When Monster Magnet finished their world tour in 1996, Dave Wyndorf got off the tour bus and crawled into his
home happily. Once inside, he turned on his radio for a dose of the "now" sound. Within a week, Dave had
resigned from the music biz. "This is rock radio?," he raged, "It sounds like the whole country's on Prozac,
screw it!" To even further his disgust, he looked long and hard at Monster Magnet's financial state. "I sat down
and looked at my bills," said Dave, "spoke to record company people, which I hadn't done in a long time, and
realized that no matter how good you think you're doing, it's never good enough for Big Business." While the
boys in Monster Magnet were rocking the Free world, the multi-national conglomerates had given their
command to the music industry: sell more or die. "You can't be happy with a lot," complains Dave. "You have to
have more, in fact; there's never enough. It's gone completely out of control. I was kind of blissfully ignorant of
that stuff 'cause I was just out having a good time (on tour)."
"Bullshit may last forever, but my fuse gets shorter everyday. I'll be glad to take your money, but gladder to burn it
all away." - Atomic Clock
Quitting, however, was never on the Monster Magnet menu. Wyndorf soon found that sitting at home after a tour
was a lot like Martin Sheen in Apocalypse Now, waiting to get back in the jungle. "I asked for another mission,
and for my sins they gave me one." POWERTRIP looks hard at the corruption of the American Dream. It
demands to be listened to all at once as it builds a nightmarish vision of society's relentless hunger for MORE:
more money, more sex, more power. Written in Las Vegas, where dreams go to die, and recorded in L.A.,
where everyone wants to be someone else, POWERTRIP is Wyndorf's most personal journey, as he explores
the darkest impulses within all of us, and consequently himself.
"If you want to spank your demons and make them pay, well baby I'm your man of the hour. Some people go to
bed with Lucifer,then cry when they don't greet the day with GOD." - Bummer
"I decided to go into the belly of the beast," says Dave. "I booked myself onto a flight to Las Vegas, the heart of
the failed American Dream, and got a hotel room about ten miles outside of town. I would watch Vegas from the
balcony of my room, it looked like a big nuclear sunset in the distance, and said, 'I have to write a song every
day before I go to town.' I made myself get up every morning and complete a song before I let myself go into the
city to watch naked women and see everyone lose all their money. I did this for 21 days, and by the end of 21
days, I had 21 songs." Wyndorf continues, "I was pumped nightly by all this artificial craziness, not to mention the
bills I had at home, and all the expectations of a major label record deal. Excitement took over and I just wrote all
these songs. It's a diary of where my heart and mind was at for a certain time." After exorcizing his demons in
Vegas, the songwriter flew home to N.J. and his Monster Magnet cohort's Joe Calandra (bass), Jon Kleiman
(drums), and Ed Mundell (lead guitar) where the songs for POWERTRIP were hammered out in swift style.
"When you get tired of their crap, baby move over here and maybe buy some of mine." - Powertrip
In a decade that has seen pop music turn smug and insincere (nouveau ska, electronica, ersatz soul), it was
only a matter of time before a band responded with a 69-megaton declaration of ROCK. From the lease
breaking power of the opening track "Crop Circle," to the apocalyptic first single "Space Lord" to the surf
garage freakout of "19 Witches" to the B-movie sex throb of "Goliath and the Vampires," Monster Magnet's
behemoth riffs and mountain shattering grooves once again dominate the planet. Real rock & roll reclaimed.
"I'm squeezed out in hump drive, and I'm drowning in love." - Space Lord
"I'm a big fan of the guitar," says Dave of the cosmically powered riff-a-rama that fuels POWERTRIP. "It's
extremely physical, the guitar is the only instrument you actually wear, it's part of you. I can attack people with a
guitar, among other things. It's the staff of life, baby!"
"I've been stuffed in your pocket for the last hundred days. When I don't get my bath I take it out on the slaves." -
Space Lord
This time out Dave wanted to capture that elusive vibe you feel when the amps are plugged in, the knobs are
switched over to the far side of the universe and the sound of real rock-n-roll kicks your ass into the next
millennium. "Spontaneity is everything," declares Wyndorf, "I really wanted to keep it a physical album and not
over produce it or polish every single thing. I wanted it to sound like a live set, which I found out was a little bit
harder to do than anything I've done before." Producing the album himself, with co-conspirator Matt Hyde (Porno
for Pyros), Dave fired five different mixers until he found Randy Staub (Metallica), the one man capable of going
on the same vision quest as himself. "I'd go in and say, 'Look, this record was written in Vegas with me
absolutely broke and really, really horny. I recorded this album standing up...It's judgement day, bring on the
rapture.' Randy was the man I needed all along, like Matt Hyde, he unflinchingly looked into the all seeing eye of
Agamotto borrowed from Dr. Strange and survived."
"Come on baby skim the top with me, I'll tell you stories 'bout victory." - Third Eye Landslide
Mission accomplished. Bigger, badder, and more bodacious than ever before, POWERTRIP is the ultimate
psych-sexual culmination of earlier Monster Magnet testaments like SPINE OF GOD (1991), SUPERJUDGE
(1993), and the breakthrough DOPES TO INFINITY (1995). That album's anthemic single and space-age video,
"Negasonic Teenage Warhead," pulled the Red Bank, N.J. reared Monster Magnet out of the underground and
thrust them significantly into the ears, eyes, and minds of rock America for the first time.
"Well I've wasted enough of my time on the edge of forever,and I've paid all the Goddamn dues that I wanna
pay." - Temple of Your Dreams
Of course, it's all about paying dues, and Monster Magnet's done plenty of that. After five straight years on the
road, in the U.S. and Europe, with everyone from Soundgarden to White Zombie, Monster Magnet is one of the
most sought after live attractions on the American scene, and a headlining favorite on the European festival
circuit. All that live energy between band and audience over the course of 18 gazillion shows has turned
Monster Magnet into a force to be reckoned with, a screaming, blazing asteroid that's hitting earth well before
the atomic click strikes midnight.
"Give me the strength to split the world in two, I ate all the rest and now I've gotta eat you." - Space Lord
"It's about money, it's about sex, it's about money, it's about sex," concludes Dave about Magnet's new
masterpiece. But indeed it's much more. POWERTRIP is sarcastic and unforgiving, a brutal commentary on
American power lust which grips us all from the haves to the have nots.
Monster Magnet's POWERTRIP, your cosmic lap dance is waiting.
|
