Pulse (finger off) - White Room Black Eye demo by Chemlab

Pulse (finger off) is what eventually became ‘White Room Black Eye’, one of my favorite tracks off of the 2004 Chemlab album “Oxidizer”.

I’m posting this version naked, with all its imperfections because there’s something glorious about its frayed figure.

The other reason that I’m posting it is because, as autumnal shadows start to elongate and nights close in I’ve been thinking about Jamie a lot. This isn’t the album version, it’s pre-, it’s demo, early, fractured and slewed off course. I adore it because it’s raw and unvarnished for mass unpopular consumption. Jason’s programming snarls rabidly, its sexual propulsion unfiltered. My vocals are ugly, burred at the edges (my natural two-packs-of-smokes-and-a-bottle-of-whiskey-a-day distortion shining through in all its fucked unglory). In the outro “down”s you can actually hear shreds of F.J.s backing vocals beckoning down the hole.

But, the thing that really blows me away, that utterly knocks my lights right out is Slo-Hand's’s unhinged guitar. Like some static drenched cyclone of sonic white light it hustles and torques underneath the song until about 2:19. From that point onwards it breaks its cage, howling straight through the mix to rocket launch a fist into the frontal lobe. It’s scorched earth, it’s canisters of napalm tumbling out of the sky, it’s urban center dirty bomb detonation.

Funny thing (or not): when I posted this link I was trying to remember exactly who had played this riff. For a long time I was sure that it was Greg Slo-Hand Lucas, but in the folds of time I got must have got lost (as Peter Wolf said) and this guitar madness became Jamie's horns and gown instead somehow. I posted it with the credit going to Jamie and, sensibly, Lucas wrote to me and said that although he loved Jamie's guitar playing as much as the next guy, that slice of searing genius was his, thank you very much while you're up.

So, kids, as much as the drug-addicted life style of the purported "rock star" may have its shiny attraction and dissolute appeal, the reality is standing right before you. I went stumbling headlong into total addiction not by mistake or chance intervention, but by clear and definite choice. I saw Iggy crash and Keith burn out and I thought that was the most fascinating part of the package: the hampered, damaged, limping lifestyle of waste behind mirrorshades. I learned all the wrong lessons from the right guys and blindly, laughingly drove a truck loaded with pills and powders and syringes and bottles and smoking reefers straight through the heart of my career, my band, my record label, many of my friendships and my first marriage and into sheer wipe out, and it wasn't pretty. No, not at all. Though I've been clean of everything for over a decade, my memory has suffered countless direct hits and the long-term damage is immeasurable...except in clearcut cases like this.

Greg Lucas, I apologize. This riff's for you. It's a fucking standard of destruction I return to again and again and again.

Sadly, the final version didn’t retain all of that slingshot madness, that nasty and unholy magic. Maybe that's because Greg was just too spicy to remain in the mix unvarnished, unfiltered, unafraid.
Or maybe I just can't remember the reason why...