Chrome Cranks
Love in Exile

Court of Justice of the State of New York, 1997, excerpt from the trial records...

Appearing before the Court: Peter Aaron and William Weber, from Cincinnati, Ohio, with no criminal record; Jeremiah Teen and Rober Bert from New York, both previously warned for activities conducted within companies named "Honeymoon Killers" concerning Teen; "Sonic Youth" and another labeled "P.G." (unmentionable due to the obscene explicitness of the corporate name) concerning Bert.

The four self-proclaimed musicians are all called to account for: desecration of the minor pentatonic scale, contempt for the twelve-bar blues, use of irregular tempos, tribalism, noise-making, garage rock, and low fidelity with the aggravating circumstances of continuation of the offenses and association in a gang, named "Chrome Cranks," aimed at distributing the aforementioned through analog and digital phonographic media and public performances... (omitted)

Upon conclusion of the evidence gathering, the floor goes to the District Attorney for the closing statement:

Thank you, Your Honor. Today we are called to judge the umpteenth act perpetrated by the defendants, misleading and hypocritical from the very title that speaks of love: "Love in Exile"... but to what love do they refer? Perhaps to the love for the blues to which they claim to adhere, but which, on the contrary, they have always impudently slapped, just like their beloved Jonathan Spencer who, from the name used in collaboration with his accomplices, would rather have the explosion of the blues? The love that they have professed for years, as evidenced by the facts, seems instead to be for the raucous sounds of that unfortunate youth who gathered in the car garages of our counties decades ago and which today, the four defendants, exacerbate even more with barbarism that finds no precedent, with excessive electric noise, with deafening hums and feedback, with instruments used as clubs, even employing, occasionally it's true (but I shudder nonetheless to recall it) irregular tempos. Dark and unhealthy atmospheres, calls to rites and tribal rhythms overflow in their... "music"... as in that of the infamous couple who have long hidden their identity behind grotesque pseudonyms like Inner Light and Iva del Veleno (the Cramps, ladies and gentlemen, yes them, the Cramps!!!) and in whose actions they find other direct, unhealthy inspiration.

Let's not fall for the trap, folks, because the guilt is not diminished by the here only hinted mitigation of the tones compared to even rougher precedents and the sporadic introduction of some instrument that isn't among the usual ones. It's nothing more than a sly, petty attempt to make new converts, incessantly sought by the four inside and outside the nation's borders, through those unworthy public performances, which are nothing but orgiastic bacchanals. Better than my words, and I conclude, are the solemn ones pronounced in 1957 by a great son of America, Francis Albert Sinatra: "rock'n roll is the most brutal, ugly, desperate, vicious form of expression it has been my misfortune to hear... an aphrodisiac stinks of rotten... the martial music of every delinquent on the face of the earth...".

I have nothing further to add, except to request the immediate dissolution of this nefarious fellowship, hoping that upon it and the four who comprise it, may forever descend the cold shroud of oblivion...

The floor now goes to the defense... (omitted)