The Antiquiet Podcast

Johnny Firecloud

Music stories, industry insights and passion-driven culture vulturing from 25+ year music journalist + photographer Johnny Firecloud. Mostly music related, sometimes not. Always aggressively honest, often naming names. Safety last. AQ Podcast theme song written & recorded by Alain Johannes. read less
MusicMusic

Episodes

065: Rock Nazi: Phil Anselmo & the American Cowardice Problem
Jan 31 2023
065: Rock Nazi: Phil Anselmo & the American Cowardice Problem
When two German festivals kicked the 2023 version of Pantera off their summer lineups last week, due to frontman Phil Anselmo screaming "white power" repeatedly onstage and throwing Sieg Heil nazi victory salutes, there was a deafening reactionary silence from some of the most influential rock publications in America. The drastic rise of white supremacy and nazi ideology in our country has become a severe crisis of sociopolitical danger, but a conversation has yet to take place about how to effectively fight back. The left sees it and attempts to address it, but is so obsessed with never stepping on anyone's toes that they've paralyzed any impactful dialogue about solutions to the point of parody, while the right is gleefully stomping through the same room with anvil boots and calling it freedom and patriotism. When that genocidal hatred is screamed and supported onstage by an American hard rock icon like Anselmo, never before in modern history has there been a more urgent moment for music journalists to address this problem directly - to use their privilege and platform for responsible editorialization and kick off important conversations, rather than the usual inconsequential gladhanding shit-shining access journalism we've come to know as the standard. Instead, we're hearing a chorus of crickets - particularly from Revolver Magazine, the leading hard rock music publication in America, whose breathlessly fawning coverage of Anselmo over the years has given Anselmo's racist, genocide-promoting bully antics a new era of exposure, popularity and profit.I say fuck that noise. If now isn't the time to start a conversation about hateful ideologies poisoning the things we hold dear, then when? It is quite literally a matter of now or never.
063: Tool’s ‘Lateralus’ on 8 Grams of Mushrooms
Oct 30 2021
063: Tool’s ‘Lateralus’ on 8 Grams of Mushrooms
Here's what happens when you take an 8-gram hero dose of psilocybin mushrooms to listen to Tool's 'Lateralus' album for the first time, completely alone. Spoiler alert: things very much did not go as planned.20 years ago, on May 15, 2001, Tool's maniacally-anticipated 'Lateralus' was released. The hype for this record is hard to put into perspective in today’s terms. You’d have to pull out all our favorite blossoms of cultural stimuli by the roots to really understand the context - remove the distractions of social media, iPhones, the proliferation of our online existences in the endless + massively distracting glut of "content" and hyperbole that it's become. Remove all of that, and you're left with the dirt-road beginnings of the internet as it was in 2001. News wasnt old 20 minutes after it broke. The "all your base are belong to us" meme, one of the first from the internet’s initial wave of weird humor, had arrived literally three months prior and was still going strong. Long-tail anticipation was still a feature of our collective culture, which hadn't yet splintered into a Plinko-game tsunami of subcultures and niches.The goal was to trip significantly while being soundtracked by a group of musicians whose entire existence within this project was dedicated to providing tools by which to dig deeper, explore the unknown, confront the discomforting. I would emerge, hopefully, with a little better of an understanding of my own life - or at least the connecting threads between my immediate circumstances and the many choices I make in life to get me there. Life doesnt just happen, and mushrooms have a distinct way of showing you the blossoms of consequence - good or bad - and fractals of expanding reaction to your choices, which fills your experience as a person and comprises what you call… life.I was completely unprepared for what I'd signed up for. I’d never heard of a “hero dose," let alone the relatively horrifying implications it carried. But it's typically understood to be about 5 grams. And my stupid, lonesome self was on my way to an 8-gram ride. Needless to say, the arrogance and ignorance required for such an adventure were exterminated with extreme prejudice during my trip. Also covered: microdosing, the Bavarian Beer Act of 1516, the Fantastic Fungi documentary, mycologist Paul Stamets, the glory days of Toolshed.down.net, Stoned Ape theory and more...