New issue of MRR is out

www.maximumrocknroll.com

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

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!!!!

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

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!

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

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

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

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!

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

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

It's not out yet...

You’ll never see your face in a magazine.

“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

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

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

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!
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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

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!

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

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

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.