I seem to remember being at a Death Hawks concert last night.
I can remember being behind a particularly rough building in a particularly rough section of a town–I had just gotten off of the bus from Brooklyn to Montana–after a particularly rough round of early evening drinking, doing the sort of things one is want to do in such a place, under such circumstances.
A back door swings open into the alley. Amid curls of smoke or steam some chilled moustacheoed dudes walk out having immediately understood my condition. I am offered a cigarette and invited in. They get on stage and start playing music.
I am surrounded by people dancing, some of them in what seem to be animal costumes holding leashes to animals wearing what seem to be human masks. The stomping goes on until a switch to some softer music, like bedtime, and all the bodies, including my own, start lying down into cuddling masses.
Next thing I know one of the guys is shaking me. There is a problem. We have to leave for some reason. When I am done rubbing my eyes–I think I may have accidently picked up someone else’s glasses–we are behind the building again and in front of a long black car with blinking lights. Someone starts driving faster than seems reasonable. The vehicle’s vibration lulls me into a sort of trance. I think I pass-out.
The next thing I notice is my own coughing, the car is full of dust and has stopped moving. We are stopped in what I am told is an old town in the middle of the Siberian desert. Before I have time to form a full objection to this claim, something is passed around and I stop having ideas that come out clearly in words. I am given a blanket and am told we are making good time and should be most of the way through Alaska by day break.
–Karl Levy, The Brooklyn Vagabond
Death Hawks: Death and Decay * * * * *