The Gay Blades
Daytrotter Session - Dec 10, 2010
- Welcome to Daytrotter
- November Fight Song
- Why Winter in Detroit?
- Puppy Mills Presents
- Rock n’ Roll, Pt. One
If he were dared, Clark Westfield seems like a man who would take an empty beer bottle and shatter it over his own head, if he thought it would get him a laugh, or it would be good for the show. He would moon others from a moving vehicle – probably still does so, even in adulthood. He would twist nipples and his idea of a perfect night would be one that either refused to end or wasn’t allowed to end. Westfield is a man who would do almost anything to improve the show, we’d like to believe, for the guy who’s been written out to be a sarcastic cuss and an incorrigible spazz, as well as a highly charismatic showman, gets off on the thrill of it – of pushing and escalating the intensity in a room, the intensity in a song. He and drummer, Puppy Mills, of the New York band The Gay Blades seem to find the spectacle of rock and roll – the making of it and the presentation of it – as a way to feel one’s own blood better, of experiencing what it feels like to take the pointer finger and the middle finger on whichever hand you’d prefer and seeing if you can find a way to jam them into a wall socket. If all else fails, go get a knife and let the fireworks fly. It’ll light yer dick up and one gets a sense that Westfield and Mills are notoriously on a mission, on the hunt, for anything that will accomplish that feat – without it having anything to do with sex. They will feistily go after anything that will provide them with some sense of being more alive than they were a moment or two ago. It needs to be done. It is their quest. They will pounce on a good time, have a tickle fight with it, buy it another round, make it get up on stage and dance with them during the rambunctious bridges or refrains. They won’t let those good times up for air. Westfield sings, above the huge riffs and perfectly placed feedback of the song “Rock ‘N Roll, Pt. 1,” “I’m gettin’ while the gettin’s good,” and it’s a lesson in getting after it before you’re shit out of luck. It’s a song that sounds like prime debauchery and smells like a pair of jeans and a shirt that have had thousands of drinks spilled on them over the course of the last three or four hours and yet the body has compensated for any unpleasantness by just getting sweatier and accepting the foreign booze as family. The Gay Blades will always accept debauchery as family and they will always give big ups to the magical wonderland of bottomless nights.