whatwewantisfree

Single Bullets

2011-12-17T12:43:00.000-08:00

I am writing this a million miles from MRR HQ, in the street I grew up on in London, England. My first month off in three and a half years of running the magazine, and of course everything went wrong, our main computer died, there was sickness in the compound, police brutality on the streets, frequent earthquakes, so many outside factors working against us. But even though I have not seen this issue of the magazine as it’s come together as I usually do, I know it’s going to be amazing. I know what Mariam is capable of, and I am really excited to read the magazine that she put together in the face of total disaster and endless trials, I know that’s where her strength lies. Coming up against insane odds and, you know, being triumphant. Working with Merm has been one of the funnest things about being coordinator of the magazine, she is so tough and smart and one of the most entertaining people to hang out with ever. A hard ass and a wise ass, a joker and a goof ball that you would be fool to underestimate… So yeah. I have been in Europe for a month, visiting with my mum, hanging out with various punks in various cities from Berlin to Bradford and for the first time in years not having the weight of the magazine on my shoulders.
I have been trying to leave MRR for nearly a year now, we have had some great applications and interviews, but no one has worked out yet in terms of replacing me. This job is intense and we need the right person to do it, someone who can handle the workload, who has energy and passion, who has a vision for the magazine in terms of producing the content, who is not a middle of the road indifferent slouch when it comes to declaring where they stand, and what they stand for. You must be consumed by music, by punk rock and hardcore, or garage, crust, KBD and most importantly be open minded and willing to work with a wide range of people who may have different ideas of what punk is or isn’t. The magazine is for the punks by the punks, for those who care about the culture and meaning of DIY punk, not just trends and message board boredom. If you think you can handle running the day to day operations of this magazine, which include everything from accounting to interview layouts, and you will be trained on how things work, not just expected to understand everything instantly, if you can handle dealing with all different kinds of people, from landlords to drunk radio show DJs get in touch! We are looking for motivated people with ideas and you must be a legal US citizen with nothing that would mean you couldn’t be on legal paperwork… so in short if you are an organized and inspired person who is ready for a new challenge and wants to live for free alongside over 40,000 green-taped records at the MRR compound email mrr@maximumrocknroll.com for an application ok?!
Writing this in my mother’s home, in a deconstructed teenage bedroom with a suitcase full of junk in front of me and a Captain Beefheart picture disc to my left is a strange feeling. When I lived here, in Brentford, under the shadow of some brutalist 1960s towerblocks, council estate youth center existence it seemed there was never anything to do. Well, I formed bands with my friends when I was thirteen, skateboarded and wrote many zines and pen pal letters, but I felt alone and marooned in a part of London where people called me a goth, even though I mostly wore 1960s mod dresses, because I just didn’t fit in with the kids I grew up around. I was considered a nerd and a freak, and punk was a lifeline to a community of similarly maladjusted nerds in various cities and towns and villages around the world. Those were different times. When we landed at the airport at the beginning of October, the first things we did was go straight to a show, in Hackney at this cool art space / show space / café called Power Lunches. We saw Weird Menace, Satellites of Love, and Roseanne Barr, unfortunately Woolf had to cancel due to a health problem, but I have heard amazing things about them. All girl London HC punk who are I think recording an LP this winter?! All of the people in the bands mentioned are in other bands, from La La Vasquez to Shitty Limits, that was one of the coolest things about being here right now, so many insanely good bands and so many of the same people doing them all… A totally different era! We were lucky as there were about five or six shows in ten days, which would have blown the mind of the teenage me. Seriously, I used to go see anything even the most bro’d out HC mosh or visiting weedy Midwestern sweater emo just to go to a show, and to have so many cool local bands playing shows was killer… London is on fire right now, no matter what people may have said to me to downplay the exciting nature of their scene. The Lowest Form cancelled their show, which was a huge bummer too, their 7” rules and I was really excited to see them play. We also planned out a trip to Berlin and Paris when Shitty Limits played their epic last show, true bad timing, we had planned it so we would make the Lowest Form and Woolf shows, both of whom cancelled. Fuckin’ punks!
However, we were in London at the same time as Mexico City’s own Inservibles so went to see them frantically, I think we went to all but two of their UK shows! One was at a squat very close to Islington, meaning that there was a large amount of time dedicated to quoting from the Islington Squatter documentary. The squat was insane, it was an abandoned office building from the ’70s that had a garden on the roof and huge art pieces through out, and a dank room full of crusties and smoke in which the show happened. We missed most of the bands, as shows actually run on time in Europe it would seem, punks gotta catch the last train home etc etc, so we missed the Wankys and Holland’s Nekromantiker (who were in the last issue of MRR courtesy of Mr Tony Gunnarsson), but Inservibles were insane. Totally blown out punk rock depravity, encapsulating the alienation of living in a city locked down by the drug war, if you have a chance to see them play ever you would be a chump to miss it. I remembered the 7”s having a sort of blown out garage sound to the mostly punk attack, but live that was not apparent at all, at any rate, whatever my hazy brain clouded memories of this band’s recorded output are I am really excited to get back to San Francisco and listen to the new LP which you should get (on Shogun/La Vida Es Un Mus). We also got to hang out with Héctor of Otan fame, who was roadying for Inservibles and filled me in on the endless adventure that is punk rock in Barcelona and Madrid right now… Next year I will be there to witness it I hope!
The Means to an End fest was happening at the long-running punk social club and venue, the 1 in 12 in Bradford, and the line up included Shitty Limits, Inservibles, and Glam so we got a car together of punkers, including Ralph and Bryony, Collette and me and the elusive and mysterious SPK fan Hubbs, and headed up the M1 to the north of England. I learned to drive in California, on huge wide suburban streets in the town my grandparents lived in, and have never driven in London and thus also cannot drive stick. The car we rented was an automatic, and Ralph who was the designated driver had never driven one of those; it was funny seeing someone as flummoxed by an automatic as I would have been by a stick shift. I hadn’t been at the 1 in 12 since I was a teenager, I can’t remember what year it was, I used to go to most of the fests and saw everyone from Acme to the Month of Birthdays there. Ah, the ’90s! It was rad being back, the space seemed way smaller, but just as cool as I remembered. Seeing a venue that was created to serve the punk community out of specific radical principles, one that still exists on the same terms was really inspiring. The food was a good and cheap as I remembered, as was the cider, though this time there were more Swedish crusties checking their facebooks on the communal computers… and I was definitely straightedge last time I was there.
As for the bands witnessed… We missed some as the epic drive meant we were hungry for Bradford curry brutality, which included a naan bread that was about the size of a human torso. Endless Grinning Skulls played, and blew me away. True veterans of the scene; I think ex members of Heresy and fuck, the singer is 51 and more hardcore and has more presence than a million MySpace crashercrusters combined. I guess they usually have a noisy almost Jap-core attack, but this show made me think of the power/impact of seeing Talk is Poison play. No joke. They were great live, I didn’t really know what to expect plus I think this was the first UK show we were at where people actually danced?! Shitty Limits played their last Northern show, and were fucking incredible. I love their last 12”, and seeing them play in SF ruled, but I guess seeing any band in an all ages space when everyone knows this is probably the last time they are gonna see them live is another matter entirely. So much energy and snot, like a teenager taking speed for the first time, it was impossible to keep still so no one did. Glam from Barcelona were also incendiary, their 7” is a constant on my turntable so having the chance to see them destroy it live was the best… Total destruccion… Paco said that the last slot at a fest here is the worst as everyone leaves to catch the last train back to Leeds, so the crowd seemed sorta thinned out when Inservibles played, but they managed to keep the frenzy going… All in all an incredible show. We were staying at our friend Charlotte’s house in Sheffield, land of brutalist architecture, “Being Boiled” and a sick mod café with an all northern soul jukebox. You can stay at the 1 in 12 after fests, which I definitely did in my youth, but I was psyched to have the chance to hang out with Charlotte who is a crazy girl band music nerd like myself, and does an awesome girl skate zine called Skate or Cry... I think she is sold out of it, but check out her blog for more info on the past and present of Sheffield punk! gnarlotte.wordpress.com
The next stop on our epic journey was Paris, where we were met at the train station by a contingent of French punks, including Alex Ratcharge, Julien and Gael, who hustled us off to the longest running squatted venue in Paris where we got to see Bastard Noise. All you could hear was the drums and vocals, which made for an interesting aural experience. But it was really cool being in the space, seeing something happen in one of the storied Euro-squats that are the backbone of the DIY scene here. Also: why do bands who write brutal songs about environmental destruction do records with corporate car companies? Hmmm! Alex and Julien put together this amazing newspaper for punks who can read French called Freak Out! which you should check out. freakoutzine.tumblr.com covering everything from Pink Reason to Crimen De Estado, with lot of other writing mostly about music of the mutant punk rock persuasion, it reminded me of a less art fueled Nuts! in that it is a local newspaper for the punks that assumes the punks are interesting and consumed by weird notions and obsessions…
I know I personally find tour diaries and travel journals pretty dull, so I will leave you there, sorry if I put you to sleep!
Top five!
1: The Means to an End Fest tied with the Big Takeover show at the squat!
2: Going record shopping with Paco in various London locations, also hitting the flea markets of Berlin with similar intentions. So sick! So many things crossed off the want list. Also Paris punker hang outs!
3: Hanging out with Bryony and Alex Ratcharge and hopefully Tony Gunnarsson; the Euro MRR columnist contingent rules and are as much fun in person as they are in written form!
4: Watching tons of documentaries my mum taped off the BBC about reggae in London in the ’70s and ’80s, also the classic movie Babylon. About racism, oppression, police brutality, Brixton existences and good times in London in the early ’80s. Although it’s about reggae sound system clashes, it reminds me a bit of Quadrophenia in that it’s a classic early ’80s youth culture movie, it’s as evocative. And it’s criminal that it’s not more known.
5: Going to see Cover Girl (new Trash Kit related band, Rachel Aggs=so dreamy) tonight, and going to Brighton tomorrow! We are the mod raucous.
Ha. Old columns are here: whatwewantisfree.blogspot.com and you can write me here: layla@maximumrocknroll.com

(photo by

SKATE FOR FUN OR NOT AT ALL

2011-11-28T09:13:00.000-08:00

One of the things that sucks about coordinating this magazine is sitting down at the end of the month, after working a seven day week of zillion hour days making sure the magazine is OK to get in to the printer on Friday AM, then having to pull a column outta that brain freeze malaise collapse. Things that have been occurring round these parts include staying up until the morning with oldest and best Bay Area friend and others yelling about music discoveries via the internet as opposed to older more “authentic” ways such as having to hang out with creepy dudes so you can tape their record collections when you were thirteen. The idea of punk being the possibility of DIY, the olden days of kids in Poland and Brazil making their own shit because of rumors and random discoveries as opposed to instant MySpace style connections and message board battles. But not like one is the good thing and the other is the bad... also the idea of punk as being something that you make and do, not something you dress as. Not who you know or what someone says about you behind your back, but what you fucking do! The this that presents itself to you is an adventure, freedom from boredom and a possibility or is it a rulebook, tyranny of expectations, dress codes and D-beat is the only beat. You know the eternal conversation. Off the pigs!
People who think punk should just be an outfit and a specific replication of a sound from 1982, 1976, 1979, 1992 people who think punk should be without content just an image they can adapt to their needs... Listen to “Bullet Proof Nothing” by Simply Saucer with coffee’d out brains and wooden fingers and wonder what it all means. If anything at all. If you exist for reasons other than being a fake GG or Wattie or all of the Seeds at once. Brian Jones hair cut, winkelpickers, bad breath, early death. “Dust to dust, dust to dreams, noise to stone.” If you exist to make sure the authentic Sports Bar Bro mentality is present in all situations you run rampant in, to make sure that girls are aware that they are only welcome if they can pretend to laugh at your jokes and let everything slide because they are cool like that... Weird attempted Raymond Chandler/Raymond Carver constructions, a street light flickers, cigarette ash falls, the myth of the private eye, the Hubert Selby Jnr character that’ll kill us all for being weak or indifferent, of identity and a vision that is not your own. Just an imagined take on grittiness with all those that make up the grittiness wiped out and recreated as ciphers. Tabla Rasa. The word “hipster.” So grim, it’s all so meaningless. Talking about punk constantly. Outlining what it is and isn’t, what the possibilities are and aren’t. Making it less and less appealing until one day you find yourself listening to Esplendor Geometrico and Psychic TV and wondering what that phase was all about... Can a punk get a break? When the ground is taken out from under you and you get defensive remember that that is what it’s like for punks of color and lady punkers on the regular. On the defensive, having to back up everything with fifty nine pieces of evidence because what do you know man, you’re supposed to be “cool” so things don’t get “weird.” Relax babe.
I got a hair cut, in the MRR courtyard, by columnist and general delightful human Ariel Awesome, my last hair cut came courtesy of another columnist Bryony Beynon, when she was visiting from das UK. Homemade hair cuts in desperate times! What is the reason for all this... endless discussion of not very much. The continued existence of mankind. I am leaving the country for a month, so the next issue of this mag you are reading is gonna be all Mariam Bastani creations... Edited, laid out and finalized by her fine hands. In other MRR news, we have a new distribution coordinator, Fred is handing over the reigns to Amelia, who just moved here from NYC and is not quite ready to give up the studs and spikes for Birkenstocks and the Grateful Dead... And we started figuring out the next photo issue, it’s gonna be mostly “classic” era punk photography, and we have some doozies lined up along with some that took killer pix but get no modern day recognition so watch out for that next year. I am gonna leave these bouts of insanity and give you a top ten of sorts!
1-See my review of the Vixens demo in the demo section this month. Band blew my brains out and didn’t bother to put em back. Vixens.bandcamp.com
2-Staring Problem tape: I feel as if I am gonna fall into a lake of my own hyperbole but this is totally great nervous sounding post-punk that’s quiet and unsettling, Allison Stratton vocals and really, the person that is writing these words out is so psyched that there are ladies making sounds as transcendent and rife with possibility / fear / otherworldliness as this. Moderntapes.bandcamp.com
3-Ke Mal Vivimos tape: Beautifully put together compilation of obscure ’80s world punk from Uruguay’s INSURRECCION to Norway’s TERROR, lots of classic Basque punk, in short this is a ahem, world class compilation of punk and hardcore, it’s not for sale, rather you have to make Teo a mix tape or send him a tape of your band’s noise destruction and he will send you this in return. Do it or lose! bastardosucio@hotmail.com
4-Household are gonna have a 12” on Dull Knife and a tape on Wild Isle, and you should get both. Even though they are done as a band, their music is so good, like Christina Billotte bands, seriously, Autoclave!!! Who can capture the unease of post-punk girls with their own identity and take on the ideal, it makes me psyched to know such band ideas exist! And also Talya from Household is in a new HC band called In School that is gonna be by new band to lose my brainz over I can feel it. Household.bandcamp.com
5-Brainwaves tape! Also in demos section, just so good...
6-The song “I Don’t Wanna Work For BA No More” By Scissor Fits. Why fly for free when complaining creates such works of punk? Kill yr boss.
7-“Bullet Proof Nothing” by Simply Saucer. Outer spaceful.
8-The song “You Take Time” by Bleached from LA. I have to say my fave post-Mika Miko band is Crazy Band, who just put out a killer LP if you like falling apart punk made by snotty FU skater girls from LA. But this song is so good! Jennifer and Jesse Clavin’s new band. “You take time / To go nowhere.” Like a punk girl’s take on “So tired / tired of waiting/Tired of waiting for you...” by the Kinks with added Zeros/Ramones dreamy snot...
9-Alex Ratcharge! Visiting columnist attack!
10-The song “Milo Minute” from the last Grass Widow 7”. Not a huge fan of this band, but some of their songs are just transcendent...
whatwewantisfree.blogspot.com
Layla@maximumrocknroll.com

Trendy Violence

2011-11-18T09:17:00.000-08:00

I used to skate with a bunch of girls, there were between four and six of us depending on different factors, we met up after school or at the weekends and went to various skate parks and parking lots around London. I started skating when I was a kid, I got a Vision Gonz board as a birthday present when I was eight, but I didn’t actually learn any tricks until I was in my teens and started skating with other girls. Initially I felt really self-conscious about the fact that you couldn’t instantly be the Bones Brigade, so would just skate around rather than risk embarrassing myself in front of the “dudes.” I got serious about skateboarding during the height of riot grrrl, my friends and I had formed a band when we were thirteen and would go hang out and flip through the 7” racks in the Rough Trade basement, conveniently located under a skate shop called Slam City Skates. We used to scurry through the store heads down, and rush down the stairs, assuming the skaters were all meathead hater bros. I started writing this girl Tulsie, we traded zines, and it turned out she worked at the “scary” skate shop, and she encouraged me to pick up skating again. She actually helped name my band too; I sent her a huge list of band name ideas, and she said Skinned Teen was the best one. This was the era of flip tricks and tiny wheels and huge pants; me and my friends were more into looking like mod girls mixed with the girls from Kleenex... But we were teenagers so we adapted. Learned to ollie, switched to Dickies so we looked like the rest, and so forth.
We skated in a pack, were very defensive and assumed all the other skaters thought we were “pro hoes” or posers so just didn’t talk to them for the most part. I remember one really humiliating incident where I tried to interview Ed Templeton for my zine at a skate contest. He blew me off and treated me like a piece of dirt, as if I was trying hit on him. Rather than being the goofy sixteen year old skater that I was, I was just some chick. These girls had told us that Deanna Templeton, his wife, ripped on vert, (which totally was not true), so I had expected him to sort of be on the side of girl skater dorks. At that point we had pretty much stopped trying to engage with the norm skate boys, we had a few male friends we skated with but there were endless similar incidents which for over-sensitive teenagers were too much. To the point where we camped out in these skaters’ backyard for one out of town contest, when they asked us if we wanted to sleep in the living room on the floor, we declined... My favorite place to skate was a vert ramp in a sort of underground walkway where a railway track used to be, it was on the other side of London and took three million years to get to, but because it was the era of tech flip trick ’90s, no one skated there. Plus it was out of the ears and eyes of squares, just below the street.
I was thinking about all of this because I still sort of have the same attitude, of not wanting to be a blind part of something. Wanting to do something on my own terms, separate from the “scene.” I remember going to a hardcore show where the singer asked the crowd, “do you wanna be part of the scene or part of the scenery...” I wanna be neither! I have been listening to punk since I was thirteen, starting out with Sham 69 and Patti Smith and moving through Huggy Bear and Bikini Kill, the Nation of Ulysses and Heroin onto His Hero is Gone and Capn Jazz (yes, at the same time), then Skull Kontrol and the Wrangler Brutes and then onto discoveries in the MRR library (Power of the Spoken Word! Rutto! Foams! So much more!) when I moved to the Bay Area in 2003. A million different shifts in perspective, mix tape fodder, going from only listening to punk tapes from Woolworths to only listening to Gravity, KRS and Dischord, then discovering old punk and hardcore that was not available on tapes for sale in the Woolworths music department, from Prag Vec to the Avengers. I have been an obsessive music nerd for my entire life, and until I reached my thirties have been stuck in relationships mostly with skaters, where I have had to listen to fucking Rancid and then onto turgid shit like the Hold Steady and have kept my mouth shut... One teenage paramour used a tape I made for him to impress another girl; his record collection was mostly sourced through Big Brother and nineties era Thrasher so was pretty much just shitty corporate punk and Slayer. I made fanzines to connect with punks in different places who felt the same way about skating, feminism and music that I did. Outside f my small group of friends, most of the kids in London when I grew up were totally alien to my idea of a good time. Either they just wanted to go to raves, or if they were hardcore kids they only wanted to play music that sounded like a fifty ninth rate Policy of 3, or some really generic NYHC.
The point to all of this self-indulgent rambling is what we do is secret, and uh, what we want is free. I do not wanna be part of a united front of punks who all listen to the same thing, who all wear the same outfit, not interested in “cool” or scene status, message board sausage parties. Not interested in “free” gifts from corporate entities, write ups in magazines that also run “cool hunting” departments for various corporations.
Punk has always appealed to me because of the beginning of the song “Explode” by Void, because of how the music transports a human out of the reality of walking to a shitty minimum wage job. The music that grabs me is the music that creates its own world, its own universe, the first Die Kreuzen LP, the Huggy Bear and Frumpies 7”s, Bobby Soxx, Germs, Electric Eels, Screamers and onwards to the end of time. Music that was created for other reasons than to sell beer and cars and get you laid at the bar. The fact that people are up in arms because MRR won’t cover their band if they start putting out records with car corporations is embarrassing. DIY punk is not ad fodder for corporations, end of story.
whatwewantisfree.blogspot.com

The Lonely Ghost Eats Toast

2011-09-10T11:10:00.000-07:00

Bands in Basements/the Hungry Ghost
Some months are an endless adventure and some are a continuous parade of degradations. I woke up this morning feeling like a piece of tissue, not exactly the right place to start a fascinating column about the trials and tribulations of this human’s existence. Got a temperature and a scratchy throat and a general negative feeling towards life that does not bode well for your future reading pleasures. There were many good times and random adventures over the past month, sick basement shows and excursions outta this town to new places. I quit one job, that was becoming a mild source of stress, got another at City Lights books, which so far is eternally dreamy... yes you see isn’t this a fascinating time to be a human being, reading all about the various existential crisis that each one of us endures in our quest for uh continued existence. Another punk complained that I was too negative, that all I did was complain, well, those are the true fax and the insaniax. I got a list of shit I don’t like and a voice with which to expel said info. That said, here is a list of things I do not like right now:
Business Punks
Whenever I get into an argument with a business punk they try and turn my coordinatorship of this magazine round at me, “But MRR profits from the scene and is a business so it’s totally cool for me too as well, lady.” Nope. All I have to say is that the kids don’t care, to paraphrase Blitz. MRR has not made a profit in years, every penny this magazine makes pays for its continued existence. Rent. Bills. Mailing out subscriptions. There is no profit involved. No one gets paid, and no one is making a killing from punk at MRR HQ. When the magazine did make money all of that went into things like opening Gilman and helping other punk endeavors. So. I hate business punk ideology, punk is for kicks not for dollars and change, for the love of it, for the continued perpetration of the punk idea, (DIY or DIE), not for what it can do for you in terms of your bank balance. The idea of something that exists just to perpetrate itself and to spread the DIY ideal and the destructive sound that assists in the achievement of that goal, plus you know, community... Something exists for reasons other than paying your bills and making sure you get the latest limited edition sneaks and plane tickets to the exciting fest on the other side of the country. Punk is not for sale, and you can’t buy it either. This isn’t some fantasy life in which there are not bills to be paid and so on, there are bills to be paid, but as soon as punk is the thing that is doing that, it’s no longer punk, it’s some other part of the capitalist existence we find ourselves trapped in or around. I don’t mean someone running a record label, that for the most part is not a profitable endeavor, in terms of dollar signs etc, but “punk” PR agents?! Those that profit from our culture but don’t participate in the exchange. Let’s make punk the same as corporate music culture, but on a smaller scale! Use the internet to find that punky chips ahoy commercial to see an example of a business punk just doing its thing. Why not have the thing I love be the thing that pays my bills, why not turn a profit from The Kids so to speak? Do they owe me a living and so forth and so forth? Let’s just make our own version of the mainstream, but with our “punky” values. Consume! Blah blah blah. The world’s a tomb.
Mushrooms.
Like eating slugs. The texture. Such sorrow.
Fake Oi.
Weird civil war reenactors from around the world put on your Fred Perrys and your Sta-Prest, jam out those terrible “alright matey down the pub” cliché chords and sing about Never Walking Alone FC. Even though the Bow Bells have never tolled in your presence, let along in the country that you live in (Germany, the US, Sweden), evoke the cheeky cockney Dick Van Dyke reality of fake oi. Please. You made the list. Cartoon reality, same clichés in every song, costume punx invoking a constructed world of fake Britain that never existed.
“Good” Small Businesses.
Maybe you work for one. The owners voted for Obama, and only use organic produce in the kitchen, but everyone makes minimum wage and no one sees any of the profits that enable said owners to drive round town in their fleet of Priuses and buy fair trade pea shoots at the farmer’s market whilst floating around in $400 organic silk tunics. Because changing the world is all about buying a different set of stuff to those other people who do not want to change the world. It’s all rooted in capitalism. Not how you treat your workers, but how many customers feel good, like they are really making a difference whilst forking over their dough. “All you have to do to change the world is change the channel.”
Veteran Punker Dudes Writing for Vice.
Barf. So many of them. What we do is secret. Vice is not just a magazine, it’s also a “cool hunter” resource for corporations such as that car company that is currently throwing money at various aspects of the underground scene. Cool Schmool!

Bands in basements
1-Hysterics show at 17th and Capp. Weird ski lodge ambience. “Hipster” invasion (see Esmerelda from Noh Mercy’s pithy take down of the Valencia St “hipster” in the Deaf Club article in this issue. Truth). Raging all girl hardcore, best all girl hardcore band since the Wrecks!! Some overheard dude said it reminded him of the first Agnostic Front 7”. Also most exciting local band award goes to the first band on the bill, Displeasure, who were so fucking good, weird Rudimentary Peni vibes with reverbed out lady vocals...
2-iceage. Blogrocker scene! The audience was all People Who Read Online Tastemakers and Follow Their Instructions attempting to “mosh” and “stagedive.” It made for some pretty comedic moments, but you cannot write off the frantic teenage sounds of Denmark with your pithy online opinions, they were great, excellent humans, a sound that makes even the squarest wanna smash cop car windows.
3-KRS is no more. This label soundtracked my teenage years, the Frumpies, Huggy Bear, UOA, Bikini Kill, Unwound, Godheadsilo, Bratmobile, Comet Gain, Born Against, Excuse 17, so many more... Mika Miko! New Bloods! But the last uh, ten years have been pretty dire, mostly tranquil music for blogrockers and the inbetween section of NPR shows. A business set up in opposition to that world attempts to becomes part of it and fails. Not sure exactly what’s happening, but word on the street is that it’s the end. I was in a record store and saw that Gravity had some new releases in other soundtracks of teenagerhood news...
4-Petals show. Petals is Jess from Brilliant Colors, Seth from Hunx and his Punx and Eric from Jump Off a Building. They play music that probably is not reviewable in these pages, Seth sings in a different style to usual, sort of reminded me of a weird Edwin Collins/Calvin Johnson thing! Every other band at this show had a lady drummer (Dunes, Cold Showers, Grass Widow).
5-Generation Suicida tape. So so so so good.... check the demo section for full report.
whatwewantisfree.blogspot.com or layla at maximumrocknroll.com

Up All Nighters / Society Suckers

2011-08-10T11:14:00.000-07:00

Sitting in my room listening to the Necro Hippies tape I picked up at the rad Vegetable / Firebrand show at a random 1920s social club... I walked in and saw a girl with a denim jacket with a United Mutation logo drawn on the back, and a Saccharine Trust patch under that, and nearly lost my shit. How in the hell does this person exist in SF without me knowing!!?? Of course it was Candise of Firebrand / Necro Hippies, on tour, punk rock dream come true, only in town for one night etc etc. Her band, with Osa formerly of New Bloods, Firebrand ruled. Their demo reminds me of Young Marble Giants restraint but live it was more in a Bush Tetras sphere, which was cool... Vegetable was great too, especially the drummer who stands up whilst playing and has a crazy Palmolive maniac style; she is the main singer too. She definitely makes the band. They really reminded me of the Ama-Dots, a rad mid-western art punk band from the early ’80s… The show was a Grass Widow release party but we did not stay for them—we had to come back for another late night shift working on this magazine you hold in your hands.
This is our existence, random kicks amid endless crisis, good times and negative energy. A continuous loop of the teenage bedroom experience, the sound of ratty girl bands and cruddy hardcore; an endless infection. The wrong clothes and the wrong timing, never satisfied or ready. (This world is a tomb. Your future is imaginary). Watching a video of something that happened thirty years ago or last week, a blog post about a record that someone made, it’s not real life. Endless reconstructions intersected with occasional adventure and possibility out of all the reenactment. A set of chords, a list of words.
I have stayed up until three or four am every day this week working on the magazine or at my shitty retail job, and thus you get this weird shit created under the influence of the following: the Good Throb tape, the Massmedia LP, the Hygiene LP, the Diagram Bros 7” and a video of the SF synth-punk band the Wasp Women performing at a Pride party in the late ’70s. You know, this could be your tired insane ramblings. If you want to coordinate MRR we are still looking for someone… apply punks! Email mrr@maximumrocknroll.com for an application ok?
Columns on the web: whatwewantisfree.blogspot.com

This is my old jam

2011-06-29T21:34:00.001-07:00

This song was the soundtrack of the riots in Zurich

This is my new jam

2011-06-29T21:31:00.000-07:00

The all female punk rock band Kandeggina Gang play "Sono Cattiva" at their practice space 1980 Milano - Italia

futur marketing purposes

2011-06-26T18:10:00.000-07:00

Spring Mini Five
1: There’s this video of these girls skating on the freeway in LA, it’s a video made by a mostly girl punk band from those parts called Crazy Band... I heard rumors about their existence for months before I heard their sound, that they were a bratty falling apart band featuring a former member of Mika Miko that I would probably like... Then of course I read about em before I heard anything, in this sort of lame free style magazine that they give away in coffee shops up here called Paper that seems to be made up of mostly regurgitated press releases. I know, I know, it’s Los Angeles. That’s how they do things there it would seem right? Well no. There are tons of punks who are in bands that don’t do interviews for fashion magazines... Another symptom of the whole punks with booking agents and PR people era that we currently seem to exist in? (Speaking as someone who has to delete about 100 shitty emails from various PR agencies everyday from the MRR email—it’s clear that everyone from crust to garage bands feel like they need a paid mouthpiece to do their bidding in the media marketplace). Where big punk fests are underwritten by cheap beer companies and car companies will give you free money as long as you solicit your fanbase for all their personal info for future marketing purposes... At any rate, I do really like the Crazy Band song on said video, it’s got a cool girls in the garage meets beach punk feel, and according to an LA spy they are destruction in the best way live, and the forthcoming LP on Teenage teardrops rules. Plus the footage of the girls skating on the freeway is enough to make parents everywhere put their heads in their hands and give up!

2: The Avon Ladies tape is so good! Apparently D X is working on an interview for this magazine you are currently reading, if this is the case... well maybe it will happen now it’s written out in newsprint in my column. There’s a review in the demo section. Send off for it HC maniax!
3: Went to see Brilliant Colors play this pop fest, they were so good, one of the best shows I have seen them play, and a former member of Balance of Terror was filling in on second guitar... Got a sneak peek at the new LP, out this summer, it’s awesome but totally not reviewable in this magazine. They went full speed ahead to the dream pop Felt / Chills landscape and the ladies of post-punk aspects are long gone. You should pick it up anyway if you dig any of these bands mentioned, it’s a good one, and will be on Slumberland.
4: I got sent a rad movie of a Huggy Bear show in Brighton in 1993, it starts out with these kids driving to the show listening to the Jam, and you can see Rachel from Comet Gain, gazin’ out the window, in her amazing red mod raincoat and perfect Anna Karina hair that made me and all my friends wanna be her. The Huggy Bear footage is sorta messy, ruptured and like a bullet and a message to your heart all at once. I will write a full report possibly for the Maximum website in the near future!!

this is them ruling it on a shitty TV show

5: Apply to be the new coordinator of MRR already! C’mon. You get to pick what runs in these pages! And you can listen to green taped versions of all your favorite Killed By Death 45s as you do this! Email us for an application if you have a vision for the magazine and a knowledge of punk and hardcore that is as extensive as your aforementioned vision! Yeah! Up the punx.

Fuck power pop, fuck new wave, this is punk rock, you’re a slave: MRR needs a coordinator! Could it be you?

2011-05-30T20:53:00.000-07:00

We are still looking for a content coordinator to replace me. We have gotten some great applicants, but as you will see my name is still on the masthead and we gotta do something about that. Maybe you can help? I know you can. MRR is a life consuming organism. As well as, uh, coordinating the magazine coordinators (right now, me and Mariam, or as I should say Mariam and I in order to appease the grammar oppressors), have to work other jobs (apart from Maximum Rocknroll, duh) in order to do things such as eat food, fix our bikes, fight the man and go to shows and so on. Or you know maybe you have student loans to take care of? Did you know the magazine allows you to live in the MRR house at no financial cost?! Yep, it pays yer rent, but you still gotta work. The bookstore I have worked at for the past five years went out of business, so I have been unemployed for four months. I got a job at City Lights books, in North Beach, but they only had one or two days a month open. Not enough to actually exist on. So I figured I would have lots of free time to make tapes and go on bike rides and so forth... attempt to live offa government cheese. But as always seems to be the case with me and MRR the magazine pretty much ate up all that free time.

There is always more to do. You could easily work 60 hour weeks and still not finish all that could be done. I got another job this week, and had to work six days in a row, plus putting together the magazine, and I am pretty tired and burned out right now. This is our busiest week, when we have to put the magazine together and get it to the printers. Sometimes this means sitting in front of a computer from 9am to 3am, and still not getting it all done. The longer you have been here the more it weighs on you.

This is the sort of job that you sort of learn as you go, and the more you learn, the more the responsibility and weight of what you are doing takes over. Most people that have coordinated the magazine you are currently reading have not run a business before, or edited a magazine, or had access to over 40,000 records. Some of the skills needed to do the job will be already there: maybe you know everything about Danish post punk and the history of Memphis garage rock, plus you can photoshop like a maniac and also are really detail oriented and budget conscious. Being able to construct a sentence is important; you will be editing the entire magazine. You are in fact the editing department! Every single article, review, interview, column and scene report is on your shoulders my friend! Does that semi-colon belong there? Or is it just a trick of the eye!? Maybe there’s no such thing. It’s 3am! Who knows. We have shitworker proof-readers, but essentially most of the editing falls on the coordinator’s shoulders. From George Tabb to that Bulgarian scene report, you must make sense of it all. You are also in charge of advertising, financial affairs, plus you are the motivational task force, the mail order department when shitworkers flake. You are the music editor, the news editor, the person who has to figure out why the toilet is leaking and you also get to pick what runs in the magazine! And what plays on the house stereo. Bear in mind we have to cover a wide range of music, not just shit you like, so being aware of what punks are currently listening to is important.

If there is something that’s missing from the magazine that you think you could bring, as stated we are still looking for someone to replace me, so if you are under the impression that you have what it takes... you should email us for an application. You will be running a business so you must be a legal citizen of the USA, and not have say, the IRS or the CIA on your back. You gotta have a vision and sense of what you want to do for the magazine. This is a great opportunity. While there are certain things that we can’t change due to Tim Yohannon’s wishes, and we do work within a certain structure, chiefly only covering underground DIY non-corporate sponsored punk, hardcore and garage... you are in charge of the content. You! You have to contact bands that you think should be in the magazine and attempt to get an interview out of them. You have to write the kids that distro the zine in Kuala Lumpur and ask em why they have never done a scene report... You get to uncover endless crazy records in the record library and figure out a way to write about said experiences in the magazine. We are looking for someone who could run a business, someone who could carry the weight of this thirty year old punk rock institution in the face of the death of print media, of bands selling out for pennies to Japanese car conglomerates who apparently make killer tube socks. We want someone who has an idea of what they want from punk, and what punk and DIY culture does for fuck ups like us and how important it is ultimately to make our own culture on our own terms. By the punks for the punks. But also someone who knows why kids lose their shit over RVIVR and Weird TV, over iceage and Isterismo, who knows about the all girl teenage punk band that just put out a 7” in Oslo, about what’s happening in Japanese hardcore, about the various offshoots of the Marked Men... You gotta know your history too.

One of the reasons I didn’t apply to be coordinator after Paul quit (in like 2004?!) was that I didn’t think I knew enough about music. This was just some stupid undermine-y lady probs bullshit; I have been obsessed with music in an all consuming way since I was thirteen. Maybe I didn’t know the history of Polish punk at that point in time, but the shitworkers at the magazine and the aforementioned insane record collection, along with my own endless curiosity about music filled in the gaps. Everyone has areas of musical knowledge that are more focused or pronounced, but MRR is the self-proclaimed holy bible of punk rock, right? So you gotta have a solid and broad based foundation on which to build. Even if you don’t like Scandi-crust, you must understand its importance and significance to punk rock. Same goes for pop punk, garage, post-punk, shambolic DIY Messthetics-core, power pop, hardcore, thrash, and so on into infinity. We’re looking for music nerds not casual listeners you know? An international punk rock and hardcore obsessive. We also want someone who can reflect and stand up for the magazine’s radical political agenda. This is not a place for group hug personal is political coffee mug sentiments. We are not interested in bumper sticker homilies or casual indifference. Up against the wall motherfuckers!

Basically we are looking for someone who is consumed by DIY, who is ready to move to San Francisco and give this magazine and punk rock the next two or three years of their lives. Are you ready? If this sounds like something you could handle, that you have been waiting for, if you are someone who makes things happen rather than just watches shit pass them by you should fuckin’ email mrr@maximumrocknroll.com and ask for an application and tell us why we should hire you. This isn’t a casual situation, this is punk rock, it’s do or die. You gotta be passionate about it, don’t send us some shitty email as if you’re applying for a job at Starbucks ya know? We want to know why you should be here, writing a column every month and making sure the world’s punks are getting their monthly fix of inky fingers and esoteric music nerd talk, even if it means you are up at 3am, and you gotta go to your shitty retail job at 9am the next day.... And the night is still young, the workload so endless. Insert appropriate Minutemen lyrics about punk rock being your life, corn doggy. There is a reason this magazine has been around for thirty years, and we need someone who has the vision and focus necessary to continue this tradition!

I made the cover this month and i really like it so there

2011-05-08T20:24:00.001-07:00

Another issue of Maximum Rocknroll is hot off the presses. MRR #337, the June 2011 issue, features an interview with one of the architects of punk, John Morton of electric eels and X_X amongst other bands, discussing his Cleveland punk days and artwork. We talk to Zack Carlson and Bryan Connolly who put together the amazing recently published Destroy All Movies!!! book, an exhaustive study of punks on the silver screen (and straight to VHS!). And don’t miss our interviews with Finnish hardcore champs YDINPERHE, doom inflected crust punk NUX VOMICA from Portland, Oakland mutants UZI RASH, Southern California psyche-punks WHITE FENCE, and Swedish garage stompers BLACK FEET. Plus, we have a look at the life and struggle of Russian anti-fascist activist “Vanya Kostolom” Khutorskoy, who was tragically murdered by Nazis at age 26; a Buffalo, NY scene report, and a look at a 1980s HC flyer archive in New Orleans: From Stapleguns to Thumbtacks. All of this madness plus the most extensive review section in punk rock, and all the columnists you love to hate!

Buy issue #337 of MRR here:
http://maximumrocknroll.com/2011/05/08/mrr-337/

Guys are obscene / Vile and unclean

2011-04-28T10:49:00.000-07:00

Bands need to stop reuniting. Start a new band, a new idea is better than soiling the memory of what you had, of attempting a new reincarnation of something for an audience that demands entertainment in a variety where they know what to expect... or else. People find solace in repetition, in a ritual that they can feel part of where they know what is going to happen next, like watching a rerun of a favorite TV show. Is that what you want out of punk? An all expenses reunion show covers the plane tickets, half original members half original audience, let’s get together for a group photo... Rock around the clock, authentic, established and guaranteed. Sponsored by a youth orientated corporation in exchange for all the personal details of all the attendees; there will be free beer for all.
I have a better idea, maybe write about it, in the style of Richard Meltzer/Lester Bangs/Pushead/another authentic rock scribe. Let the spittle hit the typewriter keys, recapture the days when there was something to be captured, the flaccid entity of rock music compressed into a bile filled sentence that will make all the readers deflate and expand at the same time. Elevate the most average bloke rock reenactment society into something that really meeeeans somethin’ maaan. Or you could blog it. There’s a coffee shop I go to sometimes and one of the guys that works there wears a Triumph motorcycle t-shirt that’s exactly the same as the one Dylan wears on the cover of Highway 61. As if wearing this totem will somehow... do something, bring him closer to that thin high mercury sound. If you simulate something, the right clothes, the sound, the correct collection of references does it make it happen?

“The Godhead. Reminds me of Teddy and the Fratgirls or the Foams in the sense that one gets the notion that these must have been fun gals to hang out with or date. The timeless splendor of the arty urban misfit girl: Her goofy charm and no-holds-barred enthusiasm for all that she found weird, interesting or sexually appetizing. A toast to the art school weirdo outcast girls of the world: May they forever paint their room black or read Hermann Hesse to you in bed! The music is wild, out of control amateuristic slop goes from Electric Eels fuzzed out haterock to drumkits thrown down the stairs to minimal teen-angst and then back. Beautiful stuff. Got this in trade from Thurston Snore for some boring free jazz records back in the day. What a chump!” Johan Kugelberg

This is in reference to the Pervers / Deutscher Abschaum record, technically a split 7” though members of Pervers were also in Deutscher Abschaum. I read an interview with Beta, who was in both bands, where she talks about MRR giving them a great review. I couldn’t figure out if she was talking about a tape if that 7”, but alas, neither are in the collection for me to investigate at this point in time. This record is sinister, dark and otherworldly, really evocative and powerful, not just “crazy wild ladypunk!” All of which mean this is obviously a top want for me, not because I have sexual fantasies about wild crazy girls who play totally like, free music but because... I want to listen to those sounds and be transported out of a world in which the possibilities that women create in aural form are easily packaged up by a record kollector/kritic into “would DO her, she sounds WIIIILD!” It’s just so rad and refreshing to always have your do-ability factioned into every thing you will ever write, record, create as a fresh wild female punker, and it really adds to the music too. To know that basement dwellin’ record skunks would like, totally like to go back in time and bang the Foams. I got into music, into underground DIY punk and hardcore music specifically because of the possibilities that existed with limited resources. What people could do with one or two chords is more interesting than an avalanche of shredding guitar center solo bro-hymns. From Huggy Bear to Sheer Smegma, from Glueams to Neos, Noh Mercy to Flipper. Electric Eels! Void! X_X! What punks come up with on their own terms, with the limitations of cheapness/broke-ness, a lack of resources and access to the rock vocabulary creating it’s own method of speaking. Different languages. When stupid shit, casual flippant misogyny, the endless jock mentality impedes on this invented world it’s... frustrating.
There’s this scene in The Great Rock’n’roll Swindle, where they have some sorta fake ad for Vicious Burgers, reiterating that this is a product, a financial scheme enabling you to buy into the punk rock wholesale. GG, Sid, Lemmy, Iggy, Stiv, just pick a sneer and run to the bank. No need to shift your focus or way of doing things, just buy in! Punk rock’n’fuckin’ roll baby. Punky chips ahoy. You have been given your instructions, now follow them! The legions of drones who think of punk as being this way, an outfit, an FU that meant something maybe in 1978 but now!? Is it a retread? I think of all the crazy girl bands that formed in the wake of punk rock, of post-punk and new wave, no wave and so forth, who found something that worked for them that they could mutate… and how no matter what they created the constraints of their gender is reflected back at them. “Punk is all about not giving a fuck bro, fuck the PC police!” Who gets the freedom to “not give a fuck!?” and how come not giving a fuck basically means not having to think about how your shitty aggro-dude behavior could possibly be alienating to punks who would love to “not give a fuck” but unfortunately due to the constraints of gender, sexuality and or race are not given that option. This train of thought brought to you by the trolls that populate the MRR facebook page. It’s depressing how many men whose opinions are reflected in the mainstream media also seem to need punk…
I had a teacher who claimed that if there were a referendum in regards to abortion it would be made illegal, if there were one about bringing back hanging it would of course be made legal. The people of Britain would have their say; kill the rotten, save the innocent balls of cells. Reading internet comments on newspaper articles is a good way of affirming the idea that said teacher espoused, that some things should be out of the hands of “democracy.” It’s just disconcerting when this shitty reality is reflected in the comments on something Maximum Rocknroll related. This person gets something from MRR!??!
As I was working feverishly on this magazine I listened to a podcast put together by Mary of the awesome Neonates... You can listen to it here: http://web.me.com/gendertrouble/televisiondinner/TV_DINNER/TV_DINNER.html
There are lots of shows to choose from, each one has many amazing secret histories put together by girls from various eras invested in punk, art, destruction, dance and soul... Not every song is a jam, but there are so many things to investigate, it’s like a way more curated version of that female fronted lady punk box set some dude did a few years ago. Some of my faves so far: the band the Take who had a song called “Summer” on a compilation 7” that is somehow related to the Primitive Calculators, which was released in 1979. Angular Australian aggro art. “I Need a Jerk Like You” by Boston art damage Black Cat Bone, has a sleazy Patti Smith intoning over the Lounge Lizards appeal... “This is not what I want / This is just what I get” The singer was in Colorado goth punker group Your Funeral in the early ’80s... The Anemic Boyfriends, girls discussing what guys are really into over this weird anodyne reggae/new wave beat... it’s compulsive stuff. Also: the Chalk Circle and Glueams reissues demonstrate that this is a good month of lady punk history
I hate pictures of people standing together where some of the people are talking on their cellphones, or texting...

2011-04-27T20:34:00.000-07:00

this is the best. bobby soxx is masterpieceful

this is teenage girl punk from NORWAY-all girl band called Razika-as far as I can tell this is their only punk song, the rest is really poppy ska-but this song is great!

tapes tapes tapes tape it to go

2011-04-06T21:08:00.000-07:00

When Cissie was coordinating the magazine with me we used to joke about doing a women in punk issue, without mentioning that that was what was happening. Just do it. See if anyone noticed that every band had women in it. I did a tape review column a few months ago, and said there would be a second part following shortly after, well here it is! This is the inadvertent women in punk edition as most of the tapes have ladies on em. Not all. Nearly though!
d.vassallotti “False X-mas” tape has a morning after haze, a photo with the light bleaching everything out, like someone in the room next to you is listening to the first New Order record. Ghosts and radiator noises. Excellent atmospherics, recommended... Wasn’t sure how to label this, as it arrived in a black envelope with no decipherable band name, but I was informed this human was in the Cult Ritual so I went with the name on the lyric sheet. Cult Maternal 804 E Genesee Tampa FL 33603
Livid are from San Francisco and Oakland and are my current favorite local live band... They are the best. Seeing them play is the best, but since I am not sure if they are playing in your town soon, they made a tape! It’s not quite as raging as the live experience, maybe as it was recorded a bit ago, earlier in the band’s existence? Live they have this Alice Bag swagger that is the best, on tape the Dangerhouse thing still comes over but the danger is a little less intoxicating. One of my friends think they sound too talky-riot grrl, I personally don’t think that’s a dis first off, though I think it was meant as one, but I honestly don’t see it THAT much. On full listen to the tape, I detect a little Bikini Kill Peel Session 7” appeal, but honestly way more Alice Bag bands!! Amelia has a really cool voice and stage presence, and Mason has excellent We Got the Neutron Bomb riffs and the rhythm section will cut your throat if you look at em wrong. Every show this band plays has a million tough girls up front losing their shit. Get it or regret it. Livid: PO Box 40711 SF CA 94140
Hysterics are from Olympia. The first tape got destroyed by the postal service: coincidence??!! The second arrived with two cool pins with bloody tampons in the Black Flag logo that were instantly stolen by me and Mariam. This tape rules so hard, totally raging and classic sounding yet innovative and interesting hardcore from Olympia, it’s so fucking good! Just straight ahead hardcore that I wish all isolated teenage weirdo girls into HC would get sent upon entrance into the scene. Perceptive, angry fuck you lyrics, awesome vocal delivery, seriously one of the best HC tapes of last year in my eyes. People always complain about how girls just aren’t hardcore, just don’t make good hardcore bands, should just stick to uh... whatever it is they do, but fuck that, not every girl band is fucking Spitboy... This shit rules, someone needs to put their band’s record out before they break up as seems to happen to all bands I love. I think this tape is sold out from the band but you can still get it from K records www.krecs.com/Shop/product_info.php?products_id=4676
Firebrand are from New Orleans, feature an ex New Blood and an ex Necro Hippie and manage to capture the Young Marble Giants dreamscape that so many are mining right now without any syrup or plaintive girl wimpiness. They mush it up with an awesome Excuse 17 bratattack making a disconcerting sound that is strong and powerful, important music... More of a post punk experimental idea than grrrl sound, but there are echoes of different personal female takes on the punk idea through out. nomorefiction@gmail.ccom
Goodthrob came with a nervous note about the guitar player was waaay better now, but seriously fuck that, this tape rules regardless of guitar strut. It’s rudimentary stroppy punk that in parts sort of reminds me of the scree of early Gravity records chaos. The more hardcore less indulgent element of that idea, bashed out and readjusted for the needs of hardcore girls in 2011. This band’s existence is exciting! As someone who bought Gravity 7”s in the early ’90s from the Rough Trade basement shop it’s with excitement and amazement that finally in the year 2011 there are English girls making these sounds their own! With added bile and punk snot obvs. I am not sure how to get this tape, but I will keep you updated on any future happenings or you could go to modernhatevibe.com and see if there’s something there? Maybe there will be!
Sceptres put out this awesome tape that may or not be a discog of their 7” output? I think it is but I am writing this in a state of total laziness and don’t feel like scrollin’ through my 7” boxes to investigate. At any rate, it demonstrates the melodic spikey ’78 punker brat majesty in an admirable fashion, vocals somewhere between Fisticuffs Bluff and um, Penetration. Everything is wound up tight for the up all night pogo punx, there’s a Shitty Limits connection, Modern Hate Vibe for life round these parts. www.direrecords.com
Hell Woman – This is rock tinged hardcore, the riffs are riffs, hardcore for stoner girls? Actually maybe it’s just grunge!?? I mean it’s not really that hardcore, I think the person that got me the tape described them as a HC band. I missed them when they played at the 16th BART station here as I had to work, but I have a feeling I would like it more in that format. It’s pretty cool though, like a more rudimentary Girlschool, emphasis on the rudimentary! From Olympia, not sure how to get one of these?
Deadhead are from Olympia too, Olympian assault on my ears this month! This band is sort of more in the tradition of KARP than any other of the Oly tapes sent in, sort of weird punker space basement dirge with pot leaves drawn on the tape, that signify more than my mere words would. Plus scrawny heavy metal parking lot vocals. When that voice lets rip, it feels like all time is yours, some of the jammier parts lose this essence and power. The band is called Deadhead and are from Olympia. You can smell the smoke on your clothes. Are you gonna submit?! PO Box 8355 OLY WA 98507
?-I picked up this tape after I saw the band play at Thrillhouse, three suburban kids playing what seemed like an inadvertent KBD take on the hardcore idea, totally falling apart FlipperGermsStickmenwithrayguns terrible genius. Not made by knowing kids, but by seeming anti social weirdos, I cannot read their band name on the tape case, nor remember what they were called, and while the tape is no way as rad as they were live, there is no contact info on it so... no use! I should have reviewed this shit when I got it a million years ago. Oh well. They have songs about rotting babies in the street making a sort of welcome matt, and one called “Drooling Blood” and one about killing a bartender who wouldn’t let them play because they were underage. so maybe they are actually 14 year old boys?! I remember there was a girl in the band. I bet that if I saw them again I would not be as impressed, but since they are this crazy mystery band now the mystique exists!
This Tyvek tape on fag tapes smells absolutely terrible, like someone puked in the car you have to ride for the next couple days. That’s OK as my tape player is across the room, and I threw the tape case away from my current position. It’s a collection of live tracks and demos and practices and chopped and screwed stuff. I love Tyvek, they make mostly the sounds that make it clear it’s a good thing to be a punk that is in existence now. If you like this band you probably have a record or tape or two already, I would suggest getting this to add to your Tyvek collection. Listen to all of them in a row and you have a full days activity planned. I have never seen them play as they always play SF when I don’t wanna go out, at bars I don’t like going to. This is not relevant to the review of the tape but I would like to see them play at some point, and I imagine the tape is a good approximation of what that would be like. No contact but you could enter ffag tapes into a internet search engine for shits and giggles.
Panzram are two dudes from Florida, playing angular heavy very ’90s hardcore, in fact this sounds like it could have been on an Old Glory compilation, something like that. It’s pretty cool that this is a two person band, it doesn’t sound like it, it does totally sound like something I would have seen in a basement in Columbus OH in 1995. Fahy_john@hotmail.com
Mixed Combat is a mix tape made by the excellent punker DJs at KBOO up in Portland OR featuring many of the amazing sets from visiting bands during the Life During Wartime radio show. A solid representation of the last six or so years of the punk landscapel, from Gorilla Angreb and the Nix to Vivid Sekt and Nerveskade, the Exploding Hearts through to Tragedy and even Fucked Up. I am again not sure how you would get the tape, but you should check out the radio show regardless, lots of MRR shitworkers and even a former coordinator participate! www.kboo.fm/LifeDuringWartime
Well, I have more to get through so maybe there will be more next month? Or at a later date, but I like getting tapes and zines, so if you want to send em in with my name on the envelope, or just send it in for review to MRR regardless. We are still interviewing people for the coordinator position, since I am leaving this summer, but I will still be doing shitwork and writing my column, so submit your coordinator application or start a band, make a tape and send it to me
Layla at maximumrocknroll.com
Whatwewantisfree.blogspot.com

more jams

2011-03-27T23:32:00.001-07:00

SCREAMERS!!!!

PERVERS!!!

some current jams

2011-03-27T23:18:00.000-07:00

PLASTIX - Geschlechtsverkehr (1981)

THE TAKE - "Summer" (1979)

ANEMIC BOYFRIENDS - "Guys are Not Proud" (1980)

this is a BORING column from MRR #334

2011-03-12T09:11:00.000-08:00

Usually MRR has another shitworker edit and compile all the year end top tens, as it’s a huge amount of work on top of the already heavy coordinator workload. This year the task ended up in my hands. And what a task! I would say we have about ten times the usual amount of lists this issue, some of the top tenners wrote over 3,000 words! I looked back at a few old year end top ten issues, and noticed that the same people had complained about what a shitty year in music it was every single year for the past five! Makes you wonder when the mythical “good” year in punk rock was.... Every year is a shitty year; we’re doomed! There are also a few records that made 2009 top tens as well as 2010 top tens (some records even made the same contributors lists both years!) We tried to edit out anything that came out in say, June of 2009, from the running, but it can get confusing because of the cover date of the magazine. For example we work on the issue that says February on the cover in December. Any records that are reviewed in the February issue actually came out the year before despite the cover date. The issue you are reading right now is the March issue, but most of the records reviewed in it came into the magazine in December, so again, more year end confusion to come! We also try to only cover stuff that’s reviewable in the magazine. Have you already done your year end top ten? Probably, since by the time you will be reading this it’s a few months into 2011. I found mine a lot easier to do this year than usual; I guess I have an advantage being that I have to listen to every record that comes in for review in order to assign them to the various reviewers each month, but some years it’s definitely been more difficult than others to pick ‘em out. I think 2010 was a good year, a ton of cool fucked up girl bands and female voices, and a fine selection super raw destruction sounds from the garage, hardcore and shitpunk planets. I am also excited about some new and imminent releases from new bands and old favorites...
All of Chalk Circle’s recordings will soon be available on LP courtesy of Mississippi records and PPM... In case you are interested in finding out more about what that means read the Sharon Cheslow interview in MRR #298 or reread her photobook Banned in DC. Chalk Circle were too arty for early ’80s Dischord to put out so they just had a few random compilation tracks here and there, all of which are great. I am excited to hear any unreleased stuff. I feel like I have written about them extensively in my column throughout the years! One annoying thing recently happened as a result of my extensive girl punker history column writing. My boyfriend tried to buy me a copy of the Foams 7”, awesome experimental girl punk from early ’80s Texas, but the seller wouldn’t let him buy it because “Layla at MRR really wants this. I have to find out what it’s worth.” Gah! It’s such an obscure record that there aren’t any listings on popsike or collector’s frenzy I guess for anyone to gauge the price/value from. So he got it from my fuckin’ column/my desire to own that record. Is it the only thing that comes up when you google it or something?? Jeez. I was told by all my kollector skum friends that this is why you keep your want list secret. However, while this was a supremely frustrating event I sort of feel like writing about weird, obscure fucked up girl punk that has been wiped from punk history is important and something I will continue to do. I would love to own that Foams record, but while I have a pretty big record collection, I am not a record collector. I am happy with a decent vinyl reissue over an expensive OG.
I am also excited by the fact that apparently there is a Neon Blud LP headed to the compound. I heard a rumor that it’s not as compelling as the 7” but I refuse to believe this until I hear with my own ears. Also a split with Diet Cokeheads in the works?? I really liked both of their 7”s, seems like it’s gonna be right up my street. I have also been enjoying tapes by Firebrand and the Sceptres. The Scepters feature MRR’s own Bryony Beynon on vocals, and assorted Shitty Limits on instruments I believe. I have heard as a band they are headed to the exit door which is a bummer as this tape is as killer and sardonic and spiky/restless as their previous 7”s but the tunes have an extra catchiness that sucks you in and pulls you under my friends. Such a good band! www.direrecords.com. Firebrand features another MRR columnist, Osa Atoe, and Candise from one of my favorite HC bands of 2009, the Necro Hippies. They have this cool Young Marble Giants undercurrent, an unsettling but calm feel, with propulsive bass and drums. Really excited to hear/witness what these ladies come up with in the future! shotgunseamstress@gmail.com for more info on that!
Also from our UK correspondent I got an amazing fanzine, Langon Olgar. I think it will get a proper review in the next issue, but I wanted to write about it briefly here as I was so blown away by it. Created by a bunch of girls for Hollaback London, it looks more like a literary journal than a zine; it’s beautifully put together and the writing inside is really powerful. Word from Ms Beynon herself:
“Back story for review tru-facts: first issue, launched at Reclaim the Night (wish I’d met your mum when we was there!) made to raise funds for Hollabackldn which we also distribute to related feminist/community orgs (Southall Black Sisters, Croydon Rape Crisis) limited to 100—it’s $10/6quid unfortunately. For contact bryony@hollabackldn.com works and order at www.direrecords.com or www. ldn.ihollaback.org . Oh and Langdon Olgar is Lisa Simpson’s one time boyfriend, ha!”
Resistance in the face of rape culture. There are pieces about street harassment, sexual harassment, assault, rape, sexual politics, the exclusion of women from certain spheres, power, powerlessness. Writing is both personal and theoretical, some of it is a difficult read and will be triggering obviously. I will write a full review next month in the zine section when I have gotten my thoughts together. Seriously though, this is one of the most important feminist DIY projects I have read in years…
OK, sorry for the rambling column! I am not sure if you read my column last month, but I am stepping down as content coordinator in May/June of this year. If you are interested in applying for the position hurry up and email us for info! Applications must be in by March 15th. I will still be working on the magazine and staying in the Bay Area, but just not coordinating MRR. It will have been about three years and I just need a break
Old columns: whatwewantisfree.blogspot.com
layla@maximumrocknroll.com

Gluebag estate

2011-03-06T21:12:00.000-08:00

This is going to be a short column, even though it’s probably one of the hardest ones I have had to write… MRR is one of the most inspiring life changing frustrating things I have been involved in. This month, at the year end shitworker meeting I gave my six month’s notice as content coordinator of this magazine. I do not intend on leaving the Bay Area, or stopping working on the magazine totally. I just realized a few months ago that I would like to come home from a days work at my crappy retail job, and not have to work for another six hours on the magazine, then do the same thing the next day and the next day. This is partially due to my own workaholic nature, I know this, which is why I am not abandoning ship totally. I just want a break. I intend on continuing to write for this rag—that includes coming up with content, (you should do this too! Interview your favorite band and send it in!)—and of course to continue on with the epic work that goes on behind the scenes. Most of you will have no clue how much effort goes into this thing you hold in your hands, every month, year after year, over one hundred shitworkers and three coordinators all working for free.

(The below is a pic I took when I interviewed Raymond Pettibon-that's his dog in his studio. You can still get this issue on the back issues page here, it's #304 www.maximumrocknroll.com)
I want to continue to be involved in the magazine for years to come, which is why I am handing in my dance card or whatever twee way there is to put such a thing. I think it’s time for some new blood to take over… I have volunteered here for seven years, and I will have run this magazine for three of those years, which is a pretty good average. I think Arwen did six as coordinator? No one has beat Tim Yohannon of course, but a shitworker expressed surprise that I wasn’t planning on trying. I mentioned before that the workload was intense, it is, but the main thing is how totally life encompassing it is. I have friends I have not seen since I started coordinating MRR and I haven’t been in a band or written for my own zine Chimps either. I find it difficult to leave town for a few days without feeling guilty.
Punks are always surprised when they come here; that it’s not a squat-like building filled with GG style miscreants. Some kids from NYC dismissed me and Cissie as a bunch of “old ladies in sweaters” when they stopped by the house when she was still coordinating the magazine last year, which I thought was funny. Like how do people think this magazine happens? A bunch of punks grab glue bags and typewriters and hope for the best??!! Actually, that is how it happens. Maximum Rocknroll is not an easy thing to run. Essentially you are running a small business, a magazine, in the face of the supposed death of print media. You get to pick what runs in the magazine, but you also get to work twelve to fourteen hour days in a building with no heat, figure out how to do the yearly sales taxes for every county in California with no “boss” to tell you the right or the wrong way to do it, figure out how the rent is going to be paid each month, and deal with the fact that your house is a community space, a library of punk. This is awesome when you want to listen to Rutto 7”s and read old issues of the classic San Jose zine Forget It! Shitworkers will call me boss sometimes, but it always makes me feel weird. MRR is what it is because of all of the people that volunteer here, whether that’s the punks that email or mail in interviews and scene reports from Nepal, Venezuela and St Louis, or those that spend the Bart fare to get here from Oakland to green tape records. Punk is what you make it, whatever Brace says, it isn’t an outfit, it’s something you do. This magazine is evidence of that fact and I am proud to have been a part of its continued existence.
Are you interested in applying to be coordinator of Maximum Rocknroll? Email us mrr@maximumrocknroll.com for an application. Must supply own gluebag. Actually, no gluebags allowed.
layla@maximumrocknroll.com
whatwewantisfree.blogspot.com

Life in the Fridge Exists

2011-03-06T21:07:00.001-08:00

My Mind is a Plastic Bag/I’m a Cliche

2011-01-12T11:19:00.000-08:00

This month I have nothing to say! Really, nothing. I’ve spent about ten hours staring at this fake piece of paper on my computer screen thinking about the extent to which I have nothing of value to impart to the readership of MRR this month. I am eating green beans and listening to X-Ray Spex. My boss cut my hours in half, which is making my financial future fragile. Other things of note that are withering into nothin’ in my numbskull include… a general excitement about the Olympia hardcore scene after witnessing both Outlook and Weird TV destroy it in the Bay Area this month. I already touched on the majesty of Weird TV on tape (you can read all about that at my online column archive whatwewantisfree.blogspot.com) but seeing them live??? Definitely one of the best live bands so far this year, and I wait with bated breath for their record, which will be released on the faultless Perennial records, out of Olympia too. I would advise buying everything Perennial put out. So far, it has all been essential… And Weird TV are probably the band I am most psyched on since the days of extolling the merits of Sex Vid, no lie. Totally different band idea but when listening, there’s a similar level of dopamine injected into brain cells or however that works. You should send off for the tape if you want to hear the most frantic raging lady vocals that combine most eloquently the best parts of Alice Bag and Theresa Brat, emphasis on the word “raging.” I am trying to figure out where you can get one, but all the options seem to be moot, sold out, not available. An EP is forthcoming on Perennial (www.perennialdeath.com), and also something on singer Lizette’s sister’s label M’Ladys is mentioned!?? Who knows, at any rate Weird TV is the sum of its parts, Ben’s drumming is propulsive and somehow reminds me of Minutemen but this is a hardcore band, Erica’s bass playing is relentless and the guitar is mindmelding psyche doom hardcore youth grab your knives now. Also, apparently the girls of Olympia are influenced by the Australian sharpie movement of the ’70s in terms of hair cuts! FUN FAX.
Outlook are part of a new politically charged youth crew orientated Olympia hardcore scene that also includes the Hysterics, an all girl band I have yet to hear to my chagrin. We saw them play at the best new secret all ages space, the basement of an arts center warehouse. Something about seeing a hardcore band blow minds in a basement will always check all the right boxes in my tired brain at least… Honestly was not expecting much, went to check out Neo-Cons and No Statik, local bands, and after a week of putting this thing you hold in your hands together 12 hours a day a million days in a row was planning on leaving soon after aforementioned bands played. This did not happen! Outlook killed it, we bought the 7”, and next month there will be a review of said record and an extensive Olympia scene report penned by Ben of the awesome Nuts!? zine… You can check out the more crew oly HC shit here: www.oursound.net. Alsoof note: Scotty Karate told a story about how the last time he saw Mariam was when he stayed at her house in Chicago after a show, and woke up to some girl pissing on him.
ENDTIMES!
layla (at) maximumrocknroll.com
1-watch my teenage band and see how much my accent has mutated via this video of the Huggy Bear/Bikini Kill tour of the UK in ’93 http://vimeo.com/11737681 also contains super amazing footage of the Raincoats with palmolive on drums... 2-next month the second volume of my tape review backlog!

2011-01-07T22:14:00.001-08:00

New issue is izzity-out! Featuring THE WELDERS (St Louis teenage girl punk from 1975!) RAI KO RIS from Nepal, ESKAPO in the Philippines, Serbia's HITMAN, Tesco Vee on the Touch & Go fanzine book, DOLLY MIXTURE (!!), Australia's STRAIGHT ARROWS, Celebrated Summer Record store, and Venezuela and Olympia, WA scene reports. Whew!
www.maximumrocknroll.com

R.I.P. ARI UP/Silence is a rhythm too...

2010-12-06T21:32:00.000-08:00

R.I.P. ARI UP/Silence is a rhythm too...

I was watching a You Tube video of Bikini Kill, when they played London for the first time and remembered the show. After the fact the NME (or Melody Maker) had asked all the doyennes of first wave punk what they thought about this newfangled riot grill business. Poly Styrene said she was at the show, and thought it was boring, a lame rerun of something that had been cool when she was a teenager, but had since played out... I remember reading that, and wondering if she had been at the same show I was at, because as a 14 year old, my experience was completely opposite. I felt engaged, and alive, felt like we could do something, me and my friends, make something out of what we had seen.

A few years after that there was a feature in a women's magazine, the English equivalent of something like Good Housekeeping that documented some of the women of punk, what had happened to them, from Jordan, the cat lady of the Westwood/McClaren Sex shop, to one of the Slits (maybe Viv?? I honestly can’t remember, though I did rip it out surreptitiously whilst at the newsagents, so it should be floating around in my random papers) through to Gina from the Raincoats and Gaye from the Adverts, and I think Palmolive and Poly too, X-Ray Spex/Raincoats/Slits... Gaye Advert said she still listened to “punky music, like Limp Bizkit.” Cripes! That always stayed with me—as soon as you describe a shitty rape-rock band as “punky” you’ve had it, time’s up. Such a grim adjective, and for a band so opposite of the punk ideal. I still need to get the second Adverts LP, it’s so good and despite finding many copies of Crossing the Dead Sea... for not very much money, I have never seen Cast of Thousands in person.

I lived in NYC for a few years in the early ’00s and one of my clearest memories was going to see Ari Up perform at a reggae night somewhere in Brooklyn. She was sort of cartoon like, really vivid and ridiculous in this one way, but it was clear she was self-made, her own person in a really inspiring way that sort of negated the comic stripness of it all... Even though I devoured ’77 punk as a kid, the Slits were harder to get into. I had only heard their later more experimental world beat stuff, at a time when I wanted Sham 69 and at most, Patti Smith. Stuff that’s still somewhat in the rock’n’roll tradition you know? So was not into them. When my teenage band started this girl at one of our shows was totally shocked that I did not seem like care about the Slits, so she made me a tape I still have with the demo and the Peel Session on it. I can still remember the feeling of hearing it for the first time, how wild and unfettered Ari’s voice was, the music was sort of like a drawing, not a rock cliché, but a total deconstruction, which is what punk had promised. This was no Elvis, no Beatles, no Rolling Stones. The demos are wild bedroom recordings, they have a bedlam-ic quality to them that is not artificially manufacture-able if that makes sense. The sound of possibility and adventure and creation thru destruction!! The Peel Session is a little more “trad” punk, but not really, and many think it’s their finest hour. You can get “fanclub” records that have these songs on them, or of course use the power of the internet to find ‘em for your computer listening pleasure. I wish someone would do a legit reissue... I remember staying at Rosie from Month of Birthdays/Pussycat Trash’s house in Newcastle once, and she was really into late era Slits, and me and my friends were just getting into post-punk, but were definitely not at the point where we could listen to anything Slits related that was released post-Cut. Now I really like the fact that they kept going, kept exploring, didn’t remain with one idea of music, but lived through many during their existence. I think it’s easily watchable on YouTube, but there’s this amazing Don Letts footage of the band dancing at a reggae club called the Four Aces, which has itself been immortalized in film by the awesome Winstan Whittar. He made a great film about the history of skateboarding in the UK, so I am really excited to check this one out when it gets to DVD.

We ran Viv Albertine’s memorial to Ari in the news section, which I implore you to read. It’s unreal that she was 14 years old when she started...

my current favorite band... weird TV from olympia

2010-11-20T23:52:00.000-08:00

love.... shock

2010-11-20T23:09:00.000-08:00

KILLER dead moon cover towards the end of this! thanks to chuck bettis for uploading this show... you can watch the whole thing

Bikini Kill in the UK! my old band is on this video... you have to watch it on vimeo

2010-11-15T16:25:00.001-08:00

you have to watch it on vimeo. how my accent has changed since livin in amerrrrica. that picture is tobi from BK. from the tullycraft website so I assume the girl who did that zine took the photo? the other one is huggy bear with no niki

innit

2010-11-05T20:35:00.000-07:00

This month’s column covers the some of the backlog of tapes I have been handed or mailed over the past uh, entire previous year to now, ie tape fest 2010 shall commence! Even though MRR convention details that only music columnists get bands in capitals in the columns section, I am using my coordinator clout to flout this rule just for clarity and understanding since this is a music column basically... First I will comment on a CDR sent to me by James of UK DIY nexus Germ of Youth, who have put out a most excellent 7” by COMET GAIN and the recent double disc of dreamy DOLLY MIXTURE Demonstration Tapes LP. This is his band, VERONICA FALLS. They elegantly, yet with suitable intent to disgust and disrupt, channel the Medway sound along with the more mod TVPs influenced C86-wave. The girl/boy vocal harmonies, band aesthetic and tuff guitar sound make me think of the early days of COMET GAIN and HUGGY BEAR more in terms of hanging out than sound. Total beatnik beach party, watch out for the LSD in the drinks though. There is venom in the sound; this isn’t a cozy reunion of Sarah records fans at an anorak warehouse. My favorite song is about popular seaside suicide spot Beachy Head, made famous in the movie Quadrophenia. I believe all four of these songs are now 7”s , on the sordid Captured Tracks label outta Brooklyn, seek them out!
NEONATES are from LA, they played Marissa’s backyard last month, and I totally enjoyed their nervous yet powerful stage presence. They trade instruments and sort of seem scared and bored by the audience at the same time in a most compelling way. The music is like MELTDOWN playing CHALK CIRCLE songs, two all girl DC bands from different eras that require your immediate investigation if you do not get that sound reference. NEONATES play deconstructed punk, anti-rhythm yet rhythmic like post punk girls that no wavers then carved up. The girls that wanted to make sounds but weren’t that invested in rock convention. I have a tape and a CDR, I think the tape is available from a UK operation called Clan Destine, but you should write the band for more info, they have a myspace, www.myspace.com/neonates. I like bands that sound like they are putting something together as they play, and yet they’ve created a powerful and total end result...
CERVIX are part of the Spending Loud Night NYHC destruktion crew, Amelia’s vocals are yowled out, total frenzy style over metallic hardcore that’s sorta UK inna SACRILEDGE stylee but this is framed in a CONFUSE GAI hardcore aesthetic and it all feels endtimes like ultimately. Comes with a patch for your denim. PO Box 30 NY NY 10276... EPIDEMIA are from Spain and play some of the most desperate lo fi shitpunk I have heard in an age, (un)holy shit... One two one two drums, shards of guitar and (female) vocals that are borne of terror and rage, the rumble of bass serves only to remind you of your puny ears and it is futile to resist! You must send off for this... Except they didn’t put an address on the tape. I tried searchin on the internerd, but only found a you tube entitled “Spanish Crust Punk”... hmmmmmm. Essentialessentialessential.
MY PARADE are from Seattle and play choppy dance punk that’s more riot grrrl inflected that anything I have heard that’s clearly as influenced by 99 records. In short this isn’t some Gang of Four disco beated out cliché; they have this cool SUBTONIX styled garage freak out and you can tell they heart ESG so totally too (so 99 records reference referenced). They are a self-described all POC dance punk band, and I am super bummed I missed their tour with the also awesome AGATHA from Seattle. Dude, someone needs to do a Seattle scene report... myparademusic@gmail.com. SFO stands for Social Freak Out... They are from Chicago and play politically charged punk, it feels like a battle cry and that’s because it is. Songs about creepy “secret admirers” out on the prowl, about protecting yourself and how male attention can be violating even if it’s not violent. About fighting back against oppression, against the rigors of gender, about liberation and freedom, against borders and yes this tape is a fight song... If you are in the mood for some raging, incendiary all female punk attack, this shit has your name on it. Fucking radical, in all senses of the word. sfochicago@gmail.com. I got the SURROGATE ACTIVITY tape along with a letter that discussed the politics of Mysterious Guy Hardcore, and teenage girls in Floorpunch hoodies... This is FU pop punk with sweet vocals delivering a message that veers pretty far from typical pop punker lyricals, then swoops back in with something about lost friendships and cold coffee. You will probably like this if you are on the hunt for catchy songs that are on the punker side of the pop, sung by a girl with a cool voice and a rad way of putting words together... julsgeneric@hotmail.com
THE GIFT are from DC and feature the ever dreamy Beck Levy on vocals, previously known for the seriously amazing TURBOSLUT... They play gnarled up, epic hardcore punk that sort of made me think of a less coiled up BABES IN TOYLAND somehow?? I don’t know, maybe it’s the dynamics of the songs somehow, but this is hardcore... makes me think of being a furious teenage girl, listening to blown out ’90s hardcore 45s and typing letters to my pen pals in various locations. Not sure I have done a good job describing these sounds, but epic experimental hardcore, lady fronted grunge, dynamic, interesting song structure... Epic sounds like it’s gonna be some horrible tech bro core nitemare. It isn’t! Promise. thegiftdc@gmail.com.
WEIRD TV are part of the continuing Olympia trail of destruction, playing simple yet direct and doomed hardcore punk with Lizette’s totally deranged and perfect vocals. I hunted high and low for this tape, the first one came direct from Tobi but was destroyed by the USPS! Conspiracy... Urgent times call for urgent measures so another was hand delivered by a NECRO HIPPIE (thanks Candice!!). Honestly this is probably my tape of the year. Perfect Layla-core. Atmospheric, doomed hardcore with the most destruktive female vocals intoned over it, like Therasa BRAT was possessed by ALICE BAG, Lizet=best singer, should sing for every band, would make the worst band amazing... So charismatic! Seriously, she has the personality and power and emotion that Theresa puts into her vocals, but the total death stare fierceness of Alice... DAMN! But the music isn’t straight ahead hardcore, it’s interesting and multi dimensional and raging... Surges into a deconstruction of the olde standard “Gloria” that’s enough to make you wanna give up on life, move to Oly and make your own band/cult... Vocals in Spanish. So fucking good. I want to form a band now, will listen to this tape every day instead. Get this. weirdtv@ymail.com
I am out of room, but UV RACE tape is also my doomed date tape of the century fuck is this band real????? Not sure how to get one, but you must! I was reminded of the fact that Australians invented punk. These ones took a bunch of LSD at some museum (not a metaphor, a literal reality, a literal literality), and made a mutated CHRIS BAILEY sings for the SWELL MAPS slice of perfection. I believe this is going to be another LP, on Aaaarght! But all of this, the bored yet necessary sometime lady vox, the intoned gentleman that was the one that brought to mind Epic Sound Tracks and Chris Bailey in one of the best musical combinations of invention, wit and genius heard as of recent times. Also from Australia we have WHITE COP who play flailing shitpunk too, but different from the Spanish one. This is blokish and more hi fi, sort of like getting yelled at by a stranger when you’re not sure what’s meant to be happening... “You are a shit” they scream, and they’re right. This is part of the Negative Guestlist empire, an excellent publication that is part of legions of examples of how the Australian punks have recusitated the fanzine format. This is trebled out, feedback enriched punk that feels like an attack, a punch in the face at random, like falling over and getting cut up reallyt bad for the first time in years, the guitars are bleached out, blaring monstrosity like NO TREND were actually trying to hang out in Georgetown. No address but try this www.myspace.com/brisbanefanzine.
More tape reviews will come! I have a whole box to go. Punk rock is an endless adventure.

MELTDOWN!!!!! super 8.

2010-10-31T23:39:00.001-07:00

teenage girls in DC influenced by Scissor Girls and No New York... From 95?? So cool... they have an LP and a 7". I think the 7" turns up pretty easily as it was a split release with dischord.

2010-10-26T20:40:00.000-07:00

NEONATES!

When you watch the end of punk rock history documentaries, the part where the protagonists claim it all died when they lost interest, how does it make you feel? When you talk to former kids, who slept on the floor of your house whilst on tour, who now are touring again with the same band, on a reunion tour playing rock clubs, pro sound pro audio... The idea of punk that resonates most with me is that of exchange, where someone stays on your floor when they’re in your town, and then in the future you stay on someone else’s floor when you’re in some other town. Where the humans in the audience are not “fans” per se, but are people that are part of the punk rock community. People that put on shows, take photos, write zines/blogs/letters, make podcasts or mixtapes, put out records, make music, and so forth. People that make the culture they participate in, that is the basic DIY ethos right? You’re bored in your hometown so you make your cohorts start a band, or you write a fanzine describing the indignations you suffer as a result, or maybe you set up shows for your friend’s bands, or take photos at those shows, or whatever the hell it is you do.
I went to see Cap’n Jazz, a band I was obsessed with as a teenager when their LP came out. They broke up before I got to see them but I played the LP to death, and my ticket purchase was fueled by nostalgia, the memories of traded zines and mixtapes from girls at expensive liberal arts colleges in the Midwest pouring into the boredom plagued teenage existence of growing up in Brentford, England. Fanzines, letters, seven inches and tapes enabled me to imagine a world outside of the non-DIY teenagers I grew up with, and along with most of the Dischord, Gravity and Kill Rock Stars catalog Cap’n Jazz were part of that imagined landscape. Boys with gas station jackets and high water pants who owned the Faith/Void split, girls who read Audre Lorde and made furious bedroom punk bands, these people did not exist in Brentford. I had no idea what to expect from this show, and obviously no one I knew wanted to go so I ate some pizza and ended up walking over one of the hugest hills in SF that seperates the MRR compound from the douchelords that populate North Beach (what was that Big Boys thing—about making you wanna kill some frats??).
It is a genuinely disconcerting experience to go to a reunion show of a band that were around when you (meaning me) first got into punk. The first thing I saw when I pulled up to the club after aforementioned epic hill walk was a huge gaggle of Urban Outfitters teens smokin’ and squawking in the regulation smoking area. Their outfits probably cost more than I earn in a pay period and my heart sunk, that weird eternal high school dork feeling when confronted with those who ooze the confidence of “cool.” No gas station jackets or Audre Lorde here… The realization struck that this was probably gonna be a long and weird night. The music was great, but I felt like I was watching a play rather than a show, a performance and that I didn’t feel part of anything. Everyone around me seemed all swept up in something that I felt so separate from to the point of repulsion. True feelings of horror! These people went to rock shows and wore merch and chugged $8 beers and so forth and so forth, if twenty people in the room had been to a basement show in the past year I woulda been shocked. I felt shitty for feeling so separate from the good times of these humans, but what we do is secret, and merchandise kind of gets in by design and so forth and until it makes you more a kid if you wanna off a pig. Afterwards I talked to the person in the band I knew from my youth, and honestly felt so gross and fan like that I had to leave—it made olden times seem all grim and for sale... I was really looking forward to the show, and musically it was what I wanted, a replication of something that meant the world to me, but it also reinforced the fact that it was not what I wanted.
The other thing that reinforced this sorta obvious fact (and yes I am sure Tim Yo is turning in his grave, clutching Ben Weasel to his chest as he recoils in horror that a current coordinator went to a Cap’n Jazz reunion) was a show in Marissa’s back yard last week, in a rare spot of SF sunshine... Featuring Los Angeles’ own Neonates, Nuclear Family from Albany NY, Daylight Robbery from Chicago and Brilliant Colors and Airfix Kits from San Francisco and Oakland respectively. Neonates play furtive ingenious girl punk, demonstrating their encyclopediatric knowledge of the history of ladypunkers, they reminded me at once of Washington DC’s Meltdown (most excellent No Wave inspired Scissor Girl worship from 1995—get the LP if you see it you will not regret it...) and the Slits demos and um, the Ama-Dots from early ’80s Michigan, all hail furtive exploratory girl sounds!! They were exciting to watch, used their instruments like toys rather than tools—weaponry listens to love… Then Brilliant Colors played a dreamy as usual set with Jess at once channeling Brian Jones and the girls from the Shop Assistants. Again, all hail exploratory girl encyclopediax! Let’s make a new sound that will banish these memories of historical endeavors in basements and youth halls, that are now being sold back to us, reinvent a movement!! Thrift stores and record shops and I don’t know what you’re talking about.... Nuclear Family played next, and while I loved their first tape for it’s raw destruction everything else has seemed so polished and wrong when you think of the people in this band and what they can do to a sound... This show (and their incredible LP coming out on Loud Punk this month...) negated all past ideas. Nuke Fam feature Zach and Paul from Acid Reflux, and Jen and Kevin, all true Albany up all night punkers, ready to half plate a buffet or play golf on the weird science fiction state capital at 2am. Zach’s guitar attack and Paul’s drums of doom, with Jen’s swooping all encompassing vocals... So good!!! Really though, the LP and live show cement the fact that it is a bummer that this band will probably be no more after this fall, so go see them when they play your town punkers! Daylight Robbery have put out the LP I listen to the most right now, it makes me think of similar things that the Observers LP did, in that I think it’s that important and good a record. The way that Christine and David’s vocals collide over the desperate Wipers guitars that also bring to mind John Doe and other things... the lyrics are great, and I love this band so totally. Jeff Rice on drums! Airfix Kits played last, had the driest stage banter, and both Allans in the band fell through the rotting on which they were performing. Tetchy, tense punk that’s bloodstains over Scotland, the problem of leisure and our band could be your life. Seriously! Punk rock is the eternal adventure, the endless possibility, this thing we make with our hands and our friends help. I am going to make myself a Cap’n Jazz t shirt, because I still love that band, but I did not want to get into the American Apparel situations. And in regards to the liner notes on the recently reissued Analphabetthology? I still get thriftstore pants for $3, even if you do not Tim Kinsella. Blah blah blah. This column was supposed to be reviews of all the demos I have been sent this year that have yet to make it to the review section. Next month? Punkie swear.
Layla at maximumrocknroll.com / Whatwewantisfree.blogspot.com

RIP ARI UP

2010-10-20T19:20:00.000-07:00

I did the radio show....

2010-10-11T23:11:00.000-07:00

You Can Listen

Intro song:
DOUBLE NEGATIVE – In Patient Out

Frequent Mutilation
CRAZY SPIRIT – Burning Children
WEIRD TV – Canalla
DRUNKS WITH GUNS – Zombie
KEBAB – Anti-L
CHANNELS 3+4 – Pills

“Belief in Repetition as Deliverance…”
FRUMPIES – Wrong Way Round
BLOOD SAUSAGE – Haunted House
CUPID CAR CLUB – Edge of the Envelope
HUGGY BEAR – Our Voltage
CIRCUS LUPUS – Tightrope Walker

TVP is an acronym for a band and for a fake meat product
VERONICA FALLS – Beachy Head
COMET GAIN – Beautiful Despair
BLACK TIME – Corpse Life
KIOSK – Royal Jerks
ACTION SWINGERS – Watch Out

I’m a Nice Guy Now
UV RACE – Girl in My Head
PEREPHERIQUE EST – Tous Les Monts
SPLINTERS – Hot Hands
TIMMY’S ORGANISM – I’m a Nice Guy Now
THE MOONHEARTS – I Hate Myself

Outro songs:
FURY – Space Love
MELAKKA – EI

on the record player on repeat

2010-09-27T17:55:00.000-07:00

weird TV is my current obsession

I love this song by Veronica Falls from London/Brighton...

also UV race has a new tape which is gonna be an LP on arrrght i think

The Libyans new LP on Sorry State is amazing. You can listen to a song here, but the whole record is so good! On constant rotation. I tried to find a youtube but could only find some other weird HC band with the same name. who do soundtracks for video games. WEEEEIRD

las señoras are from Spain, and made my favorite 7" of the year so far, like Adolescents radness but with all girls! and some sorta weird fucked up art damage! yes!

Kebab are a post Crass post-punk influenced band who just got reissued, from the early 80s, really cool...

I wrote this for Bikini Kill's archival site, re: i was a teenage tearaway skinned teen

2010-09-25T15:49:00.000-07:00

Before I saw Bikini Kill I mostly discovered music via the Melody Maker, a weekly music paper that no longer exists, and via the pages of Sassy magazine, which also no longer exists, that my American grandparents had gotten me a subscription to. I listened to bands like the Breeders, Nirvana, Sonic Youth, the Jesus and Mary Chain, went to as many shows as my mum would let me (I was 12-13 years old at this point) I felt like punk had happened, passed me by, and that although I loved the bands I was into, it wasn’t the same as “the olden days”. I always felt like I was missing out somehow. At any rate I read about BK and riot grrrl in Sassy, and immediately wanted to get involved but couldn’t figure out how as it all seemed to be happening in the USA, and I was stuck in London. I sent off for Girls Germs zine, which led to Jigsaw, and the BK zines, and Germ of Youth too-all of which I combed through for info and bands to investigate and other girls to write. THEN there was a piece on Huggy Bear in the Melody Maker, and suddenly, finally there was something happening in my town! London! Me and my friends started to go and see them play whenever we could, and they also made zines and tapes that they would give out/sell at gigs, which got us into other music and ideas , things to read, movies to watch, records to check out… Plus we all became pen pals with them (Huggy Bear) and they would make us tapes and send us letters, and send us letters written by other girls in different parts of the country to write to. We all made our own zines, and started trading them with people. It was rad!
Finally, the inevitable most dreamy thing happened-Huggy Bear and Bikini Kill toured the UK! We all bought tickets and went to every show that we could, and I think my friend Flossy told Kathleen that we were in a band (we weren’t. we had just talked about the fact we needed to do one-I had a guitar but none of us had really played music before…) Kathleen said Blood Sausage and BK were playing a show next week, and would we play?
We freaked out. We did not have a band or any songs, plus I think we were all 13/14, and couldn’t always persuade our parents to let us go out to gigs on school nights. But it was clear that we needed to do something. I don’t remember why we didn’t play that show-but we formed a band and made a tape that week. We had to come up with a band name, and had a bunch of contenders, which a girl who worked at the skate shop we hung out at (Slam City Skates!) looked at and said we should pick Skinned Teen, so we did. We gave Huggy Bear and Kathleen our tape, I think at that show, but we actually played our first show at an all girl gig, which Tammy and Jen from Linus set up, that Jo and Niki’s from Huggy Bear’s other band played, the Furbelows-they were awesome but I think they only ever recorded one song on a Huggy Nation tape?? Anyway Skinned Teen didn’t ever play with Bikini Kill but they were the reason we realized that at age 13/14 we could be a band. I didn’t ever get that feeling from listening to say, Nirvana. Bikini Kill made that world seem like something that was ours, a sound we could make rather than just consume if that makes sense. Listening to them and seeing them play was life transforming and opened up a world of possibilities, introduced me to DIY punk and making your own culture for your friends, and communicating that with other kids/punks in different places that felt the same way you did, on your own terms.
There’s a movie Lucy Thane made called Bikini Kill Changed My Life, about the BK/HB tour that you should try and watch-someone “borrowed” my copy, but on it you can see a lot of what I talked about. I feel like I haven’t talked enough about the politics of Bikini Kill maybe, the power of hearing their words of resistance and power after spending so long getting physically and verbally harassed at shows, in the pit, on the way to the show, and internalizing that. “Oh well, that’s what you get for being a girl…” and also being made to feel like my love for music wasn’t authentic or as real as some guy’s… PLus all the boring and endless explanations you had to give to clueless jerks who wanted in on riot grrrl, even though they had the rest of the “rock” world… The aggressive shitty creeps who would show up just to fuck with girls, the threatened journalists, both male and female (one women journalist made a fake zine, which was an embarrassing attempt at ridiculing riot grrrl, but her idea of feminism seemed to be from some wooden headed hippy’s description of what the women’s liberation movement was…) I just wanted to get across the idea that what Bikini Kill did for me and my friends was show us how to make our own band, our own culture, and how life changing that was. You don’t have to be Slash to pick up a guitar, you don’t have to be Thurston Moore-having an idea is sometimes more important and interesting than ability…I think Bikini Kill were my generation’s Minor Threat.

I also think girls should continue with BK and riot grrrl’s work-keep making noise, and bands, and zines, write each other, make your own girl culture…
http://bikinikillarchive.wordpress.com/2010/03/19/skinned-teen/#comments

early practitioners

2010-09-21T20:35:00.000-07:00

When my Dolly Mixture double LP arrived in the mail, my first instinct was to play the godamn thing, much to the displeasure of my co-coordinators, who were polite, but it was soon apparent that this was music to be endured with a grimace rather than an indifferent shrug... This is the reissue of the much sought after Demonstration Tapes, an almost perfect vinyl reproduction of the bands only long player, originally released in 1983. I have had Dolly Mixture songs on mix tapes over the years, but when this was reissued in the ’90s on CD, it was super hard to find, plus I did not own a CD player, so this is the first time I have had all these songs in one place by this genre defining all girl indie pop group. Did they in fact invent twee? Dolly Mixture started in 1978, who knows if they were the first to twee, not me, that’s for sure... They were definitely early practitioners, and the first platter of the aforementioned double LP features the dreamiest early stuff, including a somewhat barbed ode to Jane, of Modettes fame, and her prowess with gentlemen, entitled, “How Come You’re Such a Hit With the Boys, Jane?” Along with my favorite, an ode to being the other woman, “Side Street Walker.” Their sense of melody is so incredible, and perfect, and the fact that teenage girls constructed these songs is so inspiring and cool... It’s funny, whatever I have read about the band refers to the fact that they didn’t make it, as if they were the British Go Gos that shoulda coulda woulda, but I think they are from a completely different planet from that band. This sound would not work in an arena! And as if “making it” has that much to do with history’s judgment of how good a band is…
The ’90s CD reissue of this record goes for over a hundred bucks. (’90s CD! $100!!!??!). Which is basically why I am writing this. The aforementioned reissue I was making Mariam miserable by listening to is already sold out. Dolly Mixture may not have been the English Go Gos, but more than 300 people wanted this record obviously. I think it sold out in two days! It’s a certified classic, made by three teenage girls because of, and in spite of the DIY explosion caused by punk. I am not the hugest indie pop nut; I prefer stuff to have at least some infusion of punk, some sorta early Television Personalities or Desperate Bicycles intonation... My teenage band used to play with Comet Gain a lot in the early ’90s, but I did not start liking them until they moved on from the cleanliness of the Style Council twee soul sound and incorporated more of the aforementioned punk sneer, starting with the majestic Tigertown Pictures LP. In fact their last three LPs and the Beautiful Despair 12” are close to punk-soul-perfection... I just write this random disclaimer to indicate that I am not usually swayed by the twee. I am in fact writing this whilst wearing Bruce Roehrs’ Raw Power t-shirt that he bought at a Rock Against Reagan show in ’84. There are no hair clips in my bangs, I am not sporting an anorak, nor do I own any records on the Sarah record label. I like pop music, but I like it when it’s made by a band that fucks with the constraints of twee, more Shop Assistants than Tallulah Gosh. I think that’s pretty much the rule to most music I like. I am not interested in perfection, I like mistakes, music that sounds like it couldn’t be any other way, like it had to be made. Rather than perfect constructions of musical genres. The last song by Void on the Faith/Void split is my favorite song of all time. This of course is a perfect construction. EXPLODE!!!!
Speaking of Roehrs, we are running an Agnostic Front interview this issue that was his last before he died. Before he did it, he asked our permission, in light of MRR and that band’s antagonistic history. Bruce and Tim Yo were close, and he knew that Tim would have had something to say about this interview being in the magazine. Initially we were going to send someone alongside Bruce to make sure that the questions weren’t too deferential or unchallenging, since he was not only good friends with the band members, but they were his favorite hardcore band... (Going by the band’s first two records it’s easy to see how he reached this conclusion). I think the interview demonstrates that the fears we may have had were not realized. It may not provide a voice for Tim’s ambivalent feelings towards the band, but Bruce did not shy away from controversy, or ask only easy questions. Bruce was a complex, charming and often difficult man, and the fact that he is gone is still hard to comprehend, in terms of his history with the magazine, but also in terms of my friendship with the man. I think about him often, and his absence is a void, his voice still rings in my head, his particular and peculiar turns of phrases appear out of the blue, along with the memory of the way he bear hugged everyone.
We are currently raising money to make sure he gets a permanent memorial worthy of a man of his stature and character. One of the places that he took out of town guests, (and in town guests, present company included!) was the San Francisco Columbarium. A copper domed grand Victorian building that was built to house the ashes of some of this city’s founding families, especially popular after cemeteries were banned from SF city limits. It is now a non denominational resting place; apparently San Francisco’s “Pope of Punk” Dirk Dirksen is there... Our goal is to raise $12,000 to secure Bruce a spot. We have gotten about half way there, and have a memorial nook secured. We need help to make the rest of the money, and anything you can spare would be a huge help. I know that there are some memorial benefit shows planned, and if you would be into doing something like that I know Bruce would have appreciated it. He was most at home at the front of a show, fists in the air… If you want to make a donation via paypal this is the email: brucememorial@maximumrocknroll.com, or you can send checks payable to Maximum Rocknroll—please make sure you put Bruce Memorial in the memo line of the check or MO.
layla at maximumrocknroll.com
whatwewantisfree.blogspot.com

Tell your children

2010-09-20T15:25:00.000-07:00

I went to a bookstore today, and the clerk was holding a copy of a comic, reviewed in this issue of MRR, called something along the lines of Henry and Glen. He asked me if I liked the Misfits/Danzig, then told me Glenn Danzig had just walked past me as I was entering the bookstore. He had gone and grabbed the zine to prevent Mr. Danzig from having to see it and thus be upset if the warning Rollins wrote on the back of said book holds any weight… Anyway, I totally did not see Danzig, or notice anyone that looked remotely Danzig-like anywhere nearby even though he allegedly brushed past me after putting all the book store clerks on the guestlist for his show tonight. I am very disappointed and am, as I write this simultaneously watching the video of “Mother” on YouTube. This isn’t because I am not presently at a Danzig concert in 2010, I think that would be a spectacle and a disappointment, plus I don’t think I would have gone to see Danzig at any point unless it was free. Just disappointed that I did not get to gawk at him. DISAPPOINTED! All caps style. I like Danzig’s voice, but my favorite vocal stylings are those of Bobby Soxx, especially when he says “Even the laydeeeeeiiiiiizzzzzzzzzzzzzz.” (Apparently he doesn’t say it like that—I say it
like that. I do, frequently). LEARN TO HATE! IN THE EIGHTIEEEEEEEEEES.

Speaking of Texas punk, I also am consumed by the Foams record, which seems to have been pilfered from the MRR kollection since I got here… Or at least “misfiled” An all girl band from Austin that served mainly to prove how music was as apt an art as any to take apart… While putting together the article on the Curse in this issue I also discovered the split record they did with the Diodes had also disappeared. I think Graham wrote this month about how crazy San Francisco Amoeba has been recently,
and about Martin’s big score. I picked up Government Issue’s Legless Bull for a dollar,
which is probably the best record score ever for that price for me. I have been attempting to put together a want list so I feel less bewildered when I go to the aforementioned former bowling alley now record store. Most of the platters I am on the hunt for tend to be shit like the Foams, and other weird punk girl bands, Teddy and the Frat Girls, y’know. I have been picking up anything that looks like it might be along those lines in those mystic 7” bins, but nothing I have grabbed has been as cool as the Ama Dots 7” which was acquired by my friend Scott about ten years ago, same location, 50c. I think my favorite punk 45s are desperate sorta repulsive hardcore
items such as Neos or Mecht Mensch or Die Kreuzen or United Mutation, or their fucked up girl counterpart art punkers...
layla at maximumrocknroll.com

random hippie dirge

2010-09-10T20:31:00.000-07:00

This is a collection of random things that sprung into my brains. This is not an epic Greek poem, or a Victorian novel, this is not New Journalism, this is not bathroom graffiti. Random brains. Brain springs. We tried to watch the bio-pic cheezecore movie about Dogtown—not the Stacey Peralta documentary, but the movie with actors aping it. It was the sort of movie that whilst watching you wondered how no one involved realized how stupid and corny it was. As a punk I love teensploitation movies, from River’s Edge to Foxes, Out of the Blue to Ladies and Gentlemen the Fabulous Stains, but I was not able to transmit this love into the transformation of belief required to finish watching the absolute soiled turkey that was Lords of Dogtown. Someone ollies out of their second story bedroom in one of the first scenes, an act of very believable activity for this era of skateboarding especially on a banana board. I didn’t go see the Germs movie or American Hardcore; I probably shoulda seen the latter just for big screen dynamic eye catching ferocious footage of best bands ever. I just got so annoyed by the book I figured the movie would feature that idiot that wrote it in such a way that I might need to rip my eyeballs out after viewing. Maybe movies about culture that you feel a part of that are made for mainstream appeal should just be avoided unless it’s the midnite movie and you got a crew of rowdies? “That guy would not have been wearing a Misfits shirt! Jeez... what year is this supposed to be etc etc etc” At any rate, what do you guys this about the Tater Totz 7” that Cherie Currie sings on? That also has that insane Pat Smear led overblown cover of “Bohemian Rhapsody”?
When I first starting doing shitwork at MRR there was some random hippie dirge carved into the sidewalk in front of the house. Something about the spiral tribe? The viral tribe? I have forgotten what it said exactly but it included a shitty mosaic that an angry punk smashed at some point. The city redid the sidewalk, not before a scam punk carved something marking his or her presence... And someone across the street has carved in a selection of sidewalk penises. Or penii? Sidewalk messages. I am currently sitting in my room listening to the Sublime Frequency reissue of Dara Puspita, an insanely good Indonesian all girl garage band from the ‘60s. On headphones... Looking through the booklet that came with the CD and reading about how these musicians suffered for their art via brutal government oppression, weekly grillings, where they were forced to play their hits to assorted officials who would deem whether a song was too wild for the youth of Indonesia... and yet their music is at once liberated sounding, fun and refreshing. The music is sorta Girls in the Garage stylee, except these girls actually played their instruments, they were not just dollybird frontgirls with faceless session musicians or puppets performing some small town producer’s idea of rocknroll. Some of the music borrows hooks from contemporary western rocknroll songs, but they totally transform it into their own sound somehow... Cool.

I have been, as always, been thinking about girl sounds. MRR puts on a show one a month (third Thursday at Balazo!) and this month I think nearly every band had a female musician—one, Mothercountry Motherfuckers, wore masks so I was unable to discern gender. Genderpolice. In the style of previous Mike Kirsch bands witnessed by these eyes, they had a full multi media projection thing behind them and a sorta NOU-ish manifesto band thing going. I like it a lot more than Baader Brains and am excited to get a hold of a tape or other recorded artifact when it surfaces. Former member of John Henry West! No Statik are a reasonably new Bay Area band, I mighta written about them before? Not sure, at any rate I believe a record is to appear on Prank soon enough, but you can and should send off for the demo before that. So good. Most raging female local fronted hardcore since Look Back and Laugh? Possibly, could be due to the ex member of... The ex member of list for this band is sorta epic, but let’s just say they play tight and raging hardcore at volumes and with vigor that make paying attention to anything else futile. Then there was the incredible Necro Hippies show at Thrillhouse, which also featured Diane’s new band Livid, (Diane, soon to be former distro coordinator of this thing you currently hold... More on that in a bit), Livid were the best kind of basement punk, with the most compelling frontwoman, total Alice Bag delivery… The rest of the band had their own rhythm and idea of punk, so it made for a most killer combination with the snarled and stuttered vocals. Really had a most enchanting Dangerhouse situation and the idea that they have just recorded a tape makes this girl extremely happy for the state of Bay Area music. And yep, you read right, Diane is leaving the distribution coordinator position at MRR; Fred Schrunk of Thrillhouse Records will be taking over, starting in July, so if you wanna start selling MRR at shows or at your skate shop you should email distro@maximumrocknroll.com. Fred rules and is a long time architect of San Francisco punk, setting up the collectively run all volunteer record store and sometime show space Thrillhouse, and also tirelessly searching for a new and legit all ages space for San Francisco. We are super excited to have him as part of the coordinator power trifecta. Back to the show—Necro Hippies ruled, playing trashed out basement hardcore, timeless and true. They have a record on Raw Sugar records out of New Orleans, where they are from, and Candice, the guitarist is involved in a cool all girls show collective No More Fiction… Hardcore for the hardcore.
Anyway-listen to the song “Chronic Thoughts” by Malefice, and I promise next month this column will be less a collection of brain sewage and more a cohesive dissertation of reality.
layla at maximumrocknroll.com

Marissa and I did the radio show

2010-08-18T22:27:00.000-07:00

that's Tim Yohannan and Jeff Bale in thee olden MRR radio days
this is us:

super wild horses. i like the song enigma best from the new LP

2010-07-29T19:50:00.000-07:00

2010-07-17T10:25:00.000-07:00

U (angry side)

2010-07-12T13:29:00.000-07:00

Badge monsters

2010-06-22T22:57:00.001-07:00

YES! MRR has new buttons! Buy them peops for your denim vests, fake fur shrugs etc etc
Designed by Avi Spivek and Guillem from Destino Final!!

RITE HERE!

Teenage Tantrums

2010-06-22T12:38:00.000-07:00

I have been playing music since I was thirteen. I am now 32. I think I have played in eight bands total. I moved to San Francisco in 2005 and since then have played in one band, with my former roommates Jess Scott (of Brilliant Colors fame) and Tommy Strange (of Zero Defex fame). We have a tape, it was made in an afternoon, which is also how long the band lasted. It is now 2010. And I have been in one band, for one afternoon in the past five years. My first band, Skinned Teen, formed after we went to see Huggy Bear and Bikini Kill in London, where I grew up. One of the girls I was hanging out with told Kathleen Hanna we were in a band, and she offered us a show the week after that. We were not in a band, just wanted to be after witnessing the life affirming and life changing spectacle of Bikini Kill and Huggy Bear… We were thirteen and fourteen, and had just discovered underground punk rock, after a year or so of going to see bands like Mudhoney and Nirvana, Jesus and Mary Chain and PJ Harvey. Whatever the NME and Melody Maker were championing that week was what we were into, obviously not completely, for instance the Grebo scene seemed dire to my ears at least... Witnessing the HB/BK tour made us feel like it was in our hands, our boredom and alienation could be transformed by none other than our own sense of what was possible. Huggy Bear used to make a fanzine for every show they played, sometimes a huge elaborate 100 page opus, sometimes a one sheet thing folded in half, that they called Bullet-Teens. The fact that they were all super ancient (probably in their twenties…) yet constantly referred to teen culture and youth as being the true punk troops made us want to realize that vision. And we did.

We didn’t play our first show with Bikini Kill, we played a month or so later at an all girl band show, which also featured the awesome Furbelows, which was Jo and Niki from Huggy Bear’s all girl garage band. We made a tape in my bedroom and gave ‘em out to whoever asked, and ended up putting out four records by the time we broke up, when we were all seventeen. After that I played in a bunch of bands that only made tapes, bands that only existed in name and concept, and bands that were more about hanging out and skateboarding than actually making music. From the Fucking French Boyfriends to Elle Touer, SS Lucifer to the Frigidairres, the first “real” band I did was when I was 19, called Petty Crime. By “real” I mean a band that played shows and existed as part of a punk community rather than as a hang out opportunity between the six or seven girls I skated with. I actually have a list somewhere of every band name we came up with, something like fifty conceptual bands, some of which made tapes, which I think I still have, some of which were just conversations.
When I was in Skinned Teen there were a group of dudes at our drummer Esme’s secondary school who were in a Pearl Jam cover band. It used to drive them absolutely fucking insane that we played shows with Sonic Youth offshoots and they were playing in the beer garden at local pubs. They couldn’t understand why we, who “couldn’t play” were somehow given all these opportunities to “make it,” while they languished with their guitar skills and “Jeremy” covers in cruddy old Brentford pubs. We refused to give interviews to the music papers, we didn’t want to “make it” we wanted to make music, have a good time and connect with other grrrls. We wanted to find the weirdos who didn’t want to be part of the music industry, who wanted to make their own thing on their own terms. To make a subculture rather than pursue sponsorship opportunities. When we get sent demo tapes at MRR, I like the ones that sound like they were made by people who can’t help but exist in that same idea of music. Music that sounds like it wasn’t an attempt to make a perfect carbon copy of a specific era of hardcore or punk history. I like it when a band sounds like they were trying to make a certain sound, but couldn’t, so they ended up with some weirdo shit out of necessity rather than conceit.
I started writing about this because for the first time in about five years I picked up my guitar and started playing again last week. I am not sure why I stopped, but I am going to try make myself play regularly. My friend Tobi says that she sets aside a couple hours a week just to play guitar, otherwise it doesn’t happen. I am going to try do this. I am also going to try and write every day. This pile of drivel that I emit each month is the only thing I write anymore. I used to put out my own zines, which I haven’t for a few years. Mostly I don’t think I have the time to do it, running MRR is super life consuming… I haven’t even made anyone a mix tape for an epic amount of time, which I used to do on a monthly basis. I wrote this just to remind myself to continue to produce punk culture outside of these inky pages you hold in your hands. And if you are reading this, and I owe you a mix tape—it’s on the way!
Whatwewantisfree.blogspot.com
layla@maximumrocknroll.com

how come you're such a hit with the girls

2010-06-17T17:56:00.000-07:00

better get on it

Beer isn't good for you! I don't like beer! Unit three plus venus!!!

2010-05-28T12:43:00.000-07:00

Puffy Areolas? Really tho

2010-05-24T18:57:00.001-07:00

New LP on Siltbreeze rages.

Here is a tape

necro hippies rule

2010-05-16T16:33:00.000-07:00

Necro Hippies Garage Show 2.15.2010 from paul danos on Vimeo.

go see them play fools!

RIP

2010-05-11T22:40:00.001-07:00

This city, San Francisco is the first time I have lived somewhere within walking distance of the ocean since the ’90s. when I lived in Brighton, England for three years of college. I have now lived here for five years, with two years spent in Oakland before that. Prior to Oakland I lived in London for a year, before which I was in New York City for close to two years, I moved there from Orange County, California where I lived for a little over two years. I moved to the OC to care for my grandmother, just after I graduated from college in England, where I am from. I moved to Brighton as a teenager from London, the city in which I was born and raised. A somewhat incongruous, sloppy and inadequately put together paragraph to indicate that I started volunteering at MRR shortly after moving to the Bay Area, which is the place I have lived the longest since abandoning my home town, London. Every so often people will ask why I don’t move to NYC or LA, or back to London. As if I am here while I figure out what my “real life” is going to entail in a big city… When I lived in all those other places, I used to think, when things got bad—well, you can always leave.
At first MRR was just something I did every so often, hopped on a BART train and did the radio show a couple times a month. Then I got sucked in, through new and different responsibilities, eventually leading me to coordinator-ship. I think the longest anyone has been a coordinator of this magazine, barring Tim, is Arwen’s six year run. Most other coordinators seem to last around three before burn out strikes. I started in ’08, so I guess if I succumb to the same disease that affected all the others, I’ll burn out in 2011. A year before the apparent end of the world. Hopefully by that point I will have achieved my goal of owning the Foams 45, publishing a fanzine that is not MRR, making mix tapes for all those I’ve promised them to, and finding more new bands that affect me as much as Sex Vid did. Dare to dream…
I have been thinking about all of this stuff partially because of training a new coordinator, and partially because of Bruce’s death. Endings and beginnings. Someone said that Lance Hahn, Tim Yo and Bruce were the trinity of Maximum, that it really was the end of a real and specific era. When I first got my column in the magazine a few long time shitworkers wrote me postcards and emails, commenting on things I was obsessing over. Lance wrote me about going to see Unit Three Plus Venus, an early ’80s band featuring a mildly exploitative stage mom’s attempt at finding fame through her twelve year old daughter. Lance saw them play in Hawaii, when he was growing up, and wrote about going to see anything, any show, any punk event, which I totally could relate to. I always felt like punk was happening far from my eyes, in a different town, a different country. Bruce Roehrs always made jokes about how he didn’t read the magazine, and yet if I mentioned that I was looking for a record in my column, it would come up in conversation somehow.
When he finally got his records out of storage, he pulled out a Desperate Bicycles 45 for me, remembering that I had talked about never seeing their records in record stores in London as a kid. He was thoughtful like that. Kind. Open minded. The kind of man who claimed he couldn’t stand bands with female vocalists, yet frequently wore a Red Aunts shirt. Not one of my favorite bands, or even a band I can understand liking, but an all girl band nonetheless. He claimed he hadn’t eaten a vegetable since 1969, yet went out to dinner to Thai and Indian places twice a week with his best friend Dirk, and Dirk’s two year old daughter. It’s strange writing this, knowing that this month is the last month that this magazine will feature his music writing. I will never have to call him, a week past his supposed deadline, waiting expectantly for the reams of yellow lined legal paper that made up his column, his music reviews. He was supposed to review the new Antiseen CD, the THUG 12” and a Thieves 7” this month. Who else can review Antiseen? The idea that anyone else at this magazine is qualified would have made Bruce roll his eyes, and roll up his sleeves and get to work. He loved both the THUG and the Super Yob records, played them constantly the way he did all the records that came in that consumed him. At top volume, always wanting others to share the pleasure he got from punk, from hardcore, from oi! He loved talking to everyone here about music, from Steve Spinali, to Marissa Magic. He was able to find the common ground, the shared love of sound, that particular feeling that you get when something hits you just right. He never stayed still, was never static, stuck in the sounds of his youth. He always wanted to hear the new bands, the local bands, the support bands. I often witnessed him leaving shows early, just watching the support bands, for whom no one else could spare the time.
Interviewing Fred and Toody Cole of Dead Moon with him was one of the coolest and most enriching experiences of my time here, all of us crammed in the MRR courtyard, asking these legends about how they got to where they were, what decisions they made, how they made those sounds. Bruce sitting there, beside himself with happiness to be in the company of others who loved music as much as he did, who had also stayed true to their idea of what rock’n’roll is, and what it could be. It isn’t an oldies station, playing the same five songs on repeat. It’s in the blood of people like Bruce, like Fred and Toody who are always looking for what’s happening now, at the same time as staying true to what they believe. Connecting the past to the present without writing off either, experience and excitement, being a fan. Music is lived experience, and Bruce was the living embodiment of someone who lived for music, who loved music and was able to communicate his enthusiasm and passion to an audience in such a unique way. Who else could review the new Antiseen CD? No one could give it the review Bruce would have, and that makes me sad, makes me realize what we have lost. A brother, a friend, a true rock’n’roller, a man who lived on his own terms until the end. It’s been hard writing this, trying to encapsulate all the complexities that made up the man, what stories to tell, and what are best forgotton. I have a feeling that the stories are going to keep pouring out, from all over the world, from all the people that were affected by Bruce and his pure love of rock’n’roll as well as his kindness and friendship.
layla at maximumrocknroll.com / whatwewantisfree.blogspot.com

2010-05-11T22:35:00.000-07:00

Thee olde toppe tenne! Cut in half, bargain bin stylee.

1-The mysterious NZ comp 12” that Graham Booth tantalized my ears and brains with, it came out sometime in 1980/1981, featured mostly girl punk bands, had weird blue, kind of psychedelic cover that sort of resembled a ‘70s curtain more than a black light painting if ya know what I’m saying. At any rate I didn’t bother to write anything down—band names, who needs em. I had an idea of the comp title and record label, and assumed I could use the power of the computer search tools available in modern life to
find out more. How wrong I was! There is nothin’ anywhere about this artifact, the search led me to the absolutely insane and amazingcore Y2K Axemen blog. The maniac New Zealand band have provided a most excellent resource and time suck rabbit hole of doom, theaxemen.wordpress.com, into which I suggest you throw yourself if you are interested in downloading tapes of pre-Shoes This High bands, looking at eye damaging art and finding out which over the counter medicines have psychedelic properties. In short if you need to know about New Zealand punk weirdos and the things they conceived of during the ‘80s through ‘til now, that place is a good starting point. I am being purposely vague here, but if anyone knows what I am talking about in regards to this
record and can tape it for me, we would be friends for life. No lie.
2-”Peer Pressure was a Santa Cruz band (1980-1981) involving Kathy McVey, Rosemary Gilman and Patricia Gleseke. Kathy and Rosemary had sat in on some Waybacks shows and then decided to start their own band. They were “driving along and there was this girl standing there at the stoplight with drumsticks in her pocket, and we go ‘Hey, you wanna be in a band?’“ The girl was Patricia. John Peel played their song “I’m
Adult” so often on his radio show that they received fan mail from England.” It sounds like a less rock Bush Tetras, it’s much more shambolic (and thus punker), but with that similar band idea. At any rate of course I couldn’t find much more info about them, beyond an aging Santa Cruz punk Facebook page. I like the idea of the band forming out of some version of the punk nod, one adapted for punk girls…
3-I was going to go see Chain and the Gang, Ian Svenonius’ new band, which I have yet to hear, but alas the excursion was not possible. I have been listening to a lot of tapes recently, as I have a Walkman rather than an iPod, (due to bank balance deficiencies rather than luddite tendencies) and I’ve been listening to these Nation of
Ulysses tapes I got in the dollar bin at Amoeba. I was obsessed with NOU as a kid, and only didn’t go see them play because I was grounded when they played London. The Cupid Car Club 7” is pretty perfect too, but not so much his later stuff. Walking to work listening to NOU makes me want to form a band, a secret society. I have been attempting to get rid of some of the ephemera I carry around with me, the epic piles of fanzines and fliers and magazines that clutter my room and become the bane of my life when I have to move… The gas station jacket, probably last worn in ’95, complete with mottled Heroin patch? Do I need this artifact? Sassiest Boy in America? Nostalgia will sink us all.
4-The Plugz–“Mindless Contentment.” The punk song that gets stuck in my head the most is GG Allin’s “1980s RocknRoll.” This is not the best thing that has ever happened to me. I also get these classic numbers rattling around my thoughts on a way too frequent basis: “You’re so Stark / Raving normal” and also, “No hope for you / No hope for anyone / No hope for the wretched.” If you don’t know the words to these things and they do not reverberate around your skull like an endless woeful infomercial, consider
yourself blessed. This month however I have had the Plugz in my brains, which is quite pleasant.
Mindless Contentment!
5-Nu Sensae live. Holy shit. People mentioned Godheadsilo, which also happened when XYX
played. Bass and drums? Reasonably heavy? Pigeon holed! The singer/bassist was sort of
reminiscent of Linda Manz in Out of the Blue. The drummer’s style is transformative, and made me think of listening to Is This My World? It’s not sludge, it’s not no wave, it’s not AmRep, nor KRS, but just heavy interesting music played well with an incredible female vocalist.

whatwewantisfree.blogspot.com
layla at maximumrocknroll.com

another column! #322 was the issue that contained this~

2010-05-11T22:29:00.000-07:00

We put this magazine together as the MRR house was being worked on—the mortar between the bricks is slowly seeping out, then the water heater broke. Cissie packed up her
things to move to Portland whilst training Mariam who just got here from Chicago. Diane’s band, Opt Out, with shitworkers Robert Collins, Dan Goetz and Trash recorded a demo. People leaving, things falling apart, bands recording, epic changes and endless disasters. We have been listening to Lullabies Make the Brain Grow, Feel the Darkness, Killed by Death #3 and Electrify Me on repeat, caffeinating our brains to full capacity and attempting to get shit done without letting the chaos that currently surrounds us overtake us…
It’s hard to understand or explain the amount of work that this job entails until you actually have to do it. I have been working on the magazine since ’03, but I had no idea how much work my friends who were coordinators did until suddenly I sat surrounded by green taped records, at 3am realizing our sales taxes were due tomorrow,
the layout I was working on just crashed, the roof above the coordinator desk is leaking and no one’s picked up mail for a week… Sometimes we sit from morning coffee until long after the rest of the world has gone to sleep, forgetting to eat, working on this thing. The stress of not knowing if we are going to make rent, all adding to the dreamy and endless interpersonal conflicts that arise in an all volunteer punk
live/work environment… Making this thing you hold in your hands is one of the most satisfying yet also the most difficult and most frustrating things I have ever
done. Getting to interview people that I respect, from Raymond Pettibon to Sharon Cheslow, figuring out who we should interview when we did the Film Issue, working with punks all over the world to make our culture what it is. All of this shit is transformative, but as insinuated above, it’s also absolutely exhausting. Cissie is
leaving San Francisco, and Maximum for Portland, and I will miss her tireless work ethic, her insanely extensive musical knowledge, her sense of humor and the hours of working together to put out the magazine every month. Her band, Vaccuum, with three shitworkers (yep you guessed it—Robert Collins plays in this one too, along with Vinnie Larussa and Daiki) played their last show, and made a demo last week. (It’s
reviewed in the demo section—send off for it punx!) The show was nearly all shitworker
bands, and watching Tim Brooks yell at little Phil from the audience, while his band Airfix Kits killed it on stage, while Bruce Roehrs actually stayed for all the bands that played, reminded me why I love doing this shit. A random collection of people who have incredibly different political views, musical tastes, ways of operating that can somehow work together for no reward other than making punk happen and, you know,
this magazine happen.
Tuberculosis / Rayos X / Poliskitzo / Des Madres El Crisis at Balazo. Tuberculosis’ first song, which I think you can watch on the LA Raw Ponx MySpace—the whole show is up
there—was one of the most incrdible inspiring things I have seen so far this year. As was Opt Out / Jump Off a Building / Duck and Cover at Thrillhouse. The punk community here can feel super alienating and disparate, but at these two shows I felt like something was happening, something worth participating in... Sort of a random column this month, written in chaos, panic and disorder.

Anyway as always I am here:layla at maximumrocknroll.com

Another one! WORDS

2010-05-11T22:27:00.000-07:00

Usually it’s George Tabb who goes over the word count and squeezes the coordinator columns to their most minimal, this month it was Roehrs who unleashed an epic. What with Cock Sparrer live in SF, and the Agnostic Front reissues, the Roehrs universe was at its peak. I have been not been existing in a universe at its peak, just walking round town listening to tapes I made last time I had a walkman, in the early ’00s. King Crimson and PP Arnold, Quix*o*tic and Circus Lupus, Unwound and Jerry’s Kids. Wanna make me a tape? Brace claims he is going to. I am making one for Osa because she asked me about Wilma, San Francisco’s own lesbian separatist post-punk force who were on Subterranean. One of the women from Wilma gave a talk at the library here, for the queer part of the Penelope Houston curated punk series they’ve been having at libraries in town. Penelope is a librarian at the main branch here, and there was a rad exhibition of her Avengers ephemera, fliers and original record art, alongside an incredible photo exhibition by this woman Ruby Ray. The picture of the Zeros lying on the chalk body outline of a fresh murder scene in North Beach was my favorite. There’s going to be a Ruby Ray book, with contributions from Annex of Search and Destroy, who was involved with the early years of Maximum Rocknroll radio too. Annex’s daughter Zoe is a punk as well, continuing the family tradition, she says she is gonna interview Ruby for the mag, so that’s something to look forward to. I wanted to have it in the photo issue, but we thought it would be cooler to focus on more recent punk photographers. There are gonna be some other classic punk photographers interviewed in these pages in the upcoming months, including Edward Colver…
I like making tapes again, especially with the MRR library at my fingertips… Someone told me about this band Dress Up Like Natives, an all girl early ’80s Pittsburgh punk band that kind of remind me of a poppier Ama-Dots. (Another rad post-punk band from the same era from Milwaukee—a friend found their 7” about ten years ago in the 99c bin at Amoeba, I got one on Ebay as soon as I heard his copy). I dug out the MRR copy of the Dress Like Natives 7”, and started obsessing as to if there were other Pittsburgh girl bands at the same time. I wrote a few months back about a movie, Debt Begins at Twenty about the PGH art punk scene of this era, and guess what, you can watch it online now! www.lux.org.uk/collection/works/debt-begins-20. It’s a black and white movie, with sort of a boy meets girl plot, but basically it’s just about punks hanging out and putting on a house show in early ’80s Pittsburgh. My favorite band in it was Hans Brinker and the Dykes, who sound like Noh Mercy, and thusly are incredible. I have detectives at work trying to figure out if they recorded anything beyond this movie. Someone told me that despite the fact that the Cardboards had a great name, their record was super dull (but worth a lot of money!). They’re sort of like an uncool Contortions with the touch of a more awkward Devo, if you can picture that collision of dorkiness. I guess the drummer, who is the star of the movie kept the band going after the rest of the original members quit and put out that record. Anyway, if you don’t like art punk you will not be enthralled, but I do and I was. More girl bands that sound like Noh Mercy!
layla at maximumrocknroll.com whatwewantisfree.blogspot.com

A column from MRR 320 that is very random!

2010-05-11T22:18:00.000-07:00

Alot of times when you have to make a difficult decision regarding the magazine, there’s an unmistakable voice in the back of your mind intoning, “Tim wouldn’t have done it that way,” or something to that effect. Certain things about the way that the magazine is run are set in stone, most of them for good reason. This isn’t Punk Rock Confidential, so even though we could use the revenue, you aren’t gonna see advertisements for Ramones baby-wear or Social D sneakers anytime soon... We always get into long conversations about whether or not something is punk—or, if it is punk, is it Maximum? Are the Young Marble Giants punk in a way that means they can exist in the same review section as Terveet Kädet? Really? There are reviews of SPK and Diamanda Galas records in early issues of MRR...
One thing that always struck me as a little strange was the fact that there was only one Fugazi record in the record collection. That band shaped how I view punk and DIY culture, and I see them as very much a part of the same idea of punk that MRR represents. It’s well known that a lot of the records missing from MRR’s record library were either rejected or purged because of Tim’s own preferences and prejudices—it was his own personal collection, after all... In recent years, in order to fill these holes, we have in one way or another replaced a lot of classic punk
records that he deemed unsuitable—in this issue we have a review of the Raincoats’
debut LP, just reissued on KRS, which was not kept in the collection (though their first 7” was). And Dischord kindly send copies of all the Fugazi records we are missing earlier this month. If you are interested in seeing a list of some of the records we are missing and want to acquire, you can email mrr at maximumrocknroll.
com. At some point we hope to have a database of the entire collection online,
when our computer wizards are finished with this mammoth task. If you are interested in
doing shitwork relating to that, feel free to email our web coordinator Paul here:
paul at maximumrocknroll.com.

Whatwewantisfree.blogspot.com is where
my old columns go to die on the internet.
Write me: layla at maximumrocknroll dot com

I dd the radio show! Yay!

2010-04-26T13:55:00.000-07:00

HOORAY!

RIP

2010-03-18T14:12:00.000-07:00

we will miss you.

sorry I never post here dudes

2010-03-08T18:47:00.000-08:00

but you can watch this amazing artifact of early 80s Pittburgh artpunker action here:
http://www.lux.org.uk/collection/works/debt-begins-20

the part when hans brinker and the dykes play=next level

shoddy factory

2009-12-20T19:54:00.000-08:00

I hate it when you get those weird eye twitches, continual reminder of something awry. Maybe it’s a bad diet, or not enough sleep, or just the stress of existence... A sweaty few days wandering through LA with no car and no direction, except a free ticket to Disneyland, and some avocados from my grandparent’s back yard. Then back here in time to fix the proof of the magazine, before we go to print, and it’s column writing time! I used to harass Golnar about how her columns seemed so half-assed sometimes, obviously written at the last possible second, and now I sit in the chair she once sat in I find myself in the same boat. I feel about as inspired as it’s possible to be when waiting for a delayed flight in an airport lounge. I was going to write about going to see the Raincoats, at this epic touring Part Time Punks fest, which was sort of a post-punk version of Holidays in the Sun. Only instead of Splodgenessabounds and the English Dogs, it featured Viv Albertine from the Slits, the Raincoats, a really shoddy Factory act called Section 25, and Savage Republic. Then whatever local acts from whatever town the tour happened in that fitted in with the Part Time Punks aesthetic and didn’t mind that they probably weren’t going to get paid. I know a few bands were advertised as playing at several shows who didn’t play, that were super psyched to play with the Raincoats but got bugged out at the fact that the promoters wanted them to play for free, but were also charging $25 dollars admission… Cash from chaos! There were actually something like twelve bands playing the SF show. It was a grueling night set to test the endurance of both audience and band. First I went to see Cissie’s new band play their first show, with D-Clone and Nerveskade. They were excellent; with Cissie on bass, Vinnie on drums, Daiki on Guitar and Robert Collins on vocals what more could one expect? I left the show early after a long exchange with D-Clone’s road crew about my giant Vulpess badge. (I got it from the LA Rawponx if you find yourself needing one…)

Anyway, my former band mate was playing drums for the Raincoats, so I skipped the $25 dollar entrance fee, and I assumed my late arrival meant I would manage to skip some of the turgid support acts. NOT THE CASE AT ALL. I only missed Grass Widow, who I actually kind of like. A local band played next, called Magic Bullets I think. Imagine an AHA! Cover band playing all the songs from every John Hughes movie. If people think that shit like that is post-punk, in that the word punk is associated at all with what they were doing, they need their brains examined. It was new wave for secretaries’ night out. I can’t remember much about the terrors followed. So many bad bands! The venue felt like the kind of place where they shoot the club scenes for say Buffy the Vampire Slayer or The Crow, and in fact Savage Republic sounded like they should have been the band in that sort of TV show/corny movie club scene. They had a Tool/leather trench coat vibe to their sound, and I was told that when the Raincoats finished their soundcheck, the guitarist for savage Republic made fun of how “inept” they were, then started shredding Steve Vai style on his guitar. Why would you book a show with some stupid past-it rock band, who don’t even know who the Raincoats are? Savage Republic were one saxophone solo away from being that shitty band from the Lost Boys.

The Raincoats were great—I was really nervous about seeing them play. My band played with them when they first got back together in 1993, we were teenagers and thought they sounded like hippie mom rock. They played a song with Viv Albertine, which was dreamy, and in general managed to convey the adventurous idea of music that their records encapsulate. It didn’t seem like a pastiche of something that once meant something else, but instead was a continuation of a musical idea that echoes on in girls’ bedroom bands. That’s about all I got room for, more next month I swear!

Human Causes (this is from the queer issue I for got to put it up here)

2009-12-18T13:28:00.000-08:00

I know people dismiss the ’90s punk personal-is-political years as being one long boring workshop at a fest with a bunch of bands that whined more than they played, but for me at least coming of age in that calling-you-on-yr-shit culture made me think about what I was taught, and interrogate what punk and hardcore offered me as a girl. It’s weird sitting here writing this shit, month after month, year after year, thinking about

when I first moved here, in ’03 and starting shitworking for the mag that I am now coordinator of. We went to two shows this week, one in someone’s kitchen in the Mission, where a bunch of pop punk bands played, then Libyans took the floor, and as is the case whenever I see a great band at a show such as this, totally reminded me of why I am still here. Total destruction basement hardcore with the raddest lady vocals, the right sound in a room full of psyched kids… Then another touring band, Portland’s Silent Majority, playing with Culture Kids and Fugitive Kind at a birthday generator show at the 16th St BART plaza, a show that didn’t get shut down until the last possible minute. We put together a benefit fest, San Francisco’s Doomed, at the beginning of the month to raise money for the magazine and for a new all ages space for san Francisco. There were two or three shows a night for five consecutive days, with bands ranging from the Bananas to Crime. MRR set up a show with Descarados, Adelitas, Rayos X, Tuberculosis, NN, Send the Dogs and Conquest for Death, at a bar that because of San Francisco’s weird licensing laws can put on all ages shows a couple times a month. You have to pay extra for security, and it’s true that we raised way more money at the 21+ bar show, but it was worth it. I worked door for the first three bands, (yeah it was an epic show) but caught Descarados, who were awesome, reminding me of Revolution Summer desperation mixed with the fury of Southside Chicago punk. Their 12” is great, but if you have a chance to see them do it! Tuberculosis had to cancel due to a run in wit the police shitsystem, though I think I have raved enough about that band and the inspirational South Central LA punk scene that they are part of, along with Rayos X. Hopefully there’s

gonna be a piece in MRR about it all in the not too distant future, and I know Lengua Armada are putting out a 7” or two… Watching the kids, of all ages, races and genders freak the fuck out in the pit, singing along and dancing, to the most raging punk sound, of boredom, rage, alienation and community all at once. Yeah I was not in there with them, something about punks in their thirties? Well, to be honest I don’t think I’ve been in a pit since I was fifteen, I like dancing but…

There was a shitworker band show, where bands ranged from the pummeling noise and fog machine disorientation of the aptly named Celine Dion, to the post-punk almost Zounds-esque Rank/Xerox. And another inadvertent shitworker show, featuring the very sketchy geezers (in both US and UK senses of the words), Young Offenders, and the return of the two Allans, post-Giant Haystacks with the tense herk’n’jerk of Airfix Kits. Anyway I could just list every band that played each show, but I won’t, except to say that Crime were great. Seeing them at a seedy venue with a non-pro-sound pro-attitude soundsystem made them make so much more sense as band that exists now. Thanks to all the bands, and people who came out and supported the fest and the cause! It was fucking exhausting but worth it…

You may wonder why we are accepting tax-deductible donations nowadays. We recently got sent this book, Gimme Something More, which is an oral history of punk in the Bay Area, in the tradition of We Got the Neutron Bomb or Please Kill Me. I don’t think the editors are punks, and you can tell that they focused on more sensationalist aspects of the scene and its history, plus it’s published by a major corporation, so you won’t be reading a review of it in these pages. But the chapter on MRR left me trying to imagine what it must have been like running the magazine at a point in time when it had so much money it was able to give the excess away to other zines, and projects, (like Gilman St) that the magazine aligned with politically and punk-ically. We are definitely not in that position at this point in time. We are getting by, but it’s another era of the magazine, for print media, record stores and book stores in general. We get several emails a month from kids complaining that their local spot has stopped selling Maximum, if this is the case in your town are there any other places that would work? A show space? A skate store? Another bookstore? You can get distro rates if you order five or more of the magazine, and getting a subscription makes it even cheaper than buying it from the newsstand, and you get it before it hits said newsstands. I wanted to write more about the magazines financial situation, but maybe another time…

Thanks to the Mydolls for replacing MRR’s lost Mydolls vinyl (see story on them in the TX punk article) and to Michael for all the scans of the early punk girl zines! So amazing...

new issue of MRR!

2009-12-18T13:11:00.001-08:00

Decade-End Top Tens Issue! The first issue of the decade seems a good place to discuss the music of the decade we are leaving. MRR #320, the January 2010 issue, features numerous MRR columnists, shitworkers, and reviewers pontificating on what went before musically, the platters that mattered in the—what do we call ‘em—the zeroes? We also have interviews with cover stars from Japan, D-CLONE, Olympia, Washington’s BROKEN WATER, Montreal’s COMPLICATIONS and street punk from the UK, courtesy of CONTROL. We talk with author Ian Glasper, who has just finished a three volume series on the UK underground, starting from the spiky punk of the early ’80s in Burning Britain, then moving onto the anarcho-punk scene with The Day the Country Died, and ending up with a book on the UK hardcore scene of the late ’80s, Trapped in a Scene. And as always, we feature the most extensive punk music review section in print, plus all yer usual columnists… The cover was designed by Randy Ransome.

Get this issue of MRR here: http://maximumrocknroll.com/2009/12/06/mrr320/

no room at the inn

2009-12-14T19:58:00.001-08:00

I think this may be the shortest column I have ever written—we ran outta room, so you’re getting a digested version of my epic struggles this month. What’s been going on you may ask? I have been debating internally as to whether I wanna go see the Raincoats, who are playing the same weekend as Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, somewhat randomly, at separate revival shows. Two opposing ideas of women in music that emerged outta the dank steam of the punk rock. Lydia Lunch and Gina Birch? Wimmin in musique. I have to give a talk at a local literary event about MRR, which is making me nervous. I am an awkward and obnoxious human—how am I gonna translate the aims, past, present and future of this rag you hold in yer hands to the type of crowd that attends such occurrences? What we do is secret!

New issue of MRR is out

2009-11-08T14:12:00.001-08:00

www.maximumrocknroll.com

this is skinny. I don't feel like formatting it. sorry dudes

2009-11-02T17:18:00.000-08:00

Hanging out listening to the first Gray Matter
12”, talking about the Dischord bands you
missed out on because you heard some later
record that did not encapsulate their greatness…
Though I guess that could apply to anything,
any sound, any idea, any band that started out
hardcore and decided that hair metal was the
future. I like listening to Revolution Summer
music, it just sounds nostalgic to me. Reminds
me of being a teenager, skating to see hardcore
bands play, trading zines, feeling dramatic, you
know the scoop. Things are different now, they
were different then, that time is just a memory,
rewritten to suit how one wants to regard ones
youth. Skip the endless boredom and feelings
that you’re never gonna get outta this goddamn
town, just a snapshot of walking down the street
with your best friend, both listening to the Rites
of Spring tape on separate walkmans.
I have been thinking about growing old and
staying punk a whole lot while putting this issue
together. How things change and stay the same.
There have been so many discussions about
queerness in punk and hardcore, the shifts from
the era that I got into hardcore until now, how
the internet has wiped out penpals and perzines.
Where are the girl gangs that Bikini Kill talked
about, that were gonna rule all towns? Punk is
ruthless, culture is ruthless, things are deified,
museum quality pieces, until they are no longer
needed or remembered and they disappear. Riot
Grrrl, queer core, XChicksUpFrontPosX—does
your girl gang need a name in order to do its
work, or is it OK just to labor on in the trenches,
no affiliations, no straight edge lady crew to run
with, no secret society of drunk dykes in the pit?
Can you explain why it’s cool for women and
queers to claim this tiny piece of space as their
own in the “scene?” Can you explain for the fiftieth
time why women cannot be sexist to men?
How easy it is for some guy to shut down the
conversation with one dismissive remark? How
having a network of other punk girls and queers
talking about the shit that gets them down about
the scene that they love isn’t gonna wreck some
nervous white boys world? Though maybe it
should. You just have to accept the shit to be part
of this right? You have to accept the drunken
insults and shutdowns, the thoughtless remarks
and casual dismissals. People leave, they abandon
ship because it gets tiresome and boring
always being on the defensive. Just because that
girl you know, or your one queer friend doesn’t
have any problems with sexism or homophobia
in the hardcore punk scene must mean that it
doesn’t exist. Right?
I know people dismiss the ’90s punk personal-
is-political years as being one long boring
workshop at a fest with a bunch of bands that
whined more than they played, but for me at
least coming of age in that calling-you-on-yr-shit
culture made me think about what I was taught,
and interrogate what punk and hardcore offered
me as a girl.
It’s weird sitting here writing this shit, month
after month, year after year, thinking about
when I first moved here, in ’03 and starting shitworking
for the mag that I am now coordinator
of. We went to two shows this week, one in
someone’s kitchen in the Mission, where a
bunch of pop punk bands played, then Libyans
took the floor, and as is the case whenever I see
a great band at a show such as this, totally
reminded me of why I am still here. Total
destruction basement hardcore with the raddest
lady vocals, the right sound in a room full of
psyched kids… Then another touring band,
Portland’s Silent Majority, playing with Culture
Kids and Fugitive Kind at a birthday generator
show at the 16th St BART plaza, a show that didn’t
get shut down until the last possible minute.
We put together a benefit fest, San Francisco’s
Doomed, at the beginning of the month to raise
money for the magazine and for a new all ages
space for san Francisco. There were two or three
shows a night for five consecutive days, with
bands ranging from the Bananas to Crime. MRR
set up a show with Descarados, Adelitas, Rayos
X, Tuberculosis, NN, Send the Dogs and
Conquest for Death, at a bar that because of San
Francisco’s weird licensing laws can put on all
ages shows a couple times a month. You have to
pay extra for security, and it’s true that we raised
way more money at the 21+ bar show, but it was
worth it. I worked door for the first three bands,
(yeah it was an epic show) but caught
Descarados, who were awesome, reminding me
of Revolution Summer desperation mixed with
the fury of Southside Chicago punk. Their 12” is
great, but if you have a chance to see them do it!
Tuberculosis had to cancel due to a run in with
the police shitsystem, though I think I have
raved enough about that band and the inspirational
South Central LA punk scene that they are
part of, along with Rayos X. Hopefully there’s
gonna be a piece in MRR about it all in the not
too distant future, and I know Lengua Armada
are putting out a 7” or two… Watching the kids,
of all ages, races and genders freak the fuck out
in the pit, singing along and dancing, to the most
raging punk sound, of boredom, rage, alienation
and community all at once. Yeah I was not in
there with them, something about punks in their
thirties? Well, to be honest I don’t think I’ve been
in a pit since I was fifteen, I like dancing but…
There was a shitworker band show, where
bands ranged from the pummeling noise and
fog machine disorientation of the aptly named
Celine Dion, to the post-punk almost Zoundsesque
Rank/Xerox. And another inadvertent
shitworker show, featuring the very sketchy
geezers (in both US and UK senses of the words),
Young Offenders, and the return of the two
Allans, post-Giant Haystacks with the tense
herk’n’jerk of Airfix Kits. Anyway I could just
list every band that played each show, but I
won’t, except to say that Crime were great.
Seeing them at a seedy venue with a non-pro
sound pro-attitude soundsystem made them
make so much more sense as a band that exists
now. Thanks to all the bands, and people who
came out and supported the fest and the cause!
It was fucking exhausting but worth it…
You may wonder why we are accepting taxdeductible
donations nowadays. We recently got
sent this book, Gimme Something More, which is
an oral history of punk in the Bay Area, in the
tradition of We Got the Neutron Bomb or Please Kill
Me. I don’t think the editors are punks, and you
can tell that they focused on more sensationalist
aspects of the scene and its history, plus it’s published
by a major corporation, so you won’t be
reading a review of it in these pages. But the
chapter on MRR left me trying to imagine what
it must have been like running the magazine at a
point in time when it had so much money it was
able to give the excess away to other zines, and
projects, (like Gilman St) that the magazine
aligned with politically and punk-ically. We are
definitely not in that position at this point in
time. We are getting by, but it’s another era of the
magazine, for print media, record stores and
book stores in general.
We get several emails a month from kids
complaining that their local spot has stopped
selling Maximum, if this is the case in your town
are there any other places that would work? A
show space? A skate store? Another bookstore?
You can get distro rates if you order five or more
of the magazine, and getting a subscription
makes it even cheaper than buying it from the
newsstand, and you get it before it hits said
newsstands. I wanted to write more about the
magazines financial situation, but maybe another
time… As always layla@maximumrocknroll.
com or whatwewantisfree.blogspot.com for old
columns. Thanks to the Mydolls for replacing
MRR’s lost Mydolls vinyl (see story on them in
the TX punk article) and to Michael for all the
scans of the early punk girl zines! So amazing...

new issue of MRR is out!!!!

2009-10-05T11:42:00.000-07:00

Hot off the presses, it’s the November issue of Maximum Rocknroll! This issue features interviews with Spanish distort-punkers DESTINO FINAL, the similarly noisily minded WARNING/WARNING from France, and Mexican punk deconstructionists RATAS DEL VATICANOS. There’s an interview with hardcore legend and CRO MAG, John Joseph and one with the classic genre defining Brazilian hardcore masters RATOS DE PORÃO. Austin, Texas, garage punks HEX DISPENSERS drop us a line, EXPLODE INTO COLORS continue with their post-SLITS/ESG girl-punk experimentation, and we have an Eastern European tour diary from Polish bands ANTIDOTUM and CZOSNEK. The fun doesn’t end there — we’re also covering Canadian hardcore band DISCO ASSAULT, and Chile’s female fronted straightedge hardcore punks FUERA DE LINEA. All of this and the usual columns, news, film and book reviews, plus the most extensive music review section in punk rock!

Get this issue of MRR here: www.maximumrocknroll.com

ALSO!

I did the radio show this week!

http://radio.maximumrocknroll.com/

MRR Radio #1160 • 10/3/09

October 5, 2009 in Weekly radio show by Layla | No comments

Layla and Dan stay up late and raid the seven inch box.

Intro song:
BANSHEES – Project Blue

Layla plays a random assortment of new jams
PUTAS MIERDAS – Imagina
GG KING – Drug Zoo
GRASS WIDOW – Tattoo
GUN OUTFIT – Head Enough
FINALLY PUNK – Dear Diary?

Layla plays some new hardcore
WHITE SHIT – Surf Your Life Away
CONDOMINIUM – Barricades
SLICES – I Melt for No-One
HERDS – Windigo
CONDENANDA – Nuevas Raices

Dan Goetz drags out some new stuff also!
ABSURD SYSTEM – Christ War
I HATE THIS – Shapeshifter
NOMOS – The Cunning of Nature
CULT RITUAL – Eat the Police
BROKEN WATER – Boyfriend Hole

Layla digs recent reissues
GAS – League of Golden Maidens
FLERE DØDE PANSERE – Greenham Common
JERK WARD – Angry Salmons
HLM Gang – Autonomie Proletarienne
ELLOS AUN VIVER – Ansias de Poder
KRUG I HUDIK – Helvete

Outro song:
AVENGERS – Cheap Tragedies

AND!!!

T shirt contest winner! Guillem from Barcelona. Randy and Lydia model their new shirts!

We have a new tote bag too-it's all on thee website.

It's not my imagination

2009-08-28T11:44:00.000-07:00

I was trying to find a picture of XYX to use to illustrate something on the MRR website, and found a post on a blog about them, the comments section of which contained kids, from their own scene dissing them, and all the other Monterrey punk bands (from Los Llamarada to Ratas Del Vaticano) for being posers. Not only that, but they were accused of being a weak simulation of a sound that other countries do much better, which clearly isn’t the case for any of those bands. And what even does that mean?! Specifically I can’t think of anyone, from some mythical “other country” who does what Ratas Del Vaticano do better, which is to say pummel the audience with an eloquent yet furious and raw punk sound... Their LP is rad, but really does not even come close to capturing the power and energy of seeing them play. Watching a band without a front person can be non-compelling; this band dispels that idea immediately. This was the first time I have seen a band own the stage, without moving at all. They made the Clash look like pantomime dames, their stance combined with true and total spun out fuck you sounds. Hardly anyone was at the show, and I made NN come after band practice, resulting in all of them buying the LP and a five second slam dance. Martin called it when he described them as classic Mexican punk churned up through some raw early Rip Off records style. They fucking ruled and blew me away. If you have a chance to check them out live DO IT. Seriously, go see this fucking band!

XYX played to a similarly sparse crown at San Francisco’s only all ages space, and were similarly crushing, albeit in more of a Godheadsilo style—though to call this band a derivative of anything is to undermine what they do. It’s probably the just the bass and drums only combo that brings to mind that comparison. They are both amazing musicians to watch, and the song writing, particularly on their two 7”s is phenomenal. It’s kind of big and dumb sounding, like a deconstruction of rock music, which after all is what punk is right? And that to me is why their music is so compelling, it’s got this sneer to it and is sorta ugly and stylish, intellectual somehow but dumb in the best way. I liked watching them play at a show they probably weren’t super comfortable playing, being that every other band was an all dude hardcore band of varying types, because it made it clear that they really own their sound and that they have a clear and transmutable band idea they are able to transmit even when out of place…

I can think of few places that have as exciting a scene, at least from an outsider’s perspective as Monterrey right now. I was talking to the kids in Ratas about their other bands, and tapes they’d put out or were putting out, and it was so fucking inspiring, and exemplified to me the punk ideal… Making your own band and sound and scene, representing your friend’s ideas, your community. It’s easy to dismiss what’s happening in your own town as unremarkable compared to mythical scenes that exist elsewhere. People have been doing it since the beginning of time, that feeling of being born in the wrong place at the wrong time. I think that’s what drives people to make something happen, or to throw in the towel, and write off everyone that hasn’t given up as a poser and a rip off. What is punk rock except a rip off anyway? What can you do with three chords? It’s the sound of people figuring out how to make their own sound in the face of shitty, tame rock music…

All of this brings me to one of the most frustrating aspects of punk life in San Francisco—the lack of a decent all ages space! You may have heard rumblings about a five day festival, or rather frenzy that we are putting on in conjunction with Thrillhouse, the purpose of which is to raise the funds to both help Maximum, and to set up a DIY punk run show and community space in San Francisco. I grew up in London, England, where although most shows are held in pubs, you can pretty easily sneak into them from about age 14 and up, since the age limit for drinking is a more reasonable 18 there. And at that time at least there wasn’t a national ID card, so you just had to memorize your fake birth date for the person on the door. I definitely got kicked out of some places for being underage, but they don’t card you unless you try and buy drinks, and I think there might even be some weird law that says it’s ok for kids to go to pubs under certain circumstances… Punk and hardcore are by the kids and for the kids, and 21 and over shows are exclusionary, and bar culture is boring and depressing. MRR columnist and current teenage terror, Brace Belden was unable to attend the aforementioned Ratas Del Vaticano show as a result of his age, along with the fact that his fake ID has a picture of a 60-year-old man on it. 21 as the legal drinking age seems insane to me, I know teenage binge drinkers are a constant tabloid rage subject in the UK, but the fact that you can vote and have sex here at 18, but can’t go see a show at a bar is fucking ridiculous. I went to see Deep Sleep play a couple days ago, same bar as the Ratas Del Vaticano show, and I knew that there would have been at least twice the amount of people there if it had been an all ages show. Having a hardcore show at a bar seems especially inappropriate…

***

So Cissie has announced her decision to move on from MRR this month. I have really enjoyed working with her over this past year, putting together this thing you hold in your hands. Staying up all night the week we go to print, freaking out because we are a couple thousand dollars short on rent and it was due yesterday… The fourteen hour work days and the satisfaction of knowing that we managed to make it happen, whether it’s averting another financial crisis, a printing disaster or finally getting a band we both to love to submit an interview. Running Maximum is easily the most satisfying thing I have ever done. It’s also the hardest I have ever worked; I don’t think you can explain how hard it is until you actually do it. I have worked on the magazine for six years and been close friends with all of the coordinators during that time, and I had no idea until I took on the coordinator challenge what I was getting myself into… Anyway we need you! If you are interested in applying for the position of content coordinator email us, mrr@maximumrocknroll.com and we’ll get you an application. No one gets paid, but you do get to live in the MRR house, amongst the green tape and years of punk rock history…

1-Jerk Ward discography LP (MRR need this if you put this out can you send one for review/the collection?? This band were from the same scene as Neos, similar age and crazed sound...) 2-Mottek–Hypnose LP 3-Dead Clodetes 2nd 7” 4-Skate summer late nights at the DMV 5-Pizza for every meal

Whatwewantisfree.blogspot.com

layla@maximumrocknroll.com

Nasty Facts!

2009-08-04T19:36:00.000-07:00

HAS ANYONE GOT PIX OF NASTY FACTS?? MRR NEEDS EM-300DPI!

we'll walk right through and we'll take it

2009-07-19T10:49:00.000-07:00

Anyway I am sitting in my room listening to Tuberculosis, raging female fronted hardcore punk from East LA, and thinking about what an idiot I was for missing them when they played up here with Rayos X (also from East LA) and San Francisco’s own NN. It was, by everyone in attendance’s account, the show of the year, and upon listening to this recording, it’s clear that the weird random anti-social mindset that plagued me that night shoulda been contained... www.myspace.com/rawponxlosangeles is the website that will link you to these kids and their endlessly inspiring activities. A summer tour is planned, that they still need help with some dates; you should make them play your town!
Shit like that is super inspiring to me. Martin and Jose talked about playing the aforementioned show in the NN interview in the last issue of MRR, touching on the idea of punk as an exchange where kids and aging punks get equal inspiration from each other. Rather than one copy-catting the previous generation, and the other being bleary eyed grumpy old man style. Growing old and writing off what the kids are doing? Fuck the “good old days mentality!” That shit is weak, old-man-in-a-sports-bar-by-himself style. Complaint rock! I think what makes punk refreshing compared to other underground r’n’r movements is the aspect of theft, the idea you can take something and re-appropriate it in the subtext of your own life and idea of a good time. Forcing something new out of the old and stale. The post-card punks eternally frozen in time no longer exist; a tourist attraction is not punk. Replicating the past is for those historical re-enactment groups…
Sometimes it feels like the youth are willing to use their sound and scene as a stepping stone to some bogus pseudo-major label boredom, or sneaker sponsorship, but there are always pockets of kids that understand that punk isn’t something you can package. That as soon as you do it loses meaning, becomes an image rather than an idea. It’s depressing to me that the idea of doing something for your community, for reasons other than to make it big have lost currency in other circles. The mid-level indie rock doom of rock festivals, sponsored by sneaker and jean companies—is that what you do this for??? I just read this interview with Beth Ditto, of the Gossip, and while I think she makes a great pop-star, I am slightly irritated at the fact that she feels the need to dismiss the punk scene from whence she came as a collection of people who are achieving nothing because they’re just “preaching to the choir.” I personally do not have a set of goals that can only be achieved by becoming part of the tabloid consciousness, and the playing shows to shithead jocks and vacant trendsetters who just wanna party is also not in my “to do” list. I understand that having transgressive icons in mainstream pop culture is important, but I am not interested in participating in said culture, that’s why I am a punk. That doesn’t make what I’m doing insignificant…
I think it’s also important for punks to be aware of the possibilities of what our culture has to offer, and to not take it for granted. To rise above being a shitty one-dimensional bro-dawg that disparages women and queers. The post ironic Mugger wannabe bro-mags attitude that seems so pervasive currently is tiresome and sometimes makes me wonder why I am still involved in punk.
Here are some current reasons: 1)Destino Final Live and LP 2)Turboslut tape and tourzine 3)Zombie Dogz demo 4)Tuburculosis/Rayos X/Asko CDR sampler 5)Nuclear Family/Secret service: killer Albany punx 6)Foreign Objects demo 7)Mika Miko new LP 8)Skitkids! 9)Dunes! Whatwewantisfree.blogspot.com layla@maximumrocknroll.com

ladytimes

2009-06-30T10:43:00.000-07:00

My last two columns have been part of a trilogy based on the feminine rhythm, the sound of the uterus in rock, this is the third and final chapter, for all the wimmin in the place, throw your hands up in despair. A greatest hitz of women in rock, the mishaps and bad puns, the sexist jokes and bad hair days!
1. The Wrecks demo will not be reissued by Grand Theft Audio; the convoluted reason given to this earnest reporter relates to the fact that there are two demo tapes, and a track on an old K! records comp tape! And the songs overlap, and there aren’t enough of them! From the mouth of the source of the knowledge! This seems lame to me, like you only are worth of reissue if you have a double-CD’s worth of material?? Someone do a 7” discography now! (The Wrecks were an all-girl hardcore band from Nevada in the early/mid ’80s, in case you missed my earlier missives)
2. Turboslut broke up! I got an excellent letter and package from the mysterious Beck cursing me for mentioning Heavens To Betsy in the same sentence as her band in a previous column! And also for my callous dismissal of their band name. Interview coming up soon! Legend of thee Turboslut! You can get tapes, a tour zine and a split 12” and you probably should. If you wanna hear the sound of doomed turboslutsavedmylife@gmail.com
3. After getting the MyDolls CD for review in this issue, I suddenly started thinking about that other early ‘80s Austin based girl punk band, The Foams. MRR has a copy of their only 7”, that I currently cannot find of course, but does anyone know what the deal was with this band? Their music is at once charming and sinister, of course they often get compared to The Shaggs, that inept yet confident sound… Do they have anything else? A tape? Need to know! Also need this 7” if you got one?!
4. Apparently there’s a Chalk Circle discography CD in the works, there’s an interview with band member Sharon Cheslow in MRR #298 that details the history of this early ‘80s all-girl DC art-punk band, hangin out in Georgetown… Someone should put that out on vinyl too! A helpful human forwarded me this link, which will lead to Sharon Cheslow’s list of women in punk between 1975 and 1980! A most magnificent resource for all future girl bands to take notes from, and of course, use as ammunition.
www.mindspring.com/~acheslow/AuntMary/bang/wip.html
5. The Brat, East LA’s dreamiest, and the band that define, or rather refine the concept of pop punk also have a discography CD on the way. The picture of them on the cover of the February ‘82 issue of Low Rider magazine is the definition of hip, the band’s stance, Teresa’s presence… A band that looks as good as they sound, that insinuates they have no depth, which is totally not the case. The lyrics are perceptive, politically aware, managing to capture both the lightness and heaviness of youth! From roller skating to state oppression, with grace and style… I am psyched that they are finally gonna get their due. There’s a great interview/retrospective in Razorcake #37, which you can still pick up via their website.
Also! on the MRR stereo with alarming frequency is a tape sent in by Héctor of Cintes Podrides featuring Escroto De Rata and Epidemia…. How much do we heart falling apart desperate Spanish punk? An answer is not necessary. I hear La Vida Es Un Mus are involved somehow in future vinyl production so keep your eyes out.
On the web: whatwewantisfree.blogspot.com or layla@maximumrocknroll.com
You may have noted the back cover, we are working on a new queer punk issue, so if you have an idea for a piece, a secret history, a band you wanna interview, you know the score! The deadline is July 15th. Email or write us!!

Dear Diary!

2009-05-10T12:34:00.000-07:00

This month I watched underage drunk, Brace Belden, and his mutating face watching the Blank Dogs. I also got obsessed with the x_x 7”s, decided it was time to start a band, and had many conversations with different people about Women in Punk and Hardcore. In all caps. It’s a dissertation subject! Your PHD on gender studies and chix in the pit’ll write itself! Or maybe you can write about Riot Grrrl, no one has done that—hell that’s just what the cultural studies field needs. Another thesis about gender ‘n’ punk that focuses on the first, and only all girl youth subculture, aka riot grrrl! Why start a band, or make a zine, when you can write a paper about girls that did that stuff already in the olden days?
The modern age is a tribute to the database, an epic list of things that happened, things that will never happen again, and things you missed out on because of the shitty town you were born in, the shitty year you were born in, and so forth, and so forth. What will people write papers about in the future? That awesome message board discussion about the girls of the late ‘70s Pittsburgh no wave scene, or maybe an analysis of the stage banter of the 50th gen. pizza-thrash skateboard-hardcore revival?
Either way I can’t wait. What about the inevitable coffee table book of all the riot grrrl theses?
***
Here are some bands I will be in very soon, plus several bands that I was in that were just late night long distance telephone conversations: The Teenage Tombs. The Terrible Turncoats. Douche and the Fucking Bags. Nervous Drivers. Fucking French Boyfriends. There are others. I made a list somewhere once. I am also working on a new issue of my fanzine, it’s about women in music, all of our feelings and thoughts compiled in one place.
“Why is the rent always due on the same day, why is the clock always set to the wrong time, and all those other things that conspire against a good time?”
“Girls are the new boys, tag it on cop cars.”
How many hardcore bands are there that are all female? How many all-girl bands consider themselves to be hardcore bands, that are not considered hardcore by “the kids?”
***
How come in The Gender Revolts Simon Reynolds asserts that the Raincoats are the only true “women’s music” that came out of punk? Maybe he adds the Slits to that too. But really? What is women’s music? Stuff that’s ok for Michigan Women’s Fest? Stuff that teenage girls actually wanna listen to? Let’s get essentialist duuuuuuuuude. Feel those feminine rhythms? That’s those Women In Rock! The breakfast of champions. Championed by women rockers only. An exclusive number.
***
Top Ten Women in Rock
1-What Patti Smith has for breakfast
2-How Diamanda Galas feels about Henry Rollins
3-Supermodels wearing Bikini Kill t-shirts on party blogs.
4-All the lady bands that started after they watched Lizzie Borden’s Born in Flames.
5-What We Do is Secret. SECRET!
6-That Go-Gos double live bootleg 7”
7-That discography Sharon Cheslow did of every woman in a band between ‘77 and ‘82 that exists somewhere on the internet that I cannot find now.
www.mindspring.com/~acheslow/AuntMary/bang/wip.html
8-That time of the month.
9-Your little sister’s street punk band
10-”Girls should rule all towns” Bikini Kill, 1991.
***
Also!
Is the D-beat a feminine rhythm?
Does anyone even care?
Is Women in Rock the most redundant
phrase? What is rock music at this point?
Sheryl Crow? Joan Jett? A karaoke version of “Kids in America?”
Is there ever going to be a reissue of The Wrecks demo? What about Nog Watt?
Are we gonna drown in irony and the fear of looking stupid or getting ridiculed? Is that why people keep their mouths shut?

Either way, answers on a postcard.
“I Kept it in my bag / Won’t let the authorities have it / Your hot rock / Radiation rock /Meteorite / Outta site!”
Huggy Bear.

Layla at maximumrocknroll dot com

Cult Ritual

2009-04-28T10:19:00.000-07:00

this is the next issue of MRR, I designed the cover.

It's not out yet...

2009-04-12T21:19:00.000-07:00

Dudes!!

Check out the new maximum rocknroll website! We are gonna have an even better one this summer...

www.maximumrocknroll.com

You’ll never see your face in a magazine.

2009-04-03T10:40:00.000-07:00

“I was involved in the U.S. hardcore scene through writing, rather than touring. Anne and I worked on one of the earliest DC hardcore zines, Now What?, published in 1981 by Sarah Woodell. Then I became pen pals with guys all over the US through Colin Sears’ and my zine If This Goes On. There was this great network of fanzine writers who were also in punk bands, but they were all guys. My whole attitude was that I didn’t want to be a groupie, I wanted to participate as an equal. I communicated with Thurston Moore who had just started Sonic Youth and did Killer, Barry Hennsler of the Necros who did Smegma Journal, Bob Moore who was in Rebel Truth for a bit, did Noise and ran the label Version Sound, and one of the guys from Jody Foster’s Army who did Phenis. We all just found each other by reading each other’s zines.” (Sharon Cheslow, MRR # 298)

The first fanzine I ever got was because I read a blurb about Bikini Kill in Sassy magazine, an alternateen mag from ye olde ‘90s, and sent off for the zine mentioned. Soon after I read about Huggy Bear, based in my hometown London, who it seemed did a zine for every show they played in the early days at least, and thus my introduction to the world of xeroxed missives. Also trading zines with a lot of sXe girl pen pals at various expensive liberal arts schools in small towns of the American mid-west, as I got more into hardcore. I did my first zine when I was 13, called Drop Babies, which shifted into a more skate and hardcore orientated zine called Chimps, which I theoretically still do. There were always way more girls making zines than making bands, and I always think of how lucky I was as an isolated punk teenager in that era, so many fanzines to send off for and kids to write. Anyway, as we were putting this issue together I was reading a bunch of old zines from different eras, old Pettibon zines, Touch and Go, Forced Exposure and Tobi Vail’s Jigsaw, the Huggy Bear made Reggae Chicken and Parlez-Vous Code Fucker, thinking about the shifting meaning of punk and the different ways of representing it in paper form. We wanted this issue to be something you would pick up, and be inspired to make your own zine, but not just any zine. One that represents what punk is and can be—reactionary and transgressive, creepy and hilarious, political and moronic. Or none of those words...
I think Janelle says it best in the interview with her contained within; something along the lines that hopefully blogs have weeded out all the self-important bloated per-zine types. And thus, NOW IS THE TIME FOR YOU TO WRITE YOUR WEIRDO TREASTISE! Ten page article on the Wipers guitar sound? The punk ladies of East LA? Staying up all night at the donut store? Your all-girl skate gang? I think the secret is to cover what you want to happen, your ideas and adventures rather than making a “grrrl zine” or a “coffee and hitchhiking and bad emo zine.” It’s so fucking depressing reading the same dude’s zine over and over—about travelling the west coast whilst reading Cometbus and Kerouac and drinking diner coffee and having many life changing revelations.
I wanted to write a piece about the secret history of girl zines—Sharon’s quote at the start of this made me think about how zines were such important currency in the early hardcore scene, and yet how transient and disposable they are in comparison to records. Since zines are a primary way that women contribute to punk culture, our ideas and contributions disappear as the moms of former punks make them clear out their bedrooms. I like the idea of punk not being set in stone, kept up forever, flowers by the gravestone in memoriam to old ideas and happenings. But it’s also depressing, like unless Sharon and Cynthia had put together the Banned in DC book I would have had no idea that women were so instrumental in the construction of that scene, because there’s no discography of girl written hardcore zines you know? But then I also get bugged out about getting contacted by endless academics looking to write a book about Riot Grrrl, which I would like to be regarded in the same way as punk, where new generations of girls make it their own, form it in their own image if that makes sense. Rather than ossifying it and making it into some weird postcard punk thing that you must adhere to or else you are doing it wrong! It should be a template for girl punk culture maybe, but just as a basis that you can and should do something, not as a rule book or a formal guide line if that makes sense…
I wrote to a friend from from England who put together a super awesome zine called New Britain, in the early ‘90s because I had this vague recollection of him writing about this teenage girl who made her own zine, in the Crass/anarcho era of English punk, which combined bands she liked and weird hair style tips. He had no memory of this article, so maybe I invented it, but I have carried the idea with me that alongside the forever memorialized Sniffin’ Glue there were secret fanzine girls at work. And there were; one of the women that helped set up the Huggy Bear/Bikini Kill tour that changed my 14 year old life did a zine in ‘77 called Jolt focusing on women’s contributions to punk, and sexism in the scene.
“The very fact that rock, the so-called rebel culture, has always been completely male-dominated just goes to show once more that if there’s one person more oppressed than a teenage boy it’s a teenage girl”
(Lucy Toothpaste, Jolt)
Apparently the Slits went round to her house to hang out after reading the zine, which is so fucking cool. The ultimate punk nod of recognition! The insert to the Ultimo Resorte discography that just came out has a picture of a zine called Femzine, which instantly made me freak out. Created by Dena, an American who moved to England, it was an early ‘80s hardcore zine focusing on women’s involvement in the scene. It featured Vulpess, Sadonation, Ultimo Resorte, and the Wrecks amongst others, and I think maybe there are PDFs of it available online somewhere?? Not sure! I know you can download Dena’s contributions to Flipside via that Operation Phoenix records website, and there’s a cool lady punks in Europe guide from the same era.
It’s a paradox, on one hand the endless coffee table books and talking heads reliving their epic hardcore pasts have made me weary, but then I also am totally consumed by the ephemera of old era punk and hardcore and find it frustrating that only Riot Grrrl ever makes it into any of the books. And that just fits the right boxes, the first all girl youth subculture? I’ll write my MA thesis on that fer sure! It makes me think of how people would say that finally punk ‘made it’ when Green Day and Nirvana did, as if those bands signify such a thing, and the day punk ‘makes it’ is the day punk dies. What we do is secret! Anyway, this is as always just a rambling list of things I have been thinking about but what is more important is that you need to do a fanzine! Seriously, secret society of girls, time to represent your up all night skate sessions and bedroom bands…
Whatwewantisfree.blogspot.com

Off the Hook

2009-02-17T12:05:00.000-08:00

Sitting in my room a million miles from anyone I am related to; Israel is decimating the Gaza strip, someone on eBay has bid up a Fingers 7” to five thousand dollars with five days to go. Meanwhile in the land of the brave, I just ate a burrito and am listening to the new Lebenden Toten LP. The part in “Youth of America” when Greg Sage says, “I don’t wanna be born here again / Do you wanna be born here again / This ain’t no existence...” Consumption doesn’t pay when you have nothing to say at two in the morning. Nothing left to buy so why even go to work. The world is about to end and it’s gonna take us out with it. People losing their jobs and living in car park communities, millionaires not being able to afford Lear jets, aging dowager aunts being cheated out of their retirement funds by Ponzi schemists, Pakistani truck drivers being killed by militants on the Khyber Pass because the US doesn’t provide security for them once they’ve delivered their goods to the army bases. Who is “us” anyway? People who didn’t go to grad school that work shitty minimum wage jobs? People with expensive educations making value judgments on those without? The mythical private liberal arts colleges and Ivy League schools where rich girls are formed, and those there on scholarships learn to exclude previous life experiences or to form combative identities based on said experiences… The worst. I spent Xmas making cookies and listening to the Eskorbuto song “Ha Ilegado el Momento (el fin)” over and over. Posh enough for you? Does one ever get over class resentment? Over the fact that grad school or even university isn’t a given in the world I come from? The parents that pay the bills. Doomed till the grave to minimum wage?
So say a sneaker company gives your band free shoes a few times a month, and maybe when you played a record release show for your LP a beer company sponsored the night, and shit, you don’t make any money at your ‘real’ job, so fuck it right? I mean that’s a kind of freeganism (barf!) and hey—you’re totally getting free shit from corporations, sticking it to the man and so forth. The total joy of having to explain why MRR doesn’t review bands on, or distributed by, major labels, and why MTV also negates your band. Mostly to people that should know better. It’s strange to exist in a time where careerist musicians who wanna make it also want the “credibility” of DIY and/or being in MRR. A weird sense of deja-vu—maybe it’s the fact that grunge is back? If your band has a publicist and plays South by Southwest shows sponsored by Levis jeans why do you need MRR? Something that does not exist to provide cred for bands on their way up to the flaccid indie circuit—it’s for bands and people and scenes that exist outside of that world, for the kids by the kids. Not for bands looking for fans, that ultimately wanna play Clear Channel owned venues. That sounds like that part in Decline…where the kid talks about The Cramps coming to town and charging a million dollars and only playing over 21 venues only so the punks can’t go. It’s hard to talk about shit like this without sounding like a cardboard cut out punk-rocker™ and maybe it’s because the generation after mine came of age in an era that wasn’t defined by the Dischord ethic. More to come on this fascinating subject in the future, times a million.
When the idea of something takes the place of anything actually happening, like No Age talking about “DIY” culture on MTV, like KBD hardcore bonzer record speculation, another coffee table about punk rock ephemera, your memories, your talismans, a conversation you had. Like worrying about the lack of ideals in the punk community when children are scrambling for the scraps of corn that drop off the back of delivery trucks in famine ridden Zimbabwe. As if bemoaning the fact that the punks would rather discuss broken Koro 7”s and figure out how to perfectly mimic Power of Expression means anything in the face of total global catastrophe. It’s like the stereotype of parents telling their kids they gotta eat—think of the starving children and so forth, as though the starving children will be affected at all by that days meatloaf consumption, or lack of. As if the kid will be affected by the starving children, an idea, an impossibility in the face of being chauffeured to school in an SUV, and gallon size mayonnaise jars and televisions bigger than windscreen windows.

* * *

All I Gotta Say Is the Kids Don’t Care
1. There’s an all-girl Dead Moon cover band in town called Dead Poon. Not sure what I think about that.
2. Héctor of Spanish punk band Otan did the cover this month, and when we got the proof back from the printer we suddenly realized that it was highly unlikely that any prison readers would actually get copies of the magazine as a result of said cover. So we’ve designed a special, ltd. edition prisoner only cover for this month, which you will only see if you are currently serving time. We often get the magazine sent back to us, returned to sender from prisons for the most random reasons—one example being the issue with the Carbonas on the cover. They’re holding skateboards and looking dirty and goofy, one of them wearing a beret and a striped shirt—that was rejected by an Orange County jail for featuring ‘gang signs.’
3. The Embarrassment LP for when you’re in the mood for some tetchy sounding Midwestern art punk.
4. Paco is reissuing the Ultimo Resorte discography. If you are in the mood for circa ’79 desperate sounding Spanish punk with the best lady vocals you should send off for it! There’s a great interview with the band in the June ’07 MRR (#289) and I know both me and Golnar have played the shit out of their music on MRR radio if you wanna check it out. www.lavidaesunmus.com
5. Moss Icon demo
6. Lebenden Toten – Near Dark LP. Holy shit. Chanel’s voice. Someone interview this band for MRR!
7. Trying to figure out if I still like Mika Miko, maybe I’ll have to reserve judgment until the LP comes out, but the vocals and feel of that stupid Sub Pop members (or eBay only) 7” were not quite it for me… Not sure what the difference is.
8. Arguing with Hubbs about the drums on Is This My World? He says it’s like having Yngwe Malmsteen in a hardcore band, in short a virtuoso who ruins the band. I say: Listen to that record! Undeniable.
9. Finnish Spunk LP
10. whatwewantisfree.blogspot.com my columns on thee web.
Layla at maximumrocknroll.com is the email at which I can be reached—insert lousy correspondent disclaimer.

nasal boys

2009-01-17T10:50:00.000-08:00

A lot of times when you have to make a difficult decision regarding the magazine, there’s an unmistakable voice in the back of your mind intoning, “Tim wouldn’t have done it that way,” or something to that effect. Certain things about the way that the magazine is run are set in stone, most of them for good reason. This isn’t Punk Rock Confidential, so even though we could use the revenue, you aren’t gonna see advertisements for Ramones baby-wear or Social D sneakers anytime soon... We always get into long conversations about whether or not something is punk—or, if it is punk, is it Maximum? Are the Young Marble Giants punk in a way that means they can exist in the same review section as Terveet Kädet? Really? There are reviews of SPK and Diamanda Galas records in early issues of MRR...
One thing that always struck me as a little strange was the fact that there was only one Fugazi record in the record collection. That band shaped how I view punk and DIY culture, and I see them as very much a part of the same idea of punk that MRR represents. It’s well known that a lot of the records missing from MRR’s record library were either rejected or purged because of Tim’s own preferences and prejudices—it was his own personal collection, after all... In recent years, in order to fill these holes, we have in one way or another replaced a lot of classic punk records that he deemed unsuitable—in this issue we have a review of the Raincoats’ debut LP, just reissued on KRS, which was not kept in the collection (though their first 7” was). And Dischord kindly send copies of all the Fugazi records we are missing earlier this month. If you are interested in seeing a list of some of the records we are missing and want to acquire, you can email mrr at maximumrocknroll.com. At some point we hope to have a database of the entire collection online, when our computer wizards are finished with this mammoth task. If you are interested in doing shitwork relating to that, feel free to email our web coordinator Paul here: paul at maximumrocknroll.com.
One of the benefits of visiting MRR or becoming a shitworker here is the ability to make tapes from the insane record collection, with every GG Allin and Velvet Underground record you can imagine, plus all the raddest obscurities, from Mexican synth-punks Size to Pittsburgh lady art-punkers Dress Like Natives. If worst comes to worst and MRR ever does cease to exist, we intend on setting up some sort of arrangement with a library to make sure that the collection is available for anyone who wants access to it for such purposes.
Whatwewantisfree.blogspot.com is where my old columns go to die on the internet. layla at maximumrocknroll.com is where I can be found.

Fum Fum Fum

2008-12-21T09:46:00.000-08:00

In “strictly business, business never personal, I’m housin’ news,” last month was the first month in which we completely sold out of the magazine. That’s right, we have not a single copy of #307, AKA the December issue, left. We sold out on the day we got it, after shipping out all the subscriptions and distro orders. You can still get the issue from our distributors, (maybe try Last Gasp, or No Idea or if you do not live in the USA check out page 5, which lists all of our international distros) or from your local punk rock emporium (Vinyl Conflict, Extreme Noise to name a couple) or maybe try a newsstand near you. One of the reasons we are out of the issue is that a few larger scale distributors picked us up. So hopefully that will mean you can find the mag with ease at your local news mart.
In further MRR-related news we need scene reports. Write one! Right now!
***
Now! ONTO THE FASCINATING SHIT THAT I HAVE TO SAY THIS MONTH. In a top ten format! Bear in mind all of this was written with the Cro-Mags “Show You No Mercy” going through my brain on repeat. I think I have had this song in my head for over a week at this point. I am not sure if it’s a problem or what the cure is.

1. Right now I feel kind of INSANE as a result of eating a slice of pie for lunch and then some magical bar/cookie thing that our new distro coordinator Diane made for an extra nutritional dinner. Seriously since she has gotten here she has made some delicious cookie related treat almost every day, so in honor of the continuation of this most excellent tradition I am saluting Diane. (Feel free to sing that Husker Du song, though I have a feeling she hates it as much as I hate the song written by my nemesis Eric “slow hands” Crap-tron that features my name. Can you imagine a lifetime of being sung to by kreepy old dudes; ‘You got me on my knees Laylerrrrrrr’? I do not have to imagine this; I get to experience it on a frequency that would numb your brains.) Anyway, Diane gets the number one spot for being a rad human, making cookies, eating rice a roni, and riding SF hills on a track bike, but being nervous about driving our shitty Volvo over those said same hills. Plus she has broken the coordinator curse and actually goes to shows all the time and is already playing music with a bunch of people. The back cover of this magazine was art directed by our combined brains, natural disasters, punks, armageddon, apocalypse, doomtown...you know how we do.

2. My favorite record right now is the all California, all collected from cassette tape edition of Killed By Death, number 13 to be exact. It’s all killer no filler, which for compilation LPs is a rare feat, and the variety of punk covered ranges from post-Adolescents-Agnew-brother-radness (Der Stab) to the drag queen punk act, the Wasp Women, the stars of Whatever Happened to Susan Jane? featured in this very issue. How good a name is that for a punk band by the way? The Wasp Women emerged from the famed Angels of Light drag troupe, which was itself a splinter group from the Cockettes. I believe a dispute started because the Cockettes wanted to start charging for their show and the Angels wanted it to be free. Anyway there’s a pretty cool movie about the Cockettes you should check out for further investigative purposes. I guess in punk rock terms Tomata Du Plenty of the Screamers is the most renowned name associated with that whole scene, but if you investigate further you will uncover more secret histories. The Wasp Women song on the aforementioned compilation is entitled “Kill Me” and is a synth driven drama fest with a definite KBD feel (stating thee obvious but it’s true...) apparently featuring a member of No Alternative in the backing band. I have heard rumors that we have a complete Wasp Women tape somewhere in the vaults here, but I have a feeling it’s just a live recording from the movie. Other stand outs, for me at least, on this record are Castration Squad, a rad all girl band from LA that I guess at some point featured Alice Bag, Dinah Cancer from 45 Grave, Elissa from the Go-Gos, Phranc from Nervous Gender, and the woman who played Tanya Hearst in Desperate Teenage Lovedolls. And they only put out a tape??!! Huh? If anyone has a copy of this they would dub for me I would be super psyched. There’s a bit about them with rad fliers and an amazing manifesto on Alice Bag’s website (www.alicebag.com/castrationsquadhome) Also dug the Blowdriers and the Tanks, in terms of rad lady punk, but seriously folks all songs rule on this... My only question is why is it that the best California demo in the MRR tape box is not on this comp? It’s by Juvinil Justice, who were featured in the first issue of MRR...Hmmm!
3. Sheer Smegma – Audio Suicide 7", AKA Teddy and the Frat Girls. This is the sound of total over the edge end times music, it’s not no-wave, there are no “waves” on this motherfucker. I did a little internet research and discovered that this was a family affair—some of the lyrics were written by a 13-year-old boy and a 7-year-old girl for what was their mom’s band. Apparently the rest of the line up consisted of a 16-year-old girl on vox, a 20-year-old former debutante along with the wife of someone from the Eat. They hailed from early-’80s Florida and on that note when you hear this you’ll wanna cut your ears off and get a new pair or at least form a band. It’s the sound of bats turning themselves inside out. Or something. It’s obviously on another level to most music...
4. Seems Twice – Non-plussed 7". The Australian Urinals? It’s easily as rad and as uncatagorizable, got the same knowing/innocent combination, that simple yet fucked up quality to the music. What do you say about what may be the most perfect 7" heard this year so far?? Unfortunately it’s a two hundred dollar record. Someone needs to reissue this pronto.
5. Trying to play something from the We Got Power comp on the radio, and being told that the initial MRR review stated that this very act I was attempting was bound to be near impossible... 20 songs on each side! I wanted to play the Tar Babies but I think I played Mecht Mensch instead, shit happens yo.
6. The Death LP is finally getting released! And we are setting up an interview with the band for MRR. A while back I was consumed by this song “Keep On Knocking” that I’d heard via one of those collector scum MP3 blog-type deals. It was by a mysterious African-American proto-punk band from Detroit circa ’74. The music sounds like Detroit looks—crumbling factories, hard edged urban detritus—it totally captures a moment in time, a feeling, and it’s fucking rad. It’s not “punk” like a Ramones record is. It’s punk like a more street version of the MC5, meaning it’s genuinely exciting to listen to. I think proto punk as a phrase is thrown around a little too carelessly, used to describe music that is straight-up rock ’n’ roll in some cases. But Death is punk sounding. It sounds like the music that would score a riot or a car chase. When you listen to it you feel like something is going on, if that makes sense. It’s just got this rad, alive-yet-tense quality to it—total headphones music obviously.The rest of the LP is equally awesome, and I can’t wait to see what the packaging is gonna look like and to talk to the band.
7. Putting together this issue has been pretty exhausting. I did a lot of the interviews, transcribed them, edited them, and laid ’em out too, alongside all the other shit that coordinating MRR entails. But I am pretty fuckin psyched on it. It’s been super fun watching and rewatching all the classic and obscure punk movies mentioned within. We busted out a few soundtrack LPs and listened to many versions of “Richard’s Hung Himself,” ascertaining that the best version is on that Adolescents demos LP that came out a few years back. In more Agnew related ephemera, I am genuinely bummed that we do not have a copy of Rikk Agnew’s solo LP, All By Myself, in the collection. I first got into this record whilst living in Orange County, looking after my sick Grandma just after I graduated from college. Moving from where I went to school, a small coastal college town in the UK to the OC, was kind of a brutal transition. Riding my bike ’round town whilst listening to “OC life is not the life for me / Stupid little chicks and egotistic boys...” definitely helped.
8. V/A – Esta Sucia Cuidad Tape (Cintes Podrides) When Invasion were in town (not playing shows unfortunately) we got given these tapes, and I just got ’round to listening to mine, which was clearly a stupid move because this shit rules. Seriously another case where there isn’t a shitty band on the tape. So in short, Spanish punk is the best, Invasion made the LP of the year, so far, and there are a ton of bands on here that are so fucking good that need to put out records. Escroto De Rata rules, Residuos Electronicos make fucked up doom-time sounds, um shit, seriously this tape is just rad and you should form a million bands and make a tape comp to represent the scene in your town. The sound of the streets.
9. Total Noise Accord 7"
10. whatwewantisfree.blogspot.com or layla at maximumrocknroll.com

Urban Mutants

2008-11-06T21:35:00.000-08:00

The worst feeling is walking along somewhere and being struck by the fact that I have been working customer service style jobs since 2002. The thought of all those “Can I Help Yous?” “Let Me Know If You Have Any Questions” piling on top of each other endlessly is enough to crush a girl. SHOP WORKERS OF THE WORLD UNITE. In the face of the total collapse of the “Western” service-based economy! What can customers buy? Is customer service a skill? What’s a customer to do in a time like this, when the people who were re-re-remortgaging their houses to buy mahogany and marble bedroom sets are now living in parking lot communities? I just wanna have something to do. I don’t wanna be buried in a pet cemetary...
Things that have been on my mind this month:

1. What if you are watching a band cover a song badly, on a shitty video tape, while there are a million other things you could be doing, and all you can think of is the fact that every single kid in the front row of the show is holding a camera, looking through the lens of a camera, or about to take a photograph. There is a crowd surfer stuck on top of the crowd; he can’t get down or move anywhere somehow so he’s just flailing around in a corduroy jacket with fake sheepskin lining, held up by sweaty children of the middle classes who are only able to experience things completely if they are also able to document them simultaneously. Like my mum always says, it’s not real unless it’s been on TV or captured on your video camera or whatever.

2. The way that ideas and movements are reduced to an aesthetic, a style, a haircut, or outfit. I don’t know what to say except design blogs, girls with Marianne Faithful haircuts, the craft revolution, and last but definitely not least, Back to the Land: the Urban Outfitters version. Forget wimmin’s lib, knit yr boyfriend a scarf and cook him up some stew for the cold months—and while you’re at it take a few photos of yourself lookin’ winsome for your fashion blog. Case in point: “Girls Say Yes to Boys Who Say No.” There’s this photo of the Baez sisters, mid-’60s, sitting in a bohemian living room under the above slogan, in support of draft resistance. The first time I saw it I was horrified at the implication, and I still can’t figure it out. The more I think about it, the more the meaning shifts. Their serene yet secure expressions made me think that this was probably the first era that it was OK for women to publicly acknowledge that it’s OK to enjoy sex. Right? But then they are offering themselves as a reward to dudes who resisted the draft. Ladyprize. Yeah. Maybe you know about this already, but some hypster girls in Williamsburg, Brooklyn made a poster referring to the aforementioned with themselves looking whimsical and fey with the slogan, “Girls Say Yes to Boys Who Say Obama.” Jeez. I got nothin’ to say about that at all.

3. Reading an interview with a band that started out because the roadie of another band used to sing one song on stage with them each night, so they told him he should have his own band... and he did! But this interview is ten years after the fact, and he of course states the obvious—hardcore died in ’92 when he lost interest and the best thing that’s happened to hardcore since then was the Gorilla Biscuits reunion. To be honest with you, I have never really “gotten” Gorilla Biscuits, but I wonder about that song “Cats and Dogs” sometimes. I mean, if the best thing that’s happened to hardcore since ’92 was the GB reunion, then how does it feel singing that song as a man in your 40s? Also, the best thing that happened to hardcore since ’92? GB reunion? Really? What about the internet? Amazingcore? Ebay Gold? The Reagan-band revival followed by the Crossover™ revival? Also teenage thrash fans armed with Vile and Chronic Sick MP3s? Vegan straight edge longsleeves that reappropriated corporate logos? Krshna beads? Per-zines? Myspace Crust? Apathy? Hardline? ENDTIMES.

4. In further news on the ongoing investigation into the true mutant sound, The Power of the Spoken Word Language of a Dying Breed LP fits the bill nicely this month. Hailing from Nebraska in thee early-to-mid-’80s, the band sounded like Flipper trying to cover Rudimentary Peni—how could I not be totally consumed by this? And you too? Total claustrophobic, fucked-up hardcore that changes shape as you listen to it, not like anything else. It’s been compared to Spike in Vain, the Cleveland band, which I can see only in that it comes from a similarly skewed perspective, but I am not so sure in terms of the sound. I know that fairly recently there were still stock copies of that Spike in Vain record if you wanna do your own compare and contrast... And for true empirical comparison, Goodbadmusic.com has a downloadable version of the Language of a Dying Breed LP if you wanna check it out. Also been psyched on a similar era band, New England mutants The Scam. I played the 7" on MRR radio a few weeks back, and have heard word that there’s an unreleased LP about to be reissued. Am actually not too clear about what the deal is with this band; the music is hardcore and it’s got that thing that Void has where in lesser hands it would merely be inept metal, but somehow it’s the transcendent sound of true malcontents. It’s hardcore, exactly how I like it. You can’t go wrong with the Hieronymus Bosch-styled art on the 7" cover, too...

5. Turboslut may be the absolute worst band name of the year, and in places it gets a little Heavens to Betsy cutesy rage rock; riot grrrl vs foxcore style if you want the rock journo music tags. But when they are on it, they have this total Nog Watt mutant-girl sound that’ll make you wanna start your own Manson family. All lady-made tuff, gnarled-up thrash tapes can be gotten here: turboslutsavedmylife@gmail.com

6. Got sent the Sisters LP and have been listening to it; makes me think of dank Northwestern times, Fake Train and Kotton Krowns. It’s definitely a good sound for paranoid times and insular winters. Parts Unknown.

7. The issue after this one will be the Punx in Film issue. What’s your favorite punk movie? Favorite punk moment in a movie? I watched part of the Mike Leigh movie Meantime featuring a very young Tim Roth as a reserved slow younger brother, a similarly very young Gary Oldham as a skinhead, and Phil Daniels (Jimmy from Quadrophenia!) as a grotty casual. I had to translate most of what was said as my viewing partner was unable to understand the cockney accents prevalent throughout. Seeing the language and landscapes of my youth on the big screen is always compelling—the pebble-dashed council estates, the dark pubs and slimy parkas. How ugly ’70s and ’80s Britain was; Thatcher’s doom, crushing brains and spirits. The way in which one woman managed to get the working class to hate itself; thusly noses were cut off to spite faces. The last time I went back to London, it was such a different place—you know, organic cafes everywhere. What was particularly mind-blowin’ were the former squats converted into condos in Hackney. Victoria Park, I hardly knew ye! I was trying to picture kids breakdancing at youth club discos in council estates, reggae soundsystems, and playing tag, jumping roof to roof on parked cars—and instead got fashion stylists living in former council flats, glamorizing a past they never inhabited.
It’s funny that when I was a kid I could never get into the Clash, yet as soon as I left London and moved to America I got this instant and obsessive nostalgia for them. Their music suddenly came to embody my youth, and my idea of London was colored so totally by their sound. I saw this movie Don Letts made, with The Slits, where Ari Upp runs round Picadilly Circus taking her clothes off in inappropriate places, ending up at an all-nighter reggae party, probably somewhere in South London. I don’t know. London doesn’t exist anymore—it’s just an idea, a memory, a council estate upbringing with a resourceful free-jazz-loving single mum.

8. For some reason Vice magazine got a hold of my zine and reviewed it. I got a bunch of random emails from confused kids and pushy oblivious PR people. I didn’t respond to any of them. Chris asked me why I print my email address in here even though I never write anyone back, and I don’t know the answer to that question. I do write back sometimes! I also have none of my zines left, but Wendy at oogaboogastore.com does. She also has a zine that Raymond Pettibon made especially for her that you should get whilst you can.

9. It’s been said before but yeah, we can take tax-deductible donations! If you are sitting on piles of unwanted cash and you wanna help us continue onwards and upwards, get in touch. (Preserving, maintaining, and continuing the record collection! Pesky printing bills! The continual publishing of the very magazine you currently hold in your hands.) Email mrr@maximumrocknroll.com for more info.

10. Our new distro coordinator Diane is moving out here next month, technically next week, which’ll be awesome, and will also be the first time in MRR history that every coordinator position is held by a woman, with Cissie and myself being thee content coordinators now.

I have not read Flowers in the Attic or Helter Skelter or seen any of the Gremlins or Back to the Future movies.
whatwewantsisfree.blogspot.com is where these columns reside on the web. I am here: layla at maximumrocknroll.com

Punk Does Not Owe You a Living/Alive with Pleasure!

2008-10-10T01:32:00.000-07:00

Punk Does Not Owe You a Living/Alive with Pleasure!

I think the best thing I have listened to this month has been the last song on side two of the Beef People 7" that came free with Artcore zine. Mutant teenage shitbag sounds from mid-’80s Virginia outsiders; includes sounds of a paper cutter as well as melting brains, doomed times, and the true sound of youth hardcore damage... As a kid I spent a good portion of my time making tapes at random dudes’ houses. Sitting on living room floors, C30, C60, C90, GO! Putting Septic Death next to Rites of Spring, Mekons next to Necros, just consuming vast histories of music, finding one thing that resonated maybe, then using that as a key to figure out a way into other similar bands and sounds. The Fury 7" leading to Swiz and so forth. DC to the Midwest to Boston; you know the drill. One of the first records I got obsessed with upon becoming a shitworker here was The Left Hell 12" which was recommended me as a contemporary band of the Revolution Summer sound and scene, and the first thing I thought was “if only I had heard that record as a kid.” But back to the mutant sound...
I have and have always had this obsession with finding bands that represent that total miscreant sound as exemplified by the aforementioned Beef People song. Just to get that feeling continually… The first time you heard Die Kreuzen or Void or Neos; there must be a million mystery bands out there that will give a girl that feeling, right? Right? I think I already talked about Malefice and United Mutation. There’s Media Disease, too... I dunno, I have this weird tape loop in my head of my voice harassing collector scum endlessly since my youth: “The song Explode by Void is my favorite thing ever; what else is there? What else???”
One thing I was thinking about in regards to the above incoherent ramblings is that now random music nerd girls don’t have to go to said dudes’ houses to make tapes anymore—the internet opens a world up that definitely didn’t exist when I was a kid. Just the access to music you would never have heard of unless you were involved in some crazy tape trade with a Swiss punk circa ’82... Speaking of which, have you seen the new book, Hot Love: Swiss Punk & Wave 1976-1980? It sounds like a very specific book in terms of subject matter—I mean, Swiss punk? Really?? And this is a huge tome, more than mere coffee-table book—it’s the size of a fucking coffee table.
When you think of Swiss punk, maybe Jack and the Rippers comes to mind, Liliput/Kleenex too, but is that enough to justify buying a $69 object that’s just about the size of a phone book?? It’s way more compelling than more “conventional” punk books about less specific scenes. Aesthetically it works like a more minimalist Fucked Up and Photocopied, with tons of zine and flier reproductions, but also old shirts, homemade bondage footwear, and yes, actual interesting interviews, some with bands and people you’ve never heard of and probably never will get to actually hear! And it doesn’t even matter. The roundtable with Marlene from Lilipit/Kleenex, Sylvia from Mother’s Ruin, Sara from TNT, Marie from The Bastards, and various female fanzine editors was unsurprisingly one of my favorite parts of the book. The subtext of the discussion doesn’t revolve around the trials and tribulations of being a woman in punk. It’s just about being a young punk, about discovery and disgust, degenerate parties and disrupted political rallies, which was kind of refreshing in the face of endless wimmin in rock boredom. So many rad photos; the one of Marlene in a Bazooka Joe t-shirt, leopard pants, and Jean Sebereg haircut... Also I had no idea that Ramona from The Mo-dettes was Swiss; there’s an incredible interview/oral history that covers her move from Geneva art school troublemaker to London punk scenester. That sounds trite; we’re talking nazi stage invasions, redneck attacks in OC bars, and the story of one of the coolest girl punk bands of that era. The Mo-dettes 7"s are fucking great—sarcastic pop-edged punk that isn’t overly arty or sanctimonious.
Hot Love sums up the random adventure that is punk: pictures of scummy practice spaces, dada-vomit fanzine excerpts, endless random anecdotes and ephemera. I think it’s being marketed in an art-world context (I picked up a copy at oogaboogastore.com), which is weird maybe, considering the very particular subject matter, but not really in terms of the general aesthetic of the book. It just covers so evocatively and eloquently what it means to be a punk, in a way that’s less glass-covered exhibit and more “We did it, why don’t you??” It’s difficult to write about an era of a subculture and depict it without being dismissive of what came after or dogmatic about how things should be, and this book makes you feel part of a continuum rather than reading about something that you could never achieve.
I am gonna do some sort of a History Lesson Part 2.5 in regards to some recent and not so recent all-girl punk discoveries. Secret code message to thee ladies: Tape these records. Start bands.

1. The Nixe were an all-girl band from Utrecht in the early ’80s, formed initially in reaction to their boyfriends starting a punk band. They produced a 7” with hand-made covers and were on a live comp LP that I think I’ve played on the radio. In fact, I know I played it on the radio; Golnar told me she went out and found a copy of it and formed a band as a result. Just to fill you in on the type of music that awaits and what it’ll do to you! Their sound reminds me of The Mo-dettes; it’s less polished and more rambunctious however; not quite as crazed as, say, Kleenex; rawer and less artsy. Just to reference the same three bands over and over and over!! For all eternity! It’s how I do. The 7" is incredible—a total explosion of fierce yet bratty intensity. The MRR copy is in a red envelope with a black scrawled cover, no lyrics, no images, no band info... Finally having an entire LP (gatefold!) available with all of the above, so those without eBay millions can have access to the jams, is the best... It’s on Polly Maggoo Records.

2. Chin Chin were from Switzerland. They were around post-Hot Love—a mid ‘80s band I think. They’re definitely on the more sweet pop/punk end of things, but not like C86 indie-pop style at all—they are distinctly punk, they actually kind of reminded me of a less saccharine Go-Go’s... The songs are really catchy, much less ‘difficult’ to listen to than most music by art school girls from the same era. I sound dismissive maybe, I don’t mean to be, it’s a killer 7” but I guess right now I am searching out more mutant fucked up music and this isn’t that. The “hit” is “Don’t Want To Be Prisoners,” which actually has a watchable video if you use the power of the internet. I am not sure what else they have out, but that 7” is worth seeking out

3. Nog Watt were fucking raging Dutch thrash with the best hardcore girl vocals I have heard (sorry Sacrilege fanz.) The Fear 7" may have some of the coolest, genuinely creepy packaging ever—some for-real Manson-girl-style-now. I really, really want this record. I wanna hear No Pigs, too, which was the drummer Ingrid’s other band, just because it’s a killer band name and if it’s half as good as this... Which is to say this record is kind of perfect; someone needs to reissue it so random teenage girls in boring towns can hear it and realize the possibilities that being in an all-girl hardcore band can offer. Like, I honestly feel Riot Grrrl would have been ten times more interesting musically if girls had gotten into Nog Watt rather than Sleater Kinney. Seriously. Maybe Nog Watt and The Raincoats or whatever… I dunno I just don’t get why there aren’t hundreds of rad weirdo girl bands like this, maybe there are. Where are they? I have this theory that Sleater Kinney made girls into indie rock fans instead of making them wanna make their own sound. Nog Watt is the answer and the question.

4. The Nurse—Japanese hardcore. There are two flexis and the first one is the best. The band is rockin’ full on Siouxie style on the cover; the music is tough and relentless. It’s really heavy without being a formulaic hardcore or metal record, just the coolest sound, like the aural equivalent of a sneer. I dunno how to really describe it except to say that all you need is this and the Nog Watt and you’re ready to start your own fuckin’ secret society of girls... Do it! Kreepkrawl style.

Top Ten Jams
1. Outlets – Best Friend 7"
2. Cro-Mags – demo boot 10"
3. Marginal Man – Identity 12"
4. Rain 12"
5. Beef People – “Industrial Jelly” (the song)
6. Tar Babies – Respect Your Nightmares 12"
7. Abgas 7” (now THIS is Swiss punk-endtimes collapse in on itself stylee)
8-10. Shit, I dunno. Mexican aggro-synth. Busy boredom. Pizza.
whatwewantisfree.blogspot.com
layla at maximumrocknroll.com

in another place in another time

2008-09-10T12:30:00.000-07:00

This month has mostly been spent working on the very item you are holding in your hands. What to say about that? A sarcastic comment about the columns of MRR degenerating into people's per-zine diary doom... I am not sure if it has been formally announced yet, but I will be taking over from Justin as content coordinator in November. We have hired a very capable and awesome distribution coordinator to take over from me, Diane, who will be moving here from Brooklyn. I am looking forward slightly nervously to this new role at the mag, I have been a shitworker here for close to five years and am excited to have a bigger part in the shaping of the content and general direction. That sounds like a spiel from a cover letter, what can I say? What can I say! (The Shawn Brown version though...)

Top Ten for the end of time!

1. When someone asks you to move to a strangely cheap Brooklyn basement and form a band inspired by the first Meat Puppets 7", should you have agreed to that situation right then?? Does the song “In A Car” make you want to exist in some other place instantly?? Right then! In an instant instance! A fucking explosion of... the feeling of endless possibility enclosed in a 7". It’s hardcore before the reduction set in and it sounds like a million things you can’t explain and shouldn’t even have to! What is enough to make one want to quit a job, abandon ship, and take aim for some mysterious basement? Somewhere that kids used to hang out and sneak cigarettes on stoops now taken over by the dreaded yoga mom doom merchants... I guess I’ll stick with nega-times on the SF streets. Those are true signifiers of the end times you know; baby boutiques and craft supply stores, cupcake bakeries. Crochet me a noose, craft revolutionaries! Or perhaps a fourth wave feminist treatise on your Danish modern design blog indicating why endless consumption of niceness ’n’ lifestyles is a viable alternative.

2. The only music I have been listening to this month has been the doomed, mutant, vengeance-filled sounds of Malefice and United Mutation. Too much weight on my mind, until I found a copy of the aforementioned Meat Puppets 7" for cheap because the guy thought that it wasn’t worth anything being that it was not the SST version.... When I first moved here and knew no one I used to slouch around the fanciest parts of town, where the light is always golden and hits the socialite mansions and tech billionaire villas at the most nostalgic, synthetic ’70s soap opera angle. Listening to Void bootlegs or X Los Angeles and staring in at showcase living rooms that have never been lived in, trespassing on golf courses and so forth. This activity was dropped in favor of hanging out with actual human beings, then that was dropped for walking out to the ocean, which was in turn dropped for working a million hours at MRR. A truly all-consuming situation—it’s hard or rather impossible to convey how much your life revolves around the magazine as a coordinator. Walking manically round Pacific Heights listening to Rorschach Protestant feels like playing hooky because there are layouts that need takin’ care of! Distros to contact! A mail room to clean, stacks of back issues to reorganize, interviews to conduct/set up... Bad debts to collect!

3. Other random things that have arisen; a text from RJ to say he picked up The Girls 7" for twenty bucks... The Girls were a proto synth/doomed art punk band from Boston who released one 7" on David Thomas from Pere Ubu’s record label... I say proto-synth because while clearly there are some synths at work the music is more like a furious Pere Ubu “Cloud 149,” Clevo-punk-damaged-drone than anything akin to what The Normal or Nervous Gender were doing. The song “Jeffrey I Hear You” is supposedly about the death of the singer’s twin brother and a subsequent haunting. Listening to this otherworldly 7" with that back-story in mind adds to the eerie fervor brought forth by the sound. Apparently the keyboard player works at a record store in Boston and still has copies of the 7" he will sell to interested parties... Not sure what the exact deal with that is, but I do know this is totally worth hunting down, the cover is scratched-out black and white, an eloquent expression of the manic times contained within! I played it on the radio and Golnar made me fade it out because it creeped her out too much! Is that a good sign?

4. Probably the coolest thing this month was walking in on the Bruce Roehrs led Pierced Arrows interview, and talking to Toody Cole about playing bass and how being a musician totally transformed her sense of herself. I think the tape cut off most of what she said before we noticed it had ended (in fact I know it did since I transcribed most of the interview), but it was super inspiring listening to her talk about how she's gotten more confident and comfortable in her own skin as she's gotten older... A true triumph in the face of a society that writes women off as they grow. I made a bunch of my London friends buy the Lollipop Shoppe/Weeds reissue that came out in Europe in the early 2000s and then forced a Dead Moon show on them to encourage total indoctrination. This test failed; while the greatness of the LP was duly noted, they were somehow unable to recognize the truth, urgency, and honor in the Dead Moon sound, and wrote ’em off as olde-tyme, bar-rock boredom. While I can see how this error of judgment arose, it was still disheartening to see such greatness and power dismissed. The Coles to me represent how to do exactly what you want to do on your own terms whatever the cost—how to make your own life, your own idea of music and existence. It’s true freedom, forging one’s own path ruthlessly in a ruthlessly dull world. Pierced Arrows contains the urgency of the Rats alongside the timeless Dead Moon ideal, creating a sound for those with the ears and the desire to understand the value of such a combination...

5. I would also like to give honorable mentions to the Communal Living 12" by a mysterious band whose name I cannot mention...

6. F, the band from Florida that Sound Idea reissued a few years back, and The Randoms’ Dangerhouse 7"... more of the soundtrack to frustrated anxious times!

7. In new music, for now, I salute the current Homostupids switch from skull to cat music. The Mentally Challenged 7"s have been also consistently over played. Music for the troubled is always the way to go esp. when it’s done right...

8. Last month Cissie mentioned the fact that we are working on some theme issues: a film issue (deadline Oct 15th!), a print media issue (deadline Dec 1st!), a queer issue (no deadline set yet!) and a health issue (deadline Nov 1st.). MRR is what you make it, as is punk rock/DIY in general, duh. We have a lot of cool interviews and articles lined up for the magazine, but if you have an idea or something you want to contribute, please do! Get in touch if you need guidelines. If you live somewhere that hasn’t had a scene report for a few years, why not cover it yourself?
Also, we know our current website kind of sucks. We have had a redesign in the works for a ridiculously epic amount of time, which will eventually include a database of the entire MRR record collection with links to record reviews from the mag. This is a monumental task obviously, and the new website will be up long before this is completed... I am also hoping to create a database of the MRR zine and tape collection. Speaking of which if you are an older punk with demo tapes that you no longer care about, zines or fliers that have lost some of their meaning, we would love to have them for our collection. Please get in touch! Like it says at the front of the magazine we can take tax-deductible donations through Indy Arts and Media...

9. whatwewantisfree.blogspot.com old columns ’n’ shit on thee web

10. layla at maximumrocknroll.com—that’s an email address! Write me! I am kind of a shitty correspondent. Just a word of warning...

This is a Sharon Cheslow interview I did a while back for Chimps/MRR

2008-08-14T18:15:00.000-07:00

1-Where did you grow up and how do you think it affected what you do?

There are two parts because I grew up in two places: first in Los Angeles until I was 6 and then in the Washington, DC suburbs.
I was born in Los Angeles in 1961, and I was exposed to all the great folk and rock and roll that was happening in the '60s. It was in the air - on the car radios, in the stores. My parents liked folk and jazz and some rock and always had music around the house - my dad listened to records a lot and my mom liked to sing. I found out recently that my parents went to hootenannies while in LA and went to one in the late '50s in Idyllwild, CA with Pete Seeger and Sonny Terry & Brownie McGee. They saw Dylan in '64 at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium. So their love of music was passed on to me, especially protest music.

We lived in a bunch of LA neighborhoods, but the one I remember most was an ethnic, artsy area near the Wilshire/Fairfax Jewish area. We lived there a couple of years. At that time, the Holocaust was still very fresh in peoples' minds and there were a lot of survivors in LA. I remember my mom took me to the Jewish grocery store and one of the clerk's arms had a number tattoo. I asked my mom about it and she explained that the woman had survived the concentration camps. You don't really see this outside of cities like LA and NY, and a lot of the survivors have died so it's not even that common anymore. It really had a deep affect on me. I heard the phrase "never again" a lot, which meant that each individual had a responsibility to make sure that nothing like the Holocaust ever happened again.

Because of the legacy of the Holocaust, my mother made sure I was raised within a Jewish community. So most of the people I knew in LA were Jews. I was very dark skinned, and one time at the beach a kid called me a nigger. When I asked my mom about it, she told me it was a racist word for blacks. My parents were pro-civil rights. My mother went to hear Martin Luther King, Jr. speak at UCLA (where she'd graduated college), and took me with her. I was too young to remember it consciously, but it entered my mind. It would have been around '65.

We moved to the east coast in late '67 after both my mother's parents died and my father got a job with the Dept. of Transportation in DC. We lived in Silver Spring, Maryland for a year and then moved to Bethesda - both were suburbs right outside DC. It was a huge culture shock because Jews comprised only 3% of kids in my school. Someone called me a kike and once again I had to ask my mom what the word meant and once again she had to teach me about racism. It left me feeling that I didn't fit in. I simply withdrew and focused on being happy on my own - I was into art, music, math, science and nature. So I was never bored.

It was strange to go from a school with almost all Jewish kids to one with barely any. The kids thought I was weird enough being from LA and liking rock and roll! I couldn't find any kids in my elementary school that listened to rock until 5th grade, and by that time I was listening to David Bowie! I was Beatles fanatic and basically spent a lot of my free time in my bedroom listening to my Beatles records and playing Beatles songs on my guitar. I only found my rock friends after I performed in front of the entire 5th grade - singing and playing guitar - and a couple of people revealed they listened to rock too.

Looking back I don't know why it was so weird to like rock and roll, other than that most of the kids in my school were raised very conservatively and very Christian and perhaps it was considered devil's music. I think another reason is that rock became equated with being anti-war and also pro-black. For my parents to be against the Vietnam War in LA was not a big deal. But I think things were more divisive in DC. My parents went to the opening of the movie "Hair" and someone drove by and egged them as they stood in front of the theater. It was politically motivated. I went to the Human Kindness Day concert in '75 with Stevie Wonder and a race riot broke out. It was a really crazy atmosphere.

DC was just very, very conservative and paranoid and angry at that time. Nixon and Ford were presidents, and DC was dealing with the aftermath of Watergate, so that explains part of it.

2-How did you discover the underground/punk?

I found out about underground culture through reading about the Beatles in elementary school. I used to spend a lot of time in the neighborhood library, looking up articles on the Beatles in the reference room. I discovered Yoko Ono that way. She opened up this whole world of avant garde and experimental creativity to my young mind. Through her I discovered Fluxus and Warhol's Factory. A high school poetry teacher turned me on to the Beats.

I was an avid music magazine reader and found out about the NY punk/CBGB scene in Creem and Rock Scene in 1975. When Patti Smith's Horses came out, I read a write up in the Washington Post. In 1976 I started listening to WGTB - a free-form radio station out of Georgetown Univ. - and first heard NY Dolls and Patti Smith. That same year my family took a trip to NY to visit relatives and we walked around Greenwich Village. I saw all these punk looking people and was instantly captivated. What's funny is that a high school friend of mine played me the Ramones when their first record came out and I remember I didn't like them at all! I liked the artier stuff. The first NY punk band I saw live was Talking Heads in '78. Seeing Tina Weymouth play bass was magical - she was very reserved and petite on stage and it was the first time, except for seeing Linda McCartney perform with Wings, that I saw a woman playing in a band. I didn't like Talking Heads after their first couple of records. But that Talking Heads show is when I first started documenting what was going on through photography. I had a photography teacher in high school who encouraged my creative pursuits.

I'd have to say that it was the music magazines and fanzines that really exposed me to punk. They captured the ideas and energy through writing and photos. I found out about UK punk through reading NME and fanzines like Sniffin' Glue. I also loved LA and SF punk through reading Slash, Search & Destroy and Flipside. These were available at Yesterday & Today Records, which opened in '77 in Rockville, Maryland about 10 minutes from Bethesda. I had access to a lot of these publications through working there on and off from '79-'82. Skip Groff, the owner, would go on trips and bring things back for me. I would read the zines as if looking for some secret code that would open up the world that matched what was in my imagination. It was really like that at that time. There was this sense of an entire new consciousness - a new sense of freedom, a new way of writing music & listening to it, a new way of looking at gender, a new way of creating community. I was stuck in suburban Bethesda, envisioning a scene in my area like the scenes I read about in the zines.

3-Was Chalk Circle your first band? How did you meet each other and what made you want to do a band? What were your influences musically maybe but also anything in a more abstract way? How did you fit in with the DC hardcore thing and were there any other bands that were your peers that were more arty/messed up that have disappeared to the sands of time? What was the best show you ever played?

Chalk Circle was my first band. I wrote songs with my best friend Stacy Taylor in junior high but we never played out. Aside from my 5th grade solo performance, I performed solo in high school for a Jewish youth group at my temple, doing a cover of the Kinks' Lola to shock them! This was before I'd ever heard the Raincoats version. I did it because I loved the way Patti Smith played with gender in her cover of Gloria.

Anne Bonafede, Chalk Circle's drummer, and I met each other through the small circle of DC punk kids that hung out at Madam's Organ shows and parties and record stores around late '79/early '80. Some of the kids were friends through Wilson High School, a public DC school where most of the Teen Idles and Untouchables went. Anne went there with Jeff Nelson, Teen Idles' drummer, who was her boyfriend. I spent a lot of the spring of 1980 hanging out with Anne, Jeff, Nathan Strejcek, Henry Garfield, Ian and Alec MacKaye, Vivien Greene, Danny Ingram, Cheryl Celso, Bert Queiroz and Eddie Janney. It was a great time. We all loved the Bad Brains. And we loved UK and California punk. I could tell that the community I'd envisioned in my head was happening in reality, and that was very exciting.

Besides Yesterday & Today, we hung out in Georgetown where a lot of the DC punk kids worked. Two of DC's first punks, Danny Ingram and Bruce Buelken, worked there. Henry was manager at the Haagen-Dazs shop in Georgetown. If my memory is correct, Anne and Ian both worked at Haagen-Daz for a while. Ian also worked at the Georgetown movie theater. So for a while the DC punk scene was centered in Georgetown when we weren't at shows. Kids would spend a lot of time walking into various places to hang out with friends and people got to know each other that way. It's not the kind of place you'd expect punk kids to develop a community because it was a wealthy neighborhood with a lot of boutiques. But a lot of the DC punk kids grew up or went to school in Georgetown or nearby, and I guess it was easy to get jobs there. Some of the punk kids went to private high schools like Georgetown Day or Duke Ellington School of the Arts. It was odd for me because part of my life was in Bethesda, part of it was at University of Maryland (starting Fall '79), and part of it was in DC.

I discovered a lot about 20th century art movements once I got to college because I took a lot of art history classes. I switched majors a few times, but basically I studied art history, aesthetic theory, film studies and english. I remember reading about Dada for one of my art history classes and thinking punk had a lot in common with it. I saw punk as more than just a style of music - I saw it as a life style, a youth movement and an art movement all in one. So I tried to read as much as I could about earlier cultural movements to get inspiration. In '81 I bought the Situationist International Anthology as soon as it was published, and that had a huge influence on me. My film history professor was Robert Kolker, who taught independent and international cinema. His film classes were where I first learned about feminist theory - he used it to discuss films by Jean-Luc Godard, Maya Deren and Marguerite Duras. I found out recently that he graduated from Columbia University in 1969. Columbia at that time, along with colleges such as UC Berkeley, was a hotbed of radicalism. Students there were part of the New Leftist revolutionary time period which involved a lot of Marxist and feminist thought. So I guess you could say that Chalk Circle was indirectly influenced by the New Left.

Before Chalk Circle played out and had a name (which I took from Bertolt Brecht's Caucasian Chalk Circle), we consisted of me, Anne and Cheryl in 1980. Cheryl was at all the punk shows and we thought she was cool because she lived by herself in a studio apt. in downtown DC and had a real job, so she didn't have any parents to answer to! Anne still lived at home and I lived at home when I wasn't living in my college dorm.

Mitch Parker who went on to GI wanted to play with us, but he wanted to call the band Mitch and his Bitches so we said no. Henry was almost in the band but he ended up doing SOA instead. Bert Queiroz from the Untouchables rehearsed with us for a bit. We didn't play out until 1981 - the main lineup was Mary Green on vocals & guitar, me on guitar & vocals, Anne on drums. We went through a string of bass players - the first was Jan Pumphrey.

Anne and I met Jan and Mary through Nathan and Danny - both of whom were in Youth Brigade by that time. Mary and I wrote songs together - she wrote most of the lyrics and I wrote most of the music, but we collaborated a lot. After Jan, the bass players were Sally Berg for one show, then Tamera Edminster (aka Tamera Lyndsay). We met Sally and Tamera because they worked at the 9:30 Club. Anne and I went to shows there a lot.

We wanted to do a band because we loved playing music and listening to music. We saw all our friends playing in bands and we wanted to do it too. We saw girls from NY, LA, SF and London playing in bands and they gave us inspiration and courage. We loved the energy and attitude of punk which about just putting yourself out there and doing something productive. We wanted to be socially aware and active rather than passive consumers. We actually only played out four times and all four shows were a blast. We opened up for the Velvet Monkeys for our first two shows and then got support from the older art punk crowd - like Nurses, Half Japanese, Tru Fax & Insaniacs.

As the DC hardcore scene became more macho and less about a tight-knit group of friends, we found greater support with this older group of people. We always thought of punk as having no rules, but when hardcore became more popular there developed a code to which Chalk Circle didn't adhere. Nonetheless, Anne and I loved hardcore and went to all the shows. We went to all the Minor Threat, SOA, GI and Youth Brigade shows and loved to dance. But as the dancing matched the music, we danced so hard that we came home with bruises all over our bodies! Even though the dancing was not intentionally violent, it stopped being safe for girls - a lot of guys wore chains and studs and didn't realize their own strength when they rammed into people. This was the precursor to slam dancing. As the scene became more focused on thrash - ie. loud, fast rules - Chalk Circle didn't fit in so well. Our music was influenced by a lot of music besides hardcore, especially post-punk, no wave, funk, pop and '60s rock. I was listening to a lot of hard bop jazz at the time. Anne and I would drive around DC late at night after shows with the windows rolled down, blaring jazz on the radio.

I loved Anne's drum style. Jeff Nelson taught Anne how to play thrash beats but she made up her own style. She played cymbals sparingly. We felt we had more in common with bands like Red C, with Toni Young on bass, who had a reggae influence. I loved a lot of the bands that evolved out of hardcore that weren't generic thrash sounding and had a more experimental approach, like Red C and Toni's other band Peer Pressure, Nuclear Crayons, Hate From Ignorance, Fungus of Terror, Deadline, Void, Faith. I also really liked art punk bands like Velvet Monkeys, Half Japanese, Chumps, Tiny Desk Unit, Tony Perkins & the Psychotics. Chalk Circle fit in somewhere in the middle of all this.

Once I became friends with Colin Sears, he introduced me to all the younger hardcore kids in Bethesda. These were kids with a similar suburban background, who were a few years younger and very open-minded. Colin had a great hardcore band called Capitol Punishment and we became friends after he, Mike Fellows and I saw the DC premiere of The Decline of Western Civilization.

It was through Colin that I met Chalk Circle's last bassist, Chris Niblack. Colin and I ended up in Bloody Mannequin Orchestra together after Chalk Circle broke up and then he went on to Dag Nasty. Chris went on to No Trend.

4-Why do you think DC had so many creative ladies but so few were in the 'seminal'/remembered bands? Obviously there are other aspects to punk that are as important as being in a band, but it just seems weird that like Dischord didn't put out many bands with women in them til the late 80s/90s... Especially seeing the Banned in DC book which has so many amazing punk ladies represented.

There weren't at the time, and still aren't, enough people in the underground or mainstream print and broadcasting media who were/are interested in documenting U.S. bands with girls, especially those with creative musicians. There is a certain narrative that gets repeated over and over. The only reason the narrative began to change in the '90s is because of riot grrrl and because of the efforts of a lot of people to rethink rock/punk history. It is difficult to change the narrative when it is entrenched as a certain story from the very beginning.

It was due to efforts of Chalk Circle and documentation such as Banned in DC that things changed in DC. In the early '80s, Ian told me Dischord didn't want to release Chalk Circle because our sound didn't fit the label's aesthetic. And I completely understand that, even though at the time it hurt since the scene was so small and tight-knit and we were all friends. But obviously his tastes changed by the time Fire Party or Slant 6 were around. And Dischord probably wouldn't have released them if it hadn't been for Chalk Circle or the efforts of women like me, Cynthia Connolly, Amy Pickering and Lydia Ely. Cynthia and Amy worked for Dischord, and the four of us were responsible for the mixed gender discussion group documentation for MRR's women in punk issue in the late '80s. If Chalk Circle had been around 5 or 10 years later, maybe we would have been on Dischord. Afterall, the Suture 7" is a split release between Decomposition and Dischord, and that came out in '92. I'm the kind of person who likes to focus on the positive, rather than the negative. So I'd rather look at the fact that change is often gradual and things are much better now than they were in the '80s. Bikini Kill were directly influenced by Banned in DC. I think documenting the creative efforts of women is really important, even if the underground or mainstream media don't catch on until years later. It is the documentation that proves what happened and what is possible.

The 1980s were too conservative to promote and sustain bands with women. There just wasn't enough support for female musicians, which translated into a lack of creative nourishment. Many women chose other creative avenues of expression that provided more nourishment, such as writing or photography or graphic design.

You have to keep in mind that just before Chalk Circle played our first show, Henry left DC to join Black Flag and that changed things a lot. The attention got put on the bands like Black Flag that were touring a lot. The bands that are remembered are the ones that toured. Chalk Circle never toured - there were too many obstacles. It was hard enough for guys!

I was involved in the U.S. hardcore scene through writing, rather than touring. Anne and I worked on one of the earliest DC hardcore zines, Now What?, published in 1981 by Sarah Woodell. Then I became pen pals with guys all over the U.S. through Colin's and my zine If This Goes On. There was this great network of fanzine writers who were also in punk bands, but they were all guys. My whole attitude was that I didn't want to be a groupie - I wanted to participate as an equal. I communicated with Thurston Moore who had just started Sonic Youth and did Killer, Barry Hennsler of the Necros who did Smegma Journal, Bob Moore who was in Rebel Truth for a bit who did Noise and ran the label Version Sound, and one of the guys from Jody Foster's Army who did Phenis. We all just found each other by reading each other's zines.

5-what's your favorite memory of being a young punk? anything! a show, a feeling, the first time you heard a record...

The memory that is seared into my heart and brain is this - watching the Bad Brains and Teen Idles rehearse in the basement of Nathan's house with Henry. March 1980. It was an uplifting, exciting, exuberant feeling. I remember thinking - this is day one of my new life because I've finally found friends I fit in with. I felt completely accepted by them. We respected each other and we stimulated one another. I felt completely connected and inspired.

Another great memory is of seeing the Mo-dettes at the old 9:30 Club at 9th & F in DC. It was so rare to see an all-female punk band. Chalk Circle were the only all-girl punk band in DC until Fire Party and Nike Chix came along in the mid-'80s. So I went up to the singer for the Mo-dettes after their show and asked her for advice on how to deal with being in an all-girl band. She said something to the effect of - "You can't deny you're all girls, but remember you're in it for the music".

6-I loved the thing you talked about at VC's BBQ which was something along the lines of noise being a way to stay creative and DIY without being in a rerun of the past as a lot of punks/ex punks seem to get tangled up in... Instead of seeing punk as a musical idea/style of dress I have always thought of it as an idea of possibility and freedom, DIY etc, rather than a set of rules, and I think of your music and art as being so linked to this. How it's possible to stay fierce and brave and new and underground without seeming like a boring guy at a bar telling the same black flag anecdote over and over... if that makes sense!! do you wanna talk about your relationship to the underground scene and music and how you keep your sense of adventure in regards to music...

Yes, this makes sense. Thanks! I believe exactly what you said - that punk is an "idea of possibility and freedom". In my mind, punk is part of a lineage that stretches back through the 20th century that encourages freedom of expression through the means of everyday life. And it goes even farther back to a time when there were no rules about how art or music was supposed to be made. In other words, I see what I do in within a wider context. I have a creative practice that is a daily exercise in exploration, experimentation, discovery.

I'm interested in what I can do as an individual to engage other people. Noise is one avenue for this because noise is DIY and experimental. Actually, I was into noise back in the '80s and at that time it was seen as an extension of punk. When I was in Bloody Mannequin Orchestra, we opened up for Einsturzende Neubauten. We were all part of the same group of underground musicians. I liked noise when it was first evolving into industrial music and I was super into the NY noise scene in the early '80s. So I see a continuum with noise that has evolved from early punk to what it is today and it's mutated and transformed a lot.

Sonically I connect with noise because I like the way it makes me feel. It's actually very soothing and comforting! I love the feeling of being able to let go and lose myself in the moment that sounds are being made. It's similar to the energy I felt with punk. In these moments, the body takes over and responds to the sounds or the music even as the mind is working to conceptualize what's going on. It's a very visceral way of expressing various states of mind. That's what keeps things fresh for me. I also love narrative and sometime noise is too abstract for what I'm trying to express, especially when these ideas relate to what is happening on a larger social or political level. But at the same time, working abstractly challenges me. I usually have an idea first and then I choose how I'm going to express it. It usually comes from improvising in some way.

One of the things I like about collaborating with so many different people through Coterie Exchange is that I see how we all like noise or punk, in their broadest definitions, and integrate them into our own work in various ways. One of the original ideas I had behind Coterie Exchange was that it would be a vehicle for like-minded people to collaborate together, regardless of musical background and regardless of location. I wanted to bring together people from various regional scenes in order to facilitate a dialogue through working together. It just so happens that most of the people I know work independently - we're all pretty committed to the DIY concept. But I wouldn't rule out working with someone who wasn't underground.

I've always been very broad-minded and I love a lot of different types of music, art, film and writing, so when I think about being creative I try not to limit myself much. Often I'll play with the conventions of different genres to explore various ideas.
7-what were your favorite records when you were 17? what about now?

Hmmm, when I was 17 it was 1978-79, my senior year in high school and first year of college. It's hard to remember because all my LPs are in storage. But what I vividly recall is that 1979 was the year everything changed musically because punk was evolving into post-punk. '79 was also the year the Germs' GI came out and that blew my mind. In trying to list my favorite records, I realized I have way too many to name. I love music and I've been buying records for 35 years, so what can I say? So I'm going to take the challenge to ONLY list ones that were my favorites back when I was 17 AND nowŠand that I actually owned.

> In no particular order:
> all Beatles
> Who Sell Out, A Quick One, Happy Jack, The Who Sings My Generation, Meaty Beaty Big & Bouncy, Who's Next, Tommy, Quadrophenia - Who
> Power to the People/Touch Me 7" and Unfinished Music No.2: Life with the Lions - Plastic Ono Band
> Wild Life - Wings
> For Your Love and Having a Rave Up - Yardbirds
> The Kinks' Greatest Hits and Something Else - Kinks
> Them - Them
> Love is All Around - Troggs
> Nuggets: Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era
> Freewheelin' Bob Dylan - Bob Dylan
> Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere and After the Goldrush - Neil Young
> Gloria/My Generation 7" and Horses - Patti Smith
> Marquee Moon - Television
> Blank Generation - Richard Hell & the Voidoids
> The Clash - Clash
> Another Music in a Different Kitchen - Buzzcocks
> In the City and All Mod Cons - Jam
> I'm Stranded - Saints
> Action Time Vision 7" - Alternative TV
> Crossing the Red Sea with - The Adverts
> Cut - Slits
> Hedi's Head EP (Swiss version) - Kleenex
> Mind Your Own Business 7" - Delta 5
> Kerb Crawler EP - Au Pairs
> Fairytale in the Supermarket 7" - Raincoats
> Teenage Jesus & the Jerks 7"s
> GI - Germs
> Tooth & Nail compilation LP w/Germs, Flesheaters, Middle Class, Negative Trend
> Babylonian Gorgon - Bags
> We Are the One EP - Avengers
> Ack Ack Ack Ack EP - Urinals
> Pink Flag - Wire
> Entertainment - Gang of Four
> Live at the Witch Trials - The Fall
> Unknown Pleasures - Joy Division
> early Rough Trade 7"s and A Trip to Marineville - Swell Maps
> Heart of Darkness/30 Seconds Over Tokyo 7" - Pere Ubu
> Cyclotron/Agitated 7" - Electric Eels
> Psychedelic Sounds of and Easter Everywhere - 13th Floor Elevators
> No Way Out - Chocolate Watchband
> Barrett and Madcap Laughs- Syd Barrett
> Roxy Music and For Your Pleasure - Roxy Music
> Here Come the Warm Jets - Eno
> Space Oddity 7" - David Bowie
> Happy Together/She's My Girl 7" - Turtles
> Straight Up - Badfinger
> More of the Monkees and Head - Monkees
> White Light/White Heat and Velvet Underground & Nico - Velvet Underground
> The Stooges - Stooges
> Back in the USA - MC5
> 'Round About Midnight - Miles Davis
> Monk's Music - Thelonious Monk
> Giant Steps - John Coltrane
> I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You - Aretha Franklin
> Original Folk Blues - Elmore James
>
>

8-what's the best place you've ever lived and what was the best thing about it?
I have my most happy childhood memories from LA. In the '60s it was a great place for kids - because of the sunshine and beaches and open spaces. I don't think it's that way anymore because of the traffic congestion and urban development. I think I've always longed to recapture the sense of openness and freedom I felt back then. I had it for a while in the early '80s DC punk scene and also for a long time in San Francisco, where I moved in 1990. I've been back in LA since 2005 and it's been great reconnecting to my past, but my favorite city so far to live in has been San Francisco.

The Cool Tavern

2008-08-06T00:38:00.000-07:00

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"

whatwewantisfree.blospot.com

jambang

2008-07-06T06:00:00.000-07:00

Summer Jams
1-Death-Politicians in my Eyes/Keep on Knockin.
Death were an African American proto-punk band from early '70s Detroit; clearly you can't go wrong! I like this better than MC5; it's nastier and the riffs are fucking catchy and tough as shit. Sound of the streets, hard stares and back talking good times. I listened to it on repeat for an hour when I first got it so... will... you. You can download this from the Chunklet website. Or numerous other punk orientated forums and message boards. Or pay zillions of dollars for their 7" on ebay.

2-Maniax-we got sent two copies of this CD and each one instantly had numerous people's initials all over it (Can I review this? Can I?) Not sure who won that battle but me and Martin drove round town dropping off issues of the new MRR at record stores whilst singing,'Wendy O! OH! I love you so' (Can I be Yr Butcher Baby?) I already played another song off of this on a MRR radio show where I got in trouble for going over the time limit. Maniax! Teenagers from fucking FRESNO circa 1980, they played shows at the Mab, they got played on MRR radio when Tim n Jello n them were in charge, and were also on the Not So Quiet... comp. Most of the music contained within as far as I can tell is boom box recordings, the CD is 45 songs long, and maybe you aren't ready for that amount of this style. Maybe four or five here and there would be perfect if you aren't equipped for the reality of teenage times in a shitty town. BUT COME ON!! Wise up. This just exemplifies the genius of bored youth in the face of a New Idea, when kids reclaimed music from the tomb of 70s pop radio and Rolling Stone mag. I am sure there were a million bands like this in 1980, this is so charming and ridiculous and awesome and you need to get it together and get this. Maniaxmusic.com Also: Can someone interview them for MRR?? Like right now?

3-General Interest Demo- Sarcastic like an older brother who's always one step ahead but still annoying. I like the guitar sound, it reminds me of something I can't think of, like KBD kreepy melodics mushed up with Monorchid or Metamatics even?? It has this post punk influenced DC sound, and then a sharp-witted beach hardcore thing (which is an incongruous reference I know) that reminds me of a weird combination of all of the above. Bass is deep n dumb. Dunno. My writing on the subject of this tape is troubled but I personally would send off for it; I did even! It's snotty and funny and smart and there's nothin wrong with that huh? (4 bucks? 3 bucks? 59 Mytle St Somerville MA 02145)

4-Martin scored the Kalashnikov 45 for a typical Martin-style $20 bucks. "Oh this Betong Hysteria 7"? I found it in a box in an alley behind the showspace etc etc etc" Anyway whatever the story of his big score, he played this for me and I was totally blown away. The singer's voice is incredible, initially it reminded me of a less Exene'd out Mai of Gorilla Angreb, her voice is so much more restrained and cooler sounding though and I am aware I liken WAY too many lady singers to Mai. This is such a great 7”, I am not sure if it has been Bloodstained across Denmark or Killed by Death or anything, but someone should just fuckin reissue it! Just ruling awesome Danish punk with the best kind of lady punk vocals. This just in from Shit-Fi productions:
“Layla, I could've sworn I heard Kalashnikov was getting reissued, but that may not happen due to everything in KBN going haywire after Ungdomshuset was evicted. There was apparently a second Kalashnikov 7" recorded at the time, which never made it past test pressings (or something like that). I think there's a later record that is wave. Members were also in another band called Diarre before Kalashnikov who were on a tape comp and released a demo ltd to something like 25 (which no one has). Diarre is extremely killer raw, simple punk. One song is called "I Hate the New Romantics"! “

5-Silla Electrica will have a 7" out, at some point this summer, courtesy of one half of the Kill Test record label, ie Golnar, not sure what the name of her new endeabour is. I already raved about the demo, not sure where you can get a hold of one at this point, so just wait for the 7”. The duelling male/female vocals with a RAW Spanish punk vengeance style will make you spit blood for weeks. Total frayed at the edges frenzy, parts of it made me think of like the Tyrades trying to play Rappresaglia, but as if garage rock as it is now didn’t ever exist. It’s kind of got the violence of the Tyrades thru the filter of some Italian classix, but is way more street somehow than Tyrades!! You know, if you like punk rock that would sound good whether it came out in 79 or 08 make sure you get this record dudes! No contact info but I will pass it on when I get it! Spanish punk for you thoughtful trashed types.

6-Brilliant Colors are from San Francisco, the last time I saw them play was at this accidental all-girl bands show at the Knockout, with a band with the worst name; Schmool and Grass Widow too. Schmool kind of sounded like Y-Pants but I am not sure they would have ever heard of that band. They had nurse/insect costumes on and were very young, and initially the costume wacky factor made me wanna old lady it at the bar. I am glad I didn’t because the music they made was truly strange and out of sync in a compelling awesome way. They brought to mind Y Pants because the music was kind of creepy but also full of wonder rather than the void-like fury of the no wave…Also kind of Slits demos style, great Palmolive styled drums, really wild and unrestrained sounding. Brilliant Colors have changed rhythm sections since I last saw them, which has made them less C86 shambolic and tighter, sharper focussed somehow. I got a definite Bats feel, maybe even The Clean; some New Zealand was stuck in their throats for sure, but also a total dreamy Shop Assistants wash of veiled threats. They were fucking great, and I am sure they have a Myspace but SF check them out live for sure! Even the hardcore kids were diggin on the sound. Grass Widow played afterwards and instantly created a ladypit of frantic girls who knew all the words. They reminded me of the New Bloods, that sing songy Raincoats feel with more of a post-punk angularity however. Grass Widow were the most popular band, people were freaking out, it was kind of like what I imagine watching Against Me would be like if they were an all girl band that sounded like Raincoats?! The fans were all singing along fervently and totally losing it like girls did at Sleater Kinney shows, but the fervent unison-ness of it all made me think of having to watch this horrific Against Me vid at a random party a few years back. They sound like a less world-beat/primal New Bloods, so I guess Raincoats-lite is the new girl band sound? Kind of cool if it’s true… It was a great show even if I was a little lukewarm on the headliners. It’s a rad feeling being at an accidental all-girl show, where every band was lady fuelled like it was no big thing, as things should be you know?

7-I stole the below from some email newsletter I get; read it and realize that we need to know what The Cardboards, the Shakes and Hans Brinker and the Dykes sound like! And also we need to see the Pittsburgh punk super 8 freak out too!!

“A program of transmissions from Pittsburgh featuring small gauge oddities, punk documents from the late 1970's, home movies, industrial films of heavy industry and selections from the George Romero nostalgia vault. Playing off a combination of home movies that perform celebrity, performance in the punk underground and role playing in the silent film, this program presents aural and visual interplays and turns the tropes of sensorial convention on its ear: a vampire film by deaf children, a punk documentary, sound problems on the Super-8 mag track, a silent work print version of a sound film. Featuring a variety of films I saw originally while living in Pittsburgh in the late 1970's and early 1980's, these works are seared into my memory as fantastic microgems of cinematic invention and sublime eccentricity.

Featured in the program:

Miss You, Natalka Voslakov, Super-8, 1979, 3 mins
Natalka's kids Zoe and Zoltan perform the Rolling Stones classic.

Nosferatu in WPSD, Super-8, 1979, 18 mins
A Super 8mm rendition of the vampire story performed by kids from the
Western Pennsylvania School for the Deaf under the guidance of their
teacher Tippi Comden.

Debt Begins at 20, Stephanie Beroes, 16mm, 1980, 40 mins
Part fiction part documentary, with music by The Cardboards, The
Shakes, Hans Brinker and The Dykes.

The Beach Bunnies at the Electric Banana, Peggy Ahwesh, Super-8, 1980,
10 mins
Acting out at the punk club one night.

About Peggy Ahwesh

Peggy Ahwesh came of age with 1970's feminism, Super-8 film and the
punk underground. She works in film and video, is on the editorial board of Ediciones la Calavera, a book publishing initiative. Ahwesh plays music with Barbara Ess (from Y Pants!!) in the band Radio/Guitar. She teaches film and video production at Bard College.”

This along with a conversation in the kitchen with Justin has made me realize that we need to do a punks in the movies themed issue of MRR, covering shit like this as well as the more ‘conventional’ punker cinematic moments. If you have any ideas let us know! I am already thinking about that Chicago punk movie, the Cleveland hardcore movie, the Brazillian one, Joe Rees of Target Video… There’s also a crazy rad thing I saw once as a kid and never again since, called something like Girls Bite Back which had Slits, Mannisch Depressiv, Lilliput and other early 80s/late 70s Euro ladies. And of course Ladies and Gentlemen the Fabulous Stains is getting a reissue this fall, there’s Times Square which I have never seen even, shit I only saw Repo Man for the first time this year! The Screamers movie, Population One, that for some reason Subterranean still has a bunch of on VHS and yet I never manage to get it together to have enough money to get one when I am in the warehouse…

8-Sex Vid-Communal Living. And the future that is July 4th weekend-three Sex Vid shows, one in my backyard with Nodzz, Gun Outfit, Sisters and Never Healed, then the next day Lebenden Toten and Needles, and the next day Limp Wrist-whole weekend’s gonna be a rager dudes! Run on sentences! Yeah!

9-- I am in my last two weeks of just being a general shitworker at Maximum before I take over from Martin as distribution co-ordinator in July. I don’t think I have ever been more consumed by the magazine; constantly thinking about it and talking about it to the point of being informed that I was only allowed to talk about MRR for three hours straight as a one time thing. Nearly everyone I have talked to that's slightly outside of the Maximum orbit has informed me that we should give up on print media and just turn the mag into a blog or something to that effect. Which is kind of disheartening. And ridiculous?? At any rate each medium has it’s functions and advantages, and I wrote out a huge impassioned argument about the importance of independent print media and was somehow unable to put it in here. It was kind of exhausting to write and probably even worse to read. MRR rulez. I think (know) I am the first distribution coordinator with a column, and hopefully now even though I am going to be working two close-to-full-time jobs at once I will still have things to write about beyond recounting hilarious hijinks at the bulk mail drop off.

10-write me punx. I am a lousy correspondent I warn you… layla at maximumrocknroll.com

If you are interested in distributing MRR distro at maximumrocknroll.com

whatwewantisfree.blogspot.com is where I put the old columns from here on thee internet…

2008-06-10T01:18:00.001-07:00

The only spam I get is prescription drug related and I don’t even know what the drugs in the email titles are or what they do. Cialis. Cialis. What is this. I don’t want to know. Cialis. Cialis. A week or so ago I saw THRONES play in SF, Joe Preston; bass scientist, technician of tension. I saw MELVINS support Nirvana when I was 13 and it kind of changed my life, Joe played bass, I did not know this then though. I only remember their hair cuts and the feel of the bass on my skin, total second layer of epidermis, noise so harsh and all emcompassing it would have crumbled colluseums, definitely made me reconsider the Sid Vicious bootleg T shirt I was wearing because MELVINS were way better than My Way. Got kicked in the face in the pit and had my life changed and thus went out and got the 1st Melvins record I could find, the one with the Flipper/Alice Cooper covers on it. Such a rager. The first time I saw Thrones I tried to convey to Joe the effect this show had on my brain and demonstrated the true fixated nerd that I am, he still remembers me from this conversation even tho that was probably ten years ago. Jeez. Anyway new THRONES set is like a birthday pony ridden through the post apocalyptic tundra, or more like a birthday without the pony. A ride without the post apolcalyptic tundra, or maybe actually no birthday, no ride, no pony, no tundra. Maybe if you know about cialis? Cialysis. Cianalyse it.
Next month you will see my name in the co-ordinator section of the masthead because I am taking over from Martin as Distribution co-ordinator. If you work at a record store, skate shop, zine store, art n craft empire, info shop, squat gas station, tattoo shop, distro hovel etc etc you should totally start carrying Maximum Rocknroll. It’s the magazine for shitty thinkers, indifferent ragers, political gas attacks and you. Carry it. No but seriously duds email me here: layla@maximumrocknroll.com if you can think of a store or distro that would be interested in carrying the mag. I have been training under the watchful eyes of Uncle Mar and am really looking forward to taking over in July. If you live in the SF/Bay Area and would be interested in helping out with shitwork contact us poser. There are some vaguely exciting things happening in terms of what I will be doing with the magazine with which I will need help, and also we always need people to help out doing shit like green tapin, picking up the mail from the PO box, and other equally fascinating tasks.

In the midst of all of this I had to fly to England on two days notice to deal with Some Family Matters. I took the opportunity to bring home my early 90s hip-hop tape collection (Raekwon! EPMD! Many others!) find an OG copy of Wipers Youth of America for £5 and go see an exhibition of May ‘68 posters from the student/worker Paris uprising. Last time I was there it was because my mum wanted me to clear out my record collection from my teenage bedroom, I mailed about 2000 LPs and 7"s to SF and sold the rest at random record stores where people kept telling me that no one was buying vinyl in the UK anymore, which struck me as strange. It seems like 2nd hand vinyl is the one thing that would still sell, if only to nerd collectors now that CDs have been devalued by the MP3. I guess the UK is bereft of old vinyl obsessives? Though having seen Fat Bob from Hard Skin’s record collection I am not sure of the truth of that statement. I found that £5 Wipers LP in the ‘White Stripes/Garage revival’ section of the record store that someone from Swell Maps used to work at, which is kind of inexplicable. The catagorization that is. Garage revival?? Jeez. Also the New Model Army records were in the ‘CRUST’ section of the record store, along with a bunch of dodgy spiral tribe techno dreadfuls, can the punks please stop liking this shitsystem of a band? They had their own brand of fucking clogs! CLOGS! No! I saw many records I would have picked up if the dollar hadn’t been so worthless. Seeing an old insane looking early 80s comp LP with a bunch of classic Messthetics bands on it including The Tronics, for £30, which worked out at $60 for me, was a total bummer. Also there was an article in the listings section of the Guardian newspaper about Jay Reatard which claimed he was in a long line of American Hardcore Heroes such as Fucked Up. Really?? English people and their genres.
Other bummers:
1-The shambolic indie revival. Chapel Hill part V. Make it go away.
2-Mimimal Techno
3-Hippie dadrock jam revival music that just sounds like late 70s AM rock. At least channel Roky/Skip Spence rather than generic rock millionaires.
4-the word ‘chill’ used in contexts such as ‘we had a chill time’ ‘it was chill’ ‘he’s a chill dude’ etc etc also chill out music as a genre.
5-‘punk’ bands or bands with ex ‘punks’ who play shows/events sponsored by Nike/PBR/whatever. Also Nike’s new subliminal ‘unbranded’ advertising.

Top tenned

1-Venom P Stinger Live LP
2-Kikeiji-Plastics Love
3-The Lowrider mag from 82 with The Brat on the cover
4-Punk style from east LA in that era
5-Julien Stranger’s part in the Reason for Living vid.
6-Can-I Want More
7-Jay Boy by Kent Sherwood/Glen E Friedman. Pre Dog Town Jay Adams...
8-Subculture-I Heard A Scream LP
9-Shitty Laddes
10-layla at maximumrocknroll.com or whatwewantisfree.blogspot.com

Music that Sounds Like Raymond Pettibon Drawings

2008-05-05T06:00:00.000-07:00

One time when I was a teenage skate rat I tried to interview Ed Templeton for my zine only he thought I was hitting on him and wouldn't do it. If you knew me as a teenager (or even now) you would know that is the most ridiculous thing to think. I am the least flirtatious person on earth and I am such a champion nerd that I can launch into a 5000 word dissertation on the relative merits of late period Black Flag instrumentals with no notion that the dude I am talking to would way rather be um doing other things than listening to me demonstrate what a total dork I am. I used to hang out with this dude who looked at me incredulously when I said I would never be able to play the guitar parts on The Wipers' Youth of America. I mean for me the guitar sound on that record is kind of epic and mythic/ mysterious and thus unimaginable in the context of my mere hands. For him it would probably be a lazy evening's project. It's just a guitar part. It's just a studio trick. Except it isn't!
It's the sound of bad weather, bad drugs, paranoia, weird alien conspiracies, evenings alone, walks through isolated parts of town at the wrong moment in time. It totally evokes the North West- an isolated doomed, weather-beaten down/too many drugs genius sound. It's not something you can replicate with your hands, you could maybe make an approximation of, or maybe even an exact replica. But it would be wrong somehow. Even if you decided to do a band using the idea of that as your masterplan it would not sum up an entire paranoid universe that doesn't actually exist. Except in your head when you listen to Youth of America. Too many people wanna do a band like VOID and just make a bad metal douche sound instead. Or they wanna do a band that's along the lines of the Dead C and somehow they can't get the atmospherics quite right and instead of hexed transcendence you are very aware of the collection of devices connected to the guitar spread out on the floor, spoils of a pawn shop pedal spree. Meaning that there is some weird chemical reaction that separates the sound from the scene depiction of. Endless Re-enactments! Doomed to Dream!
Therefore no one should do anything ever again.
I want weirdo mutants not shambolic dudes who smoke a lot of pot and get a lot of ass and keep it on the regular regularly. I like having an idea of music and not having that idea ruined by actually meeting the musicians and finding out they're just regular folx, which I guess is me playing my part in upholding the myth of rocknroll. Basically I want music to be as it is in my head, not made by actual humans that participate in actual human interactions. Not too much to ask? Ho Ho HO. (YOU WILL NEVER MAKE A SOUND THAT'S AS LIBERATING AS THE GUITAR ON VOID'S EXPLODE! DON'T EVEN TRY! )
What is it about a person or a band or an idea that makes you want to create your own thing rather than just consume theirs? What makes you feel like a fan eternally stuck in the audience as opposed to the feeling that makes you think that you have something to contribute to what is happening on stage. That you could make your own weirdo version of it. Endless offshoots vs starry eyed worship. I like reading old Minutemen interviews because they were such dork fans, so obsessed and reverent and yet the music they made was a total irreverent celebration of this, they kind of turned being a total fan into this other thing. This joyful inclusive sound that makes the listener feel part of something worth investigating and yet very aware that what they are listening to is (a disruptive) part of rocknroll and thus in itself fanworthy. See also: first Meat Puppets 7". The music creates a world in which you are able to exist. But you have to also create your own thing to remain an active participant is the process, not a reproduction antique.
This is all connected. If you have been following my fascinating journey through life and thusly fervently reading these columns on a month to month basis you will know that I went to the Great Pacific North West for the Sex Vid 7" release rather than going to the upcoming punk rage fest, Chaos In Tejas. (Though I may still go to that? Um, probably not since it seems it'll ultimately cost more in the $400 range and I live more in the minus 400 dollar range) At anyrate, Olympia, the city of ghosts of former ideas and happenings; definitely was weird to be there in the context of Sex Vid rather than a Yo Yo a Go Go or Ladyfest. Felt way less frantic and run around and more weird and fucked up like a slowed down Wipers guitar part or driving round listening to Thrones in the end times.
We flew into Seattle and it was fuckin snowing, the airport had a weird sterile rock/zen garden that we sat in and watched the snow fall. I spent the flight reading this book, Enter Naomi, SST, LA and All That by Joe Carducci which Hubbs' lent me months ago. I was totally consumed by it to the point that I was one of those douchebags that reads whilst walking along, all the way to where Sam and RJ were waiting for us by the curb. Enter Naomi was written as a result of finding out two years after the fact that the SST house photographer Naomi Peterson had died. It works as a history of SST and Black Flag from an insiders perspective, Carducci was the Label Manager I think, but as it says on the subject line on the back cover "Music/Photography/Women/Los Angeles." While not quite a memoir, though it sort of is that too, it's more about the women of SST and the history of punk and how music and place and scene and scum bag geniuses make things transcendent and digusting at once. There were a few moments where I felt the depictions of the women were off; just felt like they were kind of cartoon 'crazy wild lady!' which is to say a little one dimensional. And I'm not saying that the women/girls of early LA punk/SST weren't wild, more that the characterizations seemed a little fetishistic/simplistic in certain places, but really that's kind of a minor quibble.

In using Naomi's life trajectory as his starting point Carducci creates a really refreshing way of covering familiar punk-rock-history-book territory, ie the Myth of Black Flag™. The book switches from biographical detail, of Naomi, of LA, of Medea, the woman that inspired Jealous Again, to all lower-case emails sent from other lost SST girls, and his own esoteric memories elicited from a certain photograph or flier. He details the exact manner in which Naomi managed to go from random punk girl in distress/potential groupie to scene photographer for one of the most important record labels in one of the least women friendly environments. You will lose a day to this book I swear. It works as a great companion piece to Get In The Van or the punk planet Flag interviews, and opens up another LA where the Bukowski antihero is a woman who doesn't quite get eaten by the scene/society but loses and gains something else in terms of identity and memory. The fliers and ephemera; photos, recording notes, press releases, post cards, diaries add to the collage like nature of the book. It's like a conversation rather than a broadcast if that makes sense and really opens up a world like the best books do.

I also read RJ's old Forced Exposures which made me rue the lack of great music zines, I know the internet, the internet, blah blah blah, but there's nothing as wide reaching, insane, creepy, funny and obsessive as that zine in existence now. That's a definite call to arms by the way. Half of Sex Vid live across from a place that sells Rippin' Tacos. RJ said he used to be vegetarian but started to feel the meat vibrations a few years back, which could the name of your new zine? Right? Super creepy. MEAT VIBRATIONS. Rippin Tacos is your fake OC Reagan band. We sat in on a SEX VID practise sesh minus Judd, which Hubbs' is bootlegging as I write this. $80 of ebay gold; imagine the NECROS trying to play INTEGRITY VOCAL TEST. Livin the Dream tapes. Also watch out for Sue's Meat Puppets 1st 7" Brooklyn basement scene explosion 2010 future. Heard some gnarly stories about a 20 yr old Iraqi war vet who is now an anti-war campaigner. Total annihilation. Sam's drums randomly smashed the back window of his car in the car park of the pizzeria where the show, which was free with Iron Lung and Sisters and ltd ed. ebay gold merch, was going to be in Oly. My best friend called me because she was walking home from attending a Boredoms show at 1am alone by the river Charles on the opposite coast and malevolent dark forms kept appearing from the shadows.
Of course Sex Vid were fucking great live-kids were doing flips off the pizza counter into the crowd and the new shit sounds incredible played in such circumstances, totally brutal brain damage LSD math genius disturbance. Heavy like late nights/early mornings/which is which? I liked Sisters a lot, but saw a lot of Evol/Sister replicants when I was a teenage grunge fan so wanted more from them kind of? Especially in regards to the dude that apes Thurston's voice so mechanically. He definitely needs to figure out how to not do that. Kanako's voice is super rad, though she only sang on one song and I really dug her Moe Tucker channeled thru Jesus and Mary Chain drumming style. Iron Lung also were great, like them waaaay better live than on record tho the new LP cover art is next level greatness.

Listened to lots of BATS LPs and 12"s, the Dead C White house 12" and bought some weirdo mid 80s battle of the bands/Cramps mutation shit-fi 7" with photocopied on legal paper cover with incredibly intricate autistic doom art that was moulding. Also heard more Ween hanging out with Sue and RJ than I did for the entire 90s and 00s combined. Bummerz. No sleep pretty much except on a dirty mattress in some junkie kid's apt in Olympia while a life long Petty Crime fan tried to get me to tell him something I couldn't figure out. (Petty Crime was my teenage artpunker band with aforementioned best friend)
Sex Vid will be playing my backyard some summer afternoon; SF's alright if you like saxophones/green drugs/feeling like earth.
ENDNOTES:

1-CAMPINGSEX 1914 double LP reissue

2-Late period Black Flag on headphones
3-Suburban Lawns-Janitor

4-Nixe 7" and rumors of a LP discography

5-Breakfast Without Meat zine, the issue with the Black Flag interview

6-My future contains a Thera knitted Faith/Void scarf

7-The Brat on the cpver of Lowrider magazine Feb 82 Issue. NEED THIS, also the fact that The Brat are putting out a discog. With unreleased songs…. Dreamy!

8-Coffee in Seattle is delicious, coffee at Seattle airport is a shitsystem

9-Angry Grunge Dude #1: "You Have Great Thighs©"

layla.gibbon at maximumrocknroll.com

whatwewantisfree.blogspot.com (older columns I wrote are here)

society dog

2008-04-03T00:08:00.000-07:00

The Light, The Sound, The Rythmn, The Noise.
1-Best record ever found at a thrift store? It's a toss up between Flipper, Gone Fishin from a super creepy Christian charity shop on Shepherds Bush Green or Thelonius Monk, Brilliant Corners at one in Orange County CA. Thelonius' nickname was Melodious Thunk which seems apt in regards to everything I just said or will ever say... I found the Flipper record when I was about 15 and had only really ever heard about them because Kurt Kobain wore the shirt and actually finding it really tweaked me out. Maybe now Shepherds Bush is more akin to Noe Valley or Park Slope... (not completely gone that way butbutbut the yoga moms are encroaching) ...when I was a kid there were Pie and Mash shops, rival football teams, a huge African/West Indian market and a bunch of stores that only sold new 45s from Jamaica. The idea of someone within the confines of that area owning a Flipper record and then donating it really blew my teenage mind as did the Flipper record itself... said... Repetition....
In related news I have had the No Trend song Hanging Out in Georgetown in my head for over a month on a loop. The first time I heard that band was because a pen pal I had when I was Flipper record buying age made me a mind melting tape containing the complete output of both No Trend and Middle Class. I think it's still in my tape box at my mum's house. This week I got an actual No Trend record, utilizing the power of thee internet... and then when I went to see the film recently made about Chicago punk,You Weren't There, I was struck instantly by the band End Result and everything came together. Especially after a snide comment made by Dr PepperHardcordova at brunch (BRUNCH MOTHERFUCKERS!!): 'What have you been listening to recently? Oh. No-core? Really?' I swear this is all connected but what does no core even mean? Music that isn't the skit at the beginning of the Our Turn record? I only like music that sounds like the way a Raymond Pettibon drawing looks.

End Result were formed in 1980, a three man self proclaimed hardcore band from the projects of Chicago who tuned their guitars like a cello, had no drums and a saxophone. They played hardcore shows and I would say their music is more hardcore than any generic 83 Reagan band. Since seeing the movie I have become somewhat evangelical about this band, and several people have informed me that their records turn up frequently, in dollar bins/lowest common denominator bins around the world. In fact Martin Sorrondeguy just found me the Albini released 12" for three bucks... and the 7" is downloadable from the internet browser website search engine, which I would advise you in getting involved with involving you-self within because it'll fracture your sense of self and bring your core temperature WAY DOWN.
Steve Albini on End Result:

"End Result was truly a band apart. Ahead of its time and unique in more ways than I can count. Alan tuned his guitar like a cello... End Result had no drummer to keep the beat, because (in Alan's immortal words) 'we think our audience can count.'"

Alan Jones was the constant member and the band lasted through most of the 80s. There are some mindblowing early 80s You Tube performances which are mandatory if you do not have the chance to see the Chi-punk doc. I guess they are considered a pioneering no wave band now, which is kind of a bummer. The fact that they played hardcore shows, and considered themselves a hardcore band and yet the no wave co-opted their destruction anyway makes me sad like a clown painting in a cafe co-operative.
The rest of the Chicago documentary was equally inspiring, one of the first 'good ol days' punk artifacts I have seen where despite the fact that the old men said the world ended when they lost interest you actually kind of understood where they were coming from. 1-They think Avril Laving/Hot Topic Mall Rat Rock is what the punks are up to nowadays. 2-They claim that the feeling of seeing Silver Abuse at a queer bar in 1980 has not been and will never be recreated by current punk attemptees and after seeing the footage of Chicago punk in thee olden days I have to agree. Gauze groupies in bullet belts brown baggin forties and talking about Finnish demo tapes are no match for anything in this movie. You Weren’t There is light years away from the fossils of that American Hardcore movie. The fact that all the early Chicago punk shows happened in queer bars and were also all ages definitely had an affect on the originality, up against the wall-ness and insanity of the music produced. I think they showed an early cut of the movie (it was two hours long, which the film makers said they were going to edit down) but one of the things that was kind of mind blowing was the part at the end that lasted for fifteen minutes of old people saying punk was dead, it was super harsh and brutal and endless in a way I can't quite describe. Like performance art almost? I don't know what else to say... I mean if you want to see insane Effigies, Articles of Faith, Strike Under, Tutu and the Pirates, Naked Raygun, Negative Element and Rights of the Accused footage go see this movie! The footage at the bar where Chicago punk was initially formed is amazing and sums up everything I have to say or will have to say about music and art and being an artless deadbeat...
(regressivefilms.com)
After seeing this I was really psyched and ready for destruction, but could not get anyone to do anything so I skated to Jessalyn’s where listened to the Germs, talked about dudes, and went to a random party where someone who works as a yearbook photographer had set up a room so I got a year book photo taken. Teenage wasteland. Doomed to dream.

2-Chaos in Tejas vs Sex Vid in Olympia.

I was ALL PUMPED on going to a fest for the first time since the days of olde when Assuck played a lawn in Ohio and someone made their pick up truck into a wacky time kiddie pool. I have never been to a Chaos in Tejas fest or a Pointless fest which I guess are the current versions of the ones I went to in Ohio in the 90s or at the 1 in 12 Club in Bradford same time period... But then someone informed me of the final musical line up and I realized that I really don’t care about seeing any of those bands at all and I kind of don’t want to go anymore. The only reason I would want to go is to go swimming in TX swimming holes and skate TX ditches. I decided to go to Olympia for Sex Vid’s 7” release show instead. The two events will not be occuring in the same time frame in anyway. Maybe one event will be a mass accumulation of punks on a scale my small brains cannot comprehend and I should go witness? Crusties congregating and surviving the plague? And to see both Crude and Los Crudos play. But Sex Vid is like having Pettibon on the inside of your eyelids. 21st Century Schizoid Man.

3-A Man came into my work today wearing a perfectly executed Union Jack tie dye t shirt. My mum wrote me an email asking me why I call men DUDES and women GIRLS. I will start calling everyone 20th century schizoid men regardless of gender, in tribute to Robert Fripp and mother earth. You know I actually number all my columns from one to ten like a top ten then the co-ordinators edit that part out? It’s true. If you want to see the numbers you have to look at where I put the words on the internet. Also my favorite pizza place (not hippie pizza the other one) is now bogus. I had a life crisis about what a deadbeat I am and how fruitless my life is, and ultimately decided that it’s ok to care more about getting the Church Police 7” than wearing a three hundred dollar organic cotton dress to a party at a beach house where gentle trance music plays as people smoke and discuss wine and the stock exchange and child care options. It’s not like I am puking up Sparks in a 7/11 parking lot, I mean I read Celine, listen to King Tubby and drink green tea! Sophisticated like a Flipper song on your headphones whilst walking out to the ocean for the endlessly endless time. Not needing anything else.

4-Thinking about getting a germs tattoo at age 30. What we do is secret. SECRET!

5-Hubbs’ Story about the Christian record store guy that buys records from his work and won’t swear, so when requiring the Cricifucks he instead asks for the Cruci-jerks.

6-the Nor Cal top five of mine in this issue? Here are the couldabeens:
1- Dils-Made in Canada double 7"
were they in SF or LA at this point? What city claims this band and for what period, could I claim the 2nd 7" oer the 1st one as an SF release? Regardless I love this 7" though obviously I do not own it, just a reissue, but it’s good for skating around to and also for sitting and reflecting in yr room.
2-Noh Mercy-Caucasian Guilt
When people were still trying to figure out what punk was, this was what some girl came up with. Screaming insanity over a dying drumbeat. It’s on one of those Fast records comps and is creepy and rad and wrong. The lyrics!
3-Pink Section 12"
Some art school students rented rooms in a single occupancy weekly hostel in the early 80s and only had to work one day a month to make rent. Their music contains keyboards, like a less destroyed Screamers more than a skinny tie band I would say, the girl’s vocals are kind of pitched between Exene and Lilliput, and the lyrics confront the endless liberal millionaire complacency of the Bay Area, wine collectors wife swappin in Marin voting for Jerry Brown save the planet go to the zoo. The MRR copy has an amazing Tim Yo made cover, but I bet you can get this pretty easily online in MP3 format because I have never seen this band’s records outside of the MRR collection and I have been searchin.
4- Chrome Half Machine Lip Moves LP
For some reason I always avoided Chrome, and after hearing this record I am completely confused as to why I did such a thing. A waste of my life and ears for sure. It’s post apocalyptic music, and I think I thought they were gonna be bad industrial, but it’s not. It’s half formed yet complete, shards of nasty that make up a whole world. How I wish Eno’s Warm Jets sounded when people described it to me. So good. Endtimes.
5-Inflatable Boy Clams 7"
This band were linked somehow to Pink Section, maybe they shared members or played shows together? They are way more fucked up musically. It’s not catchy destruction, it’s kind of like a meaner Y PANTS (the NYC band on 99 records). I have no chance in hell of ever finding this 7” but there’s a website that comes up that has all the music and cover art and info so you can make a tape for your faraway abandoned pen pal that makes them realize that they are not as lost as they once believed. The internet will save us. Just browse.
6-Wilma 7"
SF’s first lesbian seperatist punk band? One side is a lesbian soundscape bummerization, the other is a total rager that’ll make your eyes droop and your teeth itch. I think most of these records I am talking about came out on Subterranean records. Just to contextualize. I think in fact I am sure most were purged from the MRR collection. If that’s how you like it seek em out.
7-Raooul FreshnNubile 7”
My teenage band did a split LP with these ladies on Lookout, which apparently they threw out when they went out of business. One of my friends dumpster dived a bunch of the LPs. Wish they would have called me instead of trashing them since I don’t actually have a copy of this anymore! (Actually I do now-thanks Arwen!) But I guess they are still selling the CD/licensing the music for comps and selling downloads without our permission/ever paying us. Sketchy business people aside, when we played with Bratmobile in 93 they told us we should do a record with Raooul. So I wrote a note on the wall of Gilman when visiting the Bay later that year. Raooul wrote back and sent this 7” and it totally sums up being a bratty teenage girl in a place where being a punk is easy.
8-Peligro Social side of the Born Dead Split.
9-Ecoli 7”
10-Hey Girl! LP
11-SOCIETY DOG!!!!!!!!!!!!

THAT”S ALL I HAVE TO SAY! Write me layla.gibbon x x x gmail.com or read whatwewantisfree.blogspot.com for old columns.

It's Not My Imagination...

2008-02-28T22:22:00.000-08:00

This months top ten comes to you from the secret society of girls that don't wanna read a zine about vegan treats/herbal abortion recipes/home made tampons and would rather:

1-Insert comment on nostalgia.
The same thing every month.
The same thing.
Every month.
You are doomed whatever you have or haven't got to say.
Primitive boredom/constructed negativity/Hype bands/hipsters.

2-The sound of a reggae piano combined with the story someone told me about how Jeff Beck wanted to capture the Motown sound and recorded at the Motown studio one time in order to make this happen... but he freaked out at the basic nature of the place and had his sound guys come in and sanitize and rock dude everything out so much that no Motown sound was captured. Bad reggae tinny piano is enough to get you thru the night, in ways that a 5th generation over dubbed attempt at the Motown piano only could, out of tune but so in time. Enough to create a world in which you can exist. Like the Die Kreuzen record encapsulating something that you can't put your finger on at this point but it's probably something about nostalgia and aging and how rotten a human I am because what do I have to say that isn't about that at this point. Another dime in the jukebox. A cup of coffee and a lame story about hitch hiking. Your own personal per-zine. FEEEEEEEELINGS. Off the pigz.

3-It's easy to be a critic. Everyone has one! An opinion that is. I obviously do not know enough about anything to write about it so let's hire a scientist to write about it instead, maybe a mathematician would do a better job. I guess if you are that dude that paid 2 dollars for the Yes LA comp in '78 only to then write to Flipside in '81 because suckers were paying $100 for it...then, however, you can write about anything you want. When Golnar first asked me to write a column for MRR one of my friends asked me why I would want to write for an audience like that. I couldn't actually figure out what she meant, like who did she think MRR readers were? GG Allin fans on St Mark's Place? D-Beat trainhoppers? Spikey top Adicts Fans? I guess because I have been a shitworker since 2003-ish I had less pre-conceived notions of MRR's audience than said friend did. However, just so it's clear, I write my columns for fans of the Urinals and Huggy Bear, the people who think that the guitar on the last two songs on the VOID split is Better Than The Beatles. You know, the people whose lives were changed by the Screamers Target video. Every month do I have something to say to the audience/the Adicts fans of MRR? Every month I have to figure out what to say whether I do or don't. I made a butt flap about it that references that dude from Fang that killed his girlfriend. "Don't patronize with apologies, you son of a bitch, the devil has many faces, yours just fits!" (©Some band, a long time ago.)

4-This week I have been mostly going to shows and hanging out with my friends.

I wrote that sentence at the beginning of the month and it was very true. There were two Limp Wrist shows, an all ages one where they showed a documentary on the history of Brazilian punk, and Jump off a Building played a last super raging show... No Thanks also played and the singer lady walked home behind me boasting about singing back ups for Seven Seconds last year in a super loud voice. I watched the show from my poser spot standing on a bench behind the merch table, and while it was not as fucking crazy as the last two Limp Wrist shows attended (1-Naked dude clad in jack boots only, stage diving from balcony onto insane Black Flag in So Cal circa 82 crowd//2-Front row of pit ALL LADIED out, and all the girls knew all the words...) it was still a frenzy best watched from above... Then of course Limp Wrist at The Eagle, bear bar, line of rad ladies stood on the um benches behind the merch table? Golnar was in town visiting and she made moves towards the pit and when she saw that no one was following was kind of flabbergasted. I have not been in a pit since I was about 14, probably a Jesus Lizard show, probably some gross dude put his hand in my underwear! Oh I didn't write a riot grrrl zine about it but I totes shoulda! OMG! For sure! It totally made me never wanna be anywhere near a million random macho fucktards who think that's an ok thing to do to a teenage girl! AT ANY RATE, even from behind the merch table Limp Wrist were great, their new songs are awesome and I can't wait for a record... The riffs were killer next level and they were totes my jam. OMG for sure!!
Carnal Knowledge played a basement show, a Brooklyn based all lady hardcore band featuring ex members of Hey Girl! they talk between songs and actually give a shit so obviously are not for the message board dude scene. People that like raging intelligent yet bratty hardcore that doesn't suck and borrows equally from early Born Against and Bikini Kill, well I would advise them in making moved towards getting the demo... They played in the basement at Thrillhouse to a packed audience featuring a chicks up front pit (except I doubt any of the ladies in said pit would get that stupid 90s sxe crew reference.) Usually lady fronted hardcore is not my favorite genre, the vocals of Spitboy being a prime example of why this is the case, but Tobia from Look Back and Laugh made me rethink my lame attitude and I have since enjoyed a Margaret Thrasher show and discovered the radness that is The Wrecks demo. (All girl hardcore from Nevada circa 83, featuring the drummer from the SF version of the Dicks before she moved here. They have a song on an MRR comp but it's not as raging as the demo, which my friend Pete dubbed for me. I know MRR has a copy of it, and I played a song from it on mine and Golnar's recent ladypunk radio special, which you can listen to here: http://maximumrocknroll.com/radio/specials/LadyPunkPlaylist.html)
Also of interest during week of rad bands and hanging out with friends: the 80s skate zine exhibit up currently at Needles and Pens, if you remember Swank Zine and wanna see some OG Big Boys artwork now is the time to visit our local and awesome zine emporium... (needles-pens.com)

5- I was informed by Hubbs that watching the recent reissue onto DVD of the Flipper target video would be life changing, and I have to say his assumption was correct. The only music I want to listen to right now. Hopefully the Black Flag/Hardcore Target vid will be next. I need obliteration.

6-loomofruin.blogspot.com Sam McPheeters has a blog.

7-New Order-Turn the Heater On (Peel session nervousness like a leaky radiator in a creaky Victorian)

8-SEX VID- Nests 7" test press with especial skinned teen coverage.Best band in America. Music for the haters and the hated. Interview to come: ask the What's Your Rupture dude, he asked me to for his zine and I did so.

9-fIREHOSE-Brave Captain VIDEO.

10-The Uphill Struggle/Electrical Nitemare split on Astronautical.