The early aughts were a weird time to be in a rock and roll band. The landscape had changed and was changing. Sadly, Y2K didn’t wipe out all the computers in the world, and the digital sphere — expanded through home broadband connections, but still on dial-up for plenty of people — was continuing to grow. Meanwhile, radio and MTV were evaporating, the on-paper press was taking a nosedive — it was not a great moment to launch a career in print media, let me tell you — and many of the traditional outlets that had helped bands gain attention and momentum were gone and not yet replaced by digital word of mouth, memes, or the social media algorithm as we know it today. California Crossing, the sixth (or seventh, depending how you count) full-length from San Clemente fuzz mavens Fu Manchu, was released into a changing world on Oct. 23, 2001.

To put that date in context, on Oct. 7, the US bombed Afghanistan in retaliation for Al Qaeda’s dramatic attacks on American financial infrastructure on Sept. 11, in which 3,000-plus lives were lost. It was a generation-defining moment, and in some ways would set the tone for the quarter-century that’s followed. It was probably not a great moment to put out a record, but of course you can ask Slayer‘s God Hates Us All all about it.

25 years later, California Crossing bears little of that baggage. Tracked at the famous Sound City and engineered by Nick Raskulinecz (who already had worked with Goatsnake and a ton of others by then, was just a few years from producing the reunited Alice in Chains, etc.) with production by Matt Hyde (he produced the aforementioned Slayer record, as well as Monster Magnet‘s Powertrip a couple years earlier, and many more before and after in a commercially-relevant vein), it is the most produced-sounding offering Fu Manchu had yet made. Radio was fading, but still powerful, and coming off 2000’s King of the Road (discussed here) and a succession of landmarks, the four-piece of guitarist/vocalist Scott Hill, lead guitarist Bob Balch, bassist Brad Davis and drummer Brant Bjork maintain the performance energy they’d already displayed on studio releases while at the same time tightening the songs and codifying their sound.

You can hear this in the vocal production on “Separate Kingdom,” which opens, and it holds true throughout the entire 11 songs/39 minutes. Fu Manchu had not yet been so clear in their goals. California Crossing takes their prior-established catchiness to new heights, and listening with 25 years of hindsight, sounds very much like it’s trying to engage listeners at the time it was created. There’s a clarity of purpose that comes through in “Hang On,” or “Mongoose,” the unrepentantly hooky “Thinkin’ Out Loud,” “Wiz Kid,” “Squash That Fly,” the none-more-Californian “Downtown in Dogtown,” and so on. It’s clear that by this time — more than a decade from the outset of the band, not yet 10 years removed from their first album — Fu Manchu were mature, were veterans, who knew what they wanted to get from a recording.

Just how involved Hyde and/or Raskulinecz were in shaping that this time around, I can’t say. But if you take King of the Road next to California Crossing, the differences shine through. There’s more flourish of melody in the ends of Hill‘s vocal lines, and the backing vocals become a defining element in the title-track. Tonally, the guitars have taken a step back from the largesse of the prior outing, and while the riffs very much lead the way, the whole song is the priority, and the riffs are part of the whole. It’s not as warm, though there’s still plenty of fuzz, and California Crossing offers a glimpse at a version of Fu Manchu that was ready for broader consumption.

Yeah, they’re still punks enough to have Circle Jerks/Black Flag‘s Keith Morris step in for a guest spot on “Bultaco,” but they’re also widely-enough regarded that the thought would occur to them to do so. California Crossing was the band stepping up to meet a moment of realization head on. It got major press. It was a big deal, especially looking at the scale from an underground standpoint. No less than Disney had bought Mammoth Records already years earlier. Fu Manchu were getting as much of a commercial push as they ever were going to. Promo CDs would’ve been flying into Music Director mailboxes. Tours, payola, the traditional machine of what used to be the music industry, wielded to proliferate the video for “Thinkin’ Out Loud” or the next single, whichever song it might’ve been from among such a ready selection of potentials.

And after the years and records gone by, it’s the songs that still carry California Crossing. Fu Manchu would continue to refine their sound through collaboration with different producers, and this LP was both their last with Brant Bjork on drums (the former Kyuss member had already begun his solo career that would help shape desert rock as we now know it), and their last LP for Mammoth Records, so change was afoot for them as well as for the wider culture of rock music. But even now, there’s no denying “Hang On” or “Ampn’,” which is the perfect example of how honed this material is — it sounds like the kind of piece a band would write in as long as it takes to play, but is air-tight and refined at the same time; the blend of casual-cool and professionalism speaks for the whole record — or “Mongoose,” “California Crossing” or any of them. Hell, even the mostly instrumental capper “The Wasteoid” manages to be catchy.

“California Crossing” and “Mongoose” still feature regularly in live sets, and you might hear “Squash That Fly” on a given evening as well. Front-to-back, the album is a product of the era in which it was made, but one could argue Fu Manchu never hit this same balance again in their sound, and if you were a new fan or someone looking to get aboard, it would be harder to find a more distilled example of their craft at its most essential.

As always, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.

—

So we’re at war now. With Iran. I’m writing that so I can remember it later. This week my country bombed Iranian schoolgirls — among others — to distract from the now-widely-acknowledged fact that the president — among others — raped children, many times over a long stretch of years. I would say I never thought we’d get here if I had ever been stupid enough to conceive of a moment like this in the first place. They’re still killing people of color in this country too, though. Don’t worry. There’s plenty systemic murder to go around. What did you think all the warehouses were for?

The Patient Mrs.’ mother’s dog goes home this weekend. I am very much looking forward to that. It’s a busy couple days, anyhow. Tomorrow night is Acid Bath with The Skull and Baroness at Starland Ballroom, which I’m going to and hopefully get sorted, and then Sunday is The Obsessed two minutes from my house at Autodidact Beer. An early-ish show on a Sunday. Two gigs in a row. I’m going to a hockey game early afternoon Sunday as well. I’ll be tired, blah blah. Reviews up Monday and Tuesday, assuming I actually get in and can take photos at Acid Bath. I’m not that cool, so it’s something of a question.

Tuesday I also have a Fistula album stream, Wednesday is Deathbird Earth w/ Yanni Papadopoulos from Stinking Lizaveta and Thursday is a Red Sun Atacama album stream. I was hoping to review Undulathund and Monks Pond, but both will likely need to wait until after the week after the Quarterly Review, which puts us toward the end of March already. Did I mention The Patient Mrs. is going to Italy for like 10 days this month? Probably not. I’m not super worried about it. The Pecan and I can get through well enough, but that’ll be the longest she’s been away I think since the kid was born, so is noteworthy.

I have a bio update to do, so I’m going to punch out in a minute.

Quick Zelda update: I finished Minish Cap and was sort of looking for where to go next. Thought I’d keep with 2D and play through Echoes of Wisdom again, which is in the same style of the Grezzo Link’s Awakening remake or A Link Between Worlds, but wound up finding a mod for Tears of the Kingdom that changes your moveset and gives a multi-jump, and have been enjoying that on the hacked Switch for the last couple days. Just casual. The Pecan was playing last night as well, decided to go beat Ganondorf just to do it. There’s a lot about that game that doesn’t make sense, especially in terms of story, but the gameplay is such that I don’t care. Not much of an update, I guess, but there you go. I also started the second quest in Wind Waker, but I’m not going to play that or Twilight Princess now. Too expansive and laborious. At least in TOTK, if there’s something that’s too much of a pain in the ass right now, I can go do something else.

Alright, that’s enough of that. I hope you have a great and safe weekend wherein you think about the state of the world at large as absolutely little as possible. Or if you do think about it, not in that get-immediately-overwhelmed-and-have-to-shut-down kind of way. Staying hydrated will probably help that, but remember. If you see a nazi, punch a nazi. Fuck all of those bastards, up to and especially the masked cowards of Ice and the bootlickers that support them. History will regard these people for the vermin they are, and their children and their children’s children will bear the shame of their ignorance.

FRM.

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“King of the road says you move too slow,” on repeat, in my head, until I die. There are far worse ways to go.

Fu Manchu released King of the Road (previously discussed here) on Feb. 15. 2000. It was their third full-length to be issued via Mammoth Records behind 1997’s The Action is Go (discussed here) and 1996’s In Search Of… (discussed here), and with those it forms a holy trinity of sorts among longtime fans. It was the second LP to have been made with the lineup of Scott Hill (guitar/vocals), Bob Balch (guitar), Brad Davis (bass) and Brant Bjork (drums), and it is further distinguished by the production of Joe Barresi, who recorded the band at Studio Monkey Studios in Palm Desert, California.

It is even further distinguished by its songs, which are just about unstoppable across the 11 tracks and 45 minutes — prime for the then-already-declining CD era, but also still able to fit on a single 12″ — and make for one of the strongest A sides in any branch of heavy rock and roll from any generation you’d like to put it up against. That succession of tracks, with “Hell on Wheels” opening, “Over the Edge,” “Boogie Van,” “King of the Road” and “No Dice” closing with the ride-that-groove-into-the-fade “Blue Tile Fever” plays out almost like a concept record about custom van culture, both heralding the grainy still photos of the ’70s with shag carpet and plush radness and the more gentrified generational interpretation thereof in #vanlife, which became the Adventurous Millennial™ answer to never being able to afford a home.

The kick-on shove of “Grasschopper,” the nod of “Weird Beard,” “Breathing Fire,” which is a bit reminiscent of their earlier, shreddier output, the slowdown roll in “Hotdoggin'” and the concluding cover of Devo‘s “Freedom of Choice” do nothing to make King of the Road less of a classic. Admittedly, the second half of the record doesn’t quite hit the listener over the head with hooks the way side A frontloads singles, but they flesh out the album in important ways, and you have to understand, they’re still catchy as hell. Fu Manchu went into their first LP, 1994’s No One Rides for Free (discussed here), a ragtag bunch of punks finding their footing in a new sound, and every subsequent outing to this point refined their processes. The songwriting got tighter. The tones got fuzzier. The groove got funkier. As this lineup solidified, it all seemed to click into place and the sonic and aesthetic identities of the band were hammered out. Obviously touring plays a huge role in this — it’s where that work is really done and a band discovers who they are, provided they survive — but each album serves as a landmark along the way, and few landmarks could hope to capture a well hit stride like King of the Road. Even coming off In Search Of… and The Action is Go — two of ’90s-era heavy rock’s most essential offerings — the songs on King of the Road are at another level.

And that’s really the story of the album: the songs. Everybody’s got their favorite records and Fu Manchu have both been around long enough and been widely enough heard that genuine fans will inevitably align to specific eras in their discography, but I don’t know how you hear “Boogie Van” and don’t get down. These are songs that go beyond infectious, beyond earworm. They are sharply delivered, efficiently structured, nigh on perfect even in their imperfections, identifiable to the band’s core sound and still distinct from the rest of their work. Joe Barresi‘s recording sets a balance in the mix that never removes the riff, but compresses the guitars and pushes them forward, so the fuzz comes through next to Hill‘s vocals, which make every chorus ready for an audience to sing along. I don’t know if Fu Manchu were writing for the stage at this point, but they sure sound like it, and King of the Road speaks to the listener from a more confident, more established place than either of the two aforementioned landmarks that preceded it. I’m not going to pick a favorite, but King of the Road is the Fu Manchu record I return to most, and the songs are why.

Across its span, the band harness such a specifically West Coast kind of cool. I don’t know if a record like King of the Road could have been written from a place that didn’t have nice weather all the time. It is sun-coated, shorts-wearing, outside. As much as it’s riding around in a van, those windows are down to let the wind in — also there’s no AC, because that’s how those coast-to-coast Chevys maintain that musty ’70s odor amid the wood paneling — it’s also skating, surfing, moving. It’s not that this is a radical departure from what Fu Manchu were otherwise doing at the time. In part it emphasizes the effect a given producer could have on their sound, which has been a consistent element in bringing variety to their catalog all along and will continue to be from here, but also it’s just that they were getting better at the thing they deemed theirs through practice.

It had been 10 years already since Fu Manchu‘s 1990 self-titled EP (discussed here), and the band had been through multiple changes along the way between losing its original rhythm section of Mark Abshire and Ruben Romano and saying goodbye to guitarist Eddie Glass. The Hill/Balch/Davis/Bjork incarnation may have peaked here, however, and for that alone it stands among their most pivotal full-lengths. They — and I do think it was Hill largely driving the band stylistically as the remaining founder and conjuror of riffs, but the record stands testament to the fact that everyone’s contributions to the material made it what it is — knew what they wanted and knew how to make it happen, and then they did, and the swagger of “No Dice,” or “Boogie Van,” or “Hotdoggin'” or “Weird Beard” is all the more palpable for that.

As always, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading

—

I don’t have a ton to say. Cool week, bro. Neat to see an active DOJ cover up bigger than Watergate because lives were ended revealed and zero consequences. Really lets you know where we’re at. In incompetent-autocracy hell, in case you were wondering.

The Patient Mrs.’ mother is traveling and has left her dog with us for two weeks. I think I mentioned this last week. Well, we’re about halfway through this puppysitting now and though she hasn’t peed on the floor in four or five days, when she goes I won’t miss getting up at 5AM to take her out, give her breakfast, then take her out again, usually for a walk around the block. This morning there was someone else out there. It wasn’t even light yet. Fuck that was awkward. Are you gonna murder me? No? Well I’m not gonna murder you either. We’re just walking our dogs. Okay. I’m going to proceed now. Thanks. I actually said “have a good day.” I’m too weird to exist so I guess it’s a good thing that mostly I don’t.

Had a lovely lunch yesterday with a friend from college and after whom I’d not seen in at least a decade. The Patient Mrs. and I went, which was cool beause I really shouldn’t be on my own in public at this point, and me trying to hold a conversation is the surest way everybody gets back to work before lucnhbreak is over. But it was nice.

I had three Hungarian classes this week and a bunch of homework between them, and didn’t have time to play Zelda, so no update for that. I’m still in The Minish Cap. I’ve got a bunch more homework (and a teszt) for next week to do over the weekend, so yeah. I’m not in a rush anyhow, I guess. It’ll still be there.

Have a great and safe weekend. Hydrate. Fuck the fascist protectors of sexual predators, corrupt traitors and all the rest of the pieces of shit who make everything cost too much and are killing the world for sport. Hang pedophiles and war criminals. Abolish Ice. End genocide. And when you’re done with that, I guess maybe we’ll all go grab a coffee or something. I’ll be over here, doing jack shit and thinking about riffs in the meantime. What privilege?

FRM.

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The truth of the matter is I could sit here and pile up words until I’m blue in the fingertips and it still wouldn’t necessarily come close to capturing the effect The Action is Go (previously discussed here) has had — continues to have — on heavy rock and roll and the lives of its devotees. Released Oct. 7, 1997, as the San Clemente, California, four-piece’s second full-length for Mammoth Records (under the Atlantic umbrella for a while, later bought by Disney, who I guess still own it?), the 14-song/55-minute offering is for sure of its era in structure and the crunch of its production, but it set a standard for fuzz that looked beyond the accomplishments of, say, Kyuss, Clutch and Monster Magnet, pushing toward a future for the genre and actively shaping it. Many listners will know or will have been exposed to The Action is Go simply because opening track “Evil Eye” was on the soundtrack for Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 in 2000. Others will have come to it later, either through osmosis or having chased through Fu Manchu‘s catalog to get there, but it’s an album people cite as a favorite, and it is no less a generational landmark for the casual cool with which it unfolds.

One lesson The Action is Go teaches is that where strides Brant Bjork, groove follows. You might recall that the then-Kyuss drummer produced 1994’s No One Rides for Free (discussed here), Fu Manchu‘s first album. He would stay with the band through 2001’s California Crossing, while in the meantime launching his solo career in 1999 and releasing Ché‘s Sounds of Liberation (review here) in 2000. That he and still-in-the-band lead guitarist Bob Balch both made their first Fu full-length appearances on The Action is Go can be heard in the personality of the record. Up to that point, the shred had been handled by Eddie Glass — who after parting from Fu Manchu formed Nebula with fellow ex-members Ruben Romano (drums; now of The Freeks) and Mark Abshire (bass) — but Balch was and is a different kind of player, and as Fu Manchu began to expand on the shove that was 1996’s In Search Of… (review here), the malleability of his style let him adapt to what a given song needed. Thus the wah howl at the start of “Evil Eye” finds natural complement in the ending of “Urethane,” which follows, even though the two songs are working toward markedly different goals.

And that in itself is an important distinction. The first two tracks of The Action is Go set up a back and forth in tempo that runs throughout the tracklisting. The title-track is a shove, and “Burning Road” trades that for a slick, funky verse opening into a bigger sounding hook. It’s not all so black and white as they dig in, but the brashness of “Unknown World” and the outright funk of “Laserbl’ast” still apply, and the nascent heavy psych of “Saturn III” and punk thrust in 75-second finale “Nothing Done” (an SSD cover) perhaps make the statement most dramatically at the album’s conclusion. Fu Manchu were growing, had already grown much from their hardcore origins as founding guitarist Scott Hill already was the lone remaining founding member of the band — bassist Brad Davis had joined for 1995’s Daredevil (discussed here), locking in an essential piece of the puzzle — and in Bjork, they broadened their sound further with mid-tempo cuts like the start-stop nodder “Anodizer” and its bluesy complement “Trackside Hoax,” sounding aware of themselves in the doing in a way that speaks to maturity without actually being mature. That is to say, what they were chasing was still new at the time, to them and to the audience, and The Action is Go carries forward the urgency of its title regardless of a given track’s meter.

Balch gets something of a showcase in “Laserbl’ast,” but is right there with Hill tonally for the central riff of “Hogwash,” more patiently holding back for the solo to come. Even that choice, to momentarily hold back — don’t worry, there’s plenty of shred for everybody — is a shift in personality from where Fu Manchu had been to that point. “Hogwash,” “Grendel, Snowman” and “Strolling Astronomer” separate “Laserbl’ast” and “Saturn III.” The latter two are still featured in setlists, the three others not so much, but “Grendel, Snowman” brings a thicker, broader-sounding riff and “Strolling Astronomer” ignites at its start with an energy that is, well, about as classic Fu as you get; a skater/slacker vision of cool that rock and roll never managed to successfully replace. The flow these songs create between them, as a subsection of that of the album as a whole, isn’t to be understated, and it’s all the more crucial with “Saturn III” tucked away for the record’s apex of outreach.

I would put “Saturn III” in league with songs like Clutch‘s “Spacegrass” or Kyuss‘ “Whitewater” — a cosmic-toned jam that, for Fu Manchu, who came from punk and continue to foster a strong sense of structure in their work, was a departure in more than just its long fadeout. It brims with purpose on The Action is Go. It is a willful jam, included specifically to be a jam, and to be the grand ending ahead of the epilogue cover (again, that contrast, purposeful); it lets loose in a way Fu Manchu weren’t always willing to do. A special moment, preceded by a slew of shifts in character throughout the material, built toward and executed with vitality that remains satisfying 29 years after the fact. You could say the same of the whole record, I guess, and that’s a big part of what’s given it its staying power.

Because at least for heavy rock, The Action is Go doesn’t sound dated. It sounds quintessential. Exemplar. It is a record people are still finding — if you’ve never heard, please leave a comment, I’d love to know — and learning from, and it’s one that unmistakably helped set the path Fu Manchu would walk subsequent to it. Every accolade you’ve ever seen for it was earned.

As always, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.

—

I’m really glad I reviewed that Abronia record. Next week, Summer of Hate (which is late, I know; welcome to The Obelisk), and premieres for Craneium, L’Ira del Baccano (full album) and Sun Voyager. That’s right. Pretty killer. Things have picked back up a bit after the January lull. I don’t know that I’m ready for it, but I kind of never am, so whatever. It’ll be fun.

Yesterday was The Patient Mrs.’ birthday. She didn’t have to go to campus, which was nice, but we ended up working most of the day anyhow and she had a school board meeting at night. The Pecan and I went shopping after school on Wednesday to get her a couple ridiculous little things — a floating jellyfish lamp that The Pecan subsequently tried to adopt, then yesterday forgot about; the fleeting joys of an ADHD childhood — and this morning I came with her to work just to hang out for the commute and run some errands when she’s done in class. A little shake to my own routine, which isn’t the worst thing in the world.

I think the president (and a slew of cohorts humanity ironically refers to as “elites”) raping children might be the worst thing in the world. At least this week. Surely some fresh new horror is on the way.

What’s the point of anything, I wonder. If there was a party that was “burn it all down” that wasn’t also terrible and racist, they’d have my vote. Was thinking I might run for office on a guillotine ticket, but I’ve shared too many of my actual opinions publically to be electable. Also I know nothing, but that doesn’t seem to stop others from governing. Not sure why it would hold me back, especially as a white dude in 2026.

A Zelda update: I beat Wind Waker again. Not really an accomplishment, but fun. I modded the game to get things like a fast sail and to negate having to chase down heart pieces across the Great Sea, put in cheat codes for infinite arrows and bombs, so it wasn’t like a ‘clean playthrough,’ but I was just trying to have a good time and did. I don’t know that I’ll do the Second Quest anytime soon, but I started playing it again because I lost the other game I had, so might do it eventually. In the meantime, I started a game of Link’s Awakening on the OLED Switch, since The Pecan isn’t interested in it in the moment and it’s relatively short and, unlike the open-air games (Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom), not such a commitment of time or emotional labor. And I really like the style, the chibi Link and environment. I played A Link Between Worlds and I still want them to remake A Link to the Past with that aesthetic. It lags on the Switch, but so does everything.

I didn’t watch this week’s Starfleet Academy yet. It’s over an hour long, just the one episode, so when I loaded it up last night after bedtime (which is when The Patient Mrs. and I, also going to bed, will often put on a Star Trek together before actually going to sleep), I decided it was too much. I ended up conking out during Deep Space Nine‘s tribble episode — it was the lady’s birthday, after all; special occasion warrants special absurdity — and didn’t at all feel like that was a loss. I’ll get there either tonight or tomorrow.

Probably tonight, since tomorrow Nine Inch Nails are playing New Jersey and The Patient Mrs. and I were planning to go to that. I wasn’t going to review. I’ve seen NIN twice over the years, once for The Fragile (my favorite album) and once after that during the With Teeth era. Both times kinda sucked. I approach this show with a bit of trepidation, but I’ve seen the sets are focused around The Downward Spiral and such, and of course that record’s a classic, so we’ll roll the dice again.

The Pecan’s off from school Monday and I’ve got a boatload of homework for Hungarian class(es), but I’ll do my best to write as much as I can blah blah. Until Monday, then, have a great and safe weekend, unless you’re a bootlicker, in which case (1:) go away, you’re not welcome here and (2:) you can fuck yourself off the side of a cliff for all I care.

The rest of you, remain wonderful.

FRM.

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With clarion fuzz that continues to resonate, Fu Manchu‘s third album, In Search Of…, was released Feb. 27, 1996, just about 30 years ago. Produced by the band — it was the last go for the lineup of guitarist/vocalist Scott Hill, bassist Brad Davis, lead guitarist Eddie Glass and drummer Ruben Romano — with Brian Jenkins, who also mixed (Eddy Schreyer at Future Disc Systems mastered), it remains a standard to which bands aspire, and songs like “Regal Begal,” “Asphalt Risin’,” “Redline,” “The Falcon Has Landed,” “Cyclone Launch” and others might still show up in a live set. It is a landmark and not the San Clemente, California, four-piece’s last.

It runs 12 tracks and 40 minutes and burns just about from start to finish. The band, while not having abandoned their punkish beginnings, had taken creative steps across their first two full-lengths, 1994’s No One Rides for Free (discussed here) and 1995’s Daredevil (review here), that not only placed them at the forefront of a post-grunge stoner rock push at the time — their sound was different from the desert hues of Kyuss or the concurrent self-titled-era Clutch, or the tripped out weirdoism of Monster Magnet, but these acts were lumped together as kin just the same — but remains a blueprint of inimitable tone and presence. Hill‘s vocals, pushed down in the mix, enhance the impact of the riffs he’s following, and his, Glass‘ and Davis‘ tones throughout are like Gossamer from Looney Tunes in the amount of hair on them.

A boogie cut like “Redline,” or a swirling shove like “Seahag,” a roller like “Cyclone Launch” or the nailed-the-tempo nod of “Missing Link,” could do different things, but tone and groove unites the material across In Search Of…, and despite being nothing if not straightforward in its intentions toward riffs, hooks and liberally strewn shred, the album’s overarching atmosphere is one of its most enduring strengths. It is definitively SoCal, but with a new generational interpretation. If you believe place can inform art — and I very much do, because duh — then there’s no removing the sun and warmth of Southern California from Fu Manchu.

They weren’t the first, of course, to speak to where they were coming from. From The Beach Boys to Black Flag to various pop takes throughout the prior three/four decades, Fu Manchu were on well-trod ground, but their angle of approach was their own, definitely on the first two records as well, but more here. The crunch that emerges in “Neptune’s Convoy” may have come out of Hill‘s early days in hardcore punk, but the trippy comedown and volume trades, the ensuing nod, and the vibe were definitively something else; not grunge, not metal, not hard rock or punk, but pulling from all of them in its making. Beyond surf rock, Fu Manchu surfed. Beyond skate punk, Fu Manchu were ready when the second Tony Hawk game came calling a couple years later. In ways that would inform the work they’ve done across the three decades since, In Search Of…‘s radness was as much a part of its makeup as the wah is in “Strato-Streak.”

It was somewhere else skaters, surfers, slackers and stoners could go, and as much as it can feel frontloaded with “Regal Begal,” “Missing Link” and “Asphalt Risin'” coming in hot ahead of the slowdown in “Neptune’s Convoy,” that song and the penultimate, two-and-a-half-minute Sabbath-blues riffer “The Bargain” speak to just how cool the Fu could play it when they weren’t aiming for charge. A song like “Solid Hex,” also on the shorter end, could revel in noise and conjure a wash of distortion — without losing the album’s sense of momentum, mind you — but “The Bargain” spoke to ’70s and ’80s rock like few in the 1990s were willing to do. Maybe that’s true of Glass‘ soloing throughout, or the cowbell on “Cyclone Launch,” or “Redline” with its push to the finish, but there too, Fu Manchu brought a new creative voice and point-of-view to what had been done before.

Part of that is a sense of freedom. Maybe that sounds corny, and I’ll readily agree that the word has been coopted by generations of assholes, particularly in this country but others as well, to mean any number of things from the repression of women to being a crypto-marketing buzzword. But the freedom I’m talking about is both nothing so grand and far more encompassing. It’s doing what you want without giving in to the bullshit around you. It’s not only finding your voice, but broadcasting it. It’s about identity in a way, but about holding the self against notions of what’s expected of you, of conforming to some notion. Fu Manchu were never going to be metal, and they were never going to be punk any more than they were going to be surf rock or ’70s heavy, but they found a way to appeal to all sides by refusing to compromise on who they were as artists.

In Search Of… doesn’t come off as immediately ambitious in this or really any other regard. Its outward face is, again, straightforward. Verses, choruses, solo. It’s not experimentalism, and yet for being so undeniably itself, it refuses to fit into easy classification enough that it’s part of the reason ‘stoner rock,’ as a genre, took shape at all during these years. It was an alternative to the mainstream beyond the mainstream-approved ‘alternative rock’ that was all over the radio and MTV circa ’96, and it was both a party and substantial unto itself. Heavy rock and roll, laid out in a manner characteristically void of pretense and yet seemingly in defiance of so much that was happening around it. There’s no easy, direct line that leads to Fu Manchu in terms of influences. Even Black Sabbath — the grandaddy of them all — only partially apply as an influence. In the parlance of our times, what Fu Manchu accomplished here was low-key amazing. Except if you count all the volume and movement, it’s not really low-key at all.

And maybe that’s why bands are still learning from it 30 years later. As always, I hope you enjoy.

Thanks for reading.

—

Hey, thanks for reading.

A lot of this week was spent catching up from being away at the end of last week and over the weekend. That Hashtronaut news post today, for example, and others throughout the week. I wanted to review a compilation (I know, comp reviews…) this week but didn’t get to, so it’ll have to be next week, although I’ve already got a Stonus premiere lined up for Monday and I also want to review the new one from Finland’s Mount Palatine, which is cosmic and huge and awesome.

Then you get to stuff like the new All Them Witches single out today, a DVNE live record I haven’t even mentioned, Crippled Black Phoenix’s new album, Bong Voyage signing to Ripple and more tours and fest announcements besides and yeah, I’m pretty behind. That’s life. I’ll catch up on as much as I can.

In about an hour, The Patient Mrs. and I have yet another meeting at The Pecan’s school, this one with her teacher about what work she’s doing in class, as we’re still pretty in the dark on how her IEP is being implemented, and while we get updates on her compliance during a given day — that is, how much shit she’s talking about having to do whatever she’s being asked to do; usually plenty; from 9:58AM: “During our reading block, [The Pecan] was disrespectful towards another student while they were reading.”; never what happened or more about a situation, just ‘your kid was a problem in this way hindering our operational convenience’; I have come to care less and less about said convenience over the last three years — we generally have no idea as regards any academic work she might actually be doing. She tells us very little, and she’s eight, so grain of salt applies. She likes the iPad she plays on when she gets all her compliance points, and they use that to coerce her into doing shit. I do the same thing at home. The difference is I’m a shitty dad and these are professionals. That there isn’t some better system to implement that might — gasp — actually engage a child in a positive way rather than be reactive in a negative one is disappointing to say the least.

That’s stress, but so is everything.

I didn’t get a lot of time to play Zelda this week — I had Wind Waker going for like five minutes the other day but that’s it — but I did play my own Tears of the Kingdom game (as opposed to the one on the modded Switch or the one on the Switch 2 that was the family’s save file) for a while on the planes to and from Las Vegas last week/Monday and that was a fun visit. I did the circuit of lynels, picked hearty raddishes, slaughtered bokoblins in not-terribly-creative ways and had a good time chasing down materials and weapons just basically to do it. The story and such on that file are done, but I’ll keep it going anyway just for the inventory and a bit of fun. A different appeal than the modded game.

I’ve been watching Starfleet Academy with The Patient Mrs., and that’s alright. They managed to get some DS9 lore in there this week and that was cool, and some of the characters are engaging. The references feel like fan-service, which, yes, they absolutely are, and like other shows of its ‘generation’ — that is, like other Star Trek incarnations under the direction of Alex Kurtzman — like Discovery or Picard or Strange New Worlds, it’s heavy-handed emotionally. Part of that too in this case is the show’s intended Y.A. style, but I have a hard time imagining ‘the kids’ hanging around getting suddenly interested in the mystery of what happened to Captain Benjamin Sisko. I, on the other hand, liked it a lot, despite not being the intended audience.

Let’s leave it there since it’s just about time for me to get ready to head out. Gotta put together The Pecan’s lunch ahead of that meeting because I won’t get back in time otherwise to do so. Have a great, safe, hydrated and unhindered-by-assholes weekend. I’ll be back Monday with that Stonus premiere and we’re on from there.

FRM.

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As California as you might ever be, will you ever be as California as Fu Manchu‘s King of the Road? One suspects not. In 1999, while people were flitting about in a tizzy over whether or not planes would drop out of the sky when computers changed millennia, the kings of San Clemente were writing and recording the songs that would become their sixth album and a singularly righteous statement of aesthetic. This is the real surf rock. A monster Jeff Spicoli of a record that’s ace in its hooks from opener “Hell on Wheels” down through “Weird Beard” and “Hotdoggin'” ahead of the closing Devo cover “Freedom of Choice,” which, yes, is also catchy as hell.

There is a legion among Fu Manchu‘s fanbase who will accept no answer other than 1996’s In Search Of… when it comes to picking the band’s best album. To the point that I’m a little gunshy about calling this my favorite Fu Manchu LP, though it is. Duke it out however you want. 20 years after the fact, and on the occasion of what should’ve been a 30th anniversary victory lap throughout 2020 for the band, I’m willing to put 2000’s King of the Road out there as their most influential work. There are still dudes hearing “Over the Edge” and immediately starting bands. Two decades have passed, and even a barn-burner like “Grasschopper” still sounds mellow and easy. Less memorable than some of the other classics, even “Breathing Fire” — which if it wasn’t actually written that way was certainly positioned where CD-era filler would’ve gone to put the record over the 45-minute mark; it’s 46 — kills when you actually put it on.

Counting 1999’s Godzilla’s (Eatin’ Dust) EP compilation LP on Man’s Ruin, Fu Manchu put out four albums with the lineup of guitarist/vocalist Scott Hill, bassist Brad Davis, guitarist Bob Balch and drummer Brant Bjork, picking up the latter following the breakup of Kyuss and bringing him and Balch on board prior to 1997’s The Action is Go (discussed here) in place of Eddie Glass, who of course would go on to start Nebula with fellow-Fu-alumni Mark Abshire (bass on the first two albums) and Ruben Romano (drums on the first four). King of the Road has the distinction of being sandwiched between the Godzilla’s (Eatin’ Dust) CD and 2001’s California Crossing, but any way you look at it, the band was on a run that I don’t think any heavy rock band of the era could hope to match. Neither Sleep nor Acid King were as prolific or as punk-rooted. Kyuss didn’t put out that many records. Even Clutch weren’t as productive. The Melvins maybe, but if you’re going to sit there and argue Melvins songs stand up to Fu Manchu songs, it’s going to be a short conversation. Because they don’t. There’s a reason that no matter how many bands they have inspired and continue to inspire, there’s only one Fu Manchu.

“Hell on Wheels” fades in its riff like motors in the distance. “Over the Edge” pushes on-the-beat uptempo fuzz starts and stops and a signature chorus ahead of “Boogie Van,” which at this point just reads like an aesthetic blueprint for how to be stoner rock. I still get records with vans on the cover, if not weekly, then certainly more than once a month. The title-track and “No Dice” follow in succession, letting the long-hold wah kick in on “Blue Tile Fever” for a grittier, almost winding feel on a straight-ahead chug worthy of the cowbell that offsets it. The centerpiece of the original disc, “Blue Tile Fever” also caps the first platter of the 2LP version of King of the Road that Fu Manchu released on their own At the Dojo imprint in 2015, and thinking about it as a closer makes sense with its long fade and the way “Grasschopper” picks up the pace again, mirroring the energy with which “Hell on Wheels” (it’s no big deal, but yeah, it is) starts off the album as a whole. Learn something new all the time.

But as much as the first half of King of the Road is utterly unfuckwithable, the second answers right back. “Grasschopper” careens into the roll-rock storytelling of “Weird Beard,” which are three and a half of the best minutes you’ll spend on just about any day, while “Breathing Fire”‘s speedier thrust dirties up the fuzz a bit but is all about velocity, which is a great setup for “Hotdoggin’,” a song which reminds that this was the era in which Brant Bjork also started his solo career with 1999’s Jalamanta (reissure review here; discussed here; also here), the vision of laid back mellow-heavy that pervades the penultimate cut on King of the Road having the same kind of open-vibe start-stop funk foundation — and Davis‘ bassline; damn — as would become a hallmark of Bjork‘s work on his own. It’s a different close from “Blue Tile Fever,” but follows the pattern of being a little longer than the songs before it, and of course there’s “Freedom of Choice” as a kind of thanks-for-coming bonus inclusion.

Fu Manchu covers are a special kind of joy all on their own, and “Freedom of Choice” is a right-on pick, ending King of the Road with a groove and a hook that could’ve just as easily come from the band themselves as from Devo. As with many of the songs they’ve taken on over the years, from Blue Öyster Cult and Black Flag to The Cars to the version of The Doobie Brothers‘ “Takin’ it to the Streets” that appeared on their 2020 EP, Fu30, Pt?.?1 — part two of which was doubtless interrupted by canceled tour plans — their taste and the sense of fun they bring to whatever they’ve Fu‘ed up over time has always been impeccable.

Don’t get me wrong, I frickin’ love any number of Fu Manchu albums. I’m not gonna say a bad word about them, even the commonly-slagged Start the Machine, which’ll close out a week around here sooner or later I’m sure, is catchy as hell. But King of the Road is a standout even among the golly-that’s-sumpin’-special batch that is their entire discography, and as always, I hope you enjoy this revisit.

Thanks for reading.

—

Xmas morning, and yeah, I do consider writing about the Fu a present to myself. It’s just past 6AM now, and The Pecan has started to stir. I got up at 4:15. I’ve been doing the 4AM thing all week to work on the Quarterly Review, which has only sucked because he was up before 6 three days this week, thereby torpedoing my ability to get more done. Also since preschool isn’t happening, it’s required I take work time from The Patient Mrs. — who has very diplomatically not told me to fuck myself for doing a Quarterly Review the week of Xmas — which I am generally loath to do if I can avoid it.

It’s been a rough week. It’s been a rough couple months. Rough year? I don’t know. Virtual preschool. Come on. And nothing until Jan. 4 except sitting around and thinking about plague numbers. What the hell. No break from it. My brain. Pills.

We’re going north today, I think, to Connecticut to see The Patient Mrs.’ family. I’m not really pro-out of state travel at this point, but screw it. The only place I’ve been in the last five days that had any people whatsoever was Shop-Rite on Wednesday, which was legitimately crowded, but I haven’t started to show symptoms so I’m guessing I’ve once again emerged from a packed produce department covid-free. Unless you count fatigue as a symptom, which has become a running gag with my daddy-to-a-toddler self. I honestly don’t care anymore. I’m tired of it. Set my lungs on fire. Kill my ass. At least then I won’t be around to listen to myself complain about nothing or feel useless.

In any case, I can’t honestly say if there were three bands — or two, or one — playing Saint Vitus Bar tomorrow night I wouldn’t throw caution to the wind and go, so I’m not about to put up an argument against going to see family on what to most people is a special day even if I don’t like the holidays.

Yeah, The Pecan’s up. I can see on the monitor (app on my phone) he just got out of bed and beaned himself walking into the little cubby cut into the wall of his room. Wham. It’s still dark and he’s woozy when he first gets up. Won’t stop him. Nothing does. Kid doesn’t feel pain.

But I’d better go.

New Gimme Show today at 5PM, and special thanks in advance if you share part of your holiday with me by listening. It’s a good one, so I at least have made it hopefully worth your while.

And the Quarterly Review picks up on Monday. That’ll go Monday and Tuesday, then I’m taking Wednesday (and maybe Thursday) to work on my year-end list, then that’ll be up before the end of the week, then the poll results next Saturday and life returns to normal after that. Ha.

Great and safe weekend. If you’re celebrating, don’t be stupid. Don’t forget to hydrate. So important.

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Nothing gives me that “born too late” feeling like buying old promo CDs on the internet. Finding bits and pieces of buried treasure here and there, this store and that store, is all well and good, but it’s a different experience. Promo CDs have pretty much no value other than as a collector’s item. Even full-album promos, if I’m buying it, chances are I already own the final version of the record. And radio singles and stuff like that? Shit, I’m watching an eBay auction right now for a radio single that’s one song from Clutch‘s Pure Rock Fury. And I’m pretty sure I already have the single! I’m still watching that auction though. Like a fucking hawk.

Last week on a whim I shelled out $20 for a Fu Manchu jewel case promo disc with two “unreleased” songs from the California Crossing era. The copyright date on it is 2002.

Now, I don’t care how much you like Fu Manchu, that’s too much money to pay for two songs. Granted, I was inebriated, but even so, I probably should have taken my finger off the trigger before clicking “Buy it Now.” It’s my own fault, for sure — but here’s the worst part — when it came in the mail yesterday, I was excited.

I didn’t even remember how much I paid for the damn thing until just now when I fired up my eBay account and looked.$20? For two songs? I don’t know who to be madder at, the seller or me for being dumb enough to make the purchase in the first place. Probably me, but seriously, I got the disc, opened the envelope and was just stoked on the fact that it was Fu Manchu songs I didn’t already own. Price wasn’t even a factor. Not even a little bit.

This wouldn’t be a problem if I, you know, had money, but I don’t. I just have collector’s impulse, and the longer I live with it, the more I wonder how come no one’s developed a pill for it yet. Seriously. We live in the age of Restless Leg Syndrome — a completely fabricated “disorder” — and I’m supposed to believe they wouldn’t market medication to people who spend money irresponsibly? Come on.

Fortunately for me, I think The Patient Mrs. has all but stopped paying attention entirely, which is undoubtedly for the best. And when I put the CD on earlier to check it out, I was pretty into the groove of “Planet of the Ape Hangers” (a title I can’t even think about without automatically adding “dot blogspot dot com” in my mind), which was a bonus track on the Japanese version of California Crossing, and “Breathing Fire,” which was on the Japanese and European versions of 1999’s King of the Road, but left off the American in favor of “Drive.” I don’t know if I was into each song $10 worth, but whatever. I didn’t need to be a grown up for anything this week anyway.