jambang

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

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

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


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


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


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


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


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

Featured in the program:

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

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

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

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

About Peggy Ahwesh

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

Top tenned

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

Music that Sounds Like Raymond Pettibon Drawings

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

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

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

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

1-CAMPINGSEX 1914 double LP reissue

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

4-Nixe 7" and rumors of a LP discography

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

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

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

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

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

layla.gibbon at maximumrocknroll.com

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

society dog

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

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

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

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

2-Chaos in Tejas vs Sex Vid in Olympia.

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

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

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

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

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

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

It's Not My Imagination...

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!