Words by Jason Lee. Photos by another Jason Lee (cover photo and collage below)
We wanna be free! We wanna be free to do what we wanna do. We wanna be free to ride! We wanna be free to ride our machines without being hassled by The Man. [pause] And we wanna get loaded! And we wanna have a good time. And that’s what we’re gonna do…
You may’ve heard the words above in the intro to Primal Scream’s 1990 smiley-faced indie-dance crossover hit “Loaded” or maybe in the intro to Mudhoney’s psych-grunge freakout “In ’n’ Out of Grace” a couple years earlier with the sampled dialogue in question spoken by Peter Fonda (1940–2019, RIP) playing a nihilistic Hells Angel biker in The Wild Angels which in 1966 was Roger Corman’s latest micro-budget cinematic provocation (the “King of the B’s” passed away away earlier this year, RIP) a film whose success led to a massive wave of copycat movies made for grindhouses and drive-ins across the nation and thus the modern genre of biker-sploitation was born…
…films that like The Wild Angles projected America’s unfiltered id, and all the creepy-crawlies therein, onto the silver screens of proudly disreputable cinemas with people eating up the new cycle of outlaw ‘cycle movies like boxes of stale Junior Mints with The Wild Angels being a chef’s kiss of shameless provocation (the “funeral party” scene in particular is still shocking today-) and it really says something when even the freakin’ Hells Angels sue for defamation (see Footnote #1)…
…leading most notoriously to 1969’s Easy Rider which again starred Peter Fonda as a rebellious biker on a cross-country odyssey fated to end in senseless tragedy starring alongside Jack Nicholson and Dennis Hopper (no Nancy Sinatra unfortunately—Hopper co-wrote the screenplay with Fonda and Terry Southern) and with the two leads named after Wyatt (Earp) and Billy (the Kid) the biker-as-modern-day-cowboy subtext was made into supertext (both being “rebellious, nomadic and clannish” loners holding to their own code of ethics) except instead of being reactionary sadists like in The Wild Angels these bikers were more like the black–hatted cowboys of yore (badass yet righteous) in the form of doobie-smoking folk heroes living outside the parameters of mainstream society where reactionary sadists seek to restrain and demonize them…
…in a film that pretty much pins the Vietnam War not to mention late ’60s/early ’70s social malaise on Americans losing touch with the freedoms of the frontier era (tho’ they were never “freedoms” for all involved obviously) and with no actual physical frontiers left to explore but with manifest destiny woven deep into the bones of the body politic Americans have felt compelled to explore and expand their personal horizons instead by whatever means necessary which could include drugs, ‘cycle riding, getting into rock ‘n’ roll or independent films or whatever subcultural activity one chooses cuz basically we’re a bunch of restless muthaf***ers is what it boils down to…
…and with Easy Rider going on to gross $60,000,000 on a paltry $400,000 budget the New Hollywood was born (Hollywood’s new frontier) which thank goodness the filmmakers switched out the bongo-loving bikers of The Wild Angels for a soundtrack full of heavy metal thunder and other music beloved by dirty hippies for the film’s extended chopper-riding sequences its outlaws traversing the new interstate system on their mechanical steeds looking for adventure or whatever came their way while fully leaning into the more fetishistic aspects of biker culture (custom jackets and brain buckets, shiny shiny boots of leather and the machines themselves of course) with Kenneth Anger’s even more fetish-y Scorpio Rising (1963) having already established the holy trinity of black leather outerwear, rock music and motorcycles of course…
…which leads us to to our actual subject for today which is Mag Electric’s recently debuted music video for their song “Mean Machine” with Mag Electric being a psychedelically inclined hard-rock power trio from the borough of Brooklyn featuring Jack Simchak on guitar and vocals, Scott Meyer on bass, and Bill Peluso on the skins who together mash up bloozy hard rock á la Deep Purple and QOTSA-worthy stoner rock with a little doom á la the Sword or Black Angels and a little boogie à la Dr. Feelgood and Status Quo for good measure to where if this were 1975 one could see them touring the UK pub rock circuit just sayin’…
…but hey that’s dancing about architecture cuz Mag Electric are a biker band plain ’n’ simple as witnessed in the aforementioned music video (viewable below) which incorporates brief clips from Easy Rider alongside inserts of skeletons and explosions and Kelly Rohrbach running in slow motion plus a moddish, befanged vampire whom I can’t quite place which is annoying (maybe from a Hammer horror movie) not to mention drag racers and a T-800 Endoskeleton carrying a machine gun and let’s just say Beavis and Butthead would love this music video not to mention all the loving shots of motorcycle related stuff like dual-clutch transmissions and Hello Kitty handlebar ringers but hey don’t trust us cuz we wouldn’t be able to tell a carburetor diaphragm from an ignition circuit breaker even if you held a gun to our head…
…and if you’re going by the video only it’d be easy to believe Jack, Scott, and Bill are indeed “mean as a mean machine” with the boys modeling custom Mag Electric jean jackets with the sleeves cut off rocking exactly the kinda look and musical vibes you’d expect to encounter among the stoner kids who hang around busted-up Trans-Ams in the high school parking lot after the final bell or before a big arena concert shotgunning beers and ripping major bong hits or maybe dropping acid and huffing biker crank for the harder cases…
…but here’s the thing and don’t tell any of ‘em we said this but Mag Electric are nice guys or at least they are in the confines of Otto’s Shrunken Head or at the Kingsland both being venues the Deli booked ME to play in recent months but regardless of not always acting like “a pack of mad dogs from hell hunting down their prey” their music sure as hell sounds like it’d be favored by a pack of mad dogs from hell plus its members are actual bikers or at least a couple of ’em are anyway with the crucial point being how evocatively they evoke bikerdom in all its semotic richness thru their sonics and imagery…
…like take the main riff of “Mean Machine” for instance which is so elemental it sounds like it must’ve always existed but just now got discovered with its sleek, metallic serpentine melody evoking a 1967 Triumph Chopper with a Captain America paint job thus perfectly evoking slapping an American coat of paint on the British roots of metal at its most Sabbathy with Bill and Scott’s super-in-the-pocket rhythmic propulsion acting as the fine-tuned engine driving the whole contraption forward with plenty low-end torque to spare…
…and so on for the other seven songs from the band’s debut LP Full Throttle which came out earlier this year, similarly built upon the mechanical precision of vintage biker rock but with a hint of the chaotic too, and by eschewing too many extraneous bells and whistles it makes the songs easier to modify and customize like with the trippy dub sonics that sneak in at a couple point in “Ride” over its minimalist chug before morphing into full-on guitar shreddage and bass counterpoint…
…or the driving psych-rock fantasia of “Iron Horse” (shades of Mastadon) or the head-nodding shuffle beat and machine-gun drum fills of the instrumental “Slippery Slope” or the album-closing “To The Boneyard” which adds a little organ and indie-rock jangle to the mix but otherwise would make a credible hair metal song if Jack sang it in a screechy falsetto which he very much doesn’t and finally getting back to where we started, lyrically, all these songs are either explicitly about bikes, or even if not, they embody the 5 Golden Rules of Bikerdom we’ll helpfully lay out for you here (you’re welcome!) corresponding to the song(s) off from Full Throttle they best pair with…
#1 — Don’t tread on me i.e. leave me the f*ck alone and lemme get along with my business (“Thorn in my side”)
#2 — Go hard or go home (“Full Throttle”)
#3 — Recognize and honor your role as modern day inheritors of American individualism which first and foremost in this case means treating your bike with the same reverence a cowboy would their finest steed (“Iron Horse”)
#4 — As a corollary to #3: being a real deal biker isn’t a hobby or even merely a lifestyle, rather, it’s a full-on identity and thus there’s no such thing as retirement (“To the Boneyard”)
…and finally #5 — motorcycles and the bikers who ride them are sexy beasts when you get down right down to it cuz just think about it from an admittedly phallocentric point of view here we’re talking about riding a big ol’ hog you wrap your legs around and straddle with a tornado of pounding pistons throbbing between your legs as you alternately accelerate and de-accelerate until you find the perfect rhythm all while squeezing the throttle holding out as long as you can until reaching your point of destination, hopefully, ultimately, if you know what I mean and I think that you do but in case you don’t just take a look at the drummer’s tonguing technique (!) below which may resonate with the ladies in particular…
Footnote #1: …but they really shouldn’t have cuz it helped made the Angels iconic like revisionist westerns by directors like George Ray Hill and Sam Peckinpah–whose blood-soaked magnum opus The Wild Bunch came out in 1969 and ditto the Oscar-winning anti-western Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid—doing much the same thing for black-cowboy-hatted anti-heroes with the biker mythos rebooted to suit each new generation…
…like the demonic Black Skulls biker gang that features in Panos Cosmatos’ 2018 synthwave-meets-doom-metal fantasia Mandy (featuring Nick Cage at his Nicholas Cagiest) perfectly suited for this hyperviolent, heavily medicated times but just as often bikers on film today are bathed in the warm glow of nostalgia like in this year’s The Bikeriders directed by Mike Nichols (tagline: “Freedom is for the fearless!” and “Some people would rather crash than slow down”!) or the new Amyl and the Sniffers video which just dropped for god’s sake cuz when you get down to it it’s all about big dreams…
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More photos by Jason Lee the photographer (right-click to enlarge)…
