Barkmarket - Grinder
Barkmarket were the brainchild of singer/guitarist Dave Sardy, who is now far better known for his work as a producer (he’s worked with Oasis, Wolfmother, Jet, OK Go, and Marilyn Manson, among many others). In the early 90s, though, his main concern was this strange group who could only have attained the success they received at that point in rock history. Barkmarket’s music mixes multiple genres together, and some of those genres are pretty much extinct at this point. The sort of grungy noise rock that was Chicago’s biggest export in 1991 only exists now at reunion shows by the Jesus Lizard and infrequent live dates by Shellac. Back then, though, it was everywhere, and you can hear its influence in Barkmarket’s music. The off-kilter time signatures of math-rock and Pussy Galore’s brand of sloppy rock n’ roll also come through, and to top it all off, Barkmarket even display the ability to write the sort of catchy-in-spite-of-themselves choruses that were then the stock in trade of bands like Faith No More and Jane’s Addiction.
This unruly cocktail of several different, and sometimes diametrically opposed, genres was all on display in Vegas Throat opening track “Grinder,” which was the first song I ever heard by Barkmarket. It’s a sign of the times that I was living through that I heard them the way I did—on MTV, not even on “120 Minutes” but instead on “Headbanger’s Ball,” normally the land of unapologetic metal. The twilight of metal’s dominance of the underground music scene had come, and in 1992, “Headbanger’s Ball” was trying to roll with the changing tides, having Nirvana and White Zombie as guests and mixing Pantera and Slayer videos with Alice In Chains and Helmet. If Barkmarket weren’t the strangest band to get on the air as the result of this attempt to stay relevant, they were one of the top 10.
“Grinder“‘s noise-guitar intro falls apart as soon as the other two-thirds of the band come in, and the first verse is Dave Sardy ranting disconnectedly over a bass and drum groove that is actually in 3/4, though if you pay attention to the bassline you might never figure that out. Like many of this band’s riffs, the verse riff on “Grinder” seems like it’s flipped inside-out or backwards or something, with the note that receives the most emphasis coming at the beginning rather than the end of the riff. Drummer Rock Savage reflects that in his beats by often hitting the snare at the first or second beat in each measure rather than the third or fourth, as is standard in rock drumming. John Nowlin’s bass part, meanwhile, indicates the same sort of natural funk sense that always came through in Eric Avery’s bass parts for Jane’s Addiction. Nowlin could as easily be playing for James Brown on this part, which makes what Dave Sardy is doing vocally seem even more noteworthy. Sardy’s ranting has little to do with the rhythm of the song, as he switches the amount of syllables from one line to the next so often that there doesn’t seem to be a particular vocal pattern, at least on the verses. He’s always in time, it’s just that he might double or triple the beats per measure on one line, while halving them the next. There’s a point in the first verse where this is very clear, as his lyrics, with line breaks illustrated by slashes, go something like this: “Don’t talk yet/Just wait for your invention to make/you weightless/it’s so fine,/Just like your head’s on fire/Kick back the folds and burn.” He stretches the word “talk” in that first line into a slurring yowl, then babbles the next line so quickly that you need the lyric sheet to make sense of it. This sort of vocal (non) pattern persists throughout the song—except at the choruses, but more on them in a minute. Sardy’s vocal tricks are enough work for the average singer, and I say that as someone who used to just sing, and play no instrument, in a band. I worked hard to fit my lyrics to music, and did some of the same tricks he’s doing here to make it work, but I never had an instrument to worry about. Much of the time on “Grinder,” Sardy is both singing his strange patterns and playing equally strange, complex, and completely different parts on guitar. It’s a testament to his creativity, and talent.
When “Grinder” does reach its chorus, the transition into it makes just as little sense on the surface as the inverted verse riff did. The drumming gets more and more off-beat and hard to follow as the verse goes on, and when the entire band switches into the chorus riff, it’s hard to tell if they’re even doing the change on beat. I can’t rule it out, but it sounds more like they all hit the same note for a few seconds and then ride that note into the chorus upon some pre-arranged signal that only they can hear. The chorus is very different from the verse in that it’s catchy, overtly melodic, and Sardy’s vocal parts connect directly with the music the rest of the band is playing. There are several occurrences of this chorus during the song, but none of them are very long, so the overwhelming feeling that “Grinder” leaves the listener with is one of disorientation. The catchy choruses make their mark, though, and even as you’re disoriented upon first lesson, you find the whole thing sticking in your head, and drawing you back in for further listens. That’s certainly what happened to me with the video, all those years ago, and my seeing the video led directly to me purchasing the tape.
I don’t want to stop talking about this song yet, though, because there’s so much more to it than inside-out verses and catchy choruses. Things only get more interesting as it progresses, since after two verse-chorus repetitions—which are weird enough, with the first verse seeming to go on forever and the second verse barely starting before it’s over—there’s a catchy bridge that leads directly into a deranged middle section that never completely ends. It starts with another upside-down riff, in which the rhythm is 4/4 but the guitar parts and reversed rhythmic emphasis fool you into thinking it’s something a lot weirder. This riff builds up to a crescendo, then works its way back down and almost falls apart, with Dave Sardy finally quitting his guitar playing entirely to rant at us for a few more seconds in the unrestricted way that he did on the opening verse. “I will not move from this spot,” he sings, spitting each word distinctly, as if all of them are followed by periods (in fact, on the lyric sheet, they are). ”I will not be left out in target range for this age of disinformation!” He stretches the word “target” out into a drunk-ranting syllable slur, but then his voice rises to a scream, and the line ends with the whole band blasting back into the catchy bridge from earlier, though it now sounds upside-down even though it still sticks in your head.
The song’s final riff, which invades soon after the bridge is over, takes over in stages, at first being a strange 3/4 thing the band falls into when the bridge riff collapses halfway through on successive occasions. After that, though, they stick with it, seesawing back and forth between two chords as Dave Sardy howls wordlessly and Rock Savage’s drum part slowly corrodes into something consisting only of multiple snare hits. This ending, which is less than an overt decision to stop than a band playing itself into oblivion, fits with what’s come before in the song, as it reflects the bizarre nature of the songwriting and the way Dave Sardy’s vocals seem more like the ravings of an unhinged street person than singing in any conventional sense. There may still be music like this being made, but if so, it’s happening in some tiny basement or garage, far from the eye of the mainstream. Only in the early 90s could a band like Barkmarket have obtained even as relatively high a profile as they had.
