on Gorilla vs. Bear, (an obscure music blog stationed in Dallas,) weeks before. 

Half an hour passes in this highly anticipated spectacle with nothing happening. Dreamy currents of music are carrying sailboats of potential energy to and from the bar at the back of the hall. All around the kids are passing out, girls are screaming, good time guys are grinding up on them but where is that big wave to break down the hall? It is at this half way mark that those of my ilk reconcile smooth sailing, Condon’s trumpet rests on the stage and his uke is capoed in his hand, it is now that, with the crowd’s silent anticipation, us skeptics turn our heads as the sea rolls back. Seven eighth notes and one half note on B minor and the wave breaks on the hall... The crowd erupts but not in the way I had anticipated, no mobs, no grotesque scenes of bloody havoc, barley a power struggle between the fly boys and the aficionados. This was a brave new orgy in the good spirit of Aldus Huxley, during which the emotionally stripped bodies of a lost generation move in forced pleasure and intake of their ethers. The military drumming whips the kids into a hissing frenzy and through mustached mouths and lipstick lips you hear the moans in unison: “indie cred, indie cred”. For a moment, as the great wash rolls back, everyone grasps at what they came for, a masturbatory affirmation of their standing in this scene, a blast of blinding salt water in which they can know, without fear of contradiction, they are “hip”. The trumpet outro of “Elephant Gun” establishes the high water mark and as the music fades to nothing over a screaming anamorphic mass of people, the wave completes it’s recession. Our perceptions are cleansed now and all appears as it truly is. Zach Condon, our hipster homecoming king, replaced by a mass egoism figurine, bloated with enough fertility for hipster generations to come, stands surrounded by eight high priests sermonizing to the rabble below who writhe in the fashion of evangelical preachers, dazed by the technicolor christmas light display. This is what I’m here for.

Midnight strait up... One encore and the show is closed. The kids, their good vibes worn through like second hand shoes, head home, or head to after parties to regain their altitudes. Snow falls as the digital clocks change their suffixes and the last ripples move back to their shadowy corners of town. It would be nice to think that, for all their fussing and fixes, these boys and girls, soul sweaters worn and make up smeared, will recall this night and hang it in high regard, but to believe that(, in reference to the majority of them,) is absurd. As they head off, engines humming, oxfords clicking, their confidence slips on to the street, soon they must again prove themselves and make it stick. Many will, with masks of vacancy, meticulously arrange mixture after mixture of good time enhancers only to experience another brush with that nitrous burst of “cool” and a cold let down. Beirut is back stage, ragging off their sweat and changing their shirts under fluorescent lights, appearing as they truly are: nine talented men, nothing more, nothing less. Finally, the last lingering vibration knocks around the empty court yard of the Convention Center then flies frozen over Santa Fe.