Things that have happened since I
moved out of the MRR house... I got
consumed by Thomas Pynchon’s writing, I got to have one inspiring conversation
with Charles from My Mind’s Eye records in Cleveland about that city’s
legendary musical legacy, and I have been collecting books by the women in the
Weather Underground and other similar 1960s lady insurrectionists, so maybe I
will have a one girl book club this spring and summer. Bonnie Bremser’s book! Troia; you gotta… I listened to Ultravox’s Ha Ha
Ha LP obsessively, and then got into Eno’s Taking
Tiger Mountain. Though right now I am
listening to a demo by Quango, who apparently feature members of the Apostles,
Oi Polloi and Hygiene and despite this mixed bag of musical legacies are
fucking great! soundcloud.com/natkingdole/sets/quango-demo/ Check it out!
I can see the ocean from my
window nowadays and it’s hard to leave this room, a million books and records
to look through and listen to without the threat of “I should be editing that
eleven page scene report.” b/w “The Landladies are coming over.” Instead: Peter Blake art book found on the street,
Danny Lyon photography book scrimped and saved for, boxes of old zines from
Tobi’s Jigsaw to Pettibon’s, the
detritus of an obsessive’s life! I also have amassed a collection of
skateboards from various points in my life, and Skate Summer: The Revenge is
being planned for as I type. I skated to work last week, from MRR to North Beach; only got stressful when I got to
Chinatown and shit got too hectic for this ancient crone. At any rate, we have
a new coordinator moving in to the compound sometime in April, Lydia is her
name, and her interview was easily the most inspiring I have ever conducted in
my five years here! I will still be coordinating until then, and will still be
involved in the magazine, but hopefully will at that point have more time to do
all the other super important stuff I have planned for life post-Maximum
Rocknroll like skateboarding and reading
and... yeah.
It
seems like most ex-coords have gone onto grad school!? Cissie is in a sick new
band called the Stops that you should check out instantly:
thestops.bandcamp.com. I think it’s all lady? Whatever, it’s fucking raging!! I
need a tape and they need to play SF pronto. Golnar is also in a raging all
lady HC band, In School, who I think only have You Tubes of shows right now?!
But they are great and Bidi the singer is a gnarler... Justin is in a band
called Hunting Parties that are playing shows round the Bay a lot, they have a
tape and a 7” coming out soon. People leave the magazine and form sick hardcore
bands? Well Chris has been playing extra guitar for Brilliant Colors who are my
favorite powerviolence grind destruction force of all time. Me and Mariam are
planning out our future band as I type, well our secretaries are gonna do lunch
and see what they can come up with.
Brilliant
Colors just played a show with Bleached and Veronica Falls, which was great...
Well, it was a strange all ages show that was as full of excited teenagers as
it was industry types, a weird crowd. Veronica Falls were amazing, I totally
recommend seeing them play. I love their 7”s, but sorta wanted the LP to blow
me away in a manner that it did not, but their live show was just killer...
total dreaminess. Bleached were disappointing, they had some random session
musician dudes playing bass and drums, and it was a definite band ruiner.
Serious “Social D circa 1999 at the House of Blues in Anaheim” vibes emanating
off of both dudes. The Clavin sisters should hire two other blondes and just be
the blonde Cali girl Ramones. I think they would have more of a chance of
making it that way than with random Guitar Center specimens. But what do I know
of the machinations of music biz get rich quick schemes? Not too much! I would
rather listen to X_X (John Morton band not rotten blogrocker bullshit!) and
feel hateful than be in some band that is only making money because they play
shitty corporate branded events or the year end party for a cell phone company,
and so forth. Living the rock’n’roll dream. I am sure that is what making it in
rock’n’roll is nowadays, just aligning yourself with a huge conglomeration,
being a musical billboard shrilling your phony teenage dreams along side their
synergistic corporo-message. Boo hoo to the music industry and to all the weird
desperate capitalist creeps that require it to achieve their princess rescue
narratives.
At
any rate, a random rant, not really directed at Bleached, I would much rather
their songs be in the boring blogger hit parade than like... Best Coast, but I
would also rather listen to the Hitler SS/Tampax split and call it quits. More
next month! Hopefully les manic, more contained, easier to digest and so on!
