Elton John, what's that flower you got on? Or; Garage rock my ass! You want garage rock? We'll give you garage rock! Ladies and Gentlemen, we now give you the anti-Avril Lavigne, Memphis Tennessee's very own - Reigning Sound!

I kicked this motherfucker square in the balls, as hard as I fucking could. I just reared back with my right leg, pivoted slightly to my right, and let loose; it was a vicious and desperate shot, full of rage and panic, as though I was trying to kick down a fucking door that stood in the middle of a moment that stretched thinly between my life and my death in a fiery building.  When I hit the sad bastard I thought I could actually feel my foot go inside of his fucking pelvis, as though he were made of soft clay.  I actually wondered for a split second whether I’d have to pry my goddamn extremity out of the doughy fuck’s middle.

  I was surprised when my foot, shoe and all, actually came back to me.  The poor sonofabitch just stared at me in shock and disbelief as the pain wound it way through the boozy highways of his nervous system and into his brain.   It was amazing, I was actually able to take a long swig from my bottle of beer before the poor fucker cried out, doubled over, and started to get moist in the eyes; a full fifteen, twenty seconds after the blow.

  “There’s your ‘prevailing’ culture for you, you dumb-assed motherfucker.”  I stepped over him.   He was curled up in a fetus ball on the floor with both arms between his thighs.  His initial howls had given way to hyperventilation and tears of silence.

  By the time I’d gotten to the urinal in the men’s room my adrenaline from the whole affair was starting to ebb and I was starting to feel drunk again and lousy about the whole fucking deal. Hell, I was drunk to be sure, but I’d never been fucking violent. Never. I hated violent fucking drunks. But that cocksucker had it coming to him. In fact lots of cocksuckers have had it coming to them for a long fucking time as far as I was concerned, and he was the first to pay. So fuck’em.  I don’t care.

  I shook my prick dry and then went to the sink to run some cold water for my face.   I caught a quick glimpse of myself in the filthy scum splattered mirror.  Christ, I thought, these fucking nightclub bathrooms are the foulest fucking places on Earth.  Then I looked up again and realized that I probably fit right in. “Fuck you,” I said to the smirking asshole looking back at me from the glass; then I spit on him.

  “Jesus man, they had to carry that guy out of here,” my friend Lucas said as I approached the bar.

  “Was he able to walk at all?” I said, waving my empty beer bottle at the bartender hoping for another.

  “Yeah, he was limping a bit, but walking. He definitely needed help getting to the door.”

  “Well then I didn’t do a very good fucking job now, did I?”

  “Did he hit you first?”

  “Nope.”  I tossed three bucks onto the bar and grabbed my new bottle, pressing it to my lips for a long swig.

  “What did he fucking do to piss you off so much?  Fuck man, that just ain’t like you to kick a guy in the nutsack like that.”

  “Nothing”

  “Huh?”

  I quickly swallowed the other half of my beer and then mumbled, “Avril Lavigne.”

  “That fucking singer chick?”
  “Yeah, that fucking singer chick.”

  “What’s she got to do with this?”

“Nothing…and every-funking-thing” 

“What the fuck man? That was all he said?  Just fucking Avril Lavigne? That’s all it took for you to go off and try to sterilize the poor dumb fucker?”

  “If you wanna get down to the very fucking core of things and distill it to one prime example, yeah, that was it.”

  “Distill? What the fuck are you talking about man?”
  My voice took off and I felt my head go hot. “I’ll tell you just what the fuck it is I am talking about, I’m talking about this whole fucking miserable and mediocre media managed routine that somehow passes as rock and fucking roll in this stinking cultural shithole we’re living in right now.  All of the fucking massive mergers and moneyed controls slapped onto everything by some faceless and small handful of greed-headed, teen-porn loving, value-challenged baby boomer culture pimps.

  “I’m talking about the fucking franchising of books, movies, music, news, and even the goddamn food we eat.  It’s all shit to me.  So when I say distill, I mean distill! Distill every fucked up thing that exists as the so-called mainstream and what have you got?  That’s right, I’ll tell ya, Avril-fucking-Lavigne; homogeny supreme painted up in phony punk and street credentials, dressed up like a street walking lipstick lesbian turned twenty-five dollar runaway whore.  And what’s she do with all of that? She sings shitty pop songs that some fucks, like that asshole I just pummeled, call rock and roll.”

  “Man,” Lucas shook his head while looking down at he floor, “you are really, really fucked up, aren’t you?”

  “Me?  Ha!  Hardly.”

  Lucas shook his head some more in what I figured to be more disgust than amazement.

  “How’d it come to blows? I mean that was vicious.  Horrible in fact.”

  “The usual way.”

  “What do you mean, ‘the usual way’?

  “I mean exactly that - the usual fucking way.  The guy approached me, said he knew I wrote about music, and then started grilling me…saying all of the usual shit. You know, etcetera, et-fucking-cetera. 

  “I guess I’ve just finally had enough of shitheads like him.  And I guess I’m sick to fucking death of these schmucks arguing with me about the mainstream being the ‘mainstream’ for a reason. I’m so goddamn sick of that debate.  The mainstream is mainstream only because the people who make it mainstream are, generally speaking, mediocre piles of shit as people.”

  “So what did he say about her?” Lucas asked as he waved for a beer.

  “Who? Ohh, that Avril girl…well he asked me what record I’d reccomend the most right now so I told him that was a no brainer - Reigning Sound’s Time Bomb High School.”

  “So…?”

  “So I was telling him ‘bout these cats and this shit-hot no frills rock and roll record they put out and right in the middle of everything he fucking interrupts me and says, ‘Who are these guys? Rain what? I’ve never heard of them, at all. No wonder everyone prefers Avril Livigne.”

  “Oh shit,” Lucas smirked.

  “So I said ‘what?’ And he says, ‘Your kind is so fucking out of touch with the real world. With guys like you writing about shit like that, obscure cult bands and shit, its no wonder that real music like Avril Lavigne’s has no fucking competition on the charts.’ So I kicked the motherfucker…because I was sick of him.”

  Lucas smiled. “I can understand that,” he said, adding with a sip of beer, “someone had to do it.  If I’d known, I would’ve helped you man.”

 Greg Cartwright is excited to be brining his new band, Reigning Sound, to Cleveland.   He’s not just saying that - really. He knows damn well that nearly every band, when talking to the media, tosses some loose affections toward each and every hamlet that pops off of their tour itinerary, but he really means it. He mentions an obscure record shop in town that he thinks is “one of the best places to find music in the world” and explains that it”.   It all sounds good as Cartwright, with nary a hint of pretense, adds, “I might even go The Full Cleveland when I get there.”

  Full Cleveland?  Cartwright laughs. “Yeah,” Cartwright explains, “that phrase has been around for years. We always used to say that – The Full Cleveland.  Don’t you guys up in Cleveland know that one? Haven’t you heard that before?”   Well, maybe, maybe not. “Well,” Cartwright expounds, “it’s when you wear a white belt along with a pair of white shoes, that’s going The Full Cleveland.  If you have only one or the other, a white belt but no white shoes, or white shoes but no white belt, then you’re only going Half Cleveland.”  It’s an old cliché, but rooted in as much truth as all good clichés are, and Cartwright delivers it with an earnest fondness. He actually thinks the old line is more cool than funny, and he never once cracks a Parma joke. Maybe he really does like this town.

   Formerly known as Greg Oblivian, leader of the antediluvian bare bones rock trio The Oblivians, Cartwright talks excitedly about his new band as well as his affection for all things Cleveland while tending shop at his Memphis record boutique. He dodges a question as to whether his bands own hot new platter, Time Bomb High School, would sell well in its lead singer and songwriters own store by explaining that old timer Roky Erickson’s “new thing” is the hottest seller in his joint at the moment – not any of those new fangled, flavor of the month garage rock records.

  “I give the whole garage rock thing about six more months tops,” Cartwright says.  It’s not that he dislikes these new bands playing real old-timey rock and roll, in fact he sees it as nothing but good for the music, it’s just the way they go about it.

  “Seventy percent of it is just schtick.   So many of these new bands set out to show allegiance with the garage rock of the 60’s not through their music, but rather through fashion because that is the easiest and most obvious thing to ape. It’s hard to write good songs, which is what music is all about, so if you can’t the only thing you have left is the visual.” Cartwright pauses and then adds with a sharp laugh, “I mean, is there any reason for anyone to look like he MC5 these days?”

  But Reigning Sound is a garage band, a fact that Cartwright won’t argue but is quick to clarify considering the loose application of the term lately.  “We are, in that indefinable, rock and roll bar band sort of way, a garage band.  We’re not a real visual band, we probably don’t look much like a garage band is supposed to look, but we have the influences of garage rock: soul, rockabilly, Motown, early rock and roll.  It’s just rock and roll really,” he pauses, searching for the right words, then settling on a simple, obvious explanation. “We just play rock and roll music.”

   Time Bomb High School may be, in a large way, garage rock, but it isn’t the sort of reverential 60’s Nuggets rehash that passes as such these days. Instead, on this record Reigning Sound plunges into a late 70’s sound very much akin to the brilliant fusion of rock, pop, and R&B that the post-New York Dolls David Johansen had perfected and that New York Times music critic Robert Palmer had called at the time “no frills rock’n’roll music…with a sense of tradition”.

   Cartwright revels in that classic rock tradition.  He emphasizes the songs, not the style. He places a premium on serving up top-notch melodies and good, solid narrative lyrics, and his influences abound but blend casually into a sweaty, old fashioned no frills rock’n’roll presentation.   There isn’t any garage rock schtick here. There are no outfits, afros, bell bottoms, or faux hippy political stances. Reigning Sound, Cartwright will tell you, isn’t an act; it’s rock and roll.

  “Thespianism,” Cartwright says, clearly referring to how he views the modern day garage rock movement, with a cock sure seriousness “has no place in rock as far as I am concerned.”

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