Thought Sausage

There is a documentary about Slipknot and the overall Des Moines Iowa music scene in the mid 90's coming out called 'A Clown Short of Destiny'. Click here to watch. The video looks to me like it was made by one of the guys in a band called 35" Mudder who were pretty big around the time Slipknot started to break. Essentially, the video centers on bands (some of which were knee high to a short goat during this period) who were involved in the scene. We weren't really into that crowd so much as we didn't get into Des Moines until after Slipknot broke and for the most part, around the period, the music I was doing couldn't possibly have any less in common with the sound in Des Moines.

But the video basically claims that Des Moines was a burgeoning scene about to become "the Seattle of hardcore" and that Slipknot subtley manipulated the media and their label to ignore the other bands in the area. While I basically understand the overall gist of what they are getting at, there is some straight up bullshit being called by some bands that never made it. Since I know I have a lot of readers who were around during that whole time, I have a few points to make after watching that clip:

-Slipknot wasn't an island. Corey Taylor was around in Stone Sour, Jim Root was in Deadfront, Mick was in Anal Blast etc etc.

-While I agree that Shawn Crahan made sure whenever a big band @ Safari played, Slipknot was on the bill, owning the fucking bar entitles one to do that

-35" Mudder didn't get signed because of some Slipknot conspiracy. 35" Mudder didn't get signed because Slipknot was unique and to a kid in LA, 35" Mudder sounded just like the Linkin Park wannabe band they were. Their sound was extremely dated.

-Index Case members were, what, 12 when this happened?

-Slipknot got signed for one reason and one reason only, that reporter for the Des Moines register who was checking them out @ Connie's sent a demo to Ross Robinson and thus, the ball was set in motion.

-Des Moines was hardly the 'next seattle'. Anybody who thinks that needs to get out and live in an actual city where labels actually exist and sign more bands than Des Moines even produces

-Most of the bands being interviewed in this doc weren't even from Des Moines....sure they played there, but c'mon. I played there around this time and I'd hardly say I was "from Des Moines". Smakdab was from Waverly and Destrophy was from the Quad Cities (who weren't even really a band at this time)

Fact is, while I detested Slipknot during this time, they didn't try to suppress shit, but they sure as fuck didn't owe any bands anything. Shit, they called their sophmore album Iowa, and started that Maggot Records that tried to sign a whole boatload of us. Just because your band didn't get swiped up in that time (Index Case is signed to a major right now btw) doesn't mean it was because Slipknot held you down. I'm all for people making documentaries about the scene at that time, because it was a pretty unique period, but to try to throw Slipknot under the bus just because every wannabe band in Des Moines at that time didn't get signed is bullshit.