Iggy and the Stooges, "Death Trip"

The last couple of days have been some of the heaviest on my soul, since I have the inescapable feeling that the future is about to get a whole lot worse than the present. We are in the midst of a deadly pandemic of the likes I have never seen in my lifetime while the grifter reality TV star president rants and raves about people injecting themselves with Clorox to ward off disease. 

Even as thousands die there are governors declaring their states open for business. They simply do not give a fuck if their constituents live or die as long their rich donors get to keep their third homes. It is so hard for my mind to really assimilate what the hell is going on here. All of the worst tendencies of the this country's recent history have combined into one horrific singularity. The same nation that has ignored the spike in suicides, alcohol-related deaths, and drug overdoses and treats the carnage of gun and highway deaths with indifference was well-prepared to treat the deaths of tens of thousands of people as "no big deal."

At some point I might just embrace the insanity. No music makes me lose myself quite like that of the The Stooges. When I give myself over to their raw, primal noise I feel almost transported out of my body. While Fun House was their best album, some of the tracks on Raw Power are truly brain scrambling. 1973's Raw Power, a pure aural assault, ends with the harrowing "Death Trip." It starts with a brutal guitar riff that can only be described as stabbing.

The song goes on for six minutes of punishing noise, a final primal scream. It's a fitting song for the current moment, where many Americans welcome the death trip. They would rather sacrifice lives to the virus than change their way of living, consequences be damned. If I am going to have to try to live through this I might as well do so with punishing guitar riffs and animalistic Iggy screaming. These days it seems like only the most manic and abrasive music truly makes any sense.