A ceremonial top five!
1: Huggy Bear live in 1994 video on you tube!! This era of Huggy makes me so nostalgic for my teenagerhood... Hardcore records and mod girl haircuts. Angela Davis and the Wipers...
2: Gun Outfit, Spiritual Warriors, Replica and Index live at Thrillhouse. Replica are amazing; ex Duck and Cover and Infect, most girl raging HC with Dharma destroying all previous front people’s attempts at frontpersoning with her total reality. Send off for their tape already. Google that shit. Bay Area hardcore, it’s going off. Index played their first show, Eric from Jump Off a Building/Nodzzzz, Jess Brilliant Color on vox and I think a Traditional fool (I might be wrong) and they sounded like Kleenex playing Sham 69 songs; ie totally sick. Spiritual Warriors are a new mutant Olympia hardcore band, they have a tape you gotta get it. Weird TV and Gun Outfit peoples making your destructive urges seem more necessary. Sick! Gun Outfit bummed out the HC scene who wanted Replica to play (I sympathise, Replica is the best) but Gun Outfit paint landscapes of dark times and loneliness in a specific Northwestern manner that makes me feel like I am watching a movie or reading a book, there but not there. It’s so good and they are moving to LA?!
3: Proxy tape. We listened to this a lot during print week; great Blitz styled street punk from Montreal, I think Inepsy members are involved somehow? It sounds like Born Dead Icons playing Blitz, ie rules! The first song is just OK, but the good songs on this thing are great.
4: Weird TV test press for the new 12”. Seriously, I love this band. This is what we have been waiting for ok?
5: So this is the first issue of MRR without my name in the coordinator spot! Mariam asked me if I was gonna keep writing a column; I think so... We’ll see! Lydia got here from Greece at the end of last month, and has been impressing us all with her masterful editing skills and attention to detail, and I am happy to hand over the joys of running the magazine to her.  As I am sure I have stated a million times in this space, I intend on keeping on working on the magazine in various behind the scenes activities, and will continue to contribute content. (As you should too!! Send in a scene report/interview already). I am working on several things at once even as I type!
    You may have read Mariam’s column about having to move on from coordinating MRR this year also; she has some family responsibilities that mean she has to shift focus. That means you could be coordinator still! Seriously; you could be the person who picks what runs in the magazine, what interviews with super secret cult bands from 1982 or from last week, what theme issues and what projects... You get to live at the MRR house for free, rent and bills paid, with over 40,000 punk records and a hundred or so shitworkers passing through the house assisting you in your endeavors! You have to live in San Francisco, at the Maximum house, and you gotta have your shit together (ie to be able to edit and run a magazine), whilst at the same time being absolutely consumed by punk rock and all it has to offer. Email us at mrr@maximumrocknroll.com and let us know why you are interested and what you think you could bring to the magazine and we will send you an application. It’s a two year commitment. I lasted four years, the longest anyone (aside from Tim Yohannan, obviously) has lasted is six, but most people put in two or three years. It’s hard work, like going to graduate school for punks, but it’s the most fun/gratifying thing too. So much music to discover, punks from all over the world to correspond with and to coerce into contributing to the magazine! DIY or DIE!!
You can read old columns by me here: whatwewantisfree.blogspot.com and you can email me at Layla@maximumrocknroll.com

    This is the last column I will write in this spot; the coordinator columns always go at the end of the columns section, put in at the last minute after a month of working on the magazine, a collection of hurried thoughts congealed into words by tired brains, usually at 3am, before the mag goes to the printer... And as of May 1st 2012 I am no longer coordinator of Maximum Rocknroll. I have been doing this for four years, I think writing my column for six? And it’s time for a new regime; this next month I will be training our new content coordinator Lydia, who just got here from Greece, and it feels like it’s the end an era. I will not be in charge of Maximum Rocknroll from here on out! It’s all in Mariam and Lydia’s hands. I am looking forward to seeing what sort of things they come up with to fill these pages and I will still contribute to the magazine, but just as a shitworker, no longer as the dark overlord of content production. Listening to Martin Hannett “First Aspect of the Same Thing” looking out my window at the street lights reflecting on the ocean, it’s a weird empty feeling but I am looking forward to a future I know nothing about unfolding.
    Today at work a kid with an amazing hand-drawn Minor Threat t-shirt came in and when I commented on his handiwork told me he liked my column. Another person bought the Touch & Go book but I didn’t feel like talking about it; I did talk with some enthusiastic art school kids from the Deptford about squatting in Camberwell. Camberwell Now. I am listening to the song “Working Nights” by Camberwell Now as a result, experiencing the subject matter as the song plays, working nights working nights. Gotta get up at zero AM and ride my bike out through the park to MRR, lay out the columns and upload the proof to the printer then go the North Beach to my job that pays the rent (in theory), and serve a different kind of public. “Do you have Fifty Shades of Grey/the Hunger Games/That Book About Steve Jobs?” “No. But you can get it at Costco.” “Is there a Barnes and Noble or something around here?!?!” “NO, they all went out of business in this city because people like you only buy things online.” “There aren’t any bookstores in this town!” “There are actually a ton, just none in Fisherman’s Wharf, tourist. May I borrow your concealed weapon and blow my brains out? I am sick of talking to you and your endless army.” I will listen to Camberwell Now and Martin Hannett all day, subsist on Ritz crackers and bad vibes. Just those two songs. Over and over. And the New Order Peel Session where they play dub versions, the first one. “Turn the heater off... tonight.”
    Usually when I am having the 2am inspiration dried out column writing session, I write about shows I have gone to or bands I am obsessed with. Well, the only show I went to this month was Merchandise, which for everyone I went with seemed to be a total bust, but I had a good time! It made me think of looseness of Arthur Russell songs, secret worlds created. I listened to the first Merchandise LP on repeat for most of last year, and when the D Vassalotti LP came out, though MRR could not review it I put it on almost every day for a month whilst spending the minimal time you get to spend in your room as a MRR coordinator. (Living where you work is not very conducive to mooching around in your room if you are an obsessive workaholic type... which is what the magazine demands!) I was not into raging hard before I moved into the MRR house, and my life continued on the trajectory of not going to DJ nights, or twelve band shows at houses in Oakland that probably have no chance of finishing before the last BART heads back over to San Francisco, and I have a feeling that this arc will continue. As stated previously I will continue to write for the magazine, and to come up with content—which incidentally you should too. Anyone can submit an interview! Anyone! Seriously, interview your friend’s band, or someone that has influenced you that you are not friends with that is a punk... I think the first interview I submitted was with Sharon Cheslow, who was one of the photographers/authors behind the classic Banned in DC, and I actually did it for my zine Chimps but it came out so cool I submitted it to the magazine. If you think the editing is shitty write the mrr@maximumrocknroll.com and volunteer your services as a proof reader, same with layout. If you want to advertise your punk CD-R distribution network email ads@maximumrocknroll.com for rates. If you are an insane genius comic artist who is somewhere between Julie Doucet, Pettibon and Nick Blinko submit your work to mrr@maximumrocknroll.com. The content coordinators are the deciders in terms of what gets run in the magazine, as their job title would indicate, so there is no guarantee your interview with Stig and the Skip Diggers will run, but if Mariam and Lydia are charmed by the band’s witty quips, even though they have never heard them as they have never played outside of Romford, but they are of course DIY as death, (no corporate bozos in the mag) maybe they will choose will run it. So send it in already! Did I already write about how much our new distro coordinator rules!? Francesca moved in a month or so ago, and she is the best. Negative and charming like all the best punx are, always busting out weird secret girl records, like for instance the Fifth Column record that came out in 1990, an LP that has songs that go between NeoBoys and Shop Assistants! It’s so good! Who knew that “All Women Are Bitches” was just a random blip of boredom on that band’s career trail. She made me a tape of all the jams. And that Florida 7” comp with Morbid Opera on it that someone put on a mix tape for me years ago but I never knew who the band was. “Go ahead! Go ahead Go Aheeeeeaaaaaaaaaaah….”
    OK, so it’s 5am, the sun is risen and I need more coffee. I am listening to the Termites version of “Tell Me” from Girls in the Garage. It’s so good, teenage desperation, desolate like alleyways and it makes me wanna listen to Frumpies 7”s and eat popcorn for dinner. Also did you know that “Why Don’t You Smile Now” wasn’t a Delmonas song? It’s a Cale/Reed collaboration from when they were more Tin Pan Alley attempters. I learned this fact that maybe the whole world knows within the last two years: “You said you had everything you need / You said he could give you much more than me / Why don’t you smile now...” You can look it up on You Tube, by the All Night Workers, this is my song this morning. Also listen to the Delmonas version because Black Ludella, she’s been lyin to me... There used to be a record store in Camden that pretty much only sold Vinyl Japan/Hangman related records, it was next to a store that sold Doctor Martin boots and other workboots to skinhead types, actually inside the Camden Lock tube station, so me and all my teenage cohorts had all the Headcoatees/Childish access needed to develop our minds as youths and head towards delinquency as creation rather than any other existence offered to teenage girls growing up in London in the early 1990s. I wanna be a Delmona when I grow up. OK I think that’s enough of my rambling insanity for this month. I will be back writing columns in this space, but if you want to you can email me at Layla@maximumrocknroll.com my old columns are here: whatwewantisfree.blogspot.com and I think I am gonna compile them all into one fanzine type of thing at some point this year. Make a mess.
    Brace said I should do this column as a top ten thing like I used to, so here is something: 1: Chloe Sevigny owns the jacket that Linda Manz wore in Out of the Blue!? 2: I am the last punk 3: I like the Beach Boys better than Discharge/the D-beat 4: Eat it 5: “Notes and Chords Mean Nothing to Me” / “We Don’t Need Freedom” 6: Mariam, Francesca and me are gonna go to Berkeley when all the rich college kids abandon ship for their country homes and get all the computers and things they apparently leave behind. (Francesca has an powerbook some future billionaire of America left in a dumpster last year! College kids, what the fuck! CAN YOU EVEN imagine being that privileged that you would throw your thousand dollar computer into a dumpster?! My computer is gonna be ten years old this year! I want a free one from some trillionaire frat brat) 7: Hey Tobi did the Up All Nighters ever record anything!? 8: The Tortura tape is really good... London punk girls righting wrongs. 9: Someone send me the Quix*o*tic LP and the Cupid Car Club demo tape OK!? also write me letters. No creeps!
All girls start bands and skate gangs.

where I come from/they don't joke about it

SO GOOD!!! I love this era of huggy! Jo looks so dreamy, niki looks like etta james and drew barrymore and they all look like they were cut outta that richard barnes mods book and also the hardcore california book. I wish I had taken more photos of this era of my life, oh well! someone will youtube it sometime.

a t shirt out of your dreams

Things that have happened since I moved out of the MRR house... I got consumed by Thomas Pynchon’s writing, I got to have one inspiring conversation with Charles from My Mind’s Eye records in Cleveland about that city’s legendary musical legacy, and I have been collecting books by the women in the Weather Underground and other similar 1960s lady insurrectionists, so maybe I will have a one girl book club this spring and summer. Bonnie Bremser’s book! Troia; you gotta… I listened to Ultravox’s Ha Ha Ha LP obsessively, and then got into Eno’s Taking Tiger Mountain. Though right now I am listening to a demo by Quango, who apparently feature members of the Apostles, Oi Polloi and Hygiene and despite this mixed bag of musical legacies are fucking great! soundcloud.com/natkingdole/sets/quango-demo/ Check it out!

I can see the ocean from my window nowadays and it’s hard to leave this room, a million books and records to look through and listen to without the threat of “I should be editing that eleven page scene report.” b/w “The Landladies are coming over.” Instead: Peter Blake art book found on the street, Danny Lyon photography book scrimped and saved for, boxes of old zines from Tobi’s Jigsaw to Pettibon’s, the detritus of an obsessive’s life! I also have amassed a collection of skateboards from various points in my life, and Skate Summer: The Revenge is being planned for as I type. I skated to work last week, from MRR to North Beach; only got stressful when I got to Chinatown and shit got too hectic for this ancient crone. At any rate, we have a new coordinator moving in to the compound sometime in April, Lydia is her name, and her interview was easily the most inspiring I have ever conducted in my five years here! I will still be coordinating until then, and will still be involved in the magazine, but hopefully will at that point have more time to do all the other super important stuff I have planned for life post-Maximum Rocknroll like skateboarding and reading and... yeah.

It seems like most ex-coords have gone onto grad school!? Cissie is in a sick new band called the Stops that you should check out instantly: thestops.bandcamp.com. I think it’s all lady? Whatever, it’s fucking raging!! I need a tape and they need to play SF pronto. Golnar is also in a raging all lady HC band, In School, who I think only have You Tubes of shows right now?! But they are great and Bidi the singer is a gnarler... Justin is in a band called Hunting Parties that are playing shows round the Bay a lot, they have a tape and a 7” coming out soon. People leave the magazine and form sick hardcore bands? Well Chris has been playing extra guitar for Brilliant Colors who are my favorite powerviolence grind destruction force of all time. Me and Mariam are planning out our future band as I type, well our secretaries are gonna do lunch and see what they can come up with.

Brilliant Colors just played a show with Bleached and Veronica Falls, which was great... Well, it was a strange all ages show that was as full of excited teenagers as it was industry types, a weird crowd. Veronica Falls were amazing, I totally recommend seeing them play. I love their 7”s, but sorta wanted the LP to blow me away in a manner that it did not, but their live show was just killer... total dreaminess. Bleached were disappointing, they had some random session musician dudes playing bass and drums, and it was a definite band ruiner. Serious “Social D circa 1999 at the House of Blues in Anaheim” vibes emanating off of both dudes. The Clavin sisters should hire two other blondes and just be the blonde Cali girl Ramones. I think they would have more of a chance of making it that way than with random Guitar Center specimens. But what do I know of the machinations of music biz get rich quick schemes? Not too much! I would rather listen to X_X (John Morton band not rotten blogrocker bullshit!) and feel hateful than be in some band that is only making money because they play shitty corporate branded events or the year end party for a cell phone company, and so forth. Living the rock’n’roll dream. I am sure that is what making it in rock’n’roll is nowadays, just aligning yourself with a huge conglomeration, being a musical billboard shrilling your phony teenage dreams along side their synergistic corporo-message. Boo hoo to the music industry and to all the weird desperate capitalist creeps that require it to achieve their princess rescue narratives.

At any rate, a random rant, not really directed at Bleached, I would much rather their songs be in the boring blogger hit parade than like... Best Coast, but I would also rather listen to the Hitler SS/Tampax split and call it quits. More next month! Hopefully les manic, more contained, easier to digest and so on!

The sound of a ghost in an empty house

This is the last column I will write from the comfort of my room at the MRR house... It’s pretty empty in here, just full of the junk I am not sure if I want to keep or not, the rest of my stuff is piled up at my new apartment out at the ocean that I am moving into in two days... After over a year of trying to leave the magazine, my time has come. I will still be coordinating from a distance for a few months, while we figure out who is gonna replace me. I don’t have anything to listen to music with, except my laptop which is nearly ten years old. I am currently raging to a band my friend Talya recommended called Dark Times who have a Neon Blud attack with added Midwestern hardcore gnarliness and um a touch of the ’82 Flag demo (no lie), and of course they rule... The girl shouts “I’m sitting right next to you/But I’m living worlds away” and nothing else makes so much sense. I think they are from Norway!!?? Check them out, they have a 7” and a tape and I gotta get them both! darktimes.bandcamp.com. That is the thing I love about working on MRR, constant influx of amazing sound inspiration, new tapes, or discovery of an old band that no one ever heard outside of their town, so many punks making their own version of punk all over place, in different eras and geographic locales! I’m definitely not burned out on the punk rock, but am looking forward to being able to work on my own shit, do a band, make my own zine. I will keep writing my column and assisting in a big way at the magazine, but will not be living in the compound and experiencing the madness first hand. Hopefully my writing will reflect this and be less thrown together after a twelve hour shift of magazine work! I gotta say for all the shit talk about Maximum hype bands, the people that live and work here are fucking consumed by music, we lose our shit over it and are in short manic enthusiastic nerds. So much rad shit comes through our PO box and our email inbox, it’s an endless adventure this punk rock... I will miss having instant access to everything, but hopefully I will be able to keep up somehow? Ha!
    It’s not all sunshine and popsicles, there is also a lot of rotten overwrought reproductions of various genres, terrible bar rock, bands that will never play out of their neighborhood bar yet have a PR agent and manager. I think that is the most depressing aspect of music now... I know, the sound world is one of diminishing returns, tours used to pay for themselves, and now gas prices mean unless GoodBurger sponsor your tour you will be stranded and isolated with no gas in your tank and no one watching the show through the screens of their iphone. You gotta have the tour manager, the booking agent, the manager manager, the PR agent, or else... the DIY replication of mainstream industry set up and constructs must prevail. The award for worst record I reviewed last year has got to go to some creep’s concept pop-punk record about stalking and raping a woman. I understand that certain facets of the pop-punk scene have different political standards to the world I exist in, but come the fuck on... Everyone wants to be Peter Sotos now. Even PBR sponsored Warped Tour bros. In ten years time is punk rock gonna be an iApplication sponsored by Monsanto? A frog like croak in the back of some message board cretin’s throat? “Is That All There Is?” sung by a skeletal GG Allin replicant? A text message that no one can be bothered to read? A lifestyle magazine that owns the only venue in town that punks will go to because they get to take all these cool market research studies when they have to take a shit. A crusty who has created the first authentic scabies app.
    I am gonna keep it short this month, we gotta take care of the CA state taxes and I have to clear out the last remaining artifacts cluttering up the surface of my room... You can find me on the internet here: whatwewantisfree.blogspot.com or email me here Layla at maximumrocknroll.com.

    It’s the year end top ten issue, which means there has been a lot of reflecting on the past year... One thing I really love about working at MRR is the constant exposure to so many killer bands, not only living with the archive but also what comes through the PO box each month. So many incredible demos and records, proving that punk is a living breathing form not just an ancient artifact; there is still so much that is possible within its constraints! Every time we do this issue someone complains how there is just not enough stuff to fill a top ten with this year, and maybe I am at an advantage because it is my job to listen to every single release we get sent, (or disadvantage! Sometimes this is a soul destroying task of wading through the most tepid bar rock!), but I have never had a problem coming up with a list of things that made my year. This year my list was especially epic, and I skipped so much! I mean there were some months that it was a serious struggle to come up with my top ten, but there were always some serious jams each month, in general 2011 was a great year for punk and hardcore... There is always something to lose your shit over, this month it has been Maria Teta, legendary Peruvian art punker lady from the ’80s (yeah, 2011 has been a killer year for reissues...) and the Forced Laugh EP from present day Canada, with its mutant Dave E vibes. Last month I jammed the Cruddy LP a lot, but it didn’t make my year end list...
    You possibly might have noticed in the Year End layout that we uh, sort of ran out of room by the end, so my list and Mariam’s list are not as wordy as the other compilers, but that is not because we had less to say! I edited so much outta mine! There were also some crossover between our lists, as you know, when we are working together until the early hours of the morn we jam out to Total Control, the Omegas, Aluminum Knot Eye and the Hygiene LP. Then when we go to our rooms Mariam slaps on the Speed Kills 7” and I the Household LP. Or whatever. Brace made some comment that I was more of a garage reviewer nowadays, which I am actually not sure is true. I listen to everything from Television Personalities to Poison Idea to the Pandoras, do not have a one track mind in regards to music... I love garage music but only if it is channeling Childish or Gories, not reverbed out Turtles-esque beach wavvve gentle garbage. I want mutant destruktion in all sounds! You will also note I have an epic tape list in my top ten; so many sick demos this year!! It’s been a great year for new bands, from staring Problem to Crude Thought, Index to Vixens, so many bands have made me stop and stare into space in a bewildered yet frenzied manner! Punk rock is an endless adventure and if you don’t feel this anymore it’s because you are detaching from the reality of our times. So many new and older bands stand by ready to destroy the boredom and complacency: C30, C60 C90 go! I make a tape every six months or so of the music I am freaking out over, and am gearing up to make my tail end of 2011 version as I type... this isn’t because I am some purposeful luddite anti technology type; my computer is so old iTunes does not work on it, so tapes are the easiest way to digest new sounds. Plus I have the advantage of living upstairs from the sickest record collection in the world! Tape it to the limit!
    Oh yeah; I am leaving MRR as a coordinator in the next month. I will still be here shitworking, writing, volunteering and working on the magazine, but am attempting to move out in the hope that some magical human will appear and step in to take over from me. You too can blast the TNT (Swiss) 7”s (or TNT LP {Spain})while making breakfast and planning out the next issue of the magazine. Apply already suckers. You get to live for free in the compound and pick what runs in the magazine!
Anyway, short column from me this month, hopefully that is something that will change when I am not coordinating; I will have more time to focus on writing this shit! Ha! Up the punx and off the pigs.
2011 TAPE LIST!!!
VIXENS (This is one of my most listened to musics of the year! Vixens.bandcamp.com), NECRO HIPPIES, GOOD THROB, CRUDE THOUGHT, NOSEDIVE, HYSTERICS, GENERATION SUICIDA, FIREBRAND, STARING PROBLEM, CROSTA, LOWEST FORM, SYNTHETIC ID, LIVID, DISPLEASURE, SUDOR, BRAINWAVES, VEGETABLE, MARGY PEPPER, INDEX, ABSURDO, AUTONOMY, NEON PISS, SUDOR, THE OUTS. So many good new bands!!

Dismiss!

Everyone has a story about the first time they picked up MRR, I can remember the cover of the first issue I picked up but not much else about it. I remember more clearly why I stopped reading it. There was a review of the classic to me Slant 6 LP Soda Pop Rip Off that claimed Dischord only put it out because of the pin up quality of the band. This was a clear indication that the magazine was was not for girls like me, it was for old men who could not relate to music made by women without commodifying / writing it off in the same manner as in the mainstream press. Women in rock. Makes me wanna review every average bro band with only their style of dress and visual impact as humans in mind. Because reading a review of a band that I loved, one that meant a lot to me, who wrote subtle, evocative and powerful songs, some with feminist undertones but with a million ideas at work... Not riot grrrl, but existing on their own terms in their own context at the same time. The guitar sound evoking Greg Sage and Dead Moon and Wire, skittish self-taught drums with the most devastating voice over it all... A band that seemed like a girl gang, that created their own world with its own set of signs. I am sure I have written about this before, but I have been thinking about Christina Billotte’s guitar style and voice a lot this week... Someone uploaded an Autoclave video to YouTube that set me off on a Billotte discography trail. Autoclave was I think her teenage band with Mary Timony, who is now in indie rock sensations Wild Flag. You should watch the video, they play my three favorite songs, and are fantastic and unnerving punk girl group that bring to mind a post punk sound but do not rabidly Xerox any specific old sound like all bands do now. “We sound exactly like the Comes / Sort Sol / Some Boring Dad Rock Band.” What a boring life, to paraphrase the Slits. I have never been in a band with the intent of sounding like another band, mostly because my musical skills do not enable me to rabidly copy some old shit from thirty years ago, but also because it’s boring and I do not understand the concept of punk as a reenactment troupe inna UK82 or ConfuseGai hardcore stylee. “Why Be Something That You’re Not” etc etc. Not to say that bands don’t exist in that style or sound currently that rule, but...
    At any rate, in Billotte related matters I still need the Quix*o*tic Mortal Mirror LP, if anyone’s holding. I stupidly only bought it on CD assuming KRS would keep it in print on vinyl... doh! Someone should repress both of those CDs onto vinyl ok? At any rate... I double reviewed a record I loved this month, then decided I was just being a psycho as the other review was not as dismissive as I recalled. So without further ado reprinted in my column bc I labored over this whilst at work serving the public at my sick retail job, my take on the Household LP. Reader, I married it! Brooklyn's HOUSEHOLD have the secret bedroom recordings feel of the best of EXCUSE 17 and HEAVENS TO BETSY, but with a furtive post-punk undercurrent rather than anything strictly grrrl style. More ALISON STATTON than CORIN TUCKER. Whenever people reference post-punk it's always the herk n jerk of DELTA 5 or the POP GROUP and while there are some parts that bring to mind those bands, this sound is so far from punk funk. HOUSEHOLD use dissonance in a different way, creating space and an out of place feeling with the minor key vocal harmonies. Along with the way the instruments intertwine and play off each other it's reminiscent of the awkward and disconcerting atmospheres of the most desolate WIRE songs, someone else suggested Three Imaginary Boys era CURE too, but with a total bedroom UK/DIY appeal... I think it's the starkness of the songs, the music and the lyrics just create this foreboding atmosphere. The song "Desperate Times" hits me like the most evocative AUTOCLAVE songs do, and "cold hands" has this amazing YOUNG MARBLE GIANTS meets classic era SLEATER KINNEY feeel, it's awkward and true.. This band creates it's own evocative sound out of a mass of so many of my favorite band ideas and it's a total bummer they broke up before I got to see them play.
    Well... what else? I reviewed a sick tape by this band the Vixens a few month ago, insane Void-core all girl HC from Canada who apparently have no responded to any emails sent their way asking for the tape / asking if they would put a record out and so forth. This was my review:     VIXENS – Holy shit! This is another raging all girl HC band, this sounds like fucking VOID playing GERMS songs, a total frenzy of noise and dissolution. Fuck this is so good! Actually scratch the GERMS this is just total chaos in vicious doses, this is what every CONFUSE/GAI nerd clone wishes their band was like. Seriously just intense noise with bits of  destruction falling on your head, like a Survival Research Laboratory show in your bedroom with the Exorcist playing at the wrong speed in the background while DEEP WOUND knits you a sweater out of your stomach tubes. This is the reason punk exists. Fuck! Seriously, the singer’s voice is fucking possessed! Sick!!!!! (Layla ) (6-song cassette, lyrics included, email for $ info vixenshfx@gmail.com)
Anyway that is the end of my column! Team up all night workin on the magazine brain slaughter society of doom. Layla@maximumrocknroll.com whatwewantisfree.blogspot.com

(photo by Cynthia Connolly from her series of DC punks with their cars)

Single Bullets

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

(photo by By Owen Richards)

SKATE FOR FUN OR NOT AT ALL

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

Trendy Violence

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

The Lonely Ghost Eats Toast

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

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

Up All Nighters / Society Suckers

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

This is my old jam

This song was the soundtrack of the riots in Zurich

This is my new jam

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

futur marketing purposes

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


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

this is them ruling it on a shitty TV show

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Guys are obscene / Vile and unclean

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

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

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

this is the best. bobby soxx is masterpieceful




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