The Triangle
By J. Buck Williams
221 pages
(Gutter Books; April 3, 2015)
eBook: Amazon Digital
Services, Inc.
ASIN: B00VO17UMA
Let’s get one thing
straight from the outset: The Triangle didn’t blow up the Pike
Place Pig. Buck has his suspicions about who did, but the evidence is largely
circumstantial.
On the other hand,
there’s no question the band was responsible for the arson fire at The Rocket,
Seattle’s premiere rock dive. And they blew up the millionaire’s yachts at the
Anacostia Marina just outside D.C. And
helped spread trimethyl-L-triptophan 47, the illegal drug known to users as
“Zone.” And they did shoot down the National Guard helicopter in Cleveland and
destroy the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
 |
| The band's cryptic logo: an equilateral triangle happy face smoking a spliff, , , |
Let’s see Nirvana
beat that. It’s not a bad record for a four-member punk group from Seattle –
almost as good as Nevermind!
The Triangle is a book
about the exploits of the group and its rise from anonymity to . . . well, to anonymity.
The band’s middle-aged
leader, Buck (he just happens to have the same name as the book’s author, J. Buck Williams) has
held a variety of jobs, but keeps returning to music as his first love, despite
his lack of success as the front man, singer and lyricist for a variety of
groups.
 |
| Author Joe Buck Williams |
He despises those he
knows who have adopted dull middle-class lifestyles with the requisite SUV in
the driveway, the pool in the back yard and the kids underfoot. He will either
succeed on his own terms or fail so spectacularly he will at least become a
footnote in musical history.
“All at once, I saw
my choices laid out in front of me,” he says at one point in the book. “You could sell out and
end up with enough money to want more, but never enough to be at ease. You
could maintain your dignity and toil in poverty for the rest of your life. Or
you could pick your fight and be so loud
that they couldn’t ignore you. I decided I’d be the loudest of them all.”
Through sheer luck,
he finds himself thrown together with several much younger musicians. At least
two of them appear to have more raw musical talent than Buck. As an aggregate,
the quartet has the kind of sound that catches the casual fan’s ear while firing
the serious fan’s imagination.
The band becomes a
huge – if unlikely – hit. Its success is pointed up by the fact that the country
is quickly flooded by bootleg copies of its first set: a low-fi recording of
its performance at an anarchist gathering in Seattle’s Pikes Place Market that
turns into a disastrous riot.
The Triangle’s
involvement in the riot and a subsequent series of violent acts not only puts
the group on the music lover’s map, but also squarely on the FBI’s radar.
The band makes its
way to Southern California, the desert of the Southwest, Texas, the Midwest and
the Eastern Seaboard. On the road, they meet rowdy roadies, band chicks, dope
dealers, cookers and lifestylers and a group of drug-addled followers who seem
a lot like Deadheads – if Deadheads all had felony rap sheets. Even a group of mercenaries
hired to provide the band with security ends up in the shit by trading in illicit
firearms.
At the same time, Buck’s
anti-establishment lyrics aim to foment red revolution: The Triangle’s music is
a scathing critique of consumerism, conventional politics, corporate culture and
the one percent.
Despite the hijinks,
the rather open criminality and the front man’s downer political prognosis, The
band’s popularity and notoriety grow steadily. The tour comes to a head in
Cleveland, where an unadvertised Triangle concert is surrounded by police and
federal agents, National Guard helicopters buzz the crowd and all hell breaks
loose.
To say anything more
would be the spoiler to end all spoilers.
Don’t get me wrong:
The Triangle doesn’t simply consist of one grim incident followed by another.
Williams recognizes that even the most depressing message is more likely to
stick with a reader if it is served up with a smile or two.
The smiles offered
by the book are plentiferous.
At one point, for
example, Williams counts off the various instruments and the contribution they
can be expected to make in the hands of the right musician.
“A bass is limited
by the low register it’s stuck in and its necessary role as a bridge between
the other
instruments. A drum kit may be more or less elaborate, but it always sounds
exactly as good as the person playing it, with no way to hide insufficient
practice or talent. A sax sounds like a sax. A cello sounds like a cello.
Keyboards sound like limp dick unless they were manufactured before 1983.
Bagpipes sound like hell. Ask Bon Scott.”
Later, Buck’s ex-wife
Anastasia recognizes his voice when he and his crew sweep a group of imposters
from the stage at a nightclub and take over. Knowing the band is wanted for
blowing up the Pike Place Pig, she threatens to turn him in unless he writes a
song about her and records it. He does, but it isn’t exactly a romantic
serenade:
She’s the only woman that I ever knew
who could smile even when she was crying.
She hated her nose and she hated her hair,
but she never ever gave up trying.
We slept in the same bed for five long years;
it was meaningless, shallow, and blunt.
She always washed her hands before mixing a drink,
my beautiful Campari Cunt.
In the final pages, Buck
tries to summarize why rock is important. The passage goes on for most of three
pages and ends with this: “You think it’s about vinyl. Sex. Fashion.
Drugs. Death. Bombs.
Guitars. Love. Rockets. Amps. Candles. Triumph. Warfare. Excess. Mayhem. Chaos.
Disorder. Anger. Loudness. Bass. Guitar. Drums. More guitar. Always more guitar! You can
never have too much guitar.”
While the
descriptions of the band, its life on the road and its followers are frequently
humorous, it is clear that author Williams has wrapped them around a serious
analysis of a U.S. society in utter decline.
As he says in his
prefatory remarks, “I wrote this book in
2008 and 2009, when it seemed like the country was collapsing. Things aren’t
quite as dire as they were then, but for most of us, the world hasn’t changed
all that much. The middle class is still hollowed out and suffering, even
though company profits have returned to record highs. The economy is still
crummy, despite a lower unemployment rate (caused in part by so many
discouraged workers giving up). Politicians are still useless, bordering on
hostile. We’re not exactly at war in Iraq any more, but things are heating up
in the Middle East again and you’d have to be a fool to assume we’re going to
sit on the sidelines.
“These are the themes I set out to describe and explore, and sadly
they’re just as relevant today as they were then.”
Maybe when you set
aside Buck’s anarchy, his critique of corporate culture and his conviction that
Twentieth Century life is empty and meaningless, the book’s message is really
very simple. As Buck puts it, “There are people in this world, in your world,
who do not live for anything else. Playing rock and roll music is all we want
to do, and all we can do that makes sense to us. It’s beyond desire, beyond
addiction.”
Williams has written
a righteously enjoyable book here. There is enough criminal activity in it to
satisfy a hard-boiled fan, enough cynicism about the social structure of the
U.S. to fuel a rebellion and enough humor to tie the other ingredients together
into a satisfying whole.
Take it from me, if
you like rock ‘n’ roll, ever played in a band good enough to tour, spent any
time in a recording studio or ran from the feds, you should like this book.
Hell, the only
instrument I play these days is an iPod and I thought it was swell.
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