mental violence

a photo on your wall is a record of the past of things you had forgotten of things that couldn't last now that things are different a moment on your own brings back memories and the thoughts will make you crave for old friends some of them you see sometimes some of them are dead don't forget the bad times you swore not to forget the anger, mental violence the worries and the threats sometimes it's nice to see people who used to be really close to you now you've escaped from your dependence don't get another dose

is it all over my face

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The idea of writing sometimes is so repulsive. What is more gruesome than rock journalism? Some choad emptying their bowels on an unsuspecting audience, explaining the sound, outlining intentions, tellin’ it like it is brothers and sisters. Is there anything more grim than journaling or personal confessional pieces, a supposed arduous journey on which you found something of yourself and managed to put it on the page nice and neatly, an arc like storyline tying everything together, containing the trials and troubles experienced like packaging tape. I work at a San Francisco literary landmark, and we frequently have readings at said literary landmark, sometimes it’s an occasion, say a certain insurrectionary Hungarian writer, someone whose work shifts landscapes and disturbs mindsets. But most of the time it’s a line up of local luminaries opining and whining, the same vocal tones employed in word delivery, the same shit eventually emerging, the over use of the word I, here it is, my story, for you but mostly for me! Listening to these voices makes me want to contain all my thoughts and ideas. To refrain from inflicting more bad art and feelings on an imagined audience. Just the manner in which these people read their work makes me want to vomit, makes me feel like a surly teenager who just can’t fucking stand it, the most corny of stances, Holden Caulfield as a woman in her thirties. Grim! But spoken word! Is there anything more wretched? The performance of nothing, the tropes and routines employed by these dismal soul patches. Yet another personal narrative diving into the depths of dissatisfaction and inanity, a kitchen sink drama, a horrible childhood all rendered with the subtlety of a mime troupe. It fills me with such horror that I am adding to the garbage pile. Not that I think of myself as a fine writer by any stretch, but over the course of two years of working at my job, listening to some of the most turgid self indulgent bile, it makes you want to throw in the towel somewhat… Reading old columns I have written for MRR is sometimes painful; I can feel the stress and insanity behind the tired words, especially when I was coordinating the magazine, at one point I wanted to make a zine of some of my columns, but… rereading them is work enough! (If you want to you can digest the entire series in one sitting at whatwewantisfree.blogspot.com and no I don’t even own any Articles of Faith recordings! What a poser. I like the phrase but prefer the music of Silver Abuse in terms of Chicago sounds of that era).

Punk is DIY, making your own culture, whether that’s making music, writing fanzines, all the other aspects of culture you can participate in as a punker, and I am not insinuating that because I am no Andre Gide there is no point in me writing at all… Nor am I saying that I think I am part of the wretched personal journey narrators that haunt my workplace. I am sure there are people reading this that would align my words into that school. There has been a push in recent years to move away from the dreaded “per-zine” dredge and unfortunately for this reader (who mostly finds perzines as vile as the aforementioned spoken word enunciators) this has mostly meant a million boring zines full of boring people writing boring things about boring music. There are a few who have stuck out (Brendon Annesley (RIP) and DX are the obvious ones, I would add some of the writers I hired to write columns for this mag, Viktor, Alex Ratcharge, Shiva, Sam, Bryony… a few Midwestern zine writers I am too lazy to go over to my zine pile to dig through and get names…) Rock criticism, music criticism ultimately has the same effect, anyone can do it, and they will so watch your fucking back. Read say, Patti Smith writing in Creem, or Lester Bangs, or Ellen Willis or Tobi Vail, Joe Carducci, read old Forced Exposures, Charlotte Pressler’s writing about the early Cleveland punk scene, and then go read some random music review website. A punk one; that “guy that used to work in a record store but now holds down an office job and writes about noiserock in his home office,” or a mainstream blog rocker one… All these confident casual opinions streaming 24 hours a day relentlessly like air conditioning in an Arizona mall; it feels like a never ending tape loop of the most banal, and again who wants to contribute to the deluge?! People aim for Lester Bangs or maybe more cerebral blogrocker types, Greil Marcus, but much like the pummeling stream of woeful tiki bar attendees and sorority sisters buying Bukowski all day at my work, dreams do not pan out and reality is a lot more painful and difficult to get through.

A long and labored diatribe about why I stopped; when I was writing my columns as coordinator for the most part I was unhappy with their contents.  Running the magazine is so exhausting, a relentless treadmill of woe, and who wants to read about that?! I wrote about it a lot however! Endlessly. If you browse the archive you will witness this fact. Trying to figure out how to write for kicks was part of my vision for post-MRR life as a deadbeat with no future or plans. So here is the personal journey part of my story arc I guess? Barf! I am not sure if I will keep writing a regular column, but I am working on a fanzine and you can email me Layla at maximumrocknroll.com and I will keep you updated on that in the distant future when it’s more than a mess of late nights and smeared eyes. Writing from a state of malaise, diffident alienation and so on, in the face of fifty million wannabe Keroaucs who just have to do it or their soul will be all parched.

Sometimes it feel like punk is stuck on a late night rerun binge, a relentless parade of images and snatches of past events reconfigured in less and less interesting ways. Things that seemed absolutely life altering a few months ago suddenly seem tired and dull, losing their shape or meaning. Why is one group of lunkheaded brutalists privileged over another, why does everyone look like extras from a pre-fame Michael J Fox movie or a Sears catalogue man circa 1954?! A long list of boring constructions, with a few bursts of excitement making the rest seem like it’s worth sticking around for?! There’s always something there to remind me.

1) Lose 7” on Subterranean 2) First two Pere Ubu 7”s 3) Lori and the Chameleons – “Touch” and Dorothy – “IConfess” 45s 4) Rosa Yemen – “Herpes Simplex” 5) Electric Eels – “Crummy Fags” 6) anticipation of new releases this fall from Hysterics and Household 7) PleasureLeftists live and 45 on repeat 8) End Result cassettes finally getting reissued!? 9) Magits 10) Flesh World 12” out soon on La Vida Es Un Mus! Oh andHoax live in a cave by my house?!  

this month's players bw check out my sick html layout

EDITH NYLON-EDITH NYLON
  pleasure leftists! best THIS HEAT! peel sessions are their best roland kirk plays to the animals in the zoo and john cage rides a roundabout HOW TO GET RICH IN ROTTERDAM need this record if anyone wants to send me one this is the best felt record ELECTRIC EELS!!!!!!!!!! all u need to listen to for the rest of time


FLESH WORLD STURDY SWISS HIKER GET IT FROM LA VIDA ES UN MUS SOON!!!!
I don't know if you can listen to this band online but their tape RULES midwest HC is destrukkkkktive right now
http://www.notnormal.bigcartel.com/product/failed-mutation-demo-2013

AS ALWAYS

DISGUSTED AND DISCOURAGED

BOOKS NOT BOYS

reading material 2013 so far (only listing incendiary titles that were unputdownable)

ASTRAGAL-albertine sarrazin (if you like Genet and want to read a 1960s french/algerian criminal girl version this will be the one you need. like a steak needs a black eye!)
SAVAGE MESSIAH-laura oldfield ford-a former early 80s anarcho punk girl with a fetish for skinhead boys walks in high heels through the ruins of london brutalism, mapping out a path for dislocated youth. one of those things you can hardly believe exists as you are reading it as it is too perfect, chem trails of dissonance drugs and chaos, theory and destruction

MANUSCRIPT FOUND IN SARAGOSSA- Jan Potocki-I saw the movie first and it blew my mind, but one of my coworkers said the book was better and he was right. absolute insanity! not able to explain just read it.

FLAMETHROWERS-Rachel Kushner-That's Entertainment! One of those books you whip thru like a speed freak, easy to read but about young girls navigating conceptual art in the post warhol NY of the 70s, speed racing on the Nevada Salt Flats, Italian communist revolution, futurists... young girl protagonist inserted into arenas said girls never get to run around makes for kick fueled read. fast fascists
SPEEDBOAT-Renata Adler-a devastating incision into the cultured life, joan didion with more cruel humor. Gonna read pitch dark next
BLOW UP-Julio Cortazar-I picked this up when I worked at another bookstore and it sat on my shelf for years, wasted time. so so so good.
Opium-Cocteau-as with most books about drug use this is also about cultural production/capitalism/literature as lifeboat and death knell and I wish I could recommend it to all the choads who come into my work asking where our non existing self-help section is.
OUT OF THE VINYL DEEPS-ellen willis. feminist rock criticism that is exciting to read from the lester bangs era?! yeah. seriously. it exists.

books that I started that I had to put down BUT WILL FINISH BEFORE 2013 IS OVER/am currently reading-not listing books that were too wretched to finish of which there were two, both new releases.
Against the Day-Thomas Pynchon (fantastical but too heavy to carry to work every day)
Troia-Bonnie Bremser, one of the most brutal books I have read. hard to process. young woman puts herself on the line for her junkie beat husband. the sort of thing you have to come up for air from esp if reading as a female. what life is like for those that miss out on the mythic beat museum blurt and get trampled in the dirt

I feel like I didn;t read enough this year somehow!? head in the clouds lost my focus. 

reborn as luxury homes

some music to listen to whilst decomposing

http://familyoutingpuke.bandcamp.com/

Ellie from Good Throb, Ben from Stab and a couple other people I don't know making some truly sick sounds. I think you can get the tape from Sorry State Maybe you'll wanna do that?!







really goodness can't stop listening to this tape SHIRTLESS THUGS




I can't figure out blogging formats, i hate blogggering to be honest, but here is a song from prists that got replicated twice on my blog formatting thing, it's a good one, reference to a b52s song got a creepy sick radness to it alright i vote YES.





1983 orstralian oi expeditions

Barcelona punk explosives

I saw this band play and it reminded me of Italian horror movie soundtracks meets a Christina Billotte band, ie genius sickness

The Power of the Spoken Word

I have pretty much stopped writing columns for MRR (tho I still write music reviews if you want to read my pithy words on sounds made by punker types grab a mag! www.maximumrocknroll.com) but I am planning on making some sort of publication of some of these old ones, edited, perhaps in zine form. more news will follow when it occurs

SOMEONE SEND ME THIS TAPE BEFORE I PERISH!!!

LAS TÍMIDAS 

 

SO GOOD

paco is doing the vinyl version

JUNE TOP TEN

THE COURTNEYS RULE!!!
http://thecourtneys.bandcamp.com/
They are playing SF at the end of the month and I am going to go and dance hard. Goofy, fun, plaintive, reminiscent of Looks Blue Goes Purple in a way that is inspiring and amazing rather than tired and limp. They are an exciting band on their own terms I mean, not just because they have somehow captured the excellent stylings of a classic NZ pop band, they are rambunctious and RAD. they make me think of summer, skateboarding, adventure, possibility... wind in your hair, sun on your neck, world is yours but you can't quite touch it but that's OK. I made the music editor at rookie mag cover them because I think all teenage girls should be Courtneys fans, and also start their own bands. COOL.

The news that Spider and the Webs were recording a new record was the light at the end of the tunnel for winter, not sure when it's coming out so listen to their band camp ok, and maybe get a t shirt so they can put the record out.




I have been listening to the following songs a lot whilst working. I listen to the Total Control Henge Beat LP alot, or Taking Tiger Mountain,or Pere Ubu, They seem good WORKPLACE IS RETAIL RETAIL IS CUSTOMERS CUSTOMERS ARE MEAT YOU ARE THE BUTCHER
These are this weeks work jams tho

NEU! Doing Hero from 75. this is one of my favorite records to listen to whilst registering the cash register

CAN doing I want more. I actually listen to the extended version more as it's what is available at my work, but this one is a jammer.

I like this song a lot too. Lonnie Holley All Rendered Truth, it makes me think of certain Arthur Russell songs, the space I think!? ECHO.

"We're a Cover Band"

COVER VERSION VERSION

1) UV RACE covering DAVE E AND THE COOL MARRIAGE COUNCILLORS

2) TERMITES COVERING ROLLING STONES TELL ME (SO MUCH BETTER THAT THE STONES' VERSION OK!?) Termites were mod girls from Walthamstow who released two 7"s... genuine 60s pent up emotions


3)SNIVELING SHITS COVER JACQUES DUTRONC


4)DELMONAS COVERING A LOU REED TIN PAN ALLEY ERA JAM


5) Phones Sportsman Band COVERING SLADE! YES! YOU ARE HAPPY


6) THE DOOR AND THE WINDOW DO THEIR BEST DAN TREACY IMPRESSION


7)MELODY DOG DON'T WORRY BABY


8) SPIDER AND THE WEBS COVER WEEKEND'S NOSTALGIA


(Or maybe it's just tobi with some spiderweb help?!)

THAT'S IT FOR NOW

Notes on Nothing: a desolate report

I haven’t written a column for the past few months; I broke my right hand in a terrifying bicycle collision with a SUV and it was too frustrating to type out a sentence with my left hand, let alone a few thousand words. But also I have felt pretty dissatisfied, a sense of malaise and torpor settled in and I had nothing to say so I didn’t say anything. One of the reasons I quit coordinating MRR is that I envisioned myself doing all these cool projects on my own terms, like writing for myself and not just for the magazine, maybe starting a band or a new fanzine. Instead I have been holed up in my room with various illnesses and injuries and filled with misgivings and a total lack of energy or desire to do anything but go to work and go to bed. I am forcing myself to write this screed, just in an attempt to get back into the act of writing. What can I write about? The guy at Trader Joes who asked me about my Die Kreuzen badge, then launched into a list of bands asking me if I liked any of them. NO, I hate them all. None of this has anything to do with Die Kreuzen or my button, and what is it with people like me wearing a signifier like that but not actually wanting to talk about Weezer or reunion bands with some random guy in a grocery store?! Things I hate: Weezer, Jawbreaker, the audience at any reunion show, competition, 7”s that cost over $7 that are brand new records, men who think your very presence in public is an invitation to a monologue / “lesson.” The Punk Nod is all very well, because it’s a nod, a secret signal, but maybe I have PMS, maybe I am just in a bad mood, but that’s about all I can take right now. Certain bands make my skin itch and I would rather listen to Doc Dart’s solo record fifty times in a row than anything Blake Schwarzenbach will ever produce.

This fascinating article I am producing might indicate a sort of distaste with the punk idea; this is far from the facts. I love the sounds and ideas that exist under that particular umbrella, new and old, that is one of the benefits of volunteering at MRR, continual affirmation that the punks are producing good sound ideas on a frequent and never ending basis. The opposite is also true, there are many dull and tired ones, but they are wiped clean by the excitement of the new possibilities that exist! I wrote a thing on ye olde blogge (whatwewantisfree.blogspot.com) about sounds and bands I am excited for new sounds from in 2013. You are welcome to check it out and maybe mention your favorite new bands/records. 2013 is a broken possibility so far in terms of personal goals and health, but the sounds are gonna heal us all right? Charred and jagged massage through punk rock.

Things I don’t want to talk about: Riot Grrrl. I think girls are starting cool bands, and making radical culture in many different contexts, which is great and inspiring, and I hope that some of the women who instigated grrrrldom write books (Allison Wolfe / Tobi Vail / Kathleen etc etc) BUT I am totally not interested in participating in panel-discussion-cultures about my own experience as a thirteen year old Riot Grrl no more. Not right now anyway. Maybe I will in the future, and I have done in the distant past, guilty as charged, in a Gehry designed museum nonetheless. Maybe it’s the combination of working at City Lights and formerly helping to run MRR, but the whole academic writer’s workshop culture creation lifestyle is making me wanna run to the hills, or at least stay in my room and brood. Definitely not create new works of art, or arts of work. I would say just write a zine or start a band, do something… desperate times. We are disappearing into an age of endless critic culture, where things get commented on until they are pounded into a fine grain, micro granules that blow away, to be forgotten next week. If you self-identify as a writing type, one who likes to put words on the page, to whine and opine, then what are you to do in the face of all of this noise? Not writing seems like the obvious choice, and I think one of the things that attracted me in the first place to punk and hardcore and DIY was the creation and negation aspect of the culture. Denial! Refusal! I don’t wanna go down to the basement… I don’t want to write rock criticism; I don’t want to talk about it. At any rate, this is a rambling anthem to the dispossessed and abandoned. Make of it what you will.

Things I love, a list for your eyes only.

Charlotte Pressler: a writer and musician from Cleveland OH, who has written deftly about her city’s profound musical history and heritage, and who has a beautiful solo LP with art by John Morton, of Electric Eels and X_X fame that you should grab instantly. Someone just uploaded some tracks she recorded in the mid ’80s in NYC to ye olde youtube, look up Red Dark Sweet if you want relentless joy imposed upon your brains. It was a cassette only release, and sounds like Electric Eels and Screamers and um fucking No New York all at once. It’s a gift! Charlotte Pressler for prez. “What’s That Sound I Hear” is particularly fantastic. Oh wait I think it's actually called Mrs Hanson! Sorry.

END OF LIST! Write me at Layla at maximumrocknroll dot com.

ever nearing joy

these are the records and songs I listened to the most in 2012



Brian Eno: taking tiger mountain LP


following on from which was Ultravox's first two LPs pre Midge Ure ruining their sound/band


I listened to the Coffin Pricks mp3s Jeff sent me a lot. Chris Thomson has the best voice.
Also PAgan Icons by Saccharine Trust, I hate the culture of endless trend that is inherent in punk rock scenes, "we are really crazy mutants! check out our crazy antics!" that shit makes me wanna go home, or rather not leave my home. I would rather listen to Pagan Icons, or Crucifucks than watch "crazy" "zany" hardcore reenactment troupes. some of my teenage pals (when I too was a teenager) were in a graffitti crew, and one of them used to tag be rather than seem. be rather than seem. "become who you are" a boring idea free grunt being "wild" no thanks. I don;t know.  "genuine" "authentic" "scare quotes" "wild" "tame" "real" "pastiche" "blah"
DOC DART
DOC DART vs "Your Band Is Boring"
A REPORT

I listened to the four star comp on a shitty tape I made from graham booth which also featured grupo 415 synth damaged classic "My Walkman Loves Me" of which I can find no record online to play you, but it is SO GOOD, as good as the anemic boyfriends and I got a copy of the 7"  a couple weeks ago.
 and of course THE PACK!!

BEST FUCKING GUITAR SOUND! seriously. only good kirk brandon band really, but SO GOOD

also listened to Lori and the chameleons alot, another dollar bin find:


and this white magic song:


I listened to the D Vassalotti LP and latest Merchandise LP on REPEAT, mostly the first one as it fitted a weirdly isolated year.
also LOVE CHILD, i wrote them off as a twee pop nothing so never paid attention, but please this 7" is SO GOOD, he's so sensitive sounds like a blondie outtake but with no new wave at all, and sitting on the sofa, witness! best song about sofas and sitting since the kinks?


and the textones. I didn't know kathy valentine was in a ore go gos band that actually worte a few songs the go gos used, and were on stiff records

I also listened to this Spraypaint Love song which is on the wonderful treat tape which I think came out for the international pop underground in 91? you can listen to it here:
also this song by the go team that someone uploaded to youtube



OK youtube DJ jukebox situations. I am not really talking about stuff that came out in 2012 so much? I guess not. well you can buy the next MRR and get the scoop on that to some extent, but I missed out on putting the daylight robbery LP which was a total mistake, as I love that band and record. I got sort of bored of "urgent post observers sort of wipersy bands" it felt like a deluge, but this record sort of fits in with that feeling but has something about it that makes it amazing. I love the John Doe/Exene styled interplay, but the lyrics and songs are really sincere and not really X-like at all beyond the way the vocals interact. anyway, it rules and I love this banda nd wish they would come to california.

my favorite live bands I think were merchandise and spider and the webs? tho I am sure I am missing thigns out but those are the only two that spring to mind. my record tragedy of the year was my gene clark LP being totally warped and unplayable due to a complex situation I don;t feel like talking about, but it involved gentrification and estate sale divas. i got another 7" I have wanted for along time, a comp that features the take's classic "summer":



I listened to household a lot still, and autoclave and slant 6.



and for obvious reasons I listened to BIKINI KILL a lot (obvious meaning I wrote the liner notes for the reissue)

and to huggy bear also. OK that is the end of my musical report. I am sure I forgot something. Oh wait girl on the run by honey bane and FUCKING COMET GAIN who I totally listened to obsessively all year as always, and sonic youth sister, I have an old SST tape which I listen to on the way to work most days, and um emmylou harris 13 LP. and guy clark dublin blues, patty griffin long ride home, and I got obsessed with JUDY CLAY and listened to OV Wright a lot too.
and can I want more

I just wanna have something to do

dee dee ramone sleeping

I haven't written a column in MRR for the last two months. I broke my hand in a bike accident and descended into an unproductive state of disinterest and disdain. My record player was too high for me to reach and my shitty broken right hand prevented me from existing in my usual manner, all of these things amongst others conspired against me and created an atmosphere of negativity and frustration. Since I am a punk this should have fueled my existence and given my work meaning, but instead I just read the internet and got on the shitty train to work and nothing came out of it, like one of those 80s anarcho / class war drawings of a mobius loop worker drone, bed/work/home/death. Like Greg Sage singing "no solution" over and over again until it's clear the revolution is not gonna come and I am just gonna sit there and rot into the couch...

Anyway I half heartedly worked on my year end top ten for MRR, which will be in the next issue (the one that comes out in February 2013 but is called March 2013 for some confusing reason you will never understand). And I picked some records I listened to a lot, but I am sure I missed things as my enthusiasm was low... so anyway, this thing is a list of records I am LOOKING FORWARD TO LISTENING TO IN 2013, This is a blog post about THE FUTURE.

Spider and the Webs have a record coming out this year, I actually don't know this for a fact but I know Tobi, James, Bongo Randy and Chris were in a recording studio and when I saw them play live they played some sick new jams that are gonna rewrite our bad times. Here is Tobi singing a song by the post-Young Marble Giants band Weekend... Nostalgia.


The most important record of the year will come out on La Vida es un Mus records, and is THE VIXENS!!!! this demo was my top ten of 2011 so I trust the record will make 2013 a livable year.

The next most anticipated item would be a new CRAZY BAND LP/7"/FLEXI
PS someone send me the tape. 
AFTER THAT WOULD BE A NEW CASUAL DOTS LP WHICH I HAVE HEARD IS HAPPENING!!!! Kathi Wilcox, Christina Billotte, Steve Dore; a force to be reckoned with!

One type of music I have been enjoying this year is girl bands that are in the Bomp!/Dictators/Runaways sphere, sort of highways and dirty streets and back alley music that isn't shitty bar rock... I love the Splits

who are from Finland, and I also have been listening to MP3s of the Bleached LP which comes out soon

It's total LA girls weighed down with broken hearts and bad attitudes, armed with Blondie and Ronettes  7"s, and making a record in the tradition of the Runaways, very much summing up the feeling of Los Angeles in a certain and distinctive way...I also have been enjoying the Veronica Falls LP MP3s, although they are so English it's almost unreal, the cut glass BBC accents not heard since Sarah records was a viable entity! Nothing they do will ever top the majesty of their first two 7"s, but the new record is a cool listen, parts of it totally reminded me of listening to the Sundays when I was a skateboarding 13 year old, but I am not sure that is what they were going for! I think they write  great songs, but they have yet to write a consistently great LP. But they are fantastic to watch play, and the good songs are like Comet Gain playing the Flatmates while the TVPs nod off in the background.

I am looking forward to the Milk Music LP though the just released version of this song below is more rock than I usually dig, but who knows...


Also Potty Mouth recorded a new LP, not sure who is putting it out but cool...


And Bona Drag who I freaked out about a few months back  are getting reissued by Captured Tracks, which is great as their music was only available on scratchy transferred from cassette youtubes!

C.R.A.S.H are putting out a new 7", the only format. As someone who is totally bored with metallic tinged HC (I could go into more detail about what I mean by this, but I don't want to be mean.) their sound is totally refreshing, like apple pie and pcp.

Someone should do a record of all the Coffin Pricks songs; I know they recorded more than just that 7"!

I am looking forward to records from Olympia bands (not sure if these bands actually have records coming out...) Gag, Spiritual Warriors, Grimace, Vex, Crude Thought; I am sure there are more I am forgetting. Joaquin and Rachel's band?! And all Weird TV members need to do new bands. I wanna see all the new Perennial releases. Also a glass tipped to new Candice and Osa jams, speaking of which NOLA is having a form a new band or perish fest this summer, details here: nomorefiction.tumblr.com

I am looking forward to hearing about new bands from members of Livid, Displeasure and Opt Out all of whom broke up this year, Bay Area scene report. I think Index are recording again? They are great, sham 69 meets kleenex. And members of Needles, Brilliant Colors and Balance of Terror have formed Flesh World who I have yet to see... And Brilliant Colors have a flexi coming out I think for a tour?! Prank records is putting out replica and I think permanent ruin!? girls have pretty much taken over bay area HC, which is cool... Tony and Michael from the Ovens are each in fifty bands too, speaking of which Caged Animal have a record out soon I think!? Oh and Peach Kelli Pop moved to Oakland, so we can all do the eggroll much more frequently... and Burger records are putting her new LP out, which I hope is as fresh as the first one. I hope Cyclops put out a triple LP as all their 7"s have been absolutely essential, a Portland/Bay Area force... This is an incomplete scene report as I live out at the Pacific ocean nowadays and can hardly get myself to go to shows. Hopefully this will change?! I have seen some amazing shows this year, but recently I have been in bedroom boredom mode. Anyway hopefully more bands will form, bands I like will play and I will enjoy it and stop feeling like I am watching a trend being digested and regurgitated over and over... I wanna see Hoax play. and Creem. and Goosebumps, wait there are so many bands I hear about but am forgetting the names of. Justin talked about some youth attack HC tape that made his top ten that sounded amazing?!
OH SHIT WAIT NY SCENE REPORT, I guess you have to ask bidi: amipunkyet.tumblr.com IN SCHOOL gotta make a record, that's all I know. It seems like there are fifty million bands, so many cool girl bands, a new landscape is forming. Also shout out to Anna Nasty and MJ holding down AZ girl sound eternal. Oh and someone send me the last Dark Times 7"! I can't figure out how to order it without spending 30 fuckin euros from some insane german distro! Anyway. I am gonna leave you with Good Throb. Does irreparables have a record out yet?!!Also I am gonna assume all the women of Trash Kit are in fifty amazing new bands already that I wanna hear.

Another Look Back at the End of the World

Since I have no column in this month's MRR i will put my aborted first paragraph here, and a top five. Sorry for crazy formatting I am no pro, lo pro, no pro.
Number one!


I have been listening to the Weekend '81 Demos on repeat. Weekend were Alison Statton's post Young Marble Giants band, and the LP and EPs are full of very polished lounge pop, somewhat reminiscent in feel of Paul Weller's post Jam band, the Style Council. The Specials also put a lot of lounge stylings on their later records, so it must have been a "thing" in post 1980s English music culture. Easy European influenced sounds meant to invoke a feeling of stylishness and a cosmopolitan post-war ease, but imbued with a post-punk arch distance made more vicious when you consider the brutal reality of life under a Thatcher government. The demo versions of the Weekend songs have an unease and awkwardness that brings them closer to Young Marble Giants work than the "official" versions, making them a perfect soundtrack to a month spent feeling out of sorts and disconnected.

TWO!
WHY DIDN'T I BUY LUDELLA BLACK LPs and KYRA LPs!!! I have fifty thousand Holly Golightly ones!!! and delmonas and headcoatees. WANNIT!
This was a song i put on mix tapes from the delmonas LP, here is the original tin pan alley version, written by lou reed and john cale!  

THREE! I listen to comet gain a lot at work, have been revisiting this LP, though I much prefer Rachel as a singer, this girl holds no candle to Rachel's majesty! But still so many good songs! and her voice is cool  
FOUR I have been having a power pop moment, but only jams and no kreepy stalker boy power pearl drivel THE SHIVVERSSSSSS!!!!  

FIVE If you click on this you will see a magical video of Francoise Hardy floating thru picadilly circus in the 60s. it's not her best song but let's go back in time and hang out in London in the 60s, read Shena Mackay and imagine distant galaxies and stifled lives all at once

Learn to hate in the eighties

I am sitting on my sofa deflated and dejected, (like the Kinks song or the Lovechild song? You decide! If you have not heard either one I command you to do so immediately! 

Youtube either band name and word sofa and all will be revealed). My skin feels like it’s covered with wire wool, my bones are aching and my brains are dissolving. I cycled home from work last night and while I was stopped at a stop sign, in the pouring rain after an hour long cycle, some upstanding citizen in his seventies felt the need to stop his car and inform me that all cyclists were cocksuckers, myself included. I don’t understand why men think it’s OK to approach lone women after dark, literally when I am by myself commuting home from the night shift at my work, every fucking shadow is a potential attacker. Don’t talk to me or whistle while walking behind me, or catch my eye. Get the fuck away from me and let me go home without having to negotiate your potentially threatening presence. I imagined this shitty old man calling his grand daughter a cocksucker as she rode around on his front lawn on her bike with training wheels. I imagined him being one of those leaden republican trolls that have made the comments section on any news website unreadable with their bile and hate and rage. I imagined him driving into the concrete posts of the bridge I had just passed under as I bombed down the hill as fast as I could to get away from his shitty Giants baseball cap and Archie Bunker persona. I thought about my grandparents, both from Kentucky, both so kind and generous and sweet to strangers and friends alike. Two people who probably never called anyone a cocksucker in their lives, and wondered to myself what could have happened to this toxic human, probably considered to be part of the “greatest generation,” that made him think it was OK to call a lone woman commuter a cocksucker!? The internet has quickly made the most vile thoughts part of the national discourse, people’s bodies and politics are dissected by lizard like minds who haven’t read a book since some teacher made them do so in high school, if then. Being an ignorant hateful troll is considered real American home-spun apple-pie authentic; people who would have known previously to hide their secret hatreds let them ooze out into the public sphere, goaded by talk radio hosts and Palin like politicians.

I am sitting on the sofa listening to my favorite Francoise Hardy LP and drinking my second cup of coffee, gearing myself up for the cycle into work past oblivious blonde ladies driving Mercedes SUVs whilst screaming at the hired help on smart phones whilst simultaneously doing all they can to obliterate me and my bike with their tank like vehicles. Past guys with Euro-stubble in convertibles with “I Ride with Romney/Ryan” bumper stickers emblazoned proudly on the back blasting terrible Ibiza house jams. This is San Francisco! My bike ride takes me through the worst part of the city, inhabited by people whose biggest struggle is picking which brunch place to line up outside each week. Most of the time I see through them, and just charge up and down the hills towards my work, a bastion of radical thought and literature in a sea of gross dudes puking on their pleat fronted chinos as they veer from strip joint to strip joint. I have understandably never really hung out in this part of the city before, it’s constructed for the entertainment of oblivious yuppies and the hills above it are inhabited by the 1%. People who pay more in taxes in one year than I will make in ten years! Well, that’s if the tax cuts for the rich do not continue! It’s pretty insane when you hear about someone who will have to pay $130,000 in taxes on their income this year if the tax cuts stop. No wonder that jerk in the convertible rides with Romney. There is another half of this city where kids graduate from high school without being to write a sentence, where women work three or four jobs to make rent as boho youthful yuppies cycle past on $2000 fixed gear bicycles, farm to fork brunch-ward bound.

Anyway I am full of bile today, but here are some things that make life less hateful.

1) Finding a stash of old Flamin Groovies Filmore posters at my work, cool Monty Python meets Art Deco stylings.

2) Reading the book The Manuscript Found at Saragasso, I saw the movie, an amazing Polish psychedelic disturbance created in the 60s, but was intimidated by the book for some reason. I thought it was gonna be Don Quixote style work, but it isn’t. It’s a total pleasure to read, like Italo Calvino rewrote Chaucer. A million stories piled on top of each other and somehow though the book is as thick as Moby Dick you can’t put it down. Endless adventure!

3) The amazing Finnish band the Splits sent me their LP! It’s on P Trash and it rules so hard! They remind me of the Testors, the Dictators, but are all girl, and I think I already wrote this in my review of their 7” a few issues back, but they named themselves the Splits because they loved the Slits and the Splits equally. So rad.

4) Diane of Livid/Opt Out/Brilliant Colors fame joined my favorite local band, Index! Index is the best and they have a tape you should send out for OK? I am reviewing it next issue, but it’s so so so good! For people that love Sham 69 as much as they love the Kleenex 7”!! http://cut-up-tapes.tumblr.com

5) Bona Dish! An amazing mostly girl band from the early ’80s who only had two tapes, both of which you can download if you can use an internet search engine or listen to on YouTube, total strange bedroom post punk constructions that are dark and poppy in a primitive compulsive fashion. They have a Facebook page with lots of links for you to check out! www.facebook.com/pages/bonadrag

That’s all the positivity I have mental capacity for this month.

Whatwewantisfree.blogspot.com

Layla (at) maximumrocknroll.com

Suzuki Beane! Baby Beatnik

You've Got to Pay

This is the November issue, but it comes out in October, which is is the best month of the year, for autumnal reasons and also for the fact that it's my birthday month, plus Halloween (even though I never do anything for Halloween).

I am writing this at work, sitting upstairs at a bookstore in North Beach watching the chaos unfold, homeless guys screaming at each other about stolen skateboards, a terrible relentless busker playing the same Led Zeppelin song over and over again to the delight of a pack of gross jocks that make up most of the crowd that now hang out in this formerly bohemian neighborhood. I work the night shift, and cycle nearly nine miles each way to get to work, from the Ocean to the Bay, through the park and through some of the ritziest neighborhoods in San Francisco. At night, at one in the morning when I am bombing the hills towards home this town seems haunted and empty, spectral and desolate. There are an inordinate amount of men who go jogging at 1am, alone, huffing down suburban streets with headlamps, safe in the cocoon of male privilege that affords them the luxury of not thinking about whether that shadow is a rapist or a distorted tree... I have been attacked twice during this commute, once whilst riding my bike and once on the bus before I started riding my bike; for a while every trashcan looked like a potential monster, but now things are shifting back. I am still very aware of my surroundings, very aware that every car full of kids might stop and fuck with me, that those drunks might push me off my bike, that that fucked up raver who has stopped his car in the middle of the street to dance by himself like a windmill might do more than yell at me aggressively. I don't take chances or feel relaxed; I used to bomb the last hill, through the darkness of Golden Gate Park staring up at the stars through the trees or watching the fog creep in and slowly submerge everything around me. Not so much anymore. But last night I saw skunks, and a fox and the shadowy shapes of the bison in their pen, and not another human for the last five miles of my ride. Reading about other people my age and the struggle to get any sort of paying work makes me very aware of how good I have it, working full time at one of the best bookstores in the world with coworkers who I enjoy, for not very much money and with not the best hours ever. But I can make my rent and buy a record or two. Privilege.

I have been thinking about work a lot recently, especially after a year of being underemployed and barely getting by, and also since ceasing to coordinate MRR, which is a more than full time job. But a job that gives you a sense of security in that you're working from home, the MRR compound, and in exchange for your labor you don't have to pay rent or bills. I mean that sense of security is undermined somewhat by the stressful nature of the job, and the stressful nature of the job is undermined by the fun and good times that running the best international punk magazine provides. (In fact, you should write to mrr@maximumrocknroll.com and ask for a coordinator application if you are a detail orientated punk music maniac who loves to write! Seriously dooo it! You get to pick what runs in this very magazine you are holding and live in San Francisco rent free!!) One of the things I have been doing since I quit the magazine is helping Bikini Kill with their reissue project. You may have heard that Bikini Kill started their own record label in order to reissue all of the BK records and some rare unreleased recordings too, plus Frumpies and Casual Dots too... It was cool to do something as radical and exciting as this and get paid for it. The endless paradox of working bottom rung shitty jobs because you don't want to be somebody's secretary, or shill for some corporation, and just writing for kicks and out of desperation... Then getting paid to write about something so important to your existence as a revolutionary girl punk youth. Maybe there's some sort of future in words? Well, maybe only if I move to a town where the rent isn't a mess of pottage. You will see the fruits of my labors in a month or so when the first EP comes out. It was really exciting to be a part of something as monumental as this; Bikini Kill were my generation's Minor Threat, a band that shaped and shifted the culture and made so many realize that they could do it too. Including a teenage me! There are so many more women and queers playing music now, 25 years later. It's so cool, every month there is a new band or three to freak out about in different parts of the world that send in their tape or record to Maximum or who I hear about on some social network site. I bet if you read the archives of my column-blog thing you would see I extol the virtues of a band or two every month that were formed by bored and/or adventurous ladies. (whatwewantisfree.blogspot.com!) Watching the Hysterics and then Weird TV whilst those bands were on tour were total inspiration forces, and the Honeysuck 7" I got for review this month too! There are secret girl histories all over the place, and new ones being created as I type! When I am toiling at the counter at work I frequently discover crazy girl bands that only had a tape in 1982, like Bona Dish-discovered via the 433rpm blog and listened to on youtube whilst serving the tourists of North Beach their Beatnik History Digests! Also reading the comments on the Termites "Tell Me" youtube page leading to the discovery that they have another amazing 7", that they were Walthamstow mod girls, and not just faceless girlgroupettes from a Girls in the Garage comp! So much more where that came from.
At any rate, one of the things that I said when I wanted to stop coordinating the mag was that I was going to start playing music again; well reader, I did. I am in a band with a Frumpie and an Awesome, we are long distance style right now but I think in the future it will be telepathic... We have songs after a week of skating and late night practice sessions. Here is a top ten of those times:
1: Skate for fun or not at all, with Frankenstein in the car park of the Northern. Super 8 footage was shot, so watch your local underground movie pavilion cuz we are taking over. We don't skate parks, we skate old school style, parking lots and curbs...

2: Puyallup Fair, which get its own sub top ten 1) the ponies and bunnies 2) Marissa ate deep fried butter, she is a true soldier for snax and the revolution 3) the wood butcher art of a life size baby bear taking a dump on a life size wooden toilet 4) the  rollercoasters 5)the '60s mod rocker aerial sky ride across the carnival 6) the high school alienation disaffection art competition 7) the crazy hypnotist lady performance, total audience domination until she started getting all homophobic / state fair hypnotist hypnotize this 8) it was half price ride day and there were no lines 9) the skateboarding bird 10) fair food

3: Playing music with Tobi and Marissa, the best, Marissa is a shredder, Tobi one of the best drummers ever, new excitement sounds for late night writing lifestyles
4: Watching Sir Drone, one of the best movies in the history of time. Mike Kelley RIP for real. If anyone has a copy of this they can dub for me I would be so stoked. This is one of the best movies I have ever seen, true comic genius, the essence of punk, the youth movement for all ages.

5: Seeing Henry Rollins and Henri Riot in one night, (or I should say, Mo Henry Rollins, FREE PUSSY RIOT) hanging out on the bench and lurking as he lectured the kids after the show about Chuck Biscuits' dual chocolate milk and booze chugging and drumming style, '82 demos / you're fired! Why pay to hear him speak when you can lurk the outside the tour bus after party for free.
6: Chain and the Gang and Spider and the Webs and Grass Widow and Neonates and Permanent Ruin and Crude Thought and Gag live... We missed Milk Music, band practice took precedence, but apparently it was gonna be the last Olympia show in a while so I am sure it was epic. Olympia is for real a 24 hour society, five shows a night, constant action, all night diner, girls skating in the streets, everyone is in five bands, band practice at the deli, shows at the all ages art space or the pizzeria, or the printmaking studio, abandoned puppies rescued by sympathetic bar tenders, mo henry.
7) Suzuki Bean book (google it! beat-sploitation for kids!)
8) Watching the seals lunge at the salmon
9) Jean Smith Pussy Riot paintings...
10) Lakeside walks and mod memorial book readings

OK start a band, write a zine, email me layla at maximumrocknroll.com

REVOLUTION GIRL STYLE NOW!!!

One of the things I have been working on since leaving Maximum Rocknroll as coordinator is this amazing new project! BIKINI KILL REISSUE!!! Preorder now and get a rad poster designed by Kathi Wilcox! I helped with the liner notes/a fold out compilation of zine writings and images you can also put up on your wall OK? YES! Order it then start your own band immediately. 

http://bikinikill.bandcamp.com/album/bikini-kill-ep-limited-edition-vinyl-pre-order

single bullets

When I first moved to America I was totally startled by the professionalism exhibited by its punk bands in regards to practicing. I have been playing in bands since I was thirteen, and I moved to the US when I was twenty three, so I had a few bands under my belt so to speak. But some of these bands didn't ever play outside of my bedroom. Some were just a conversation. Only one or two actually had organized practice space, both happening to be at youth centers where we were probably the only teens who had touched the practice space since rave culture decimated anyone's desire, in our neighborhood at least, to be in a band. We mostly formed bands and played music to hang out with each other, and I am definitely not speaking for every single English person or human being that was a punk in London in the '90s, just for my circle of friends. We were all teenage girls from various housing estates in West London, we found each other through our love of underground music, and skateboarding. We performed both of these activities with a distinct lack of interest in reaching for the stars or being the champions of the world. In fact we pretty much just did these things to hang out with each other with in desolate car parks or to somehow trick the antiquated youth club system into letting us make shit-fi sounds on the government's dime. The first time I played music with Americans, it was a pretty similar mentality; the girls I was playing with had also been in a degenerate teenage punk combo, theirs was Emily's Sassy Lime. That band was drawing to a close, and so when I moved to California we formed numerous new bands with various combinations of girls and played shows whenever we could. Sometimes with only songs written on the plane towards the location in which our gig was scheduled, as was the case when we played Olympia the first time under the name the Dillettoes. We evolved into the Shady Ladies, and maybe some day I will unleash the majesty of our recorded works onto the universe. If you saw us play, you were one of us. When I relocated to the Bay Area the attitude was much more pro gear, pro audio. Everyone had a practice space, huge monolithic amps and preordained riffs. I remember attempting to play with some garage rocker types in Oakland, they riffed and rocked and wailed, and I stood dumbfounded attempting to figure out what the fuck I was supposed to do. I eventually found some miscreants who got my endtimes, collapsible D is for duh guitar style, and formed a band and went on tour, but that was about eight years ago... My teenage band was informed by the sounds of the Shaggs and Huggy Bear, when I discovered Mars, DNA, Void and No Trend that added more ammunition, but I have never been moved by the urge to rawk or shred. This is something that may work for others, and in some cases it makes for an OK sound, but for the most part I would rather listen to say the Primitive Calculators than some perfect modern day approximation of Teenage Head. At any rate, skate for fun or not at all. layla@maximumrocknroll.com whatwewantisfree.blogspot.com

it's just the same old thing

A few years ago Alternative Tentacles reissued a demo tape onto 10” vinyl that the Melvins had sent into them in the early ’80s that Jello had rediscovered in his archive. To commemorate the occasion they performed the record, in the style of so many bands nowadays, “performing” records from years ago like they are theatre. It was at the Great American Music Hall in SF, with Jello as support, I got to go for free as my boyfriend works for the distribution company that AT go through; I think I even wrote about it in this space, about how the sound was too “pro gear pro attitude” and didn’t match up with the scrappiness of the essentially HC demo at all. And about Jello pantomiming to a song called something like “Coffee Plantation” about all the laptop droids that are taking over coffee shops in cities, and their barista/server overlords. Well, as you may or may not know San Francisco is in the middle of another dot com boom; Twitter and Facebook and a million other start ups and app creators are infesting our beautiful formally bohemian city and Valencia Street, once center of the anti-yuppie anti-dot com movement is now totally filled with young people wearing made in America denim with Lil House on the Prairie mustaches and sitcom blank eyes consuming all they can... I haven’t lived in the Mission for five years, and even when I lived there it was clear things were changing, Valencia has been gentrifying for over twenty years at this point in time, but it’s apparent the onslaught of the dot com deluge is final and complete. Walking past Adobe Books and seeing the closing sign in the window felt like someone had finally taken the air out of the tires of what this city was. Abobe is a local cultural institution, a second hand bookstore that lets day laborers and itinerant types sleep on the many chairs, that hosts art openings and readings by punks and others who don’t fit into San Francisco’s Literary Brunch scene. It truly was a magical place, somewhere to disappear for a few hours, and it’s so gross that it’s probably gonna be some gnarly reclaimed wood steam punk douche hang out that serves artisan pickles in a few months. The city is on its knees begging for corporations to take huge tax breaks and turn this place into an extension of the suburbs in which they should be existing. People that are unfortunate enough to have to work in Silicon Valley still get to live here, and get driven out on company busses sometimes further north than Sacramento to their places of employment. It’s not longer “cool” to live in the safety of the suburbs, so the tactic is to transform San Francisco into such a place...

It’s clear they have taken the city bar a few

undesirable neighborhoods, but give them time! Give them time; the entire city shall be theirs. Maybe even the foggy desolate ocean-side neighborhood I live in. Right now they are invaders, but maybe they’ll wanna make it home soon? Hopefully not! It’s a good seven mile cycle to the Mission, eight miles to North Beach, so maybe a bit far from the authentic Victorian barber shop recreations, pour over coffee and selvedge denim emporiums. All you need to do to change the world is change the channel. The old beer vats that punks once squatted are now condos, and reading about old existences in the city fills me with nostalgia and melancholy... Radical labor movements from the early part of the last century have ceded to this?!

Today I was walking around hitting up all the thrift stores, which is what I like to do on my day off, and it reminded me of living in lower Manhattan in the late ’90s/early ’00s, when it started to feel like I was living in a mall rather than a city. SF is much smaller than NYC and the neighborhoods are separated by huge hills, so it’s easy to stay in one neighborhood and never venture out of it, sorta like the uptown/downtown dichotomy of NYC I guess? But the globalness of cool, the insidiousness and ultimately meaninglessness of hipsterisms, where everything is a commodity, especially ideas, culture, clothing, anything that someone can attach meaning to and use to sell a product to kids who want more more more of something new new new. This hyper real hyper endless culture: blurred amoral bathtub drugged out times, Jane Birkin-ed out girls, every boy just stepped of a yacht in a Carly Simon song, it feels like that “hot tub yuppies in Marin on coke” era of post-’60s radicalism: the seventies of Steely Dan blandness, mellow “authenticity” with no sharp questions about race or class. Just for the feeeeling, don’t step on anyone’s toes. Everyone loves post-glam-beachpunk-surf-garage fuzz and is fucking boring and an oblivious yuppie consuming lifestyle like it’s coke in a golden bowl. Tumblr blog desolation. Got the outfit, got the cash, let’s blow it all on shitty music and a bland time! As Esmeralda of Noh Mercy stated in these pages a few months back, Valencia Street (and all the other similar streets of shame) are full of  yuppies, not “hipsters.”

Anyway, teenage tantrums, nostalgia, DIY, off the pigs and up the punks.

Whatwewantisfree.blogspot.com // Layla@maximumrocknroll.com

Pottymouth!!

Dark TImes!!

DARK TIMES ARE THE BEST

a boring tirade

One of the weird things about running MRR is the insider/outsider take on the music business it offers. The magazine starts out from a place of refusal, an attempt to create something outside of the music industrial complex. And yet for probably the past ten-fifteen years this thing that our version of punk, a thing which the DIY network was put in place to circumvent, has become part of the reality of a lot of the music and musicians we cover. Things that would have once been out of the ordinary are now usual; one sheets from PR companies, bands that supposedly operate on a DIY scale who also play Blackberry / Facebook / corporate holiday parties for thousands of dollars, and of course corporate sponsorship of tours and records and punk festivals. Bands having not only a PR person that handles their records, but also one to promote the tour probably means that the only way they can financially exist is by accepting as much corporate cash as is humanely possible. Of course we exist in an era where only a small fraction of kids actually buy records; music is now seen as being something that should be free, everything is a one sided tape trade, so bands that actually expect to make a living from their sound or even a profit are “forced” to engage with the market place. Right?! There’s a lot of room for contradiction; for instance a friend’s band who I am pretty sure get flowed free sneakers from Nike recently played an anti-Walmart benefit... Of course there still exists a huge underground DIY network of punks that refuse to participate in corporate/pseudo music biz bullshit, and thousands of bands who have no dreams of playing the Diesel tent at SXSW in exchange for a pair of jeans and some coverage on turd-burglermusic.com. 

I have been thinking about the incursion of music business practices into punk rock, in the light of the fact that Maximum Rocknroll is thirty, and especially since I now get all my MRR email automatically forwarded and about three quarters of it is made up of relentless PR screeds for bands that you probably own records by. (And many more that you do not! It’s an endless stream of shit). 

It’s a different era from the one in which I grew up in for sure. My gateway band was Nirvana, a classic example of a band who desired stardom whilst being repulsed by it at the same time. I can’t imagine any members of that band giving away free Scion branded tube socks at their merch table however... From Nirvana it was a quick descent into actual DIY punk, a lot of which I found out about courtesy of major news outlets like Sassy magazine and the Melody Maker/NME before discovering actual underground communication methods. My teenage punk band, at the height of the Riot Grrl news frenzy would not do interviews with major publications, only fanzines. We had people literally invent interviews with us so they could get their GrrrlScoop taken care of, but we refused partly because of Huggy Bear’s treatment in the press, and partly because of the Fugazi code. Fugazi’s influence seems to have totally waned in terms of band ethics now, but when I was a teenage punk, even if you did not like their music (I did but I know many reading this did not) their ethics and ways of doing things as a band informed the culture in seismic ways. Of course people had lived DIY pre-“Margin Walker”, I am not claiming that Fugazi invented anything, but this was a huge band who insisted in doing everything on their own terms, using small scale DIY ethics even when their LPs made the Billboard Hot 100. I don’t think anything I am saying here is particularly revolutionary, but someone told me what a certain band got paid to play a Blackberry staff party, and it was more than I make in a month. In three months! It just made me think of how for example, now MRR is not paying my rent anymore, my job at City Lights Books is much less appealing in that it doesn’t cover San Francisco rent a lot of the time, and I have to sell shit in order to make the difference... Maybe too much personal information, but I wanted to heighten the fact that although I love my job I barely get by, and I am not someone who is complaining about people making life / financial decisions from the comfort of my parents’ basement or something. 

And as I stated before, there are many bands who refuse corporate hand outs, that somehow manage to do US tours without the help of multinational corporations, who rely on the DIY network to sell records rather than the Artie Fufkin PR angle. I am not trying to entirely write off our scene/culture as a mini-music business model because for the most part it is not like that, out of choice and out of necessity, and uh, reality. But we are definitely in an era where it seems for the most part consumers of underground music do not care if the fest they are at is sponsored by PBR or if the band they are watching got their gas money from a car conglomerate. Is creating a semi-DIY mirror of the music business what punk rock is aiming for? I mean I am not saying that punks who have set up their own screen printing, or record mastering or recording businesses should all stop engaging with capitalism and come smoke some banana peels with me, maaan. I understand that it’s better to support a small, DIY business, but I don’t understand the PR creep in. For example, if your band can’t sell any records without the help of a PR person, maybe that indicates that your band does not have enough of a fanbase to be putting out records at this point in time!? But then see my comment about kids not buying records; you have to be pretty popular nowadays to sell a thousand records... It seems the current business model is press 300 of something, attempt to build up some message board hype, hope they sell out instantly and become momentary ebay gold, before people move onto the next internet sensation, forgetting the names of those that went before...

What do I know! I do know that I pretty much delete all emails from PR agencies instantly. I also know that I have only been in one band that anyone (meaning the mainstream media) has cared about, and we had the privilege of not giving a shit about making it in the biz, possibly due to the fact that we were fourteen/fifteen years old. We played big shows (for instance the reason I met Lance Hahn was that J Church were Beck’s backing band when my band supported him...) and that back then, as is the case now, if your band is playing a big show like that, you will get paid about $50-$100 and also have to sign some shit about not playing anywhere in that city for a month. Supposedly the “exposure” you get from having 500-1500 kids screaming at you to go away so they can watch the headliner is payment itself. Unless of course you have a PR agent to negotiate better terms for you. Maybe you can put on your PR agent drag and work it out yourself with the venue, DIY style?! One of my friend’s bands was in this position recently—they were offered lots of amazing “career-wise” opening slots for amounts of money that wouldn’t even cover gas costs, and I was totally blown away by how little the terms had changed from my limited experience of twenty years ago. At one time said she was gonna write a big expose about all of this for the magazine, since she was living it (but without a PR agent representative holding her hand) but it never materialized. All of this shit is a world I am not interested in existing in. Drum tech, guitar tech, sound guy tombstone.

At any rate, this is a rambling confused column, with a lot of remarks that have been made before, but I think since this magazine you are holding has made it to age 30 without compromise, without knowingly taking advertising money from corporate entities, only supporting DIY bands, of a narrow scope perhaps, but on its own terms... I think that’s all the evidence you need that indeed, another world is possible, that punk rock does not owe you a living, that you are the one that owes punk. You have to make punk what you want it to be. 

Sometimes when I am at a show, or when I see pictures of kids at shows and every single punk is wearing a bootleg t-shirt of some band that broke up thirty years ago, probably bought online, it makes me wonder what the point of all of this is. Another outfit bought out of a catalog to signify the correct allegiance to whatever subsect you are adhering to!? What does it all mean!? We all walk in line.