I feel like writing out the lyrics to the RAMONES ‘I don’t wanna grow up’ and have that be my column this month. Not because I want to be a child but because I don’t want to be a lame adult. My co-worker is reading a book about a woman who tried to live for a year without buying anything. Just to contextualize, before her great experiment she already owned a house in Vermont and an apartment in Manhattan, and had decided that going to the movies and fine wine were not things she would be able to live without so somehow these things didn’t count in her great strike against consumerism. Also: Skiing didn’t count because hey, she already had a place in Vermont so… well you know. Just to contextualize my own uh involvement in said matter, I did not read this book. Just observed a lot of outraged and bemused grunts from said co-worker and got to listen to a lot of pompous excerpts from said masterwork. It made me think about how out of touch liberal America is, and how somehow this lady adding to the endless glut of crappy post-Bush jnr literature and blogs and shallow media world existences was somehow not part of the problem she was attempting to address. It’s like Liberal Outrage™ as a lifestyle choice; just watch that Al Gore movie about the enironment, buy a Prius, or put a Buck Fush sticker on yr vintage Volvo and uh, there you go all the way to the expensive organic food mart. As you recycle your huge stack of New Yorkers and sip yr Soy Latte, your delicate furrowed brow and Working Assets credit card are doing all they can to save us from doom.
I am not an eager college graduate ready to take on the world with enthusiasm and vigour
and yet I get asked ‘what are you doing with your life’ increasingly often as I age by the Concerned Adults in my life. I work at a rad independent bookstore, making a buck or so over minimum wage, and live in a rent controlled apartment in the most expensive city in America. I am much happier than when I lived in the Other Most Expensive City in America but somehow had a more parent acceptable existence working for the Time Warner Corporation making sure that people got paid for allowing New Line Cinema to use their music in movies such as Next Friday and the trailer for Lord of the Rings. That was 5 yrs ago and to my parents I believe it was the pinnacle of my achievement, a proper grown up job! 401k! Benefits! I only lasted a year as a fast paced adult style yuppie drone, and one of the reasons I am not currently clawing my way viciously up the ladder in Movie Exec powerland is that I didn’t care. There were other more personal reasons that led to the collapse of my potential yuppie scum lifestyle but probably the fact that I did not actually want a corner office on the 57th floor of a Manhattan skyscraper, that would be the main light switch/HELL NO moment. I didn’t enjoy cubicle life, but who does right? But at the same time I didn’t want to be my boss, the Snr VP of Music and Business, who had the Seinfeld theme as his Screen Saver, so every time he left his office we got to hear that awesomely teeth gratingly non- sweet slap bass refrain and who also fervently listened to Yanni and who’s claim to fame was that he’d written a made for TV movie for Kirstie Alley. NO THANKS! I’LL PASS!
One of the perils of getting older and staying punk is watching people abandon ship and start to roll their eyes or smile vacantly at the things that used to mean something to them. I mean seriously, insert a whole boatload of SXE warrior betrayal lyrics here because they all apply. Plus some earnest yet strident fingerpointing please. I don’t think my goal is to stay emotionally and developmentally backwards and just be a perpetual useless adolescent. Uh, I guess punk is essentially an extended adolescence to all intents and purposes, and first world living means lots of time to sit around and be the most self involved creature you can be. I also didn’t mean this to be a lame-o emo finding your inner colorful parachute spiel. But as I get older and find myself doing the things that I could have done pretty much at any age without a BA and also find myself a lot more content and happy than I was when on the path to Great Acheivements in Corporate Adulthood I find myself thinking about boring shit like this ALL THE TIME.
I do not want my own office or business cards. I am sure I will regret this decision when I am a bitter old jerk who hates life and has no money as opposed to a bitter old jerk who hates life with a pension plan and a 2nd house in Vermont. But right now when I skate down the street listening to “I don’t wanna be a rich” by The Guilty Razors (who have a Myspace! Huh??) that world doesn’t make sense to me. I know this seems really juvenile and 15 yr old kid in 711 carpark sneering sell out at anyone with an ounce of direction or responsibility, and I understand the priviledge inherant in all of this naval gazing. I grew up in England when it was still possible to get a university education on the tax payers dime, and I could be a white collar worker. The possibility exists if I wasn’t such a fuck up. I like things on my own terms, and I really do not want to exist on a dinner party conversation planet where I don’t see the irony in thinking about consumption as I ski down a virgin slope far from the welfare lines and housing projects where Buy Nothing Day isn’t a lifestyle choice but a fact of life.
I would welcome correspondence on this subject! And I am sorry I am so rotten at writing back.
write me c/o MRR.
1- Britton saying that my wanting to see the reunited Stimulators, Harley Flanagan 06 version was in direct contradiction to my last column 2- Jess saying that she likes it when it rains because it means everyone suddenly has the same problem and you kind of know what people are thinking about. 3-when you name things you damn them to the graveyard of ‘not gonna happen’, RIP Productive Summer 06. You could have been. But weren’t. 4-Mika Miko. SO much better at the falling apart calamitous house show than at the uptight women’s studies major from expensive liberal arts college club show. But I am going to continue to name check that band until they truly leave my realm by only playing stadiums and coliseums. SO GOOD. Seeing them play is like yr birthday everyday.5-Lebenden Toten Discog CD. Seriously. This Band. Next Level Rad. 6-Martin talking about organizing a mass heckle of that stupid American Hardcore book dude if he comes to town. 7-Minutemen-working men are pissed. and the liner notes to the American Youth Report comp 8-Rocking out to the Uzbek and Kazakhstan compilations with the Gnar. 9-Calvary LP. The best combination of Post Punk and revolution summer ever. Totally missed this band when they wwere around but I think it’s the only true successful demonstration of a Rites of Spring influence ever. 10-The clip for that Chicago punk film You Weren’t There. It’s on the internet. http://regressivefilms.com How much better than American Hardcore does this look? I think all girls at punk shows should do that one girl’s crazy vibration dance. And all punk bands should just be THE EFFIGIES.
Friday, August 24, 2007
4th
On the Lookout for Something Else.
I remember having a conversation with my friend Amy a few years back about how she doesn’t consider herself a punk anymore, and how her idea of punk was so inherantly linked to what she saw as a regurgitated subcultural museum diorama or a lame performance art pastiche that she couldn’t see it as anything other than a cheezy dude puking in an alleyway clad in a studded leather jacket. Growing up in London the postcard punks totally defined my idea of punk too, the wasted time spent just hanging out on the King’s Road or Picadilly Circus mooching off tourists, fulfilling their idea of London, a pound for a photo with an East German Exploited fan. Punks in full costume, most of whom weren’t actually from England but were there as subcultural tourists themselves, trying to find an outlet for their imaginary idea of the authentic punk™ lifestyle after most trad-dad UK punks abandoned ship. The punk idea muted after being flogged to death on TV advert cartoon like compilation tapes, another ghost of a cultural movement laid to rest. Perhaps because of it’s reliance on the shock of the new which soon became the set-in-stone signifiers of what ‘punk’ is, thus the eternal cliché of the postcard punk. If that makes sense, I mean that the initial idea of punk eventually became another capitalistic formula, another way to sell product rather than produce ideas. Things become static and while some people obviously took the possibilities of punk to heart and made it in their own image etc etc for some people punk will always be a cartoon of Sid Vicious, an empty salute to a mythical past.
I think I have already written about this too much maybe, but it’s something I think about a lot, the notion of punk as a transient idea rather than a fixed reality. It probably has a lot to do with growing older and just being more reflective in general about the main thing that has shaped my life. How when you are young things feel like they are happening everywhere that you aren’t, and then as you age things feel like they have already happened and all that’s left is formaldahyded memories of glory days. It’s so depressing to me that people get stuck on this one moment, the idea of youth as your last chance for freedom, which I think is such a shitty capitalistic construct used to sell jeans and and skincream lifestyles to people who think their moment has passed. Punk is for some a snap shot of their youth, frozen in time, forever to be xeroxed onto all their future endeavours, rather than just the idea of total possibility which can be applied to whatever it is they happen to be doing. I know some people are doomed to be crushed by life, and probably uh that applies to everyone at some point, and maybe going on a renunion tour seems like a good idea, the last time you felt alive or connected to anything was when you were in your teenage hardcore band so why not attempt to reproduce said experience with a collection of dissatisfied beer bellied middle aged men... I mean actually most renunion tours are little more than crass cash ins on nostalgia hungry audiences, I am just attempting to figure out aging ‘punk’ motivations beyond that I guess. The RAMONES/GERMS/ FLIPPER show in particular kind of blew me away, just the fucking concept, especially in the case of the GERMS and FLIPPER who’s appeal to me at least lies in their total disgust for authenticity in music. They both made totally disposable youthful yet terrifying and disparaging music, the sound of mocking laughter and mean pranks and alienated brains, the exact opposite of what they are doing now, pantomiming an idea long lost to their age addled brains. and I am sure it’s been said but the dead members of said bands are surely rolling in their graves. It’s so ridiculous it’s hard to even comment on it seriously. Anyone who went to that show thinking that it was anything other than the ultimate rip off (and thusly maybe punk? Maybe??) is clearly a lunk headed goon.
We have to stop allowing space (ie stop giving them our money) to lame nostalgic old men who once were maybe dangerous and made exciting sounds but now who’s vision is coated in a congealed buttery like substance which is reflected in their creative output. I am not saying that once you reach a certain point you should not be allowed to make music anymore in any way. Just that we need to stop deifying the past and the people who are trapped there. I had to review a Nikki Sudden 7” last month, and that, while not at all replicating anything the SWELL MAPS did sonically, depressed me too. It was straight bar room country music, so boring and trite coming from a man who basically reinvented DIY punk. It felt like another old man trying to find his roots, some kind of authenticity, and I understand why punks like country music, it’s good music from a rebel perspective (well the good stuff, not the shitty radio country-politan elevator music) but it seems like such a well worn cornball path. So the two musical options for growing old and staying punk are being in a poser synthesis of your past musical endeavours or yowling lame truck stop diner myth country truisms? SO BORING.
It’s difficult because any punk music made now is inherantly nostalgic, it’s always going to refer to the past in a way that maybe it didn’t have to in the beginning stages of its inception. It’s become a reverent movement, where knowledge of obscure forefathers of Scandi-beat or whatever is requisite. I think one of the distinguishing factors that separates the music I like (ha!) from generic replicant music is that good music references the past perhaps, but ultimately makes something different and new out of it. One of my favorite records right now is the CRIMINAL DAMAGE LP, or as I like to say, crim dam, which is pretty clearly a BLITZ tribute, but there’s something else about it that doesn’t exist in the other 60 zillion shitty cardboard oi!-lite bands in existance now, a feeling in the music, yet it still sounds so classic and time capsule like. Also LEBENDEN TOTEN, how the influences are so clear and yet listening to it is totally brutal in the best way. It’s not generic, there’s some weird quality to it that makes it transcend the confines of the influences or the imprint of the past.
As information relating to olden days music has become less obscure and less guarded by the salivating record nerds, also because of all of the reissues and the sheer availability of information on the internet more good bands should come into existance. I like seeing bands that are clearly influenced by obscure japanese noise flexis and HUGGY BEAR and REALLY RED. Not that I have, but you know it would be rad. I think that’s why I love MIKA MIKO so much, because they have the possibility explosion of old KLEENEX 7”s with the guitar sounds and snot nosed vengeace of the FIRST FOUR YEARS. It’s such an inspiring combination of ideas, and seeing them play at house shows and basements and all ages spaces just reaffirms the true excitement of possibilities of DIY punk. The audience and the band members totally losing it, sweaty and ridiculous and all for under 5 dollars! So far away from some tame SLITS renunion show, nothing they do now as THE SLITS will ever recapture the total insanity and genius and collapsibility of their first PEEL session or their demo. Nothing. They are totally cashing in on something that was dangerous and fierce and making it a lame world beat old lady jam band compost heap. I think of punk as ridiculous and embarrassing, fun and brave and dumb, good times and total hell all at once. As soon as you lose the idea of punk as being anything other than kicks and freedom and community it just becomes another museum piece. I mean it in both the way people in the scene use their influences now and in the way people of the past exploit their musical histories. I have this old fanzine, Germ of Youth, in which the editor keeps writing “Punk Rock is an endless adventure’ somewhat ironically I am sure, but I feel like that should be the case. It isn’t a prison cell or a rule book or a fancy dress costume. It’s a mess and it’s yours. It’s disposable and it’s permanent and contradictory but it’s ours and we have to make it good or else it’ll just be a bunch of old men rotting in a bar talking about watching Black Flag in 82.
ANYWAYS.
Top ten for the winter months:
1-mika miko at the pine st house!! craziest show i have been to? Well this year maybe? we all got crucial, wasted, and some random person paintbombed the room so we also got covered in paint. they are so fucking good! and they make so much sense at a house show. made me happy to be a punk/live in the bay area/have such rad friends... west oakland is seriously like life after the apocalypse though. the house was way out by the docks surrounded by these crumbling ghost town style buildings, there were random pit bulls running around, totally felt like that movie suburbia. it was weird bc the day felt so static and frozen then the evening was just totally insane and liberating and total kicks affirmative duvet ta etc etc. 2-ultimo resorte 12” rad lady fronted spanish punk, she kind of sounds like Mai of gorilla angreb. Totally awesome. Also Martin’s story about how she punched out Nancy Spungeon. So punk. 3-Golnar’s ‘worst records at MRR’ set for the 1000th radio show. 4-riding my bike after dark 5-ladies and gentlemen the fabulous stains, the song watse of time is the best song ever. Seriously. If anyone has this on a soundtrack pls tape it for me. 6-going vegan 7-black and white photobooths 8-Dis-carriage, latest Portland hype band for sure. I heard they were Champagne punks! 9-Swell Maps Peel sessions 10- The Clean discography.
I remember having a conversation with my friend Amy a few years back about how she doesn’t consider herself a punk anymore, and how her idea of punk was so inherantly linked to what she saw as a regurgitated subcultural museum diorama or a lame performance art pastiche that she couldn’t see it as anything other than a cheezy dude puking in an alleyway clad in a studded leather jacket. Growing up in London the postcard punks totally defined my idea of punk too, the wasted time spent just hanging out on the King’s Road or Picadilly Circus mooching off tourists, fulfilling their idea of London, a pound for a photo with an East German Exploited fan. Punks in full costume, most of whom weren’t actually from England but were there as subcultural tourists themselves, trying to find an outlet for their imaginary idea of the authentic punk™ lifestyle after most trad-dad UK punks abandoned ship. The punk idea muted after being flogged to death on TV advert cartoon like compilation tapes, another ghost of a cultural movement laid to rest. Perhaps because of it’s reliance on the shock of the new which soon became the set-in-stone signifiers of what ‘punk’ is, thus the eternal cliché of the postcard punk. If that makes sense, I mean that the initial idea of punk eventually became another capitalistic formula, another way to sell product rather than produce ideas. Things become static and while some people obviously took the possibilities of punk to heart and made it in their own image etc etc for some people punk will always be a cartoon of Sid Vicious, an empty salute to a mythical past.
I think I have already written about this too much maybe, but it’s something I think about a lot, the notion of punk as a transient idea rather than a fixed reality. It probably has a lot to do with growing older and just being more reflective in general about the main thing that has shaped my life. How when you are young things feel like they are happening everywhere that you aren’t, and then as you age things feel like they have already happened and all that’s left is formaldahyded memories of glory days. It’s so depressing to me that people get stuck on this one moment, the idea of youth as your last chance for freedom, which I think is such a shitty capitalistic construct used to sell jeans and and skincream lifestyles to people who think their moment has passed. Punk is for some a snap shot of their youth, frozen in time, forever to be xeroxed onto all their future endeavours, rather than just the idea of total possibility which can be applied to whatever it is they happen to be doing. I know some people are doomed to be crushed by life, and probably uh that applies to everyone at some point, and maybe going on a renunion tour seems like a good idea, the last time you felt alive or connected to anything was when you were in your teenage hardcore band so why not attempt to reproduce said experience with a collection of dissatisfied beer bellied middle aged men... I mean actually most renunion tours are little more than crass cash ins on nostalgia hungry audiences, I am just attempting to figure out aging ‘punk’ motivations beyond that I guess. The RAMONES/GERMS/ FLIPPER show in particular kind of blew me away, just the fucking concept, especially in the case of the GERMS and FLIPPER who’s appeal to me at least lies in their total disgust for authenticity in music. They both made totally disposable youthful yet terrifying and disparaging music, the sound of mocking laughter and mean pranks and alienated brains, the exact opposite of what they are doing now, pantomiming an idea long lost to their age addled brains. and I am sure it’s been said but the dead members of said bands are surely rolling in their graves. It’s so ridiculous it’s hard to even comment on it seriously. Anyone who went to that show thinking that it was anything other than the ultimate rip off (and thusly maybe punk? Maybe??) is clearly a lunk headed goon.
We have to stop allowing space (ie stop giving them our money) to lame nostalgic old men who once were maybe dangerous and made exciting sounds but now who’s vision is coated in a congealed buttery like substance which is reflected in their creative output. I am not saying that once you reach a certain point you should not be allowed to make music anymore in any way. Just that we need to stop deifying the past and the people who are trapped there. I had to review a Nikki Sudden 7” last month, and that, while not at all replicating anything the SWELL MAPS did sonically, depressed me too. It was straight bar room country music, so boring and trite coming from a man who basically reinvented DIY punk. It felt like another old man trying to find his roots, some kind of authenticity, and I understand why punks like country music, it’s good music from a rebel perspective (well the good stuff, not the shitty radio country-politan elevator music) but it seems like such a well worn cornball path. So the two musical options for growing old and staying punk are being in a poser synthesis of your past musical endeavours or yowling lame truck stop diner myth country truisms? SO BORING.
It’s difficult because any punk music made now is inherantly nostalgic, it’s always going to refer to the past in a way that maybe it didn’t have to in the beginning stages of its inception. It’s become a reverent movement, where knowledge of obscure forefathers of Scandi-beat or whatever is requisite. I think one of the distinguishing factors that separates the music I like (ha!) from generic replicant music is that good music references the past perhaps, but ultimately makes something different and new out of it. One of my favorite records right now is the CRIMINAL DAMAGE LP, or as I like to say, crim dam, which is pretty clearly a BLITZ tribute, but there’s something else about it that doesn’t exist in the other 60 zillion shitty cardboard oi!-lite bands in existance now, a feeling in the music, yet it still sounds so classic and time capsule like. Also LEBENDEN TOTEN, how the influences are so clear and yet listening to it is totally brutal in the best way. It’s not generic, there’s some weird quality to it that makes it transcend the confines of the influences or the imprint of the past.
As information relating to olden days music has become less obscure and less guarded by the salivating record nerds, also because of all of the reissues and the sheer availability of information on the internet more good bands should come into existance. I like seeing bands that are clearly influenced by obscure japanese noise flexis and HUGGY BEAR and REALLY RED. Not that I have, but you know it would be rad. I think that’s why I love MIKA MIKO so much, because they have the possibility explosion of old KLEENEX 7”s with the guitar sounds and snot nosed vengeace of the FIRST FOUR YEARS. It’s such an inspiring combination of ideas, and seeing them play at house shows and basements and all ages spaces just reaffirms the true excitement of possibilities of DIY punk. The audience and the band members totally losing it, sweaty and ridiculous and all for under 5 dollars! So far away from some tame SLITS renunion show, nothing they do now as THE SLITS will ever recapture the total insanity and genius and collapsibility of their first PEEL session or their demo. Nothing. They are totally cashing in on something that was dangerous and fierce and making it a lame world beat old lady jam band compost heap. I think of punk as ridiculous and embarrassing, fun and brave and dumb, good times and total hell all at once. As soon as you lose the idea of punk as being anything other than kicks and freedom and community it just becomes another museum piece. I mean it in both the way people in the scene use their influences now and in the way people of the past exploit their musical histories. I have this old fanzine, Germ of Youth, in which the editor keeps writing “Punk Rock is an endless adventure’ somewhat ironically I am sure, but I feel like that should be the case. It isn’t a prison cell or a rule book or a fancy dress costume. It’s a mess and it’s yours. It’s disposable and it’s permanent and contradictory but it’s ours and we have to make it good or else it’ll just be a bunch of old men rotting in a bar talking about watching Black Flag in 82.
ANYWAYS.
Top ten for the winter months:
1-mika miko at the pine st house!! craziest show i have been to? Well this year maybe? we all got crucial, wasted, and some random person paintbombed the room so we also got covered in paint. they are so fucking good! and they make so much sense at a house show. made me happy to be a punk/live in the bay area/have such rad friends... west oakland is seriously like life after the apocalypse though. the house was way out by the docks surrounded by these crumbling ghost town style buildings, there were random pit bulls running around, totally felt like that movie suburbia. it was weird bc the day felt so static and frozen then the evening was just totally insane and liberating and total kicks affirmative duvet ta etc etc. 2-ultimo resorte 12” rad lady fronted spanish punk, she kind of sounds like Mai of gorilla angreb. Totally awesome. Also Martin’s story about how she punched out Nancy Spungeon. So punk. 3-Golnar’s ‘worst records at MRR’ set for the 1000th radio show. 4-riding my bike after dark 5-ladies and gentlemen the fabulous stains, the song watse of time is the best song ever. Seriously. If anyone has this on a soundtrack pls tape it for me. 6-going vegan 7-black and white photobooths 8-Dis-carriage, latest Portland hype band for sure. I heard they were Champagne punks! 9-Swell Maps Peel sessions 10- The Clean discography.
third
This week has been titled "out of the bunker onto the bike" or "the
bro-dyssey continues" depending on who you talk to. The dreamy Scott
Moore was in town as was Paul Henry, so not only did Limp Wrist have
an intense writing sesh for their next triple LP but the pit at the 5
zillion Fucked Up shows that also occured was taken to the next level
by their delectable presense. Good times! The animals also were at
once saved and oppressed; from the San Diego chapter of the vegan
reich descending on my house millitia style with a righteous vegan
brunch to free day at the zoo with the wolfpack to the aforementioned
Scott Moore feeding a strange vole-like creature carrots out of his
mouth... Totes ridic. This week in Bay Area shows also included
Peligro Social, the Clorox Girls, many Look Back and Laugh side
projects and the second Club Sandwich event, more on that later tho. I
have been formulating an article on growing old and staying punk, and
then suddenly the deadline for getting this thing in looms up and my
well crafted article is uh, still in the "draft" stage so I just write
about random things instead. I am the champion of digression. Anyway
before I launch into the Homer like retelling of my Bro-dyssey styled
week, I got this awesome correspondence from Lance Hahn in regards to
my first column, specifically the thing I wrote about Unit 3 + Venus.
I am such a nerd, I love it when I get fill in the blank details about
random obscure bands I am obsessed with... Like one time my friend
Scott found this single in the dollar bin at Amoeba by a band called
Ama-Dots, it looked punk, plus Ohio in the early 80s? Definitely worth
checking out... We played it and it totally blew our brains out, like
a better Bush Tetras, informed by the ladies of early Rough Trade but
not as earnest dead pan politico, kind of arch and mocking, less
direct, more fucked up even... So I had to procure my own copy, this
was in the days before myspace crust (which I only just found out
about. Mind is blown!) meaning less viper like record nerdage on the
net, a mystical time when bargains were still possible, anyway, I got
the single on ebay for 3 bucks. I think it costs a lot more now. The
seller sent it to me with a huge package of show fliers, radio
playlists... Just the rad ephemera of punk that tends to disappear,
but that really puts bands and scenes into context. Ama-dots, as far
as I remember, played shows with both Bad Brains AND The
Contortions-so fucking rad!! That is the best thing about having
access to the huge pile of zines that Steve Subterranean donated to
the MRR archive, just to have random snotty kid opinions on bands that
are considered part of the canon nowadays. To read about bands and
shows that are legendary now but were just what was happening in that
juncture in time for whomever wrote the article... Also see that
Italian punk zine reprint thing that just came out for a similar idea.
I feel like my favorite contradiction in punk is it's permanent yet
disposable nature, how some things get written in stone and other
things totally evaporate, and what's the factor that makes things that
way? I mean there are obvious ones like access to resources, like if
you are a punk in close proximity to Hollywood you get to be in
Decline of the Western Civ pt 1, whereas if you are a punk in a random
town in TN you get Poison Idea arranging an entire tour around getting
ahold of your 7" of which only 200 made it into circulation ie: KORO.
Also I had this rad conversation with someone who helped put together
that Jim Jocoy book "We're Desperate" that came out a few years back,
with unnamed pictures of punks from LA and NY, and how intially they
were going to get everyone's name onto their image, but then they
decided it would be radder to have everyone in there without
distinctions between the audience and the band members/more notorious
scenesters. I think the names are in the back of the book, but I
think it's so cool that it takes away the legend's status and just
puts them in the context of the kids that helped create the
movement/scene in one big line up.
Anyway, on to Lance Hahn, note the lame introduction of a dreaded
stage mother into my idealistic notion of Unit 3 plus Venus, which
further demonstrates how punk in Hollywood is always going to be
weird:
"When I was a kid growing up in Hawaii there was one punk club called 3Ds. It
was in Waikiki and was for tourists and college kids. They were pretty
fucked but would sometimes bring okay bands over. They would operate like a
'70s club where a band would come over and play a residency for a week or
so. They brought over Agent Orange and the Circle Jerks. It was okay. They
were mostly into new wave. At the height of their popularity, they also
brought over Unit 3 w/ Venus. They actually were sorta popular in the
underground very briefly for two reasons. First of all, I think they were on
one of the Rodney on the ROQ compilations. Those records were the BIGGEST
source for kids not in the know to find out about new bands. It's funny to
think that everyone was so into those comps. But that's how a lot of people
heard Black Flag, The Minutemen and the Adolescents for the first time.
Also, they appeared on New Wave Theater which was a horrible cable access
type show out of LA. It would play late at night and in the era before MTV
it was where a lot of punks got to see bands for the first time. In both
cases they played the song "I Like Boys" and it was sort of a hit.
But the punks hated them. First of all, they were a fake band. The actual
band were her mom and dad and forced her to sing. It was sort of like a new
wave Bonnet-Ramsey situation. I wanna say her mom was something like a
sleazy Hollywood agent. The hardcore punks in Hawaii made fun of them and
Venus started crying. It was actually kind of mean.
The funny thing about her and the kid from Mad Parade is that they were just
kids. The used to pretend to be boyfriend and girlfriend, whatever that
means. Even though it was totally uncool at the time, the kid from Mad
Parade got REALLY into the second Adam and the Ants record and would show up
at gigs dressed like an indian. It was very cute.
Anyway, just wanted to make a note as it's pretty rare when you get to
communicate with anyone about something like Unit 3 w/ Venus (who I did
like, incidentally)... "
I think Hubbard already said something about this in his column in the
last issue with the rad Hjertestop/Guy Smiley from the Muppets style
cover, but Lance is having some lame medical problems, so you and yr
friends should form a Unit 3/Mad Society style band and do a benefit
for him. American health care is a shitsystem, so weird living in a
country where health care is considered a priviledge for the wealthy
and not a right for all... I think you can read about it here:
http://myspace.com/lancehahn. Also if you want to listen to Unit 3 or
Mad Society both me and Golnar have played them on various MRR radio
shows, so I am sure if you go to the MRR website and look in the
archive section you can download a show and skate to it or somethin?
What else? Not much! I did/used to do a zine called Chimps when I
lived in England and I am trying to locate some back issues, so if you
have any, specifically issues 1-5 and 7, pls send them to me via MRR
and I will xerox and mail them back. Unless you want them banished
from yr life.
You could also write me here but I am REALLY LAME at writing people
back: (c/o MRR) Just a warning.
Summer Jams:
1-Learning that Poison Idea planned their 83 (?) tour around Pig
Champion getting the Fix 7" 2-crucial abbreves 3-going tubing, free
day at the zoo, fucked up live, clorox girls live, peligro social
live. Christy in town... Productive Summer 06 all in one week. 4-Chloe
Puke's Pizza Cab idea 5-Can I say the proper reissue of the Koro 7"
even though I already mentioned it in here at least three times? yes i
can. 6-The Eyes TAQN 7" 7-Mika Miko LP. DUDE. So good, total eternal
top ten material. 8-Chaos-Get out of my pocket 9-Nervous Students and
Hot Tub shows upcoming. 10-Having to pick between a Look Back and
Laugh, Mindless Mutant and Young Offenders show OR a Carbonas show.
Yay areaaaaaaaaa...
bro-dyssey continues" depending on who you talk to. The dreamy Scott
Moore was in town as was Paul Henry, so not only did Limp Wrist have
an intense writing sesh for their next triple LP but the pit at the 5
zillion Fucked Up shows that also occured was taken to the next level
by their delectable presense. Good times! The animals also were at
once saved and oppressed; from the San Diego chapter of the vegan
reich descending on my house millitia style with a righteous vegan
brunch to free day at the zoo with the wolfpack to the aforementioned
Scott Moore feeding a strange vole-like creature carrots out of his
mouth... Totes ridic. This week in Bay Area shows also included
Peligro Social, the Clorox Girls, many Look Back and Laugh side
projects and the second Club Sandwich event, more on that later tho. I
have been formulating an article on growing old and staying punk, and
then suddenly the deadline for getting this thing in looms up and my
well crafted article is uh, still in the "draft" stage so I just write
about random things instead. I am the champion of digression. Anyway
before I launch into the Homer like retelling of my Bro-dyssey styled
week, I got this awesome correspondence from Lance Hahn in regards to
my first column, specifically the thing I wrote about Unit 3 + Venus.
I am such a nerd, I love it when I get fill in the blank details about
random obscure bands I am obsessed with... Like one time my friend
Scott found this single in the dollar bin at Amoeba by a band called
Ama-Dots, it looked punk, plus Ohio in the early 80s? Definitely worth
checking out... We played it and it totally blew our brains out, like
a better Bush Tetras, informed by the ladies of early Rough Trade but
not as earnest dead pan politico, kind of arch and mocking, less
direct, more fucked up even... So I had to procure my own copy, this
was in the days before myspace crust (which I only just found out
about. Mind is blown!) meaning less viper like record nerdage on the
net, a mystical time when bargains were still possible, anyway, I got
the single on ebay for 3 bucks. I think it costs a lot more now. The
seller sent it to me with a huge package of show fliers, radio
playlists... Just the rad ephemera of punk that tends to disappear,
but that really puts bands and scenes into context. Ama-dots, as far
as I remember, played shows with both Bad Brains AND The
Contortions-so fucking rad!! That is the best thing about having
access to the huge pile of zines that Steve Subterranean donated to
the MRR archive, just to have random snotty kid opinions on bands that
are considered part of the canon nowadays. To read about bands and
shows that are legendary now but were just what was happening in that
juncture in time for whomever wrote the article... Also see that
Italian punk zine reprint thing that just came out for a similar idea.
I feel like my favorite contradiction in punk is it's permanent yet
disposable nature, how some things get written in stone and other
things totally evaporate, and what's the factor that makes things that
way? I mean there are obvious ones like access to resources, like if
you are a punk in close proximity to Hollywood you get to be in
Decline of the Western Civ pt 1, whereas if you are a punk in a random
town in TN you get Poison Idea arranging an entire tour around getting
ahold of your 7" of which only 200 made it into circulation ie: KORO.
Also I had this rad conversation with someone who helped put together
that Jim Jocoy book "We're Desperate" that came out a few years back,
with unnamed pictures of punks from LA and NY, and how intially they
were going to get everyone's name onto their image, but then they
decided it would be radder to have everyone in there without
distinctions between the audience and the band members/more notorious
scenesters. I think the names are in the back of the book, but I
think it's so cool that it takes away the legend's status and just
puts them in the context of the kids that helped create the
movement/scene in one big line up.
Anyway, on to Lance Hahn, note the lame introduction of a dreaded
stage mother into my idealistic notion of Unit 3 plus Venus, which
further demonstrates how punk in Hollywood is always going to be
weird:
"When I was a kid growing up in Hawaii there was one punk club called 3Ds. It
was in Waikiki and was for tourists and college kids. They were pretty
fucked but would sometimes bring okay bands over. They would operate like a
'70s club where a band would come over and play a residency for a week or
so. They brought over Agent Orange and the Circle Jerks. It was okay. They
were mostly into new wave. At the height of their popularity, they also
brought over Unit 3 w/ Venus. They actually were sorta popular in the
underground very briefly for two reasons. First of all, I think they were on
one of the Rodney on the ROQ compilations. Those records were the BIGGEST
source for kids not in the know to find out about new bands. It's funny to
think that everyone was so into those comps. But that's how a lot of people
heard Black Flag, The Minutemen and the Adolescents for the first time.
Also, they appeared on New Wave Theater which was a horrible cable access
type show out of LA. It would play late at night and in the era before MTV
it was where a lot of punks got to see bands for the first time. In both
cases they played the song "I Like Boys" and it was sort of a hit.
But the punks hated them. First of all, they were a fake band. The actual
band were her mom and dad and forced her to sing. It was sort of like a new
wave Bonnet-Ramsey situation. I wanna say her mom was something like a
sleazy Hollywood agent. The hardcore punks in Hawaii made fun of them and
Venus started crying. It was actually kind of mean.
The funny thing about her and the kid from Mad Parade is that they were just
kids. The used to pretend to be boyfriend and girlfriend, whatever that
means. Even though it was totally uncool at the time, the kid from Mad
Parade got REALLY into the second Adam and the Ants record and would show up
at gigs dressed like an indian. It was very cute.
Anyway, just wanted to make a note as it's pretty rare when you get to
communicate with anyone about something like Unit 3 w/ Venus (who I did
like, incidentally)... "
I think Hubbard already said something about this in his column in the
last issue with the rad Hjertestop/Guy Smiley from the Muppets style
cover, but Lance is having some lame medical problems, so you and yr
friends should form a Unit 3/Mad Society style band and do a benefit
for him. American health care is a shitsystem, so weird living in a
country where health care is considered a priviledge for the wealthy
and not a right for all... I think you can read about it here:
http://myspace.com/lancehahn. Also if you want to listen to Unit 3 or
Mad Society both me and Golnar have played them on various MRR radio
shows, so I am sure if you go to the MRR website and look in the
archive section you can download a show and skate to it or somethin?
What else? Not much! I did/used to do a zine called Chimps when I
lived in England and I am trying to locate some back issues, so if you
have any, specifically issues 1-5 and 7, pls send them to me via MRR
and I will xerox and mail them back. Unless you want them banished
from yr life.
You could also write me here but I am REALLY LAME at writing people
back: (c/o MRR) Just a warning.
Summer Jams:
1-Learning that Poison Idea planned their 83 (?) tour around Pig
Champion getting the Fix 7" 2-crucial abbreves 3-going tubing, free
day at the zoo, fucked up live, clorox girls live, peligro social
live. Christy in town... Productive Summer 06 all in one week. 4-Chloe
Puke's Pizza Cab idea 5-Can I say the proper reissue of the Koro 7"
even though I already mentioned it in here at least three times? yes i
can. 6-The Eyes TAQN 7" 7-Mika Miko LP. DUDE. So good, total eternal
top ten material. 8-Chaos-Get out of my pocket 9-Nervous Students and
Hot Tub shows upcoming. 10-Having to pick between a Look Back and
Laugh, Mindless Mutant and Young Offenders show OR a Carbonas show.
Yay areaaaaaaaaa...
2nd
For the past few months, in fact pretty much since I woke up paralyzed and had to be taken to SF general emergency room/hobo camp for thee uninsured, I have descended into a general doom clad malaise. Which coincidentally coincided with a total obsession with Brian Wilson, particularly the unreleased SMILE sessions. Generally I have a million ideas and action plans for every moment of leisure, you know, maybe something along the lines of an owl scouting trip with Gabe, or a bike ride round the docks, or anything mass-food-consumption related. Or bonfires on the beach for the birthday of the dreamy ERIN YANKE for which the SF weather totally cleared up, only one person puked in the sand and there was a Germs burn around the moon… Plus I taught some frat girls about the magic of making fire. The past few months have been spent holed up in my room watching documentaries about uh Brian Wilson and the making of Smile or obsessing about more general Beach Boys psychotica, like when Dennis Wilson pissed in Mike Love’s transcendental meditation tent. This is clearly NOT PUNK so I am not sure why I am writing about it in the pages of this hallowed and most punk tome. I mean seriously my world used to be more like a Minutemen song, awkward, fast political and joyous, rather than like a solemn but creepy song about a girl who cut her hair, i.e. Caroline No! but I digress. I am slowly easing back into civilian life because I can assure you that the past few months have not been spent composing teenage symphonies to god, (uh sorry, another BRIAN WILSON reference) but slouched vacantly in my room, sullen malcontent style. My gloom incongruously collided with the arrival of spring which then merged into summer and I had this idea that I was going to destroy said gloom by going with the infamous LADYHAWK to some pagan ritual on a beach somewhere on Midsummer’s eve, but that didn’t happen so my hippy mom garb didn’t get cleansed by the goddess or anything and the mood sticks on.
I may not have been inclined to ride bikes or play guitars or anything as of recent times, but there have been a few total KICKS AFFIRMATIVE/ ACTION! TIME! VISION! moments of transcendence that hopefully bode well for PRODUCTIVE SUMMER 06 which I named but have done nothing to make happen since. Anyways, here are the jams and the dreamy times.
1-Tobi wrote this and will probably be bummed I put it in here, but whatevs. It was written in response to me bitching about Flipper not only reuniting but also playing the Haight Street Fair. In mathematical terms: Flipper 2006 version+Hippies=HELL NO.
“Flipper not hippies! punk noise poet....also, how can you be washed up if your band is dystopia incarnate...the Armageddon i.e. now would be a perfect time for them to play, especially if they become more grotesque with age! flipper=the trickster anecdote to hardcore, which covered the world in a venomous teenage boy goo like privilege that stuck to everything and made us stupid...flipper would be the heroic uber villains, yelling absurdist truths over distorted noise that could hardly be call music. and the slow drums swing in a way that made them somehow disco! I love flipper! hippies are ok by me as long as they are anti-consumer and pro co-op, but flipper were not hippies. In the hardcore lexicon of my youth, hippy=fag, which is what a jock surfer who liked black flag and Marshall Stacks would call flipper. I beg to differ!”
I think she thought I meant Flipper were hippies, which is not a delusion I am under in any way, but I AM AGAINST OLD RAD BANDS RE-EXISTING AND SULLYING MY IDEA OF THEM! I mean I understand that growing old gracefully is hard for punx; most disappear or become vile caricatures of their former selves. I totally can relate to and understand the idea of wanting to recapture the feeling of freedom and kicks that youth and punk give when combined, but I think it’s better to figure out new and different ways of getting that than becoming the reconstituted meat products that most reformed bands ultimately are. Anyway Tobi is one of my favorite writers of ever and that missive totally made the world a different color to me for a second in the best way.
2-Mika Miko and the re-emergence of teenage girl destruction! I know Mika Miko are no longer teenagers, but they were when they started, and one of the raddest things about seeing them play over the years has been the amount of other bands that are now in existence formed by teenaged girls totally inspired by their idea of sound. It makes me think of how girl bands in the late 70s/early 80s from Kleenex in Switzerland, to the Ama-dots in Ohio heard the Slits and reclaimed punk for themselves. Anyway the band that inspired this adulation is Finally Punk from Austin TX, who are like fireworks going off from some kid’s bedroom window for real. Mika Miko have this Circle Jerks meets Kleenex sound, total ferocious and exciting but also fucked up and art damaged, whereas Finally Punk are more distinctly in the ‘art’ section I guess? Live, they totally destroy; they trade instruments and are simultaneously fun and aggressive like I guess I imagine old 82 era hardcore was, but without the macho kill or be killed idea. They sound smart and dumb, goofy but sure… I don’t know, musically the CDR reminded me of the Scissor Girls or Meltdown, but somehow live they also have the energy of a teenage basement hardcore band, it’s not sensitive artiste experimentalism, but a rampage on your senses. Like you have to dance or you’ll perish. Maybe also because I saw them play at an eviction party in Oakland, there was this feeling of the transcendent possibilities of punk music and destruction! They played with the also great Kiosk from Australia (also teenagers??) who play somehow stripped down elemental classic rock which is also mythology depleting in a Lydia Lunch-ish way maybe? Like Death Valley 69 but disgusted rather than ironic. Cool girl singer and guitarist and rad tunings too… Of course they all have a myspace page which I would guess is probably www.myspace.com/finallypunk or for kiosk www.myspace.com/kiosk but you should see them play live, and I think you probably can because they collectively are on a two month tour of the US. (Summer Break forever!)
3-Look Back and Laugh Live Tonite! I always felt like LBAL were a Bay Area secret, because they make so much more sense live than they do on record, and so few people outside of this area had seen them play until this summer. I was in full on grouch mode and did not want to go to the show but the force that is Golnar rode her bike to my house and MADE ME GO using mind tricks honed in the babe den or something. I have seen pictorial evidence of the aforementioned co-ordinator in full on bro mosh mode as a result of the fury and power that is Look Back and Laugh, and I was ready and waiting to see the re-match. In short, if Golnar was going to get crucial I wanted to be there. Plus I might have mentioned that Look Back and Laugh are my favourite local band. It was a rare show where pretty much every band was in the raging shredder category, and despite the fact that I did not see the cruciality emanating from the pores of Golnar LBAL totally made up for it by demonstrating why they are the best and uh, most crucial. I have said it before but I will restate it here Tobia is up there with fuckin John Brannon in my book in terms of front-person intensity... and the band as a whole is just fucking phenomenal and the summer 06 roadie said it was probably one of the best shows of tour, and I didn’t even see any of the other tour shows and I totally agree with him. Dude. Get the new 7” that just came out on derranged and get with the program if you haven’t already. Seeing them play is like watching buildings crumble! Seriously dudes, just totally fierce and righteous and timeless. The below is from an email I wrote before the show trying to convince people to get with the program and get in the pit yo:
I have not yet been to the show (tonight at BALAZO!) and it’s ALREADY in my reinvigorating-the-zombie-that-is-me list. LBAL are not to be denied. Total power and fury. I am hoping for the re-emergence of Mosh-Gnar, no half arsed fist pumps along with the chorus, Golnar must bring the mosh gnars!
ANYWAY here is a top ten:
1-Fucked Up is going to come back on the MRR radio show for a rematch 2-Scott Moore singing on my voice mail and the fact that most of Limp Wrist will be in town for the Fucked Up shows. Good times ahead. 3-Peligro Social! Get the record fools. If you like classic Spanish punk, like RIP combined with the energy and assault of black dot era Bad Brains get the record or see them play for sure. 4-Martin’s homemade Criminal Damage denim vest 5-Paco’s radio show (South American Punk, you can still listen to it at the mrr radio website!) 6-Francoise Hardy and Jacques Dutronc duets from the late 60s 7-the Mika Miko full length get it or regret it 8-the Oh Okay 7”, great early 80s lady fronted Athens GA art punk 9-firework night in the Mission, total insanity 10-pizza!
write me if you want c/o mrr.
I may not have been inclined to ride bikes or play guitars or anything as of recent times, but there have been a few total KICKS AFFIRMATIVE/ ACTION! TIME! VISION! moments of transcendence that hopefully bode well for PRODUCTIVE SUMMER 06 which I named but have done nothing to make happen since. Anyways, here are the jams and the dreamy times.
1-Tobi wrote this and will probably be bummed I put it in here, but whatevs. It was written in response to me bitching about Flipper not only reuniting but also playing the Haight Street Fair. In mathematical terms: Flipper 2006 version+Hippies=HELL NO.
“Flipper not hippies! punk noise poet....also, how can you be washed up if your band is dystopia incarnate...the Armageddon i.e. now would be a perfect time for them to play, especially if they become more grotesque with age! flipper=the trickster anecdote to hardcore, which covered the world in a venomous teenage boy goo like privilege that stuck to everything and made us stupid...flipper would be the heroic uber villains, yelling absurdist truths over distorted noise that could hardly be call music. and the slow drums swing in a way that made them somehow disco! I love flipper! hippies are ok by me as long as they are anti-consumer and pro co-op, but flipper were not hippies. In the hardcore lexicon of my youth, hippy=fag, which is what a jock surfer who liked black flag and Marshall Stacks would call flipper. I beg to differ!”
I think she thought I meant Flipper were hippies, which is not a delusion I am under in any way, but I AM AGAINST OLD RAD BANDS RE-EXISTING AND SULLYING MY IDEA OF THEM! I mean I understand that growing old gracefully is hard for punx; most disappear or become vile caricatures of their former selves. I totally can relate to and understand the idea of wanting to recapture the feeling of freedom and kicks that youth and punk give when combined, but I think it’s better to figure out new and different ways of getting that than becoming the reconstituted meat products that most reformed bands ultimately are. Anyway Tobi is one of my favorite writers of ever and that missive totally made the world a different color to me for a second in the best way.
2-Mika Miko and the re-emergence of teenage girl destruction! I know Mika Miko are no longer teenagers, but they were when they started, and one of the raddest things about seeing them play over the years has been the amount of other bands that are now in existence formed by teenaged girls totally inspired by their idea of sound. It makes me think of how girl bands in the late 70s/early 80s from Kleenex in Switzerland, to the Ama-dots in Ohio heard the Slits and reclaimed punk for themselves. Anyway the band that inspired this adulation is Finally Punk from Austin TX, who are like fireworks going off from some kid’s bedroom window for real. Mika Miko have this Circle Jerks meets Kleenex sound, total ferocious and exciting but also fucked up and art damaged, whereas Finally Punk are more distinctly in the ‘art’ section I guess? Live, they totally destroy; they trade instruments and are simultaneously fun and aggressive like I guess I imagine old 82 era hardcore was, but without the macho kill or be killed idea. They sound smart and dumb, goofy but sure… I don’t know, musically the CDR reminded me of the Scissor Girls or Meltdown, but somehow live they also have the energy of a teenage basement hardcore band, it’s not sensitive artiste experimentalism, but a rampage on your senses. Like you have to dance or you’ll perish. Maybe also because I saw them play at an eviction party in Oakland, there was this feeling of the transcendent possibilities of punk music and destruction! They played with the also great Kiosk from Australia (also teenagers??) who play somehow stripped down elemental classic rock which is also mythology depleting in a Lydia Lunch-ish way maybe? Like Death Valley 69 but disgusted rather than ironic. Cool girl singer and guitarist and rad tunings too… Of course they all have a myspace page which I would guess is probably www.myspace.com/finallypunk or for kiosk www.myspace.com/kiosk but you should see them play live, and I think you probably can because they collectively are on a two month tour of the US. (Summer Break forever!)
3-Look Back and Laugh Live Tonite! I always felt like LBAL were a Bay Area secret, because they make so much more sense live than they do on record, and so few people outside of this area had seen them play until this summer. I was in full on grouch mode and did not want to go to the show but the force that is Golnar rode her bike to my house and MADE ME GO using mind tricks honed in the babe den or something. I have seen pictorial evidence of the aforementioned co-ordinator in full on bro mosh mode as a result of the fury and power that is Look Back and Laugh, and I was ready and waiting to see the re-match. In short, if Golnar was going to get crucial I wanted to be there. Plus I might have mentioned that Look Back and Laugh are my favourite local band. It was a rare show where pretty much every band was in the raging shredder category, and despite the fact that I did not see the cruciality emanating from the pores of Golnar LBAL totally made up for it by demonstrating why they are the best and uh, most crucial. I have said it before but I will restate it here Tobia is up there with fuckin John Brannon in my book in terms of front-person intensity... and the band as a whole is just fucking phenomenal and the summer 06 roadie said it was probably one of the best shows of tour, and I didn’t even see any of the other tour shows and I totally agree with him. Dude. Get the new 7” that just came out on derranged and get with the program if you haven’t already. Seeing them play is like watching buildings crumble! Seriously dudes, just totally fierce and righteous and timeless. The below is from an email I wrote before the show trying to convince people to get with the program and get in the pit yo:
I have not yet been to the show (tonight at BALAZO!) and it’s ALREADY in my reinvigorating-the-zombie-that-is-me list. LBAL are not to be denied. Total power and fury. I am hoping for the re-emergence of Mosh-Gnar, no half arsed fist pumps along with the chorus, Golnar must bring the mosh gnars!
ANYWAY here is a top ten:
1-Fucked Up is going to come back on the MRR radio show for a rematch 2-Scott Moore singing on my voice mail and the fact that most of Limp Wrist will be in town for the Fucked Up shows. Good times ahead. 3-Peligro Social! Get the record fools. If you like classic Spanish punk, like RIP combined with the energy and assault of black dot era Bad Brains get the record or see them play for sure. 4-Martin’s homemade Criminal Damage denim vest 5-Paco’s radio show (South American Punk, you can still listen to it at the mrr radio website!) 6-Francoise Hardy and Jacques Dutronc duets from the late 60s 7-the Mika Miko full length get it or regret it 8-the Oh Okay 7”, great early 80s lady fronted Athens GA art punk 9-firework night in the Mission, total insanity 10-pizza!
write me if you want c/o mrr.
first
Well, here is my first non guest column for MRR. I guess should write about my highly mystical entry into the mysterious world that is punk rock, but uh, I kind of don’t feel like it? It seems like it’s the hazing ritual for all new columnists here however. I understand the purpose of it, as some kind of introduction to random new columnist’s weird quirks and drunken teenage car park puke- it-up-stories but instead I have decided to write about random things I like about living in San Francisco? Or maybe just random things I like? What about if I just insert a sarcastic comment about the life changing effect Jimmy Pursey had on my life? That would probably be enough right. Or maybe something about walking along the Brighton seafront with Jon from Huggy Bear, in the late 90s of course talking about Jimmy Pursey modeling for Comme Des Garcons, that fashion label. The main thing I am going to use this column for, apart from increasing my street-team-style attempts at getting Golnar an all girl Scandi-beat army (If you want to sign up, are female, AND like Scandinavian hardcore particularly the sounds that emanate from Finland, contact me or Floyd ASAP) …is to outline the rad and inspiring things that are, uh, rad and inspire me? An extended and endless top ten with epic descriptions of the pain and suffering that elevated said things to the ‘rad and inspiring’ heights that they have reached. How am I writing a column about writing a column? So lame. I totally feel like a kid with a paper due though. AT ANY RATE.
One of my favorite musical genres is teenage bedroom/basement music. I interviewed Craig from God is my Co-pilot many years ago, and he was talking about how as a kid in the 70s he had first heard about punk via the written word, ie he read about it before he actually heard any music. When he finally heard the Sex Pistols he was super disappointed because he was expecting something that would shatter music forever, and it was basically just destroyed 50s rocknroll... I guess nowadays in the land of post ironic dudes in flares and douchebag 70s jockrock mustaches who just wanna play bar-rawk’n’roll maaaan the idea of destroying rocknroll is very pleasing to me, and I kind of wish the Sex Pistols had been more sucessful in that regard. I am super sick of gross gentlemen who resemble the jock assholes in Dazed and Confused populating the streets of my town in perpetuality; why do retro hipster people have to dress like the jock jerkoffs and secretary bitches of the past? So weird... but anyway my point was that I like the music that people made in the 70s and early 80s where when you listen to it you get this feeling that they were blown away by the notion of punk, just the idea of total freedom from the rocknroll canon. Obviously a lot of the initial fire and idea of punk came from the rediscovery of the trashed out sounds of 60s garage bands, so most of the intial wave had that as their aesthetic... hence the aforementioned destroyed rocknroll feel. But what I love is the totally insane almost terrifying music, made by the people who would never have played music if the music scene had continued to be dominated by mustached arsewipes in tight pants who wailed their cocaine demons out on their $10,000 guitars or made bassface as they thumped out another 50 year long slap bass solo. Punk was for the people, to paraphrase Patti Smith, the girls and the geeks, the queers and the maladjusted, true outsider music. I like also listening to bands that think they are making ‘normal’ rocknroll but are actually clearly operating using quite different brain chemistry and are quite unable to do ‘normal’ anything at least musically. Below I have detailed a few of my jams, I am not a masterful record nerd and I am sure I have some of the details wrong in regards to some of these records and bands, but I wanted to write about them anyway in my bogus introduction column... because fuck record nerds. Total shitsystem. Right now and always I am consumed by teenage bedroom/basement music. Music that is cohesive in it’s totality, that creates new worlds and that’s exclusive and inclusive too somehow. Like this band made these sounds and you could never do it the way they did but you could definitely do something. And you should.
UNIT 3 were a synth-punk band from LA, featuring their 8 year old daughter Venus on vocals, the UNIT 3+ VENUS 7” ‘Beer’ is perhaps one of creepiest/most awesome 7”s ever. The music kind of reminds me of the SCREAMERS, old synths played to death, with an 8 year old girl intonating over and over “Beer isn’t good for you, I don’t like beer” on the A side and, “Blue is my color...’ on the B side, and somehow making it sound like she’s singing about your future doom. It’s way more disturbing that anything Slayer or any of those Norweigian prison death bands combined have put to tape. Their ‘brother’ band was MAD SOCIETY, which featured an 11 year old boy on vocals, they also have an amazing 7” you should seek out. It’s more straight ahead So Cal punk, but the vocals are fucking terrifying and insane, almost too much to take but fucking great. I met shitworker Shane White because he overheard me talking about UNIT 3 + VENUS and couldn’t believe I had heard of them, he used to go see them all the time apparently... I think they ‘happened’ after the initial LA punk explosion, maybe more in the hardcore bonehead era? Which I think is cool because the way all the art punk people from that first generation of LA punks talk about that later era is as if it was just a million Shawn Sterns beating the shit out of each other, and the idea that this crazy 8 year old girl fronted music existed in tandem with TSOL is fuckin rad.
I can remember the first time I heard the Void side of the Faith/Void split clearly, thinking that it was pretty much the best record ever at the same time as trying to figure out how they sounded so amazing whilst falling apart. I think that is pretty much my favorite kind of hardcore, not many can do it, probably only the Neos 7”s come close... What is it that separates VOID from all the shitty bands that can’t play that have made unlistenable records? I mean Bubba Dupree is pretty much the best name ever in general, and the first two and last two songs on that split are just untouchable. Perfect suburban basement music, rage and frustration that makes no sense and is ridiculous and awesome at the same time. If you know about any other bands in this genre that are not bogus seriously send me tapes! My friend Brett made me a tape of the two RUTTO 7”s, an old Finnish lady fronted punk band who kind of remind me of VOID in some of the above mentioned ways. He called them the Finnish FRUMPIES, I guess because of the screamed out girl vocals, but I think they are more hardcore sounding, the music collapses in on itself, the singer is furious and doesn’t care at the same time. I would totally skate to this.
What else? Well obviously there’s the RAINCOATS the ultimate secret bedroom band, I am sure you have at least herad the first LP?? Total instinctive music that sounds like it had to exist or the band members would surely have expired. Hopefully there will be a feature on the Raincoats/Rough Trade scene in these pages in the next few months. My mum met Gina Birch at a memorial show for our friend Andy who was killed in a bike accident, she remembered her bc my teenage band played the first RAINCOATS reunion show, at any rate the point of that anecdote is that the RAINCOATS are all still best friends, (except for Palmolive who is a crazy Christian,) but how rad is that? I mean the music sounds like it was made by a secret society of girls, and to know that over twenty years later that same secret society still totally hang out together? That makes me psyched to grow old and stay punk. Obviously the Slits peel session and demo totally fall in this category too, I am kind of ambiguous about their reunion, who knows why? They have the daughter of one of the singers from Rip Rig and Panic doing backups, which is kind of cool... That era of music always makes me nostalgic for my childhood, the early 80s in West London were an amazing time to be alive. Or maybe just shorten that to ‘growing up in West London was the best.’ Chasing reggae soundsystems with my friends, skating at all the random 70s bowls, discovering the Rough Trade record shop, the random mix of British working class and Jamaican and Portuguese culture... Before Maggie Thatcher wiped out the dole and attempted to wipe out working class culture entirely and make England a land of upwardly mobile opportunists and speedily sinking desperation on the faces of those who were unable to ‘pull themselves up by their bootstraps’ or whatever...
I kind of get the same sense living in San Francisco, where there are weird old bohemian types who have lived in the same apartment for like 40 years surrounded by an archeology project in the works of books and records... Except I feel like that culture is getting wiped out by straight upfree market yuppie doom merchants. I read this rad interview with PINK SECTION, an old SF punk band from the late 70s that you should totally check out if you like lady fronted punk, where the singer talked about living in an apartment in the North Beach and only having to work one day a month. Can you even imagine?
I guess I meant to write about all the music that has shaped me as a human, and am not sure if I have done that successfully here. I mean I missed out HUGGY BEAR who totally changed my life, Plus there’s the English DIY culture side of teenage bedroom music, bands like the DESPERATE BICYCLES and the HOMOSEXUALS that you can probably check out on those MESSTHETICS comps that Hyped 2Death put out.
Anyway here is an eternal/right now only top ten of falling apart but world creating music:
1-Kraut/Matinee 2- Kikeiji/plastic love 3-Huggy Bear/Rubbing thee Impossible to Burst 7” 4-Void/Faith split 5-Frumpies/ all 7”s 6-Raincoats first LP 7-bedboys/L'Indifferenza Uccide 7” 8-RUTTO 7”s 9- Rappresaglia/Attack 10-Mika Miko demo tape.
Other things I am into right now include: 1-underground cave formations, 2-walking thru Golden Gate Park in the fog to the windiest shittiest but raddest beach, like walking onto the set of a 70s dinosaur sci-fi movie 3-pizza, 4-anne briggs,5- productive summer 06 6-the Townes Van Zandt documentary Be Here to Love Me 7-W.A.S.T.E.D (we all skate til everyone dies= skate summer 06!) 8-Irma Thomas 9-the Eccentric Soul comp 10-Dr Alimantado Best Dressed Chicken In Town LP
Write me c/o the MRR mailing address.
One of my favorite musical genres is teenage bedroom/basement music. I interviewed Craig from God is my Co-pilot many years ago, and he was talking about how as a kid in the 70s he had first heard about punk via the written word, ie he read about it before he actually heard any music. When he finally heard the Sex Pistols he was super disappointed because he was expecting something that would shatter music forever, and it was basically just destroyed 50s rocknroll... I guess nowadays in the land of post ironic dudes in flares and douchebag 70s jockrock mustaches who just wanna play bar-rawk’n’roll maaaan the idea of destroying rocknroll is very pleasing to me, and I kind of wish the Sex Pistols had been more sucessful in that regard. I am super sick of gross gentlemen who resemble the jock assholes in Dazed and Confused populating the streets of my town in perpetuality; why do retro hipster people have to dress like the jock jerkoffs and secretary bitches of the past? So weird... but anyway my point was that I like the music that people made in the 70s and early 80s where when you listen to it you get this feeling that they were blown away by the notion of punk, just the idea of total freedom from the rocknroll canon. Obviously a lot of the initial fire and idea of punk came from the rediscovery of the trashed out sounds of 60s garage bands, so most of the intial wave had that as their aesthetic... hence the aforementioned destroyed rocknroll feel. But what I love is the totally insane almost terrifying music, made by the people who would never have played music if the music scene had continued to be dominated by mustached arsewipes in tight pants who wailed their cocaine demons out on their $10,000 guitars or made bassface as they thumped out another 50 year long slap bass solo. Punk was for the people, to paraphrase Patti Smith, the girls and the geeks, the queers and the maladjusted, true outsider music. I like also listening to bands that think they are making ‘normal’ rocknroll but are actually clearly operating using quite different brain chemistry and are quite unable to do ‘normal’ anything at least musically. Below I have detailed a few of my jams, I am not a masterful record nerd and I am sure I have some of the details wrong in regards to some of these records and bands, but I wanted to write about them anyway in my bogus introduction column... because fuck record nerds. Total shitsystem. Right now and always I am consumed by teenage bedroom/basement music. Music that is cohesive in it’s totality, that creates new worlds and that’s exclusive and inclusive too somehow. Like this band made these sounds and you could never do it the way they did but you could definitely do something. And you should.
UNIT 3 were a synth-punk band from LA, featuring their 8 year old daughter Venus on vocals, the UNIT 3+ VENUS 7” ‘Beer’ is perhaps one of creepiest/most awesome 7”s ever. The music kind of reminds me of the SCREAMERS, old synths played to death, with an 8 year old girl intonating over and over “Beer isn’t good for you, I don’t like beer” on the A side and, “Blue is my color...’ on the B side, and somehow making it sound like she’s singing about your future doom. It’s way more disturbing that anything Slayer or any of those Norweigian prison death bands combined have put to tape. Their ‘brother’ band was MAD SOCIETY, which featured an 11 year old boy on vocals, they also have an amazing 7” you should seek out. It’s more straight ahead So Cal punk, but the vocals are fucking terrifying and insane, almost too much to take but fucking great. I met shitworker Shane White because he overheard me talking about UNIT 3 + VENUS and couldn’t believe I had heard of them, he used to go see them all the time apparently... I think they ‘happened’ after the initial LA punk explosion, maybe more in the hardcore bonehead era? Which I think is cool because the way all the art punk people from that first generation of LA punks talk about that later era is as if it was just a million Shawn Sterns beating the shit out of each other, and the idea that this crazy 8 year old girl fronted music existed in tandem with TSOL is fuckin rad.
I can remember the first time I heard the Void side of the Faith/Void split clearly, thinking that it was pretty much the best record ever at the same time as trying to figure out how they sounded so amazing whilst falling apart. I think that is pretty much my favorite kind of hardcore, not many can do it, probably only the Neos 7”s come close... What is it that separates VOID from all the shitty bands that can’t play that have made unlistenable records? I mean Bubba Dupree is pretty much the best name ever in general, and the first two and last two songs on that split are just untouchable. Perfect suburban basement music, rage and frustration that makes no sense and is ridiculous and awesome at the same time. If you know about any other bands in this genre that are not bogus seriously send me tapes! My friend Brett made me a tape of the two RUTTO 7”s, an old Finnish lady fronted punk band who kind of remind me of VOID in some of the above mentioned ways. He called them the Finnish FRUMPIES, I guess because of the screamed out girl vocals, but I think they are more hardcore sounding, the music collapses in on itself, the singer is furious and doesn’t care at the same time. I would totally skate to this.
What else? Well obviously there’s the RAINCOATS the ultimate secret bedroom band, I am sure you have at least herad the first LP?? Total instinctive music that sounds like it had to exist or the band members would surely have expired. Hopefully there will be a feature on the Raincoats/Rough Trade scene in these pages in the next few months. My mum met Gina Birch at a memorial show for our friend Andy who was killed in a bike accident, she remembered her bc my teenage band played the first RAINCOATS reunion show, at any rate the point of that anecdote is that the RAINCOATS are all still best friends, (except for Palmolive who is a crazy Christian,) but how rad is that? I mean the music sounds like it was made by a secret society of girls, and to know that over twenty years later that same secret society still totally hang out together? That makes me psyched to grow old and stay punk. Obviously the Slits peel session and demo totally fall in this category too, I am kind of ambiguous about their reunion, who knows why? They have the daughter of one of the singers from Rip Rig and Panic doing backups, which is kind of cool... That era of music always makes me nostalgic for my childhood, the early 80s in West London were an amazing time to be alive. Or maybe just shorten that to ‘growing up in West London was the best.’ Chasing reggae soundsystems with my friends, skating at all the random 70s bowls, discovering the Rough Trade record shop, the random mix of British working class and Jamaican and Portuguese culture... Before Maggie Thatcher wiped out the dole and attempted to wipe out working class culture entirely and make England a land of upwardly mobile opportunists and speedily sinking desperation on the faces of those who were unable to ‘pull themselves up by their bootstraps’ or whatever...
I kind of get the same sense living in San Francisco, where there are weird old bohemian types who have lived in the same apartment for like 40 years surrounded by an archeology project in the works of books and records... Except I feel like that culture is getting wiped out by straight upfree market yuppie doom merchants. I read this rad interview with PINK SECTION, an old SF punk band from the late 70s that you should totally check out if you like lady fronted punk, where the singer talked about living in an apartment in the North Beach and only having to work one day a month. Can you even imagine?
I guess I meant to write about all the music that has shaped me as a human, and am not sure if I have done that successfully here. I mean I missed out HUGGY BEAR who totally changed my life, Plus there’s the English DIY culture side of teenage bedroom music, bands like the DESPERATE BICYCLES and the HOMOSEXUALS that you can probably check out on those MESSTHETICS comps that Hyped 2Death put out.
Anyway here is an eternal/right now only top ten of falling apart but world creating music:
1-Kraut/Matinee 2- Kikeiji/plastic love 3-Huggy Bear/Rubbing thee Impossible to Burst 7” 4-Void/Faith split 5-Frumpies/ all 7”s 6-Raincoats first LP 7-bedboys/L'Indifferenza Uccide 7” 8-RUTTO 7”s 9- Rappresaglia/Attack 10-Mika Miko demo tape.
Other things I am into right now include: 1-underground cave formations, 2-walking thru Golden Gate Park in the fog to the windiest shittiest but raddest beach, like walking onto the set of a 70s dinosaur sci-fi movie 3-pizza, 4-anne briggs,5- productive summer 06 6-the Townes Van Zandt documentary Be Here to Love Me 7-W.A.S.T.E.D (we all skate til everyone dies= skate summer 06!) 8-Irma Thomas 9-the Eccentric Soul comp 10-Dr Alimantado Best Dressed Chicken In Town LP
Write me c/o the MRR mailing address.
Thursday, August 23, 2007
guest column
I wanted to write something about feminism and politics in punk, this is written in some vague attempt to start a ‘dialogue’ on something that is really important to me. I keep feeling like I have to insert some kind of disclaimer here, I am sort of uncomfortable writing in this forum just bc it feels so permanent, like MRR is the canon of punk rock and these words are now set in stone. Fuck it right… this is more of a collection of random thoughts on said subjects, not a cohesive and conclusive dissertation on feminism in punk today. Anyway! Please respond.
As of recent times my friends have been subjected to epic conversations about the transition from End Racism longsleeves and long instructional song intros about the plight of the downtrodden to messageboard cynicism and ironic dismissiveness in regards to anything that might implicate someone in the crime of giving a shit. It feels like the political culture in punk has gone from the 90s faux sincere personal is political feminist 4 fux to a general feeling of “Hey we’ve achieved feminism now, let’s talk about lipcream flexis!” Everything seems really static and codified. I don’t mean that somehow in thee olden days everyone had a deep understanding of feminist issues and it was like a constant giant group hug at all times in safe spaces across america, maybe more like there seemed to be a willingness to confront uncomfortable issues. And I don’t mean that those confrontations were always fruitful or beneficial, but at least people had to at least pretend they gave a shit somehow… It just feels like things have shifted towards the comfort of apathy, anything that makes anyone feel uncomfortable is ridiculed and dismissed.
The random instance that inspired all of this profound insight is actually one of the most irritating things about about being an active woman in the punk scene. When you are talking to someone at a show say and they don’t bother to introduce you to their friends or maybe they don’t acknowledge what you do. For example a dude will be given a title and background info upon introduction; ‘This is Scott Weed of Douche and the Fuckin Bags” Whereas generally women’s work in the scene is not acknowledged as being part of their punk identity. It seems really superficial perhaps, but when experienced on a constant basis it can make everything you do seem like meaningless background busywork.
Another random point is that I feel like a lot of cool punk girls have jumped ship for the comforts of indie rock/noise/whatever… and why is that? I think underground culture is way more fragmentary and separated out than it was before, and a lot of people (girls/women) see punk/hardcore as a monolithic outdated form, rather than an idea they can own and use for their own purposes. I got into punk thru riot grrrl, via Huggy Bear in London where I grew up. Riot grrrl was clearly contextualized within the punk movement, it was intially at least a spark of DIY spirit in a staid and boring scene. There was a distinct sense of taking things back, and of invigorating a staid and reactionary dude scene with ideas and sounds and words that genuinely freaked people out at least intially… before everything got codified and the rule book was written out and the sense of freedom and adventure dissipated in a flood of press attention and the dogmaticcs of expensive private school liberal artpeak. My question in regards to the after effects of that would be; How did feminism become knowing how to knit yr boyfriend a skull and crossbones scarf? I get so bored and depressed looking at magazines like Bust and Venus. Mainstream indie rock culture magazines, which obviously have their roots in riot grrl but seem to ultimately be about being a crafty entrepreneur and encouraging an alternative girl-culture based on consumption rather than liberation through ideas and sound. It’s so frustrating how pedestrian and mundane feminist culture is right now in that sense. Emulating a crafty mom from a midwestern suburb in the 70s isn’t why I got into punk. I understand the notion of DIY and making your own things and how that could be perceived as an empowering buy-nothing stance but I don’t feel like that is really what’s at work. What do you think?
My last point is a little all over the place but here goes… I know that the internet has revolutionized punk in many good and decent ways, for instance I love the fact that I can now find out in about 5 seconds all I ever needed to know about The Proletariat, seriously I used to have to weasel info from random reluctant to share dudes about that kind of thing in the pre information age, when I discovered that early 80s hardcore was in fact my favourite kind of music. Anyway I digress… does that same instant avalability of info also makes it way easier to not really be into things in the same way that you are when you have to struggle to figure things out on your own via random mix tapes and random pen pal contact? Does it create a mass consumer culture where people greedily consume and regurgitate without thought? Where information about obscure bands formed in Nordic squats in the early 80s becomes almost like currency? Does that make sense… probably not. I have this image in my head of a pac man like game where people are just consuming information hungrily and without pause, just gorging to own and feel important.
I think the internet also re-inforces the idea of punk as a lifestyle choice/consumer phenomenon rather than a spirit, that sounds corny but I can’t think of another way of explaining it really… I can’t imagine a day when I will not call myself a punk, to me punk isn’t so much about bulletbelts and amebix buttpatches but it’s an idea of opposition and freedom. Punk is obviously an aesthetic culture, messing with appearance is one of the fun things about punk and being a punk, but when things become so codified and punk stops being an idea of opposition and becomes a pose with a set collection of visual identifiers then how is it a revolutionary concept? There’s nothing punk about blindly simulating the past, being a total replicant. I like have this cool picture of VOID where they look like diseased preppies, their clothes aren’t particularly ‘punk’ but they just look wrong, out of place, like a question mark. Do kids feel like they have to have a ripped up Articles of Faith t shirt and authentic keith morris style cycle cap to be hardcore now? I mean this is so obvious, but I guess I have just been thinking a lot about punk as being more than just a set of signifiers, the right records, the right reference points, the right outfit. Do people ever buy the ‘wrong’ SSD record anymore?
As I said before this is more of a collection of thoughts and ideas than anything conclusive and it would be cool if people would write in and talk about their feelings on such weighty mattters. Also if girls/women would write in and talk about their experiences/call me on my shiiiiit etc etc. I guess the general gist of all this is something along the lines of me feeling alienated from the politics of punk, trying to figure out how to make feminism and female punk identity and just punk politics relevant to my life/point of view. It feels like a lot of the politics in the scene now are either unspoken, like ‘oh of course we are anti sexist/racist/homophobic’ but …let’s not talk about that! Now back to those 84 Finnish punk demos. Or things are really explicit and cartoony, like watch me destroy society as I puke on myself outside of Burnt Ramen! Or maybe the green anarcho crimethinc types and their notion of politics as a vegan potluck kissing booth, which makes me wanna puke. I like some instances of situationist sloganeering, which they seem to have adopted in a clumsy wholesale way. Turning the sharp witticisms of mai 68 into a mouldy assortment of buttflappatch opportunistic freerider manifestos somehow seems so boring to me. Plus I hate hippies.
Anyway this is super convoluted and was really difficult to write. I wanted to say as a parting shot that the Limp Wrist show at Burnt Ramen was really inspiring and terrifying in many ways, some of which I will not go into, but the audience was truly insane, like a Glen E Friedman photo of some old DC hardcore show, piled up and sweating and totally connected to the moment and the band. It was also truly mixed. There were so many girls, queers, boys, weird homeless dudes, old punks, sxe warrior types, you know. It was super inspiring to see teenage girls at the front screaming the words and holding their own in the pit. Speaking as a wussy aging punk girl who watched from behind the guitar amp on stage the spectacle seemed really timeless, not like a retread of a only jock dudes up front of the aforementioned Glen E Friedman picture reference. Girls holding their own in the pit? Maybe actions speak louder than words. Anyway. What do you think? Please write me! via MRR….
As of recent times my friends have been subjected to epic conversations about the transition from End Racism longsleeves and long instructional song intros about the plight of the downtrodden to messageboard cynicism and ironic dismissiveness in regards to anything that might implicate someone in the crime of giving a shit. It feels like the political culture in punk has gone from the 90s faux sincere personal is political feminist 4 fux to a general feeling of “Hey we’ve achieved feminism now, let’s talk about lipcream flexis!” Everything seems really static and codified. I don’t mean that somehow in thee olden days everyone had a deep understanding of feminist issues and it was like a constant giant group hug at all times in safe spaces across america, maybe more like there seemed to be a willingness to confront uncomfortable issues. And I don’t mean that those confrontations were always fruitful or beneficial, but at least people had to at least pretend they gave a shit somehow… It just feels like things have shifted towards the comfort of apathy, anything that makes anyone feel uncomfortable is ridiculed and dismissed.
The random instance that inspired all of this profound insight is actually one of the most irritating things about about being an active woman in the punk scene. When you are talking to someone at a show say and they don’t bother to introduce you to their friends or maybe they don’t acknowledge what you do. For example a dude will be given a title and background info upon introduction; ‘This is Scott Weed of Douche and the Fuckin Bags” Whereas generally women’s work in the scene is not acknowledged as being part of their punk identity. It seems really superficial perhaps, but when experienced on a constant basis it can make everything you do seem like meaningless background busywork.
Another random point is that I feel like a lot of cool punk girls have jumped ship for the comforts of indie rock/noise/whatever… and why is that? I think underground culture is way more fragmentary and separated out than it was before, and a lot of people (girls/women) see punk/hardcore as a monolithic outdated form, rather than an idea they can own and use for their own purposes. I got into punk thru riot grrrl, via Huggy Bear in London where I grew up. Riot grrrl was clearly contextualized within the punk movement, it was intially at least a spark of DIY spirit in a staid and boring scene. There was a distinct sense of taking things back, and of invigorating a staid and reactionary dude scene with ideas and sounds and words that genuinely freaked people out at least intially… before everything got codified and the rule book was written out and the sense of freedom and adventure dissipated in a flood of press attention and the dogmaticcs of expensive private school liberal artpeak. My question in regards to the after effects of that would be; How did feminism become knowing how to knit yr boyfriend a skull and crossbones scarf? I get so bored and depressed looking at magazines like Bust and Venus. Mainstream indie rock culture magazines, which obviously have their roots in riot grrl but seem to ultimately be about being a crafty entrepreneur and encouraging an alternative girl-culture based on consumption rather than liberation through ideas and sound. It’s so frustrating how pedestrian and mundane feminist culture is right now in that sense. Emulating a crafty mom from a midwestern suburb in the 70s isn’t why I got into punk. I understand the notion of DIY and making your own things and how that could be perceived as an empowering buy-nothing stance but I don’t feel like that is really what’s at work. What do you think?
My last point is a little all over the place but here goes… I know that the internet has revolutionized punk in many good and decent ways, for instance I love the fact that I can now find out in about 5 seconds all I ever needed to know about The Proletariat, seriously I used to have to weasel info from random reluctant to share dudes about that kind of thing in the pre information age, when I discovered that early 80s hardcore was in fact my favourite kind of music. Anyway I digress… does that same instant avalability of info also makes it way easier to not really be into things in the same way that you are when you have to struggle to figure things out on your own via random mix tapes and random pen pal contact? Does it create a mass consumer culture where people greedily consume and regurgitate without thought? Where information about obscure bands formed in Nordic squats in the early 80s becomes almost like currency? Does that make sense… probably not. I have this image in my head of a pac man like game where people are just consuming information hungrily and without pause, just gorging to own and feel important.
I think the internet also re-inforces the idea of punk as a lifestyle choice/consumer phenomenon rather than a spirit, that sounds corny but I can’t think of another way of explaining it really… I can’t imagine a day when I will not call myself a punk, to me punk isn’t so much about bulletbelts and amebix buttpatches but it’s an idea of opposition and freedom. Punk is obviously an aesthetic culture, messing with appearance is one of the fun things about punk and being a punk, but when things become so codified and punk stops being an idea of opposition and becomes a pose with a set collection of visual identifiers then how is it a revolutionary concept? There’s nothing punk about blindly simulating the past, being a total replicant. I like have this cool picture of VOID where they look like diseased preppies, their clothes aren’t particularly ‘punk’ but they just look wrong, out of place, like a question mark. Do kids feel like they have to have a ripped up Articles of Faith t shirt and authentic keith morris style cycle cap to be hardcore now? I mean this is so obvious, but I guess I have just been thinking a lot about punk as being more than just a set of signifiers, the right records, the right reference points, the right outfit. Do people ever buy the ‘wrong’ SSD record anymore?
As I said before this is more of a collection of thoughts and ideas than anything conclusive and it would be cool if people would write in and talk about their feelings on such weighty mattters. Also if girls/women would write in and talk about their experiences/call me on my shiiiiit etc etc. I guess the general gist of all this is something along the lines of me feeling alienated from the politics of punk, trying to figure out how to make feminism and female punk identity and just punk politics relevant to my life/point of view. It feels like a lot of the politics in the scene now are either unspoken, like ‘oh of course we are anti sexist/racist/homophobic’ but …let’s not talk about that! Now back to those 84 Finnish punk demos. Or things are really explicit and cartoony, like watch me destroy society as I puke on myself outside of Burnt Ramen! Or maybe the green anarcho crimethinc types and their notion of politics as a vegan potluck kissing booth, which makes me wanna puke. I like some instances of situationist sloganeering, which they seem to have adopted in a clumsy wholesale way. Turning the sharp witticisms of mai 68 into a mouldy assortment of buttflappatch opportunistic freerider manifestos somehow seems so boring to me. Plus I hate hippies.
Anyway this is super convoluted and was really difficult to write. I wanted to say as a parting shot that the Limp Wrist show at Burnt Ramen was really inspiring and terrifying in many ways, some of which I will not go into, but the audience was truly insane, like a Glen E Friedman photo of some old DC hardcore show, piled up and sweating and totally connected to the moment and the band. It was also truly mixed. There were so many girls, queers, boys, weird homeless dudes, old punks, sxe warrior types, you know. It was super inspiring to see teenage girls at the front screaming the words and holding their own in the pit. Speaking as a wussy aging punk girl who watched from behind the guitar amp on stage the spectacle seemed really timeless, not like a retread of a only jock dudes up front of the aforementioned Glen E Friedman picture reference. Girls holding their own in the pit? Maybe actions speak louder than words. Anyway. What do you think? Please write me! via MRR….
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