Providence 2000 : Fort Thunder Part 6 “Bread and Circuses; Friends and Monsters”

I can’t remember the exact dates but I think I was at the Fort for the last 3 weeks of August. I think I remember a quote from Mat Brinkman a few years later about how the people interested in comix were generally far less enthusiastic about noise bands and vice versa. While this is no doubt generally true I can say with absolute certainty that the Venn Diagram had at least a small sliver of overlap.

I lived there.

Being in Providence offered many opportunities to examine and collect artifacts from both of these circles. However while the comic book can be said to be most alive in the physical object the music side of things reached an apogee in the fleeting temporal spectacle called performance. I had heard stories about the legendary 1997 concert where Dan from Landed had set himself on fire and FORCEFIELD had basted the audience in the deadly vapors of an idling moped.

To me this legend was as vital as the infamous murders and church burnings surrounding the early ‘90s Norwegian Black Metal scene. Much like the celebrated happenings where John Cage gave recitals on burning pianos the artist on heroic quest to explore the boundaries of creation inevitably explored the dissident and iconoclastic power of destruction. Performances like the one I just described marked the geometrical asymptotes of this destructive impulse, briefly glimpsed through the Overton Window of the passing vehicle of convention.

While Fort Thunder was absolutely buzzing with the energies of creation my visit barely coincided with the species of bacchanal I was hoping to participate in. While Brian Chippendale returned toward the end of my holiday Lightning Bolt was on effective hiatus while Brian Gibson was attempting to relocate to NYC. Chippendale graciously allowed me to sate my prodigious appetite on his claustrophobic comic diaries but a home field repeat of the live set I had barely caught in Los Angeles was not forthcoming. Similarly while Dan St. Jacques was briefly present in all his gorilla chested glory I would not be catching any sets from Landed or the raucous Olneyville Sound System.

I visited Ben McOsker at the crowded apartment home of essential Providence imprint Load Records. He offered me a bulk rate on all the records I wanted and I filled the holes in my collection while discovering some new favorites. Astoveboat would become the soundtrack to a hazy few weeks in the following summer when I read Moby Dick, took meth and angrily fantasized about killing Gods and whales. He told me to grab the Scissorgirls 10 inch but I declined. He told me I’d regret it.

He was right.

I was making a mistake that was prevalent in the experimental music circles of the day. I failed to appreciate the creative powers of the feminine. In the years to come nearly all of my musical collaborations would be with women but at this point I was still young and stupid.

Raphael Lyon was filling the unenviable yet essential stations of House Mom and spokesperson but it was Leif Goldberg who most graciously took me under his wing. I remember spending hours in his room while he showed me screen printed comics, impressive flip books and an experimental film made from cross sections of colorful marbled clay. The creativity in the air was infectious; I spent days at Jim Drain’s desk making assorted items of construction paper collage: an unfortunately never finished wordless comic about a fantasy wizard, a copy of a He-Man tableaux as a gift for Drain and black and white prehistoric scenes in the vein of Mary Fleener that made it into the following issue of Paper Rodeo, albeit out of order. [author’s note: if anybody might have a copy of this issue and could send an image I’d be most grateful. It was the Fall 2000 issue with the Ben Jones cover. The piece is reproduced quite small and features skeletal apes and dinosaurs]

Goldberg showed me around the screen printing studio while he put together an impressive issue of the Monster anthology and posters for an upcoming Fort Thunder concert to be held on the eve of my 20th birthday. He took me on his bike rides to wheat paste these posters around town which came in extremely handy when it was time for me to put up flyers for the upcoming xbxrx concert I had ended up organizing. I practiced on the roof with a green and blue toy guitar with preloaded rhythms and chords produced by plucking tiny metal wires but somehow never got up the gumption to ask if I could jump the bill.

I had no problem asking complete strangers if I could cross the country and live in their home but struck a hidden vein of adolescent shyness when it was time to ask to perform inside of it.

Show Night finally came around and I got to see the Fort come to life in concert mode. Peter Fuller set up an espresso stand that I later donated the bottles from my raft to and shipped a kilo of Italian beans when I started working for a Sicilian sociopath in Chicago. The show was opened by Duct Tape Union and another project I seem to have forgotten the name of. Colin Langenus from USAISAMONSTER had been obliviously sleeping until minutes before their set then quickly brushed his teeth and took the stage, earning him the affectionate nickname Sleepy Tooth. While their live set was amazing the truly life changing consequence of meeting this band was an initiation into the illicit fellowship of the counterfeit Greyhound Ameripass.

They also introduced me to my aforementioned friend from Benefit Street who would become a lingering crush for the remainder of my visit and several years to follow.

Finally the crowd was ushered into an alley behind the building for a last performance. Friends Forever offered the exact type of heretical live show I had been so fervently pining for. They were my first introduction to what I would call the “extreme noise tour lifestyle”, shunning brick and mortar venues to blast their infectious tunes from the inside of their actual tour van and accentuated with smoke machines, lasers and fireworks. I danced with abandon as the midnight hour ushered in my 20’s. Nate Hayden and I bonded over a shared enthusiasm for Coricidin and he gave me a cassette of recordings he had created under this unhealthy influence: Wizard 333. One of the tracks was entitled Fungi from Yuggoth which boosted my enthusiasm substantially.

While my floating exploits on the Woonasquatucket were still to come this night was undoubtedly the climax of my days at Fort Thunder. Much like the 1998 The Makeup concert of the introductory chapter this night felt like an initiation ceremony in which I was inducted into the secret society of the Underground. Big changes were on the horizon as I left my teenage self behind and began the adventure of adulthood. In a little more than a year Fort Thunder would become a memory and the naive innocence of ‘90s subculture would be forever shattered on a day called 9/11

The night before my departure brought a rare instance of the type of fellowship that is only brought about by shared consumption of alcohol. While I had spent the entire summer exploring the psychedelic potential of various over-the-counter medications I could count my experiences with alcoholic inebriation on a single hand. I drank the entire bottle of Brass Monkey that had been gifted to me during my maiden voyage and became embarrassingly drunk.

Dan St Jacques was front and center for this excursion in his trademark straw hat that looked like it had been stolen from a donkey. A rag tag crew on tall bikes, choppers and other monstrosities set out to explore the city and raid a popular bread dumpster. I fell on my head, cursed St. Jacques for snagging the only olive loaf and generally made a fool of myself until it was time to climb into Jim Drain’s bed for the final time.

I woke early the next morning and left a note for my absent host, contributed a pittance toward his outstanding rent debt and trudged across Federal Hill for the final time until I reached my bus to Chicago.

I spent the next twenty years hunting for regional undergrounds with the same type of creative Zeitgeist as Fort Thunder and turn of the century Providence. I lived in Chicago, Oakland, Los Angeles, Tijuana, Portland, New Orleans and San Diego. I visited Baltimore, NYC, Philadelphia, Berlin, Oslo, Panama, rural Maine and countless others. While every one of these destinations pulsed with currents of authentic underground energy the closest I would ever feel to my days at the Fort would be my time on a fleet of junk rafts, touring on a city bus turned concert venue and participating in a small but magical occurrence known as the Mojave Rave.

I dedicate these stories to the one’s who were there but more importantly to the kids who would never have the opportunity. For all the ones who only heard the name Fort Thunder in reverent whispers when it had already become as unreachable as Avalon or Tir Na Nog I humbly hold out my hand.

Climb into my eyes, my ears and my memories; I’ll take you on an adventure to a magical world that lives on forever in the eternal optimism of youth,

a place called Fort Thunder

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