In My Own Summer, The Shade is A Tool: on the passing of Chi Cheng, and a reflection on the Deftones
It may surprise you to learn that Deftones frontman Chino
Moreno—two of his favorite records of all time are Disintegration by The Cure, and Loveless
by My Bloody Valentine. In fact, while recording the band’s seminal 2000
release White Pony, he said he wanted
the record to sound like Loveless,
and in playing it for the band’s producer, Terry Date, Date said it was the
most “coked out mix he had ever heard.”
While now it’s safe, thanks to a love of the 90’s and a love
of irony, to say that seeing the New Kids on The Block was my first concert
experience at the age of 7, I usually will say my first “real” concert was
seeing the Deftones in Milwaukee in the fall of 2000. Touring in support of the
aforementioned White Pony, a record
that shaped much of my final year of high school, it was, needless to say, an
intense experience.
There was a time, when I was between the ages of 15 and 17,
that I would have said one of my favorite bands was the Deftones. I’m pushing
30 now (yikes) so my love for this band has obviously waned over the course of
the last decade. However, when the Deftones do release a new album, I am apt to
take note of it, even though punishing heavy metal guitars and larynx-shredding
screams are not really my main thing anymore.
Last weekend I was saddened to learn of the passing of Chi
Cheng, the original bassist for the band. In 2008 he was in a car accident that
left him pretty much in a vegetated state. The band shelved the album they were
working on with him, and eventually regrouped and recruited a new bassist, and
continued to record. After I heard about Cheng’s accident, every so often, I
would look for updates on his condition, to see how he was doing. After making
some major steps for someone in as serious condition as he was, his heart
suddenly stopped on April 13th.
The Deftones were, and I guess to an extent still are, a
metal band with art-rock leanings. Frontman Chino Moreno’s eclectic tastes are
subtly woven within certain songs. After hearing some of the material from
their most recent album, Koi No Yokan,
I wish they’d just make the arty, shoegaze album I know that they are capable
of producing.
In preparing to write this piece, and in thinking about
Cheng’s passing, I found my copies of White
Pony and the band’s 1997 breakthrough Around
The Fur. Around The Fur opens
with a classic, late 90’s “nu metal” anthem—“My Own Summer (Shove It),” the
refrain of which involves Moreno just fucking screaming the words “Shove it
shove it shove it.” Hearing that album
took me right back to my sophomore year of high school, listening to a copy of
it I put on cassette in my walkman as I waited for the bus.
(a sticker i mos def had on my mini-van when i turned 16)
I think I had revisited White
Pony relatively recently. I know that I played “Change (In The House of
Flies)” on the radio show I used to do. While it’s not an album that I’ve taken
with me through a majority of my adult life, I was pleasantly surprised by how
much of it had aged very well. In all
honesty, these are both still albums I could see myself jamming out to in the
car—but would more than likely get some raised eyebrows from my wife. Playing
them in the house may be out of the question—they may just be too metal for the sensitive ears of our
companion rabbits.
A trait I’ve always admired about the Deftones is their
ability to transcend genres, and that after many of their peers from the late
90’s and early 2000’s (your KoRns, your Limp Bizkits) have faded into punch
lines, they’ve managed to stay somewhat relevant and interesting. And the blend
of singing and screaming has given the band a unique dynamic. Moreno’s voice is
gorgeous when he sings. But then sometimes he screams. And it is loud.
I don’t know what will ever become of the shelved album they
were working on with Cheng before his accident. Now it may never see the light
of day. Chi Cheng’s passing obviously
does not have me as shook as when Jason Molina passed away in March, but it has
saddened me, and given me cause for reflection on the time when the Deftones
were my jam.
Here are two of my favorite Detones songs, and apparently I only like songs that have parentheses on the titles.
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