Akimbo ::: Live to Crush

[Scene opens with Alyssa Milano meandering in the middle of a soon-to-be empty parking lot. There is a building that has been foreclosed on a couple of paces behind her. A few menacing Bobcat construction vehicles wait like vultures in the distance. Orange mesh fence and yellow tape serve as the veil to an imminent end. In the corner of the shot, a gentleman with a salt and pepper colored beard drinks something that is being concealed by a moist, brown paper bag. He's wearing a Canadian Tuxedo. Instead of "Angel" by Sarah McLaughlin playing in the background it's Akimbo's "Acid Grandma." Mrs. Milano moves her lips and words form accordingly..]

All the mosquito nets in the world couldn’t prepare the United States, the world’s leader in all things we have deemed important, from the seismic shift that has taken place in the music industry. Beginning with the years that preceded the dawn of the new millennium, the record industry has been a veritable sinkhole.

Nevermind the Bollocks Not even our very own “Prince Valiant” (Lars Ulrich) could stop high-powered, futuristic bit torrents, the unholy union of behemoth record labels and record executives that would rather eat their own children, than give a fair shake in royalties and licensing agreements. Artists have become chow mein for the “Old Men of the Desert.”

What was once a mechanical, predictable an elegant process has become mutated beyond recognition. As a result, record stores everywhere are becoming extinct. Why buy a record at the store when can you download the files for a paltry fee? The Earth is becoming overpopulated and I no longer have room for my cream-sicle colored, limited edition 7″ of that one touring band whose name I have totally forgotten (Rinse. Lather. Repeat…oh…about 40,000 times). For the love of petrol money.

[Camera zooms in on the middle-aged gentleman wearing denim on denim. He takes a drink of his mystery beverage and winks at the camera.]

Why leave your house when all the music in the universe can come to you? Why walk to the bathroom when you can just wear an adult diaper? Why live when you can just die? 

[Milano walks toward the camera.]

In honor of vinyls “Day of the Dead” Record Store Day (April 20th, 2013), Akimbo has decided to release their final album on Alternative Tentacles Records. Live to Crush, further expounds on the “Eat Beer. Shit Riffs” philosophy that the band has worn on their sleeve for a number of years. Akimbo’s final document will be limited to 500 copies on vinyl. The remainder of the spoils can be downloaded in digital format. The last time you kissed someone goodbye forever, what were the words you left them with? What themes, memories or harsh realities did you gleefully nail into their conscience? Akimbo left us with their most powerful creeds to date. Let us delve into the hypothetical topics that this album presents us with. Tales of America’s playground ribbing and phantom rivalry with France (“The Fucking French!” — sans les frites de la liberté), completely ignoring the tyranny of the politically correct establishment (“The Retard Blues”) and my personal our society’s obsession with good looks and an immaculate physique (“Building A Body”).

[Camera cuts to archival Akimbo footage during the voice over.]

The lead guitar during the bridge on “I Am Very Successful” mimics our stock market on a semi-daily basis. Fre Descending with a brief flirtation with mania, mocking and oddly cruel. Freshly minted in the minds of the participating. “Acid Grandma” presents itself as the unwilling bride to Helms Alee’s “Grandfather Claws.” The biggest difference is where the husband and wife originate from. Mr. Claws sounds as if he is from Boston. Mrs. Grandma sounds like she is from somewhere between Savannah and Athens.  

These songs are better than the songs that appear on previous albums. The songwriting is more intelligent yet it doesn’t subtract from Akimbo’s cardinal mission of command and conquer. These are significant statements because I say so. If you’ve spilled your drink during “Lungless,” then you know that such  accomplishments are mountainous in stature. In terms of being “brought out to pasture” in the musical sense,  the In Memoriam we are privy to is often worse than the actual demise itself. Freeze framing old glories. Nostalgic reverie over faded photographs. Reshaping the legacies found at the end of the noose for no reason other than the fact that it “feels good.”

That is not the case on Live to Crush.

[Camera cuts back to Milano. The middle-aged man that can only be described as fashionably debonair is peeing behind some construction vehicles in the background.]

There are no hints or slight indications of musical atrophy during the course of this 40-minute tantrum. As a listener, you want to tell Akimbo, “Get back into the van! Finish what can never be finished!”

Your hopes are in vain (as always). It’s not happening, not for you or anyone else.

If you buy this record, will you reverse the misfortune of the retail cathedrals known as “record stores”? You’re a smart consumer (you are “watching this commercial”, aren’t you?) so I am going to assume you know the answer to that. You know what mother said, it doesn’t hurt to try. That’s the same mother who would drive you to the record store and bring a good book. She’d sit in the car for hours and hours while you lived out your adolescent fantasies thru listening stations and captured moments that make great wall art. It’s the same woman that could see her son finding solace in the sounds and ideas put forth by total strangers. Foreign souls he felt like he’d known his entire life. The same woman that bought you a drum kit and selflessly encouraged you to pursue your passions, even though it gave her a headache…literally.

[Camera zooms in on Milano's upper torso.]

Record stores? Who needs them! They only lead to heartache and erosion of self-esteem. This space could be used for expensive downtown parking!

“12 more hours in this fucking hole. Somebody give me a sword!”           

[Camera zooms in on Milano's face.]

Akimbo, you can’t leave now. We were supposed to rid the world of danger.

[Scene ends with the camera zooming in on the gentleman wearing denim on denim. He's giving the lens a John Kerry-esque thumbs up.]