The Obelisk Questionnaire is a series of open questions intended to give the answerer an opportunity to explore these ideas and stories from their life as deeply as they choose. Answers can be short or long, and that reveals something in itself, but the most important factor is honesty.

Based on the Proust Questionnaire, the goal over time is to show a diverse range of perspectives as those who take part bring their own points of view to answering the same questions. To see all The Obelisk Questionnaire posts, click here.

Thank you for reading and thanks to all who participate.

The Obelisk Questionnaire: Murray Acton of Stinkhorn & Dayglo Abortions

—

How do you define what you do and how did you come to do it?

I don’t really identify with genres and from the start, I wanted this band to be genre neutral. I would like to be able to play whatever style of music seems appropriate for the song. That said I am heavily influenced by the music of my youth. I was a teenager in the ‘70s, I remember when Master of Reality came out. That changed everything for me. Back then it was all about Black Sabbath, King Crimson, Rush, UFO, basically ‘70s metal. I can’t hide nor would I try to hide where I came from. I also have a punk band called the Dayglo Abortions. I built a song around a Black Sabbath riff on all nine (I think) of their albums. I don’t consider it theft, everyone knows it’s a Black Sabbath riff. It’s more of a tribute.
Describe your first musical memory.

My first record was the Walt Disney release of “Peter and the Wolf” conducted by Leopold Stakowski. There is a part in there where the wolf is stalking Peter in the woods. The music in that part gets all low and creepy, with woodwinds and strings. I loved it. I would play it over and over again. I spent my whole childhood trying to find more music like that. I found some. The Hall of the Mountain King from the Peer Gynt symphony was one. Then when I was I think 12 or 13, Master of Reality finally made it to the backwoods town I lived in. I remember rushing home with it. My cousin had the first Sabbath album and I liked it, but it didn’t prepare me for what I was about to hear. It was as profound as my first acid trip. At that point I new what I was going to be doing with my life.

Describe your best musical memory to date.

Jeasus there are so many. A few years ago the dayglo abortions played at the Montebello Rockfest in Quebec. They were really good to us and put us on the Punk stage just after the sun went down, and there was nobody playing on the corporate stages. I got to watch Converge from New York play right before us (if that doesn’t inspire you to play you’re in the wrong business). Then we went on. There were no other bands playing so the people from the corporate side all came over to see what was going on. There must have been 100,000 people in front of us. The French Canadian punks were up front and they were singing our songs with us at deafening volume that was out of hand. There’s video of it on Youtube as well. When it gets down to it though, the big shows are a bit weird. You are so disconnected from the audience, with the lights right in your face so you can’t even see them. There is nothing on earth that is as much fun as playing in a packed sweaty bar in Slovenia or something. I played in Slovenia in the middle of the Serb/Croat war. We were only a few miles from the Croatian border where the fighting was, and people from four countries, three of them were at war with each other, came to the show. It was awesome. They made us play our entire set twice, and one song four or five times in a row at the end. They would just push us back on the stage yelling, “You drink with us!”

When was a time when a firmly held belief was tested?

Hmmm. I’m not sure. I was a weird kid. I had a bunch of beliefs right from the start. Adults are all liars and they want to take all your cool shit. No authority can be trusted for the same reason. Credit cards are a bad idea that the banks enslave people with. I really didn’t even like money for the same reasons. As I got older I picked up some more beliefs like beer and weed are good for you. The drugs that the pharma companies make are very bad for you, and the pharma companies are the worst drug pushers on the planet. Right along with the psychiatrists. There are more I’m sure… the universe is not held together by gravity. It’s electromagnetism, and there is no dark matter, or dark energy. Anyways I’ve got all these beliefs but none of them have ever been disproved.

Where do you feel artistic progression leads?

The Beautiful think about pursuits like that is your progression takes you to new places of creativity, which in turn inspires new ideas and directions for your so called “quest to enlightenment” I personally believe that us humans evolved into what we are with our big brains, because of the music we play, and it is our duty to the larger system that we are a part of to make our song join in with the songs of all the other creatures we share this place with. We’re not doing a very good job of it. That’s why the Mayan mystics say were disconnected from the universe. We need to connect to it with our music. It is a language that transcends spoken languages, and is capable of transmitting pure emotion. It is also the only thing we do that uses our entire brain. It’s obvious to me.

How do you define success?

Well seeing as I didn’t start playing music for the money, and I’m always broke, it’s obviously not for the money. (if that’s what you want in life, get a fucking job, you probably won’t make much playing music) Success to me is seeing three generations of a family at a show. Sitting in a locals-only bar, thousands of miles from home, with friends I’ve known for years from coming to that town once a year on tour. To have a bunch of top rated bands do a tribute album of your songs. That might be the biggest compliment I ever been given. There is a comp with bands like Napalm Death, Municipal Waste. Gwar, Agnostic Front. And stuff playing Dayglo Abortions songs. All those bands are better known than my band but apparently I was a big influence to them when they were growing up and shit. Crazy eh.

What is something you have seen that you wish you hadn’t?

I’ve had friends die in my arms from drug overdoses. I’ve been in multiple high speed car accidents. I’ve been beaten and pepper sprayed by the cops so many times it wasn’t even spicy anymore. But there is one thing I wish I hadn’t seen. Once in the ‘70s I walked into an orgy. It was on a kitchen floor and they were all friends. They tried to get me to stay and join in. I think I said. There’s 10 people here already, and eight of you are dudes. No thank you.
Describe something you haven’t created yet that you’d like to create.

When I was a kid I thought I could save the world with music. I was naive. Now I have concluded that it’s going to take more than that… wait… that’s it… something that I believed in that I have UN-believed. (to answer your question from earlier) I want to do a project that explores the use of instrumental music as a language to communicate directly to the creative force of the universe. Maybe make music that can be heard in other dimensions, or music that can be heard across the universe because it resonates with reality and propagates forever like a toroidal vortex, that folds in on itself like a smoke ring, and just keeps on going. Not sure how to go about it

What do you believe is the most essential function of art?

Our art does so much for us. It tells us who we should hang with, how we should dress, who to vote for. It cheers us up when were sad. It helps us remember our past. But possibly it’s most important function is to point out and provide solutions to the things that we are doing wrong. The injustices, and the intolerance. It shows us how to defeat evil. It show us what true evil really is, and helps us fight it.

Something non-musical that you’re looking forward to?

I am looking forward to our solar system crossing the galactic plane. When it does the Earth’s magnetic field flips, and the earth will start spinning in the other direction. The Sun will go micro-nova, and just about everything on the planet will be killed. It happens every 12,00 years. The last time it happened was the younger dries extinction event. Humans have survived it several times, but not very many of them. That is why our DNA can be traced back to less than a thousand individuals. That is why there are so many indications that people went underground. (it takes 200 years for us to cross the galactic plane and things will be really shitty on the surface for much of that time) That is why all of the ancient sites are astronomical clocks, and why our ancestors were so hung up about the stars. They new it would happen again at the end of the long year, aka the procession of the zodiac. The Mayan calendar maps this out, and it says that the end of this age there will be a cleansing by fire. Anyways, I think it is an incredible privileged to be alive to witness the end of the world. It should be starting in the next 20 or so years, and I hope I live long enough to be there.

[Art at top of post by Trevor R. Coles.]

https://www.facebook.com/StinkhornStonerMetal/
https://murraythecretinacton.bandcamp.com/

Murray Acton, Covid-19 Nervous Breakdown (2021)

Stinkhorn, “High on Beans”

Tags: British Columbia, Canada, Dayglo Abortions, Stinkhorn, Victoria

This entry was posted on Friday, May 14th, 2021 at 10:43 am and is filed under Questionnaire. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.