The Cool Tavern

Get Outta My Pocket.

Some time last year (I think) I swore I would not mention Mika Miko again in this column and I think I have been good to my word. I will use this moment to assert that the words Sex Vid will not reappear here unless they break up and form a hippie death cult or something. End times. Nothing personal obvs, more along the lines of overkill the sequel. Anyway onto the last rites. One of the things that has been most difficult to decide since becoming a coordinator here at the magazine has been whether or not to move into the MRR fortress. I live in a rent-controlled apartment in the Mission with awesome room-mates, including a former member of ‘80s Ohio hardcore greats ZERO DEFEX, who has lived in the house since time immemorial (hence the rent control.) We have a huge backyard and in the summer we have shows out there. The yard is super lush in terms of vegetation and foliage, succulents and vegetables and also irate yuppie upstairs neighbors. Super lush in terms of... There’s a deck on the 2nd floor, and when you are standing up there, it doesn't feel like you are in the Mission anymore somehow. Watching a punk band play in this setting on a summer afternoon is one of the best things about living in this town, especially when said setting involves one of my favorite bands. I set up a Sex Vid show on the 4th of July with Nodzz, Gun Outfit and Sisters. America’s birthday! A perfect day for paranoia, miscommunications, raging hardcore, bad vibrations, drugs shitty tattoos and a lame BBQ.
I couldn't figure out why exactly the day had this strange end of an era feel to it but it did. The neighbors next door were putting together an elaborate family BBQ oblivious to the future backyard sounds and I had extreme pangs of guilt for potentially ruining America's Birthday for them. I yelled over that we were having some bands playing in the yard. This grandpa aged guy said he loved rock'n'roll and that the bands had better be good. His family spent the entire show demonstrating why they are the best most relaxed good time neighbors ever, in direct contrast to the old man maniac that called the cops and threw rocks at Kevin from Crim Dam's head. The summoned cops showed up and obviously didn't give a shit about the show; a marked difference to later that night when the Mission was a mini police state with manic cop car drag races. Pigs hate fireworks but heart SISTERS. Gun Outfit have a killer drum section. Sex Vid is the sound of scraping the remnants of the night before out of your eyes, a twelve pack of Olympia beer and a Bla’st tape on the floor of your truck. Except they aren’t the sound of any of that exactly. Think about all the whiners that set up complaint lines because Sex Vid don’t sound exactly like that one band or that one other band I once mentioned. You know the sound of puking in a carpark at 3am or that-morning-after-feeling-only-the-night-before? Just mention my name in regards to the tragedy of one’s own inability to understand that a band can capture an idea or feeling of another band idea or the sense of buildings crumbling and shitty drugs without being replicant replicas. Nobody sounds like the VOID but the VOID; read a book, the internet is a tomb. I spent the last couple hours of the house show in my room listening to the first Dinosaur record super loud and feeling paranoid. I’m good at that.
It was day three of a five day show frenzy that involved two Lebenden Toten shows, Limp Wrist at Gilman and three Sex Vid shows that also conveniently coincided with my first ever new issue day by myself as distro coordinator. This is when we organize shipping out 5,000 copies of MRR and is the busiest time of month for distro. Good timez! I think that is the most frustrating part of the job; having to work while a million rad things are happening, or maybe more like going to a few of those million rad things with the heavy hearted realization that you’ll be up til the early hours working on the magazine then have to get up a couple hours later to go to your ‘real’ job.
One thing that's vaguely linked to all of the above if only in my head is the fact that No Age get free sneakers and weird random promotional sneakerhead shit from NIKE. Eat Skull were on some MTV special about the Portland DIY scene. Um I have a whole lot more to say about such matters, but not right now. This column is dedicated to doom not coherence. Wretched Indigestion. Hubbs and I went to see the original hardcore line up of Melvins, which was and would have been a dream show for the 16 year old me. It was marred slightly by the 'pro-sound/pro-equipment' feel of the setting and of the sound, but seriously SO FUCKING RAGING. It was part of the Great Mime Artiste Jello Biafra's 50th birthday party and the only reason we went was because my friend Andy was playing bass for the Melvins/Jello so it was free. I wonder if Melvins get free sneakers from Nike. OG line up Matt Lukin dunks. Matt Lukin’s legs.
Some random hardcore bro came up to me and said my house was gonna get fucked up during the Sex Vid show, so I got super paranoid and did not make fliers and made it disappear from the internet circles of circularity. Anyway. My house did not perish and neither did I. Nothing bad will ever happen again. Funeral pyre style. Sexual Video have a 12” coming out at some point. SEXVIDSEXVID.

TOP TEN
1-Lebenden Toten live at Thrillhosue. Easily the most connected to the sound at a show I have felt since maybe seeing Look Back and Laugh at their peak. Just that total involvement in the sound and situation sense.
2-The first Nurse flexi. Sure I have blathered about it before in this column but seriously: so good, all girl early/mid 80s punk from Japan. I definitely have played it on the radio so check the MRR archive.
3-I Hate Danger-Bikini Kill
4-Interviewing Raymond Pettibon.
5-Kitchen Floor Haircuts
6- Radiopuhelimet- Pian Pian LP
7-Swiss punk book! It be expensive but holy shit, the ultimate coffee table book for sure. So beautiful and epic. Also the Chin Chin- Don’t Wanna be a Prisoner 7”. Amazing lady punk that’s like um, Ama-dots tryin to play Go Gos, but Swiss! So rad.
8-Chanel's back up vox on the new Limp Wrist 12". Also the last two songs.
9-Sick Things 7"
10-Homostupids Cat Music 7"

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