Lightning Bolt
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There are people who make art because they want to and there are people who can’t do anything but. Lightning Bolt fall into the latter category. Drummer and artist Brian Chippendale, the mangy dog of the duo, looks like he cuts his own hair without a mirror and randomly selects his wardrobe from the trash. His rough-edged comics depict chaotic fragments of life in make-believe lands–kingdoms where the little guy puts up an admirable fight before inevitably “failing”–and he helps maintain a homemade screen-printing press in order to circulate his drawings. In The Power of Salad, a film documenting Lightning Bolt’s 2001 summer tour, he says that he drums the way he draws, “covering every bit of space with a beat.” His bandmate, bassist Brian Gibson, has constructed a monument to wattage with a tottering wall of amps, and in the film he says that after years of tinkering he’s finally rigged up his gear so that anything played through it sounds good. Maybe that’s true, but even with only three strings on his bass it’s hard to tell he’s the only one plugged in; he produces such beautifully complicated parts that it sounds like he grafted a few of Cliff Burton’s fingers to his own.
They were admittedly a little late for their surprise attack, and it was sad to see them miss a cue that had until then been so key to the experience. Maybe they’ve raised the bar so high that anything less seems like a failure. They’re constantly trying to push themselves as hard as possible, but a person can go only so far before entropy kicks in. The Fireside wasn’t exactly packed, but it didn’t feel as intimate as past shows, even the one the night before. They weren’t on the bill last Saturday at the Abbey Pub, and they played only half as long as at the Fireside, but the show felt more inspired. It gave the audience the impression they were in on the secret, which made all the difference.
Inevitably, Providence caught wind of Fort Thunder. Until early 2001 the building’s owner tried to keep city officials out of the way. After all, his tenants paid their rent with nary a complaint about the crumbling state of the building. But then some strip mall developers decided that very spot would make an excellent parking lot, and it was a done deal. Sure, there was some protest and a lot of letter writing–Spin even ran a story about it on-line–but when efforts to save the place fell flat the disassembly was very hush-hush, allowing Fort Thunder a quiet, dignified death and its inhabitants a chance to sever themselves from the building without a lot of hullabaloo. Everyone moved out last fall, and two months ago the building was leveled.
