With millions of dead animals washing up on shores and falling from the sky, it seems that THE RAPTURE is nearly upon us. And fuck -- it's a little less than two years until December 21, 2012, the date prophesied (OK, "misinterpreted," but whatever) to be the END OF THE WORLD. But what are you gonna do, cry about it?
At Wayward, we're already compiling our END OF DAYS playlist. These are five rock concerts we've picked for five different apocalypses. After all, when it starts raining pig intestines and the dead rise, you want to send civilization off in style.
How It Ends: The rapture
The Band: Spiritualized
Spiritualized nearly played at CERN in 2008 when the Large Hadron Collider was going to be switched on, so it makes perfect sense that the space-rock band should play an end-of-the-earth concert. Spiritualized's music is heavy on drone, packed with druggy references and twinged with blues and gospel music (no band, short of The Rolling Stones, has fetishized black choir as much as Spiritualized); so, seeing them on Apocalypse Day, 2012 (or, as we're affectionately nicknaming it, 'Poc Day '12), would be particularly rapturous.
Final Song: "Shine A Light"
Spaceman 3 holdover "Walking with Jesus" would be incredibly fitting, since that song equates, to some measure, the use of drugs to the melding of heaven, hell, and earth. The slow-mo tumble of "Feel Like Goin' Home" expresses a return to the loam from whence we came. But live roster mainstay, "Shine a Light," would give a sweet, slow, coda to the world as we know it.
How It Ends: Nuclear war
The Band: Radiohead
Thom Yorke has envisioned the end of the world so many times throughout band's entire catalog that a Radiohead set would create a sense of commiserated fatalism. It's also perfect for the final cathartic swell that comes with before the bomb hits.
Final Song: "4 Minute Warning"
Kid A's electronic word salad, "Idioteque," is befitting, with lines like Ice age coming and We're not scare mongering / This is really happening. But the sweet and resigned "4 Minute Warning" -- which references the Cold War-era British emergency system to warn the public of impending Soviet nuclear attacks -- would cap the night resolute with equal measures of despair and optimism. When the final sirens erupt, Radiohead's lullaby to humanity will bid civilization a sweet farewell: This is just a nightmare / Soon I'm gonna wake up.
How It Ends: Zombies
The Band: Daft Punk
So let's say McD's gets big on some weird McRib fusion sandwich, and the meat -- as if it was meat to begin with -- is tainted, and turns customers into crazed zombies. Okay, it's a long stretch -- well, maybe not that long -- but the point is: the End of the World could be fun. Your end-of-the-world concert doesn't have to be drab miserabilist music; it could be an enormously entertaining celebration of humanity's primal rock-and-roll urges. (Hug it out, bitch.) I suggest we dance it out, before we get our skin ripped off and our flesh devoured -- especially if impending doom comes from worm-filled McRibs.
Final Song: "Around the World."
Obs.
How It Ends: A black hole collides with Earth
The Band: My Bloody Valentine
Loveless, My Bloody Valentine's enduring indie-rock signpost, is already the sound of the space-time continuum ripping open. The record relishes the spaces between unbearable decay and unbearable romanticism. (Plus, My Bloody Valentine already has the soundtrack to the creation of the world: "Only Shallow" sounds like a single molecule exploding into the Big Bang.
Final Song: "You Made Me Realize"
You wanna talk about apocalyptic catharsis? Try the sustained, painful feedback of "You Made Me Realize," a three-minute song that gets turned into a thirty minute opus of serrated noise in a live setting. The tension and the final release will match the moment the black star collides with Earth.
How It Ends: The grid goes down and the devil comes up
The Band: Tom Waits
Much of Waits' music is a paen to older times, laden with acid folk, vaudeville, and evil carny music. So when it all goes tits up, Waits' rustic -- emphasis on the rust -- will remind of us of simpler ages. Also, Waits plays a cool Mr. Scratch, with even cooler tunes that play on gritty themes. (Often, they're his characters' personal Armageddons.)
Final Song: "Earth Died Screaming"
The skeletal, creepy, absurd ditty, "Earth Died Screaming," from Bone Machine, is all the more unsettling because of its apocalyptic chorus. But the next cut on Bone Machine, "Dirt in the Ground," is a better fit. Soft and scratchy, "Dirt in the Ground" is full of depressing images such as "the quill from a buzzard" and gallows. Waits' ultimate vision of death is expressed in this sentiment: Hell is boiling over / and heaven is full.
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When I saw Jandek play at SXSW, Ian and I decided that he was the soundtrack to the Apocalypse. When we walked ou the church where he'd been playing, we were slightly disappointed to find the sky'd not turned blood red, nor had the ground been rent asunder.
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