This months top ten comes to you from the secret society of girls that don't wanna read a zine about vegan treats/herbal abortion recipes/home made tampons and would rather:
1-Insert comment on nostalgia.
The same thing every month.
The same thing.
Every month.
You are doomed whatever you have or haven't got to say.
Primitive boredom/constructed negativity/Hype bands/hipsters.
2-The sound of a reggae piano combined with the story someone told me about how Jeff Beck wanted to capture the Motown sound and recorded at the Motown studio one time in order to make this happen... but he freaked out at the basic nature of the place and had his sound guys come in and sanitize and rock dude everything out so much that no Motown sound was captured. Bad reggae tinny piano is enough to get you thru the night, in ways that a 5th generation over dubbed attempt at the Motown piano only could, out of tune but so in time. Enough to create a world in which you can exist. Like the Die Kreuzen record encapsulating something that you can't put your finger on at this point but it's probably something about nostalgia and aging and how rotten a human I am because what do I have to say that isn't about that at this point. Another dime in the jukebox. A cup of coffee and a lame story about hitch hiking. Your own personal per-zine. FEEEEEEEELINGS. Off the pigz.
3-It's easy to be a critic. Everyone has one! An opinion that is. I obviously do not know enough about anything to write about it so let's hire a scientist to write about it instead, maybe a mathematician would do a better job. I guess if you are that dude that paid 2 dollars for the Yes LA comp in '78 only to then write to Flipside in '81 because suckers were paying $100 for it...then, however, you can write about anything you want. When Golnar first asked me to write a column for MRR one of my friends asked me why I would want to write for an audience like that. I couldn't actually figure out what she meant, like who did she think MRR readers were? GG Allin fans on St Mark's Place? D-Beat trainhoppers? Spikey top Adicts Fans? I guess because I have been a shitworker since 2003-ish I had less pre-conceived notions of MRR's audience than said friend did. However, just so it's clear, I write my columns for fans of the Urinals and Huggy Bear, the people who think that the guitar on the last two songs on the VOID split is Better Than The Beatles. You know, the people whose lives were changed by the Screamers Target video. Every month do I have something to say to the audience/the Adicts fans of MRR? Every month I have to figure out what to say whether I do or don't. I made a butt flap about it that references that dude from Fang that killed his girlfriend. "Don't patronize with apologies, you son of a bitch, the devil has many faces, yours just fits!" (©Some band, a long time ago.)
4-This week I have been mostly going to shows and hanging out with my friends.
I wrote that sentence at the beginning of the month and it was very true. There were two Limp Wrist shows, an all ages one where they showed a documentary on the history of Brazilian punk, and Jump off a Building played a last super raging show... No Thanks also played and the singer lady walked home behind me boasting about singing back ups for Seven Seconds last year in a super loud voice. I watched the show from my poser spot standing on a bench behind the merch table, and while it was not as fucking crazy as the last two Limp Wrist shows attended (1-Naked dude clad in jack boots only, stage diving from balcony onto insane Black Flag in So Cal circa 82 crowd//2-Front row of pit ALL LADIED out, and all the girls knew all the words...) it was still a frenzy best watched from above... Then of course Limp Wrist at The Eagle, bear bar, line of rad ladies stood on the um benches behind the merch table? Golnar was in town visiting and she made moves towards the pit and when she saw that no one was following was kind of flabbergasted. I have not been in a pit since I was about 14, probably a Jesus Lizard show, probably some gross dude put his hand in my underwear! Oh I didn't write a riot grrrl zine about it but I totes shoulda! OMG! For sure! It totally made me never wanna be anywhere near a million random macho fucktards who think that's an ok thing to do to a teenage girl! AT ANY RATE, even from behind the merch table Limp Wrist were great, their new songs are awesome and I can't wait for a record... The riffs were killer next level and they were totes my jam. OMG for sure!!
Carnal Knowledge played a basement show, a Brooklyn based all lady hardcore band featuring ex members of Hey Girl! they talk between songs and actually give a shit so obviously are not for the message board dude scene. People that like raging intelligent yet bratty hardcore that doesn't suck and borrows equally from early Born Against and Bikini Kill, well I would advise them in making moved towards getting the demo... They played in the basement at Thrillhouse to a packed audience featuring a chicks up front pit (except I doubt any of the ladies in said pit would get that stupid 90s sxe crew reference.) Usually lady fronted hardcore is not my favorite genre, the vocals of Spitboy being a prime example of why this is the case, but Tobia from Look Back and Laugh made me rethink my lame attitude and I have since enjoyed a Margaret Thrasher show and discovered the radness that is The Wrecks demo. (All girl hardcore from Nevada circa 83, featuring the drummer from the SF version of the Dicks before she moved here. They have a song on an MRR comp but it's not as raging as the demo, which my friend Pete dubbed for me. I know MRR has a copy of it, and I played a song from it on mine and Golnar's recent ladypunk radio special, which you can listen to here: http://maximumrocknroll.com/radio/specials/LadyPunkPlaylist.html)
Also of interest during week of rad bands and hanging out with friends: the 80s skate zine exhibit up currently at Needles and Pens, if you remember Swank Zine and wanna see some OG Big Boys artwork now is the time to visit our local and awesome zine emporium... (needles-pens.com)
5- I was informed by Hubbs that watching the recent reissue onto DVD of the Flipper target video would be life changing, and I have to say his assumption was correct. The only music I want to listen to right now. Hopefully the Black Flag/Hardcore Target vid will be next. I need obliteration.
6-loomofruin.blogspot.com Sam McPheeters has a blog.
7-New Order-Turn the Heater On (Peel session nervousness like a leaky radiator in a creaky Victorian)
8-SEX VID- Nests 7" test press with especial skinned teen coverage.Best band in America. Music for the haters and the hated. Interview to come: ask the What's Your Rupture dude, he asked me to for his zine and I did so.
9-fIREHOSE-Brave Captain VIDEO.
10-The Uphill Struggle/Electrical Nitemare split on Astronautical.
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Thursday, January 31, 2008
for third degree burns
1- Disneyland it's my favorite place/ Black Flag tapes/ Closed down record stores.
I spent this weekend in Orange County, victim of a failed family reunion, the only silver lining was the fact I was going to go record shopping... But the record store at which I got Dicks-Kill From The Heart, Fire Engines-Lubricate your Living Room, Archie Shepp-Fire Music etc etc etc is now a mortgage company. The best thrift store is now a (specially made for gated communities) furniture store... The Goodwill store was just full of 90s Target clothing and old video rentals. It made me wonder about how I managed to live in Anaheim for close to two years and managed only to lose it a little, obviously thanks to a combination of the above factors. Thrift stores and record shops and being given a Disneyland annual pass for Xmas one time… getting there by bus, after a day of working at Revelation selling shitty post-emo SXE to indifferent record store clerks. Walking round listening to the First Four Years on my walkman watching families live their dreams while I lived in total isolation. Something about riding the Snow White ride with Fix Me as the soundtrack.
Other historic faux teenage times; hanging out at a shitty all night diner with Golnar talking about our His Hero is Gone experiences. (Seeing them play once, mind totally blown, then making my best friend hitchhike with me for the rest of their UK tour, bear in mind our favorite bands were The Frumpies and Huggy Bear at that point...) Both of us (Golnar and I that is) had to bike frantically to our respective homes so we could listen to Monuments to Thieves, which unlike most 90s hardcore records still totally holds up. So fucking good! The whole evening made me think about how when you are a teenager you’re so trapped by circumstance, and about how much fun you have anyway.
Now I wouldn’t ever hitchhike to follow some hardcore band; maybe living in America has made me pretty complacent, I guess getting older does that too. I still have experiences with music where I am transported in that way by shows and records, totally consumed and transformed... but true independence from parental control does something to the way you see the world. I like teenage style activity, hanging out for hours directionless in some random diner. I hate how everyone just does the directionless hang out in bars when they get old. Well I guess it isn't that directionless, because people just wanna get laid/fucked up etc. I just like goofy good times, things that aren't weighed down by what you are going to get out of a situation. Bars spell doom to me somehow and it makes me sad that that is all people want to do. Sitting and rotting.
Me and Helen (aforementioned best friend) used to walk around Brighton listening to the Rites of Spring LP simultaneously on our walkmans. We would go see anyone who came through town, we were so bored, from Palatka to Carol to The Locust. Anyone. Now we both live across the ocean in separate American towns. She is together and teaches/works at Harvard and Boston U and is astro-nautical, and I work at a bookstore and do shitwork at MRR. Brighton was so dreamy and boring, the greenness of the hills and how you can walk out of town to the downs and be in typische English countryside, or get wind blown at the piers and the sea. The way the sea gulls are lit up by the lights of the palace and look like flying bird shaped torches, how they congregate so creepily around the West Pier and it looks like some 50s British noir film, just swarms of them in one big unit of bird swooping.
2-I don't need a diary to know there's nothing to do.
It's been hard times around these parts recently- everyone I know seems to be freaking out, breaking up, fucking up or just existing in a weird paranoid doomy haze. I am sure it's linked to the Nor Cal Winter crushing spirits and freezing humans in the style of the Amoebix krust-classic WINTERRRRRRRR. The sense of impending doom that's affecting actions and behavior and ideas and plans would seem to indicate a future of total collapse and dismay. I am being purposefully vague. In the face of fear and negativity it's hard to actually make things happen and not just allow things to happen that are going to anyway when you can't shake this feeling of total horror.
I know I have felt the past few months have been spent just getting by; waking up on time and getting to work late anyway amongst pointless acts. Going home, and that's about it. I hate it but am unable to make things different somehow, trapped by routine and boredom. The internet is the new evening lost to bad television and lost possibilities... I had this stupid conversation with a boy I was crazy about a while back about how he doesn’t like mosh parts. Apparently the whole song should be a mosh part not just 5 seconds of a song surrounded by filler non-mosh parts. For some reason that idea made me really sad, and connected a million melancholic thought dots, like is growing old just accepting your pathetic lot in life/settling for 5 second mosh parts and lots of filler? When you are younger things are hurtling so fast but it actually feels like dragged feet slowwwwwww and your enthusiasms consume you and it's hard to imagine ever existing in a world where all people wanna do is get wasted and be comfortable and coy rather than have random adventures and make music and go on random bike rides.
Usually I am content just walking around epic style; over Twin Peaks and out to the ocean, headphones on, total disconnection from the world in this weather. I don't understand people that can't be by themselves without wanting to end it all, but then at the same time right now I feel like a ten yr old on a rainy day stuck in a self constructed prison of boredom and drudgery when by myself. so... Contradictory girl. I am constantly getting unnecessarily nervous about people moving to different parts of the world and abandoning San Francisco, which as my friend Charity puts it can feel like a pile of shit disguised as a wedding cake sometimes. Beautiful on top but totally rotten throughout. Dreamy and boring. But I think everywhere is kind of like that sometimes... When you move to a city expecting to leave behind the things that made you so miserable in another city, the one you abandoned, turns out it's not possible bc it wasn't the city it was you that created the shittiness. Somehow we have to learn how to relax into ourselves... like not always running away from anything that could spring a trap or could provide refuge. Right now it’s easy to feel like California has been reduced to one cliche, the end of the world. There's nothing to go towards, just flotsam and jetsam, slums and gated communities, credit cards and craft projects, mountains and graveyards. I would feel doomed but I feel like that's not even an option in this state. Have a nice day tho.
3-"Have You Got 10p?"
See you down the social getting your dole
You're a real scrounger, you're a real arsehole
See you in the city down the Marquee
Going up to people, now you're coming up to me
"Have you got 10p?"
"Have you got 10p?"
"Have you got 10p?"
"No, not me!"
Blond spikey hair, bondage strides
You got no class.
You ain't got no pride.
See you in the city standing with a mate.
10p a person. It's the going rate.
4- Good things about the internet include the fact that you can ask for someone to upload MP3s of the Mecht Mensch/Tar Babies split tape and they will just do it. I like that I am able to walk to work listening to Die in the Classroom; Mecht Mensch adequately preparing me for confronting endless yuppie oblivion. Obviously easy access raises the eternal question of the new kids 'earning' the right to listen to the Betong Hysteria 7" since they didn't find it in a gluebag in the alleyway behind Martin Sorrondeguy's apartment but instead on some nerd's MP3 blog. I remember one of the first times I met Martin, whilst following Los Crudos around the hottest part of America during the hottest part of the summer and feeling totally alienated after an epic all night mostly dude based conversation about Finnish hardcore... I think I was 18, and I had no idea what anyone was talking about and was just bored and thus retained none of the information imparted. If that same conversation happened now I would just go to some website, maybe Kill From the Heart, investigate some of the bands mentioned, and discover at age 18 that Finnish hardcore rules rather than finding it out at age 28 or whatever via doing the MRR radio show. Though I guess if I had not been too uncomfortable and irritated as a teenage to care, I would have taken the info in and used it to obtain 7"s, which probably cost a lot less then than they do now. MP3 blogs make life as an obsessive circa 81 hardcore fan a lot easier than having to hang out in gross dude's rooms while they make tapes for your dumb ass.
5-The Silla Electrica Demo- you need to figure out how to get this! It's like the perfect combination of ye olde Danish and Spanish punk, like a crazy mix of um Lost Kids and Vulpess? It’s totally wild sounding and frantic with the most insane and great girl vocals since Mai of Gorilla Angreb blew out your heart. I think they are based in Madrid and hopefully someone will put out a record soon because they were born for the 7" format for sure. It's actually exciting to listen to you know? There haven't been that many new bands recently that have been worth caring about, let alone worth losing yr shit over, this is some seriously fierce and classic sounding Spanish punk.
6-Golnar's Permanent Birthday Section. When Gnars lived here we used to joke that it was always almost her birthday, because she talked about it so much. 'I'm going to have Crim Dam/Limp Wrist play SF on my birthday...' etc etc, and well it never actually happened, and still Criminal Damage have failed to play the Bay Area in an unprecedented display of lameness. But Limp Wrist are playing here in February, which I believe is Golnar's birthday month (who knows though! Like I said, could be anytime! Maybe it's actually her birthday everyday?) as are Pierced Arrows (the new Fred and Toody band) and Gnars is going to be here for both of these events. I guess she had to leave SF in order to raise the possibility of her mass birthday punk fest actually happening. Maybe Crim Dam will play too? Also in Gnars related news, WTF is up with her not writing a column anymore? Too busy hanging out at Lower East Side hot spots with the hipsters to write about how life changing Alien Kulture and the Petticoats are? It seems like whenever people move to NYC punk starts being a collection of ephemera and humorous past life anecdotes rather than experienced culture. Happens to the best of us. My only request- please don't start thinkin yr still punk bc of your collection old Ripper zines and having PBR sponsor your ironic art openings?
7-Last week I went to see Juno with my aunt who generally likes family movies featuring Whoopie Goldberg and Ashley Judd, in a mall cinema full of Orange County teenagers. I am sure you have heard about this movie, it has been promoted exhaustively as a female counterpart to the current wave of awkward teenage boy comedies like Superbad, which made me curious to see it. I like jokes! And teen movies! Watching Juno however was like watching a three hour-long episode of the Gilmour Girls. So many pop cultural references crammed into every surface, every conversation, it was almost too exhausting to absorb or care about any of it. The dialog was contrived and phony, like a weird combination of Dawson's Creek, old Sassy Magazines and an after school special from a post-Simpsons world. What was really depressing however was the basic plot; the lead protagonist, Juno, gets pregnant at 16, and is unable to have an abortion after being told outside of the abortion clinic that her fetus already has fingernails by a cartoony stereotyped cypher of an asian teen pro-life classmate. The abortion clinic itself is full of self absorbed goth chicks and sweaty unpleasant looking people, and it seemed like straight up pro-life propaganda aimed at girls who shop at Hot Topic and like the Ramones. Her pregnancy is bathed in this cute indie rock craft-fair glaze, with Kimya Dawson's cutesy infantile vocals endlessly cooing in the background. She gives up the child for adoption of course, because that's always super easy to do and the movie ends with her and her boyfriend singing the same horrible Kimya Dawson song that has been playing endlessly throughout the movie to each other in a particularly effective act of aural terrorism. Obviously being a feminist is about making choices on your own terms, but for most 16 year old girls having a child is a difficult non-indie-rock soundtracked situation and it was frustrating to see a movie that basically made being a pregnant teenage girl seem like a twee adventure.
Juno made me think of the creepy way that 50th wave hipster feminists have taken on and 'radicalized' or rather made chic the so called domestic arts (ie the craft revolution, see my first ever column for a rant on that) defending patriarchal constructions of femininity and traditional roles as valid choices for women… The whole movie felt so underhand and lame the more I thought about it, the ultimate theft of underground culture for nefarious purposes.
I did not identify with the lead character at all, she seemed like the construction of a lonely thirty year old man trying to spew out as many ‘now’ pop cultural references as possible. Though as my aunt kept telling me it was actually written by a 30 year old SEX WORKER LADY which I guess is what they’re promoting to keep the movie edgy or something so people don’t notice it's plastic veneer? Juno seemed like it was written in the early 90s, in the post grunge slacker boom, really dated with the same air as something like Reality Bites. Another failed attempt at a subcultural moment that ends up making the characters not seem like actual people but representations of the writer's fantasy of youth and rebellion. The fact that this was vaguely marketed as the female answer to the Judd Apatow movies and yet it wasn't even funny was also a bummer. It seemed more like the teenage Garden State, so consumed with it's own 'quirkiness' and so fey it was kind of unbearable. Also how lame; the dudes in Superbad were on a quest to lose their virginity whereas Juno instantly gets pregnant as soon as she loses hers. No epic quest for her! Long ass digression to note that I just got back from seeing Persepolis, a movie based on a graphic novel about a Iranian girl coming of age during the revolution, which was so much radder than fuckin Juno. Marjane, the main character in Persepolis actually seemed like a real girl rather than a drawing of one even though she was in fact a drawing! So much more real and relatable than Juno even though her life experiences were so much more distant from mine.
9-The Nurse 7”
10-Agnostic Front-Fascist Attitudes
I spent this weekend in Orange County, victim of a failed family reunion, the only silver lining was the fact I was going to go record shopping... But the record store at which I got Dicks-Kill From The Heart, Fire Engines-Lubricate your Living Room, Archie Shepp-Fire Music etc etc etc is now a mortgage company. The best thrift store is now a (specially made for gated communities) furniture store... The Goodwill store was just full of 90s Target clothing and old video rentals. It made me wonder about how I managed to live in Anaheim for close to two years and managed only to lose it a little, obviously thanks to a combination of the above factors. Thrift stores and record shops and being given a Disneyland annual pass for Xmas one time… getting there by bus, after a day of working at Revelation selling shitty post-emo SXE to indifferent record store clerks. Walking round listening to the First Four Years on my walkman watching families live their dreams while I lived in total isolation. Something about riding the Snow White ride with Fix Me as the soundtrack.
Other historic faux teenage times; hanging out at a shitty all night diner with Golnar talking about our His Hero is Gone experiences. (Seeing them play once, mind totally blown, then making my best friend hitchhike with me for the rest of their UK tour, bear in mind our favorite bands were The Frumpies and Huggy Bear at that point...) Both of us (Golnar and I that is) had to bike frantically to our respective homes so we could listen to Monuments to Thieves, which unlike most 90s hardcore records still totally holds up. So fucking good! The whole evening made me think about how when you are a teenager you’re so trapped by circumstance, and about how much fun you have anyway.
Now I wouldn’t ever hitchhike to follow some hardcore band; maybe living in America has made me pretty complacent, I guess getting older does that too. I still have experiences with music where I am transported in that way by shows and records, totally consumed and transformed... but true independence from parental control does something to the way you see the world. I like teenage style activity, hanging out for hours directionless in some random diner. I hate how everyone just does the directionless hang out in bars when they get old. Well I guess it isn't that directionless, because people just wanna get laid/fucked up etc. I just like goofy good times, things that aren't weighed down by what you are going to get out of a situation. Bars spell doom to me somehow and it makes me sad that that is all people want to do. Sitting and rotting.
Me and Helen (aforementioned best friend) used to walk around Brighton listening to the Rites of Spring LP simultaneously on our walkmans. We would go see anyone who came through town, we were so bored, from Palatka to Carol to The Locust. Anyone. Now we both live across the ocean in separate American towns. She is together and teaches/works at Harvard and Boston U and is astro-nautical, and I work at a bookstore and do shitwork at MRR. Brighton was so dreamy and boring, the greenness of the hills and how you can walk out of town to the downs and be in typische English countryside, or get wind blown at the piers and the sea. The way the sea gulls are lit up by the lights of the palace and look like flying bird shaped torches, how they congregate so creepily around the West Pier and it looks like some 50s British noir film, just swarms of them in one big unit of bird swooping.
2-I don't need a diary to know there's nothing to do.
It's been hard times around these parts recently- everyone I know seems to be freaking out, breaking up, fucking up or just existing in a weird paranoid doomy haze. I am sure it's linked to the Nor Cal Winter crushing spirits and freezing humans in the style of the Amoebix krust-classic WINTERRRRRRRR. The sense of impending doom that's affecting actions and behavior and ideas and plans would seem to indicate a future of total collapse and dismay. I am being purposefully vague. In the face of fear and negativity it's hard to actually make things happen and not just allow things to happen that are going to anyway when you can't shake this feeling of total horror.
I know I have felt the past few months have been spent just getting by; waking up on time and getting to work late anyway amongst pointless acts. Going home, and that's about it. I hate it but am unable to make things different somehow, trapped by routine and boredom. The internet is the new evening lost to bad television and lost possibilities... I had this stupid conversation with a boy I was crazy about a while back about how he doesn’t like mosh parts. Apparently the whole song should be a mosh part not just 5 seconds of a song surrounded by filler non-mosh parts. For some reason that idea made me really sad, and connected a million melancholic thought dots, like is growing old just accepting your pathetic lot in life/settling for 5 second mosh parts and lots of filler? When you are younger things are hurtling so fast but it actually feels like dragged feet slowwwwwww and your enthusiasms consume you and it's hard to imagine ever existing in a world where all people wanna do is get wasted and be comfortable and coy rather than have random adventures and make music and go on random bike rides.
Usually I am content just walking around epic style; over Twin Peaks and out to the ocean, headphones on, total disconnection from the world in this weather. I don't understand people that can't be by themselves without wanting to end it all, but then at the same time right now I feel like a ten yr old on a rainy day stuck in a self constructed prison of boredom and drudgery when by myself. so... Contradictory girl. I am constantly getting unnecessarily nervous about people moving to different parts of the world and abandoning San Francisco, which as my friend Charity puts it can feel like a pile of shit disguised as a wedding cake sometimes. Beautiful on top but totally rotten throughout. Dreamy and boring. But I think everywhere is kind of like that sometimes... When you move to a city expecting to leave behind the things that made you so miserable in another city, the one you abandoned, turns out it's not possible bc it wasn't the city it was you that created the shittiness. Somehow we have to learn how to relax into ourselves... like not always running away from anything that could spring a trap or could provide refuge. Right now it’s easy to feel like California has been reduced to one cliche, the end of the world. There's nothing to go towards, just flotsam and jetsam, slums and gated communities, credit cards and craft projects, mountains and graveyards. I would feel doomed but I feel like that's not even an option in this state. Have a nice day tho.
3-"Have You Got 10p?"
See you down the social getting your dole
You're a real scrounger, you're a real arsehole
See you in the city down the Marquee
Going up to people, now you're coming up to me
"Have you got 10p?"
"Have you got 10p?"
"Have you got 10p?"
"No, not me!"
Blond spikey hair, bondage strides
You got no class.
You ain't got no pride.
See you in the city standing with a mate.
10p a person. It's the going rate.
4- Good things about the internet include the fact that you can ask for someone to upload MP3s of the Mecht Mensch/Tar Babies split tape and they will just do it. I like that I am able to walk to work listening to Die in the Classroom; Mecht Mensch adequately preparing me for confronting endless yuppie oblivion. Obviously easy access raises the eternal question of the new kids 'earning' the right to listen to the Betong Hysteria 7" since they didn't find it in a gluebag in the alleyway behind Martin Sorrondeguy's apartment but instead on some nerd's MP3 blog. I remember one of the first times I met Martin, whilst following Los Crudos around the hottest part of America during the hottest part of the summer and feeling totally alienated after an epic all night mostly dude based conversation about Finnish hardcore... I think I was 18, and I had no idea what anyone was talking about and was just bored and thus retained none of the information imparted. If that same conversation happened now I would just go to some website, maybe Kill From the Heart, investigate some of the bands mentioned, and discover at age 18 that Finnish hardcore rules rather than finding it out at age 28 or whatever via doing the MRR radio show. Though I guess if I had not been too uncomfortable and irritated as a teenage to care, I would have taken the info in and used it to obtain 7"s, which probably cost a lot less then than they do now. MP3 blogs make life as an obsessive circa 81 hardcore fan a lot easier than having to hang out in gross dude's rooms while they make tapes for your dumb ass.
5-The Silla Electrica Demo- you need to figure out how to get this! It's like the perfect combination of ye olde Danish and Spanish punk, like a crazy mix of um Lost Kids and Vulpess? It’s totally wild sounding and frantic with the most insane and great girl vocals since Mai of Gorilla Angreb blew out your heart. I think they are based in Madrid and hopefully someone will put out a record soon because they were born for the 7" format for sure. It's actually exciting to listen to you know? There haven't been that many new bands recently that have been worth caring about, let alone worth losing yr shit over, this is some seriously fierce and classic sounding Spanish punk.
6-Golnar's Permanent Birthday Section. When Gnars lived here we used to joke that it was always almost her birthday, because she talked about it so much. 'I'm going to have Crim Dam/Limp Wrist play SF on my birthday...' etc etc, and well it never actually happened, and still Criminal Damage have failed to play the Bay Area in an unprecedented display of lameness. But Limp Wrist are playing here in February, which I believe is Golnar's birthday month (who knows though! Like I said, could be anytime! Maybe it's actually her birthday everyday?) as are Pierced Arrows (the new Fred and Toody band) and Gnars is going to be here for both of these events. I guess she had to leave SF in order to raise the possibility of her mass birthday punk fest actually happening. Maybe Crim Dam will play too? Also in Gnars related news, WTF is up with her not writing a column anymore? Too busy hanging out at Lower East Side hot spots with the hipsters to write about how life changing Alien Kulture and the Petticoats are? It seems like whenever people move to NYC punk starts being a collection of ephemera and humorous past life anecdotes rather than experienced culture. Happens to the best of us. My only request- please don't start thinkin yr still punk bc of your collection old Ripper zines and having PBR sponsor your ironic art openings?
7-Last week I went to see Juno with my aunt who generally likes family movies featuring Whoopie Goldberg and Ashley Judd, in a mall cinema full of Orange County teenagers. I am sure you have heard about this movie, it has been promoted exhaustively as a female counterpart to the current wave of awkward teenage boy comedies like Superbad, which made me curious to see it. I like jokes! And teen movies! Watching Juno however was like watching a three hour-long episode of the Gilmour Girls. So many pop cultural references crammed into every surface, every conversation, it was almost too exhausting to absorb or care about any of it. The dialog was contrived and phony, like a weird combination of Dawson's Creek, old Sassy Magazines and an after school special from a post-Simpsons world. What was really depressing however was the basic plot; the lead protagonist, Juno, gets pregnant at 16, and is unable to have an abortion after being told outside of the abortion clinic that her fetus already has fingernails by a cartoony stereotyped cypher of an asian teen pro-life classmate. The abortion clinic itself is full of self absorbed goth chicks and sweaty unpleasant looking people, and it seemed like straight up pro-life propaganda aimed at girls who shop at Hot Topic and like the Ramones. Her pregnancy is bathed in this cute indie rock craft-fair glaze, with Kimya Dawson's cutesy infantile vocals endlessly cooing in the background. She gives up the child for adoption of course, because that's always super easy to do and the movie ends with her and her boyfriend singing the same horrible Kimya Dawson song that has been playing endlessly throughout the movie to each other in a particularly effective act of aural terrorism. Obviously being a feminist is about making choices on your own terms, but for most 16 year old girls having a child is a difficult non-indie-rock soundtracked situation and it was frustrating to see a movie that basically made being a pregnant teenage girl seem like a twee adventure.
Juno made me think of the creepy way that 50th wave hipster feminists have taken on and 'radicalized' or rather made chic the so called domestic arts (ie the craft revolution, see my first ever column for a rant on that) defending patriarchal constructions of femininity and traditional roles as valid choices for women… The whole movie felt so underhand and lame the more I thought about it, the ultimate theft of underground culture for nefarious purposes.
I did not identify with the lead character at all, she seemed like the construction of a lonely thirty year old man trying to spew out as many ‘now’ pop cultural references as possible. Though as my aunt kept telling me it was actually written by a 30 year old SEX WORKER LADY which I guess is what they’re promoting to keep the movie edgy or something so people don’t notice it's plastic veneer? Juno seemed like it was written in the early 90s, in the post grunge slacker boom, really dated with the same air as something like Reality Bites. Another failed attempt at a subcultural moment that ends up making the characters not seem like actual people but representations of the writer's fantasy of youth and rebellion. The fact that this was vaguely marketed as the female answer to the Judd Apatow movies and yet it wasn't even funny was also a bummer. It seemed more like the teenage Garden State, so consumed with it's own 'quirkiness' and so fey it was kind of unbearable. Also how lame; the dudes in Superbad were on a quest to lose their virginity whereas Juno instantly gets pregnant as soon as she loses hers. No epic quest for her! Long ass digression to note that I just got back from seeing Persepolis, a movie based on a graphic novel about a Iranian girl coming of age during the revolution, which was so much radder than fuckin Juno. Marjane, the main character in Persepolis actually seemed like a real girl rather than a drawing of one even though she was in fact a drawing! So much more real and relatable than Juno even though her life experiences were so much more distant from mine.
9-The Nurse 7”
10-Agnostic Front-Fascist Attitudes
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
when I see the monorail in the stupid parking lot
1-MRR needs a truck. The one they have that someone donated three thousand years ago died... If you have one you don’t need you could get some kind of tax deduction situation happening. Intense. Or if you are a reclusive millionaire who is desperately thinking of how you could reconnect with your true punk self, start by donating a truck! Or a working Xerox machine that isn’t a piece of shit! I mean it’s tax deducdable! What’s stoppin ya.
2-Cleveland’s Screaming is a documentary about early 80s Cleveland (and Akron) hardcore. I was talking about it with Carl (who handed in his MRR keys this month; I guess the Japanese Oi comp CD he had to review this month was the nail in the coffin for his epic years of shitwork) .. and his first question was “How much Pagans footage?” to which I would say: not much! And while Pagans footage is always a positive I think this documentary is refreshing and awesome for a number of other reasons. Firstly it’s about a small group of kids, mostly working class who made their own scene in the decaying post industrial landscape that was Cleveland in the late 70s/early 80s. Kids who’s parents were laid off from closed down auto plants rather than the children of diplomats and professors, which makes it more compelling for me at least. It’s definitely footage from a world that hasn’t been documented and written into the ground, buried by footage of old men reliving their teen years (which seems to be what some of them do for a living) and ending with the assertion that punk/hardcore died as soon as they stopped caring about it. Seriously I think this is the first document I have seen on early 80s Hardcore than doesn’t have anyone dismissing what happened after they got cynical and jumped ship. The other best thing about this was the fact that all the shows happened in the backroom of a local tavern that resembles a rec room, you know wood panelling, no stage etc... So every band that plays looks like they are playing the same show, also: amazing Dicks footage! Just for like one minute (bc they were defs not a Clevo band) but it’s so fucking intense and proves that they were the greatest. Dicks hate police.... Anyway my favorite band discovered was the Urban Mutants, totally raging hardcore with a girl singer.
Danielle is more in the style of Tobia/Look Back and Laugh than um Spitboy (totally can’t think of girl fronted hardcore bands right now) which means: totally dreamy and raging! Also when they talked about how there wasn’t a stage so they would climb up on top of the door jam to stage dive... Sometimes watching documents of times past can turn into one long boring parade of self satisfied talking heads cleansing their bloated egos, and reaffirming what mythic warriors they were in the pit/in the van/on the streets. I liked this one because the participants seemed like genuine freaks who were saved by hardcore, who were able to create their own lives and good times because of the discovery of the underground. The kids in the audience were obviously just as important to the scene as the kids on the ‘stage’, which to me is what separates punk and hardcore from whatever else, fuckin indie rock grown folks music. People talked about how kids from San Diego/Southern California would move to Cleveland and expect the pit to be a total jock fest and act accordingly, and how Jimi from Zero Defex would school them on Clevo pit ettiquette. (Which was really different in the early 80s to say an Integrity show circa 94-mixed genders, aggressive but not violent, actual slam dancing not windmill/rice pickin aggro-jazzercize sausage party style) I really liked watching the punk girls in the pit because they either had crazy 80s Farah Fawcett mall hair, or mohawks/skinheads-nothing in between. See I am deep like that. Anyway, tons of crazy footage of Zero Defex, Spike in Vein (my favorite band from this era) The Guns, Urban Mutants, Agitated, tons of bands... More from the New Hope comp era than the Pagans era you know? Cissie said that you can download a tape of Urban Mutants stuff from the internet but I was unable to actually make this happen, so if anyone manages to do this mail me a CDR and I will make you a killer mix. Interestingly the only person in the entire doc who claims that punk died is my room mate and Zero Defex guitar hero Tommy Strange who wanted me to ask of you two things 1: if you know where Danielle of Urban Mutants is currently at he would like to get back in touch with her 2: He is currently putting on bi-monthly benefits for an organization that raises money for refugees of the Iraqi war. I can’t find his email and this column is so late already but if you write him c/o the MRR address I will pass on any correspondence to him.
Also Martin is trying to organize a screening of the Chicago punk doc, You Weren’t there, so if that goes well maybe we can do a MRR sponsered screening of Cleveland’s Screaming. The dude who made it has a blogspot: clevelandscreaming.blogspot.com and there’s a bunch of rad footage on you tube too. I think he’s still looking for distribution so if you are into that you should contact him. Brad (the guy that made the movie) not Tommy that is.
3- Outraged are my favorite live band right now. There actually haven’t been that many shows recently, I think I wrote about the last show I went to in my last column. (also featuring Outraged, and a Martin band, the one at this show was N.N. who Hubb’s likes better than Needles, the Martin band from last column’s Martin band/Outraged show. I am on the fence. Both rule and need to play more shows.) I did not go see the Naked Raygun reunion. Not sure exactly why, but sometimes I like bands to stay the way they are on record and in my head instead of ‘imposters on reunion tours’ to quote the Monorchid’s ‘A Was for Anarchy” not that Naked Raygun are imposters. But. The endless debate: is punk a museum object/aging relative to be cooed at and paid endless respect to or something we need to take back and make our own. Fifty words or less. Sometimes I don’t want to see legends recreating something I missed out on for my consumption. That was one of the things I liked about the Clevo doc, it was kids making music for themselves, reaffirming what punk is and will always be and why it will never die. There will always be some band like Outraged who bring raging hardcore to their cental valley farm community and made their own scene instead of just waiting for touring bands to pass thru town.
4-we have mice and they will perish
5-Also: The box o reagan memerobilia that was on the floor of MRR last time I was there. Collected over a period of many years in preperation for his demise! Newspaper clippings about his scum bag antics in Central America, the Middle East and in the fuckin Midwest factory towns like Cleveland. The 80s calendar of him zombie like, iconic and hollow eyed, astride a horse at his ranch; whoever put that little masterwork together wrote a simpering essay about how Reagan’s Ranch was in fact AMERICA and how it was somehow more important that any presidential library. Got me to thinking that that was pretty much true, the image of Reagan had more weight than any of his amoral policies to most of America, a symbol of a mythical idea. Plus: Rich People Are America! And why read a book when you can gaze lovingly at a wax work of a human being melting in the California sun onto a horse that has been underneath him since his B Movie days and is probably still there now rotting in the rivers of blood and genocide that his reign helped perpetrate.
6-Punk and credit cards and how the last person you would suspect of it has entire tours and record collections paid for via never paid off plastic. It’s strange to think that the entire American economy is built on and rests so precariously on credit. I am attempting to get out of debt right now, as it really freaks me out that people (including myself) maintain a lifestyle that they can’t actually afford because of credit. I mean I work a job that pays just over minimum wage and live in one of the most expensive cities on earth, so theoretically I should not have bought that Effigies “We’re Da Machine” I saw for 12 bucks yesterday because I know by the end of the week I will have to pay for my groceries with a credit card. I remember a friend putting out numerous records with his credit card, in the mid 90s, DC no wave stuff like Cranium and Ayler’s Angels and how it totally blew my mind that he was $10,000 dollars in debt yet still he spent. I mean I am nowhere neear that, but I kind of want to be able to continue to live the lazy non careerist lifestyle I am living without the shadow of owing money to shitty financial insitutions hovering over my brains. Not very interesting true, but on my mind nonetheless.
7-I need the Shop Assistants LP. Anyone?
8-Why does The Wards’ song Weapon Factory continuously get stuck in my head?
9-Per my last column, in which I casually dismiss Charles Bronson of being worthy of inclusion in the new book by the Fucked up and Photocopied dude... (it’s titled Punk is Dead, Punk is Everything, and yes at the reading in SF the author/compiler declared that punk was in fact dead so... hmm. Old dudes! Get over it! Just because you don’t know about things anymore doesn’t mean they don’t exist.) I got called on this assumption in the place online in which I put these columns after they are published in the magazine (whatwewantisfree.blogspot.com) because a certain someone claims that Charles Bronson were in fact more worthy of inclusion in the above mentioned tome, than say Scratch Acid because they created art out of boredom in a positive way, whereas Scratch Acid just created boredom out of boredom. (Directly quoted from the mouth or fingers I guess, of Ethan Swan: ‘Scratch Acid is people drowning in their own boredom and Charles Bronson is people overturning their boredom and being radical about it.’) Firstly, musical taste is personal, and political screamo to me does not match the burnt taste in the mouth Scratch Acid offers. Yes I am irritatingly PC in a lot of ways probably, but this doesn’t mean I like bands just bc they are ‘wimmin’ or don’t like bands because their values do not match mine. I tried really hard to like Spitboy when I was 14 but found myself entirely unable to do so. Their music is resoundingly horrendous. But I am sure we shared similar values in regards to feminism etc etc
Tommy Strange and I had a conversation in the kitchen just now about how he was at Negative Approach and the Necros first shows ever, in thee ancient olden days, and how though he liked the music he could never get that into them because they wouldn’t dismiss their huge skinhead following. For me, though context is important, e.g. I am not one of those people that hearts the first Slrewdriver record or anything, BUT I do like music that was created by people that I would probably not enjoy hanging out with/having a conversation with about their politics/ morals/ love lives etc etc, Intent is important but music that means nothing to me cannot be saved by shared values.
Case in point: I completely dismiss the entire genre of Anarcho punk/Peace Punk (ie Anarcho Pie, c.f Oi Polloi) because I hate Crass. Their music irritates me so much I am unable to take seriously any of their followers. I think the scene they created is rad and inspiring etc, though it is a bummer that ultimately they were responsible for the gross hippie rave scene that took over the UK and destroyed any possibility of a punk underground existing in the same way it does in Europe or the US because all the ex punks are too busy takin E and dancing in fields and warehouses. (Not to say the punk underground doesn’t exist, just that it’s no way close to the same level as it is here and I blame Crass and Ravers both for this situation.) The only band of this genre I can get behind is Rudimentary Peni, their music is disturbing and fucked up and wrong in ways I like and can identify with. Also bear in mind I have not actually heard most anarcho bands, even legendary ones like Golnar’s favorites Zounds, but whatevers. I don’t like listening to the ABC of moral values for hippies in different smellier outfits and have not much interest in investigating further when there are three billion types of music that do interest me that I don’t know enough about. So. I happen to like and think Scratch Acid are more worthy of inclusion in washed up old punk’s art books than The Locust or Charles Bronson. I mean c’mon.
10-now is the time. When is the truth.
Oh and Scott Moore esq. wanted never to be mentioned in this column again. ‘Bitch Please!”
Also: Cani- Guai a Voi 7”.
If you wanna write me write c/o mrr I seriously don’t even write my friends back though. Ugh. I am probably more likely to respond to comments on the stupid blog of my old columns I mentioned: whatwewantisfree.blogspot.com But maybe I will make myself a dutiful penpal. Sorry dudes.
2-Cleveland’s Screaming is a documentary about early 80s Cleveland (and Akron) hardcore. I was talking about it with Carl (who handed in his MRR keys this month; I guess the Japanese Oi comp CD he had to review this month was the nail in the coffin for his epic years of shitwork) .. and his first question was “How much Pagans footage?” to which I would say: not much! And while Pagans footage is always a positive I think this documentary is refreshing and awesome for a number of other reasons. Firstly it’s about a small group of kids, mostly working class who made their own scene in the decaying post industrial landscape that was Cleveland in the late 70s/early 80s. Kids who’s parents were laid off from closed down auto plants rather than the children of diplomats and professors, which makes it more compelling for me at least. It’s definitely footage from a world that hasn’t been documented and written into the ground, buried by footage of old men reliving their teen years (which seems to be what some of them do for a living) and ending with the assertion that punk/hardcore died as soon as they stopped caring about it. Seriously I think this is the first document I have seen on early 80s Hardcore than doesn’t have anyone dismissing what happened after they got cynical and jumped ship. The other best thing about this was the fact that all the shows happened in the backroom of a local tavern that resembles a rec room, you know wood panelling, no stage etc... So every band that plays looks like they are playing the same show, also: amazing Dicks footage! Just for like one minute (bc they were defs not a Clevo band) but it’s so fucking intense and proves that they were the greatest. Dicks hate police.... Anyway my favorite band discovered was the Urban Mutants, totally raging hardcore with a girl singer.
Danielle is more in the style of Tobia/Look Back and Laugh than um Spitboy (totally can’t think of girl fronted hardcore bands right now) which means: totally dreamy and raging! Also when they talked about how there wasn’t a stage so they would climb up on top of the door jam to stage dive... Sometimes watching documents of times past can turn into one long boring parade of self satisfied talking heads cleansing their bloated egos, and reaffirming what mythic warriors they were in the pit/in the van/on the streets. I liked this one because the participants seemed like genuine freaks who were saved by hardcore, who were able to create their own lives and good times because of the discovery of the underground. The kids in the audience were obviously just as important to the scene as the kids on the ‘stage’, which to me is what separates punk and hardcore from whatever else, fuckin indie rock grown folks music. People talked about how kids from San Diego/Southern California would move to Cleveland and expect the pit to be a total jock fest and act accordingly, and how Jimi from Zero Defex would school them on Clevo pit ettiquette. (Which was really different in the early 80s to say an Integrity show circa 94-mixed genders, aggressive but not violent, actual slam dancing not windmill/rice pickin aggro-jazzercize sausage party style) I really liked watching the punk girls in the pit because they either had crazy 80s Farah Fawcett mall hair, or mohawks/skinheads-nothing in between. See I am deep like that. Anyway, tons of crazy footage of Zero Defex, Spike in Vein (my favorite band from this era) The Guns, Urban Mutants, Agitated, tons of bands... More from the New Hope comp era than the Pagans era you know? Cissie said that you can download a tape of Urban Mutants stuff from the internet but I was unable to actually make this happen, so if anyone manages to do this mail me a CDR and I will make you a killer mix. Interestingly the only person in the entire doc who claims that punk died is my room mate and Zero Defex guitar hero Tommy Strange who wanted me to ask of you two things 1: if you know where Danielle of Urban Mutants is currently at he would like to get back in touch with her 2: He is currently putting on bi-monthly benefits for an organization that raises money for refugees of the Iraqi war. I can’t find his email and this column is so late already but if you write him c/o the MRR address I will pass on any correspondence to him.
Also Martin is trying to organize a screening of the Chicago punk doc, You Weren’t there, so if that goes well maybe we can do a MRR sponsered screening of Cleveland’s Screaming. The dude who made it has a blogspot: clevelandscreaming.blogspot.com and there’s a bunch of rad footage on you tube too. I think he’s still looking for distribution so if you are into that you should contact him. Brad (the guy that made the movie) not Tommy that is.
3- Outraged are my favorite live band right now. There actually haven’t been that many shows recently, I think I wrote about the last show I went to in my last column. (also featuring Outraged, and a Martin band, the one at this show was N.N. who Hubb’s likes better than Needles, the Martin band from last column’s Martin band/Outraged show. I am on the fence. Both rule and need to play more shows.) I did not go see the Naked Raygun reunion. Not sure exactly why, but sometimes I like bands to stay the way they are on record and in my head instead of ‘imposters on reunion tours’ to quote the Monorchid’s ‘A Was for Anarchy” not that Naked Raygun are imposters. But. The endless debate: is punk a museum object/aging relative to be cooed at and paid endless respect to or something we need to take back and make our own. Fifty words or less. Sometimes I don’t want to see legends recreating something I missed out on for my consumption. That was one of the things I liked about the Clevo doc, it was kids making music for themselves, reaffirming what punk is and will always be and why it will never die. There will always be some band like Outraged who bring raging hardcore to their cental valley farm community and made their own scene instead of just waiting for touring bands to pass thru town.
4-we have mice and they will perish
5-Also: The box o reagan memerobilia that was on the floor of MRR last time I was there. Collected over a period of many years in preperation for his demise! Newspaper clippings about his scum bag antics in Central America, the Middle East and in the fuckin Midwest factory towns like Cleveland. The 80s calendar of him zombie like, iconic and hollow eyed, astride a horse at his ranch; whoever put that little masterwork together wrote a simpering essay about how Reagan’s Ranch was in fact AMERICA and how it was somehow more important that any presidential library. Got me to thinking that that was pretty much true, the image of Reagan had more weight than any of his amoral policies to most of America, a symbol of a mythical idea. Plus: Rich People Are America! And why read a book when you can gaze lovingly at a wax work of a human being melting in the California sun onto a horse that has been underneath him since his B Movie days and is probably still there now rotting in the rivers of blood and genocide that his reign helped perpetrate.
6-Punk and credit cards and how the last person you would suspect of it has entire tours and record collections paid for via never paid off plastic. It’s strange to think that the entire American economy is built on and rests so precariously on credit. I am attempting to get out of debt right now, as it really freaks me out that people (including myself) maintain a lifestyle that they can’t actually afford because of credit. I mean I work a job that pays just over minimum wage and live in one of the most expensive cities on earth, so theoretically I should not have bought that Effigies “We’re Da Machine” I saw for 12 bucks yesterday because I know by the end of the week I will have to pay for my groceries with a credit card. I remember a friend putting out numerous records with his credit card, in the mid 90s, DC no wave stuff like Cranium and Ayler’s Angels and how it totally blew my mind that he was $10,000 dollars in debt yet still he spent. I mean I am nowhere neear that, but I kind of want to be able to continue to live the lazy non careerist lifestyle I am living without the shadow of owing money to shitty financial insitutions hovering over my brains. Not very interesting true, but on my mind nonetheless.
7-I need the Shop Assistants LP. Anyone?
8-Why does The Wards’ song Weapon Factory continuously get stuck in my head?
9-Per my last column, in which I casually dismiss Charles Bronson of being worthy of inclusion in the new book by the Fucked up and Photocopied dude... (it’s titled Punk is Dead, Punk is Everything, and yes at the reading in SF the author/compiler declared that punk was in fact dead so... hmm. Old dudes! Get over it! Just because you don’t know about things anymore doesn’t mean they don’t exist.) I got called on this assumption in the place online in which I put these columns after they are published in the magazine (whatwewantisfree.blogspot.com) because a certain someone claims that Charles Bronson were in fact more worthy of inclusion in the above mentioned tome, than say Scratch Acid because they created art out of boredom in a positive way, whereas Scratch Acid just created boredom out of boredom. (Directly quoted from the mouth or fingers I guess, of Ethan Swan: ‘Scratch Acid is people drowning in their own boredom and Charles Bronson is people overturning their boredom and being radical about it.’) Firstly, musical taste is personal, and political screamo to me does not match the burnt taste in the mouth Scratch Acid offers. Yes I am irritatingly PC in a lot of ways probably, but this doesn’t mean I like bands just bc they are ‘wimmin’ or don’t like bands because their values do not match mine. I tried really hard to like Spitboy when I was 14 but found myself entirely unable to do so. Their music is resoundingly horrendous. But I am sure we shared similar values in regards to feminism etc etc
Tommy Strange and I had a conversation in the kitchen just now about how he was at Negative Approach and the Necros first shows ever, in thee ancient olden days, and how though he liked the music he could never get that into them because they wouldn’t dismiss their huge skinhead following. For me, though context is important, e.g. I am not one of those people that hearts the first Slrewdriver record or anything, BUT I do like music that was created by people that I would probably not enjoy hanging out with/having a conversation with about their politics/ morals/ love lives etc etc, Intent is important but music that means nothing to me cannot be saved by shared values.
Case in point: I completely dismiss the entire genre of Anarcho punk/Peace Punk (ie Anarcho Pie, c.f Oi Polloi) because I hate Crass. Their music irritates me so much I am unable to take seriously any of their followers. I think the scene they created is rad and inspiring etc, though it is a bummer that ultimately they were responsible for the gross hippie rave scene that took over the UK and destroyed any possibility of a punk underground existing in the same way it does in Europe or the US because all the ex punks are too busy takin E and dancing in fields and warehouses. (Not to say the punk underground doesn’t exist, just that it’s no way close to the same level as it is here and I blame Crass and Ravers both for this situation.) The only band of this genre I can get behind is Rudimentary Peni, their music is disturbing and fucked up and wrong in ways I like and can identify with. Also bear in mind I have not actually heard most anarcho bands, even legendary ones like Golnar’s favorites Zounds, but whatevers. I don’t like listening to the ABC of moral values for hippies in different smellier outfits and have not much interest in investigating further when there are three billion types of music that do interest me that I don’t know enough about. So. I happen to like and think Scratch Acid are more worthy of inclusion in washed up old punk’s art books than The Locust or Charles Bronson. I mean c’mon.
10-now is the time. When is the truth.
Oh and Scott Moore esq. wanted never to be mentioned in this column again. ‘Bitch Please!”
Also: Cani- Guai a Voi 7”.
If you wanna write me write c/o mrr I seriously don’t even write my friends back though. Ugh. I am probably more likely to respond to comments on the stupid blog of my old columns I mentioned: whatwewantisfree.blogspot.com But maybe I will make myself a dutiful penpal. Sorry dudes.
Saturday, December 1, 2007
notes from a lousy pen pal
Sometimes when things are happening that are not good you just sort of let them happen. Watching things unfold around you as a result of certain actions you may have enacted but really in the end, doing nothing to alter said set of actions. When you are aware if you say a certain set of words a certain response will occur, but the words roll off of your tongue anyway regardless of cause and effect. There’s a feeling of watching things happen around you, a certain stillness while things collapse, (‘I’m stuck in this uh movie...but it doesn’t move me....) but maybe. Not always dramatics, knowing you are going to be half an hour later than you said but not doing anything to change the course of events. Always too late or too early: it’s the worst.
Things I think about too much and thus talk about too much:
I need to get my stupid ‘meaningful’ teenage sxe tattoo covered
I have no ambition
Why did someone take my Dicks Kill from the Heart LP and Faith Subject to Change on blue? Who is it that went to my mum’s house in the years since I have been living here even knows who those bands are?
I am bored but do not want to do anything to change this.
Plus many other more profound and meaningful things like: ebay, dudes, records, food.
There’s gonna be a new babe den at MRR. Will it be scott’s room? Or bloody’s room? Or hubb’s new bachelor pad? Is hubbs really moving back to NY soon? Is punk rock just the fetishization of ephemera? Why am I unable to write anything except the night before it’s due? Why are people only seen as doing something with their lives if they are talking about going to grad school or actually goin to grad school? What is the point of doing something with your life? Can you tell the differnce between Pissed Jeans, Clockcleaner and Snake Apartment? What about Rabies and WarKrime? What about that picture of Keith Morris and his mom? CAN YOU TELL THE DIFFERENCE! What about dudes in bands that play art gallery openings sponsored by PBR and apparently traverse the country by limo, behind Sex Vid’s van, whilst silkscreening merch bandanas? Whilst signing to subsids of Major labels and yet still wanting to be on the cover of MRR. Why are all the manilla envelope emo records in the 50c bin at Amoeba? Except the ones I sold and now want back of course. Why did all the modern bands that submitted fliers for the second book by the Fucked Up and Photocopied dude only submit fliers with their own bands advertised? I mean are Das Oath and Charles Bronson really in the same league as The Controllers and Scratch Acid? Or the Germs and The Brat? Oh bitch please! Why do dudes that are ‘over’ punk still want Sex Vid to play their gallery show? If Hubbs moves to NY will he stop being into punk and instead hang out with Golnar listening to Bulgarian Field Recordings? What’s up with riot dudes? When will it end! Why doesn’t anyone like Shattered Faith? I do! Working Men Are Pissed! Notes and Chords Mean Nothing TO ME! Neither of which has anything to do with Shattered Faith, but you know: join the dots.
What would you do if you slowly replaced all your band mates with random hair metal dudes and then one day your old band was only the replacement hair metal dudes, and not you. Your band name was no longer applicable to anything you were doing musically, invasion of the body snatchers style, so you had to call it LOST. BACKWARDS. Why did Corin from Sleater Kinney do backing vocals for Eddie Vedder’s solo project soundtrack for the new Sean Penn movie? Maybe it’s a riot dude thing. Why is screamo such a horrible sounding genre, both in actual sound, and in genre title? Why do dudes who partook in the emo but are now over it make bad tofu jokes to demonstrate said overness? I mean is anyone even vegetarian anyore? I know people gave up on the whole ending racism thing after it didn’t happen in time for the Endpoint/Falling Forward tour. I guess vegetarianism got taken back by the hippies. Only weedy Arcade Fire fans are vegans now, all the hardcore kids need meat to feed their moshtard antics. The endless reprinted PETA fliers in early sxe zines just cancelled each other our until Floorpunch reunited and people remembered hardcore was just about the brotherhood of man; aggro dance moves and ‘no homo’ jokes.
TOP TEN
1-Needles (Ex Crudos, Talk is Poison, California Love...) My new favorite local band? Martin is one of the best front humans ever, the rythmn section of Talk is Poison is legendary and unimpeachable and I am nominating this band for ‘Layla’s new end of year incessant hype band.’ (On a similar note: I also am self-imposing a ban on the words “mika miko’ and ‘finally punk’ until year end top tens. AT LEAST. So look forward to lots of candid infotainment about NEEDLES bc they are my new jam.) The 7” will be available via Martin/Brian at some point. ALSO in that they played the same show; OUTRAGED, I have the back cover of MRR with the Outraged crowd shot from their interview issue on my door. It is easily in my Heartattack style non-linear pictorial and food based year end top ten already. So inspiring that band is, bringing raging hardcore to fuckin Watsonville CA. 2-There’s going to be a new Acid Reflux 7” by years end. 3-Scott Moore is moving to the Bay Area.4-The song Bad Attitude by Articles of Faith. Really though. Like all the time. 5-Red Monkey, like it better now than I did then. Perfect mix of Gang of Four/Circus Lupus/Huggy Bear, maybe a little too anarcho-CRASS and heavy on the punk funk, which in the light of that tired ass nu- millenial revival is hard to take. But Red Monkey was pre all of that boredom.. I like listening to their music. Oh gee. 6-The fact that after hearing a song we played on the radio in SF, Golnar, in NY, won an obscure all girl 80s Dutch punk comp on the ebay and is now forming a band inspired by sounds of said comp. 7-Tobi Celeste- Broken Stones 8-Los Saicos-Demolicion 9-Terraplanes-Shop Talk 10-nothing nothing nothing. Bored bored bored sorry about this! Really though I am. you can write me: I do read it all I just don’t write back and I have no idea why. Maybe I am just a lousy pen pal. Off the pigs.
Things I think about too much and thus talk about too much:
I need to get my stupid ‘meaningful’ teenage sxe tattoo covered
I have no ambition
Why did someone take my Dicks Kill from the Heart LP and Faith Subject to Change on blue? Who is it that went to my mum’s house in the years since I have been living here even knows who those bands are?
I am bored but do not want to do anything to change this.
Plus many other more profound and meaningful things like: ebay, dudes, records, food.
There’s gonna be a new babe den at MRR. Will it be scott’s room? Or bloody’s room? Or hubb’s new bachelor pad? Is hubbs really moving back to NY soon? Is punk rock just the fetishization of ephemera? Why am I unable to write anything except the night before it’s due? Why are people only seen as doing something with their lives if they are talking about going to grad school or actually goin to grad school? What is the point of doing something with your life? Can you tell the differnce between Pissed Jeans, Clockcleaner and Snake Apartment? What about Rabies and WarKrime? What about that picture of Keith Morris and his mom? CAN YOU TELL THE DIFFERENCE! What about dudes in bands that play art gallery openings sponsored by PBR and apparently traverse the country by limo, behind Sex Vid’s van, whilst silkscreening merch bandanas? Whilst signing to subsids of Major labels and yet still wanting to be on the cover of MRR. Why are all the manilla envelope emo records in the 50c bin at Amoeba? Except the ones I sold and now want back of course. Why did all the modern bands that submitted fliers for the second book by the Fucked Up and Photocopied dude only submit fliers with their own bands advertised? I mean are Das Oath and Charles Bronson really in the same league as The Controllers and Scratch Acid? Or the Germs and The Brat? Oh bitch please! Why do dudes that are ‘over’ punk still want Sex Vid to play their gallery show? If Hubbs moves to NY will he stop being into punk and instead hang out with Golnar listening to Bulgarian Field Recordings? What’s up with riot dudes? When will it end! Why doesn’t anyone like Shattered Faith? I do! Working Men Are Pissed! Notes and Chords Mean Nothing TO ME! Neither of which has anything to do with Shattered Faith, but you know: join the dots.
What would you do if you slowly replaced all your band mates with random hair metal dudes and then one day your old band was only the replacement hair metal dudes, and not you. Your band name was no longer applicable to anything you were doing musically, invasion of the body snatchers style, so you had to call it LOST. BACKWARDS. Why did Corin from Sleater Kinney do backing vocals for Eddie Vedder’s solo project soundtrack for the new Sean Penn movie? Maybe it’s a riot dude thing. Why is screamo such a horrible sounding genre, both in actual sound, and in genre title? Why do dudes who partook in the emo but are now over it make bad tofu jokes to demonstrate said overness? I mean is anyone even vegetarian anyore? I know people gave up on the whole ending racism thing after it didn’t happen in time for the Endpoint/Falling Forward tour. I guess vegetarianism got taken back by the hippies. Only weedy Arcade Fire fans are vegans now, all the hardcore kids need meat to feed their moshtard antics. The endless reprinted PETA fliers in early sxe zines just cancelled each other our until Floorpunch reunited and people remembered hardcore was just about the brotherhood of man; aggro dance moves and ‘no homo’ jokes.
TOP TEN
1-Needles (Ex Crudos, Talk is Poison, California Love...) My new favorite local band? Martin is one of the best front humans ever, the rythmn section of Talk is Poison is legendary and unimpeachable and I am nominating this band for ‘Layla’s new end of year incessant hype band.’ (On a similar note: I also am self-imposing a ban on the words “mika miko’ and ‘finally punk’ until year end top tens. AT LEAST. So look forward to lots of candid infotainment about NEEDLES bc they are my new jam.) The 7” will be available via Martin/Brian at some point. ALSO in that they played the same show; OUTRAGED, I have the back cover of MRR with the Outraged crowd shot from their interview issue on my door. It is easily in my Heartattack style non-linear pictorial and food based year end top ten already. So inspiring that band is, bringing raging hardcore to fuckin Watsonville CA. 2-There’s going to be a new Acid Reflux 7” by years end. 3-Scott Moore is moving to the Bay Area.4-The song Bad Attitude by Articles of Faith. Really though. Like all the time. 5-Red Monkey, like it better now than I did then. Perfect mix of Gang of Four/Circus Lupus/Huggy Bear, maybe a little too anarcho-CRASS and heavy on the punk funk, which in the light of that tired ass nu- millenial revival is hard to take. But Red Monkey was pre all of that boredom.. I like listening to their music. Oh gee. 6-The fact that after hearing a song we played on the radio in SF, Golnar, in NY, won an obscure all girl 80s Dutch punk comp on the ebay and is now forming a band inspired by sounds of said comp. 7-Tobi Celeste- Broken Stones 8-Los Saicos-Demolicion 9-Terraplanes-Shop Talk 10-nothing nothing nothing. Bored bored bored sorry about this! Really though I am. you can write me: I do read it all I just don’t write back and I have no idea why. Maybe I am just a lousy pen pal. Off the pigs.
Monday, November 5, 2007
the song bad attitude by articles of faith
1-I am sitting in my room as always a few days late on this whole column writing business, listening to St Vitus having just eaten a bunch of rice and peas. It’s an exciting life I lead in this super city of excitement and superness. Things I have been freaking out about recently: Getting attacked by crazy junkie dude who I stopped from stealing a bunch of Chrome messenger bags from my work... and how every customer since has merged into said crazy junkie dude. Lady with zillion dollar handbag asking me where the books about Bhutan are? She is totally gonna attack me once she has ransacked the store of Bhutan related goodies for her junkie lair. It is clear that the time has come for me to quit working retail before I become a crazy conspiracy theorist who hates humans and living. I also am sick of customers asking me if it’s great to work at a travcl bookstore since I must get to travel a lot. I am not sure where they draw this masterful theory from, I guess most of the people who shop at our store are oblivious yuppies with savings plans and weekend warrior plans too, but dude I work retail! I can just about pay my rent and bills, I am not going backpacking in the Himalayas anytime soon. I hate feeling like I should be doing something meaningful with my life in termns of how I make my living. I am happy and broke, but I guess just bored.
2-Also why is St Vitus so good and yet all the bands that sound like this now, in the current beard hesh revival are just not as interesting? Also: I went to see Kyuss when I was about 15 with members of Fabric (Who also introduced me to Into Another and Septic Death) and it was the scariest show I went to since my mum took me to see Miles Davis electric when I was 10ish. That was also terrifying; he wore a bright patchwork leather coat, refused to face the audience and made an unholy noise I could not file away neatly. Kyuss was scary because it was completely full of huge gnarly biker dudes, I had to perch on a speaker to aviod destruction. If that show happened now it would be full of ironic huge non gnarly non biker dudes. Whatevers though. I remember the music being so loud I could feel it kind of before I heard it. Same thing when I saw Melvins a year or so, maybe two before, Joe Preston era,. I like that feeling, when the music seems kind of like a second skin it’s so fucking loud. I went to a free bluegrass fest they have every year here, and watched Los Lobos (not bluegrass at all!) do an old Merle Haggard song with John Doe on Vox, it was pretty dreamy, and there was a baby in front of me with trying to get these huge blue noise blocking headphones off it’s head to no avail. It made me think about going to shows since age 11 with no ear plugs ever except when it actually hurts to be without.
3-Per my last column Sex Vid are not doing a 12” after all, they decided to do a 7” or so instead. So all my worries about the corruption of hardcore via the LP were totally unfounded.
4-Another thing that I have been thinking about recently in regards to the Freemo scene also mentioned in my last column is the overwelming posi-ness of it all. It’s suffocatingly positive, like a reading of I’m OK You’re OK! at a yoga retreat in a Saturday Night Live skit on 70s Marin new age living. I consider myself to be relatively positive, cynical yes, but not negative or hateful, but sometimes hanging out with people involved in post art noise scenes makes me feel like I have negi-tourettes. Everyone seems like extras in that cult from Strangers with Candy. Maybe I should move to Cleveland. I am a dismissive bored human right now.
5-Because you know I am not actually that psyched on anything much right now, except for the fact that I am going to see the new Dead Moon band next week, Pierced Arrows. I am so ready for this event to be lifechanging I am actually going to buy tickets in case in sells out. Last time I saw Dead Moon there was a power failure and they didn’t play til 3am, but it made the show so much more weighted and important feeling, the epicness of the wait combined with the power that is Fred and Toody. Someone needs to send me Toody’s solo LP. The first time I saw them play was in Olympia and everyone knew all the words, and they sold out the Capital theatre, so I assumed all their shows were like that. Not quite! I made my friends in England go see them, we all had the Lollpop Shoppe LP and I guess I wasn;’t able to explain adequetely how different Dead Moon were from that. They were NOT INTO IT and thought it was bad bar rock, which is total bullshit obviously. Dead Moon was the way and the truth. Dead Moon were genuine times, and hopefully Pierced Arrows will blow minds and break hearts in a similar way.
6-I do not like or understand the appeal of the Cro Mags but do like Agnostic Front
7-Right now I am not into much of anything as mentioned but I am into the Hippies is Propaganda comp LP and the Os Estudantes 12”..
8- Also: Gerry and the Hollograms, Impatient Youth, Toxin III and Ikkashinju’s Slow Down. Oh and the Modern Lover’s song Some I Care About. Also in non punk related news I have been listening to Hank Snow.
9-whatwewantisfree.blogspot.com is where I am putting all thee oldies of these columns I am churning out if you wanna read the unedited version with all the grammatical errors and spelling improvisations.
2-Also why is St Vitus so good and yet all the bands that sound like this now, in the current beard hesh revival are just not as interesting? Also: I went to see Kyuss when I was about 15 with members of Fabric (Who also introduced me to Into Another and Septic Death) and it was the scariest show I went to since my mum took me to see Miles Davis electric when I was 10ish. That was also terrifying; he wore a bright patchwork leather coat, refused to face the audience and made an unholy noise I could not file away neatly. Kyuss was scary because it was completely full of huge gnarly biker dudes, I had to perch on a speaker to aviod destruction. If that show happened now it would be full of ironic huge non gnarly non biker dudes. Whatevers though. I remember the music being so loud I could feel it kind of before I heard it. Same thing when I saw Melvins a year or so, maybe two before, Joe Preston era,. I like that feeling, when the music seems kind of like a second skin it’s so fucking loud. I went to a free bluegrass fest they have every year here, and watched Los Lobos (not bluegrass at all!) do an old Merle Haggard song with John Doe on Vox, it was pretty dreamy, and there was a baby in front of me with trying to get these huge blue noise blocking headphones off it’s head to no avail. It made me think about going to shows since age 11 with no ear plugs ever except when it actually hurts to be without.
3-Per my last column Sex Vid are not doing a 12” after all, they decided to do a 7” or so instead. So all my worries about the corruption of hardcore via the LP were totally unfounded.
4-Another thing that I have been thinking about recently in regards to the Freemo scene also mentioned in my last column is the overwelming posi-ness of it all. It’s suffocatingly positive, like a reading of I’m OK You’re OK! at a yoga retreat in a Saturday Night Live skit on 70s Marin new age living. I consider myself to be relatively positive, cynical yes, but not negative or hateful, but sometimes hanging out with people involved in post art noise scenes makes me feel like I have negi-tourettes. Everyone seems like extras in that cult from Strangers with Candy. Maybe I should move to Cleveland. I am a dismissive bored human right now.
5-Because you know I am not actually that psyched on anything much right now, except for the fact that I am going to see the new Dead Moon band next week, Pierced Arrows. I am so ready for this event to be lifechanging I am actually going to buy tickets in case in sells out. Last time I saw Dead Moon there was a power failure and they didn’t play til 3am, but it made the show so much more weighted and important feeling, the epicness of the wait combined with the power that is Fred and Toody. Someone needs to send me Toody’s solo LP. The first time I saw them play was in Olympia and everyone knew all the words, and they sold out the Capital theatre, so I assumed all their shows were like that. Not quite! I made my friends in England go see them, we all had the Lollpop Shoppe LP and I guess I wasn;’t able to explain adequetely how different Dead Moon were from that. They were NOT INTO IT and thought it was bad bar rock, which is total bullshit obviously. Dead Moon was the way and the truth. Dead Moon were genuine times, and hopefully Pierced Arrows will blow minds and break hearts in a similar way.
6-I do not like or understand the appeal of the Cro Mags but do like Agnostic Front
7-Right now I am not into much of anything as mentioned but I am into the Hippies is Propaganda comp LP and the Os Estudantes 12”..
8- Also: Gerry and the Hollograms, Impatient Youth, Toxin III and Ikkashinju’s Slow Down. Oh and the Modern Lover’s song Some I Care About. Also in non punk related news I have been listening to Hank Snow.
9-whatwewantisfree.blogspot.com is where I am putting all thee oldies of these columns I am churning out if you wanna read the unedited version with all the grammatical errors and spelling improvisations.
Monday, October 1, 2007
love is a kick in the bullmarket
Love is a Kick and a Bullmarket.
I worked at Rough Trade records really briefly when I was about 15 or 14, the one in Covent Garden which I think is closing down now because they put up the rent. (Actually I just found out they are moving out to the East End, the one in Talbot Road will always be there I think, if you are ever in London definitely go check it out, the wall of punk 7”s is pretty amazing...) Covent Garden used to be really seedy, I think the Sex Pistols had a squat there even, it was an old flower market that relocated and left a barren mass of squats and dilapedated buildings, then of course, artistically minded business people opened up stores there. And twenty or thirty years later it’s an outdoor mall pretty much, with the same stores that exist on streets in every town in every place in the western world. There’s no room for Rough Trade records anymore I guess. I wonder what they are going to do with the space, turn it into a boutique? Another rare sneaker store? I think about hanging out with the Huggy Bear girls and watching bands play, going and buying Unwound 45s and fanzines from the Slampt Underground. I saw so many bands in that basement, the Beastie Boys played there once, Blood Sausage, Free Kitten, Pavement I think? I even skipped school to see Courtney Love do an acoustic set there, which boggles the mind at this point but it was before I was into punk so... I wonder if Slam City Skates are moving too? I used to get all my skateboards from there, in the time of small wheels, Plan B videos and huge pants that could house 5 at least in each leg.
I got given a bunch of Dischord tapes by an old punk when I worked at Rough Trade, the Rites of Spring one, the Minor Threat one, and I listened to them until they warped. The pictures on the spine of the Rites of Spring tape made me feel so nostalgic for something I knew nothing about. Images of them climbing trees in winter time, maybe after Revolution Summer? Well punk was nostalgia then too. Everything I remember from the Banned in DC book about Rev Summer was about trying to recreate something lost, the end of childhood frenzy, lost teenage freedoms and the need to make something else other than cynical write offs claiming that things would never be as good again... I remember distinctly looking at the photos and wanting something I couldn’t explain, some other existance, some other world that was only available to me when walking along listening to End on End on my walkman. In another place, in another time.
I am writing this whilst sitting in my room listening to the Hul LP. I have not hung out with anyone for a little while, just picked a zit, ate some ice cream, (for future zit upkeep) thought about how I do not like anything Paul Weller has done after the Jam broke up and also thought about a conversation I had with Golnar today about punk and the glass ceiling politics of the eternal dude circle. (which in itself is an eternal conversation! From the Conflict (US) interview in the May MRR through to Riot Grrrl and xChicksupfrontposX...to this afternoon on a lunch break phone call.) I was reading a zine from my 90s emo sxe pos library (the ones that didn’t get recycled) which was one of my favorites, had a great Sam Mcpheeters interview complete with bloody nose pin up and a rad piece about how homoerotic pits are at sxe shows. Can you even imagine some sxe scenester now having the balls to talk about that? I think they would rather dress up like Agnostic Front and watch Boston Beatdown, just do the jock part without the whole complicated questioning societal values part. It made me randomly google the aforementioned sxe zinester to find out what the dude was doing now, and of course he is a graphic designer that does advertisements for companies like Jeep. His webpage references his zine name still. I can’t imagine the transition from writing about the Earth Liberation Front and being queer in sxe to making adverts for companies that are directly responsible for destroying the earth. But I guess this has turned into yet another column about growing old and selling out and how things I still think are important were just youthful indiscretions to most of my generation. I feel like I should be able to just get over this stuff and just get into Death Cab for Cutie and buying three hundred dollar dresses at Anthropologie or whatever it is punk girls do when they grow out of it. It just occupies my brain too much. Everything: the fact that it all makes me feel so melancholic, the fact that it really is just a phase for most, the fact that I still feel strongly about shows and bands and community and the underground and yet also feel really alienated from most punks. It’s confusing and boring and endless.
I went to a great show at Gilman last week, Government Warning, Wasted Time and Look Back and Laugh. Brian and Tobia set up a BBQ outside, a racist skinhead got knocked out with one punch by a weird time travelling quantum leap crusty/bathing ape druid on a mission, Scott informed me that music is much better now than it was in the 90s and told me a story about Brandon from Government Warning busting in on some sorority girl’s party the night before. He started performing a strip tease which all the party girls were into, and assumed was part of the evening’s entertainment until dudes from Warkrime showed up. Wasted Time were fucking incredible, like Pick Your King through the Ginn blender, so much better than the 7”, Government Warning were also phenomenal, I can’t believe how great they are live, and the to top it off Look Back and Laugh killed it. Made all the non sxe record collectors happy with a Youth of Today cover, made me happy because they totally brought it. I would have gotten crucial but I am too old for that type of thing, plsu wtihout Golnar’s presence it’s hard to focus the cruciality needed. It was such a great show, three incredible bands,... It was funny because the entire teenage thrash scene left as soon as Govt Warning finished, missing LBAL to go back to their million dollar Berkeley Hills homes for a hug from mommy? It has been pointed out that LBAL are mostly in my age group (that is to say agreeably matured, like a fine wine or whatever the sxe version of that metaphor would be) and The Kids are mostly interested in seeing musical acts from their own generation rather than aging wizened crones from mine I guess. It’s just bizarre to me coming from a scene where I would go see Huggy Bear play a Camden bar, or DDI play a Brixton squat. I was so psyched on discovering the underground and punk, and DIY and hardcore I would go see Btallion of Saints AND Sensefield AND Bikini Kill irrepective of how close the members of the bands were to the realms of the ancients. I guess me and my friends were always the one group of teenagers at most shows, so maybe the median age for being into punk when I was growing up in London was more college age than it is here? I remember thinking the aforementioned girls from Huggy Bear were REALLY OLD because they were like 24 or something. Also Carl Hard-Cordova told me a story about going to see Samuel or Junction and thinking the singer was as old as a tree because she was like 28 or something. SO maybe age does play a part in your perceptions of music especially if you live in an area like the Bay, where there are so many different types of shows and bands and scenes you can go through yout entire priviledged teenage existance only watching bands that sound exactly like the Decry Suburban Death Camp LP and not feel like you are missing out on anything.
ALSO: Carl pointed out to me that my dismissal of Fucked Up in the column before last could also be applied to my current dream team Sex Vid. This may be true but Sex Vid’s music makes me want to become a fuckin alchemist or you know, destroy society or start a new band or something in a way that Fucked Up never has. I feel like Sex Vid is perfect burned down basement music which is to say the best kind of music, whereas Fucked Up somehow exists in another space in my mind, it seems more professional and normal and palatable. But Sex Vid are about to put out a 12” which will be a new test, because the 7” is the perfect format, so maybe their run of greatness will be crushed by the new and different format. I feel like the tape and the 7” are the way and truth. Who knows! Not me!
Anyways, off the pigs, if you wanna correspond/want to send me Neos bootlegs write c/o mrr.
1-Life Without Buildings LP and Live CD 2-The New Hope comp of weird old Ohio bands from early 80s check out maximumrocknroll.com/radio (the 9/1/07 show) for sounds 3-Ian Svenonius interview in the new ANP quarterly 4-Fugazi-In On The Killtaker and the Glen E Friedman Fugazi book5-The introduction of the term ‘freemo’ into my life, it refers to the noise/art school thing, you know post Lightning Bolt/Fort Thunder fan boy music, lots of contact mics, aggressive floor rolling and gaffer tape and pedals. And adds to my theory that basically this scene is full of the people that would have been in roll on the floor emo bands in the 90s. 6-Homostupids still 7-King Tubby presents Roots of Dub LP 8-Joan Didion. For some reason I can’t find a copy of Play as it Lays but I am kind of obsessed with her right now... 9-Coffee in the morning 10-The Brat 10” and the Wolf and the Lamb-it’s almost too cheesy but it is just so transcendent and great.
I worked at Rough Trade records really briefly when I was about 15 or 14, the one in Covent Garden which I think is closing down now because they put up the rent. (Actually I just found out they are moving out to the East End, the one in Talbot Road will always be there I think, if you are ever in London definitely go check it out, the wall of punk 7”s is pretty amazing...) Covent Garden used to be really seedy, I think the Sex Pistols had a squat there even, it was an old flower market that relocated and left a barren mass of squats and dilapedated buildings, then of course, artistically minded business people opened up stores there. And twenty or thirty years later it’s an outdoor mall pretty much, with the same stores that exist on streets in every town in every place in the western world. There’s no room for Rough Trade records anymore I guess. I wonder what they are going to do with the space, turn it into a boutique? Another rare sneaker store? I think about hanging out with the Huggy Bear girls and watching bands play, going and buying Unwound 45s and fanzines from the Slampt Underground. I saw so many bands in that basement, the Beastie Boys played there once, Blood Sausage, Free Kitten, Pavement I think? I even skipped school to see Courtney Love do an acoustic set there, which boggles the mind at this point but it was before I was into punk so... I wonder if Slam City Skates are moving too? I used to get all my skateboards from there, in the time of small wheels, Plan B videos and huge pants that could house 5 at least in each leg.
I got given a bunch of Dischord tapes by an old punk when I worked at Rough Trade, the Rites of Spring one, the Minor Threat one, and I listened to them until they warped. The pictures on the spine of the Rites of Spring tape made me feel so nostalgic for something I knew nothing about. Images of them climbing trees in winter time, maybe after Revolution Summer? Well punk was nostalgia then too. Everything I remember from the Banned in DC book about Rev Summer was about trying to recreate something lost, the end of childhood frenzy, lost teenage freedoms and the need to make something else other than cynical write offs claiming that things would never be as good again... I remember distinctly looking at the photos and wanting something I couldn’t explain, some other existance, some other world that was only available to me when walking along listening to End on End on my walkman. In another place, in another time.
I am writing this whilst sitting in my room listening to the Hul LP. I have not hung out with anyone for a little while, just picked a zit, ate some ice cream, (for future zit upkeep) thought about how I do not like anything Paul Weller has done after the Jam broke up and also thought about a conversation I had with Golnar today about punk and the glass ceiling politics of the eternal dude circle. (which in itself is an eternal conversation! From the Conflict (US) interview in the May MRR through to Riot Grrrl and xChicksupfrontposX...to this afternoon on a lunch break phone call.) I was reading a zine from my 90s emo sxe pos library (the ones that didn’t get recycled) which was one of my favorites, had a great Sam Mcpheeters interview complete with bloody nose pin up and a rad piece about how homoerotic pits are at sxe shows. Can you even imagine some sxe scenester now having the balls to talk about that? I think they would rather dress up like Agnostic Front and watch Boston Beatdown, just do the jock part without the whole complicated questioning societal values part. It made me randomly google the aforementioned sxe zinester to find out what the dude was doing now, and of course he is a graphic designer that does advertisements for companies like Jeep. His webpage references his zine name still. I can’t imagine the transition from writing about the Earth Liberation Front and being queer in sxe to making adverts for companies that are directly responsible for destroying the earth. But I guess this has turned into yet another column about growing old and selling out and how things I still think are important were just youthful indiscretions to most of my generation. I feel like I should be able to just get over this stuff and just get into Death Cab for Cutie and buying three hundred dollar dresses at Anthropologie or whatever it is punk girls do when they grow out of it. It just occupies my brain too much. Everything: the fact that it all makes me feel so melancholic, the fact that it really is just a phase for most, the fact that I still feel strongly about shows and bands and community and the underground and yet also feel really alienated from most punks. It’s confusing and boring and endless.
I went to a great show at Gilman last week, Government Warning, Wasted Time and Look Back and Laugh. Brian and Tobia set up a BBQ outside, a racist skinhead got knocked out with one punch by a weird time travelling quantum leap crusty/bathing ape druid on a mission, Scott informed me that music is much better now than it was in the 90s and told me a story about Brandon from Government Warning busting in on some sorority girl’s party the night before. He started performing a strip tease which all the party girls were into, and assumed was part of the evening’s entertainment until dudes from Warkrime showed up. Wasted Time were fucking incredible, like Pick Your King through the Ginn blender, so much better than the 7”, Government Warning were also phenomenal, I can’t believe how great they are live, and the to top it off Look Back and Laugh killed it. Made all the non sxe record collectors happy with a Youth of Today cover, made me happy because they totally brought it. I would have gotten crucial but I am too old for that type of thing, plsu wtihout Golnar’s presence it’s hard to focus the cruciality needed. It was such a great show, three incredible bands,... It was funny because the entire teenage thrash scene left as soon as Govt Warning finished, missing LBAL to go back to their million dollar Berkeley Hills homes for a hug from mommy? It has been pointed out that LBAL are mostly in my age group (that is to say agreeably matured, like a fine wine or whatever the sxe version of that metaphor would be) and The Kids are mostly interested in seeing musical acts from their own generation rather than aging wizened crones from mine I guess. It’s just bizarre to me coming from a scene where I would go see Huggy Bear play a Camden bar, or DDI play a Brixton squat. I was so psyched on discovering the underground and punk, and DIY and hardcore I would go see Btallion of Saints AND Sensefield AND Bikini Kill irrepective of how close the members of the bands were to the realms of the ancients. I guess me and my friends were always the one group of teenagers at most shows, so maybe the median age for being into punk when I was growing up in London was more college age than it is here? I remember thinking the aforementioned girls from Huggy Bear were REALLY OLD because they were like 24 or something. Also Carl Hard-Cordova told me a story about going to see Samuel or Junction and thinking the singer was as old as a tree because she was like 28 or something. SO maybe age does play a part in your perceptions of music especially if you live in an area like the Bay, where there are so many different types of shows and bands and scenes you can go through yout entire priviledged teenage existance only watching bands that sound exactly like the Decry Suburban Death Camp LP and not feel like you are missing out on anything.
ALSO: Carl pointed out to me that my dismissal of Fucked Up in the column before last could also be applied to my current dream team Sex Vid. This may be true but Sex Vid’s music makes me want to become a fuckin alchemist or you know, destroy society or start a new band or something in a way that Fucked Up never has. I feel like Sex Vid is perfect burned down basement music which is to say the best kind of music, whereas Fucked Up somehow exists in another space in my mind, it seems more professional and normal and palatable. But Sex Vid are about to put out a 12” which will be a new test, because the 7” is the perfect format, so maybe their run of greatness will be crushed by the new and different format. I feel like the tape and the 7” are the way and truth. Who knows! Not me!
Anyways, off the pigs, if you wanna correspond/want to send me Neos bootlegs write c/o mrr.
1-Life Without Buildings LP and Live CD 2-The New Hope comp of weird old Ohio bands from early 80s check out maximumrocknroll.com/radio (the 9/1/07 show) for sounds 3-Ian Svenonius interview in the new ANP quarterly 4-Fugazi-In On The Killtaker and the Glen E Friedman Fugazi book5-The introduction of the term ‘freemo’ into my life, it refers to the noise/art school thing, you know post Lightning Bolt/Fort Thunder fan boy music, lots of contact mics, aggressive floor rolling and gaffer tape and pedals. And adds to my theory that basically this scene is full of the people that would have been in roll on the floor emo bands in the 90s. 6-Homostupids still 7-King Tubby presents Roots of Dub LP 8-Joan Didion. For some reason I can’t find a copy of Play as it Lays but I am kind of obsessed with her right now... 9-Coffee in the morning 10-The Brat 10” and the Wolf and the Lamb-it’s almost too cheesy but it is just so transcendent and great.
this one is all over the place
1-I made someone tell me who died in Harry Potter even though I have not read any of the books or watched any of the films and have no intention of doing so. It made no sense to me obviously, as I have no idea who any of the characters are and it ended up just annoying me; why did I care about such a piece of meaningless (to me) information? I think the curse of the age is too much mindless information and ephemera. I am sure many irritating liberal columnists have said this before, but seriously when more people care about who dies in Harry Potter than the death count in Iraq it would seem to indicate a certain moral collapse… End times fer sure!
2-I have been reading two books by Mike Davis that kind of tie in with this um, apocalyptic vision, one is called Planet of Slums, and is about the new supercities built on sewage and out of the discards of capitalism that are emerging as people in the so-called third world move to large industrial cities from rural areas but find they do not have the means or power to fit in with the way those cities work. The other one is a collection of essays edited by him called Evil Paradise: Dreamworlds of NeoLiberalism. The “evil paradises” are free market utopias built on the unspoken reality of slave labor and robber baron slash-and-burn capitalism. These places are created by the super rich in places like Dubai and Orange County, gated communities and private cities, which are kind of like the flip side of the super city coin. The inhabitants of supercities are living in the economic and literal trash created by those living in ‘dreamland,’ where you can only even walk the streets if you are economically viable (ie oil rich/media rich etc.)
In Davis’ hellish vision of Dubai the divide between the Haves and the Have-Not’s seems almost medieval in its brutality and immorality. Huge cartoonish buildings and man-made mega islands built with oil money and the aforementioned slave labor shield the ultra rich from the indignities of having to pay taxes or in some cases serve time in the countries from which they came. Rebecca Shoenkopf’s Orange County is a little less feudal, and makes for a much lighter read though she still, albeit mockingly, covers the disparities between the inland barrios of Santa Ana and the coastal gated communities of Laguna Canyon. The Gated McMansion-residing ladies buy their over-saturated offspring Mercedes convertibles to stave off their baby-bird-like insatiable hunger and empty rage; It reads like an even more soulless Less Than Zero. There are other chapters about faux California-style gated communities in Hong Kong and Cairo and even in Iran’s desert, so perhaps that will be America’s legacy rather than Bush’s promised democracy in the Middle East. I am envisioning the free market as a stream of vomit; constant and unless you have a boat you are stuck swimming in the slop. I can’t explain it really.
3-Summer in San Francisco never quite feels like how I imagine summer to be. The culmination of summers past and the mythologies of the idea of summer as being all freedom and adventure all the time leave grown up summers with a lot to live up to. After school, unless you are a trust fund type that doesn’t have to work (or maybe a crusty?) summer is only really distinguished from the rest of the year by the weather. Well maybe I am being a little harsh. I live in California which only has two seasons really, and SF pretty much doesn’t have summer at all, until fall, depending on the day. Thusly I have decided that summer is just an idea and that I have to make freedom and adventure all the time happen myself. A couple of days ago Jess and Holly and I drove to Stinson beach and watched tourists gamboling in the water oblivious to the sign asserting that there had been great white shark attacks there in less than six feet of water… The perfect way to end yr California vacation! On the way home we drove over the Golden Gate Bridge listening to Rock Bottom and the Spies’ Rich Girl and The Dils’ Sound of the Rain, total mix tape magic, and we got to avoid the zillion dollar bridge toll because there were three of us. It felt totally triumphant somehow and I made a remark along the lines of ‘the punks win for once!’ which triggered a discussion about how neither Jess nor Holly consider themselves to be punk anymore. I actually did not participate in this discussion because I am and will always be a punk.
BUT it also made me think about a conversation I had with Sharon Cheslow about why she plays noise, at a very summery east bay BBQ. She talked about being an older woman in underground music and the dilemmas and conflicts of art and a wider audience and basement shows and art gallery shows and so on and so forth… and the whole DUDE THING; contre le sexisme! It made me wish I had a tape player because I totally have wanted to interview Sharon for this zine for the longest time, about DC punk histories yes but also about growing old and staying true, staying independent and committed to the underground. You know there is a Chalk Circle myspace now? She made it and it enabled her to get back in touch with two of the other members; pretty fucking cool!! Chalk Circle was one of the few harDCore bands with ladies in, although really I guess they are more arty lady punk than harDCore, like say um, the Teen Idles? I am sure Sharon does not consider herself punk anymore, though she still plays her art damage destruction in basements with punk bands and I totally think she’s a punk. Punk is like summer in San Francisco. It’s a possibility, and an idea, an ideology maybe, or just a moment of mix tape transcendence.
Punk is a youth subculture for sure, I know this, but I for one would not consider myself a punk still if I considered punk as only being represented by kids at Gilman or the mall punk’s Blanks 77 backpatches and sugary Mohawk hairstyles. I think that’s one of the problems I have with the hero worship of Japanese bands by kids here; if those bands existed here they would be corny Mohawk studded jacket style rockstars. Underground punk is and will always be DIY and independent culture, the idea that the bands are essentially the same as the audience. Not fifty dollar shows. It’s so weird to me that they are so obsessed with Discharge aesthetically, but not by the values or politics JUST THE MUSIC SOUND AND CLOTHING! How is that punk? Probably a million skinny jeans clad dudes are rolling their eyes in disgust at this paragraph. I know I am definitely NOT an expert on Japanese punk culture, please write me and correct me on my cultural ignorance, don’t be mean though!
4-I went to see Sonic Youth do Daydream Nation. It was like watching a play/being in church; the audience were so reverent and the Sonic Youth were so mock solemn. Kim looked so rad dancing in a mod striped dress against a tie die light show, go Berkeley community theatre! It was kind of dreamy but also kind of wrong! I hate the indie rock crowd, so depressing and easily sated. I like that era of Sonic Youth; scary death valley Manson girls/ Pettibon doom doom dooom time! Bad Moon Rising! A comment on the end of the summer of love… I wanted to see the Melvins perform Lysol tonight SO BADLY! It's weird how the 90s are being reconstructed right now in mainstream ‘indie’ culture; Dinosaur jr, Slint, Melvins, Sonic Youth, though guess it's more late 80s early 90s. The Pitchfork crowd need their reconstructed war re-enactments! I wonder if it's like the baby boomer freak out in the 80s when every movie had baby boomered music; think about it, The Big Chill, The Outsiders, Stand By Me; REVIVALISTS!! That is happening now but with bands performing entire LPs, it's like a play because if you saw the Melvins in 89 or whatever they wouldn't 'do' the whole of Gluey Porch Treatments, or Slint wouldn't 'do' the whole of Spiderland. They would just play a show; it's total theatre constructionisms. Speaking of which Mike Mckee is writing a book about 90s DIY hardcore (91-94) I am sure he is looking for contributions and if you have any check out his myspace, his name on there is 90’s DIY.
5-I was a teenage straight edge warrior! I’m not anymore! But I still hate it that hanging out in bars is most people’s idea of entertainment. BOOOORING.
6-I have mostly been listening to Leonard Cohen because of seeing McCabe and Mrs Miller for the first time, I guess that’s not very punk. I think about punk a lot and am sorry if I talk about the same thing every month!
7-That’s about it! A bunch of random stuff not very coherently discussed!
2-I have been reading two books by Mike Davis that kind of tie in with this um, apocalyptic vision, one is called Planet of Slums, and is about the new supercities built on sewage and out of the discards of capitalism that are emerging as people in the so-called third world move to large industrial cities from rural areas but find they do not have the means or power to fit in with the way those cities work. The other one is a collection of essays edited by him called Evil Paradise: Dreamworlds of NeoLiberalism. The “evil paradises” are free market utopias built on the unspoken reality of slave labor and robber baron slash-and-burn capitalism. These places are created by the super rich in places like Dubai and Orange County, gated communities and private cities, which are kind of like the flip side of the super city coin. The inhabitants of supercities are living in the economic and literal trash created by those living in ‘dreamland,’ where you can only even walk the streets if you are economically viable (ie oil rich/media rich etc.)
In Davis’ hellish vision of Dubai the divide between the Haves and the Have-Not’s seems almost medieval in its brutality and immorality. Huge cartoonish buildings and man-made mega islands built with oil money and the aforementioned slave labor shield the ultra rich from the indignities of having to pay taxes or in some cases serve time in the countries from which they came. Rebecca Shoenkopf’s Orange County is a little less feudal, and makes for a much lighter read though she still, albeit mockingly, covers the disparities between the inland barrios of Santa Ana and the coastal gated communities of Laguna Canyon. The Gated McMansion-residing ladies buy their over-saturated offspring Mercedes convertibles to stave off their baby-bird-like insatiable hunger and empty rage; It reads like an even more soulless Less Than Zero. There are other chapters about faux California-style gated communities in Hong Kong and Cairo and even in Iran’s desert, so perhaps that will be America’s legacy rather than Bush’s promised democracy in the Middle East. I am envisioning the free market as a stream of vomit; constant and unless you have a boat you are stuck swimming in the slop. I can’t explain it really.
3-Summer in San Francisco never quite feels like how I imagine summer to be. The culmination of summers past and the mythologies of the idea of summer as being all freedom and adventure all the time leave grown up summers with a lot to live up to. After school, unless you are a trust fund type that doesn’t have to work (or maybe a crusty?) summer is only really distinguished from the rest of the year by the weather. Well maybe I am being a little harsh. I live in California which only has two seasons really, and SF pretty much doesn’t have summer at all, until fall, depending on the day. Thusly I have decided that summer is just an idea and that I have to make freedom and adventure all the time happen myself. A couple of days ago Jess and Holly and I drove to Stinson beach and watched tourists gamboling in the water oblivious to the sign asserting that there had been great white shark attacks there in less than six feet of water… The perfect way to end yr California vacation! On the way home we drove over the Golden Gate Bridge listening to Rock Bottom and the Spies’ Rich Girl and The Dils’ Sound of the Rain, total mix tape magic, and we got to avoid the zillion dollar bridge toll because there were three of us. It felt totally triumphant somehow and I made a remark along the lines of ‘the punks win for once!’ which triggered a discussion about how neither Jess nor Holly consider themselves to be punk anymore. I actually did not participate in this discussion because I am and will always be a punk.
BUT it also made me think about a conversation I had with Sharon Cheslow about why she plays noise, at a very summery east bay BBQ. She talked about being an older woman in underground music and the dilemmas and conflicts of art and a wider audience and basement shows and art gallery shows and so on and so forth… and the whole DUDE THING; contre le sexisme! It made me wish I had a tape player because I totally have wanted to interview Sharon for this zine for the longest time, about DC punk histories yes but also about growing old and staying true, staying independent and committed to the underground. You know there is a Chalk Circle myspace now? She made it and it enabled her to get back in touch with two of the other members; pretty fucking cool!! Chalk Circle was one of the few harDCore bands with ladies in, although really I guess they are more arty lady punk than harDCore, like say um, the Teen Idles? I am sure Sharon does not consider herself punk anymore, though she still plays her art damage destruction in basements with punk bands and I totally think she’s a punk. Punk is like summer in San Francisco. It’s a possibility, and an idea, an ideology maybe, or just a moment of mix tape transcendence.
Punk is a youth subculture for sure, I know this, but I for one would not consider myself a punk still if I considered punk as only being represented by kids at Gilman or the mall punk’s Blanks 77 backpatches and sugary Mohawk hairstyles. I think that’s one of the problems I have with the hero worship of Japanese bands by kids here; if those bands existed here they would be corny Mohawk studded jacket style rockstars. Underground punk is and will always be DIY and independent culture, the idea that the bands are essentially the same as the audience. Not fifty dollar shows. It’s so weird to me that they are so obsessed with Discharge aesthetically, but not by the values or politics JUST THE MUSIC SOUND AND CLOTHING! How is that punk? Probably a million skinny jeans clad dudes are rolling their eyes in disgust at this paragraph. I know I am definitely NOT an expert on Japanese punk culture, please write me and correct me on my cultural ignorance, don’t be mean though!
4-I went to see Sonic Youth do Daydream Nation. It was like watching a play/being in church; the audience were so reverent and the Sonic Youth were so mock solemn. Kim looked so rad dancing in a mod striped dress against a tie die light show, go Berkeley community theatre! It was kind of dreamy but also kind of wrong! I hate the indie rock crowd, so depressing and easily sated. I like that era of Sonic Youth; scary death valley Manson girls/ Pettibon doom doom dooom time! Bad Moon Rising! A comment on the end of the summer of love… I wanted to see the Melvins perform Lysol tonight SO BADLY! It's weird how the 90s are being reconstructed right now in mainstream ‘indie’ culture; Dinosaur jr, Slint, Melvins, Sonic Youth, though guess it's more late 80s early 90s. The Pitchfork crowd need their reconstructed war re-enactments! I wonder if it's like the baby boomer freak out in the 80s when every movie had baby boomered music; think about it, The Big Chill, The Outsiders, Stand By Me; REVIVALISTS!! That is happening now but with bands performing entire LPs, it's like a play because if you saw the Melvins in 89 or whatever they wouldn't 'do' the whole of Gluey Porch Treatments, or Slint wouldn't 'do' the whole of Spiderland. They would just play a show; it's total theatre constructionisms. Speaking of which Mike Mckee is writing a book about 90s DIY hardcore (91-94) I am sure he is looking for contributions and if you have any check out his myspace, his name on there is 90’s DIY.
5-I was a teenage straight edge warrior! I’m not anymore! But I still hate it that hanging out in bars is most people’s idea of entertainment. BOOOORING.
6-I have mostly been listening to Leonard Cohen because of seeing McCabe and Mrs Miller for the first time, I guess that’s not very punk. I think about punk a lot and am sorry if I talk about the same thing every month!
7-That’s about it! A bunch of random stuff not very coherently discussed!
Friday, August 31, 2007
violins of the cover of mrr is totally punk. and the raincoats aren't a 90s band.
Second Verse same as the First!
1-Sex Vid!!!!! Holy shit! Is it just me or is most of San Francisco walking round in crummy tie dye Sex Vid shirts?
Merchandise it keeps us alive. After seeing them first at the Hemlock I was wondering if it was worth going to the other show because they were just so impossibly great and how could anything else be so exactly what I wanted... But of course the sweaty basement show was like watching like Neos open for Void or being able to eat pizza for every meal with no consequences. Speaking of which; I can't believe people would wanna leave SF. It's fucking great here posers; we have good pizza, and good punks. Spoken in faux Valley girl accent, since I have returned from my brief sojourn to the UK I have seen THREE next level amazing best ever (for sure!) shows. I mean fucking SEX VID!!!! This band is the best. They are like a birthday present and and xmas present without yr family breathing down yr throat. Seriously, watching them play it's hard to believe a band that good is even possible in a climate such as today; doom clad shitty message board fucktard mythologies and depressing bug eyed record vampire cataloging fuckers. Sex Vid are like acid on the eyeballs of those boring dorks. And yes, I finally got a tye die shirt, as did the rest of this dirt bag city and so on and so on. The basement show, which was probably the best ever, at least for right now, I couldn't believe it would be even technically possible to top their previous achievements but they did so with venom and vigour. and I got to bro-down with the legend, True Bromance, with his Corrosion of Conformity/Void tatts etc etc (and that’s a long etc etc). I formed two conceptual bands, New Age Attack and Ancient Rage. Um Sex Vid are totally dreamy and doomy. Lately I have been into walking out to the ocean thru the foggy neanderthal trees listening to Die Kreuzen and the only thing that touches that experience is terms of radness would be watching Sex Vid play a basement show and everyone losing it totally and realizing, Greg Sage style, that now is the time, when is the truth.
2-Then Finally Punk and the New Bloods played a show at the Albany Landfill which I had to work for the duration of, which was a major irritant... BUT I heard a rumour that they were to be playing a show at a top secret bar, that night, in town. I harrassed people and made em all go and everyone that showed up was glad for this, really they were. Finally Punk! All girl Texas destruction like a Lilliput-Mika Miko-Bush Tetras-Amos and Sara-Unit 3+ Venus mash up. I dont know! I dont know! Just go see them; they are on tour now!! You will be totally wretched for missing out on their brand of radness; they trade instruments after every song and are just so genuine and exciting and cool. They have this deadly combo of detatched humor and charming attack, it’s ironic and genuine all at once, and is another situation where it's hard to believe something so rad is happening in front of yr eyes and yet it is... One thing watching them kind of reminded me of was seeing Erase Errata play the Smell when they had just put out their demo. It was a great show-Sharon Cheslow, Erase Errata and Quixotic, and I had never heard of Erase Errata before so they had nothing to prove in my eyes, just another lame support band. Watching them play was like watching the Beatles or something, I can’t exactly explain it, I don’t mean it was as mindblowingly amazing musically maaaan, because, to be honest, I only like about three Beatles songs total... But the thing I like about them as a band is their inherent charisma and individual personas, if that makes sense. They weren’t bland identikit pop idols. Watch a Hard Days Night. This relates to that Erase Errata show because... Um yeah, Erase Errata are not like the Beatles as people. I don’t know them at all personally but they all seem kind of shy and withdrawn; BUT what I mean to say in this long digression is that watching them on stage playing music, each member was so cool and charismatic and it was maybe like a watch where you can see all the machinery and it’s so delicate and intricate but the sum of it also makes an impact.... um! That was the only association I had in regards to watching Finally Punk play. They don’t really sound like Erase Errata, they are more aggressive and confident, but they had that visual excitement and presence, but you know they are PUNKER. Last time I saw them was at a crazy eviction show in Oakland, where kids were climbing out of the windows and throwing fireworks, so being able to actually see them and pay attention made me realize truly how great they are.... Then the New Bloods played. They are totally like what you wish wimmin's music was instead of crystals, mullets and folk song; gritty earthy basement Raincoats style with total fire and ferocity. SO AMAZING!! Live even better than on record: again, really! This may sound weird, but their music was strong and angry but not angsty in a way that makes it easy to write off as another post riot grrrl antagonism. It has this drive and power and authority that is really cool and um powerful? I can’t wait to hear their next record, and am really happy Kill Rock Stars are going to put them out, they are fucking great.
3-You should get all the 7"s and designer merch put out by all the aforementioned bands or lose out. I think that Finally Punk have a new 7" coming out on someone from uh Deerhunter??'s label. Does that sound right? I think so. (Ps there’s a pretty amazing interview with Dennis Cooper and that Deerhunter dude in the new ANP quarterly... the one with Phillis Diller on the cover) Anyways I am sure Kill Rock Stars will distro it; Finally Punk also have a 7” LP and a CDR. KRS are putting out the New Bloods, who have a 7” on Brown Sugar records (or is it burnt sugar?? Dude! I forgot. Brice White’s label...) and a CDR. Sex Vid are gonna be on a top secret division of CTR recs I think? a 12"? oh yeh. It’s not as punk as a 7”, but being that they have already released the two of the best hardcore 7” of this decade I guess it’s cool...
4-Hubb's story about going to see Tortoise with the intent of getting the dude in that band who was also in Mecht Mensch to issue/let him issue some sort of discography. Instead he wound up drinking a bunch of the Fucking Champs' rider and was so wasted by the time Tortoise finished their epic dirge of a set he has no recollection of anything at all except the worst hangover of all time.
5-Someone made fun of me for liking Comet Gain a while back, because apparently they aren’t ‘punk’ enough for the MRR compound. I admit I avoided them for a long time even when our bands would play together (early 90s London grrrl mod explosion) which I think was probably mostly because I hated the girl singer’s voice. As soon as they replaced her with the awesome Rachel, when all the lame people who wanted to ‘make it’ quit the band, I got into it. I would advise getting their last 12” Imagine the Shapes, it’s great, one song which is somehow created in the image of a Television Personalities song that didn’t happen (not sure about the exact story behind this...), the other feel good like a too much to drink, up all nighter on Brighton Beach singing old PP Arnold songs loud and shakily all at once. They are great. Their records always have clunkers and not-quite-made-its, but the last three LPs have all contained enough killer Swell Maps/TVPs/ Go-Betweens/Jam/Dance Stance references to keep this girl satisfied. I guess some of their early stuff is straight c86 indie pop, but they are punk, and more interesting than another boring power pop revival.
6-One day me and Holly met up and went to see Dan Higgs play a generator show on a bus. I don’t think Lungfish have ever been considered punk, and I admittedly only have gotten into them as I have neared crone-hood, ie gotten older... And if you had been at said bus show you priobably would have gotten out yr bullets belts and started trying to make all those D-Beeat war porn record covers a reality RIGHT THERE. BUT it was rad. It was a surprisingly warm day/evening for summer in SF. (Normally it is fuckin cold here all summer, because of some weird weather thing where the hot air of the central valley area of California combined with the ocean and maybe the bay too makes SF a foggy cold non- summery place til about October when it gets HOT for about a week, VAGUE SCIENCE! PROBABLY NOT ACCURATE.) Since it was Pride weekend the cops assumed the bus was a legal part of the festivities and did not get involved in shutting down the obviously illegal generator show. Bus shows rule. I like it when they are at the Albany Landfill or Potrero Del Sol Park under the overpass, but it was super rad being at a generator show in one of the most visible places in SF on a super nice day and not getting fucked with by cops. We hung out a bunch, got heavy into the primal Dan Higgs earth-ocean-sky spirit and left after the third song, ..
7-NOT because we were too punk, but becase we had plans to sneak into a screening of Lizzie Borden’s Born in Flames. Which is incidentally as good on the lady punk move scale as Ladies and Gentlemen the Fabulous Stains. Essential Logic AND Red Crayola on the soundtrack? oh yeh... An all girl 10 speed bike army avenging rapists and molestors? Oh yeh. Twin towers blowing up because of a post socialist revolution women's army plot? Totally! If you wanna see a post-apocalyptic 70s feminist punk movie that kind of makes no sense but is amazing and life changing anyway... this would be the movie. Watching the army of lady avengers on 10 speed bikes, in V formation, riding down empty revolution struck 70s New York City streets was as close to perfection as say, um watching Sex Vid play a bsement show? This movie was made over a period of seven years, so it starts out with afros and Staples Singers and ends with the Bloods (the New York girl punk band from the late 70s) and lots of Warriors style radio code messages. It’s just so inspiring and clumsy and cool...
8-Saw Fucked Up, heard that they are playing a show IN OLYMPIA with Spider and the Webs, AND Sex Vid. This is my dream show, just those two bands.
Fucked Up were actually really great even though I just got bored of them last year after they put out the double LP. Which I have only heard once! How lame am I? But a DOUBLE LP! It doesn’t make me think of Double Nickels on the Dime or Zen Arcade, more like um MDC’s Smoke Circles. Which is like most of that band’s out put bar a 7” or two, a bummer. Last time I saw Fucked Up it was a total old man in the mosh pit jamboree and this time was no different. Lots of aging dudes being manly. It’s like grown folks hardcore. They undeniably have great songs, as was clearly demonstrated by their set. BUT. There’s something missing from them as a band idea, and maybe musically too; the mystery ingredient that makes me crazy about bands like Finally Punk or Sex Vid. It’s like Fucked Up are too calculated, their myth is too self congratulatory and obviously intended to provoke a response. I don’t know, they do have killer songs, but the idea of an entire double LP of sigils and situationalisms, endless mocking irony is not what I want. Obviously that is not a problem in anyway for them or their future world domination program, I am a nerdy girl who likes the Frumpies better than 86 Mentality or whomever their audience like to mosh it up to so I am sure I am not the target message board dude anyways.
9-Mecht Mensch-Die in the Classroom
10-the Autoclave 7” on Dischord
Dudes. I am sorry, I really probably am not going to write you back. I totally suck at even writing to my friends or my family, and I think the only time I was ever able to make correspondence happen was during the halycon 90s emo pooh bear man lifting banner endpoint endracism longsleeve era. BUT maybe I will change.
1-Sex Vid!!!!! Holy shit! Is it just me or is most of San Francisco walking round in crummy tie dye Sex Vid shirts?
Merchandise it keeps us alive. After seeing them first at the Hemlock I was wondering if it was worth going to the other show because they were just so impossibly great and how could anything else be so exactly what I wanted... But of course the sweaty basement show was like watching like Neos open for Void or being able to eat pizza for every meal with no consequences. Speaking of which; I can't believe people would wanna leave SF. It's fucking great here posers; we have good pizza, and good punks. Spoken in faux Valley girl accent, since I have returned from my brief sojourn to the UK I have seen THREE next level amazing best ever (for sure!) shows. I mean fucking SEX VID!!!! This band is the best. They are like a birthday present and and xmas present without yr family breathing down yr throat. Seriously, watching them play it's hard to believe a band that good is even possible in a climate such as today; doom clad shitty message board fucktard mythologies and depressing bug eyed record vampire cataloging fuckers. Sex Vid are like acid on the eyeballs of those boring dorks. And yes, I finally got a tye die shirt, as did the rest of this dirt bag city and so on and so on. The basement show, which was probably the best ever, at least for right now, I couldn't believe it would be even technically possible to top their previous achievements but they did so with venom and vigour. and I got to bro-down with the legend, True Bromance, with his Corrosion of Conformity/Void tatts etc etc (and that’s a long etc etc). I formed two conceptual bands, New Age Attack and Ancient Rage. Um Sex Vid are totally dreamy and doomy. Lately I have been into walking out to the ocean thru the foggy neanderthal trees listening to Die Kreuzen and the only thing that touches that experience is terms of radness would be watching Sex Vid play a basement show and everyone losing it totally and realizing, Greg Sage style, that now is the time, when is the truth.
2-Then Finally Punk and the New Bloods played a show at the Albany Landfill which I had to work for the duration of, which was a major irritant... BUT I heard a rumour that they were to be playing a show at a top secret bar, that night, in town. I harrassed people and made em all go and everyone that showed up was glad for this, really they were. Finally Punk! All girl Texas destruction like a Lilliput-Mika Miko-Bush Tetras-Amos and Sara-Unit 3+ Venus mash up. I dont know! I dont know! Just go see them; they are on tour now!! You will be totally wretched for missing out on their brand of radness; they trade instruments after every song and are just so genuine and exciting and cool. They have this deadly combo of detatched humor and charming attack, it’s ironic and genuine all at once, and is another situation where it's hard to believe something so rad is happening in front of yr eyes and yet it is... One thing watching them kind of reminded me of was seeing Erase Errata play the Smell when they had just put out their demo. It was a great show-Sharon Cheslow, Erase Errata and Quixotic, and I had never heard of Erase Errata before so they had nothing to prove in my eyes, just another lame support band. Watching them play was like watching the Beatles or something, I can’t exactly explain it, I don’t mean it was as mindblowingly amazing musically maaaan, because, to be honest, I only like about three Beatles songs total... But the thing I like about them as a band is their inherent charisma and individual personas, if that makes sense. They weren’t bland identikit pop idols. Watch a Hard Days Night. This relates to that Erase Errata show because... Um yeah, Erase Errata are not like the Beatles as people. I don’t know them at all personally but they all seem kind of shy and withdrawn; BUT what I mean to say in this long digression is that watching them on stage playing music, each member was so cool and charismatic and it was maybe like a watch where you can see all the machinery and it’s so delicate and intricate but the sum of it also makes an impact.... um! That was the only association I had in regards to watching Finally Punk play. They don’t really sound like Erase Errata, they are more aggressive and confident, but they had that visual excitement and presence, but you know they are PUNKER. Last time I saw them was at a crazy eviction show in Oakland, where kids were climbing out of the windows and throwing fireworks, so being able to actually see them and pay attention made me realize truly how great they are.... Then the New Bloods played. They are totally like what you wish wimmin's music was instead of crystals, mullets and folk song; gritty earthy basement Raincoats style with total fire and ferocity. SO AMAZING!! Live even better than on record: again, really! This may sound weird, but their music was strong and angry but not angsty in a way that makes it easy to write off as another post riot grrrl antagonism. It has this drive and power and authority that is really cool and um powerful? I can’t wait to hear their next record, and am really happy Kill Rock Stars are going to put them out, they are fucking great.
3-You should get all the 7"s and designer merch put out by all the aforementioned bands or lose out. I think that Finally Punk have a new 7" coming out on someone from uh Deerhunter??'s label. Does that sound right? I think so. (Ps there’s a pretty amazing interview with Dennis Cooper and that Deerhunter dude in the new ANP quarterly... the one with Phillis Diller on the cover) Anyways I am sure Kill Rock Stars will distro it; Finally Punk also have a 7” LP and a CDR. KRS are putting out the New Bloods, who have a 7” on Brown Sugar records (or is it burnt sugar?? Dude! I forgot. Brice White’s label...) and a CDR. Sex Vid are gonna be on a top secret division of CTR recs I think? a 12"? oh yeh. It’s not as punk as a 7”, but being that they have already released the two of the best hardcore 7” of this decade I guess it’s cool...
4-Hubb's story about going to see Tortoise with the intent of getting the dude in that band who was also in Mecht Mensch to issue/let him issue some sort of discography. Instead he wound up drinking a bunch of the Fucking Champs' rider and was so wasted by the time Tortoise finished their epic dirge of a set he has no recollection of anything at all except the worst hangover of all time.
5-Someone made fun of me for liking Comet Gain a while back, because apparently they aren’t ‘punk’ enough for the MRR compound. I admit I avoided them for a long time even when our bands would play together (early 90s London grrrl mod explosion) which I think was probably mostly because I hated the girl singer’s voice. As soon as they replaced her with the awesome Rachel, when all the lame people who wanted to ‘make it’ quit the band, I got into it. I would advise getting their last 12” Imagine the Shapes, it’s great, one song which is somehow created in the image of a Television Personalities song that didn’t happen (not sure about the exact story behind this...), the other feel good like a too much to drink, up all nighter on Brighton Beach singing old PP Arnold songs loud and shakily all at once. They are great. Their records always have clunkers and not-quite-made-its, but the last three LPs have all contained enough killer Swell Maps/TVPs/ Go-Betweens/Jam/Dance Stance references to keep this girl satisfied. I guess some of their early stuff is straight c86 indie pop, but they are punk, and more interesting than another boring power pop revival.
6-One day me and Holly met up and went to see Dan Higgs play a generator show on a bus. I don’t think Lungfish have ever been considered punk, and I admittedly only have gotten into them as I have neared crone-hood, ie gotten older... And if you had been at said bus show you priobably would have gotten out yr bullets belts and started trying to make all those D-Beeat war porn record covers a reality RIGHT THERE. BUT it was rad. It was a surprisingly warm day/evening for summer in SF. (Normally it is fuckin cold here all summer, because of some weird weather thing where the hot air of the central valley area of California combined with the ocean and maybe the bay too makes SF a foggy cold non- summery place til about October when it gets HOT for about a week, VAGUE SCIENCE! PROBABLY NOT ACCURATE.) Since it was Pride weekend the cops assumed the bus was a legal part of the festivities and did not get involved in shutting down the obviously illegal generator show. Bus shows rule. I like it when they are at the Albany Landfill or Potrero Del Sol Park under the overpass, but it was super rad being at a generator show in one of the most visible places in SF on a super nice day and not getting fucked with by cops. We hung out a bunch, got heavy into the primal Dan Higgs earth-ocean-sky spirit and left after the third song, ..
7-NOT because we were too punk, but becase we had plans to sneak into a screening of Lizzie Borden’s Born in Flames. Which is incidentally as good on the lady punk move scale as Ladies and Gentlemen the Fabulous Stains. Essential Logic AND Red Crayola on the soundtrack? oh yeh... An all girl 10 speed bike army avenging rapists and molestors? Oh yeh. Twin towers blowing up because of a post socialist revolution women's army plot? Totally! If you wanna see a post-apocalyptic 70s feminist punk movie that kind of makes no sense but is amazing and life changing anyway... this would be the movie. Watching the army of lady avengers on 10 speed bikes, in V formation, riding down empty revolution struck 70s New York City streets was as close to perfection as say, um watching Sex Vid play a bsement show? This movie was made over a period of seven years, so it starts out with afros and Staples Singers and ends with the Bloods (the New York girl punk band from the late 70s) and lots of Warriors style radio code messages. It’s just so inspiring and clumsy and cool...
8-Saw Fucked Up, heard that they are playing a show IN OLYMPIA with Spider and the Webs, AND Sex Vid. This is my dream show, just those two bands.
Fucked Up were actually really great even though I just got bored of them last year after they put out the double LP. Which I have only heard once! How lame am I? But a DOUBLE LP! It doesn’t make me think of Double Nickels on the Dime or Zen Arcade, more like um MDC’s Smoke Circles. Which is like most of that band’s out put bar a 7” or two, a bummer. Last time I saw Fucked Up it was a total old man in the mosh pit jamboree and this time was no different. Lots of aging dudes being manly. It’s like grown folks hardcore. They undeniably have great songs, as was clearly demonstrated by their set. BUT. There’s something missing from them as a band idea, and maybe musically too; the mystery ingredient that makes me crazy about bands like Finally Punk or Sex Vid. It’s like Fucked Up are too calculated, their myth is too self congratulatory and obviously intended to provoke a response. I don’t know, they do have killer songs, but the idea of an entire double LP of sigils and situationalisms, endless mocking irony is not what I want. Obviously that is not a problem in anyway for them or their future world domination program, I am a nerdy girl who likes the Frumpies better than 86 Mentality or whomever their audience like to mosh it up to so I am sure I am not the target message board dude anyways.
9-Mecht Mensch-Die in the Classroom
10-the Autoclave 7” on Dischord
Dudes. I am sorry, I really probably am not going to write you back. I totally suck at even writing to my friends or my family, and I think the only time I was ever able to make correspondence happen was during the halycon 90s emo pooh bear man lifting banner endpoint endracism longsleeve era. BUT maybe I will change.
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
13th
I am writing this hunched over my mum’s computer in sunny Brentford, west London, where I grew up. Right now I am trying to figure out how the hell I am going to ship 18 years of being a total record nerd to San Francisco without going broke. They don’t have Media Mail here, which is totally rotten obviously. I shipped pretty much the same record collection back to the UK from New York for less than a hundred dollars thanks to Media Mail rates in America. I would say I have two to three thousand records I can’t bear to part with, along with a huge pile of essential teenage mix tape-age. I also uncovered a stockpile of desperate misery in fanzine form, in other words the future Scott Moore library of midwestern emo zines. I will ship those to Scott first class so he can put on his The Hated acoustic tape and rock silently and soulfully as he reads about the sorrows of overprivileged youths in expensive liberal arts schools in Ohio circa ’93.
Before I came here I really couldn’t remember what I had, and kind of assumed I would sell most of my records to pay for the super-expensive plane ticket, but I seriously had really good taste in music when I was a youth (And I am not being arrogant! I mean I had Irma Thomas LPs, the FU’s, Albert Ayler, the Fury 7"!) Plus I think I must have already done (and forgotten about!) the great emo unload before I moved back to America, because I don’t really have any bad emo to get rid of and make vast amounts of money off of on eBay. I totally need the Faith 12" on two different color vinyls, you know, to match my cheesy teenage Faith tattoo. And all those post punk records I picked up for 50p at the Brighton Station car-boot sale? The Pop Group? Rip Rig and Panic? I am weighed down by an inherently un-Zen-like pack-rat instinct and two zillion essential records. I am much less consumption-oriented nowadays, but seeing my record collection in all its glory is awakening the old scary impulses and reminding me of the gaps that need filling; I have a feeling when I return to SF I will be haunting the aisles of Amoeba once more looking for the Shop Assistants LP or the Eyes TAQN 7”.
The day before I came here I came upon a huge tape collection abandoned on the street by someone who was clearly a lame-o baby boomer but who also had great taste in music. Thelonious Monk and Elmore James on the same tape? That kind of thing. It kind of blew me away that someone could just abandon their musical history like that, but I guess with the advent of MP3s and mix CDRs tapes are even more redundant than they were when CDs were first introduced. There’s something more appealing about a mix tape than a CDR, though. CDRs are so disposable and plastic, and I know tapes are too, but somehow they hold more meaning than a blank disc of shiny silver. I broke my tape player on my first day back in London and my mum freaked out because apparently you can’t buy tape players here anymore so I guess the tape really has had its day. CDRs and instant internet music libraries somehow devalue musical taste, I think; when you can download the Desperate Bicycles discography in one fell swoop it kind of takes away the meaning of the music and turns it into just another computer file. But then I know a lot of music is just too hard and/or expensive to find on vinyl, and record nerds are mostly creepy dudes who are more into getting one up on each other than sharing their knowledge/making tapes for less knowledgeable people, and the internet wipes that horrible interaction out in one easy swipe.
I remember reading something Tobi Vail wrote in her zine Jigsaw about when she first saw the Shop Assistants discography online and how happy she was knowing that now girls wouldn’t have to cozy up to some creepy dude to update the gaps in their record collection. Just going through all my mix tapes, and seeing all the terrible tapes various dudes made me as I was getting into hardcore reinforced this fact to me. All the random teenage girls I see at like Gilman shows with super-obscure early-‘80s hardcore-band backpatches on their denim jackets will never have to sit in some creep’s living room taping his records because now they can just download them on soulseek or whatever, subtracting the sleazy dude interaction from the equation. Maybe they won’t have the same appreciation for the music, maybe they won’t ever buy the “bad” Gang Green record or whatever, but at least they won’t have to endure the sliminess of the desperate old man/nerdy teenage girl situation.
I remember having a conversation with Nikki from Huggy Bear about how sad she was that teenage girls hadn’t really formed bands in the wake of the Huggy Bear/Bikini Kill UK tour—besides my band. (We put out a split record with Berkeley’s Raooul in like ’94? On Lookout, a CD of which incidentally and bizarrely is selling at the HMV music store in the mall in Hammer-smith; having never been paid the millions clearly owed to us by Lookout, I and the rest of Skinned Teen intend to seek vast amounts of monetary compensation.) Just before I came here I was at the Maximum house as were members of Jump off a Building and Mika Miko (ooohhh, dreamy!) and I had another similar conversation with Michelle of Mika Miko about how rad it was that Finally Punk exists—obviously the first post-Mika Miko band. I kind of wish there were millions of them, teenage girls armed with a Dischord: Year in 7"s tape and some Greg Ginn guitar doom...and maybe there are, because I am not really super in touch with the teenage girl bedroom noise punk rock scene these days. Knowing that Finally Punk may be breaking up because some of the members are abandoning Texas for school/new futures is kind of bittersweet, but you should most definitely check them out. They themselves are not influenced by hardcore boy sound at all; more like they are influenced by Mika Miko who you know have Negative Approach stickers on their guitars or whatevers. But still! Sitting in my teenage bedroom surrounded by Huggy Bear demo tapes and old Sassy magazines and Girl Germs fanzines makes me wish that girls would rule all towns, and that girls would be inspired to form bands by more than say, Sleater-Kinney. Meaning that I wish that girls had my old No Trend/No New York mix tapes rather than just Le Tigre or whatever mid-level indie rock it is that the ladies are getting down to in bedrooms and practice spaces.
One thing I really wish had existed when I was a teenage girl living in London was the Upset the Rhythm collective. Me and my mum were in Rough Trade yesterday hanging out with a member of Hard Skin (oooh! Namedropper!) and I noticed fliers for a ton of amazing forthcoming shows that Upset the Rhythm are putting on, mostly when I will be back in America unfortunately. It totally made me psyched that people are doing things and making shows and bands happen for more reasons than just getting in the NME, which is and always has been a total vampire on the London music scene, reducing possibility and creativity to just another scene to consume and destroy/dismiss. There have always been anarcho-pie shows in the squats and pubs of South and East London, but anything slightly art-damaged or girl-based always seemed to get consumed and destroyed by the indie rock cynics. My theory used to be that the DIY underground people that made up the flexi disc/tape label scene in the ’80s got into rave culture and that’s where the non-anarcho-pie DIY scene got subsumed. Nothing against South London crusties—except they smell and listen to Oi Polloi. I always wanted the underground people here to be into Black Flag and the Shop Assistants, Huggy Bear and His Hero is Gone. Ha! Re-reading this I am struck by the fact that I am totally into punk in the most lame nostalgia-infused way! The eternal good old days robbing my brains of insight and sharpness. At any rate, that’s all I have to say this month.
Before I came here I really couldn’t remember what I had, and kind of assumed I would sell most of my records to pay for the super-expensive plane ticket, but I seriously had really good taste in music when I was a youth (And I am not being arrogant! I mean I had Irma Thomas LPs, the FU’s, Albert Ayler, the Fury 7"!) Plus I think I must have already done (and forgotten about!) the great emo unload before I moved back to America, because I don’t really have any bad emo to get rid of and make vast amounts of money off of on eBay. I totally need the Faith 12" on two different color vinyls, you know, to match my cheesy teenage Faith tattoo. And all those post punk records I picked up for 50p at the Brighton Station car-boot sale? The Pop Group? Rip Rig and Panic? I am weighed down by an inherently un-Zen-like pack-rat instinct and two zillion essential records. I am much less consumption-oriented nowadays, but seeing my record collection in all its glory is awakening the old scary impulses and reminding me of the gaps that need filling; I have a feeling when I return to SF I will be haunting the aisles of Amoeba once more looking for the Shop Assistants LP or the Eyes TAQN 7”.
The day before I came here I came upon a huge tape collection abandoned on the street by someone who was clearly a lame-o baby boomer but who also had great taste in music. Thelonious Monk and Elmore James on the same tape? That kind of thing. It kind of blew me away that someone could just abandon their musical history like that, but I guess with the advent of MP3s and mix CDRs tapes are even more redundant than they were when CDs were first introduced. There’s something more appealing about a mix tape than a CDR, though. CDRs are so disposable and plastic, and I know tapes are too, but somehow they hold more meaning than a blank disc of shiny silver. I broke my tape player on my first day back in London and my mum freaked out because apparently you can’t buy tape players here anymore so I guess the tape really has had its day. CDRs and instant internet music libraries somehow devalue musical taste, I think; when you can download the Desperate Bicycles discography in one fell swoop it kind of takes away the meaning of the music and turns it into just another computer file. But then I know a lot of music is just too hard and/or expensive to find on vinyl, and record nerds are mostly creepy dudes who are more into getting one up on each other than sharing their knowledge/making tapes for less knowledgeable people, and the internet wipes that horrible interaction out in one easy swipe.
I remember reading something Tobi Vail wrote in her zine Jigsaw about when she first saw the Shop Assistants discography online and how happy she was knowing that now girls wouldn’t have to cozy up to some creepy dude to update the gaps in their record collection. Just going through all my mix tapes, and seeing all the terrible tapes various dudes made me as I was getting into hardcore reinforced this fact to me. All the random teenage girls I see at like Gilman shows with super-obscure early-‘80s hardcore-band backpatches on their denim jackets will never have to sit in some creep’s living room taping his records because now they can just download them on soulseek or whatever, subtracting the sleazy dude interaction from the equation. Maybe they won’t have the same appreciation for the music, maybe they won’t ever buy the “bad” Gang Green record or whatever, but at least they won’t have to endure the sliminess of the desperate old man/nerdy teenage girl situation.
I remember having a conversation with Nikki from Huggy Bear about how sad she was that teenage girls hadn’t really formed bands in the wake of the Huggy Bear/Bikini Kill UK tour—besides my band. (We put out a split record with Berkeley’s Raooul in like ’94? On Lookout, a CD of which incidentally and bizarrely is selling at the HMV music store in the mall in Hammer-smith; having never been paid the millions clearly owed to us by Lookout, I and the rest of Skinned Teen intend to seek vast amounts of monetary compensation.) Just before I came here I was at the Maximum house as were members of Jump off a Building and Mika Miko (ooohhh, dreamy!) and I had another similar conversation with Michelle of Mika Miko about how rad it was that Finally Punk exists—obviously the first post-Mika Miko band. I kind of wish there were millions of them, teenage girls armed with a Dischord: Year in 7"s tape and some Greg Ginn guitar doom...and maybe there are, because I am not really super in touch with the teenage girl bedroom noise punk rock scene these days. Knowing that Finally Punk may be breaking up because some of the members are abandoning Texas for school/new futures is kind of bittersweet, but you should most definitely check them out. They themselves are not influenced by hardcore boy sound at all; more like they are influenced by Mika Miko who you know have Negative Approach stickers on their guitars or whatevers. But still! Sitting in my teenage bedroom surrounded by Huggy Bear demo tapes and old Sassy magazines and Girl Germs fanzines makes me wish that girls would rule all towns, and that girls would be inspired to form bands by more than say, Sleater-Kinney. Meaning that I wish that girls had my old No Trend/No New York mix tapes rather than just Le Tigre or whatever mid-level indie rock it is that the ladies are getting down to in bedrooms and practice spaces.
One thing I really wish had existed when I was a teenage girl living in London was the Upset the Rhythm collective. Me and my mum were in Rough Trade yesterday hanging out with a member of Hard Skin (oooh! Namedropper!) and I noticed fliers for a ton of amazing forthcoming shows that Upset the Rhythm are putting on, mostly when I will be back in America unfortunately. It totally made me psyched that people are doing things and making shows and bands happen for more reasons than just getting in the NME, which is and always has been a total vampire on the London music scene, reducing possibility and creativity to just another scene to consume and destroy/dismiss. There have always been anarcho-pie shows in the squats and pubs of South and East London, but anything slightly art-damaged or girl-based always seemed to get consumed and destroyed by the indie rock cynics. My theory used to be that the DIY underground people that made up the flexi disc/tape label scene in the ’80s got into rave culture and that’s where the non-anarcho-pie DIY scene got subsumed. Nothing against South London crusties—except they smell and listen to Oi Polloi. I always wanted the underground people here to be into Black Flag and the Shop Assistants, Huggy Bear and His Hero is Gone. Ha! Re-reading this I am struck by the fact that I am totally into punk in the most lame nostalgia-infused way! The eternal good old days robbing my brains of insight and sharpness. At any rate, that’s all I have to say this month.
Friday, August 24, 2007
12th
When I first moved here from England I swore I would never ever say two things: “CUTE!” and You Guys!” both of which are now firmly and unfortunately ensconsed in my vocabularly. Living in New York was not a problem in regards to said words, but California has wreaked it’s own special havoc on the way I speak. The first phrase, the seemingly innocuous “You Guys!” Every American uses this couplet with little thought, “Are you guys going to the show?” etc etc. I understand the use of the word ‘guys’, it’s seemingly gender neutral, even though it shouldn’t be, it’s used in the plural as if it is, so it makes life easier when dealing with a mass of friends or whatevers. It’s one thing that I know I am going to be mocked mercilessly in regards to when I go back to England in two weeks, it makes me think of over enthusiastic bosses at team building sessions and also the Christian metal fan from Beavis and Butthead cartoons. “You guys!” People that don’t understand that they are viewed as a separate entity from the group trying to affiliate themselves with said group. Cute is totally a hideous word when used to describe anything that isn’t a baby animal, unfortunately, especially in California clothes are cute, houses are cute, neighborhoods are cute, and so it goes on and on. I understand that a puppy is cute, as is a baby polar bear, but why do I find myself describing a certain part of town or an old trolley car in that way? The Californification of the way I talk started a long time ago being that my mum is from Southern California, but I have no excuses for the fact that my conversation is essentially Fast Times at Ridgemount High at all times nowadays. It just makes me laugh that the two phrases I swore would never encroach upon my vocab are now used without thought.
I ran into Golnar on the street yesterday, I was waiting for pizza, she was getting photobooth and she told me with alarm and horror in her voice that she used the word Hella whilst on tour with Condenada and no-one even noticed. She didn’t mean to use the word obviously, it just slipped out, but I guess that is a sure sign that it was time to leave the West Coast. One thing I know she will miss about living in SF is not knowing what washed up grunge lite band are playing at The Independent, the venue across the street from MRR HQ that seems to only feature washed up jam band stalwarts and grunge couldabeens. Candlebox anyone? Sometimes the band names are so ridiculous it’s hard to believe it’s not in actual fact an SNL paraody of some hemp wearing hacky sack jock rock, but no, the people that partake in that particular lifestyle (the frat hippie stoner douchebag jam band planet) clearly just have an even more gruesome vocabulary than me and all my friends combined. I am not sure if I already wrote about this but me and my friend Gabe went to see one of those Bridge School benefits that Neil Young does, which is basically a big meeting of everyone from different generations of that type of crowd to watch various people play their music acoustically. We went because of a) NEIL YOUNG and b) I was still in the throws of my Brian Wilson obsession, and he was gonna play Pet Sounds acoustic. I can assure you however that watching Dave Matthews was not something I ever wanted to experience. And the actual act of watching him affirmed that I was right in my prejudice. Imagine if you will a million different colors of khaki swirling around in one big ecstatic hacky sack match/dance, people losing their shit over what I would hesitate to call music at all. I mean it was basically just a collection of random howls and world beat colonialisms and jazz funk fusion unfortunates, really no order or need for a tune at all. And you are reading the words of someone whose favorite music is early 80s hardcore. We spent the set lying on the floor, eyes closed hands on ears like 5 yr olds stuck at a board meeting.
I also went on tour, albeit briefly, in fact I abandoned my roadie duties pretty speedily. I ‘roadied’ for XBXRX on their east coast tour; my best friend Helen’s band Squids were playing their last ever show with XB. That was the main reason for my heading out there having never seen her band play in their two or three year existence I thought it was about time. They were really great, reminded me of the secret basement girls only meet up stylings of the Raincoats, thanks to Sonya’s drumming they also kind of reminded me of Delta 5 or the Bush Tetras, that propulsive rythmic style. Sonya used to be in the awesome Meltdown, who were a mid 90s all teenage girl no wave band from DC who are simply AMAZING. They were inspired by the Scissor Girls, and have an LP and a 7” which you should totally get. (oogaboogastore.com has the LP, the 7” might be available from Dischord still) Helen and me were/are in Petty Crime together, we did a 7” on Slampt records when we were teenagers, and will hopefully play more this summer. Because you know, we never broke up, just moved to different towns. Kristen who played bass and guitar in Squids was in this rad Detroit band Red or Dead, who should release their jams for sure. I think another all teenage girl situation. Squids have a new CDR which you should send off for, it’s totally great, and of course they have a myspace.com/squidssquidssquids I think will get you connected to a CDR.
After Boston I headed to NYC and rolled deep with the original MZA. We drank the best bubble tea available anywhere at Saint’s Alp, and obvies spent a lot of time hanging out on Saint’s Mark (we renamed Saint Marks in honor of the bubble tea place) getting our bootleg GG Allin shirts together. I watched Lightning Bolt play a boring Amphet Reptile circa 95 style set to a crowd of ecstatic drunk college boys,, and watched XBXRX too who actually really reminded of Clikitat Ikatowi for some reason. Maybe the new drumming style is kind of Mario-esque? The show was in this hideous euro rave club in Williamsburg, which was pretty much like an Urban Outfitters store in neighborhood form. Generic blank hipster © times, no one with any sense of adventure, just the skinny jeans pointed glae armies of darkness. Last time I was in NY I was considering moving back there, and this time though i was only there for two days, my mind was changed. I love San Francisco as a place, and now can’t imagine moving. I like not living in what is essentially an outdoor shopping mall. Going there makes me nostalgic for my brief time living in NYC, but seeing Lightning Bolt in a shitty club play boring rock jams made me think of seeing them in shitty dive bars 7 million yrs ago and actually not knowing where they were going to play in a venue, watching the audience run to wherever the sound was emanating from instead of having their huge amp set up make it super explicit that they were playing in the audience! Crrazy!
Anyway that’s about it.
Top Ten
1-Laukaus demo 2-Messthetics best of comp 3-Golnar and Britton’s Dead Moon offshoots obsession 4-the fact that Fred and Toody’s country band has a myspace! So ridic 5-Dag nasty with Shawn singing. 6-Mika Miko 666 EP 7-Christina Billotte’s voice 8-Rites of Spring 8-Ruby Andrews- You Made a Believer out of me 9-Matokie Slaughter-Big Eyed Rabbit 10-pizza
I ran into Golnar on the street yesterday, I was waiting for pizza, she was getting photobooth and she told me with alarm and horror in her voice that she used the word Hella whilst on tour with Condenada and no-one even noticed. She didn’t mean to use the word obviously, it just slipped out, but I guess that is a sure sign that it was time to leave the West Coast. One thing I know she will miss about living in SF is not knowing what washed up grunge lite band are playing at The Independent, the venue across the street from MRR HQ that seems to only feature washed up jam band stalwarts and grunge couldabeens. Candlebox anyone? Sometimes the band names are so ridiculous it’s hard to believe it’s not in actual fact an SNL paraody of some hemp wearing hacky sack jock rock, but no, the people that partake in that particular lifestyle (the frat hippie stoner douchebag jam band planet) clearly just have an even more gruesome vocabulary than me and all my friends combined. I am not sure if I already wrote about this but me and my friend Gabe went to see one of those Bridge School benefits that Neil Young does, which is basically a big meeting of everyone from different generations of that type of crowd to watch various people play their music acoustically. We went because of a) NEIL YOUNG and b) I was still in the throws of my Brian Wilson obsession, and he was gonna play Pet Sounds acoustic. I can assure you however that watching Dave Matthews was not something I ever wanted to experience. And the actual act of watching him affirmed that I was right in my prejudice. Imagine if you will a million different colors of khaki swirling around in one big ecstatic hacky sack match/dance, people losing their shit over what I would hesitate to call music at all. I mean it was basically just a collection of random howls and world beat colonialisms and jazz funk fusion unfortunates, really no order or need for a tune at all. And you are reading the words of someone whose favorite music is early 80s hardcore. We spent the set lying on the floor, eyes closed hands on ears like 5 yr olds stuck at a board meeting.
I also went on tour, albeit briefly, in fact I abandoned my roadie duties pretty speedily. I ‘roadied’ for XBXRX on their east coast tour; my best friend Helen’s band Squids were playing their last ever show with XB. That was the main reason for my heading out there having never seen her band play in their two or three year existence I thought it was about time. They were really great, reminded me of the secret basement girls only meet up stylings of the Raincoats, thanks to Sonya’s drumming they also kind of reminded me of Delta 5 or the Bush Tetras, that propulsive rythmic style. Sonya used to be in the awesome Meltdown, who were a mid 90s all teenage girl no wave band from DC who are simply AMAZING. They were inspired by the Scissor Girls, and have an LP and a 7” which you should totally get. (oogaboogastore.com has the LP, the 7” might be available from Dischord still) Helen and me were/are in Petty Crime together, we did a 7” on Slampt records when we were teenagers, and will hopefully play more this summer. Because you know, we never broke up, just moved to different towns. Kristen who played bass and guitar in Squids was in this rad Detroit band Red or Dead, who should release their jams for sure. I think another all teenage girl situation. Squids have a new CDR which you should send off for, it’s totally great, and of course they have a myspace.com/squidssquidssquids I think will get you connected to a CDR.
After Boston I headed to NYC and rolled deep with the original MZA. We drank the best bubble tea available anywhere at Saint’s Alp, and obvies spent a lot of time hanging out on Saint’s Mark (we renamed Saint Marks in honor of the bubble tea place) getting our bootleg GG Allin shirts together. I watched Lightning Bolt play a boring Amphet Reptile circa 95 style set to a crowd of ecstatic drunk college boys,, and watched XBXRX too who actually really reminded of Clikitat Ikatowi for some reason. Maybe the new drumming style is kind of Mario-esque? The show was in this hideous euro rave club in Williamsburg, which was pretty much like an Urban Outfitters store in neighborhood form. Generic blank hipster © times, no one with any sense of adventure, just the skinny jeans pointed glae armies of darkness. Last time I was in NY I was considering moving back there, and this time though i was only there for two days, my mind was changed. I love San Francisco as a place, and now can’t imagine moving. I like not living in what is essentially an outdoor shopping mall. Going there makes me nostalgic for my brief time living in NYC, but seeing Lightning Bolt in a shitty club play boring rock jams made me think of seeing them in shitty dive bars 7 million yrs ago and actually not knowing where they were going to play in a venue, watching the audience run to wherever the sound was emanating from instead of having their huge amp set up make it super explicit that they were playing in the audience! Crrazy!
Anyway that’s about it.
Top Ten
1-Laukaus demo 2-Messthetics best of comp 3-Golnar and Britton’s Dead Moon offshoots obsession 4-the fact that Fred and Toody’s country band has a myspace! So ridic 5-Dag nasty with Shawn singing. 6-Mika Miko 666 EP 7-Christina Billotte’s voice 8-Rites of Spring 8-Ruby Andrews- You Made a Believer out of me 9-Matokie Slaughter-Big Eyed Rabbit 10-pizza
11th
This column is outrageously late. Ridiculously so. Mostly because I have had one of the most stressful months I can remember, more stressful than when I was looking after my dying grandmother in a dying southern Californian suburb? Perhaps. No definitely not, but still, I have not been able to even decompress enough to read anything more than a magazine let alone write anything entertaining or whatever it is my columns are. Anyways, that is a lame disclaimer but I am writing this under duress...
Last week a tweaker smashed the window of the store I work at, so there were tiny shards of non earthquake safe glass all over the floor, on every book in the store, under my finger nails, in fact we are still finding shards now. It made me envision life working in that book store during an earthquake, which would pretty much be us getting impaled by knife like glass fragments, running around in agony as the earth shook beneath us, soon realizing there was nowhere to go because THE ENTIRE STORE is fronted by non earthquake friendly glass. It would be called DEATH BY SHARDS and would be somewhere between one of those new Korean horror movies and a shitty 70s Michael Caine movie. I think it would make a good epic disaster movie, in the 70s epic disaster movie realm of course. My favorite encounter during the whole ‘bleeding hands! Broken glass!” experience was a random irate Bay Area liberal lady who screamed at me through the gaping window “I came ALL THE WAY FROM BERKELEY! I NEED A BOOK ON SPAIN! TODAY!” She couldn’t fathom that her retail needs were not going to be met by my aforementioned bleeding hands, and was so vile and unpleasant about it that is merely reinforced my ongoing hatred of Bay Area liberal lifestyle types. Who think a bumper sticker, a Volvo and voting democrat somehow exonerates them from being decent human beings, you know because they shop at the farmer’s market? They don’t have to be polite to the little people? They’re totally gonna change the world in their 40000 dollar hemp robes and organic designer jeans. Anyway, the day after that happened our computers crashed, so we spent a week hand writing every single transaction out and having to like DO MATH instead of having the computer do everything for us, which is how I prefer to live my life. Which also sounds like it would make a good 70s style disaster movie. It probably already is one actually. In fact every movie in the 70s was about how computers are going to do everything for us in the future. And now here we are in the future.
RANDOM STUFF I HATE #1:
Yuppie women in baseball hats: "I'm on the go! Things to do! Go GO GO! That's me!" Their ponytails poking energetically out of the hole in the back of the hat, their manic eyes and “I’m asking you a question? No I’m not actually? Just making a statement? In a passive aggressive way?” style of talking... They listen to female singer songwriter music; the stuff they play in Walgreens and Whole Foods, like Sheryl Crow and Jewel. Which in itself makes me want to stop girls from picking up guitars. Why can't girls be influenced by like Patti Smith or Anne Briggs instead of fuckin Joni or whatevers it is that made the dark force that is Sheryl Crow pick up a guitar. I mean Joni has some jams and I ACTUALLY LIKE FOLK MUSIC ALOT. But please! Lillith Faire and it’s bastard children must be put out of it’s misery. It's not fair to my ears that that is the muzak of now; 'All I wanna do is have some fun, and I got a feeling I’m not the only one...' is seriously like a Cambodian death march to me. It's truly music for those go getter bitches in baseball hats to feel empowered by as they squash the souls of me and my friends in some real estate land grabber deal.
Living in San Francisco can be a little disconcerting sometimes, like when 149 people die because of a car bomb at a Mosque in Iraq and the paper has a story about the history of a Marin lighthouse on the cover that day. Or how the people who started Burning Man are suing eachother over who ‘owns’ that stupid self indugent hippie yuppie douchebag fest. Women are having their reproductive freedoms removed by a terrifying supreme court and the SF Chronicle are writing about yuppie freelancers who work from their laptaps at coffee shops! Not offices! How modern! (The headline to this piece of front page clearly earth-shattering ‘news’ was “Where Neo-Nomad’s Ideas Perculate” The article itself refers to these ‘Neo-Nomads” as new bedoins. Can you think of anything more vile, offensive and straight up ridiculous? We have it on our fridge to remind outselves to never forget the struggle) It’s apparent that people here are so lifestyle orientated that unless they can buy something, profit from something or wear it they are really not going to ‘do’ radical politics at all. It makes me think of an advert that MTV ran during the TV coverage of the second Woodstock, “Change the World without Changing the Channel!” which has stuck with me for years. Like the part of the book Less Than Zero when he drives past a billboard that says Disappear Here.
I feel like Holden Caulfield right now. Not because of any generic yet picturesque sense of alienation, you know the way it turns out just about everyone feels except maybe the automatons who were destined for middle management at mall chain restaurants and insurance firms etc... but for the kind of mean spirited dismissal of anything and everything that will make me feel better about humanity. Human interactions, people's intentions, potential activities, ideas and feelings that don't coalesce with my exacting idea of how things must be right now... I have some strange overthinking problem where everything gets over thought and over wrought and nothing ends up actually happening.
NOT SO RANDOM THING I HATE #2-when men whistle. Maybe they think it's cheery and reassuring? I always think "Psycho Killer! Run!" My worst instance of this was walking from Brixton tube stn to my friend Katie's house really late at night, some dude whistled cheerily and incessantly behind me for a good thirty minutes while I had total heart palpatations and random murderous situations running through my head.
And onto my TOP TEN
1-Comet Gain’s cover of The Clean song Beatnik 2-went to the subterranean warehouse, got the Tronics CD but saw the ACTUAL Screamers movie. not the Target vid but the actual movie they thought was going to make them stars of the future. must get this!! Also someone needs to put out a full Tronics discog CD. STRICTLY SHARK FUCKS! 3-also I totally want a tie dye Sex Vid shirt. Sorry Golnar, now you are gone there is nothing that will keep me from embracing my true self 4-Gerry and the Holograms by Gerry and the Hollograms. AMAZING. This is the music that will play as the soundtrack to my glass shards disaster movie “Look Around Look Around Look Around” I can see it now. You can download this song at the WMFU website, DO IT! 5-Michael Hurley live! Devendra Barhart was doing the merch and I had no idea as I can’t stand the dude or his music, he just looked like a creepy troll forrest hippie, but not an actual one, maybe one from a catalogue or infomercial. Michael Hurley was great, really inspiring and entertaining. He is the best, if you are into mildly eccentric outsider folk music you will dig, if you think Devendra and his band of poser doom merchants fall into this category you are totally mistaken. Their music is for those who think Urban Outfitters commercials are trippy. 6-The Flipper song Earthworm-STILL!! So great. End of time is ours! 7-NO AGE Get Hurt 12” 8-Deep Wound 9-Frumpies Discography 10-Pizza
Last week a tweaker smashed the window of the store I work at, so there were tiny shards of non earthquake safe glass all over the floor, on every book in the store, under my finger nails, in fact we are still finding shards now. It made me envision life working in that book store during an earthquake, which would pretty much be us getting impaled by knife like glass fragments, running around in agony as the earth shook beneath us, soon realizing there was nowhere to go because THE ENTIRE STORE is fronted by non earthquake friendly glass. It would be called DEATH BY SHARDS and would be somewhere between one of those new Korean horror movies and a shitty 70s Michael Caine movie. I think it would make a good epic disaster movie, in the 70s epic disaster movie realm of course. My favorite encounter during the whole ‘bleeding hands! Broken glass!” experience was a random irate Bay Area liberal lady who screamed at me through the gaping window “I came ALL THE WAY FROM BERKELEY! I NEED A BOOK ON SPAIN! TODAY!” She couldn’t fathom that her retail needs were not going to be met by my aforementioned bleeding hands, and was so vile and unpleasant about it that is merely reinforced my ongoing hatred of Bay Area liberal lifestyle types. Who think a bumper sticker, a Volvo and voting democrat somehow exonerates them from being decent human beings, you know because they shop at the farmer’s market? They don’t have to be polite to the little people? They’re totally gonna change the world in their 40000 dollar hemp robes and organic designer jeans. Anyway, the day after that happened our computers crashed, so we spent a week hand writing every single transaction out and having to like DO MATH instead of having the computer do everything for us, which is how I prefer to live my life. Which also sounds like it would make a good 70s style disaster movie. It probably already is one actually. In fact every movie in the 70s was about how computers are going to do everything for us in the future. And now here we are in the future.
RANDOM STUFF I HATE #1:
Yuppie women in baseball hats: "I'm on the go! Things to do! Go GO GO! That's me!" Their ponytails poking energetically out of the hole in the back of the hat, their manic eyes and “I’m asking you a question? No I’m not actually? Just making a statement? In a passive aggressive way?” style of talking... They listen to female singer songwriter music; the stuff they play in Walgreens and Whole Foods, like Sheryl Crow and Jewel. Which in itself makes me want to stop girls from picking up guitars. Why can't girls be influenced by like Patti Smith or Anne Briggs instead of fuckin Joni or whatevers it is that made the dark force that is Sheryl Crow pick up a guitar. I mean Joni has some jams and I ACTUALLY LIKE FOLK MUSIC ALOT. But please! Lillith Faire and it’s bastard children must be put out of it’s misery. It's not fair to my ears that that is the muzak of now; 'All I wanna do is have some fun, and I got a feeling I’m not the only one...' is seriously like a Cambodian death march to me. It's truly music for those go getter bitches in baseball hats to feel empowered by as they squash the souls of me and my friends in some real estate land grabber deal.
Living in San Francisco can be a little disconcerting sometimes, like when 149 people die because of a car bomb at a Mosque in Iraq and the paper has a story about the history of a Marin lighthouse on the cover that day. Or how the people who started Burning Man are suing eachother over who ‘owns’ that stupid self indugent hippie yuppie douchebag fest. Women are having their reproductive freedoms removed by a terrifying supreme court and the SF Chronicle are writing about yuppie freelancers who work from their laptaps at coffee shops! Not offices! How modern! (The headline to this piece of front page clearly earth-shattering ‘news’ was “Where Neo-Nomad’s Ideas Perculate” The article itself refers to these ‘Neo-Nomads” as new bedoins. Can you think of anything more vile, offensive and straight up ridiculous? We have it on our fridge to remind outselves to never forget the struggle) It’s apparent that people here are so lifestyle orientated that unless they can buy something, profit from something or wear it they are really not going to ‘do’ radical politics at all. It makes me think of an advert that MTV ran during the TV coverage of the second Woodstock, “Change the World without Changing the Channel!” which has stuck with me for years. Like the part of the book Less Than Zero when he drives past a billboard that says Disappear Here.
I feel like Holden Caulfield right now. Not because of any generic yet picturesque sense of alienation, you know the way it turns out just about everyone feels except maybe the automatons who were destined for middle management at mall chain restaurants and insurance firms etc... but for the kind of mean spirited dismissal of anything and everything that will make me feel better about humanity. Human interactions, people's intentions, potential activities, ideas and feelings that don't coalesce with my exacting idea of how things must be right now... I have some strange overthinking problem where everything gets over thought and over wrought and nothing ends up actually happening.
NOT SO RANDOM THING I HATE #2-when men whistle. Maybe they think it's cheery and reassuring? I always think "Psycho Killer! Run!" My worst instance of this was walking from Brixton tube stn to my friend Katie's house really late at night, some dude whistled cheerily and incessantly behind me for a good thirty minutes while I had total heart palpatations and random murderous situations running through my head.
And onto my TOP TEN
1-Comet Gain’s cover of The Clean song Beatnik 2-went to the subterranean warehouse, got the Tronics CD but saw the ACTUAL Screamers movie. not the Target vid but the actual movie they thought was going to make them stars of the future. must get this!! Also someone needs to put out a full Tronics discog CD. STRICTLY SHARK FUCKS! 3-also I totally want a tie dye Sex Vid shirt. Sorry Golnar, now you are gone there is nothing that will keep me from embracing my true self 4-Gerry and the Holograms by Gerry and the Hollograms. AMAZING. This is the music that will play as the soundtrack to my glass shards disaster movie “Look Around Look Around Look Around” I can see it now. You can download this song at the WMFU website, DO IT! 5-Michael Hurley live! Devendra Barhart was doing the merch and I had no idea as I can’t stand the dude or his music, he just looked like a creepy troll forrest hippie, but not an actual one, maybe one from a catalogue or infomercial. Michael Hurley was great, really inspiring and entertaining. He is the best, if you are into mildly eccentric outsider folk music you will dig, if you think Devendra and his band of poser doom merchants fall into this category you are totally mistaken. Their music is for those who think Urban Outfitters commercials are trippy. 6-The Flipper song Earthworm-STILL!! So great. End of time is ours! 7-NO AGE Get Hurt 12” 8-Deep Wound 9-Frumpies Discography 10-Pizza
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)