A Year-End List 4 the End of All of the Years

If you think we'll all be alive NEXT year, you're probably due for a few surprises!

If it smells like a duck, walks like a smelly duck…Kora has a decidedly potent take!(Photo by Kate Crane)

You DO know that every day of the year comes only once, right? So, it’s a wonder that we mythologize this one day over any of these others — like who among us doesn’t know where they were on that fateful day of June 23? — and yet this does give rise to a noteworthy, if not dubious occasion: the year-end list.

But to do and have an effective year-end list it stands to reason that your recall of the previous 358-odd days is rock solid. Or at the very least that you liked anything that happened then well enough to remember it here, and find it fit for wide public consumption.

Gameness is a quality admired here though and so we are and will give it a shot so forthwith…

2023: THE YEAR OF THINGS THAT KEPT ME FROM KILLING THE REST OF YOUSE!

BOOKS

Sure. A very high tension event, in the shape and form of the Feral House release of my memoir A Walk Across Dirty Water and Straight Into Murderer’s Row was some significant cause for celebration. However, this was, and will be, something that was fraught with a certain amount of panic. If you don’t like A Long Slow Screw, it could be because you don’t like crime capers. Or if you dislike fighting you’ll not like Fight: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Ass-Kicking but Were Afraid You'd Get Your Ass Kicked for Asking. You dislike the memoir though and the fact that my life sucks and I suck for having lived it is a point that could be made and which might stick.

And yet my favorite commenter, from Lambgoat said this: “dude is a sociiopath [sic] narcissist who brags about sleeping with his friends wives. His music sucks.” Which is as fitting tribute as you’re likely to find and which amuses me enough to mention it here.

Also: Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk, After Midnight by Irmgard Keun and Razorblade Tears by SA Cosby.

MUSIC

At first I thought we got the Grammy nod for Best New Rock Performance for “Lovely Murk”. Then it turns out that while we made the final cut we were in no way close to the nomination. Changing not one iota that Love’s Holiday was the first OXBOW record ever to, in much the same way the memoir did, have us stand as unadorned as possible in front of an audience geeked up on the Internet’s endless source of new, next, more, faster, louder, crazier. The craziest thing about this effort has been it being so resolutely downbeat.

Love is, after all, a cause for celebration, yes? Sure. In maybe the same way that there hasn’t been a war that was not preceded by a parade.

The best part of this quiet, plangent offering is how we ever would manage to make it sing LIVE and yet in show after show in a season of touring both the US and Europe it happened. Sometimes naked. Sometimes sobbing. Sometimes naked and sobbing it perfectly encapsulates the six decades in this toilet bowl earth where we find ourselves in 2023.

On top of this and previously unannounced and presently unreleased the cherry on the top of 2023, the 2024 SkinGraft/Overdrive release of BUNUEL’s double gatefold, two-album set for our newest Mansuetude. It’s the iD to OXBOW’s superego. And will crush 2024 beautifully.

Also: Psychic Trash by Psychic Trash, Alchemy for the Dead by Spotlights, Brothers in Christ by Chat Pile, Dazzling Darkness by Outer Limit Lotus, Power Trip: Live in Seattle by Power Trip, and An Eternal Reminder of Not Today / Live at Moers by OXBOW

MOVING IMAGE

In a cash-burning disregard for what the world wanted, Love’s Holiday saw OXBOW decide to release a video for every song on Love’s Holiday. Though this put us several thousands of dollars in debt, debt that won’t be mitigated by show receipts or even record sales, like ever, it seemed to be what the jungle was calling for. So following the dictates of our souls, we did and have. Three videos remain to be released, however I am still haunted by the experience of filming “Gunwale”, as well as “1000 Hours”.

Haunted? Yes. In the same way that James Joyce’s eyes burned from bad surgery during the writing of Ulysses, these videos emerged from the crucible of pre- and post-surgical issues for both Niko Wenner and me.

Also: Mandy by Panos Cosmatos and When Evil Lurks by Demián Rugna

SITUATIONS

Le Affair OZY, documented here on this substack, and in the New York Times, and Alta, and really just about everywhere, managed to be the gift that kept giving. Not only did we live long enough to see disgraced CEO Carlos Watson blame his arrest and troubles on him being Black for the first time in his life, but on a crafty Ben Smith whose initial article, Watson claimed, brought the whole Carlos House of Cards tumbling down. Were it not for those meddling kids, Carlos claims, he’d have gotten away with it too. Or some such garbage.

No fewer than four film companies have OZY projects in development, a book deal is a possibility, and had Andre K. Braugher not died he’d have been strongly recommended by me to play the part of the Never Say Die grifter Watson. Can’t wait for his trial in 2024.

Also: The Trials and Tribulations of Trump, the rape-y allegations lined up against the never-very funny Russell Brand, and P. Diddy suddenly realizing that “Won’t stop/Can’t stop” doesn’t play that well in court.

Honorable mention goes to Alex Jones and Rudy Giuliani from the Broke Billionaire Boys Clubs.

MISCELLANEA

The numbers of friends I have lost on account of Internet agita? A refreshingly high number of people who have failed to understand that there’s no reality to any of how we engage with news media these days. Their presence was no gain, their absence no loss. And for the final time, for those still reading: the Internet is not real.

But in the spirit of that lack of reality though no year numbered 2023 would be complete without a well-placed mention of the close to 40 very real shows OXBOW played this year, and the close to 20 played by BUNUEL. The articles and interviews that took their time to pimp what we’re rhyming? Also, wunnerful.

Same goes for all of the people that we actually cared about who breathed their last breaths this year, a list that does NOT include my father, though he most assuredly, is dead. But when bad things happen to bad people I count this as a win. So let’s keep on winning.

Also: Brad Pitt, Joe Rogan, Jimmy Fallon, and Elon Musk because, yeah, man, enough of youse too. And enough of fist fights on planes. I like fist fights just as much as the next fist fighter, but not when I need to stare at the wing to keep it from falling off the plane and plunging us into certain death. Finally, I wish I knew, or could identify a single song by Ed Sheeran, Taylor Swift, Drake or Justin Bieber, but I can’t, so please stop trying to get me to.

Honorable mentions go out to the Red Hot Chili Peppers for sucking as much now as they ever have, Tarantino for promising only one more movie before he leaves us and our lives alone, and Dave Chappelle who need never tell another “joke” again.

END PIECE

No idea if this is how Year-End Lists are supposed to work, but in my house, ruled by Festivus, it had to involve bitter recriminations, and unsullied grievances. So there you have it.

Next up? “Resolutions” for 2024. And not a single one of them involves being nicer.