Get Underground
Centipedes tickle my arms as they crawl around, scurrying about my flesh. Everything appears sterile and surreal in the backyard at 2:00 in the morning. Night on Planet Sativa, esoteric universal plains ownership of my mind and my soul.
It appears to be raining or sleeting only on me in the milieu of my ghastly little fantasy/trip. I feel suspended in mid-air by my lungs which burn with the heavenly throb of a piston engine on dope…and all this as I listen to the seminal teen rock phenomenon of Linkin Park’s “Hybrid Theory”. The album produces anomalous effects, a tonic of the imagination, and I begin seeing each song as a prophetic sign. A prophetic sign of what, I could only begin to surmise.
The album consists of of practically an entire track list of radio hits, and it became a crossover sensation betwixt a dichotomized fan base of hipster outcasts and their trendy popular kid enemies. However, the album, a monster fusion of Japanime-inspired keyboard-driven mental and rap/rock, was eschewed by “important” critics as just another teen thang. A K-ROCK dee-jay called the lead singer “Jonathan Davis’ little brother”. I don’t know about that, but I do know that the album is a stimulant on so many levels.
Track five: “Crawling”—Pipeline, we run through it like a movie camera, something dirty yet glamorous. The water that pushes up out of the pipe is silver like mercury, shooting up like a spout, pulsing, pounding, it all is pitter patter, seguing into deafening indignation spilling forth eloquently from a spiky-haired, body pierced blonde young man. CHESTER!!! Easing back into provocative keys and gentle, magical, melancholic singing from a soaking wet junkie boy in a cold cell in some gulag. Suddenly, he is in durance vile in a padded room, straight jacket and all. He breaks free of the straight jacket, sending shreds of it floating down in slow-mo as he morphs into a demonic boy and then again into an angelic young man with sky blue contacts.
I’m back in the yard at night and a bush turns into a Tazmanian Devil stalking me in the shadows. Relax, you know it isn’t really there. Hold that cool and distant look, and keep your marijuana-induced aplomb. No use worrying about things that you have no control over. I hear the words, “in the memory you’ll find find me, eyes burning. The darkness holding me tightly, until the sun rises up,” from “Linkin Park’s “Forgotten,” and say smoke another cigarette, you’ll feel better.
Music is all about rhythm and melody, but it is also about strong feelings. Chester Bellington and the Gang seem to have those in spades. So there is only one thing left to say: Blow some of your rent money on “Hybrid Theory”. You won’t regret it.
