Patriotica Games
The charitable concerts that followed 9/11 contributed some indelible images, such as flags billowing behind the bands and tearful audience members gazing appreciatively at newly humanized superstars. But this year, Robico Lopez, who once told the Pitch that his group Deathray Angels‘ stage show features “Plenty of blood, blood everywhere,” presents a tribute concert that will either warm people’s hearts or get them boiling mad, depending on their tolerance for a peculiarly punk form of patriotism.
Some scribes pronounced irony dead in the immediate aftermath of the World Trade Center attacks, and though it’s made quite a comeback, it plays no part in the Deathray Angels’ latest disc, Patriotica. Like an MC5 cover band fronted by a rabid John Mellencamp, the Angels combine Midwest pride with mini-solo-studded garage thrash. It’s “pure American fucking fury,” as Lopez puts it, but not in the Toby Keith boot-to-butt meaning of the phrase. The jagged riffs and cannon-shot drum rolls are certainly aggressive, but the lyrics, when not cartoonish (“Love Cannibal”), are earnest expressions of affection for the city and country from which the band hails. Last year, the title of Slipknot‘s Pledge of Allegiance tour went from sarcastic to solemn in mid-September; Patriotica suggests what it might sound like if that group had set out with a genuine POA theme, then fertilized its setlists with some heartfelt odes to Iowa’s cornfields.
“It’s just about being really proud about the rock scene and about America,” Lopez says, describing both the album and its release-party concert at the Madrid Theatre on Wednesday, September 11. “I don’t want to expose too much about the show, but you’ll definitely see a couple flags there. It’s from the heart, and it’ll be really classy.”
Some people’s definitions of a classy 9/11 tribute don’t include Veronica, the 8-foot-flame-belching beauty who adorns the Angels’ album art and heats up its performances. Other potentially touchy elements of Patriotica include the record’s cover, which depicts a bald eagle carving its talons into a bloody skull and two smoldering flags that seem to have gotten in the path of Veronica’s fireballs, and its song titles, among them “Bombs Away!” and “Pall Bearer Blues.” A year ago, such images might have been deemed not fit for public consumption, let alone at a 9/11-themed event. Lopez says he means no disrespect.
“Hopefully, people will be able to look past those things and see what we’re actually trying to achieve,” he says. “There’s no direct derogatory meanings, and a lot of these songs don’t even have anything to do with the Twin Towers attack. I wrote [‘Bombs Away!’] three years ago.”
Last year, live-music venues were all but empty on 9/11, and a good number of Americans will probably stay at home again, watching news programs and paying silent tribute. Still, Lopez hopes a decent number of people will decide to spend their nights watching the Angels.
“I hope they don’t just sit at home, because that’s doing nothing but catering to the people we’re fighting against,” Lopez says. “During the day, go pay memorial and keep it stored away in the back of your heart. But at night, the best thing to do is to get out, have fun and take your mind off it.” Watching a pyrotechnic display seems an unlikely way to take one’s mind off a horrific explosion, and, for that matter, going to a 9/11-centered show doesn’t seem as if it would prove too distracting, but Lopez says it would be insensitive to present entertainment that didn’t address the date. “It’s more tasteful to deal with it,” he explains. “It shows we’re not afraid to take control.”
Though the band’s flamboyant way of voicing its views on the year’s most somber date might ruffle some feathers, it shouldn’t create any major protests. (When the Coup, a politically radical hip-hop duo that makes the Angels look like Lee Greenwood, arrived at the Madrid last fall, there was nary a picket sign.) However, the crowd the group draws should offer an interesting indicator of how far Kansas City’s rock fans have come. If the all-ages gig is packed, perhaps people have healed enough to experience the Angels’ “Heavenly Debauchery” on the anniversary of unspeakable anguish. If no one shows, maybe seeing Deathrays just isn’t appealing on a date that has become synonymous with sudden, shocking mortality.
