![]() Only 10 or 12 people showed up at their first gig, but one of those people was Paul Vodas of Glorium, four local avant-punkers who never got the credit they deserved for their music or their benevolence. Reece and Keely started Trail of Dead shortly after arriving here from Hawaii via Olympia, Wash., in 1995. And I don't even think this record reaches the apex of what we might do in the future as far as taking that theme further." "Rather than release something that is 13 tracks of this band's music, one song and the next song and the next, we've always tried to have an album that is conceived as one piece," says Conrad Keely, who also switches between guitar and drums. The rest of the album never stops humming, unless you count the space between the last song and the obligatory secret track. At only one point on Madonna, between "Flood of Red" and "Children of the Hydra's Teeth," is there no sound at all. A nonstop wall of guitars pocked by rifle snare shots rises and falls with the changing moods. Madonna's vaguely cinematic structure captures a wide range of emotions, from poignant woe ("Clair de Lune") to frothing anger ("A Perfect Teenhood"). The end product of this slight refinement is one of the most engaging and fully realized rock albums to come out of Austin this year. Trail of Dead's new album, Madonna, sacrifices just enough of that onstage spontaneity to bring the artistic merits of the music itself to the forefront. ![]() There's no preconceived notion or motive. You're just playing and whatever happens just happens spontaneously. "You're not trying to be one thing or the other. "Not to be overly philosophical, but I think you can get to the point where you're not thinking," says guitarist/drummer Jason Reece. But unlike thickheaded doofs who just want to fuck shit up in the name of cool, Trail of Dead girds their mayhem with a fervent desire to break through the superficial barriers separating audiences from performers in order to bring about that elusive but pristine moment of collective, frenzied transcendence. The Austin quartet's propensity for destroying instruments amid a swirling panorama of noise and sweat has garnered them favorable feedback in crannies throughout the international underground music circuit. And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead knows their way around the art of breaking apart. Although they'll never have to upstage the Who like Hendrix did at Monterey. But the ecstatic smile on Hendrix's face as the flames rise toward his conjuring hands tells you everything you need to know about the difference between destruction as beauty and destruction as malevolence. Pennebaker's camera appear both horrified and mesmerized by the display. Two audience members briefly captured in the night by D.A. You actually hear the guitar's earsplitting death squeals as the flames begin to consume it. Hendrix sprays it all over the face of the instrument and kisses the strings before lighting a match and setting the guitar ablaze. A can of Ronsonol¨ lighter fluid appears. In the feedback-drenched wake of a blistering "Wild Thing," Hendrix straddles his guitar and begins thwacking away at the whammy bar like Onan reincarnated. ![]() When Jimi Hendrix set his guitar on fire at the Monterey Pop festival in 1967, he set in motion one of the most indelible and emotive sequences in rock history.
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