a t shirt out of your dreams

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!