The first song we ever heard by Zig Zags is fifty seconds long – which equates to it being about thirty seconds longer than it needed to be in order to secure our love and support.
As it turns out, while that fifty-second ode to suicidal bikers of the black magic kind was the first song we ever heard by Zig Zags, it was not the first time we ever heard Zig Zags. That honor would go to the band’s earthquake inducing, soul-Sabbath swing at Betty Davis’ “If I’m In Luck I Might Get Picked Up,” featuring raw vocal power from James Newell Osterberg, Jr., a man many people refer to as Iggy Pop.
Sadly, we recalled the song as being solely the work of Pop, without the pep of Zig Zags, their very name erased from our memory, perhaps the result of the use of the delivery system referenced in the band’s namesake. Yet we were in luck because we just might have picked up … a tape.
A tape featuring no less than fourteen fuzzy, freaky formulations of the awesome kind. A tape that opens with “Psychomania,” the fifty-second wheelie through your brain mentioned above, and then follows through on the promise of amplified adrenaline overdose until the very end. A tape that guarantees – guarantees under threat of pain from Captain Zag himself – that Zig Zags will this time remain in our memory, no matter how cloudy and resin-caked it may become.
Zig Zags seem incapable of writing riffs that aren’t nitro-charged and six-hundred and sixty-six stories tall, as evidenced by the scorching “Scavenger.” Surprisingly, their three-piece thrift-store boogie-thrash is balanced beautifully with some comparatively more mellow moments, like “Sauer Jam” and “Eyes,” reminding us that the band is coming from California with an aching in their heart, broken and bruised as it may be.
Still, when Zig Zags enter your world, you’re welcome to leave your dream-catchers and picnic blankets in the trunk. Those items will only weigh you down as you traverse the land of monster wizards and turbo hits, the band’s natural habitat. Zig Zags may be wanderers, but they’re never far from home. If we’re in luck, they’ll stay around, too.
Zig Zags music is available at their Bandcamp page.
“To wander through the desert feeling very thirsty represents our inner yearning for joy, happiness, and peace, which we try unsuccessfully to satisfy in the outside world. The excitement and delight experienced on seeing the pool in the distance correspond to the feeling that arises in the first jhana [meditative absorption]— the realization that there is something that, though it is still ‘in the distance,’ can ultimately bring us complete satisfaction. Knowing it is there, the mind moves toward it.” – “Who Is My Self?” by Ayya Khema
Revolt of the Apes 
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