Contact high

by JOHNSON CUMMINS

Contrary to very popular belief, I don’t actually smoke pot. If you take a gander at my grizzled and admittedly dishevelled mug shot atop this column, I swear to Allah that’s just a cigarette dangling from my pie-hole and not a big bat of sticky green. I admit I used to be part of the wake-and-bake club back in the day and would while away the hours watching local teen soap opera Time of Your Life and other assorted boob-tube garbage while shovelling raw cookie dough down my throat, but somewhere along the line, I started getting “the fear,” and when they finally took Time of Your Life off of the air, I knew I was done. I still manage to look like a card-carrying member of the bud club, and still attract dudes in bars asking if I can “hook them up”—and cops still ask me if I was “smoking anything tonight.”

Looking like a pothead is just something I’ve grown used to, I guess. Although I’m not doing bottle tokes for breakfast anymore, I would hardly call myself anti-drug. I still drink like a fish and am up to a pack of coffin nails a day. If anything, when it comes to music, I am probably more pro-drug than anything else. Just look at the facts: The Beatles on acid = “Tomorrow Never Knows; The Beatles on weed = “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da”; Neil Young on heroin = “Tonight’s the Night”; Neil Young on environmentally conscious fuel = the worst rockabilly I have heard.

WINGING IT:
The Black Crowes

Okay, you get the point, so don’t even get me started on Keef. I think if you really want good fucked up music like Spacemen 3, Coltrane, Mingus, Lee “Scratch” Perry, Sleep, Motörhead, Hawkwind, Aerosmith, the Allman Brothers, Syd Barrett etc., give them all the drugs they need and let’s get some fucking hits happening again.

One of my favourite bogart bands of all time would be the Black Crowes. Although they tend to hotbox it a bit in the studio, live is where these guys really bubble up the bong. Songs take on a backstreet Dead nature that can last up to a half-hour as they gleefully let the groove obscure the destinations while they noodle away with plastered, sloppy grins and eyes that could be blindfolded with dental floss. Just fucking perfect. If you’re a true bud, pack up your one-hitter and head down to see what is sure to be pure bliss for the stoner when the mighty Crowes smoke out Metropolis on Tuesday, July 8.

If biker crank, diet pills, bathtub meth or even Jolt Cola is more your (ahem) speed, on Tuesday night you can also check out the Fuck Yeah Fest, with one of the best live bands you are likely ever going to see—Tel Aviv, Israel’s Monotonix (see interview on p. 20). Upping the ante are one of the best punk bands around lately, Brutal Knights, who’ll plough through a glorious light-speed half-hour of Reagan-era hardcore at la Sala Rossa. Opening will be Team Robespierre.

If you like to mix your weed with your speed, then check out Halifax ex-pats Trouble Rocket when they do a one-time-only tribute to one of the greatest bands of all time, Bad Brains, tonight, July 3, at Café Chaos.

A FRIEND WITH WEED IS A FRIEND INDEED… JONATHAN.CUMMINS@GMAIL.COM