Book Review
Edward Colver: Blight at the End of the Funnel
Review by Early Times

There was a time when I walked through Ning Hou’s house in the little Chinese town of Locke in Northern California on the delta. Paintings of various sizes hung from floor to ceiling. They were everywhere. They were the trim to doorways and the frames to windows.

I went from room to room so that by the time I got to the door to lead back outside I was breathless. It was a sensory overload of color, texture, movement, stillness, and expression. And work.

I got it this week. You didn’t get it because I got the last one. I bought one earlier, quite a while back, and gave it to my sister. It deserves it’s proper evaluation. It’s the life’s work of a serious artist, so here it goes.

Edward Colver’s Blight at the End of the Funnel is like a walk through Ning Hou’s house. And, like that experience, I was floored by this book.

It starts where it should. In the middle of a mosh pit at a California punk show, circa late 70s/early 80s. I’m pretty sure that term mosh pit had not been coined yet which was fine by me. I always hated the term anyway. But we’re in the middle of something. Or, rather, just off to the side, behind a camera. Swirls of chaos everywhere. People flying. People ducking. People are getting crushed. They don’t care. Bring it on!

One prelude would not suffice. There are three. My tired eyes will have to revisit those mini-fonts another day.

Around the corner, on the following pages, I run into Stiv Bators. He’s in a punk club bathroom, staring right at me, something unsanitary in his mouth. The next turn it’s Rikk Agnew holding a hairless cat. Oh, did I mention it’s dead? The cat, not Rikk.

Then it’s the Minutemen. Next it’s the Circle Jerks. And we’re off. Jello Biafra is crawling across a stage like he’s just escaped from a George A. Romero movie. The Dead Kennedy’s are working the crowd into a frenzy.

Jello: “Edward brings out the Fellini in almost anything that steps into his lens.”

Darby Crash is confused and desperate.

Edward wonders, “What would Coltrane do?”

Social Distortion is being born. Lee Ving loves living in the city. Ian MacKaye is surrounded by rejects at some fraternity party of no school you’ve ever attended or that ever existed outside of Rod Serling’s mind. And he means business.

And the hits keep coming. Bad Religion doing their civic duty on what appears at first glance to be a black Monte Carlo with pin striping.

John Lydon, no longer Rotten, fancies himself an angel.

D.O.A.
T.S.O.L.
X.

It’s the encyclopedia of early L.A. punk and you haven’t heard a thing yet. But now Edward begins to pull back the curtain a bit so we can see the backdrop. The slum houses and squats, dilapidated homes for the unwanted and discarded. The police aren’t coming, they’re already here. Outside the Whiskey a Go Go. And I don’t think Van Halen is playing on this night.

Henry Rollins is about to regurgitate an alien at the Olympic Auditorium. The next time we see him he’s just busted a bathroom mirror with his bare fist and Edward caught it. And there’s history right there. Black Flag. Damaged.

It’s damn-near pandemonium and the cops are there to keep the peace and bust a head or two if need be. It’s the premier of the Decline of Western Civilization. I had the album soundtrack and it changed me.

Now the freaks have been let out of their cages and they’re loose, and they’re everywhere. A gentleman from 45 Grave appears to be a priest. Or a Zombie. Or both.

Bad Brains. ’82.

Stan Ridgway is brushing up on social etiquette.

And then… WHAT? George Clinton! Damn, son! How’d he get in here? He mugs like the illegitimate stepchild of Screamin’ Jay Hawkins and a villain from Live and Let Die.

And off we go onto a new journey.

The Chili Peppers are doing their Chili Peppers thing. Whatever.

Now, Tom Waits is a different story. He comes across as the only sane one in the whole lot and that’s sayin’ something. He’s got the diner on lockdown and he’ll get you anything you want. Except not right now. He’s got to go meet a cat across town. Come back tomorrow, buddy. He won’t be here, but wait for him. Have pie and coffee.

Robert Fripp. Huh? Easy E. holding a shotgun to his mouth? Nothing to see here. Move along.

Cheech and Chong? Any minute now you might as well have Sun Ra show up. Oh shit! There he is too. And Michael Stipe has hair!

Wasn’t this an L.A. punk book a few moments ago?
Edward has taken us down the rabbit hole and we didn’t even see it coming.

Insane Clown Posse. Devo. On and on. Ice Cube. Andy Warhol.

Is there anybody Edward has not shot?

Alice Cooper is in a graveyard. Timothy Leary is on a trip.

And now there are no faces, only images. Shadowy figures. As it should be. And the warning to avoid consumerism at all costs. And here I am, the one who bought the last copy. I bought in. I’m the consumer.

Now we’ve reached the aria. It’s art. It ain’t a fat lady. It’s Jesus and Mary and a young kid with a flesh wound, a man turning a gun on himself, then on you. Park bench motels. Media rooms in abandoned fields.

You’re not getting out that easily. Mat Gleason has something to say first and you’re gonna hear it. Even if it is in 4-point font. But we read enough to learn that the man behind the lens is a cross between Keith Richards and Ichabod Crane. I don’t buy it. He ain’t one of those. He ain’t none of those. He’s dressed sharp and smart like a man who is fiercely focused and who has been there before. He’ll tell you about it if you ask, but only if you ask.

He’s distinguished, doesn’t take no shit, and doesn’t buy what they’re selling because he can spot a fugazi a mile away. He won’t be lured into a 3-card Monte con-man’s game, because he was there taking the pictures when the game was created, in some backroom that you’ve only read about in books. And now it’s all in his book. And I got the last copy. One of these days I’ll get a chance to read the google of volumes of Corruption In American Politics, but for now I’m coming back up from the rabbit hole, and I’m walking towards the door, and I’m reminded as I close the book of the time I was leaving the house of Ning Hou, exhausted from the experience, and better for it.