Singin’ through you to me
thunderbolts caught easily
shouts the truth peacefully
Electricity
My first King Gizzard show was on 10/22/2022 at Franklin Music Hall, just a week after I had purchased the domain KGLW.net. Lightning has crackled through each and every day since. We’re talking about the frenetic energy that makes life exciting, that attracts people across time and space, that powers us to create. This essay is a reflection on the ways that the circuitry has been in place to light up this machine all along. Looking back to my first show, the synchronicity was all there for me to see. So, this is also a prompt for you to consider the lessons you’ve learned and connections you’ve made thanks to this band, whether you recently saw your first show or you’re nearing triple digits.
I can’t explain why I, a Pennsylvanian professor in his 40s, jolted my own existence like this. I had only been a true fan of the band mere months, even though I’d listened to but not really loved the band’s music off and on starting in 2019. Something changed in the Summer of ’22. I opened up to let in Murder of the Universe and Nonagon Infinity. That had me primed when Ice Death released in early October and obsessed by the release of Laminated Denim. That two-track jam-heavy album dropped and I couldn’t get enough. I had also found that Gizz are a phenomenal live band first through the Bonnaroo ’22 recording. I had to see them, I had to listen to all their albums, all of their live recordings, and keep track of what was coming next. I had to.
All of that explains my obsession, but not why, having next to no experience building a website, I went to GoDaddy to purchase Gizz.net in mid-October. That URL was not available, but I found an (arguably) better one in KGLW.net. As soon as I found it, I didn’t hesitate for an instant. I felt it was extremely pressing that I get this site started right away, but I really didn’t yet know why or how.
Once I had the site, I knew I could not miss seeing this band live while they were so close. Thanks to a Phish friend, I had a person to go with and a place to stay for my first show in Philly. Of course, I wish I’d seen them 100 times by October of 2022, but I was struck when I was struck, the English professor in me repeating in my head a favorite quote:
“I had been my whole life a bell, and never knew it until at that moment I was lifted and struck.”
—Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
I’ve always been obsessive about my musical loves, all of which I found when I was a teenager. Bob Dylan came first, then Phish, and Captain Beefheart after that. I love all kinds of music, but those three have carried me through my entire adult life. And I was happy. I didn’t really need any other bands to obsess over, even though I had been expanding my tastes to include bits of punk and metal thanks to friends I’d made fishing for fishies over the last decade. But it has always come back to music that is weird. Dylan has a funny voice, Phish has strange lyrics, and Beefheart is plain bizarre through and through. Those are simplifications, of course, but I definitely like music that pushes the levers further than they’ve been rigged to go. Captain Beefheart really encapsulates that and maybe is the clearest link to Gizzard out of the three. Batty names aside, both Beefheart and Gizz feature instructive lyrics if you can listen hard enough. They each also have instrumentation that is purposefully rough, evocative, and rewarding to those who give it multiple listens. Dig into Beefheart’s discography if you never have before. The song I’m highlighting here for its perfect fit for my jolt into the Gizzverse is from Safe as Milk, but my personal favorite has got to be Shiny Beast/Bat-Chain Puller.
High voltage man kisses
night to bring the light
to those who need
t’ hide their shadow deed
go into bright, find
the light and know
that friends don’t mind
just how you grow
Looking back to my first show, the setlist is full of meaning and message. I can’t help but read into things; it’s in my nature. Here are some of the ways my first show spoke directly to the moment and continues to do so through a selection of songs and my recollection of them. We’ll close with a bit about what happened next that resulted in KGLW.net as we know it today.
Oddlife – This song opened the show and was not one I’d been hoping for, I have to admit. But those lines “It’s an odd life ‘til you get it right” meant a lot right away as I shook my head in wonder at the scene. The guy next to me was wearing a bitchin’ battle jacket, a term I’d later learn (those are not a thing in the jamband scene). The crowd was already frenetic, and my view from the balcony made it clear that I was in for a major disruption to everything I’d come to know as normal. But now with a few years behind me, I can see that the odd life was before I found this band, just as Stu sings it.
K.G.L.W. (Outro) – As I mentioned, I’d just secured the domain KGLW.net only a week before this performance. L.W. with “If Not Now, Then When?” and “K.G.L.W. (Outro)” were my favorites and kept ringing in my head for weeks up until that day, and then hearing this song banished any doubts I’d had. This band has the sickest theme song. I imagined it playing in MIDI when you landed on our page just as websites used to do in the mid-90s.
Organ Farmer – The guy in the battle jacket looked over at me and yelled, “ORGAN FARMER!!” What in the fuck was I witnessing? I had never been to a metal show, had never seen any live metal. I’d never even seen a mosh pit in person. This kind of intensity put me on edge. I was smiling, but I was nervous. The crowd was intense and so was my heartbeat. “In the fields of BEEF.” Whoa. I was coursing with the adrenaline of survival. I had been telling myself for so many years I wouldn’t enjoy anything like this. King Gizzard just tore down a wall I had been building my whole musical life. I might not fit in, but I was in the right place.
Her & I (Slow Jam 2) – The next moment I was back to a place that felt familiar; instead of thrashing I was swaying, the crowd was grooving rather than grinding. The shift from “Organ Farmer” to “Her & I” really did it for me. This band makes you feel that anything is possible, that maybe fitting in is not what this is about at all.
Crumbling Castle > The Fourth Colour – The Her & I jam floored me and then the venue turned into a dwarven hall. We were underground, the walls were shaking, night was here and we might never get out of this place. I was enraptured by it then I spun around and around in the kaleidoscope of “The Fourth Colour.” I was seeing through the hyperbole and believing “with sight you can see the future.”
Altered Beast – This suite quickly became my favorite once I discovered Murder of the Universe. My daughter also got hooked and even requested it at her friend’s 10-year birthday party when all the kids got to ask for a song. It reminds me that in my normal life there is still space for primal energy. That it is okay, even good, to have an alter ego that lives outside the bounds of normalcy. I’d gone by variations of “Beefheart” online for years but once Gizzard got me, I felt my life had been irrevocably altered.
Evil Death Roll – This has become probably my favorite song (alongside a dozen others). The experience of this one ramping up to that swirling intensity, the crackle of energy, the whip and snap, splashing, roaring. It was all there. I didn’t even catch the “Hypertension” tease which now to me is so apparent. Then it was just about being in the tumult, immediately followed by needing desperately to hear the show again, to read the setlist, the notes, the teases, the stats. We needed to capture all of this.
The whole show shook me, and I knew that KGLW.net was going to become a lot bigger than what I could give it alone. The small group that chatted about the idea in a Phish Discord was there to help, and then it took no time at all before others stumbled upon us when they had the same idea to start a website about the band. They reached out, we welcomed them in, and the most amazing team of wonderful people formed. Thank Gizzness because I certainly did not have deep knowledge of the band, but I did have the spark and the will to push through the challenges that arise when passionate people come together in common cause. While some have come and gone, I don’t ever think that current will stop flowing through me and the rest of us who seek electricity. My gratitude goes to the whole KGLW.net team, as always.
Light-house beacon straight
ahead, straight ahead
across blank seas to free
seeking:
electricity, E-LEC-TRI-CITY(Electricity, Captain Beefheart, 1967)